Terrorism in The United States - Failed Attacks

Failed Attacks

• 1920 September 16: The Wall Street bombing: A suspected attempt to kill financier J.P. Morgan by exploding the first car bomb. Bomb was created by putting scrap metal and 100 pounds of dynamite on a horse-drawn cart and blowing it up on Wall Street. Morgan was out of town but 38 people were killed. Responsibility for the attack has never been firmly established.
• 1940 June: Two dynamite bombs were discovered outside of the Philadelphia Convention Hall during the Republican National Convention. A total of seven bombs were discovered in the greater Philadelphia area during this period.
• 1950 November 1: Assassination attempt on President Harry S. Truman by members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party at the Blair House in Washington, D.C.
• 1965 The Monumental Plot – New York Police thwart an attempt to dynamite the Statue of Liberty, Liberty Bell, and the Washington Monument by three members of the pro-Castro Black Liberation Front and a Quebec Separatist.
• 1970 March 6 Three members of the Weather Underground are killed when their "bomb factory" located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins die in this accident. The bomb was intended to be planted at a non-commissioned officer's dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey. The bomb was packed with nails to inflict maximum casualties upon detonation. See Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
• 1971 April Pipe bombs found at the embassies of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in Washington, D.C.
• 1972 Two Jewish Defense League members were arrested and charged with bomb possession and burglary in a conspiracy to blow up the Long Island residence of the Soviet mission to the United Nations
• 1972 March 7 4.5 pounds of C-4 explosives found on a plane by New York City Police Bomb Squad.
• 1973 March 6: 1973 New York bomb plot Explosives found in the trunks of cars were defused at the El Al air terminal at Kennedy Airport, the First Israel Bank and Trust Company, and the Israel Discount Bank, in New York City. The plot was foiled when the National Security Agency intercepted an encrypted message sent to the Iraqi foreign ministry in Baghdad to the Palestine Liberation Organization's office. The attacks were meant to coincide with visit of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir. Khalid Duhham al-Jawary of the Black September was convicted on charges relating to the attacks in 1993 and was released to immigration authorities in 2009.
• 1975 September 22: Sarah Jane Moore tries to assassinate President Gerald Ford outside of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. The attempt fails when a bystander grabs her arm and deflects the shot. Moore has stated the motive was to create chaos to bring "the winds of change" because the government had declared war on the left wing.
• 1984 According to Oregon law enforcement there was an abortive plot by the Rajneeshee cult to murder United States Attorney for Oregon, Charles Turner.
• April 1985: The FBI arrested several members of a Sikh terrorist group who were plotting to kill Indian PM Rajiv Gandhi when he visited New York in June.
• 1988 April 12: Yū Kikumura, a member of the Japanese Red Army, is arrested with three pipe bombs on the New Jersey Turnpike. According to prosecutors, Kikumura planned to bomb a military recruitment office in the Veteran's Administration building in lower Manhattan on April 14, the anniversary of the U.S. raid on Libya.
• June 1993: New York City landmark bomb plot. Followers of radical cleric Omar Abdel-Rahman were arrested while planning to bomb landmarks in New York City, including the UN headquarters.
• December 1995: A drum of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil is found behind an Internal Revenue Service building in Reno, Nevada. An anti government tax protester is arrested later.
• 2000 January 1: 2000 millennium attack plots, plan to bomb LAX Airport in Los Angeles
• 2001 December 12: Jewish Defense League plot by Chairman Irv Rubin and follower Earl Krugel to blow up the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California and the office of Lebanese-American Congressman Darrell Issa foiled.
• 2001 December 22: British citizen and self-proclaimed Al Qaeda member Richard Reid attempted to detonate the C-4 explosive PETN concealed in his shoes while on a flight from Paris to Miami. He was subdued by crew and passengers with the plane landing safely in Boston.
• 2004 financial buildings plot: Al-Qaeda plan to bomb the International Monetary Fund, New York Stock Exchange, Citigroup and Prudential buildings broken up after arrest of computer expert in Pakistan and plotters in Britain.
