Free Republic

LIFE AFTER TERROR By JOSEPH F. CONNOR YOU sometimes hear how the first World Trade Center attack was a warning that the city ig nored. But it wasn't the first: Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the New York terrorist attack that killed my father, Frank T. Connor — the Jan. 24, 1975, bombing of Fraunces Tavern. The killers struck on a warm, clear and pleasant winter's day. My dad, a 33-year-old officer of Morgan Guaranty Trust, was having lunch with clients. The bomb killed him and three others in unspeakably gruesome ways. One of his colleagues was decapitated; silverware...

After the price of oil quadrupled in 1973, Syria and other Arab states put pressure on Saudi Arabia to use its new wealth against Israel. Part of the Saudi government's response was to lead a campaign against support for Israel in the U.S. On their own, however, the Saudis lacked the connections and savvy to affect American-Israeli ties. To make up for this, the Saudi state recruited help. In "The American House of Saud" (Franklin Watts, 448 pages, $18.95), Steven Emerson, a journalist and former staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chronicles anti-Israeli activities undertaken in recent years...