The U.S. Sends a Message

By George Russell

"Thank God we finally won one!" exulted Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. "It's a glorious day in American history," agreed Republican Congressman Robert K. Dornan of California. WE GOT 'EM, shouted a headline in USA Today. Kevin Kirby, 28, a Detroit garage attendant, echoed countless other Americans as he declared, "It's about time. We needed to prove that we were not going to sit and take it anymore."

On Capitol Hill and all across the U.S. last week, there were fierce outpourings of pride at a military job well done. Indeed, not since the 1983 U.S. landing on the shores of Grenada had there been any expression of patriotic sentiment quite like it. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger harked back much further than that: he invoked "the time of the Barbary pirates" in praising the Administration's action. No one put it better than Ronald Reagan. The U.S., said the President, had "sent a message to terrorists everywhere. The message: 'You can run, but you can't hide.' "

The celebration, however, was mixed with restraint, as if the country understood that it had won a small victory in a larger war with no end yet in sight. Late last week another skirmish in that war may have taken place. In | Beirut, the Shi'ite terrorist group known as Islamic Jihad distributed blurred photographs purporting to show the body of U.S. Diplomat William Buckley, kidnaped 18 months ago. The State Department was skeptical of the claim.

Nonetheless, with one bold, nonviolent stroke, the U.S. had erased four days of frustration, horror and humiliation, an all-too-familiar progression in the recent history of international terrorism. Once again Arab extremists had struck at a vulnerable civilian target. A few hours after it left Alexandria on a pleasure cruise of the Mediterranean, an Italian liner, the Achille Lauro, with 123 passengers and 315 crew aboard, was hijacked by Palestinian gunmen. Once again American passengers were singled out for especially brutal attention. One of them, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, of New York City, a stroke victim confined to a wheelchair, was shot in cold blood through the forehead and his body thrown overboard.

Then the hostage drama was suddenly, even suspiciously, over. Despite the strongest U.S. pleas to a close ally, it seemed that the killers were about to escape scot-free. All the anger and revulsion that Americans felt at that prospect were summed up by U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Nicholas Veliotes, who demanded that the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak "prosecute the sons of bitches."

Only a few at the topmost levels of U.S. policymaking had foreseen how Veliotes would get his wish. More than 30 hours after the seagoing hijack drama had ended, a flight of four F-14 Tomcat fighter-interceptors from the aircraft carrier Saratoga pulled alongside a chartered EgyptAir Boeing 737 jetliner just south of the Mediterranean island of Crete. The Egyptian aircraft had left Cairo's Al Maza military airport 1 hour and 45 minutes earlier, apparently headed for Tunis. Aboard it were the hijackers, accompanied by two representatives of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a number of Egyptian diplomats and security officials.

Traveling under radio silence, the Tomcats overheard the Egyptian pilot radio Tunis for permission to land. Permission denied. The pilot tried Athens and got the same answer. Then the U.S. fighters moved in. They dipped their wings in the international signal for a forced landing, while a U.S. Navy E-2C Hawkeye radar plane radioed the 737 to follow them. The pilot complied.

An hour and 15 minutes later, the jetliner and its escorts landed at Sigonella Naval Air Base in Sicily. U.S. soldiers and Italian carabinieri surrounded the Egyptian plane. The Italians took the four hijackers into custody.

Moments later in Washington, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes described the U.S. exploit at a hastily called press briefing. The aerial interception, he said, "affirms our determination to see that terrorists are apprehended, prosecuted and punished."

Precisely how all that would be done in this case was still not clear at week's end. From Genoa to Rome, Italian magistrates were involved in complex legal proceedings. A number of the former U.S. hostages went to Sicily, where they identified the Palestinians in police lineups at a local jail. Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi refused a telephoned request from President Reagan to have the terrorists extradited to the U.S., saying the crime had been committed on an Italian ship, which is sovereign territory of Italy. Nonetheless, Speakes announced that the U.S. would formally request extradition of the four Palestinians. President Reagan even held out the possibility that the hijackers might eventually be tried in both countries.

