T A B L E+T A L K How much time do you spend following the stock market? Enough to interfere with your life? Join the stock market discussion in Money. D A I L Y+Q U O T E The joys of a debt collector R E C E N T L Y HotFired By Andrew Leonard Money wasn't the only reason for the latest layoffs at Wired (11/20/97) Shape of things to come By Jonathan Broder Unless the Clinton administration does something to rescue the Middle East peace process, there will be more Saddam Husseins -- and more Luxor massacres (11/19/97) Bloodbath on the Nile By Andrew Ross Why Islamic radicals are murdering foreign tourists (11/18/97) That's Ms. hippie chick to you By Susan Kuchinskas While radical politics tore up the streets, sexual politics were heating up the kitchen (11/17/97) How mad is Ted Kaczynski? By Ros Davidson The Unabomber is not like most other serial killers. But the demons that drove him were every bit as lethal (11/14/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		Lone gunmen The most serious terrorist threat to America comes not from organized or state-sponsored groups of political militants but from loners with a grudge and a gun. BY JEFF STEIN | While Washington was working itself into a lather over Saddam Hussein for the past two weeks, an arguably more potent face of anti-American terrorism was right here at home, in an American courtroom, hearing a jury recommend that he be executed. Mir Aimal Kansi was not a member of a political terrorist organization when he attacked a line of cars outside CIA headquarters in 1993, killing two people and wounding three with lethal spurts of AK-47 semiautomatic rifle fire. He was an individual with a grudge, and there are many more like him out there, unhinged loners who are focusing their rage on all things American. Last August I walked through the political environment out of which Kansi sprang when I went to Pakistan to investigate his life and eventual capture by a team of FBI, CIA and Pakistani commandos. Bumping along a stretch of broken concrete in the broiling heat of central Pakistan, my driver, Ahmad, told me a story. "You know how Pakistan was listed No. 2 in world corruption last year?" he asked. On the horizon, like a runaway prop from "A Passage to India," the half-century-old Lahore-Karachi Express chugged by, its passengers hanging from the windows and riding on the roofs. Yes, I said to Ahmad, I'd heard something about that. Nigeria was the worst, right? "Actually," Ahmad said, his eyes dancing and black mustache twitching, "Pakistan was No. 1, but we bribed the Nigerians to go first." When they're not joking, Pakistanis blame the U.S. for this rather dubious achievement. Corruption, along with a flood of heroin and AK-47s, they say, are Pakistan's principal rewards for collaborating with Washington during the Afghanistan war of 1980-89, when the CIA equipped and quarterbacked a coalition of Islamic fundamentalist rebel groups against the Soviet Red Army. With the Red Army long gone, radical Islam of the most extreme kind has triumphed in Afghanistan. And it is becoming an increasing factor in Pakistani cities, where rival Sunni and Shia extremists battle it out with leftover AK-47s. N E X T+P A G E+| Mullahs raising the anti-American flag