’60 Minutes’ explores homegrown terrorist attack inspired by ISIS

CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday reviewed a 2015 incident in which two homegrown terrorists inspired by ISIS propaganda attacked a contest in Texas to draw the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

The attack took place in Garland, Texas, in the northeast Dallas suburbs, and was the first on American soil that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria took credit for. 

The “60 Minutes” report comes on the heels of this week’s London terror attack by a radicalized jihadist born in Britain, which ISIS also took credit for.

{mosads}One of the two men, Elton Simpson, had already been interviewed by the FBI and even convicted for lying to the bureau. Yet Simpson was able to join Nadir Soofi, a fellow jihadist. Both men had radicalized in the United States after watching ISIS militant videos that became viral and easily accessible on the internet, according to the FBI. 

Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of the George Washington University Center on Extremism, examined the two men’s communications and determined that the ISIS propaganda had played a large role in pushing them to act.

“This idea of a so-called caliphate was a driver for Simpson and Soofi. They had finally realized what they had talked about for years. It touched a nerve with a lot of folks in the jihadi-sphere,” Hughes told Anderson Cooper. 

“Especially in the summer of 2015, you saw a lot of these FBI guys, everything was blinking red. You had a number of different plots happening. And the FBI was kind of trying their best to catch up,” Hughes added.  

Hughes suggested that ISIS egged on and encouraged Simpson and Soofi to attack the drawing contest, which goes against Islamic rules of not depicting the prophet.

“I think the [ISIS] folks whispering in his ear was a big part of it,” Hughes said. 

Simpson and Soofi, heavily armed and wearing bulletproof vests, opened fire on a police officer and security guard after they reached a security checkpoint at the event. 

Soofi and Simpson missed the two men despite firing dozens of shots, and the police officer shot and killed both men. 

It was later discovered that an undercover FBI agent had been in a car right behind the attackers, according to court documents reviewed by “60 Minutes.”

Despite his presence, the FBI did not have any knowledge that an attack would occur and would not give reporters a comment on the agent’s presence that day. 

The offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine, were the site of a deadly attack in January 2015 that left 12 dead after one of their artists drew a cartoon depicting Mohammed.