by William Blum.The newspapers were filled with pictures of happy
relatives of the victims of the December 21, 1988 bombing of
PanAm 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland. A Libyan,
Abdelbaset Ali
Mohmed al Megrahi,had been found guilty of the crime the day before, January 31,2001, by a Scottish court in the Hague, though his co-defendant,Al
Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted. At long last there was going to be some kind of closure for the families.
But what was wrong with this picture?
What was wrong was that the evidence against
Megrahi was thin to the point of transparency. Coming the month after the(s)election of George W. Bush, the Hague verdict could have
been dubbed Supreme Court II, another instance of non-judicial
factors fatally clouding judicial reasoning. The three Scottish
judges could not have relished returning to the United Kingdom
after finding both defendants innocent of the murder of 270 people,largely from the U.K. and the United States. Not to mention having to face dozens of hysterical victims' family members
in the courtroom. The three judges also well knew the
fervent desires of the White House and Downing Street as to the outcome. If both men had been acquitted, the United States and
Great Britain would have had to answer for a decade of sanctions
and ill will directed toward Libya.
One has to read the entire 26,000-word "Opinion of
the Court", as well as being very familiar with the history of
the case going back to 1988, to appreciate how questionable was
the judges' verdict.
The key charge against
Megrahi -- the sine qua non --
was that he placed explosives in a suitcase and tagged it so it
would lead the following charmed life: 1)loaded aboard an 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?
This scenario by itself would have been a major feat and
so unlikely to succeed that any terrorist with any common
sense would have found a better way. But aside from anything else,
we have this -- as to the first step, loading the suitcase at Malta:there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints,nothing to tie
Megrahi to the particular brown
Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence
of any kind linking him or
Fhimah to such an act.
And the court admitted it: "The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta] is a major difficulty for the Crown case."{1}
Moreover, under security requirements in 1988, unaccompanied baggage was subjected to special X-ray examinations, plus --because of recent arrests in Germany -- the security personnel
in Frankfurt were on the lookout specifically for a bomb secreted
in a radio, which turned out to indeed be the method used with
the PanAm 103 bomb.
Requiring some sort of direct and credible testimony
linking Megrahi to the bombing, the Hague court placed great -- nay,paramount -- weight upon the supposed identification of
the Libyan by a shopkeeper in Malta, as the purchaser of the
clothing found in the bomb suitcase. But this shopkeeper had
earlier identified several other people as the culprit, including one
who was a CIA agent.{1a} When he finally identified
Megrahi from
a photo, it was after
Megrahi's photo had been in the world
news for years. The court acknowledged the possible danger
inherentin such a verification: "These identifications were
criticised inter alia on the ground that photographs of the accused
have featured many times over the years in the media and
accordingly purported identifications more than 10 years after the event
are of little if any value."{2}
There were also major discrepancies between the
shopkeeper's original description of the clothes-buyer and
Megrahi's actual appearance. The shopkeeper told police that the customer was"six feet or more in height" and "was about 50 years of age."
Megrahi was 5'8" tall and was 36 in 1988. The judges
again acknowledged the weakness of their argument by conceding that
the initial description "would not in a number of respects fit
the first accused [
Megrahi]" and that "it has to be accepted
that there was a substantial discrepancy."{3}
Nevertheless, the judges went ahead and accepted the identification as accurate. Before the indictment of the two Libyans in Washington in November 1991, the press had reported police findings that the clothing had been purchased on November 23, 1988.{4}
But the indictment of
Megrahi states that he made the purchase on December 7. Can this be because the investigators were able to document
Megrahi being in Malta (where he worked for Libya Airlines) on that date but cannot do so for November 23?{5}
There is also this to be considered -- If the bomber
needed some clothing to wrap up an ultra-secret bomb in a suitcase,would he go to a clothing store in the city where he planned
to carry out his dastardly deed, where he knew he'd likely
be remembered as an obvious foreigner, and buy brand new,
easily traceable items? Would an intelligence officer -- which
Megrahiwas alleged to be -- do this? Or even a common boob?
