DUBIOUS POLICY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807580051-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 23, 2012
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: June 27, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807580051-1 STAT
CHARLESTON GAZETTE ('VV)
27 June 1985
Dubious policy
I N March a car bomb was exploded in the Bir
Abed neighborhood of southern Beirut, kill-
ing 80 people and wounding hundreds.
The morning following the blast workers still
were pulling bodies from the rubble, says John
Kifner of The New York Times. Suddenly a
banner was unfurled across one of the ruined
buildings which reported the bomb's parentage:
"Made in U.S.A."
Subsequently, reports revealed that the Amer-
ican Central Intelligence Agency had been in
some manner linked to the blast. The agency
wasn't accused of executing the terror or of
masterminding it but rather of instructing in
terror tactics those perhaps responsible.
Sheik Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah of the Is-
lamic group Party of God has a mosque and a
group of devoted disciples in the Bir Abed neigh-
borhood. Some people suspect March's bombing
was directed at him.
That raises the issue as to whether the hijack-
ing of the TWA jet passenger plane from Cairo
to Athens to Rome was in retaliation for the
earlier act of terror. Hostages from this air-
craft, reports Kifner, were taken to see the
damage caused by that explosion.
Thus, terror feeds on terror and invites more
terror.
Under this circumstance does it make sense
for the United States to talk, as some have
talked notably Senate Minority Leader Rob-
ert C. Byrd - and some have intimated - nota-
bly President Ronald Reagan - of reprisal
when the current horror ends?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/23: CIA-RDP9O-00965ROO0807580051-1