• US drone fired missile at Gadhafi convoy

    NATO confirmed Thursday that it had carried out an airstrike on a convoy near Sirte, where Moammar Gadhafi died. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.

    By Jim Miklaszewski, NBC News Pentagon correspondent

    A U.S. Predator drone fired a Hellfire missile at the 15-vehicle convoy carrying former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi as he attempted to flee his hometown of Sirte, U.S. officials told NBC News.

    According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, both the Predator and a NATO warplane launched missiles, striking several vehicles while the rest scattered. Gadhafi was in or near the motorcade, but apparently managed to make his way to a nearby drainage pipe, where he was captured by forces from Libya’s National Transition Council from Misrata.

    It's still not clear whether Gadhafi's visible wounds were suffered during the airstrike or at the hands of his rebel captors.

  • Western agencies eager for crack at Gadhafi archives

    U.S. intelligence agencies hope to find details of Libya's involvement in terrorism worldwide. NBC's Robert Windrem reports.

    By Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative producer

    Western intelligence agencies believe there is a "treasure trove" of material in Libyan intelligence archives, and they may have already prepared to exploit it once Moammar Gadhafi's regime finally falls.

    Current and former U.S. intelligence officials point to the possibilities of what could be found in the files, among them:

    • The intelligence service's (and Gadhafi's own) role in the 1988 bombing of PanAm 103 and UTA 772 months later, which killed 430 people in the air and on the ground, as well as their role in the 1986 LaBelle Disco bombing in Berlin, which killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded 79 others.

    • Support for various terrorist groups, including Palestinian groups, the Irish Republican Army, the El Rukns street gang in Chicago and individual terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and Abu Nidal.

    • A purported 1981 assassination plot against U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

    • Gadhafi's financial support for the Pakistani nuclear weapons program in the 1980s and the relationship between Libya and Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan a decade later, as well as Western countries that supported Gadhafi's chemical and biological weapons programs.

    Obama promises to support Libyan transition

    There may also be materials on U.S. intelligence operations against al-Qaida, which began under President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A steady stream of U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials visited Libya over the last decade as relations between the two countries got better.  

    U.S. officials say Gadhafi has one major intelligence service but that there are also "security elements around him" who carry out intelligence and security operations and whose files Western intelligence agencies would also like to exploit.

    One former official suspects there may already be planning for that exploitation. He noted that Musa Kusa, the former head of Libyan intelligence and one of Gadhafi's most loyal aides, had defected. 

  • Does al-Qaida play big role in Libya revolt? U.S. doesn't think so

    In this Arabic YouTube video from an Al Jazeera report on the fighting in Libya, rebel fighters listen to al-Qaida songs and indicate that religious fervor is motivating their battle against the regime of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

     

    By Robert Windrem
    NBC News investigative producer for special projects

    It’s a short YouTube clip from the Libyan war -- a three-minute piece culled from an Al Jazeera report on a group of rebel fighters. The group, dressed in fatigues and carrying AK-47s, are listening to recordings coming from a speaker in the back of a camouflaged pickup. 

    The recordings playing in the background were produced by al-Qaida and the conversations around the truck suggest that these particular Libyan rebels are driven by a radical agenda and religious fervor rather than a desire for democracy. 

    How significant was this scene in the Libyan desert? Not very, the commander of NATO forces and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday. There are concerns about the makeup of the rebel forces, they acknowledged, but not significant ones so far. The problem is, very little is known about the rebels. 

    U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander, testified before a U.S. Senate committee about “flickers” of radical Islamic al-Qaida sympathizers in Libya.  

     “We are examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders of these opposition forces," he said.

    Stavridis said that while the opposition's leadership appeared to be "responsible men and women," there were "flickers in the intelligence of potential al-Qaida (and) Hezbollah (presence among the rebels). We've seen different things…But at this point I don't have detail sufficient to say there is a significant al-Qaida presence or any other terrorist presence.”

    Clinton went further at a London press briefing, saying after a meeting with allies on future actions in Libya that there is no specific information that al-Qaida is involved in the opposition to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s government.

