PROMISING ANTITERROR POLICY IS PUT THROUGH THE SHREDDER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000200830001-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 19, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 16, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/19 : Cl
INSIGHT
16 March 1987
Promising Antiterror Policy
Is Put Through the Shredder
SUMMARY: Just when it seemed
to be gathering momentum, the
U.S. campaign against terrorism
has been thrown Into disarray.
Recent gains may be lost, as U.S.
allies are left Incredulous and
Irresolute, and terrorist sponsors
seek to take advantage of the
confusion. The effective covert
and paramilitary structures that
were erected may fall victim to
congressional wrecking crews.
W Nile making his way
through the Frank-
fun airport with
three bottles of ex-
plosive liquid in
his suitcase. Mo-
hammed Ali Ha-
madei was detained and then arrested by
West German authorities in mid-January.
Hamadei, it was soon discovered. was no
run-ot-the-mill thug: A L.S. indictment
had named him as one of two terrorists who
hijacked a Trans World Airlines jet airliner
en route from Cairo to Athens in June
I9;i5. A 17-day saga ensued; 39 passengers
were held hostage and C.S. Navy diver
Robert D Stethem was murdered.
Hamadei was traveling to West Ger-
many as part of a new Shiite extremist
ottensiye in Western Europe. U.S. intel-
ligence analysts say And so his apprehen-
sion ought. h,, rights, to have been cele-
brated as a mayor blow to international
terrorism. Today. headlines worldwide
ought to he trumpeting news of the sensa-
tional Hamadei trial.
But it does not look as though Hamadei
will be brought to justice anytime soon.
West German officials, citing the safer of
West German kidnap victims in Muslim-
controlled West Beirut. have refused so tar
to honor a U.S. extradition request for Ha-
madei, whose release the kidnappers are
demanding. The story quickhas fallen
off the front pages and the U.S* . request has
been "put on the back burner:' in the words
of one West German official.
Official U.S. protests - Secretary of
State George P. Shultz told the West Ger-
mans "it isn't a good idea to make trades
for hostages" - have a hollow ring to them
in the wake of the revelations of the Iran
affair Says a military intelligence officer of
a major allied power: "Calling people in
Il-ipo6 after U.S. air raid. April 1986: Attack gave terrorists second thoughts.
Europe 'Eurocowards' doesn't quite pack
the punch it used to"
Once again, the West finds itself hos-
tage to the hostage-takers. impotent in the
face of a renewed terrorist challenge di-
rected by enemy states intent on expelling
Western influence from the Middle East.
Before the Iran affair became public know l-
edge. there were 17 kidnapped foreigners
in Beirut: toda there are 26. including
eight Americans - and counting.
Whether or not the correlation is direct.
this much is certain: The actions of the
administration - selling Iran arms to se-
cure freedom for Americans held captive
by groups under Iranian influence in Beirut
- have unraveled an antiterrorist policy.
six years in the making. that finally seemed
to be working. The stony is a tragedy in
which some of the architects of that get-
tough line were simultaneously undermin-
ing it. Primarily, Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.
"We're back to square one:' says terror-
ism expert Daniel Pipes, director of the
Foreign Policy Research Institute in Phila-
delphia. "We didn't have a perfect record
in fighting terrorism. but we had the best
one going. Then came the spectacular de-
ception. arms for hostages"
Saes Joyce Starr of the Center for Strate-
_ic and International Studies: "We have to
put Humpy-Dumpty back together again."
States that use terrorism to wage war
against the United States and its interests
have stepped up their pace and raised the
stakes. "The Iran overture gave the impres-
sion that terrorism works. It makes cutting
deals a lot more possible says one State
Department critic of the initiative. "This.
of course. makes U S. and West European
targets yen attractive in the Mideast.'
The Reagan administration came into
office declaring that combating terrorism
would be its No. I national security prior-
ity. in the face of a growing number of
radical states willing to underwrite terror-
ism to achieve their foreign policy goals.
The situation had become particularly
acute after the Islamic fundamentalist rev-
olution in Iran in 1979.
One terrorist group holding foreign hos-
tages today in Lebanon - Hezboilah. or
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Party of God - has links to Iran dating
back to the time the Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini lived in exile in Iraq. Hezbollah
wants to establish an Iranian-style Islamic
republic in Lebanon. Other terrorist groups
in Lebanon are the pro-Syrian .Amal. led
by Nabih Bern: the Palestine Liberation
Organization. mostly loyal to Passer .Ara-
tat: and the Abu Vidal Organization. De-
spite factional differences. these groups
share the broader goal of damaging West-
ern and Israeli interests in the region.
