Subject: REPORT-LONG/ High Tech & Terrorism 2000
Date: 95-03-22 15:50:54 EST
From: cntrspy@iapps.org (Executive Protection Associates)
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Summary:  Be a HARD target
Re-printed under the fair use doctrine for education purposes.
++++++++++++++

Combined, they're the blessing and curse of our time:
increasingly intricate public systems, like skyscrapers and jumbo
jets, and increasingly sophisticated terrorist weapons, like the
nerve gas used in the Tokyo subway.
        The Tokyo catastrophe was caused by sarin, a product of Nazi
Germany, so toxic that a good whiff or a drop on your skin can kill
you in 10 minutes.
        ``I think there's been an informal bond between terrorists and
their victims not to exceed certain constraints -- chemical,
radiological, nuclear and biological weapons,'' said Robert
Kupperman, a terrorism expert. ``Now the terrorists have begun to
exceed this contract.''
        The Tokyo attack was unprecedented, but there appeared no reason
why something like it could not happen again -- on New York's
subway, London's underground, or Paris' Metro. A mere firebomb
carried onto the subway in New York in December burned 39 people
and tied up the system for hours.
        Next time, the weapon might as easily be plastic explosives or a
hand-held rocket launcher; the target could be a power grid,
computer network or art museum.
        Civilization raises great edifices, as well as the discontents
and the weapons to lay them low. Computer hackers can download bomb
manuals via the Internet. A shaving cream can filled with a gray
gel called Foam-X can blow out the wall of a 747. Some nuclear
bombs weigh only a couple of hundred pounds.
        The sarin that killed six and injured thousands in Tokyo can be
made ``by any competent organic chemist, especially one experienced
with insecticides,'' Kupperman said. ``Are we vulnerable? One
hundred percent.''
        ``Our social contract is such that the haters can do a great
deal of damage,'' said Robert McCrie, a security expert at John Jay
College of Criminal Justice in New York. ``So far, they just
haven't.''
        Not in the United States; the bomb that rocked the World Trade
Center two years ago was fairly simple. But the one that destroyed
Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 was apparently
made of Semtex, a powerful plastic explosive virtually undetectable
by standard baggage-screeners.
        Then there are vulnerable, high-tech targets. A year ago this
month, two power line towers near Montreal were blasted by
dynamite. Hydro Quebec discounted the possibility of terrorism,
however, calling the incidents ``simple acts of vandalism.''
        Indeed, some of the oldest fears about new weapons and new
targets have not been realized.
        Poison a city's water supply? Pulp fiction aside, only a vast
amount would not be harmlessly diluted in all that water. And
nuclear blackmail has proved a bigger problem for James Bond than
his real life counterparts, given the difficulty of obtaining,
building, delivering and detonating a bomb.
        Meanwhile, the world has battened down. Witness the concrete
barrier outside Belfast's Europa Hotel, the soldiers with M-1s in
the corridors of the Manila Hotel, the shuttered general parking
garage at the World Trade Center, the checkpoints around London's
financial district.
        Airlines and airports have scanners to detect firearms and most
types of bombs. Researchers are working on machines to identify
even small amounts of Semtex.
        But no matter the system -- skyscraper, power grid, airport --
security managers are always playing catchup. As aviation safety
expert Clinton V. Oster Jr. wrote three years ago: ``Tightening
security only in some regions creates incentives for terrorist
activity in other locations.''
        When undercover investigators tested airport security after the
World Trade Center blast two years ago, they were able to walk
unchallenged past security guards and through emergency doors,
setting off alarms that elicited no response.
        ``There's always going to be that one vulnerable point,'' McCrie
said. ``Security managers see the point, but sometimes they have to
say, `It's not practical or economical for us to back this point
up.' And they have to hope nothing happens.''




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Subject: REPORT-LONG/ High Tech & Terrorism 2000
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