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PanAm 103, The Charge Against Libya: Case Closed? Or Disinformation? |
PanAm Flight 103? ... Oh yeah, Christmas
time 1988, those two Libyans did it, but Gaddafy has refused to allow them
to be tried in an American or British court. He knows they'll be
found guilty and the whole world will condemn him.
He does indeed. But not necessarily
because the two men are guilty. The acquittal of the Los Angeles
police in the Rodney King beating was sufficient to disabuse the Libyan
leader of any
illusions about the workings of the American
justice system he may have entertained.
{1}
The verdict in the O.J. Simpson case may
well have reinforced that view, while "The Guildford Four", the "Birmingham
Six" and other infamous miscarriage-of-justice cases in Britain have reportedly
imparted to Gaddafy a similar lesson about the UK.
{2}
Now, with December 21 marking the
tenth anniversary of the tragedy that took 270 lives in Lockerbie, Scotland,
the United States, the UK, and Libya have agreed, at least in principle,
to try the two Libyan suspects in the Netherlands, before Scottish judges
and under Scottish law. In actuality, the evidence against the Libyans
-- Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Ehimah, who worked for
Libyan Arab Airlines at the Malta airport -- is thin to the point of transparency.
There is no forensic evidence to support the charge that they placed a
suitcase containing the fatal bomb in an Air Malta plane in Malta, tagging
it so it would eventually be
transferred to Flight 103 in London.
No witnesses, no fingerprints. Nothing to tie them to that particular
brown Samsonite suitcase. No past history of terrorism. Amongst the
reported pieces of evidence casting suspicion on the two Libyans or on
the Libyan government is an entry on
December 15, 1988 in a diary kept by Fhimah,
which, according to the U.S. indictment, says: "Abdel Basset is coming
from Zurich with Salvu ... take taggs from Air Malta." It's all in
Arabic
except for the misspelled "taggs".
"Salvu" is not explained.
{3}
However, the indictment further states
that "Air Malta ... was the handling agent for Libyan Arab Airlines" for
flights to and from Malta, "and as such utilized Air Malta luggage tags
on luggage destined for Libyan Arab Airline flights." It therefore
seems rather unsurprising that Fhimah might have had some normal business
reason to be using such tags. More importantly, if he
were actually planning a murderous covert
operation using the tags, why would he commit any mention of them to paper?
And then leave the diary in his office where it could be taken.
Another piece of evidence presented by
US/UK investigators, out of which they derived much mileage, is that the
type of timing device used in the bomb was sold only to Libya. It
was
later revealed that, in fact, the investigators
were told in 1990 by the Swiss manufacturer that he had also sold the same
timers to East German intelligence, which had close contact with the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command (PFLP-GC) and numerous other "terrorist" groups.
{4}
The investigators' failure to disclose
this information can best be described by the word "coverup". And
in any event, there's no reason to assume that Libya could not have given
one of their timers to another party. Malta became a focus for investigators,
even before serious Libyan involvement was presumed, when tests indicated
that the suitcase which contained the bomb also contained several items
of clothing manufactured in Malta and supposedly sold in a particular clothing
shop on the island. The present US/UK version of events would have
the world believe that Megrahi has
been identified by the shopkeeper, Tony
Gauci, as the purchaser of the clothing. But there is no such evidence.
Megrahi has never been presented to Gauci in person, and there has been
no
report that Gauci has even been shown
his photo. Moreover, the Maltese shopkeeper has already made several
erroneous "positive" identifications, including one of a CIA asset.
{5}
Before the indictment of the two Libyans,
the press reported police findings that the clothing had been purchased
on November 23.
{6}
But the indictment of Megrahi states that
he made the purchase on December 7. Can this be because the investigators
can document Megrahi being in Malta on that date but cannot do so
for November 23? The identification of
Megrahi is even more questionable than the above indicates.
{7}
The fact that the investigative authorities
do not make clear exactly how Megrahi was identified by Gauci is indicative
of the weakness of their case. Furthermore, after the world was assured
that these items of clothing were sold only on Malta, it was learned that
at least one of the items was actually "sold at dozens of outlets throughout
Europe, and it was impossible to trace the purchaser."
