Terrorism As Crime by Mark S. Hamm

Author:Mark S. Hamm [Hamm, Mark S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Criminology, General
ISBN: 9780814737453
Google: VkAdEJZou64C
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2007-03-01T05:23:43+00:00

EVIDENCE AS TOTEM

Once again, the primary goal of this research is to identify the distinguishing features of terrorist-oriented criminality. The FBI’s investigation of the Brink truck robbery revealed such a distinction. And as in all cases of terrorism, this distinction was located in the varieties of criminality associated with deviant subcultures.

When the CSA’s Richard Snell was found with a .22-caliber pistol following his killing of an Arkansas state trooper—the same gun Snell previously used to murder a pawnshop owner—he was not simply showing a lack of judgment. Nor was he exhibiting the sort of criminal stupidity we’ve so far witnessed with the jihadists. This was something entirely different. Instead Snell was demonstrating a fundamental characteristic of the American radical Right. Rather than concealing incriminating evidence, American terrorists actually hold onto this evidence, thereby recasting it as a symbol of their struggle. The terrorist’s ends (bombing targets, assassination victims, etc.) are always symbolic. And so are the means to those ends. For Snell, the .22-caliber pistol was far more than physical evidence worthy of capital punishment. For him, it was proof of a noble performance.

This facet of domestic terrorism is all about individual reputation, or the prospect of generating stories that cast the terrorist as brave, loyal to confederates, and fearless to a fault. In these stories, the terrorist assumes a heroic identity that becomes a permanent part of his biography. Terrorists use evidence gained in battle, then, to create stories that reveal themselves as admirable to present and future audiences. “Why do terrorists consider evidence to be venerated emblems of their crimes?” I asked the FBI’s Danny Coulson. “Beats me,” he said. “It’s kind of like the Sioux when they slaughtered Custer’s troops at Little Big Horn. They cut off fingers of dead soldiers and wore them as necklaces. To them, it was totem.”26

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