WHAT DID WE EXPECT?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570008-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: May 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570008-8
W!lL'LS LP M
OI< PLGEA _,1
WASHINGTON POST
17 May 1985
Charles Krauthammer
What Did We Expect?
Dealing with dictators and terrorists.
Congress seems very shock-prone
these days. Only a few weeks ago
House Democrats were shocked to
find Nicaragua's President Daniel
Ortega in Moscow. He had flown there
only hours after the House blocked
President Reagan from giving any aid
to Nicaragua's anti-Sandinista guerril-
las. Sen. James Sasser (D-Tenn.) con-
fessed that had he known about the
Ortega trip, he would have changed
his vote and supported the contras.
(Why is it that Democrats cannot fig-
ure out where a Marxist-Leninist-
which Ortega has declared' himself to
be-is headed, until presented with
his travel schedule?) Other liberals,
who on the floor of the House had just
challenged Reagan's characterization
of Nicaragua as a Soviet base, de-
clared themselves variously. upset,
embarrassed, even betrayed by Orte-
ga's unsportsmanlike conduct.
This week, more unsportsmanlike
conduct. another round of indignation.
It seems that not on iv our enemies
disappoint us. Some of our associates
around the world are bad actors too.
One group, trained in Beirut by the
CIA as a counterterrorist force, hired
its own free-lance terrorists, who tried
to kill yet another terrorist with a car
bomb. It killed bystanders instead.
Terror is terror, and the bombing
was both a crime and tragedy. Yet
when the event happened months ago,
before it acquired a third-hand connec-
tion with the United States, it was ac-
corded a few 30-second bites on the
evening news; and then dismissed as
more of the Lebanese same.
The fuss now is not about the act,
which was barely noticed. but about the
American connection. What exactl is
the charge? The reports indicate that
the -CIA neither authorized nor knew
about the m ing an, when it found
out, cancelled the whole Beirut opera
tion7a can be criticized for the
way it carried out this mission and for
its lousy choice of participants (though
e ne erwor o Beirut terror is
hardiv a recruiters dream). But beyond
general indignation, what exactly is it
that so upsets critics about the original
counterterror ea.
Everyone is against terrorism.
Everyone wants to do something
about it. And everyone, even the big-
gest dove, ism avor o gat ermg m-
telligence, Now, what to o wrt tat
intelligence? If you find out certain
groups are trying to kill Americans-
and in Beirut they most certainly are
-you can use the intelligence to avoid
attack an run. This response is as fu-
ti a as it is an erous. Lebanon's ter-
rorists are people of proven serious-
ness. a will t again tomorrow. .
the Unit States does not want to
let itself be driven from the Middle East
-and we are talking here about main-
taining embassies, not Marines-and if
it wants to protect American nationals
and diplomats, it must be prepared to
act on, not just gather, information.
What kind of action? Overt action is
of proven uselessness. battleships and
bombers either kill Lebanese indis-
criminately or they risk producing
American prisoners. (Remember Lt.
Goodman?)
That leaves covert action, not a ter-
ribl popu ar item these days on api-
to ill. Yet, covert action to over-
throw governments is one t in The
purpose of this operation was quite
dif-
ferent. It was meant to defend m -
ican lives against terrorists. And, of all
the rationales for the use of force
abroad, that narrow purpose is per-
haps the most widely accepted and
easily justified. Many who opposed the
Grenada invasion, for example, said
they would have supported it had they
thought it was really meant to rescue
American medical students.
Who is to carry out such covert ac-
tion? Much of t h; indignation on Capi-
tol Hill has been directed at the use of
proxies or, as Rep. Pat Schroeder (D-
0 0.) ca s t em, "loose forei n prox-
es. The pro em with using foreign-
ers is that they are harder to control
than Americans. True. But. using
American dangerous and
ris . t is not easy to keel) a group of
American commandos hanging casu-
ally around Beirut or toe them in-
conspicuously rom the Sixth eet.
esi es, now do you penetrate
the world of Lebanese terror without
loose foreign proxies? 1, too, would be
happier if we could infiltrate the Shiite
Party of God with a Yaue, PhD in inter-
national law, MA in ethics. But no mat'
ter how well cut his kaffiyeh, I doubt he
would make it past the front door. The
remaining alternative (to doing nothing)
is to risk working with foreigners whose
aims coincide with ours. That- they may
turn out not to be Blackford' Oakes
should hardly surprise us.
And yet we are surprised-shocked
-every time friend or foe fails to
measure up. I am not arguing against
keeping our standards high-only
against our ridiculous fits of outrage
when we discover, monthly, that not
everyone lives up to them. It is exactly
40 years now since the United States
became the preeminent power in the
world and, as a consequence, charged
with dealing with foreigners even to
the murkiest corners of the earth. One
might have thought that 40 years of
Old World work would make a dent in
some of our New World naivete. Give
us another hundred.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403570008-8