TERRORIST NERVE CENTER TEMPTING TARGET

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110159-7
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 5, 2012
• Sequence Number: 159
• Publication Date: January 10, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110159-7
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WASHINGTON POST
10 January 1986
JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN ATTA
Terrorist Nerve Center Tempting Target
White House documents emphasize President
Reagan's attitude toward any further
tweaking of Uncle Sam's beard by Moslem
terrorists: He's sick of being pushed around.
Reagan believes that the American people "are
tired of suffering insults at the hands of other
nations," as one policy paper put it. For this reason,
Reagan is convinced that "minimal risks" can be
taken to bolster U.S. leadership in the world.
The list of target options that could both assuage
the public's outrage and deal the terrorists a
damaging blow includes the obvious ones such as
Libya, Syria and Iran. But there's an even more
tempting target: the ancient city of Baalbek in
northeastern Lebanon.
If ever there were a viper's nest ripe for
destruction, it is this terrorist plotting-and-training
center in the Bekaa Valley, close to the Syrian
border. Since 1975, the Bekaa has been the
headquarters and nerve center for the greatest
concentration of terrorists in the world today.
Protected by Syrian troops, who screen every
outsider venturing into the area, the Bekaa Valley
is only about an hour's drive from Damascus or
Beirut. It is an ideally situated launching pad for
terrorist operations anywhere in the world.
Among the groups that use the valley's facilities,
which are defended by mobile batteries of Syrian
antiaircraft missiles, are terrorists linked to the
notorious Ilyich Ramirez Sanchez (Carlos the
Jackal) and radical Palestinians Abu Musa and Abu
Nidal.
Of all the terrorist gangs in the Bekaa, the most
numerous and blatant are those supported by Iran,
loosely lumped under the cover name of Islamic
Jihad. The most vicious of these fanatics are the
Shiite Hezbollah and the Islamic Amal, both based
in Baalbek;
At one time or another, almost every American
hostage held in Lebanon, aside from last June's
TWA hijacking victims, has been kept at some
location in the Bekaa Valley.
According to intelligence sources, two prominent
Bekaa Valley terrorists are Sheik Subhi Tufaile,
leader of Hezbollah in the Bekaa, and Hussein
Rezaie, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard in the valley.
The nerve center for most of their depredations
is a dilapidated building in downtown Baalbek
known as "Hosseinieh." A former school, it serves
today as the Bekaa Valley headquarters for the
Revolutionary Guards.
The Iranian guard units were rushed to the
Bekaa in June 1982, when Israel invaded Lebanon.
Their strength quickly reached 350 and kept
growing. It was from the Hosseinieh headquarters
that terrorists planned the devastating bombings of
the U.S. Embassy and Marine compounds in Beirut
in 1983, as well as airplane hijackings, murders and
kidnapings of Americans.
The old schoolhouse isn't the only identifiable
target for U.S. retaliation in Baalbek. The Hotel
Khawam is used by the Hezbollah as a military
training school. The Hezbollah headquarters in the
Sheik Abdullah barracks sits on a hillside above the
town; a one-time Lebanese army post, it was the
target of French and Israeli reprisal raids in 1983,
but has since been rebuilt.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/05: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110159-7