U.S. officials also tried to persuade the Italians to hold on to the two P.L.O. representatives who accompanied the four hijackers on the EgyptAir plane. One of the P.L.O. figures was Mohammed Abul Abbas Zaidan, better known as Abul Abbas, head of the Tunis-based faction of the Palestine Liberation Front (P.L.F.), the group to which the Achille Lauro hijackers may belong. Abul Abbas is one of P.L.O. Leader Yasser Arafat's most trusted confidants, and a link between Abul Abbas and the Achille Lauro hijacking suggests that Arafat might have known of the plan in advance. At week's end, however, the U.S. detention effort failed as the P.L.O. representatives suddenly and stealthily left Rome for an undisclosed location aboard a Yugoslav jetliner. U.S. Ambassador to Italy Maxwell Rabb pronounced himself "not happy with what happened today." The Italian government was sure to be bitterly criticized by the U.S. for allowing the duo to flee.

The Reagan Administration's daring stroke put heart back into a nation numbed by the seemingly endless spectacle of U.S. citizens abused by terrorists abroad, particularly in the Middle East. The Mediterranean interception also helped to reverse an image of the U.S. reminiscent of former President Nixon's famous description of a "pitiful helpless giant." Said Senate Minority Leader Robert Byrd: "Finally, we have changed the rules. We have shown the world that the U.S. is a force to be reckoned with in the global battle against terrorist actions." Secretary of State George Shultz, in an interview with TIME last Friday, declared that "terrorism is losing ground," while the "idea that terrorists deserve no sanctuary" is gaining currency (see box).

Many Arab governments, however, condemned the U.S. interception. Egyptian President Mubarak piously described the incident as "an act of piracy," and declared that it had caused "coolness and strain" between Cairo and Washington. Said Mubarak: "I am very wounded." Most Western governments withheld comment, but British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was reportedly "delighted" at the successful U.S. operation. In Moscow, the official news agency TASS described American anger over the Klinghoffer murder as "understandable and just," probably because four Soviet diplomats have been kidnaped, and one subsequently murdered, by Arab extremists in Beirut.

On the other hand, many U.S. and foreign intelligence officers fear that the dramatic interception of the EgyptAir 737 may inspire new, dramatic terrorist activities. Warns a high-ranking intelligence official in Washington: "They will try very hard to get their hands on some Italian and American hostages in order to negotiate a deal."

The U.S. interception of the EgyptAir jet was bound to have lingering effects along the Mediterranean littoral. It further complicated relations between the U.S. and Egypt. Washington was upset that President Mubarak had resolved the Achille Lauro hijacking in cooperation with Arafat's P.L.O. by promising the hijackers safe-conduct out of his country in exchange for surrender. American outrage increased considerably after discovery of the shipboard murder. Mubarak insisted that he had been unaware of Klinghoffer's death when he made the safe-conduct deal.

But then, as Secretary of State Shultz publicly demanded that Egypt "hold these people and prosecute them," Mubarak made things worse. For hours he insisted that the hijackers had already left the country, even as U.S. intelligence specialists knew that they were still at Al Maza airport. The kidnapers finally took their leave a full day after Mubarak claimed that they were no longer in Egypt.

Some Western diplomats speculated that Mubarak had covertly aided the U.S. mission. According to this theory, neither the U.S. nor Egypt could admit such complicity without jeopardizing Mubarak's tenure. But at his press conference Thursday evening, Speakes "categorically denied" that Egypt had in any way helped the U.S. Next day President Reagan made a point of saying that he and Mubarak had "disagreed" on how to handle the situation, while trying to minimize the tension between the two nations. Said he: "We have too firm a relationship between our two countries and too much at stake in the Middle East to let one incident color our relationship. On the question of U.S.-Egyptian collusion, Reagan declared, "We did this all by our little selves."

The fast-paced series of events also took a toll on the P.L.O.'s Arafat. Last week the Palestinian leader was claiming loudly that his organization shuns acts of terrorism on principle--although attacks against Israeli territory seem to fall outside his definition of terrorism. In keeping with his avowed position, Arafat wasted no time in denying that the cruise-liner hijackers had anything to do with the P.L.O. Arafat's attempt to portray himself as a peacemaker reached a peak when the Achille Lauro hijackers surrendered, seemingly as a result of pressure from P.L.O. mediators. Later, when the reports of Leon Klinghoffer's murder were confirmed, Arafat had promised that if the gunmen were turned over to the P.L.O., the organization would bring them to justice.

