Word: gaddafi
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Only days after President Reagan called upon all U.S. citizens to leave Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, the first of some 1,500 Americans expected to depart by the end of next month were dutifully queuing up at the Tripoli International Airport for the flight home. Despite well-publicized U.S. reports that Gaddafi had dispatched hit men to assassinate Reagan, few believed that they were in any real danger of Libyan retaliation. For the occasion, Gaddafi eased usually tight restrictions on journalists to invite members of the foreign press to hear him, presumably, denounce Washington's claims. TIME...
...press conference, or rather the non-conference, was vintage Gaddafi. After two days of waiting, anxious revolutionary committeemen herded the press out of our hotels for a breathtaking, Libyan-style drive through the narrow streets of Tripoli. Lights blinking and horns blaring, the wild caravan raced to a walled compound where soldiers wielding submachine guns waved us through a gate flanked by two Russian T-72 tanks. For the fifth time since my arrival I was thoroughly searched. Inside the handsome government offices with beautifully crafted wooden Arabic arches, television crews set up their equipment on priceless rugs. Then...
...difficult for Westerners to grasp the extent to which Gaddafi is the sole spirit and voice of a revolution that in twelve years has transformed this North African desert wasteland. In 1969, armed with Islamic zeal and a near fanatical belief that he was the heir to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's pan-Arabic nationalism, Gaddafi and eleven other young officers deposed the conservative King Idris in a bloodless coup. Gaddafi has since established iron political control of his countrymen, largely by spreading Libya's abundant oil wealth among them. Says Fouad Zlitni, a true believer...
...character, not our behavior to assassinate any person, Gaddafi said "It is the behavior of America, preparing to assassinate me, to poison my food. They tried many things to do this . . . you are a superpower. How are you afraid? America must get rid of this administration . . . as they did with Nixon, and elect another respectful President to get respect for America. . . He is silly, he is ignorant, . . . Reagan is liar." His interviewer in Tripoli, ABC's Lou Cioffi, asked Gaddafi what message he had for Reagan. "I would have to tell...
Back now to a Washington described by Brinkley as "something like an armed camp" (shots of snipers on the White House roof). Usually Brinkley's panel of journalists-now reduced to a manageable three-interview the guest, then discuss the news among themselves. In place of the distant Gaddafi, they now turned to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, acting Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Commitee, who came on strong: "Right off, David, the President of the United States is not a liar. The dictator of Libya is a liar." There was "concrete evidence" that since 1977 Gaddafi "targeted" U.S. officials...