That said, however, no counterterrorism expert will ever concede the risk has ended-it’s a tough world out there, they say, and the world’s last remaining superpower has plenty of enemies. “I believe [the World Trade Center bombing] is an action inspired by a combination of frustration and resentment at the world leadership role of the United States,” said Robert O’Neill, former director of London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies and a professor of modern history at Oxford. Translation: it could be anybody-or, as another British expert put it, the trade-center bombing could have been carried out by any of “perhaps two or three dozen groups.”
Figuring out who did it is the essential first step. If there’s a new gang of bad guys out there, the tedious work of forensic analysis should eventually give U.S. intelligence agencies something to go on. Terrorism has changed its face over the past two decades. Skyjacking and spectacular raids like the one at the Munich Olympics have all but disappeared-and one reason may be the fact that the CIA and other intelligence agencies have radically improved their ability to monitor known terrorist cells and spot the considerable operational planning that must be accomplished before a paramilitary assault can be launched.
But bombings are far more difficult to stop ahead of time because they require less planning, less support and fewer participants. “Bombs are a throwaway weapon,” says Robert Kupperman, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “You set the timer and go away. Nobody suspects you. You can choose to take credit for the attack or not take credit.”
U.S. authorities must meanwhile try to tighten security at likely targets and at the borders. At a minimum, this means keeping a much closer watch at U.S. ports of entry and more surveillance of alien political activists inside the United States. At a maximum, it can mean incursions on civil liberties that few Americans would accept. “In an open society like ours, there’s absolutely nothing to stop [terrorists],” says Eric Hammel, who wrote a book on the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. “People aren’t going to put up with lots of checks and searches. That’s not how Americans operate.”
Most terrorist attacks have precursor events in the recent past-a rumor, an explicit threat or a sign that somebody was preparing a major hit. The CIA, which has excellent computer archives of reported terrorist incidents almost everywhere in the world, can use its data to try to develop patterns that point toward a particular group. At the weekend, U.S. officials were looking for just such leads-but one source said, “We’re not finding much.”
Given the dearth of obvious leads, the best any U.S. official could say last week was that Washington was making the World Trade Center bombing a top priority. Many experts seemed to be betting that the bombing was the work of a new terrorist organization, and some speculated that it was connected to the turmoil in what used to be Yugoslavia. But what if it wasn’t? “We shouldn’t automatically [assume] this is the beginning of a new world war,” said Jerry Bremer, the State Department’s top counterterrorism official in the 1980s. “It’s entirely plausible that this is some disgruntled employee who’s been fired.” And that’s the last lesson of preventing terrorist attacks: don’t overlook the obvious.
Eleven people died after a bomb exploded at the TWA terminal. FALN, a Puerto Rican independence group, was a chief suspect.
Four CIA employees were killed by a gunman, thought to be a Pakistani national who wanted to lodge a protest against Serb abuses of Bosnian Muslims.
A bomb planted at the Statue of Liberty caused $15,000 in damage, but no injuries. Among the suspects were Croatian nationalists, who may also have left a bomb in Grand Central Terminal four years earlier.
In response to an Israeli attack on PLO headquarters in Tunis, four Palestinians seized the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro for three days. Wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer was shot and thrown overboard.
A plastic explosive on Pan Am Flight 103 killed all 259 people aboard, including 35 Syracuse University exchange students.
A bomb killed an American sergeant in a disco frequented by U.S. servicemen. Holding Libya responsible, Ronald Reagan sent U.S. planes to attack Tripoli.
Abu Nidal’s group struck twice the same day at different airports. Twenty people were killed, including five Americans, one of them an 11-year-old girl.
In an effort to free Lebanese prisoners, Shiite Muslims hijacked TWA Flight 847, holding hostages for 17 days and killing a U.S. Navy diver.
After four Arab terrorists seized Pan Am Flight 73, the pilot fled. But 21 others, including two Americans, died when the hijackers, fearing an assault on the plane, threw grenades and opened fire on their hostages.
