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The Lockerbie Bombing

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The Boeing 747 jumbo jet: Maid of the Seas had barely reached cruising altitude when it swept over Scotland en route to New York. It was three days before Christmas, 1988, and the passengers remained blissfully unaware of what awaited them. The explosion, when it came, tore a gaping hole in the aircraft’s fuselage, sending the airliner plunging to earth. The casualties were horrific. All 259 passengers and crew aboard perished. Eleven more people died in the small Scottish border town of Lockerbie, as wreckage from the airliner rained down on streets and houses.

Pan Am was fined over $600,000 by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for security lapses at Frankfurt airport, where the bomb was allegedly smuggled aboard flight 103. This effectively pointed the finger of blame for the bombing at Pan Am, and led to 300 court actions being filed against the airline by relatives of the victims.

Despite the seriousness of the atrocity, the Lockerbie case slowly simmered on the stoves of government investigators for almost three years. The reason for this official tardiness soon emerged. A US journalist, Jack Anderson, revealed that in March 1989 President George Bush and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher agreed, during a transatlantic phone call, to ‘limit’ their respective investigations.

Veil Of Secrecy.

Anderson stated that this pact was agreed to avoid discrediting the British and US intelligence community. His claims were potentially devastating for the two governments - it implied that both intelligence agencies either knew of or were involved in the bombing. The difficulty for investigators lies in proving this duplicity.

As far as Britain and the US were concerned, there was proof of Libyan responsibility for the bombing. That position became the official line, and remains so to this day. However, informed observers point to a wealth of conflicting information and suggest that blaming Libya is nothing more than a political whitewash.

The evidence for this - and Anderson’s claims of a US-British cover-up - was backed up in 1989 by a Pan Am, reeling under the prospect of multi-million dollar law-suits, had hired the group to independently investigate the events leading to the atrocity. Their report was explosive. It was also effectively covered up.

CIA Implicated.

Interfor’s report was based on eyewitness accounts and the testimony of at least 11 unnamed sources within ‘the intelligence agencies of four Western governments’. It revealed that a secret, five-man Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) team headed by Major Charles ‘Tiny’ McKee was aboard the plane. A suitcase belonging to McKee was allegedly recovered and emptied by the CIA before it was returned to the site to ‘found’ again. The case contained sensitive intelligence documents , a large amount of cash and travelers cheques, and a sizable quantity of heroin. Incredibly, an unidentified body was also removed from the crash site. But despite these extraordinary examples of evidence tampering, no explanation has been given.

It is now known that the five-man DIA team were returning from Lebanon, where they had been searching for US hostages held by the Iranian-backed militia fighters, Hezbollah. While in Lebanon, McKee is said to have come across a secret CIA operational group known as ‘CIA One’, who were collaborating with Manzur Al-Kassar, a Syrian drug baron. Convinced that the CIA One group was a US front for overseeing drug-running to the West, McKee had secured a sample of heroin to take back to Washington to challenge the authorities with.

Al-Kassar’s relationship with the US was highly classified.

He had forged an alliance with the CIA and was permitted to ship heroin to the US in exchange for his help in the release of Us hostages.

Although the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) knew of his heroin pipeline through Frankfurt airport, officials maintain that this was a carefully controlled ‘sting’ operation which would have eventually resulted in a number of high profile arrests. Many doubt this explanation, saying it was just one leg of a global narcotics network controlled by ‘The Octopus’, the shadowy network of high-ranking elements within Western intelligence agencies.

Lives At Risk.

According to Interfor investigations, Major ‘Tiny ‘ McKee, having unearthed the major narcotics connection, feared ‘that [his team’s] rescue [operation] and their lives would be endangered by the double-dealing’. After reporting the matter to his superiors - and getting no response - an angry McKee booked his team on the ill-fated Pan Am flight 103, intending to expose the CIA corruption himself when he returned.

Their presence on flight 103 gave Interfor a lead. Their report suggested that McKee’s travel plans had been intercepted and reported to Syrian Intelligence, who then notified Al-Kassar. He, in turn, arranged to have a bomb planted inside the suitcase that usually carried the regular heroin shipment. This would then dispose of McKee and his evidence, and thus protect the CIA-backed trade in narcotics.

However, at this point an alternative scenario suggested itself to Interfor investigators. In July 1988, an Iranian Airbus was blown from the sky by the Us Navy battle cruiser vincennes, resulting in the deaths of 290 passengers. Despite US statements that this was a tragic accident, disbelieving hard-line Iranians were hell-bent on revenge. They hired the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC) for a tit-for-tat attack. Under the leadership of Ahmed Jibril an explosives expert, plans were speedily put into place. Jibril learned of Al-Kassar’s drug pipeline and asked him if he could put a bomb in the normal heroin laden suitcase instead. In this scenario, the subsequent deaths of Tiny McKee and his team were coincidental.

There is, however, a third option that neatly dovetails with the known Syrian and Iranian involvement. This view holds that both the Interfor theories merge rather than diverge. Faced with exposure of his drugs pipeline, and aware that the Iranians wanted revenge for the Airbus attack, Al-Kassar and the CIA backers decided to kill two birds with one stone. They would aid Jibril and satisfy the Ayatollah’s lust for revenge. And at the same time rid themselves of a US agent and his team that was about to blow the whole lid off the drug trafficking.

Hidden Agenda.

Evidence and informed opinion now point to Syria and Iran as being responsible for the bombing. So it is therefore interesting to note that both these nations were approached by the allied forces to join the fight against Saddam Hussein in Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Could it be that the price they demanded for their co-operation in this conflict was to have all charges against them dropped? This, too, may have been a multilayered strategy. Not only did this bring Syria and Iran into the Allied fold, but it also blurred the Western intelligence’s involvement in drug trafficking.

Sources: The X Factor