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Subject: IP: The Great Superterrorism Scare
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From: believer@telepath.com
Subject: IP: The Great Superterrorism Scare
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 09:03:50 -0500
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Subject: The Great Superterrorism Scare 
From: RoadsEnd@AOL.COM - Sept. 29, 1998 (Thanks for all your research)
      http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807/

The Great Superterrorism Scare
http://www.jya.com/superterror.htm

28 September 1998 - Source: Foreign Policy, Fall, 1998, pp. 110-124. 
Thanks to the author and Foreign Policy. http://www.foreignpolicy.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Great Superterrorism Scare - http://www.jya.com/superterror.htm

by Ehud Sprinzak

     EHUD SPRINZAK is professor of political science at Hebrew
     University of Jerusalem. This article was written under the
     auspices of the United States Institute of Peace where he spent
     the last year as a senior scholar with the Jennings Randolph
     program.

Last March, representatives from more than a dozen U.S. federal agencies
gathered at the White House for a secret simulation to test their readiness
to confront a new kind of terrorism. Details of the scenario unfolded a
month later on the front page of the New York Times: Without warning,
thousands across the American Southwest fall deathly ill. Hospitals
struggle to rush trained and immunized medical personnel into crisis areas.
Panic spreads as vaccines and antibiotics run short--and then run out. The
killer is a hybrid of smallpox and the deadly Marburg virus, genetically
engineered and let loose by terrorists to infect hundreds of thousands
along the Mexican-American border.

This apocalyptic tale represents Washington's newest nightmare: the threat
of a massive terrorist attack with chemical, biological, or nuclear
weapons. Three recent events seem to have convinced the policymaking elite
and the general public that a disaster is imminent: the 1995 nerve gas
attack on a crowded Tokyo subway station by the Japanese millenarian cult
Aum Shinrikyo; the disclosure of alarming new information about the former
Soviet Union's massive biowarfare program; and disturbing discoveries about
the extent of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hidden chemical and
biological arsenals. Defense Secretary William Cohen summed up well the
prevailing mood surrounding mass-destruction terrorism: "The question is no
longer if this will happen, but when."

Such dire forecasts may make for gripping press briefings, movies, and
bestsellers, but they do not necessarily make for good policy. As an
unprecedented fear of mass-destruction terrorism spreads throughout the
American security establishment, governments worldwide are devoting more
attention to the threat. But as horrifying as this prospect may be, the
relatively low risks of such an event do not justify the high costs now
being contemplated to defend against it. Not only are many of the
countermeasures likely to be ineffective, but the level of rhetoric and
funding devoted to fighting superterrorism may actually advance a potential
superterrorist's broader goals: sapping the resources of the state and
creating a climate of panic and fear that can amplify the impact of any
terrorist act.

CAPABILITIES AND CHAOS

Since the Clinton administration issued its Presidential Decision Directive
on terrorism in June 1995, U.S. federal, state, and local governments have
heightened their efforts to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack
involving weapons of mass destruction. A report issued in December 1997 by
the National Defense Panel, a commission of experts created by
congressional mandate, calls upon the army to shift its priorities and
prepare to confront dire domestic threats. The National Guard and the U.S.
Army Reserve must be ready, for example, to "train local authorities in
chemical- and biological-weapons detection, defense, and decontamination;
assist in casualty treatment and evacuation; quarantine, if necessary,
affected areas and people; and assist in restoration of infrastructure and
services." In May, the Department of Defense announced plans to train
National Guard and reserve elements in every region of the country to carry
out these directives.

In his 1998 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton promised to
address the dangers of biological weapons obtained by "outlaw states,
terrorists, and organized criminals." Indeed, the president's budget for
1999, pending congressional approval, devotes hundreds of millions of
dollars to superterrorism response and recovery programs, including large
decontamination units, stockpiles of vaccines and antibiotics, improved
means of detecting chemical and biological agents and analyzing disease
outbreaks, and training for special intervention forces. The FBI, Pentagon,
State Department, and U.S. Health and Human Services Department will
benefit from these funds, as will a plethora of new interagency bodies
established to coordinate these efforts. Local governments are also joining
in the campaign. Last April, New York City officials began monitoring
emergency room care in search of illness patterns that might indicate a
biological or chemical attack had occurred. The city also brokered deals
with drug companies and hospitals to ensure an adequate supply of medicine
in the event of such an attack. Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, and Washington are developing similar programs with state and
local funds. If the proliferation of counterterrorism programs continues at
its present pace, and if the U.S. army is indeed redeployed to the home
front, as suggested by the National Defense Panel, the bill for these
preparations could add up to tens of billions of dollars in the coming
decades.

