February 18, 1999: Novel by CIA Official Features Plane-as-Missile Terror Plot

Circle William, a Tom Clancy-style military thriller by CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, is released, and centers on a terrorist plot involving a kamikaze air attack with a commercial airliner. In the book, a US submarine off the coast of Libya intercepts a cryptic phone conversation that suggests Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi is planing to attack the Israeli Knesset with a nerve gas-laden plane. The Pentagon quickly surmises that the plot probably requires “a terrorist willing to sacrifice himself and make the delivery using a commercial airliner.” When the CIA uncovers that Libya is keeping an unused Airbus 300 in a hangar at Tripoli airport, it infers that the plan is to first fly the plane west along the coast toward Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city, then to drop below radar coverage somewhere along the route. “We [figure] they would plan [to] remain at low altitude until they could get [to] the Cairo air traffic control region. Then they would pop up, mix in with the heavy traffic along that corridor, and try [to] sneak in to somewhere in Israel.” [Harlow, 1999, pp. 116, 166] Harlow joined the CIA in 1997 after a long Navy career, mainly as a public affairs officer. He will later co-author George Tenet’s memoirs, At the Center of the Storm. [Tenet, 2007, pp. 19]