Word: plante
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Gaddafi shut down the Rabta plant after Washington threatened to attack it with warplanes and publicly identified European companies that had provided equipment. But U.S. satellites soon discovered that Rabta's equipment had been moved and stored in underground bunkers a mile away...
...thousands of foreign technicians for big construction projects. The agency was able to develop a network of informants among the foreign workers, and one of them now reported that Gaddafi had big plans for the Rabta hardware. Much of it would eventually be moved to a new chemical-weapons plant inside a mountain near Tarhunah. CIA spy satellites immediately began pointing their cameras at the mountain. Secret cables went out to CIA stations worldwide ordering case officers to collect intelligence from foreign firms Gaddafi might have enlisted for the project...
...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...
Gaddafi appeared to have received some topflight help in designing the plant so it would be virtually impregnable. CIA clandestine officers suspected that he had got hold of blueprints the former Soviet Union used to build its large network of underground bomb shelters during the cold war. Only a direct hit by a nuclear warhead on top of the mountain could take out the plant. Sneaking a conventional bomb through the front door would be impossible, and a precision-guided projectile fired from an attack jet or a cruise missile could never be programmed to twist and turn...
...high and eight yards wide into the mountain. These had to be constantly replaced. Stop the supply of spare bits, the CIA men told Kohl's advisers, and the boring machines would soon become useless. Embarrassed by revelations in 1988 that German companies had helped equip the original Rabta plant, Kohl quickly ordered Westfalia-Becorit to shut down the spare-parts pipeline...