Big Leaks in the Explosive File : Terrorists Now on the Defensive--for a Change

Semtex is an odorless, pliable, enormously potent explosive, virtually undetectable by conventional airport-screening devices or sniffer dogs. A mere 200 grams of the chemical--about 7 ounces--is enough to blow an airliner out of the sky. Tragically, it’s been used to do just that.

Residues of Semtex were found in the wreckage of a French UTA DC-10 that exploded over Niger in 1989, killing 170 people. Security experts say Semtex destroyed Pan Am’s Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people. Czechoslovakia is the sole manufacturer of Semtex. In the 1980s, its Communist regime sold Libya 1,000 tons of the stuff. Dictator Moammar Kadafi didn’t buy all that Semtex to blast tree stumps out of the desert. Instead, Czechoslovakia’s new non-Communist President Vaclav Havel now confirms, Kadafi gave much of it to terrorists. Hundreds of innocent people died as a direct result.

Czechoslovakia is now out of the Semtex exporting business, but, unhappily, terrorists aren’t out of Semtex. Havel calculates that there is enough in hostile hands to present a threat for decades to come. This is only one of probably many revelations about the extent of past Communist links with terrorism that can be expected to see the light of day as Communist rule in much of Eastern Europe comes to an end.

The files of the security and intelligence services of East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania--assuming they aren’t destroyed--could prove to be especially revealing. All of these countries are known to have given training and equipment to terrorists and facilitated their clandestine travel. In some cases it’s clear that Communist secret services worked intimately with other regimes to provide such aid. East Germany’s notorious Stasi, for example, is believed to have cooperated closely with Syria to aid terrorist activities in Western Europe. What’s emerging as the East European world changes is the good chance that a bonanza of information and insights about terrorism could soon become available, even as the networks that terrorists could once count on in these countries are shut down. The bad guys, for a change, would be going on the defensive.