Anti Terrorist

Re "Deal near in May Day melee," Nov. 20 This embarrassing and damaging chapter in the LAPD's recent history will not be closed until the department has persuasively demonstrated over several years' time that it has changed its policy of using peaceful protests as training opportunities for crowd control and deployment of anti-terrorist gear. Danila Oder Los Angeles

Stupid fun, "From Paris With Love" doesn't do much for Paris or love, or your brain cells, but it flies like a crazed eagle on uppers and comes from the talented, propulsive schlocketeer Pierre Morel. A former cinematographer who learned to light brutality stylishly under the tutelage of international violence impresario Luc Besson, Morel turns his kinetic eye to a tale (story by Besson, script by Adi Hasak) of a low-level spy and Paris embassy functionary, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

The pitch: The FBI Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division has an urgent message for you. The scam: You could be in terrible trouble. According to an e-mail from this division of the FBI, money has been transferred to your account from a suspicious, overseas source. "Secret diplomatic payments are not made unless the funds are related to terrorist activities," the e-mail says. Indeed, these kind of transfers have "always been related to terrorist acts." The FBI is willing to work with you, though, if a mistake has been made.

In movies, the CIA has so many prolifically lethal assassins roaming the world that the main problem often seems to be reining them in. But details that spilled out this week about a real CIA assassination program indicate that when the plotting is being done by spies instead of screenwriters, the obstacles are not so easy to surmount. According to current and former U.S.

British Judge Timothy Workman's ruling to release on bail the suspected "lead trainer" of the Sept. 11 skyjackers requires the U.S. under the Bush terrorism doctrine to forthwith invade England (Feb. 13). We must oust the terrorist-leaning government and replace it with a more sympathetic regime. If the queen is cooperative and sufficiently anti-terrorist to suspend British due process of law, we can reinstate the monarchy and send Parliament and the British judiciary to prison camps in Cuba.

A Dublin man was charged Saturday with the kidnaping of dentist John O'Grady who was freed in a shoot-out between police and his abductors earlier this week at the end of a three-week ordeal. Amid tight security, Gerard Wright, 44, made a 10-minute appearance in Dublin's anti-terrorist special criminal court on charges of falsely imprisoning 38-year-old O'Grady and possessing a firearm.

Former hostage Jacobsen believes that the U.S. State Department should have worked overtime to attain the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. If ever I should become a hostage, I hope I will not expect my government to make my release its top foreign policy priority. If I should become a hostage I would like to defy my captors like Leon Klinghoffer (the U.S. citizen killed in 1985 during the hijacking of the Achille Lauro ship) did, quickly ending my usefulness to the terrorists. Of course I would probably not act so courageously.

A suspected member of the Abu Nidal terrorist group arrested in London three weeks ago is being questioned by Swedish police in connection with the Feb. 28 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, the London Sunday Telegraph reported. The paper said that the man, a Swedish national, is one of six people arrested three weeks ago by British anti-terrorist detectives and that he was expelled to Sweden.

Police officers and agents of the federal investigative agency searched Palestinian dwellings and student dormitories here Monday for clues to last Friday's hijacking of a Pan American World Airways jetliner. An estimated 3,000 Palestinians live in Karachi, about two-thirds of them students. Four men identified as Palestinians were captured after they raked the cabin of the Boeing 747 with gunfire and hand grenades, killing or fatally wounding 17 passengers and injuring about 127 others.

Re "Greece Fiddles as Terrorists Work," editorial, June 15: Greece has every reason to rid itself of this scourge, for the main targets of the terrorists have been Greeks. The November 17 terrorist group has never proclaimed an institutional agenda; its attacks have been made exclusively on targeted individuals. That is why this group, relying on the actions of a very few members without wider connections, has been so difficult to track down. You are wrong to ascribe the failure to apprehend terrorists to a lack of will on the part of the Greek authorities, which you claim results from "domestic politics" and "anti-American sentiment."

The pitch: The FBI Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division has an urgent message for you. The scam: You could be in terrible trouble. According to an e-mail from this division of the FBI, money has been transferred to your account from a suspicious, overseas source. "Secret diplomatic payments are not made unless the funds are related to terrorist activities," the e-mail says. Indeed, these kind of transfers have "always been related to terrorist acts." The FBI is willing to work with you, though, if a mistake has been made.

Facing mounting public anger over the response of his government and security forces to last week's assault on Mumbai, India's prime minister pledged Sunday to beef up anti-terrorism measures, and a top police official more pointedly fixed blame on a Pakistani group for the violence that left nearly 200 dead. But analysts and ordinary citizens questioned whether the government's promise of reform would lead to serious changes in an approach whose systemic problems were laid bare by the assault.

Re "Deal near in May Day melee," Nov. 20 This embarrassing and damaging chapter in the LAPD's recent history will not be closed until the department has persuasively demonstrated over several years' time that it has changed its policy of using peaceful protests as training opportunities for crowd control and deployment of anti-terrorist gear. Danila Oder Los Angeles

Rarely do U.S. military officials talk about the month-old security crackdown in Iraq without mentioning three words: "joint security stations." The stations are considered crucial to the plan's success because of their emphasis on giving Baghdad's toughest neighborhoods a 24/7 troop presence. Four years ago today, U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

To read of continued terrorist attacks is depressing and infuriating. At the time of 9/11, I believed that our policy should combine a relentless pursuit of Al Qaeda and a vigorous search for the underlying causes. This administration chose to divert its focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. It also chose to render the so-called roadmap in Palestine an empty stream of words without action. Madrid paid a price for these disastrous policies, and on Thursday so did London. This month my son joined the anti-terrorist part of the Army.

Travelers at a rail station near Washington will have to walk through an explosives detection machine and have their bags screened in a security test designed to frustrate terrorists. The "puffer" machine blows small puffs of air onto a passenger to detect residue from explosives. An official said the one-month test at the station in New Carrollton would determine if the gear worked and how much it bogged down travelers.

The police explanation of why Sgt. Daniel Christian shot and killed his SWAT teammate James Jensen Jr. is hardly reassuring: that he "mistook his partner for a suspected drug dealer." So, obviously, it is perfectly acceptable to kill suspected drug dealers or, perhaps, suspects in general. It is this attitude, and the readiness to kill, that caused the death of Jensen. The Oxnard police SWAT team in this predawn raid was poised and primed to blast anything that moved and this is exactly what Sgt. Christian did when he fired repeatedly into the smoky darkness.

To read of continued terrorist attacks is depressing and infuriating. At the time of 9/11, I believed that our policy should combine a relentless pursuit of Al Qaeda and a vigorous search for the underlying causes. This administration chose to divert its focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. It also chose to render the so-called roadmap in Palestine an empty stream of words without action. Madrid paid a price for these disastrous policies, and on Thursday so did London. This month my son joined the anti-terrorist part of the Army.

A portion of the USA Patriot Act that makes it a crime to provide "expert advice and assistance" to terrorist organizations, even if that aid is humanitarian, was challenged as unconstitutional Wednesday in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court. The suit, which names Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell as defendants, seeks an injunction barring the government from enforcing the contested section of the law.

House members Tuesday lambasted the Terrorist Threat Intelligence Center, a new piece of the government designed to coordinate the analysis of intelligence gathered by the CIA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security, as a step toward more bureaucracy and less analysis.