Who could have anticipated the attack?

[Nic Name]

Al-Qaida's expected retaliation for the U.S. cruise missile attack against al-Qaida's training facilities in Afghanistan on August 20, 1998, could take several forms of terrorist attack in the nation's capital. Al-Qaida could detonate a Chechen-type building-buster bomb at a federal building. Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House. Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters.

THE SOCIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF TERRORISM:

WHO BECOMES A TERRORIST AND WHY?

A Report Prepared under an Interagency Agreement

by the Federal Research Division,

Library of Congress

September 1999

Author: Rex A. Hudson
Editor: Marilyn Majeska
Project Managers: Andrea M. Savada
Helen C. Metz

Read the report here