TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/85/85capts.12

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 29.2 KB | 561 lines

                                                                                October 21, 1985

COVER STORY

The U.S. Sends a Message


A bold, nonviolent stroke ends four days of horror and
humiliation


"Thank God we finally won one!" exulted Democratic Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. "It's a glorious day in
American history," agreed Republican Congressman Robert K.
Dornan of California. WE GOT 'EM, shouted a headline in USA
Today. Kevin Kirby, 28, a Detroit garage attendant, echoed
countless other Americans as he declared, "It's about time. We
needed to prove that we were not going to sit and take it
anymore."

On Capitol Hill and all across the U.S. last week, there were
fierce outpourings of pride at a military job well done.
Indeed, not since the 1983 U.S. landing on the shores of Grenada
had there been any expression of patriotic sentiment quite like
it. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger harked back much
further than that:  he invoked "the time of the Barbary pirates"
in praising the Administration's action. No one put it better
than Ronald Reagan. The U.S., said the President, had "sent a
message to terrorists everywhere. The message:  'You can run,
but you can't hide.'

The celebration, however, was mixed with restraint, as if the
country understood that it had won a small victory in a larger
war with no end yet in sight. Late last week another skirmish
in that war may have taken place. In Beirut, the Shi'ite
terrorist group known as Islamic Jihad distributed blurred
photographs purporting to show the body of U.S. Diplomat William
Buckley, kidnaped 18 months ago. The State Department was
skeptical of the claim.

Nonetheless, with one bold, nonviolent stroke, the U.S. had
erased four days of frustration, horror and humiliation, an
all-too-familiar progression in the recent history of
international terrorism. Once again Arab extremists had struck
at a vulnerable civilian target. A few hours after it left
Alexandria on a pleasure cruise of the Mediterranean, an Italian
liner, the Achille Lauro, with 123 passengers and 315 crew
aboard, was hijacked by Palestinian gunmen. Once again American
passengers were singled out for especially brutal attention.
One of them, Leon Klinghoffer, 69, of New York City, a stroke
victim confined to a wheelchair, was shot in cold blood through
the forehead and his body thrown overboard.

Then the hostage drama was suddenly, even suspiciously, over.
Despite the strongest U.S. pleas to a close ally, it seemed that
the killers were about to escape scot-free. All the anger and
revulsion that Americans felt at that prospect were summed up
by U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Nicholas Veliotes, who demanded that
the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak "prosecute
the sons of bitches."

Only a few at the topmost levels of U.S. policymaking had
foreseen how Veliotes would get his wish. More than 30 hours
after the seagoing hijack drama had ended, a flight of four F-14
Tomcat fighter-interceptors from the aircraft carrier Saratoga
pulled alongside a chartered EgyptAir Boeing 737 jetliner just
south of the Mediterranean island of Crete. The Egyptian
aircraft had left Cairo's Al Maza military airport 1 hour and
45 minutes earlier, apparently headed for Tunis. Aboard it were
the hijackers, accompanied by two representatives of the
Palestine Liberation Organization and a number of Egyptian
diplomats and security officials.

Traveling under radio silence, the Tomcats overheard the
Egyptian pilot radio Tunis for permission to land. Permission
denied. The pilot tried Athens and got the same answer. Then
the U.S. fighters moved in. They dipped their wings in the
international signal for a forced landing, while a U.S. Navy
E-2C Hawkeye radar plane radioed the 737 to follow them. The
pilot complied.

An hour and 15 minutes later, the jetliner and its escorts
landed at Sigonella Naval Air Base in Sicily. U.S. soldiers and
Italian carabinieri surrounded the Egyptian plane. The Italians
took the four hijackers into custody.

Moments later in Washington, White House Spokesman Larry
Speakes described the U.S. exploit at a hastily called press
briefing. The aerial interception, he said, "affirms our
determination to see that terrorists are apprehended, prosecuted
and punished."

Precisely how all that would be done in this case was still not
clear at week's end. From Genoa to Rome, Italian magistrates
were involved in complex legal proceedings. A number of the
former U.S. hostages went to Sicily, where they identified the
Palestinians in police lineups at a local jail. Italian Prime
Minister Bettino Craxi refused a telephoned request from
President Reagan to have the terrorists extradited to the U.S.,
saying the crime had been committed on an Italian ship, which
is sovereign territory of Italy. Nonetheless, Speakes announced
that the U.S. would formally request extradition of the four
Palestinians. President Reagan even held out the possibility
that the hijackers might eventually be tried in both countries.