{8}
Once Malta became a focus due to the clothing,
it appears that the next "logical" conclusion for the investigators was
that the suitcase containing the bomb and the Maltese clothing was put
together there; and thus the suitcase was somehow put aboard Air Malta
flight KM180 to Frankfurt without an accompanying passenger on the first
leg in its fateful journey. News reports presenting the latter as
a certainty have alternated with reports like the following: The Lockerbie
investigating team discovered [that] the list of luggage checked into the
hold against passengers' names on Air Malta KM180 to Frankfurt bore no
resemblance to what the passengers had checked in. The Air Malta
list was a shambles, one officer said."
{9}
Air Malta itself is on record as having
made an exhaustive study of this matter and has categorically denied that
there was any unaccompanied baggage on KM180 or that any of the passengers
transferred to the Frankfurt-to-London
flight.
{10}
And a report sent by the FBI from Germany
to Washington in October 1989 reveals profound doubt about this thesis.
The report concludes: "There remains the possibility that no luggage was
transferred from Air Malta 180 to Pan Am 103."
{11}
In January 1995, more than three years
after the indictment of the Libyans, the FBI was still of the same mind.
A confidential Bureau report stated: "There is no concrete indication that
any piece of luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 180, sent through the
luggage routing system at Frankfurt
airport, and then loaded on board Pan
Am 103." The report added that the baggage records are "misleading"
and that the bomb suitcase could have come from another flight or was simply
a
"rogue bag inserted into the system".
{12}
To accept the Malta scenario is to believe
that the suitcase itself led the following charmed life: 1)
loaded aboard the Air Malta flight to Frankfurt without an accompanying
passenger;
2) transferred in Frankfurt
to the PanAm 103A flight to London without an accompanying
passenger;
3) transferred in London
to the PanAm 103 flight to New York without an accompanying
passenger.
To the magic bullet of the JFK assassination,
can we now add the magic suitcase? Under international airline rules, bags
unaccompanied by passengers should not be allowed onto aircraft without
being searched or X-rayed. Actual practice is of course more lax,
but how could serious professional terrorists count on this laxness taking
place three times in a row for the same suitcase? Regular airline
passengers wouldn't make such an assumption. Moreover,
since the perpetrators in all likelihood
wanted to time the explosion to occur over the ocean, adding Malta as an
extra step could only add much more uncertainty. In any event, the Pan
Am X-ray operator at Frankfurt on December 21 testified in court that he
had been told look for a radio in such baggage, but found none.
{13}
A passenger could conceivably have accompanied
the suitcase on the first, and/or second leg, but this would carry with
it the sizeable risk of subsequent identification. We must also ask why
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, writing in her 1993 memoirs about the
US bombing of Libya in 1986, with which Britain had cooperated, stated:
"But the much vaunted Libyan counter-attack did not and could not take
place. Gaddafy had not been destroyed but he had been humbled.
There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding
years."
{14}
Finally, it should be pointed out that
even if the two Libyans were involved, there is no reason to assume that
they knew that the suitcase contained a bomb, and not drugs, or some other
contraband.
Alternative
theory
There is, moreover, an alternative scenario,
laying the blame on Iran and Syria, which is much better documented and
makes a lot more sense, logistically, politically, and technically.
Indeed, this was the Original Official Version, delivered with Olympian
rectitude by the U.S. government -- guaranteed, sworn to, scout's honor,
case closed -- until the Gulf War came along and the support of Iran and
Syria was needed, and Washington was anxious as well to achieve the release
of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. The
distinctive scurrying sound of backtracking then became audible in the
corridors of the White House. Suddenly -- or so it seemed
-- in October 1990, there was a New Official
Version: It was Libya -- the Arab state least supportive of the US buildup
to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq -- that was behind
the bombing after all, declared Washington. The two Libyans were
formally indicted in the U.S. and
Scotland on November 14, 1991. "This
was a Libyan government operation from start to finish," declared the State
Department spokesman.
{15}
"The Syrians took a bum rap on this,"
said President Bush.
{16}
Within the next 20 days, the remaining
four American hostages were released along with the most prominent British
hostage, Terry Waite.The Original Official Version accused the PFLP-GC,
a 1968
breakaway from a component of the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO), of making the bomb and somehow placing it
aboard the flight in Frankfurt. The PFLP-GC was led by Ahmed
Jabril, one of the world's leading terrorists,
and was headquartered in, financed by, and closely supported by, Syria.
