Raid aimed to kill Gadaffi, says reporter

Press, 23 February 1987, Page 10

Raid aimed to kill Gadaffi, says reporter

NZPA-Reuter London An American investigative reporter says the United States set out deliberately to kill the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadaffi in last year’s air raids on Tripoli, according to British newspaper reports yesterday. The “Sunday Times” newspaper carried the assertion by the veteran reporter, Seymour Hersh. Hersh, who said he interviewed more than 70 American officials and servicemen, concludes that the real aim of last April’s air raid was not to strike at guerrilla and military facilities as the United States administration said, but to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi. He quotes one United States Air Force intelligence officer as saying: “There is no question they were looking for Gadaffi. It was briefed that way. They were going to kill him.” Hersh, who exposed the American massacre of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai in 1968, said only five of the nine aircraft sent to bomb Colonel Gadaffi’s headquarters managed to de-

liver their bombs. Israeli intelligence pinpointed Colonel Gadaffi’s whereabouts during the night of the raid.

Some bombs did hit his quarters inside a military barracks in Tripoli. The Libyans said their leader’s adopted 15-month-old daughter was killed. Colonel Gadaffi himself was unhurt, although scores of people were reported killed in the raids on the Lebanese capital and on Benghazi.

Administration officials, including the Secretary of State, George Shultz, and Defence Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, both denied at the time that Colonel Gadaffi was a target Hersh said the plan was co-ordinated by the National Security Council, the same body that was involved in covert arms sales to Iran. No written records were kept of the operation. Hersh quotes one unnamed source as saying: “There was no executive order to kill and no administrative directive to go after Gadaffi. They covered their tracks beautifully.”