Prime-Time Terrorism

By Evan Thomas.

It was like a nightmarish rerun of the Iranian hostage drama, with a surreal twist. Once again American hostages were paraded before the cameras by their terrorist captors. Only this time they were not blindfolded, as the American embassy officials had been in Tehran, or made to grovel by bug-eyed radicals shouting "Death to America!" Rather, the prisoners, some unshaven, all uneasy, but combed and neat, were graciously ushered out to meet the press.

Acting as a kind of terrorist talk-show host was Ali Hamdan, a well-groomed representative of the Lebanese Amal, the mainstream Shi'ite faction that had in effect hijacked the hostages from their original hijackers, the two brutal gunmen who had seized TWA's Flight 847 and murdered Navy Diver Robert Stethem. The only glitch in this presentation occurred when reporters and cameramen got into a shoving match as they jockeyed for position. Quickly, the Shi'ite guards hustled their prizes from the crowded room in the Beirut airport, waving pistols and cuffing a few reporters for good measure. When the press settled down, the five hostages returned and pronounced themselves healthy and well cared for. Their keepers had attended to their medical needs, fed them, kept them abreast of the news, they said. In fact, the hostages were "appreciative of that, uh, hospitality," said Thomas Cullins of Burlington, Vt.

The spokesman for the hostages seemed straight from central casting: a square-jawed, clear-eyed Texan named Allyn Conwell. An oil company executive based in Oman, Conwell was returning from a vacation in the U.S. Showing more aplomb in captivity than Cool Hand Luke, he calmly beseeched his captors and the U.S. alike to "put aside fear, anger and insult" and "let us go home."

It was as if terrorism had been refined, spruced up, made almost civilized for TV. The effect was strangely serene, almost lulling, at least until Conwell warned in his calm drawl, "If negotiations fail, we will be returned back to the original hijackers. Let me say, based on experience, that is something that I would find most unappealing." Lest reporters miss the point, a shadowy figure stalked in the background, hoisting an AK-47.

All week the world was held in dreadful thrall by the spectacle of Americans turned into political pawns in a distant land. Only at the weekend did there appear to be the slightest sign of a possible breakthrough. Meeting on Sunday, the Israeli Cabinet decided to free 31 of the 776 Lebanese detainees, most of them Shi'ites, currently held in Atlit prison, south of Haifa. The gesture was quickly dismissed by Shi'ite leaders in Beirut as inadequate, but it could conceivably help ease the impasse.

Throughout the week, ordinary Americans, buffeted by feelings of outrage and concern, tied yellow ribbons to trees and prayed for the hostages' safe return.* Ronald Reagan meanwhile grimly contemplated his severely limited options. He had assumed the presidency vowing to make America "stand tall" after its 444-day humiliation at the hands of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and warning terrorists to "be aware that . . . our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution."

Faced with his own hostage crisis, however, Reagan was as hamstrung as his unlucky predecessor, Jimmy Carter. His customary jauntiness subdued, a weary President last week resolutely vowed that "America will never make concessions to terrorists. To do so would only invite more terrorism." Yet, he conceded, as any leader of a humanitarian country was bound to do, that his "first priority" was winning the safe return of the hostages.

"I have to wait it out as long as those people are there and threatened and alive and we have a possibility of bringing them home," he soberly acknowledged to reporters at a press conference. Even if he wanted to retaliate, the President admit

ted, he could not be sure who the terrorists were or where to find them. "You can't just start shooting without having someone in your gunsights," he sighed, sounding like a man who was sorely tempted to squeeze off a few rounds.

The Administration's determination not to give in to terrorists, a view shared by its Israeli allies, precluded a quick resolution of the crisis. The terrorists' principal demand was for the release of the Lebanese still held by Israel. These prisoners were among nearly 1,200 Lebanese rounded up as part of Israel's "iron fist" policy, a mop-up campaign conducted by Israeli occupation forces as they pulled out of Lebanon earlier this year. Though detained for loosely defined "security offenses," the Shi'ite prisoners are in effect hostages themselves. They were seized as an insurance policy against attacks on the retreating Israelis by Shi'ite militiamen (see box).

