LEBANON/CIVIL CONFLICT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01070R000200990004-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: December 12, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-01070R000200990004-6
CBS EVENING NEWS
12 December 1983
LEBANON/ RATHER: After the Beirut bombings the United States took no
CIVIL CONFLICT. retaliatory action. Now, as David Martin reports, that may
change. _
MARTIN: Senior administration officials tell CBS News the
Pentagon has drawn up a list of targets in Lebanon to be bombed
by U.S. aircraft in retaliation for terrorist attacks against
American installations. The target list moves the U.S. one step.
closer toward adopting an Israeli-like strategy of immediate
retaliation against terrorists. However, it is not clear
whether the target list will be 'used to retaliate against
today's attack since it took place in Kuwait and not in Lebanon.
Pentagon officials are convinced none of the recent suicide
bombings could have happened without the assistance of Syria.
One official compared the situation to a tunnel with Iranians at
one end and Americans at the other. 'Syria owns the tunnel,' he
said. 'They can let people through, or they can stop them.'
The target list includes Syrian positions in Lebanon and is
intended to convince. Syria to close the tunnel. U.S. officials
say this is the man who could give the order. He is Rafat
Assad, brother of Syrian president, Hafez Assad, and chief of
Syrian intelligence. Once before the U.S. asked Rafat to head
off a plot to bomb the American Embassy in-Kuwait. That plot
never materialized. It is too soon to know if Rafat is involved
in today's bombing. But Lebanese intelligence has identified by
name members of his organization involved in both the April
bombing of the American' embassy in Beirut and the October attack
against Marine headquarters. The threat of suicide bombings has.
now spread to the U.S. There are already anti-aircraft missiles
positioned around the White House. And now makeshift barricades
have gone up at the White House and State Department after the
FBI received an anonymous letter whose author claimed to have
overheard Iranians plotting to blow up a building in downtown
Washington. That warning was taken even more seriously after
800 pounds of TNT were stolen from this explosives dealer in New
Hampshire late last month. Syrian backing gives Moslem fanatics
in Iran a destructive potential they've never had before. The
U.S. either can learn to live with its new threat as a price of
doing business in the Middle East, or it can try going at least
part-way to the source by attacking Syrian targets in Lebanon.
David Martin, CBS News, the Pentagon.
Approved For Release 2008/06/27: CIA-RDP88-01070R000200990004-6