CIA headquarters shooting

On January 25, 1993, outside of CIA Headquarters campus (now known as the

Mir Aimal Kansi (or Mir Qazi) was born in

According to Kansi, he first thought of attacking CIA personnel after buying a Chinese-made AK-47 from a Chantilly gun store. The plan soon became "more important than any other thing to [him]."^[2]

Shootings

At around 8 a.m. on January 25, 1993, Kansi stopped a borrowed brown Datsun station wagon^[5] behind a number of vehicles waiting at a red traffic light on the eastbound side of Route 123, Fairfax County.^[6] The vehicles were waiting to make a left turn into the main entrance of CIA headquarters. Kansi emerged from his vehicle with an AK-47 semi-automatic rifle, and proceeded to move among the lines of vehicles, firing a total of 10 rounds into them,^[7] killing Lansing H. Bennett, 66, and Frank Darling, 28. Three others were left with gunshot wounds.^[4] Darling was shot first and later received additional gunshot wounds to the head after Kansi shot the other people. According to a CIA release, "all the victims were full-time or contract employees with the agency." No other details were revealed.^[8]

During his later

At 4 AM on June 15, 1997, an armed team of FBI agents, working with the Pakistani ISI, raided Kansi's hotel room to arrest him. His fingerprints were taken at the scene, confirming his identity.^[13]

There is some dispute over where Kansi was taken next, U.S. authorities claim it was a holding facility run by Pakistani authorities,

During the flight, Kansi made a full verbal and written confession to the FBI.[4]

Kansi's extrajudicial rendition was controversial in Pakistan; no formal request for his extradition was made, and no extradition proceedings were initiated.^[14] U.S. authorities would later assert that the rendition was legal under an extradition treaty signed with the UK, before Partition when India was under colonial rule.^[4] Kansi argued against his rendition in court but his assertions were found to have no basis in law. The Court wrote:

...the treaty between the United States and Pakistan contains no provision that bars forcible abductions, nor does it otherwise 'purport to specify the only way in which one country may gain custody of a national of the other country for the purposes of prosecution.' Id. at 664. Nor does the treaty provide that, once a request for extradition is made, the procedures outlined in the treaty become the sole means of transferring custody of a suspected criminal from one country to the other. Finally, because Kansi was not returned to the United States via extradition proceedings initiated under the Extradition Treaty between the United States and Pakistan, Kansi's reliance upon United States v. Rauscher did not avail him.^[15]

Trial

On February 16, 1993, Kansi, then a fugitive, had been charged with the capital murder of Darling, murder of Bennett, and three counts of malicious wounding for the other victims, along with related firearms charges.

Kansi was tried by a Virginia state court jury over a period of ten days in November 1997, on a plea of not guilty to all charges. During the trial, the defense introduced testimony from Dr.

On February 4, 1998, Kansi was sentenced to death for the capital murder of Darling, who was shot at the beginning of the attack and again after the other victims had been shot. Among his other punishments were a life sentence for the first-degree murder of Bennett, multiple 20-year sentences for the malicious wounding, and fines totaling $600,000.^[4]

Possible vendetta

Days before Kansi's conviction in November 1997, four U.S. oil executives and their Pakistani taxi driver were shot dead in Karachi, in what has been described as a deliberate response to Kansi's guilty verdict.^[16][17]

Execution

Kansi was executed by lethal injection on November 14, 2002, at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Virginia,^[18] and his body was repatriated to Pakistan.

Victims

The two fatalities resulting from Kansi's attack were Lansing H. Bennett M.D., 66, and Frank Darling, 28, both CIA employees. Bennett, with experience as a physician, was working as an intelligence analyst assessing the health of foreign leaders.^[19] Darling worked in covert operations.^[3]

The three people wounded in the attack were Calvin Morgan, 61, an engineer; Nicholas Starr, 60, a CIA analyst; and Stephen E. Williams, 48, an

Bennett and Darling were memorialized as the 69th and 70th entries on the CIA's "memorial wall" of stars in the foyer of the Langley headquarters building, although President Clinton, in an address to the CIA, attributed the two individuals as the 55th and 56th stars.^[20]

Route 123 Memorial

The Route 123 Memorial, consisting of a granite wall and two benches facing each other near the site of the shooting, is dedicated to Bennett and Darling.^[21] This memorial is illuminated at night. The memorial is not at the exact location of the shooting due to traffic reasons.

An inscription reads:

In Remembrance of Ultimate Dedication to Mission Shown by Officers of the Central Intelligence Agency Whose Lives Have Been Taken or Forever Changed by Events at Home and Abroad.
Dedicato Par Aevum
(Dedicated to Service)
May 2002

The memorial was dedicated May 24, 2002.^[21]

Lansing Bennett Forest

A forest was renamed in Bennett's honor—the Lansing Bennett Forest in Duxbury, Massachusetts, where he was formerly chair of the Duxbury Conservation Commission.^[22]

Bennett is interred in the Quivet Neck Cemetery, off Route 6A, East Dennis, Massachusetts, along with his brother and parents in a family plot.^{[citation needed]}

Kansi's memorial

Kansi was memorialized through a mosque built in his name as

• 2010 Pentagon shooting: A similar shooting where a gunman shot two police officers at the military headquarters.
• List of incidents of political violence in Washington, D.C.

References