MOON OVER LIBYA 117At the time of the Berlin disco bombing, I was handling another trusted
Palmera station agent—an unobtrusive “utility” asset named “Manuel”
who had been on the CIA’s books for nearly twenty years. Manuel was
good at his job and was a pleasure to handle. I knew I could count on him
to deal with any “unusual” tasking that fell outside the areas of expertise
of other station assets.
Not long after the American air attacks against Libya, Manuel
reported to me that he happened to be near the US embassy one day and
had observed two men who appeared to be “Arabs” photographing the
American diplomatic compound. I was initially skeptical, but he provided
their license plate number, which we traced and learned was connected to
a local Middle Eastern man with ties to known extremists. The obvious
implication was the “Arabs” may have been casing the American embassy
in advance of a terrorist attack. In light of heightened tensions at the time
between the United States and Libya, our best guess was that Libya might
be involved. Libya could easily add the chaotic country of Palmera to their
growing list of global venues in which they were targeting Americans for
terrorist attack.
Based on Manuel’s report, which we passed to the US embassy, the
embassy requested and received an enhanced security presence from the
government of Palmera.
During this same time frame, CIA headquarters conceived of a creative
global CA campaign designed to disrupt potential threats to America.
Headquarters tasked me to run the program in Palmera. The ingenious
plan was risky but, if carried out properly and without detection, could
produce valuable results. The campaign was cooked up by headquarters
CA experts who were well versed in propaganda and intelligence opera-
tions. Unfortunately, I am not permitted to discuss the specifics of the CA
campaign, but its objective was to counter potential terrorism activity and
reduce the risk to Americans globally.
I really liked the clever idea and quickly responded with a detailed pro-
posal for securely executing this promising CA operation. My job would be
made easy by the fact that I was running a finely tuned CA network with a