The bombing was done at the behest of Iran as revenge for the U.S. shooting
down of an Iranian passenger plane over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988,
which claimed 290 lives.
The support for this scenario was, and
remains, impressive, as the following sample indicates:
In April 1989, the FBI -- in response
to criticism that it was bungling the investigation -- leaked to CBS the
news that it had tentatively identified the person who unwittingly carried
the bomb aboard. His name was Khalid Jaafar, a 21-year-old Lebanese-
American. The report said that the bomb had been planted in Jaafar's
suitcase by a member of the PFLP-GC, whose name was not
revealed.
{17}
In May, the State Department stated that
the CIA was "confident" of the Iran-Syria-PFLP-GC account of events.
{18}
On September 20, The Times of London reported
that "Security officials from Britain, the United States and West Germany
are totally satisfied' that it was the PFLP-GC" behind the crime.
In December, Scottish investigators announced
that they had "hard evidence" of the involvement of the PFLP-GC in the
bombing.
{19}
A National Security Agency (NSA) electronic
intercept disclosed that Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Iranian interior minister,
had paid Palestinian terrorists $10 million dollars to gain revenge for
the downed Iranian airplane.
{20}
Israeli intelligence also intercepted
a communication between Mohtashemi and the Iranian embassy in Beirut "indicating
that Iran paid for the Lockerbie bombing."
{21}
Even after the Libyans had been indicted,
Israeli officials declared that their intelligence analysts remained convinced
that the PFLP-GC bore primary responsibility for the bombing.
{22}
In 1992, Abu Sharif, a political adviser
to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, stated that the PLO had compiled a secret
report which concluded that the bombing of 103 was the work of a "Middle
Eastern country" other than Libya.
{23}
In February 1995, former Scottish Office
minister, Alan Stewart, wrote to the British Foreign Secretary and the
Lord advocate, questioning the reliability of evidence which had led to
the accusations against the two Libyans. This move, wrote The Guardian,
reflected the concern of the Scottish legal profession, reaching into the
Crown Office (Scotland's equivalent of the
Attorney General's Office), that the bombing
may not have been the work of Libya, but of Syrians, Palestinians and Iranians.
{24}
Key Question
A key question in the PFLP-GC version
has always been: How did the bomb get aboard the plane in Frankfurt, or
at some other point? One widely disseminated explanation was in a
report,
completed during the summer of 1989 and
leaked in the fall, which had been prepared by a New York investigating
firm called Interfor. Headed by a former Israeli intelligence agent,
Interfor -- whose other clients included
Fortune 500 companies,the FBI, IRS and Secret Service
{25}
-- was hired by the law firm representing
Pan Am's insurance carrier. The Interfor Report said that in the mid-1980s,
a drug and arms smuggling operation was set up in various European cities,
with Frankfurt airport as the site of one of the drug routes. The Frankfurt
operation was run by Manzer Al-Kassar, a Syrian, the same man from whom
Oliver North's shadowy network purchased
large quantities of arms for the contras.
At the airport, according to the report, a courier would board a flight
with checked luggage containing innocent items; after the luggage had
passed all security checks, one or another
accomplice Turkish baggage handler for Pan Am would substitute an identical
suitcase containing contraband; the passenger then picked up this suitcase
upon arrival at the destination. The only
courier named by Interfor is Khalid Jaafar,
although this may well have derived from
the many news reports already citing Jaafar as a prime suspect. The report
spins a web much too complex and lengthy to go into here. The short
version is that the CIA in Germany discovered the drug operation at the
airport and learned also that Kassar had the contacts to gain the release
of American hostages in Lebanon. He had already done the same for
French hostages. Thus it was, that the CIA and the German Bundeskriminalamt
(BKA, Federal Criminal Office) allowed the drug operation to continue in
hopes of effecting the release of
American hostages. According to the report,
this same smuggling ring and its method of switching suitcases at the Frankfurt
airport were used to smuggle the fatal bomb aboard flight 103, under the
eyes of the CIA and BKA. Because of several warnings, these same
officials had reason to suspect that a bomb might be aboard flight 103,
possibly in the drug suitcase. But the CIA, for
various reasons, including not wanting
to risk the hostage- release operation, told the BKA to do nothing. Interfor
gave three of the baggage handlers polygraphs and two of them were judged
as being deceitful when denying any involvement in baggage switching.
