SYRIAN CONNECTION TO TERRORISM PROBED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000604900038-5
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 4
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 38
• Publication Date: June 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000604900038-5
A" VAP
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WASHINGTON POST
\ 1 Jun 1986
Syrian Connection
To Terrorism Probed
`New and Very Disturbing' Evidence
By David-B. Ottaway)
Washington Post Staff Write[
The presence of a high-ranking
Syrian intelligence officer in West
Ber in ear y this year and a ege
Syrian involvement in an attempt
last month to blow up an El air- _
liner have touched o a sweeping
reexamination by western intelli-
gence agencies of Syria's role in
supporting terrorism.
Allied investigations into terror-
ist incidents in Britain. Italy and _
West Germany are leading Euro-
pean authorities to the conclusion
that Syrian intelligence has been far
more involved than previously sus-
pect in abetting Arab terrorists in
.urooe.
their operations in Western
But most western governments
still seem to believe that Syrian
President Hafez Assad did not di-
rectly order or approve of either
the recent attempt to blow up an El
Al jumbo jet or the bombing of a
discotheque filled with American
servicemen in West Berlin.
This tentative conclusion about
the Syrian role in terrorist incidents
in Western Europe is not totally
shared, however, by all Reagan ad-
ministration officials, who seem to
be sharply divided in their evalua-
tion of the "Syrian connection" to
terrorism in Western Europe.
The El Al incident, widely viewed
as a probable trigger for a massive
Israeli strike against Syria or Libya
had it succeeded, has nonetheless
served as a powerful catalyst for a
total reevaluation by western intel-
ligence services and antiterrorist
experts of the current Syrian role in
terrorism.
Even those U.S. officials most
reluctant to pin responsibility for
the El Al bombing plot on Assad
regard the extensive evidence of
Syrian links to the aborted attempt
as "new and very disturbine" evi-
The Washington Post's bureaus in
London, Paris, Rome, Bonn and
Jerusalem contributed to this report.
dence of Syrian support for terror-
ism in Europe.
That evidence includes a close
relationship between Syrian intel-
ligence and the Jordanian arrested
in London for attempting to blow up
El Al Flight 016 on April 17 as well
as with his brother, who has con-
fessed to bombing an Arab-German
club id West Berlin llflarch'29 With
explosives provided by Syria's em-
bassy in East Berlin.
One Pentagon source noted, that
the El Al plot came close to suc-
ceeding, the bomb having been
found only on the Israeli. security
officials' third search of the luggage
of the Irish woman who was.unwit-
tingly carrying it. Had the, 10
pounds of explosive gone off in mid-
air; almost ever clue to those re-
sponsible most likely would have
vanished in the wreckage, he said.
This source, familiar with the
details of the British investigation,
said he was convinced that Assad
mt t.bave known about the El Al
play beforehand and believed it was
so well conceived that the risk of its
be#ig discovered or linked to Syria
was minimal. The Pentagon source
did not, however, provide any de-
tails to corroborate this impression,
and refused to be identified.
Western European officials and a
Pentagon source also suspect that
Syrian Air Force intelligence offi-
cers with close ties to Assad were
the masterminds behind the at-
tempt to place a bomb aboard the El
Al plane.
Syrian "Handling?"
Some U.S. and Western Euro-
pean antiterrorism experts believe
that Syrian Air Force intelligence
was directly involved in "handling"
both brothers, Nezar Nawaf Man-
sour Hindawi, 31, in London, and
Ahmed Nawaf Mansour Hasi, 36, in
West Berlin. Hasi, who uses a dif-
ferent last name but is a full brother
of Hindawi, has vehemently denied
any role in the bombing of the La
Belle discotheque in' West Berlin
App 5, in which an American sol-
di i ;'and a Turkish woman were
ki ' and 230 wounded.
'ed intelligence sources
di vexed that a top Syrian Air
Fo intelligence officer, Lt. Col.
Ism Saeed
, repeatedly passed
thrvnbest t Berlin earlier this
yeO Some U.S. and extern Tu-
r en antiterrorist exerts believe
he. rsona su rvise the bomb-
in the friendship club.
st to es erman in-
vdstigators that the explosive used
in the rien s ip society bombing
cane from the Syrian Embassy in
East Berlin. Saeed is believes tO
hive played a key role in making
sate the attack on the friendship
society, twice botched ear,
ier,
wouldbe.a success on Marc
according to -Allied intelligence
sources.
ie possible involvement of
Seed, the number two man in Syr-
iatt Air Forre gene,
titular interest to western antiter-
rt ist experts because his oosss,
h m~>io i, is extremely-56-se
t ssa and has served as it
Force intelligence director sorts
Assa a ormer Air Force f,
seized ower in 1970, a it
Force -intelligence unit has re-
mained the small, elite
y of
yr-
ia s complex web ot to a igence
services ever since.
