A car bomb explodes in Beirut, killing at least eighty bystanders and injuring one hundred and seventy-five on October 5, 1985.
The bomb explodes between nine and forty-five meters from the house of Islamic cleric Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, in a failed assassination attempt allegedly organized by "rogue elements" of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
The Beirut car bombing occurs "within the continuously evolving framework of an American 'preemption' counterterror program". (Chasdi, Richard J. "An Analysis of Counterterror Practice Failure: The Case of the Fadlallah Assassination Attempt" Archived 21 September 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Project on National Security Reform. Accessed July 8 2020.)
The U.S. military had considered a range of retaliatory options following the 1983 United States embassy bombing and the 1984 U.S. embassy annex bombing, but it was unclear that these would have any deterrent value.
On November 14, 1983, U.S.President Ronald Reagan authorized a retaliatory strike, but Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger did not authorize U.S. aircraft to take off for reasons that have not been disclosed.
CIA director William J. Casey, along with CIA General Counsel Stanley Sporkin, favor the use of preemptive counter-terrorism practices in Lebanon; others, including Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John N. McMahon, do not approve of the strategy, concerned that it would violate Executive Order 12333.
The U.S. National Security Advisor, Robert McFarlane, will state that those responsible for the bomb may have had American training, but will assert that they were "rogue operative[s]," and the CIA in no way sanctioned or supported the attack.
Author Bob Woodward's own account of his conversation with Casey suggests that Casey's action was "off the books". ("Target America: Interview: Bob Woodward". PBS. September 2001. Archived from the original on November 26, 2012. Retrieved July 8, 2020.)
A former CIA operative maintains that the failed 1985 attempt tarnished the CIA's reputation. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/qassem-suleimani-and-how-nations-decide-to-kill).
