This chapter tells the story of two lone-wolf avengers—Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani immigrant to the United States who shot several CIA employees in 1993; and James Dalton Bell, whose various schemes for ridding the world of his purported enemies are at the cutting edge of the virtual-network organizational style. Although only two people died in Mir Aimal Kansi’s attack, it significantly affected how CIA employees view the safety of their workplace. Analysts became aware, in a visceral way, that they are vulnerable to lone-wolf shooters; that even in their cars driving to work, they may suddenly find themselves combatants in some terrorist’s war.
Lone wolves often come up with their own ideologies that combine personal vendettas with religious or political grievances. For example, John Allen Muhammad, who, together with a seventeen-year-old protégé who called him Dad, carried out a series of sniper shootings in suburban Washington, D.C., in the fall of 2002, appears to have been motivated by a mixture of personal and political grievances. He told a friend that he endorsed the September 11 attack and expressed admiration of the small group that had managed to cause more damage to the United States than an army could have done. He said that he disapproved of U.S. policy abroad, especially in regard to Muslim states. But he appears to have been motivated principally by anger at his ex-wife for keeping him from seeing their children, and some of his victims were personal enemies.1
There is a limit to the damage a lone-wolf avenger can cause. An individual can terrorize a city, as the sniper case makes clear. But he could not carry out a September 11–type attack, which required coordination among a large number of operatives and supporters. Lone wolves are especially difficult for law-enforcement authorities to stop, however. As military technology continues to improve and spread, enabling what political scientist Joseph Nye calls the “privatization of war,”2 virtual networks and even lone-wolf avengers could become a major threat.
On the morning of January 25, 1993, a Pakistani immigrant named Mir Aimal Kansi walked into rush-hour traffic and fired a Chinese-made AK-47 at commuters waiting to enter CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Lansing Bennett, sixty-six, a physician and intelligence analyst, and Frank Darling, twenty-eight, a communications officer in the covert operations branch, died. Three other people were wounded. Although Kansi seemed at first to be shooting randomly at drivers, he went back to Frank Darling’s car and shot him many times, making sure that Darling was dead.
Eight hours later Kansi walked into a grocery store in Herndon, Virginia, where he was a regular customer, and asked the proprietor to procure him a one-way ticket to Pakistan. The owner of the store, Mohammad Yousaf, made some phone calls and obtained the requested ticket for a flight that left the following day. When Kansi returned to pick up his $740 ticket, which he bought with cash, he asked Yousaf to order him a cab to the airport. But Yousaf, who lives near the airport, offered to give him a ride. Yousaf noticed that Kansi was wearing slacks and a sweater over a shirt, and that he had no luggage at all. He recalled asking him, “You are going to Pakistan with no gifts or anything?” and that Kansi replied that he didn’t need anything. “He was quiet. Nothing special,” Yousaf told the Washington Post. “I did not have even the slightest notion of suspicion.”3 At 5 P.M. on January 26, Kansi was already on the plane when authorities began disseminating sketches of the killer based on witnesses’ accounts.
In the weeks prior to the attack, Kansi had bought ammunition, two handguns, and a Colt AR-15 assault rifle, which he subsequently exchanged for an AK-47 assault rifle. He also ordered a bulletproof vest.4
Kansi had spent most of his time in the United States inside the Pakistani expatriate community in northern Virginia. He rented rooms from expatriates and worked for their companies. But he never really found his way. His acquaintances described him as socially awkward. He had been involved in a militant organization dedicated to creating a “greater Pakhtunistan,” a new nation-state comprised of Pashtuns from both Pakistan and Afghanistan. People in the Pakistani expatriate community didn’t like that, Yousaf explained.5
When authorities captured Kansi four years later, he explained that he shot the CIA officers to protest mistreatment of Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere in the world.6
In June 1999, I wrote to Kansi at Sussex One State Prison in Waverly, Virginia, where he was then on death row, requesting to speak with him. At first Mr. Kansi said he was willing to speak with me, but only on condition that I pay him for the interview. Later, he said he would accept a donation to an Islamic charity in lieu of payment. When I told him I would not be able to pay him for an interview, even with a charitable donation, he decided to meet with me free of charge. With each exchange, Kansi grew more enthusiastic about the prospect of meeting me, telling me in his last letter before we met, “I hope your book becomes one of the best sellers in US and you become a millionaire, so rich and travel in a nice new Mercedes Benz.” He also told me to request a visit in the “noncontact visiting place,” so that we would be able to see one another. Otherwise, he told me, they would bring a phone into the death row block and we would not be able to see each other during the conversation.
