One of the first acts of the new
Republican-dominated Senate Judi-
ciary Committee was to create a
Subcommittee on Security and Ter-
rorism. This article, written by a
NACLA staff member, examines the
subcommittee and the threat it
poses to NACLA and all progressive
organizations.
On April 24, Senator Jeremiah
Denton (R-Ala.) gavelled to order the
newly formed Senate Subcommit-
tee on Security and Terrorism (SST).
On the agenda was a broadly rang-
ing discussion of terrorism and the
Soviet Union. The committee was
treated to a full serving of testimony
on Soviet sponsorship of internation-
al terrorism cooked up by Claire
Sterling, author of The Terror Net-
work, Arnaud de Borchgrave, of The
Spike fame, and William Colby, lately
of the CIA and Operation Phoenix,
among others. The testimony was
largely a rehash of the witnesses’
previous pronouncements, but de
Borchgrave managed to rouse the
audience from boredom with the
startling accusation that Mobiliza-
tion for Survival, a broad-based anti-
nuclear, anti-arms race group was
linked with the Soviet Union and,
hence, international terrorism. De
Borchgrave had let slip the real pur-
pose of the SST: to harass and
smear political opponents of the
Reagan Administration and its con-
servative allies.
Who Are the Targets?
One didn’t have to wait until the
April 24 hearings to see that the real
targets of the Subcommittee on
Security and Terrorism were the
domestic political opponents of the
Reagan-Haig world view. Given that
the majority of terrorist attacks in the
United States in the past three to five
years have come from right-wing
Cuban exiles (who recently assas-
sinated a Cuban diplomat in
Queens, New York) and their friends
in the Chilean security apparatus
(responsible for the 1976 murder of
Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in
Washington, D.C.), one would ex-
pect that investigations of such
Cuban anti-Castro groups, as
Omega 7 or Alpha 66 would be high
on the SST’s list of concerns.
They’re not. Nor has the subcom-
mittee, in turning to foreign affairs,
shown any interest in state-directed
violence which plagues the people
of Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, El
Salvador, South Korea, Haiti and so
forth.
Instead, we find that NACLA
might be called before the commit-
tee! Even before the SST was
formed, rumors coming from the of-
fice of soon-to-be SST member Orrin
Hatch (R-Utah) hinted that at least
three U.S. organizations should be
investigated. We were more than a
little surprised to learn that NACLA
The anti-nuke movement, shown here at a May 1979 march on Washington, is among those targeted by the SSTi to
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NACLA Report 40update .update * update *update
headed the Hatch hit-list, followed
by Mother Jones, a highly respected
investigative magazine, and the In-
stitute for Policy Studies (IPS), a
Washington-based progressive re-
search center which examines both
domestic and international issues.
Nor was this the only indication of
the SST’s true intent. The Heritage
Foundation, a major conservative
supporter of the new Administration,
suggests the targets should be not
only “terrorist groups,” but “the
several Communist parties,” and
radical and new left groups includ-
ing, again, NACLA, IPS, and Tom
Hayden’s Campaign for Economic
Democracy. Heritage, though, went
Hatch a step better, arguing that the
SST should investigate “clergymen,
students, businessmen, entertain-
ers, labor officials, journalists and
government workers [who] may en-
gage in subversive activities without
being fully aware of the extent, pur-
pose or control of their activities.”
Sour Wine in New Bottles
Taking its cue from Reagan and
Haig, the SST is bent on “proving”
two points: first, the Soviet Union is
behind all terrorism in the world; and
second, the international terrorist
threat is present at home in the
guise of political dissenters.
This issue is not new, though the
MaylJune 1981
words used to characterize the
“threat” are. In earlier periods dis-
senters were branded as “com-
munists,” “labor agitators,” “an-
archists,” or “foreigners.” Now they
are called “terrorists.” But the con-
tent of the attack remains the same.
Individuals and organizations which
are fully within their First Amend-
ment rights to free speech, press,
assembly and dissent are smeared
and hounded by congressional
committees bent on their destruc-
tion. The vague and expansive focus
of the SST-according to Denton,
the subcommittee “will hold hear-
ings bearing on matters relating to
terrorist activities and to national
security matters”-makes it a dir-
ect descendant of the late House
Unamerican Activities Committee
(HUAC), the Senate Internal Secur-
ity Committee (the “Eastland Com-
mittee”) and the Senate Permanent
Investigations Subcommittee (Jo-
seph McCarthy’s favored forum).
What’s in a Name?
Early in his administration, Presi-
dent Reagan made it known that “in-
ternational terrorism” would take
the place of “human rights” as a pri-
ority concern. Alexander Haig, Jr., in
his first press conference as Secre-
tary of State, warned that “interna-
tional terrorism” had become “ram-
pant.” This set the climate for Sen-
ate conservatives to argue for a sub-
committee whose purpose was the
investigation of “terrorism.”
