US faces growing home-grown terror threat

Home-grown terrorists have become one of the main threats faced by the United States in the nine years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, a report issued Friday says. The report by the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Security Preparedness Group says US citizens and residents have taken on an "increasingly prominent role in planning and operations... in the leadership of al Qaeda and aligned groups.
"More and more Americans are also "attaching themselves to these groups," the report by the Washington think tank said. Another shift in the US-threat landscape is "the increasing diversification of the types of US-based jihadist militants, and the groups with which those militants have affiliated," the report says. Today's "jihadists" in the United States "do not fit any particular ethnic, economic, educational, or social profile," it says. The report was compiled following interviews with a wide range of senior US counterterrorism officials.