Some in U.S. intelligence, however, were never convinced that the Libyans limited their chemical weapons production to mustard gas.

“I don’t know of anyone at the (Central Intelligence) Agency who was fully comfortable with the Libyans telling us everything we wanted to know,” said a former senior intelligence official. “The going assumption was they were lying whenever possible, and we were rarely proven wrong.”

Moreover, he said, U.S. intelligence believed that the Libyans had not been completely truthful on the quantity as well as the quality of the weapons. “We believed they were saving something for a rainy day.”