The Shadow of Terrorism

By Ed Magnuson

Under attack overseas, Americans now worry: Can it happen at home?

Normally, wars are not won by dying for one's country. They are won by making the enemy die for his. Unfortunately, holy wars are not waged under this harsh but rational precept. Today many religious zealots seem almost eager to die for their cause in suicidal truck bombings and other terroristic attacks. President Reagan said two weeks ago that there were as many as 1,000 kamikaze terrorists being trained in Iran alone. Such individual fanaticism has now been coupled with something new: the technical resources and diplomatic protections of governments like Iran's and Syria's. "The possibilities," says a high U.S. State Department official, "are frightening." What can be done about it? "We all worry that question to death," he says. "But we have no answers."

The concern in Washington was heightened last week by six explosions in Kuwait, including that of an explosives-laden truck that crashed through fragile barriers at the U.S. embassy. At least six people were killed and 60 wounded (see WORLD). Believed to be the work of Iran-backed Islamic revolutionaries, the bombings represented an ominous spread of the tactic from Lebanon, where similar attacks in recent months against the U.S. embassy, American and French military barracks near the Beirut airport, and an Israeli army headquarters at Tyre killed a total of 423 people. On Saturday, terrorists struck another chilling blow, this one in a setting familiar to many Americans. At the height of the Christmas rush, a bomb ripped through Harrods department store in London, killing at least five and injuring 91. Police suspected the Irish Republican Army. Even before last week's attacks, 1983 was "the bloodiest year for terrorism on record," according to Brian Jenkins, director of research on terrorism for the Rand Corp.

With the U.S. increasingly the target of terrorists overseas, the inevitable question arises: Can it happen at home? Reluctant to spread undue concern or issue self-fulfilling prophecies, yet anxious to prepare Americans for what they see coming, many experts on terrorism fear the worst. Declares former CIA Director Richard Helms: "It would be surprising if a wave of terrorism didn't hit the U.S." New York Senator Daniel Moynihan, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, was even more alarmist at a New York conference on terrorism last week: "The prospect of 1984 being the year they bring the war to our shores is real. We should assume it and not be surprised by it."

The isolated, politically motivated bombing, of course, is hardly unknown in the U.S. A bomb left in a corridor outside the Senate chamber caused some $250,000 damage to the Capitol last month, and a group calling itself the Armed Resistance Unit claimed it had done the deed to protest U.S. "imperialism" abroad. Various Puerto Rican independence groups have touched off explosions in New York City, including four against federal and local government buildings last New Year's Eve and four others on Wall Street in March 1982.

Last week two bombs went off, one minute apart, in a Navy recruiting center on New York's Long Island. Fortunately, the building had been evacuated because of telephone warnings from a group called the United Freedom Front. Next day another caller, saying he wanted "the U.S. out of Central America," said a bomb had been planted at a Queens, N.Y., building where Honeywell Inc., a defense contractor, has offices. The bomb did not explode.

Despite such incidents, FBI Director William Webster reported last week that acts of terrorism in the U.S. have actually declined so far this year, from 51 a year ago to just 31. "Rather than a rising tide of terrorism," Webster said, "we have a rising concern for terrorism in this country." Still Webster warned, "This suicide-mission concept, which has now been expanded in a key way, presumably could just as easily take place in the U.S. and calls for reasonably prudent measures." Indeed, he said that the FBI had recently "interdicted a terrorist plot in a public facility in which many, many people might have been killed." The occasion was a theater appearance in Seattle on Dec. 10 by two Iranian singing sisters and an Iranian comic. Rumors of a possible bombing had been so widespread that the 2,000-seat theater was left three-quarters empty.

What can be done to prevent terrorist attacks? Most experts consider the new security measures taken at the White House, State Department, Capitol building and Pentagon good first steps but far from adequate. These include placement of 3-ft.-high concrete barriers at White House driveways to discourage a car or truck attack, airport-style metal detectors at some federal buildings to check parcels carried by visitors, the closing of bus tunnels under the Pentagon, restrictions on nonbusiness traffic in front of the Capitol. The Washington precautions, which for a time included the blocking off of driveways with sand-loaded dump trucks, began during Thanksgiving week when police in Manassas, Va., got a letter from a Shi'ite group claiming that it intended to attack the State Department. In Manhattan, a newly erected concrete barrier now guards the U.S. mission to the U.N.

No security expert thinks such defensive measures will stop a determined Islamic terrorist who expects to join Allah by killing some Americans. The possible targets of the terrorist are so numerous in the U.S. that there is no way to protect them all. While the attacks in the Middle East employed heavy explosives that seem to have required substantial resources to acquire and deploy, more portable explosives offer more bang for the same size package, according to Robert Kupperman of the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies. Some of these sophisticated explosives can be molded to fit innocuously into briefcase linings and are detectable only by specially trained dogs.

Inspiring a general sense of panic among perceived enemies is a major aim of terrorists. So is attracting attention to a cause. Radical Islamic sects want to spread their revolution, and apparently see the U.S. presence in the Middle East as an obstacle. Thus, killing U.S. Marines in Lebanon had an obvious goal: to drive them out by undermining support at home for their deployment abroad. What an Iranian terrorist would hope to accomplish by hitting a target in the U.S. is less clear; perhaps lashing out at "the Great Satan" would be motive enough.

The challenge for U.S. antiterrorist planners is to take sensible precautions without turning Government buildings into fortresses or resorting to police-state tactics. American embassies have been treading that narrow line for years, beefing up security while trying to remain a symbol of an open and hospitable government. The State Department has undertaken 200 security projects at 120 chancelleries since the U.S. embassy in Beirut was blasted last April. When Secretary of State George Shultz flew into Tunis this month, his aircraft wingtip lights were doused and the plane even made an unusual zigzag landing approach.

Neil Livingstone, author of The War Against Terrorism, contends that much can be done to discourage the phenomenon in the U.S. He claims that vulnerable power stations, telecommunications facilities and the power-line grid system should be better guarded, and he advocates a federal antiterrorism law so that the FBI can more readily assist in investigations.

All experts stress the need for better intelligence, both at home and abroad, to anticipate and deter a terrorist attack before it can be carried out. In addition, the U.S. and the rest of the civilized world must try to make it clear to the exporters of terrorism--most conspicuously, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea--that murder is not a legitimate instrument of national policy. One way to do this would be to cut off all diplomatic and commercial contacts with the offending countries.

While prudence demands a discussion of terrorism and steps to prevent it, the danger must not be overstated. Through their tradition of free movement in public places, Americans may be particularly unsuited to coping with a state of siege. Says Peter White of the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta: "A lot of talk about terrorism can make a lot of people see terrorists everywhere." Such na tional fear is exactly what the terrorist seeks. Advises a top State Department official: "I guess it's like living with the Bomb. You know it's out there, but you can't worry about it every day."

--By Ed Magnuson.

Reported by Christopher Redman and Bruce van Voorst/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Christopher Redman, BRUCE VAN VOORST This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.