Terror and Counterterrorism 9/11 is one instance of international terrorism because its planning and preparation transcended the national boundaries of the United States, and thus its perpetrators could have been prosecuted as international terrorists (Definitions of Terrorism in the U.S. Code, 2015). Indeed, the counterterrorism activities before and after 9/11 indicate that there was a substantial and major shift in efforts to better comprehend and fight international terrorism post-9/11. A form of domestic terrorism, on the other hand, would be the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The methodology involved in this plot was to use homemade items to construct a bomb that would blow up a federal building.

The Oklahoma City bombing occurred in 1995, six years prior to 9/11. Yet counterterrorism had not sufficiently developed in those intervening years to be able to prevent 9/11. Perhaps the reason for this was that McVeigh and his accomplices were domestic terrorists -- or extremists, who were anti-government and were venting frustrations over the slaughter of the Branch Davidians by the ATF at Waco. Counterterrorism prior to the Oklahoma City bombing was best exemplified by the ATF at Waco, which focused on the Branch Davidian compound as a group of...

The ATF then proceeded to "terrorize" the Davidians into submission by blasting loud music at them day and night with loud speakers and assaulting the compound on various raids that ultimately ended in the compound being burned to the ground (Gazecki, 1997). Counterterrorism prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, which was described as revenge for Waco against the federal government, consisted of monitoring arms sales, as the ATF was doing (Collins, 1997). It encompassed gathering data within certain legal parameters while also upholding individual liberties such as a right to privacy. Prior to and even after the Oklahoma City bombing, one could take an airplane without having to be searched or strip searched. Today, in a post-9/11 world, that is no longer possible, as body scanners are everywhere and everyone is a suspect in the eyes of the various counterterrorism departments of the FBI, TSA, NSA, CIA, etc.
The vulnerabilities that were exploited in Oklahoma City was the sense that no American would be so inhuman as to blow up hundreds of innocent persons out of revenge for something the government did. Yet the bombing showed that America was no longer an innocent place: this act of terror exploited American naivete. Society responded by growing cynical, even doubting the truth of the story…