Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

572 • RACKETEER INFLUENCED CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS ACT– R –RACKETEER INFLUENCED CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS(RICO) ACT. The federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt OrganizationsAct, Chapter 96 of Title 18 U.S. Code 1963(a), was originallypassed on 15 October 1970 to address organized crime but since thenhas been amended several times to make it applicable to antiabortionviolence, inner-city youth gangs, and domestic terrorism. The RICOstatutes were used in 1987 to convict Joseph Murray and RobertAnderson, two members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) whowere involved in smuggling drugs into the United States to financeIRA activities. Members of the Bruder Schweigen Strike Force II(The Order) were convicted on RICO charges for bombings carriedout in northern Idaho in 1987. During the period 1982–1989, over40 percent of the charges against 1,363 terrorists tried in the UnitedStates were based on federal antiracketeering (30.2 percent) or RICOstatutes (9.3 percent). The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, Title III, SubtitleA, Section 304 expands the scope of RICO predicate offenses toinclude all terrorist offenses under federal statutes.A Joint Terrorism Task Force of the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) in Charlotte, North Carolina, used the RICO Act to convict 26members of a Hezbollah procurement and fund-raising cell for immigrationfraud, visa fraud, cigarette smuggling, interstate transportationof stolen property, fraud, bank fraud, bribery, money laundering,racketeering, and providing material support to a terrorist organization.The FBI investigations of Sami al Arian, the head of the World IslamicStudies Enterprise, an alleged front for Islamic Jihad of Palestine, ledto the February 2003 arrest of al Arian, Sameeh Hammoudeh, HatimNaji Fariz, and Ghassan Ballout following a 50-count indictment forRICO and material support of terrorism violations.RATIONAL-CHOICE THEORY. Theory of political and social behaviorthat regards individuals as the main unit of analysis for understandingpolitical behavior and their tastes, preferences, and desires asthe fundamental motivators for collective actions undertaken by individualsas the most cost-effective means of gaining their desired ends.Empirical studies of ordinary political and social behavior do notsupport rational-choice theorists’ belief that one can eliminate cultural,ideological, or religious beliefs from a cogent explanation of human