Saddam's secret weapon?
Baghdad may try to incite terrorist reprisals, as it did in the last war
The last time that America went to war against Iraq, Saddam Hussein promised to strike America with a wave of worldwide terrorism. His effort, back in 1991, was less than spectacular. In Indonesia, Saddam's henchmen targeted the home of U.S. Ambassador John Monjo, planting 24 sticks of dynamite in a flower box near where he ate breakfast. Foolishly, they failed to wire the bomb properly and left it poking out of the soil, where it was discovered by the gardener.
Around the world, Baghdad dispatched some 40 two-man teams to attack U.S. targets. But as in Jakarta, the squads were "crude and unprofessional," says Neil Gallagher, who retired as the FBI's national security chief in 2001. "They used people who were expendable." In the Philippines, the Iraqi consul general's car dropped off two would-be terrorists near their target, the American library. But as they were arming their bomb, it exploded, killing one of them. The survivor then gave his rescuers a telling contact: the business card of an Iraqi diplomat.
U.S. officials fully expect Baghdad to try again should the United States invade Iraq. "We know they're trying to prepare for the possibility of some sort of terrorist activity," says one intelligence official. But they also note that Iraq has not attempted a terrorist attack since a foiled 1993 plot to assassinate former President Bush in Kuwait. Nor is Iraq believed to have developed new terrorist capabilities, and its intelligence service lacks the kind of support network developed by al Qaeda. "No one is too concerned because they are too ham-fisted," says a senior official.
Despite this, nobody will be sitting still. Aside from the incompetence of Iraq's agents, a major reason that few attacks succeeded in 1991 was a full-court press by the United States and its allies. Some 200 Iraqi diplomats and intelligence agents were expelled worldwide. At home, the FBI tailed the few remaining diplomats and monitored their telephones. Overseas, the CIA and the State Department helped persuade allies and others to mount extensive surveillance of Iraqi diplomats and students. "They were shadowed overtly," says retired Gen. Kenneth Bergquist, the State Department's associate coordinator for terrorism at the time. "They knew they were being followed." Plots were disrupted in France, Thailand, Egypt, and elsewhere, while Iraqi agents were arrested throughout Asia and Africa.
By the numbers. Investigators were aided by Saddam's compulsion for tight central control. Iraq's operations were all directed out of embassies, which were closely monitored. And, as it turned out, the terrorists had been issued sequentially numbered passports, making it even easier for authorities worldwide to track them down.
Has Iraq learned from its mistakes? Since the last war, terrorism experts say, Baghdad has noted the success of groups like al Qaeda and Hezbollah. And though clumsy in the past, Iraq's operatives have had more time to prepare this go-round.
Also troubling: No regime with weapons of mass destruction has ever been toppled by military force. In one particularly worrisome scenario, Iraq's germ weapons or chemical agents could be handed off during the war to a terrorist group and not used until months later. "It would be an act of revenge fitting with Saddam's character," says Ahmed Hashim, an Iraq expert at the Naval War College.
Most officials, however, are not unduly alarmed. The handful of terrorist groups based in Iraq are largely inactive, and U.S. intelligence has found no evidence of solid ties between Saddam Hussein's secular regime and al Qaeda's Islamists. Nor is there a precedent. In keeping with Saddam's obsession with control, the regime so far has employed only Iraqi nationals under the direct command of intelligence officials.
More likely: sympathetic attacks by groups like al Qaeda. During the Gulf War, Saddam broadcast appeals to terrorists worldwide to strike at U.S. interests--and the terrorists responded. Officials logged some 200 incidents worldwide, although most were decidedly low level--firebombs, gunshots, and bricks thrown through windows. In the post-9/11 era, that would almost come as a relief.
This story appears in the January 20, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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