Hitting the Source

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

The blow, when it finally fell, was unexpectedly jarring. Despite years of agonized Western debate about combatting terrorism, months of mostly fruitless diplomatic maneuvering, weeks of U.S. warnings and finally days of ominous public silence, the world still seemed unprepared when the bombers struck. Although Libya had felt the sting of the Sixth Fleet over the Gulf of Sidra just three weeks before, the principal buildings and the minarets of the central mosque in Tripoli were bathed by floodlights, providing a beacon for U.S. pilots. Under cover of darkness, 13 F-111 fighter-bombers flying out of Britain, joined by twelve A-6 attack planes launched off carriers in the Mediterranean, blasted military and intelligence targets in and around Tripoli and the coastal city of Benghazi. Going to the source of Libyan fanaticism, four F-111s aimed 16 bombs, each weighing 2,000 lbs., at the Bab al Azizia barracks: the living quarters and command and communications center from which Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had incited, planned or supported terrorist murders throughout the world.

The raid began around 7 p.m. Monday Washington time (2 a.m. Tuesday in Libya) and was over in time for a White House announcement to catch evening TV news shows. But no one ventured to label it an 11 1/2-min. war; neither the Reagan Administration nor anyone else harbored illusions that anything definitive had been settled during the few moments that the bombs were falling. Rather, there was a sense in Washington and around the world that the U.S. had crossed a fateful line in the intensifying battle between civilized society and terrorism, with consequences that no one could truly predict.

The U.S. launched its bombers out of a grim conviction that ruthless attacks on Americans and the citizens of many other countries will never let up until terrorists and the states that sponsor them are made to pay a price in kind. In his televised address following the raid, the President asserted that the air strike "will not only diminish Colonel Gaddafi's capacity to export terror, it will provide him with incentives and reasons to alter his criminal behavior." That argument won the support of only three U.S. allies: Britain, which gave permission for the F-111s to use English bases, Canada and Israel. All the others at minimum counseled against a raid; France and Spain went further, vexing U.S. opinion by refusing to let the F-111s fly over their territory. That forced the bombers to take a circuitous route that added 2,400 nautical miles to their 5,600-mile round trip.

The great fear in Europe was that the attack would trigger a cycle of new vengeful terrorist assaults followed by more U.S. reprisals. Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi expressed the concerns of European governments and public opinion alike: the U.S. action, he said, was likely to unleash "explosions of fanaticism and of criminal and suicide missions."

The Administration did not dismiss that possibility. The President told a business group the day after the raid, "Yesterday the United States won but a single engagement in a long battle against terrorism." But as that battle proceeds, Reagan has made his intentions clear. "We have done what we had to do," he said in his televised address. "If necessary, we shall do it again."

If the bombs had fallen differently, the U.S. might have eliminated one of its principal adversaries in that long battle. Despite the tonnage dropped on the barracks where Gaddafi lives, Administration officials insisted they were not trying to kill him. "He was not a direct target," said Secretary of State George Shultz. Pentagon Spokesman Robert Sims elaborated: "The nerve center was the target, not the individual." Privately, though, Reagan's aides left no doubt that, to put it mildly, they would not have been unhappy if Gaddafi just happened to die in the raid. The distinction appeared to be largely legalistic; a long-standing U.S. Executive Order forbids attempts to assassinate foreign heads of state, and it would be an extremely fine point whether that includes targeting one in a bombing raid.

In any case, Gaddafi survived the attack, apparently because he was not in his personal residence but, said a close associate, "underground"--presumably in a bunker where he often sleeps. His family was less fortunate: an 18-month-old girl, reportedly his adopted daughter Hana, was said to have been one of at least 37 civilian casualties of the raid. The dictator's two young sons, Saif al Arab, 4, and Hamis, 3, were injured and his wife Safia shell-shocked when bombs blew off the front walls of their living quarters.

There was some speculation that Gaddafi had at least lost some political power. Washington was wondering how far to trust intelligence reports indicating that the U.S. attack had touched off an attempted military coup against the Libyan leader during which he had been wounded in the left shoulder. If there was an attempt at a coup--and journalists in Libya could detect no more than some mysterious firing--Gaddafi survived that too and appeared to be no more than momentarily subdued. No wounds were visible when he began making appearances on Libyan TV at midweek, apparently to reassure his countrymen that the U.S. attack was over and he was still in command.

