The Edited Version
The Lockerbie Bombing:
PanAm Flight 103 Revisited
['Unfriendly Skies']
(The Iran Connection)
Introduction
At the time of the Lockerbie bombing I was a student.
I had deferred my studies to work in Germany and Holland.
I had no knowledge of the workings of intelligence agencies and certainly no knowledge of far away remote countries such as Libya.
I recall the bombing incident because I was due to travel to Ireland by Aer Lingus (Irish State Airways) that same week for the Christmas holiday.
The individual I am quoting from here is Robert Baer, a (then) retired CIA counterterrorism specialist who was regarded as an expert in his field.
He left the Agency because of his disillusionment with anti-terrorism and counterterrorism methods.
Why Re-Visit This Tragedy At This Time and Bring More Pain and Suffering To The Victims Relatives?
Because a great injustice was committed and two completely innocent individuals, as with many other political trials, were sentenced to prison terms which should never have been imposed.
No justice for any of the victims of Lockerbie has been seen to this very day.
Blood For Blood
Iran was the real culprit of the PanAm Lockerbie bombing and justice has never been done to the victims of this tragedy nor that of the earlier downing of the Iranian civilian airline over the Persian Gulf - which was the motive for this carnage – blood for blood.
Rewind To 1979
Iran
Tehran:The American Embassy Siege
4th November, 1979
Breach of International Diplomatic Protocol When Iranian Republican Guards and Students Storm The U.S. Embassy In Tehran Taking U.S. Diplomats Hostage.
Tensions Are High In The Aftermath of The U.S. Embassy Hostage Taking -With the Blessing of Ayatollah Khomeini, The Ruler of Iran.
This caused international outrage and Iran became a pariah state overnight.
April 24th, 1980 Operation Eagle Claw
[An attempted rescue mission of the 52 hostages by U.S. President Jimmy Carter resulted in even more tragedy as Special Forces rescue personnel are themselves killed when a remaining helicopter collided with Lockheed C130 Hercules transport plane at a designated landing and refuelling zone within Iran – this after having already lost other helicopters due to mechanical problems (clogging sand dust – flying as they were below radar - ground hugging) before reaching their destination,Tehran. The mission was aborted.]
U.S. Embassy Hostages eventually released after 444 days of captivity, thanks in part, to the good offices of Colonel Oliver North on behalf of President-elect Ronald Reagan
Fast Forward To July 3rd, 1988
The Persian Gulf
''On July 3, 1988, the U.S.S. Vincennes shot down with a surface-to air missile a civilian Iranian airliner killing 290 people. The airliner was on a scheduled flight, on a heavily traveled civil airway, climbing through 12,000 feet, when the missile was launched. The explosion created indescribable horror as the occupants fell over two miles to their deaths. Obviously, Iran was outraged. Iran’s Ayatollah was reported to have issued a fatwa, a Muslim proclamation that four U.S. airliners would be downed in retaliation. Iran then contracted with a terrorist group headed by Ahmed Jibril to bring about the downing of a U.S. commercial aircraft.
One Of Many CIA-DEA Drug Smuggling Operations
The CIA and DEA had an ongoing drug-smuggling operation with Lebanese and Syrian drug traffickers** using Pan Am aircraft out of Frankfurt that were departing for the United States. It was this drug smuggling operation that made possible the placement of the bomb on Pan Am Flight 103.
This is how the drug smuggling operation worked:
A courier would check his bags at Pan Am in Frankfurt, and the bags would pass inspection.
However, before the bags were placed on the aircraft, baggage handlers replaced one of the previously inspected bags with another bag containing approximately 200 pounds of heroin.
Jibril, paid to down a U.S. airliner, had no trouble using the CIA’s own illegal operation to make possible the downing of Pan Am Flight 103. The Jibril group bribed the baggage handlers to place an additional bag in the baggage compartment, which contained the bomb. Because of a flight delay, the bomb that was set to explode over the North Atlantic exploded over Lockerbie.
