The end of a cycle of protest does not automatically mean the end of the actions committed by the groups that had been directly or indirectly a part of it. All the groups prolonged it, sometimes quite extensively, like the Red Army Faction and the Japanese Red Army, which disbanded in 1998 and 2001, respectively. The BR-PCC (Brigate rosse per la costruzione del partito comunista combattente, or Red Brigades for the Construction of the Combatant Communist Party) remained, 20 years after the founders of the Red Brigades had declared their history closed, and continued to perpetrate attacks such as the assassinations in 1999 of Massimo D’Antona, a law professor and advisor to the Ministry of Labour, and in 2002 of Marco Biagi, also a law professor and economic advisor to Silvio Berlusconi's government. Of all the far-left armed organizations, only the Weather Underground Organization chose its own end, the others disappearing as a consequence of the arrests of their members.

Anti-Terrorist Policies

The United States

States initially react to protest by reinforcing police and intelligence staff. The 1968 Columbia University occupation gave the FBI the measure of the dangerousness of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). A congressional inquiry was opened the following year, and the FBI's COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program), which had been reactivated in 1967 against the Black Panthers, was enlarged. Its role had remained unchanged since its institution in 1956 to fight against the Communist Party. Its goals were threefold: to disrupt the Black Panthers by spreading false rumours about it and by infiltrating it to make trouble; to discredit it through a propaganda campaign, notably intended to exaggerate the threat it posed; and to destroy it, by force if necessary. Between 1968 and 1973, 28 Black Panthers were simply assassinated.

Japan

Japan expanded its special riot unit, Kidotai, by 50 per cent to 3137 officers in 1969, and to 5200 (plus a 4200-man reserve) in 1971. At the time, the country had a police force of about 177,000, that is, 1 per 593 citizens (versus 1 per 572 in the United States and 1 per 407 in West Germany) (Farrell, 1990, pp. 180-182).