WHAT WE'RE NOT BEING TOLD ABOUT TERRORISM IS KILLING US

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460014-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 14
• Publication Date: July 2, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460014-7
ARTS I ~''?EASED
V" ". ,.I- _- 2 July 1985
What we're not being told
about terrorism is killing us
With all the pap and pabulum
about the moderation of Syria's
President Hafez Assad and
Lebanon's Minister of Justice Nabih
Berri, the time has come to explain,
in detail, what the intelligence com-
munity, on both sides of the Atlantic,
knows about state-sponsored terror-
ism.
FACT 1 - Shi'ite terrorists, work-
ing hand-in-glove with the Syrian
and Iranian secret services, have
struck U.S. targets 16 times since
April 1983 - from the kamikaze
attack against the Marine compound
that killed 241 to the kidnapping of
seven Americans in Beirut who are
still being held. It's what the special-
ists call low-level, low-intensity, low-
risk and high-payoff warfare.
FACT 2 - The latest hijacking
was not the work of extremists
working in isolation. The Israeli
Mossad, after many interrogations
of Shi'ite prisoners, knows that
Nabih Berri himself was involved in
the planning of eight hijackings and
two car bombings.
FACT 3 - The key supervisory
role for Shi'ite extremists in Leba-
non belongs to Col. Ghazi Kana'an, a
Syrian intelligence operative who
also functions as President Assad's
pro-consul in a country Syria
regards as its own. Col. Kana'an has
worked closely with the KGB in
Syria and in Lebanon. French coun-
terintelligence discovered in 1983
the existence of a terrorist training
camp near Damascus that special-
ized in car bombings and where the
trainers were members of the Bul-
garian DS.
FACT 4 Col. Kana'an was in
charge of the Hama massacre in
February 1982 when 20,000 oppo-
nents of the minority Assad dictator-
ship were killed by Syrian special
forces and the town virtually leveled.
FACT 5 - It was President Assad
who originally authorized the instal-
lation of Iranian terrorist squads in
Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Mr. Assad
has been profoundly impressed by
the success of Lebanese Shi'ite sui-
cide squads in forcing a hasty U.S.
withdrawal from Beirut in 1984 and
in "breaking Israel's fighting spirit"
I I 1 I
I I
I ' I / l
f
l if
- as he as expressed himself in
recent conversations with his
brother Rifaat and his top intelli-
gence aide, Gen. Mohammed al-
Kholi. Electronic surveillance -
from the ground and from orbiting
satellites - does produce known
results.
FACT 6 - President Assad, a mas-
ter of deceit and hypocrisy,
underwent a dramatic psychological
change in recent months. His is now
inspired by the Islamic cult of
Shahadah (martyrdom in a holy
cause), which is characteristic of the
Shi'ite extremist terrorists. This
appeared to receive confirmation in
an extraordinary speech he deliv-
ered to the ninth Congress of the
National Federation of Syrian Stu-
dents on May 4. The key excerpts:
"I have believed in the greatness
of martyrdom and the importance of
sacrifice since my youth. My feeling
and conviction was that the heavy
burden on our people and nation ...
could be removed and uprooted only
through sacrifice and martyrdom.
... Early in my military life, I used
to discuss with my colleagues the
necessity for the state to form sui-
cide squads from among the pilots.
We used the word 'suicidals' and the
well-known Japanese word kami-
kaze. We used to say: 'Due, every
pilot is already a commando I fida'i I
by virtue of his profession. Still, we
must differentiate between the ordi-
nary mission and the fida'i mission
which requires the pilot to pounce on
the enemy target and strike enemy
ships, airports and other targets by
turning himself, his plane and the
bombs into one single fireball. Such
attacks ... guarantee results ... in
spreading terror among enemy
ranks, raising people's morale, and
enhancing citizens' awareness of the
importance of martyrdom. Thus,
waves of popular martyrdom will
follow successively and the enemy
will not be able to endure them"
President Assad concluded his
advocacy of state-sponsored terror-
ism by saying that "My conviction of
martrydom is neither incidental nor
temporary. The years have
entrenched this conviction. ... I
hope that my life will end only in
martyrdom."