On November 7, 1999, I travel to the prison. I arrive early. The guards inspect my identification cards and instruct me to walk through a metal detector. They direct me to walk, alone, to the noncontact visiting area, where Kansi is already waiting for me, also early. Although the visiting area is close to the entrance, I get slightly disoriented and have to ask directions a second time. A guard tells me, in a slightly patronizing tone, first door to your right, it will be open.
Kansi is in a kind of glass cell in the far-left corner of a large room. The room is freshly painted a blinding white and smells of Lysol. Kansi seems oddly happy to see me, as if he hadn’t seen an outsider for a long time.
Why did you attack the CIA? I ask. Were your motivations religious or political?
“I attacked the CIA for both religious and political reasons,” he says. “In 1993 the U.S. government was fully supporting Israel. Israel oppresses Palestinian Muslims. Therefore it is a religious duty for all Muslims to help the Palestinians. Also the United States was attacking Iraq. After the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, there was no need to persist in attacking Iraq.”
He tells me that American policies are “anti-Islamic” worldwide. His opposition to the United States dates from its support of Zia-ul-Haq’s military regime and its involvement in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union. “I was against foreign powers in Afghanistan,” he says.
Kansi’s father was a Pashtun tribal leader. Kansi became passionately involved in a series of political groups, including Pashtun nationalist ones, while studying in Quetta, Pakistan. The one fixed element, according to a relative, was his anti-Americanism.7
“I did not want to kill ordinary Americans,” Kansi says. “Only government officials. They are not normal people—they represent the government. Therefore they are legitimate targets for attack.”
I wonder whether it is just U.S. government officials whom he considers “not normal” human beings. Do you know any government officials in Pakistan? I ask. Did you perceive them as abnormal?
“Yes. My own brothers and sisters and other relatives worked for the government of Baluchistan. They were different from ordinary Pakistanis.”
But the victims were human, I say.
“Yes, they are beings of God. But there is a difference between Muslims and non-Muslims. Non-Muslims deny the last prophet. They don’t surrender to the orders of God. They are rebellious people. Non-Muslims work against Islamic countries.”
How did you know that you weren’t attacking Muslims? What if a Muslim was working for the CIA? I ask
“I was one hundred percent sure—no true Muslim would be working for the CIA.”
But the officials you killed have families. The ones you killed have children, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers they left behind, I say.
“When I think about the family members of the victims, it troubles me,” he concedes. “But when I think about the damage the U.S. government has caused Muslims, it’s much worse than what I did.”
Were you involved with any of the jihadi groups in Pakistan or Afghanistan?
“I met members of Harkat-ul-Ansar, Hizb-ul Mujahideen, Lashkar e Taiba. I spent a long time in Afghanistan. I know lots of these organizations. But I never joined any of these big groups.”
Twenty-eight hours after a Virginia jury convicted Kansi of murder, five employees of a Texas-based oil and gas company were shot in their station wagon on the street in Karachi. Senior Pakistani police officers said the most likely motive was to avenge Kansi’s conviction.8 A previously unknown group called the Aimal Secret Action Committee took credit for the attack. Militants in Baluchistan, Kansi’s home province, had vowed to seek revenge after Kansi was captured and brought to America to be tried, in violation of Pakistan’s extradition law.9 The U.S. government believes that the assailants were connected with the group Harkat-ul-Ansar, which the State Department had recently put on its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
Were you fighting a jihad when you attacked the CIA? I ask.
