|
by Roy Rowan
[American-Buddha Librarian's Comment: If you don't
know anything about Inter-Agency warfare, then you don't know anything at
all. Learn about it now.
I've put a few quotes from "Trail of the Octopus" at the beginning of this
article to give you a taste of what it's all about:
"Trail of
the Octopus -- From Beirut to Lockerbie -- Inside the DIA, by Donald
Goddard and Lester Coleman" wrote:
'This CBN thing is getting to be a
real pain in the ass.' Donleavy said. 'So is Ollie North and that
whole damn bunch of kooks and weirdoes. We got this lightbird colonel
running around loose, telling two and three-star generals what to do, and
they're getting pissed off about it. So don't be surprised if we pull his
plug. Starting with this cockeyed deal with the Hoobaka bunch. We want you
to close 'em out, old buddy. Nothing sudden, nothing dramatic -- we don't
want to make waves. Just let it die from natural causes, okay? Let 'em get
on with it, but from now on, things should start to go wrong.'
***
Donleavy's strictures about keeping
away from the embassy had focused particularly on the risks of associating
with the Drug Enforcement Administration's 'cowboys', the DIA's contempt
for the CIA under William Casey being exceeded only by its detestation of
the DEA.
***
If Hurley asks you again if you can
do something for him,' he said, 'tell him, okay. Otherwise he's going to
get suspicious. But you don't tell him Condor is a DIA operation or let
him think you're with DIA HUMINT. And under no circumstances do you tell
him about any assets we have in place in Lebanon. If he wants to know who
your contacts are over there, make 'em up.' 'Just string him along
until we get things squared away. There could be a positive spin to it
because now you can keep an eye on Hurley for us. We've been picking up
some bad vibes on that guy. But watch yourself. That whole bunch is into
cowboys and Indians. Just don't get too close.'
***
'You know, buddy, you don't have to
do this if you don't want to,' Donleavy said. 'Those guys are bad news.
Anything goes wrong, they'll just leave you face down in the shit.'
'The DEA, hell -- it's just one big mistake. Which is why we want you out
there. To keep an eye on 'em.'
***
They WERE cowboys. Rock'n' roll
cowboys, with beards, long hair, leather boots and jeans -- the embassy
people couldn't stand them. Not their sort of bridge partners at all. And
to see 'em hanging out upstairs with the spooks in their tennis shorts --
God, what a picture. America in action overseas.
***
But nobody could tell Hurley what to
do. Not Connie, not me and certainly not anybody in Washington. They were
all assholes at DEA headquarters, according to Hurley. They'd never
understood him or what he was trying to do, he once told me.
***
'You're going in there to observe
the effect of Operation El Dorado Canyon,' he said.
Coleman waited, but that was all.
'Okay. So what the hell's El Dorado Canyon?'
'We're going to give Gaddafi a
slap,' said Donleavy. 'Maybe take him out.'
'No shit.' Coleman whistled. 'What's
he done now?'
Control shrugged. 'They reckon the
disco bombing was enough.'
'In West Berlin? The Libyans didn't
do that.'
'I know,' said Donleavy.
***
We could have gotten the hostages out any damn time we wanted to, but
nobody was willing to rock the boat with a rescue operation. We knew where
they were. We knew who their guards were. We knew what they had for lunch.
We knew when and where they were going to be moved before their guards
did. But the DIA wouldn't risk any action based on information that might
have been traced back to one of Asmar's people. If we'd blown the network
because of the hostages we would have left ourselves blind in the middle
of a minefield. So there had to be another way. And it was in trying for
another way that the CIA let in people like Monzer al-Kassar.
***
All the noise being made about the
hostages at that time was just political rhetoric. Nobody could move in
those Beirut sectors without the consent of the Syrian occupying forces.
If the Syrians had not permitted Hezbollah to have a presence in the
southern suburbs of Beirut, there would have been no Iranian presence
there. When the Syrians said, 'We don't know where the hostages are but
we'll be glad to help locate them,' all they had to do was pick up the
phone. Never mind what the US government says or what the public thinks --
that's how it worked. The hostages could not have been held for ten
minutes without Syrian permission.
***
Hurley was waiting for them on the
tarmac near the terminal in his big blue BMW 520i. When the Colemans'
baggage arrived, without the formality of having to clear Customs, Coleman
jokingly observed that the DEA attache must have the island in his pocket,
a suggestion that Hurley took quite seriously.
'You bet your sweet ass,' he said.
'I got customs and immigration working for me and the Cypriot National
Police. Once you got that, you got the whole damn country by the balls.'
'So hearts and minds must surely
follow,' said Coleman politely. Hurley did not improve on further
acquaintance.
