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  Voice of the Libyan People By Nick Grace C., February 11, 1998.  
The Voice of the Libyan People had a four year career with broadcasts against Muammar Qadhafi and Libya between 1984 and 1988.  It was proclaimed as the voice for the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL), a group consisting of exiled opponents of Qadhafi's regime headed by Aly Abuzaakouk that was founded in 1981.  This group, according to Perry Shultz,, established ties with the CIA which saw the organization as the most potent opposition against Tripoli (Perry, p.165).
 
The station began broadcasting from the Sudan in March 1984 as a psychological warfare tool, just two months before the NFSL attempted a coup.  The coup was crushed and an estimated 75 exiles were killed by the Libyan government, resulting in strained relations between Libya and the Sudan.  As tensions heightened, Qadhafi supported a successful revolution in the Sudan and the US-friendly government was overthrown in 1985.  The Voice of the Libyan People was immediately taken off the air by the new Sudanese leadership in April of that year (Soley, p.134).
 
The CIA planned another covert action, called Flower / Rose, which consisted of an armed NFSL rebellion based in Egypt, Algeria and Chad in 1986 while the US military failed to knock out Qadhafi with its airstrikes, and the Voice of the Libyan People resumed its transmissions.  By late 1988, however, Secretary of State George Schultz stopped the plans and CIA funding for the NFSL was effectively yanked.  As a result, the station was no longer broadcast from Egypt and Chad and the station disappeared from the airwaves.
 
The Voice of the Libyan People was nearly a textbook case of Cold War covert broadcasting action.  It was a "gray" clandestine that was on to engage in psychological war and to prepare Libya for an invasion.  The loss of support from Sudan came as a setback for both the NFSL and the CIA, but separate contingencies were developed and the station continued its work.  But after the failure of multiple attempts for covert action, its own value collapsed and the station fell into oblivion.
 
An interesting endnote, the Voice of the Libyan People was reported to be broadcasting again in March 1994 via Turkish satellite transponders.  The use of a satellite to broadcast was done because "Qadhafi cannot jam this radio in any way."  According to reports, it used a 7.38 MHz audio subcarrier of the Turkish commercial HBB TV transponder on the Eutelsat-II-F2 satellite with 11617 MHz vertical polarization.  Renown clandestine radio expert George Zeller correctly notes that "It seems obvious that this is a USA-financed operation. I do not think that the grassroots Libyan opposition has the cash to finance a satellite feed for their clandestine programming" (Zeller, p.19).
 
The NFSL maintains a webpage that is mostly in Arabic but is interesting nonetheless: http://www.nfsl-libya.com/, and their newspaper "Al Inqad."
 
Should the Voice of the Libyan People return to shortwave, listeners may try Al Inqad's address in the US: 4444 Cane Run Road, Suite 118, Louisville,  KY  40210, USA.
 
Perry, Mark.  Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA.  William Morrow & Company.  New York: 1992.
Soley, Lawrence C. and John S. Nichols.  Clandestine Radio Broadcasting.  Praeger.  New York: 1987.
Zeller, George.  "Clandestine Profile."  The ACE, May 1994.
    QSL courtesy of Nick Grace C.