Wouldn't it make more sense to use any old clothing, from anywhere? Furthermore, after the world was repeatedly 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."{6}
The "Opinion of the Court" placed considerable weight on
the suspicious behavior of
Megrahi prior to the fatal day,
making much of his comings and goings abroad, phone calls to
unknown parties for unknown reasons, the use of a pseudonym, etc.The three judges tried to squeeze as much mileage out of
these events as they could, as if they had no better case to make.But if
Megrahi was indeed a member of Libyan intelligence,
we must consider that intelligence agents have been known to act
in mysterious ways, for whatever assignment they're on. The court,however, had no idea what assignment, if any,
Megrahi was
working on.
There is much more that is known about the case that
makes the court verdict and written opinion questionable,
although credit must be given the court for its frankness about what
it was doing, even while it was doing it. "We are aware that
in relation to certain aspects of the case there are a number
of uncertainties and qualifications," the judges wrote. "We
arealso aware that there is a danger that by selecting parts of
the evidence which seem to fit together and ignoring parts
which might not fit, it is possible to read into a mass of
conflicting evidence a pattern or conclusion which is not really justified."{7}
It is remarkable, given all that the judges conceded
was questionable or uncertain in the trial -- not to mention all
that was questionable or uncertain that they didn't concede -- that
at the end of the day they could still declare to the world that"There is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with
any reasonable doubt as to the guilt of [
Megrahi]".{8}
The Guardian of London later wrote that two days before
the verdict, "senior Foreign Office officials briefed a group
of journalists in London. They painted a picture of a bright
new chapter in Britain's relations with Colonel
Gadafy's regime. They made it quite clear they assumed both the Libyans in
the dock would be acquitted. The Foreign Office officials were
not alone. Most independent observers believed it was impossible
for the court to find the prosecution had proved its case
against Megrahi beyond reasonable doubt."{9}
There is, moreover, an alternative scenario, laying
the blame on Palestinians, Iran and Syria, which is much
better documented and makes a lot more sense, logistically and otherwise. 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 buildup to
the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria
was needed.
Washington was anxious as well to achieve the release
of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran.
Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking became audible
in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly -- or so it seemed -- in October 1990, there was
aNew Official Version:
It was Libya -- the Arab state
least supportive of the U.S. build-up 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 Nov. 14, 1991. "This was a Libyan government operation from start to finish," declared the State Department spokesman.{10}
"The Syrians took a bum rap on this," said President
GeorgeH.W. Bush.{11}
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 1968breakaway from a component of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, 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 allegedly 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.{12}
In May, the State Department stated that the CIA was"confident" of the Iran-Syria-
PFLP-
GC account of events.{13}
On Sept. 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 1989, Scottish investigators announced that
theyhad "hard evidence" of the involvement of the
PFLP-
GC in the bombing.{14}
A National Security Agency 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.(15)
The intercept appears to have occurred in July 1988, shortly after the downing of the
Iranian plane. Israeli intelligence also intercepted a
communication between Mohtashemi and the Iranian embassy in Beirut "
indicating that Iran paid for the
Lockerbie bombing."{16}
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.{17}
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 "
MiddleEastern country" other than Libya.{18}
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.{19}
We must also ask why Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,writing in her 1993 memoirs about the US bombing of Libya in1986, 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."{20}
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,
Juval Aviv,
Interfor -- whose other clients included Fortune 500companies, the FBI, IRS and Secret Service{21} -- 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
PanAm 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 was Khalid
Jaafar, who, as noted above, had been named by the FBI a few months earlier
as the person who unwittingly carried the bomb aboard.
The
Interfor report spins a web much too lengthy and
complex to go into here. The short version is that the CIA in Germany discovered the airport drug operation 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
ofthe CIA and
BKA.
In January 1990,
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,the lack of interest in the polygraph results and the attempt at intimidation of Keefe was the strongest evidence of a cover-up
by the various government authorities who did not want
their permissive role in the baggage switching to be revealed.{22}
Critics claimed that the
Interfor report had been
inspired by PanAm'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 report was the principal reason
PanAm'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, adding "I don't know quite what to do because I think some of the material may be significant."{23}
On October 30, 1990, NBC-TV News reported that "
PanAm 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 the drugs he usually carried.