'You better believe it. Anybody gets
out of line, we just run his ass clear off the island. So any problems,
you come to me. I'm your sphincter muscle, okay? Everything passes through
me. I'm your total interface with this operation.'
***
The truth is the hostages were
cynically exploited by both sides for political and tactical purposes.
Okay, so we couldn't afford to compromise the Asmar network with a rescue
operation, but there was another reason, too, why we had to leave them
where they were. We needed to keep Hafez Assad, the Syrian president, in
place. He's probably the most astute politician in the Middle East, and we
knew we could do business with him.
***
Out poured a detailed account of visits made by Robert McFarlane and
Lt-Col. Oliver North to Iran, traveling on Irish passports, to organize
the sale of TOW missiles and launchers to the Iranian government in
exchange for the release of American hostages; details of money transfers
and bank accounts, with dates and places -- most of it based on incidents
and conversations that could only have been known to the Iranian or
American negotiators.
***
Meanwhile, one of Asmar's operatives had delivered the
Speak 'n' Spell material to a relative who worked for At Shiraa, Beirut's
pro-Syrian Arabic-language news magazine.
When the story ran on 3
November, it was picked up at once by the Western media, touching off an
international scandal of such embarrassing proportions that President
Reagan was forced to act. On 25 November 1986, he fired North, accepted
the resignation of Rear-Admiral John Poindexter, McFarlane's successor as
National Security Adviser, and spent the rest of his administration trying
to dodge the political fallout from Irangate.]
PAN AM 103:
WHY DID THEY DIE?
by Roy Rowan
"Victor Marchetti, former
executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director and co-author of 'The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence,' believes that the presence of the [five-man
intelligence] team on Flight 103 is a clue that should not be ignored. His
contacts at Langley agree. 'It's like the loose thread of a sweater,'' he
says. ''Pull on it, and the whole thing may unravel.'"
April 27, 1992
Washington says
Libya sabotaged the plane. Provocative evidence suggests that a Syrian
drug dealer may have helped plant the bomb -- and the real targets were
intelligence agents working for the CIA
''FOR THREE YEARS,
I've had a feeling that if Chuck hadn't been on that plane, it wouldn't
have been bombed,'' says Beulah McKee, 75. Her bitterness has still not
subsided. But seated in the parlor of her house in Trafford, Pennsylvania,
the house where her son was born 43 years ago, she struggles to speak
serenely. ''I know that's not what our President wants me to say,'' she
admits.
George Bush's letter of condolence, written almost four months after the
shattered remains of Pan Am Flight 103 fell on Lockerbie, Scotland, on
Dec. 21, 1988, expressed the usual ''my heart goes out to you'' sorrow.
''No action by this government can restore the loss you have suffered,''
he concluded. But deep inside, Mrs. McKee suspects it was a government
action gone horribly awry that indirectly led to her only son's death.
''I've never been satisfied at all by what the people in Washington told
me,'' she says.
Today, as the U.S. spearheads the U.N.-sanctioned embargo against Libya
for not handing over two suspects in the bombing, Mrs. McKee wonders if
Chuck's background contains the secret of why this plane was targeted. If
her suspicions are correct, Washington may not be telling the entire
story. Major Charles Dennis McKee, called ''Tiny'' by his Army
intelligence friends, was a burly giant and a superstar in just about
every kind of commando training offered to American military personnel. He
completed the rugged Airborne and Ranger schools, graduated first in his
class from the Special Forces qualification course, and served with the
Green Berets. In Beirut he was identified merely as a military attache
assigned to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). But his hulking
physique didn't fit such a low- profile diplomatic post. Friends there
remember him as a ''walking arsenal'' of guns and knives. His real
assignment reportedly was to work with the CIA in reconnoitering the
American hostages in Lebanon and then, if feasible, to lead a daring raid
that would rescue them.
McKee's thick, 37-page Army dossier contains so many blacked-out words
that it's hard to glean the danger he faced. Surviving the censor's ink
was his title, ''Team Chief.'' Under ''Evaluation,'' it was written that
he ''performs constantly in the highest-stress environment with clear
operational judgment and demeanor . . . Especially strong in accomplishing
the mission with minimal guidance and supervision . . . Continues to
perform one of the most hazardous and demanding jobs in the Army.''
For Beulah McKee the mystery deepened six months after Chuck's death, when
she received a letter from another U.S. agent in Beirut. It was signed
''John Carpenter,'' a name the Pentagon says it can't further identify.
Although the letter claimed that Chuck's presence on the Pan Am plane was
unrelated to the bombing, Carpenter's message only stirred her suspicions.
