Terrorism in Our Face

...The conference gave Riyadh support for a tough line on Iraq, and the June 23 summit communiqué called for keeping sanctions on Iraq, while affirming that the Iraqi regime was "solely responsible for the suffering of the Iraqi people...

...45 31444M'3 motivation Not only was Iraq the most obvious candidate for the bombing, it had particular reason to strike just then...

...Iraq's official media celebrated the second bombing, as it had the first: "The United States which calls this incident an act of terrorism, practices the ugliest kinds of terrorism...

...was not going to endorse the most likely explanation—Iraq—and that all they could do to prove themselves in control was to sacrifice some scapegoats...

...This time the Saudis suggested that the bombing was an Iranian-backed operation...

...On issues of life and death, Americans are trusting of authority, even, oddly, of this president...

...This led to the first Arab summit conference since the war...

...Most likely they recognized that the U.S...

...Formally, Prince Khalid was General Schwarzkopf's co-commander in the war against Iraq...

...Islamic Change took credit for the Damascus bombing, which it claimed was in retaliation for the Syrian murder of Jaffar al Shweikhat, whom the Saudis charge transported the Dhahran bomb from Lebanon and whom they claim died in Syrian custody...

...Indeed, the results have been disastrous...

...Even as they had failed to arrest those who built the bomb or the two men who had been seen speeding away from the truck just before it exploded, they had detained forty others, all of them Shiites — a minority Muslim sect dominant in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Iran...

...The investigation into TWA 800 was difficult and complex...

...Saddam's speech that morning was the most ferocious he had given since the Gulf war...

...He was a Middle Eastern male, thirty to forty years old, with thinning hair, mustache—and no beard...

...was engaged in "state-sponsored terrorism...

...Iraq's Foreign Ministry regularly and formally protests the coalition over flights as "provocative and hostile violations" of its airspace...

...what about flight BOO...

...But while the administration is more than ready to acknowledge that terrorism in other countries, like Israel, is carried out by terrorist states, like Iran, and terrorist organizations, like Hamas or Hezbollah, often with the support of terrorist states, it is strangely blind to the notion that that should be the case when major terrorist attacks occur against U.S...

...The FBI has already supplanted the State Department as the lead agency in dealing with terrorism, and its role is growing...

...Despite the signs pointing to state sponsorship, Clinton declared instead, "We have already begun the process of determining what happened and who, if anyone, was responsible—if it was not an accident—and we will devote an enormous effort to that...

...On December 29, the Foreign Ministers of Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf sheikhdoms, met in Damascus...

...Within hours, TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island...

...The finding was dutifully reported by the national media and strongly criticized by investigators in New York...

...When bureaucracies do not want to know something, it is easy to say "there is no evidence" and otherwise dismiss important material...

...If the president defines terrorism as a law enforcement issue, what incentives do the national security agencies have to analyze the information in their possession for clues that would suggest state sponsorship...

...Iraq added to its indictment of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait the charge that the U.S...

...Marine barracks in Lebanon...

...Al Hayat's editor explained that the only previous threats made against the paper had occurred during the Gulf war...

...In the preceding months, a new coalition had emerged among Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt—the triumvirate that had constituted the core of Arab opposition to Iraq during the Gulf war...

...It was the first appearance of the Islamic Change Movement since November 13, following the Riyadh bombing...

...The Iraqi National Accord, which consisted largely of former members of the regime and shared its thuggishness, had carried out a number of bombings in Baghdad, with attendant civilian casualties...

...More significantly, Saddam had established a secret committee after the invasion of Kuwait for just such operations against U.S...

...Indeed, Al Hayat had some months earlier published a complaint from Sheikh Omar about prison conditions in Missouri...

...military personnel...

...from Lebanon...

...authorities would also blame "Saudi fundamentalists" for the The American Spectator April 1997 Dhahran bomb, making the regime's opposition appear more organized, violent, and capable than it is...

