Now, that just did not happen; that was not happenstance. That did not come about through chance. That was through a very careful and controlled collection of intelligence, outstanding cooperation, and diligent investigation.

We and other law enforcement agencies have been able to prevent over the last 5 years 54 specific terrorist incidents that would have amounted to hundreds of casualties. If those incidents had occurred, then the United States would be known as a focal point for terrorism.

So, the fact that you do not see the incidents occurring does not mean that there are not groups or organizations that are bent upon committing acts of terrorism in the United States, as well as against the United States internationally.

In order to continue to prevent terrorism from occurring in the United States, it is absolutely essential that information of an intelligence nature be collected and carefully evaluated to determine its validity.

The FBI devotes considerable resources to the analysis of information acquired through its process of analysis and investigation. That information must be carefully vetted and prioritized.

Sometimes this information, and quite often, in fact, leads to the evidence for prosecution. We have seen a number of cases being prosecuted this year. However, not all intelligence leads to prosecution. Nevertheless, it does lead to actions on behalf of the Government or to actions that we can take to prevent incidents from occurring short of prosecution.

The principal goal of the FBI is to prevent terrorist acts from taking place. However, in the event that we are unable to prevent an incident from occurring, we have established comprehensive plans for responding to such incidents both here and abroad.

We have established 12 joint terrorism task forces in major cities of the United States. These task forces, which are made up of Federal, State, and local law enforcement officers, were established to deal with terrorism problems in specific areas and to facilitate the exchange of information and joint investigative activities.

This effort has been extremely successful in deterring criminal activity of terrorists, as well as solving criminal acts committed by terrorist groups after the fact. Just last week, the excellent work of the New York Joint Terrorism Task Force led to the convictions of Mutulu Shakur, a leader of the Republic of New Africa Group, and Marilyn Jean Buck, a member of the May 19 Communist Organization, for their participation in a 1981 robbery of an armored car and the murder of a Brink's guard and two police officers.

We call that the NYROB case, and it was that case that led us to the determination of a coalition between extreme left groups in the United States where they were aiding and abetting and supporting each other in a number of interrelated terrorist activities. They were also convicted of a number of other serious crimes and face penalties up to life imprisonment.

On the same day of these convictions, a Federal grand jury here in Washington indicted seven persons for the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol and several other bombings of Government buildings.

By the way, I have been asked many times in appearances up here when we were going to solve that case. This is the first time I

have had to testify since we have solved it, and so I would like to point out that we fulfilled our promise; we did solve it.

Senator LEAHY. You did not have anybody up here that was watching that case, did you, Mr. Revell?

Mr. REVELL. Not at all. There was not much interest up here. Senator LEAHY. None among the hundred Senators who had been standing nearby there just 2 hours before the explosion.

Mr. REVELL. The gentleman who leads this body, whose office the explosion occurred next to, did exhibit some interest in that matter.

Senator LEAHY. I have a feeling he might have.

Mr. REVELL. One of those indicted was Marilyn Jean Buck, who has just been convicted in a New York case. Both the New York and Washington cases were the result of cooperative law enforcement efforts led by the FBI.

I would like to note that the individuals arrested and convicted are highly intelligent, and they constitute a very sophisticated terrorist group. They and others like them could have represented a threat to the infrastructure of the United States if not identified, arrested, and prosecuted.

Our projections for future terrorist activities in this country are based upon past experience, intelligence information gleaned through our investigations, informants and assets, information provided to us by other components of the U.S. Government, and by the law enforcement community and foreign governments.

Although the United States has not experienced an act of terrorism involving nuclear, chemical, biological, or other highly technical weapons, we have aggressively pursued the coordination of interagency operational responses to prepare for crises such as these.

Much of what we are doing and the initiatives we are taking cannot be discussed in this session, as you indicated. However, I would like to point out some of the things we are doing to prepare for these type incidents which would be the most difficult, obviously, for a free society to deal with.

Of particular concern to the FBI has been the threat of nuclear terrorism. The FBI has worked to establish a coordinated effort domestically for responding to threats of nuclear terrorism.