''I cannot comment on Chuck's work,'' he wrote, ''because his work lives
on. God willing, in time his labors will bear fruit and you will learn the
true story of his heroism and courage.''
Chuck had given no clues about his work. Back home in November for
Thanksgiving three weeks before he perished, he wouldn't even see his
friends. ''I don't want to mingle, so I don't have to answer any
questions,'' he told his mother. ''Anyway, he didn't have time,'' she
recalls. ''He stayed up till 3 every morning studying reports. And when he
flew back to Beirut, all he said was, 'Don't worry, Mom. Soon I'll be out
from under all this pressure.'''
Almost immediately after the Pan Am bombing, which killed the 259 people
aboard the plane and 11 more on the ground, the prime suspect was Ahmed
Jibril, the roly-poly boss of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine-General Command (P.F.L.P.-G.C.). Two months earlier, West German
police had arrested 16 members of his terrorist organization. Seized
during the raids was a plastic bomb concealed in a Toshiba cassette
player, similar to the one that blew up Flight 103. There was other
evidence pointing to Jibril. His patron was Syria. His banker for the
attack on the Pan Am plane appeared to be Iran. U.S. intelligence agents
even traced a wire transfer of several million dollars to a bank account
in Vienna belonging to the P.F.L.P.-G.C. Iran's motive seemed obvious
enough. The previous July, the U.S.S. Vincennes had mistakenly shot down
an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf, killing all 298 aboard.
Suddenly, last November, the U.S. Justice Department blamed the bombing on
two Libyans, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah. The
scenario prompted President Bush to remark, ''The Syrians took a bum rap
on this.'' It also triggered an outcry from the victims' families, who
claimed that pointing the finger at Libya was a political ploy designed to
reward Syria for siding with the U.S. in the gulf war and to help win the
release of the hostages. Even Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the
CIA's investigation of the bombing, told the New York Times it was
''outrageous'' to pin the whole thing on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
A four-month investigation by Time has disclosed evidence that raises new
questions about the case. Among the discoveries:
-- According to an FBI field report from Germany, the suitcase originating
in Malta that supposedly contained the bomb may not have been transferred
to Pan Am Flight 103 in Frankfurt, as charged in the indictment of the two
Libyans. Instead, the bomb-laden bag may have been substituted in
Frankfurt for an innocent piece of luggage.
-- The rogue bag may have been placed on board the plane by Jibril's group
with the help of Monzer al-Kassar, a Syrian drug dealer who was
cooperating with the U.S.'s Drug Enforcement Administration in a drug
sting operation. Al- Kassar thus may have been playing both sides of the
fence.
-- Jibril and his group may have targeted that flight because on board
was an intelligence team led by Charles McKee, whose job was to find and
rescue the hostages.
Investigators initially focused their efforts on examining the procedures
in the baggage-loading area at Frankfurt's international airport. But
risking the transfer of an unaccompanied, bomb-laden suitcase to a
connecting flight did not jibe with the precautions terrorists usually
take. Security officers using video cameras routinely keep watch over the
area. An intricate network of computerized conveyors, the most
sophisticated baggage-transfer system in the world, shunts some 60,000
suitcases a day between loading bays. Every piece of luggage is logged
minute by minute from one position to the next, so its journey through the
airport is carefully monitored. The bags are then X-rayed by the airline
before being put aboard a plane.
But the U.S. government's charges against al-Megrahi and Fhimah don't
explain how the bronze-colored Samsonite suitcase, dispatched via Air
Malta, eluded Frankfurt's elaborate airport security system. Instead, the
indictment zeroes in on two tiny pieces of forensic evidence -- a
fingernail-size fragment of green plastic from a Swiss digital timer, and
a charred piece of shirt.
Even though investigators previously thought the bomb was probably
detonated by a barometric trigger (considered much more reliable,
especially in winter, when flights are frequently delayed and connections
missed), a Swiss timer was traced to Libya. The shirt, which presumably
had been wrapped around the bomb inside the suitcase, was traced to a
boutique in Malta called Mary's House. The owner identified al-Megrahi as
the shirt's purchaser, although he originally confused al-Megrahi with a
Palestinian terrorist arrested in Sweden.
It was the computer printout produced by FAG, the German company that
operates the sophisticated luggage-transfer system, that finally nailed
down the indictment of the two Libyans. The printout, discovered months
after the bombing, purportedly proved that their suitcase sent from Malta
was logged in at Coding Station 206 shortly after 1 p.m. and then routed
to Gate 44 in Terminal B, where it was put aboard the Pan Am jet. But a
''priority'' teletype sent from the U.S. embassy in Bonn to the FBI
director in Washington on Oct. 23, 1989, reveals that despite the detailed
computer records, considerable uncertainty surrounded the movement of this
suitcase.