The Israelis began releasing some prisoners in early April, and had planned on freeing the rest in coming weeks -- that is, until the hijacking of Flight 847. Fearful of seeming soft on terrorism, Israel hinted publicly it would give up the remaining Shi'ites only if the U.S. insisted that it do so. But the U.S. was not about to ask, publicly or privately. In a telephone conversation at week's end, Secretary of State George Shultz and Israel's Prime Minister Shimon Peres agreed that their countries must not give in.

Israeli officials stoutly maintained that the decision to free the 31 detainees had nothing to do with the hostage crisis in Beirut and was, in effect, a continuation of existing policy. Nabih Berri, the Western-educated Lebanese Cabinet minister and leader of the Shi'ite Amal movement, has been negotiating on behalf of the hijackers for the release of the 40 American hostages, as well as the Lebanese prisoners still held by Israel. "What should we do now?" he asked, when told of Israel's decision to free 31. "Should we release half a hostage?"

At the same time, a Swiss government official said Sunday that his country's Foreign Minister had relayed a message from Berri to Israel and the U.S. as part of the effort to end the deadlock. In the message, Berri reportedly said he agreed in principle to release of the American hostages but requested the freeing of an undisclosed number of Lebanese Shi'ites by Israel. Whether Israel's decision to release the 31 Shi'ites was in any way connected with this diplomatic exchange was not clear.

With each passing day, the risk grew that the terrorists would escalate their demands. As their carefully staged press conference demonstrated, the radical Shi'ites revel in the glare of television lights. The day after that conference, several hundred Shi'ites marched at Beirut airport in support of the hijackers, producing the kind of terrorist theater -- bursts from Kalashnikovs, women clad in long black gowns and veils, flags burning and epithets against "the great Satan" -- that is made to order for the nightly news. Indeed, the ultimate aim of the terrorists may be less the safe return of their comrades than the continued humiliation of America in prime time (see PRESS). Shultz warned the Shi'ite leaders that they would become international "outcasts" if the hostages were not quickly released. Nor did the Shi'ites hear any words of encouragement from their natural allies; Arab gulf nations, several of which have been the victims of Shi'ite terrorism, remained conspicuously silent. So did Iran and Syria, normally strong supporters of the Shi'ites. King Hussein of Jordan, usually circumspect in his judgments, bitterly denounced the hijackers as "the scum of the earth."

Any chance that the Administration would rescue the hostages by force evaporated almost before the White House realized it was dealing with a major terrorist act rather than a run-of-the-mill hijacking. A commando team could have shot out the tires of the jetliner as it stood on the runway in Algeria and then tried to storm the plane, but at the time the elite Delta Force unit trained to mount such lightning raids was still packing its gear at Fort Bragg, N.C. When the plane returned to Algiers a second time, the Algerians forbade the U.S. to attempt a rescue while they bargained with the skittish and suspicious hijackers. After 23 hours, the talks collapsed, and the plane was allowed to take off again.

By the time Flight 847 returned to Beirut on the second day of the hijacking, a military rescue had been ruled out. For one thing, it would have been too risky at the heavily guarded airport. For another, it would have been a death warrant for a half dozen passengers, initially reported to have "Jewish- sounding last names," who were secretly removed from the plane in the middle of the night.

Unwilling to bargain, unable to use force, the U.S. turned to indirect diplomacy. Late in the first day of the crisis Reagan secretly cabled Syrian President Hafez Assad and asked him to use his influence to free the hostages or at least keep them alive. Though the Damascus regime has harbored Shi'ite extremists in terrorist camps in Baalbek, a city in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Assad is known to want to contain Shi'ite terror, as he takes his turn at trying to pacify Lebanon. His response to the U.S. request, according to Administration aides, was "positive." Assad is believed to have encouraged Berri to take a public role in mediating the crisis. On the first day of the hijacking, Berri had put a dozen armed Amal militiamen aboard the plane to take control from the original hijackers, believed to be free- lancers related to Shi'ites languishing in the Israeli prison camps. With Berri's intercession, the atmosphere became calmer. His men were far more restrained than the original hijackers, who had roughed up a number of passengers and brutally beaten Navy Man Stethem before putting a bullet between his eyes.