`The assumption of western intel-
ligence services is that Saeed could
not be involved without the knowl-
edge and express approval of
Khouli, and that Khouli, in turn,
would not act without clearing any
risky operations with Assad.
No evidence has yet emerged
linking Saeed, or any other Syrian
intelligence operative, to the La
Belle discotheque bombing, how-
ever. West Berlin police chief Man-
fred Ganschow has said there are
''till very, very few clues" linking
tote three men involved in the
friendship society bombing to that
at the discotheque.
The bombing of the friendship
society's building was in keeping
with the already established and
Well-known pattern of the Syrian
Else of terrorism to deal with its
Arab enemies abroad. Direct Syrian
involvement in either the La Belle
discotheque or El Al bombings, with
Israeli and American civilians as
targets, would represent a new
trend far more disturbing to west-
ern governments.
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Sophisticated technology
One confusing element for Allied
ovestigators searching for the Syr-
Jpn connection has been the sophis-
ticated technology used in the El Al
bombing plot. The plastid explo-
dive-which could not be, spotted
by regular metal detectors or X-ray
devices-was hidden in the bottom
fining of a piece of hand luggage and
the detonator concealed in a hand
calculator.
: Similar technology was used in
another attempt to blow up an El Al
airliner in December 1983 and a
variation of it in the bombing April
2 of a TWA plane over Greece in
which four Americans were killed.
As in the latest El Al bombing at-
tempt, the one in 1983 involved a
woman who did not realize she was
carrying an explosive in her suit-
ease. The suitcase went through
airport security checks in both Ath-
4ns and Tel Aviv, but the bomb
failed to explode. It was finally.d-.
covered by British security in Lon-
don.
The use of this kind of technology
has been most closely associated
yvith the May 15 Organization head-
ed by Abu Ibrahim, known as the
"master suitcase bomber." It is un-
clear where his base of operations
is today.
French intelligence officials,
working on the basis of confessions
obtained from a recently appre-
hended Tunisian terrorist, Habib
Maamar, say Abu Ibrahim is work-
ing out of Baghdad, but some.U.S.
antiterrorist experts believe he
moved to Libya after pressure from
Washington on the Iraqi govern-
ment.
Exerts familiar with the murky
world of Middle East terrorism,
where operatives often have ties
with multiple Arab intelligence ser-
vices at the same time, do not ex-
clude the possibility that MnZawt
could have been working on behalf
of u Ibrahim. So faras is known,
however, those terrorists arrested
in London and West ermany have
spoken only of Syria's acing or
their ooeerations and have not men-
tioned Abu Ibrahim.
Within the Reagan administra-
tion, CIA Director William J. Casey
has taken a particularly hard line in
public against Syria. In a speech
here May 15 to the American Jew-
ish Committee, Casey openly cas-
tigat yria, toget er wit ran
and Libya, for using its embassies,
di matte pouc es, communica-
tiQaa_channels an territory to ai
various terrorist groups in their
operations.
On the other hand, White House
and State Department spokesmen
have been far more reluctant to
blame Assad publicly. This, they
say, is because many "hard facts"
are still missing and because the
Syrian leader is regarded as too
important a player in Middle East
politics and in efforts for the release
of Americans kidnaped in Beirut to
dismiss as a wild-eyed terrorist fa-
natic. The prevailing administration
line has been to await the results of
British and West German investi-
gations before reaching. any final
judgment.
The British, West German,
French and Italian governments
have all taken the same public dip-
lomatic stance. But together with
the United States, they have been
pressing hard on Assad in private to
crack down on the activities of
known terrorist groups.
One administration official said
Assad has passed word to the Unit-
ed States that he will curtail the
operations of the Abu Nidal group
and has expelled one or more of its
members from Syria recently. Abu
Nidal's Fatah-Revolutionary Com-
mand asserted responsibility for the
attacks at the Rome and Vienna
airports Dec. 27 that killed nearly a
score of passengers and wounded
more than 100. There are also re-
ports that Assad is on the verge of a
showdown with Iranian-backed Is-
lamic fundamentalist groups in Leb-
anon who hold a dozen French and
American hostages.
Intelligence officials of four West-
ern European governments, Israel
and the United States do not ques-
tion Assad's deliberate and finely
honed use of terrorism as an instru-
ment of Syrian foreign policy to get
his way in Lebanon, the Arab world
and elsewhere.
