Political debris continues to fall from the bombing of the Pan-Am flight 103 on 21 December 1988, which killed 270 people. Fallout from Lockerbie has begun to reveal one of the ugliest political corruptions of recent times. This Byzantine tale is further evidence of just how powerful and ruthless the American-led international security apparatus — the ‘octopus’ — has become.
From the start there have been many awkward and unanswered questions about the Lockerbie affair. Why were the widely-signalled warnings of the possibility of a bomb being placed on a Pan-Am flight from Frankfurt ignored? Why was there an immediate and aggressive intelligence operation at Lockerbie after the crash? When the CIA’s presence was reported on Radio Forth by David Johnson (author of Lockerbie: the Real Story), why was he threatened with legal sanctions unless he revealed his sources? Why was the first body count and tagging process, conducted largely by Dr David Fieldhouse, set aside and then repeated? Who removed, and why, the suitcase, which a local farmer says was full of heroin, and had a name-tag which did not correspond with any names on the passenger list?
Bush tells Thatcher to cool it
Even more significantly, why did George Bush ring Margaret Thatcher in mid-March 1989 to ask her to soft pedal on Lockerbie? This gem was discovered by the senior American journalist, Jack Anderson (Washington Post, 11 January 1990). Before the Prime Minister was able to brief her Secretary of State for Transport, ‘events’ took a hand and the ‘octopus’ had a bad day. The luckless Paul Channon, possibly on the very night of this transatlantic conversation, was telling five senior journalists over lunch at the Garrick Club that the Dumfries and Galloway Police had almost completed a successful investigation and that arrests were not long off.
This sensational news was not, however, for publication: Channon had leaked it only on strict ‘lobby’ terms. In a rare display of independence from this disgraceful practice, the Daily Mirror ran the story. This led to front page denials and accusations that Channon was a liar. He could not and did not sue and was sacked months later after the dust had settled.
The Jibril plot in Germany
Channon had been right to praise the work of the Scottish police team. They were confident that they knew both the names and motives of the bombers. The German authorities had informed them that members of a faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, had been discovered near Frankfurt. Two of them — Hafez Kassem Dalkomini and Marwan Khreesat — were arrested on 26 October, 1988, in a car containing a bomb set inside a black Toshiba cassette recorder. Very quickly a number of arrests were made, including that of Mohammad Abu Talb, another PFLP member. It became clear that this group had made five bombs, all designed to blow up planes, and that the other four had to be found. The Germans also discovered that the planned attack on an American plane was to be the half-expected ‘balanced revenge’ (from the Islamic code of Intekam) for the shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian civil airliner, killing all 290 Moslems aboard, in Islamic airspace earlier in the year.
A warning went out to European airports in early December, 1988, to watch out for bombs hidden in cassette recorders. The American embassy in Helsinki received a message on 5 December, 1988, that ‘within the next few weeks’ there would be an attack on a Pan-Flight from Frankfurt to New York. This was confirmed by the Israeli army who, three days later, found planning papers following a successful assault on a PFLP camp in Lebanon. Another warning, on 18 December, resulted in a mass cancellation of seats by US embassy staff planning to use Pan-Am to get home for Christmas.
By March 1989, the Lockerbie investigator had discovered that the bomb had indeed been concealed in a black Toshiba cassettte recorder, exactly like the bomb found near Frankfurt. The police in Scotland, with motive established and much evidence, were ready to move against the suspected PFLP-GC group. Hence the Channon briefing.
Mrs Thatcher replaced Channon with ultra-loyalist Cecil Parkinson, but he apparently did not ‘need to know’ the new White House line. He responded to the strong feelings of victims’ families by offering a full public inquiry, only to be rebuked by the PM who insisted on a non-judicial and restricted fatal accident inquiry.
More evidence of the likely guilt of this Syria-sponsored radical Palestinian group surfaced in May 1989. PFLP-GC members, including Talb, were arrested in Sweden leading to a raid on the aforementioned Talb’s flat in Germany, where a large quantity of clothing purchased in Malta was found.
The Maltese connection
The suitcase which carried the Lockerbie bomb was stuffed with clothes bought in Malta, and there was evidence that Talb had been in Malta a month before the bombing. A shopkeeper in Sliema remembered selling the clothes to a man who looked like a photograph of Talb. A British couple, Mr and Mrs Middleton, remembered that they had overheard in a cafe an Arab and a blonde woman — Talb had a blonde girlfriend — discussing the problem of getting a suitcase onto a plane. A Scottish police team in Malta found that Dalkomini, as well as Talb, had visited the island; that Talb owned a brown Samsonite suitcase of the type used for the bomb; and that Talb flew out of Malta on 26 November, 1988 — just three days after the purchase of the clothes. When flight printouts indicated an unaccompanied suitcase transferred to Pan-Am 103 from a flight from Malta, the finger was pointing at the Jibril gang.