Gaddafi raged at Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as "child murderers" and announced to the Western world that "we will not kill your children. We are not like you." This comment overlooked the fact that in December, Gaddafi praised and perhaps assisted the terrorists who opened fire on passengers in the Rome and Vienna airports, killing 20 people, including an eleven-year-old American, Natasha Simpson. Overall, White House Spokesman Larry Speakes was quick to contrast the casualties of the Libya raid with the 938 people he said had died last year in terrorist attacks around the world, though American officials admitted they had difficulty breaking down how many of these could be called direct or indirect victims of Gaddafi. For once, Gaddafi in his Wednesday talk made no threats of new attacks. But by week's end Radio Tripoli was calling for bloody vengeance. His followers and allies by then had already begun a wave of reprisal attacks. Among them:

In Lebanon, gunmen dumped the corpses of three Western hostages on a road in the Chouf Mountains east of Beirut. The victims were identified as American University Librarian Peter Kilburn, 60, who had disappeared in Beirut in December 1984; and Leigh Douglas, 34, and Philip Padfield, 40, two British teachers who had been abducted three weeks before their murder. The men were among 18 British, French, U.S. and other hostages being held in Lebanon. A stenciled statement found near the bloodstained bodies said they had been killed in retaliation for the U.S. air strike against Libya. The statement was signed by the "Arab Revolutionary Cells," a group believed to be linked to the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal, who reportedly is in Libya.

In Khartoum, William Cokals, a communications officer in the U.S. embassy to the Sudan, was shot in the head and partly paralyzed as he drove home Tuesday night. Street mobs marched on the embassy, and at week's end, the U.S. ordered the evacuation from Sudan of 200 to 250 embassy employees and their families.

In London, a major tragedy was averted at Heathrow Airport Thursday morning when security guards for El Al, the Israeli airline, found a bomb in the luggage of a pregnant Irishwoman who was attempting to board a flight from New York City. The bomb was timed to go off when the flight would have been back in the air winging toward Tel Aviv. Said George Churchill-Coleman, head of Scotland Yard's antiterrorist branch: "It is highly likely that an explosion from a device of this type would have resulted in the loss of the aircraft, a 747 jumbo, and the 400 passengers and crew." British police believe the pregnant woman might have been duped into unknowingly carrying the bomb by her lover, Nezar Hindawi, 35, who was arrested Friday evening by Scotland Yard.

In the short run it seemed likely that there would be more such attacks, although U.S. officials hoped that the bombing raid would eventually diminish the taste for murders, hijackings and other outrages, not only by Gaddafi but among terrorist groups that he sponsors and trains. Meanwhile the diplomatic and political fallout from the bombing raid has damaged the U.S. position in Europe. Government leaders, who had been pressed hard by the U.S. since the December airport attacks to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on Libya, were careful to balance criticisms of the American raid with strong condemnations of Libya and terrorism. Opposition politicians, especially those on the left, were less circumspect. In the Netherlands, for example, Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek observed in fairly mild terms that "we seriously doubt if terrorism can be actually erased this way," but Klaas de Vries, parliamentary spokesman for the Labor Party, thundered that the strikes "made fools of all European ministers who had urged restraint."

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, disapproving of the raid, warned that it might provoke outbursts of "primitive anti-Americanism." Indeed, demonstrators marched and shouted Saturday in Rome, West Berlin and even London, where Prime Minister Thatcher came under scathing attack from critics who accused her of exposing her countrymen to terrorist vengeance.

The Soviets, as might be expected, pulled out all the propaganda stops. Less than 90 min. after the first word of the attack, the news agency TASS flashed some vintage vituperation by Analyst Vladimir Goncharov. The U.S., he said, "has started speaking in its true tongue: the tongue of bombs, flames and death." The next day, Moscow called off a mid-May visit to Washington by Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. He had been scheduled to confer with Shultz about preparations for the summit meeting between Reagan and Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev that is supposed to take place in the U.S. this year.

