Top British diplomats and MI6 officers have spent nearly two weeks questioning Libya’s former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa in the hope that they can unlock the secrets of Colonel Gaddafi’s war strategy and end his hated regime.
But a crucial insight into the Libyan leader’s mindset has already been provided by Koussa – the top-flight Gaddafi aide who defected to Britain – in a 226-page study of the dictator written more than 30 years ago.
The Mail on Sunday has uncovered a university dissertation – titled The Political Leader And His Social Background, Muammar Gaddafi, The Libyan Leader – written by Koussa when he was studying at Michigan State University in the United States in the Seventies. The document has been buried in the college archive until now.
Prejudice: Gaddafi (far left) is pictured here with a group of British students in the Libyan capital Tripoli in 1973
For his dissertation, part of a master’s degree course in sociology, Koussa conducted a series of interviews with Gaddafi, and his work reveals vital clues about the source of the dictator’s hatred of the West and in particular the British, linking this animosity to a previously unknown visit to London at height of the swinging Sixties.
Gaddafi, who was sent to England in 1966 to complete his military training, claims that during his four-month stay in England he was insulted by British Army officers whom he accused of ‘oppressing’ him for days.
Further secret National Archive reports, also uncovered by The Mail on Sunday, show that by the time Gaddafi came to power in 1969 the British Government considered him mad, moronic, messianic and a genuine threat to the security of the region.
These papers also reveal how Gaddafi’s table manners during a state occasion caused acute embarrassment – as he drank the water from a finger bowl because he didn’t know what it was for – and that the dictator was once a sex symbol in Sri Lanka.
Koussa’s interviews with Gaddafi took place in 1977 and 1978. Koussa was unknown to the Libyan leader and had to rely on wealthy family connections to secure privileged access to him in order to complete his dissertation.
Army days: Koussa's thesis featured this early snap of Gaddafi in army uniform
These first meetings between Gaddafi and Koussa are believed to have taken place when Koussa travelled to the dictator’s palace in Tripoli, but they laid the foundation for their future relationship. Koussa became ambassador in London in 1979 and went on to become Libya’s most senior intelligence officer. He was often referred to as Gaddafi’s ‘fingernail-puller-in-chief’.
Gaddafi graduated from his Libyan army school in August 1965 and the following April was sent to London to finish his military training. Britain had maintained close ties with Libya’s pro-Western leader, King Idris, after independence in 1951.
In the dissertation, Koussa wrote that Gaddafi told him about his arrival in the UK and described his encounter with a customs officer who accidentally pricked his finger on the young Libyan’s sewing kit.
Gaddafi said to him: ‘To begin with, I remember the customs officer who started to search my bag. A needle pricked his finger. I had brought the needle with me because it is important for every soldier.’
After a night in a hotel, Gaddafi and fellow Libyan officers were dispatched to an unnamed British military training camp.
Gaddafi told Koussa: ‘We met a British major of Norwegian origin. He represented to us the typical ugly British colonialist. He asked many questions concerning our national feelings.
'His dress had been startling...he was a sex symbol for the Sri Lankan girls'
‘It was obvious that he hated the Arabs and wanted to know our reactions. He emphasised the ugly territorial tendencies.’
Gaddafi said he found the questioning – about Arab nationalism, Libyan oil and Palestine – so offensive that he pretended he couldn’t speak English. ‘For days, we sustained oppression and insults, until we were about to leave. Then we moved to another school where we met some Arab brothers from Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Iraq and we formed a solid group.’
Gaddafi not only objected to the British soldiers who had been given the job of training the Libyan officers, but he also found the British culture unpalatable. Gaddafi told Koussa that he shunned London nightlife and all that the swinging Sixties had to offer. Describing a trip to the West End, Gaddafi said: ‘I put on my Al-Jird [Arab robes] and went to Piccadilly. I was prompted by a feeling of challenge and a desire to assert myself. But I did not explore the cultural life in London.
