KHOMEINI COUNTRY IN THE BEKAA VALLEY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110003-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 3
• Publication Date: October 6, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110003-9 /-_
The New York Times
ILLEGIB The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
ILLEGIB
JACK ANDERSON and JOSEPH SPEAR
Khomeini Country in the Bekaa Valley
0 ur associate Barbara Newman has just She arranged for a shUte surrey, a woana
returned from the terrorist stronghold of who would be sate there, to go into Be" Moss
Baalbek, deep in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. L- behalf and speak to the terrorist operrtions ddel, a
Intelligence experts describe Baalbek starkly as the 44-year-old former act named Hussein
most dangerous city On EArth. She c us it the Musawi. He laughed when he was told Newmw
suburbs of hell." was afraid to enter his lair. He sent block a
Newman is perhaps the first Western reporter to statement that the terrorists would retatlste
venture into this forbidden valley since Iran's against Americans because of their intervention in
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sent a detachment of the Persian Gulf, that all Jews are Israeli and
his revolutionary guards to eastern Lebanon in "should be stamped on like microbes," that Western
1979. They recruited and trained fanatical Shiite hostility toward Islam had made It necesseryr to
Moslems as terrorists. Today an invisible terrorist "kidnap and hurt" innocent hostages,
army, sworn to die for Khomeini, holds the valley in Syrian soldiers staff the checkpoints in the Bekr
its grip and the populace in dread. Valley, and the villages are populated with
Our associate was escorted by Lebanese Lebanese, Yet this is Khomeini country. His
bodyguards and Syrian commandos. They drove at scowling image glares constantly from wall posters,
top speeds through terrorist territory, with wall murals and tall roadside signs.
automatic weapons bristling out of car windows, At The road to Baalbek is emblazoned with
the town limits of Baalbek, they refused to enter. Khomeini's Inflammatory words. One mural slaws
Instead, they hid their cars and led Newman to a a fist smashing through a U.S. flag. Another calls
ridge overlooking the town. for the elimination of Israel.
She ducked into a pit, out of sight, where she was Khomeini's call to revolution also wails forth
allowed five minutes to photograph the terrorist from tinny loudspeakers strung high on village
stronghold. She asked a bodyguard to take some mosques. And his flags flutter in the drifting
pictures, but his hands trembled so violently that he breezes--Islamic flags, revolutionary flags,
couldn't focus the camera. "I can't believe I'm in terrorist flags. The people on the road to Baalbek
Baalbek," he said. sulk in their walled enclaves, staring sullenly at
Newman's escorts pointed out the terrorist outsiders who dare to invade their private corner of
headquarters, a former Lebanese army outpost still hall. The mullahs' wailing echoes through the
called the Sheik Abdullah barracks, on the opposite streets; their amplified chants have a chilling effect.
hillside. The terrorists reportedly hold most of Newman's military caravan sped through lush
their hostages there in barren basement rooms. All fields of wheat and hemp, used to make hashish.
Newman could do was observe the terrorist Then there It was: Baalbek, rising out of the hsakP
compound through field glasses. fields and slumping quickly back into them.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100110003-9