   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]






