The Search for Culprits Yields Very Few Clues

By ROBIN WRIGHT and TYLER MARSHALL

Aug. 8, 1998 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WASHINGTON —

In the wake of any apparent terrorist attack, it’s always the first question asked: “Who did it?”

But amid the blood and debris of Friday’s U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, there were depressingly few clues that might point to a culprit. Experts on East Africa came up empty in their initial search for possible suspects or motives within the region.

“I’m comfortable with the notion this has nothing to do with internal African politics,” noted Walter Kansteiner, an Africa specialist at the Forum for International Policy in Washington. “In Kenya, opposition parties are very pro-American, so there’s not the motivation to do this and, quite frankly, not the instinct or capability. It’s the same in Tanzania.”

The apparently well-coordinated bombings, which occurred just a few minutes apart in capital cities separated by about 400 miles, suggests the involvement of a sophisticated organization with the ability to deploy simultaneously on multiple fronts and slip across borders without arousing suspicion, according to former State Department counter-terrorism chief Robert B. Oakley, who also served as ambassador to Somalia and Zaire, now known as Congo.

“This is the first time we’ve had two coordinated explosions. It obviously required planning,” Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering said.

No group in Africa has ever demonstrated that kind of sophistication, U.S. officials said.

Moreover, only two of the 123 anti-American attacks recorded in the last year by the State Department took place in Africa.

Almost inevitably, initial suspicion was focused on established Middle East-based groups that have demonstrated both the desire and the capability to strike at the United States, despite the seemingly unlikely locations.

Officials noted that American Embassies in Africa would be far softer targets to hit than their heavily fortified counterparts in the Arab world.

In response to a reporter’s question, National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said a threatening message allegedly received Thursday by the French news agency Agence France-Presse from the Iranian-supported terrorist organization Islamic Jihad “will be thoroughly investigated.”

Islamic Jihad reportedly pledged last week to strike American interests. The group was angered because the U.S. had arranged the arrest and deportation to Egypt of three Islamic fighters who had sought to join forces with Albanian Muslim rebels in the Serbian province of Kosovo, according to a report published Thursday in Al-Hayat, an Arabic-language newspaper in London.

“We take those threats very seriously,” Crowley said, although his comments suggested that the administration had no concrete information to link the extremist group with Friday’s bombings.

Crowley also noted that the United States receives terrorist threats on a daily basis.

Islamic Jihad is a successor to the Egyptian group that assassinated its country’s president, Anwar Sadat, in 1981. It also claimed responsibility for the June 1995 assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak as he was driving to the airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, another East African country.

With the U.S. response to Friday’s bombings initially focused on the rescue operation, officials said it may be days, weeks or even months before investigators obtain the forensic evidence required to make a formal link to the bombers.

But the method of the attacks and the targets chosen offer tentative indications of what kind of groups may have been responsible and why.

Another terrorist with strong anti-American sentiments is Saudi financier Osama bin Laden, who reportedly controls a network of Islamic cells across Southwest Asia, the Middle East and Europe and who has issued two directives calling for attacks against American facilities and personnel.

An Iraqi-sponsored attack also is viewed as a possibility among foreign policy specialists in Washington, who note that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has recently renewed public threats to strike the United States.

“I’d certainly look at the Iraqi hypothesis,” noted Peter Rodman, former senior National Security Council official in the Reagan administration. “You certainly need to explore [the possibility of] a Middle East connection in this.”

In the past, embassy attacks have been a favorite tactic of Mideast terrorist groups.

Bombings, in general, have been the most common form of terrorism for many years, accounting for 175 of the 304 acts of international terrorism last year.

Investigators will need to uncover the telltale “fingerprint” of the bombs’ assembly, which differs with each explosive device, and the type of explosive material to help identify the origin and maker.

Preliminary speculation about the identities of the perpetrators was tempered by uncomfortable recollections of how quickly the experts, pundits and press reached seemingly obvious conclusions after previous tragedies--and wound up getting it drastically wrong.

U.S. officials strongly cautioned against jumping to conclusions about what is, in fact, little more than a list of “usual suspects” in car bombings.

“There was no warning, and there has been no claim of responsibility,” State Department spokesman Lee McClenny said.

Added a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official: “The field is open. We’re looking into every lead and every report. Don’t rush to any concrete hypothesis. One lesson we learned from the Oklahoma City bombing is not to rush to judgment.”

Although an American, Timothy J. McVeigh, was eventually convicted of masterminding the April 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, which left 168 dead and hundreds injured, initial speculation focused so intently on Islamic extremists that many media reports left the impression that foreign involvement was established fact.

One reputed terrorism expert appeared on network newscasts within hours of that bombing, describing Oklahoma City as “one of the largest centers of Islamic radical activity outside the Middle East.” NBC talk show host Geraldo Rivera concluded a discussion on the bombing and the possibility of Islamic extremist involvement with the comment: “They’ve killed our babies. We’re not going to forget it.”

Fifteen months later, Muslim extremists were among the prime initial suspects in the explosion that killed 230 passengers aboard TWA Flight 800 shortly after it departed New York’s JFK International Airport. In that instance, a prolonged investigation ruled out a terrorist attack altogether, instead tracing the disaster to a faulty fuel tank.

“The danger is that someone begins to make the allegations and they don’t understand what the impact is of being wrong,” said James Zogby, head of the American Arab Institute, a lobbying group for the country’s 3 million Arab Americans. “We saw that in Oklahoma City and with TWA 800. We were denied the right to be Americans or to mourn America’s dead.”

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Global Terror

Foreign groups designated as terrorist organizations by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:

* Abu Nidal organization (Palestinian)

* Abu Sayyaf group (Philippines)

* Armed Islamic Group (Algeria)

* Aum Supreme Truth (Japan)

* Euzkadi Ta Azkatasuna (Basque Homeland and Freedom) (Spain)

* Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Hawatmeh Faction

* Hamas (Palestinian)

* Harakat ul-Ansar (Pakistan)

* Hezbollah (Lebanon)