...Perhaps such words are even reassuring in their implicit promise that some modern-day Wyatt Earp will right the wrong...

...But what have been the results...

...The fax took credit for the Riyadh and Dhahran bombings...

...U.S...

...from foreign military bases inside the Arab homeland," he raged...

...Not one major terrorist bombing of a U.S...

...media was quick to jump to the conclusion — the followers of Sheikh Omar were behind the letter bombs...

...Min more Cad: The administration's head in the sand policy perhaps helps explain why the bombings have continued...

...Economic sanctions against Iraq have been in place for more than six years, and U.S.-imposed "no-fly zones" cover two-thirds of the country...

...Iraq was the only Arab state not invited...

...A key assumption had been made—that the explosion had occurred without leaving a trace of evidence...

...The meeting was held in Cairo, just days before the Dhahran bombing...

...It concluded that if there had been a small stream of leaking fuel, it could have created an electrical spark, igniting vapors in the center tank, causing the explosion, but leaving no trace...

...The next day Iraq's official press counter-attacked, charging that the statement had been "dictated" by the United States and "paid for" by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia...

...The paper reported that it had received a fax from the previously unknown "Islamic Change Movement" threatening to attack the "crusader forces" and "influential members of the Al Sa'ud family" if foreign forces did not leave Saudi Arabia by June 28...

...Those concerned with this meeting used the skulls of the free Arabs as stepping stones to make themselves taller," Saddam thundered...

...Two others were sent to another paper in Saudi Arabia, and three were sent to Leavenworth federal prison, addressed only to the "Parole Officer...

...The fax marked the first time Al Hayat had received a message from the group or indeed any letter like it...

...The FBI has failed to come up with evidence that would demonstrate the crash was an act of terrorism...

...Like the two faxes that preceded that bombing, the July 16 fax arrived before the crash and suggested that it was not just coincidence that the downing of TWA 800 took place on Iraq's national day...

...It was the first such bombing in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the most lethal assault on a U.S...

...The attacks, otherwise random and incomprehensible, make sense as steps in a complex foreign intelligence maneuver, simultaneously threatening the United States and Saudi Arabia and aiming to split the United States from the Arabs by convincing the notoriously skittish Saudis that they cannot rely on the U.S...

...Why, then, did the Saudis claim to have resolved the matter with the executions of four men...

...There was another reason for Iraq to retaliate against the United States: The CIA was financing a group to overthrow Saddam...

...Who would want to simultaneously threaten Saudi Arabia and the United States...

...That same day, April 11, the first explicit threat to U.S...

...46 April 19 9 7 • The American Spectator Nor did the fax sent to Al Hayat receive proper consideration...

...He was angry at the Arab summit three weeks before and, in his view, the Arabs had backed sanctions—starving the Iraqi people to keep Iraq weak and promote themselves...

...The American Spectator • April 19 9 7 Then, in the first two weeks of January of this year, twenty letter bombs were received in the United States, Britain, and Saudi Arabia, all postmarked from Alexandria, Egypt, on or about December 21...

...One likely reason is that, by shifting the emphasis from rogue states to rogue individuals, the United States has lost sight of the fact that we have national enemies—and that one state in particular, Iraq, is a bitter enemy indeed...

...fired in anger and, until recently, the CIA was actively involved in trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime...

...what 1.3 dinteli n rift:n Terrorism has become a major issue under Clinton...

...Baghdad radio broadcast the threat the next day...

...But on April lo, 1995, UNSCOM reported that Iraq had an offensive biological weapons program...

...Yet Clinton once again responded as if it were a law enforcement problem...

...President Clinton, however, has subtly but unmistakably turned terrorism from a national security issue into a law enforcement issue — rather than punishing nations or groups thought to be behind terrorist acts, Clinton lays the blame on individuals, and makes public pronouncements that the individuals responsible will be brought to justice...

