Dozens of confidential and secret cables sent in recent years by the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli to the State Department describe a softer and gentler Libya that Americans following the bloody crisis there now would have a hard time recognizing.
Moammar Gadhafi's son Saif al Islam, who's become the most vehement defender of his father's vicious onslaughts against protesters that triggered the civil war, is portrayed as a human rights advocate and reformer on the losing end of a battle with his harder line brother, Muatassim, Moammar Gadhafi's national security adviser.
Musa Kusa, the former foreign minister who recently defected to Britain, is called a "useful" and "powerful interlocutor" who seeks closer ties with the U.S. But there is no mention of his suspected roles in patronizing international terrorist groups, the 1988 midair bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 190 Americans or the 1989 downing of a plane in Africa that killed the wife of a U.S. ambassador.
Musa Kusa, the former foreign minister who recently defected to Britain, is called a "useful" and "powerful interlocutor" who seeks closer ties with the U.S. But there is no mention of his suspected roles in patronizing international terrorist groups, the 1988 midair bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 190 Americans or the 1989 downing of a plane in Africa that killed the wife of a U.S. ambassador.
Amid ongoing disruptions to maritime shipping in the Middle East due to the closure of the...