I should point out that we do not have an assessment that indicates that nuclear terrorism is at all likely. In fact, just the opposite. All the estimates and all the intelligence would indicate that this is an extremely remote possibility.

However, due to the dire circumstances that would be involved if there was even a semblance of a successful terrorist incident involving nuclear materials or nuclear devices, we expend extraordinary efforts to be prepared to respond to any such eventuality.

One of the most ambitious projects that we are currently working on is the establishment of a response for chemical and biological terrorism. The spread of chemical weapons in the Third World has increased the possibility that terrorists will acquire these weapons and the capability to use them. State-sponsored terrorism increases the potential for such an incident. The FBI has worked very hard to be prepared for this possibility and is working to develop

an interagency response along with the IGT that Ambassador Bremer chairs.

Mr. Chairman, I know that one of your concerns is the vulnerability of the infrastructure, and I have had a number of conversations with one of your witnesses, Dr. Kupperman, about this potentiality.

Senator LEAHY. In fact, if I could interject there, Mr. Revell, some of the writings by Dr. Kupperman and Mr. Woolsey have concerned me a great deal; also, the Vice President's Report on Terrorism, where he says:

Our vulnerability lies ironically in the strength of our open society and highly sophisticated infrastructure. Transportation, energy, communications, finance, and so on, are all interrelated. Given these inherent vulnerabilities and the fact that Americans are increasingly the targets of terrorist attacks outside the United States, it is apparent that a potentially serious domestic threat exists.

At some point I want to go back to discuss the concern you mentioned about a nuclear threat and the steps we might take on that. But, first, what about this interconnected, interrelated, high-tech infrastructure that seems so vulnerable? What do we do about that?

Mr. REVELL. Well, Dr. Kupperman, of course, was a consultant to the Vice President's task force, and I was on the senior review group of the task force, so the task force did take cognizance of that potential.

In an open and free society where we are a very complex and sophisticated network of various supporting activities-rail transportation, communications, aviation, electronic funds transfer, gas and oil pipelines, sea lanes, and so forth-and we have seen certain natural phenomena tieup segments of our society, the New York black-outs, and so forth.

All you need to see is what happens when there is a wreck on a freeway or a bridge is in some way damaged to see the disruption that can occur. We certainly are cognizant of the fact that this society is vulnerable and that it is virtually unprotectable from the standpoint of security measures. You cannot establish in an open society a bunker mentality.

You had a debate here as to what sort of security precautions to take in the Capitol building. What type of access should the public have to their legislators? What type of security should you have? I think you made some reasonable adjustments, and yet preserved the openness of this particular facility. We have to do the same thing. We have to determine what are the most sensitive and the most important of these critical nodes that represent the support of our society, make sure that reasonable precautions are taken, make sure that we collect intelligence on those groups that are likely to carry out attacks of this nature and are in a position to prevent such acts, and then if we ultimately fail, be prepared to deal with the consequences, both the response of law enforcement and the support agencies such as FEMA and others that would come in to deal with the consequences. We are working in all of those areas.

Senator LEAHY. Well, let me follow on that just a little bit more because it is not just the terrible acts that might occur. I understand that terrorists could knock out major segments of networks,

as long as they have the equipment and the money. We know that a number of the terrorist organizations have state support with very deep pockets, and get all the financial support they need.

They sometimes have diplomatic immunity so that they can move equipment in diplomatic pouches. They certainly have an ability to travel to any part of the world in a very short time.

So, on the one hand we have the threat of a major part of our telecommunications or electrical grids or natural gas lines being knocked out. But on the other hand we have the problem of extortion. To what extent can we be blackmailed by terrorists threatening such an incident-at the beginning of a summit meeting or at the time of major negotiations, for example, in the Middle East on a peace mission of some sort?

To what extent can the United States-which could never be defeated militarily by these groups—have its foreign policy and maybe even its economic policy thwarted by the threat of terrorist action?

Of course, the other problem we face from the threat of terrorist action here at home is whether there comes a point when the United States cut back its own constitutional safeguards-something none of our enemies in World War II or World War I were able to force us to do.

