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 himself to abolishing the Qaddafi regime, through violence, if necessary. Casey did not expect the exiles to be powerful enough to overthrow Qaddafi, but he supported them as an inexpensive, low-risk means of making trouble for the Libyan dictator and as a new source of intelligence on developments inside Libya.50
In the summer of 1981 the covert operation in Chad got underway. After the CIA’s deputy director for operations, Max Hugel, briefed the House Intelligence Committee on the operation, a number of committee members questioned the wording of the finding, which was vague enough that it could be interpreted as justification for directly challenging Qaddafi’s hold on power. Concerned committee members sent a classified letter to Reagan in which they strongly protested the operation. The media soon caught wind of the letter and reported that several members of the Intelligence Committee were objecting to a CIA covert operation taking place in an unnamed African country. In a half-page article Newsweek described the operation as “a large-scale, multiphase and costly scheme to overthrow the Libyan regime of Col. Muammar Qaddafi.” The article then reported that “the CIA’s goal . . . was Qaddafi’s ‘ultimate’ removal from power. To members of the House Intelligence Committee who reviewed the plan, that phrase seemed to imply Qaddafi’s assassination.”51 A scheme to assassinate Qaddafi, however, would be in direct violation of Executive Order 12333, signed by Reagan in 1981. According to the order, “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.”52
Casey was furious about the leaks and subsequent news reports. The CIA’s Directorate for Operations had carefully designed a covert support operation for Chad, a country in which the agency believed it had a reasonable chance of success and where U.S. allies France, Egypt, and Sudan were already involved. Reports of a plan to topple the Qaddafi regime undoubtedly would make the Libyan dictator more cautious and vigilant just as the CIA was trying to strike at him indirectly through Chad. In response to the Newsweek story the White House issued a statement that denied the contents of the article but acknowledged that some members of the House Intelligence Committee had written a letter to Reagan protesting an unspecified operation. Newsweek reporters then sought clarifying information about the operation from their source, who happened be a member of the committee. Soon afterward Congressman Clement J. Zablocki—Democrat of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and a member of the House Intelligence Committee—admitted to House staff personnel that he had been the source of the Newsweek story. Congressman Edward P. Boland, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, rebuked Zablocki for the leak and informed him of his misunderstanding of the facts, but Boland did not pursue disciplinary action against his colleague.53
The next component of Reagan’s Libya strategy to take shape was the calculated use of military power. One month into his presidency Reagan approved an assertive, comprehensive FON program that was designed to defend U.S. national interests against the unreasonable maritime claims of more than forty nations, including Qaddafi’s Libya. Weinberger and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), particularly Admiral Hayward, urged Reagan to authorize a FON exercise for the Gulf of Sidra. Carter had blocked the most recent proposals for an exercise in the gulf, but Weinberger and Hayward did not want to follow the former president’s policy of avoiding the disputed body of water. Conducting maneuvers in the gulf, they argued, would demonstrate U.S. determination to exercise its rights and would undermine Qaddafi’s credibility since there was nothing he could do to prevent the Sixth Fleet from operating there. Reagan sided with the top officials at the Pentagon.
In the late spring of 1981 at a meeting of the National Security Planning Group (NSPG)—a gathering of the president’s most senior advisers and chaired by the president himself—Reagan directed