At first, the United States recognized Jibril as the main suspect. But then the United States needed Syria’s cooperation in attacking Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Since Syria was the home to one part of the CIADEA drug smuggling operation and also the terrorist group, Syria could not be exposed for harboring them. Further, exposing how the bomb was put on the aircraft risked exposing the CIA-DEA drug smuggling operation. Justice Department officials then fabricated evidence and blamed two Libyans for placing the bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103. This story was believed primarily by the American public who did not have access to foreign media reports. Articles in the European press identified the false U.S. charges. German police, for instance, who knew about the CIA-DEA drug pipeline, gave no credence to the Justice Department’s fabricated evidence and false charges. In shifting the blame for the Pan Am deaths to the Libyans, the United States government protected the terrorists who actually caused the tragedy. To make their argument sound legitimate, the United States ordered sanctions against Libya for refusing to turn over the two Libyans falsely charged by the United States with placing the bomb on Pan Am 103. European countries, recognizing the lack of credibility to the evidence and argument presented by the Justice Department, and knowing the facts, refused to go along with some of the sanctions demanded by the United States.
The British authorities were fully aware of these events and conspired to hide the truth from the world:
The Backstory To Lockerbie
[A CIA operation involving drugs for guns in the Middle East (Lebanon) barter arrangements and 'black budget' payoffs to assets went terribly wrong in Frankfurt, West Germany when the Agency was double-crossed by one of it's own assets.
Most books only reveal the drug-smuggling part of this operation.
The sideshow to this were the weapons being sent in the opposite direction (via Cyprus,Greece and Italy) to the Christian Phalangists and other groups opposed to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon and supporting Israeli operations across the Lebanese-Israeli border.
Britain played an important part in this operation.
The London connection was a firm called 'Tripower' operating out of offices on Regent Street in Central London. PE]
December 21st 1988, Lockerbie:
What Really Happened?
FOCUS: When did you find out who was responsible for the Lockerbie disaster?
CIA: From the beginning we had information about the Damascus based PFLP-GC of Ahmed Jibril. The information said that this group blew up the airplane on orders of the Iranians. Out of revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian civil airliner over the Persian Gulf by the US Navy. We got the first proof for this story in February 1989. One of our Near Eastern agents, a member of a Palestinian group, took part in an Islamic conference in Tehran. He had been invited by the then Iranian Interior Minister, Al Akbar Mohtashemi. Earlier, he had been ambassador in Damascus and helped to build up the Lebanese terrorist organization Hizbollah.
FOCUS: What happened at this meeting in Tehran?
CIA: It was a meeting of the ten groups of so-called Palestinian rejectionist;the opponents of peace, and a Hizbollah delegation.
Abu Nidal‘s people were also represented. Mohtashemi demanded more action from his guests against the USA and Israel.
He criticized them because he considered them too lazy.
That was like a whiplash for them. As sugar coating, he offered further financial support. Suddenly, he portrayed the PFLP-GC as a shining example. Ahmed Jibril looked around proudly.
FOCUS: What did this praise have to do with Lockerbie?
CIA: The others asked Jibril later on what Mohtashemi meant, in personal conversations. Jibril finally admitted that he was responsible for the attack on Pan Am 103.
FOCUS: Did he confirm this to your agent too?
CIA: Yes.
FOCUS: Couldn’t this just be a case of a terrorist who wanted to make himself look important? Did you learn more?
CIA: Our knowledge was very extensive. We learned, for example, that the Lockerbie bomb was built in Lebanon, in a camp of the PFLP- GC in the Bakaa Valley. The device was flown from Damascus to Berlin aboard Syrian Arab Airlines and given there to the German commando branch of Jibril’s organization.
This was led by Hafer Qessan Daikamouni, who the German police later arrested. An American staffer of Pan Am [baggage handler?] smuggled the bomb on board Pan Am 103 in Frankfurt.
