THE TERRORIST INTERNATIONAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300300002-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 13, 2000
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: September 18, 1972
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

. STATINTL
Approved For Release 2001/0 /PI'*F 'AA-RDP80-01601 RO
SEP 1972
The Terrorist ntrn"Iona
ft. either Black September nor any other
terrorist group has ever put together
a.unilicd, centralized international com-
~maiid along the lines of the infamous
SM\IERSH of James Bond lore. No single
country or guerrilla organization directs
terrorist activities around the globe. Yet,
even before last week's slaughter in Mu-
nich, there was evidence of growing
complicity among some of the most hard-
core revglutionaries in Europe, the Mid-
dle East, Japan and Latin America.
Experts of U.S. intelligence report a
consistent pattern of informal c9ntacts be-
'twoen., revolutionary groups in various
'countries, mainly for such purposes as
financing, acquiring weapons. and guer-
rilla training. In addition, such recipro-
cal privileges as the'supplying of forged
documents and shelter and travel ar-
rangements abroad have given terrorists
a new international mobility enabling
them to 'seek out targets anywhere in
the world.
First among the terrorist groups to spot
-the potentials in international coopera-
tion were the fcdaycen commandos.
Specifically, it was the Marxist-oriented
. Popular Front for the' Liberation of Pal-
estine (PFLP) of Dr. George Habash
that speaiJheaded the search for allies
abroad, qnd Ilabash. himself has emerged
.as a guru of world revolution. Two years
rrgo, he delivered the` key address at a
symposium on revolutionary strategy, or-
ganized in Pyongyang by North Korea's
Workers' (Communist) Party. "In the
age of the revolution of peoples op-
pressed by the world imperialist system,"
Habash told 400. wildly applauding dele-
gates, "there can be no political or geo-
graphical boundaries or moral limits to
the operations of. the people's camp."
And he argued in a concluding flourish
that "in today's world, no one is 'inno-
cent,' no one is a `neutral'."
During the heyday of the fedayeen
movement in early 1970, the Palestinian
armed' camps in 'Jordan and Lebanon
acted as magnets for international revo-
lutionary acolytes froin the U.S., Scandi-
navia, Western Europe and Japan. In
summer-training sessions, the would-be
terrorists (including, it is believed, rep-
resentatives from .the U.S. \Veathermen
faction and the Irish Republican Army)
learned such useful 'guerrilla skills as
running through burning rubber tires or
the care and handling of nitroglycerin.
"There must have been hundreds of
foreigners who Iea`rued how to handle
explosives during that period," a West-
ern intelligence source in Beirut admits.
"Many probably did it' for kick's or as a
lark and then went home and forgot
about.it. Others did not_" Among the lat-
ter were the members of Turkey's Dev-
Gene group, trained in fcdaycen camps
and then infiltrated back to the ]join,---
land. When Israeli Consul General Eph-
raim cl-Ron was assassinated in Turkey
last year, captured - Dev-Gene members
told authorities that the killing was done
"in part payment of our debt to the Pal-
estinian freedom fighters."
Love At First Sight
Evidence of similar linkages' between
terrorists of different nationalities
abound. Two years ago, when a skyjack
team that included Palestinian girl-com-
marrdo Leila Kha led made an abortive
attempt to take over an El A] airliner in
flight to London, Israeli security men on
board killed Khaled's male companion;
he turned out to be Patrick Arguello, a
member of the Nicaraguan Tandanisla
guerrilla movement. And most of the
members of the notorious Baadcr-Mein-
hof gang that kept West Germany on
edge for nearly two years were said to
have been alumni of Palestinian guer-
rilla camps. 13ut easily the most striking
link-up to' date was the' one forged be-
tween the PFLP in the Middle East and
Japan's Rengo Sekigun, or United Red
Army Group. They met while the PFLP's
Habash was in North Korea, and it was
apparently a revolutionary version` of
love at first sight, consummated on the
spot with an agreement pledging coor-
dinated ? PFL.P-Red Army activities
whenever possible. Ultimately, the al-
liance brought on the world's first fully
provable terrorist conspiracy involving
direct cooperation of different national
guerrilla groups.
That was the Lydda Airport massacre
at Tel Aviv last May, in which the "inlcr-
nationalized" nature of today's terrorist
activities was unmistakably rev+caled.
First, a quartet of young Japanese radicals
was dispatched to Lebanon (vin the U.S.;
Canada and France) for training . in
fedayeen camps. On completing their
course, the terrorists left I3eirut for.Paris,
Home and Frankfurt, where PFLI:' agents
provided them with false. passports;
.Three of the young Japanese terrorists
then returned to Rome to pick up hand
grenades and Czech-made VZT-58 auto-
matic rifles supplied by Italian sympa-
thizers. Near the end of May, the trio
departed for their mission of indiscrimi-
nate murder in Tel Aviv-a bloody kami-
kaze assault that killed 28 and wounded
scores more. The sole survivor among the
three Red Army terrorists, Kozo Okamo-
to, was convicted by an Israeli military
court and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The expansion of guerrilla operations
over wider distances hardly comes as any
surprise to intelligence agents, who point
out that terrorists are merely taking ad-
vantage of the mobility of a modern
world that is available to everyone else.
"International terrorists cannot help but
meet and exchange ideas given the easy
communications in the world today," ob-
serves Col. Antoine Dahdahrn of Leba-
non's security service. And the mass
gadding-about of. travelers increases the
difficulties of separating the terrorists
from visiting businessmen, tourists and
students. "Millions of people arrive at
Orly Airport every year," laments a
French counterintelligence agent. "flow
can we check each one? When a jumbo
jet disgorges 350 passengers, how much-
time can the police devote to each pass-
port without choking the airport?"