“No. This was a religious duty. But not jihad. I am not sure whether God will reward me for what I did. This was retaliation. It was revenge. What I did was between jihad and tribal revenge. This was like a tribal revenge. We go after people of the other tribe—not just the one who carried out an attack. Everyone in the other tribe is considered a legitimate target.”
Kansi comes from a wealthy family in Quetta. His father, Malik Abdullah Jan Kansi, inherited extensive land holdings in Quetta and increased the family wealth through investments in real estate, construction, and a factory in Karachi. The father is widely believed to have helped the CIA and the Pakistani intelligence service funnel weapons to the Afghan mujahideen in the war against the Soviets. At the time, Quetta was a way station for arms shipments to the mujahideen.
According to an article published in the New Yorker in 1995, not only Kansi’s father, but also Kansi himself may have had a relationship with the CIA. The New Yorker quoted a Pakistani intelligence official: “Abdullah Jan, at least one of his cousins, and two of his sons, including Aimal, were an integral part of the CIA-ISI weapons pipeline to the mujahideen.”10 Former Pakistani ISI chief Hamid Gul says, “Kansi grew up in Quetta, the southern base for the CIA’s war in Afghanistan, and may…have been recruited by the CIA at some point.”11
The CIA denies that it had any contact with Kansi, but officials from two Pakistani governments rejected its disclaimer. Judy Becker-Darling, the wife of one of the agents who was slain, wonders whether Kansi knew her husband and intended to murder him in particular. Darling had worked in Karachi at the height of the Afghan war. A tribal chief told the New Yorker that Malik Abdullah Jan Kansi (Kansi’s father) had worked for the CIA for many years. “It’s well-known among his friends that many of his businesses were set up by the CIA, and it’s generally assumed that the Agency used them from time to time as fronts. Oh, he received a lot of goodies over the years, including the pledge that his son [Aimal] would take his place when he retired.” Also suspicious is that Kansi reportedly entered the United States without being interviewed by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which, according to INS officials, could only happen if he had been sponsored by a U.S. government agency.12
Kansi denies any connection with the CIA. He also says his father never worked for the Agency.13 Perhaps he is lying.
“When I was on the run I felt really good,” Kansi says. “I never thought of getting arrested. I didn’t realize until the next day when I was in the newspaper that people had died. I felt normal—I didn’t feel terrible. Just normal.”
He tells me he went to Afghanistan to hide. “It was very easy to go over the border. There is no visa required, no passport. The best place to hide in the entire world is Afghanistan.
“I had a powerful radio. I listened to VOA. I heard that they had arrested [me] on Indian radio. They were wrong. This was so funny I couldn’t resist telling a few of my friends. But I was afraid because of the reward money. The U.S. government was offering a lot of money. People in Afghanistan are very poor.”
Kansi had been on America’s ten-most-wanted fugitives list for four years when he was caught, reportedly with the help of information provided to the U.S. government by Afghani and Pakistani nationals in exchange for a reward of $2 million offered by the State Department’s Counter-Terrorism Rewards Program.14 President Clinton had requested Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to allow U.S. agents to capture Kansi on Pakistani soil, and to take him directly to the United States, in violation of Pakistan’s extradition law. The abrogation of the law infuriated Pakistanis—from human-rights activists to pro-jihadi groups. At least three suits were subsequently brought against the Pakistani government.15
Kansi’s arrest remains a mystery in Pakistan, where different versions and theories abound as to who leaked information about Kansi’s whereabouts, and how. According to one senior Pakistani government official, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, members of Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau16 (NAB) inadvertently discovered that $10,000 of the State Department’s $2-million reward money had been deposited into the account of a junior ISI official in Baluchistan. According to the official who spoke to me, the junior ISI official revealed that he had been instructed by members of the ISI branch in Quetta to leak the information about Kansi’s whereabouts to the United States. He apparently transferred the reward to an ISI account within twenty-four hours.17
Are you afraid of death? I ask.