...The interesting point is that one more bomb with an apparent Iraqi connection exploded and one more missive from Islamic Change appeared...

...A major story about how the CIA had stepped up its campaign against Baghdad through the INA chanced to appear in the Washington Post on June 23...

...The four were executed a month later, but there was one problem: soon after the bombing, Saudi authorities had released a sketch of a man seen emerging from the bomb-laden vehicle just before the explosion...

...Previously the United States had acted under the assumption that terrorist bombings were the work of terrorist states or terrorist organizations...

...It is unlikely that so many people would have been involved in such a plot or even had knowledge of it...

...There is no country in the world against which the United States enforces harsher measures...

...They used the skulls of Iraqi children and elderly as stepping stones to trample the nation's dignity, thinking that they can avoid the dangers of the sweeping flood and the flaming fire that is burning under their feet—a fire that is caused by their own peoples...

...Indeed, "the mission of the 4404th Wing (Provisional)," as the Pentagon report on the bombing explained, is to "serve in the front line of defense against possible Iraqi aggression...

...The best evidence of this is the death of one million Iraqi children because of the U.S...

...Neither the letter bombings, nor the Saudi attacks, nor indeed Flight 800 have been explained satisfactorily...

...The size of the bomb was enormous, and its deployment was clearly the work of trained professionals...

...This is partly a consequence of the administration's narrow focus on that process, generating the impression that terrorism has become the exclusive province of ranting mullahs, while secular figures, like Saddam and even Hafez al-Assad, are out of the business...

...As one Saudi paper observed, "Nobody has paid tribute to this crime except for the press in Iraq...

...The Iraqi people consist of 18 million people...

...The NTSB then asked what if there had been a tiny leak in the fuel pipe passing through the central fuel tank, linking the two wing tanks...

...pilots enforcing the no-fly zone over southern Iraq...

...federal parole was abolished a decade ago...

...That was the work of Syrian and Iranian intelligence...

...He hinted at state sponsorship, and implied either Iran or Iraq was responsible...

...Yet the day after the crash, Clinton addressed a shocked nation, "I want to caution the American people —we have no evidence—we have no evidence on this flight yet that would indicate the cause of the accident...

...Evidently, he was not told of Saddam's angry speech that morning...

...Pressed by the Senate Armed Services Committee to explain how the second bombing could have occurred, Secretary of Defense William Perry seemed unwilling to say what he surely knew—given the size and sophistication of the bomb, it was almost certainly state-sponsored, and there were two likely candidates, Iraq and Iran...

...A senior Saudi official, speaking privately several months later, was much more direct: "Of course that was Iraq...

...Islamic Change reappeared five days after that, in faxes sent to several news organizations, including Al Hayat...

...They focused on a Saudi national, Osama bin Ladin...

...Months later there is no official explanation for the crash...

...Current administration would rather bury its head in the desert sand than link Iraq to TWA flight 800, the Dhahran killings, and the recent letter omb campaign...

...servicemen were exposed to chemical agents in the Gulf war— until the political pressure became so great that it was finally obliged to acknowledge the significance of the information long in its possession...

...Probably only Clinton could get up after every tragedy and propose the least likely, politically most convenient explanation, produce no results, and consistently get away with it...

...The bombing had all the earmarks of state-sponsored terrorism...

...facility in the Middle East since 1983, when a Syrian-Iranian bombing campaign drove the U.S...

...citizens...

...training mission in Riyadh...

...In late April 1996, four men in their mid-zos, wearing, as the Times put it, "the broad beards that are an emblem of devout Islamic faith," confessed to the bombing on Saudi television, in statements that seemed scripted and "almost surreal...

...Resolution 687, the formal cease-fire to the Gulf war, Saddam must turn over all of Iraq's banned weapons to the U.N...

...After the bombing, Baghdad's official press gloated, "Gulf tigers shake the Saudi throne and deprive Washington of sleep...

