COUNTERTERRORISM ON A SHOESTRING

There is, in fact, a growing interest in chemical and biological weapons among terrorist and insurgent organizations worldwide for small-scale, tactical attacks. As far back as 1975, the Symbionese Liberation Army obtained instructions on the development of germ warfare agents to enhance their "guerrilla" actions. More recently, in 1995, four members of the Minnesota Patriots Council, an antitax group that rejected all forms of authority higher than the state level, were convicted of possession of a biological agent for use as a weapon. Prosecutors contended that the men conspired to murder various federal and county officials with a supply of the lethal toxin ricin they had developed with the aid of an instruction kit purchased through a right-wing publication. The flourishing mystique of chemical and biological weapons suggests that angry and alienated groups are likely to manipulate them for conventional political purposes. And indeed, the number of CBW threats investigated by the FBI is increasing steadily. But the use of such weapons merely to enhance conventional terrorism should not prove excessively costly to counter.

The debate boils down to money. If the probability of a large-scale attack is extremely small, fewer financial resources should be committed to recovering from it. Money should be allocated instead to early warning systems and preemption of tactical chemical and biological terrorism. The security package below stresses low-cost intelligence, consequence management and research, and a no-cost, prudent counterterrorism policy. Although tailored to the United States, this program could form the basis for policy in other countries as well:

*International deterrence.

The potential use of chemical and biological weapons for enhanced conventional terrorism, and the limited risk of escalation to superterrorism, call for a reexamination of the existing U.S. deterrence doctrine--especially of the evidence required for retaliation against states that sponsor terrorism. The United States must relay a stern, yet discreet message to states that continue to support terrorist organizations or that disregard the presence of loosely affiliated terrorists within their territory: They bear direct and full responsibility for any future CBW attack on American targets by the organizations they sponsor or shelter. They must know that any use of weapons of mass destruction by their clients against the United States will constitute just cause for massive retaliation against their countries, whether or not evidence proves for certain that they ordered the attack.

*Domestic deterrence.

There is no question that the potential use of chemical and biological weapons for low-level domestic terrorism adds a new and dangerous dimension to conventional terrorism. There is consequently an urgent need to create a culture of domestic deterrence against the nonscientific use of chemical and biological agents. The most important task must be accomplished through legislation. Congress should tighten existing legislation against domestic production and distribution of biological, chemical, and radiological agents and devices.

The Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 enlarged the federal criminal code to include within its scope a prohibition on any attempts, threats, and conspiracies to acquire or use biological agents, chemical agents, and toxins. It also further redefined the terms "biological agent" and "toxin" to cover a number of products that may be bioengineered into threatening agents. However, the legislation still includes the onerous burden of proving that these agents were developed for use as weapons. Take the case of Larry Wayne Harris, an Ohio man arrested in January by the FBI for procuring anthrax cultures from an unknown source. Harris successfully defended his innocence by insisting that he obtained the anthrax spores merely to experiment with vaccines. He required no special permit or license to procure toxins that could be developed into deadly agents. The FBI and local law enforcement agencies should be given the requisite authority to enforce existing laws as well as to act in cases of clear and present CBW danger, even if the groups involved have not yet shown criminal intent. The regulations regarding who is allowed to purchase potentially threatening agents should also be strengthened.

A campaign of public education detailing the dangers and illegality of nonscientific experimentation in chemical and biological agents would also be productive. This effort should include, for example, clear and stringent university policies regulating the use of school laboratories and a responsible public ad campaign explaining the serious nature of this crime. A clear presentation of the new threat as another type of conventional terrorism would alert the public to groups and individuals who experiment illegitimately with chemical and biological substances and would reduce CBW terrorism hysteria.

*Better Intelligence.

As is currently the case, the intelligence community should naturally assume the most significant role in any productive campaign to stop chemical and biological terrorism. However, new early warning CBW indicators that focus on radical group behavior are urgently needed. Analysts should be able to reduce substantially the risk of a CBW attack if they monitor group  radicalization as expressed in its rhetoric, extralegal operations, low-level violence, growing sense of collective paranoia, and early experimentation with chemical or biological substances. Proper CBW intelligence must be freed from the burden of proving criminal intent.

*Smart and compact consequence management teams.

The threat of conventional CBW terrorism requires neither massive preparations nor large intervention forces. It calls for neither costly new technologies nor a growing number of interagency coordinating bodies. The decision to form and train joint-response teams in major U.S. cities, prompted by the 1995 Presidential Decision Directive on terrorism, will be productive if the teams are kept within proper proportions. The ideal team would be streamlined so as to minimize the interagency rivalry that has tended to make these teams grow in size and complexity. In addition to FBI agents, specially trained local police, detection and decontamination experts, and public-health specialists, these compact units should include psychologists and public-relations experts trained in reducing public hysteria.

*Psychopolitical research.

The most neglected means of countering CBW terrorism is psychopolitical research. Terrorism scholars and U.S. intelligence agencies have thus far failed to discern the  sychological mechanisms that may compel terrorists to contemplate seriously the use of weapons of mass destruction. Systematic group and individual profiling for predictive purposes is almost unknown. Whether in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, or the United States, numerous former terrorists and members of radical organizations are believed to have considered and rejected the use of weapons of mass destruction. To help us understand better the considerations involved in the use or non-use of chemical and biological weapons, well-trained psychologists and terrorism researchers should conduct a three-year, low-cost, comprehensive project of interviewing these former radicals.

*Reducing unnecessary superterrorism rhetoric.