FOCUS: What was his motive?
CIA: Money and drugs from Lebanon. He was a drug addict.
FOCUS: Why this airliner specifically?
CIA: On board the jumbo there were drug investigators and intelligence colleagues. They were coming from the Middle East and wanted to fly home to their families for Christmas. The terrorists knew this.
FOCUS: Does your information on the real background come from one single Arab source?
CIA: No, of course not. We had many contacts, especially in Damascus.
FOCUS: Why didn’t you simply confront the Syrians with this and demand that they take decisive measures against Jibril?
CIA: We did. Secretary of State James Baker flew to Damascus. He said to his colleague [Syrian Foreign Minister] Farouk al-Sharaa: “We know who it was.” Sharaa answered: “Then prove it to me.” We couldn’t.
FOCUS: And that was that?
CIA: No, of course not. We took tougher political measures.
But then overnight, the policy changed. Saddam Hussein had steamrolled over Kuwait, and Syria was needed in the grand coalition against its neighbor Iraq. We compelled Assad to take part in the Gulf war against Iraq.
But then overnight, the policy changed. Saddam Hussein had steamrolled over Kuwait, and Syria was needed in the grand coalition against its neighbor Iraq. We compelled Assad to take part in the Gulf war against Iraq.
FOCUS: The coalition won the war. Months later, Washington suddenly accused two Libyan secret agents and the entire regime from Colonel Qaddafi of having blown up the Pan Am Airliner.
How does this all track?
How does this all track?
CIA: Its Realpolitik.
How could we unmask our partner during the tough weeks of the war as being behind one of the worst crimes of all times? We had to spare Syria, but at the same time, also for the sake of the 270 relatives of those 270 dead, come up with a culprit. So we used the Libyans, with whom we have a traditionally tense relationship anyhow.
FOCUS: The US Navy wanted to bomb Qaddafi to death in 1985. Do you think that some day the truth about Lockerbie will be officially confirmed?
CIA: It’s very doubtful whether my government can part ways with the Libya version. Too much has happened since 1991. The fronts have all grown too hard. The United Nations embargo has caused a lot of damage. And Syria? The country is on the threshold of peace with Israel. I don’t exclude the possibility that this peace will be paid for with the knowledge about Lockerbie.
''Unfriendly Skies''**
In an attempt to kill the leader of a foreign country, U.S. and French aircraft shot several air-to-air missiles at what they thought was a passenger aircraft carrying Libyan Col. Moammar Gadhafi. (June 27, 1980.) Instead of killing the head of a foreign country, the attempted assassination succeeded in killing everyone on board an Italian passenger plane over the island of Ustica, just north of Sicily. Eighty-one people were killed by that scheme. The London Independent reported this sequence of events, based upon documents obtained from the retired head of Italy’s counterintelligence agency. (January 8, 1996)
[Operations (such as this one to assassinate Gadhafi) usually go wrong because of 'bad intelligence'.
In some cases intelligence is deliberately falsified by double-agents as part of a terrorist counter-strategy to create an international incident, such as Ustica.
It is not possible nor practicable for the CIA – nor any other government nor agency for that matter - to just say ''sorry for the 290 deaths over the Persian Gulf or the 81 deaths over Ustica, we downed the wrong plane!''
The reason for this is easier to explain: The question would then be asked as to why a government agency (or cooperative agencies of allied countries) is/are downing civilian or private airlines in order to assassinate heads of state.
These questions are just as embarrassing for governments as the downing of the airliners themselves since they expose fatal flaws in intelligence gathering operations, or just sheer incompetence.
PE ]
©Patrick Emek, October, 2017
'Unfriendly Skies' is the title of the book by Rodney Stich:
''Unfriendly Skies: 20th & 21st Centuries''
Stich, Rodney—Author
Unfriendly Skies, 4th edition
ISBN: 978-0-9432438-06-5