FACT 7 - Mr. Assad, in person,
with the asistance of Gen. Kholi, has
supervised the training of handpick-
ed kamikaze squads, including a
group of fighter pilots who are-tow
in the final phase of their training -
and rehearsals - at Minakh air base
north of Aleppo,
FACT 8 - A recent analysis com-
pleted on behalf of the CIA iatitled
"Expelling America -- A New
Coordinated Radical Strategy." Pres-
ident Assad has reached agrements
with Iran and Libya for coordinated
o 'rations between the Syrian ami-
kazes and two other similar sgua s:
a Libyan-controlled group, based at
Tobruk, including Iranian,
Palestinian and Libyan pi lots, and an
Iranian squad at Bandar Abbas, at
the entrance tote Straits o Or-
muz.
FACT 9 - - West European counter-
terrorism operatives have
discovered that Syrian-controlled
networks are now in place in Athens,
Madrid, Lille and Marseilles.
Iranian terrorists, disguised as mul-
lahs, have used French mosques as
safehouses.
FACT it) Mr. Assad's control-
lers for terrorist operatons include
Sabah Noun, who helped coordinate
the Shiite campaign against Israeli
forces in southern Lebanon, and who
has now been given overall charge of
operations against Israel and Jor-
dan: Issam Kansuq, a Syrian intel-
ligence officer: and Hossein
Mansouri, the Iranian who com-
manded the Ayatollah Khomeini's
Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon
until six months ago. These are the
agents who have been made respon-
sible for liaison between Damascus
and networks in West Europe and
the Gulf.
FACT 11 President Assad is
convinced that he has a personal
mission to harness Arab radicalism
to Iran's fundamentalist fury in
continued
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460014-7
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460014-7
order to overcome moderate forces
in the region. Mr. Assad's grand
design dovetails neatly with Soviet
plans. '['here is no central war room
in the bowels of the Kremlin direct-
ing these operations, but Mikhail
Gorbachev can see how a worldwide
decline in Soviet prestige has been
accelerating, and state-sponsored
terrorism is a low-risk course t0
change the correlation of forces
hack in Moscow's favor.
FACT 12 -- In the past two
months, West German counterintel-
ligence has uncovered links between
East German agents based in West
Germany and the alliance between
the Red Army Faction, the Belgian
"Fighting Communist Cells" and
France's Action Directe, three
extreme leftist terrorist groups.
This is the alliance that has taken
credit for a wave of terrorist bomb-
ings against NATO and U.S. military
installations in several West Euro-
pean countries. Anti-U.S. and anti-
NATO terrorism clearly encourages
neutralism in West Europe and
opens the way for an SPD-Green
coalition to succeed the Christian
Democrats now in power in West
Germany. Eastern secret services
drew one very important conclusion
from what happened in Beirut Octo-
ber 23, 1983. TWo kamikazes, driving
five-ton trucks loaded with explo-
sives, triggered the unraveling of
the entire Western position in Leba-
non and changed the course of
history.' It does not require an over-
whelming effort of imagination to
figure out how we might get simi-
larly discouraged in West Germany.
After prolonged harassment by ter-
rorists, a growing number of people
would be tempted to conclude that
we're not wanted over there.
FACT 13 - In May 1984, key inter-
national terrorist leaders, including
Mrs. Fusako Shigenobu, who heads
what's left of the Japanese Red
Army network, met with Col. Muam-
mar Qaddafi in Tripoli. Shortly
thereafter, Col. Qaddafi announced,
upon the 14th anniversary of the
closing of the U.S. Air Force at
Wheelus Field outside "I!ripoli, that
Libya was "now in a position to
export terrorism, arson and liquida-
tion to the heart of America and we
shall do so if necessary."
FACT 14 - Libyan plots to mine
the Red Sea; sin a ship in the Suez
Canal, bomb the Aswan High Dam
(which would wreck the Egyptian
economy); take over the holy city of
Mecca with 2,000 terrorists dis-
guised as pilgrims (which Morocco's
King Hassan managed to stop after
calling Col. Qaddafi when King Fahd
told him his intelligence service toad
discovered what was about to hap-
pen ); and assassinate moderate
Arab leaders have all been uncov-
ered in the past 18 months.
