Lone Wolf Terrorism (41 page)

69
. Vikram Dodd, “Roshonara Choudhry: Police Interview Extracts,”
Guardian
, November 3, 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/03/roshonara-choudhry-police-interview
(accessed December 29, 2011). Choudhry also told police that she was influenced by a YouTube video she watched in April 2010 by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam, who was a Palestinian Islamic militant killed in 1989. Choudhry told the detectives that Azzam said that “when a Muslim land is attacked it becomes obligatory on every man, woman and child and even slave to go out and fight and defend the land and the Muslims.”

70
. Paul Avrich,
Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
(Edinburgh: AK Press, 2005), pp. 107, 111, 120, 132, 157, 158, 316; cited in Jeffrey D. Simon, “The Forgotten Terrorists: Lessons from the History of Terrorism,”
Terrorism and Political Violence
20, no. 2 (April/June 2008): 196.

71
. Dodd, “Roshonara Choudhry: Police Interview Extracts.”

72
. Pantucci, “Trial of Would-Be Assassin.”

73
. Vikram Dodd, “Roshonara Choudhry: I Wanted to Die…I Wanted to be a Martyr,”
Guardian
, November 3, 2010,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/04/stephen-timms-attack-roshonara-choudhry
(accessed December 29, 2011).

74
. Dodd, “Roshonara Choudhry: Police Interview Extracts.”

75
. Dodd, “Profile: Roshonara Choudhry.”

76
. Dodd, “Roshonara Choudhry: Police Interview Extracts.”

77
. “Student Jailed for Stabbing of MP Stephen Timms,” Channel 4 News,
November 3, 2010,
http://www.channel4.com/news/student-jailed-for-stabbing-of-mp-stephen-timms
(accessed January 4, 2012).

CHAPTER 5. LONE WOLF ASSASSINS

1
. Maximilien Robespierre gave birth to the term
terrorism
by unleashing his Reign of Terror between 1793 and 1794 upon all strata of French society. The Committee on Public Safety that ruled France following the French Revolution can be considered the first case of state terror imposed upon a people. It was the forerunner of twentieth-century terror governments such as Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Pol Pot's Cambodia. Robespierre viewed terror as the only way to save the revolution from anarchy at home and the threat of invasion from abroad by European monarchs. More than seventeen thousand people, ranging from peasants and workers to aristocrats and moderate revolutionaries, met their deaths by the guillotine, while approximately twenty-five thousand others were shot or killed by different methods throughout the country. There were more than one hundred thousand political prisoners taken, while several hundred thousand others were declared suspects. Robespierre did not view terrorism as an evil or immoral act but instead thought of it as a virtuous deed. “If the basis of popular government in time of peace is virtue,” he argued, “the basis of popular government in time of revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue without which terror is murderous, terror without which virtue is powerless.” See Jeffrey D. Simon,
The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism
, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 27–29. The word
terrorism
first appeared in the 1798 supplement of the
Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française
, as meaning a “système, régime de la terreur.” See Walter Laqueur,
The Age of Terrorism
(Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1987), p. 11.

2
. Bernard Lewis,
The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 134.

3
. Quoted in ibid., p. 5.

4
. A poison-tipped umbrella was used to assassinate Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov on a London street in 1978. Markov was waiting for a bus when a man poked him in the thigh with the umbrella and then apologized as though it had been an accident. What he had actually done, however, was fire a platinum pellet from the umbrella containing ricin, a poison derived from the castor bean plant for which there is no antidote. Markov died a few days later. Bulgarian agents working with the Soviet KGB had designed the plot.

5
. Philip B. Heymann,
Terrorism and America: A Commonsense Strategy for a Democratic Society
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), p. 6.

6
. R. Hrair Dekmejian,
Spectrum of Terror
(Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2007), p. 25.

7
. Franklin L. Ford,
Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 381.

8
. See, for example, Nancy Jo Sales, “Click Here for Conspiracy,”
Vanity Fair
, August 2006,
http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/features/2006/08/loosechange200608
(accessed February 25, 2012); “Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report—The World Trade Center,”
Popular Mechanics
, March 2005,
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/debunking-911-myths-world-trade-center
(accessed February 25, 2012).

9
. Lindsay Porter,
Assassination: A History of Political Murder
(New York: Overlook Press, 2010), p. 154.

10
. Ibid., p. 143.

11
. David C. Rapoport,
Assassination and Terrorism
(Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Company, 1971), p. 19.

12
. Ibid.

13
. Ford,
Political Murder
, pp. 383–84.

14
. See for example, Trevor Burrus, “Get Rid of the Spoils System,”
Washington Times
, March 11, 2011,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/11/run-democrats-run/
(accessed March 26, 2012); “Garfield, James A.: Assassination,”
Encyclopedia Britannica
, 2012,
http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-302549
(accessed March 26, 2012); “History through the Decades, United States Census Bureau,”
http://www.census.gov/history/www/through_the_decades/fast_facts/1880_fast_facts.html
(accessed March 26, 2012).

15
. James W. Clarke,
American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 198–99, 206–207. During his trial, Guiteau continually referred to the need to “remove the President of the United States for the good of the American people.” See Douglas O. Linder, “Excerpts from the Trial Transcript: Cross-Examination of Charles Guiteau,” University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law,
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/guiteau/guiteautranscriptguiteaucrossx.html
(accessed January 22, 2012).

