Liberal Talk Radio

If it’s common knowledge that at one point Lybia was targeting U.S. diplomats, then this tidbit from the Times’ profile of departing hawk Robert Joseph seems pretty juicy:

Inside the White House, he drafted a new policy for aggressively pursuing trade in unconventional weapons, one that goes far beyond export controls. It became the “Proliferation Security Initiative,” a plan now supported by both Democrats and Republicans that creates a web of countries that use their national laws to cooperate in intercepting shipments.

When the new effort hit early pay dirt in the fall of 2003, intercepting a cargo ship bound for Libya with nuclear centrifuges built by Abdul Qadeer Khan’s nuclear smuggling network, it led to Mr. Joseph’s biggest success: working with American and British intelligence officials to persuade Libya to give up its nuclear program, which helped break up Mr. Khan’s network.

He had a personal stake in the Libya negotiations: In 1988, Mr. Joseph had nearly taken Pan Am Flight 103, which Libyan terrorists blew up, and in his dealings with the Libyans he said he periodically saw the faces of the passengers whom he watched waiting to board that plane in London. [Emph. added]

Assuming this isn’t some kind of literary device, do we mean to take from this that he was literally getting ready to board the plane when for some reason he couldn’t? That’s like something out of the best suspense movie ever . . .