CIA’s 30-Year Hunt for a Dictator: The Real Story of Gaddafi’s Downfall

March 2011, Libyan rebels rise against Muammar Gaddafi. What at first appears to be a spontaneous uprising is, in reality, the culmination of a carefully managed, top-secret 30-year-old CIA operation. The goal here is to get rid of Gaddafi, to overthrow him. For decades, America has been plotting to remove the man it branded “the mad dog of the Middle East.”

“Gaddafi was a chief sponsor of terrorism. They wanted him out. They wanted to make an example of him, because there’s evil in this world; evil’s got to be dealt with.”

What few people know as the rebellion against Gaddafi unfolds is that the man leading the uprising is, in fact, a longtime CIA contact.

“Khalifa Haftar and his lieutenants were trained by the CIA to remove Gaddafi. There’s a bunch of Libyans, you know? You give him arms, say, ‘All right, go get rid of Gaddafi.'”

His relationship with the CIA dates back to the 1980s. He’d returned to Libya 20 years later to finish a job that was left undone. Recent investigations reveal that the Libyan rebels are directed and coordinated by CIA experts on the ground. This is the top-secret account of the true extent to which the CIA was instrumental in the Libyan revolution which took down Gaddafi.

CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia. The North Africa desk is buzzing. They are monitoring secret communications coming in from Libya. The satellites and electronic surveillance will be collecting huge amounts of communications between any sort of threat to the United States. The first 387 messages are innocuous, but when they reach the 388th, everything changes. It appears to be a direct threat.

“I got intercepts that were clear-cut. There was no—it wasn’t a question. No one could argue with them.”

The intercepted message reads: “Stand by and be ready to attack American targets and execute the plan.” The CIA immediately considers it to be an imminent and credible danger. The message emanates from the intelligence headquarters of one of America’s most dangerous enemies: Muammar Gaddafi.

Since leading a coup to overthrow King Idris in 1969, Muammar Gaddafi has been a tyrannical dictator of Libya.

“He’d taken over in 1969 as a very young colonel, and he’d managed to institute a system, if you like, of divide and rule. He made sure that the army high command never grew too strong. He never really had a rival.”

Originally, the West had thought they might be able to deal with Gaddafi.

“I think there was hope that the US could work with him, and you know, that rather quickly went away.”

Having quelled dissent in Libya, Gaddafi soon embarked on a campaign of murdering Libyan opponents abroad.

“He had spies everywhere, both at home and abroad. He very much kept a watch on the exile movement, such as it was. He wants to get rid of these opponents who have left Libya, and he sends assassination squads to Europe and hires people in the United States to kill members of the opposition.”

“He had his hit teams out knocking off Libyan—I think he called them ‘stray dogs.'”

He allows dozens of terrorist groups to run training camps in Libya.

“Well, it’s often said that he was, you know, the key controller of terrorism or terrorist groups, certainly in the Middle East and maybe some extent Africa.”

Muammar Gaddafi gives money and weapons and passports and safe haven to a number of terrorist groups. The CIA have long suspected he is actively targeting America.

“Gaddafi was seen as the bogeyman because of his sponsorship of terrorism. They didn’t like Gaddafi, you know? They looked at him almost as sort of a, you know, ideological menace.”

The CIA know that Gaddafi is behind terrorist acts around the world, including the slaughter of American and Israeli civilians by Palestinian government at Vienna and Rome airports in 1985.

“He was a significant enemy to the United States. For most of my time in CIA, he was a problem, one way or the other.”

But what makes Gaddafi truly terrifying is his unpredictability. This “mad dog of the Middle East” has a goal of a world Muslim fundamentalist revolution.

“President Reagan, of course, famously called him that ‘mad dog’ because Gaddafi’s behavior was so irrational at times. He was sort of… he was a lunatic. The man at times seemed to be unstable, but on the other hand, he was obviously clever, and he played things very well.”

Now, it seems that the Mad Dog is ordering a direct attack on American targets. The question is: who are the targets, and where are they? Later that day, Libyan intelligence officers contact their agents abroad. The message is intercepted by a CIA listening post.

“The Americans had managed to basically tap into pretty much all Libyan communications with their diplomatic premises abroad. The Libyans were not nearly as careful about covering their traces as, say, the Syrians or the Iraqis, so the Americans knew that something was afoot.”

The CIA discover the location for the attack: Germany. The communication had been with East Berlin, and the People’s Bureau in East Berlin had tipped Tripoli off. The message from the Libyan embassy in Berlin reads: “Tripoli will be happy when you see the headlines tomorrow.”

