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Terror's Blueprint
Posted Oct. 28, 2002
By Paul M. Rodriguez
Investigators looked for clues after the shooting in Manassas, Va.
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As Insight went to press news continued to break about the capture of two alleged snipers who have terrorized the Washington metropolitan area in a shooting spree that killed 10 and critically injured three. While law-enforcement authorities believe the deadly attacks are over, reflection on the 22-day ordeal has raised still more troubling issues for the nation.
Observers fear al-Qaeda may look at this episode as showing the way to terrorize a city — any city — and create an indelible national fear. Imagine, some in Washington political and law-enforcement circles are saying, what might happen if al-Qaeda were to employ just 10 sharpshooters in 10 U.S. cities. In fact, evidence presented in mid-October by CNBC News indicates that al-Qaeda has trained sharpshooters to do exactly this — targeting children and others on school buses, at malls, in gas stations and going about their everyday lives. Insight has confirmed that intelligence reports say al-Qaeda schemes have called for attacking schools nationwide, including elementary schools.
So expect John Allen Muhammad, 41, and his 17-year-old "stepson," Jamaican national John Lee Malvo, to be celebrated the world over as heroes and textbook examples for jihadists and other terrorists. And never mind that the gunsel kid and his hero from the motor pool were arrested while sound asleep outside a rest stop on Interstate 70 near Frederick, Md., about 50 miles northwest of Washington, and taken without a struggle. The arrests came when the shooters were identified after a Malvo fingerprint on a letter left at the scene of a shooting was linked to a cowardly Montgomery, Ala., robbery in September that left one woman dead and another wounded.
Neighbors reportedly said the sniper team openly was sympathetic to the jihadist hijackers who killed nearly 3,000 in attacks on the World Trade Center, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The older man converted to Islam in 1984 and legally changed his surname from Williams to Muhammad 17 months ago. Young Malvo also is believed to have converted to Islam, but as Insight goes to press no evidence tying them to Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaeda terrorists has been found. Perhaps trying to calm public alarm, law-enforcement sources have claimed the alleged killers were the usual lone assassins on a murderous spree. And never mind their alleged attempt to extort $10 million and move it out of the country electronically.
The suspected serial killers had been living off and on in Clinton, Md., in the Washington suburbs of Prince George's County. Muhammad had at one time worked security for Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March" to strengthen families. Sources tell Insight that paramedics were called repeatedly to Muhammad's former Maryland residence because of domestic abuse involving the second of his ex-wives.
Muhammad reportedly is connected with the Islamic Community Center in Laurel, Md., and practiced Islam while serving nine years as a mechanic in the U.S. Army. Malvo is said by law-enforcement sources to be an illegal alien, but that will have no bearing on his trial.
"Tons of evidence," police sources claim, link the two alleged killers to the crimes — including ballistic evidence, witnesses and the sniper weapon — a Bushmaster rifle that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms identifies as matching the ballistic fingerprint of bullets extracted from those killed and wounded. Ballistic evidence also has linked the men to a prior address in Tacoma, Wash.
The two are expected to be tried first in Maryland where, if convicted, Muhammad could face the death penalty. Police sources tell Insight they expect the 17-year-old to claim he was coerced into the shootings. But it will avail him little since, sources say, under Maryland rules he cannot be sentenced to death if convicted, but only to life imprisonment without parole. Nor can he face the death penalty if tried in federal court for killing the FBI analyst. He can, however, be executed for murder in Virginia or Alabama.
Law-enforcement officials tell Insight they believe the two shooters participated in a deadly competition with no regard for human life. So sophisticated was their method of operation that their stolen 1990 Caprice had been modified with a hole in the trunk to accommodate a rifle for easy firing. The trunk could be accessed from the backseat.
But beyond the local terror resulting from these murders and assaults on civilians, including a 13-year-old Maryland child who was shot entering a middle school, there have been other ramifications. For example, occurring in the month before general elections, the murders have been politicized by some Democrats to argue for more gun laws, including ballistic fingerprinting.
In Maryland, the murders at first seemed to jeopardize the gubernatorial bid of four-time Republican congressman Robert Ehrlich, who has been blasted for his alleged National Rifle Association agenda with negative ads placed by his challenger, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Never mind that her role as Maryland's titular chief of crime for contact left her vulnerable to questions about failed manhunts and how snipers could tool about the state for nearly a month killing at will. Since she did not take responsibility when the issue was up in the air, political consultants say, she hardly could take credit for the capture. Voters ultimately may care about this.
And certainly these serial murders from ambush are likely again to raise the issue of whether constant mass-media exposure to violence has had any bearing on the killings. The killers were still at large when some began calling for the banning and removal of popular video games that glorify hit-men and murder. [See "Do Deadly Games Lead to Violent Acts."]
While much is yet to be learned about the motives of the alleged killers, there has been no shortage of opinions from pundits and previously unknown experts who grabbed their 15 minutes of fame from cable news to Internet chat rooms and watercooler conversations. Even the national news media found themselves racing to catch up to local beat reporters on a story that eventually knocked the impending Iraq war from leading the nightly news and brought the president and White House aides into the picture during daily press briefings and photo opportunities.