The Soviets also promised last week, in a letter from Gorbachev to Gaddafi, to "fulfill obligations" to strengthen Libya's defense capability, presumably by replacing planes, spare parts and other weapons that had been destroyed by the U.S. bombing. But the Kremlin has been wary about getting too close to the unpredictable Libyan; it seemed scarcely conceivable that Moscow would risk a clash with the U.S. to defend him. In Washington, officials dismissed the postponement of the Shevardnadze-Shultz summit- planning meeting (it was not canceled, merely declared to be "impossible . . . at this time") as the minimal gesture the Soviets could make against a nation that had just clobbered a client of the Kremlin. The State Department still believes that Gorbachev will eventually show up for his second meeting with Reagan, though almost certainly now toward the end of the year rather than the preferred U.S. date of June or July. Gorbachev took care to keep the West guessing at his intentions. In a speech in East Berlin at week's end, he simultaneously charged that the raid on Libya had brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear war and made a new proposal to reduce Soviet and NATO conventional forces and tactical nuclear weapons across "the territory of all of Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals."

In any case, the Reagan Administration had decided to go ahead with the raid whatever the cost in relations with the allies and the Soviets--and, for that matter, at whatever price in an immediate spasm of fresh terrorism. Why? Of all people, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who had long been publicly dubious about military reprisals against terrorism, put the rationale most succinctly. Terrorism, Weinberger declared in a Boston speech, "is now a state-practiced activity, a method of waging war" planned and organized by governments convinced of their impunity. It will get steadily worse unless the U.S. convinces them otherwise, he said. Shultz, who for years had argued what was originally a lonely case in favor of antiterrorist strikes, developed the rationale still further. Whatever the immediate effects of U.S. action, said the Secretary of State, "if you raise the costs (of inciting terrorism), you do something that should, eventually, act as a deterrent."

Besides, there was a growing feeling that the Administration had exhausted every other alternative for taming Gaddafi. Said President Reagan, addressing a meeting of lawyers on Wednesday: "We tried quiet diplomacy. We tried public condemnation. We tried economic sanctions. And, yes, we tried a show of military might (the Sixth Fleet's skirmish in the Gulf of Sidra with Libyan patrol boats and missile batteries last month). But Gaddafi intensified his terrorist war, sending his agents around the world to murder and maim innocents."

The Administration's case drew vigorous agreement across almost the full spectrum of American political opinion. House Speaker Tip O'Neill, usually a leader of opposition to what his fellow Democrats see as an overly adventurous Reagan foreign policy, declared that "we just can't let this madman of terrorism (Gaddafi) keep threatening." Indeed, said O'Neill, if Libya continues to foment terrorism, "I think the American people would demand that we go in again." The New York Times and Washington Post, whose editorial writers are often skeptical about military action overseas, voiced approval of the raid. The most notable dissenter was former President Jimmy Carter, who predicted that the raid would make Gaddafi "a hero" in the Arab world and a worse menace than ever. But, Carter acknowledged, "mine is one of the lonely voices." It certainly seemed to be; polls indicated that the military strike against Libya was about as popular with the American public as any action Reagan has ever taken. An overwhelming 71% of 1,007 adults polled for TIME by Yankelovich/ Clancy, Shulman last week approved the strike, vs. only 20% who disapproved and 9% who were not sure. Some 60% went further to agree with the statement that the raids "made me feel proud to be an American."

Something more than jingoistic pride seemed to be involved in the public's attitude. Many respondents approved the strike despite a sober appreciation of the dangers involved. Three out of five declared themselves to be "afraid of what will happen in the future," and 48% agreed that "the bombing will only make the situation with Libya worse, not better." But the majority looked for eventual gains; 56% agreed that "in the long run, the bombing will help stop terrorist attacks on Americans."

The Reagan Administration's attitude toward an air strike had been years in the making. The President has been preoccupied with the problem of terrorism since his early days in office. Two events in Reagan's first year helped to fix his thoughts on Gaddafi as a symbol of virtually everything he hates. One was a Libyan attack on U.S. jets in the Gulf of Sidra that resulted in the shooting down of two of Gaddafi's Soviet-built Su-22 fighter planes. Later in 1981 U.S. intelligence picked up information that Libya was sending hit squads to the U.S. to assassinate Reagan and some of his close aides. No such attacks occurred, but the scare contributed to Reagan's revulsion toward the Libyan dictator, which has been fueled since by Gaddafi's long series of boasts, taunts and public threats against Americans and open encouragement of terrorism around the world.

