The Week

■ Making the rounds in NYC: Do you know what they found at the bottom of the rubble in the World Trade Center? A GM van and an NBC camera crew.

■ Until the World Trade-Center bombing, the United States had been mercifully free from the terrorism that has so tormented Western Europe and the Middle East. But we now face the prospect of those who seek to destabilize their own governments disrupting our lives in the process. Bombing suspect Mohammed Salameh is reputed to be a follower of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian fundamentalist mullah whom some link to the terrorists who gunned down Anwar Sadat in 1981. The sheik in due course fled Egypt for the spiritually purer air of Jersey City. It is small comfort to learn that he was on somebody’s list of dangerous people. What is the purpose of such lists if those on them enter the country at will and freely incite terrorism? The FBI should crack down—not necessarily deporting them (which would only spread terrorism elsewhere) but putting them out of circulation altogether. Above all, we must remember that the terrorists win only if they intimidate this country into changing policy. If we have the fortitude not to yield to blackmail, and we make that plain from the start, terrorism will subside.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

■ Making the rounds in NYC: Do you know what they found at the bottom of the rubble in the World Trade Center? A GM van and an NBC camera crew.

■ Until the World Trade-Center bombing, the United States had been mercifully free from the terrorism that has so tormented Western Europe and the Middle East. But we now face the prospect of those who seek to destabilize their own governments disrupting our lives in the process. Bombing suspect Mohammed Salameh is reputed to be a follower of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, an Egyptian fundamentalist mullah whom some link to the terrorists who gunned down Anwar Sadat in 1981. The sheik in due course fled Egypt for the spiritually purer air of Jersey City. It is small comfort to learn that he was on somebody’s list of dangerous people. What is the purpose of such lists if those on them enter the country at will and freely incite terrorism? The FBI should crack down—not necessarily deporting them (which would only spread terrorism elsewhere) but putting them out of circulation altogether. Above all, we must remember that the terrorists win only if they intimidate this country into changing policy. If we have the fortitude not to yield to blackmail, and we make that plain from the start, terrorism will subside.