Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 6 Num. 69
======================================
("Quid coniuratio est?")
-----------------------------------------------------------------
LOCKERBIE: CRACKS IN THE COVER-UP
=================================
[From The London Sunday Telegraph, 29 January 1995]
[My thanks to "D.C. Dave" for sending me this.]
Within hours of Pan Am flight 103 devastating the Scottish border
village of Lockerbie in December 1988, a team of American secret
agents was methodically working its way through the crash site.
By the following morning a small area on the outskirts of the
town had been sealed off. The Americans removed a suitcase full
of heroin and some incriminating documents from a U.S. undercover
agent, who died in the crash, and was taking part in a "sting"
drug smuggling operation in Lebanon.
Two months prior to Lockerbie, the worst civilian atrocity
committed on British soil since the last war, the German security
services had rounded up a Palestinian terrorist cell in
Frankfurt.
The ringleaders of the cell, sent to Germany to conduct terrorist
operations, were caught red-handed. A primed bomb, almost
identical to the one which destroyed the Pan Am flight, was found
in the back of their car.
After five days of questioning, and following a bitter dispute
between rival German security agencies, 12 of the 14 Palestinians
arrested were released in October 1988, together with their bomb-
making equipment.
One of those released, Marwan Khreesat, a known Jordanian bomb-
maker, is believed by many experts on the case, with the key
exceptions of American and British officialdom, to be the man who
masterminded the placing of the bomb on the Pan Am flight at
Frankfurt airport, which resulted in the murder of 270 people.
This is not idle supposition. These are the conclusions that have
been reached following numerous, exhaustive inquiries which have
sought to establish the truth about the disaster.
But tell any of the above to the governments responsible for
bringing the culprits to justice, and they will respond either
with an outright denial or sullen silence.
Far from actively seeking the truth about Lockerbie, the British,
German and American governments appear to engage in a contest to
deny any new evidence about the disaster.
Take last week. A top secret report, compiled by the intelligence
wing of the American Air Force, was finally made public.
The report, written *two* *years* after the Lockerbie bombing,
stated that a prominent Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Akbar
Mohtashemi, paid L6.5 million [6.5 million British pounds] for
the Palestinian group arrested in Frankfurt to carry out the
bombing.
No sooner had the report been made public than the respective
spokesmen for the British and American governments denied its
authenticity.
In Washington, it was dismissed as a "dud", the result of third-
hand information which had been "mistakenly" channelled into the
system. In Whitehall it was discounted as "old hat", nothing to
get excited about.
At no point did any of the various agencies involved in the
Lockerbie investigation suggest the American report might be
worthy of further attention.
The primary objective of any murder inquiry is to establish
motive. The Iranians had more than enough reason to bomb an
American passenger jet after an Iranian Airbus, with 290 people
on board, was shot down by an American warship in the Gulf in the
summer of 1988.
The Americans never apologised, and Mrs. Thatcher inflamed
Iranian ire by appearing to justify the American action.
Mohtashemi, who founded the Islamic fundamentalist Hizbollah
militia in Lebanon in the 1980s and masterminded the Lebanon
hostage crisis, openly vowed to seek revenge.
That Mohtashemi has a record of sponsoring state terrorism should
in itself be reason enough to investigate him. To claim that
allegations of the nature contained in the U.S. report were
published by mistake is also stretching the bounds of
credibility. Intelligence services, more than any other
government department, are required to sift, assess and analyze
information before it is committed to print.
Whenever it relates to Lockerbie, however, this process, if the
spokesmen are to be believed, is unaccountably overlooked. A more
rigorous intelligence assessment is applied only when the
information, belatedly and often with embarrassing consequences,
becomes public.
The German government responded in similar vein last week when
The Sunday Telegraph revealed that a key figure in the Lockerbie
investigation had been freed from jail in Frankfurt and
repatriated to Syria as part of a secret deal with Iran.
Scottish detectives were keen to interview Abdel Ghadanfar, 53,
one of the Palestinians rounded up in Frankfurt before the
Lockerbie bombing and jailed for 12 years for terrorist offences.
