The preventive approach to domestic terrorism goes back even further than the 1990s and it begins with the basic police work and surveillance of the joint terrorism task forces. In fact, there is no section of the U.S. Criminal Code that criminalizes domestic terrorism as such. The absence of clear law around domestic terrorism, and the imperatives of prevention, mean that investigators and prosecutors who work domestic terrorism cases must focus on more common charges: weapons violations, illegal drug possession, burglary, aiding and abetting and so forth. But this was not enough to overrule the fear of domestic terrorism that was gripping the nation and that hung in the courtroom. It reflected the legal paradoxes of the case and domestic terrorism law in general or, maybe more accurately, the absence of it.

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