Conflicting U.S. Impulses : Nation Facing Decisions on Handling of Terrorism

The ordeal of 39 Americans held hostage in Beirut has ended, but a major national debate over how the United States should deal with such terrorism has only begun.

While the Reagan Administration’s words still echoed the President’s initial pledge of “swift and effective retribution” against terrorists, senior Administration officials on Sunday specifically ruled out any quick retaliatory strike against Hezbollah (the Party of God), the extremist Shia Muslim group believed responsible for the June 14 hijacking of TWA Flight 847.

And, despite 4 1/2 years of painful experience with terrorism since taking office, the Administration finds itself still in the talking stage about even such relatively uncontroversial measures as tighter airport security and collective international action against regimes that cast a tolerant eye on terrorists.

In a White House briefing Sunday, Secretary of State George P. Shultz pledged that a broad range of actions would soon be undertaken. However, he offered few specifics and concentrated chiefly on efforts to organize international measures that would make future terrorism more difficult rather than on sanctions against those responsible for the TWA hijacking.

Thus, the 16-day crisis revealed an Administration that, when actually confronted by a terrorist challenge, was torn by contradictory impulses--a desire for punitive action, on the one hand, and for patient diplomacy aimed at sparing innocent lives, on the other.

The ordeal in Beirut ended with the Administration still lacking a clear, comprehensive and unanimously agreed-upon policy for bringing U.S. might to bear on future terrorists.

Shultz, who has argued strongly within the Administration for preemptive strikes against terrorist targets, said Sunday he hopes that the original hijackers of Flight 847 can be captured and brought to justice and that an international agreement can be forged “to close the usefulness of (Beirut) airport,” which he called “a safe haven for terrorists.”

He added that the Administration hopes to continue building U.S. intelligence capabilities to thwart future attacks before they occur and to improve defensive measures at airports, embassies and other vulnerable installations.

But Shultz did not propose any specific measures against Hezbollah, the organization to which the hijackers reportedly belong; did not suggest how the hijackers could be brought to justice, and did not explain what he meant by “closing the usefulness” of Beirut airport.

A senior Administration official said the hijacking could create a public consensus for action that might “sustain proposals for legislation” giving the government “greater legal authority to act and to apprehend--to follow, track, identify and detain people” involved in terrorism.

“I would put the emphasis less on retaliation and more on the purposeful use of all U.S. resources, including force, in a consistent way to deal with the global problem,” the official said.

But other officials said no specific legislative proposals are yet ready. And several sources said there is still no clear consensus within the Administration on what kind of preemptive strikes or measures to capture terrorists should be attempted.

“I’m not convinced that there’s a clear analytical comprehension of the problem within the Administration,” said Ray S. Cline, a former deputy director of the CIA. “There’s been a great deal of hesitance. . . . I see a battle shaping up between those who argue that we can cope with all this mainly by imaginative diplomacy and those who believe we need to do much more.”

On the issue of retaliation, for example, Shultz has argued that attacks against the leadership of Hezbollah could have a deterrent effect against future incidents of terrorism and could be portrayed as acts of “active self-defense.”

But national security adviser Robert C. McFarlane, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger and others have reportedly blocked proposals for such strikes at least twice since 1983, arguing that the dangers of killing civilians and of prompting retaliation outweigh the possible benefits.

“Hezbollah lives in urban areas,” the senior Administration official said Sunday. “It is manifestly unfeasible--and they know it--to conduct violent raids against them.

“The natural emotional reactions can’t goad you into imprudent reactions,” he said. “You’ve got to take a longer view and have a considerable amount of patience.”

The Administration has also found no comfortable way to describe its approach to dealing with terrorists once they take U.S. hostages. Reagan’s public position was that the United States would not negotiate, would not make concessions and would not encourage others to do so. But as the crisis wore on, the President found his Administration in intensive dealings with both Hezbollah and Amal, the larger Shia group that took control of most of the hostages soon after the TWA jetliner landed in Beirut for the third time.

The hijackers emerged with indirect U.S. assurances that their central demand, the release of 735 Arab prisoners in Israel, would be met. And a last-minute demand from Hezbollah that Reagan forswear retaliation elicited a State Department declaration that the United States would launch no wholesale retribution.

Reagan, Shultz and others insisted that such assurances were not concessions, since they essentially reiterate existing U.S. policies and since Israel stoutly maintains that any staged release of the Shia inmates is not linked to the hostages’ release. But they did not square easily with Shultz’s sweeping declaration that “you don’t make deals with terrorists.”

“We have never said that under no circumstances we’ll negotiate with terrorists (or) make a deal with them,” Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin said pointedly. “We have always stated . . . that whenever there was no military option, we might negotiate an exchange--terrorists for hostages.”

The Administration has already acted defensively against terrorism, beefing up the security of U.S. installations around the world and pouring money into its intelligence agencies, which Shultz said have blocked about 60 possible terrorist attacks in the last nine months.

But Cline and other experts said much more can be done, even short of military retaliation: an international agreement to ban air traffic to Iran, Libya and other nations that support terrorists, for example; and new international law agreements that might allow countries to capture terrorists in Lebanon through covert kidnaping operations and bring them to trial.

A consensus for action already exists, they point out. Leading Democrats have pledged their support for more active measures.

“When terrorists violate international law by abducting and murdering innocent Americans, the targeted use of American force, aimed carefully against those directly responsible, is fully appropriate,” Sen. Gary Hart (D-Colo.) said Sunday.

“The most important issue now is whether we draw any lessons from this incident,” said Cline, now a scholar at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “If we can’t get our act together--if this incident isn’t a watershed--we’re going to get a lot more of this kind of terrorism.”