When white plastic residue found at Lockerbie was traced back to alarm clocks bought by the PFLP-GC team in Malta, the game was surely up. It was a revenge bombing, probably funded by Iranians with Syrian compliance, executed by a Jibril team based in Germany, using a bomb made by Khreesat, planted by Talb with Dalkomini’s assistance. Both the Scottish police team and David Leppard, of the Sunday Times Insight team, came to this conclusion. Leppard, having worked closely with the police, told his readers in December 1989 that ‘charges are now possible against certain persons.’
Very oddly, just at the point when Leppard wrote that ‘the trail to Talb was so strong’ (17 December, 1989), the pursuit of these suspects appeared to stop in its tracks. Little was published on the case in early 1989 until the Daily Mirror leak from Channon. The expected charges were not made.
The Libyan connection
Putting Libya in the frame has been orchestrated from Langley by Vincent Canestraro, head of the CIA counter-terrorist section. In his book On The Trail of Terror: the inside story of the Lockerbie bombing, published in October 1991, David Leppard tells us this while completing one of the most amazing somersaults in investigative history. Let one example suffice: his own prime suspect throughout his Sunday Times series in 1989, Abu Talb, gets a first mention on page 174.
Turning his back on his excellent earlier work on this case — I am indebted to him for much of the story so far — Leppard decided to embrace the new Langley line. His book and subsequent activity by CIA personnel in Malta, Cyprus and Germany have sought to establish the guilt of Libyan agents and to unpick the case against Talb. After lengthy sessions with CIA personnel, the Maltese shopkeeper who had previously recognised a photograph of Talb — a 35 year-old Palestinian — apparently changed his mind and fingered a Libyan airline official in his fifties. This identification, along with allegations — later disproved — that a Swiss-made timing device for the Lockerbie bombing was supplied exclusively to the Libyan intelligence service, led to charges against two Libyans and sanctions against Libya.
Syria and the oil war in the Gulf
In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. James Baker’s feet didn’t touch the ground for weeks as he flew round the world making alliance deals — either provide men and armour or pay your oil dues: a mercenary force was in preparation. It was vital to bring on board a number of key Arab states to avoid the enterprise being characterized as anti-Arab or anti-Islamic. Crucial to the creation of the alliance was President Hafez al-Assad, the dictator of Damascus. Instead of supporting a fellow Arab state confronted by Western imperialism, Assad was persuaded to join the crusade to ‘restore democracy’ to Kuwait. Later, in November 1990, Bush met Assad and American sources claim that much of the meeting was devoted to Lockerbie and the suspected involvement of the Damascus-based Jibril.
Meanwhile the Lockerbie investigation had undergone an extraordinary redirection. The control centre of the inquiry was switched from Scotland to Langley. A commission of inquiry set up in the US reported in May 1990 without mentioning Jibril, Syria or Palestinians, and Bush famously declared that ‘the Syrians took a bum rap on this.’
The octopus surfaces
What is the explanation for this unbelievable piece of political camouflage? The only credible answer to date is supplied by Lester Coleman, who claims to have been an agent of the CIA and the lesser known Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) for eight years. In his Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie — Inside the DIA (Bloomsbury, 1993), written with Donald Goddard, Coleman claims that the US government is implicated in the Lockerbie bombing.
Coleman tells us that he was recruited as a Middle East-based agent with the CIA and DIA between 1982 and 1990, and used his journalist background as cover. He informs us that the DIA, the joint intelligence service of the US Army, Navy and Air Force, has 57,000 employees and a budget five times that of the CIA. It appears that one of its main roles is to monitor the clandestine activity of other US government agencies.
Coleman’s DIA job was to spy on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which operated out of a base in Cyprus. Coleman alleges that the DEA is supervising, and the DIA is manipulating, the drugs and arms trafficking which is a part of the currency of power in the Syrian-dominated part of Lebanon, as well as Syria itself. He tells us that the purpose was to attain some influence over hostage trading and, more significantly, to influence the politics of Syria, regarded as a key Middle East state.
Destination Detroit
In particular, Coleman claims that the US allowed a series of DEA/CIA ‘approved’ heroin operations from Lebanon to Detroit, via both Frankfurt and London. Coleman’s job in Nicosia led him to develop contacts with both drug dealers and smugglers who plied their trade mainly through Frankfurt airport. He found out that the security of this operation had been breached, and passed this warning on to the US embassy. He discovered that certain Turkish baggage handlers — usually for money but also for political or religious aims — occasionally switched bags in place of checked-in luggage bound for the US.