From the beginning, Israeli officials insisted that Arafat not only had been aware of the hijack plot before it took place, but had been involved in the planning. Well before the EgyptAir interception took place, some diplomats and intelligence analysts had reached the conclusion that the Achille Lauro hijacking was in fact a bungled terrorist attempt to launch an attack on the Israeli harbor of Ashdod, using the cruise liner merely as transport. They also believed that while Arafat was aware of the plan to attack Ashdod, neither he nor P.L.F. Leader Abul Abbas knew about the liner hijacking in advance. Apparently, the hijacking occurred only after the terrorists' weapons had been discovered aboard the ship (see following story).

That theory received indirect support on the day of the EgyptAir interception. A P.L.F. statement delivered in Cyprus accepted responsibility for the hijacking, apologized, and admitted that Ashdod was the original terrorist target. Said the statement: "The aim of the operation was not to hijack the ship or its passengers or any civilian of any nationality."

Bizarre and illogical even by terrorist standards, the hijack drama suddenly came into focus in Washington on Monday evening. About four hours earlier, the Palestinian terrorists had announced their piracy over ship-to- shore radio. By 6 p.m. Monday, a State Department task force had convened in a windowless suite of seventh-floor offices at Foggy Bottom. Information was scanty, even for President Reagan and National Security Adviser Robert ("Bud") McFarlane, who consulted twice on Monday night. Ironically, Secretary of State Shultz was aboard a ship himself: on a Potomac River barge where he was entertaining Singapore's visiting Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew.

At Tuesday morning's daily 9:30 National Security Council briefing in the Oval Office, McFarlane reviewed with the President what the U.S. could and should do. As usual, the options seemed pitifully few. U.S. and Italian ships and planes were tailing the Achille Lauro as it wandered across the eastern Mediterranean, headed toward the Syrian port of Tartus. The U.S. immediately established contact with the other governments principally involved: Italy, Egypt, Israel. To each, Washington gave the same message: American policy toward terrorism, as always, was not to give an inch. At most, the U.S. would sanction what it called "discussions" with the terrorists on the safety of the hostages. Washington urged the other governments not to yield. The U.S. pleaded with all Mediterranean nations not to permit the Achille Lauro to dock at their ports.

In the U.S. view, it was crucial to keep the Achille Lauro from docking anywhere. Seared into the memory of Administration officials was last June's TWA hijacking ordeal. When the captured jetliner was allowed to land at Beirut airport, its Shi'ite hijackers were able to disperse their 37 hostages into the surrounding urban slums, dragging out the kidnaping drama for 17 days. This time Administration crisis managers were also thinking that a rescue in international waters would be far easier than one in Syria or Lebanon.

Surprisingly, the U.S. ploy worked. When the Achille Lauro tried to enter Syrian waters near Tartus, the Syrians turned it away. Cyprus also refused to allow the ship into port. Said a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington: "Everyone had been sensitized. It wasn't so much a matter of U.S. pressure as the fact that no one wanted these pirates on their hands." The Achille Lauro had little choice but to turn back toward Egypt's Port Said.

Meanwhile the governments involved agreed to let Cairo take the lead in talking with the hijackers. The decision seemed logical since Mubarak enjoyed close relations with the P.L.O., and the Achille Lauro was steaming back toward Egypt. But from the start, the U.S., Italy and Egypt were not thinking alike about the crisis. All agreed, however, that there were three key issues: 1) safety of the hostages, 2) concessions to the hijackers, and 3) future punishment for the terrorists.

All three countries stressed their concern for the passengers' safety. They also agreed that they would make no concessions to the terrorists. But they were split badly over the question of punishment. The U.S., frustrated that terrorists have so easily escaped retribution in the past, put great emphasis on the issue. The Italians were less insistent, perhaps because they had more lives and property at stake. For the Egyptians, the punishment issue posed a difficult dilemma. Said a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington: "We were fighting Egypt all the way."