However, neither the U.S., UK
or German investigators showed any interest
in the results, or in questioning the baggage handlers. Instead,
the polygrapher, James Keefe, was hauled before a Washington grand jury,
and, as
he puts it, "they were bent on destroying
my credibility -- not theirs [the baggage handlers]." To Interfor,
this attempt at intimidation was the strongest evidence of a cover-up.
{26}
Critics claimed that the report had been
inspired by Pan Am's interest in proving that it was impossible for normal
airline security to have prevented the loading of the bomb, thus
removing the basis for accusing the airline
of negligence. The Interfor report was likely the principal reason Pan
Am's attorneys subpoenaed the FBI, CIA, DEA, State Department, National
Security Council, and NSA, as well as, reportedly, the Defense Intelligence
Agency and FAA, to turn over all documents relating to the crash of 103
or to a drug operation preceding the crash. The government moved
to quash the subpoenas on grounds of "national security", and refused to
turn over a single document in open court, although it gave some to a judge
to view privately.
The judge later commented that he was
"troubled about certain parts" of what he'd read, that he didn't "know
quite what to do because I think some of the material may be significant."{27}
Drugs Revelation
A year later, on October 30, 1990, NBC
News reported that "Pan Am flights from Frankfurt, including 103, had been
used a number of times by the DEA as part of its undercover operation to
fly informants and suitcases of heroin
into Detroit as part of a sting operation to catch dealers in Detroit."
The TV network reported that the DEA was looking into the possibility that
a young man who lived in Michigan and regularly visited the Middle East
may have unwittingly carried the bomb
aboard flight 103. His name was
Khalid Jaafar. "Unidentified law enforcement sources" were cited
as saying that Jaafar had been a DEA informant and was involved in a drug-sting
operation
based out of Cyprus. The DEA was
investigating whether the PFLP-GC had tricked Jaafar into carrying a suitcase
containing the bomb instead of [or in addition to?] the drugs he usually
carried. The report added that "Informants
would put [suit]cases of heroin on the Pan Am flights apparently without
the usual security checks ... through an arrangement between the DEA and
German authorities."
{28}
These revelations were enough to inspire
a congressional hearing, held in December, entitled, "Drug Enforcement
Administration's Alleged Connection to the Pan Am Flight 103
Disaster". The chairman of the committee,
Cong. Robert Wise (Dem., W. VA.), began the hearing by lamenting the fact
that the DEA and the Department of Justice had not made any of their field
agents who were most knowledgeable about flight 103 available to testify;
that they had not provided requested written information, including the
results of the DEA's investigation
into the air disaster; and that "the FBI
to this date has been totally uncooperative".
The two DEA officials who did testify
admitted that the agency had, in fact, run "controlled drug deliveries"
through Frankfurt airport with the cooperation of German authorities,
using U.S. airlines, but insisted that
no such operation had been conducted in December 1988.
The officials denied that the DEA had
had any "association with Mr. Jaafar in any way, shape, or form."
However, to questions concerning Jaafar's background, family, and his
frequent trips to Lebanon, they asked
to respond only in closed session. They made the same request in
response to several other questions. (NBC News had reported on October
30 that the DEA had told law enforcement officers in Detroit not to talk
to the media about Jaafar.)
The hearing ended after but one day, even
though Wise had promised a "full-scale" investigation and indicated during
the hearing that there would be more to come. What was said in the
closed sessions remains closed.
{29}
One of the DEA officials who testified,
Stephen Greene, had himself had a reservation on flight 103, but he canceled
because of the warnings. He has described standing on the Heathrow
tarmac, watching the doomed plane take
off.
(30}
There have been many reports of heroin
being found in the field around the crash, from "traces" to "a substantial
quantity" found in a suitcase.
{31}
Two days after the NBC report, however,
the New York Times quoted a "federal official" saying that "no hard drugs
were aboard the aircraft." The DEA of course knew of its sting operation
in Frankfurt
two years earlier when the tragedy occurred,
but they said nothing, not even to the President's Commission on Aviation
Security and Terrorism which held hearings in the first months of
1990 in response to the 103 bombing.
