Military background of men who carried out New Orleans attack & Las Vegas explosion under scrutiny

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- Authorities are continuing to look into the backgrounds of the suspects involved in Wednesday's attack in New Orleans and explosion in Las Vegas, though at this time do not believe they are connected.

Both Shamsud-Din Jabbar and Matthew Livelsberger served at Fort Liberty and Afghanistan, though authorities have no record they served in the same unit or even in the same years, but it's "something that continues to remain under investigation."

Jabbar served in human resources and information technology roles in the Army from 2007 to 2015, during which he deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010, an Army spokesperson confirmed to ABC News. He continued as an IT specialist in the Army Reserve from 2015 to 2020, the spokesperson said. His listed jobs were not direct combat roles.

Livelsberger was an active duty Green Beret who spent most of his time at Fort Carson and in Germany.

"Given the unique skills that people in the military do learn, I think there's going to be a lot more attention, especially after these two attacks on what's being done as people leave the service to enable them to be in a better position to acculturate into regular society, even if the numbers are not such that make us want to be having to really be super concerned," said Dr. Matthew Levitt, the Fromer-Wexler Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute.

A 2022 report from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism found the number of extremist incidents involving active and former military members more than doubled between 2010 and 2021 compared to the prior two decades.

"We have seen a disproportionate number of people who engage in this kind of terrorism or what we call inspired terrorism, have some sort of military, background. So that's a problem. The Pentagon has looked into it, but it's an issue that's going to need continued attention," said David Schanzer, the Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke.

In about 10% of extremist incidents involving former or current military members between 1990 and 2021, the suspects were connected or inspired by overseas jihadist groups, including ISIS. AN ISIS flag was found in the truck used by Jabbar, though the FBI has not found evidence that he had any co-conspirators or was directed by a terror group.

"It's most likely that these were attacks that were simply inspired by one ideology or another and were the act of a couple of individuals acting on their own behalf," said Schanzer.

Jabbar, a US citizen who was living in Texas, was not on any federal watchlists.

"What's more important to understand is that this is not exactly an outlier. It is in the sense that the attack succeeds. And more often than not, local police and FBI, other law enforcement, intelligence agencies and the intelligence community, they tend to thwart these things in advance. But we have about, on average, about a dozen cases a year that are thwarted. And the main message here is that there's no such thing as a 100% success. The bad guys have to get it right once and we have to get it right every time in order for something not to happen," said Levitt.

"What was known about this individual 72 hours prior, and that includes what did the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force know, what his family and friends know, what was his social media postings before that," added Fred Burton, the Executive Director of Center for Protective Intelligence at Ontic.

Authorities continue to look into potential motives in both cases. Schanzer, who writes the Substack "Perilous Times," penned a piece Thursday in reaction to both incidents, including looking into motivations of prior terror attacks.

"They would certainly be looking at social media activity, people saying things that show that they have, both adopted an ideology and are interested and have the capability to engage in violence. And when you put those things together, if it's either brought to their attention or it's done through some form of internet monitoring, then that is an individual that will gain some scrutiny and some investigation," Schanzer said.

"The degree of resources the federal government can throw at this are endless to some degree. You're going to have record checks run all over the world, and any places individuals ever served, been, traveled to," said Burton.

Both Jabbar and Livelsberger used vehicles rented from the app Turo.

"This idea of just using things that are at your regular, everyday disposal, that does make things more difficult for law enforcement, because law enforcement takes advantage of tripwires opportunities, where people are going to take money out of their accounts that don't fit their regular pattern, travel patterns that are different, purchases that are different. But if someone is renting a car, that's something we all do all the time. If someone picks a kitchen knife off their counter, there's no way to really know about that. And that does make it more difficult for law enforcement," said Levitt.

"When you think about just how easy it is to just get in your vehicle and use it as part of a terrorist attack, that's not a complex kind of operation," added Burton.