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As part of its search for the hit teams, the U.S. Customs Service last week sent out descriptions and composite sketches of five of the alleged members to about 2,000 Customs and U.S. Border Patrol officials around the country. Stamped EXTREMELY SENSITIVE and running seven pages, the list includes two Iranians, a Palestinian, a Lebanese and a German. Their names: Ibrahim El Haya, Ahmed Jooma, Ahmat Abass, Ali Chafic, Luitz Schewesman. All are estimated to be between the ages of 25 and 36 save for the German, whose age is listed as "appx. 56." Besides giving a physical description of the men, each sketch mentions a habit or two. The item on Ibrahim El Haya, "appx. 36" and an Iranian, for example, said that he "often wears sun glasses. Often wears dark brown leather coat, mid thigh, belted with leather buttons. Smokes Rothman cigarettes." The memo also warned of a second, six-man squad headed by the notorious international terrorist known as "Carlos" (Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez), who is wanted for a string of murders and kidnapings around the world. Over the years, he has been linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Japanese Red Army and West Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang.
There was one awkward error in a preliminary list of alleged members of the hit teams, which was first made public by Columnist Jack Anderson. Among the members of these death squads, about whom little biographical information was said to be available, were Nabih Berri and Mohammed Shamseddin, two well-known leaders of Amal, a Shi'ite Muslim political party and militia in Lebanon that is violently opposed to Gaddafi because it believes he kidnaped and killed their spiritual leader, Imam Moussa Sadr, on a visit to Tripoli three years ago. Administration officials blamed the mix-up on a computer error and quickly corrected the mistake, but not before Anderson broadcast the wrong lineup.
The confusing array of members and numbers—Was it five men? Eleven men? One team? Two teams?—was apparently owing to the fact that a host of agencies, including the FBI, CIA and Secret Service, have been gathering and analyzing their own information. Indeed, U.S. officials could not even confirm with absolute certainty that a hit team, or teams, exists. "If we knew exactly who these people were and where they are, don't you think we would put an end to this?" said one White House aide.
Some U.S. officials were willing to concede that the rumors might well be true but felt, not without reason, that Washington was making too much public noise about them. "There are doubts around here," said Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "It's not so much whether there is evidence, but why the Administration is making such a big deal about it." Said Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut: "If that's all there is, we're being bombarded with a lot of hype. I need more evidence."