International participation was also notable: Annie Kriegel and Jacques Soustelle of France, Lord
Alun Chalfont, Paul Johnson, and Robert Moss of the United Kingdom, and many leading Israelis.
The keynote statement was made by Prime Minister Begin, who told the participants that they
should spread through the world the main idea of the conference, which was that all terrorism in the
world, whatever its origin, is controlled by the Soviet Union. Ray Cline made a major presentation,
developing his theory that terrorism should not be seen as a spontaneous response to oppression byfrustrated minorities, but rather only as the preferred tool of Soviet bloc subversion. For Cline, the
great watershed was an alleged 1969 decision by the Poliburo in Moscow to use the Palestine
Liberation Organization as the Kremlin's fifth column in the Middle East, and specifically to
subsidize PLO terrorist attacks with money, training, and communications provided by the KGB.
For Cline, the PLO, despite the fact that it enjoyed the support of the vast majority of Palestinians,was merely a synthetic tool of Soviet intelligence. It was a very convenient argument for Zionist
hardliners.
Richard Pipes then drew on Russian history to illustrate the singular thesis that terrorism was a
product of Russian history, and of no otmodern terrorism," according to Pipes, "date back to 1879...Ither history. "The roots of Soviet terrorism, indeed of marks the beginning of that
organization which is the source of all modern terrorist groups, whether they be named the
Tupamaros, the Baader-Meinhof group, the Weathermen, Red Brigades or PLO. I refer you to the
establishment in 1879 of a Congress in the small Russian town of Lipesk, of an organization known
as Narodnaya Volya, or the People's Will."
There is no doubt that the KGB and its east bloc satellite agencies were massively involved in
running terrorism, as former Soviet bloc archives opened after 1989 definitively show. But is it
really true that terrorism was invented in Lipesk in 1879? And is terrorism really the absolute
monopoly of the KGB? Did that include Menachem Begin, who blew up the King David Hotel inJerusalem? Did it include other members of the Irgun and Stern gangs? Everyone present seems to (^)
have found good reasons for believing that the ludicrous thesis of the conference was true. For the
Israelis, it was a new reason not to negotiate with the PLO, who could be classed as Soviet terrorist
puppets. For the immediate needs of Bush's election-year demagogy, it was an argument that could
be used against Carter's equally demagogic "human rights" sloganeering. More broadly, it could beused to allege a clear and present universal danger that made it mandatory to close the book once
and for all on the old Church committee-Pike committe mentality. All the participants, from CIA,
MI-6, SDECE, Mossad, and so on down the line could readily agree that only the KGB, and never
they themselves ran terrorism. Hardly ever.
Begin had been a terrorist himself; Soustelle had been in the French OAS during the Algerian war
where the SDECE had committed monumental crimes against humanity; Bush and Cline were
godfathers of the Enterprise; the Mossad was reputed to have an agent on the Abu Nidal central
committee, and also exercised influence over the Italian Red Brigades; while the chaps from MI-6
had the longest and bloodiest imperial records. But Ian Black wrote in the Jersualem Post wrote that"the conference organizers expect the event to initiate a major anti-terrorist offensive." In Paris, the
right-wing L'Aurore ran an article under the headline "Toujours le KGB," which praised the
conference for having confirmed that when it comes to international terrorism, the Soviets pull all
the strings. [fn 16]
There were skeptics, even in the US intelligence community, where Ray Cline's monomania was
recognized. At the 1980 meeting of AFIO, Cline was criticized by Howard Bane, the former CIA
station chief in Moscow, who suggested "We've got to get Cline off this Moscow control of
terrorists. It's divisive. It's not true. There's not one single but of truth to it." A retired CIA officer
named Harry Rostizke put in: "It's that far-right stuff, that's all. It's horseshit."