Hide and Seek

IT was shortly before 8 A.M. on January 25, 1993, the height of the morning rush hour. At the entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., as traffic was waiting at the stop light to make a left turn into the agency complex, a man got out of his car with a Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifle and walked among the other cars, shooting the people in them. In less than three minutes, he murdered two people and left three bleeding and maimed for life. All but one of the wounded were CIA employees. The gunman then calmly got back into his car and disappeared amid the spreading shock, panic, and terror.

Police had no clue as to the terrorist’s identity until a Pakistani immigrant living in the area tipped them off that he thought it might be his roommate, who had disappeared the day after the shooting with no notice or explanation. The FBI found the assault rifle in the apartment, and forensic experts established that it matched the shell casings at the murder scene. Fingerprints found on the casings established the assassin’s identity: he was Mir Aimal Kasi, a 28-year-old Pakistani who had entered the country illegally in 1992. The FBI established that Kasi left the country the day after the shooting on a flight to Islamabad, then flew to his home in Quetta, a city of 800,000 in Baluchistan, near the Afghan border. After a brief stay with his family, and just before the FBI announced he was wanted for the shooting, Kasi disappeared into the Afghan borderlands.

EH

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Eugene H. Methvin

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IT was shortly before 8 A.M. on January 25, 1993, the height of the morning rush hour. At the entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., as traffic was waiting at the stop light to make a left turn into the agency complex, a man got out of his car with a Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifle and walked among the other cars, shooting the people in them. In less than three minutes, he murdered two people and left three bleeding and maimed for life. All but one of the wounded were CIA employees. The gunman then calmly got back into his car and disappeared amid the spreading shock, panic, and terror.

Police had no clue as to the terrorist’s identity until a Pakistani immigrant living in the area tipped them off that he thought it might be his roommate, who had disappeared the day after the shooting with no notice or explanation. The FBI found the assault rifle in the apartment, and forensic experts established that it matched the shell casings at the murder scene. Fingerprints found on the casings established the assassin’s identity: he was Mir Aimal Kasi, a 28-year-old Pakistani who had entered the country illegally in 1992. The FBI established that Kasi left the country the day after the shooting on a flight to Islamabad, then flew to his home in Quetta, a city of 800,000 in Baluchistan, near the Afghan border. After a brief stay with his family, and just before the FBI announced he was wanted for the shooting, Kasi disappeared into the Afghan borderlands.