To Administration officials searching for a solution to the stalemate, Berri seemed to offer hope. On the fourth day of the crisis, National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane called the Amal leader and in effect told him that the burden was on him to resolve the crisis. Berri had it in his power, McFarlane said, to secure the release of both the American hostages and the Shi'ites held by the Israelis. But if the hostages were not freed, McFarlane warned, Berri would be held personally responsible. Said a White House official: "The thrust of our diplomatic effort became to convince Berri that he had a problem, not us." At his press conference a day later, Reagan drove home the point. The hijacking was a "stain on Lebanon," he said, and "we hold (its leaders) accountable."

Berri's position was precarious. Some U.S. officials feared a reprise of the Iranian experience, when efforts to negotiate with moderate leaders made the radicals inside the embassy more intransigent. As it turned out, the Iranian "students" used the hostages as pawns to consolidate Khomeini's power and to drive from government moderates like Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, the Foreign Minister who had the temerity to bargain with "the Great Satan." Trying to avoid a similar fate, Berri threatened to "wash his hands" of the whole affair and turn the hostages over to their original hijackers unless the U.S. arranged a "swap" with the Israelis.

Whether Berri could deliver the hostages was another matter. He admitted that he did not have direct control of the six passengers who were taken off the plane early in the crisis, merely an "honor promise" that they would be freed when Israel released its prisoners. The status of the separate group added a chilling dimension to the drama. At first it was reported that they had been taken because of their "Zionist connections." A TWA stewardess, Uli Derickson, said the hijackers examined the passengers' passports and picked out those with "Jewish-sounding names." But Berri told CBS that "it is not true that they took them because they have Jewish names. They are Americans, like the others." U.S. officials now believe that some of the group were singled out for a different, though equally ominous reason: they carried U.S. Government or military passports. All remain segregated, their whereabouts a mystery. There was widespread speculation that the original hijackers were holding them with the help of Hizballah, or Party of God, a radical, pro-Khomeini fringe group that has been held responsible for several suicide bombings.

It may be a positive sign that Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the leader of Hizballah, told the Washington Post that he would press Berri to release all the hostages. But U.S. officials fear that the missing hostages will be used as an insurance policy against any cave-ins by Berri, who is regarded by some extremists as too secular and too Western. Berri almost admitted as much. "They are under the control of the hijackers because maybe they don't trust me too well," he told CBS. "But I have their word."

In order to resolve the crisis before it escalated any further, some mid- level State Department officials had wanted to give Israel a shove, but Secretary of State Shultz was adamant: no concessions by the U.S., and no pressure on Israel to give in. The President agreed with Shultz. At the very first National Security Council meeting on the crisis, he told aides: "Don't encourage others to do what we don't do."

The Israelis took umbrage at what they perceived to be public pressure in the U.S. for them to free the Shi'ite prisoners. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin angrily declared that Israel would not negotiate the release without a direct request from Washington. Prime Minister Peres declared that Israel would never "surrender to terrorism" (see box).

In its search for a solution, the U.S. also thought of using the International Committee of the Red Cross as a possible intermediary. But the Red Cross, whose access to battlefields and disaster scenes depends on strict neutrality, protested that it is a humanitarian relief organization, not a political agency. Red Cross officials declined to mediate between Israel and Amal, though they stood ready to provide logistical support in the event of a prisoner exchange.

The U.S. sought out and received offers of help from Switzerland, Austria and Sweden. The Swiss government volunteered to make the airports in Geneva and Zurich available for a swap. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar called the hijackers "cowards" and offered U.N. mediation. The U.S. also appealed to Algeria and even the Soviet Union to use their influence to persuade Berri to release the hostages. If the Americans are freed, Shultz assured foreign governments, Israel would free its detainees.

