The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks (40 page)

Overview:
By 1985, Hizballah (the Party of God) had established itself as a parallel government in Lebanon, providing services that the weakened
Lebanese government was unable to offer, while also conducting a highly publicized series of kidnappings of dozens of Westerners.

Incidents:
Sometimes termed the Lebanon Hostage Crisis when considering years 1982–1992, the years 1985 and 1986 saw a significant uptick in Western kidnappings by Hizballah that included journalists, prominent theologians, a university president, and teachers. Negotiations for the hostages' release took months, sometimes years. Among them were Terry Anderson, Rev. Terry Waite, Rev. Lawrence Jenco, Joseph Cicippio, Thomas Sutherland, David Jacobsen, and Frank Reed. The 1985 kidnappings began on January 3 with Eric Wehrli, the Swiss chargé d'affaires. At least six people died in 1985 and 1986, including William F. Buckley, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chief of Station kidnapped in 1984.

Elements of a frustrated U.S. administration quietly reached out to the Iranian regime, offering to provide arms in exchange for Tehran pressuring its Hizballah protégés to release the hostages. While hostages were eventually freed, the arms-for-hostages plan ultimately led to a fissure between the administration and Congress that took years to heal. Attempts to bring the hostage-takers to justice came in fits and starts. The most prominent of the kidnappers, Imad Fayez Mugniyah, was killed on February 12, 2008, by a car bomb in Syria.

On October 14, 1992, former U.S. hostages Joseph Cicippio and David Jacobsen sued Iran for $600 million in U.S. District Court in Washington, saying it orchestrated their abductions in an effort to recover millions of dollars frozen in the United States. The suit sought damages for kidnapping, physical abuse, false imprisonment, inhumane medical treatment, loss of job opportunities, and pain and suffering. While terrorist victims often won major awards from courts, few were able to collect from state sponsors of terrorist attacks or from the terrorist groups and their aboveground wings.

Overview:
Although the term “lone wolf” terrorist became popular among U.S. terrorism-watchers only in the late 2000s and early 2010s, the first inkling of a homegrown Islamic terrorist problem surfaced on January 25, 1993, when Pakistani citizen Amal Kasi, 28, opened fire just outside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, killing two CIA employees as they headed in to work one morning.

Kasi's attack was the latest in a string of attempts to target CIA employees, the most successful being the 17 November Group's assassination of Chief of Station/Athens Welch in 1975 and Hizballah's
kidnapping on March 16, 1984, and murder on June 3, 1985, of Chief of Station/Beirut Buckley in 1985. The bloodiest attack came two decades later, when an al Qaeda suicide bomber killed seven people at an Agency base in Khost, Afghanistan. The Kasi killings led legislators to look at loopholes in gun laws.

Incident:
On the morning of January 25, 1993, Kasi stopped at a red light at the Route 123 entrance to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, got out of his car, and fired a Chinese-made AK-47-type assault rifle into the cars of CIA employees waiting to make the left turn, killing two people and injuring three others. He fired left, then right, then left again, firing at least two shots per victim. The turn signal had just turned green, and some cars flew across the intersection to get out of the way.

The dead were Dr. Lansing C. Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28. The wounded were Nicholas Starr, 60, an intelligence analyst; Calvin Morgan, 61, an engineer; and Stephen E. Williams, 48, an AT&T employee.

Nearby schools, including the Potomac School and the Country Day School, locked doors and monitored radios as rumors spread that the gunman was on the loose in the nearby woods.

Darling's wife, Judy, was with him in the couple's Volkswagen Golf when Kasi shot him. She was treated for shock at a nearby hospital. Three bullet holes were found in the windshield.

Starr managed to drive to the entrance gate to the 258-acre compound before he collapsed. He underwent 12 hours of surgery, having lost 11 pints of blood from the wound to his arm that severed the bone, an artery, and some veins. Fragments from the bullet lodged in his chest and collapsed his left lung. Doctors had to graft a two- to three-inch long piece of artery from his groin area to reconnect the artery in his arm. He since has experienced some impairment in his left arm because one of its three major nerves was severed and another is not working. More than 250 people showed up when the hospital asked for donors of his rare O-negative blood. Another 200 gave blood the next day.

