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In addition, although his captors claimed to have dumped his body near a hospital in Syrian-controlled territory in Beirut, no trace of Higgins has been found there. Marrack Goulding, U.N. Under Secretary-General of Special Political Affairs, met in Beirut last week with Shi'ite leaders and Iranian embassy personnel in an effort to recover Higgins' body. Though the effort failed, Goulding later told reporters in Damascus that there was "optimism in the air" in Beirut about the release of hostages.
Last week Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin laid out his unflinching quid pro quo for hostage trades in Lebanon. "We must have commanders and leaders of the terror organizations," he said. "Only when they are in our hands can we move ((them)) to exchange prisoners." Jerusalem has not hesitated to resort to kidnaping in the past. In 1983 Israeli troops in Beirut kidnaped the nephew of Ahmed Jabril, head of the P.F.L.P. --General Command and later the suspected mastermind of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Two years later Israel swapped the captured nephew -- and 1,150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons -- for three Israeli soldiers held by Jabril.
The U.S. has also resorted to kidnaping of a sort, most famously during the 1985 midair interception of the Achille Lauro hijackers by fighter planes. In September 1987 FBI agents lured suspected terrorist Fawaz Younis into international waters off Cyprus, arrested him aboard a U.S. vessel and flew him to Andrews Air Force Base for eventual trial and imprisonment. For the most part, however, the U.S. has adopted a waiting posture, which critics charge has degenerated into a prescription for inaction.
What else should the U.S. be doing? Three years ago, a White House task force on terrorism chaired by then Vice President Bush recommended limited and well-defined military retaliation in a hostage crisis if all other means failed. "((The panel)) would not approve of wanton destruction of human life . . . in order to show some muscle," said Bush in introducing the report. Armed force would be used only "where it can be surgically done."
As a result of task-force recommendations, the State Department was designated as the lead agency in combating terrorism, with responsibility for coordinating other Government departments. At the CIA, a new covert counterterrorism force was set up to combine intelligence from other groups such as the National Security Agency and the armed forces. Any raid to rescue the hostages would require pinpointing where they are held, but the ability of U.S. intelligence to discover the whereabouts of the hostages is still limited. Terrorist cells are small, often based on family ties, and very hard to crack. The killing of two of the CIA's top Middle East operatives, former hostage William Buckley and Robert Ames, severely crippled what little was left of any U.S. intelligence network in the region.