Assassinations and Attempted Assassinations

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    What Do You Say to a Young Person Who Admires the Unabomber?

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    I published a novel about the Unabomber this year, and during a book tour stop in Seattle, a high school teacher raised his hand and asked me what he could tell his students about Ted Kaczynski, because he was a hero to so many of them. The question stopped me cold, reminding me that Mr. Kaczynski’s influence is deeper and more widespread than most people realize.The same feeling of cold unease returned this week when I read news reports that Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, Brian Thompson, had posted a favorable review of the Unabomber’s manifesto online. The similarities didn’t end there. The meticulous planning and use of symbolism in the crime reminded me of Mr. Kaczynski, who spent years choosing his targets, designing disguises (even gluing false soles to the bottoms of his shoes) and leaving messages for investigators. The words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on the bullet casings found by Mr. Thompson’s body were an eerie echo of the “FC” for Freedom Club that Mr. Kaczynski carved into his bombs. The fact that Mr. Mangione allegedly made his own gun and carried a copy of his own manifesto reinforced the similarities.There is, of course, still much we don’t know about Mr. Mangione: a full picture of who he is, and what factors shaped him and motivated him. But the teacher’s suggestion that the Unabomber was a hero to some of his students pointed to a larger truth. To many young people living in a system of extreme economic disparity, in a world they believe is on the verge of ecological collapse, the Unabomber represents a dark, growing ideological desperation. To them, his ruthlessly intellectualized turn to violence can seem justified.But what is lost in this lionization of one of the most notorious terrorists in American history is that for Mr. Kaczynski, the desire to kill came first, and the ideological justifications followed. Lonely rage defined him, and he spent far more time tormenting his neighbors than he did on his grandiose plans to bring down industrial society. He killed dogs for their barking, strung razor wire across dirt bike paths and fantasized about murdering a neighboring toddler. The manifesto and its carefully constructed veneer of Luddite and anarchist philosophies were a con to lure others into his world of despair and hatred.Watching video of Mr. Mangione’s detention, and listening to the words he shouted to the media, I felt a profound sadness. I saw a young man with a promising start in life lost in naïve convictions, and poisoned by his newly formed and corrupt ideology.Violent men have always gained followers, but Mr. Kaczynski’s continued influence is mostly intellectual. He had a showman’s instinct for manipulating the crowd, and intuited that the advance of technology and collapse of the environment would be the two dominant crises of the 21st century. He callously identified the environmental movement as being the most socially acceptable justification for his crimes, even though he privately denigrated environmentalists in his journals, and proudly littered, poached and illegally logged on national forest land around his cabin.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      CEO’s Killing Poses Test for New NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch

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      Weeks ago, Jessica Tisch was in charge of street sweeping and trash pickup. On Monday, she found herself overseeing a ferocious manhunt as the head of the Police Department.Jessica S. Tisch, New York’s police commissioner, was giving her two sons their morning cereal on Dec. 4 when she got a text from a deputy telling her that the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare had been shot dead on a Manhattan sidewalk.“‘Kids, I’ve got to go’,” she said, and jumped in a car that drove her to police headquarters.She ordered that photos of the gunman be sent to all officers as a manhunt got underway. She assigned 10 analysts from the intelligence bureau to work with detectives analyzing surveillance video that might have recorded the gunman’s movements. For five days, investigators scoured thousands of hours of footage, analyzed ballistics and dove in the ponds of Central Park to look for evidence.They were not the only law enforcement agencies that sprang into action. In San Francisco, the police recognized a surveillance photo of the suspect as a man declared missing by his family, and told the F.B.I. in New York, which eventually passed the name to the New York police. The suspect was finally captured on Monday 280 miles away from Manhattan in Altoona, Pa., after a McDonald’s patron recognized him.The case, which has transfixed the nation, was a first test for Commissioner Tisch, who has never been a police officer and just four weeks ago could have been called the city’s street sweeper in chief. As sanitation commissioner, she oversaw more than 2,000 garbage trucks, 450 mechanical brooms, 700 salt spreaders and dozens of specialized machines to clean and plow bike lanes.Then Mayor Eric Adams appointed her to oversee about 49,000 employees at a law enforcement agency still emerging from chaos and turmoil — and the departures of three commissioners since June 2023.The killing of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, placed the department under intense pressure. It thrust Commissioner Tisch, who was appointed on Nov. 20, into the spotlight.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Police Have Luigi Mangione’s Notebook Describing Rationale for UHC CEO Killing