TIME has obtained a copy of the five-page FBI message, which states,
''This computer entry does not indicate the origin of the bag which was
sent for loading on board Pan Am 103. Nor does it indicate that the bag
was actually loaded on Pan Am 103. It indicates only that a bag of unknown
origin was sent from Coding Station 206 at 1:07 p.m. to a position from
which it was supposed to be loaded on Pan Am 103.''
The FBI message further explains that a handwritten record kept by a
baggage handler at Coding Station 206 was even less specific about what
happened to the suitcase. ''It is noted,'' the teletype continues, ''that
the handwritten duty sheet indicates only that the luggage was unloaded
from Air Malta 180. There is no indication how much baggage was unloaded
or where the luggage was sent.'' The FBI agent's report concludes, ''There
remains the possibility that no luggage was transferred from Air Malta 180
to Pan Am 103.''
Also described in the teletype is an incident that ''may provide insight
into the possibilities of a rogue bag being inserted into the baggage
system.'' On a guided tour of the baggage area in September 1989, it was
disclosed, detective inspector Watson McAteer of the Scottish police and
FBI special agent Lawrence G. Whitaker ''observed an individual approach
Coding Station 206 with a single piece of luggage, place the luggage in a
luggage container, encode a destination into the computer and leave
without making any notation on a duty sheet.'' This convinced the two
investigators that a rogue suitcase could have been ''sent to Pan Am 103
either before or after the unloading of Air Malta 180.''
Lee Kreindler, the lead attorney for the victims' families, who are suing
Pan Am for $7 billion, says he can prove that the suitcase from Malta was
put aboard Flight 103. He charges that a gross security failure by Pan Am,
which went bankrupt in January 1991 and later folded, contributed to the
disaster.
But it was the rogue-bag theory that was pursued by Pan Am's law firm,
Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives, representing the airline's insurers. To
piece together their version of how the bomb was planted, Pan Am's lawyers
hired Interfor, Inc., a New York City firm specializing in international
intelligence and security. If it hadn't been for the government's
implausible plottings revealed during the Iran-contra hearings, Interfor's
findings might be dismissed as a private eye's imagination run amuck --
especially considering the controversial background of the company's
president, Juval Aviv.
Now 45 and an American citizen, Aviv claims to have headed the Mossad
hit squad that hunted down and killed the Arab terrorists who murdered 11
Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Israeli and U.S.
intelligence sources deny that Aviv was ever associated with Mossad.
However, working for Pan Am, he spent more than six months tracking the
terrorists who the airline now alleges are responsible for the bombing.
While his report has been written off as fiction by many intelligence
officials, a number of its findings appear well documented.
The central figure emerging from the Interfor investigation is a
44-year-old Syrian arms and drug trafficker, Monzer al-Kassar. His
brother-in-law is Syria's intelligence chief, Ali Issa Duba, and his wife
Raghda is related to Syrian President Hafez Assad.
Al-Kassar has many passports and identities. Most important, he was
part of the covert network run by U.S. Lieut. Colonel Oliver North. During
the Iran- contra hearings, it was revealed that al-Kassar was given $1.5
million to purchase weapons. Questioned about al-Kassar, former U.S.
National Security Adviser John Poindexter said, ''When you're buying arms,
you often have to deal with people you might not want to go to dinner
with.''
It was through al-Kassar's efforts, or so he claimed, that two French
hostages were released from Lebanon in 1986 in exchange for an arms
shipment to Iran. The deal caught the eye of a freewheeling CIA unit
code-named COREA, based in Wiesbaden, Germany. This special unit was
reported to be trafficking in drugs and arms in order to gain access to
terrorist groups.
For its cover overseas, COREA used various front companies: Stevens
Mantra Corp., AMA Industries, Wildwood Video and Condor Television Ltd.
Condor paid its bills with checks drawn on the First American Bank
(account No. 2843900) in Washington, D.C., which was subsequently
discovered to be a subsidiary of the Bank of Credit and Commerce
International.
According to Aviv, agents in COREA's Wiesbaden headquarters allowed al-Kassar
to continue running his smuggling routes to American cities in exchange
for help in obtaining the release of the American hostages being held in
Lebanon. At about the same time, al-Kassar's drug-smuggling enterprise was
being used by the U.S.'s DEA in a sting operation. The DEA was monitoring
heroin shipments from Lebanon to Detroit, Los Angeles and Houston, which
have large Arab populations, in an attempt to nail the U.S. dealers.