Although there is no way to censor the discussion of mass-destruction terrorism, President Clinton, his secretaries, elected politicians at all levels, responsible government officials, writers, and journalists must tone down the rhetoric feeding today's superterrorism frenzy.

There is neither empirical evidence nor logical support for the growing belief that a new "postmodem" age of terrorism is about to dawn, an era afflicted by a large number of anonymous mass murderers toting chemical and biological weapons. The true threat of superterrorism will not likely come in the form of a Hiroshima-like disaster but rather as a widespread panic caused by a relatively small CBW incident involving a few dozen fatalities. Terrorism, we must remember, is not about killing. It is a form of psychological warfare in which the killing of a small number of people convinces the rest of us that we are next in line. Rumors, anxiety, and hysteria created by such inevitable incidents may lead to panic-stricken evacuations of entire neighborhoods, even cities, and may produce many indirect fatalities. It may also lead to irresistible demands to fortify the entire United States against future chemical and biological attacks, however absurd the cost.

Americans should remember the calls made in the 1950s to build shelters, conduct country-wide drills, and alert the entire nation for a first-strike nuclear attack. A return to the duck-and-cover absurdities of that time is likely to be as ineffective and debilitating now as it was then. Although the threat of chemical and biological terrorism should be taken seriously, the public must know that the risk of a major catastrophe is extremely minimal. The fear of CBW terrorism is contagious: Other countries are already showing increased interest in protecting themselves against superterrorism. A restrained and measured American response to the new threat may have a sobering effect on CBW mania worldwide.

Setting the FBI Free

When members of the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo went shopping in the United States, they were not looking for cheap jeans or compact discs. They were out to secure key ingredients for a budding chemical-weapons program--and they went unnoticed. Today, more FBI agents than ever are working the counterterrorism beat: double the number that would-be superterrorists had to contend with just a few years ago. But is the FBI really better equipped now than it was then to discover and preempt such terrorist activity in its earliest stages?

FBI counterterrorism policy is predicated on guidelines issued in 1983 hy then-U.S. attorney general William French Smith: The FBI can open a full investigation into a potential act of terrorism only "when facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that two or more persons are engaged in activities that involve force or violence and a violation of the criminal laws of the United States." Short of launching a full investigation, the FBI may open a preliminary inquiry if it learns from any source that a crime might be committed and determines that the allegation "requires some further scrutiny." This ambiguous phrasing allows the FBI a reasonable degree of latitude in investigating potential terrorist activity.

However, without a lead--whether an anonymous tip or a public news report--FBI agents can do little to gather intelligence on known or potential terrorists. Agents cannot even download information from World Wide Web sites or clip newspapers to track fringe elements. The FBI responds to leads; it does not ferret out potential threats. Indeed, in an interview with the Center for National Security Studies, one former FBI official griped, "You have to wait until you have blood on the street before the Bureau can act."

CIA analysts in charge of investigating foreign terrorist threats comb extensive databanks on individuals and groups hostile to the United States. American citizens are constitutionally protected against this sort of intrusion. A 1995 presidential initiative intended to increase the FBI's authority to plant wiretaps, deport illegal aliens suspected of terrorism, and expand the role of the military in certain kinds of cases was blocked by Congress. Critics have argued that the costs of such constraints on law enforcement may he dangerously high--reconsidering them would be one of the most effective (and perhaps least expensive) remedies  against superterrorism

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Brian Jenkins first makes his well-known argument that terrorists want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead, in "Will Terrorists Go Nuclear?" (Orbis, Autumn 1985).

More recently, Jenkins provides a reasoned analysis of weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) terrorism in the aftermath of the Tokyo subway attack in "The Limits of Terror: Constraints on the Escalation of Violence" (Harvard International Review, Summer 1995).

For a counter argument, see Robert Kupperman's "A Dangerous Future: The Destructive Potential of Criminal Arsenals" in the same issue.

Ron Purver reviews the literature on superterrorism and weighs the opportunities for, and constraints on, terrorists considering a WMD attack in "Chemical and Biological Terrorism: New Threat to Public Safety" (Conflict Studies, December 1996/January 1997).

Jerrold Post and Ehud Sprinzak stress the psychopolitical considerations inhibiting potential WMD terrorists in "Why Haven't Terrorists Used Weapons of Mass Destruction7" (Armed Forces Journal, April 1998).

For a solid compilation of essays on superterrorism, see Brad Roberts, ed., Terrorism with Chemical and Biological Weapons: Calibrating Risks and Responses (Alexandria: Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute, 1997).

Walter Laqueur surveys the history of terrorism and finds an alarming number of barbarians at the gate in "Postmodern Terrorism" (Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996).

John Deutch takes a counterintuitive look at the subject in "Think Again: Terrorism" (FOREIGN
POLICY, Fall 1997).

Finally, David Kaplan provides the best available study of Aum Shinrikyo in his excellent book The Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to the Nuclear Arsenals of Russia (New York: Crown Publishers, 1996).

The World Wide Web provides a number of resources for superterrorism research. The  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nonproliferation Project and the Henry L. Stimson Center provide regular coverage of nuclear-, chemical-, and biological-weapons issues, including terrorism.

The Federation of American Scientists publishes a wealth of government documents as well as excellent news and analysis pertaining to weapons of mass destruction. And the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" provides one-stop shopping for information on some of the world's more notorious organizations.

For links to these and other Web sites, as well as a comprehensive index of related articles, access

www.foreignpolicy.com.

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