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      “It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” said a sentence in a spiral notebook belonging to the man charged with murdering Brian Thompson.Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthCare at a company investors’ day, was found with a notebook that detailed plans for the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials.The notebook described going to a conference and killing an executive, the officials said.“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” was one passage written in the notebook, the officials said.The shooting occurred early Dec. 4 as Mr. Thompson arrived early at a Hilton hotel on West 54th Street to prepare for the UnitedHealthcare investors’ meeting.Mr. Mangione, 26, was captured Monday after a tip from an employee at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., who was alerted by a customer who recognized him. Mr. Mangione, who faces a murder charge and has been denied bail, is fighting extradition to New York, which starts a process that could take weeks. “He is contesting it,” his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said on Tuesday.The suspect was found with a ghost gun, a suppressor and false identification cards similar to those believed to have been used by the killer, officials said. In addition to the false identification cards, he was carrying identification with his real name.The authorities also found a 262-word handwritten note with him, which begins by appearing to take responsibility for the murder. The note, which officials described as a manifesto, also mentioned the existence of a notebook.The suspect saw the killing as a “symbolic takedown,” according to a New York Police Department internal report that detailed parts of a three-page manifesto found with him at the time of his arrest. The report added that the suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices” and expressed concern that others might see him as a “martyr and an example to follow.”The recovery of the notebook was first reported by CNN.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s Funeral Held Privately in Minnesota 

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      Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare who was gunned down in a brazen killing in New York, was laid to rest this week at a private funeral service in his Minnesota hometown.On Monday, while the nation was transfixed by the arrest of a 26-year-old man from Maryland who was charged with the murder, family and friends of the slain executive gathered at a Lutheran church in Maple Grove, Minn., to mourn the loss of a husband and father who ascended from modest roots in Iowa to one of the most powerful roles in the health care industry.In the days since Mr. Thompson’s death, there has been an outpouring of anger at the insurance industry for denying medical claims, with some people even seeming to cheer his killing online. The vitriol has stunned those who were closest to Mr. Thompson, leaving many of them to grieve his death in private ways.“Brian was an incredibly loving husband, son, brother and friend,” Mr. Thompson’s family said in a statement. “Most importantly, Brian was a devoted father to our two sons, and we will miss him for the rest of our lives. We appreciate the overwhelming outpouring of kind words and support we have received.”Mr. Thompson, 50, grew up in a working-class family in Jewell, Iowa. His mother was a beautician, according to family friends, and his father worked at a facility to store grain, according to an obituary of his father.He spent his childhood summers “walking beans” on farms, going row by row through the fields to kill weeds with a knife, or working manual labor at turkey and hog farms, according to two friends.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Reaction to C.E.O. Killing Exposes Frustrations With Health System

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      The killing of the UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson has mesmerized a deeply polarized nation that shares a collective frustration over dealings with health insurance companies.On social media, some people have cheered for the gunman and expressed little remorse over the death of Mr. Thompson, 50, a father of two boys from Maple Grove, Minn., with some painting him as the villain in a national health care crisis.And now that the identity of the suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26, has been revealed and more photos of him have emerged, he is being defended or even applauded in some circles. That adulation reflects public anger over health care, said Nsikan Akpan, managing editor for Think Global Health, a publication that explores health issues at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The UHC killing and the social media response stem from people feeling helpless over health coverage and income inequality,” he said. The topic is so often ignored by American public officials, he said, that voters have stopped listing it as a top priority.“A targeted killing won’t solve those problems, and neither will condoning it,” he added.Experts who reviewed the flood of social media posts expressing support for Mr. Mangione said that while it can be difficult to assess the provenance of posts, none have the telltale signs of an “influence campaign” by a foreign entity.“People are legitimately actually pissed off at the health care industry, and there is some kind of support for vigilante justice,” said Tim Weninger, a computer science professor at Notre Dame and expert in social media and artificial intelligence. “It’s organic.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ghost Gun Taken From Luigi Mangione Was Fully Homemade, Officials Say

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      The ghost gun that the authorities believe was used to kill UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson last week in Manhattan was an exceedingly rare variety.The police officers in Pennsylvania who on Monday arrested the man who has now been charged in the killing, Luigi Mangione, 26, said that he was found with a black pistol and a suppressor, often called a silencer. Both, the authorities said, had been fabricated with a 3-D printer, a device that sculpts a physical object from a digital model.Each year, authorities in the U.S. seize thousands of ghost guns, almost all of them originating from inexpensive kits bought online that can be assembled into a working weapon in as little as half an hour. But it is rare to recover a 3-D printed gun used in a crime, according to Tom Chittum, a former associate deputy director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.“If the gun used in the New York assassination really was 3-D printed, it would certainly be the highest-profile crime ever committed with one, and it would be one of a small number overall,” said Mr. Chittum, who now works for a public safety technology company.A 3-D printer can be used to create a gun frame, which is the only individual part of a firearm that federal law regulates, and then assemble a working firearm by equipping it with commercially made aftermarket components that are not regulated, including the slide, barrel, and trigger mechanism, Mr. Chittum said.The Pennsylvania authorities said Mr. Mangione’s pistol had a plastic handle, a metal slide and a threaded metal barrel.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      An N.Y.P.D. Manhunt Caught a Subway Shooter. This Time, It’s Different.

