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We helped Ghaddafi stay in power as long as he was useful. For torture. And PR. And the oil flowed freely. It was only once the region started to destabilize that we discovered our "conscience." He had, after all, been running a tyrannical regime for decades.http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/tortured-alliance.html...............................
Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture.
Although it has been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the
cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.
Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be
a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/03/world/africa/03libya.html...................
CIA RENDERED REBEL COMMANDER TO LIBYA AT QADDAFI REQUEST | Apparent Central Intelligence Agency communiques to now-deposed Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Qaddafi obtained by the New York Times and Human Rights Watch (HRW) indicate that the CIA rendered Abdelhakim Belhadj to Libya at the request of Qaddafi’s intelligence agency in 2004. Belhadj, who has a militant extremist past but is now the rebel commander in charge of Tripoli, says he was tortured while in CIA and Libyan custody. Asked for Belhaj, an apparent CIA caseworker wrote the CIA was “committed to developing this relationship” with Libyan intelligence. Two days later, an officer wrote the CIA was “planning to take control of (Belhadj and his pregnant wife) in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country.” The Times couldn’t verify the documents, which were found by journalists and HRW in a binder marked CIA at Qaddafi’s intelligence headquarters.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2011/09/03/311651/cia-qaddafi-rendition/