By Richard Halloran
...September 9, 1998
The customs official stood before several hundred law enforcement officers in a conference here and said matter-of-factly: "Over 400 million people come into the U.S. every year, including returning American citizens, and there are 800,000 aircraft arrivals. If someone wants to bring in a vial of anthrax (a lethal bacteria), they're probably going to get in."
Moreover, 9 million large cargo containers arrive by ship from abroad every year. The customs official, who cannot be named under conference rules, continued: "We can inspect only two or three percent of
them for possible terrorist weapons. Altogether, we can't find the proverbial needle in the haystack." The main conclusion from the conference: The United States, despite its multiple law enforcement agencies and powerful military forces, is mighty vulnerable to terrorist attack. "The danger could come from anywhere," said Steven S. Alm, the U.S. Attorney here and a host of the conference. "The focus of an attack could be anyplace."
That danger may have increased as a consequence of the recent cruise missile assault on alleged terrorist centers in Afghanistan and Sudan ordered by President Clinton in retaliation for the bombing of
U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The State Department has warned of "the potential for retaliatory acts against Americans and American interests." Noting that terrorists "have not distinguished between military and civilian targets," the State Department said, "we take these threats seriously."
On a wider range, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis Freeh, told a Senate committee: "The trend toward more large-scale incidents designed for maximum destruction, terror, and media impact actually places an increasing proportion of our population at risk." Pointing to biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, Freeh said: "These weapons of mass destruction represent perhaps the most serious potential threat facing the United States today."
Until last year, international terror had been on a decline because of better defenses, more international action, and improved law enforcement. The number of incidents fell to a 25 year low in 1996, then rose a bit to 304 episodes in 1997. Some observers even scoffed at the threat. David Kopel of the Cato Institute, a research organization in Washington, said two years ago that only 200 Americans a year had been killed by terror, less than the 317 who fell off ladders, and far less than the 42,000 killed in automobile accidents.
That, however, overlooked a fundamental difference: People fall off ladders by accident but innocents are deliberately slaughtered by terrorists for political ends. Not to be underestimated are the stunning effect of a terrorist explosion, as in Oklahoma City, the trauma caused by the capricious temper of terrorism, as at the Olympics in Atlanta, and the concentration of casualties, as in the airliner downed by a bomb over Scotland, all magnified by televised pictures on the six o,clock news. When soldiers go into battle,
some know they will die. When a young mother takes her child with her to the post office, her husband does not expect them to be killed by a bomb sitting in the mail.
Kopel's argument, however, does point up the dilemma of a free society in trying to cope with terror. On one hand, Americans cherish the freedom to enter public buildings or pass easily through airports for which they pay taxes. On the other hand, they expect to be protected by policemen and soldiers"also hired by tax money--who might seek to curtail those freedoms in the name of security. No one has yet
figured out how to balance those two legitimate demands.
A fresh assessment of the new terrorist threats from the National Defense University in Washington says the U.S. and other developed nations have become more vulnerable because "economies and
infrastructures are increasingly integrated and people move more or less freely across borders." Rogue states such as the seven designated by the State Department-Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea,
Sudan, and Syria-find terror tempting "because they are not able to confront the United States more directly," said the NDU study.
It adds, however: "Rogues need not be governments; they can be radical movements" that turn to terror "to blackmail governments and gain publicity." The FBI identified some as formal terrorist groups, such as Hizballah in Lebanon, Al-Gama Al-Islamiyya in Egypt, the Palestinian HAMAS, and the Irish Republican Army. Beyond them are what the FBI terms "loosely affiliated international radical extremists" that are "neither surrogates of, nor strongly influenced by, any one nation." According to an FBI report, "they have the ability to tap into a variety of official and private resource bases in order to
facilitate terrorists acts against U.S. interests." Evidently one private resource was Osama bin Ladin, the Saudi financier fingered by the U.S. as having paid for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Although the recent attacks were against embassies, terrorist targets have changed as governments and military forces have sought to protect themselves. "In the 1990's," says the NDU survey, "most international terrorist incidents have targeted businesses rather than governments." Of the 50 attacks against American interests in 1996, the report says, 50 were against civilian businesses compared with 4 against military and 2 against other government targets.
Weapons of terror promise to become more insidious, especially biological weapons that are easier and cheaper to produce than chemical or nuclear weapons. Says James Anderson of the Heritage
Foundation, another Washington think tank, a "bioterrorist attack will cause mass casualties because densely populated areas make lucrative targets." Enough anthrax, for instance, can be carried in a brief case to kill tens of thousands of unsuspecting people.
In an otherwise scary conference, there was one bright spot: An official of the Central Intelligence Agency said "no known instance of a successful transaction in trafficking of nuclear materials was
detected last year." In the next breath, however, the official said "the CIA's reliable reporting on this is
limited and fragmentary."
Richard Halloran, formerly with The New York Times in Asia and Washington, writes about Asia from Honolulu. He is a consultant to the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, and a regular contributor to the Global Beat. For reprint rights, please contact him at tel: 808-395-0511, fax 808-396-4095, or e-mail: oranhall@compuserve.com
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