Why have terrorism specialists and top government officials become so
obsessed with the prospect that terrorists, foreign or homegrown, will soon
attempt to bring about an unprecedented disaster in the United States? A
close examination of their rhetoric reveals two underlying assumptions:

The Capabilities Proposition. According to this logic, anyone with access
to modem biochemical technology and a college science education could
produce enough chemical or biological agents in his or her basement to
devastate the population of London, Tokyo, or Washington. The raw materials
are readily available from medical suppliers, germ banks, university labs,
chemical-fertilizer stores, and even ordinary pharmacies. Most policy today
proceeds from this assumption.

The Chaos Proposition. The post-Cold War world swarms with shadowy
extremist groups, religious fanatics, and assorted crazies eager to launch
a major attack on the civilized world--preferably on U.S. territory. Walter
Laqueur, terrorism's leading historian, recently wrote that "scanning the
contemporary scene, one encounters a bewildering multiplicity of terrorist
and potentially terrorist groups and sects." Senator Richard Lugar agrees:
"fanatics, small disaffected groups and subnational factions who hold
various grievances against governments, or against society, all have
increasing access to, and knowledge about the construction of, weapons of
mass destruction.... Such individuals are not likely to he deterred . . .
by the classical threat of overwhelming retaliation."

There is, however, a problem with this two-part logic. Although the
capabilities proposition is largely valid--albeit for the limited number of
terrorists who can overcome production and handling risks and develop an
efficient means of dispersal--the chaos proposition is utterly false.
Despite the lurid rhetoric, a massive terrorist attack with nuclear,
chemical, or biological weapons is hardly inevitable. It is not even
likely. Thirty years of field research have taught observers of terrorism a
most important lesson: Terrorists wish to convince us that they are capable
of striking from anywhere at anytime, but there really is no chaos. In
fact, terrorism involves predictable behavior, and the vast majority of
terrorist organizations can be identified well in advance.

Most terrorists possess political objectives, whether Basque independence,
Kashmiri separatism, or Palestinian Marxism. Neither crazy nor stupid, they
strive to gain sympathy from a large audience and wish to live after
carrying out any terrorist act to benefit from it politically. As terrorism
expert Brian Jenkins has remarked, terrorists want lots of people watching,
not lots of people dead. Furthermore, no terrorist becomes a terrorist
overnight. A lengthy trajectory of radicalization and low-level violence
precedes the killing of civilians. A terrorist becomes mentally ready to
use lethal weapons against civilians only over time and only after he or
she has managed to dehumanize the enemy. From the Baader-Meinhoff group in
Germany and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka to Hamas and Hizballah in the
Middle East, these features are universal.

Finally, with rare exceptions--such as the Unabomber--terrorism is a group
phenomenon. Radical organizations are vulnerable to early detection through
their disseminated ideologies, lesser illegal activities, and public
statements of intent. Some even publish their own World Wide Web sites.
Since the 1960s, the vast majority of terrorist groups have made clear
their aggressive intentions long before following through with violence.

We can draw three broad conclusions from these findings. First, terrorists
who threaten to kill thousands of civilians are aware that their chances
for political and physical survival are exceedingly slim. Their prospects
for winning public sympathy are even slimmer. Second, terrorists take time
to become dangerous, particularly to harden themselves sufficiently to use
weapons of mass destruction. Third, the number of potential suspects is
significantly less than doomsayers would have us believe. Ample early
warning signs should make effective interdiction of potential
superterrorists easier than today's overheated rhetoric suggests.

