Blast May Mean Terrorism Has Been Imported to U.S.

After decades of virtual immunity from international terrorism, the United States on Friday began analyzing the possibility that a threshold has been crossed.

Although U.S. officials stressed the lack of firm evidence that the bombing of a Navy captain’s van in San Diego was a terrorist attack, the initial reaction among counterterrorism and intelligence officials was that this prospect is a very serious one.

Should the link be established, “this officially brings terrorism home to the United States,” a Bush Administration official said. “The potential repercussions of this are dramatic.”

There was unanimity among experts on the prime suspect for a terrorist strike: Iran.

“It seems obvious,” a counterterrorism official said. “It’s possible that Iran contracted out to somebody who was not necessarily Iranian. But the operation fits in with both the militancy of Iran these days and the promise to get revenge” by Iranian officials last summer after the Navy cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf. The van destroyed by bomb blasts was being driven by the wife of the commander of the Vincennes, Will C. Rogers III.

The bombing clearly took the Bush Administration by surprise. An international alert was recently issued to U.S. military and diplomatic facilities on four continents warning of potential Libyan attacks on April 15, the anniversary of the 1986 U.S. bombing raid on Libya. And after the Iranian airliner was shot down last July, killing all 290 on board, U.S. intelligence picked up widespread indications that pro-Iranian groups were conducting reconnaissance of American diplomatic missions in Europe.

But there was virtually no suggestion that foreign elements have planned to hit a U.S. target inside this country, a counterterrorism official said. The State Department also reported that Rogers had received no recent threats.

Indeed, one Bush Administration official said, there are reasons to believe that international terrorism may not have been involved in the van blast. “To go after a military man was brazen and rather obvious. It is too obvious,” he said.

But in a reflection of the pervasive mood here, he added that, if the bombing is proven to be a terrorist’s work, “Something will have to be done. They hit us at home and that can’t be tolerated.”

Private terrorism specialists acknowledged that they have considered an attack on a U.S. target at home almost inevitable. “There have been a whole bunch of (unsuccessful) attempts in the past,” Rand Corp. terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman said. “Most law enforcement agencies have long been saying that it was just a matter of time.”

Dozens of foreign groups have tried to hit U.S. targets since terrorism became a weapon of modern warfare in 1968. The most recent was Yu Kikumura, a Japanese Red Army member arrested a year ago and later convicted of planning to bomb a military recruiting station in Manhattan.

An FBI official said Friday that there was another attempted terrorist act in the United States involving “a Mideast country” that was headed off by agents last year. The official declined to elaborate.

In 1986, two Libyan exchange students were arrested in Philadelphia in possession of weapons. Authorities believe they had planned to attack either U.S. facilities in Washington or Libyan dissidents in this country. In 1979, eight Iranians were arrested at the Baltimore airport. Based on maps in their possession, U.S. authorities suspected that they planned to seize the airport and take hostages.

But all previous attempts by foreign groups have been preempted, according to Neil C. Livingstone, adjunct professor of national security at Georgetown University. “They’ve usually been caught at the stage of buying explosives or arms, or shortly thereafter.”

Foreign groups have launched attacks on foreign targets in the United States, according to Rand terrorism researcher Karen Gardela. In 1973, the Palestinian Black September group attempted to bomb El Al airlines at Kennedy Airport, an El Al office in Queens and an Israeli branch bank in New York.

In 1980, two Iranian dissidents were assassinated in Washington and Los Angeles, allegedly by followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“In the past, international terrorists did not have to come here as they had enough targets abroad. It may be that things are changing. We’ve seen indications of this most recently in Yu Kikumura’s arrest,” Hoffman noted.

Terrorism experts said they fear that if the van bombing is proven to be a terrorist attack, other such incidents may follow. “Terrorists tend to be imitative rather than innovative,” Hoffman said. “So in that respect, this incident may prompt others to follow suit.”

Any strong evidence of terrorism will put the Bush Administration under serious pressure to act, U.S. officials acknowledged. During the Reagan Administration, Vice President Bush headed the first U.S. task force on terrorism. Its final report vowed to “win the war” against terrorism with tough new measures.

The possibility of an Iranian link to the van blast was underscored by the threats of revenge voiced openly by Iranian officials after the airliner was shot down by the U.S. warship, which mistook it for an Iranian fighter plane.

“The element of blood vengeance is so strong in Shiite culture that I find it hard to believe it was anything other than an Iranian attack,” Livingstone said. “There’s always a symmetry to the way the Iranians operate.”

Earlier this week, FBI official Oliver B. Revell warned a Senate subcommittee that at least 200 “hard-core” Iranian nationals in the United States were under surveillance because of their loyalties to the Islamic Republic.

Of the 30,000 Iranians in this country on student visas and another 30,000 here illegally, he said, up to 15,000 are sympathetic to the current government. Many receive government funding or are affiliated with hard-line Iranian groups such as the Revolutionary Guards.

He also warned: “We cannot control our borders, even for our own self-protection.”

Some government analysts noted that the explosive device that destroyed the van was “amateurish” and therefore did not fit the pattern of sophisticated Iranian bombings elsewhere. But others suggested that this approach fits another pattern.

“What we learned from the Kikumura case is that their training overseas involves just that. They learn how to make simple, unsophisticated bombs using ordinary ingredients that are easy to get,” Hoffman said.