Is U.S. Too Easy a Terrorist Target? : Can’t U.S. keep clearly labeled terrorists out?

Extraordinarily fast and efficient police work has begun to provide answers and identify suspects in last week’s bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, a crime the prosecutor in the case, Asst. U.S. Atty. Gilmore Childers, calls “the single most destructive act of terrorism ever committed on American soil.”

It’s clear, though, that much hard work lies ahead before full criminal responsibility can be fixed in what is now widely regarded as a conspiracy. In time, a lot more will be known. Meanwhile, the spotlight focused by this investigation on overseas-based terrorist movements raises a serious question about the government’s effectiveness in keeping even clearly labeled terrorists out of the country.

POROUS SHIELD: A 25-year-old Arab, Mohammed A. Salameh, who entered the United States on an Egyptian passport, has been charged with participating in the bombing. A second man has been charged with obstructing justice.

Authorities describe Salameh as a fundamentalist Muslim. He was traced through identification of a van he rented that may have carried explosives into the garage beneath the World Trade Center, and he was arrested after he tried to get back his deposit on the vehicle, which by then had been destroyed in the blast.

Authorities link Salameh to the Masjid El Salam Mosque in Jersey City, which has drawn police attention before. An Egyptian named Al-Sayyid A. Nosair, who is in prison in connection with the 1990 killing in New York of right-wing Israeli politician Rabbi Meir Kahane, also worshiped at the mosque. In recent years, a frequent preacher there has been Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who was tried and acquitted in Cairo a decade ago in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

The cleric, who is suspected of involvement in other crimes, has long been on the State Department’s list of known terrorists. A chief purpose of that list is to alert consular and immigration officials to foreigners who pose a danger to the United States so that they can be kept from legally entering the country. Yet three years ago Abdul Rahman was able to get a tourist visa from the U.S. Embassy in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum simply by applying for one, an achievement that the U.S. government now attributes to a slip-up. Almost as unbelievable as this laxity has been Abdul Rahman’s recent request for political asylum in the United States, pending before an immigration judge.

NO BLANKET BLAME: A great deal more, as we said, remains to be learned about the World Trade Center bombing. As officials go about their work, the public should keep in mind that this was a specific crime carried out, in all probability, by a small group. That crime has nothing to do with the millions of law-abiding Muslims who live in the United States, or the hundreds of millions who live throughout the world. Let no one seek to ascribe collective blame, because there is no such thing as collective guilt. It is solely individuals who must be brought to justice and punished for this crime.