April 19, 2005 was the 10 year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing that leveled the Alfred P Murrah Federal building . One hundred sixty-eight people were killed including children and hundreds wounded by the truck bomb, which detonated outside the building. America woke up to terror in its heartland that day that shocked Oklahomans, the rest of the US, and indeed the world. Until the terrorist attack perpetrated by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001 , the Oklahoma City bombing was the first major terrorist attack on the US homeland, with high casualties and destruction (while the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 was meant to cause carnage and destruction, it did not achieve its goal, although there were fatalities). While US targets had been attacked abroad, the United States had seemingly escaped major terrorist attacks within its borders. On April 19, 1995, that luck or sanctity finally ran out. Ironically, and for a brief moment of speculation that foreign terrorists might have been involved, it became horrifyingly clear that the perpetrators of the bombing were Americans and that the threat against the US came from within.

April 19, 1995 can be viewed as the end of innocence for the US and, indeed, was a wake-up call that the US needed to better prepare to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism. If the US heartland could be attacked, then nowhere would be immune. Certainly, the United States began to take the threat of terrorism more seriously as a result. Yet, a few years later, the US suffered an even larger, multiple, and simultaneous series of terrorists attacks by foreign entities on September 11, which killed several thousand people in New York, Arlington, and Pennsylvania and caused the eradication of the two World Trade Center towers, damage to the Pentagon, the US economy, and untold damage to the psyche of the United States. To a certain extent, the destructiveness of the September 11 attacks and the focus on a foreign adversary that was likely not going to stop in their anti-American and anti-Western campaign seemed to eclipse the events that transpired in Oklahoma City. September 11 became the pivotal event for the start of the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Currently, much of the country?s focus and resources has been on combating this adversary, which is now beyond al-Qaeda and has morphed into a movement. But, what of the enemy within?