Terrorism

Terrorism involves illegal acts of violence or intimidation by persons seeking to coerce or influence the conduct or policy of a government or civilian population. These acts often take the form of kidnapping, beating, or murder and are applied either individually, as in the case of hostage taking and assassination, or collectively through the hijacking of aircraft, or indiscriminate bombing. For most of the 20th century, the physical territory of the United States has been largely untouched by acts of international terrorism and only rarely touched by incidents of domestic terror, and its defense strategy has reflected this relative peace. The devastation wrought by the attacks on the twin World Trade Center towers of New York, and on the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., on September 11, 2001, forced the United States to dramatically rethink its homeland defense.

Most of the acts of terror inflicted on American soil during the early to mid-1970s came from domestic radicals, such as the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. These groups undertook criminal actions that included burglary, bank robbery, assassination of police officers, and bombings. Though members of these groups viewed themselves as radicals organized against the government, federal authorities generally treated them as they would criminal organizations. As a result, throughout most of the 1970s, the United States policy for homeland defense involved enacting new laws such as the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the Organized Crime Control Act (OCCA) of 1970, although these measure were aimed more against criminals than radical terrorists.

International terrorism was addressed only indirectly through a policy of economic sanctions against nations

Believed to harbor terrorist organizations or who gave asylum to hijackers. This response changed, however, in 1979, after Islamic fundamentalists overthrew the shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, and installed an Islamic revolutionary government. On November 4, with tacit approval from the new authorities, Iranian students stormed the American embassy in Tehran and held 52 hostages for 444 days. President Carter failed to win their release during his term, even after halting oil imports from Iran and freezing more than $8 billion in Iranian assets. The hostage crisis had two results; it emboldened other Arab nations to use terrorist groups to take hostages with relative impunity, and it forced American lawmakers to reassess their counterterrorism strategies. In addition to existing sanctions, Congress provided special funding for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Defense (DOD) for new special forces units and antiterrorism assistance programs. It also required the administration to establish specific protocols in the event of future attacks on Americans abroad.

In March 1984 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief William Buckley was kidnapped by Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad in Beirut, Lebanon, and was later tortured and executed. The following month, 18 servicemen were killed and 83 injured in a bomb attack by Hezbollah terrorists near a U. S. Air Force base in Torrejon, Spain. Beginning in 1983, dozens of journalists, academics, and businessmen were taken hostage in a series of abductions throughout the mid 1980s, including Associated Press bureau chief Terry Anderson; Joseph Cicippio and Thomas Sutherland of American University in Beirut, Lebanon; and American businessman Edward Tracy. Anderson was held hostage for more than six and a half years, and many others were held more than five years in captivity. In addition to taking hostages, terrorists used suicide bombers to attack American installations; twice in Beirut in 1983, including the U. S. embassy in April (17 dead), the marine barracks in October (299 dead), and the U. S. embassy in Kuwait in December (5 dead). The U. S. embassy annex in Beirut was bombed again in September 1984, killing 16. American citizens became special targets even when the installation was not American in origin; a navy diver aboard a TWA flight was killed after terrorists hijacked the plane and forced it to land in Beirut in 1985. They held 39 Americans for more than two weeks, awaiting their demanded release of 700 Arabs held in Israel. In October of that same year, Palestinian militants killed crippled American Leon Klinghoffer after they seized the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro. The wave of terrorism culminated in December 1988, when Pan Am flight 830 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

The United States responded with a flurry of legislation including the Act to Combat International Terrorism (1984), which established rewards for the capture of terrorists; a call for a civil aviation boycott of terrorist states in 1985, and the Anti-Terrorism Act (1987), which specifically prohibited trade with or recognition of agents of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In addition, President Ronald W. Reagan authorized the bombing of terrorist bases in Libya in April 1986. These efforts eliminated the more obvious vulnerabilities of American installations in the Middle East, but were largely ineffective in rescuing hostages. President Reagan came under criticism when he became associated with a CIA scheme to trade arms for hostages in the Iran-contra affair. For many Americans, however, terrorism remained a foreign problem associated with the Mideast peace process; the solution to future terrorism seemed to depend on peace treaties between Israel and Arab nations. Congress continued to address homeland security indirectly with the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 prohibiting transfer of relevant hazardous materials outside U. S. borders; an amendment to the Immigration and Naturalization Act (1990) providing safeguards against terrorist immigration; and the AntiTerrorism Act of 1990, which provided civil remedies for American victims of international terrorist assault.

