TALES OF COUNTERTERRORIST OFFER FREE WORLD A MORAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440005-1
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 5
• Publication Date: June 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/03/08 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100440005-1
~ ARNOLD BEI
WASHINGTON TI''1~S
13 June 1985
~ rr r~S
~ o coon o o er
I __
ree or a mor
a le Rivers is the
pseu onym o a profes-
sronal soldier who says he
is now a professional coun-
terterrorist. His bona fides are
vouched for by the publisher of his
book, The Specialist: Revelations of+
a Counterterrorist. (Stein & Day).
Mr. Rivers, a New Zealander by
origin, has decided to go public after
a long career as a mercenary for the
secret service agencies of the
United States, Britain, Spain, Egypt,
and on behalf of Iraq in the war
against Iran. The highly specialized
Western strike forces such as those
he has worked with against terrorist
organizations like the IRA, the
Basque ETA,. Syria (all three sup-
ported by Libya) successfully fought
"terrorism with its own weapons" -
counterassassination, counter-
bombing, countertorture and coun-
terkidnapping.
The author describes himself as
clean-shaven with neatly trimmed
hair, of conservative dress, medium
height. He drives a Porsche 'Iltrga
with local Swiss license plates
assigned to the Vaud canton. His
retainer is 575.000 plus expenses,
and the final amount could be double
or triple, depending on how much
assistance he needs to carry out the
assignment.
He served originally with A,vZAC
special forces in Vietnam, has been
down to the U.S. Special Forces
training center at Fort Bragg and
speaks familiarly of the elite British
counterterrorist organization, the
SAS, in which he says he is a reserv-
ist who has fought the IRA.He has
also been a "contract mercenary
specialist in South Africa" He flies
fixed-wing airplanes and helicop-
ters.
His favorite recreations are
"beautiful women;' a la James Bond,
and music. His cover is that of a
salesman of "specialized military
hardware:' All of the above tray be.
true, some of it, or none of it. If one
reads this as fiction, then The Spe-
cialist is the best thriller I have read
in years. Yet much of Mr. Rivers's
"memoir" does ring true.
Although Mr. Rivers says he has
disguised names, dates, and places
so as to protect the anti-terrorist net-
work, he has done press, radio, and
television interviews with voice and
appearance disguised. Not, I would
judge, the best kind of security I
asked his publisher how he was dis-
guised. The publisher declined to
answer, merely saying that even if
you had seen Mr. Rivers in a TV stu-
dio, you wouldn't recognize him if
you saw him half-an-hour later on
the street.
In any case, whether the incidents
he writes about in enormous and
sanguinary detail are true or not
obviously cannot be answered
except, perhaps, by his publisher,
whose anti-totalitarian credentials
are impeccable. Yet there is no ques-
tion that the author (or authors -
theadventures could be a composite
of several Gayle Riverses) knows a
good deal about contemporary ter-
rorism. The book, therefore, has an
intrinsic value whether we believe
Mr. Rivers's experiences 100
percent or not.
He thinks that, "the United States
is ripe for a terrorist explosion"
Europe, on the other hand, "has got
its counterterrorism machinery into
good order [because) European
police forces have learned just how
strong the ties are between terrorist
world groups:'
Such praise for Western Europe
seems to me to be misplaced. Mr.
Rivers concedes that the French
government is so fearful of reprisals
that it does nothing about the Eus-
kadi Th Askntasuna (ETA), which,
operating in Southern France, seeks
through terrorism to establish an
independent Marxisi state in the
Basque part of Spain: The current
spate of bombings in Paris without
arrests hardly confirms that Fran-
ce's counterterrorism machinery is
in good order.
As for the British, the Labor and
'Ibry governments have bungled the
war on the IRA, says Mr. Rivers. The
West German government can't
seem to halt bombing of U.S. mili-
tary installations. Belgium hasn't
caught its terrorists. Only the Italian
government has shown a pertina-
cious will and a remarkable under-
standing of terrorism and what must
be done about it, especially when the
life of Pope John Paul is at stake.
From a counterterrorist veteran
like Mr. Rivers, there is a peculiar
omission in this book, one which
troubles me greatly Apparently, he
never came across Communist
involvement in terrorist activities in
the West. With all his years of exper-
ience as a wunterterrorist, and with
his close contacts with Western
secret services, it seemed to me
hardly likely that he would have
almost no knowledge about either
Soviet or Soviet bloc terrorist oper-
ations and the training to be had in
the Communist camp network.