U.S. officials also tried to persuade the Italians to hold on
to the two P.L.O. representatives who accompanied the four
hijackers on the EgyptAir plane. One of the P.L.O. figures was
Mohammed Abul Abbas Zaidan, better known as Abul Abbas, head of
the Tunis-based faction of the Palestine Liberation Front
(P.L.F.), the group to which the Achille Lauro hijackers may
belong. Abul Abbas is one of P.L.O Leader Yasser Arafat's most
trusted confidants, and a link between Abul Abbas and the
Achille Lauro hijacking suggests that Arafat might have known
of the plan in advance. At week's end, however, the U.S.
detention effort failed as the P.L.O. representatives suddenly
and stealthily left Rome for an undisclosed location aboard a
Yugoslav jetliner. U.S. Ambassador to Italy Maxwell Rabb
pronounced himself "not happy with what happened today."  The
Italian government was sure to be bitterly criticized by the
U.S. for allowing the duo to flee.

The Reagan Administration's daring stroke put heart back into
a nation numbed by the seemingly endless spectacle of U.S.
citizens abused by terrorists abroad, particularly in the Middle
East. The Mediterranean interception also helped to reverse an
image of the U.S. reminiscent of former President Nixon's famous
description of a "pitiful helpless giant."  Said Senate Minority
Leader Robert Byrd: "Finally, we have changed the rules. We
have shown the world that the U.S. is a force to be reckoned
with in the global battle against terrorist actions."  Secretary
of State George Shultz, in an interview with TIME last Friday,
declared that "terrorism is losing ground," while the "idea that
terrorists deserve no sanctuary" is gaining currency.

Many Arab governments, however, condemned the U.S.
interception. Egyptian President Mubarak piously described the
incident as "an act of piracy," and declared that it had caused
"coolness and strain" between Cairo and Washington. Said
Mubarak:  "I am very wounded." Most Western governments withheld
comment, but British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was
reportedly "delighted" at the successful U.S. operation. In
Moscow, the official news agency TASS described American anger
over the Klinghoffer murder as "understandable and just,"
probably because four Soviet diplomats have been kidnaped, and
one subsequently murdered, by Arab extremists in Beirut.

On the other hand, many U.S. and foreign intelligence officers
fear that the dramatic interception of the EgyptAir 737 may
inspire new, dramatic terrorist activities. Warns a
high-ranking intelligence official in Washington:  "They will
try very hard to get their hands on some Italian and American
hostages in order to negotiate a deal."

The U.S. interception of the EgyptAir jet was bound to have
lingering effects along the Mediterranean littoral. It further
complicated relations between the U.S. and Egypt. Washington
was upset that President Mubarak had resolved the Achille LAuro
hijacking in cooperation with Arafat's P.L.O. by promising the
hijackers safe- conduct out of his country in exchange for
surrender. American outrage increased considerably after
discovery of the shipboard murder. Mubarak insisted that he had
been unaware of Klinghoffer's death when he made the
safe-conduct deal.

But then, as Secretary of State Shultz publicly demanded that
Egypt "hold these people and prosecute them," Mubarak made
things worse. For hours he insisted that the hijackers had
already left the country, even as U.S. intelligence specialists
knew that they were still at Al Maza airport. The kidnapers
finally took their leave a full day after Mubarak claimed that
they were no longer in Egypt.

Some Western diplomats speculated that Mubarak had covertly
aided the U.S. mission. According to this theory, neither the
U.S. nor Egypt could admit such complicity without jeopardizing
Mubarak's tenure. But at his press conference Thursday evening,
Speakes "categorically denied" that Egypt had in any way helped
the U.S. Next day President Reagan made a point of saying that
he and Mubarak had "disagreed" on how to handle the situation,
while trying to minimize the tension between the two nations.
Said he:  "We have too firm a relationship between our two
countries and too much at stake in the Middle East to let one
incident color our relationship. On the question of U.S.-
Egyptian collusion, Reagan declared, "We did this all by our
little selves."

