Aftermath of a Painful Ordeal

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The incessant assault of gunpoint interviews is over, the Fourth of July cheers for the 39 returning hostages have died away and other faces are filling TV screens. But reverberations of the crisis are likely to echo through the U.S., the Middle East and the world for months to come, affecting matters ranging from Israeli Cabinet decisions to congressional votes on the American budget. In particular, Ronald Reagan comes out of the crisis enjoying a new lift in public support and praise from some of his sharpest critics, who confessed that in this case at least he was not the headstrong hawk they had so long feared. Reagan's image as a statesman was further burnished last week by Moscow's agreement to a summit conference between him and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, to be held Nov. 19 and 20 in Geneva (see WORLD). But the President also faces the equally daunting though less heroic task of putting his clout to work internationally and domestically before the glow from the return of the hostages dissipates, as White House aides acknowledge it probably will.

That much became clear even as the process began of carrying out the "arrangement" that got the 39 Americans sprung from Beirut. Only hours after the hostages had arrived safely in West Germany, the Israeli Cabinet on Monday voted to begin another release of prisoners taken out of Lebanon by withdrawing occupation forces. Two days later, some 300 Lebanese dressed incongruously in track suits sprinted from cell blocks in the prison of Atlit to a caravan of eleven buses that hauled them across the border to Ras al Bayada, the northernmost checkpoint of the remaining Israeli "security" (i.e., occupation) zone in southern Lebanon. There, Israeli soldiers untied white plastic ropes from the prisoners' wrists and turned them over one by one to Red Cross officials for release.

Israeli officials set no timetable for freeing as many as 460 more Lebanese prisoners, mostly Shi'ites, still held in Atlit. One purpose of a delay would be to underscore the insistence of both the U.S. and Israel that they had made no deal to secure the freedom of the hostages taken off the hijacked TWA Flight 847. Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin asserted once again last week that the hijacking had actually delayed release of the Atlit prisoners. Nonetheless, the freeing of the 300 validated assurances relayed to Nabih Berri, leader of the Shi'ite Amal militia holding the hostages, that releases from Atlit would begin as soon as he let the captive Americans go.

That accomplished, the U.S. stepped up pressure to win freedom for seven Americans kidnaped before the TWA hijacking and still held in Lebanon. Secretary of State George Shultz publicly repeated a demand for their release as the TWA 39 were still en route home. At about the same time, Reagan telephoned Syrian President Hafez Assad and pressed for his assistance in getting the kidnaped seven released as well. Assad's troops occupy much of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where the seven are thought to be held by Shi'ite extremists. In Jerusalem, officials said privately that the Israeli government might hold 29 militants belonging to the Shi'ite Hizballah (Party of God) as a kind of bargaining chip to exchange for the kidnaped Americans. By week's end, however, these efforts had produced no visible results. Worse, they had got tangled up with another U.S. problem: deciding on some appropriate form of retaliation for the TWA hijacking and hostage taking.

As a first step in that direction, Washington opened a campaign to "isolate" Beirut airport, where the hijacked TWA jet still sits. Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole revoked U.S. landing rights for the only two lines still flying out of there. They are the passenger- carrying Middle East Airlines and Trans Mediterranean Airways, a cargo line, both owned primarily by the Lebanese government. Shultz announced that the U.S. would ask its allies and other nations to take the same step, beginning at a meeting of airline security experts from leading Western industrial nations this week in Bonn. Washington, said Shultz, proposes to put the airport "off limits" to international air traffic "until it makes terrorists off limits."

To Americans, that step might seem not only reasonable but minimal. Lebanon's warring factions have kept up their byzantine bloodletting for prolonged periods over the past few years, during which the airport was closed altogether because of the fighting that raged around it. One senior State Department official admitted that closing the airport would be little more than "a way of expressing our views" about the hostage taking.

Nonetheless, the hint of even this much U.S. retaliation brought some dismaying reactions. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher promised support, but other U.S. allies responded only with silence. In Lebanon, Berri charged "betrayal" of a Washington pledge not to retaliate in any manner (in fact, the so-called pledge was a deliberately ambiguous statement). More serious, government-controlled newspapers in Syria that presumably echo the views of Assad denounced the move. Worst of all, a note delivered to Western news agencies in Beirut threatened that the seven kidnaped Americans would meet "a black fate" if there were any reprisals for the TWA hijacking. The note claimed to be from Islamic Jihad, a name used from time to time by a variety of terrorist groups, including the presumed kidnapers of the seven.

The Administration let it be known that it is leaning toward a more innovative and precisely targeted kind of retribution. The idea: putting a price on the heads of the two terrorists who originally hijacked TWA Flight 847 and murdered one of its passengers, Navy Diver Robert Stethem. Shultz noted that a law passed last year empowers the Administration "to offer rewards for information leading to the trial and successful prosecution" of terrorists. Though the law limits the rewards to $500,000 for each terrorist caught, the Administration is studying legal ways of increasing them to an even more tempting $5 million.

The U.S. has little hope of help from what remains of the Lebanese central government, with which it has no bilateral extradition treaty. Berri, who is Lebanon's Minister of Justice, blandly claims not even to know the identities of the hijackers, although his Amal militiamen took over the hostages from them. But Shultz says the U.S. knows exactly who they are and virtually promised that they would be punished. Washington is considering publicizing their names and descriptions, in effect putting out an international Wanted poster.