The Whistleblowers
Lester Coleman, author and radio talk-show
host, who spent several years with the Defense Intelligence Agency and
the DEA, beginning in the mid-1980s, has revealed that when he was working
with the DEA station in Cyprus, he met Khalid Jaafar several times, that
Jaafar was working for the DEA, and that the young man had run two or three
controlled deliveries of heroin into
Detroit.
{32}
Because Coleman did not keep what he knew
to himself, but repeated his story in an affidavit for Pan Am's action
against the U.S. government, and then co-authored a highly revealing
book, he was hounded for several years,
across continents, and severely punished by various institutions of that
same government, including being imprisoned on phony charges to damage
his credibility. His tale reads
like something out of Les Miserables with the U.S. government as Inspector
Javert. At one point, a federal judge warned Coleman: "If you attack the
government on the radio, I will take that very, very seriously."
{33}
Several other individuals who have raised
questions about a U.S. government role in the 103 disaster have also paid
a heavy price, including Juval Aviv, the head of Interfor. His office
suffered a series of break-ins; the FBI
visited his clients; his polygrapher was harassed, as mentioned; and a
contrived commercial fraud charge was brought against him. Even though
Aviv eventually was cleared in court,
it was a long, expensive, and painful ordeal.
{34}
There was also Allan Francovich, who made
a documentary film, "The Maltese Double Cross", which presents Jaafar as
an unwitting bomb carrier with ties to the DEA and the CIA.
Showings of the film in Britain were canceled
under threat of law suits, venues burglarized or attacked with arson.
When Channel 4 agreed to show the film, the Scottish Crown Office and the
U.S. Embassy in London sent press packs to the media, labeling the film
"blatant propaganda", and attacking some of the film's interviewees, including
Coleman and Aviv.
{35}
Additionally, Francovich said he had learned
that five CIA operatives had been sent to London and Cyprus to discredit
the film while it was being made; that his office phones were tapped, and
staff cars sabotaged; and that one of his researchers narrowly escaped
an attempt to force his vehicle into the path of an oncoming truck.
{36}
Lockerbie investigators went so far as
to ask the FBI to investigate the film. The Bureau later issued a
highly derogatory opinion of it.
{37}
The film's detractors made much of the
fact that the film was initially funded jointly by a UK company (two-thirds)
and a Libyan government investment arm (one-third). Francovich said
that he was fully aware of this and had taken pains to negotiate a guarantee
of independence from any interference.
On April 17, 1997, Allan Francovich suddenly
died of a heart attack at age 56, upon arrival at Houston Airport.
{38} His film has had virtually
no showings in the United States.
Abu Talb
The DEA sting operation and Interfor's
baggage-handler hypothesis both predicate the bomb suitcase being placed
aboard the plane without going through the normal security checks.
In
either case, it eliminates the need for
the questionable triple-unaccompanied baggage scenario. They don't
eliminate the clothing purchased in Malta, but we don't need the Libyans
for
that. Mohammed Abu Talb fits that
and perhaps other pieces of the puzzle. The Palestinian had close
ties to PFLP-GC cells in Germany which were making Toshiba radio-cassette
bombs, similar, if not identical, to what was used to bring down 103.
In October 1988, two months before Lockerbie, the German police staged
several raids against these cells, uncovering all but one of
their known five bombs. In May 1989,
Talb was arrested in Sweden, where he lived, and was later convicted of
taking part in several bombings of the offices of American airline companies
in
Scandinavia. In his Swedish flat,
police found large quantities of clothing made in Malta.
Police investigation of Talb disclosed
that during October 1988 he had been to Cyprus and Malta, at least once
in the company of Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the German PFLP-GC, who
was arrested in the raid. The men
met with PFLP-GC members who lived in Malta. Talb was also in Malta
on November 23, which was originally reported as the date of the clothing
purchase before
the indictment of the Libyans, as mentioned
earlier. After his arrest, Talb told investigators that between October
and December 1988 he had retrieved and passed to another person a bomb
that had been hidden in a building used by the PFLP-GC in Germany.