The fast-paced series of events also took a toll on the
P.L.O.'s Arafat. Last week the Palestinian leader was claiming
loudly that his organization shuns acts of terrorism on
principle--although attacks against Israeli territory seem to
fall outside his definition of terrorism. In keeping with his
avowed position, Arafat wasted no time in denying that the
cruise-liner hijackers had anything to do with the P.L.O.
Arafat's attempt to portray himself as a peacemaker reached a
peak when the Achille Lauro hijackers surrendered, seemingly as
a result of pressure from P.L.O. mediators. Later, when the
reports of Leon Klinghoffer's murder were confirmed, Arafat had
promised that if the gunmen were turned over to the P.L.O., the
organization would bring them to justice.

From the beginning, Israeli officials insisted that Arafat not
only had been aware of the hijack plot before it took place, but
had been involved in the planning. Well before the EgyptAir
interception took place, some diplomats and intelligence
analysts had reached the conclusion that the Achille Lauro
hijacking was in fact a bungled terrorist attempt to launch an
attack on the Israeli harbor of Ashdod, using the cruise liner
merely as transport. They also believed that while Arafat was
aware of the plan to attack Ashdod, neither he nor P.L.F. Leader
Abul Abbas knew about the liner hijacking in advance.
Apparently, the hijacking occurred only after the terrorists'
weapons had been discovered aboard the ship.

That theory received indirect support on the day of the
EgyptAir interception. A P.L.F. statement delivered in Cyprus
accepted responsibility for the hijacking, apologized, and
admitted that Ashdod was the original terrorist target. Said
the statement:  "The aim of the operation was not to hijack the
ship or its passengers or any civilian of any nationality."

Bizarre and illogical even by terrorist standards, the hijack
drama suddenly came into focus in Washington on Monday evening.
About four hours earlier, the Palestinian terrorists had
announced their piracy over ship-to-shore radio. By 6 p.m.
Monday, a State Department task force had convened in a
windowless suite of seventh-floor offices at Foggy Bottom.
Information was scanty, even for President Reagan and National
Security Adviser Robert ("Bud") McFarlane, who consulted twice
on Monday night. Ironically, Secretary of State Shultz was
aboard a ship himself:  on a Potomac River barge where he was
entertaining Singapore's visiting Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew.

At Tuesday morning's daily 9:30 National Security Council
briefing in the Oval Office, McFarlane reviewed with the
President what the U.S. could and should do. As usual, the
options seemed pitifully few. U.S. and Italian ships and planes
were tailing the Achille Lauro as it wandered across the eastern
Mediterranean, headed toward the Syrian port of Tartus. The
U.S. immediately established contact with the other governments
principally involved:  Italy, Egypt, Israel. To each, Washington
gave the same message:  American policy toward terrorism, as
always, was not to give an inch. At most, the U.S. would
sanction what it called "discussions" with the terrorists on the
safety of the hostages. Washington urged the other governments
not to yield. The U.S. pleaded with all Mediterranean nations
not to permit the Achille Lauro to dock at their ports.

In the U.S. view, it was crucial to keep the Achille Lauro from
docking anywhere. Seared into the memory of Administration
officials was last June's TWA hijacking ordeal. When the
captured jetliner was allowed to land at Beirut airport, its
Shi'ite hijackers were able to disperse their 37 hostages into
the surrounding urban slums, dragging out the kidnaping drama
for 17 days. This time Administration crisis managers were also
thinking that a rescue in international waters would be far
easier than one in Syria or Lebanon.

Surprisingly, the U.S. ploy worked. When the Achille Lauro
tried to enter Syrian waters near Tartus, the Syrians turned it
away. Cyprus also refused to allow the ship into port. Said
a senior U.S. diplomat in Washington:  "Everyone had been
sensitized. It wasn't so much a matter of U.S. pressure as the
fact that no one wanted these pirates on their hands."  The
Achille LAuro had little choice but to turn back toward Egypt's
Port Said.

Meanwhile the governments involved agreed to let Cairo take the
lead in talking with the hijackers. The decision seemed logical
since Mubarak enjoyed close relations with the P.L.O., and the
Achille LAuro was steaming back toward Egypt. But from the
start, the U.S., Italy and Egypt were not thinking alike about
the crisis. All agreed, however, that there were three key
issues:  1) safety of the hostages, 2) concessions to the
hijackers, and 3) future punishment for the terrorists.