“I don’t feel afraid,” Kansi says.
Kansi’s father had three sons and four daughters with a first wife, and one child, Mir Aimal Kansi, with his second wife. Relatives described Kansi as a brooding and introspective young man, the loner in the family. He suffered from a seizure disorder as a child, but recovered by the time he was ten years old. After Kansi’s mother died in 1982, he became even more isolated, his relatives said. When Kansi’s father died in 1989, he inherited around $100,000, which he spent, in part, on his trip to the United States.18
I ask him to tell me about his upbringing.
“When I was a child, my friends and I used to go to the refugee camps in Pakistan. We used to shoot there. Shoot targets. Shoot in the air. I bought an AK-47 for target practice. I like guns very much. This is part of our culture. We always keep guns in our home. My father, grandfather, had guns. We practiced target shooting. There are many tribal conflicts.”
What is the name of the refugee camp where you went to shoot? I ask.
“The name of the camp was Piralizai Jungle. All the refugees are Pashtun. At the camps they pray regularly, and they are trained to fire guns. I had many friends in the refugee camps. But I did not get involved in any of the big groups. They were fighting a jihad. My father did not allow me to fight in the jihad. I was completely ready to go to fight in Afghanistan, but my father would not allow me.”
Later, I ask a Pakistani government official to check the name of the camp, to make sure I got the spelling right. He tells me he knows all about this camp because it was “a top den for narcotics dealers. The highest consumption of heroin is in this area.” The camp, which is in Pishin, is far away from Quetta, where the Kansi family lived. It is surprising, he tells me, that Kansi’s father didn’t send him to a local camp for shooting exercises, since there are many such camps nearby. It is possible that Kansi’s father had business at Piralizai Jungle camp, he says, pointing out that the ISI has long used drug money to fund its operations, much like other intelligence agencies in the world. Kansi’s mentioning of Piralizai Jungle may well have been “a slip of the tongue,” he says.19
What about your schooling? I ask.
Kansi tells me he went to school at Saint Francis grammar school, the best school in Quetta, his hometown. Then he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from a government-run college in Quetta. “There was a lot of cheating on exams there,” he says. “And a lot of politics. I didn’t study much. I was a member of the Pashtun student association. Fighting for rights of Pashtuns in Pakistan.” After that he earned a master’s in English literature at the University of Baluchistan. What kind of literature? I ask. “Shakespeare. Poetry of Milton,” he says.
What is your favorite book?
“Macbeth.”
What are you reading now?
“I’m not reading. I watch the news all day.”
Whom do you admire most?
“I like Osama bin Laden. He is demanding that foreign forces leave his country. He stands up for all Muslims.
“Our society has gone away from religious values a little bit. But here is very far from religious values. The prisoners here know nothing about religion. Society becomes more and more materialist. Religious people are better people. Here everyone is very materialistic—all they care about is acquiring wealth.”
Soon after the interview, Kansi sends me a letter: “After talking to you I realized that you have knowledge about Islam which made me happy. I would like to request you to come to Islam and live and die as a Muslim believer.”
I send him some more questions in writing in response: What was the message you were trying to send by shooting CIA officials, and whom were you trying to reach?
“The message was this—that if you keep on supporting Israel and Israel oppresses Palestinians (Muslims) that your own government officials can also get hurt and suffer the consequences of your wrong policy toward Muslims (Palestinians).”
He also wrote, “I was more interested in attacking the Israeli embassy in Washington DC. That was my target…. I went to Israeli embassy in Washington in my car (pick up truck) but the embassy was no good for one-man rifle attack. It was a good place for a bomb attack, to blow it up completely, but I did not know how to make a bomb. If I had the knowledge of making a bomb, I guarantee that I would have blown up the Israeli embassy. The CIA was my second target, the outside place of CIA is big roads and that place was good for one-man rifle attack because there you can easily shoot CIA officials who are in their car on the left turning lanes on stop light outside CIA. I don’t like killing ordinary American people, as they don’t have big role in making policy of US toward Israel or against Islamic countries. I believe the people who should be attacked should be government officials or senators or congressmen or people in CIA, Pentagon, White House, etc.”