Officials declined to identify the person to whom Talb said he had passed
the bomb. A month later, however, he recanted his confession. Additionally,
Talb was reported to possess a brown Samsonite suitcase, and have circled
December 21 in a diary seized in his Swedish flat. After the raid
upon his flat, his wife was heard to telephone Palestinian friends and
say: "Get rid of the clothes." In December 1989, Scottish police, in papers
filed with Swedish legal officials, made Talb the only publicly identified
suspect "in the murder or participation in the murder of 270 people".
{39}
Since that time, the world has scarcely
heard of Abu Talb, who was sentenced to life in prison in Sweden, but never
charged with anything to do with Lockerbie. In Allan Francovich's film,
members of Khalid Jaafar's family -- which long had ties to the drug trade
in Lebanon's notorious Bekaa valley -- are interviewed. In either
halting English or translated Arabic, or paraphrased by the film's narrator,
they drop many bits of information, but which are difficult to put together
into a coherent whole. Amongst the bits ... Khalid had told his parents
that he'd met Talb in Sweden and had been given Maltese clothing ... someone
had given Khalid a tape recorder, or put one into his bag ... he was told
to go to Germany to friends of Ahmed Jabril who would help him earn some
money ... he arrived in Germany with two kilos of heroin ... "He didn't
know it was a bomb. They gave him the drugs to take to Germany.
He didn't know. Who wants to die?" ... It can not be stated with
certainty what happened at Frankfurt airport on that fateful day, if, as
seems most likely, that is the place where the bomb was placed into the
system. Either Jaafar, the DEA courier, arrived with his suitcase of heroin
and bomb and was escorted through security by the proper authorities, or
this was a day he was a courier for Manzer al-Kassar, and the baggage
handlers did their usual switch.
International Law
Contrary to what American officials and
the media have stated on numerous occasions, the 1992 U.N. resolutions
do not demand that Libya turn the two men over to the United States or
Scotland. No specific venue is mentioned.
{40}
In 1992, Gaddafy declared that if the
U.S. could demand that Megrahi and Fhimah be turned over for trial,
he could ask for the surrender of the American airmen who bombed two Libyan
cities,
killing 37 people, including his daughter.
The United States refuses to accede to the request of Costa Rica for the
extradition of John Hull, an American who was a major player in Iran-Contra,
and who is wanted in Costa Rica for drug trafficking and other crimes.
Similar requests from Cuba
over the years for the terrorists harbored
by the U.S. in Washington have also been ignored.It is surprising that
Gaddafy has agreed to subject the two Libyans to a Scottish judge and Scottish
law, without a jury. Even though it would take place in the Netherlands,
there's no reason to assume that the Scottish judges would be any less
biased than in Scotland. To return home after acquitting the men
could not be a pleasant thing to face.
At the same time, it's unlikely that any
U.S. or British official really believes that Libya played a significant
role, if any. And for that reason they probably do not actually want
to see the trial of the two men take place.
{41}
Not only would the paucity of their evidence
be exposed for all the world to see, but they might be obliged to reveal
information they'd rather not see the light of day, perhaps touching upon
the role played by one or more US agencies.
*****************
On February 16, 1990, a group of British
relatives of Lockerbie victims went to the American Embassy in London for
a meeting with members of the President's Commission on Aviation
Security and Terrorism. After the
meeting, Britisher Martin Cadman was chatting with two of the commission
members. One of them said to him: "Your government and our government
know
exactly what happened at Lockerbie.
But they are not going to tell you."
{42}
NOTES
1. The Times (London), May 11, 1992, p.11.
2. "God Bless America -- A Personal View", paper written by Dr. Jim Swire, spokesman for the bereaved UK families of Pan Am 103 victims, Oct. 20, 1995. Copy in author's possession. Swire met with Gaddafy in Libya.
3. Grand Jury indictment, US District Court for the District of Columbia, 1991.
4. Der Spiegel (Germany), April 18, 1994, pp.92-7; Sunday Times (London), December 19, 1993, p.2; The Times (London), December 20, 1993, p.11; Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1993.
5. Mark Perry, Eclipse: The Last Days of
the CIA (Wm. Morrow, New York, 1992), pp.342-7. See also Time, April
27, 1992, p. 27 for another example of the unreliability of the shopkeeper's
identification.
6. See, e.g., Sunday Times, Nov. 12, 1989, p. 3.
7. See The Independent (London), Jan. 24, 1995, p.3 for more on this matter.
8. Sunday Times, December 17, 1989, p. 14. Malta is, in fact, a major manufacturer of clothing sold throughout the world.