After three years of relative inattention
i+NC
Delta Force and streamlined command and
control procedures in the Pentagon en-
hanced the U.S. military capability.
The Central Intelligence Agency, cha-
erined at its failure to wam officials about
the Beirut bomb attacks against the Manne
barracks and against the U.S. Embassy ear-
lier that year. began working with friendly
countries to create a new antiterrorism in-
telligence network. The CIA worked to
rebuild its netw ork of agents insi ie terrorist
groups. assets that had bega,-lpat to hudeet
cuts in t e late 1970s.
Bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, 1983. spurred lethargic U.S. officials.
to the problem. the administration was gal-
\anized by the truck-bombing of a U.S.
Manne barracks in Beirut in October 1983
in which 241 Americans were killed. At the
same time, a spate of intelligence reports
prompted a consensus within the admin-
istration that state-sponsored terrorism -
by Iran, Syria and Libya - was an estab-
lished fact requiring special attention apart
from individual acts of terrorism and that
Moscow was directly involved.
In April 1984. President Reagan signed
a national security memorandum authoriz-
ing preemptive. preventive and retaliatory
action against terrorists and against coun-
tries sponsoring terrorism. A better trans-
port capability for the crack antiterrorist
The first serious test of the counter-
terrorism policy came with the hijacking of
TWA flight 847 in June 1985. The Reagan
administration got mixed reviews, Some
applauded the diplomacy that won the sate
release of all the TWA passengers but one.
while others worried that negotiations be-
tween the White House. Shiite leader Berri
and Syria's President Hafez al-.Assad had
set the United States on a dangerous path
of negotiating with terrorists.
But four months later. the story was
different. To show terrorists "you can run.
but you can't hide Reagan ordered an
attack on the hijackers of the Italian luxury
liner Achille Lauro, who had murdered
American Leon Klinghotfer. The plan, de-
vised by North. took advantage of a 'lucky
break in the words of an insider: intercept-
ing the unarmed Egyptair plane on which
the terrorists were flying to runes. Tunis a,
was like "shooting fish in a barrel." U S
F-1-is intercepted the flight and torced the
plane to land in Sicily.
But the Italian _overnmeni rejected a
U S. extradition request for Mohammed
"Abu" Abbas, a high-ranking aide to Aratat
accused of directing the hijacking Ahbas
slipped out of Italy during the contro\em
and headed for Yugoslavia.
1986 saw even greater gains against ter-
rorism. For starters, the states that sponsor
it were indisputably identified, and some
of the perpetrators were apprehended and
punished. The trials of the Hindaw i broth-
ers, one convicted of attempting to blow up
an El .Al airliner leaving London. the other
of bombing a discotheque in West Berlin,
both implicated Syria's .Assad. [ran was
further implicated when it was learned that
CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley
was transferred from Beirut to Tehran to be
tortured and murdered. And the Pakistani
investigation of the Pan Am massacre in
Karachi identified Libya's Muammar Qad-
dati as the architect.
But it was the U.S. air strike against
Libya in April that sent terrorists into a
tailspin. Libya, which had been implicated
in terrorist attacks on the Rome and % ienna
airports in December 1985, claimed the
entire Gulf of Sidra as its territorial waters.
When the U.S. 6th Fleet undertook maneu-
sers there. Qaddati drew a "line of death '
After Libya tired missiles at U S. planes in
.March, the United States responded with
attacks on Libyan ships and a missile in-
stallation. Then U.S. intelligence con-
cluded that Libya was also implicated in the'
West German nightclub bombing, in which
one U.S. serviceman was killed, and Rea-
gan ordered air attacks on Qaddati's head-
quarters in April.
The mores, undertaken with precision
to avoid ciytliancasualties, prompted Libya
to stop operating in Europe, shift its activi-
ties to the less hostile Islamic countries and
act more cautiously. A report by U. S. intei-
ligence analysts in October 1986 showed a
drop in terrorist attacks against U S targets
as well as a drop in the number of incidents
directly traceable to Libya or S,.na.
The act was tremendously popular in the
United States and also garnered support
from international public opinion. Two
weeks afterward, members of the European
Common Market met and agreed to step up
their exchange of information on terronsm
with the United States.
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At a summit in Tokyo. U.S. allies joined
in a strong statement against state-spon-
sored terrorism and lifted Qaddali's cloak
of deniability: The statement specifically
mentioned him as a mastermind of terrorist
operations. The allies also imposed diplo-
matic and economic sanctions against Lib-
ya.
By fall. British intelligence had linked
Syria to the El Al bombing plan, prompting
Britain to break off diplomatic relations.
