Silence Deepens Mystery Surrounding TWA Explosion

At the beginning of the century, Russian revolutionaries used to say that terror was to be done, not talked about.

At the end of the century, terrorists seem to be taking their advice.

Many explosions are followed by a long, terrible silence, unbroken by any credible claim of responsibility. But, many Americans wonder, how could anyone blow a jumbo jet out of the sky, kill hundreds of strangers and not feel compelled to say why?

More than a month after TWA Flight 800 exploded over the Atlantic, investigators have received scores of messages claiming responsibility. The FBI won’t say if any is valid.

Some interpret that silence to mean the July 17 crash was an accident. But many terrorist attacks--as many as half, by some estimates--are not accompanied by a legitimate “confessor claim.”

These include the bombings of Pan Am 103 over Scotland in 1988, an Air India jetliner over the Atlantic in 1985, and the federal building in Oklahoma City last year.

“It doesn’t matter whether anyone claimed credit or not,” James K. Kallstrom, the FBI agent in charge of the TWA investigation, argued recently. “The event in itself is a public statement . . . that there is tremendous animosity and hatred in the world.”

It does matter, said Charles Bahn, a forensic psychologist who has advised federal agencies on terrorism: “If you can label a problem, a solution seems more likely. If not, it’s more terrifying.”

If the downing of Flight 800 was the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, people want to know. If even the Son of Sam and Zodiac killers sent messages, however garbled, why not someone with a cause to push?

Rona Fields, an Alexandria, Va., psychologist, voiced the common puzzlement: “If you don’t say anything, you’re defeating one of your purposes.”

The world is so filled with exploding bombs and explosive politics that no conclusion can be easily drawn when a car bomb plows into a post office. Absent a message, how do we know if it is the work of militant Muslims who feel U.S. policy is too pro-Israel, or Jewish militants who feel it is too pro-Arab? Or simply a domestic militia upset about taxes?

The Irish Republican Army practices a more easily understood form of terrorism. It always takes responsibility for its bombings, and each statement repeats a demand hundreds of years old: England out of Ireland. The IRA’s grim dance with British authorities is so set that it uses a secret code to inform police if a bomb was the IRA’s.

But there is another approach: anonymous, seemingly pointless, terror.

With the end of the Cold War, none of the United States’ enemies has weapons for a toe-to-toe slug-out. So they resort to war by other means, such as the bomb in the baby carriage.

If such a conflict’s means are limited, its ends are not. To some, such as more-militant Islamic fundamentalists, Western civilization is the fundamental evil in the world. The goal, however unlikely, is not negotiation but destruction.

“These are bitter, angry people, and for them it’s the act itself that matters,” said John Entelis, a Middle East specialist at Fordham University.

To claim responsibility is also to increase the risk of capture, and few terrorists are so radical as to court that fate.

The men who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 mailed a ringing statement of principle to newspapers--which passed them on to grateful detectives. At trial, an expert testified that DNA found in dried saliva on an envelope flap matched one defendant’s DNA. And the voice on a tape-recorded message claiming responsibility matched too.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterintelligence officer, says state-sponsored terrorism favors anonymity because a nation--a small one--is more vulnerable to sanctions and other reprisals. Libya’s refusal to hand over two men charged in the Pan Am 103 bombing led to United Nations sanctions and a bans on air travel and arms sales to Libya.

Such terrorists must satisfy the sponsor’s desire for secrecy, not the public’s desire to know why.

In other cases, terrorists bypass the public and take their message directly to those in power. For state sponsors, terrorism can be a subtle, unspoken bargaining chit, said Bahn, the forensic psychologist.

A leader like Syrian President Hafez Assad, Bahn speculated, “might tell [U.S. Secretary of State] Warren Christopher, ‘Get Israel to give us some land up north, and we’ll restrain terrorism.’ ”

“What else gives a guy like Assad power against the U.S.?” asked Mike Ackerman, a former CIA counterintelligence agent.

In spy circles, the authorship of some terrorist acts has become a subject of hot academic debate.

Take the bombing of Pan Am 103. The United States has indicted two Libyans in absentia, but the PLO has blamed Iran. Gerry Bremer, a Bush administration counter-terrorism official, has blamed Libya, Syria and Iran. Several analysts and journalists have blamed the Syria-based terrorist group of Ahmed Jibril, the PFLP-General Command. And a Palestinian follower of terrorist mastermind Abu Nidal has told a Beirut court he did it.

Even if there is a claim, it isn’t always immediately apparent. In 1993, it took almost a month for officials to confirm and announce that the trade center bombers had issued a statement.

It’s usually not easy to identify a legitimate message.

“When a bomb goes off, everyone takes credit,” said Robert Louden, a former New York City Police Department bomb squad member. “You have to eliminate the hoaxers.”

That was accomplished with some dispatch in the trade center case only because the messenger was already under suspicion.

For all the mystery of silent terrorism, you can sense something in the dark, quiet hours after such a bombing: a vast distance between terrorist and target.

“It’s pointless to us because we’re pragmatic; we think an act has to have a purpose,” said Cannistraro, the former CIA officer. “Other people don’t look at it that way. The balance sheet they keep to redress grievances is more archaic--an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”