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      Capturing a suspect who slips away from a crime scene requires solid police work, help from the public and a little luck, experts say. So far, it’s not working.A shocking early morning act of violence, a frantic New York Police Department search for a suspect and a gunman seemingly in the wind: The year was 2022, and the man the police had fanned out to find was Frank R. James, who had set off smoke grenades inside a crowded subway car in Brooklyn and opened fire.Now, more than two years later, another manhunt has gripped the city. But unlike Mr. James, who was apprehended the day after his rampage, the man who assassinated the chief executive of a health insurance company just before dawn on Wednesday in Midtown Manhattan has not been caught or even identified after more than four days.The two most recent fugitive searches in New York City have involved gunmen who made seemingly improbable escapes in a city teeming with surveillance cameras and people. But despite some similarities between the cases and the investigative tactics being used to try to solve them, the search for the man who killed Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, has proved far more challenging.The suspect’s ability to evade capture appears to be tied to his methodical planning, including wearing a mask and a hood during nearly all of his time in New York City and paying with cash everywhere, along with using a fake driver’s license.And unlike Mr. James, who did essentially nothing to conceal himself after slipping away amid the chaotic aftermath of the shooting that wounded 10 people, the suspect in Mr. Thompson’s killing fled quickly into Central Park, away from the surveillance cameras that blanket much of Manhattan. He also appears to have left the state long before the police could possibly have begun to track his movements.“I don’t think I’ve seen this level of operational preplanning in any crime, never mind in a murder,” said Kenneth E. Corey, a former chief of department in the New York Police Department.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Read the Trump Assassination Plot Criminal Complaint

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      and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
      FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
      defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
      to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
      conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit murder-for-hire, in
      violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1958.
      6. It was a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD SHAKERI,
      CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, and others known and
      unknown, would and did knowingly travel in and cause others to travel in interstate and foreign
      commerce, and would and did use and cause another to use a facility of interstate and foreign
      commerce, with intent that a murder be committed in violation of the laws of the State of New
      York or the United States as consideration for the receipt of and as consideration for a promise or
      agreement to pay anything of pecuniary value, to wit, SHAKERI, RIVERA, and LOADHOLT
      participated in an agreement whereby RIVERA and LOADHOLT would kill Victim-1 in exchange
      for payment, and used cellphones and electronic messaging applications to communicate in
      furtherance of the scheme.
      (Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1958 and 3238.)
      COUNT FIVE
      (MONEY LAUNDERING CONSPIRACY)
      7. From at least in or about December 2023, up to and including the date of
      this Complaint, in Iran, the Southern District of New York, and elsewhere, and in an offense begun
      and committed out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district of the United States,
      FARHAD SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the
      defendants, and others known and unknown, at least one of whom is expected to be first brought
      to and arrested in the Southern District of New York, knowingly and willfully did combine,
      conspire, confederate, and agree together and with each other to commit money laundering, in
      violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956.
      8. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
      SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
      and others known and unknown, in an offense involving and affecting interstate and foreign
      commerce, knowing that the property involved in certain financial transactions represented the
      proceeds of some form of unlawful activity, would and did conduct and attempt to conduct such
      financial transactions which in fact involved the proceeds of specified unlawful activity, to wit,
      the proceeds of the murder-for-hire offenses charged in Counts Three and Four of this Complaint,
      knowing that the transactions were designed in whole and in part to conceal and disguise the
      nature, location, source, ownership, and control of the proceeds of said specified unlawful activity,
      in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(B)(i).
      9. It was further a part and an object of the conspiracy that FARHAD
      SHAKERI, CARLISLE RIVERA, a/k/a “Pop,” and JONATHAN LOADHOLT, the defendants,
      and others known and unknown, would and did transport, transmit, and transfer, and attempt to
      transport, transmit, and transfer, monetary instruments and funds to a place in the United States
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      U.S. Charges Indian Official in New York Assassination Plot

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      The United States and Canada have worked together to investigate what they say is the Indian government’s campaign against Sikh separatists.Federal prosecutors have charged a man they identified as an Indian intelligence officer with trying to orchestrate from abroad an assassination on U.S. soil — part of an escalating response from the U.S. and Canada to what those governments see as brazenly illegal conduct by a longtime partner.An indictment unsealed in Manhattan on Thursday said that the man, Vikash Yadav, “directed the assassination plot from India” that targeted a New York-based critic of the Indian government, a Sikh lawyer and political activist who has urged the Punjab region of India to secede.The target of the New York plot has been identified by American officials as Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the general counsel of Sikhs for Justice.In a statement, Mr. Pannun called the plot to kill him a “blatant case of India’s transnational terrorism which has become a challenge to America’s sovereignty and threat to freedom of speech and democracy.”The indictment said that Mr. Yadav called himself a “senior field officer” in the part of the Indian government that includes its foreign intelligence service, known as the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW.Authorities say Mr. Yadav recruited an associate to find a U.S.-based criminal to arrange the murder of the Sikh activist. Last year, U.S. prosecutors charged the man accused of being Mr. Yadav’s henchman, Nikhil Gupta, and said Mr. Gupta had acted under instructions from an unidentified employee of the Indian government. Now, prosecutors have charged Mr. Yadav with orchestrating the plot.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More