The World - News from Feb. 23, 1987

U.S. bombing raids on Libya last year were not planned to assassinate Moammar Kadafi, a White House spokesman said, but “if he had been killed, there probably wouldn’t have been a damp eye in the place.” Spokesman Dan Howard, responding to a report in the New York Times Magazine that the raids were intended to kill the Libyan leader and his family, said “there was no plan to kill Kadafi per se.” He said the bombs that fell on Kadafi’s compound in the April, 1986, raids “were targeted on a military barracks 200 meters away.” Writer Seymour Hersh said in the magazine article that the attempt was ordered after the CIA had tried unsuccessfully for five years to oust the Libyan leader.