Yet even after Shultz began his open advocacy of military reprisals in 1983, Reagan continued to express caution. Then late last year several factors combined to push him to a more militant view. Terrorism seemed to be accelerating, exemplified by the massacres at the Rome and Vienna airports. Nonmilitary means of countering the outrages seemed maddeningly ineffective. Evidence for the airport massacres appeared to point to Syria as well as Libya, and when Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead toured Europe early this year trying to organize a political and economic boycott of Libya, he came home empty-handed.

Another decisive event for the President had been the U.S. capture in October of the four Arab terrorists who had hijacked the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered an American passenger, Leon Klinghoffer. The seizure gave the President new confidence that U.S. military forces could indeed strike effectively against terrorists. When John Poindexter, then deputy assistant for national security, met with the President the morning after the hijackers had been seized, Reagan leaped from his chair in the Oval Office and exclaimed, "I salute the Navy!" Still, Reagan had laid down and stuck to an all-important precondition for any outright reprisal attack: it had to be directed against a target that could be proved responsible for a specific terrorist attack. And for all his open support of terrorism, Gaddafi had always been skillful at covering his tracks in actual incidents. But then the U.S. broke the Libyan diplomatic code and intercepted messages between Tripoli and Libyan "people's bureaus" (as the country calls its embassies). The messages proved, to Washington's satisfaction and eventually to the satisfaction of initial skeptics like West German Chancellor Kohl, that the bureau in East Berlin had dispatched terrorists to place a bomb in a West Berlin disco packed with American servicemen. The bomb exploded early in the morning of April 5, killing U.S. Army Sergeant Kenneth Ford and a Turkish woman and injuring 230 people, 79 of them Americans.

The U.S. claimed further that intercepted messages disclosed orders by Gaddafi to Libyan agents and Libyan-sponsored terrorists to carry out attacks against more than 30 American targets around the world. White House Spokesman Speakes asserted that one plot was for Libyan agents to hurl grenades and open fire with machine guns at lines of people waiting at the U.S. visa office in Paris. This intelligence enabled the Administration to claim that it had struck Libya not only to punish Gaddafi for the Berlin disco bombing but in self-defense, to forestall a new wave of bloodshed. That argument appeared to be crucial in winning the support of the British government. In private communications to Washington, Thatcher insisted that any U.S. action had to be justified as one taken under the inherent right of self-defense recognized in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Whether the strike against Libya really met that condition is at best questionable; Article 51 refers to self-defense "if an armed attack occurs." Nonetheless, the U.S. got political support it urgently needed. "What they really wanted was less the planes than someone along with them," said one Thatcher confidant.

In Washington, once the intelligence information had been assessed, there was never any serious debate about what the U.S. should do. "We'd been a pretty determined bunch ever since the Achille Lauro," said one senior Reagan official. "The only major point of discussion was targeting." Reagan insisted that the targets be chosen with a view toward holding down casualties among Libyan civilians. That damage nonetheless occurred in downtown Tripoli might indicate that a so-called surgical air strike is much easier to plan than to achieve.

Although military action was decided on Monday, April 7, final approval of a plan and targets did not come until the following Sunday. That allowed time for a last-minute mission by Vernon Walters, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and a veteran troubleshooter, to sound out European allies on their attitudes. On Saturday, Sunday and Monday, he visited in quick succession London, Madrid, Bonn, Paris and Rome.

Walters' mission, however, became a source of new controversy. Several European leaders contended that Walters, while making it clear that the U.S. was seriously considering a military strike, put all his comments on a what-if basis. As a result, they said, they got no impression that an attack had already been ordered, much less that it was within days or even hours of beginning. Added to their concern about being caught in the middle of a cycle of military reprisal and terrorist vengeance was a resentful feeling that the U.S. had failed to consult them properly, and perhaps had even misled them.

