A Wet Kiss for Kaddafi
The move to normalize relations between the U.S. and Libya accelerates next month when Muammar Kaddafi makes his first-ever trip to America to address the U.N. The arrival of Kaddafi is already creating problems for New York security officials: he travels with a massive, heated Bedouin tent. Libyan officials recently asked permission for Kaddafi to pitch it in Central Park. "The location for the tent is still an open question," says a senior State Department official who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters. (One alternative: coax Kaddafi, and his retinue of female bodyguards, to pitch the tent on Libyan-owned property in New Jersey.)
The prospect of the Libyan leader on U.S. soil is angering families of the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, which the U.S. long ago pinned on Kaddafi's government. "On the political world stage, he should be a laughingstock, except for the fact that he's got blood on his hands," says Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103. The families' anger was further inflamed by reports that Scottish officials are weighing the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the bombing, on the grounds that he is dying of cancer.
The diplomatic thaw began in 2003, under President George W. Bush, after Kaddafi renounced his nuclear- and chemical-weapons programs. That led to a lifting of U.S. sanctions; the policy of forging closer ties is continuing under Obama. Shortly after Obama shook Kaddafi's hand at last month's G8 summit, Jeffrey Feltman, acting assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, visited Libya and announced the U.S. was seeking "strengthened" military cooperation to fight Al Qaeda in North Africa. (Expanding U.S. military ties, including, eventually, U.S. weapons sales, has been a goal of Kaddafi's government, which last year signed a $2.4 million annual lobbying contract with the firm of former GOP House speaker Robert Livingston.) In addition, David Goldwyn, until recently the executive director of the U.S.-Libya Business Association, a group founded by five major U.S. oil companies to "enhance the U.S.-Libya relationship," was recently named State Department coordinator for energy affairs. (Goldwyn, who apparently wasn't covered by Obama's lobbyist ban because he never registered as one, didn't return calls for comment.)
The senior State Department official concedes Kaddafi doesn't run a "model government," but that better relations make sense because Libya is "strategically located" and it abandoned its nukes program. "There's an opportunity to move Libya in a more constructive direction," says the official, who emphasizes that the administration isn't abandoning the Lockerbie families: both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder recently phoned the Scottish justice minister to say al-Megrahi should stay "where he is." The Libyan Embassy declined to comment.
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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