In a New York Times/CBS News poll taken the night after the bombing of Libya, an overwhelming majority of Americans (77%) approved. The latest survey showed that while support had slipped a bit, a hefty 65% continued to support the bombing (New York Times, May 4, 1986: 8).

The bombing of Libya was ostensibly undertaken to punish Colonel Muammar el-Quaddafi for "exporting" terrorism. Although domestic support for President Reagan is indeed remarkable, it is all the more so when world opinion is almost unanimous in its condemnation, not only of the use of military force, but also of the administration's hypocrisy in simultaneously seeking approval from Congress for $100 million for military arms and equipment to export its own terrorism to Nicaragua.

In assessing the relationship between the political climate established by the Reagan administration and public opinion on crime and its control, there is certainly no denying that the New Right has displayed an ability to determine the national agenda in public policy, legislation, and central issues, e.g., with their definition of terrorism, which follows an especially ahistorical and depoliticized conception. In an issue of Crime and Social Justice published before the ascent of the Reagan forces to executive power, we noted the rise to prominence of "intellectuals for law and order" (see No. 8, 1977). Four years later, we depicted the "New Right" as a "clearly growing and serious political force (No. 15, 1981). Contributors to these issues described the essential characteristics of the New Right and understood that "street crime" was, on the one hand, the code word for domestic law and order. On the other hand, they sensed that it was associated in some way with widened criminalization, that is, with "the widening of the definition of criminal to include potential disrupters of the economic, political, and ideological rule of (global) capital" (John Horton, Crime and Social Justice 15, 1981: 7).

What we seriously underestimated at the time were the processes of hegemony. We refer, for example, to those processes that would seek to redefine and reduce an incredibly complex historical moment (e.g., liberation movements, the rise of nationalism, and resistance to U.S. hegemony) to common criminal acts. Simultaneously, justification for punishing these acts was made by appealing to the simple experiences and common sense of the American people. Backstage, the right wing posed its pragmatic agenda: Was it not reasonable, they asked, to strip terrorism of its political immunity, brand it as a common crime subject to normal police work and judicial proceedings, and in so doing, free the president and the secretary of state to manage pressing affairs of state, instead of each new hostage crisis?

It is within this context that we will begin to describe the legislative machinations that linked terrorism to crime. We invite scholars who may have examined these or related aspects to submit their papers to Crime and Social Justice.

Toward the end of the first Reagan term, the New Right seized the momentum with impressive feats of legislative fiat, such as the last minute passage of Senate Bill 1762 (the so-called anticrime bill) that ironically had been blocked in its omnibus form for 11 years due in large measure to the building of broad oppositional coalitions that were fearful of one or more aspects of the massive multi-provision bill. By taking a few provisions incrementally, the rightwing, anti-due process, anti-equal justice agenda finally succeeded in outmaneuvering its opposition.

Of course, this law was part of a more comprehensive agenda consisting of a series of measures including the federal death penalty, restrictions on habeas corpus and the exclusionary rule, as well as the various reincarnations of the Simpson-Mazzoli Bill. Senator Kennedy's support for sentencing reform, which was enacted in SB 1762, unfortunately helped assure its passage, as did the fact that the bill had never gone through committee, and was attached as an amendment to the continuing appropriations resolution signed into law on October 12, 1984.

The most disturbing precedents set by SB 1762 allowed for "preventive detention," which negated the presumption of innocence before trial for federal defendants considered "dangerous," and the retrogressive sentencing "reform" that abolished parole, increased maximum sentences, and weakened the insanity defense. Further, it legalized the unwarranted search and seizure of people and vehicles by customs officials suspecting violations of currency transaction laws. It also created an interagency National Drug Enforcement Policy Board to forward the War on Drugs. This Board was to coordinate the CIA, the Justice Department, the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense, along with Health and Human Services and the Office of Management and Budget (Congressional Quarterly, October 20, 1984).

It is noteworthy that President Reagan's anti-terror package was tagged onto the crime bill. Similarly, perhaps the most ominous legislation passed by Congress was the section of President Reagan's "anti-terrorist" package (HR 6311) that was tagged onto the emergency bill authorizing additional money to increase the security of U.S. embassies, introduced after the U.S. Embassy and Marine compound bombings in Lebanon (October 1983). Both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime had reported the rewards bill without changing the definition of an "act of terrorism." Consequently, a new and far-reaching definition of terrorism appeared on the books: A "violent act" (including violence against property and persons) that "appears to be intended...to influence the policy of the government by intimidation or coercion."

