In the aftermath of the World Trade Center bombing and the later suspected plot to blow up the UN, the Federal building, and the Port Authority's Hudson River tunnels, when the long list of likely sponsoring "terrorist states" and "organisations" had run its course in the media - Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Nicaragua, the Serbs, the Croats, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Columbian drug cartels, the Sendreso Luminose, the IRA - one thing was clear. The suspects were very much in residence. Far from being hitmen dispatched from overseas, they had roots and family in the new immigrant communities ringing the metropolitan areas. Nothing, not even evidence of a monstruous international terrorist network, could have presented more of a nightmare, or a godsend, to the national security bloodhounds. Like the domestic omnipresence of red spies at the height of the Cold War paranoia - they could be your neighbours. The new terrorist was no longer recognizably alien.

after Andrew Ross in Bombing The Big Apple