What proved to be more difficult
was foisting on the U.S. populace
the belief that not only was terrorism
on the rise worldwide, but that it dir-
ectly affected the domestic tranquil-
ity of the United States. The FBI
didn’t help much, placing “terror-
ism” seventeenth on its list of con-
cerns and arguing that terrorist at-
tacks in the United States had de-
clined over the past three years.
No matter. According to Anthony
C.E. Quainton, director of the State
Department’s “Office for Combat-
ting Terrorism,” the government is in
the process of revising its definition
of terrorism to include “threats” of
violence as well as actual violence.
The CIA, under prodding from State,
is also revising its definitions. In its
previous reports on terrorism, the
CIA had never found more than 188
international terrorist attacks in any
one year. Suddenly, it revised its
1980 figures upward to 760 by adop-
ting a definition of terrorism which
made it almost synonymous with
political violence. Such a definition
would label most wars of national
liberation and anti-colonial wars as
terrorist acts, quite in contradiction
to generally accepted United Na-
tions’ standards. Thus, by the flick of
a definition, terrorism had become
rampant.
Terrorism and
“Our Friends”
Yet while the Administration’s
semantic gymnastics solved one
problem for those who saw terror-
ism as rampant, it created another.
By so broadening the definition of
“terrorism,” the word manipulators
had inadvertently encompassed not
only those movements for social
change which resort to armed strug-
gle, but a much more serious threat
to peace: states which systematic-
ally employ violence to stamp out all
opposition and dissent. How was
the Reagan Administration to dis-
tance its allies (and, indeed, the Gov-
ernment itself) from the charge of
“terrorism”?
To the rescue came Jeane Kirk-
patrick, U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations. Ms. Kirkpatrick di-
vided the third world between “revo-
lutionary autocracies” and “tradi-
tional authoritarian governments,”
arguing (without evidence) that the
latter “are less repressive” than the
former. From this semantic swamp-
land, she dredged out the concept
of the “moderately repressive re-
gime”-by which, perhaps, we are
to understand regimes which, when
torturing their opponents, break one
arm of the victim instead of both.
In the same vein, and with the
same purpose of condoning state-
41update. update. update * update
directed violence as long as it is
practiced by “our friends,” Ernest
Lefever, nominated director of the
State Department’s Human Rights
Office, opposed moralizing about
the use of torture in Argentina and
Chile because, however deplorable,
it was a “residual practice of Iberian
traditions.”
The SST Does Battle
By April, the SST was ready to en-
ter the battle against international
“terrorists” and their domestic al-
lies. After a few brief skirmishes with
the FBI in which the subcommittee
tried to prove that the Justice De-
partment should be more con-
cerned with these matters, it fully
entered the campaign on April 24.
By selecting Sterling and de Borch-
grave as witnesses, the subcommit-
tee insisted on lending credibility to
the thesis that the Soviet Union was
behind all terrorist acts worldwide
even though a recent CIA “draft es-
timate” concluded that there was in-
sufficient evidence to substantiate
these charges. (Sterling dismissed
this by arguing that the CIA suffered
from an “unwillingness to face cer-
tain political realities which are un-
pleasant.”)
More seriously, the subcommit-
tee hearings gave the lie to those
who have argued that the SST would
not become a modern-day HUAC.
Playing to the cameras and a nation-
al audience, de Borchgrave began
to reveal Soviet terrorists under ev-
ery bed. Not only was the “UN infra-
structure. . under increasing KGB
control,” but, he testified, there was
“irrefutable proof” that the Soviet
Union was playing a “covert role in
promoting the anti-nuclear lobby” in
the United States. Clearly warming
to the task, de Borchgrave charged
in to link the Mobilization for Survival
(MFS) to the Soviet Union. His tac-
tics were vintage red-baiting: one of
the several hundred organizations
affiliated to the MFS is the U.S.
Peace Council which is tied to the
World Peace Council which is tied
to, etc., etc. That MFS, the U.S.
42
Peace Council and the others are
perfectly legal groups entitled to the
same First Amendment rights as Mr.
de Borchgrave was of little concern
to the former Newsweek cor-
respondent.
Foreign Agent
Registration Act
It is no longer a question if the
SST will be used to red-bait political
opponents of the Reagan Adminis-
tration. It already has. What remains
in question is precisely how far the
subcommittee will go in its efforts to
stifle dissent. It is no coincidence
that the Republican majority on the
SST consists of three of the most re-
actionary senators in Congress:
John East (R-NC), Jesse Helms’ jun-
ior clone; Orrin Hatch (R-Utah); and
Denton.
Nor is it a coincidence that the
real power of the subcommittee, its
Chief Counsel, is Joel Lisker, an ex-
FBI agent who is considered an ex-
pert on prosecutions under the For-
eign Agent’s Registration Act
(FARA).
