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By RICK GLADSTONE JANUARY 14, 2016 Even by today’s standards, the Middle East in the 1970s was chaotic. Bombings, hijackings and assassinations were daily headlines. In the midst of the mayhem, one of the most revered clerics in the Shiite branch of Islam vanished while visiting Libya . Criminal inquiries, books and speculation have abounded over the fate of the cleric, Imam Moussa al-Sadr, the charismatic Iranian-born scion of a powerful religious family who had made his home in  Lebanon  for nearly two decades and had become an ardent advocate of its impoverished Shiites. He and two colleagues have not been seen since Aug. 31, 1978, when they were reportedly spotted at the airport in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. Many have blamed agents of Libya’s former leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi , though a motive remains unclear. Yet a coming book about the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran in 1979 has helped cast the disappearance in a...