Nowhere to Hide

Lou Gehrig's disease does not deter U.S. State Department Special Agent Brad Smith from fighting terrorism. From his wheelchair he operates Heroes, a bounty program that "hangs" Most Wanted posters online in countries that sponsor terrorism. (Photograph by Dick Swanson).	s it has since the days of the Wild West, the U.S. government is offering a reward for the capture of bad guys. Only this time, the Most Wanted posters hang, not in the local post office, but in cyberspace. Heroes, the U.S. State Department's counterterrorism program, uses the Net to penetrate the borders of countries suspected of harboring international terrorists and drug traffickers. Posting the names, aliases, photos, and alleged crimes of suspected criminals to their website, the State Department entices informers and bounty hunters all over the world with rewards of up to $4 million per capture.
	Overlooking the bright lights of Cairo, a Marine provides cover from the roof of the U.S. Embassy during a Realistic Reaction Drill, part of the U.S. government's anti-terrorism program. (Photograph by Barry Iverson)
U.S.-trained bomb-sniffing dogs now work for the Egyptian police as part of an international effort to combat terrorism. (Photograph by Barry Iverson)	Before the Web, media censorship in many countries severely curtailed the U.S. government's ability to publicize its search for wanted criminals. But, as Brad Smith, coordinator of the two-year-old Heroes progam, explains, "the Internet is ideal for getting information to people without totalitarian governments controlling what they say." With thousands of Net subscribers in countries like Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, and the Sudan, the State Department has a direct line to an important and previously unreachable audience. The information posted to the Heroes website (including the part about the $4 million reward) has already helped snare one of the men involved in the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 and another suspected of participating in the World Trade Center attack.

http://www.hero.net/