By the fall of 1988, al-Kassar's operation had been spotted by
P.F.L.P.-G.C. leader Ahmed Jibril, who had just taken on the assignment
from Tehran to avenge the U.S. downing of its Airbus. A CIA undercover
agent in Tripoli reported that Jibril also obtained Gaddafi's support.
According to Mossad, Jibril dined with al-Kassar at a Paris restaurant and
secured a reluctant promise of assistance in planting a bomb aboard an as
yet unselected American transatlantic jet.
Al-Kassar's hesitancy was understandable. He wouldn't want anything to
disrupt his profitable CIA-assisted drug and arms business. Presumably he
was also worried because West German police had just raided the Popular
Front hideouts around Dusseldorf and Frankfurt. Among those arrested: the
Jordanian technical wizard and bombmaker Marwan Khreesat.
The bomb that ended up on the Pan Am jet could have been assembled by
Khreesat. However, last month the Palestine Liberation Organization
reported that it was built by Khaisar Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Elias), who is
also a member of Jibril's Popular Front. Haddad purchased the detonator,
the P.L.O. said, on the Beirut black market for more than $60,000.
The detonator, in fact, is considered one of the main keys to the bombing
puzzle. Thomas Hayes, a leading forensics expert, did the main detective
work on a minute piece of timer recovered from the wreckage by Scottish
authorities. In a recent book about the Lockerbie investigation, On the
Trail of Terror, British journalist David Leppard reports that ''Hayes
is not prepared to commit himself publicly on whether the bomb that blew
up Pan Am 103 was originally made by Khreesat and subsequently modified by
timers of the sort found in possession of the Libyans.'' In fact, adds
Leppard, ''his authoritative view is that not enough of the bomb's timing
device has been recovered to make a definite judgment about whether it was
a dual device containing a barometric switch and a timer, or a single
trigger device, which was activated by just a timer.''
James M. Shaughnessy, Pan Am's lead defense lawyer, has tried to drive a
wedge into this opening left by Hayes, thereby casting further doubt on
Libya's responsibility for the bombing. Britain's High Court ruled that
Pan Am's lawyers could depose Hayes. However, in a last-minute legal
maneuver by the Scottish authorities, the deposition was blocked for
reasons of national security. Pan Am's lawyers are now appealing that
decision.
But regardless of the bomb's design, al-Kassar still didn't know how and
when Jibril planned to use it. A Mossad agent, according to Aviv, first
tipped off U.S. and West German intelligence agents that a terrorist
attack would be made on an American passenger plane departing from
Frankfurt on or about Dec. 18. Al-Kassar quickly figured out that Pan Am
Flight 103 was the most likely target and, playing both sides of the
fence, notified the COREA unit. His warning corroborated an earlier bomb
threat, involving an unspecified Pan Am flight from Frankfurt, telephoned
to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki.
Precisely how a rogue bag containing the bomb eluded the Frankfurt airport
security system, Aviv doesn't know. Presumably this required the help of
baggage handlers there. So in January 1990 he and a former U.S. Army
polygraphist flew to Frankfurt, accompanied by Shaughnessy. At the
Sheraton Conference Center, adjoining the airport, the polygraphist
administered lie-detector tests to Pan Am baggage handlers Kilin Caslan
Tuzcu and Roland O'Neill. Pan Am had determined that they were the only
ones who were in a position to switch suitcases and place the bomb-laden
bag aboard Flight 103.
Tuzcu took the test three times, and O'Neill took it twice. As the
polygraphist later testified before a federal grand jury in Washington,
Tuzcu ''was not truthful when he said he did not switch the suitcases.''
The polygraphist also told the grand jury, ''It is my opinion that Roland
O'Neill wasn't truthful when he stated he did not see the suitcase being
switched, and when he stated that he did not know what was in the switched
suitcase.'' The two men continued to claim ignorance of a baggage switch.
After flunking their lie-detector tests, both were sent on a bogus errand
by Pan Am to London, where it was assumed they would be arrested. But
British authorities refused to even interrogate the pair. According to
Leppard, Tuzcu and O'Neill were simply ''scapegoats'' and were never
''considered serious suspects.'' They returned to Frankfurt that same
night.
If the bomb-laden luggage replaced an innocent bag, what happened to the
displaced suitcase? On Dec. 21, 1988, the day of the bombing, one of Pan
Am's Berlin-based pilots was about to head home to Seattle, Washington,
for Christmas when he received orders to fly to Karachi first. He had with
him two identical Samsonite suitcases full of presents. At the Berlin
airport, he asked Pan Am to send them directly to Seattle. ''Rush'' tags,
marked for Flights 637 to Frankfurt, 107 to London and 123 to Seattle,
were affixed to the bags.