One might argue that since he is
writing about his personal exper-
iences he sticks to what he knows,
although I do find it odd that he
makes a point of denying that his
counterterrorism resembles that of
"Fascist" death squads. In view of
the provable existence of KGB
death squads and Soviet Spetznaz
killers, which go unmentioned in Mr.
Rivers's book, the use of the word
"Fascist" sounds weirdly
anachronistic and politically dubi-
ous.
It is because of the omission of
KGB activities an t e strap a use
o rtrca an ua e t tat east one
ormer A o rcra as ar ue t a
Mr. rvers's is an exam le of
K isin ormation. he "disinfor-
mation" line rs that the KGB wanted
to ~ortrav counterterrorist
activities as being just as bloody and
ar arrc as t e terrorist or aniza-
nons t ey oaerate aQarnst.
On May 28. l raised these ques-
tions in a telephone interview with
both the publisher, Sol Stein, and Mr.
Rivers himself at the publisher's
home in Briarcliff Manor. N.Y. Mr.
Rivers said he had omitted mention
of the Soviet Union and its KGB
because important academic stud-
ies on these subjects have been pub-
lished. Iwas not at all impressed
with this explanation.
Mr. Stein added that both he and
Mr. Rivers had been on the lorry
King three-hour radio interview
show April 4, and that at least an
hour of the interview had been
M16. If he is still workin? for the
aQencv, then rt is the height of irre-
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/03/08 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100440005-1
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/03/08 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100440005-1
2,
~nsibilin~ to announce that one of
hoc rliPnts was tree. th rebv afford-
~no 'proof" to Iran of U.S.
involvement on behalf of Iraq. It is
equally ~rresponstble - tf Mr. Riv-
ers is still loyal to his various "old
firms" - to announce that among
his many employers was South
Africa. Who do such revelations help
if not the KBG or Soviet "disinfor-
mat~on" propaganda?
other hand. what Mr Riv-
r has done in disclosm tat a as
worked for lra an out rice
a ege von be a o r e ntte
States is no worse than The Washcng-
um Post slot o a 1 which
repurte that aCIA-trained counter-
terrorist rou cn Lebanon had hired
anot er a anese an or a car-
om in ob w cch killed more than
arc h. a enie t to in
an one a ministration o icial said
that the news stor "ha t
o every American in b
~eopar y. mcncans bein(t held
nsoner m ran are certatnl not
Komg to c e e r. ivers's
a eKat~on t at a as ought or Iraq
in its rye-veer war attatnst ran.
Susp~c~on about a pseudonymous
political author is always warranted
but rarely conclusive without evi-
dence of some kind which goes
beyond the Italian maxim, Si non e
veto. a ben trovato ("Even if it isn't
true. it is quite possible"1. In any
case. there are several amazing inci-
dents Mr. Rivers tells us about
which. I think. could be confirmed
independently.
IT1:M: In 1981. U.S. terror4~st
everts, fine u to ort ra e-
cta orces. C: a ents. utsiana
po ice. an avv teams
iwater orne war are specie fists)
~?~?d" an oil collection platform in
the Gulf of Mexico, offshore from
the port o organ try, t seems
ever a enc o overnm nt was
tnvo ved exce~r the FBI. The evsnL
was based on a scenario devised b
r. tvers to see ow re red the
ntte tares was or sue an emer-
enc .The local press was told it was
genuine. Only a handful of people
knew this was not a genuine tet-t'or-
ist heist.
ITEM: An old friend of Mr. Rivers
is identified as Dale Brinton, a
salesman for the McDonnell Doug-
las Aircraft Corp.. trying to peddle
DC10s to Egypt. In Cairo, where Mr.
Rivers had contracted to teach Egyp-
tian pilots to fly the French Mirage,
an event which disturbed the Israeli
secret service, the Mossad, his
friend Mr. Brinton, who speaks flu-
ent French, was pistol-whipped and
badly beaten one night in a dark
Cairene alley.
The Rivers stories do have a
strange authenticity. For me, they
have a single moral: the war against
terrorism will not be won until we
accept as a given that the terrorist
has declared war against free soci-
eties. Therefore, we must start
treating terrorists caught in jIa-
Krunte delicto as enemy soldiers out
of uniform and, therefore, deserving
not the protection of the Bill of
Rights but a drumhead court-
martial, reserved in wartime for
spies caught behind the lines.
Arnuld Beichman, a visiting
scholar nt the Hoover Institution,
has written extensively about inter-
natiunul terrorism.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/03/08 :CIA-RDP90-009658000100440005-1