The attack, stated to be by Al Qaeda, on the USnaval ship USS Cole at Aden in October,2000, and the subsequent investigationinto that incident gave birth to concerns that international terrorists mightexpand their acts of terrorism from the land to the sea. Terrorist groups ofWest Asia and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had indulged in acts of maritime terrorism even before October,2000, and the LTTE, through itsfleet of ships, ostensibly used for legitimate commercial purposes, had beenusing the sea for the clandestine transport of arms and ammunition and othermaterial required for its acts of terrorism on the land. However, such uses hadlimited tactical objectives and did not think in terms of mass casualties ormass damage to be inflicted on the global economy as a whole.