Terrorists are told to sever group ties before acting to protect organizers

Evidence

Because many of them are not affiliated with militant terrorist groups, there is no “chatter” in phone and online conversations among group members to provide clues about planned actions. If they operate as loners, there are no groups for informers or undercover agents to infiltrate. Moreover, if the terrorists have no records of previous arrests, they do not attract the attention of law enforcement. However, some do belong to groups but are instructed to dissociate themselves from the group before they take action, so that neither the group nor the group’s leader is compromised (German, 2005). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2246

Categorization

• XREF: Preplanned dissociation before attacks is an institutionalized form of moral disengagement that shields leaders from culpability, paralleling how policy authorities insulate themselves from harmful consequences.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2246