FBI CURBED IN FIGHT AGAINST TERRORIST

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87B00858R000600940027-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 14, 2010
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: July 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2010/10/14 :CIA-RDP87B00858R000600940027-8
~ y
TUESDAY, JULY , 1985 A11
FBI Curbed in Fight
Against Terrorists
white House Limit on Funding Noted
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Past Staff Writer
The FBI has been trying to ex-
pand its counterterrorist forces
since last year but has been turned
down twice by the White House,
according to a member of the Sen-
ate Select Committee on Intelli-
gence.
Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.) said
he learned of the budgetary lid as a
result of his inquiries about the ad-
equacy of the bureau's resources.
"It's one of the most foolish
things I've seen since I've been up
here," Bentsen said. "Here you have
terrorism on an increase around the
world, and you know it's going to
increase in the United States and
we must fight it."
According to figures compiled by
Bentsen and his staff and verified by
other sources, the FBI had been
seeking an $11 million increase
over last year's $39.5 million coun-
terterrorism budget to pay _'or 191
more agents, support personnel and
related expenses.
The biggest chunk of the addi-
tional appropriation, about $5.7 mil-
lion, would have been used to ex-
pand FBI counterterrorism task
forces set up with local police in
Boston, .New York, Chicago and
Washington since 1980 and to es-
tablish new ones in -Newark, Los
Angeles and San Francisco.
The rest of the money would
have been devoted to strengthening
the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue
Team, now said to have about 50
agents, and broadening the scope of
the five-year-old National Terror-
ism Research and Analyis Center
based here.
The White House Office of Man-
agement and Budget rejected the
proposals last fall in trimming a sup-
plemental budget request for fiscal
1985 and again this year in ruling
on the 1986 budget proposal before
Congress.
Voicing alarm in a weekly video-
taped report to Texas constituents,
Bentsen said he regards the frugal-
ity as "just counterproductive" and
said he would introduce legislation
"to put that $11 million back."
Bentsen's press secretary, Jack
DeVore, said the OMB lirciited the
FBI counterterrorism budget to
$39.8 million, a 1.1 percent in-
crease in a year when, according to
OMB projections, inflation is ex-
pected to be 4.4 percent.
DeVore said Bentsen learned
about the $11 million trim in asking
about the FBI's resources to cope
with such counterintelligence prob-
lems as the alleged Walker spy ring.
He said Bentsen was told that the
counterintelligence budget was in
good shape but that the counterter-
rorism program faced constraints.
OMB spokesman Edwin L. Dale
Jr. declined to comment. "We don't
discuss decisions made back at bud-
get time," he said. ,
The FBI declined to voice public
chagrin. Spokesman Tony Genakos
said FBI Director William H. Wea-
ster is "supportive of the adminis-
tration's request to Congress for
fiscal 1986 in connection with our
terrorist activity, and we're also
grateful for the support we've re-
ceived from the administration and
Congress in combating terrorist
operations." '
Bentsen aide Jim Currie said,
however, that the extra $11 million
would "give the FBI greater ability
to deal with domestic hijackings and
hostage situations, to identify ter?
rorist groups that are an outgrowth
Sen. Bentsen said
he would introduce
legislation to restore
the funds.
of or have an affiliation with foreign
governments or movements and to
be in a position to tell who these
groups are affiliated with, where
they are in the United States and
what they are doing and planning to
do." ,
The FBI's hostage rescue team
was established in January 1983
and, Genakos said, is "a cohesive
unit able to respdnd to highly so-
phisticated hostage situations. IE
gives. the president and the attor-
ney general a viable law enforce-
ment alternative to the use of a mil-
itary group for the resolution of a
domestic incident."
The terrorism task forces, start
ing with that established in New
York in April 1980, are teams of
FBI agents and local police, usually
housed in FBI quarters and de~
signed "to make the most use of all
the laws available" in concurrent
investigations of terrorist crimes,
plots and threats. -
The Terrorism Research Center
has been operated here since 1980
and consists of a computerized data
bank that compiles information on
known active terrorists in the Unit-
ed States and tries to determine
"the potential threat of further ter=
rorist activity," Genakos said. It is~
directly linked to most FBI field
offices.
Bentsen is expected to offer arf.
amendment giving the FBI the ad-
ditional $11 million and, Devore
said, will probably try to attach it to.,
"the first handy appropriations bill,,
that comes down the pike."
