Preventing another Boston Marathon bombing

OPINION:

I will never forget April 15, 2013, the day a jihadi bombed the streets of Boston during a marathon, killing three and wounding more than 260 innocent runners and spectators.

It was a day that shook the nation. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, I led the investigation into the bombings and saw firsthand how terrorists exploit mass-spectator events to unleash chaos, inflict pain and spread fear.

Over the next few years, the United States will welcome millions of visitors for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, our nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations and the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Although these events offer powerful opportunities to showcase America’s leadership and commitment to excellence, they also provide backdrops for nation-state adversaries, foreign terrorist organizations and lone wolf extremists to make statements of terror on the world stage.

History has shown us the seriousness of this threat.

At the 1972 Munich Olympics, a Palestinian terrorist group exploited weak security to kidnap and kill members of the Israeli national team. In 1996, a fanatic detonated a pipe bomb in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, killing one and injuring more than 100. Just last year, French authorities foiled multiple terrorist plots aimed at the Paris Games.

We would be naive not to expect and prepare for similar threats at our upcoming events. This is especially true as Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism, has threatened violence on U.S. soil.

That’s why the House Committee on Homeland Security established the Task Force on Enhancing Security for Special Events in the United States. As a former lawyer with a background in counterterrorism, I’m proud to chair this important task force alongside my committee colleagues. Our goal: to prepare the nation to prevent, detect and respond to emerging threats.

This challenge will be compounded by the increasingly unconventional nature of modern threats as terrorism evolves. Traditional, large-scale terrorist plots have given way to simpler but often more devastating tactics used by homegrown extremists. These individuals often act alone, weaponizing everyday tools to carry out devastating attacks. On New Year’s Day, a radicalized lone actor killed 14 and wounded 57 in New Orleans, using nothing more than a rental car.

This was a clear example of how terrorist groups exploit social media and encrypted apps to inspire violence remotely. The threat is harder to detect than traditional, foreign-directed attacks but can be just as deadly.

Identifying and stopping these threats will require seamless coordination, not just by FIFA and the International Olympic Committee but also among states and localities, the Department of Homeland Security, federal partners and our international allies.

Unfortunately, past incidents have revealed how difficult this level of coordination can be. My investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing exposed glaring gaps in the way federal, state and local law enforcement agencies share information. These gaps should have been fixed in the aftermath of 9/11, when we first saw the consequences of failing to connect the dots.

Unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, also pose alarming threats. Inexpensive, widely available and easily weaponized, drones have become fixtures of conflicts abroad, as demonstrated in Ukraine, Israel and across the Middle East, to conduct reconnaissance, targeted strikes and swarm attacks.

The threat has reached our stadiums. According to the NFL, more than 2,800 drone incursions were reported during the 2023 season, a 4,000% increase from just five years earlier.

Yet the legal authority for federal agencies to disrupt and disable malicious drones on U.S. soil is set to expire this fall. Congress cannot allow that to happen. We must also empower state and local agencies to act faster to defend their communities from drone threats.

Physical security is only one piece of the puzzle. Cyberattacks are also rising, as adversaries such as China, Russia and Iran continue probing vulnerabilities in our critical infrastructure. In Paris, organizers of the 2024 Summer Olympics faced a surge of more than 140 cyberattacks linked to state-backed actors and criminal syndicates.

Now is the time to act to close coordination gaps, fund key security platforms, modernize authorities and ensure our nation is ready to meet the moment. Thankfully, we’ve already begun.

House Homeland Security Committtee Republicans secured critical funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including $625 million for security preparations ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, $1 billion for the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics and $673 million for U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s entry-exit system to help detect fraudulent identities at our ports of entry.

This week, the task force held its first hearing, “Lessons Learned: An examination of historic security incidents at mass gatherings.”

We heard testimony from retired Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, with whom I worked closely in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, and Louisiana State Police Col. Robert Hodges. These men know as well as I do that we must learn from the past to prevent future tragedies.

Important work lies ahead. The world will be watching our events live, but those who wish to do us harm are already planning.

Let them be warned: The United States will not be caught off guard. We will meet any threat with the full strength and resolve of a nation united and prepared so that what happened on April 15, 2013, will never happen again.

• Rep. Michael McCaul represents Texas’ 10th Congressional District. He is chairman emeritus of the House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs committees. Before joining Congress, he served as chief of counterterrorism and national security in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Texas and led the Joint Terrorism Task Force charged with detecting, deterring and preventing terrorist activity.