Morgan suffered at least one gunshot wound in the left arm. The bullet traveled up his arm and lodged behind his ear. He was on the operating table for a few hours. His wife, Doris, said he saved himself by diving on the seat of his Cadillac. He was released from Fairfax Hospital after three days.

Williams was treated at Arlington Hospital for a graze wound to his chest and released. A bullet may have been deflected by his rib. He managed to drive his car the 500 feet to the CIA entrance gate to get help.

Police noted that the gunman did not fire at women in the queue.

The gunman drove up and parked his car behind Bennett's Saab in the rightmost of the two left-turn lanes, fourth car in the line for the turn. He walked to the head of the two lines and then calmly walked up to each car, firing his AK-47 with a cold, emotionless expression.

The FBI ran a computer check of fingerprints, but its computer had only the prints of people arrested for felonies. The millions of others in paper files had to be searched manually.

The police bulletin described the gunman as a white male between 20 and 30, weighing 145–165 pounds, having a dark complexion, of medium build and height, and having dark brown or black, medium-length hair.

Hours after the shootings, a man driving a light-brown compact station wagon narrowly missed an Alexandria, Virginia, police officer who was clocking traffic with a radar gun on Slaters Lane, near the George Washington Parkway. The driver reportedly swerved toward the police officer, who leaped out of the way. The car was found abandoned at Potomac Yard.

Among those in the line was former ambassador Gilbert Robinson and freshman senator Bob Smith (R-New Hampshire). Smith told the news media, “He looked in my direction, and then he turned and walked away. He coolly, methodically, with no expression, with no words, he simply walked up to the cars and fired shots point-blank at people. It was a pretty horrible sight.”

Agency officials said that they planned a small monument as a memorial to the two men who were killed. The median strip was littered with flowers and flags from CIA employees. In a memorial service attended by thousands of CIA employees, First Lady Hillary Clinton offered the president's condolences.

At 4:00
P.M
., eight hours after the shooting, Kasi walked into Crescent Groceries, a few miles away in Herndon, and attempted to purchase a oneway ticket to Pakistan. Pakistani immigrant Mohammad Yousaf, owner of the store where Kasi was a regular customer, called his Arlington store to arrange the purchase. An Arlington store employee then called Super Travel, an Alexandria, Virginia, travel office owned by a Pakistani immigrant. Kasi paid $740 in cash for the ticket and promised to return the following afternoon. Kasi came back at 1:30
P.M.
the next day. Yousaf gave him a ride in his Caprice Classic to National Airport.

Ballistics experts determined that the gun was a Chinese SKS gasoperated rifle with 10 rounds. There are several knockoffs of the AK-47, such as the AKM, which carries 30 rounds.
WTOP
radio reported that the 7.62 mm Russian AK shells could also fit a U.S. Ruger. The gunman fired at least 10 rounds, hitting the 5 victims 8 times.

On January 28, 1993, Kasi's Pakistani roommate, Zahed Ahmed Mir, 39, reported Kasi missing to Fairfax police. He said that he last saw him on January 25, 1993.

On January 30, 1993, Kasi called Mir to tell him that he had to leave town in a hurry. He said that someone would come back to get his belongings and that he would never return. Mir believed that it was a longdistance call.

On February 6, 1993, Mir called police and said that he believed Kasi was the killer. Mir's call was among 2,700 tips police received. On
February 8, 1993, Kasi's roommate let police into the apartment, and police found two semiautomatic pistols, a bulletproof vest, and 550 rounds of ammunition in addition to the AK-47-type assault rifle used in the killings. The ammunition, 11 magazines for the assault rifle, and pistols were found in a suitcase.

On February 9, 1993, police announced that ballistics tests demonstrated that Kasi's AK-47 was the weapon used in the shootings. He was charged with capital murder, which carries the death penalty as the maximum sentence; first-degree murder; three counts of malicious wounding; five weapons charges; and federal charges of fleeing prosecution. He apparently had no previous record and had never been in a mental hospital. He apparently was not a member of any radical group, had no affiliation with any terrorist group, and had no affiliation with the CIA.

