◆ SpookStack

Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R000100330001-5 SPECIAL EDITION -- TERRORISM -- 26 JUNE 1984 Terrorism Continued from page 95 cussions. Open all the doors so the blast would go out, they told me. Keep your legs out of the car when you start it, if you can. And when you're starting it, put a briefcase between your chest and the steering wheel. ‘‘The threats made me nervous, but there was nothing I could do about them. I remember a photographer came to the house for a magazine. I asked him not to take pictures of my kids’ faces. Or if there was a knock at the door at night, a neighbor coming over unexpectedly, I'd worry about who it was.”’ The specter of terrorism extends beyond its impact on individuals. It can change the way a city lives. Michael Ledeen remembers what it was like to live in Rome during the Red Brigade’s reign of terror. ‘Rome is a city built around outdoor places. People gather in piazzas and talk and drink coffee and play. The first thing that happened was that people went in- doors; the piazzas emptied out, mostly in the evenings, but also during the day. The second change was that an edge came over the city. In normal times, Rome is garrulous and friendly. But conversa- tions became much shorter. You didn’t wander around the streets as much. Peo- ple tended to go outside, do what they had to do, and get in again. It lasted several years, until the Red Brigade was shut down.”’ I have my own images of how terror- ism can affect a city. While researching a novel on terrorism, I traveled to Italy and Israel, two countries that are very familiar with it. Three scenes stick in my mind: a In Rome and Milan, soldiers with submachine guns guarded government buildings, synagogues, and a Greek Or- thodox church. I noticed that the soldiers kept their fingers on the triggers at all times. But what struck me most was that pedestrians seemed to pay no attention. The scene was that normal. a In Jerusalem one afternoon, I sat on a bus-station bench. Suddenly, I noticed the passengers on my right scurrying away from the bench. Then those on my left. I looked up to see a soldier directing me away, too. A police jeep roared into the lot; the buses pulled away from the curb. I asked the soldier what was going on, and he pointed to a crumpled paper bag eight feet behind me by a pay phone. It was a plain brown paper bag, the kind you carry sandwiches in. There had been no bomb threat, but the mere presence of an unclaimed paper bag cleared the area. A half-eaten sandwich was found inside. w The bus I used while in Jerusalem was the Number 18 bus. It travels from the student dormitories on the outskirts of the city past the Yad Vashem mon- ument to Jews killed in World War II, through the downtown area and near the expensive La Roma Hotel and the Old City. Some of my relatives used this bus to get to school; a friend working on a book took it often while doing her re- search. While riding the bus, I some- ES You didn’t wander around the streets as much. People tended to go outside, do what they had to do, and get in again. ee times would imagine what would happen if a bomb went off in it, particularly at rush hour, when it was packed with shop- pers, tourists, and schoolchildren. I vis- ualized seats ripped from the floor, a child’s shoe lying on the street. One day after I left Israel, terrorists blew up the Number 18 bus. In one 24-hour period at the beginning of the recent Easter weekend, terrorist bombings shook two Western capitals. Here in Washington, a powerful explo- sive placed under a couch tore apart the officers’ club at the Washington Navy Yard. No one was injured in the blast, which occurred shortly before 2 AM on Good Friday. A previously unknown group, calling itself the Guerrilla Re- sistance Movement, said the bombing was a protest against US policy in Cen- tral America. Several hours later, a bomb hidden in a briefcase at London’s busy Heathrow Airport was detonated by a timer, injur- ing 25 people, five of whom had to be hospitalized. An anarchist group called the Angry Brigade claimed credit for the blast, but British police continue to in- vestigate links to Libyan terrorists. The bombings were indicative of the levels of terrorism in the two cities. Lon- don has been the site of indiscriminate bombings, such as the one that rocked Harrod’s, the famous department store, during the holiday shopping season last year. But so far, Washington has been spared the kind of wholesale violence inflicted on other cities. In addition to the Capitol bombing, the FBI investigated four other terrorist incidents in Washington last year, all of which were directed against institutions rather than individuals. A group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit took credit for explosions at the National War College at Fort McNair last April and at a computer complex at the Navy Yard last July. An unknown Philippine ter- rorist group ignited two fire bombs near the front of the Philippine Chancery. In the fourth incident, the Jewish Defense League claimed responsibility for a bombing that caused minor damage at the Aeroflot office here. Some terrorism experts contend that the threat from squads of professional Middle Eastern terrorists is being ex- aggerated, and statistics, at least, bear them out. Of the 31 terrorist incidents reported in the US last year, none were attributed to Libyan or Iranian organi- zations, according to the FBI. In fact, two-thirds of them were linked by the FBI to Latin American groups. One expert who downplays the threat from Middle Eastern terrorists is Neil Koch, deputy assistant defense secre- tary, who is in charge of the Pentagon policy on terrorism. He points out that despite what most people think, terror- ism is not a mindless activity; it’s a stra- _ tegic weapon based on calculated deci- sions. Government-sponsored terrorists, he goes on, would have to have a very powerful motivation to stage mur- derous attacks in America and risk US retaliation. Other experts aren’t as sure that an attack on a Metro train or National Airport or a department store is so implausible. That is clearly the trend of terrorism. Briga- dier General P. Neal Scheidel, chief of the Air Force security police, recently said that five years ago, 80 percent of terrorist attacks were on property, and 20 percent were on people, “But now it's 50-50.”’ Professional terrorists, says one law-enforcement official, know that blowing up empty buildings will get at- tention but that it is indiscriminate mur- _der that causes terror, and maybe a re- examination of policy. It is just that kind of terrorism that the administration’s counter-terrorist strat- egy is aimed at. Reagan’s policy direc- tive, which will become a legislative pro- posal, supports the principle of striking at terrorists abroad and staging reprisal raids in response to terrorism here or against Americans overseas. It repre- sents the first time the US has taken an aggressive anti-terrorist stance as a mat- ter of national policy. That, in turn, raises the stakes in the renegade war. So law- enforcement agencies, from the DC po- lice to the Capitol police to the FBI, continue to step up their anti-terrorist training. On March 9, FBI Director William Webster unveiled the Bureau’s new “Hostage Rescue Team’’ at Quantico. The squad, two years in the developing, Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R00010033000¢QNTINUED NEXT PAGE