The U.S. and the Skyjackers: Where Power is Vulnerable

ALL week the nation fixed its agonized attention on Qa Khanna, the stretch of Jordanian desert where three hijacked airliners rested improbably, like a mirage of beached whales. The piracies represented an oddly terrifying juxtaposition of technology and barbarism, an almost science-fiction quality of civilization in a retrograde time machine, stranded abruptly in a desert waste. A handful of fanatics, equipped with nothing more complex than guns, dynamite and airline schedules, rendered some of the most advanced nations impotent to protect several hundred of their citizens (see THE WORLD). In one violent drama, the guerrillas frustrated the most sophisticated diplomacy and further endangered the already parlous chances for peace in the Middle East. After six days of waiting on the desert, the hijackers evacuated their hostages from the planes and then blew up $25 million worth of aircraft, in many ways the symbols of wealth and advanced technology.

There was an intimation that the world's most elaborate systems were vulnerable sometimes in proportion to their complexity. The specific problem of hijacking might be reduced, but the larger threat suggested by last week's piracies remained. Small groups can tyrannize simply by finding a pressure point. The older metaphors for societies --the ship of state, the political machine --should perhaps be replaced. More apt would be a neurological or organic comparison, what Columbia's Zbigniew Brzezinski calls "the global nervous system," in which revolutionaries can cause not massive onslaughts but small and devastating aneurysms.

In earlier, prenuclear times, American

Presidents responded to such depredations with fleets, Marines and righteous cannon fire--as when Thomas Jefferson dispatched U.S. frigates under Stephen Decatur to clean out the Barbary pirates who menaced American trade in the Mediterranean. Wistfully truculent, California's Governor Ronald Reagan complained last week: "It used to be that an American could simply pin a little American flag on him and be safe even in the midst of a revolution in some other country, because the world knew that this country would go any place in the world to get back any citizen of ours." Richard Nixon argued during the 1968 campaign: "When respect for the United States falls so low that a fourth-rate military power like North Korea will seize an American naval vessel on the high seas, it is time for new leadership." Last week Nixon was involved in an operation more intricate and hazardous than political campaigning.

No Force. The President was looking forward to the last day of his San Clemente vacation when word of the first two hijackings arrived. Flying back to Washington in Air Force One, Nixon received another bulletin. Pan Am's hijacked 747 had been blown up on the tarmac in Cairo. The President's immediate reaction: "Were the people out of it?"

On Tuesday morning Nixon summoned a task force of advisers to the Oval Office--Secretary of State William Rogers, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Attorney General John Mitchell, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, CIA Director Richard Helms and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. The problem, as they discussed it, was threefold: 1) the safety of the hostages in the Jordanian desert, 2) hijackings as part of the overall Middle East crisis and 3) de, terrence of further hijackings.

The first two questions, Nixon and his aides agreed, could best be managed by delicate international diplomacy. With the hostages' lives at stake, there was no inclination to call down military force to deal with the Palestinians, though some units were placed on alert. Laird sent six C-130 transport planes to Turkey to stand by with food supplies and medical evacuation teams. Negotiations with the guerrillas, the President's team concluded, should be handled by the International Red Cross.

Prevention Plan. The uncertain ritual of negotiation continued through the week--the Swiss and West Germans agreeing quickly to release their Palestinian prisoners, the British hesitating, the Israelis conceding nothing but leaving open at least a possibility that they might deal with the guerrillas.

While he approached the fate of the hostages with a gingerly care, the President immediately set his advisers to work on a tough new program to prevent future hijackings. Said Nixon: "I want everything--every program, every plan--looked at by every involved department. I want steps taken now."

On Friday morning, the White House released its plan. Among its provisions: specially trained armed guards would ride on all international and some domestic flights; use of electronic devices to detect weapons on passengers would be extended. Further, said the President: "It is imperative that all countries accept the multilateral convention pro viding for the extradition or punishment of hijackers." Nixon concluded with the warning: "Most countries, including the United States, found effective means of dealing with piracy on the high seas a century and a half ago. We can--and we will--deal effectively with piracy in the skies today."

Higher Authority. The hijackers' act was so outrageous that condemnation was all but instant and unanimous. It was not quite so easy to see that the judgment on them also applied to terrorists everywhere, including those inside the U.S. The situations are totally different; but the Palestinians' tactics are analogous to the methods of radical bombers in the U.S. in the sense that both abandon law for what they regard as the higher authority of their revolution.

Acting out of a sense of despair and powerlessness, they are willing to wreck "the system" in any way, even if it means sacrificing the lives of bystanders.

Much of the radical press in the U.S. refrained from commenting on last week's hijackings, and a few underground papers condemned them as "nationalistic" and "racist." But the Berkeley Tribe editorialized: "We are all the new barbarians. We are closer to the Palestinians than some like to admit. We are the people without power in the world. Maybe soon, planes carrying very prominent international pigs like [Reagan] will be hijacked from the U.S. to parts unknown. By, say, freaks."

If such threats are carried further --in the nation or in the world--it is a safe guess that "the system" will not be destroyed. Rather it will be rendered less civilized by the searches and the armed guards that will be necessary to make it function.

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