France had already refused a U.S. request to permit the F-111s to fly over her territory before Walters met with President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. An official French government statement later explained that Paris was fearful of intensifying "the chain of violence" by abetting the U.S. military strike. France may also have been reluctant to become involved in any military action that it did not initiate and could not control. Another factor: the newly installed Chirac government had just renewed efforts to win freedom for eight French hostages in Lebanon and did not want to endanger them--a concern that was justified by the subsequent execution of British and American hostages.

Walters implied that Spain also had refused overflight permission before he got to Madrid Saturday. Said the Ambassador: "Sometimes it is better not to ask the question when you don't think you will like the answer." But Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez said later that during his meeting with Walters, the Ambassador--again on a what-if basis--specifically asked if Spain would permit overflight, or, failing that, at least allow tanker planes taking off from Spanish bases to refuel the F-111s in flight over the Atlantic. Whenever asked, Gonzalez replied with a firm no.

As late as Monday, many European leaders apparently believed they might still have time to talk the U.S. out of an attack. Meeting in emergency session in the Hague only hours before the strike, foreign ministers of the twelve European Community nations went further than they ever had before toward meeting U.S. requests for collective action. They pledged to reduce the number of Libyan diplomats allowed into their countries, to limit their freedom of movement and to keep them under close surveillance. That move has some importance: Libyan "diplomats" are believed often to pass instructions, money and weapons to terrorists.

But besides coming too late, the move fell short of meeting Washington's urging that the Europeans shut down the Libyan people's bureaus entirely. Meeting again on Thursday, two full days after the attack, the twelve tried to come up with some further move that might satisfy the U.S. but could agree only to wait for a committee report due this week.

It is possible that this attitude will change. While opposing the attack, some European leaders also criticized their own failure to propose any alternative antiterrorist program. Said West Germany's Kohl: "Too frequently, the Europeans have been too satisfied with mere declarations which have been politically ineffectual while leaving the U.S. alone in its struggle against international terrorism . . . If we Europeans do not want to follow the Americans for reasons of our own, we must develop political initiatives."

Public opinion in Europe, while predominantly against the raid, was hardly monolithic. Polls showed an odd pattern. In Britain, Market & Opinion Research International surveyed 1,051 people for the London Times. Two-thirds were against the air strike, and 71% disapproved of Thatcher's permission for British bases to be used. But in France, which refused to participate, a survey taken within 48 hours of the raid turned up only 49% against vs. 39% who were in favor of it. In France also, one notable political figure, former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, stated flatly, "I approve of the American action in Libya." French-speaking Swiss polled by the Lausanne newspaper Le Matin registerd an astonishing 67.8% majority for the attack. Opinion seemed vehemently opposed in Spain. A crowd in Barcelona smashed windows of a McDonald's restaurant, and El Pais, the leading daily in Madrid, published a cartoon of the U.S. flag with skulls for stars and bones for stripes.

Very privately, the U.S. picked up some support in the Arab world. Radical Arab states condemned the military strike in shrill, vehement and threatening terms, conservative nations in ritualistic tones. But their confidential comments differed markedly from their public ones. Said one Arab government minister: "Gaddafi has done more harm to us (by fomenting terrorism) than to the Americans. The only problem with the attack on Libya is that you didn't get him."

The final act before the bombs could fall was a move by the White House to line up congressional support. The Administration acted at about the last imaginable moment to fulfill even theoretically the requirement of the 1973 War Powers Act that "the President in every possible instance shall consult with Congress before introducing United States armed forces into hostilities." At 4 p.m. on Monday, when the already airborne F-111s were only three hours from the attack, nine House and Senate leaders of both parties were summoned to the Old Executive Office Building for "consultation" with a pride of Administration lions: Vice President George Bush, Shultz, Weinberger, CIA Director William Casey, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral William Crowe. Reagan came in ten minutes later, read briefly from typewritten notes describing the operation, then turned the presentation over to National Security Adviser John Poindexter, who gave a detailed rundown of the evidence linking Libya to the Berlin disco bombing and the wave of new terrorist acts that the Administration said was imminent. All the congressional leaders found the evidence sufficiently convincing to justify the raid, but several remarked that they were being notified, not consulted. One of the Reagan officials replied that there was still time to call off the attack--if the legislators objected "unanimously" and strongly. House Republican Leader Robert Michel thought, "If I had some serious objection, how could I make it now?"

