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 in Jerusalem? 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 be used 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."
Nevertheless, the absurd thesis of the Jerusalem Conference was soon regurgitated by
several new top officials of the Reagan Administration. In Alexander Haig's first news
conference as Secretary of State on January 28, 1981, Haig thundered that the Kremlin
was trying to "foster, support, and expand" terrorist activity worldwide through the
"training, funding, and equipping" of terrorist armies. Haig made it official that
"international terrorism will take the place of human rights" as the central international
concern of the Reagan Administration. And that meant the KGB.