It so happened that the flight from Berlin to Frankfurt was delayed. While
all the passengers ultimately made the connection to London, 11
suitcases, including the pilot's two bags, remained behind in Frankfurt.
They were entered into the airport computer system and rerouted via the
Pan Am flight. But only one of the pilot's suitcases was recovered at
Lockerbie. The other had been mysteriously left behind in Frankfurt, and
arrived safely in Seattle a day later. That story, which TIME has
corroborated, doesn't prove Pan Am's claim that terrorists used al-Kassar's
drug pipeline to pull a suitcase switch in Frankfurt. But it does support
the theory that a rogue bag was inserted into the automated
baggage-control system, as the secret FBI report indicates was possible.
TO GATHER FURTHER EVIDENCE that the bomb was not contained in an
unaccompanied bag from Malta, Pan Am lawyer Shaughnessy recently
interviewed under oath 20 officials who were in Malta on Dec. 21, 1988,
including the airport security commander, the bomb-disposal engineer who
inspected all the baggage, the general manager of ground operations of Air
Malta, the head loader of Flight 180 and the three check-in agents. Their
records showed that no unaccompanied suitcases were put aboard the flight,
and some of the staff Shaughnessy interviewed are prepared to testify
under oath that there was no bag that day destined for Pan Am Flight 103.
Although Shaughnessy subpoenaed the FBI, CIA, DEA and four other
government agencies for all documents pertaining to both the bombing of
Flight 103 and the narcotics sting operation, he has been repeatedly
rebuffed by the Justice Department for reasons of national security. Even
so, with the help of investigators hired after Aviv, he has managed to
obtain some of the documents needed to defend Pan Am's insurers in the
trial scheduled to begin April 27 at the U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of New York. The stakes are enormous, and the incentive
is high for Shaughnessy to demonstrate the government's responsibility for
the bombing. In addition to defending against the compensation claims of
$7 billion, he is bringing a claim against the government for failing to
give warning that Pan Am had been targeted by the terrorists.
The man who has been Shaughnessy's key witness in these proceedings is
hiding in fear of his life in a small town in Europe. His real name is
Lester Knox Coleman III, although as a former spy for the DIA and DEA he
was known as Thomas Leavy and by the code name Benjamin B. A year ago, the
stockily built, bearded Coleman filed an affidavit describing the
narcotics sting operation that Shaughnessy claims was infiltrated by
Jibril.
It wasn't until July 1990, when Coleman spotted a newspaper picture of one
of the Pan Am victims and recognized the young Lebanese as one of his
drug-running informants, that he realized he might be of assistance to Pan
Am. He was also looking for work. Two months earlier he had been
deactivated by the DIA after being arrested by the FBI for using his DIA
cover name, Thomas Leavy, on a passport application. Coleman claims that
the DIA instructed him to do this. ''But such trumped-up charges are
frequently used to keep spooks quiet,'' says A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a
Pentagon whistle-blower and a director of the Fund for Constitutional
Government in Washington, which has been looking into Coleman's case.
Coleman spent three days in jail. His official pretrial services
report, filed with the U.S. District Court of Illinois for the Northern
District, began, ''Although Mr. Coleman's employment history sounds quite
improbable, information he gave has proven to be true.''
Raised in Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia, Coleman, now 48, was recruited by
the DIA and assigned to the still classified humint (Human Intelligence)
MC-10 operation in the Middle East. In early 1987 he was transferred from
Lebanon to Cyprus, where he began his work for the DEA. However, he says
he was instructed not to inform the DEA there of his role as a DIA
undercover agent. By this time even the DIA suspected that the
freewheeling narcotics sting operation was getting out of hand.
In Nicosia, Coleman saw the supposedly controlled shipments of heroin,
called kourah in Lebanon -- inspiration for the CIA operation's code name
COREA -- grow into a torrent. The drugs were delivered by couriers who
arrived on the overnight ferry from the Lebanese port of Jounieh. After
receiving their travel orders from the DEA, the couriers were escorted to
the Larnaca airport by the Cypriot national police and sent on their way
to Frankfurt and other European transit points. The DEA testified at
hearings in Washington that no ''controlled deliveries'' of drugs through
Frankfurt were made in 1988.
Coleman's DEA front in Nicosia, called the Eurame Trading Co. Ltd., was
located on the top floor of a high-rise apartment near the U.S. embassy.
