wayne%oz.ai.mit.edu@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (10/11/86)
Four quick observations and two questions:
(1) We have just learned that the Reagan Administration has
engaged in a policy of so-called disinformation or "strategic
deception" regarding Libya and calculated to rattle Khadafy. While
American intelligence data revealed that Khadafy's terrorist planning
activities were in a "quiescent" phase, the Administration falsely
claimed precisely the opposite, that Libya was hatching new terrorist
schemes.
(2) Seymour Hersh in _The Target Is Destroyed_ has demonstrated
quite convincingly, with the cooperation of disgruntled members of the
American intelligence community who were appalled by the abuse of
intelligence data, that the Administration knew clearly that the
Soviet Union mistakenly thought that KAL 007 was a spy plane. Again,
the Administration in the interests of pursuing an ideological
offensive, turned the truth upside down to score a few propaganda
points in charging that the Soviets deliberately and knowingly
attacked a civilian airliner.
(3) A few years ago hysterical stories, supposedly based on
classified, inside information, appeared in the American media about
the sinister presence in the U.S. of a Libyan "hit team." Later more
level-headed information indicated that the story was a fantasy and
probably cooked up by Israeli intelligence as a means to stir up fear
and hatred of Khadafy, and to aggravate tensions between the U.S. and
the Arab world.
(4) James Bamford, author of _The Puzzle Palace_, a popular study
of the National Security Agency, recently commented in _The Boston
Globe_ that the Administration seriously compromised intelligence
methods by providing details about how communications were intercepted
pertaining to the terrorist bombing of a discotheque in Germany, the
proximate cause of our bombing of Tripoli, but failed to release the
content of those communications so that objective analysts could
determine whether they did indeed implicate without a doubt the Libyan
government in this terrorist incident.
Question 1: doesn't one begin to see a fairly consistent pattern
of deception here, and doesn't it raise some serious questions about
what is its purpose, who benefits, and what is a judicious use of
intelligence information in policy-making?
Question 2: I am quite willing to believe that Khadafy is the
arch- terrorist fiend and monster that the media have painted, but
whenever I have asked some of the people who seem most upset by this
problem to produce hard evidence that the Libyan government has
engaged in terrorism against American citizens, at a level that would
justify the bombing of Tripoli, I have encountered a good deal of
emotional language but no clear facts. I am eager to be enlightened
by anyone on the list who does possess any facts: specifically, what
American citizens during the last decade have been the targets of
terrorist attacks by the Libyan government or its surrogates? Names
and particulars, please.
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