As prosecutors begin to prepare their criminal cases, there likely will be second-guessing about the police investigation, including whether the evidence about these killers was made available to investigators in a timely enough fashion, and whether more should have been released to the public sooner. Lawsuits surely will be filed, some no doubt claiming brutality by conspicuously armed police officers who will be accused of roughing up drivers of white box trucks and Chevy Astro vans.
No one really cares to hear about such cases now, Insight has been told by lawyers and jurists, but the lawyers are swarming. And the time will come when jurors will sit to decide whether the police who now are being cheered as heroes stepped across the line. Some believe cases brought by relatives of those shot or killed will find sympathetic ears in potential cases involving police officials who withheld information from the public, as the lawyers ask whether this would have saved lives by leading more quickly to arrest of the alleged assassins.
Though overlooked in the crush of news about the killing spree, a CIA assessment that says al-Qaeda is regrouping worldwide — learning from its mistakes and operating through independent cells — raises ominous storm flags for the future. The threat of terrorism, domestic or imported, looms ever larger in the public mind.
But it also now is evident that the public can play a crucial and important role in stopping or preventing sustained bloodshed. For example, within 60 minutes of an all-points bulletin put out by the police and broadcast by the media, a truck driver stopped at a rest area spotted the Chevrolet Caprice with New Jersey tag number NDA 21Z, called 911 and blocked the rest-area exit with his truck. Within 15 minutes police arrived. It was an alert citizen and not exotic profilers and tabloid psychics who caught the bad guys. "I did my job. I'm no hero," says Ron Lantz, the truck driver who made that call. The night before he had attended a prayer meeting with other truckers to pray the sniper would be found.
Seeking assistance from truckers to identify likely terrorists has been much maligned by the liberal media, but it turns out that it works. And throughout the weeks of the terror other good citizens were sharing ideas and trying to help by using the Internet. There was a blackout of evidence and a paucity of hard news about the search, so ordinary Americans did what they always do by trying to solve the problem on their own. For example, America Online offered one of many chat rooms where ordinary people shared their ideas, feelings, insights, suspicions and expertise about the shooters.
One visitor to the site wrote: "If any law-enforcement agency takes a look at these boards, I hope any ideas placed on them help catch the person." The visitor, a numerologist, then predicted that "the next victim will be a woman, the shooting will take place in the evening, possibly around 8:30. It will take place in the parking lot of a grocery store. The area will be west-northwest of Rockville [Md.], in Virginia." This message was posted at 1:50 a.m. on Oct. 4, just 19 hours before the next shooting. At 9:15 p.m. on Oct. 14, FBI intelligence analyst Linda Franklin was shot in the head and killed at a Home Depot parking lot in Falls Church, Va.
Of course, eccentricity, analysis and guesses abounded as local and federal officers scoured such "tips" and listened to radio broadcasts and fielded thousands of calls coming in to police dispatchers. The point is, according to law-enforcement officials including Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose, without the help of the public killers such as the Washington snipers cannot and could not be found.
Consider the vast array of technology brought in to monitor the Washington-area killing fields. Military reconnaissance planes, classified satellites, choppers, eavesdropping equipment, infrared technology and all the rest were not as effective as one alert truck driver.
At the same time, the extraordinary nature of the terror caused by the snipers helped officials to shrug off turf battles and cooperate across a vast array of expertise that included the monitoring of civilian cameras throughout the area — cameras long criticized for Big Brother intrusion into the privacy of law-abiding citizens.
For example, in Virginia, there are nearly 200 operational traffic cameras, with 107 of them in Northern Virginia alone. And according to Larry Nelson, a spokesman for Trafficland Inc., a video-networking company working in partnership with the Virginia Department of Transportation, "not all of these cameras that are out there are on our Website." Nelson was referring to www.Trafficland.com, which provides live traffic video of Virginia highways on the World Wide Web.
The camera system in Virginia has the ability to zoom in as commanded. And, while Nelson would not comment on specific cooperation with law-enforcement concerning use of any of the camera/tape equipment to try to find the snipers, he tells Insight there was "very comprehensive" contact with law enforcement.
Unlike the traffic-camera system set up in Virginia, however, the Maryland system does not tape the traffic — something that officials probably will revisit after the reviews of this manhunt are done. Maryland State Highway Administration spokesman David Buck tells Insight "there are 18 cameras in Prince George's County and 60 others throughout the state. They provide real-time traffic video and have some zoom capability, but for our purposes we're only interested in traffic flow. We don't tape the images."
To many who for weeks lived in fear in the Washington area, this technology designed to track traffic patterns now seems to be a potentially useful defense against criminals and terrorists. Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. But how much privacy is even a frightened public prepared to forgo in the choice between safety and liberty?
Paul M. Rodriguez is the managing editor of Insight magazine. Kelly Patricia O'Meara and Timothy W. Maier contributed to this report.
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