This paper addresses why terrorist organizations target aviation, using the Big Allied and Dangerous database to explore this question. The paper focuses on ideology, experience, knowledge and environmental factors that might make an organization more or less likely to target aviation.
Brent Smith also has a paper featured on Characteristics of Border Crossings and Border Crossers Involved in American Terrorism . This paper identifies "officially designated" federal terrorism cases that involved border crossings. Analysts searched files of approximately 397 federal criminal court cases that were currently being tracked by the American Terrorism Study for the period 1980-2005. Border crossings have been confirmed in 97 cases. In addition to case summaries, quantitative data collection involves information on up to 224 variables for each crossing event.
Preliminary results include information on the type and location of each crossing, demographic characteristics of crossers, and links to acts of terrorism associated with each crossing. Although crossers represent a broad spectrum of terrorist groups, a majority were international terrorists targeting the United States.