All three countries stressed their concern for the passengers'
safety. They also agreed that they would make no concessions
to the terrorists. But they were split badly over the question
of punishment. The U.S., frustrated that terrorists have so
easily escaped retribution in the past, put great emphasis on
the issue. The Italians were less insistent, perhaps because
they had more lives and property at stake. For the Egyptians,
the punishment issue posed a difficult dilemma. Said a senior
U.S. diplomat in Washington:  "We were fighting Egypt all the
way."

President Mubarak's main concern was to prevent the hijacking
from torpedoing the Middle East peace process. Ever since
Jordan's King Hussein and P.L.O. Leader Arafat agreed last
February to work together to get Middle East peace talks moving
again, Mubarak has hoped to bring Israel and Jordan to the
negotiating table. That hope was dealt a rude blow two weeks
ago, when Israel launched a 1,500- mile bombing raid on Arafat's
P.L.O headquarters near Tunis.

A further concern of Mubarak's was the fragile state of his own
government, which is burdened by severe economic problems as
well as a persistent challenge from Muslim fundamentalists. By
conspicuously lining up with the U.S. against the P.L.O, Mubarak
would be vulnerable to opponents at home and abroad. The
Egyptian leader was therefore eager, perhaps overeager, to
demonstrate that Arafat was a moderate opposed to terrorism by
involving him in the hostage mediation.

Arafat was just as eager to comply. On Monday evening, one of
his closest advisers, Hani el-Hassan, already was in Egypt. He
was soon joined by Abul Abbas, leader of the pro-Arafat faction
of the P.L.F. The heavyset Abbas, 40, was born in Haifa and
educated in Damascus; a former airline hijacker himself, Abbas
rates high on many Western lists of most-wanted terrorists. In
1977, Abbas helped to found the P.L.F. as a breakaway group from
the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine--General Command.

Among other things, the Palestine Liberation Front was
responsible for the 1979 attack on the Israeli coastal town of
Nahariya, where an Israeli man and his five-year-old daughter
were murdered. Abbas' branch of the P.L.F. has cultivated
increasingly close military links with Arafat's Fatah
organization. In 1982, Abbas moved to Tunis, where he now
commands about 1,500 fighters. Abbas is a member of the
executive committee of the Palestine National Council, a post
he could not hold without Arafat's backing.

As discussions between Egyptian officials and the P.L.O.
representatives proceeded on Tuesday, it soon became clear to
the U.S. that both Italy and Egypt were prepared to make a
deal. According to sources in Washington, the U.S. repeated its
vigorous opposition. Said a U.S. official:  "We had indications
all along that the Egyptians were moving that way. We weighed
in when we could."  In the end, Italy agreed to go along with
Egypt in offering safe passage to the hijackers on one
condition:  that there had been no killing aboard the Achille
Lauro.

Klinghoffer had already been murdered, but Captain De Rosa had
presumably reported to Egyptian authorities that no one aboard
the ship had been harmed. At 11 a.m. EDT, Egypt announced that
the hijackers had surrendered in return for safe passage out of
the country. Washington's first public pronouncement at around
1 p.m. implied the U.S. was "disturbed" by that. Said State
Department Spokesman Charles Redman:  "We believe those
responsible should be prosecuted to the maximum extent."

For the next six hours, the U.S. according to Washington
sources, demanded access to the Achille Lauro to make sure all
the Americans aboard were safe. Meanwhile, rumors flew that one
or more U.S. citizens had been killed. Washington also wanted
to know where the terrorists were. Administration officials
feared that Egypt was, in the words of one, "trying to get rid
of them" as quickly as possible.

At 7 p.m. EDT, Ambassador Veliotes announced from the Achille
LAuro that Klinghoffer had been murdered. Two hours later,
White House Spokesman Speakes declared that the U.S. was
"saddened and outraged by the brutal killing of an innocent
American," and urged Egypt "in the strongest terms" to bring the
perpetrators to book.

In Rome, Italian Prime Minister Craxi reacted to news that the
hijacking had ended by exclaiming, "Thanks be to God, it's
over!" Only ten minutes later, in a telephone call to the
captain of the Achille LAuro, did Craxi learn that an American
hostage had been killed. His government responded by declaring
that it would seek extradition of the hijackers for prosecution
in Italy.

Washington accepted Mubarak's claim that he did not know of
Klinghoffer's murder at the time he negotiated the hijackers'
safe passage out of Egypt. "We think he did it in good faith,"
a senior U.S. official said, "but whatever deal he cut came
uncut when we found out they killed someone."

