The Washington Post, October 17, 1996, pp. A25, A32. U.S. Considers Slugging It Out With International Terrorism Aides Split on Whether to Target Groups or States That Sponsor Them By David B. Ottaway The Clinton administration, increasingly frustrated in its efforts to thwart terrorism in the Middle East, is considering a more activist policy that could include preemptive strikes and expanded covert counter-terror operations, according to senior U.S. officials. But U.S. strategists are divided over whether terror-sanctioning states or independent terrorist groups should be the primary targets of more aggressive U.S. action. Officials also disagree over whether military action -- an option fraught with potential problems -- would prove more effective than traditional diplomatic tools such as sanctions and boycotts against governments the State Department considers terrorism sponsors. Some U.S. officials contend that the main threat now comes from a murky network of home-grown, privately financed and largely independent groups forming a kind of international "terrorists' Internet," in the words of one expert. That network is proving extremely difficult for U.S. intelligence agencies to locate and penetrate let alone effectively counter. "The problem is getting worse faster than we're getting better," former CIA director James Woolsey Jr. said in an interview. "In relative terms, I'm not convinced we're gaining ground and we may well be losing a bit." The debate over how to combat terrorism comes amid charges from Republican presidential candidate Robert J. Dole and his party that the Clinton administration has been too soft on Middle East state sponsors of terrorism. Republicans also have charged that the administration has treated leaders of those countries "with undue respect," an apparent reference to President Clinton's efforts to win support for the Middle East peace process from Syrian President Hafez Assad despite indications that his country hosts terrorist groups. In this atmosphere, administration officials have discussed taking more aggressive action against terrorists and their sponsors. But given the risks involved in any military action, the likelihood of conducting preemptive strikes or an extensive covert operation before the Nov. 5 election is considered remote. Moreover, not all officials share Woolsey's sentiment that the terror threat is worsening. But CIA Director John Deutch said last month in a speech at Georgetown University that the CIA was drawing up a list of military options to present to Clinton "to act against terrorist groups directly either to prevent them from carrying out operations or to retaliate against groups we know are responsible for operations." "There will be no guaranteed safe havens anywhere in the world," he said. One example of "safe havens" that might be targeted are camps inside Afghanistan where Arab and other Islamic extremists have been receiving training in bombmaking and other terrorist techniques, another senior administration official said. Mir Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani fugitive wanted for the murder of two CIA employees outside the agency's headquarters in 1993, is reported to have taken refuge in one of these camps. Yet given the limited U.S. intelligence on these shadowy groups, the difficulties of carrying out a successful military strike against one of their camps inside a Middle East country appear enormous. Moreover, the administration's own officials remain divided over the next steps in the war on terrorism. It is not just Republicans who have questioned the administration's effectiveness in dealing with foreign terrorism. The Pentagon's own recent report on the June 25 truck bomb outside the U.S. military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, cited a long list of bureaucratic and intelligence failings in the U.S. counter-terrorism program. Ret. Gen. Wayne A. Downing, who led the investigation, emphasized the U.S. intelligence community's inability to penetrate terrorist groups. "We still have enormous difficulty in gaining first-hand, inside knowledge of terrorist plans and activities," the report said. At his Sept. 16 press conference, Downing seemed to support Republican allegations that U.S. penetration of the groups is being hampered by the CIA's new guidelines aimed at excluding use of serious human rights violators as agents. These restrictions, he said, "hamper the efforts of national intelligence agencies." Whether the Clinton administration has been too soft on terrorism sponsors as Republicans charge, it is clear its approach and policies have varied greatly -- as have the results. The State Department has designated five Middle East countries as such sponsors: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Sudan. The administration has alternately adopted policies of containment, pressure and dialogue or a mixture of the three -- depending on the diplomatic needs of the moment, the willingness of U.S. allies to cooperate and the other issues at stake in relations with those countries. While a combination of U.N. sanctions and military pressure has largely succeeded in curbing the terrorist activities of Libya and Iraq, U.S. efforts to curtail Iran's involvement through economic boycotts and joint allied Western pressure have failed, according to the State Department. Iran remains "the premier