A Mafia-style hit contract too? Probably not; the U.S. would prefer to take the two alive. But it presumably would offer rewards to anyone, mercenaries or even rival terrorists, who would either finger the two for Eichmann-style capture by U.S. covert-action forces or hand them over directly. "It would be open season for bounty hunters," says one American official. At least, the Administration hopes to put a crimp in any travel by the pair outside their own enclave in Lebanon. At most, if they were actually captured, brought to the U.S. and convicted in an American court, they could be sentenced to life in prison, conceivably even to death.

Other forms of retaliation have been put on hold, at least for the time being. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane has hinted at strikes against terrorist training camps, either overtly by U.S. military forces or covertly by undercover action squads. But officials now say that nothing dramatic can be expected soon. Instead, they talk rather vaguely of consulting with allies to develop a long-range "grand strategy" to foil and/or punish terrorists. Says one Reagan lieutenant: "It will be the kind of thing that requires care and deliberation and considerable work with a number of parties on several continents. You just don't do it overnight." Indeed, one fallout from the hostage crisis may be that it finally puts pressure on the Administration to convert its harsh rhetoric about terrorism into a concrete plan for combating it. There are severe difficulties in developing this grand strategy, however. American officials indicate that it would involve some form of economic reprisals against countries thought to foment terrorism. Washington has publicly identified several, but some of the names make awkward reading right now. One is Syria, which helped to free the TWA hostages and could do the most to win the release of the seven kidnaped Americans still held in Lebanon. Another is Iran, and U.S. officials suggested last week that Iran also assisted in freeing the TWA hostages. A third is the Soviet Union, and the Administration will be seeking to increase rather than cut off contacts with the other superpower now that a summit is being prepared.

But all these considerations were overshadowed in the public mind by relief that the 39 TWA hostages had been released without any overt deal or drastic military action. President Reagan's standings in the polls benefited immediately. An overwhelming three-quarters of the people questioned in a Washington Post/ABC News poll taken as the hostages were being released approved his handling of the crisis, even though 42% considered the outcome more of a victory for the terrorists than for the U.S. Presumably, many of those polled thought a different course would have had an even worse result. Private surveys conducted by Pollster Richard Wirthlin for the White House at the same time showed a quick jump in the President's overall job-approval rating from the low 60s up to the mid-60s. That was still below his 71% high around the time of his second Inauguration in January, but marked a reversal of a persistent slump. Said Wirthlin: "There is no question that the President is stronger today than he was three weeks ago. Americans view him as having been very much at the center of the crisis."

The President did come under fire from some hawkish supporters who thought he should have issued an ultimatum and backed it up by military action. But those criticisms were balanced by grudging commendations from some of Reagan's most severe critics. For example, New York Times Columnist Anthony Lewis, who rarely finds anything good to say about the Administration, wrote that "Mr. Reagan deserves praise" for his restraint. In a more partisan vein, the College Republican National Committee began selling, for $1 each, red and white buttons with the simple message "427 DAYS." That is the difference between the 444 days of captivity endured by the hostages seized at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 and the 17 days that the 39 taken off TWA 847 were held in Beirut. The comparison is unfair, but it was the kind that might stick in the public mind.

Presidential aides fully expect the boost in Reagan's popularity to be short- lived. The real effect of the return of the hostages on his other problems will flow more from what did not happen than from what did. A prolonged crisis that the U.S. seemed impotent to break could have sapped his ability to govern effectively as thoroughly as the seizure of the hostages in the Tehran embassy eventually undermined Jimmy Carter's authority. The relatively quick release of the TWA 39 not only averted that danger but enabled Reagan to turn his attention back to some pressing domestic concerns that had threatened to get out of hand. And at least for now he would probably have the ear of a grateful public.

Reagan made a start last week by meeting, just after the hostages had been released, with representatives of 16 Washington-based business associations that have been lobbying for the domestic spending cuts contained in his budget proposals. They had asked for the gathering because, as one put it, "members of Congress were getting back to us and asking 'Is the President really still committed?' " Reagan put that question to rest by walking into the meeting sporting a 6-in.diameter lapel button shaped like an octagonal stop sign and bearing the words HALT THE DEFICIT. Said one participant: "He sounded as if he was really up for making a deal."

The President plans to keep up the pressure this week in meetings with some of the legislators who two weeks ago broke off a House-Senate conference on the budget resolution with no agreement. The outlines of a compromise are visible. Essentially, it would drop all limits on Social Security benefit increases and trade reductions in the military budget that are deeper than the Republican-controlled Senate (or Reagan) so far has been willing to accept in exchange for more reductions in social programs than the Democratic House has voted. Putting together such a deal will probably require all the President's persuasive powers, however, and even then the deficit at best would be prevented from swelling still more alarmingly in a slowing economy. It might still run around $200 billion annually.

Prospects for rescuing Reagan's tax-reform program are also problematic. The President tried to build public support for it in a series of speeches that he continued to make during the hostage crisis, but inevitably his pitch got drowned out by the uproar over the hijacking. Meanwhile, Congress was listening to lobbyists for interests whose tax loopholes would be plugged, and voicing growing doubt about whether the plan is fair to the middle class. The return of the hostages gives Reagan a chance to begin beating the drum again with some hope that the public will now listen, but it may be too late to do more than keep the program alive for decisive votes next year.

For all that, the outcome of the hostage crisis was probably about the best that could reasonably have been expected. It was no great victory, and it did little to resolve the ever pressing problem of developing a long-range U.S. response to terrorism. Now that the Administration has once again sidestepped the public thirst for retaliation, the pressure for the concerted war on terrorism that it has been promising will no doubt be increased. The greatest consolation in such an outcome is the realization that it could have been, oh so easily, so very much worse.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington, John Borrell/ Cairo and Roland Flamini/Jerusalem