Like many Americans, Jill Swanson is watching Muammar Gaddafi’s regime massacre people with disgust. But she has something other Americans don’t: a letter from the Libyan dictator.

“I was the teacher who wrote to Moammar El-Gadhafi,” Swanson says.

Muammar Gaddafi (courtesy Jim Gordon via Wikimedia Commons)

The name is spelled differently from MinnPost’s style rules because that’s how it was typed at the end of Gaddafi’s 1986 reply, which was otherwise in Arabic.

The letter caused a journalistic stir for two reasons. Reporters were fascinated that a bunch of St. Paul second-graders had chosen to engage a hated terrorist who actually wrote back. Copy editors were relieved the kids had gotten the Libyan leader to transliterate his name for the first time.

If a contemporary recounting from Cecil Adams’ “The Straight Dope” is to be believed, “This was the first known indication of his own feelings on the subject, and the wire services and many newspapers promptly announced they would switch.”

If they did, it didn’t stick: a Google News search reveals no media outlet spells it that way — unless they include the spelling in stories about the “112 different ways to spell Gaddafi.” 

So that part of the tale proved ephemeral. But Swanson — then, as now, a second-grade teacher at Maxfield Magnet School — calls it “just the hugest learning experience for my students, and me as well.”

In the next breath, she adds, “It backfired on us.”

The story begins with a 1986 bombing of a German disco, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. The U.S. said it intercepted messages from Libya to its German agents; 10 days later, President Ronald Reagan ordered the country bombed. 

American planes hit Gaddafi’s home base in Tripoli and Benghazi, the “second city” that has broken free in the current crisis. Gaddafi obviously survived, but his 15-month-old daughter was killed. 

“The day after the U.S. bombed Libya, we discussed it, and one of the students said we should write a letter to President Reagan and Gaddafi,” Swanson recalls. “We were following current events and writing letters. I really believe in writing letters.” 

She says, “One of the most meaningful letters began, ‘Dear President Reagan, I want to know if we’re the good guys or the bad guys. Why didn’t we talk?'” 

Students also put Gaddafi on the spot, according to this 1986 Associated Press story:

Jimmy Xiong had written: "Dear Col. Kadafi, I am so sorry that your little daughter died and can I ask you a favor? Could you stop bombing us, OK? And we'll stop bombing you."

"Dear Col. Kadafi, Why are you bombing the U.S.A.? Can't you think of a better way to solve the problem? Well I can . . . Write letters!" wrote Daniel Barbosa.

Reagan didn’t reply, even though Swanson enlisted Minnesota U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger to get the letters to the White House. (To be fair, Swanson says the class had written to the President earlier that year, and received a response.)

Gaddafi’s reply arrived on “white paper trimmed in green and decorated with Libyan political slogans,” the AP story noted. Swanson had to get it translated; it began:

"Dear friend. We received your kind letter in which you condemned the American barbarian aggression against our country and our people. We appreciate your deeply feelings towards us." 

The letter referred to Reagan and Thatcher as “child murderers,” urged they be “toppled and tried” and memorialized the Libyan dead as "martyrs for the cause of Allah.”

Says Swanson, “The children understood Gaddafi’s letter was propaganda. He said 33 bombs hit his tent. The kids didn’t understand how 33 bombs could hit a tent and anyone survive. We had a great discussion about the difference between fact, opinion and propaganda, and how presidents might not always be what we want them to be.”

At least one newspaper editorial cautiously praised the class, but not everyone appreciated the even-handed intellectual inquiry. Beyond questioning an American president, the mere act of writing to a dictator – a terrorist linked to the death of American GIs – brought “a lot of negative mail” once national media picked up on the story, Swanson says.

“It was a front-page story in the newspaper, Newsweek and Time featured it, and we got good and bad feedback from people all over the world,” she notes.

While the harshest condemnations stung at first, “The kids were cool about it,” Swanson says. “One reporter asked a student if he knew where Libya was, and the student replied, ‘Yes, the same place it is now.’

“I think they learned a lot. They suggested something, we acted on it, and it got results.”

Now in their thirties, those students sometimes invite Swanson to weddings and graduations, “and when I stop in, I’ll sometimes hear, ‘Remember when we did this? It was a major thing for me and my family.’”

As for Gaddafi, Swanson says simply, “He’s the same tyrant he was 25 years ago, who has turned on his own people. It’s interesting, and frightening, and I believe my former students are keenly aware of it because of what happened then.”