THE WORLD'S MOST WANTED

Who, then, is most likely to attempt a superterrorist attack? Historical
evidence and today's best field research suggest three potential profiles:

   * Religious millenarian cults, such as Japan's Aum Shinrikyo, that
     possess a sense of immense persecution and messianic frenzy and hold
     faith in salvation via Armageddon. Most known religious cults do not
     belong here. Millenarian cults generally seclude themselves and wait
     for salvation; they do not strike out against others. Those groups
     that do take action more often fit the mold of California's Heaven's
     Gate, or France's Order of the Solar Temple, seeking salvation through
     group suicide rather than massive violence against outsiders.

   * Brutalized groups that either burn with revenge following a genocide
     against their nation or face the prospect of imminent destruction
     without any hope for collective recovery. The combination of
     unrestrained anger and total powerlessness may lead such groups to
     believe that their only option is to exact a horrendous price for
     their loss. "The Avengers," a group of 50 young Jews who fought the
     Nazis as partisans during World War II, exemplifies the case.
     Organized in Poland in 1945, the small organization planned to poison
     the water supply of four German cities to avenge the Holocaust.
     Technical problems foiled their plan, but a small contingent still
     succeeded in poisoning the food of more than 2,000 former SS storm
     troopers held in prison near Nuremberg.

   * Small terrorist cells or socially deranged groups whose alienated
     members despise society, lack realistic political goals, and may
     miscalculate the consequences of developing and using chemical or
     biological agents. Although such groups, or even individual "loners,"
     cannot be totally dismissed, it is doubtful that they will possess the
     technical capabilities to produce mass destruction.

Groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, and Islamic Jihad, which so many Americans
love to revile--and fear--do not make the list of potential
superterrorists. These organizations and their state sponsors may loathe
the Great Satan, but they also wish to survive and prosper politically.
Their leaders, most of whom are smarter than the Western media implies,
understand that a Hiroshima-like disaster would effectively mean the end of
their movements.

Only two groups have come close to producing a superterrorism catastrophe:
Aum Shinrikyo and the white supremacist and millenarian American Covenant,
the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, whose chemical-weapons stockpile was
seized by the FBI in 1985 as they prepared to hasten the coming of the
Messiah by poisoning the water supplies of several U.S. cities. Only Aum
Shinrikyo fully developed both the capabilities and the intent to take tens
of thousands of lives. However, this case is significant not only because
the group epitomizes the kind of organizations that may resort to
superterrorism in the future, but also because Aum's fate illustrates how
groups of this nature can be identified and their efforts preempted.

Although it comes as no comfort to the 12 people who died in Aum
Shinrikyo's attack, the cult's act of notoriety represents first and
foremost a colossal Japanese security blunder. Until Japanese police
arrested its leaders in May 1995, Aum Shinrikyo had neither gone
underground nor concealed its intentions. Cult leader Shoko Asahara had
written since the mid-1980s of an impending cosmic cataclysm. By 1995, when
Russian authorities curtailed the cult's activities in that country, Aum
Shinrikyo had established a significant presence in the former Soviet
Union, accessed the vibrant Russian black market to obtain various
materials, and procured the formulae for chemical agents. In Japan, Asahara
methodically recruited chemical engineers, physicists, and biologists who
conducted extensive chemical and biological experiments in their lab and on
the Japanese public. Between 1990 and 1994, the cult tried six
times--unsuccessfully--to execute biological-weapons attacks, first with
botulism and then with anthrax. In June 1994, still a year before the
subway gas attack that brought them world recognition, two sect members
released sarin gas near the judicial building in the city of Matsumoto,
killing seven people and injuring 150, including three judges.

In the years preceding the Tokyo attack, at least one major news source
provided indications of Aum Shinrikyo's proclivity toward violence. In
October 1989, the Sunday Mainichi magazine began a seven-part series on the
cult that showed it regularly practiced a severe form of coercion on
members and recruits. Following the November 1989 disappearance of a
lawyer, along with his family, who was pursuing criminal action against the
cult on behalf of former members, the magazine published a follow-up
article. Because of Japan's hypersensitivity to religious freedom, lack of
chemical- and biological-terrorism precedents, and low-quality domestic
intelligence, the authorities failed to prevent the Tokyo attack despite
these ample warning signs.

