This Reference Aid provides state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) homeland security stakeholders with a typology—along with associated examples—of the terrorist facilitation activities that have been most commonly reported as taking place in the Homeland in order to assist in awareness, mitigation, and collection support efforts. This Reference Aid details activities that go beyond the provision of ideological support to a foreign terrorist organization (FTO)—a “sympathizer” does not meet the threshold for materially supporting an FTO or other violent extremist group—and, because it focuses exclusively on facilitation, this Reference Aid does not address activities that immediately precede an individual taking violent action.
To improve homeland security stakeholders’ understanding of the terrorist
threat environment in the United States and to guide reporting efforts by DHS Component
and SLTT partners, I&A convened Intelligence Community (IC) subject matter experts on Homeland-related terrorist activity and conducted a review of relevant reporting from the IC, state and local law enforcement, and open sources dating to 2011. Our analysis revealed that most identified US-based terrorist activity does not involve pre-operational activities conducted in preparation for an imminent attack; instead, most activities can be broadly defined as involving material support to terrorism, which we term facilitation. I&A grounded the wide range of reported terrorist facilitation activities into three major categories: financial support, logistical support, and providing access to and connections between known or suspected terrorists (KSTs).
Terrorist Facilitation Activities in the Homeland: Key Categories and Examples