9. The Independent, October 30, 1989, p.2.
10. The Guardian (London) July 29, 1995, p.26.
11. Time, April 27, 1992, p. 28
12. The Independent, Jan. 30, 1995, p.
3. The newspaper said it was a five-page official briefing paper
that had been leaked to it. It is possible that this is the same
1989 report referred to
in note 11. Time magazine also said
it was a five-page document.
13. Donald Goddard with Lester Coleman,
Trail of the Octopus: Behind the Lockerbie Disaster (London: Penguin Books,
1994),
p.420
14. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York, 1993), pp.448-9.
15. New York Times, November 15, 1991, p.1
16. Los Angeles Times, November 15, 1991, p.25
17. New York Times, April 13, 1989, p.9;
David Johnston, Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103 (New York, 1989),
pp.157, 161-2. Johnston says investigators believed that the person
who
put the bomb into Jaafar's bag was Abdul
Dalkamoni, the brother of Hafez Dalkamoni, whom we shall meet later.
18. Washington Post, May 11, 1989, p. 1
19. New York Times, December 16, 1989, p. 3.
20. Department of the Air Force -- Air
Intelligence Agency intelligence summary report, March 4, 1991, released
under a FOIA request made by lawyers for Pan Am. The intercept appears
to
have taken place in July 1988, shortly
after the downing of the Iranian plane. Reports of the intercept
appeared in the press long before the above document was released; see,
e.g., New York
Times, Sept. 27, 1989, p.11; October 31,
1989, p.8; Sunday Times, October 29, 1989, p.4. But it wasn't until
Jan. 1995 that the exact text became widely publicized and caused a storm
in the UK,
although ignored in the U.S.
21. The Times, September 20, 1989, p. 1
22. New York Times, November 21, 1991, p. 14. It should be borne in mind, however, that Israel may have been influenced because of its hostility toward the PFLP-GC.
23. Reuters dispatch, datelined Tunis, Feb. 26, 1992
24. The Guardian, Feb. 24, 1995, p. 7
25. National Law Journal, Sept. 25, 1995, p.A11, from papers filed in a New York court case.
26. Barron's (New York), December 17, 1990, pp.20, 22
27. Barron's, p. 18.
28. Goddard/Coleman, p.205; Washington Times, October 31, 1990, p. 3; The Times, November 1, 1990, p.3
29. Government Information, Justice, and Agriculture Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, House of Representatives, December 18, 1990, passim.
30. The film, "The Maltese Double Cross" (see below).
31. Sunday Times, April 16, 1989
(traces); Johnston, p.79 (substantial). "The Maltese Double Cross"
mentions other reports of drugs found, by a Scottish policeman and a mountain
rescue
man.
32. Goddard/Coleman, pp.40-3.
33. Goddard/Coleman, passim, and conversations
with Coleman by the author in 1998. Coleman was eventually compelled
to plead guilty to a contrived perjury charge in order to be released from
detention while seriously ill.
34. Article by John Ashton, The Mail on Sunday (London), June 9, 1996; Wall Street Journal, December 18, 1995, p.1, and December 18, 1996, p.B2
35. Ashton article and Financial Times (London), May 12, 1995, p.8
36. The Guardian, April 23, 1994, p.5
37. Sunday Times, May 7, 1995.
38. Francovich's former wife told
the author that he had not had any symptoms of a heart problem before.
However, the author also spoke to Dr. Cyril Wecht, of JFK "conspiracy"
fame, who performed an autopsy on Francovich. Wecht stated that he
found no reason
to suspect foul play.
39. Re Abu Talb, all 1989: New York Times, Oct. 31, Dec. 1, Dec. 24; Sunday Times, Nov. 12; The Times, Dec. 21; and The Times, Feb. 9, 1990
40. UN Resolution 731, Jan. 21, 1992 and Resolution 748, Mar. 31, 1992
41. See The Guardian, June 8, 1995, p.1, "Clinton ends fight to try Lockerbie suspects"; and The Times, Sept. 20, 1997, p.9, "Britain gives up fight over Lockerbie".
42. Cadman in "The Maltese Double Cross". Also see The Guardian, July 29, 1995, p.27
Written by William Blum, author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions