Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

GROUPTHINK • 217G8 travel document security standards and in 2004 persuaded theInternational Maritime Organization to adopt the G8 port and maritimesecurity assessment guide. In the 2003 Evian Summit, the G8established a Counterterrorism Action Group (CTAG) to enablecounterterrorism cooperation with, and assistance to, non-G8 nationsand to encourage all nations to subscribe to the 12 major counterterrorismconventions. In the 2004 Sea Island Summit, the G8 adopted aSecure and Facilitate International Travel Security Initiative (SAFTI)to increase security of international travel by securing borders andother points of entry, increasing screening of transportation workers,and developing a plan to counter the emerging threat of shoulderfiredantiaircraft missiles known as MANSPADS (Man-Portable AirDefense Systems).GROUPTHINK. Hypothesis developed by Irving L. Janis about criticalerrors in strategic decision making, namely, a mode of reasoningused by members of a cohesive and exclusive in-group in which theirdesire to maintain group cohesion, morale, and unanimity overridestheir desire to appraise realistically alternative courses of action.The groupthink syndrome is marked by overestimations of thepower, correct opinion, and moral superiority of the group; by closedmindednessto contrary information; and by intense pressures of conformitywithin the group.The groupthink hypothesis can be used to explain the reasoningand strategic and tactical errors made by terrorist groups. The cellularterrorist group is the ultimate example of a closed in-groupwhose members have been indoctrinated to believe in the missionof the terrorist group and in their moral and intellectual superiorityover the state or other groups whom they are opposing. Theconditions of clandestine existence and of doctrinal conformitywithin the group provide precisely the sorts of conditions thatencourage groupthink. Examples of such disastrous decisions includethe decision by the Red Brigades to murder Aldo Moro on 9May 1978 and Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols’s decision tobomb the Murrah Federal Building in the Oklahoma City bombingon 19 April 1995. In each case the perpetrators had convincedthemselves that their action would be hailed by the wider publicand understood in the same terms that they had used to rationalizecommitting each action.