ANATOMY OF AN OBSESSION

lf a close examination reveals that the chances of a successful
superterrorist attack are minimal, why are so many people so worried? There
are three major explanations:

Sloppy Thinking

Most people fail to distinguish among the four different types of
terrorism: mass-casualty terrorism, state-sponsored chemical- or
biological-weapons (CBW) terrorism, small-scale chemical or biological
terrorist attacks, and superterrorism. Pan Am 103, Oklahoma City, and the
World Trade Center are all examples of conventional terrorism designed to
kill a large number of civilians. The threat that a "rogue state," a
country hostile to the West, will provide terrorist groups with the funds
and expertise to launch a chemical or biological attack falls into another
category: state-sponsored CBW terrorism. The use of chemical or biological
weapons for a small-scale terrorist attack is a third distinct category.
Superterrorism--the strategic use of chemical or biological agents to bring
about a major disaster with death tolls ranging in the tens or hundreds of
thousands--must be distinguished from all of these as a separate threat.

Today's prophets of doom blur the lines between these four distinct
categories of terrorism. The world, according to their logic, is
increasingly saturated with weapons of mass destruction and with terrorists
seeking to use them, a volatile combination that will inevitably let the
superterrorism genie out of the bottle. Never mind that the only place
where these different types of terrorism are lumped together is on
television talk shows and in sensationalist headlines.

In truth, the four types of terrorism are causally unrelated. Neither
Saddam Hussein's hidden bombs nor Russia's massive stockpiles of pathogens
necessarily bring a superterrorist attack on the West any closer. Nor do
the mass-casualty crimes of Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City or the World
Trade Center bombing. The issue is not CBW quantities or capabilities but
rather group mentality and psychological motivations. In the final
analysis, only a rare, extremist mindset completely devoid of political and
moral considerations will consider launching such an attack.

Vested Interests

The threat of superterrorism is likely to make a few defense contractors
very rich and a larger number of specialists moderately rich as well as
famous. Last year, Canadian-based Dycor Industrial Research Ltd. unveiled
the CB Sentry, a commercially available monitoring system designed to
detect contaminants in the air, including poison gas. Dycor announced plans
to market the system for environmental and antiterrorist applications. As
founder and president Hank Mottl explained in a press conference, "Dycor is
sitting on the threshold of a multi-billion dollar world market." In
August, a New York Times story on the Clinton administration's plans to
stockpile vaccines around the country for civilian protection noted that
two members of a scientific advisory panel that endorsed the plan
potentially stood to gain financially from its implementation. William
Crowe, former chair of the joint chiefs of staff, is also bullish on the
counterterrorism market. He is on the board of an investment firm that
recently purchased Michigan Biologic Products Institute, the sole maker of
an anthrax vaccine. The lab has already secured a Pentagon contract and
expects buyers from around the world to follow suit. As for the expected
bonanza for terrorism specialists, consultant Larry Johnson remarked last
year to U.S. News & World Report, "It's the latest gravy train."

Within the U.S. government, National Security Council experts, newly
created army and police intervention forces, an assortment of energy and
public-health units and officials, and a significant number of new
Department of Defense agencies specializing in unconventional terrorism
will benefit from the counterterrorism obsession and megabudgets in the
years ahead. According to a September 1997 report by the General Accounting
office, more than 40 federal agencies have been involved already in
combating terrorism. It may yet be premature to announce the rise of a new
"military-scientific-industrial complex," but some promoters of the
superterrorism scare seem to present themselves as part of a coordinated
effort to save civilization from the greatest threat of the twenty-first
century.

Morbid Fascination

Suspense writers, publishers, television networks, and sensationalist
journalists have already cashed in on the superterrorism craze. Clinton
aides told the New York Times that the president was so alarmed by
journalist Richard Preston's depiction of a superterrorist attack in his
novel The Cobra Event that he passed the book to intelligence analysts and
House Speaker Newt Gingrich for review. But even as media outlets spin the
new frenzy out of personal and financial interests, they also respond to
the deep psychological needs of a huge audience. People love to be
horrified. In the end, however, the tax-paying public is likely to be the
biggest loser of the present scare campaign. All terrorists--even those who
would never consider a CBW attack--benefit from such heightened attention
and fear.

