Finger-Pointing in Libya

Accidents, after all, do happen. An American satellite fails to enter its planned orbit, a Soviet nuclear reactor suffers a meltdown, a supposedly unsinkable ocean liner collides with an iceberg and sinks, all without the agency of sinister human intervention. Take it as at least a strong possibility, then, that the fiery destruction of the Libyan plant the United States believes was making chemical weapons could have resulted from something other than sabotage. A short circuit, say, or an explosion from improperly mixed chemicals or a rupture somewhere in the labyrinth of pipes. Even in the best regulated of societies, such things do occur.

That something calamitous happened at a site the White House recently called critical attention to, however, inevitably draws speculation away from the accident theory. Certainly Col. Moammar Kadafi’s regime refuses to acknowledge that plain bad luck might have been responsible for what happened. Right off the mark Libya held outside forces culpable, although it’s having trouble deciding just what forces it means. Its initial ritualistic blame-laying fell on the United States and Israel. Soon, though, Kadafi began pointing the finger at West German intelligence, probably because West German firms built the plant. In no case has evidence been offered to support any allegation.

The truth of the matter may never be known, and so the question on a lot of minds seems destined to remain unanswered. Could the heavily guarded and isolated Rabta plant, 60 miles from Tripoli, have been penetrated by a saboteur? That seems quite unlikely, however much the plot devices of popular espionage fiction--to say nothing of the inferred accomplishment of some intelligence services--might feed suspicions to the contrary. In any event, a country that’s aggressively erratic in its foreign policy and a proclaimed supporter of international terrorists in one way or another seems to have been put out of the chemical-weapons business. Because of that, the world today is a marginally safer place.