Time: Sun Aug 17 14:45:38 1997
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Date: Sun, 17 Aug 1997 14:41:05 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: U.S. Experts Assess Terror Threat (fwd)
<snip>
>
> U.S. Experts Assess Terror Threat
>
> By LAURA MYERS
> Associated Press Writer
>
> WASHINGTON (AP) -- To moviegoers, it sounds like a summer
> blockbuster: Terrorists threaten the nation's capital with a nuclear
weapon.
>
> To U.S. policy makers, it sounds like an increasingly possible scenario.
>
> ``People don't understand the enormity of the national security threats out
> there,'' said Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., a foreign policy and arms control
> expert. ``We need to be vigilant. This is not a time to go to sleep at the
> switch.''
>
> Former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who is writing a book
> titled ``Six Nightmares'' detailing major threats to the U.S. government,
let
> slip that one involves a blackmailing nuclear terrorist.
>
> ``You'll just have to wait for the book,'' Lake said of his other nightmare
> visions, explaining his publisher won't let him give a preview.
>
> National security experts list these top modern menaces:
>
> --Weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, biological and chemical devices
> that can kill huge numbers of people and, in some cases, do immense
> physical damage.
>
> --Terrorism, domestic and foreign.
>
> --Narcotics traffic and international crime.
>
> --Global conflicts -- from belligerents in the former Yugoslavia and Russia,
> to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, to Asia, particularly the Korean
> Peninsula and around disputed China Sea territories.
>
> ``People are most afraid of the nuclear scenario, but biological weapons
> produce the same number of kills and are very easy to put together,'' said
> Robert Kupperman, a terrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and
> International Studies. ``You could just go over a major city and spray.''
>
> What-would-happen-if scenarios have no limit.
>
> Imagine the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 Oklahoma City
> federal building blast with a nuclear capability or a toxic cloud.
>
> Consider the 1995 Japanese subway sarin gas attack. In July, a former
> member of the cult responsible for it told a Tokyo court the group
> considered attacking the United States, shipping the gas to America by
> hiding containers in ice sculptures or concrete.
>
> In the latest apparent terrorist threat, two Palestinians were shot and
>arrested
> July 31 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City and accused of plotting
> to blow up a New York subway station with nail-loaded pipe bombs. Police
> said they found a note that vowed to ``burn the ground under America'' if
six
> jailed Islamic militants weren't freed. An FBI theory says the goal actually
> was extortion, the suspects seeking a $2 million reward from the State
> Department's ``heroes'' program that buys information about terrorists.
>
> Jeane Kirkpatrick, former permanent U.S. representative to the United
> Nations, warns of growing ranks of extremist terrorists, both freelancers
and
> those backed by ``outlaw nations'' such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya.
>
> ``I think it's related -- outlaw nations working all the time to acquire
>weapons
> of mass destruction and the continued spread of a kind of radical extremism,
> carried on often in the name of Islam,'' Kirkpatrick said.
>
> As the United States and Russia, the only major nuclear powers, reduce their
> arsenals, Washington is working to prevent other nations from developing
> such weapons, especially rogue states.
>
> President Clinton, at a Denver summit with world leaders in June,
> emphasized how America has enlisted other nations to fight nuclear
> terrorism, including tightened controls on plutonium stockpiles and a
> ``rapid-response network to prevent nuclear smuggling.''
>
> Congress, meanwhile, has ratified a treaty outlawing use, development,
> production, possession and transfer of chemical weapons. More than 80
> other nations have ratified it.
>
> Stopping rogue states from gaining weapons of mass destruction is not a
> straightforward matter. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has praised
> China for cooperating with the United States to contain North Korea's
> suspected nuclear weapons program. At the same time, the CIA considers
> China the world's leading exporter of technology for weapons of mass
> destruction, including nuclear missiles.
>
> The CIA lists Iran and Pakistan as leading buyers -- from Chinese and
> Russian sources -- of materials that could be used in nuclear, chemical and
> biological weapons.
>
> India, which has warred with Pakistan three times since partition in
1947, has
> resumed its long-range ballistic missile program. India exploded a nuclear
> device in 1974.
>
> The CIA, which focused on the Soviet threat during the Cold War, has now
> turned its attention to individuals worldwide involved in terrorism, weapons
> proliferation and drug trafficking, said CIA director George Tenet. The FBI,
> which in 1994 got worldwide jurisdiction under U.S. law over the federal
> crime of terrorism, is working with the CIA as it opens two dozen overseas
> offices.
>
> On narcotics and organized crime, law enforcers are cracking down on
> networks among the Italian Mafia, Russia mobs, Japanese yakuza, Chinese
> triads and Colombian and Mexican drug lords.
>
> Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., detailed in his book ``The New War'' what he
> called ``the web of crime that threatens America's security.'' As an
example,
> he wrote of a Russian hit man sent to New York City to kill an
> uncooperative store owner. The shooter got fake papers ``by supplying the
> Sicilian Mafia with Soviet Army surplus ground-to-air missiles to smuggle
> into the Balkans to supply the Bosnian Serbs with the firepower to take on
> U.N. security forces.''
>
> ``America is the great prize for criminals,'' Kerry concluded.
>
>
>
>
>J.J. Johnson
>500 N. Rainbow Blvd.
>Suite 300
>Las Vegas, Nevada 89107
>fedbuster@mindspring.com
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
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