On February 10, 1993, police announced that a fingerprint found on a shell casing on 123 matched those of Kasi's immigration records.

Kasi was issued a business visa in Karachi, Pakistan, in the name of “Mir Aimal Kansi” on December 4, 1990. His birth date was listed as October 22, 1964.

Kasi had entered the United States on a flight to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York on March 3, 1991 (some records say February 27, 1991). He did not turn in an entry card. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials did turn up a card for “Kansi.” Two weeks after arriving in the United States, Kasi reported that he had lost his passport. He filed an application for asylum (because of political persecution, based on flimsy evidence of fear of the rival Baluchs) with the INS office in Arlington, Virginia, on February 3, 1992. He said that he had not gone through INS inspections and listed relatives named Kansi on the application. He was permitted to stay in the United States while the application was being considered. (U.S. law prohibits deportation of immigrants whose requests are pending.) He was granted a one-year work permit that was due to expire on February 13, 1993. He had not applied to renew the permit.

Kasi was born on October 2, 1964, the son of Abdullah Jan Kasi, a well-known Quetta building contractor who died in 1989. His father founded Pakistan Particle Board in Karachi in the early 1970s. His father's will left 20 million rupees (circa $500,000) for the construction of the Kasi Ward, a medical general ward in Civil Hospital, Quetta. His mother died in 1982. His well-respected Pashtun family includes two brothers and three stepbrothers and also runs the Faran and Novelty Hotels and a dozen shops in Quetta. His father sent him to a prestigious private grammar school, unlike other children of the family. Kasi graduated from Baluchistan University in Quetta with a master's degree in English literature. He inherited $100,000 after his father's death. His family was not a strictly observant Muslim family. His friends said he was “fun-loving” and was not close to any religious group or university student group.

In 1988, he became close to students affiliated with the Pashtun Students Organization (PSO), the student wing of Mahmood Khan Achakzai's Pakhtun-khwa Milli Awami Party. Former PSO leader and former Kasi friend Nasrullah Khan Achakzai told the press, “He was a patient listener of our political ideology which was heavily influenced by the revolution in Afghanistan. Aimal never accepted my offers to work in the front line.” Nasrullah, now a lawyer in Quetta's lower courts, said that at the time, the group believed that “the CIA had killed fifteen million innocent people in Afghanistan.” He admitted having led the 1989 demonstration against an American professor, during which Kasi fired shots. Kasi frequently carried a weapon and often used threats and intimidation to get higher grades.

In early 1989, a small group of students at the Department of English at Baluchistan University shouted “Death to America” in protesting a presentation by an American professor on T. S. Eliot. Kasi fired shots into the air. The teachers called off the lecture and the American professor left town the next day. Professors and students remembered Kasi as changing from a shy student in 1987 to a short-tempered, angry youth in 1989 who used strong-arm tactics against senior teachers.

On February 12, 1993, the Virginia General Assembly unanimously consented to the introduction of legislation that would require aliens to get a judge's permission before buying or possessing assault rifles. A Fairfax County ordinance had permitted Kasi to buy the rifle without a waiting period, unlike the 72-hour delay required for handgun sales. Moreover, police cannot check immigrants' criminal backgrounds in other countries when they try to buy guns. Police noted that there are a large number of gunsmiths in the county. To compare, there are 500 licensed gun sellers in Fairfax to only 240 service stations.

On February 16, 1993, Islamabad's
The News
reported that Pakistan had asked Iran to join the search for Kasi. Iran had earlier indicated that Kasi was not in the country. The paper suggested that the FBI was exploring whether Kasi was part of the growing number of Afghan war veterans trained in Pakistan who had lately turned their expertise against proU.S. governments in the Middle East and Africa.

Foreign media offered suggestions as to Kasi's whereabouts. On February 26, 1993, Islamabad's
The Nation
said that he was staying with Hezbe Eslami leader Engineer Golboddin Hekmatyar at Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Correspondent Umer Alam wrote that U.S. commandos were unable to find him in Quetta.