President Mubarak's main concern was to prevent the hijacking from torpedoing the Middle East peace process. Ever since Jordan's King Hussein and P.L.O. Leader Arafat agreed last February to work together to get Middle East peace talks moving again, Mubarak has hoped to bring Israel and Jordan to the negotiating table. That hope was dealt a rude blow two weeks ago, when Israel launched a 1,500-mile bombing raid on Arafat's P.L.O. headquarters near Tunis.

A further concern of Mubarak's was the fragile state of his own government, which is burdened by severe economic problems as well as a persistent challenge from Muslim fundamentalists. By conspicuously lining up with the U.S. against the P.L.O., Mubarak would be vulnerable to opponents at home and abroad. The Egyptian leader was therefore eager, perhaps overeager, to demonstrate that Arafat was a moderate opposed to terrorism by involving him in the hostage mediation.

Arafat was just as eager to comply. On Monday evening, one of his closest advisers, Hani el-Hassan, already was in Egypt. He was soon joined by Abul Abbas, leader of the pro-Arafat faction of the P.L.F. The heavyset Abbas, 40, was born in Haifa and educated in Damascus; a former airline hijacker himself, Abbas rates high on many Western lists of most-wanted terrorists. In 1977, Abbas helped to found the P.L.F. as a breakaway group from the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command.

Among other things, the Palestine Liberation Front was responsible for the 1979 attack on the Israeli coastal town of Nahariya, where an Israeli man and his five-year-old daughter were murdered. Abbas' branch of the P.L.F. has cultivated increasingly close military links with Arafat's Fatah organization. In 1982, Abbas moved to Tunis, where he now commands about 1,500 fighters. Abbas is a member of the executive committee of the Palestine National Council, a post he could not hold without Arafat's backing.

As discussions between Egyptian officials and the P.L.O. representatives proceeded on Tuesday, it soon became clear to the U.S. that both Italy and Egypt were prepared to make a deal. According to sources in Washington, the U.S. repeated its vigorous opposition. Said a U.S. official: "We had indications all along that the Egyptians were moving that way. We weighed in when we could." In the end, Italy agreed to go along with Egypt in offering safe passage to the hijackers on one condition: that there had been no killing aboard the Achille Lauro.

Klinghoffer had already been murdered, but Captain De Rosa had presumably reported to Egyptian authorities that no one aboard the ship had been harmed. At 11 a.m. EDT, Egypt announced that the hijackers had surrendered in return for safe passage out of the country. Washington's first public pronouncement at around 1 p.m. implied the U.S. was "disturbed" by that. Said State Department Spokesman Charles Redman: "We believe those responsible should be prosecuted to the maximum extent."

For the next six hours, the U.S., according to Washington sources, demanded access to the Achille Lauro to make sure all the Americans aboard were safe. Meanwhile, rumors flew that one or more U.S. citizens had been killed. Washington also wanted to know where the terrorists were. Administration officials feared that Egypt was, in the words of one, "trying to get rid of them" as quickly as possible.

At 7 p.m. EDT, Ambassador Veliotes announced from the Achille Lauro that Klinghoffer had been murdered. Two hours later, White House Spokesman Speakes declared that the U.S. was "saddened and outraged by the brutal killing of an innocent American," and urged Egypt "in the strongest terms" to bring the perpetrators to book.

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Craxi reacted to news that the hijacking had ended by exclaiming, "Thanks be to God, it's over!" Only ten minutes later, in a telephone call to the captain of the Achille Lauro, did Craxi learn that an American hostage had been killed. His government responded by declaring that it would seek extradition of the hijackers for prosecution in Italy.

Washington accepted Mubarak's claim that he did not know of Klinghoffer's murder at the time he negotiated the hijackers' safe passage out of Egypt. "We think he did it in good faith," a senior U.S. official said, "but whatever deal he cut came uncut when we found out they killed someone."

