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something like this, Tap?”
    “Not really,ţsir. It’s something they’ve talked about for years. But it’s always sounded more like hashish talk to us than anything else. We did have one report in the intelligence community in 1978 that a bunch of them were being trained by the Libyans to pull an armed raid on a nuclear power plant. Hijack it, so to speak. But we were never able to confirm it.
    “We’ve been pulsing all our Palestinian assets since this came in. There are people out there capable of making a nuclear device. And there’s material around. But so far we’ve had no indication that any of the groups we’re watching have married the two up.”
    “How about the Israelis?” the President queried. “Have you been onto them?”
    “Not yet, sir. It’s our feeling it’s still a bit early for that. For the moment we recommend holding this as tight as possible.”
    “And the Libyans?” The President turned to address his question to Bob Fundseth, the Deputy Secretary of State. “Have we had any answer from Tripoli?”
    “No, sir. The charge went personally to the army barracks at Bab Azizza where Qaddafi and most of his ministers live, saying he had an urgent communication from the government of the United States. The guards wouldn’t give him the time of day. Told him they had orders not to admit anyone before eight A.M.” Christopher glanced at the clock on the conference room wall. “That’s five hours from now.”
    The President drummed the tabletop with his fingertips. That would seem to confirm his suspicion there was little likelihood that Qaddafi was behind this. “fell me, Tap,” he said to his CIA director, “would Qaddafi even have the capacity to do something like this? Where’s his nuclear program at these days?”
    Bennington struck a match and noisily lit his pipe, a play he had learned from his second boss, Allan Dulles. “Well, sir, as you know, he’s never made any secret of his intention to get atomic bombs.” Bennington picked up a file stamped “Top Secret” from the table in front of him.
    “We’ve been keeping a close eye on him and he’s done a number of things that concern us very much. He’s been literally flooding this country with students taking nuclear courses. Over a fifth of the Libyans who’ve studied here since 1973 have been enrolled in some kind of nuclear program or another.”
    The President shook his head. If Qaddafi gave away his oil as cheaply as we give away our knowledge, he reflected, we wouldn’t have an energy crisis on our hands.
    “All that, of course is ostensibly for peaceful purposes,” Bennington continued. “What really worries us are the secret initiatives he’s undertaken to get hold of plutonium or uranium for military purposes, the business in Chad, the link with the Paks which you’re aware of.”
    The President was growing impatient. “Okay, Tap, but where is he right now?
    Can he or can he not make a bomb?”
    Bennington leaned back in his chair. “In our judgment, he’s at least five years away from it. He still has only one source of potential fissile material on Libyan soil, and that’s that nine-hundred-megawatt light-water reactor the French have just set up for him.”
    The director of intelligence’s words struck a responsive note around the room. Pressed by the staggering deficits left in France’s balance of payments by the oil price rises of 1979, President Giscard d’Estaing had finally agreed to sell Libya a nuclear reactor, ostensibly to be employed to desalinize water.
    Bennington leaned toward the President. “The reactor, as you know, is under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. They have inspectors down there regularly from Vienna. We’ve seen their reports and we see no evidence the Libyans have diverted fuel from the reactor.”
    A loud honking noise seemed to explode in the room. It was the Secretary of Energy blowing his nose. Delbert Crandell had a face that was stained the