The NBC report quoted an airline source as saying:"Informants would put [suit]cases of heroin on the
PanAm flights apparently without the usual security checks, through
an arrangement between the DEA and German authorities."{24}
These revelations were enough to inspire a
congressional hearing, held in December, entitled, "Drug
Enforcement Administration's Alleged Connection to the
PanAm Flight 103Disaster".
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
agentswho 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
theagency 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 drug agency had said nothing of its sting operation to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism which had held hearings in the first months of 1990 in response to the 103 bombing.)
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.{25}
NBC News had reported on October 30 that the DEA had toldlaw enforcement officers in Detroit not to talk to the mediaabout Jaafar.
The hearing ended after but one day, even though Wise hadpromised a "full-scale" investigation and indicated during thehearing that there would be more to come. What was said in theclosed sessions remains closed.{26}
One of the DEA officials who testified, Stephen Greene, had himself had a reservation on flight 103, but he canceled because of one or more of the several international warnings that had preceded the fateful day. He has described standing on theHeathrow tarmac, watching the doomed plane take off.{27} 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.{28} Two days after the NBC report, however,the New York Times quoted a "federal official" saying that "no hard drugs were aboard the aircraft."
In 1994, American filmmaker Allan Francovich completed adocumentary, "The Maltese Double Cross", which presents Jaafar asan unwitting bomb carrier with ties to the DEA and the CIA. Showings of the film in Britain were canceled under threat of lawsuits, venues burglarized or attacked by arsonists. When Channel4 agreed to show the film, the Scottish Crown Office and the U.S.Embassy in London sent press packs to the media, labeling thefilm "blatant propaganda" and attacking some of the film'sinterviewees, including Juval Aviv the head of Interfor.{29} Aviv paid a price for his report and his outspokenness.
Over a period of time, his New York office suffered a series ofbreak-ins, the FBI visited his clients, his polygrapher washarassed, as mentioned above, and a contrived commercial fraudcharge was brought against him. Even though Aviv eventually wascleared in court, it was a long, expensive, and painfulordeal.{30}
Francovich also stated that he had learned that five CIAoperatives had been sent to London and Cyprus to discredit thefilm while it was being made, that his office phones were tapped,that staff cars were sabotaged, and that one of his researchersnarrowly escaped an attempt to force his vehicle into the path ofan oncoming truck.{31}
Government officials examining the Lockerbie bombing went sofar as to ask the FBI to investigate the film. The Bureau laterissued a highly derogatory opinion of it.{32}
The film's detractors made much of the fact that the filmwas initially funded jointly by a UK company (two-thirds) and aLibyan government investment arm (one-third). Francovich saidthat he was fully aware of this and had taken pains to negotiatea guarantee of independence from any interference.
On April 17, 1997, Allan Francovich suddenly died of a heartattack at age 56, upon arrival at Houston Airport.{33} His film has had virtually no showings in the United States.
The DEA sting operation and Interfor's baggage-handler hypothesisboth predicate the bomb suitcase being placed aboard the plane inFrankfurt without going through the normal security checks. Ineither case, it eliminates the need for the questionabletriple-unaccompanied baggage scenario. With either scenario theclothing could still have been purchased in Malta, but in anyevent we don't need the Libyans for that.
Mohammed Abu Talb fits that and perhaps other pieces of thepuzzle. The Palestinian had close ties to PFLP-GC cells inGermany which were making Toshiba radio-cassette bombs, similar,if not identical, to what was used to bring down 103. In October1988, two months before Lockerbie, the German police raided thesecells, finding several such bombs. In May 1989, Talb wasarrested in Sweden, where he lived, and was later convicted oftaking part in several bombings of the offices of Americanairline companies in Scandinavia. In his Swedish flat, policefound large quantities of clothing made in Malta.
Police investigation of Talb disclosed that during October1988 he had been to Cyprus and Malta, at least once in thecompany of Hafez Dalkamoni, the leader of the German PFLP-GC, whowas arrested in the raid. The men met with PFLP-GC members wholived in Malta. Talb was also in Malta on November 23, which wasoriginally reported as the date of the clothing purchase beforethe indictment of the Libyans, as mentioned earlier.