This 1938 act, later amended, is
vague, threatening and hardly
tested in the courts. It is occasion-
ally associated with famous peo-
ple-Billy Carter was prosecuted
under the act by Lisker for not regis-
tering as an agent of the Libyan gov-
ernment-or with public relations
firms representing foreign govern-
ments. But the act is much broader
than this implies. Its text states that
public registration as a foreign agent
is required of “persons engaging in
propaganda activities and other ac-
tivities for or on behalf of foreign
governments, foreign political par-
ties, and other foreign principals.”
Left virtually undefined are the con-
cepts of “propaganda and other ac-
tivities” and “foreign principals.”
Registration under this act gives the
government a very broad right to
know where your money comes
from and exactly how it is spent.
The FARA could be used to har-
ass the many international solidarity
organizations currently working in
the United States. Just conjecture?
The fact that at least one such group
in California has recently been
threatened by the Justice Depart-
ment under the provisions of the
FARA leads us to argue that the
threat is real.
For his part, Lisker makes no
bones about desiring a return to the
pre-Watergate days when the FBI
and CIA had virtual free reign to dis-
rupt the activities of political dis-
senters. “We will do everything we
can,” Lisker noted recently, “to
modify and eliminate” the guide-
lines imposed in 1975 to restrict infil-
NACLA Reportupdate.update update update
tration and surveillance of domestic
groups and political dissidents. For
Lisker and the SST, it would seem,
national security demands the infil-
tration, harassment and disruption
of dissenters.
Conservative Soap Boxes
The Senate Subcommittee on
Security and Terrorism is but one ex-
ample of a series of extremely con-
servative Senate committees
which, having reached their conclu-
sions before a single witness is
heard, seek to use congressional
forums to propagandize their rigidly
narrow point of view. Perhaps this
isn’t new, but the vehemence with
which the Senate committees have
approached their task is mind-bog-
gling. Senator John East, for exam-
ple, SST member who also chairs
the Judiciary Committee’s Subcom-
mittee on the Separation of Powers,
recently began a series of hearings
on abortion rights which were so
biased that even committee
member Orrin Hatch (another SST
hardliner) was moved to protest.
Even though the Democrats con-
trol committee appointments in the
House, the conservative tide threat-
ens to wash over that body as well.
Arch witch hunter Rep. Larry
McDonald (D-Ga.) has once again
introduced legislation to recreate
the old House Internal Security
Committee (also known as HUAC).
Support for this campaign has come
from Rep. Dan Crane (R-lll.) who re-
cently wrote a letter for the Council
for Inter-American Security which
stressed that “Ronald Reagan
needs your support now more than
ever. He needs your help in closing
America’s ‘open door’ to bomb-
throwers, spies and revolution-
aries.” If one is to believe Crane and
McDonald, the “terrorists are plot-
ting subversive attacks right under
our noses. And our hands are tied by
the liberals.”
Chilling Effect
Well, there is something going on
under McDonald and Crane’s
noses, but it’s not terrorism, and it
smells much worse. It’s the aggres-
sive attempt of a reactionary minor-
ity, by playing off the majority’s pro-
found apathy and cynicism, to push
back every shred of progressive so-
cial legislation on the books. It’s an
appeal by the frightened to the fears
which have naturally sprung from a
very troubled society.
Just consider what we have ex-
perienced in the first four months of
1981: the escalation of U.S. support
to the Salvadorean junta which
moves us closer to a land war in
Central America; the return of sup-
port for military dictatorships from
Argentina to Guatemala; the dra-
matic and unprecedented peace-
time increase in the defense budget
and the vicious slashing of all social
services; the increase in racist at-
tacks in the cities from Atlanta to
Buffalo and official government pro-
nouncements that affirmative action
is dead; an .”Executive Order”
which threatens to unleash the FBI
at home and the CIA abroad and the
move to vitiate the Freedom of Infor-
mation Act; the challenge to mini-
mum wage laws which (minimally)
protect working people and an
economic package which will as-
suredly increase unemployment.
Tying this retrogressive package
together is the great fear Candidate
Reagan kicked this off by blindly
stating that, “the Soviet Union un-
derlies all the unrest that is going
on” in the world. Richard Pipes, a
National Security Council staff
member offered that there was “no
alternative to war” with the Soviet
Union if the Soviets did not abandon
their political system. Richard Allen,
Reagan’s national security adviser,
spoke with scorn of a “return of pa-
cifism” in Europe, and berated the
“allies” for spending on butter in-
stead of guns.
The SST has a role to play in
bringing this war home. James Mad-
ison once noted that “it is a univer-
sal truth that the loss of liberty at
home is to be charged to provisions
against danger real or pretended
from abroad.” There is terrorism in
the world, but thus far the SST has
been totally unconcerned with its
real causes or dimensions and
much more interested in using the
issue as a springboard to deprive
dissenters at home of their political
rights.
Whether they are successful de-
pends largely on the extent of popu-
lar opposition to these measures.
And, in that, we can find some hope,
for on May 3, nearly 100,000 people
gathered in Washington, D.C. with
the very strong message that hard-
won victories will not be easily taken
away.
