Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

FATAH REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL • 187sponsored by Iraq from 1974 until 1983, then by Syria until 1987, andthen by Libya from 1987 until 1997; after a brief limited cooperationwith Egypt from 1997 to 1998, the FRC returned to Iraq in December1998 where it again had state sponsorship until August 2002, whenAbu Nidal was killed by Iraqi security forces. These states eventuallyfound that the cost in international opprobrium for aiding and abettingAbu Nidal far exceeded the benefits obtained from sponsoringsuch a client. Yet a greater concern for them was the irascibility andwaywardness of Abu Nidal himself, who remained beholden to noone and was apt to turn against his erstwhile sponsors.Michael A. Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American EnterpriseInstitute with expertise in the Middle East conflict and terrorism, hasclaimed that the Abu Nidal group was in reality a covert action grouporganized by Yasir Arafat in order to assassinate potential rivalswithin the PLO as well as to carry out terrorist actions for which thePLO would have plausible deniability. This claim is based mainly onthe testimony of Ion Mihai Pacepa, the former Romanian intelligenceservice chief, who defected to the United States in July 1978, and isnot accepted by all analysts.Despite its radical revolutionary rhetoric, the FRC in later yearsappeared to be pursuing terrorism almost as an end in itself and alsoshowed an entrepreneurial willingness to hire itself out without regardto the politics of its patrons. While one-third of its resources camefrom Arab states, the FRC was also able to derive one-third of its incomefrom extortion and another third from a consortium of businessesthroughout the world, many of which might have been legitimate bythemselves but all of which functioned as a support network for FRCoperations. In many respects, the FRC evolved into an organized crimesyndicate, and failed to perpetuate itself after the death of Abu Nidal.During the 1980s the FRC amassed assets totaling about $400 millionthrough its commercial organizations, but in 1995 many of these assetswere sequestered when President Bill Clinton issued an executive orderfor the freezing of the funds being raised within the United Statesby terrorist groups and front organizations for financing terrorism.Investigations of the Pakistani Bank of Credit and Commerce International(BCCI) in 1991 revealed that the FRC had used the BCCI as afront for money laundering and illicit arms transactions.The more notorious acts of the FRC include the following: Anassassination attempt was made on the Israeli ambassador to Great