The media and the US/UK attempts to topple Gaddafi

Richard Lance Keeble, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, considers how the West’s dealings with Gaddafi have been reflected in the headlines over the past 40 years:

Behind a wall of silence, the US and UK have been conducting over the last four decades a massive, largely secret war against Libya – often using Chad, the country lying on its southern border, as its base. The current attacks on Col. Gaddafi’s troops and attempts to assassinate the Libyan leader with the US deployment of unmanned drones are best seen as part of a wide-ranging and long-standing strategy by the US/UK secret states to dislodge Gaddafi.

Seizing power in Libya by ousting King Idris in a 1969 coup with the support of the CIA, Gaddafi (who intriguingly had undertaken a military training course in England in 1966) quickly became the target of massive covert operations by the French, US, Israeli and British. Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, records how in 1971 a British plan to invade the country, release political prisoners and restore the monarchy ended in a complete flop. In 1980, the head of the French secret service, Col. Alain de Gaigneronde de Marolles, resigned after a French-led plan ended in disaster when a rebellion by Libyan troops in Tobruk was rapidly suppressed.

Throughout the early 1980s Gaddafi was demonised in the mainstream US and UK media as a ‘terrorist warlord’ and prime agent of a Soviet-inspired ‘terror network’. In July 1981 a CIA plan to overthrow and possibly kill Gaddafi was leaked to the press. At roughly the same time, Libya hit squads were reported to have entered the United States, though this has since been revealed to have been a piece of Israeli secret service disinformation. Joe Flynn, the infamous con man, was also able to exploit Fleet Street’s fascination with the Gaddafi myth. In September 1981, posing as an Athens-based arms dealer, he tricked almost £3,000 from the News of the World with his story that the Libyan leader was ‘masterminding a secret plot to arm black revolutionary murder squads in Britain’.

Then in 1982, away from the glare of the media, Hissène Habré, with the backing of the CIA and French troops, overthrew the Chadian government of Goukouni Wedeye. Human Rights Watch records: ‘Under President Reagan, the United States gave covert CIA paramilitary support to help install Habré in order, according to secretary of state Alexander Haig, to “bloody Gaddafi’s nose”.’ Bob Woodward, in his semi-official history of the CIA, reveals that the Chad covert operation was the first undertaken by the new CIA chief William Casey and that throughout the decade Libya ranked almost as high as the Soviet Union as the ‘bête noir’ of the administration.

US official records indicate that funding for the Chad-based secret war against Libya also came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Israel and Iraq. The Saudis, for instance, donated $7m to an opposition group, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (also backed by French intelligence and the CIA). But a plan to assassinate Gaddafi and take over the government on 8 May 1984 was crushed. In the following year, the US asked Egypt to invade Libya and overthrow Gaddafi but President Mubarak refused. By the end of 1985, the Washington Post had exposed the plan after congressional leaders opposing it wrote in protest to President Reagan.

Frustrated in its covert attempts to topple Gaddafi, the US government’s strategy suddenly shifted. In March 1986, US planes patrolling the Gulf of Sidra were reported to have been attacked by Libyan missiles. In the following month, the US responded with a military strike on key Libyan targets. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was perhaps hoping for an action-replay of the Falklands factor when she gave the US permission to fly F111 attack jets from bases in East Anglia to bomb Libya targets. Also, according to Annie Machon, Mrs Thatcher was ‘anxious for revenge’ after the shooting of W.P.C. Fletcher during a demonstration by Libyan oppositionists outside the Libyan embassy in London in 1984. It was an archetypal move of the secret state: only a select few in her cabinet were involved in the decision. Yet the attack appeared to win little support from the public. Harris, Gallup and MORI all showed substantial majorities opposed. Much of the UK mainstream press, however, responded with jingoistic jubilation. The Sun’s front page screamed: ‘Thrilled to blitz: Bombing Gadaffi was my greatest day, says US airman.’

Yet the main purpose of the raid was to kill the Libyan President – dubbed a ‘mad dog’ by Reagan. David Yallop quotes ‘a member of the United States Air Force intelligence unit who took part in the pre-raid briefing’: ‘Nine of 18 F111s that left from the UK were specifically briefed to bomb Gaddafi’s residence inside the barracks where he was living with his family.’ In the event, the first bomb to drop on Tripoli hit Gaddafi’s home, killing Hana, his adopted daughter aged 15 months – while his eight other children and wife Safiya were all hospitalised, some with serious injuries.

Consider the outrage in the Western media if a relative of Reagan had been killed by a Libyan bomb. There was no such outrage over the Libyan deaths. In November, the UN General Assembly passed a motion condemning the raid. Interestingly, Israel was one of the few countries to back the US over the raid.

Following the April 1986 attack, reports of US military action against Libya disappeared from the media. But away from the media glare, the CIA launched by far its most extensive effort yet to spark an anti-Gaddafi coup. A secret army was recruited from among the many Libyans captured in border battles with Chad during the 1980s. And, as concern grew in MI6 over Gaddafi’s alleged plans to develop chemical weapons, Britain funded various opposition groups in Libya including the London-based Libyan National Movement.

Then in 1990, with the crisis in the Gulf developing, French troops helped oust Habré and install Idriss Deby as the new president in a secret operation. The French government had tired of Habré’s genocidal policies while the Bush administration decided not to frustrate France’s objectives in exchange for their co-operation in the war against Iraq. Yet even under Deby the abuses of civil rights by government forces have continued.

Attempts to oust Gaddafi continued. David Shayler, a former MI5 agent, even alleged that MI6 were involved in a plot in 1996 to assassinate the Libyan leader. His motorcade was attacked by dissidents with Kalashnikovs and rocket grenade but while Gaddafi escaped six bystanders were killed. Shayler claimed MI6 paid the Islamic Fighting group £100,000 to carry out the attack.

Following Libya’s decision following the 9/11 US terrorist attacks to build closer ties with the West and renounce all efforts to develop nuclear weapons, UN sanctions against the country were lifted in 2003. The demonisation of Col. Gaddafi predictably declined and members of the political, financial and academic British elite lined up to welcome the Libyan leader back into the ‘international community’.

The recent rising against the authoritarian Gaddafi regime has changed all that. And the Western elites (assisted by a compliant mainstream media) are seizing the new opportunities in their increasingly desperate attempts to eliminate the Libyan leader.