state sponsor of international terrorism and is deeply involved in the planning and execution of terrorist acts," said the State Department's 1996 report on "Patterns of Global Terrorism." Syria, however, continues to be treated gingerly by Washington although it serves as a safe haven for nearly a dozen Palestinian, Turkish and Lebanese opposition groups that "engage in international terrorism," the report said. Islamic extremists also operate training camps in Lebanon's Syrian controlled Bekaa Valley. In addition, Assad permits Damascus to be used as an operations base for Iranian agents who recruit Egyptian and other Islamic militants for terrorist training in Iran, according to sources close to Egyptian intelligence. Administration officials say their lenient policy toward Syria is dictated by the larger U.S. diplomatic objective of winning Assad's support for the Arab-Israeli peace process. In Sudan, the administration has wielded both the stick of strict U.N. sanctions and the carrot of better relations with Washington in an effort to get President Omar Bashir to stop Islamic extremists from using his country as a haven and staging center. The other U.S. demand is that Khartoum hand over three Egyptian dissidents wanted in connection with the June 1995 assassination attempt on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. U.S. pressure so far has resulted in the expulsion of some extremists and closing of some camps. But skeptical U.S. officials characterize those gestures as "cosmetic" or "tactical," taken to avoid further U.N. sanctions. Egyptian authorities say the Bashir government has simply reorganized the "closed camps" into smaller, mobile centers to avoid detection by overhead U.S. reconnaissance satellites. "Despite the PR campaign they've been launching lately," Osama Baz, Mubarak's national security adviser, said in an interview, "they are still receiving terrorists, or potential terrorists, arming them and providing them with forged travel documents." U.S. officials are divided over whether state sponsorship of terrorism remains the main challenge in curbing modern-day terrorist activities. Some officials argue that actions taken against rogue states still can make a significant difference. They cite the crackdown on activities of Middle East terrorists by formerly Communist countries in East Europe such as Bulgaria since the end of the Cold War and the expulsion by the Bosnian government -- under enormous U.S. pressure -- of most Islamic extremists from Bosnia. They also argue that the Palestine Liberation Organization has changed under U.S. and Israeli prodding from supporting terrorism to actively seeking to curb Islamic extremist activities. Former CIA director Woolsey contends, as do many administration officials, that if the United States could deal "effectively" with Iran and Syria, "the problem [of terrorism] would go from being an extremely serious one to being an occasional one.... It wouldn't go away, but it would be considerably more manageable." Other analysts disagree. Philip C. Wilcox, who heads the State Department's counter-terrorism office, contends that "the role of states in promoting terrorism is in sharp decline." Some Pentagon analysts agree the main problem now is the increasing number of fragmented and free-lancing Islamic extremist groups supported by private sources. "Whereas 10 to 15 years ago, we had a large number of state-sponsored groups and state sponsorship was relatively easy to discern, in today's environment we have far fewer state-sponsored groups," one Pentagon official said. For example, the Saudis have concluded that the four Saudi Islamic extremists executed for killing seven people, including five Americans, in a car-bomb explosion in Riyadh last November were not part of a larger Islamic extremist group, but rather carried out the operation on their own, influenced by militant Islamic teachers. "Today's terrorists don't have to depend that much any more on states for access to financing or the technological means," a Pentagon official noted. Nonetheless, L. Paul Bremer III, President Ronald Reagan's top counterterrorism official at the State Department in the mid-1980s, has proposed that Washington ratchet up its pressure on states like Syria and Sudan to force a crackdown on extremist groups. "We should just say, "You've got 48 hours or else," he said. "The terrorist camps in the Sudan, you take them out." No country has followed a more militant policy toward terrorists than Israel. Regularly, after attacks inside its borders, Israel has bombed camps of militant anti-Israeli groups in Lebanon and sent out assassins to kill their agents. The consequences have often led to the shedding of more Israeli blood than that of terrorists. In February 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships ambushed Abbas Musawi, leader of the militant Hezbollah faction, in southern Lebanon. A month later, a bomb exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 28 people. Hezbollah, through the Islamic Jihad faction, claimed responsibility, saying it was in revenge for Musawi's killing. Last January, a booby-trapped cellular telephone was used to assassinate Yehiya Ayash, the Palestinian mastermind of many terrorist attacks on Israelis. The technically sophisticated operation was widely seen to be the work of Israeli agents, although Israel