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Gaddafi asked Washington to reopen the embassy and even offered to pay for the rebuilding of the burned U.S. embassy in Tripoli. Washington refused. Gaddafi made several subsequent overtures, but was rebuffed each time. The Administration wanted not only payment in cash for the embassy damages and an apology from Gaddafi (who refused, because he claimed that he had not sanctioned the attack) but also the release of a Libyan national who had worked at the Tripoli embassy and had been jailed by Gaddafi on charges of spying.
In late July, a Libyan group called the Free Unionist Officers threatened a campaign of "physical liquidation" against Americans, including President Reagan. Then, in mid-August, came the attack by two Libyan SU-22 fighter planes against a pair of U.S. F-14s as they flew over the Gulf of Sidra during a naval exercise by the U.S. Sixth Fleet in disputed waters that Libya had long claimed as part of its territory. The U.S. planes downed the Libyan jets.
In September, Gaddafi dispatched an envoy, Ahmad Shahati, to Washington with a personal message of reconciliation to Reagan. But U.S. intelligence officials had begun to receive reports that Libyan hit teams were out to kill Reagan. By the time U.S. Chargé d'Affaires Chapman narrowly missed being assassinated in Paris in November, Washington had made up its mind about Gaddafi's true intentions. As Haig put it: "I think it underlines the urgency of dealing with the problem [Gaddafi] in an effective, prudent, unequivocal way."
To some students of Gaddafi's elusive persona, it is no great surprise that he would send hit teams in pursuit of a powerful American President who had spurned him. "He feels justified in using terrorism and is able to justify his excesses because of the deprivations of his people during his youth," says a U.S. Government official. "He feels very menaced, and he will strike out at a superpower. It is difficult for a person like that to see the results of his actions. It is all mixed up with his image of himself as a victim, someone persecuted and hounded."
If that analysis of Gaddafi is sound, the desert denizen who sees himself as the slighted messiah of a scorned nation may have launched a frightful new era in modern-day terrorism. To be sure, the 20th century does not lack for examples of political murder. But the threat of assassination of a head of government may now have been elevated by Gaddafi, in an era of worldwide terrorism, to a conscious act of statecraft by a sovereign nation. "For years after World War II, heads of state were considered off-limits to assassination teams," observes Paul Wilkinson, professor of international relations at Aberdeen University, Scotland. "If the reports are true, we are being faced with a sinister new development."