The CIA now have a date and a rough location, but little time to try to stop the attack. The CIA station in Berlin is put on full alert. All they know is that someone, somewhere in the city, is preparing an attack on an American target. Agents are ordered to contact all informants to gather any intelligence about the impending attack. But as the hours pass, their investigations yield little actionable intelligence.

In the early hours, at the La Belle nightclub, a spot popular with American GIs, revelers are enjoying their night out. Nobody notices a woman entering the club carrying a bag. Then, in Langley, another message is intercepted. Again, it originates from the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, sent at 1:30 a.m.

“The Libyans did that just minutes before this bomb attack took place. The message simply says, ‘Happening now.'”

There’s been yet another major terrorist incident, this time in Berlin. A bomb ripped through a nightclub frequented by Americans. 230 people are injured in the blast. Three will die: a young Turkish woman and two US soldiers.

“The bombing of the disco in Berlin was purely a seminal event in that Americans died for the first time.”

The CIA have cast-iron evidence that Gaddafi is behind an atrocity against their citizens.

“This particular bombing, which killed a lot of innocent civilians, was kind of a touchstone for the US government. They now had some evidence that they could use openly. There was certainly good information that Gaddafi was behind the Palestinians that blew up the La Belle disco. There was enough intelligence to indicate that that bombing was not an isolated event. It really was a pattern of operations that Libya was engaging in and was absolutely going to continue into the future, and they would get worse.”

“This is not a case of picking on some guy to make an example of him; the man wasn’t innocent at all. Gaddafi was indeed doing what the Reagan administration was saying that he was doing.”

“There is such such thing as evil today. It is not popular to talk about evil. I mean, there aren’t any evil people in some people’s…”

Although the psychological offensive is beginning to work, the rebel army is down to a last desperate handful of troops, only 6 miles into the country itself, and Arbenz is still in power. The CIA is about to make an incredible gamble to bluff its way from defeat to stunning victory.

“Right at this critical stage, Phillips introduced what he called his most important big lie. The ‘important big lie’ is the final stage of the fake radio broadcasts, presenting an entirely made-up version of the invasion.”

So, in some ways, there were two invasions. There was the real invasion that showed a poultry invasion force, its numbers reduced by half, and then there was the map created by Radio Liberacion. It suggested the force was having unimpeded progress. The CIA radio broadcasts tell of one victory after another—an invasion which, in reality, doesn’t exist at all.

“Rebel forces were moving. They were moving towards the capital. The invasion was successful. The uprising was coming. It was one tale after another of the inevitable victory of the rebel forces.”

The biggest lie of all is when the radio reports that thousands and thousands of fictitious soldiers are closing in on Guatemala City itself. And the lie was that two military columns were advancing on the capital, ready to take it over. The “big lie” gamble now pays off. Thousands fled the city, car traffic stopped, the city itself was slowly becoming paralyzed. People ran to the outskirts of the city; they were fleeing to safety. The critical moment of the “big lie” is when the senior officers turn against the Guatemalan president.

“The big payoff for ‘black science’ comes when several army colonels make clear to Arbenz that they’re not going to stand with him. They basically tell him, ‘You and your communist friends have got us in trouble with the Americans, and now you’ve got to step down.'”

One by one, the officers around Arbenz distance themselves from the isolated president.

“So you’re a colonel in the Guatemalan army, you’re hearing news of military action, and you’re starting to ask yourself, ‘Where am I going to be? Where am I going to stand when the dust settles?'”

Politically isolated, the pressure on Arbenz surges to dizzying heights. Not only does he fear defeat at the hands of his bitter enemy, Armas, but also the terrifying prospect that America is behind him.

“It’s not the issue of us fighting, uh, Castillo Armas and his guys; it’s that the United States is threatening to invade, and we’d have to fight them.”

He was sitting in his presidential office, bewildered and unsure what to do. He had collapsed internally; the CIA had brilliantly undermined him, and that was really the end of his reign. With the officers turning against him, on June the 27th, Arbenz resigns.

“Couldn’t… he just couldn’t handle it. The psychological pressures were too enormous.”

10 days later, Castillo Armas is sworn in as Guatemala’s new president. The exiled colonel, who just over a week earlier was a relatively unknown figure, is now the most powerful man in the country. In Washington, Operation PB Success goes down as a huge victory. By all accounts, this is an operation that should not have succeeded; this was made possible by gutsy determination and in some ways crazy abandon.

“Operation PB Success was a brilliant deception, one of the great artistic achievements of illusion that the CIA ever produced. Operation PB Success proved that psychological warfare could be used as a deadly and effective weapon. It fooled an entire country and ultimately brought down a president.”

Within the CIA, PB Success becomes the model for future regime change across the world.