Word: libya
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...former senior CIA official recalls that in early 1992 "alarm bells started ringing at the agency." Analysts feared that Libya intended the plant to have the same capacity as the original Rabta facility, which over two years produced about 100 tons of mustard gas and nerve agents. Unless destroyed, the experts concluded, the new factory could keep Gaddafi's favorite terrorists well stocked with chemical poisons for decades...
...build elaborate construction-flow charts that identified choke points. To buy equipment, Gaddafi had set up a purchasing network, operating through front companies and middlemen around the world. CIA and State Department officials persuaded governments in Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Denmark, Austria, Britain and Poland to stop deliveries of equipment Libya had bought from their companies...
...could also cripple some critical equipment that Gaddafi had already purchased--60-ton rotary boring machines used to tunnel into the mountain. Analysts traced them to the German manufacturer Westfalia-Becorit. The firm's executives told German officials they legally delivered the machines to a Thai company, which claimed Libya bought them to build road tunnels for a river irrigation project...
...Tarhunah project back 10 years. But the agency has never had detailed intelligence on how much progress the Libyans had made with the tunneling before the drill bits wore out. Moreover, Gaddafi has skillfully found ways around Washington's roadblocks. When European sources for equipment dried up, Libya began prowling for suppliers in China, India and Southeast Asia, where export controls on chemical weapons-related equipment are loose. The State Department has found that Thai companies, operating behind their government's back, are still supplying construction workers for the plant. Westfalia-Becorit's managers say Gaddafi could even find bits...
...equal parts of patience and perseverance. It can take years to gain the trust of intelligence officers and months to verify the information they provide. Such was the case with this week's story about the CIA's efforts to block construction of an underground chemical-weapons plant in Libya. "This kind of story never gets dumped in your lap," says TIME's national-security correspondent. "The information is always shrouded in secrecy and comes in tiny bits that have to be pieced together like a puzzle...