Coleman believes that a member of the Jafaar clan, which has been shipping hash and heroin to the US for nearly 50 years, was probably the unwitting accomplice of the PFLP-GC. The Jafaar clan is one of the Lebanese clans of the Bekaa valley which have, in recent times, become deeply resentful of the Syrian heroin cartel which controlled the flow of drugs along the ‘pipeline’ from this area to Detroit, via Frankfurt and London. Rifaat Assad, younger brother of Syria’s dictator, and his associate, Monzer al-Kassar, an arms dealer and armourer-in-chief of the extremist Palestinian groups, including the PFLP-GC, were the overlords of this business, with the Syrian army turning a blind eye. Or so alleges Coleman.
Nazzie the mule
Coleman also believes that Khalid Nazir Jafar, a 21 year-old Lebanese-American, whose father is a businessman in Detroit, acted as a courier for the CIA/DEA on a number of occasions, including the fateful day. His view is now supported by Major Khali Tunayb, a former chief of intelligence of the PFLP-GC, who confirmed this (in an interview in Playboy, November 1992), and added that Jafar had been affiliated with Muslim fundamentalists in Lebanon and Detroit, who knew of his US secret state links.
While al-Khassar and Rifaat Assat would not wish to see their drug pipeline through Frankfurt compromised by a terrorist attack, they also knew that they could not refuse to co-operate without seeming to lack zeal in the cause of Islam, thereby greatly displeasing the powerful Hezbollah and its allies in Lebanon. Coleman tells us that both of these men are regarded by the CIA as ‘assets’, and are potentially major players in Middle East politics.
Indeed, it is not impossible that the CIA is trying to engineer the choice of Rifaat Assad as the replacement for the ailing Syrian leader. It could be significant that Rifaat has been forgiven for his attempt to seize power in 1984, which led to his exile in Europe for eight years. He returned to Damascus in 1992, and his chance of becoming the new Syrian dictator has been dramatically enhanced by the timely death of the President’s eldest son, Basil Assad, on 21 January, 1994.
Coleman’s testimony hangs crucially on why he decided to become a whistle-blower. He left Cyprus in 1988, and was not employed again by the ‘octopus’ until 1990. When the call came again, he was told that he would need a passport with a false name, but not told where he was to be sent. At first he was prepared to believe that there had been some stupid mistake, but when his DIA seniors and almost all of his professional contacts seemed to be constantly unavailable, he started to worry. After one rare contact, he realised that the ‘octopus’ was about to strike. Sheila Hershow had worked as a chief investigator for the House of Representatives Sub-committee on its hearings into Lockerbie. After tenaciously pressing the airport authorities at Frankfurt and Heathrow with awkward questions, she was fired. When Hershow asked Coleman if he recognized a photo of a young man who had died in the crash — it was DEA courier Khalid Nazir Jafaar — he realised that he knew too much for his own good. When he was told that his CIADIA documents were ‘classified’ and could not be used in his court case, he felt the tentacles being tightened around him.
After signing a long statement which he thought would assist Pan-Am in it legal action, he fled the country. Feeling that his personal safety could depend on urgently getting his story into the public domain, he wrote his book from various hideaways in Sweden. His fears deepened when he learned of the death of Danny Casolaro in August 1991. An American freelance journalist working on a complex story about the ‘octopus’, linking the BCCI scandal, the Iran-contra affair, and much else, Casolaro had tracked Coleman down and persuaded him to name his DIA contact. Nine days later Casolaro was found dead in a West Virginia hotel bathroom, his briefcase missing.
The Maltese Double Cross
What of the future for Coleman? He plans a second book and would like to see a film which would challenge the official version of the events behind Lockerbie. Such a film has been in production for the last eight months under the direction of Allan Frankovich, an American journalist. Due for completion in May 1994, provisionally titled the Maltese Double Cross, the film was inexplicably pulled by Channel 4 this April. Frankovich, who recently directed an excellent TV series on the Italian and Belgian ends of the Gladio story, says that he was warned by sources inside the CIA that five agents had been sent to London and Cyprus to sabotage his film. (Guardian, 23 April, 1994)
There are enduring doubts about the second Lockerbie explanation. Some senior Conservatives, such as Sir Teddy Taylor, are convinced that Libya has been framed. (Observer, 16 January, 1994) Another, Lady Thatcher, rejoices in her memoirs at the failure of Libya to mount a terrorist attack in revenge for the bombing of Tripoli. While she appears to be implicitly absolving Colonel Gaddafy’s regime of any responsibility for Lockerbie, we need to recall that marbles have been sighted under her chair for some years.