16
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 209–10; Alan Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois: President Garfield's Assassin,”
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
70, no. 2 (May 1977): 130–31; Charles Guiteau Collection, Georgetown University,
http://gulib.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/cl133.htm
(accessed January 22, 2012).

17
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 199–200; Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois,” pp. 130–32.

18
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 201–202; Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois,” p. 132.

19
. Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois,” p. 132.

20
. Candice Millard,
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President
(New York: Doubleday, 2011), pp. 30–47.

21
. Ibid., p. 57.

22
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, p. 204.

23
. Ibid.

24
. Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois,” p. 135.

25
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 206–207.

26
. Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois,” p. 136.

27
. Millard,
Destiny of the Republic
, p. 113.

28
. Peskin, “Charles Guiteau of Illinois,” p. 136.

29
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, p. 207.

30
. Ibid.

31
. “Guiteau's Day of Torture: The Assassin Driven into Maze of Contradictions,”
New York Times
, December 2, 1881,
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60A17FB3A581B7A93C0A91789D95F458884F9
(accessed January 22, 2012).

32
. Millard,
Destiny of the Republic
, pp. 119–24.

33
. Ibid., pp. 125–37.

34
. Douglas O. Linder, “The Trial of Charles Guiteau: An Account,” University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law,
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/guiteau/guiteauaccount.html
(accessed January 22, 2012).

35
. Millard,
Destiny of the Republic
, p. 215.

36
. Ibid., p. 253.

37
. Ibid., p. 236.

38
.
Guiteau Trial, Closing Speech to the Jury of John K. Porter of New York, In the Case of Charles J. Guiteau, the Assassin of President Garfield
, Washington, January 23, 1882 (New York: John Polhemus, 1882), p. 54.

39
. “Guiteau's Day of Torture.”

40
. Ibid.

41
. Ibid.

42
. “Pendleton Act (1883),” Our Documents,
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=48
(accessed January 27, 2012).

43
. Millard,
Destiny of the Republic
, p. 249.

44
. Ibid.

45
. The Boxer Rebellion was a peasant uprising against foreign presence in China. The United States and several other nations sent troops to China to suppress the rebellion and protect their interests in the country.

46
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, p. 44.

47
. Scott Miller,
The President and the Assassin: McKinley, Terror, and Empire at the Dawn of the American Century
(New York: Random House, 2011), p. 57.

48
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 44–49.

49
. Miller,
President and the Assassin
, p. 246.

50
. Ibid., pp. 273–75.

51
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, p. 55.

52
. Ibid., p. 56.

53
. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

54
. Porter,
Assassination
, p. 154.

55
. “‘Lights Out in the City of Light': Anarchy and Assassination at the Pan-American Exposition,” Libraries, University of Buffalo, June 2004,
http://library.buffalo.edu/exhibits/panam/law/trial.html
(accessed January 29, 2012).

56
. Miller,
President and the Assassin
, p. 323.

57
. “‘Lights Out in the City of Light.'”

58
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 10–11. The M'Naghten Rule derived from a case in Britain in 1843. Daniel M'Naghten, a Scottish woodworker, believed that he was the target of a conspiracy between the pope and British prime minister Robert Peel. He attempted to assassinate Peel but instead shot and killed the prime minister's private secretary, Edward Drummond. M'Naghten was acquitted based on his lawyers' successful argument that their client was insane. The verdict infuriated the British public and government as well as Queen Victoria, who, a few years earlier, had herself been the target of an assassin who was also found not guilty by reason of insanity. The House of Lords and the queen, along with many other people, felt that Britain needed a clear and strict definition of criminal insanity. Therefore, the British Supreme Court ruled, just four months after the M'Naghten verdict, that a defendant could use an insanity defense only if “at the time of committing of the act, the party accused was labouring under such a defect of reason, from a disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.” See Millard,
Destiny of the Republic
, p. 237.

59
. All the doctors who examined Czolgosz found him to be sane. One group of doctors wrote in its report that “the most careful questioning failed to discover any hallucinations of sight or hearing. He had received no special command; he did not believe he had been specially chosen to do the deed. He always spoke of his motive for the crime as duty; he always referred to the Anarchists' belief that killing of rulers was a duty…. He is the product of anarchy, sane and responsible.” See Miller,
President and the Assassin
, pp. 347–48.

60
. Clarke,
American Assassins
, pp. 58–59.

61
. Ibid., p. 59.

62
. Ibid.

63
. Ibid.

64
. Theodore Roosevelt, “State of the Union Message,” December 3, 1901,
Primary Speeches, Addresses, and Essays by Theodore Roosevelt, Almanac of Theodore Roosevelt,
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trspeeches.html
(accessed February 3, 2012). While many anarchists condemned the assassination and denounced Czolgosz, Emma Goldman came to his defense. In an article in
Free Society
one month after the assassination, she wrote, “Some people have hastily said that Czolgosz's act was foolish and will check the growth of progress. Those worthy people are wrong in forming hasty conclusions. What results the act of September 6 will have no one can say; one thing, however, is certain: he has wounded government in its most vital spot.” See Jewish Women's Archive, “Article by Goldman about Leon Czolgosz's Assassination of President McKinley and the Use of Violence,”
http://jwa.org/media/article-by-goldman-about-leon-czolgoszs-assassination-of-president-mckinley-and-use-of-violenc
(accessed January 29, 2012).

65
. Paul Avrich,
Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 130.