...He then arranged for twenty tons of C-4 explosive to be shipped to Qatar, whence two tons were sent across the border into Saudi Arabia and used in the Dhahran bombing...

...Uri Dan, an Israeli journalist with close connections to Israeli intelligence, wrote: "Israeli counter-intelligence people who have been analyzing the subject of Middle Eastern terror closely...point a finger directly at Saddam Hussein...

...A high ranking Iraqi defector, General Wafiq Samarrai, who headed military intelligence during the Gulf war, suspected Baghdad was behind the Riyadh bomb and that it was the work of the committee on which he had once served...

...Until the spring of 1995, it looked as if Saddam could shake off the sanctions, even as he had managed to conceal the existence of an entire proscribed program...

...Is the morning not near...

...Instead Perry told the senators, "It is reasonable to assume that these bombers had extensive support from an experienced and well-financed international terrorist organization...

...challenged recent statements by U.S...

...The report also stated that while in Sudan, Bin Ladin met with an Iraqi intelligence officer, an Egyptian extremist, and a Palestinian expert on car bombs...

...That, after all, is what the Pentagon did regarding the possibility that U.S...

...With or without Mr...

...But citing Israeli and British intelligence sources, Uri Dan wrote, "Assad is well aware that Iraq's dictator...is almost certainly the mastermind...

...Iraq is the only state against which Clinton has ever ordered a shot LAURIE MYLROIE, a senior associate at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is co-author of Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf (Random House...

...The bigger question is why the Clinton administration was willing to leave the matter at that...

...Then, on January 6, Saddam gave another angry speech, in which he condemned the Arabs' "mini or expanded conferences" — an apparent reference to the Cairo summit and the recent Foreign Ministers meeting...

...Iraq is being attacked daily...

...and British aircraft are taking off daily from Najd [ Saudi Arabia] to violate Iraqi air space and miserably try to divide Iraq under the fictitious lines which Washington has marked...in the hope of fulfilling its damned evil dreams...

...That report meant sanctions were not coming off Iraq, at least not as envisaged in 687, because Saddam refuses to give up any of his biological stockpile...

...Those who imposed and accepted the statement are official and effective parties to the policy of annihilating millions of Iraqis...

...Saddam condemned them most vividly on Iraq's national day, some three weeks after the bombing...

...This approach has been criticized by the president's own blue-ribbon commission on intelligence, and has proved singularly unsuccessful in protecting U.S...

...The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has failed to find any malfunctioning equipment to prove it an accident...

...Bin Ladin is a Sunni fundamentalist, who got his first taste of jihad in the Muslim war against the Soviets in Afghanistan...

...It is easy to discredit information, much harder to make sense of it...

...According to the leaked report, in early 1996 Bin Ladin flew to Qatar, where he discussed plans for attacks in Saudi Arabia...

...authorities were not satisfied with the Saudi information, charging that it was mostly "hearsay" and obtained through torture...

...It required that two sets of bureaucracies, the FBI and the national security agencies, analyze and integrate two sets of information: the evidence from the crime scene and the foreign intelligence...

...Investigators were able to determine that the central fuel tank had exploded, but not what had caused that explosion...

...Baghdad has never accepted the legitimacy of that zone...

...Given the Saudis' experience with the investigation of the Riyadh bombing, they may well have feared that U.S...

...We are ready to work with [the Saudis] to make sure those responsible are brought to justice...

...for their protection...

...The Riyadh bombing of November 13, 1995, and the subsequent terrorism can be explained as part of Saddam's efforts to secure the lifting of sanctions...

...But the foreign intelligence was not analyzed properly in Washington and did not flow properly to investigators in New York...

...politicians and their followers among rulers in our Arab homeland" that "Iraq's abandonment of part of its weapons...does not mean it has lost everything...

...A major expansion of FBI offices and activity overseas is underway, to the consternation of the national security agencies whose turf the bureau is usurping...

