The Terrorist Trap, Second Edition: America’s Experience with Terrorism

The bombings of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and of the World Trade Center in New York City have joined a long history of terrorists acts against the United States. In this updated edition of his work, Jeffrey Simon reaches back to the founding days of the Republic to tell a story that is both instructive and alarming. Simon uncovers the dynamics of a deadly conflict that affects all Americans. His in-depth interviews with terrorists and their victims, with reporters, government officials and others seek to bring to life a tale of presidents and terrorists, media and society, all entangled in a drama of international violence.;The text traces the government response to terrorism from the days of Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates to William Jefferson Clinton’s confrontation with home-grown terrorism. It explores the terrorist trap: the psychological, political and social elements that make terrorism unlike any other conflict. With the end of the Cold War and the defeat of Saddam Hussein’s army in the Gulf War, many believed that the threat of terrorism had been significantly reduced. But Simon shows how terrorism grows out of political, economic and social gri