NYT casts doubt on Gaddafi regime portrayal of NATO airstrike

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There was, too, the fact that the three huge water-filled bomb craters shown to the reporters, and other features close by, appeared to point to the real target of the bombings as being a vast network of underground bunkers running for a half a mile or more beneath the compound — a network that is believed to have been well known, for years, to Western intelligence agencies tracking the largely clandestine life of Colonel Qaddafi.


The other features that pointed to an attack on the compound’s subterranean tunnels and bunkers included bomb fragments strewn around the craters that indicated that they came from bunker-busting, 2,000-pound bombs that were used by American aircraft in the attack on Baghdad in 2003, according to a Western security adviser accompanying one of the television crews who said he was familiar with the bombs.


Also, smaller craters at the bomb sites were tangled with what appeared to be the punctured wreckage of massive concrete and steel structures reaching deep underground, and at least one large aboveground ventilation shaft. Close to the children’s playground, there was a concrete stairway descending to a steel door, flanked by green-painted steel railings.


An official determination to disguise the stairway’s presence was betrayed by what appeared to have be a carefully marshaled gathering of a crowd of protesters around the stairway, and a frenzied push forward by the protesters whenever a reporter or a camera crew approached to get a closer view.

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Libya Offers Controlled Tour of NATO Bombing Sites in Tripoli
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/world/africa/13tripoli.html