TERRORISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000403900012-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 25, 2010
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: March 15, 1981
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403900012-4
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uring the past dec-
ade-while the
United States has
felt- guilty about
Vietnam, shied away
from sending troops' into An-
gola, refused to protect a dic-
tatorial regime in. Nicaragua-'
and generally tried to be moral
and decent in its-foreign policy
-what have those sneaky
Russians been up to?
The short answer, given by a
growing number of conserva-
tive foreign policy thinkers
with influence in the Reagan
administration, is that the
Soviets have been up to no
good. no argument goes like
this:
While soft-minded liberals
in Washington and the capi-
tals of Western Europe were
seeking friendship and trade
with the Soviet Union, the
Soviets conspired throughout
the 197th with terrorists of
every stripe to disrupt and dis-
turb the governments of Great
Britain, Spain, West Germany,.
Italy, Turkey, Japan and se-
lected countries in - Latin
America and Africa. Examples
abound.
/ The beloved English war
hero, Earl Mountbatten of
Burma, was murdered in 1979
on his fishing boat by a Provi-
sional IRA terroist who
learned his bomb-malting. craft
in Libya under Soviet supervi-
sion.
/- Aldo Moro, the Italian
Christian Democrat states-
man, was kidnapped and
killed in 1978 by terrorists of
the Red Brigades, the radical h1uo.eved. farmer zeneral -leas
THE WASHINGTON POST MAGAZIN
15 March 1981
whose leaders trained in
Soviet KGB camps in Czecho-
slovakia and Soviet-supported
terrorist camps in South
-Yemen.
i
Th
l
t
t
d
e
egen
ary
error
s
"Carlos the Jackal," who
helped organize the massacre
of Israeli athletes at the 1972
Olympics ~ in Munich. and in
1975 led_a kidnapping squad
that seized 11-Arab oil minis-
ters in Vienna, learned how to
ply his bloody trade in three
special training, camps in the
U.S.S.R.
There you have it a conspir-
acy. Carlos the cold-eyed killer
drinks vodka with the KGB.
The Provisional -IRA slaugh-
ters helpless school girls with
Soviet-made Kalashnikov, as-
sault rifles. The violence-
crazed Baader-Meinhof Gang
blows up West German banks
for the furtherance of Soviet
world domination. The con-
spiracy theory of terrorism,
with the Russians i3s the bad
guys, has an intoxicating polit-
ical appeal in this city where
Ronald Reagan reigns. Reagan
himself claims the Soviets re-
serve the right "to commit any
crime, to lie, to cheat"-to fur-
ther their goal of world domi-
nation:
Secretary of State Alexan-
der Haig, the soldier turned
diplomat, accuses the Soviets
of "training, funding and
equipping" the forces of
hum8
tiona
conce
1'h
seem
newly powerful Kepub@can
hard-liners that Democrats
who used to run U.S. foreign
policy (and who now stand ac-
cused of ignoring Soviet in-
volvement in terrorism) ques-
tion whether the "Russians
did it' theory is based on
genuine intelligence informa-
tion or on anti-Communist
conservatism that's welded to
a keen sense of what the elec-
torate wants to hear.
"I have a feeling there is a
lot of looee? talk going around
with very little support," says
former United- Nations Am-
bassador Donald F. McHenry.
"It has the pungent smell of
politics."
Whatever its - motivation,
the Reagan administration's
finger-pointing has provoked
the Soviet Union into one of
its more hyperbolic, self-right-
eous rejoinders since the Cold
War- Soviet Defense Minister
Dmitri Ustinov said last
month the U.S. accusations
were an "evil-minded decep-
tion" to cover up Western sub-
version in Poland and other
left under Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/25: CIA-RDP90-00552R000403900012-4