Little opposition is expected,~
"This may well be one of the easiesC,
legislative victories in the history o~,~
man," Devore said. '
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 Approved For Release 2010/10/14 :CIA-RDP87B00858R000600940027-8
,i
A12 TUESDAY, Jut.v 2, 1985
Pir~emises of TWA
~~_.
~ Madrid Fo
.~._
- r'r
~Y*r
Killed; Caller Linl~s Blast to U.S. Policy
..
. By Tom Burns
.+
..$em an American teen-ager on
:+$a`cation.
a-~=Police said they believe the in-
;ded target of the bomb damag-
the British Airways office was
;"~-yVA. The bomb exploded on the
_~teet level, where British Airways
? a sales office, while the floor
`~ove is occupied by TWA. The
?~-5. airline's large red sign dom-
sizates the facade.
::~[In Beirut, an anonymous caller
:~d a group carried out the attack
~~ reply to President Reagan's
.great to strike against terrorists.
~~uter quoted the caller as saying,
met Reagan know that our hands
X111 reach the whole world .... We
ink all the alliances which helped
to carry out the bombing of the
~i~VA office-Organization of the
pressed." Hijackers holding .the
~T, A airliner at Beirut signed a
:'s'tatement made to reporters Sun-
:+Qay "The Oppressed of the Earth:'
o kidney Bridges, 17, from Ontar-
;", Calif., was cut in the face and
aa~'ins by the flying glass in the Brit-
-~ Airways blast. According to his
Viler brother, Don, Sidney Bridges
' the bomber.
?;Twenty-five were injured in the
p~aarrcel-bomb blast, which gutted the
s'B'ritish Airways- sales room and
killed the woman, who was buying a
~',~earby Alia Royal Jordanian Airline
+~Evday, killing an elderly Spanish wo-
.~men and injuring 27 persons among
~itish Airways and attacked the
es of Trans World Airlines and
;;MADRID, July 1-Terrorists
~.rnbed a building that houses of-
ticket. Two severely injured were
British Airways empbyes.
Five minutes after the bomb ex-
ploded at British Airways in the
busy commercial center of Madrid,
gunmen raked the Alia offices 200
yards away with automatic-weapons
fire and lobbed two grenades
through the shattered plate glass..
The grenades failed to explode
and later were deactivated by po- ~
lice. Two persons in the Jordanian
office were hurt by flying glass.
A connecting thread between
Madrid and the U.S. hostages in
Beirut was formed by the trial last
month in the Spanish capital of two
radical Shiite Moslems.
The TWA plane hijackers had at
one time demanded their release in
return for the. freedom of the hos-
tages, but the Spanish government,
according to Prime Minister Felipe
Gonzalez, signaled that it "would
not bow to terrorist blackmail" and
the demand was dropped.
The two Shiites were sentenced
last week to 23 years in jail for the
wounding last September of a Libyan
diplomat here.
The Jordanian ambassador in Ma-
drid said after the attack on the Alia
office that terrorism would "never
deter" Middle East peace initiatives
undertaken by King Hussein and
the Jordanian government.
The two attacks brought Madrid
to a standstill. Police sealed off the
area for three hours in an apparent-
ly fruitless search for the assailants.
Two other attacks last year in-
volved Arabs on the south coast,
near Marbella, which lately has be-
come a favored haunt for the
wealthy from the Persian Gulf.
Israel Schedules Release i~
Of 300 Mostl Shiite Prig
y
Rabin Discloses Figure at Conference on Teri
By Edward Walsh
Washington Poat Foreign Service
JERUSALEM, July 1-Israel de-
cided today to release 300 of the
more than 700 Arab prisoners
whose freedom was demanded by
the hijackers of Trans World Air-
lines Flight 847.
The decision, the first in what is
expected to be a relatively rapid
process of freeing all of the 735
prisoners, was made by the govern-
ment's so-called inner cabinet of 10
senior ministers and was announced
tonight by Defense Minister Yitz-
I,~L D.,1.:.. ..+ ~t.,. _t
of the release depended on logistic-
al arrangements with the Interna-
tional Committee of the Red Cross,
which will oversee the release in
southern Lebanon.
Rabin said further releases of
prisoners will depend on develop-
ments in southern Lebanon, where
Israel continues to maintain asix-
to-l5-mile wide "security belt" just
north of the Israeli-Lebanese bor-
der and supports a local militia, the
South Lebanon Army.
Israeli radio said there was no
opposition in the inner cabinet to
freeing the first 300 prisoners, an
indication of Israel's ea?erness to
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