COUNTERTERRORISM ON A SHOESTRING

There is, in fact, a growing interest in chemical and biological weapons
among terrorist and insurgent organizations worldwide for small-scale,
tactical attacks. As far back as 1975, the Symbionese Liberation Army
obtained instructions on the development of germ warfare agents to enhance
their "guerrilla" actions. More recently, in 1995, four members of the
Minnesota Patriots Council, an antitax group that rejected all forms of
authority higher than the state level, were convicted of possession of a
biological agent for use as a weapon. Prosecutors contended that the men
conspired to murder various federal and county officials with a supply of
the lethal toxin ricin they had developed with the aid of an instruction
kit purchased through a right-wing publication. The flourishing mystique of
chemical and biological weapons suggests that angry and alienated groups
are likely to manipulate them for conventional political purposes. And
indeed, the number of CBW threats investigated by the FBI is increasing
steadily. But the use of such weapons merely to enhance conventional
terrorism should not prove excessively costly to counter.

The debate boils down to money. If the probability of a large-scale attack
is extremely small, fewer financial resources should be committed to
recovering from it. Money should be allocated instead to early warning
systems and preemption of tactical chemical and biological terrorism. The
security package below stresses low-cost intelligence, consequence
management and research, and a no-cost, prudent counterterrorism policy.
Although tailored to the United States, this program could form the basis
for policy in other countries as well:

   * International deterrence. The potential use of chemical and biological
     weapons for enhanced conventional terrorism, and the limited risk of
     escalation to superterrorism, call for a reexamination of the existing
     U.S. deterrence doctrine--especially of the evidence required for
     retaliation against states that sponsor terrorism. The United States
     must relay a stern, yet discreet message to states that continue to
     support terrorist organizations or that disregard the presence of
     loosely affiliated terrorists within their territory: They bear direct
     and full responsibility for any future CBW attack on American targets
     by the organizations they sponsor or shelter. They must know that any
     use of weapons of mass destruction by their clients against the United
     States will constitute just cause for massive retaliation against
     their countries, whether or not evidence proves for certain that they
     ordered the attack.

   * Domestic deterrence. There is no question that the potential use of
     chemical and biological weapons for low-level domestic terrorism adds
     a new and dangerous dimension to conventional terrorism. There is
     consequently an urgent need to create a culture of domestic deterrence
     against the nonscientific use of chemical and biological agents. The
     most important task must be accomplished through legislation. Congress
     should tighten existing legislation against domestic production and
     distribution of biological, chemical, and radiological agents and
     devices.

     The Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 enlarged the federal criminal code to
     include within its scope a prohibition on any attempts, threats, and
     conspiracies to acquire or use biological agents, chemical agents, and
     toxins. It also further redefined the terms "biological agent" and
     "toxin" to cover a number of products that may be bioengineered into
     threatening agents. However, the legislation still includes the
     onerous burden of proving that these agents were developed for use as
     weapons. Take the case of Larry Wayne Harris, an Ohio man arrested in
     January by the FBI for procuring anthrax cultures from an unknown
     source. Harris successfully defended his innocence by insisting that
     he obtained the anthrax spores merely to experiment with vaccines. He
     required no special permit or license to procure toxins that could be
     developed into deadly agents. The FBI and local law enforcement
     agencies should be given the requisite authority to enforce existing
     laws as well as to act in cases of clear and present CBW danger, even
     if the groups involved have not yet shown criminal intent. The
     regulations regarding who is allowed to purchase potentially
     threatening agents should also be strengthened.

     A campaign of public education detailing the dangers and illegality of
     nonscientific experimentation in chemical and biological agents would
     also be productive. This effort should include, for example, clear and
     stringent university policies regulating the use of school
     laboratories and a responsible public ad campaign explaining the
     serious nature of this crime. A clear presentation of the new threat
     as another type of conventional terrorism would alert the public to
     groups and individuals who experiment illegitimately with chemical and
     biological substances and would reduce CBW terrorism hysteria.

