Trucks are a key terrorist tool for mass destruction. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh rented a 20 foot Ryder and packed it with 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate he exploded into a 30 foot crater under the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, taking 168 lives. Terrorists in Britain, Israel, Canada, and North Carolina have since followed suit, running vehicles over sidewalks and through barriers to barrel over the unsuspecting. In 2010, al-Qaeda called the truck, “the ultimate mowing machine… not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.” Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel took that to heart when, in July 2016, he walked into a rental company in France and said, “I want the biggest, most powerful vehicle you have.” He walked out with the keys to a 20-ton refrigerator truck he plowed through a national celebration in Nice, taking 86 lives, including Americans on vacation.
Could a similar truck attack happen here?
Absolutely. Since the Oklahoma City bombing, counter terrorism officials have been running through truck-borne terrorism situations over and over, including live scenarios in downtown Los Angeles, at Los Angeles International Airport, and the Port of Los Angeles. But they’re missing the key weapon terrorists are trained to use first in order to get behind the wheel of a truck – a fake ID.
McVeigh hand-made a counterfeit South Dakota driver’s license with a heated iron and a typewriter he used to rent his Ryder truck. But today, anyone with the internet and an address can order a high quality fake ID from China. If Bouhlel walked into a U-haul store in America this afternoon looking for a “mowing machine”, he would simply need to show a fake ID before he got to pick anything from a cargo van to a 26-foot behemoth with a 20,000 pound capacity.
Whether he is on a terror watch list, has warrants out for his arrest, or is simply trying to hide his identity, as instructed in the al-Qaeda and ISIS training manuals, all he would need to show is the ever-popular counterfeit Connecticut fake ID or the the perpetually produced Pennsylvania. Or, it doesn’t even have to be from a state. According to the U-Haul website, foreign driver’s licenses are also accepted for rentals. I don’t know how to verify a Yemeni driver’s license and I can guarantee the guy at the cash register doesn’t either.
U-Haul attendees make no effort to verify a driver’s license, they simply check the name and the date. I called a U-Haul store and asked what system they use to verify licenses before renting a truck. I told the customer service representative on the other line that my fictional friend is a privacy fanatic who needs to move but doesn’t want to hand over his information. The worker assured me that there is no scanning of licenses so I asked to speak to a supervisor to confirm. The supervisor assured me that stores are instructed to simply look at the name and the expiration of a license before handing over the keys to a truck. Any truck.
My research points to a number of people who actually did use fake IDs to rent trucks. Following is an anonymous online post on Reddit from July 8, 2016, just days before the Nice, France truck attack:
“Anyone ever use their fake ID for a uhaul before? I know that you only have to be 18, but I lost my real ID this week, and haven’t had a chance to get into the DMV yet… so I’m wondering what the ID checking process is. Will they just keep a record of my ID information, or will they do a background check?”
“I had a friend who wasn’t old enough to get a rental car once, so he got a u haul and took it to six flags”
“i work at Uhaul in Georgia, when someone hands me the ID , all we do is put in the license number, make sure its not expired and your date of birth ( must be older than 18) . I actually just rented a car last week for a road trip to socal. I just went to my airport (SFO) and just chose Hertz cause they had a good rate. When I went up to the counter the guy just asked for me drivers license and a credit card. He then took my New NY [fake ID] and went to go make a photocopy of it, including my credit card. Then he just gave it back to me and I filled out some other paperwork. I was in and out within 25 minutes.”
It’s not just kids renting U-haul trucks with fake IDs, it’s criminals, too. In an incident also days before the France attack, a Brooklyn man with 20 suspensions on his license was arrested while trying to drive a U-haul truck in the no trucks lane through the Holland Tunnel in New York. According to the New York Daily News:
“A person must have a valid driver’s license to lease a U-Haul truck, the company website says. But U-Haul officials said their system showed no one with Lewis’ name with a current rental contract originating in New York. It is remained unclear how the man managed to get the truck.”
Duh. With a fake ID.
In another New York incident, a teenager was launched ten feet into the air and critically injured when a man driving a U-haul despite a suspended license slammed into the 17-year on his way to school. We rely on our driver’s licenses for so much in everyday life, yet many are so easy to counterfeit. It’s time that we all learn how important driver’s licenses are to our public safety and national security. It’s time we make driver’s licenses more counterfeit resistant, shut down counterfeit document mills, and use existing verification measures at truck rentals shops to stop criminals and terrorists from exploiting our identity documents before it’s too late.