Again, the Nightmare

By William E. Smith

For the third time in 17 months, a major U.S. target in Beirut is bombed

It was an act of terrorism that U.S. diplomats had discussed, dreaded and planned against for nearly a year and a half. Yet when it occurred, all the worry, the precautions and the special security devices proved to be almost futile against the fanatical determination of one man to reach his target. "At first I thought it was a supersonic boom," said a Lebanese civilian moments after the explosion. "Then I knew it was the American embassy."

At 11:45 a.m. last Thursday, a van with diplomatic license plates pulled up at a checkpoint outside the embassy annex, a building in East Beirut that in the past few months had become the headquarters of Ambassador Reginald Bartholomew and his staff. The car was ordered to halt by the Lebanese security guards on duty at the checkpoint. Suddenly the driver pulled a gun and shot at one of the guards. Then, as another guard shouted and ran after the van, the driver raced his engine, zigzagged through the "dragon's teeth," a staggered row of concrete blocks designed to reduce the speed of approaching cars, and headed for the embassy building.

One of the bodyguards accompanying British Ambassador David Miers, who happened to be visiting his U.S. counterpart, opened fire on the approaching van. Said the British security man later: "I fired about five rounds through the door of the vehicle. I saw the driver fall over. As he fell, he pulled on the wheel and the car swung to the right, hitting a parked vehicle." The van was still 30 ft. from the embassy when it exploded, producing a flash and a deafening roar. The fac,ade of the building collapsed, raining masonry and broken glass over a wide area in the residential district.

The shots fired at the van apparently prevented the driver from reaching his presumed destination, the parking garage underneath the embassy. If the car and its 350 lbs. of explosives had blown up there, the entire building might have collapsed, with terrible consequences. As it was, at least twelve people were killed and 35 wounded, although the casualty figures may turn out to be higher. Among the dead were two Americans attached to the embassy's military liaison office: Army Chief Warrant Officer Kenneth V. Welch of Grand Rapids, Mich., and Navy Petty Officer First Class Michael Ray Wagner of Zebulon, N.C. The other fatalities were Lebanese civilians working at the embassy or seeking visas to the U.S.

By the ugly standards of Lebanon's recent history, the toll was not all that high. Just 17 months earlier, 63 people had been killed in the car bombing of the old U.S. embassy in West Beirut. Six months later, similar suicide bombings within moments of each other took the lives of 241 U.S. servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. Sixty-one others died two weeks after that when a bomb devastated an Israeli military headquarters in the southern port city of Tyre. In the meantime, of course, untold hundreds have died in the continuing chaos throughout Lebanon.

The latest atrocity was deeply troubling to U.S. officials. It demonstrated that despite an array of new security precautions instituted during the past year, embassies and other facilities are still vulnerable to attack by terrorists willing to sacrifice their lives. The bombing showed that Christian East Beirut, which has until now been far less volatile than Muslim West Beirut, is nowhere near as secure as had been believed. It also indicated that despite a sharp decline in the American military and diplomatic presence in Lebanon over the past seven months, the U.S. remains a favorite target of fanatical Muslim terrorism.

Ninety minutes after the blast, an anonymous caller, speaking in Arabic, telephoned the Beirut office of Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, and claimed responsibility in the name of Islamic jihad (holy war). This shadowy organization, whose leaders are unknown and whose membership is uncertain, has been associated with the previous car bombings in Beirut. The caller declared, "In the name of God the Almighty, Islamic jihad announces that it is responsible for blowing up a car rigged with explosives, which was driven by one of our suicide commandos. The operation proves that we will carry out our previous promise not to allow a single American to remain on Lebanese soil."

Meanwhile, rescue workers were sifting through the embassy wreckage. The blast had left a crater 26 ft. in diameter and 8 ft. deep. Beside it lay the remains of the lethal van, in a burned and twisted heap. Ambulances wailed as armed guards lowered their weapons menacingly to keep curiosity seekers away. Bodies were scattered amid the rubble, some without limbs; screams and groans could be heard everywhere. Among the wounded was Fawzi Yazeji, a Lebanese guard, who was taken to the nearby Abu Jawdeh hospital for treatment. Said he: "Thank God this didn't happen two hours earlier, when the embassy was packed with hundreds of people waiting for visas."

When the bomb went off, Bartholomew was in his fifth-floor office talking with British Ambassador Miers. Elsewhere on the same floor, U.S. Political Officer David Winn was conferring with a Dutch diplomat. Said Winn later: "We heard a burst of automatic fire, and we both looked at each other, and then it blew." He and others rushed to the Ambassador's office, where they found Miers shaken but not seriously hurt. The British envoy asked them to help him dig out Bartholomew, who was so covered with rubble that he was not even visible. Like Miers, Bartholomew was not badly injured. The two diplomats briefly surveyed the devastation below and were then taken to the hospital.

Later that morning, Bartholomew spoke by telephone with Ronald Reagan. The President had been awakened by his National Security Adviser, Robert McFarlane, and told of the bombing. At 8:30 a.m., McFarlane and Secretary of State George Shultz briefed Reagan at the White House. By then Shultz had asked Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Richard Murphy to proceed to Beirut to lead an investigation of the bombing.

After the briefing, Reagan decided to go ahead with a scheduled campaign trip to Iowa, on the grounds that he could easily keep in touch with the situation in Beirut. Throughout the day, he spoke of the bombing as "a cowardly terrorist act" and described it as "another painful reminder of the persistent threat of terrorism in the world." When asked whether he was satisfied with the security at the Beirut embassy, the President replied, "As much as I know about it, yes. I think if someone is determined to do what they did, it's pretty difficult to prevent it."

