The Third Option   ::   Flynn Vince

Hagenmiller and his companies had first landed on the CIA's radar screen back in the early nineties. At the time, Kennedy was working on a project known as the Rabta II operation. Rabta II was a worldwide effort by the agency to prevent Muanmar al-Qaddafi from building a facility capable of producing biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. The operation received its name from the original weapons facility that Qaddafi was building in the late eighties. The plant was located in the town of Rabta in northern Libya. In 1990, just before it was to start production, President Bush threatened to use air strikes and publicly identified the European companies that had helped build the factory. One of those companies was Hagenmiller Engineering.

Rather than see his dream bombed to the ground, Qaddafi closed the plant and began searching for a new place to set up shop. In early 1992, the CIA discovered the site of his new weapons plant. The Libyan dictator was trying to build the plant deep inside a mountain. Once the facility was complete, it would be impregnable to every- thing except a direct strike by a nuclear warhead.

In an effort to stall the completion of the facility, the CIA launched Rabta II. They identified all equipment, technology, and personnel that would be crucial to the construction of the facility. With the help of its allies, the United States placed an embargo on all the items on the list. But as with all embargoes, Qaddafi and his people found ways around it. Since the inception of the operation, Hagenmiller Engineering and its subsidiaries had popped up several times. Each time they claimed they had no idea whom they were selling their goods to and walked away without even a token fine from the German government. Heinrich Hagenmiller was well connected. With Qaddafi fading from the international scene and seeming to mellow with age, the United States did not press the issue with the German government.

Kennedy flipped through the dossier, looking at a series of photos and the translated conversations that Hagenmiller had had with his newfound business associates. It was this new relationship that most concerned the CIA. Hagenmiller Engineering was, among many things, a manufacturer of high-tech lathes and other engineering components crucial to the building of a nuclear bomb.

On the next page were photos of the count's various homes. A brownstone in one of Hamburg 's oldest neighborhoods, the family's estate an hour to the south, and a mountain retreat in Switzerland. Hagenmiller's family had rich royal roots and a lot of debt.