U.S. hard line on terrorism at home

Press, 15 January 1986, Page 16

U.S. hard line on terrorism at home

President Reagan’s message to Libya is backed up by surveillance of potentially dangerous groups in the United States. MICHAEL WHITE,- of the “Guardian,” London, reports from Washington.

We have all been here before. When United States-Libyan relations rapidly deteriorated after the air battle over the Gulf of Sidra in 1981 there was excited talk of Libyan hit squads setting out to take the anti-imperialist struggle to American soil.

Artists’ impressions of the desperadoes were even issued across the United States.

As President Reagan again berates Colonel Gadaffi and the Libyan leader threatens to harass Americans “on their own streets,” it is worth recalling that the hit squads never materialised, though the concrete barriers which went up around the White House and other key buildings here remain to this day. United States authorities remain morbidly fearful after their Beirut experience of a suicidal truck bomber.

If America’s temptation to retaliate against Tripoli’s persistent penchant for terrorist adventurism is tempered by the knowledge that 1500 potential U.N. hostages are still defiantly making a dollar or two inside Libya, Colonel Gadaffi’s rhetoric should be restrained by other thoughts. The F. 8.1. and its fellow law enforcement agencies are bracing themselves for possible trouble but they are as confident as it is prudent to be that they will be able to nip it in the bud. On television recently, the State Department’s director of counterterrorism, Robert Oakley, who - like America’s booming private sector security industry - is mainly concerned with protecting embassies, bases and businesses overseas, put it this way: United States security is better than' Europe’s and the authorities watch the borders closely. Moreover, he said, the American people have an abhorrence of organised violence (quickly acknowledging that spontaneous violence was a different matter).

If it sounds complacent it is a view widely shared.

“There is no support for terrorism in America,” said one intelligence official. “It is very difficult for them to operate without logistical support.” More cautiously another observed: “At present it is still felt that there are so many Americans overseas that it is easier for terrorists to strike in other places than run the greater risk of operating here” - a point which I.R.A. hit squads trying to set up in London might concede. That assumption directly challenges alarmists that the United States is uniquely vulnerable: an open society with cheap mass

travel, diverse ethnic groups and plenty of weapons. But the FJB.I. can claim tangible successes to sustain its own point, most topically the extent to which high-tech methods and improved intelligence pooling is rolling back the Mafia in a spectacular series of court cases and its 1985 successes in arresting so many domestic spies. To support their contention, officials cite electronic surveillance, video-cameras, the greater use of informers, better interagency liaison and analysis at the Terrorist Research and Analysis Centre (Trac) at F. 8.1. Headquarters half-way between Congress and the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.

To make his point, the F. 8.1. director, Judge William Webster, was able to recall that his bureau had foiled a number of potential terrorist attacks inside the United States last year - most notably a plot by Sikh radicals to kill Prime Minister Gandhi during his visit last June.

Judge Webster, a Missouri lawyer appointed by Jimmy Carter in 1978, has not only survived under President Reagan but remains widely respected - even on the civil liberties Left.

Though definitions are disputed, its own record of the number of organised terrorist incidents fell from 22 in 1983, to 13 in 1984, and a provisional seven last year. Fatalities fell from 12 to six to two last year - a bomb killed a former Nazi S.S. man in New Jersey and in California a boobytrapped parcel killed Arab-Ameri-cian poet and political moderate, Alex Odeh, during the Achille Lauro hijack.

All these were products of conflicting loyalties in struggles beyond America’s shores. Indeed the extremist Jewish Defence League, which believes in retaliation against anti-semitic acts (hijackings or smashed shop windows in Brooklyn) is suspected in both 1985 deaths, actions deplored by mainstream Jewish leaders. As Shi’ite Mulisms showed in their Detroit neighbourhoods last year, America’s ethnic groups have tended to put loyalty to their new flag ahead of the old in a crisis. Exceptions are jumped on hard. The F. 8.1. boasts that the Croatians who started bombing Yugoslav targets in the United States are now behind bars. The most notable present exception - and judged the most dangerous - is the myriad batch of Puerto Rican groups which are prepared to bomb their way from home rule to full independence from Uncle Sam. In a world where terrorism in

support of political gains has enjoyed a revival of intellectual respectability in many prosperous Western countries, what is strikingly absent in the United States is domestic terrorism for domestic goals. Not since the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army of Patti Hearst fame enjoyed a brief vogue of bombing and bank robberies in the 60s and early 70s have Left-wing “revolutionaries” been seriously active. The 1981 abortive Brinks security firm robbery was a last twitch which led to the prosecution of some black radicals involved as recently as last summer.

The “armed resistance unit” which claimed responsibility for a cloakroom bomb in Congress in 1983 has not been heard of since. The Black Muslim leader, Louis Farrekhan’s, chosen weapon is black capitalism: he rejected Colonel Gadaffi’s offer of guns. Of the sixties bombers most are dead, disappeared or in prison.

A crucial factor is almost certainly the F.8.1.’s far greater evenhandedness under Judge Webster. Though the American civil liberties union expects pressure for draconian measures if terrorism does reach the United States, the pressure will come from Congress, not from the F. 8.1. with the

bureau’s terrorist section firmly relocated by Judge Webster in the criminal rather than intelligence division.

The excesses of J. Edgar Hoover’s long reign and the liberal reaction of the 70s have finally produced operational guidelines which satisfy most people.

In 1985 the F.8.1.’s anti-subver-sion energies seemed to be less directed against peace groups than against neo-nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other of what it calls “white supremacy groups.” As it keeps its fingers crossed for 1986 it hopes that the Europeans will also try harder.