After his arrest, Talb told investigators that betweenOctober and December 1988 he had retrieved and passed to anotherperson a bomb that had been hidden in a building used by thePFLP-GC in Germany. Officials declined to identify the person towhom Talb said he had passed the bomb. A month later, however,he recanted his confession.
Talb was reported to possess a brown Samsonite suitcase andto have circled December 21 in a diary seized in his Swedish flat. After the raid upon his flat, his wife was heard to telephonePalestinian friends and say: "Get rid of the clothes."
In December 1989, Scottish police, in papers filed withSwedish legal officials, made Talb the only publicly identifiedsuspect "in the murder or participation in the murder of 270people"; the Palestinian subsequently became another of theseveral individuals to be identified by the Maltese shopkeeperfrom a photo as the clothing purchaser.{34} Since that time, theworld has scarcely heard of Abu Talb, who was sentenced to lifein 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 notoriousBekaa Valley -- are interviewed. In either halting English ortranslated Arabic, or paraphrased by the film's narrator, theydrop many bits of information, but which are difficult to puttogether into a coherent whole. Amongst the bits ... Khalid hadtold his parents that he'd met Talb in Sweden and had been givenMaltese clothing ... someone had given Khalid a tape recorder, orput one into his bag ... he was told to go to Germany to friendsof PFLP-GC leader Ahmed Jabril who would help him earn some money... he arrived in Germany with two kilos of heroin ... "He didn'tknow 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 atFrankfurt 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 ofheroin and bomb and was escorted through security by the properauthorities, or this was a day he was a courier for Manzeral-Kassar, and the baggage handlers did their usual switch. Or perhaps we'll never know for sure what happened.
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. He later reportedwhat one of them had said to him: "Your government and ourgovernment know exactly what happened at Lockerbie. But they are not going to tell you."{35}
Comments about the Hague Court verdict
"The judges nearly agreed with the defense. In their verdict, they tossed out much of the prosecution witnesses'evidence as false or questionable and said the prosecution had failed to prove crucial elements, including the route that thebomb suitcase took." -- New York Times analysis.{36} "It sure does look like they bent over backwards to find away to convict, and you have to assume the political context ofthe case influenced them." -- Michael Scharf, professor, NewEngland School of Law.{37}
"I thought this was a very, very weak circumstantial case. I am absolutely astounded, astonished. I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence." -- Robert Black, Scottish law professor who was the architect of the Hague trial.{38}
"A general pattern of the trial consisted in the fact thatvirtually all people presented by the prosecution as keywitnesses were proven to lack credibility to a very high extent,in certain cases even having openly lied to the court." "While the first accused was found 'guilty', the secondaccused was found 'not guilty'. ... This is totallyincomprehensible for any rational observer when one considersthat the indictment in its very essence was based on the jointaction of the two accused in Malta."
"As to the undersigned's knowledge, there is not a singlepiece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime. In such a context, the guilty verdict in regard to the firstaccused appears to be arbitrary, even irrational. ... This leadsthe undersigned to the suspicion that political considerationsmay have been overriding a strictly judicial evaluation of thecase ... Regrettably, through the conduct of the Court,disservice has been done to the important cause of internationalcriminal justice." -- Hans Koechler, appointed as an international observer of the Lockerbie Trial by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.{39}
So, let's hope that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi is really guilty. It would be a terrible shame if he spends the rest of his life in prison because back in 1990 Washington's hegemonicplans for the Middle East needed a convenient enemy, which just happened to be his country.
NOTES
1. "Opinion of the Court", Par. 39
1a. Mark Perry, Eclipse: The Last Days of the CIA (Wm. Morrow, New York, 1992), pp.342-7.
2. "Opinion of the Court", Par. 55
3. "Opinion of the Court", Par. 68
4. See, e.g., Sunday Times (London), Nov. 12, 1989, p.3.
5. For a detailed discussion of this issue see, "A Special Reportfrom Private Eye: Lockerbie the Flight from Justice", May/June2001, pp.20-22; Private Eye is a magazine published in London.
6. Sunday Times (London), December 17, 1989, p. 14. Malta is, infact, a major manufacturer of clothing sold throughout the world.
