Reply #4: Libya was a big deal then

[starroute]

Qaddafi was a sort of Castro-like figure -- far more important symbolically than for his actual degree of power. But there's more to the story than that. For example, try googling for any of the below:

Check into "the Enterprise" -- the rogue CIA operations of Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, Edwin Wilson, and Richard Secord that started in Vietnam and wound up in Iran-Contra. Note that in the middle 70's, they transferred their main base of operations from southeast Asia to Iran, where they were both overseeing their drug-running, arms-dealing and money-laundering and also instructing SAVAK in Phoenix Program-style assassination. (This was a major factor leading to the overthrow of the Shah a couple of years later.) Note that when the Carter administration forced them to pull out of Iran, they started diversifying their operations throughout the Middle East. It was Edwin Wilson's dealings with Qaddafi that finally got the whole gang in trouble and ultimately led to them being pushed out of the CIA.

Then note that Michael Ledeen was working with Ted Shackley in Italy around 1979-80, offering trainings to European intelligence services. Note that it was Ledeen who help shut down the investigation of Wilson that might have implicated Shackley and Clines. Note also that it was Shackley who first brought Ghorbanifar into Iran-Contra in November 1984 and then passed him on to both Ledeen and Ollie North (who himself went back to the Shackley team's Vietnam days.)

(I'd really love to know how that Shackley-Ghorbanifar connection came about and whether it went back to the Enterprise's days in Iran in the middle 70's.)

Also note that in 1980 Ledeen was busy trying to concoct a "Billygate" scandal tying President Carter's brother to Qaddafi. And that Ledeen and Shackley are both said to have been involved in the October Surprise.

Finally, just for the fun of it, check out Ledeen in connection with the "strategy of tension" and P2.

It seems possible to me that what was happening around 1980-81 was a preliminary attempt to shift gears from the Cold War to the war on terror. It was still haphazard -- partly because Libya wasn't a good enough boogeyman -- and they soon reverted to the standard Cold War moves in Latin America and in Afghanistan. But this proto-phase of the war on terror seems to have set the paradigm for everything that has come along since 9/11.


On edit: Now that I think about it, if Ghorbanifar was behind the Libyan hit squad story in 1981, he couldn't have popped up out of nowhere in 1984. That's interesting . . .