From: Jeff Shultz 

If it took the Associated Press that long to find out about them, it's a
fair bet nobody in gov't had read them since 1978 or so...


On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 13:24:08 -0600, Glenn Meadows wrote:

>       Documents Reveal 30-Year-Old Terror Threats Monday, January 24, 2005
>
>
>       WASHINGTON - Top government officials worry about the possibility of
> radioactive "dirty bombs" being detonated in large cities. Airlines,
> scared of losing business, protest that new security measures will
> bankrupt them. Civil liberties groups fear a focus upon Arab-Americans and
> Arab travelers will erode basic freedoms.
>
>       Sounds familiar? It should. It is the present, and also the past -
> more than three decades ago, 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 (search), wrote in a 1977 report.
>
>       It summarized nearly five years of work by the Cabinet Committee to
> Combat Terrorism (search), a high-level government panel created to draft
> plans protecting the nation from attacks.
>
>       President Nixon created the group in September 1972 after
>       Palestinian
> commandos slaughtered 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games
> (search). It involved players as diverse as Henry Kissinger (search) and
> George H.W. Bush (search) to a young Rudolph Giuliani (search).
>
>       "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 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 full panel met only once, in October 1972, to organize, but its
> experts gathered twice a month over nearly five years to identify threats
> and debate solutions, the memos show.
>
>       Eventually, the panel'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 panel's experts fretted that terrorists might gather loose
>       nuclear
> materials for a "dirty bomb" that could devastate an American city by
> spreading lethal radioactivity across many blocks.
>
>       "This is a real threat, not science fiction," National Security
> Council staffer Richard T. Kennedy wrote his boss, Kissinger, in a
> November 1972 memo describing the "dirty bomb" scenario.
>
>       While Rogers praised the Atomic Energy Commission's steps to
>       safeguard
> nuclear weapons in a memo to Nixon in mid-1973, he also warned that
> "atomic materials could afford mind-boggling possibilities for
> terrorists."
>
>       Committee members also identified commercial jets as a particular
> vulnerability, but they raised concerns that airlines wouldn't 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," one 1972 White House memo said. "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 (search) argued "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 redacted records and memos obtained by
> AP from government archives and under the Freedom of Information Act show
> the task force also:
>
>       - Discussed defending commercial aircraft against shootdowns from
> 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 a crackdown on foreigners living in and traveling
>       through
> the United States, with particular attention to Middle Easterners and
> Arab-Americans.
>
>       - Crafted plans to protect U.S. diplomats and businessmen working
> abroad, who were frequently the victims of kidnappings and gruesome
> murders.
>
>       Although the CIA routinely updated the panel on potential terrorist
> threats and plots, members learned quickly that intelligence gathering and
> coordination was a weak spot, just as Bush would find three decades later.
>
>       Long before he helped New York City weather the devastation of Sept.
> 11, 2001, as mayor, Giuliani told the panel 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, then the associate deputy attorney general in the
>       President
> Ford's Justice Department, suggested relaxing intelligence collection
> guidelines - something that occurred with the Patriot Act three decades
> later.
>
>       Other panel members, however, felt that obstacles to intelligence
> gathering were more bureaucratic than legal.
>
>       Lewis Hoffacker, a veteran ambassador who served as chairman of the
> working group, said institutional rivalries, particularly between the FBI
> and CIA, were a constant source of frustration even back 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
> spectacular homefront attack also quickly became a problem. Proposals to
> levy international sanctions against countries harboring terrorists drew
> little support from the United Nations, the memos show.
>
>       "The climate at the 1974 General Assembly was such that no
>       profitable
> initiative in the terrorism field was feasible," Kissinger, then-secretary
> of state, reported to Ford in early 1975.
>
>       Two years later, the terrorism working group was absorbed by the
> National Security Council (search). In a 1978 report, the Senate
> Governmental Affairs Committee worried the Carter administration wasn't
> giving enough attention to terrorism.
>
>       "The United States will not be able to combat the growing challenge
>       of
> terrorism unless the executive policymaking apparatus is more effectively
> and forcefully utilized," the panel warned.

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