Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

96 • CELLULAR ORGANIZATIONmay adopt a distinctive name to mask its relationship with the parentorganization.The circumstances under which terrorists operate perhaps ensure thatonly those organizations having cellular structures can continue to survivefor long. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) originally conceivedof itself as a regular army and so produced general orders, officialhandbooks, rules, and records of courts-martial and had the hierarchicalcommand structure of a regular army. The need of clandestinity to protectthe organization from penetration by informers or the confessionsof captured members forced the IRA to adopt a cellular structure.It should be noted that many or even most cells in a terrorist organizationmay be merely support groups that do not directly executeterrorist activities. Their members may run businesses or operatesafe houses that provide support to people whose identities and aboutwhose activities they may know nothing.The “sleeper cells,” or autonomous leadership units, are cells thatremain inactive for a long period to infiltrate a nation or an organization,but which may become active after a certain time when theyhave achieved access to a critical facility. Following the WorldTrade Center bombing the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)began to suspect that Middle Eastern Islamic fundamentalist groupshad been setting up such sleeper cells within the United States toactivate at some later, critical time.Apart from cells in a networked structure, there are also cases of freefloating“phantom” cells, which are independent entities fed by an environmentof ideological extremism. The Symbionese Liberation Armywas one such free-floating cell that fed off the currents of left-wing extremismand antiwar activism in the 1970s, whereas Timothy McVeighand Terry Nichols, who fed off the environment of antigovernment extremismand prejudice found among right-wing extremists in the 1990s,may be considered a right-wing variant of the free-floating cell.Many ethnonationalist groups maintain parallel political front andmilitary wing structures. The political front is a relatively transparent,hierarchical organization that can serve as a legitimate political partyor interest group if conditions allow, yet it also has a shadow militaryorganization, organized on a solar cellular basis, which is linked tothe leaders in the political front by some “chain network,” a series ofpersonal links so that authorities may not easily track the connectionsbetween the political and military wings. In the event the authorities