Counterterrorism Blog

The killing of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah terrorist leader behind the death and kidnappings of hundreds of Americans, is a major development and a reminder of the painful Lebanon hostage traumas inflicted on the western world in the 1980’s, long before 9/11. In a precursor to the present, Mughniyeh’s terrorist acts were related to conflicts involving Iraq and Iran and utilized techniques that have been adopted by Al Qaeda.

The traumatic events, which wrapped the Reagan Administration around the terrorism axle, included the kidnappings of nearly 100 American and other western hostages in Lebanon during the 1980’s. Ten of the hostages died in captivity including the CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley and Col. William Higgins, assigned to Lebanon on a U.N. peace keeping mission.

Many misconceptions and attempts by some political leaders and con- men to exploit the human tragedy for political and mercenary motives surrounded the hostage situation. Attempts to free the hostages included the disastrous Iran-Contra missiles-for- hostage deals orchestrated by NSC staffer Oliver North that violated U.S. counterterrorism policies and arms export laws. This in turn prompted Congress to pass tougher arms control legislation that made it more difficult for the executive branch to remove a country from the terrorism list.

I

Mughniyeh’s Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group, which is backed by Iran, conducted the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy that claimed 63 lives, including the CIA station chief and his colleagues. The attack also killed Agency for International Development officials who were involved in designing foreign assistance projects for Lebanon, particularly in the impoverished Shiite sections in southern Lebanon and southern Beirut. (I had met them during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff trip in January 1983 to explore speeding up U.S. economic assistance to Lebanon. It still incenses me when I read or hear remarks that the U.S. did not do enough to help the Lebanese Shiites.)

This bombing was followed by the simultaneous truck bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and French facilities in Beirut in October, 1983, killing 241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers who were in Lebanon on a peace keeping mission. This attack also had wide ranging repercussions, leading to President Reagan’s withdrawal of the U.S. peacekeeping forces and enhancing the perception in the Middle East of American weakness and that terrorism can pay off.

Other attacks included the 1985 hijacking of TWA 847 and the murder of an American Navy diver, Robert Stet hem, for which Mughniyeh was indicted in an American court. Mughniyeh’s Hezbollah group was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist organization until Al Qaeda struck the American embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the World Trade Center and Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The State Department terrorism information rewards program also put out a $25 million reward for information leading to his capture and effective prosecution. Hezbollah exercised a long reach to Latin America in the 1992 bombing the Israeli embassy in Argentina and the 1984 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, reportedly with help from the Iranian government.

The news of Mughniyeh’s death by a car bombing in Damascus reminded me of President Reagan’s statement that “you can run but you cannot hide.” President Reagan was trying to make the point that the U.S. would not give up on trying to catch terrorists who killed Americans, no matter how long it took.

(I am not suggesting that the U.S. was behind Mughniyeh’s death although there have been press reports of past operations that were planned but were called off for various reasons including uncertainties about the accuracy y of the intelligence or diplomatic complications with France which reportedly had him briefly but exchanged him for a French hostage, and Saudi Arabia which refused to let a plane carrying him land, allowing him to avoid arrest. Hezbollah of course was quick to blame the Israelis for the car bombing in the heart of Damascus .The claim was quickly denied by the Israeli government. The fact that the bombing took place in the police state of Syria, and that Mughniyeh has been very careful to cover his tracks, suggests that western intelligence operatives were better than usually given credit for or that his death could also have involved some shrouded inter-Arab dispute, perhaps related to the strife in Lebanon.)

However it occurred Mughniyeh’s death is a reminder of some little known history, attempts by some persons to exploit the hostage crisis, and lessons to be learned.

My observations come from serving as one of the representatives of the State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism on a State Department inter-bureau working group force that was established to meet several times a week to coordinate efforts on the issue. The group included representatives from the Near East Bureau and even included a State Department psychiatrist to help advise the Consular Affairs Bureau representative who was assigned to be the Department’s primary contact with the families of the hostages.

The efforts to release the hostage were complicated by media hype about them, publicity campaigns on their behalf, and a lack of understanding among some hostage advocates of the motivations of the terrorists. And of course, a key factor was the ruthlessness of the hostage-takers.

The series of hostage taking was prompted primarily by Mughniyeh’s efforts to pressure the U.S. and other western countries to twist Kuwait’s arm to release imprisoned members of an Iraqi Shiite organization, the Iraqi Dawa that bombed the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait and a number of Kuwait facilities, in December, 1983.

The pro-Iran Dawa group staged the coordinated multiple target attacks in retaliation for Kuwait, U.S. and French support for Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war. After the attacks, which deeply shocked the Kuwaitis, the government arrested and imprisoned 17 members of the group, “the Dawa 17” including two Lebanese. One of the Lebanese was Mustafa Youseff Badreddin, a brother-in law, cousin and colleague of Mughniyeh, who reportedly was an explosives expert. There was a widespread rumor that Mughniyeh’s wife refused to sleep with him until her brother was freed. Whether or not that was the case the demand for release of Dawa prisoners was the major element in the hostage taking.

The Kuwait government refused to release them and the U.S. Government declined to pressure Kuwait to make a deal.

Long standing U.S. government policy opposed such deals because giving into such terrorist demands would just lead to future such demands.

The hostage takers tried to manipulate the families with occasional releases of letters or photos in order to build up public pressure on the Reagan Administration to “do more” to obtain the release of hostages. They did not believe that behind the scenes diplomatic pressures were sufficient. Peggy Saye, sister of Associated Press Beirut bureau manager Terry Anderson, was a dedicated leader of the public campaign effort. Her heart was in the right place but perhaps it was not by coincidence, Mr. Anderson that became the longest held hostage because of his publicity value.