7. "Opinion of the Court", Par. 89
8. Ibid.
9. The Guardian (London), June 19, 2001
10. New York Times, Nov. 15, 1991
11. Los Angeles Times, Nov. 15, 1991
12. New York Times, April 13, 1989, p.9; David Johnston,Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103 (New York, 1989), pp.157,161-2.
13. Washington Post, May 11, 1989, p. 1
14. New York Times, December 16, 1989, p.3.
15. Department of the Air Force --
Air Intelligence Agencyintelligence summary report, March 4, 1991, released under a FOIA request made by lawyers for PanAm. Reports of the interceptappeared in the press long before the above document wasreleased; see, e.g., New York Times, Sept. 27, 1989, p.11;October 31, 1989, p.8; Sunday Times, October 29, 1989, p.4. Butit wasn't until Jan. 1995 that the exact text became widelypublicized and caused a storm in the UK, although ignored in theU.S.16. The Times (London), September 20, 1989, p.1
17. New York Times, November 21, 1991, p. 14. It should be bornein mind, however, that Israel may have been influenced because ofits hostility toward the PFLP-GC.
18. Reuters dispatch, datelined Tunis, Feb. 26, 1992
19. The Guardian, Feb. 24, 1995, p.7
20. Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York, 1993),pp.448-9.
21. National Law Journal, Sept. 25, 1995, p.A11, from papersfiled in a New York court case.
22. Barron's (New York), December 17, 1990, pp.19, 22. A copy ofthe Interfor Report is in the author's possession, but he hasbeen unable to locate a complete copy of it on the Internet.
23. Barron's, op. cit., p. 18.
24. The Times (London), November 1, 1990, p.3; Washington Times,October 31, 1990, p.3
25. Government Information, Justice, and Agriculture Subcommitteeof the Committee on Government Operations, House ofRepresentatives, December 18, 1990, passim.
26. Ibid,
27. The film, "The Maltese Double Cross" (see below).
28. Sunday Times (London), April 16, 1989 (traces); Johnston, op.cit., p.79 (substantial). "The Maltese Double Cross" filmmentions other reports of drugs found, by a Scottish policemanand a mountain rescue man.
29. Financial Times (London), May 12, 1995, p.8 and article byJohn Ashton, leading 103 investigator, in The Mail on Sunday(London), June 9, 1996.
30. Ashton, op. cit.; Wall Street Journal, December 18, 1995,p.1, and December 18, 1996, p.B2 31. The Guardian (London), April 23, 1994, p.5
32. Sunday Times (London), May 7, 1995.
33. Francovich's former wife told the author that he had not hadany symptoms of a heart problem before. However, the author also spoke to Dr. Cyril Wecht, of JFK "conspiracy" fame, who performedan autopsy on Francovich. Wecht stated that he found no reason to suspect foul play.
34. Re: Abu Talb, all 1989: New York Times, Oct. 31, p.1, Dec. 1,p.12, Dec. 24, p.1; Sunday Times (London), Nov. 12, p.3, December5; The Times (London), Dec. 21, p.5. Also The Associated Press,July 11, 2000
35. Cadman in "The Maltese Double Cross". Also see The Guardian,July 29, 1995, p.27
36. New York Times, Feb. 2, 2001
37. Ibid.
38. Electronic Telegraph UK News, February 4, 2001
39. All quotations are from Koechler's report of February 3,2001, easily found on the Internet
Written by William Blum
, author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions SinceWorld War II andRogue State: A Guide to the World's Only SuperpowerThis essay is a chapter in the book, Everything You Know Is Wrong,a sequel to the book You Are Being Lied To.
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/panam.htmLabels: 103, Al Kassar, Al Megrahi, CIA, Cyprus, DEA, Drug Operations, FBI, Francovitch, Intelligence, Iran, Jibril, Libya, Lockerbie, Maltese Double Cross, PFLP-GC, Talb, UK, US
Colonel Oliver North, who was deeply involved in selling arms to Iran to finance Contra mercenaries in Central America, contrary to official US government policy. He went on to play a nefarious role in the Middle East, and may have been partly responsible for setting up Terry Waite for abduction by Arab militants, which may explain Waite’s public expression of forgiveness to North at a televised meeting. 
