Word: truck
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lead at an astronomical level: 54% to 26%. That was before Reagan took a few questions from reporters on the eve of his United Nations speech in New York. He conceded that security arrangements at the new embassy had not been finished when a terrorist zigzagged an explosives-laden truck around concrete barriers and set off a blast that killed at least 13 people, including two Americans. With a smile, the President then suggested a singularly inappropriate analogy: "Anyone that's ever had their kitchen done over knows that it never gets done as soon as you wish...
That was hardly a compelling excuse for the slipshod embassy security (see box), especially since there had been public threats from a terrorist group that it would attack U.S. installations in Beirut. Moreover, the previous truck-bomb assaults (at the original West Beirut embassy on April 18, 1983, and the Marine headquarters near the airport last Oct. 23) should have been lesson enough that greater security was needed...
...greatest intelligence problems in Lebanon, in fact, were of distinctly recent origin. Seven CIA employees were among those killed in the April 1983 truck bombing of the American embassy in West Beirut. In addition, the U.S. lost many of its best local intelligence sources as a result of the P.L.O.'s expulsion from Lebanon...
...special team of analysts dispatched from Washington is still picking through the wreckage, but President Reagan got a 15-minute preliminary report last week. No real dereliction is apparent, the team believes, although prudent jury-rigged security measures, like a sand-filled dump-truck blockade, might have prevented the attack. "In hindsight," says Under Secretary of State for Management Ronald Spiers, "they are dead right. But that's a degree of micromanagement you cannot conduct from Washington...
Jordan's move came during a week of heightened diplomatic activity in the Middle East. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy, who had hastened to Beirut to investigate the Sept. 20 truck bombing of the U.S. embassy, turned his trip into an impromptu regional tour. After spending a day in the Lebanese capital, Murphy visited Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo and Amman on what he called a "mission of exploration." Murphy was primarily seeking a way to speed a withdrawal of the 22,000 Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir said last week that he would like...