ABSTRACT
IN 2001, BEFORE THE ATTACKS ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER and the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) list of the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” included three men sought for their involvement in acts of political violence: Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of lethal attacks on the American battleship USS Cole in the fall of 2000 and on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania two years earlier; Eric Robert Rudolph, who was sought for the deadly bombing of an abortion clinic in Alabama, the fatal explosion in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympic Games, and similar attacks on other facilities; and James Charles Kopp, who was charged with the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a provider of legal abortions. At the time, bin Laden was called a “terrorist” in the United States-by U.S. government officials, the media, and the public. However, with the exception of activists in the prochoice movement, hardly anyone characterized Rudolph and Kopp publicly as “terrorists”; each was described as a “criminal,” “murderer,” or “extremist.” After Slepian’s violent death, President Bill Clinton said, “I am outraged by the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian in his home last night in Amherst, NY.”1 Yet, neither Kopp nor Rudolph was an ordinary murderer. Both were antiabortion extremists who killed in the name of an elusive “Army of God” and single-issue politics as pursued by the most violent wing in the pro-life movement. Just like bin Laden, they acted to publicize, dramatize, and further their political and religious agenda. Why, then, did public officials, the media, and Americans in general choose different terms to explain the same types of deeds and the same types of perpetrators?
