Hindsight from The New Gun Week September 10, 1998
Tools of Terrorism Big and Small
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive EditorA number of Americans, including many newspaper and broadcast commentators, could not help comparing President Clinton's strikes against suspected terrorist installations in The Sudan and Afghanistan on Aug. 20, following his admission of lying in the Monica Lewinski matter three days earlier with the plot of the recent movie "Wag the Dog."
They saw the close proximity of the events as a parallel to that movie president's attempt to deflect public attention from his own sexual peccadillos.
Whatever the underlying reasons for the missile attacks in Africa and Asia, this Administration and other governments seem genuinely concerned about the dangers posed by the growing threat of free-lance and government-sponsored terrorism.
It is worth noting that a major target of the government's recent anti-terrorism strikes, Saudi millionaire and alleged terrorism sponsor Osama bin Laden, is probably not amused by the "Wag the Dog" analogy. He responded to the US strikes by saying he had not yet begun to fight and that his war against the United States and its interests was just getting started.Assassination Orders
Then, on Aug. 25, Associated Press reported the details of earlier allegations about bin Laden, saying that bin Laden, the alleged plotter of two US embassy bombings in Africa, directed his followers at least twice to kill President Clinton, but neither attempt was ever made.
The first assassination attempt was to take place when Clinton visited the Philippines to begin a trip to Asia on Nov. 2, 1994, but it was abandoned because of heavy security, Newsday reported, citing counterterrorism and intelligence sources.
Ramzi Yousef, later convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was to have been the hit man, The New York Post reported.
He told FBI agents he planned to use missiles or explosives while Clinton was in a motorcade, Newsday reported. The Post said a chemical attack was also considered.
A second attempt was planned for Pakistan in February, when Clinton had scheduled-but later canceled-a visit.
Yousef admitted his plan to kill Clinton to FBI agents who were escorting him from Pakistan to New York in 1995 for his trial in the bombing, the sources said. But he did not identify bin Laden as the mastermind, they reported.
But one of his co-defendants, Wali Khan Amin Shah, once a top aide to bin Laden, told federal authorities in New York recently that the order to assassinate Clinton had come from bin Laden, according to two unidentified US officials.
A federal grand jury in Manhattan recently heard details of the aborted assassination plot, AP cited the sources as saying.
Whether bin Laden had targeted Clinton simply because he was president of the United States and as a symbol of American global power and not for personal reasons is unclear. However, the Administration's targeting of bin Laden is likely to turn the current anti-terrorism campaign into a personal grudge match.Escalating Battle
The Administration, meanwhile, is warning of an escalating battle against terrorism, even as Republicans and other opponents put aside their criticisms of President Clinton to support the missile attacks against suspected terrorist sites.
"This is a scourge that we are dealing with today, we are likely to deal with it tomorrow, and we will likely face the kind of terrorism that could use chemical and biological weapons, as well," Defense Secretary William Cohen said Aug. 23.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also repeated the pro-active stance the Administration has stressed since the attacks in Sudan and Afghanistan. "We believe that we have a legal right to self-defense," she said on ABC's "This Week." The United States will seek the cooperation of its friends, she said, but "We will take unilateral action when we think that our national interest has been threatened."
The US launched more than 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a chemical plant in Sudan and terrorist camps in Afghanistan, saying both were linked to bin Laden, who the Administration has accused of masterminding the American embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
White House national security adviser Sandy Berger said the six bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan "have been rendered ineffective."
The assassination of foreigners has been banned since the Ford administration and Cohen, on NBC's "Meet the Press," said bin Laden was not the target of the missile strikes. But he said bin Laden is responsible for the deaths of some 270 people in the embassy bombings, and he wouldn't be bothered if bin Laden were killed in a future US raid.
"If he has declared war against the United States, which he has, and if he is part of the command and control of that terror network, then if he is in the line of fire as such, that's his problem," Cohen said.
Senatorial Comments
"What bin Laden did was an act of war," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), agreed. "When you're at war it's not assassination." Specter, who last month questioned whether Clinton timed the attack to divert attention from the sex scandal with Monica Lewinsky, praised the intelligence community for its work leading up to the attack. "It's really a matter that we have no alternative. We are at war with terrorism," he said on "Fox News Sunday."
"I think the president deserves a lot of credit for having made the decision to do this," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), another frequent Clinton critic, said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN), who also questioned Clinton's motives a week earlier, welcomed the stepped-up campaign against terrorism and told CNN's "Late Edition" that while the president still has a credibility problem, there was "credible evidence" warranting the military response.
Cohen said briefings given some of the doubting lawmakers after the attacks convinced them there is strong evidence that bin Laden was involved in the embassy bombings and planned other attacks on Americans.
Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS that US officials had very reliable evidence the embassy bombings were the first of three or possible four attacks.
Newsweek magazine said the operation, code-named "Infinite Reach," was so secret that even people in Cohen's office weren't informed. It said one factor behind the decision to move ahead with the attack was an intercepted mobile-phone conversation between two of bin Laden's lieutenants that clearly implicated them in the embassy bombings.
It seems clear that the war against terrorism is going to be long and protracted. What is of special concern is the predilection of many in government to focus strategic defensive thinking on modern weaponry, including biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. These may be big and scary, but they are so expensive and require such sophistication in handling and delivery that we would be better served concentrating on the smaller weapons.
Among these, the car bomb seems the one most easily made and delivered to a target. The deaths and injuries in Kenya and Tanzania on Aug. 7 give tragic testimony to the danger of such a weapon.
In countries like Great Britain and Ireland, where personal firearms are as outlawed as biological, chemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the terrorist's choice still seems to be the car bomb.
One need look no further back than the early August detonation of a car bomb in Northern Ireland which slaughtered 28 people. So appalling was the result of that blast that even some of the militant "freedom fighters" in Ireland, who have been more or less at war with England for several centuries publicly backed away from the further use of such attacks.
Several lessons are to be learned from the brands of terrorism practiced in the British Isles and in Israel.
The first, of course, is a lesson from both areas: such battles are not decided by antiseptic strikes from the air, whether by aircraft or sea-launched missiles, but by a seemingly decades-long and even centuries-long war of attrition in which everyone can be a target, not just bin Laden or Clinton.
Second, from the British Isles is that the use of common explosives poses a much greater threat to the population of a country than gee-whiz weapons of mass destruction.
Third, from Israel, comes the lesson that an armed civilian population may be the best deterrent to terrorism yet devised. This last suggests that in the US, the very least we can do to protect the average citizen is to pass legislation that allows CCW licensees to carry in any state they may travel.
The New Gun Week is published three times a month by the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) on the 1st, 10th, and 20th. Hindsight is a commentary written by SAF President and Gun Week Executive Editor Joseph P. Tartaro. This commentary may be reprinted so long as credit is given to the author and the publication. For more information or to subscribe, write Gun Week, PO Box 488, Buffalo, NY 14209, or call 716-885-6408 Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST, or inquire on Compuserve to John Krull, Production manager-JohnSAF@Compuserve.com or gunweeksaf@broadviewnet.netAlso, check out the New Gun Week at http://www.GunWeek.com