    U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking during a press briefing in London after a meeting with allies on future actions in Libya, says there is no specific information that al-Qaida is involved in the Libyan opposition.

    Responding to a question about Stavridis’ testimony, she said, “We do not have any specific information about specific individuals from any organization who are part of this, but of course we are still getting to know those who are leading the transitional national council.”  The Interim Transitional National Council is the rebels’ umbrella group -- or at least the organization the U.S. is dealing with at this point.

    Other U.S. officials told NBC News that they believe al-Qaida has a very small presence  in Libya, and that there is no indication that the rebels are being led by al-Qaida or that a majority of the rebels are affiliated with the either the terrorist group’s central command in Pakistan or its North Africa affiliate, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

    U.S. officials have long been concerned that a radical Islamic movement could develop in Libya, but have focused less on al-Qaida than a local group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). Some of the latter group’s top figures, including one time leader Abu Faraj al Libi, joined al-Qaida in the early 2000s. He eventually rose to No. 3 in al-Qaida before being captured in Pakistan in 2005. He is currently imprisoned at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba.

    Another Libyan, Abu Yahya al Libi,   is currently al-Qaida’s ideological chief. He released a 30-minute video earlier this month encouraging the rebels in their battle against Gadhafi. (Both names are noms de guerre.)

    But the LIFG leadership could never recruit the rank-and-file into al-Qaida and a plan to merge the two groups failed, according to U.S. intelligence. That’s because the Libyan group wanted to pursue local goals rather than worldwide jihad. It even renounced violence last year.

    As tensions rose in Libya last month, the government released more than 100 members of the LIFG, some of whom had been serving life sentences.  Although the stated reason was to free the last of Libya’s political prisoners, U.S. officials believe it was actually an effort by Gadhafi to signal that radical Islamists could seize power if his regime fell, in an effort to force Western nations to back off in supporting the rebels.

    Whatever the reason, U.S. officials say, Gadhafi’s regime almost instantly regretted the move, since the LIFG’s internal discipline and experience has benefited the rag-tag rebel forces.

    These officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said al-Qaida will likely try to subvert the Libyan rebellion to achieve its own ends, but they don’t believe it currently has the capability to co-opt the revolt.

  • Libya has 'significant' stockpile of chemical weapons

    By Robert Windrem
    NBC News investigative producer for special projects

    More than decade ago, a Washington writer penned a novel based on Moammar Gadhafi’s willingness to use chemical weapons.  Called “Circle William,” the novel was based on a supposed plot by Gadhafi to use chemical weapons against the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem and a ship christening ceremony in Norfolk, Va. Predictably, the plot failed because of the heroic efforts of two brothers.

    While there is no evidence that Libya would go after U.S. or Israeli targets — or even has the capability to do so — one of the book’s main premises is very real: Gadhafi has vast reserves of chemical weapons.

    Libya has a "significant" stockpile of chemical weapons, developed during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials, but the U.S. also believes there is no evidence that he is prepared to use them against his own people. With the destruction of 3,500 aerial bombs in 2004, Gadhafi may not have the delivery systems needed.

    "We have no indication he is planning to use them against his population ... but he doesn't always make rational decisions," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

    U.S. officials do say the Libyan government recently updated security measures at the country’s chemical weapons storage and destruction facilities.

    U.S. officials tell NBC News the facilities are on an air base near the town of Sebha, 250 miles south of Tripoli. The Libyans have been using a chemical neutralization process to destroy the weapons and are nearing completion of an incineration facility at Sebha.

    Indeed, Libya has one of the world’s largest remaining stockpiles of chemical weapons.

    Of the 23 tons of mustard gas declared by the Libyans in 2004, only about 9.5 tons remain, according to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW, which has responsibility for overseeing the destruction of such weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention.

    The destruction began in 2010 and was supposed to be concluded by May,  but the situation  in Libya clouds that timetable, say officials.