   * Better Intelligence. As is currently the case, the intelligence
     community should naturally assume the most significant role in any
     productive campaign to stop chemical and biological terrorism.
     However, new early warning CBW indicators that focus on radical group
     behavior are urgently needed. Analysts should be able to reduce
     substantially the risk of a CBW attack if they monitor group
     radicalization as expressed in its rhetoric, extralegal operations,
     low-level violence, growing sense of collective paranoia, and early
     experimentation with chemical or biological substances. Proper CBW
     intelligence must be freed from the burden of proving criminal intent.

   * Smart and compact consequence management teams. The threat of
     conventional CBW terrorism requires neither massive preparations nor
     large intervention forces. It calls for neither costly new
     technologies nor a growing number of interagency coordinating bodies.
     The decision to form and train joint-response teams in major U.S.
     cities, prompted by the 1995 Presidential Decision Directive on
     terrorism, will be productive if the teams are kept within proper
     proportions. The ideal team would be streamlined so as to minimize the
     interagency rivalry that has tended to make these teams grow in size
     and complexity. In addition to FBI agents, specially trained local
     police, detection and decontamination experts, and public-health
     specialists, these compact units should include psychologists and
     public-relations experts trained in reducing public hysteria.

   * Psychopolitical research. The most neglected means of countering CBW
     terrorism is psychopolitical research. Terrorism scholars and U.S.
     intelligence agencies have thus far failed to discern the
     psychological mechanisms that may compel terrorists to contemplate
     seriously the use of weapons of mass destruction. Systematic group and
     individual profiling for predictive purposes is almost unknown.
     Whether in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, or the United
     States, numerous former terrorists and members of radical
     organizations are believed to have considered and rejected the use of
     weapons of mass destruction. To help us understand better the
     considerations involved in the use or non-use of chemical and
     biological weapons, well-trained psychologists and terrorism
     researchers should conduct a three-year, low-cost, comprehensive
     project of interviewing these former radicals.

   * Reducing unnecessary superterrorism rhetoric. Although there is no way
     to censor the discussion of mass-destruction terrorism, President
     Clinton, his secretaries, elected politicians at all levels,
     responsible government officials, writers, and journalists must tone
     down the rhetoric feeding today's superterrorism frenzy.

There is neither empirical evidence nor logical support for the growing
belief that a new "postmodem" age of terrorism is about to dawn, an era
afflicted by a large number of anonymous mass murderers toting chemical and
biological weapons. The true threat of superterrorism will not likely come
in the form of a Hiroshima-like disaster but rather as a widespread panic
caused by a relatively small CBW incident involving a few dozen fatalities.
Terrorism, we must remember, is not about killing. It is a form of
psychological warfare in which the killing of a small number of people
convinces the rest of us that we are next in line. Rumors, anxiety, and
hysteria created by such inevitable incidents may lead to panic-stricken
evacuations of entire neighborhoods, even cities, and may produce many
indirect fatalities. It may also lead to irresistible demands to fortify
the entire United States against future chemical and biological attacks,
however absurd the cost.

Americans should remember the calls made in the 1950s to build shelters,
conduct country-wide drills, and alert the entire nation for a first-strike
nuclear attack. A return to the duck-and-cover absurdities of that time is
likely to be as ineffective and debilitating now as it was then. Although
the threat of chemical and biological terrorism should be taken seriously,
the public must know that the risk of a major catastrophe is extremely
minimal. The fear of CBW terrorism is contagious: Other countries are
already showing increased interest in protecting themselves against
superterrorism. A restrained and measured American response to the new
threat may have a sobering effect on CBW mania worldwide.

                           Setting the FBI Free

  When members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo went shopping in the
  United States, they were not looking for cheap jeans or compact discs.
  They were out to secure key ingredients for a budding chemical-weapons
  program--and they went unnoticed. Today, more FBI agents than ever are
  working the counterterrorism beat: double the number that would-be
  superterrorists had to contend with just a few years ago. But is the
  FBI really better equipped now than it was then to discover and preempt
  such terrorist activity in its earliest stages?

  FBI counterterrorism policy is predicated on guidelines issued in 1983
  hy then-U.S. attorney general William French Smith: The FBI can open a
  full investigation into a potential act of terrorism only "when facts
  or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are
  engaged in activities that involve force or violence and a violation of
  the criminal laws of the United States." Short of launching a full
  investigation, the FBI may open a preliminary inquiry if it learns from
  any source that a crime might be committed and determines that the
  allegation "requires some further scrutiny." This ambiguous phrasing
  allows the FBI a reasonable degree of latitude in investigating
  potential terrorist activity.

