United States Security

Now that the United States and Osama bin Laden have publicly declared war on each other, the question becomes: What's next? The answer reflects the difficulty of dealing with the kind of low-intensity conflict that has redefined warfare in the post-Cold War world. The threat posed by Bin Laden, the millionaire Saudi dissident linked to the Aug.

With fewer than 500 days left before the year 2000, law enforcement officials are increasingly concerned that widespread paranoia about the millennium could touch off a clash between the government and domestic terrorists. "I worry that every day something could happen somewhere," said Robert M. Blitzer, section chief of the FBI's domestic terrorism unit. Recent attacks on U.S.

These days, American foreign policy faces, in a sense, two different worlds. One is the nice, fictitious world that was portrayed in the movie "Wag the Dog." And the other is the much nastier reality we are beginning to see unfold in Russia. "Wag the Dog" is, of course, on everyone's mind, because of the U.S. missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan.

A few years ago, the Pentagon's secretive Office on Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict quietly buried one of the most comprehensive reports ever commissioned on the changing patterns of global terrorism. The "Terror 2000" findings compiled by 41 experts--including former ranking CIA, FBI, State Department and Rand Corp. officials, as well as an ex-KGB general and Israeli intelligence agent--were deemed too alarmist and far-fetched. "Outrageous," commented one CIA official.

The Pentagon tightened security and halted public tours after a threat of possible terrorist action, a spokesman said. "We did receive some information through the FBI. Some of it was credible; some of it wasn't very credible," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. He said the decision to make a "one-notch increase" in security was taken because of heightened fears of possible terrorist strikes against U.S. military forces.

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh warned Thursday that retaliation by Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden for U.S. missile strikes against suspected terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan "is about as serious and imminent a threat as I can imagine." This grim assessment came as Freeh offered the Senate Judiciary Committee a broad panorama of the terrorist threat in the United States and the capacity of the FBI and other agencies to counter it. He said U.S.

Only once in the past 20 years has the world found itself nearing the brink of nuclear war. In 1990, India and Pakistan rolled their air forces' bombers onto runways during a confrontation over the disputed region of Kashmir.

Despite their powerful friends and lobbying prowess, America's high-tech industries suddenly face an unprecedented challenge to the philosophy that has fueled a decade of growth in exports of militarily sensitive goods. The burgeoning controversy over President Clinton's decision to let a U.S. firm contract with China to send American satellites into space has heightened concern about business deals that might enable potential foes to upgrade their military capability.

The package that landed on Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's suburban front porch one day last month was swathed in black plastic and had no visible markings. That was all it took to activate the FBI's anti-terrorism unit and to send the Maryland fire marshal's bomb squad--along with the local police, fire and rescue squads--rushing to the scene to cordon off the street.

In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing--the event many Americans thought could never happen--the FBI has instituted a series of new techniques and initiatives designed to ensure that it never happens again. To better protect the country against the threat of domestic terrorism, the agency has stepped up its monitoring and penetration of anti-government groups.