CHAPTER 11
MOON OVER LIBYA
O
n April 5, 1986, Libyan agents operating out of the Libyan embassy
in East Berlin planted and detonated a bomb inside the popular La
Belle discotheque in West Berlin, killing two American soldiers and injuring
229 others.^1 Ten days later, the United States launched air attacks against
select targets in Benghazi and Tripoli, in retaliation for Libya’s involve-
ment in this and other terror attacks against Americans. A full moon
shone brightly on the night of the raid, potentially increasing the odds the
American planes would be more visible and vulnerable to attack by Libyan
antiaircraft batteries. One American aircraft was shot down during the air
operation. Putative American ally France refused to allow US warplanes to
overfly France en route to and from Libya, adding 2,600 nautical miles and
considerable additional risk to the American pilots’ mission.^2
At the same time, the CIA was developing a number of “covert action”
operations to quietly counter hostile anti-American actors worldwide.
What exactly is covert action? In 1948, the National Security Council first
directed the CIA to undertake covert action operations that were deter-
mined as acts “which are conducted or sponsored by this Government
against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign
states or groups but which are so planned and executed that any US Gov-
ernment responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and
that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any respon-
sibility for them.”^3 Covert action included psychological warfare and other
“hidden hand” operations that fell somewhere between the two overt
options of traditional diplomacy and direct military action.
Several months after the Berlin disco bombing, and as a result of a
covert action operation I was running, the CIA was able to obtain posi-
tive strategic results in Palmera, which made life much safer for the “good115