WHY SO FEW BELIEVED IN THE 'HIT SQUAD'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150136-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 29, 2012
• Sequence Number: 136
• Publication Date: January 7, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RD
If
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE_RCAL__
THE WASHINGTON POST
7 January 1982
P90-00965R000100150136-8
Why So Few
Believed in
The 'Hit Squad
Libyan hit squad story is clear from
the CIA report itself:
? The chief source of the hit
squad allegation, who claimed to
have been present when Libyan dic-
tator Muammar Qaddafi gave orders
for the assassins' mission, demanded
$500,000 for his information (wheth-
Senate Majority Leader lioward er he received it is unknown). The
Baker announced weeks ago that the fact that the informer passed a lie-
threat to President. Reagan and detector test is not compelling; a
other high officials from Libyan as- ? practical liar can beat the gadget,
sassination squads was "diminish- particularly someone with the cool-
ing." What was diminishing was the , ness to demand a half-million for his
credibility of the reported threat. :-- - -: sthrY? - -
? The informer also provided the
The charges that led to the inter- _
names of some buddies in Beirut
national uproar?and the tightened
who would be willing to sell infor-
security measures at US. border
mation on the drug traffic. The CIA
crossings --were contained in a 40-
recognized some of them as hustlers
page secret report by the Central
who had been peddling phony doc-
Intelligence Agency to the National
uments for years. Oddly enough,
Security Council. My associate Ron though the CIA itself was dubious
McRae has seen parts of this report. about this part of the informer's ma-
From the outset, foreign policy terial, the Drug Enforcement Ad-
experts outside the spy agency as-
ministration began stuffing suitcases
sessed the CIA's assassination alarm full of cash in anticipation of a big
as "possible, but not much better score in Beirut.
than 10 percent." But obviously, ? Two of the 14 names on the hit
however farfetched the possibility, it squad were members of the Le-
had to be treated seriously by secu- banese Shiite Moslem sect, Amal,
rity agencies. , which has been engaged in a blood
. "The Secret Service tracks down feud with Qaddafi since their leader,
dozens of crank calls_every year, in- Mousa Sadr, disappeared in Libya in
eluding threats to shoot Reagan with 1978. The FBI claimed that the
psychic bullets,' one official pointed names were included because of a
out, adding..."But we don't broadcast "computer - error" and were quickly
them all over the world."- removed. Yet the names were still on
. - ,
What made non-CIA people in the list in documents issued at least
the adailnistration , suspicioua of the - 12 days later.
_ .
? Several of the informers are
known to have connections with Is-
raeli intelligence, which would have
its own reasons to encourage a U.S.-
Libyan rift _ ?
? The report calls the evidence of
the hit squad's existence "over-
whelming," and predicts that "more
detailed information is forthcoming"
from reliable sources. None materi-
? ? The CIA report predicted con-
fidently that its evidence "guarantees
the support of allied governments in
any action deemed reasonably nec-
essary to protect the lives of Amer-
ican officials." In fact, our allies,
when briefed on the CIA findings,
found them unconvincing?in a class
with the white paper on El Salvador
earlier last year,. which was later
shown to have relied on highly ques-
tionable and probably forged docu-
ments.?
Footnote: There is a possibility
that the CIA was played for a sucker
by its own "disinformation" cam-
paign directed at Qaddafi. The cam-
paign, ordered by CIA Director
Wil-
liam J. Casey last May, used foreign
nationals for the dirty work. ?
Knowing what the CIA wanted,
and without proper supervision by
American agents, it's possible the
CIA's foreign hirelings cooked up the
"hit squad" on their own. It fit neatly
into the Reagan administration's po-
litical scheme of things, and?voila!
a full-blown international incident
was born-. -..
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/08/29: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100150136-8