While that thesis will be much debated, it is true that most U.S. embassies in the Middle East are more secure than they were a year ago. Shultz, who is said to be obsessed with the problem, declared last week, "This attack once again reminds us of the importance of the efforts we are taking to combat terrorism."

Said State Department Spokesman John Hughes: "You have to remember that an embassy has to be open to the public, a window of the U.S. open to the world." When reminded that there had been an anonymous telephone threat in Beirut earlier this month of a forthcoming attack against "one of the vital American installations in the Middle East," Hughes replied, "Threats against our installations are sadly all too frequent."

The problem has been particularly acute in Lebanon. After last year's bombing of the embassy in West Beirut, U.S. diplomats began working out of the British embassy. But in late July they moved their offices to the new "annex" in East Beirut, partly because much of the government of President Amin Gemayel was located in that half of the city, but mainly because East Beirut was considered safer than West Beirut. The annex building was thought to be especially secure because it was located in Aukar, a suburb on the outskirts of the city. The move coincided with the departure from Lebanon of 80 U.S. Marines, after which Christian Lebanese guards trained by U.S. military advisers took over the job of protecting the embassy's exterior. The Administration was clearly relieved to get those 80 Marines out of Lebanon and was convinced that the Lebanese could handle the job.

At the time of last week's bombing, however, the building was still under construction and some of the planned security measures had not been completed. According to reports from Washington, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency recently concluded that security at embassy installations in the East Beirut area was inadequate and that the buildings were vulnerable to terrorist attack. A separate report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative and auditing arm of Congress, faulted the State Department for the way it had managed its "security-enhancement program" for embassies in the region. Late last week Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ordered an investigation into whether "all necessary precautions" had been taken to prevent such an act of terrorism.

When the bomb went off in East Beirut, workmen were preparing to install a steel gate near the dragon's teeth that would strengthen security by giving guards a little more time in which to deal with a possible emergency. The white-painted gate was still lying on the sidewalk, waiting to be put into place, and the cement in which the gateposts were set was still wet. In the aftermath of the tragedy, a Lebanese guard said that he thought the dragon's teeth had been placed too far apart to force traffic to a crawl. Countering such criticism, Bartholomew's predecessor as Ambassador to Lebanon, Robert Dillon, pointed out that the security measures in effect last week had at least prevented the bomb-laden car from reaching the embassy building.

Apart from security concerns, the latest bombing raised the question of possible U.S. retaliation. Asked about the matter, President Reagan said flatly, "I can't discuss that." The main problem is that the culprits are not easy to identify, let alone punish. Most experts believe the name Islamic Jihad is a sort of catchword used by several fanatical Shi'ite Muslim groups inspired by Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini and affiliated with Iranian Revolutionary Guards based in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. The terrorists seem to be linked to the ruling Shi'ite hierarchy in Iran or to a segment of it. Because the groups operate out of an area that is controlled by Syria, it has been assumed that Damascus was encouraging their terrorist activities, but this is probably no longer true.

Ever since the withdrawal of the U.S. Marines and other contingents of the Multi-National Force last winter, Syria has been the dominant power in Lebanon and has been trying to bring an end to that country's factional fighting. In the past six months there have been several clashes between the Iranian guards and Syrian troops in the Bekaa Valley. In the latest fight, in early September, Syria brought in tanks and forced the guards to return to their camps outside the ancient city of Baalbek. That clash was promptly followed by a surprise visit to Syria by Iranian President Seyed Ali Khamene'i, who reportedly met with the guards in the Bekaa Valley and ordered them to toe the Syrian line.

Nonetheless, the troublemaking has continued. Even Libyan and Soviet diplomats have on occasion been harassed by fundamentalist groups, and a number of Western officials and journalists have been kidnaped. (Late last week, Reuters Correspondent Jonathan Wright was released unharmed by unidentified gunmen after being held for 23 days.) All these terrorist incidents, coming at a time when Syria was trying to bring some kind of order to Lebanon, have embarrassed the Damascus government of President Hafez Assad. Worse, they bring with them the possibility of U.S. retaliation. The Syrians thus have reason to be annoyed with their onetime surrogates but obviously have not managed to check the terrorist activities.

The Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rashid Karami, denounced the embassy bombing as "inexcusable and intolerable," adding, "We congratulate the survivors, and implore God's mercy for the victims." Otherwise, the reaction in the Arab world was somewhat muted, perhaps because many Arab moderates, including the Lebanese, were angry over the U.S. veto in early September of a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for improved living conditions in Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon. Indeed, many Middle East experts speculated that the latest bombing was intended as retaliation for the veto.

Others traced the continuing series of terrorist acts to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June 1982. Said a British government official: "Until there is a just Palestinian settlement that assures Israel's statehood and security and grants self-determination to the Palestinians, there will be no ending to the sort of violence we have seen this week." Some Middle East experts, including William Quandt of the Brookings Institution, advocate closer U.S. ties with Syria as a possible way of reducing the risks of such terrorism. Quandt argues that neither Syria nor any of the other main powers in the area benefit from these acts, and therefore he cautions against any retaliatory strike that is not aimed precisely at the culprits. "If you have good intelligence, there's a strong case for taking action," he contends. "But if you're that good, you probably knew about the plot beforehand and could have prevented it."

If nothing else, the U.S. learned last week that its troubles in Lebanon did not end with the withdrawal of the Marine peace-keeping force last winter. Says former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert Neumann: "The area is not heating up again. It never cooled down." As for the latest bombing, Neumann predicts grimly, "Fasten your seat belts. There will be more."

--By William E. Smith.

Reported by John Borrell/Beirut and Barrett Seaman/Washington

With reporting by John Borrell/Beirut, Barrett Seaman/Washington