Anti-Kadafi Leaks Called ‘Stupid’ : Disinformation Campaign Ill-Advised, 2 Senators Agree

WASHINGTON — The Reagan Administration’s bungled effort to use a disinformation campaign to destabilize the Libyan regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi was branded “stupid” Sunday by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and an influential Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“It was just simply stupid to be involved in this type of thing at this point,” said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “I think Kadafi is a menace. I think terrorism is a menace. The American people want to see this connection exposed and then suppressed. But I think our greatest strength is still that we tell the truth as a government, and there’s credibility in what we say.

“And to the extent that we undermine that, we lose a very big foreign policy initiative.”

Leaks to the Press

The disinformation campaign touched off an uproar after last week’s disclosure that the campaign had included untruthful leaks to the press. The program--designed to destabilize the Libyan government--produced widespread reports that Kadafi, who had been unnerved by the U.S. bombing of Tripoli, was about to instigate another terrorist campaign and that the United States was making plans to retaliate.

Although Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga) joined Lugar on Sunday in denouncing the effort as “stupid” and “inept,” he said he did not believe that the United States government should make a blanket commitment never to use disinformation as a tactic.

Interviewed with Lugar on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” Nunn said: “I don’t think we ought to rule out all disinformation campaigns, no matter what the circumstances in the world. It could be that the survival of our nation depended on something like that at some point. Who knows?”

But the current instance “was damaging in two aspects,” he said.

‘We Don’t Believe You’

“One: Now when we say that Kadafi is up to something, the American press and, therefore, perhaps the American people will say, ‘We don’t believe you anymore.’ And the second damaging aspect is the leaks in general. What we are doing is undermining the ability of any government to contain truly crucial information by deliberate leaks from top places.”

Once the disinformation campaign against Kadafi was disclosed, Administration officials acknowledged that the government’s credibility had suffered.

But officials, led by President Reagan, continued to maintain that there had been no formal plan to deliberately lie to the press in order to unnerve the leader of the Libyan regime, although they defended the wisdom of keeping psychological pressure on him.

“If one can keep him off balance through some deception,” Under Secretary of State Michael H. Armacost said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “that’s probably a good thing. But this shouldn’t include, obviously, lying to our media, and that was never done.”

Someone Lied, Shultz Says

Secretary of State George P. Shultz acknowledged, however, that someone had lied to the press in the episode.

“I don’t lie,” he said. “I’ve never taken part in any meeting in which it was proposed that we go out and lie to the news media. . . . And somebody did that. He was doing it against policy.”

Shultz and Armacost discussed the affair in the wake of a report in the Washington Post that a State Department memorandum, written before President Reagan’s approval of the disinformation campaign, suggested that a U.S. strategy could lead to “a coup or assassination” of Kadafi. The White House said the memorandum was a working document that had no policy standing.