What if a respected Islamic scholar told you it would be wrong to shoot CIA employees? I asked him in writing.
“If a respected Islamic scholar would have told me not to do it then I would have asked him questions, and if he would have satisfied me completely then I would have not done it. Otherwise I would have done it,” Kansi wrote.
What if your mother asked you not to proceed?
“If my mother would have been alive, she would have got me married and I would have never been in the US. I would have been living in the Pakistan with my mother and wife.”
He closed by saying, “I think I have answered your questions to the best of my ability, although I am not a journalist or politician or an Islamic Scholar.”
Mir Aimal Kansi is an example of a growing trend: lone actors or small groups who commit terrorist crimes, inspired by a terrorist ideology, but not belonging to established terrorist groups. Kansi was even more leaderless than members of the save-the-babies movement. He seems to have been moved, at least in part, by the anti-American fervor he was exposed to in his youth. However, terrorists often use slogans of various kinds to mask their true motives. It is, therefore, not inconceivable that Kansi’s primary motivation was to exact personal revenge against an organization he believed had betrayed his father. As one Pakistani official explained, “Baluchistan, where Kansi was born, has a very strong tribal culture, and revenge is a central part of the ethos.”20 When Kansi says he was seeking revenge, was it for some perceived slight—either to his father or to himself? We may never know. Kansi was executed by lethal injection on November 14, 2002.21
One of the best examples of a lone-wolf avenger is James Dalton Bell, an MIT-trained chemist who got angry with the U.S. government and wanted to take revenge. He came up with a scheme to use virtual networks to rid the world of “miscreants” and “slimeballs,” his terms for government officials and other political enemies. Although he is not a religious terrorist, he is both a virtuoso lone-wolf avenger and a budding inspirational leader, and worth discussing for that reason.22
The scheme involves the creation of an Internet-based organization that would reward people who correctly “predict” the death of a “miscreant” in digital cash. Sympathizers could contribute to the creation of a miscreant-free world by sending charitable donations in digital cash.
The organization would not actually exist except in virtual form, and every communication would be encrypted. The plan involves “the ultimate in compartmentalization of information,” Bell explains. “It is very likely that none of the participants, with the (understandable) hypothetical exception of a ‘predictor’ who happens to know that he is also a murderer, could actually be considered ‘guilty’ of any violation of black-letter law…in the plan I describe, none of the participants agrees with ANYONE to commit a crime.”23
Bell calls the virtual terrorism scheme “the solution to wars, nuclear weapons, militaries, politicians, tyrannies, dictators, holocausts, governments, taxes, and at the very least a substantial fraction of crime. The fix. The cure. The complete and total repair job. The last correction.” He describes his essay as “not really a paper; it’s more like a forecast. A manifesto. A warning. A promise…The word inevitable was practically invented for it.”24
When federal agents executed a search warrant on Bell’s Vancouver, Washington, home, they found a variety of chemicals, including diisopropyl fluorophosphate, a chemical that could be used to make a nerve gas similar to sarin.25 Government officials believe that Bell made the nerve agent sarin, but cannot prove it with publicly available information. They cite e-mail messages retrieved from Bell’s computer in which Bell claims to have produced sarin in the basement of his residence.26 Officials claim they have information not in the public record, which is now protected by an agreement Bell struck in exchange for a guilty plea for a series of threats and actions against the Internal Revenue Service.