By Thursday morning, however, Mubarak was becoming distinctly less credible. He told NBC-TV's Today show that "when this murder emerged, we had already sent the hijackers out of the country." Where had they gone? "Perhaps to Tunis," Mubarak said. Challenged by reporters later in the day, Mubarak questioned whether Klinghoffer had been killed at all. Said he: "Maybe the man is in hiding or did not board the ship at all." By then, U.S. patience was beginning to wear thin. At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State Shultz called on Cairo to "hold these people and prosecute them." Privately, U.S. officials could hardly restrain themselves. Said an intelligence analyst: "They just lied to us, from top to bottom. They did everything they could in order to mislead us about the location and fate of the terrorists." But thanks to effective intelligence in Egypt, the White House knew by Thursday morning that the hijackers still had not left the country.

Trying to keep Reagan above the fray, his aides made no changes in his public schedule. Thursday morning the President traveled to Chicago to continue his uphill battle for tax reform. On the way to Andrews Air Force Base, he told a staffer that the U.S. had been prepared to launch a military raid on the Achille Lauro to rescue the hostages. The President seemed personally chagrined that the hijackers had been whisked off the ship, foreclosing the rescue mission.

Senior U.S. intelligence sources confirmed to TIME that such a plan existed. According to one source, a seagoing branch of the U.S. antiterrorist Delta Force, composed essentially of Navy SEALs (for Sea, Air and Land forces), was not ready to carry out the operation on Tuesday, but was able to launch an attack by Wednesday night. The U.S. plan called for the SEALs, who had been practicing their assault at Akrotiri, Cyprus, to glide from the air ^ onto the Achille Lauro. After the initial assault, Navy helicopters would have brought in more Delta teams. The U.S. apparently knew in advance exactly how many terrorists there were on board, and where they were. "It should have been a piece of cake," said an intelligence official. "We anticipated a few casualties on our side, but something the unit could have sustained." By that time, however, the hijackers had left the hostage ship.

Administration officials would not reveal who first came up with the interception scheme, or when. At a Friday press conference, National Security Adviser McFarlane said only that Reagan's "community of advisers" proposed the idea "on the road," meaning on the way to Chicago. At about 11:50 a.m., as a presidential motorcade wended its way to a Sara Lee bakery in Deerfield, Ill., McFarlane informed a White House staffer that the Egyptian plane bearing the hijackers would leave Cairo at about 4 p.m. EDT. After Reagan held forth on tax reform at the bakery, McFarlane informed the President at about midday that it might be possible to intercept the jetliner. In a private room inside the bakery, Reagan agreed in principle to the move and provided "one or two elements of guidance on the concept and on the rules." By that he apparently meant whether U.S. interceptors would shoot if the EgyptAir flight failed to obey orders. The rules discussed in Chicago covered only the initial stages of the mission. If the Egyptian pilot resisted, the U.S. pilots would have had to radio for further orders. It is unlikely that Reagan would have ordered the pilots to shoot, but that was, as the President put it, something for terrorists "to go to bed wondering about."

The final decision came when the presidential party returned to Washington aboard Air Force One. At about 4 p.m., McFarlane abruptly left a staff discussion of the upcoming Geneva summit and entered Reagan's private cabin. It was then that the President said, "Go ahead, and let's execute." About 15 minutes later, the EgyptAir plane left Cairo.

Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, visiting Ottawa, stayed in close touch with Washington through secure communications aboard his Grumman executive jet. Meanwhile the Saratoga, accompanied by the Aegis-class guided-missile cruiser Yorktown, was steaming in the Adriatic close to the Greek-Albanian border. All told, about 25 U.S. warships were stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, many of them with the sophisticated radar capability needed to pick the EgyptAir plane out of the heavy stream of regular Mediterranean air traffic.

At 2:15 p.m. EDT, the Saratoga received the order to launch its Tomcats, four to undertake the interception and three as backup. Accompanied by two of the Hawkeye radar aircraft, the fighters loitered in the vicinity of Crete. At 4:37 p.m., they received the interception order. By 5:30, they had spotted the EgyptAir plane, and the final drama began. Back at his vacation home in Bar Harbor, Me., Defense Secretary Weinberger called the President at the White House to inform him of the mission's success.