He says the intelligence agency paid him with unsigned Visa traveler's
checks issued by B.C.C.I. in Luxembourg. Additionally, the DEA country
attache in Cyprus, Michael Hurley, kept a drawer full of cash in his
office at the embassy, which he parceled out to Coleman and to a parade of
confidential informants, known by such nicknames as ''Rambo Dreamer,''
''Taxi George'' and ''Fadi the Captain.'' Hurley admitted in a Justice
Department affidavit that he paid Coleman $74,000 for information.
The informants, Coleman reported, were under the control of Ibrahim el-Jorr.
''He was a Wild West character who wore cowboy boots and tooled around in
a Chevy with expired Texas plates,'' he says. ''I was told (by el-Jorr))
that in the Frankfurt airport the suitcases containing the narcotics were
put on flights to the U.S. by agents or other sources working in the
baggage area. From my personal observation, Germany's BKA (Bundeskriminalamt,
the German federal police) was also involved, as was Her Majesty's Customs
and Excise service in the United Kingdom.''
After deciding to become a witness for Pan Am, Coleman phoned a friend,
Hartmut Mayer, a German intelligence agent in Cyprus, and asked if he knew
how the bomb got aboard Flight 103. Mayer suggested calling a ''Mr.
Harwick'' and a ''Mr. Pinsdorf,'' who Mayer said were running the
investigation at the Frankfurt airport. ''I spoke with Pinsdorf,'' says
Coleman. ''From his conversation I learned that BKA had serious concerns
that the drug sting operation originating in Cyprus had caused the bomb to
be placed on the Pan Am plane.'' Mayer and Pinsdorf gave depositions last
year at the request of Pan Am. But the German Federal Ministry of the
Interior ruled they couldn't discuss law-enforcement matters relating to
other nations. Mayer did say he knew Coleman.
''It took three informants just to keep tabs on al-Kassar,'' claims
Coleman. He said the informants reported that al-Kassar and the Syrian
President's brother Rifaat Assad were taking over drug production in
Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, under protection of the Syrian army. Coleman also
says he learned that the principal European transfer point for their
heroin shipments was the Frankfurt airport.
In December 1988 al-Kassar picked up some news that threatened to shut
down his smuggling operation. Charles McKee's counterterrorist team in
Beirut that was investigating the possible rescue of the nine American
hostages had got wind of his CIA connection. The team was outraged that
the COREA unit in Wiesbaden was doing business with a Syrian who had close
terrorist connections and might endanger their planned rescue attempt.
Besides McKee, a key member of the team was Matthew Gannon, 34, the
CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut and a rising star in the agency.
After venting their anger to the CIA in Langley about al-Kassar, McKee and
Gannon were further upset by headquarters' failure to respond. Its silence
was surprising because Gannon's father-in-law Thomas Twetten, who now
commands the CIA's worldwide spy network, was then chief of Middle East
operations based in Langley. He was also Ollie North's CIA contact.
MCKEE AND GANNON, joined by three other members of the team, decided to
fly back to Virginia unannounced and expose the COREA unit's secret deal
with al-Kassar. They packed $500,000 in cash provided for their rescue
mission, as well as maps and photographs of the secret locations where the
hostages were being held. Then the five-man team booked seats on Pan Am
103 out of London, arranging to fly there on a connecting flight from
Cyprus.
McKee's mother says she is sure her son's sudden decision to fly home was
not known to his superiors in Virginia. ''This was the first time Chuck
ever telephoned me from Beirut,'' she says. ''I was flabbergasted. 'Meet
me at the Pittsburgh airport tomorrow night,' he said. 'It's a surprise.'
Always before he would wait until he was back in Virginia to call and say
he was coming home.''
Apparently the team's movements were being tracked by the Iranians. A
story that appeared in the Arabic newspaper Al-Dustur on May 22, 1989,
disclosed that the terrorists set out to kill McKee and his team because
of their planned hostage-rescue attempt. The author, Ali Nuri Zadeh,
reported that ''an American agent known as David Love-Boy (he meant
Lovejoy), who had struck bargains on weapons to the benefit of Iran,''
passed information to the Iranian embassy in Beirut about the team's
travel plans. Reported to be a onetime State Department security officer,
Lovejoy is alleged to have become a double agent with CIA connections in
Libya. His CIA code name was said to be ''Nutcracker.'' [AB-1]
Lawyer Shaughnessy uncovered similar evidence. His affidavit, filed with
the federal district court in Brooklyn, New York, asserts that in November
and December 1988 the U.S. government intercepted a series of telephone
calls from Lovejoy to the Iranian charge d'affaires in Beirut advising him
of the team's movements. Lovejoy's last call came on Dec. 20, allegedly
informing the Iranians that the team would be on Pan Am Flight 103 the
following day.
