SYRIA'S FOUR-YEAR TIES TO TERRORISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110059-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 59
• Publication Date: November 7, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110059-8
ART1C1F APPEARED
ON PACE
WASHINGTON POST
7 November 1986
JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN ATfA
Syria's Four-Year Ties to Terrorism
The United States and the United Kingdom
have officially confirmed what we have been
reporting for years: that Syria has sponsored
international terrorism. Syrian strongman Hafez
Assad has been stirring up terrorist attacks against
the West for at least four years.
There is no question that Syrian troops
occupying Lebanon have protected the Iranian
Shiites, who have held American and other Western
hostages in the Bekaa Valley over the last two
years. Not much happens in the Bekaa Valley
without the Syrian army's knowledge and consent.
We were the first to disclose-on May 10,
1983-that the Bekaa Valley terrorists were
responsible for the bombing a month earlier of the
U.S. Embassy in Beirut, which killed 17 Americans.
Since that first terrorist incident in the current
cycle of anti-American violence, many other
Americans have been murdered by Iranian
Shiites-with the Syrians' help. All told, we count
at least 270 Americans who have died as a result of
the unholy Iranian-Syrian alliance. Here is the
detailed indictment of this bloody conspiracy at
work:
^ October 1983-An Iranian-trained terrorist,
with Syrian logistical help, car-bombed the U.S.
Marine barracks at Beirut airport, killing 241
Americans.
? September 1984-Two Americans died in the
suicide bombing of the Beirut embassy annex. U.S.
intelligence sources are convinced the attack had
Syrian support.
? December 1984-Two Americans were
murdered and two others savagely tortured aboard
a Kuwaiti airliner hijacked to Tehran. The hijacking
was planned and coordinated by the Ayatollah
Mohtashani, then Iran's ambassador to Syria. We
proved this by quoting word-for-word from a Dec. 4
NSA intercept of a telephone conversation between
Mohtashani in Damascus and an Iranian foreign
ministry official in Tehran.
^ June 1985-A U.S. Navy man was murdered
during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, which U.S.
intelligence sources say was the work of Iranians
and Syrians.
^ December 1985-Simultaneous terrorist attacks
on the Rome and Vienna airports left six Americans
dead. Although Libya helped Abu Nidal's terrorists
stage these atrocities, secret intelligence evidence
we've seen shows that Iran and Syria were equally
to blame. As we reported earlier this year, the two
four-man terrorist teams got their training and
operational planning in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa
Valley.
Under the Dome: The ill-fated American Embassy
a-building in Moscow for the past couple of decades
continues to fuel a snarling match between State
Department officials and the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee staff. At one point in the
discussions, the exasperated Senate staffers
proposed that all further work on the embassy be
halted until the State Department gets its act
together. The diplomats chewed this over for a
while, then protested that such a move would cost
time and money. Responded the committee staff
with bitter sarcasm: "It is obvious that speed and
economy have not been the hallmarks of this
particular project."
Declassified and Approved For Release 2011/12/21 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110059-8