  However, without a lead--whether an anonymous tip or a public news
  report--FBI agents can do little to gather intelligence on known or
  potential terrorists. Agents cannot even download information from
  World Wide Web sites or clip newspapers to track fringe elements. The
  FBI responds to leads; it does not ferret out potential threats.
  Indeed, in an interview with the Center for National Security Studies,
  one former FBI official griped, "You have to wait until you have blood
  on the street before the Bureau can act."

  CIA analysts in charge of investigating foreign terrorist threats comb
  extensive databanks on individuals and groups hostile to the United
  States. American citizens are constitutionally protected against this
  sort of intrusion. A 1995 presidential initiative intended to increase
  the FBI's authority to plant wiretaps, deport illegal aliens suspected
  of terrorism, and expand the role of the military in certain kinds of
  cases was blocked by Congress. Critics have argued that the costs of
  such constraints on law enforcement may he dangerously
  high--reconsidering them would be one of the most effective (and
  perhaps least expensive) remedies against superterrorism.

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WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Brian Jenkins first makes his well-known argument that terrorists want a
lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead, in "Will Terrorists Go
Nuclear?" (Orbis, Autumn 1985). More recently, Jenkins provides a reasoned
analysis of weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) terrorism in the aftermath of
the Tokyo subway attack in "The Limits of Terror: Constraints on the
Escalation of Violence" (Harvard International Review, Summer 1995). For a
counter argument, see Robert Kupperman's "A Dangerous Future: The
Destructive Potential of Criminal Arsenals" in the same issue. Ron Purver
reviews the literature on superterrorism and weighs the opportunities for,
and constraints on, terrorists considering a WMD attack in "Chemical and
Biological Terrorism: New Threat to Public Safety?" (Conflict Studies,
December 1996/January 1997). Jerrold Post and Ehud Sprinzak stress the
psychopolitical considerations inhibiting potential WMD terrorists in "Why
Haven't Terrorists Used Weapons of Mass Destruction?" (Armed Forces
Journal, April 1998). For a solid compilation of essays on superterrorism,
see Brad Roberts, ed., Terrorism with Chemical and Biological Weapons:
Calibrating Risks and Responses (Alexandria: Chemical and Biological Arms
Control Institute, 1997). Walter Laqueur surveys the history of terrorism
and finds an alarming number of barbarians at the gate in "Postmodern
Terrorism" (Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996). John Deutch takes a
counterintuitive look at the subject in "Think Again: Terrorism" (FOREIGN
POLICY, Fall 1997). Finally, David Kaplan provides the best available study
of Aum Shinrikyo in his excellent book The Cult at the End of the World:
The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to
the Nuclear Arsenals of Russia (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996).

The World Wide Web provides a number of resources for superterrorism
research. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nonproliferation
Project and the Henry L. Stimson Center provide regular coverage of
nuclear-, chemical-, and biological-weapons issues, including terrorism.
The Federation of American Scientists publishes a wealth of government
documents as well as excellent news and analysis pertaining to weapons of
mass destruction. And the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism"
provides one-stop shopping for information on some of the world's more
notorious organizations.

For links to these and other Web sites, as well as a comprehensive index of
related articles, access http://www.foreignpolicy.com.

[End]

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Also see:

Money Laundering -The BCCI Mystery Continues
Rose Attorney Hillary Rodham represented a Stephens
subsidiary, the Systematics bank-data processing firm.
http://www.aci.net/kalliste/

Judicial Watch's RICO case against Clinton
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/980929_judicial_watchs_cas.html

Clinton's secret war games
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/exclusiv/980929.exbre_clintons_secr.html

The War On Truth
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/smith/980929.comcs.html

Here you can examine the fairness of the UN climate change treaty....
http://www.climatefacts.org/

Bilderberg Conferences 
http://www.tlio.demon.co.uk/1998.htm

"....no conspiracy can survive expose'...."
-----------------------
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