97622. Terrorism Expert Sounds Battle Cry

By Douglas J. Gillert

American Forces Press Service



	SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- Terrorists in the years ahead will

become less politically motivated and more attuned to religious,

fanatical zealotry. Less concerned than ever about international

repercussions, they will seek ways to reap mass casualties on an

unprepared public. The United States will most often be their

target.

	Peter Probst, a specialist on international terrorism with

DoD's special operations and low-intensity conflict office, made

these predictions during the 1997 DoD anti-terrorism conference

here. Probst said the nature of terrorism is changing

fundamentally, and DoD's approach to countering terrorists must

undergo similar changes.

	Because it's effective and cheap -- and sponsorship can be

easily disguised or denied -- terrorism increasingly will be the

weapon of choice for extremists, Probst said. Political terrorism

is declining, he said, supplanted by religiously motivated

terrorist acts -- and the change spells trouble.

	"In contrast to their politically motivated counterparts,

terrorist groups or cults motivated by religious ideology exhibit

few self-imposed restraints," Probst said. "They actively seek to

maximize the carnage, believing that only by annihilating their

enemy they may fulfill the dictates of their guru or god."

	This difference of perspective affects terrorists' choice of

targets and weapons. "Religious zealotry creates the will to

carry out mass casualty attacks, and proliferation provides the

means," Probst said. "This marriage of will and means has forever

changed the face of terrorism."

	Whereas truck bombs have been the weapon of choice in

several major terrorist incidents, Probst sees that changing. He

said he fears DoD won't change correspondingly.

	"We have not been very good at anticipating change," he

said, "and once we have identified change, we have not proved

very adept at developing an effective response." The time will

come, he said, when U.S. countermeasures will make truck bomb

attacks too difficult or too costly. But terrorists are adaptable

and will soon find a new approach, he said.

	While anti-terrorist analysts look at this eventuality, they

tend to focus "beyond the perimeter fence, on some sort of stand-

off attack using exotic weaponry," Probst said. Instead, he said,

planners should focus on an inside-the-fence threat that could

come from the very people DoD employs to make up rooms, serve

food, groom lawns and perform other such services at overseas

installations.

	"Such workers may be recruited from the local population or

provided by large contract firms," Probst said. The latter

category often is made up of third-country nationals whom "we

know little or nothing about," he said. "At best, the contracting

firm may have done cursory [background] checks."

	It's possible terrorists could infiltrate installations

through such contracts, Probst said. A single terrorist could

conceal a toxic agent such as anthrax in as small an object as a

cigarette, then, when nobody's looking, poison the iced tea or

Kool-Aid that sits at the end of the counter in the cafeteria.

	Biological and chemical agents could become terrorists' new

weapons of choice, Probst said, because they are easy to conceal

and would cause mass casualties. And the terrorist would be long

gone by the time symptoms begin to appear, he said.

	Such tactical use of biological weapons could easily gain

strategic value for terrorists, Probst said. "If 50 or 100 of our

[people] at some remote installation in some Third World country

came down with this unknown condition, we would air-evac them as

quickly as possible. But what would happen if simultaneously our

terrorist group alerted the major wire services that they'd

carried out an attack against 'the Great Satan' ... and would

similarly strike against any country that permitted our aircraft

to land or offered us any form of assistance? What started out as

a tactical attack very quickly might develop strategic overtones

and implications."

	Terrorists will try to have a major impact on U.S. policy

because they've enjoyed past success, Probst said. "We should all

remember that one driver in one suicide attack against our

Marines in Beirut turned American policy 180 degrees and drove

the greatest world power out of Lebanon," he said.

	Probst said he doesn't think the United States can defeat

terrorism by relying on old thinking and methodology. "To rely

predominantly on a group's historical record as a predictor of

future behavior is to court disaster," he said. "If the

demonstrated capabilities of terrorist organizations remain the

primary criteria for anti-terrorism planning, we will continue to

be reactive in our thinking. We will be much less likely to

anticipate change and much more likely to be blindsided."

	Instead, DoD should take several new approaches to

countering terrorism, Probst said. First, the military should

send mock terrorist "red teams" against its own installations to

identify and pinpoint vulnerabilities, he said. "To assume that

terrorists are aware of vulnerabilities and won't exploit them is

dangerously unrealistic," he said. "It's far better that the red

team [identifies weaknesses] and perhaps [causes] some

embarrassment than to leave that task for the terrorists."

	Next, he suggested formation of an anti-terrorism institute.

To effectively fight fanatical terrorists and better anticipate

changes in tactics and targets, Probst said, it's necessary to

understand "what makes your adversary tick. What does he fear?

What does he value? What are the demons that drive him? And most

important, how can we best exploit that knowledge?

	"To provide such insights, we need to be able to draw on the

knowledge of social psychologists, cultural anthropologists,

linguists and historians, as well as experts in crosscultural

communication." Gathered in an institute dedicated to

understanding terrorism, such individuals would identify trends

and potential threats and develop new tactics, strategies and

policy initiatives to combat terrorism, he said.

	Finally, he suggested formation of operational teams,

tailored to meet a specific terrorist challenge. Such teams would

include the FBI, CIA and DoD, he said. "But depending on the

nature of the problem, [a team] could also include experts in

exotic languages, covert actions, applied psychology, information

warfare and whatever other specific skills might be needed to

neutralize the threat. After resolving the threat, the team would

disband.

	"Such teams would operate transnationally, just as the

terrorists do," Probst said. "They would not be bound by

bureaucratic considerations or turf issues."

	Probst said such approaches to terrorism "must increasingly

become the norm, if we are to maximize the effective use of our

resources and hunt the terrorists to ground."









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