White House aides were ecstatic. Reagan called Prime Minister Craxi to thank him for his cooperation in agreeing to prosecute the Palestinians, and to reaffirm that the U.S. very much wanted to prosecute them too. When Admiral John Poindexter, the Deputy National Security Adviser, entered the regular 9:30 NSC briefing for the President the next morning, Reagan rose to attention and snapped his right hand to his forehead. Said the Commander in Chief: "I salute the Navy."

For the remainder of the day, however, the White House staff seemed curiously drained. Even some of the President's aides were puzzled by the lack of jubilation. Said one: "I would have thought that just for political reasons, they would have made more of a to-do." The Administration even passed up the arrival of eleven hostages at Newark Airport on Saturday as an opportunity to flaunt its triumph.

In Rome, Italian Deputy Premier Arnaldo Forlani summarized the mood well as he declared that "silence is more useful than an excess of words, and in this affair there have already been too many." He, as well as the Reaganauts, seemed keenly aware that the apprehension of the Palestinian hijackers represented a short-term victory but that the episode might even prompt new outrages. Said a senior intelligence official: "I expect terrorists to change tactics and attack U.S. officials and facilities again, maybe even in the U.S." The nature of terrorism is such that no one can tell where the next attack may come from. Late last week, a bomb in Santa Ana, Calif., killed Alex Odeh, 41, a leader of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, after he called Arafat a "man of peace" on television.

In the Middle East, certainly, terrorism seems to have inexorable momentum. According to the State Department, the number of incidents there has doubled annually since 1982. What is more, says Noel Koch, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the terror "has become more violent and much more indiscriminate."

One reason, paradoxically enough, may be tighter security by Western governments and officials. U.S. Army and Air Force bases that were once lightly guarded are now fortified camps. Embassies in many capitals look like urban redoubts. As a result, terrorists are looking elsewhere for targets. In the case of the Achille Lauro, for example, it appears that the hijackers chose the cruise liner because the usual avenues of access to Israel--by land and air--have been blocked by Israeli security measures. There is also what Brian Jenkins, a Rand Corp. terrorist expert, describes as a kind of novelty factor. Says Jenkins: "If you want to stay in the headlines and exercise coercive power over governments, you have to do novel things."

The fragmentation of the P.L.O. in the wake of its 1982 expulsion from Lebanon may help explain the increased violence. Now dispersed from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, the P.L.O.'s young guerrillas are becoming bored after three years of relative inactivity. Says a P.L.O. expert in Tunis: "Launching a raid against Israel, however dangerous, is better than sitting around in a camp in North Yemen."

The answer, as Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres told TIME last week, is that "Israel will continue to act full force against terrorists, killers, murderers, assassins." He added: "Whoever wants peace (in the region) must stop terrorism. There can't be a compromise about it."

The fundamental problem, says Lawrence Eagleburger, a former Under Secretary of State and currently president of the Manhattan-based consulting firm of Kissinger & Associates, is that terrorism "is basically a new kind of warfare. Nobody really knows how to manage it or deal with it." Eagleburger recommends several principles to apply in terrorist attacks. First: make no deals. Second: assure terrorists that somewhere, sometime, there will be retaliation for their actions. The nature of the response will vary according to circumstances, says Eagleburger, but "there has to be a cost to the terrorists or their organizations for what they do."

In any given situation, Eagleburger warns, the U.S. is liable to find itself temporarily helpless. But that should never, he says, lead the country or its leadership to a failure of nerve in attempting to strike back at gunmen like the Achille Lauro hijackers. Says he: "The important thing is that we not be deterred from punishing people like these because of a fear that there will be more terrorist attacks." Last week the Reagan Administration certainly communicated to the world that it would not be deterred. Few doubted White House Spokesman Speakes when he declared after the EgyptAir interception that "if an opportunity presents itself, we will do exactly this same thing again." The U.S. could only hope that the same unhappy opportunity would not arise again soon.

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof and Roberto Suro/Rome, Johanna McGeary/Washington and Alessandra Stanley with the President