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CHAPTER 1 Cyber Terrorism and Covert Action Jack Caravelli September 11, 2001, marked a new and deeply troubling era in American life, ushering in the persistent threat, especially in cities like New York and Washington DC of terrorist attack. From a broader perspective and outside the United States, terrorism in its many forms is far from new, having been a presence in parts of the globe over the past two thousand years in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. We can identify three long-ago precursors to the terrorist movements we struggle against in the current era. The first were the Zealots who oper- ated against the backdrop of the Roman Empire. They often used dag- gers and knives, usually in crowded gathering places, so that their vicious attacks could be observed by many. Their goal was the simple if wholly rejected demand that by using violence, they could make a political state- ment to force the Roman Empire to give up Palestine. The Zealots lasted only a few decades before being rooted out by Roman legions, but in that short period, they showed the power of their intense views by successfully mobilizing mass disaffection against Rome. Interestingly, in today’s politi- cal lexicon, zeal is the meaning of Hamas, the Palestinian group. The “Assassins,” a word that is also still in our vocabulary, were Shia Muslims who operated in the Middle East from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Their stated goal was to “purify” Islam, a claim made in more recent times by terrorist groups also operating in the Middle East. As with the Zealots, the preferred weapons of the Assassins were knives, often used against moderate religious leaders. In an uncanny foreshadowing of what the terrorist group ISIS would seek hundreds of years later in our time, the Assassins sought to establish territorial control over large parts