Word: libya
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September 1988: The U.S. State Department declares that Libya "has established a chemical-warfare production capability" at Rabta, 40 miles south of Tripoli. Colonel Muammar Gaddafi protests that Rabta is designed to manufacture only pharmaceuticals...
...technology park in North Africa. The man soliciting the bids calls it a "big contract." Kiefer is intrigued, but as he says later, "when someone comes in with a suitcase full of money, you feel wary." When Kiefer learns that the "park" is to be built in Libya, he bows out. "I assumed from the outset that the man was talking about a weapons factory," recalls Kiefer, "and we didn't want to get involved...
December 1987: The press reports that the U.S. has evidence that Libya is building a chemical-warfare weapons facility...
What may be even more "against the health" is Libya's chemical-weapons plant, which U.S. intelligence officials say was masterminded by Barbouti. In an interview with a TIME correspondent, the amiable Dr. Barbouti, as he prefers to be called, readily admits he was the designer and prime contractor for the entire Rabta complex -- with the exception of what he describes as the "pharmaceutical" plant. Barbouti insists that his only involvement with this facility was to sell building materials to the Libyans and that he had no inkling the plant might be used for sinister purposes...
Over a period of four years, Barbouti spent two or three days a month in Libya, designing and supervising construction of the "technology center." As prime contractor and chief procurement agent, he traveled the globe recruiting expertise and labor. For Rabta he provided Japanese-designed desalinization and electrical equipment, as well as plastic molding and precision machining plants, a foundry from a Danish firm, a metal-working plant, a power station, a water-treatment facility, a maintenance workshop and three warehouses. He had plenty of money to spend; one Rabta contract, he boasted to a friend, was worth nearly...