At the White House, Reagan's handlers carefully tried to show that the President was deeply concerned about and engaged in the hostage crisis, but not succumbing to the siege mentality that increasingly gripped the Carter White House during the Iranian embassy takeover. Early in the week, a dispute erupted between Reagan's political aides, who wanted him to take a hard line, mostly for domestic political consumption, and his national security advisers, who feared that tough talk would limit his options or even provoke further bloodshed. White House Advisers Pat Buchanan and Ed Rollins urged that Reagan go to Andrews Air Force Base to meet the returning casket of Stethem. McFarlane, however, warned that if the terrorists thought they had monopolized the President's attention by "killing one sailor," they would "send him five more dead ones." Reagan was said to be angry, but for the moment more worried about freeing the hostages than punishing their abductors. He agreed to "punched up" language in his opening statement, but he balked at the politicos' rash suggestion that he set a deadline for the hostages release -- "or else."

The President tried to carry on his normal schedule, but the crisis dogged him. In a speech on tax reform to the Jaycees in Indianapolis, Reagan interjected a note of defiance to the terrorists: "We cannot reward their grisly deeds. We will not cave in." The line brought chants of "U.S.A. ! U.S.A.!" After the speech, the President was confronted by the family of Hostage James Hoskins Jr. "Oh, good Lord, what can I tell that woman?" he wondered aloud as he stepped to greet a tearful Deanna Hoskins. He reassured her that gaining the freedom of her son was his "paramount" objective.

Congress was mostly supportive, or at least quiescent. "Our job is to keep our mouths shut," said Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole. Opinion polls generally backed Reagan's handling of the crisis, especially after his press conference. But a narrow majority favored negotiating a prisoner swap with the hijackers, a sign that public sentiment could sour if the crisis persists. Warned one adviser: "The question is how long before the frustration and anger now focused on the terrorists shift to the White House." The President's men were clearly spooked by what happened to Reagan's predecessor, and newspaper editorialists were eager to make comparisons. "Jimmy Reagan," the Wall Street Journal mocked. From Plains, Ga., Carter called on Americans to "give President Reagan our full support and encouragement."

On Main Street, Americans vented their frustration. "It makes me sick. It seems that the whole doggone world has gone crazy," sighed Robert Langley, a gas-station mechanic in Atlanta. "But what are you going to do? What can you do?" Said Harriet Simpkins, a sixtyish housewife in Los Angeles: "The more they get away with, the more they think they can get away with. If I could do it, I'd drop a bomb right in the middle of those Shi'ites."

The hostages' families, meanwhile, waited for news, often while TV cameras waited for them to react to news. At the Boxford, Mass., home of Axel Traugott, whose brother Ralf is a hostage, three TV sets tuned to different networks flickered all day long. Said he: "We feel that our brother and the others are pawns in a game of geopolitical chess." Ralf, 32, a car dealer who had gone to Greece to see his girlfriend, "probably didn't know where Lebanon was."

Yellow ribbons festooned the trees in the yards in Richmond, Mo., hometown of TWA Pilot John Testrake. Said his mother Mildred, of Ripley, N.Y.: "At first I was scared, now I'm outraged. But John is a good man, and God has too many plans for him to take him now." In airport arrival lounges across the country, tearful reunions greeted the return of freed hostages. The Rev. P. William McDonnell, who had led 34 religious pilgrims on a trip to the Holy Land, headed straight from Chicago's O'Hare Airport to his Roman Catholic Church in Algonquin, Ill. Several hundred parishioners, nearly all wearing yellow ribbons, cheered wildly as he entered the church. Then they prayed for the four parishioners still held hostage.

Among the 20,000 Shi'ite Muslims living quietly in Dearborn, Mich., there was fear of a backlash. "We have replaced blacks as the object of hate," said Helen Atwell, a Lebanese American. The family of Nabih Berri -- his ex- wife and six children -- received threats; some local residents suggested that they be used as pawns in negotiations with Berri.

When the hostage crisis is finally resolved, with or without further bloodshed, the President will be faced with a difficult dilemma: whether to retaliate. His 1981 promise to meet terrorism with "swift and effective retribution" has so far been hollow. The U.S. has done nothing to retaliate for a long string of car bombings, kidnapings and shootings in Lebanon. The CIA did recruit friendly Lebanese to act as counterterrorist mercenaries, but agency officials say the idea was abandoned as impractical. Without its knowledge, the CIA says, some of these recruits planted a car bomb outside the home of Hizballah Leader Fadlallah. The bomb missed him and killed 80 people instead. It enraged the followers of Fadlallah, some of whom reportedly gave the hostages a guided tour of the bomb site.