By Thursday morning, however, Mubarak was becoming distinctly
less credible. He told NBC-TV's Today show that "when this
murder emerged, we had already sent the hijackers out of the
country." Where had they gone?  "Perhaps to Tunis," Mubarak
said. Challenged by reporters later in the day, Mubarak
questioned whether Klinghoffer had been killed at all. Said he:
"Maybe the man is in hiding or did not board the ship at all."

By then, U.S. patience was beginning to wear thin. At a hearing
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State
Shultz called on Cairo to "hold these people and prosecute
them." Privately, U.S. officials could hardly restrain
themselves. Said an intelligence analysts:  "They just lied to
us, from top to bottom. They did everything they could in order
to mislead us about the location and fate of the terrorists."
But thanks to effective intelligence in Egypt, the White House
knew by Thursday morning that the hijackers still had not left
the country.

Trying to keep Reagan above the fray, his aides made no changes
in his public schedule. Thursday morning the President traveled
to Chicago to continue his uphill battle for tax reform. On the
way to Andrews Air Force Base, he told a staffer that the U.S.
had been prepared to launch a military raid on the Achille Lauro
to rescue the hostages. The President seemed personally
chagrined that the hijackers had been whisked off the ship,
foreclosing the rescue mission.

Senior U.S. intelligence sources confirmed to TIME that such a
plan existed. According to one source, a seagoing branch of the
U.S. antiterrorist Delta Force, composed essentially of Navy
SEALs (for Sea, Air and Land forces), was not ready to carry out
the operation on Tuesday, but was able to launch an attack by
Wednesday night. The U.S. plan called for the SEALs, who had
been practicing their assault at Akrotiri, Cyprus, to glide from
the air onto the Achille Lauro. After the initial assault, Navy
helicopters would have brought in more Delta teams. The U.S.
apparently knew in advance exactly how many terrorists there
were on board, and where they were. "It should have been a
piece of cake," said an intelligence official. "We anticipated
a few casualties on our side, but something the unit could have
sustained."  By that time, however, the hijackers had left the
hostage ship.

Administration officials would not reveal who first came up with
the interception scheme, or when. At a Friday press conference,
National Security Adviser McFarlane said only that Reagan's
"community of advisers" proposed the idea "on the road," meaning
on the way to Chicago. At about 11:50 a.m., as a presidential
motorcade wended its way to a Sara Lee bakery in Deerfield,
Ill., McFarlane informed a White House staffer that the Egyptian
plane bearing the hijackers would leave Cairo at about 4 p.m.
EDT. After Reagan held forth on tax reform at the bakery,
McFarlane informed the President at about midday that it might
be possible to intercept the jetliner. In a private room inside
the bakery, Reagan agreed in principle to the move and provided
"one or two elements of guidance on the concept and on the
rules."  By that he apparently meant whether U.S. interceptors
would shoot if the EgyptAir flight failed to obey orders. The
rules discussed in Chicago covered only the initial stages of
the mission. If the Egyptian pilot resisted, the U.S. pilots
would have had to radio for further orders. It is unlikely that
Reagan would have ordered the pilots to shoot, but that was, as
the President put it, something for terrorists "to go to bed
wondering about."

The final decision came when the presidential party returned to
Washington aboard Air Force One. At about 4 p.m., McFarlane
abruptly left a staff discussion of the upcoming Geneva summit
and entered Reagan's private cabin. It was then that the
President said, "Go ahead, and let's execute."  About 15 minutes
later, the EgyptAir plane left Cairo.

Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, visiting Ottawa, stayed in
close touch with Washington through secure communications aboard
his Grumman executive jet. Meanwhile the Saratoga, accompanied
by the Aegis-class guided-missile cruiser Yorktown, was steaming
in the Adriatic close to the Greek-Albanian border. All told,
about 25 U.S. warships were stationed in the eastern
Mediterranean, many of them with the sophisticated radar
capability needed to pick the EgyptAir plane out of the heavy
stream of regular Mediterranean air traffic.

At 2:15 p.m. EDT, the Saratoga received the order to launch its
Tomcats, four to undertake the interception and three as
backup. Accompanied by two of the Hawkeye radar aircraft, the
fighters loitered in the vicinity of Crete. At 4:37 p.m., they
received the interception order. By 5:30, they had spotted the
EgyptAir plane, and the final drama began. Back at his vacation
home in Bar Harbor, Me., Defense Secretary Weinberger called the
President at the White House to inform him of the mission's
success.