never acknowledged a role. Ayash's death led to the most lethal sequence ever of suicide bombings in Israel, by Ayash's supporters in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad. Four attacks over a nine-day period last February and March left 59 victims dead. Israelis think "we don't have a choice" but to reply tit-for-tat to terrorist acts against them, Israeli political writer Nahum Barnea wrote after suspected Israeli agents gunned down Fathi Shiqaqi, the leader of Islamic Jihad, in Malta a year ago. "But the big question is does it work. Is it effective? Are we ready to accept the notion that retaliation will be pricey?" ----- Correspondents John Lancaster in Cairo and Barton Gellman and Edward Cody in Jerusalem contributed to this report. [End] ---------- The Washington Post, October 17, 1996, p. A21. Postal Service Plans to Leave Its Mark on Electronic Mail By Bill McAllister Computer devotees may regard its delivery service as "snail mail," but the U.S. Postal Service is betting millions of dollars that its reputation for handling mail will give it a leg up on the competition in cyberspace. The federal agency signaled yesterday that it is planning several major electronic mail ventures. Speaking at a forum on the Internet in Boston, Robert A F. Reisner, postal vice president for strategic planning, said the agency has signed agreements with three California- based computer firms that should help it create "a series of first-class mail electronic services." Officials said the agency has devoted $16 million to $20 million to the projects. Reisner announced that Cylink Corp. of Sunnyvale is developing a system for electronically postmarking and encrypting computer messages and said the agency has signed Sun Microsystems Inc. and Enterprise Productivity Inc. of Mountain View to develop software that will allow bulk mailers to calculate the price of mail shipments on the Internet. The Postal Service predicted that the new system ultimately will account for $5 billion in postage a year, about 9 percent of all postage. In his Boston speech, Reisner brushed aside suggestions that the federal government should leave development of electronic commerce entirely to private business. He said the Postal Service has proved itself "a trusted third party for more than two centuries," and said "we can transfer our trust to the electronic medium." In an interview, Reisner said the agency could become an "enabler" of electronic commerce rather than a major competitor with private firms. He likened the agency's role to the one it played in the 1920s when air mail routes laid the foundation for the airline industry. Computer industry experts long have been skeptical of the government playing a major role in electronic commerce and some see the agency's plans as direct competition with private computer encryption services. Reisner acknowledged their concerns in his speech, saying, "The USPS is almost certainly the wrong institution to develop services that can best be developed by private entrepreneurs. But at the same time, there is no other agency, public or private, that has the same reach to all parts of society or inherent trust as a third party in the communications system." Therefore, Reisner argued, the Postal Service should "surely" play a role in the transition to an electronic communications system. "The American people who own the enormous national postal infrastructure should expect no less of their company," he said. "Here is a classic opportunity to maximize both shareholder and customer value." Senior postal officials long have been worried about the impact electronic communications, such as e-mail and faxes, were having on mail. Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon has said that 35 percent of business-to-business mail has disappeared in recent years and has predicted that another 35 percent will vanish in the next five years. To offset that, the agency is planning "a series of services to mirror those of first class mail." The first is supposed to be electronic postmarking of e-mail messages, but other services planned include certification of receipt, registration and archiving of messages. Reisner said the electronic postmark, which involves a form of computer encryption, is being tested by 20 organizations, including law firms, hospitals and banks. Stratton Scalvos, president and chief executive of Verisign, a Mountain View, Calif., firm that makes devices for verifying who has sent and received electronic mail, said his firm had no objection to the Postal Service plan. It "actually complements" his products, he said. "This offering certainly is a worthwhile thing for the post office to do." While a number of private services offer ways to encrypt electronic messages and verify their receipt, the Postal Service is banking on the use of its force of postal inspectors to investigate any suspected tampering with electronic messages. This should give the agency an advantage its private encrypting competitors do not have, spokesmen have said. During recent congressional hearings, some of the agency's private competitors and its public regulators voiced skepticism of the agency's plans for electronics. Newspapers, delivery services and the agency's regulators have questioned whether the agency should concentrate on delivery of the mail and leave other services to private industry. [End]