This scattered list of suspects reflected the fractured character of terrorism worldwide. There had been fifteen officially designated terrorist incidents on United States soil between 1990 and 1992. Many involved attacks by Puerto Rican nationalists; one involved an Iranian Marxist group; others were carried out by American extremists. Globally the most active terrorist groups included Maoists in Peru and Tamil separatists in Sri Lanka. The pattern seemed to be that there was no pattern.