No one objected, but no one expressed any enthusiasm either. Michel, playing devil's advocate, asked if the Administration had considered waiting for the next terrorist provocation. Poindexter replied that the case against Gaddafi was so strong that there was no point in waiting. Several legislators ventured worried what-next questions: in effect, how ready was the Administration to use military force against future terrorist acts? Democratic Senate Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia asked, "What are we playing, tit for tat? Suppose the trail leads to Syria or Iran. Are we going to send in the bombers?" Shultz replied that the Administration would consider the problem on a case-by-case basis, deciding on a military or other response as the circumstances of each terrorist outburst appeared to dictate. That did not satisfy Georgia Senator Sam Nunn, the leading Democratic expert on defense. While continuing to defend the Libya raid as justified, Nunn re- marked later, "I don't sense any long-range strategy in dealing with terrorism. I think it's still ad-hocism."

Administration officials, for their part, are anything but eager to proclaim a broad new Reagan Doctrine of repeated military retaliation against terrorism. On the contrary, they warned against assuming that new terrorist outrages will necessarily, or even probably, be punished by bombs and bullets. Having demonstrated that the U.S. really will hit back if it has sufficient evidence and provocation, the President, they say, will now return to emphasizing political and economic action. Primarily, that means pushing the allies yet again to agree to some sort of tough, coordinated action, this time with at least the implicit argument that they can see for themselves the unpleasant consequences if they refuse. Indeed, there was some intention among Reagan's advisers to use the bombing to shock the Europeans out of their timidity and inertia. The President especially intends to press for a coordinated program next month at the economic summit meeting in Tokyo of the non-Communist world's seven leading industrial powers: the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy and Japan.

Still, the question of when, how and at whom the U.S. might strike again probably cannot be dodged for long. Even if Gaddafi is cowed, terrorist violence undoubtedly will continue and may even increase, as last week's incidents so frighteningly indicated. Libya's assistance to terrorists is of two types: Gaddafi directly plans and carries out some attacks, but he also supplies money, weapons and training to groups that act on their own and could carry on without him. Says Brian Jenkins, a Rand Corp. expert on terrorism: "Quite clearly Gaddafi has played a major role in terrorism, but he by no means exercises control over the myriad Middle East groups who target the U.S. - and the West for a variety of reasons. Gaddafi may have a 'go' switch for some terrorist groups, but not a 'stop' switch."

Richly as Gaddafi deserved being targeted, the U.S. has been observing a kind of double standard in fingering him as Terrorist Public Enemy No. 1. Less noisily, but not a bit less lethally, Syria and at times Iran have been quite as active as Libya in sponsoring, aiding and sheltering terrorists. To take the most notorious example, Italian police believe that the gunmen who carried out the Rome and Vienna airport attacks trained in the Syrian-occupied Bekaa Valley of Lebanon. But Syria and Iran are far more populous, and more heavily armed, than Libya. They also are less politically isolated.

Syria maintains a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union--a diplomatic plum Gaddafi has pleaded for but never received--which Damascus conceivably could invoke for military assistance against attack. Under those circumstances, if evidence ties some future terrorist murder to Syria as unequivocally as the intercepted messages pointed to Libya in the Berlin disco bombing, what would the U.S. do? Go back on the pledge, renewed by Reagan at his news conference two weeks ago, to "respond" whenever he has proof of responsibility for a specific terrorist act? Or would the U.S. take the risk of launching a military action that could lead to a much wider conflict?

One criterion for the use of military force, of course, is precisely the likelihood that it will prove effective at an acceptable cost. But in the end, the reason for last week's U.S. air strike came not so much from a calculation of effectiveness as from a conviction that a military blow had become inevitable. Shultz has much merit to his argument that terrorists must be forced to consider a cost for their attacks; given the evidence on Gaddafi and the military strength the U.S. had against him, it became a question of put up or shut up, now or never. The blow established the credibility of the U.S. military threat. But it did not solve the question of how to integrate that threat into a global antiterrorist strategy.

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With reporting by David Beckwith and Barrett Seaman/ Washington and Christopher Ogden/London