By 1990 the frequency of terrorist attacks declined by a third from its average of 630 attacks a year during the mid-1980s. A period of relative peace followed the first years of the 1990s, until a surprise attack on the World Trade Center in February 1993 left six people dead and wounded more than 1,000 others. A bomb exploded in the parking garage, but it failed to bring the towers down. Six Islamic radicals were caught, tried, and imprisoned by American authorities. Despite the ambitious scope of the attack, the United States did not significantly alter its policies with regard to terrorism, and the attack was largely viewed as a singular incident. Two years later in Tokyo, Japan, the Aum Shinrikyo cult placed containers of Sarin nerve gas in the Kasumigaseki subway station, killing 12 and injuring thousands. Some lawmakers became increasingly concerned that American cities were similarly vulnerable to attacks using weapons of mass destruction.

The following month their fears were confirmed when a massive truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Mur-rah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 166 people and injuring more than 500. The tragedy was the largest terrorist attack on American soil up to that date. After initial speculation that it was the work of Middle Eastern terrorists, authorities soon discovered that it was in fact the work of two American domestic terrorists, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, acting in retaliation for the Branch Davidian disaster two years earlier. The Oklahoma City bombing, therefore, was not seen as an act of terrorism per se, but rather as the result of radical militia elements within the nation. This view was compounded when a militia group called the Montana Freemen entered into a two-month standoff with federal authorities in March 1996, followed six months later by a bomb explosion in Centennial Square during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, which killed one person, and injured 111 others. Again, in January 1997, two bombs exploded outside an abortion clinic in Atlanta, Georgia, which many believed to be related to the Olympic bombing. Congress responded by establishing the Domestic Counter-Terrorism Center in 1995, which monitored the sale and distribution of materials that might be used to make weapons of mass destruction; and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which allowed the federal government to seek the death penalty for crimes of terrorism, and included provisions for easier information-gathering by law enforcement. Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death, and was executed on June 11, 2001. Terry Nichols was convicted on federal charges and sentenced to life in prison.

While the American public became preoccupied with domestic terrorism, the most serious threats continued to originate with international terrorists. In November 1995 a car bomb exploded outside a U. S. military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing five American servicemen. The news came so close on the heels of the Oklahoma City bombing that it elicited little public response. Similarly, there was little public reaction after a truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans and wounding hundred of others the following year. Congress passed a resolution that the United States should declare war against any nation that commits terrorist acts against American properties, but the law had little force and was soon forgotten. In August 1998 two car bombs exploded simultaneously outside American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people and wounding thousands of others.

Congress responded by passing the Global Military Force Policy (1998), which established a Coordinator for Counterterrorism under the Office of the Secretary of State. President William J. Clinton retaliated by sending 70 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a suspected terrorist stronghold in Afghanistan, and destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan. Since the attacks came on the same day he was scheduled to testify before Congress concerning a scandal related to Monica Lewinsky, many Americans feared the reprisal was intended only to distract from the president’s domestic problems. In October 2000, terrorists bombed the American warship USS Cole while it was refueling at a port in Yemen, killing 17 sailors and permanently disabling the ship. The Cole attack was viewed as an example of poor safeguards in American naval procedure, and not as evidence of an increasingly dangerous threat of international terrorism.

American policy with regard to both international and domestic terrorism changed significantly after the events of September 11, 2001. Nineteen members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network hijacked four separate commercial jets; two were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third struck the Pentagon, and a fourth was prevented from reaching its destination in Washington, D. C., by a passenger uprising. The resulting explosions and fires brought down both of the World Trade Center’s towers and inflicted serious damage to a section of the Pentagon, with a resulting death toll of nearly 3,000.