In his book, Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103, Scottish radio
reporter David Johnston disclosed that British army searches of the
wreckage recovered more than $500,000 cash, believed to belong to the
hostage-rescue team, and what appeared to be a detailed plan of a building
in Beirut, with two crosses marking the location of the hostages. The map
also pinpointed the positions of sentries guarding the building and
contained a description of how the building might be taken.
Johnston also described how CIA agents helicoptered into Lockerbie
shortly after the crash seeking the remnants of McKee's suitcase. ''Having
found part of their quarry,'' he wrote, ''the CIA had no intention of
following the exacting rules of evidence employed by the Scottish police.
They took the suitcase and its contents into the chopper and flew with it
to an unknown destination.'' Several days later the empty suitcase was
returned to the same spot, where Johnston reported that it was ''found''
by two British Transport Police officers, ''who in their ignorance were
quite happy to sign statements about the case's discovery.''
Richard Gazarik, a
reporter for the Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Tribune-Review, spent many
months probing the major's secret mission. He found, hidden inside the
lining of McKee's wallet, which was retrieved from the Pan Am wreckage and
returned to his mother, what he assumes was McKee's code name, Chuck
Capone, and the gangster code names (Nelson, Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde)
of the other team members.
The theory that Jibril targeted Flight 103 in order to kill the
hostage-rescue team is supported by two independent intelligence experts.
M. Gene Wheaton, a retired U.S. military-intelligence officer with 17
years' duty in the Middle East, sees chilling similarities between the
Lockerbie crash and the suspicious DC-8 crash in Gander, Newfoundland,
which killed 248 American soldiers in 1985. Wheaton is serving as
investigator for the families of the victims of that crash. ''A couple of
my old black ops buddies in the Pentagon believe the Pan Am bombers were
gunning for McKee's hostage-rescue team,'' he says. ''But they were told
to shift the focus of their investigation because it revealed an
embarrassing breakdown in security.''
The FBI says it investigated the
theory that McKee's team was targeted and found no evidence to support it.
Victor Marchetti, former executive assistant to the CIA's deputy
director and co-author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, believes
that the presence of the team on Flight 103 is a clue that should not be
ignored. His contacts at Langley agree. ''It's like the loose thread of a
sweater,'' he says. ''Pull on it, and the whole thing may unravel.'' In
any case, Marchetti believes the bombing of Flight 103 could have been
avoided. ''The Mossad knew about it and didn't give proper warning,'' he
says. ''The CIA knew about it and screwed up.''
The CIA may still be trying to find out more information about why McKee
and Gannon suddenly decided to fly home. Last year three CIA agents,
reportedly following up on their hostage-rescue mission, were shot dead in
a Berlin hotel while waiting to meet a Palestinian informant.
Beulah McKee has given up trying to find out if Pan Am's bombers were
after her son, although she says, ''The government's secrecy can't close
off my mind.'' Twice she called and questioned Gannon's widow Susan, who
like her husband and her father Tom Twetten worked for the CIA. ''The last
time, I was accused of opening my mouth too much,'' says Mrs. McKee.
Yet memories die hard, and mothers never quite get accustomed to losing a
child. Beulah McKee keeps her son's bedroom all tidied up, as if she still
expected him to come home. His pictures, diplomas, military awards, even
his chrome-plated bowie knife, decorate the walls. In a cardboard carton
under the made-up bed are the heavily censored service records of her son,
which may contain the secret of why Pan Am 103 was blown out of the sky
over Scotland.
_______________
American-Buddha
Librarian's Comments:
[AB-1]
No. These
terrorists were under the control of the Oliver North faction in the CIA. It was a hit by the
fascists in the
CIA on the "liberal elite" in the CIA and DIA for giving them so much
trouble. This double-agent
business is bullshit. It is the last defense of the Unintelligent
Agency when they are caught in the act to say, "We were tricked! We
didn't know! It's not our fault!"
And what exactly is the difference
between the CIA and the DIA, and criminal enterprises like the Mafia or
the Crips and the Bloods? They are all rival
gangs involved in murder, drugs and guns. There is no difference, except the murder, drugs
and gun-running of the CIA and DIA is sanctioned by the U.S. Government.
And the Crips and Bloods are
blacks. We can't forget racism.
How do they trick
us? Authoritarianism. It is the main cause of our
spiritual disease, which is not being able to see things as they really
are because we are trusting the authorities. And if we can't see things as
they really are, we can't have democracy, and we can't fix our problems.
They have made us blind. Which is why this world is headed into the
trash can.
"City of
the Lost Children," directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet
See
"Godzilla Returns," by Tara Carreon
Godzilla
Returns, by Tara Carreon
Return to Table of
Contents |