Basically, my question is this: What do you see as the most likely high-tech terrorism threat in the near future? As I understand your testimony, you have ruled out a nuclear threat, but what do you see as the greatest high-tech terrorist threat that we must be prepared to deal with?

Mr. REVELL. If I was putting it on a scale of probabilities, I would say the most probable would be a chemical device that could be catastrophic, more so than a biological because biological devices are very difficult to obtain and very difficult to transport and very difficult to utilize.

Chemicals are available readily. Bhopal indicated how devastating they can be. You could even use a stand-off weapon and attack containers. You could use the transport, which is done both by rail and truck in this country, of very lethal chemicals.

So, if a terrorist group was going to escalate substantially-and in part of Ambassador Bremer's testimony he will cover some of those aspects-there does not seem to be any tendency to do that because they are very successful with what they are trying to do with the weapons at hand.

But if they were to decide, because of countermeasures and security measures and hardening of targets, that they wanted to ratchet up substantially the stakes involved, my view would be that the most amenable methods for them, the most likelihood they would have of success would be to go to the chemical device that could have, in a metropolitan area or a heavily populated area, a rather devastating impact if not dealt with very quickly.

Senator LEAHY. Is it too much of a simplification to say the only real defense against something like that is intelligence and preemptive action to stop it from happening, because if they made such an attempt, there really is no way of defending?

Mr. REVELL. In this society, as you know, everyone can obtain a weapon, they can travel freely, they can come in and out of the

country virtually unfettered. Once in the country, as Mr. Yukikumura, they can travel around and pick up materials to build devices.

There is no way in our society to have sufficient security measures to prevent a terrorist from attacking a target of very high vulnerability and potential consequences, high consequences.

The only way that I know and the only way that I think that we have been successful to date is the very careful collection of intelligence and the use of that intelligence for preemptive action.

Now, preemptive action in this country is the use of law enforcement-arrests, searches, and seizures. Extremely effective; it does the job. It is not exotic, but it does prevent acts of terrorism.

A case in Chicago, the FALN-we were able through intelligence to place closed-circuit television inside two safehouses. We watched the terrorists building the bombs. We were able, then, by a court order to go in and disable those bombs, and also disable the automatic weapons.

As they proceeded out to go and bomb an Armed Forces Day parade and three military facilities, we arrested them. Well, that parade, if it had been bombed, could have caused mass casualties, and certainly the bombs going off at the armories could have.

So, the point is that the intelligence that we collected and used through arrests and searches was the precisely proper way for us in this society to deal with terrorism.

Senator LEAHY. You really have to have it before the fact?

Mr. REVELL. The only way that I think you can be successful is before the fact. Now, we are not always going to be successful. Senator LEAHY. I understand.

Mr. REVELL. You cannot always prevent it, so we must be prepared to respond as well.

Senator LEAHY. In my own State of Vermont, I noticed the U.S. attorney in papers he filed yesterday, an FBI affidavit, said that three men arrested in Richford, Vermont, are members of a Syrian terrorist organization responsible for the 1982 assassination of Lebanese president-elect, Bashir Gemayel.

I recall the day that happened the Secretary of State, Mr. Shultz, made it a point to mention to me how proud he was of the police chief in Richford, Vermont.

Mr. REVELL. I mentioned it in my statement.

Senator LEAHY. I know you did, and I appreciate that. I intend to make sure that the chief knows about that. In a rural area like that, had the chief not come along when he did, the terrorists could have gone much further. They were only a couple hundred miles from New York City.

Mr. REVELL. Well, one of the things we are trying to do is-there are only 9,000 FBI agents. If you took all the Federal officers of all the agencies, you would not have a very significant force.

But we have 900,000 police officers out there, and they are in the rural areas, they are in the metropolitan areas, they are on the highways. If we can create a state of alertness and readiness and a knowledge as to how to deal with these incidents, such as the State trooper in New Jersey and the chief in Vermont, then we have a much more formidable defensive line out there operating within