The Reagan Administration Develops a Libya Policy
For senior policymakers in the State Department, the CIA, and the NSC there was no better target for Reagan’s advocacy of “swift and effective retribution” against terrorism than Qaddafi’s Libya. In a 1981 research paper titled Patterns of International Terrorism: 1980, the CIA identified Libya as “the most prominent state sponsor of and participant in international terrorism.”33 Whereas Admiral Inman referred to the Soviets as the “grandparents” of international terrorism, Claire Sterling labeled Qaddafi as “the Daddy Warbucks of terrorism.”34 Haig pointed out that Qaddafi’s oil revenue was “almost exclusively diverted to the purchase of armaments, the training of international terrorists, and the conduct of direct intervention in neighboring states of Northern Africa.”35 The CIA reported that Libya’s support for terrorism included “financing for terrorist operations, weapons procurement and supply, the use of training camps and Libyan advisers for guerrilla training, and the use of Libyan diplomatic facilities abroad as support bases for terrorist operations.”36
The Reagan administration immediately began crafting a systematic, comprehensive, and multifaceted strategy aimed at exerting extraordinary pressure on the Qaddafi regime. The strategy would consist of covert operations, diplomatic actions, economic sanctions, and demonstrations of military power.37 According to one official the plan would, as a minimum, “make life uncomfortable” for the Libyan dictator, whom many Reagan appointees erroneously perceived as a Soviet surrogate bent on spreading mischief throughout the Middle East and Africa.38 Administration officials hoped that an aggressive Libya policy would damage Qaddafi’s reputation as an Arab leader, isolate him diplomatically, dissuade him from new foreign adventures, and deprive him of international support in the event of a confrontation with the United States or one of its allies in the Middle East, namely Egypt. They wanted to weaken Qaddafi’s domestic authority and increase the likelihood that he would be removed from power. They sought the support of U.S. allies in Europe but were determined to carry out their plan with or without the help of the Europeans, who did not share their view of Qaddafi as a crazed terrorist and international menace.39
This dramatic change in U.S. policy toward Libya did not occur overnight. For a number of departments and agencies of the U.S. government—particularly the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA—producing a complicated strategy required several months of intense discussion and negotiation.40 Nevertheless, some of the components of the strategy were ready for implementation within a few months.
Planning covert operations against Libya began immediately. During his first week at the CIA Casey reviewed an SNIE titled Libya: Aims and Vulnerabilities. The secret study, which the Carter administration initiated following the attempted assassination in October 1980 of an exiled Libyan dissident living in Colorado, was completed only a few days before Casey took office. It contained a number of conclusions that piqued the director’s interest in taking direct action against Qaddafi.41 First, after his recent success in Chad, Qaddafi was likely to undertake other foreign ventures that would challenge U.S. and Western interests in the Middle East and Africa.42 Second, the number of recent coup attempts suggested that Qaddafi’s grip on power might be loosening. Unfortunately, the exile and internal opposition to Qaddafi was fragmented, disorganized, and largely ineffective. The activities of Libyan exile groups consisted mainly of publishing anti-Qaddafi materials and smuggling them into the country. To enhance the opposition’s chances of effectively challenging the Qaddafi regime the CIA had to play a more direct, hands-on role. Merely supplying funds and arms would not be enough.43 Third, although Qaddafi was not a Soviet pawn, his relationship with the Soviet Union was “based on common short-term interests rather than on a shared world view.” The Libyans purchased Soviet military equipment in huge quantities and the Soviets benefited from the hard currency generated by the arms sales—estimated at $1 billion per year—as well as from Qaddafi’s anti-Western policies.44 Fourth, Qaddafi had ordered his armed forces to attack any U.S. ship or aircraft entering the Gulf of Sidra, which made the chance of an incident occurring between U.S. and Libyan forces extremely high.45 Finally, Qaddafi was to a large extent a “traditional Arab street politician” who derived his political legitimacy from his charisma and the public’s perception of his invincibility. If the aura of Qaddafi’s personality could be irreparably damaged then his inept domestic and foreign policies might overtake him and prove to be his undoing.46 Consequently, some of Qaddafi’s regional opponents, most notably President Sadat of Egypt and President Numayri of Sudan, focused “their resources on quietly bleeding Qaddafi at his most vulnerable point—his overextension in Chad and the danger this [posed] for him at home.”47
The strategy of undermining Qaddafi’s domestic base by striking at him in Chad appealed to Haig and Casey. The two officials directed their staffs to develop a coordinated policy to provide covert aid to the Chadian rebel Hissene Habré, whom the CIA described as the “quintessential desert warrior.” Haig and Casey believed that a Libyan defeat in Chad would foment widespread disaffection within the officer corps of the Libyan armed forces, while heavy Libyan casualties would generate great unrest among Libyan rank and file. The two advocated a covert initiative that would, in effect, “bloody Qaddafi’s nose” and “increase the flow of pine boxes back to Libya.” Reagan approved a formal intelligence order or “finding” that authorized the CIA to conduct a covert operation in support of Habré’s efforts to wrest control of the Chadian government from Goukouni Oueddei and remove Libyan influence from the country. The operation provided Habré with money, weapons, technical support, and political assistance.48
It was presumed that thwarting Qaddafi in Chad also would send a very strong signal to the Soviet Union. Since the 1970s the Soviets had established client states in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Angola virtually unopposed by U.S. administrations in the years following the Vietnam War. Haig emphasized that the Reagan administration’s position regarding Soviet involvement in the Third World was decidedly different. “Our signal to the Soviets had to be a plain warning that their time of unrestricted adventuring in the Third World was over,” he asserted, “and that America’s capacity to tolerate the mischief of Moscow’s proxies, Cuba and Libya, had been exceeded.” The fact that Qaddafi did not act on behalf of the Soviet Union and therefore could not be considered a Soviet proxy was not important to Haig.49 Libya and the Soviet Union enjoyed a close relationship by virtue of a few common interests, and that relationship caused some administration officials (such as the secretary of state himself as well as the hard-liners within his department) to regard Libya as a client of the Soviet Union.
Reagan signed another intelligence finding that directed the CIA to provide “nonlethal” aid and training to anti-Qaddafi groups. This aid operation was to proceed cautiously and deliberately first by recruiting reliable agents from the exile Libyan community and then by taking on the arduous task of developing viable opposition groups based outside the country. If the second step achieved a measurable degree of success the administration would then consider drafting a new finding that would support a plan to go forward with an anti-Qaddafi propaganda program and paramilitary operations.
In 1979 Dr. Muhammad Yusuf al-Muqaryaf, a senior Libyan bureaucrat and diplomat, defected to Egypt where he immediately denounced Qaddafi as a corrupt, brutal, and profligate dictator. In October 1981 Muqaryaf founded the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), a group financed primarily by the CIA and Saudi Arabia. Based in Sudan, the NFSL set up a radio station that broadcasted news and opposition propaganda into Libya, and recruited other prominent exiles to join the anti-Qaddafi movement. Muqaryaf dedicated