‘We preferred spending the vacation in the countryside. We became self-absorbed and introverted in the face of Western civilization, which conflicts with our values.’
Gaddafi gave Koussa two souvenir photographs – one showing him striding along the streets of London wearing his Libyan national costume and another of him relaxing in the countryside. They are both exhibited in the dissertation.
Reflecting on his experiences of Britain and the British, Gaddafi told Koussa: ‘After my stay in Britain, the idea I had about it changed. I thought they were advanced while we were backward. But I returned more confident and proud of our values, ideals and social character.
Meeting of leaders: Former Prime Minister Tony Blair met Gaddafi in Tripoli in 2009
‘I liked the material progress in Britain especially in the agricultural sector. How happy I was when I visited the British villages.’
In 1969, three years after visiting Britain, Gaddafi – by now a colonel, staged a military coup which ended the reign of King Idris and established the Libyan Arab Republic. One of his first acts was the expulsion of all British forces from Libya.
By the mid-Seventies, Gaddafi was secretly authorising financial and military support for the IRA and was later accused of sanctioning atrocities including the bombing of the Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie and the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher.
Gaddafi’s sudden rise to power took the West and other leaders by surprise. The documents from the National Archive files report that the Foreign Office discreetly asked ambassadors throughout North Africa and the Middle East to assess Libya’s new leader – and they came to a near unanimous conclusion when it came to his mental health.
A dispatch from the British Embassy in Tripoli stated: ‘The simplest conclusion to draw would be that in his vision of himself as a new Arab messiah, Gaddafi is bordering on the insane.’
Present day: Gaddafi has made a number of TV appearances recently following the unrest in Libya
King Hussein of Jordan regarded him as an unworldly ‘nutcase’.
One report described a series of diplomatic faux pas committed by the new Libyan leader.
It said: ‘At the Rabat summit conference in December he drank the contents of his finger bowl at a formal dinner because he was unaware of its purpose and contrived to have bitter exchanges with both King Faisal [of Saudi Arabia] at one end of the spectrum and President Boumedienne [of Algeria] at the other.’
A report from North Yemen described how that country’s ruler, President Saleh, was so shaken by an encounter with Gaddafi that he turned to the American ambassador at an event and commented: ‘Mad, isn’t he?’
However, correspondence from the Sri Lankan High Commissioner revealed that, while the dictator’s thuggish conduct alarmed diplomats, his outlandish garb and swagger attracted screaming crowds of teenage girls.
The British diplomat comments: ‘His dress had been startling: slacks and a loud-striped shirt with a lightweight barakan [an Arab cloak] on top. He had indeed become something of a sex symbol for the Sri Lankan girls.’
Koussa, the charmer in a drop-top Chevy
MoussaKoussa was groomed to become Colonel Gaddafi’s most notorious henchman while masquerading as a sophisticated foreign exchange student at Michigan State University in 1976.
Driving a smart red Chevrolet convertible, he spoke fluent English and initially charmed his tutors. ‘He seemed like an awfully nice guy – good-looking, polite, nothing like
the envoy of death he became,’ recalled sociology professor Harry Schwarzweller. ‘He’d give me a ride home in his convertible and we’d crack open a beer and have fun.’
Other Libyan students have claimed, however, that Koussa threatened to kill those who criticised the dictator. ‘There were four or five who were scared,’ Prof Schwarzweller said. ‘One of them never completed his course. He went back to Libya, where he became a youth leader. I lost touch with him and then one day I read he’d been executed by the regime.’
Koussa’s thesis was derided by faculty members, and he was told that he would not be admitted to a PhD programme. ‘His thesis was a glorification of Gaddafi,' said Professor Tom Conner, who sat on the MA committee.
Gaddafi then gave Koussa a job as a spy and within five years he was a top official in the dictator’s security service. ‘Their closeness went way back,’ said retired US spymaster Paul Pillar.
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