...And there is reason for suspicion about the crash of TWA flight Soo, though it has not officially been described as a terrorist act...

...In late October, U.S...

...Subsequently, he went on to finance fundamentalists seeking to overthrow governments elsewhere...

...and concluded, "The movement will give a decisive reply to the threats of the stupid American president and everyone will be surprised by the size of the response and the mujhadin's choice of the time and place...

...ambassador to Saudi Arabia explained shortly afterwards, "We know that it was not a homemade device like the Oklahoma City bomb, but one that required expertise...

...U.S...

...And if the national security agencies don't do their job properly, law enforcement operates in a strategic vacuum...

...The Dhahran bombing occurred the next day...

...targets...

...Special Commission (UNSCOM) to get sanctions lifted...

...The president regularly pronounces it one of the country's top national security challenges in the post—cold war era, even as the tool he has chosen for dealing with that problem is law enforcement...

...Saddam, then, has good reason to detest the United States...

...They issued a statement, which put "full blame on the Iraqi regime" for the continuing sanctions...

...Yet unless the issue of state sponsorship is properly addressed, there will almost certainly be more attacks, because those most responsible never pay a price, even if law enforcement manages to arrest, prosecute, and convict a perpetrator or two...

...target occurred under George Bush...

...The invaders must prepare to leave alive or dead...

...It may be that, during their investigation, Saudi authorities stumbled on such a group...

...There is no such officer...

...Syria immediately accused Israel...

...At 11:4o am on November 13—lunch time for Americans and prayer time for the Saudis— a 250-pound bomb exploded at the U.S...

...Bin Ladin, wasn't Iraq the most likely suspect for the bombing of the complex housing the U.S...

...Jim Kallstrom, who led the FBI investigation, remarked that July 17 was Iraq's National Day, as well as the anniversary of another Middle Eastern event, but he did not see the relevance of either...

...The tiny amount of explosive was enough to cause serious injury, as it did in London, and even death...

...Fifteen of the bombs were sent to the offices ofAl Hayat, Prince Khalid's newspaper, in Washington, New York, London, and Riyadh...

...last year there were two bombings of United States military facilities in Saudi Arabia...

...As the Sunni-Shi'a schism is the basic divide in Islam, Saudi authorities were essentially claiming that one group had carried out the first bombing and an entirely different group had carried out the second...

...Although the Islamic Change Movement reemerged to claim credit in a fax sent to several news agencies, Iraq's response was telling...

...targets in Saudi Arabia...

...Nonetheless, the State Department discounted its importance, dismissing the fax as a "political tract...a general fulmination against the American presence in Saudi Arabia...

...In January a series of letter bombs were sent to various American locations...

...Clinton thus made the judgment that the bomb wasthe work of individuals, to be arrested by the Justice Department, rather than a state to be punished by the Pentagon...

...The Saudis claimed that the Dhahran bomb was built in Lebanon, with Tehran's support and possibly Damascus's knowledge, and transported from there to Saudi Arabia...

...airmen constituted the bulk of America's forward-deployed offensive capability and, along with British and French forces, enforced the "no-fly," limited-forces zone over the southern third of Iraq...

...That was a professional bomb...

...It was left to Sheikh Omar—convicted for "seditious conspiracy" after a second New York bombing plot in the wake of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center—and other fundamentalists to explain that they would not target Al Hayat, which had been open to their views...

...Sheikh Omar denounced the letter bombs through a spokesman, who explained, "Al Hayat has been moderate in its coverage of Islamist issues...

...Why did the Saudis finger Tehran...

...forces in Saudi Arabia appeared in a London-based paper, A/ Quds al Arabi, funded by Baghdad...

...The "black box" revealed that a sudden, catastrophic event had occurred, but did not reveal what that event was...

...Yet the report ends, "Mr...

...The next day was Iraq's national day...

...Seven people were killed...