FACT 15 - There are 66 identified
training camps for international ter-
rorists in Marxist or pro-Marxist
countries; 20 in Libya alone. The Lib-
yan Mukhabarat (secret service) is
supervised by the East German
MFS on behalf of the KGB. The KGB
knows precisely how this entire net-
work operates and what its objec-
tives are.
FACT 16 - About half of all
terrorist actions in the world are
aimed directly at U.S. targets -
about 500 in 1983, up 20 percent in
1984. Most of the others were
directed against U.S. allies or pro-
Western Third World countries.
FACT 17 - Former Secretary of
State Alexander Haig was the first
high-ranking administration official
since World War If to warn about
Soviet and Soviet proxy links to
international terrorist groups, dur-
ing his first press conference in Feb-
ruary 1981. His successor, George P.
Shultz, repeated this warning at the
Jonathan Institute Conference on
International Terrorism in Washing-
ton in June, 1984.
FACT 18 - According to a lemon thy
French. intelligence report dated
Ma 11, 1979,- it was in Havana-in
January 1966, at the first icon-
tinental Solidarity Conference, that
the Soviet bloc secrel:17 decided on a
two-track approach for destabilizing
the West. On a government-to-
government level, it was to become
"peaceful coexistence;' a sort of
smokescreen behind which the
Soviet Union was to achieve global
military supremacy, while the West
was being disarmed psychologically.
On another level, the Havana 66
compact agreed to organize, fund
and train international terrorist
groups through a variety of proxies.
'1 he introduction of the French
intelligence report said "the analysis
of intelligence collected since 1972
establishes that the international
solidarity of revolutionary move-
ments on different continents and.
for some of them, their terrorist
emanation, stems from the 119661
Havana conference. In six years
time I that is by 19721, the structures
of this new terrorist international
became operational. The 'mother
cell' is in Cuba. The external ramifi-
cations, centers of coordination and
action impulses of various 'anti-
imperialist' movements of the Third
World, as well as European terrorist
groups, are, for the most part, made
up of the networks that the KGB and
its surrogate services have estab-
lished abroad. Since 1972, sheltered
by detente and peaceful coexistence,
the actions of this new network of
terrorism are detectable throughout
the Westerm world."
2
One recent example: Barricada,
the official Sandinista organ, con-
firmed the presence in Nicaragua of
a Basque ETA "brigade" while Inte-
rior Minister Tomas Borge, then on
a visit to Spain, was busy denying it
to the Spanish press. The Cuban DGI
supervises camps that have trained
terrorists from all over the world,
including members of the IRA, ETA
and Italy's Red Brigades.
FACT 19 - Turkey, as a member
of NATO, was the victim of a reign
of terror for six years at the height
of the so-called detente period. all
masterminded by the KGB, via the
Bulgarian DS, which operated a
multibillion-dollar heroin-for-guns
ring based in Sofia. It supplied tens
of millions of dollars worth of weap-
ons, ammo and explosives to terror-
ists on both the extreme right and
extreme left - until the military
were reluctantly forced to take over
in 1980 to put an end to Soviet-
manipulated terror in a member
country of the Atlantic alliance.
FACT 20 - In his political testa-
ment smuggled to the West in the
spring of 1980, Dr. Andrei Sakharov
warned us to take seriously allega-
tions of links hetween the KGB and
its integrate surrogates, on the one
hand, and nternational terrorist
groups on the other. The media
ignored this part of his 7,000-word
message.
It is a war, albeit undeclared and
by proxy, against Western democra-
cies. Thrrorism is but one of the
weapons. The others are pen-
etration, subversion and disinfor-
mation. Lenin said the purpose of
terror is to terrorize. He practiced
what he preached. He also said in
1921 that to tell the truth is a petty
bourgeois habit.
The time has come for tough
warnings and tough action against
known terrorist states, those that act
as terrorist proxies for Soviet ohjec-
tives. Syria is one of them. So far, all
the Reagan administration has done
is apply a Band-Aid to a hemorrhag-
ing wound. Unless its deeds match
its words, we are condemned to
watch the slow erosion of our still
free societies.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201460014-7