by Brian M. Jenkins

About the author: Brian M. Jenkins serves as deputy chairman to Kroll Associates, an international investigative firm.

Nineteen ninety-five began with renewed alarms about terrorism. Car bombs exploded in Algiers, Algeria, and in Beit Lid, Israel. One of the key suspects in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center was arrested in Pakistan and extradited to the United States. Fearing that his comrades, still at large, might retaliate by planting bombs aboard airliners, authorities heightened airport security worldwide. Airlines flying in Europe and North Africa were already on edge following the December 1994 hijacking of an Air France jet by Algerian extremists, who, according to French authorities, intended to blow up the plane over Paris. Chechen rebels threatened to launch a campaign of terrorism in Russia. The discovery of a cache of explosives in...