White House aides were ecstatic. Reagan called Prime Minister
Craxi to thank him for his cooperation in agreeing to prosecute
the Palestinians, and to reaffirm that the U.S. very much wanted
to prosecute them too. When Admiral John Poindexter, the
Deputy National Security Adviser, entered the regular 9:30 NSC
briefing for the President the next morning, Reagan rose to
attention and snapped his right hand to his forehead. Said the
Commander in Chief:  "I salute the Navy."

For the remainder of the day, however, the White House staff
seemed curiously drained. Even some of the President's aides
were puzzled by the lack of jubilation. Said one:  "I would
have thought that just for political reasons, they would have
made more of a to-do." The Administration even passed up the
arrival of eleven hostages at Newark Airport on Saturday as an
opportunity to flaunt its triumph.

In Rome, Italian Depute Premier Arnaldo Forlani summarized the
mood well as he declared that "silence is more useful than an
excess of words, and in this affair there have already been too
many."  He, as well as the Reaganauts, seemed keenly aware that
the apprehension of the Palestinian hijackers represented a
short-term victory but that the episode might even prompt new
outrages. Said a senior intelligence official:  "I expect
terrorists to change tactics and attack U.S. officials and
facilities again, maybe even in the U.S." The nature of
terrorism is such that no one can tell where the next attack may
come from. Late last week, a bomb in Santa Ana, Calif., killed
Alex Odeh, 41, a leader of the American Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee, after he called Arafat a "man of
peace" on television.

In the Middle East, certainly, terrorism seems to have
inexorable momentum. According to the State Department, the
number of incidents there has doubled annually since 1982. What
is more, says Noel Koch, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense, the terror "has become more violent and much more
indiscriminate."

One reason, paradoxically enough, may be tighter security by
Western governments and officials. U.S. Army and Air Force
bases that were once lightly guarded are now fortified camps.
Embassies in many capitals look like urban redoubts. As a
result, terrorists are looking elsewhere for targets. In the
case of the Achille Lauro, for example, it appears that the
hijackers chose the cruise liner because the usual avenues of
access to Israel--by land and air--have been blocked by Israeli
security measures. There is also what Brian Jenkins, a Rand
Corp. terrorist expert, describes as a kind of novelty factor.
Says Jenkins:  "If you want to stay in the headlines and
exercise coercive power over governments, you have to do novel
things."

The fragmentation of the P.L.O. in the wake of its 1982
expulsion from Lebanon may help explain the increased violence.
Now dispersed from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, the
P.L.O.'s young guerrillas are becoming bored after three years
of relative inactivity. Says a P.L.O. expert in Tunis:
"Launching a raid against Israel, however dangerous, is better
than sitting around in a camp in North Yemen."

The answer, as Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres told TIME
last week, is that "Israel will continue to act full force
against terrorists, killers, murderer, assassins."  He added:
"Whoever wants peace [in the region] must stop terrorism.
There can't be a compromise about it."

The fundamental problem, says Lawrence Eagleburger, a former
Under Secretary of State and currently president of the
Manhattan-based consulting firm of Kissinger & Associates, is
that terrorism "is basically a new kind of warfare. Nobody
really knows how to manage it or deal with it."  Eagleburger
recommends several principles to apply in terrorist attacks.
First:  make no deals. Second:  assure terrorists that
somewhere, sometime, there will be retaliation for their
actions. The nature of the response will vary according to
circumstances, says Eagleburger, but "there has to be a cost to
the terrorists or their organizations for what they do."

In any given situation, Eagleburger warns, the U.S. is liable
to find itself temporarily helpless. But that should never, he
says, lead the country or its leadership to a failure of nerve
in attempting to strike back at gunmen like the Achille Lauro
hijackers. Says he: "The important thing is that we not be
deterred from punishing people like these because of a fear that
there will be more terrorist attacks."  Last week the Reagan
Administration certainly communicated to the world that it would
not be deterred. Few doubted White House Spokesman Speakes when
he declared after the EgyptAir interception that "if an
opportunity presents itself, we will do exactly this same thing
again."  The U.S. could only hope that the same unhappy
opportunity would not arise again soon.

--By George Russell.  Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof and Robert
Suro/Rome, Johanna   McGeary/Washington and Alessandra Stanley
with the President