But Ghadanfar was spirited out of Germany last November before
the Scottish inquiry team received satisfactory answers to the
questions they wanted to put to him.
The first the Scottish inquiry team, not to mention the Foreign
Office and the British government, knew about Ghadanfar's release
was when they read about it in The Sunday Telegraph last week. So
much for the much-vaunted international co-operation on
Lockerbie.
And as Ghadanfar's confession to the German authorities,
published for the first time today, has revealed, Ghadanfar and
his accomplice, Hafez Dalkamoni, were deeply involved with
Khreesat in setting up a bomb-making ring in Frankfurt in the
months immediately preceding the Lockerbie disaster.
Despite the protestations of the German Embassy in London that
its government has done nothing wrong, these revelations show
that the Germans, for reasons that remain totally inexplicable to
the victims' relatives, set free an active, bomb-making terrorist
cell.
It is not difficult to understand why the Germans would prefer to
keep their security limitations to themselves. Their discomfort
will be alleviated if they are successful in repatriating
Dalkamoni, Ghadanfar's sole remaining accomplice, in the summer.
Then no one will ever know the real truth about what happened in
Frankfurt.
What is more difficult to explain is why both the British and
American governments continue, in the face of mounting evidence
to the contrary, to persist with their line that culpability for
the disaster should rest entirely with two Libyans.
Warrants were served for the arrest of the Libyans, both members
of Col. Gaddafi's intelligence service, in 1991 after Scottish
and American investigators jointly concluded that they were
involved in placing a suitcase bomb on a flight from Malta, which
was subsequently transferred to Pan Am 103 at Frankfurt.
Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, said shortly after the
charges were initially made: "The investigation has revealed no
evidence to support suggestions of involvement by other
countries. This matter does not, therefore, affect our relations
with other countries in the region."
This is a highly convenient excuse for the government. The fact
that the Libyan charges are still pending means that all those
involved in Scotland in the inquiry are unable to make any
comment about new developments.
So when Sir Teddy Taylor, the Conservative MP for Southend, says
he has "new and disturbing" information that the bombing was
carried out by Syrian, not Libyan, terrorists, there is no
official response.
And when Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP for Linlithgow, produces
compelling evidence that the Americans actually "stole" a body
from the Lockerbie wreckage, all he receives are gratuitous
insults from Douglas Hogg, Mr. Hurd's lieutenant at the Foreign
Office, when he raises the matter in the Commons.
There are many reasons why the British and Americans have sought
to protect both Syria and Iran from being implicated in
Lockerbie. First there was the fate of the Western hostages held
in Lebanon; then there was the need to keep Damascus and Teheran
sweet during the Gulf war.
The warrants against the two Libyans were served after Iran and
Syria had co-operated with the successful liberation of Kuwait.
But as new evidence, which seriously undermines both the Libyan
and Maltese connections, continues to mount, the government is
under pressure to set up a commission of inquiry, with the same
wide-ranging scope as the Scott Inquiry, to investigate
Lockerbie. This, the relatives of the victims argue, is the very
least that they deserve.
They want to know, for example, precisely what the American
secret agents did at Lockerbie the day after the crash and to
have explained the true extent of the communication breakdown
between the German and Scottish authorities.
Dr. Jim Swire, the official spokesman for relatives of the
Lockerbie victims, said: "It is more than six years since
Lockerbie, and we still have not received a proper explanation
about what happened."
"Our lives were ruined by what happened that night, and our
government has a duty to tell us why these innocent people died."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
-----------------------------------------------------------------
If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail
address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to
listproc@cornell.edu (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1")
-----------------------------------------------------------------
For information on how to receive the new Conspiracy Nation
Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred@shout.net
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc?
(1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom
-----------------------------------------------------------------
See also: ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et
pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
O what fine thought we had because we thought | bigred@shout.net
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out. | Illinois,
-- W.B. Yeats, "Nineteen Hundred And Nineteen" | I'm your boy.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=