Furthermore, any half-competent tcr-
roril agent can be expected to know
where; to gc ,md whom to see before
continued
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 Approved For Release 2001/03/04
taking an assignment abroad. While in
Western Europe, for example, he knows
that West Germany's decentralized police
system, in which each state within the
federal republic maintains its own interi-
or ministries, allows ?a bit more leeway
than the highly centralized police estab-
lishments of France or Italy. Several Eu-
ropean monasteries are considered safe
havens, notably one at Cuxa near the
border between France and Spain. Cities
favored by the terrorists include Brus-
sels, Zurich, Milan and Stockholm, most-
ly because of the liberal environment.
Surprisingly enough, London is regarded
kindly as an informal convention center
by many ,underground extremist groups.
Traditionally, the British police will not
bother them if they have no local police
record and the)' keep their noses clean
for the duration of their stay. "it really
is a little funny,"? says a Scotland Yard
Special Branch officer. "They sit there
eating jelly cakes and brown-bread-and-
butter sandwiches blithely discussing
ava'labilities of weapons and supplies
of explosives."
In some instances, foreign embassies
serve as the Main conduits for under-
ground activities through their diplomats
and pseudo-diplomats. The current head
of Black September's organization in
Western Europe, reports NEWSWEEK Sell-
ior Editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, is
Daoud Barakat, ,vho is now installed big
as life in Switzerland as a diplomat from
Democratic Yemen fully accredited to
the offices of the United Nations and oth-
er international organizations in Geneva.
Barakat has helped to plan some of Black
September's most spectacular capers and
is a prime suspect as a mastermind be-
hind the Munich massacre. Yet, armed
with a'diplomatic passport issued by the
Democratic Yemen Government in Aden,
lie can commute between Geneva and
the Middle East with casual ease.
All the clandestine razzle-dazzle on'
the international stage has not masked
the fact that terrorist groups in many
parts of the world have not fared too'
well on their own home grounds. Jap-
anese authorities no longer seem much
concerned about the remnants of the
United Red Army, and the Uruguayan
Government appears to have broken the
strength of its Tupamaro urban guerril-
las. West Germany's Bonnie-and-Clyde
pair of Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas
Baader were both captured by police
this "summer. Even with their headline-
grabbing outrages, the terror activities of
the Palestinian fedayeen have backfired
as often-perhaps more often-than they
have succeeded. Black September's at-
tempt to hold a hijacked Belgian airliner
for ransom at Tel Aviv last May, for ex-
ample, ended with Israeli commandos
storming the aircraft, killing two terrorists
and capturing two others. Indeed, it was
the PFLP's feat of first diverting and
then blowing up three hijacked airliners
at Jordan's Dawson Field two years ago
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CIA-RDP80?-01601 R000300300002-7
that finally provoked King Hussein 's army
to launch an all-out offensive to oust the
fedayeen from their Jordanian bases.
With disastrous results like those, it
would be easy and comforting to con-
clude that terrorism is mostly counter-
productive even for those who practice
it. But such may not ' be the case. For
the avant-garde in international terrorist
organizations no longer cares much
whether others approve of its tactics. Its
models are less likely to be Mao Tse-
tung, with his emphasis on national guer-
rilla movements, than the figure of Leon
Trotsky-the Russian revolutionary who
sought to spread Communism through-
out the world. "Ills gigantic portrait,
complete with fuzzy hair and pince-
nez,' wrote British New Left specialist
Peter Paterson, "can dominate a hall full
of British teen-agers on a sunny Sunday
afternoon like some political versiop of
that sanctified teen-age star, the late
James Dean." Trotskyites see themselves
as- the catalysts provoking governments
into ever harsher repressive measures.
This, they believe, will encourage Fas-
cism and, in turn, produce more radical
fanatics and more cracks in es~ablishcd
society.
The Philosophy `Is to Shoot'
According to some European special-
ists, the founding of the Trotskyite
Fourth International in Brussels two
years ago repre:;ented the most ambi-
tious current effort to set terrorism firmly
into a multinational frame. Its leading
theoretician, Prof. Ernest Mandcl of the
University of Brussels, urges "active par-
ticipation of our comrades in armed in-
surrections designed to destroy the es-
tablished order, .vItether in Ireland or in
Latin America.'' ']'he- Fourth' Internation-
al seems to has c especially close ties
with Latin American terrorists-and, in
fact, was instrumental in convincing the
Latin leftists to switch from rural to ur-
ban guerrilla warfare. Its philosophy
dovetails nicely with that of Brazil's Car-
los \larighella, who first expounded the
principle that "the urban guerrilla's only
reason for exist'nce . is to shoot."
Marighella himself was killed in a police
ambush in 1969.
Whether international terrorists can
live up to their own rhetoric remains to
be seen. "There are young revolution-
aries in more than a dozen countries I
can name who would be willing to take
part in some dramatic, world-shaking act
of bravado," said one U.S. intelligence
analyst. "But basically all these move-
ments are nationalistic in nature, with
only a thin overlay of ideology, and
there is seldom sustained, profitable con-
tact between different groups." Leba-
non's Colonel Dahdahm agrees: "What
we have now are contacts which occa-
sionally lead to. exchanges of ideas and
general cooperation on a particular ac-
tion," he said, "This is not a real threat
to security, but it is definitely a new
problem that will make terrorism much
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