One of Bell’s most “ambitious” projects was to develop and market a material that would destroy enemy computer systems.27 He discovered that nickel-plated carbon fiber is electrically conductive and that airborne fibers can short-circuit electrical equipment.28 Bell learned about this property of the fiber from a safety sheet enclosed with some fiber that he had bought for building model airplanes.29 He and a friend had begun mapping out a strategy for testing and marketing the fiber, which they hoped to sell to “nefarious individuals” for use against “large vulnerable target[s] like the IRS.”30 In addition to the marketing-strategy discussions, which authorities found on Bell’s computer, they also discovered that Bell and his friend had already bought some of the fiber.31
Bell had “hypothetical” discussions about contaminating city water supplies with another friend named Greg Daly, according to what Daly told investigators.32 At that time, Daly worked for the city of Portland’s Bureau of General Services, which carries out maintenance at the Bull Run water treatment facility, and claimed direct access to the plant.33 Daly no longer worked at the plant, but he hinted in interviews that he still had keys to the facility.34 Daly told investigators that Bell had been trying to extract botulinum toxin from green beans.35 He also said that Bell boasted that making chemical weapons would be easy, and that he planned to order chemical precursors from a catalog.36 He said that Bell told him that he had acquired a few milligrams of methyl phosphonyl dichloride, a direct precursor to sarin, and that he had managed to synthesize a small quantity of chemical agent.37
I wrote to Bell during his first incarceration in 1998, asking whether he was willing to talk with me about the scheme. He responded over a year later, telling me I could interview him by telephone. Beginning in February 2000, we had numerous telephone conversations.
“Terrorism is an overreaction to a legitimate problem, and that problem is called government,” Bell tells me immediately.38 “A lot of people think you have to have a government. I don’t think we need one—even for defense.”39
We talk about other lone-wolf terrorists. What do you think about Theodore Kaczynski? I ask.
“I haven’t read his whole essay,” Bell says. “I read about the first three paragraphs. It began like too many academic papers that I’ve read—I got bored after three paragraphs. His primary objection seems to be technology…I don’t agree with that philosophy. I think technology is wonderful. Computers at the time were the products of government, big business. The computer was widely seen as the product of an oppressive organization—government and big business. Now the opposite is true. Now computers are on the side of individuals.”
In the academic community we talk about how the Internet facilitates the development of virtual communities. What do you think about the idea of virtual community? I ask.
“People have obscure interests and desires. The Internet allows people with unusual interests to get together.”
Is the Internet increasing the strength of the antigovernment movement?
“I’m as big a fan as it is possible to be of the Internet,” he says, arguing that it “dramatically increased” the strength of antigovernment movements. It has dealt a decimating blow to the government’s strength, he says, a blow they haven’t even noticed. “Historically people couldn’t talk to others around the world. To get your story out—maybe you’d write a letter to the editor. Today, anybody can get his or her word out.” The Internet means that “the story can’t be killed,” Bell tells me.
Bell seems to understand intuitively that a good story is a critical component of inspirational leadership and of building a virtual network. The story Bell tells is that tax authorities are stealing our money: “Think how much the IRS is stealing from you. On a per dollar basis [they] victimize you far more than street crime.” He wants to rid America of IRS “terrorists” who steal ordinary Americans’ hard-earned cash, only to waste it on unnecessary projects like national defense.40 Like the inspirational leaders in the save-the-babies movement, Bell has developed his own language. The villains are the “slimeballs” and “miscreants” who work in the government. The heroes are the people strong enough to take action against them.