The hostage crisis also was used by some activists to blame Israel. I remember publicity sessions organized on Capital hill, including one hosted by then Congressman Dymally of California, a supporter of the controversial anti-Iran MEK group, in which various participants asserted that Americans were taken hostage because of U.S. support for Israel. (Not mentioned was the fact that French and Germans and other nationalities were also taken hostage and it was the Dawa 17‘s attacks against countries supporting Iraq that led to their imprisonment by Kuwait.)

American policies also were blamed by the wife of one of the hostages, Presbyterian missionary Benjamin Weir. During a meeting early in the crisis (when I was still on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff), I suggested to her that she try to enlist assistance from Presbyterian groups in countries that had friendly relations and important trade with Iran, such as Australia and New Zealand and I offered to put her in touch with influential friends "down under" to get their governments to weigh in. Her stiff reply was that this was an American-caused problem and that it was up to the U.S. to get her husband freed.

Jesse Jackson got into the act, flying to Damascus to “accept” the release of hostages. But shortly after one hostage was released, another was grabbed. And there numerous “tips” and offers of go-between assistance by a large variety of people who claimed they had good contacts with the hostage holders. They invariably turned out to be con-men trying to get money from the families or the US government. Some of the leads took a considerable effort to check out and became part of what. a middle east expert in the counterterrorism office dubbed the “sleaze bag file.

There were two major concerns in the State Department about the publicity campaign. One was that it increased the value of the hostages in the eyes of their captors. Television played into the captors hands with the “bleeding heart, how do you feel stories” using emotional interviews with the families of the newly taken hostages. The potential effect was to increase pressure on the public and Congress to, in turn, pressure the White House to make deals.

Another concern, expressed by the then-CTC coordinator Ambassador Robert Oakley was that the families would get to President Reagan and the emotions and sympathy evoked during the meetings would result in some unwise action. A basic counterterrorism rule is that the decision-makers should not meet with families because the emotional environment might result in actions that, while possibly helping resolve the immediate hostage situation by making deals, would create greater problems and prompt more hostage -taking in the future.

(For an early account of the public pressure campaign and its impact on President Reagan see “The King is Hostage,” by Terrell Arnold, after he retired as Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism ,in an April 10, 1987 National Review article.

Nevertheless, the White House staff did arrange meetings with President Reagan. Ultimately Ollie North and other NSC officials, including Admiral Poindexter and Bud McFarlane, worked out the Iran-Contra dea in which the U.S. traded anti-tank TOW missiles to Iran in order to get Tehran to direct its Hezbollah ally to release hostages. When the deal, which had been kept secret from the State Department, was ultimately exposed by a Lebanese newspaper, it led to criminal convictions for North and other players. It also prompted Congressional passage of the Arms Control Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989.

In addition to tightening controls over the issuance of export licenses, the legislation included a provision that made it more difficult for the President to remove a country from the terrorism list and required 45-day advance notification to Congress, giving Congress time to block the action if it could muster the votes. This provision was in reaction to the Reagan Administration’s removal of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq government from the terrorism list in 1982 without even notifying Congress in advance. The Reagan Administration took the move as part of the tilt toward Baghdad in its war against Iran. Tehran’s promotion of its Islamic Revolution was considered to be the greater of the two evils.

Thus, an overreach and illegal actions by the Executive Branch a quarter century ago led to increased Congressional restrictions on the President’s flexibility. This could lead to difficulties if this or the next Administration tries to remove North Korea from the terrorism list without being able to convince Congress is that North Korea is not playing games on the nuclear issue and will not share its nuclear technology with terrorist groups or other countries.

Mughniyeh’s operations against the U.S. used techniques that should have provided important lessons for the U.S. and in many respects provided the pattern for the attacks by Al Qaeda a decade later. The use of truck bombs against the US Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut surprised security officials who apparently could not imagine that someone would be willing to commit suicide in order to kill others. The simultaneous and coordinated attacks against several targets at once, as in Kuwait in 1983, created a template adopted by Al Qaeda terrorists when they bombed the American embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 and crashed fuel-laden passenger planes aircraft into the New York World Trade Center and Washington site on 9/11.

The Lebanese terrorists also showed great ability to get publicity by staging life television broadcasts and interviews following the TWA 847 hijacking in 1985 and manipulating the families of the hostages.
.
On the U.S. side, the prolongation of the Lebanon hostage situation reminded U.S officials that heavy publicity about hostages can prolong their agony by making them appear more valuable to the captors and that making deals such as providing weapons or trading hostages can result in more innocents being taken hostage. However this did not prevent some countries from making deals when there citizens were taken hostage during the current Iraq conflict

By the end of the 1980’s the Lebanese hostage taking subsided. The Dawa 17 ironically were freed by Iraq’s action, a country they opposed, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the jail was opened. Unconfirmed reports said that Mughniyeh’s brother-in-law did not return to Lebanon and his wife immediately but stayed in the area for a few months.

Mughniyeh dropped out of public sight and reportedly underwent plastic surgery to conceal his identity. But although most Americans may not have known of him, and the Lebanon hostage situation is all but forgotten except by the victims and their families, he remained active.

As State Department spokesman Sean McCormack put it: “he was a cold blooded killer, a mass murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless lives lost. One way or another, he was brought to justice.”