Assad's Syria is generally held
responsible, directly or indirectly,
for the assassinations of Lebanese
Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt in
1977 and Lebanese president-elect
Bashir Gemayel in 1982 and for
abetting Shiites who blew up the
U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in
October 1983, killing 241 soldiers.
But most officials continue to
doubt that Assad himself played a
direct role in ordering the bombing
of La Belle discotheque or that he
approved, or knew beforehand, of
Hindawi's decision to attempt to
bomb the El Al plane, which carried
340 passengers, including more
than 200 Americans.
The main reason for these doubts
is both Assad's cautious character
when it comes to matters of war
and peace with Israel and the po-
tential for a violent Israeli retali-
ation against Syria had the El Al
airliner blown up. Assad is not be-
lieved ready to risk provoking a war
with Israel at this time.
The El Al bombing attempt was a
"mishap," according to a senior Is-
raeli military official. "Someone
took Assad's general guidelines,
which are 'we have to do some-
thing,' and went too far."
The official was referring to
Assad's presumed desire to retal-
iate in some fashion for the Israeli
interception over the Mediterra-
nean Feb. 4 of a Libyan executive
jet carrying a top Syrian party of-
fical. The Israelis mistakenly
thought Palestinian terrorists were
aboard.
"It's not like Assad or for that
matter Syrian intelligence to con-
duct an operation without adequate
deniability," the srae i sai .
T e theory of a "rogue" Syrian
intelligence officer possibly acting
on his own is share v many of er
western intelligence and govern
ment officials. It has already been
dubbed by some Middle East spe-
cialists as the "'Thomas a Becket
Syndrome." Becket was the arc -
bishop of Canterbury murdered at
the vague suggestion ot Henry
("Will no one revenge me of the
injuries I have sustained from one
turbulent priest?").
I he view oFTY-iian intelligence
acting on its own implies that yna
today is ruled by a physically an
politically weakened . ssa , w ose
state of health has been a subject o
coot.nuaTS ecula n since Tie suf-
fered a heart attack in late
Complex Network
During his 16 years in power,
Assad has built up an enormously,
comp ex intelligence
several secret services and agen-
cies-es ima
where from five to nine-working
with a score o known terr-o-n-s-1-
gro u s, The question now is wheth-
er the Syrian leader's once tig t
grip on their Uay-to:Ua-y`--ac-f1-vitaS
has loosened.
"It as inevitable that this net-
work would get out of hand and turn
some of its activities elsewhere,"
the senior Israeli military source
said.
b"
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Anal analysis circulating in U.S.
and Western European in e i ence
circles, however, asserts t t
Assad's control over his highly cen-
tralized intelligence network Sys-
tem has not slackened. Those hold-
en this view note that various yr-
ian intelligence services have lone
been actively involved in providing
logistical support, explosives and
various orms o m irec asses nce
to Middle East terrorists active in
Western Europe.
Middle experts note three
types of distinctly different relation-
ships between Syria's secret ser-
vices an terrorist rou s and three
different Syrian methods o using
"cutouts," or agents whose actions
cannot easily be trace to Damas-
cus.
One method has been the cre-
ation of Palestinian factions such as
aiga, w hich are virtually an m e-
rated
part of the Syrian Army an
n
Iigence system and irec
agents of the Syrians. Another is
collaboration with, and lo
support, for radical Palestinian
Le anese groups t at remain arge-
ly their own masters and ecision-
makers but are often sent on ter-
rorist operations by Syrian intelli-
ence.
According to Iraqi and Lebanese
sources, -Syrian intelligence agents
usually work with these groups by
setting down guidelines on the
kinds of targets to be attacked
selecting which countries t ey
should operate in and which are to
remain off limits. But the choice of
specific targets most often is letup
to the groups themselves, these
sources say.
Best Known Group
The best known of such groups in
the West today is Abu Nidal's,
which has taken responsibility for a
number of attacks on Israeli targets
in Western Europe and on Palestin-
ians associated with his number one
Arab enemy, Palestine Liberation
Organization Chairman Yasser
Arafat.
Abu Nidal's terrorist organiza-
tion, which is small (200 to 300
members) but highly professional,
is perhaps most famous for its near-
ly successful assassination attempt
on the Israeli ambassador in Lon-
don, Shlomo Argov, in June 1982
that served as the pretext for the
start of the Israeli invasion of Leb-
anon.
To this day, it has never been
clear whether Abu Nidal himself
selected Argov as a target or was
acting for the Iraqi government, his
host at the time. Iraq has since bro-
ken all ties to Nidal's group and ex-
pelled him from Baghdad. Both Iraq
and Abu Nidal spokesmen in Da-
mascus maintain that the decision
to try to kill Argov was made by
Nidal on his own.