Bell occasionally participated as a “juror” in “trials” at a common-law court in Multnomah County, Oregon. Bell and his fellow jurors found a number of IRS employees and government officials guilty of theft and conspiracy, and of violating amendments to the American Constitution. They demanded an award of $100,000.41 In November 1996, Bell sent a letter to the IRS’s Ogden Service Center to demand a large tax refund. He gave the IRS two months to expedite his refund, warning them that he was prepared to take the matter up with his local common-law court “for final disposition.”42 At a January 1997 meeting of his common-law associates, Bell distributed computer discs of his “assassination politics” essay, labeled “AP: A Solution to the Common Law Court Enforcement Problem,” which he had already been publicizing on the Internet.43
Virtual networks enable violent individuals who are socially ill at ease to work together on a common political or religious cause without having to meet face-to-face. Experts claim that schizophrenics and sociopaths may want to commit acts of mass destruction, but they are probably the least likely to succeed because of their difficulty functioning in groups.44 Such individuals are often prone to “political paranoia,” tending toward extreme suspiciousness, megalomania, and grandiosity.45 They tend also to feel victimized. They are often persuaded that the enemy camp—whether the government or a rival religious group—is not only out to get them but is monitoring their every move. Once lone-wolf avengers prove themselves to be dangerous, their conviction that the government is out to get them is likely to become true, at least to some extent. But that does not make them less paranoid.46 As their paranoia increases, such individuals may become more violent. Until now, individuals have been unable to do a great deal of harm. But methods for producing crude weapons of mass destruction are now widely available.
The prospect that well-trained lone-wolf avengers or small networks could get involved in biological weapons attacks is especially worrisome, especially in light of the fall 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, which infected eighteen people, five of whom died.47 Inputs to biological weapons are inherently “dual-use.” Unlike special nuclear materials, which are man-made and produced only at government-sanctioned facilities, biological agents (with the single exception of variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox) exist in the environment. John Collier, a leading expert on anthrax at Harvard Medical School, points out that virtually any microbiologist could isolate anthrax spores, which persist in soil for decades. “You are never going to be able to eradicate them from nature,” he says.48 Listed pathogens are used in thousands of clinical and diagnostic laboratories. The same equipment used to produce beer, for example, could be used to produce biological agents. The underlying research and technology base is available to a rapidly growing and increasingly international technical community.49
In response to a neo-Nazi’s acquisition of Yersinia pestis from an American germ bank in 1995, the U.S. government tightened up the rules for shippers and receivers of select agents, the pathogens that the government considers especially dangerous.50 But cultures are also available from germ banks outside the United States. In the fall of 2001, the World Federation for Culture Collections urged its 472 members to tighten access to dangerous microbes, but the organization is not empowered to demand compliance.51 More than a thousand germ banks around the world do not belong to the federation, and few of them are adequately regulated or secured.52 And because of the difficulty of detecting freeze-dried pathogens, the ability of U.S. Customs to stop illegal imports of small quantities of pathogens, such as seed cultures, is minimal.53
Within a week after his release from prison, Bell commenced a new campaign against his enemies, which he called a “Thug hunt.” He was determined to locate the home addresses of his “slimeball” enemies, in particular IRS and ATF employees who had been involved in his earlier arrest.54 Although he did not find the homes of his intended targets, he continued his Thug hunt even after the IRS carried out a search of his residence.55 Bell was rearrested on November 17, 2000, on charges of stalking government officials “with the intent to injure or harass” causing them “reasonable fear of death or serious injury.”56 Bell is now in a federal prison in Lampac, California, serving a ten-year sentence.
So far, Bell has had only modest success as an inspirational leader. Carl Edward Johnson, a forty-nine-year-old man with whom Bell exchanged e-mails through a cypherpunk chat group, vowed to take “personal action” on Bell’s behalf after his first arrest. Johnson established a Web site he named Dead Lucky, which offered specific amounts of “eCa$h” for the deaths of Jeff Gordon, the IRS inspector who had led the investigation of Bell, and two other IRS employees. He was ultimately convicted of sending anonymous e-mail threats to the judges involved in Bell’s case, and also to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.57
Authorities’ biggest fear is that Bell would inspire others to develop and use chemical or biological agents as a means for creating a miscreant-free world. After the anthrax letter attacks of fall 2001, it is a risk that cannot be ignored. Perhaps the most frightening prospect is an organization that combines the strengths of virtual networks and lone-wolf avengers (resilience to law-enforcement penetration) and commander-and-
cadre organizations (capacity to carry out complex, large-scale attacks), which I investigate next.