The horror of the events united America unlike anything the recent generation had experienced. Thousands of volunteers donated blood in Red Cross centers around the country and showed their support with a flurry of American flags and financial gifts of nearly $2 billion to help the families of those lost in the tragedy. On the day of the attacks, President George W. Bush announced the new direction the United States would take in its policy against international and domestic terrorism; the United States would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” Earlier partisan conflicts disappeared almost immediately as the president received unqualified support from the entire Congress who passed a series of emergency response bills at the president’s request, including the Combating Terrorism Act of 2001, which appointed a deputy attorney general for combating domestic terrorists and a national director for homeland security; and the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. The latter law provided substantial funding increases to the FBI and DOD for their counterterrorism divisions; empowered the FBI, CIA, and Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with greatly enhanced surveillance powers to use against individuals and institutions suspected of terrorist activities; and tripled the personnel for the border patrol, customs service, and INS. It also provided law enforcement with stronger tools to investigate and prosecute money-laundering schemes used to finance terrorist activities. The new “war on terrorism” included an immediate attack on Taliban forces in Afghanistan that were linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. The United States also went to war with Iraq for reputedly harboring terrorist groups and refusing to account for biological, chemical, and nuclear materials used in making weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which the Bush administration believed Iraq had developed in defiance of United Nations resolutions.

Several deadly attacks occurred in Western Europe since September 11, 2001, in spite of international efforts to stop terrorism, most notably the bombing of commuter trains in Madrid that killed 191 persons and wounded 1,755 in March 2005 and in London in July 2006, kill-

Smoke billows from the World Trade Center's twin towers after they are struck by commercial airliners that had been hijacked by terrorists. (Shaw/Getty Images)

Ing 52 persons and wounding 700. The Madrid bombing occurred days before the reigning government was ousted from power in Spain’s general election, generating controversy about the source and the political implications of the attack. The London bombings were said to be retaliation for British support of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the British remained steadfast in their efforts to end terrorism. Eventually, international efforts appeared to make a difference. Libya, formerly a state sponsor of terrorism and actively pursuing the ability to produce WMDs, renounced both. According to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), an agency created within the State Department in 2004 to collect and analyze intelligence data on terrorism, although the number of terrorist attacks worldwide increased 25 percent from 2005 to 2006, most of those took place in the Near East and South Asia. None of the 300 high-casualty attacks (killing 10 or more persons) occurred in Western Europe.

An F/A-18 Hornet prepares for launch, November 14, 2001, while aboard the USS Kitty Hawk. The ship was supporting bombing missions over Afghanistan in Operation Enduring Freedom. (Woods/U. S. Navy/Getty Images)

National and international efforts, the arrests and convictions of would-be terrorists and those aiding terrorists groups, and the actions of alert citizens proved effective in preventing further attacks on American soil since 2001. In December 2001 passengers and crew members on an airline flight from Paris to Miami overpowered a passenger attempting to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his shoes. “Shoe bomber” Richard Reid was subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment, as was Zacarias Moussaoui for his role in aiding al-Qaeda during the September 11 attacks. In August 2006 British authorities arrested suspects planning to use liquid explosives to blow up several transatlantic flights bound for the United States. These foiled plots temporarily interrupted transportation; more significantly, they resulted in tightened security screening of airline passengers in airports worldwide. In May 2007 FBI officials arrested six radical Islamists plotting an attack on Fort Dix, an Army installation in New Jersey. Authorities had the group under surveillance for more than a year prior to their arrests, after having been tipped off to the group’s activities by an alert video store employee who had been asked to convert video of their militant activities to DVD. Three of the men charged were illegally residing in the United States.

In early June 2007 agents thwarted a plot to detonate fuel tanks at New York City’s JFK International Airport as well as the fuel lines leading to the airport through neighborhoods in nearby Queens. Although the group involved with the plot was thought to have ties with Islamist extremists in Trinidad, one of four charged was a former air cargo worker at JFK with U. S. citizenship, and two others were citizens of Guyana, one a former member of the parliament.

The Bush administration continued its efforts to fight global terrorism by seeking more effective ways of securing the borders from illegal entry, including the reform of immigration laws, and from the importation of nuclear, chemical, and biological materials that could be used to produce WMDs. In addition, Bush pursued a FOREIGN POLICY objective of stabilizing democratic regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere in order to deny terrorist groups access to safe havens and resources.

In what is expected to last at least a generation, the United States redirected its foreign policy, reoriented its domestic priorities, and has mobilized a major portion of its military and intelligence resources toward a new effort to destroy the sources of international terrorism throughout the world.

See also Afghanistan War; assassinations; CRIME; Iranian hostage crisis; Iraq War; militia movement.

Further reading: Steve Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living among Us (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

—Aharon W. Zorea and Cynthia Stachecki