Wanting It Both Ways

There are good reasons why Administration officials played it coy on the subject of whether they intended to kill Gaddafi with a well-aimed bomb. For one thing, acknowledging such an attempt could provoke a political fire storm. But more important, the idea of killing a leader raises difficult legal and moral issues, issues that the Administration seems unwilling and unready to confront publicly.

If the raid was in fact a veiled execution attempt, it would pit the Reagan Administration against a specific presidential order and substantial legal precedent. In 1976, after public discontent over the revelations of cia assassination attempts in Chile, Guatemala and Iran, President Ford issued an Executive Order forbidding the Government from authorizing the assassination of world leaders. Both Presidents Carter and Reagan have reaffirmed that ban.

In discussing whether the Administration had tacitly hoped to kill Gaddafi, Secretary of State George Shultz seemed to be engaged in a kind of Jesuitic legal maneuvering. "We did not have a strategy saying we wanted to go after Gaddafi personally," said Shultz. "We have a general stance that opposes direct efforts of that kind." The implication is that if the attempt was indirect and unofficial, they would be off the hook.

But some experts suggest that the Administration need not engage in any protective hairsplitting. They argue that Reagan's risk in superseding Executive Order No. 12333 would be political rather than legal. The Executive Order represents a voluntary restraint rather than a legally imposed one. By violating it, the President is not breaking a law but a promise. Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger speculates that the President could have sidestepped any legal problems by issuing a secret National Security directive sanctioning action against Gaddafi.

The question prompted by an assassination attempt, say some, is more a moral issue than a political one. Critics of the Administration suggest that the Government's actions have undermined American claims of moral superiority, reducing the U.S. to the same level as the terrorists it condemns. If the Administration did intend to get Gaddafi, notes former Carter Legal Adviser Lloyd Cutler, it would be "the equivalent of a terrorist attack on a foreign leader."

There are those who think that the U.S. erred on the side of restraint, that the Administration should have had the courage of their convictions--or their animosities. "If we genuinely believe that Gaddafi is more than just a booking agent for terrorism," says Robert Kupperman, a terrorism expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, "then covert means of getting rid of him should be considered. We seem to be dealing in niceties. We think we can use the larger instruments of warfare to bring about his elimination, but that we shouldn't use the smaller ones, such as a pistol."

Some suggest that an assassination attempt could be considered more moral than an all-out attack. Neil Livingstone, president of Washington's Institute for Terrorism and Subnational Conflict, proposes that a precise covert action directed toward a single figure may be preferable to a military raid. Says Livingstone: "It is far more humane to get the legitimate bad guy than his baby daughter and innocent civilians." But it seems the Administration simply wanted to have it both ways. That is, it wanted to send a message to terrorists in general and a knockout punch to one in particular.