THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609190343
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 77 lines
Field commanders who failed to recognize a growing threat. Higher-ups who inadequately supervised those commanders. A lack of direction reaching to the highest levels of the Pentagon.
All, according to a report released this week, contributed to the deaths of 19 American soldiers in a June terrorist bombing in Dharan, Saudi Arabia.
And all had a familiar ring: The report's account of how disorganization and misjudgments in the military preceded the attack is hauntingly similar to the history of another attack on American troops in the Middle East 13 years ago.
As a pair of Congressional hearings Wednesday focused on the bombing of the Khobar Towers complex in Dhahran, there were echoes aplenty of the October 1983 attack on a Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon.
The Beirut bombing, which killed 241 Marines, was even more devastating than the Khobar blast.
In its aftermath, an independent commission appointed by the Pentagon reached many of the same conclusions about failings within the military that were voiced on Monday by a panel looking into the Khobar attack.
Indeed, in some spots, the reports of the Beirut commission, headed by retired Adm. Robert L.J. Long, and the Khobar commission, headed by retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, appear almost to have been written by the same person.
In a summary of its findings, the Long commission declared that ``the most important message it can bring to the Secretary of Defense is that the . . . attack on the Marine (barracks) in Beirut was tantamount to an act of war using the medium of terrorism.''
A section of the Downing report entitled ``Terrorism - An Undeclared War Against the United States,'' suggests that terrorists be seen as ``soldiers.''
The Long Commission found that the Marines had been given intelligence reports that should have warned them of the terrorist threat in Beirut. But they lacked a ``human intelligence'' capability that would have given them information from within terrorist groups. ``We must have better human intelligence to support military planning and operations,'' it said.
``There was general warning of an attack on Khobar Towers,'' Downing wrote in a cover letter for his commission's report, ``but the information was not sufficiently precise to determine its exact timing or method. This must be improved through . . . a more intense emphasis on human intelligence.''
The Long commission detailed what it called ``a lack of effective command supervision of the (Marine) security posture,'' before the Beirut bombing. Commanders up the line, it said, ``did not initiate actions to ensure the security of the (force) in light of the deteriorating political/military situation in Lebanon.''
An entire section of the Downing report is devoted to the lack of supervision the commission says was provided by the U.S. Central Command for anti-terrorism efforts at Khobar Towers. Though it is responsible for all American forces operating in the Middle East, ``No member of the U.S. Central Command chain of command inspected force protection at Khobar Towers,'' the Downing report noted, and the senior Air Force officer within Central Command ``did not provide sufficient guidance and assistance'' to protect Air Force personnel assigned to Khobar.
Though the Long commission concluded that ``much needs to be done to prepare U.S. military forces to defend against and counter terrorism,'' the Downing report found that training and outfitting American troops to deal with terrorists remains insufficient.
Security units assigned to Khobar Towers were understaffed, the Downing panel reported, and were operating without guidance by any published standards. The troops those units were to protect, meanwhile, had received only general instruction about terrorist threats, not specific information about the situation in Saudi Arabia.
In releasing his commission's report on Monday, Downing acknowledged the parallels between its findings and those of Long's panel 13 years ago. ``What is the follow-through going to be to ensure the actions that we have recommended are implemented and not forgotten?'' he asked.
The Pentagon reacted to the Downing report by trying to answer that question. Defense Secretary William J. Perry directed a new review of security arrangements around the world and changed a longstanding set of protection ``guidelines'' into ``standards,'' forcing commanders to comply.
KEYWORDS: SAUDI ARABIA BOMBS TERRORISM
FATALITIES by CNB