...blockade...If it thinks it can cope with such operations, then it should send more coffins to Saudi Arabia...

...One-eighth of an ounce of the military explosive Semtex was concealed in musical greeting cards, triggered to explode when the card was opened...

...Their appointment is the morning...

...On December 24 of last year, in his annual "Christmas message," Saddam lashed out again at the "evildoers...enforcing a regime of sanctions against us...

...Why not Saddam, keener than ever to lift sanctions...

...The bomb was probably "masterminded by Saudis against Saudis," the New York Times's Thomas Friedman reported a month later...

...Why...

...If the report is accurate, then the Iraqi intelligence officer was the most significant of those involved—Iraq supplied the expertise and was essentially responsible for the bombing...

...officials...

...The New York Times described the device as having a "sophisticated detonator...

...It was equally possible, however, that the key evidence had been washed away, by salt water, tides, and hurricanes...

...The four men executed in April were of the rival Sunni Muslim sect...

...authorities leaked their suspicions about the Dhahran bombing...

...On July i6 the Islamic Change Movement suddenly reappeared, when it faxed a threat to London-based Al Hayat, an Arabic-language newspaper owned by Khalid bin Sultan, son of the Saudi defense minister and commander of the Arab and Muslim forces during the Gulf war...

...Not since the early 1980's had a bus been bombed in Damascus, when Iraq supported Syrian fundamentalists in a campaign against the regime...

...The very next day, the number two official in Iraq's information ministry wrote in Al-Iraq, warning "U.S...

...authorities concluded just that...

...Bin Ladin represents a new brand of international terrorism that has little connection to state sponsors...

...On July 3, Al Quds al Arabi reported receiving another fax from the group, asserting the deadline had passed and it "would soon begin to carry out its threats by attacking senior princes and foreign forces...

...Subscribe to '1 he American Spectator...call 1-Soo-524-3469 47...

...It may sound appealing, when, after each terrorist incident, the president, often biting his lip with suppressed emotion, vows to bring the perpetrators to justice...

...Should it be necessary, these people can become a huge potent force in defense of their interests...

...Certainly the Saudi story does not have a great deal of internal coherence...

...If so, they had reason...

...In short, there was no evidence to explain the crash...

...But because of the three bombs sent to Leavenworth prison, the U.S...

...Two days later a bomb exploded on a bus in Damascus, killing a dozen people...

...Particularly if they had not made much progress in the bombing investigation, the Saudis might have decided to take care of one problem and pretend that they had solved another...

...So why all the bombs during Clinton's reign...

...He vowed to work with the Saudis in "identifying those responsible...and bringing them to justice...

...aahran bombing A month after the execution of the four Sunni fundamentalists, a fuel tanker was driven on June 25 to within eighty yards of a large complex in Dhahran, capital of Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern province—and a bomb twenty times larger than at Riyadh exploded outside a high-rise building housing members of the United States Air Force, killing nineteen U.S...

...Iran is an enemy of Saudi Arabia and it is a terrorist state...

...Never before had a plane, without warning or indication of any malfunction whatsoever, dropped from the sky, amid a fireball no less, and the cause was not terrorism...

...My it' mylroie 42 April 1997 • The American Spectator 3144111'3 Gas1111111118 Under U.N...

...But, as one former CIA official observes, "Forty people sounds about right for the core of a political-religious movement...

...As the U.S...

...The only precedent for a bomb of that magnitude in the entire region—from the Mediterranean to the Gulf—was the 1983 bombing of the U.S...

...The targeted U.S...

...He vowed, "The cowards who com44 April 19 9 7 • The American Spectator miffed this murderous act must not go unpunished...

...Bin Ladin is so extreme that Saudi authorities revoked his citizenship in the early 1990's, and he went to live in Sudan...

...Indeed, it was not long before U.S...

...It is also the foremost sponsor of terrorism against the Arab-Israeli peace process, and Americans associate Iran with terrorism...