Supervisors Call for Greater Terrorism Safeguards

Alarmed by the downing of TWA Flight 800 and the Atlanta Olympic park bombing, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors called Tuesday for expanded anti-terrorist efforts by law enforcement agencies and intensified security measures at Los Angeles-area airports.

After hearing an overview from the FBI and county Sheriff’s Department, the supervisors unanimously endorsed formation of a multi-agency, anti-terrorist working group that will immediately review security measures at airports and develop plans to train and equip emergency response units.

Board Chairman Mike Antonovich went further, calling for background checks on all personnel at the airports and increased inspection of all baggage and cargo loaded onto aircraft.

“There has got to be a greater effort to ensure that all personnel at airports have background investigations, especially those involved with handling cargo and luggage,” Antonovich said.

Since passengers must go through security screening, he said, “it is only logical that packages, luggage, cargo that is being transported by the aircraft are also subjected to the same security precautions.”

Antonovich also sought heightened security at all Los Angeles-area points of entry, including the area’s major ports.

The board acted after Charles H. Middleton, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, and Helena Ashby, chief of detectives for the Sheriff’s Department, told the supervisors that the terrorist threat is heightened by this region’s diversity.

“The threat to the Los Angeles area . . . is based on the diverse ethnic makeup of Los Angeles,” Middleton said. “Nearly every segment of violent worldwide conflict is represented here in L.A.”

Middleton said the region’s geographic location as an “international door to the world” makes it more vulnerable along with “its vast and remote desert and mountain terrain” that can serve as a training ground.

Ashby said there are several different types of terrorist groups, including those that would use terrorist acts to further international ends, philosophical goals, anti-government purposes or to fuel racial or ethnic dissent. Since Los Angeles is a multicultural city and county, she said, the area is home to sympathizers from throughout the world.

Overall, she said, the Los Angeles area has been extremely lucky in terms of terrorist incidents.

There have been a number of terrorists attacks, including the assassination of the Turkish consul general in West Los Angeles in 1982, the bombing death of the regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana in 1985, and the 1990 discovery of a powerful chemical bomb outside a West Los Angeles building housing IRS offices, she said.

The most disruptive incident was the Unabomber’s threat to blow up an aircraft at Los Angeles International Airport last summer.

Ashby told the supervisors there has been a recent and dramatic surge in the number of explosive devices discovered that were armed and could detonate. The percentage of suspicious devices that turned out to be bombs doubled from about 33% in the first six months of last year to more than 67% in the first half of this year.

Ashby said the Sheriff’s Department believes the Internet has made information on bomb making techniques readily accessible.

“We need a cooperative effort to combat terrorism in California and Los Angeles County,” she said, involving not only law enforcement and fire departments, but also large and small employers.

The public has been helpful in reporting more suspicious packages in the aftermath of recent terrorist incidents.

Middleton, former chief of counter-terrorism at the FBI headquarters in Washington, said the United States was “very fortunate” that there was an average of 9.5 terrorist incidents a year between 1986 and 1993.

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But since then, he said, there has been a trend toward indiscriminate violence, including the bombings at the federal building in Oklahoma City, at the Olympics, and the “possibility of TWA Flight 800 being a terrorist act.”

In seeking tougher anti-terrorist legislation from Congress, Middleton said advanced technology, the Internet and instability in the world all point to the possibility of terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, chemical and biological.

Ashby and Middleton agreed there is an ongoing need for intelligence gathering. “How do you plan for a terrorist attack?” Ashby asked. “You can’t harden all the targets.”