    By comparison, as of last month the U.S. had more than 4,700 tons of chemical weapons agents still awaiting destruction, specifically mustard and blister agents as well as the nerve agents VX and sarin.  The Russian stockpile is even larger, at more than 20,000 tons.

    The Libyans declared their country had produced only mustard gas.

    “And the declaration on precursor chemicals (those used to make chemical warfare agents) was also only for mustard gas,” said Michael Luhan, a OPCW spokesman.

    Some in U.S. intelligence, however, were never convinced that the Libyans limited their chemical weapons production to mustard gas.

    “I don't know of anyone at the (Central Intelligence) Agency who was fully comfortable with the Libyans telling us everything we wanted to know,” said a former senior intelligence official.  “The going assumption was they were lying whenever possible, and we were rarely proven wrong.”

    Moreover, he said,  U.S. intelligence believed that the Libyans had not been completely truthful on the quantity as well as the quality of the weapons. “We believed they were saving something for a rainy day.”

    However, a current U.S. intelligence official said that while there was concern about nerve agents “because of the discovery of precursor chemicals,”  it was only research and development.

    “No one believed they were successful,” said the official. “Never a capability.  Never actual stocks, just precursors. OPCW was concerned that Libya did not declare an R&D effort, but they didn’t.”  

    In addition to the stockpile, one inactivated chemical weapons production facility at Rabta, 60 miles south of Tripoli, was declared and has now been converted to a pharmaceutical plant, ironically, its original cover.

    “The conversion is irreversible,” said Luhan.

  • Gadhafi controls $32 billion, turned down Madoff, diplomat wrote

    By Robert Windrem
    NBC News investigative producer for special projects

    Moammar Gadhafi’s regime controls $32 billion in liquid assets around the world, including hundreds of millions of dollars invested in U.S. banks, according to a confidential cable written by the U.S. ambassador to Libya last year. The leaked diplomatic message was distributed through WikiLeaks.

    The same cable reported that Libya had been approached by two men accused of running huge Ponzi schemes, Bernard Madoff and Allen Stanford, but had resisted offers from them to invest Libyan funds with them. Madoff is serving time in a U.S. prison; Stanford has not been convicted of a crime and is awaiting trial.

    The cable is entitled "Technology of Tourism: Head of Libyan Investment Authority Discusses Opportunities for US Business in Libya," and was written Jan. 28, 2010, by Ambassador Gene A. Cretz, after a meeting with Mohamed Layas, the head of the LIA, Libya’s sovereign wealth fund. Sovereign wealth funds are the vehicles used by Middle East and other governments to invest oil wealth. The LIA, according to U.S. intelligence, is controlled by Gadhafi's regime.

    "Layas asserted that the LIA has USD 32 billion in liquidity, and noted that several American banks are each managing USD 300-500 million of the LIA's funds," according to the cable.

    Cretz also quotes Layas as saying, "We have USD 32 billion in liquidity,  mostly in bank deposits that will give us good long-term returns." Layas explained that beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. banks, not further identified, Layas said the LIA has extensive investments in the United Kingdom.

    Cretz wrote that Layas "said that the LIA has an office in London and preferred doing business there rather than in the United States, due to the ‘ease of doing business’ in the UK and relatively 'uncomplicated tax system.' He noted that the LIA's primary investments are in London, in banking and residential and commercial real estate."

    The LIA’s best-publicized investment was in a Canadian oil company, Verenex. Libya paid $316 million for the company in 2009.

    However, the Libyan claimed he had avoided being involved in two Ponzi schemes, those run by Madoff and Stanford. Layas denied press reports that LIA had invested $100 million with Stanford, but admitted being approached by both Stanford and Madoff.

    "Stanford had approached the LIA in the middle of his crisis, offering a 7-8% share in his investment scheme, but Layas had refused," Cretz wrote. "Layas also mentioned having been previously approached by Bernard Madoff about an investment opportunity, 'but we did not accept’." 

    Read the cable here.

    Other diplomatic cables on Libya are described in this New York Times article, "WikiLeaks cables detail Qaddafi family's exploits."

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