Nidal, whose real name is Sabri
Banna, now operates out of both
Damascus and Tripoli, Libya. He is
allowed by the Syrians to run an
office in the Syrian capital and to
train terrorists in camps located in
the Syrian-controlled part of Leb-
anon's Bekaa Valley.
Assad said in a recent interview
with The Washington Post that he
has never met Abu Nidal but that
he would continue allowing him to
run "a cultural and political" office
in Damascus and could not close his
camp in the Bekaa.
The third and most complicated
"cutout" system used by the Syrians
is the selection of lone terrorists,
"freelancers" or "sleepers," to ac-
complish a specific action. The con-
victed Lebanese assassin of pres-
ident-elect Gemayel was such a
case. Hindawi and Hasi also appear
to fit into this category.
So far as is known to date, nei-
ther belonged to any well estab-
lished Palestinian or Lebanese po-
litical group, though Hindawi is re-
ported to have been a member of
the Jordanian branch of the Syrian-
backed, pan-Arab Baath Party. Hin-'
dawi was a sometime journalist in
London and Jordan who was re-
garded as unstable by many of his
closest friends and past employers.
An Unstable Relationship
Typical of his instability was his
relationship to the Irish woman,
Anne Marion Murphy, whom he
tried to use to smuggle a bomb hid-
den in the bottom of a piece of her
luggage onto the El Al flight. After
a stormy six-year marriage to a Pol-
ish wife, Barbara, Hindawi broke up
with her and began dating Murphy,
a hotel chambermaid, in the spring
of 1985.
According to British police
sources, Hindawi's relationship with
Murphy, like the one with his Polish
wife, was "not very stable," with the
Jordanian coming and going away,
sometimes for weeks. Hindawi left
Murphy-pregnant, as it turned
out-about six months ago and only
returned and offered to marry her
about one week before the El Al
incident.
The timing suggests that Hin-
dawi had not originally intended to
use Murphy as a bomb carrier and
only came up with the idea a short
time before the El Al bombing at-
tempt. It also suggests his plot was
hatched before the U.S. bombed
Libya April 15 and thus not origi-
nally meant as retaliation for it.
Just whose idea it was to place a
bomb aboard the El Al plane is far
from clear.
The Pentagon source familiar
with the British interrogation of
Hindawi said the Jordanian and his
brother had "offered" their services
to yrian rote igence mo s ago
and were recruited and trained in
Syria before returning to England
an Germany to be etas "s eep-
ers.
Subsequently, the brothers were
"activate by Syrian intelligence in
East Berlin to carry out the bomb-
ing o the riendship society But
that act involved an in ra Arah
squabble in which Syrian use of ter-
rorist means is regarded as typical.
However, Syrian involvement in
bombing La Belle discotheque or
lowing up t e J Al King wo ,
highly atypical.
Syrian aid for Hindawi in London
apparently was considerable and
included giving him a false Syrian
passport to enter Britain and a let-
ter from the Syrian Foreign Min-
istry in Damascus to obtain a visa.
Hindawi also has said that he used a
Syrian safe house in London and
had extensive contacts with Syrian
Embassy officials before and after
the El Al incident.
These allegations were enough to
convince British authorities of the
need to interrogate three Syrian
diplomats. When they refused to
waive diplomatic immunity and
would agree to questioning only
within the Syrian Embassy, the
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British government expelled all
three.
Unlike the British police, who
have consistently given more cre-
dence to Hindawi's claims of Syrian
involvement in the El Al incident,
the British Foreign Office has been
more doubtful While Hindawi cer-
tainly had ties to Syria, Foreign Of-
fice officials remain skeptical the
Syrian government helped to plan
the operation or ordered it done
because of the potentially far-reach-
ing repercussions for Assad.
According to one Reagan admin-
istration source, Assad has admit-
ted to Jordan s King Hussein tTFa-t
Syrian intelligence had contacts
with Hin awe ut regar a im as
too unstable and unreliable to deal
with. The Syrian leader told Hus-
sein that when Hindawi came to the
Syrian Embassy in London after his
ait^bom ?g attempt, officials
there reuse to-take him in, e
source said.
Even if Syria was involved, For-
eign Office officials are doubtful the
proof will ever be found. Unlike the
Libyans, one official noted, - the
Syrians are very careful to observe
the proprieties. They have some
concern for their international im-
age."
That the "Syrian connection" to
terrorism is extremely difficult to
pin down was demonstrated last
week in Italy. Italian judicial author-
ities issued arrest warrants for 14
Arabs implicated in a series of ter-
rorist incidents last year. Abu Nidal
was among the 14, but no Syrian
official was named.
Italian officials said this was be-
cause no evidence.had been discov-
ered linking Syria directly to any of
the incidents.
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