MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We wanted to hear more about where the investigation into Charlie Cook's murder goes from here. So we've called Javed Ali. He's a former FBI counterterrorism analyst who now teaches courses on counterterrorism and national security law and policy at the University of Michigan. Good morning, Professor. Thank you so much for joining us.
JAVED ALI: Michel, thanks for having me this morning.
MARTIN: You know, when something happens like this, it's so shocking and upsetting. The obvious question is why? So a lot of people are looking at things that were etched into bullet casings that were recovered at the scene. How typical is it to find evidence like this, and what, if anything, does it tell us?
ALI: So, Michel, the why part of this event, this terrible event and similar types of attacks, this is one of the most difficult aspects for investigators and analysts to try to figure out. And as you mentioned already, there may be some potential clues or insights, like the inscriptions on the bullet casings, but that may not be the totality that explains the attack in this case. And there could be - there's always a number of factors that drives an individual to conduct some - an attack like this. It may not even be a shooting, per se. And trying to figure that combination of factors out, it just takes a significant amount of time.
MARTIN: You know, Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, said in several television interviews over the weekend that the suspect lived with a partner who is making a gender transition. Is that relevant to investigators?
ALI: Again, it may be something they're looking at, but was that something that in Robinson's mind was a factor that then led him to commit the attack? Only Robinson can answer that question. And if he's not cooperating, it's going to be difficult. So if that type of issue is something that could have been a mobilizing factor for the attack, then the investigators are going to have to pore through all these different streams of evidence to look at to figure out if that was a factor, or there could be 10 other ones. It's just very, very early right now in the stage.
MARTIN: So the FBI has a term called nihilistic violent extremism. And I understand from you that this isn't a term that even existed some few years ago. What does that mean, and is it relevant to the issue we're talking about now?
ALI: Yeah. That's another interesting development on the FBI side. So over the years, there have been different terms that have been developed in the intelligence community and within the FBI as part of that to help describe the types of threats we were seeing inside the country, especially from what we would call lone offenders. One of them, going back almost 15 years ago, was something called homegrown violent extremists. And that was describing people who were inspired by the first al-Qaida and then ISIS ideology, sort of using that jihadist belief to then go out and conduct attacks here.
What may be occurring now is a term like the FBI has apparently developed, this nihilistic violence, that doesn't necessarily fit into a single label, but there's a combination of ideological issues that are now in this basket called nihilistic violence, and that potentially could also be where Robinson lands from a motivation standpoint. But again, very early to comment (ph).
MARTIN: Because - and you say that because we don't necessarily know that he's not - he doesn't seem to be affiliated with some group. There doesn't seem to be some clear sort of ideological pattern that we are aware of, and that's what makes it this nihilistic violence.
ALI: Right, right. People sort of conducting these very violent and terrible attacks on the name of some undetermined belief system, but it's not driven by a particular religion or sort of racial animus or ethnic animus. There are other categories of threats. I described one, that homegrown violent extremist one. There is another term the FBI had come up with, the intelligence community - racially motivated violent extremism. There's been anti-government extremism. So these different categories that fit under this taxonomy, but this nihilistic violence, to me, seems newer and different and harder to describe, too. From the outside looking in now, having not been in government since 2018, I can't tell you all different sort of...
MARTIN: Sure.
ALI: ...Components that the FBI has used to come up with this nihilistic violence...
MARTIN: You know, the president keeps focusing on the radical left, but the fact is that there have been attacks on people from both political parties, violent, sometimes fatal attacks and often by lone gunmen with no - little to no prior interaction with authorities, which would seem to be very difficult to guard against. So we only have a little bit of time left, and obviously, this is a broader conversation, but what is the way forward here?
ALI: So the - this pattern, or wave that I've been calling - of recent political violence, yeah, most of the offenders are using guns to carry out these attacks, but their motivation is across this ideological spectrum, and so it's not just coming from one particular category.
MARTIN: But what I'm asking you is, is this - is there any way to guard against something like this? That's what I'm asking you.
ALI: Well, yeah. This is the significant challenge for FBI and law enforcement - how do you get upstream with individuals who are not part of formal groups? They're not part of networks. They're operating by themselves. They have access to weapons, and they haven't committed a crime.
MARTIN: That's Javed Ali. He's an associate professor at the University of Michigan and a former FBI counterterrorism analyst. Professor Ali, thank you so much for joining us.
ALI: All right. Thank you, Michel. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
