TERRORISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080012-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 15, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/10: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080012-2
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZI
15 March 1981
from sending troops' into An-
gola, refused to protect a dic-
tatorial regime in Nicaragua=
and generally tried to be moral
and decent in its-foreign policy
-what have those sneaky
Russians been up to?
The short answer, given by a
growing number of conserva-
tive foreign policy thinkers
with influence in the Reagan
administration, is that the
Soviets have been up to no
good. The argument goes like
this:
While soft-minded liberals
in Washington and the capi-
tals of Western Europe were
seeking 'friendship and trade
with the Soviet Union, the
Soviets conspired throughout
the 1970e with terrorists of
every stripe to disrupt and dis-
turb the governments of Great
Britain, Spain, West Germany,.
Italy, Turkey, Japan and se-
lected countries in Latin
America and Africa. Examples
abound.
v The beloved English war
hero, Earl Mountbatten of
Burma, was murdered in 1979
on his fishing boat by a Provi-
sional IRA terroist who
learned his bomb-making craft
in Libya under Soviet supervi-
sion.
v- Aldo Moro, the Italian
Christian Democrat states-
man, was kidnapped and
killed in 1978 by terrorists of
the Red Brigades, the radical
left underground organization
uring the past dec-
ade-while the
United States has
felt' guilty about
Vietnam, shied away
whose leaders trained in
Soviet KGB camps in Czecho-
slovakia and Soviet-supported
terrorist camps in South
-Yemen. -.
V The legendary terrorist
"Carlos the Jackal," who
helped organize the massacre
of Israeli athletes at the 1972
Olympics l in Munich _ and in
1r,5 led _a kidnapping squad
that seized 11 Arab oil minis-
ters in Vienna, learned how to
ply his bloody trade in three
special training, camps in the
U.S.S.R
There you have it a conspir-
acy. Carlos the cold-eyed killer
drinks vodka with the KGB.
The Provisional IRA slaugh-
ters, helpless school girls with
Soviet-made Kalashnikov as-
sault rifles. The violence-
crazed Baader-Meinhof Gang
blows up West German banks
for the furtherance of Soviet
world domination. The con-
spiracy theory of terrorism,
with the Russians as the bad
guys, has an intoxicating polit-
ical appeal in this city where
Ronald Reagan reigns. Reagan
?-irnself claims the Soviets re-
serve the right "to commit any
crime, to lie, to cheat". to fur-
ther their goal of world domi-
nation:
Secretary of State Alexan-
der Haig, the soldier turned
diplomat, accuses the Soviets
of "training, funding and
equipping" the forces of
worldwide terrorism The
blue-eyed. former general -has
m.,, rn rv rannal reasons for
Haig'
hums
tiona
conce
Th
seem:
newly powerful KepublAcan
hard-liners that Democrats
who used to run U.S. foreign
policy (and who now stand ac-
cused of ignoring Soviet In-'
volvement in terrorism) ques-
tion whether the "Russians
did it" theory is based on
genuine intelligence informa-
tion or on anti-Communist
conservatism that's welded to
a keen sense of what the elec-'
torate wants to hear.
"I have a feeling there is a
lot of locee-talk going around
with very little support," says
former United* Nations Am-
bassador Donald F. McHenry.
"It. has the pungent smell of
politics."
Whatever its - motivation,
the Reagan administration's
finger-pointing has provoked
the Soviet Union into one of
its more hyperbolic, self-right-
eons rejoinders since the Cold
War- Soviet Defense Minister
Dmitri Ustinov said last
month the U.S. accusations
were an "evil-minded decep-
tion" to cover up Western sub-
version in Poland and other
Communist countries. 'Ter-
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/10: CIA-RDP90-00552R000505080012-2