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US foresaw terror threats in 1970s: AP
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-24 09:12
Nearly three decades before the Sept. 11 attacks, a high-level government
panel developed plans to protect the nation against terrorist acts ranging from
radiological "dirty bombs" to airline missile attacks, according to declassified
documents obtained by The Associated Press.
"Unless governments take basic precautions, we will continue to stand at the
edge of an awful abyss," Robert Kupperman, chief scientist for the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency, wrote in a 1977 report that summarized nearly five years
of work by the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism.
Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger, left, and President Richard M. Nixon are see after
Kissinger was sworn is as the 56th secretary of state in the East Room of
the White House in Washington in this Sept. 22, 1973 file photo. Nearly
three decades before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a high-level panel,
including Sec. Kissinger, established plans to avert terrorist attacks on
the United States, according to documents obtained by The Associated
Press. [AP] | The group was formed in September
1972 by President Nixon after Palestinian commandos slaughtered 11 Israeli
athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. The committee involved people as diverse
as Henry Kissinger to a young Rudolph Giuliani, the once-secret documents show.
"It is vital that we take every possible action ourselves and in concert with
other nations designed to assure against acts of terrorism," Nixon wrote in
asking his secretary of state, William Rogers, to oversee the task force.
"It is equally important that we be prepared to act quickly and effectively
in the event that, despite all efforts at prevention, an act of terrorism occurs
involving the United States, either at home or abroad," the president said.
The full committee met only once, in October 1972, to organize, but its
experts did get together twice a month over nearly five years to identify
threats and debate solutions, the memos show.
Eventually, the group's influence waned as competing priorities, a change of
presidents ushered in by Watergate, bureaucratic turf battles and a lack of
spectacular domestic attacks took their toll.
But before that happened, the panel identified many of the same threats that
would confront President Bush at the dawn of the 21st century.
The experts fretted that terrorists might gather loose nuclear materials for
a "dirty bomb" that could devastate an American city by spreading lethal
radioactivity.
"This is a real threat, not science fiction," National Security Council
staffer Richard T. Kennedy wrote his boss, Kissinger, in November 1972.
Rogers, in a memo to Nixon in mid-1973, praised the Atomic Energy
Commission's steps to safeguard nuclear weapons. Rogers, however, also warned
the president that "atomic materials could afford mind-boggling possibilities
for terrorists."
Committee members identified commercial jets as a particular vulnerability,
but raised concerns that airlines would not pay for security improvements such
as tighter screening procedures and routine baggage inspections.
"The trouble with the plans is that airlines and airports will have to absorb
the costs and so they will scream bloody murder should this be required of
them," according to a White House memo from 1972. "Otherwise, it is a sound plan
which will curtail the risk of hijacking substantially."
By 1976, government pressure to improve airport security and thwart
hijackings had awakened airline industry lobbyists.
The International Air Transport Association said "airport security is the
responsibility of the host government. The airline industry did not consider the
terrorist threat its most significant problem; it had to measure it against
other priorities. If individual companies were forced to provide their own
security, they would go broke," according to minutes from one meeting.
Thousands of pages of heavily blacked out records and memos obtained by the
AP from government archives and under the Freedom of Information Act show the
task force:
-- discussed defending commercial aircraft against being shot down by
portable missile systems;
-- recommended improved vigilance at potential "soft" targets, such as major
holiday events, municipal water supplies, nuclear power plants and electric
power facilities;
-- supported cracking down on foreigners living in and traveling through the
United States, with particular attention to Middle Easterners and
Arab-Americans;
-- developed plans to protect U.S. diplomats and
businessmen working abroad against kidnapping and attack.
Though the CIA routinely updated the committee on potential terrorist
threats and plots, task force members learned quickly that intelligence
gathering and coordination was a weak spot, just as Bush would discover three
decades later.
Long before he was mayor and helped New York City recover from the Sept. 11
attacks on the World Trade Center, Giuliani told the committee in May 1976 that
he feared legal restrictions were thwarting federal agents from collecting
intelligence unless there had been a violation of the law.
Giuliani, who at that time was the associate deputy attorney general in
President Ford's Justice Department, suggested relaxing intelligence collection
guidelines — something that occurred with the Patriot Act three decades later
Other committee members said that obstacles to intelligence gathering were
more bureaucratic than legal.
Lewis Hoffacker, a veteran ambassador who served as chairman of the terrorism
working group, told the AP that institutional rivalries, particularly between
the FBI and CIA, were a constant source of frustration even in the 1970s.
"That was our headache, a quarter-century ago," said Hoffacker, now retired.
"They all pulled back into their little fiefdoms. The CIA was always off by
itself, and the FBI was dealing with the same situation they're dealing with
today."
Finding the political will to fight terrorism in the absence of a major
attack in the United States also quickly became a problem. Proposals for
international penalties against countries harboring terrorists drew little
support from the United Nations (news - web sites), the memos show.
"The climate at the 1974 General Assembly was such that no profitable
initiative in the terrorism field was feasible," Ford heard from Kissinger, his
secretary of state, in early 1975.
Two years later, the working group was absorbed by the National Security
Council. In a 1978 report, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee worried
that the Carter administration was not giving enough attention to terrorism.
"The United States will not be able to combat the growing challenge of
terrorism unless the executive policy-making apparatus is more effectively and
forcefully utilized," the Senate committee warned.
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