June 1, 2006 – 8:17 p.m.
A report that a Libyan intelligence official connected to the 1988 PanAm airlines bombing was about to be named the country’s first ambassador to Washington in over a quarter century is probably not true, U.S. and other diplomatic sources said Thursday.
A U.S. government Libya specialist, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said “it’s very unlikely” that Musa Kusa would be dispatched to Washington as Libya’s first ambassador since 1980.
Kusa (also spelled Kussa) was “ directly involved” in the airliner bombing, according to a top former CIA official. Court documents and a Sept. 5, 2005, report in the Los Angeles Times also place Kusa as the principle author of a 2004 plot to kill King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was crown prince at the time.
Kusa was also involved in the 1989 sabotage of a French airliner that exploded over Niger and killed everyone aboard, according to former State department Libya expert Henry Schuler.
The Times said Kusa was “barred” from entering the United States as a result of his alleged role in the Lockerbie bombing, but a State Department official said Thursday that no one can be “barred” without applying for a visa, and Kusa had not.
A report in the May 18 edition of Maghreb Confidential, a Paris-based online newsletter focusing on North Africa, said Kusa “is being tipped for the post of Libyan ambassador to the United States.” The report raced through U.S. security circles over the last several days, generally prompting surprise and outrage.
In one typical reaction to the newsletter report, a former top FBI counterterrorism official said U.S. State Department officials ”had to be out of their mind” to accept Kusa as the first ambassador since 1980 from Libya, which is still officially listed as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”
“That would be pretty brain dead,” said a top national security official in both the Clinton and Bush administrations. “But nothing surprises me.”
The U.S. government Libya specialist, who is not authorized to comment on diplomatic relations, barely suppressed a laugh at the possibility that Libyan strongman Muammar El-Qaddafi would pick an envoy with such a notorious past.
“They need him in Tripoli,” said the official.
But another factor fueled speculation that the report was true.
Beginning in 2001, and perhaps earlier, Kusa played a key role in behind-the-scenes negotiations involving the CIA and MI6, London’s foreign intelligence organization, that led to Libya’s renunciation of nuclear weapons and the resumption of full diplomatic relations with Washington.
Libya also agreed to help U.S. and British intelligence identify Libyans who were trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Kusa would be at the center of those operations, too, as head of The Anti-Imperialism Center (AIC), which is “used by the Libyan Government to support terrorist networks and thus plays an important role in El-Qaddafi’s terrorism strategy,” according to Global Security.org.
“He is a very bad actor,” said Schuler, a retired foreign service officer who has studied Libya for 30 years. “But it would not be altogether surprising” if Kusa was tapped for the Washington post.
“He is exceedingly bold . . . and he was the go-between in the nuclear talks,” Schuler added.
A Libyan diplomat, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said while it was possible that intelligence chief Musa Kusa could be named the regime’s ambassador to the United States, no announcement had been made and none was expected for several weeks, perhaps even months.
But, the diplomat added, Kusa was “well qualified . . . and very clever . . . Why not?”
The two countries broke diplomatic relations after several years of strained ties, which culminated with Libyan mobs attacking the U.S. embassy in Tripoli in 1979.
Washington designated Libya a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979.
The following year El-Qaddafi called for the “physical liquidation” of his opponents in exile.
Kusa, who was ambassador to London at the time, publicly expressed approval when two Libyan dissidents in the United Kingdom were murdered and said more assassinations would follow. He was promptly expelled.
Beyond the PanAm explosion over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 259 passengers and crew, mostly Americans, Libya was said to have orchestrated the 1986 bombing of a West German discotheque in which two U.S. servicemen were killed and over 250 people injured.
In retaliation, U.S. warplanes bombed Tripoli.
Libya also sought to build nuclear weapons, based on designs clandestinely supplied by Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan.
On May 15, Secretary of State
On Wednesday and Thursday the two countries exchanged diplomatic notes agreeing formally to the opening of relations.
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.