Common Enemies is the story of a group of Black Muslims, American Indians, and Chicano radicals that first found each other and then found their way to Libya during the mid-1980s. The Reagan White House had declared Libya a state sponsor of terror and banned travel there. Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi and his American contacts were defiant. Personalities like Louis Farrakhan, Ward Churchill, and Stokley Carmichael (a.k.a. Kwame Ture) traveled to Tripoli to meet a revolutionary and forge common cause with other militant and activist groups. Reagan and the media dubbed their trips “an international gathering of terrorists and other disaffected people.”

What actually happened in those meetings, and the pandemonium that ensued, landed some participants in prison and helped catapult tensions between the U.S. and Libya to an all-time high. As meetings grew in size, the bombings began – first of a discotech, then of Tripoli, and then a passenger plane over Scotland.

Common Enemies fills in some of the blanks on this history through the reminiscences of participants, unearthed private photograph collections, rare news coverage, court documents and audio recordings from the time.