Cooperative Research - Following the bombing of a Berlin disco in which three people, including two US serviceman, died, and which is blamed on Libya, and a retaliatory air strike by the US against Libya, European public opinion begins to turn against the US. The CIA therefore makes it seem that the Libyans intend to plant another bomb in Berlin, so as to influence the European public. According to a CIA officer involved in the operation, the first step is “to convince German intelligence and police there was a terrorist cell.”

To achieve this, a Lebanese CIA asset named Jamal Hamdan, who helps the US in various ways around this time, makes a series of phone calls from an apartment in Cyprus to suspected terrorists in Germany. Hamdan also tells a relative living in West Berlin that his brother Ali and a friend will enter the city carrying a package, which, it is implied, is a bomb. Ali Hamdan and the friend then enter West Berlin illegally from the east and are arrested by German police, who wrongly believe that they actually have a bomb and the plot is real. Word of the plot is leaked to the US press, enabling the Reagan administration to quell criticism of the attack on Libya. The CIA then steps in and has the two men held in Germany released.

This article was published on Cooperative Research