The failure to retaliate against past terrorist outrages, in the view of many experts, may have led to the current hostage crisis. "The U.S. is paying the price for years of refusing to respond to the terrorists," said Michael Ledeen, an expert on terrorism at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies. Terrorists, he said, are not irrational at all. "Terror is a high-gain, low-cost alternative. We've got to make terrorists pay a price for striking the U.S. We've got to make clear that they cannot attack the U.S. with impunity."

The U.S. has no lack of firepower available should it choose to launch a retaliatory raid. The aircraft carrier Nimitz, with at least 60 fighter- bombers and an amphibious landing force of 1,500 Marines, sits just off the Lebanese coast. A Delta Force unit reportedly stands ready on Cyprus, 100 miles from Beirut. The 100-plus Delta operatives are highly trained, but they have been used only twice against terrorists -- both times unsuccessfully. The 1980 Iranian hostage-rescue attempt was aborted in the desert when two helicopters broke down; during the invasion of Grenada the Delta commandos failed to reach the Richmond Hill prison, where they were supposed to rescue political prisoners, and reportedly sustained casualties (the number and details remain classified). Though intended primarily to rescue hostages from terrorists, the Delta Force could presumably be used in a retaliatory attack, ferreting out and killing terrorists in their lairs.

"As far as I'm concerned, if you can identify the people responsible, then you should act against them," Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger told TIME last week. But he hastened to add, "I don't know if anybody has a clue who is responsible. That's probably your greatest problem in terms of fashioning a response." In the murky world of Middle Eastern terrorism, sorting out who is who and who is to blame is a difficult task. U.S. intelligence is notoriously poor in the region. The CIA has been unable to penetrate successfully the clannish and secretive extremist sects. Furthermore, if Berri does manage to deliver the American hostages, the U.S. might find it hard to turn around and kill Lebanese Shi'ites.

If the U.S. cannot decide whom to hit, then it might consider what. Beirut airport is a hijacker haven, offering provisions, protection, reinforcements and television cameras. Yet bombing the airport would be a clumsy blow, an act of war against Lebanon that asks killing innocents. An air strike on Kharg Island, Iran's oil port in the Persian Gulf, is tempting to some hawks, but it would only martyr Khomeini and further inflame his followers.

It is widely believed that both Iran and Syria support and condone terrorism. Weinberger, for instance, claims that the U.S. has discovered strong links between Hizballah and the Khomeini regime. "Can anyone seriously doubt that Syria's Assad has the means or the methods to shut down operations like the TWA hijacking?" asked the Wall Street Journal. "We should give him the incentive to do so" -- by bombing Syrian military targets. Nonetheless, the degree of control exercised by Iran and Syria is a matter of dispute in intelligence circles. Some experts feel that both countries have lately sought to restrain Shi'ite fanatics. This impression is reinforced by Assad's apparent cooperation last week and Iran's refusal to support the TWA hijackers, much less allow them to land in Tehran.

Lashing out at a target, almost any target, would serve at least one purpose. It would be cathartic. For a nation seemingly humiliated, for a people fed up with too much talk and too little action, dropping a bomb on Baalbek or shooting a few Shi'ite fanatics would be grimly satisfying. Yet for policymakers the ultimate goal must be not simply to avenge terrorism but to stop it. Doing nothing, it seems certain, invites more atrocities. Yet force often begets force. For Ronald Reagan, the hard question is whether retaliating against terrorists will deter terrorism -- or only provoke more of it.

FOOTNOTE: *The yellow ribbon was a symbol of longing for the return of the American hostages taken by Iran in 1979. It comes from Tony Orlando's 1973 hit pop tune, Tie a Yellow Ribbon (Round the Old Oak Tree), based on a story about the homecoming of a Civil War soldier from prison.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett and Johanna McGeary/Washington