Following the recent tragedy in New Orleans, there has been some discrepancy in the terminology used by officials to describe the event. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell initially referred to the incident as a 'terrorist attack,' while FBI Assistant Special Agent Alethea Duncan stated that it was not classified as such.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe acknowledged the challenge of effectively communicating such incidents to the public in the early stages of an investigation. Terrorism analyst Juliette Kayyem suggested that the mayor may have used the term 'terrorist attack' colloquially to convey the impact of the violence on the city, rather than in line with the FBI's formal definition of terrorism.