• 2004 Columbus Shopping Mall bombing plot: A loosely organized group of young men planned to carry out an attack on an unnamed shopping mall.
• June 2006: The Animal Liberation Front targets UCLA professor Lynn Fairbanks with a firebomb due to her research on animals. The bomb was placed on the doorstep of a house occupied by her neighbor and a tenant. According to the FBI, the device was lit but failed to ignite and was powerful enough to have killed the occupants.
• 2006 September 11: A man rammed his car into a women's clinic that he thought was an abortion clinic and set it ablaze in Davenport, Iowa causing $20,000 worth of damage to the building.
• 2007 April 25: A bomb was left in a women's clinic in Austin, Texas but failed to explode.
• 2009 2009 New York bomb plot
• 2009 December 25: Nigerian citizen and self-described Al-Qaeda member Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in flight over Detroit by igniting his underpants which were filled with the C-4 explosive PETN. He has been indicted in a U.S. federal court; charges include the attempted murder of 289 people. Several days later, Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen and Saudi Arabia claimed responsibility for the attempted attack. Addressing America, the group threatened to "come for you to slaughter." On January 24, 2010 an audio tape that US intelligence believes is authentic was broadcast in which Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing. The intelligence officials expressed doubt about the veracity of bin Laden's claim. On October 12, 2011 Abdulmutallab plead guilty to all counts against him and read a statement to the court saying "I attempted to use an explosive device which in the U.S. law is a weapon of mass destruction, which I call a blessed weapon to save the lives of innocent Muslims, for U.S. use of weapons of mass destruction on Muslim populations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and beyond".
• 2010 May 1 2010 Times Square car bomb attempt and plot: A attempted evening car bombing in crowded Times Square in New York City failed when a street vendor saw smoke emanating from an SUV and called police. The White House has blamed Tehrik-e-Taliban the Pakistani Taliban for the failed attack and said Faisal Shahzad aged 30, an American of Pakistani origin who has been arrested in relation to the incident was working for the group. In July 2010, the Pakistani Taliban released a video featuring Shahzad in which he urged other Muslims in the West to follow his example and to wage similar attacks. On May 3, Shahzad was arrested at Kennedy Airport as he was preparing to fly to Dubai. The device was described as crude and amateurish but potent enough to cause casualties. On May 13 the F.B.I. raided several locations in the Northeast and arrested 3 on alleged immigration violations. Several suspects were arrested in Pakistan including the co-owner of a prominent catering firm used by the US embassy. On June 21 Shahzad plead guilty to 10 counts saying he created the bomb to force the US military to withdraw troops and stop drone attacks in a number of Muslim countries. Shahzad said he chose the location to cause mass civilian casualties because the civilians elected the government that carried out the allegedly anti Muslim policies. On October 4, 2010 Shahzad was sentenced to life in prison. During his sentencing, he threatened that "the defeat of the U.S. is imminent" and that "we will keep on terrorizing you until you leave our lands." Shahzad planned on detonating a second bomb in Times Square two weeks later.
• 2010 July 21. Bryon Williams captured after shootout with California Highway Patrol with guns strapped on his body armor alleged to have confessed that he was on his way to kill workers at the American Civil Liberties Union and follow it up with and attack on Tides Center allegedly was angry with left-wing politics and inspired by conspiracy theories of Glenn Beck and hoped the attack would ignite a revolution.
• 2011 January 17: Spokane bombing attempt: A small pipe bomb in a backpack designed to be detonated by remote control and spread shrapnel in a specific direction was discovered during a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. White supremacist Kevin Harpham is convicted and sentenced to 32 years in federal prison.
• 2013 April 8: Letters believed to contain the poison Ricin were sent to President Obama and Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker and a Mississippi Justice official. Tests on the granular substance found in the letters tested positive for "low grade" ricin.
• 2013 April 25: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the suspect in the Boston Marathon Bombings told investigators that he and his brother discussed using leftover explosives to attack Times Square. According to NYC Police commissioner Raymond Kelly the plan was conceived after they attacked Boston and was foiled when their SUV ran out of gas as they tried to escape from the Boston marathon bombing manhunt.