TALES OF COUNTERTERRORIST OFFER FREE WORLD A MORAL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440040-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 8, 2012
• Sequence Number: 40
• Publication Date: June 13, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440040-2
~04 ~r Efb ~~~
ARNOLD BEICHMAN
13 June 1985
Tales of counterterronsroner
Free World a-h moral
a l e Rivers i s the I Although Mr. Rivers says he has
pseudonym o a profes- disguised names, dates, and places
sional soldier who says he so as to protect the anti-terrorist net-
is now a professional coun- work, he has done press, radio, and
terterrorist. His bona fides are television-interviews with voice and
vouched for by the publisher of his appearance disguised. Not, I would
book, The Specialist: Revelations oft judge, the best kind of security. I
a Counterterrorist. (Stein & Day). asked his publisher how he was dis-
guised. The publisher declined to
Mr. Rivers, a New Zealander by
answer, has decided to go public after , merely saying that even if
long a mercenary for the you had seen Mr. Rivers in a TV slu-
a career as dio, you wouldn't recognize him if
secret service agencies of the you saw him half-an-hour later on
United States, Britain, Spain, Egypt, the street.
and on behalf of Iraq in the war
against Iran. The highly specialized In any case, whether the incidents
Western strike forces such as those he writes about in enormous and
he has worked with against terrorist sanguinary detail are true or not
organizations like the IRA, the obviously cannot be answered
Basque ETA, Syria (all three sup- except, perhaps, by his publisher,
ported by Libya) successfully fought whose anti-totalitarian credentials
"terrorism with its own weapons" - are impeccable. Yet there is no ques-
counterassassination, counter- tion that the author (or authors -
bombing, countertorture and coun- the adventures could be a composite
terkidnapping. of several Gayle Riverses) knows a
The author describes himself as good deal about contemporary ter-
clean-shaven with neatly trimmed rorisrn. The book, therefore, has an
intrinsic value whether we believe
hair, of conservative dress, medium Mr. Rivers's experiences 100
height. He drives a Porsche Targa percent or not.
assigned local Swiss license plates He thinks that, "the United States
retainer ned is to the Vaud canton. His is ripe for a terrorist explosion"
and the final $75 amount plus could expenses, be double Europe, on the other hand, "has got
d
or triple, depending on how much its counterterrorism machinery into
assistance he needs to carry out the good order [because) European
assignment. ? police forces have learned just how
He served originally with ANZAC strong the ties are between terrorist
special forces in Vietnam, has been world groups:'
down to the U.S. Special Forces Such praise for Western Europe
training center at Fort Bragg and seems to me to be misplaced. Mr.
speaks familiarly of the elite British Rivers concedes that the French
counterterrorist organization, the government is so fearful of reprisals
SAS, in which he says he is a reserv- that it does nothing about the Eus-
ist who has fought the IRA.He has kadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), which,
also been a "contract mercenary operating in Southern France, seeks
specialist in South Africa:" He flies through terrorism to establish an 11 fixed-wing airplanes and helicop- independent Marxist state in the
ters. Basque part of Spain: The current
His favorite recreations are spate of bombings in Paris without
"beautiful women:' & la James Bond, arrests hardly confirms that Fran-
and music. His cover is that of a ce's counterterrorism machinery is
salesman of "specialized military in good order.
hardware:' All of the above may be. As for the British, the Labor and
true, some of it, or none of it. If one Tbry governments have bungled the
reads this as fiction, then The Spe- war on the IRA, says Mr. Rivers. The
cialist is the best thriller I have read West German government can't
in years. Yet much of Mr. Rivers's seem to halt bombing of U.S. mili-
"memoir" does ring true. 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 counterterrorist, 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 and t e strange use
ST_
itica an ua e Mat at least one
former CIA official has argued that
Mr. Rivers's book is an example of
KGB disinformation. The "disinfor-
mation" line is that the KGB wanted
to portray U.S. counterterrorist
activities as being just as blood and
barbaric as t e terrorist organiza-
tions they operate against.
On May 28, I 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. I was not at all impressed
with this explanation.
Mr. Stein added that both he and
Mr. Rivers had been on the Larry
King three-hour radio interview
show April 4, and that at least an
hour of the interview had been
'devoted to Soviet terrorist activities.
Mr. Rivers told me he was still
"involved" with the CIA. MI5 and
M16. If he is still working for the
agency, then it is the height of irre-
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440040-2
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440040-2
2.
sponsibility to announce that one of
his clients was iraa thereby afford-
jng "proof" to Iran of U.S.
involvement on behalf of lraq. It is
equally irresponsible - if 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-
mation" propaganda?
the other hand, what Mr. Riv-
ers has done in disclosing that he has
worked for Iraq and South Africa
allegedly on behalf of the United
States is no worse than The Washing-
ton post story of May 12 whic~h
re orted that a CIA-trained counter-
terrorist grou in Lebanon had hired
another Lebanese ban or a car-
om in ob which killed more than
gin
arc 8. The C,IA enie the link
an one administration official said
that the news stor "had put th liv
o every American in Lebanon
~eopar y. Americans bein held
prisoner in Iran are certainl not
JIV Ill
to e e e Mr. Rivers's
n t at he has fought for Ira
in its ive year war against 1ran.
Suspicion 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
vero, e ben trovato ("Even if it isn't
true, it is quite possible"). In any
case, there are several amazing inci-
dents Mr. Rivers tells us about
which, I think, could be confirmed
independently.
seized" an oil collection platform in
the Gulfof mMexico, offshore from
the port of Morgan City, It seems
every agency o government was
lye the FBI 1 he v n
invoxcep
was based on a scenario devised b
r avers to see how prepared the
Unite States was or suc an emer-
enc .The local press was told it was
genuine. Only a handful of people
knew this was not a genuine terror-
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
DCIOs 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 fla-
grante 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.
ITEM: In 1981, U.S. terrorist
ex erts, including Fort Bragg pS e-
cia Forces, CIA agents, Louisiana
po ice, and av teams
(water orne war are specia ists)
Arnold Beichman, a visiting
scholar at the. Hoover Institution,
has written extensively about inter-
national terrorism.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/03/08: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100440040-2