Hypothetically, by this definition if demonstrators were to push down a chain fence (i.e., violence against property) in order to hold a sit-in at a nuclear power plant, that act could be prosecuted as an act of terrorism under that law, which provided substantial rewards ($500,000) to informers reporting on such acts or "conspiracy" to commit such acts. "Rewards could be paid for information leading to the prevention, frustration, or favorable resolution of an act of terrorism against a U.S. person or property" (Congressional Record, October 6, 1984; NCARL Notes, November 1984).

A provision of the rewards bill gave priority to the establishment of an international working group (consisting of Britain, West Germany, and Israel) to combat terrorism. Expanding on the Reagan administration's policy of preemptive and punitive action against international terrorists (adopted with the April 1984 signing of National Security Decision Directive 138), Secretary of State Shultz stated that he supported retaliation against terrorists even if innocent people were killed in the process. With remarkable perspicacity, the New York Times (June 6, 1984) emphasized the potential in a second Reagan administration for the use of pre-emptive counterforce and military retaliation even where hard evidence may be lacking. The line crossed from old policies made the terrorism package attractive to "high-ranking Pentagon civilians," bolstering the positions of those within the administration who have agitated for a greater reliance on the projection of military force in international relations, in contrast to the traditional military, which at the present time is loathe to risk the possible combat deaths that would alienate it from a public still suffering from "Vietnam Syndrome."

With this in mind, invoking the menace of terrorism could prove useful in undercutting those movements that could effectively organize public opinion against any future Vietnam-like interventions. A particularly ominous piece of legislation unveiled in April 1984 was the final part of the antiterrorist package, Senate Bill 2626, co-authored by Senators Jeremiah Denton and Strom Thurmond of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism. (The House version was HR 5613.) According to Richard Criley, this legislation:

This bill was stopped in the Judiciary Committee, but considering the perseverance that ultimately guaranteed passage of much of SB 1762, the current composition of Congress, and the appointment of Edwin Meese III as attorney general, this repressive bill may yet become law. Given the conservative decisions on matters of crime and its control by the current Supreme Court, the Denton and Thurmond legislation may very well survive a constitutional challenge.

These repressive policies can be credited to the activities of the New Right, which has been enormously successful in obtaining massive financial backing to fund its think tanks and political action committees as part of its larger success in building institutions capable of incorporating a new long-term strategic dimension into U.S. politics. Within its vast ideological apparatus lodging the "conservative counterintelligencia" are included the American Enterprise Institute (with its Legal Policy Center); the Heritage Foundation (which authored the Reagan administration's 1980 "blueprint for conservative government," including the abolition of restrictions on domestic intelligence work, the renewal of congressional panels on internal security, and the axiom that individual liberties are secondary to the requirement of national security and internal civil order); the Georgetown Institute of Strategic Studies (with its counterterrorism and intelligence-related staff); as well as the Attorney General Edwin Meese III-related Institute for Contemporary Studies, and the Pacific Legal Foundation. This long-term vision of conservative strategists is captured by a comment made by Walter Wriston, the ex-chairman of Citicorp and a fund-raiser for the American Enterprise Institute:

In relation to this, terrorism has become a major refrain in the administration's selling of its Reagan Doctrine of global interventionism to the American people. While elite antiterrorist units, such as the Delta Force, have been undergoing a major expansion in funding along with the other Special Forces geared for the pro- and counterinsurgency parameters of "low intensity conflict" so favored by the Heritage Foundation, the major barrier to the deployment of these forces -- public opinion -- has been subjected to an onslaught of media imagery calculated to create a connection between "terrorism" and the diverse movements and states that the administration finds so objectionable.

Thus, at the beginning of his latest drive for aid to the Nicaraguan contras, the American public was once again reminded by President Reagan that "links between the Sandinistas, the PLO, and Libyans and others are extensive," and that failure to finance the contras would make Nicaragua "a refuge for terrorism" and "will result in the creation of another Libya on our doorstep" (New York Times, June 7, 1986; June 10, 1986). "Terrorism" has therefore become a key conceptual and ideological weapon in the battle for the "hearts and minds" of the American people, wielded for the purpose of establishing popular support for accelerated unilateralism and global adventurism.