The United States. Canada and Belgium
subsequently recalled their ambassadors
from Damascus.
"The lessons of the first nine months of
1986 were that much of this terrorism is not
random chaos. but directly traceable to
gangster regimes:' says a State Department
official. 'And we proved that they respond
to penalties."
But paradoxically. current and former
members of the National Security Council
staff who had conceived these successful
operations - former national security ad-
viser Robert C. McFarlane. national secu-
ntv adviser John Poindexter and North -
had not learned the lessons they were at-
tempting to teach the terrorists. At the time
President Reagan gave the "let's do it" or-
der from Air Force One to intercept the
Achille Lauro hijackers. the United States
had given the go-ahead for a shipment of
arms to Iran. also a plan devised by the
NSC trio with their full knowledge of Iran's
complicity in the Beirut Marine bombing.
As revelations of these secret dealings
with Iran have unfolded publicly in the past
tour months. the allied counterterrorism
engine has been driven off the tracks. A
high-level meeting on counterterrorism
scheduled for Rome in early February was
canceled by Britain. France and West Ger-
many because "the allies were afraid it
would worsen the Lebanon hostage crisis:'
says Joyce Starr.
Around the world, the United States is
facing a new challenge from radical oppo-
nents. You have basically two schools of
thought:' says Avigdor Haselkom. a terror-
ism analyst at Eaton Corp. "One school
believes the U.S. is looking for a provoca-
tion as an excuse to act. They won't act
against Americans directly, because they
don't want to play into Reagan's hand. The
second school believes a great provocation.
unmet by U.S. action. will prove Reagan is
kaput. What they have in common is a
strategy of increasing pressure on the
United States."
ntelligence analysts say there is
evidence Libyan agents have
been looking for new targets for
terrorist strikes. These analysts
have also concluded that Libya is
moving to expand its influence
with Hezbollah. offering money
and use of Libya's terrorist support struc-
ture. apparently convinced that this influ-
ence will pa} off. as it has for Iran.
In Iran. a little-known but dynamic Shi-
ite leader. Ayatollah Saved Hadi Khoso-
row-Shahi. has taken over responsibility for
Iran's international terror operations. Ana-
ly.sts say the new leader's hand can be seen
in the Dec. 25 hijacking of an Iraqi airliner
flying from Baghdad to Jordan in which 67
persons were killed after a crash landing.
The question now is how the United
States can resurrect its antiterrorism policy.
The first test comes with the increasing
number of Americans being held in Beirut
by various Hezbollah factions. A U.S. ac-
tion against one target would likely have a
deterrent effect on other terrorist sponsors.
experts say.
In the military sphere. options include
putting in the Delta Force to take out the
terrorists or undertaking general retaliatory
air strikes against terrorist strongholds and
training camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
Some are advocating a naval blockade of
Iranian ports. which would bring the na-
tion's economy to a grinding halt.
"Much of the terrorism battle is fought
on the level of perception:' says Haselkom.
"We may be perceived as paper tigers. but
obviously we are not in reality. We don't
have to act to fit the perception.' Implicit
in any action, military or not, is the risk
that the lives of the hostages will be lost.
"But negotiating is worse:' he believes.
goodwill gesture invites more abuse:'
In any event. a proportionate U.S. re-
sponse will hinge on the covert intelligence
business and its ability to demonstrate ties
between terrorist acts and their sponsors -
Svria. Iran or the Soviets themselves. The
greatest fear is that the covert and para-
military operations built up by the Reagan
administration also may be casualties to the
Iran affair. House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Louis Stokes. an Ohio Demo-
crat. has announced that he wants advance
notice on every covert operation undertaken
by the CIA. with 48-hour delays permitted
in rare instances. The existing law requires
notification of covert operations but was
left vague to avoid a confrontation over the
executive branch's right to keep secrets.
Says Neil Livingstone. president of the
Institute on Terrorism and Subnational
Conflict. "I think we will go through an-
other period like the one after the Church
committee report in the 1970s. when covert
action became dirty and no one wanted to
do it. We will be back to the days when an
action plan meant do a new study."
The revelations by the late Sen. Frank
Church's committee also scotched allied
cooperation with the United States in the
intelligence sphere. severely damaging the
CLA's ability to monitor Europe and the
Middle East. As a result. the CIA missed
the coming revolution in Iran. the start of
many of the current troubles. Livingstone
predicts a rerun. He recounts a recent con-
versation with the intelligence chief of a
major U.S. ally, who was more perturbed
by the self-immolating response to the Iran
affair than to the affair itself. "You can't
keep a secret.' the official observed. "How
do you expect us to work with you."
- David Brock
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