Washington

Recollections of a terrorist-free capital

By CHARLES J. ABBOTT

THE ARRIVAL of warm weather in Washington often prompts nostalgic recollections of the old days in the capital. You've seen the stories: warmly tinged tales of sleepy Southern days before America was a world power or fondly told stories about details of historic events. Sometimes these recollections are illuminating. At the least, they show how things have changed.

I have some of those recollections, although mine date from rather recent times. I recall when nearly every doorway on Capitol Hill was open to visitors. Nowadays, tourists are allowed to use only a couple of the entrances to each of the congressional office buildings and to the Capitol. Each of those is equipped with metal detectors and an X-ray machine. Even the mail to congressional offices arrives with a sticker declaring, "X-rayed." Terrorist scares over the last few years, coupled with a bomb that exploded near the Senate cloakroom in 1983, have prompted some changes in the way Congress and the rest of Washington operate.

Some of the changes are obvious, even to the tourist, like the X-ray machines, gatehouses to check cars coming onto the Capitol grounds and the corridors that are closed to all but congressmen and people wearing the appropriately coded photo identification tags. There was some griping and chafing over those bits of tightened security, even some lampooning of the illogic or shortcomings of some of the features.

The U.S. bombing attack on Libya in April chastened the mood considerably. No one complains now about security precautions. In the weeks immediately after the attack, there were stories about cancellations of school trips to Washington landmarks. Museums started taking a much closer look at what people were bringing into the buildings. It was as if everyone suddenly realized how vulnerable they might be.

Some people date the tightening down on security from 1981, when President Reagan was shot. Others remember quite vividly an earlier moment: March 1, 1954, when four Puerto Rican nationalists shouted "Freedom for Puerto Rico!" and started shooting at congressmen from the House gallery. House Minority Leader Robert Michel, then a 31-year-old aide to Rep. Harold Velde, rushed to the Capitol from the Cannon office building when he heard the news. Michel talked about those 32-year-old memories recently, his hands illustrating where the congressmen were wounded as he named each one. He recalled that one woman was sprawled flat in an aisle when the shooting started. He remembered, too, that after the bomb exploded on the Senate side in 1983 congressmen got an intimidating briefing on how bombs could be hidden, and some were advised to consider using a variety of routes to the Hill.

The April attack on Libya inspired legislation to loosen the restrictions of the War Powers resolution so the president would not have to consult with the Congress before sending U.S. troops into hostilities. At first glance, said Michel (R-18, Peoria), "I don't really have any problems with that." With terrorism, he said, "we're involved in a new kind of war out there."

Rep. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) was willing to go a step farther. "Now that we've seen overt military action in Libya, is covert action such an unpalatable alternative?" he asked in an opinion piece written for the New York Times. In the article and in an interview, he said that the president has too few options now. Economic sanctions work only if other countries agree, and it is too easy now for word to leak out about supposedly secret operations. The only choice left is a large-scale military operation, like the one used on Libya, he said. It is worth a review, he said, of "our restrictions on covert action. . . . Covert action, judiciously used, can be an important tool of foreign policy." There was no rush to embrace DeWine's idea, since there is a common memory that the restrictions were imposed because of strong disagreement with some of the things that U.S.-backed groups were doing, but it shows how the currents of thinking might change.

There is little question of what congressmen thought of the bombing raid on Libya. They strongly supported it, but mentioned some reservations about whether it would put an end to Libyan sponsored terrorism. That is the long-term question and was the dilemma confronting President Reagan in ordering the April 14 attack. "You just have to raise the cost of terrorism," Rep. Henry Hyde (R-6, Park Ridge) said the day afterward, noting the possibility of retaliation. "The world tensions are racheted up by this very serious step, which I support. We did what we had to do." Michel said somewhat the same thing that week. "These acts would have gone on," he said, if the United States had not acted.

There is no perfect security system, and embassies are one example. Fewer U.S. citizens in our embassies would be at risk if staffs were cut, but that would also mean hiring more foreign nationals, in effect raising the opportunity for infiltration by terrorists of our embassies.

In some ways, the terrorism situation is reminiscent of the end of the Vietnam War, when the U.S. had to decide how to deal with failure. Some people said it would become a marker of maturity, a recognition of the limits of U.S. ability. This may be a similar moment, very much like the first time a young person realizes mortality when he or she looks into the eyes of a grieving widow and sees the pain. We may have much pain ahead of us.

42/June 1986/Illinois Issues