Lester Coleman began as a reporter, became an agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the Middle East (he's fluent in Arabic), and ended as an exile in Sweden after trumped-up passport charges were filed against him in Chicago. The problem was that Coleman, without fully realizing it, had inside information about Drug Enforcement Administration operations in the Middle East, and specifically about DEA arrangements for controlled-delivery baggage handling out of the Frankfurt airport. In other words, what he knew put an different spin on the Lockerbie tragedy, and suggested a degree of U.S. intelligence complicity with the bombing of Pan Am 103. click here for the full article

There is also new information about DIA, DEA, and CIA turf wars in the Middle East. DIA keeps their secrets better than the CIA (there's no Congressional oversight), which allows them greater latitude for dirty tricks, and for spying on the DEA and CIA. (For example, Coleman was tasked by the DIA to expose Oliver North to an agent whose relative worked for Al Shiraa, the Beirut news magazine that ran this information on 3 November 1986, and was thereby credited with opening the Iran-contra floodgates for the Western media.) This book is well-written, perhaps because principal author Donald Goddard spent eight years as an editor at the New York Times. Despite this, don't look for it in U.S. bookstores -- you won't find it.
ISBN 0-7475-1562-X






Afterward

On 22 September 1993, five days before hardback publication of Trail of the Octopus, Christopher Byron telephoned Bloomsbury Publishing to ask if they had heard that a Federal grand jury had just indicted Lester Coleman on eight counts of perjury. It was six o'clock in the morning, New York time.
This was news to Bloomsbury but no surprise. For three years, Coleman had been the target of a relentless campaign to destroy his credibility as a witness in the Lockerbie affair. On learning that the indictment was based on his affidavit of April 1991 in support of Pan Am's suit against the US government, and that the charges could have been brought against him at any time in the previous two and a half years rather than five days before publication, Bloomsbury thanked Byron for getting up so early to tell them about it, expressed their continued faith in the book and were left wondering what had prompted his call.
' Was this a publicspirited gesture on the part of a responsible commentator trying at the last moment to save a leading publisher from possible embarrassment? Or had he been unwittingly used by the US government in an attempt to shake Bloomsbury's confidence in Trail of the Octopus to the point where they delayed or cancelled the book's publication?
The indictment certainly showed every sign of having been cobbled together in a hurry. The first count accused Coleman of perjury in saying that he spoke Arabic. This certainly amused MaryClaude, to whom he had proposed in Arabic! If they had been old enough to appreciate the joke, it would also have amused his children, for whom Arabic is a family language.
The other seven counts were simply flat denials of passages from Coleman's affidavit describing his work for the US government, statements that could only be confirmed or disproved by reference to classified security documents that Washington refused to disclose.
As these denials were already a matter of public record, the most interesting thing about the indictment, apart from the haste that seemed to have inspired it, was a telling slip in the very last sentence: 'Coleman was deactivated by the Defense Intelligence Agency more than two years prior to May 11, 1990.' (He had stated in his affidavit, perjuriously according to the government, that he had been 'deactivated' on that date ) By any reading, this implied that he had been active as an agent of the DIA until the beginning of 1988 or thereabouts. This appears to conflict with the observation of LtCol. Terry Bathen, assistant general counsel to the DIA, that Coleman had performed no services for the DIA after November 1986, more than four years prior to 22 May 1990.
Nevertheless, the indictment served to secure a warrant for Coleman's arrest and representations were made to the Swedish government to secure his extradition, even though perjury is not an extraditable offence. When challenged on this point, a Justice Department spokesman claimed that extradition was possible in a case of 'aggravated' perjury. Although inquiries failed to discover any such offence in the canon of Federal law, the manoeuvre set off another round of hostile publicity that coincided with publication of Trail of the Octopus.
Besides Coleman, the same Federal grand jury had also targeted James Shaughnessy, lead counsel for Pan Am, and Juval Aviv, the private investigator whose report had first called attention to the government's role in the Lockerbie disaster. In view of the allegations now being levelled at him, on 21 October 1993 Shanghnessy wrote to Chief Judge Platt, who had presided over the case from the start, to correct the one minor error he found in the record. In a footnote to an affidavit opposing the government's application for financial sanctions against him and his firm for daring to question the official version of events, Shaughnessy had written that, 'Mr Coleman was never paid any amount except for his expenses in meeting first with me and then with [my partner] Mr Prugh.'
These expenses, including air fares, hotel bills, meals and so on for three meetings spread over a total of seven days, plus the expenses of a second witness who spent three days with the defence team in Brussels, amounted to about $12,500, most of it billed directly to Pan Am. In addition, the airline paid a further $2,688 for the shipment of the Coleman family's personal effects by air cargo from Mother Teresa's Sisters of Charity convent in Spain to their new home in exile in Sweden.
But Shaughnessy had forgotten to mention that three separate payments of $1,000 had also been made to Coleman as compensation for loss of working time. Concerned that this omission might be seized upon by the government, however improbably, as evidence that he had paid Coleman X3,000 to perjure himself, Shaughnessy corrected the record by drawing the judge's attention to the payments and apologizing for his lapse of memory.
But if he had honed to close off this loophole, he had reckoned without Christopher Byron. In the 8 November issue of New York magazine he charged Shaughnessy with having 'built [Pan Am's] defense, in part at least, out of testimony obtained by secret and demonstrably improper payments to Coleman'. After speculating 'about who else might have been paid', Byron went on to assert that 'by Shaughnessy's own admission, the defense team did pay Coleman handsomely. The total amount: some $18,000, of which $15,000 was for '`expenses" and $3,000 was in the form of direct cash payments.' Writing dismissively of Coleman as 'the international con man and fugitive' though the evidence for this serious charge seemed to be based on a payment of $3,000 and a few nights in a Brussels hotel Byron reminded his readers that Coleman 'ran into trouble after being arrested on passport fraud charges in 1990' and 'fled to Europe, where he swore out his affidavit in support of the airline's case while pocketing his payoff '.
The article did not mention the deficiencies in the FBI's case. Documentary evidence, some of it from the Bureau's own files, had already proved that the passport charges were false. But the allegation against Shaughnessy, picked up and repeated elsewhere in the media, served its purpose. At the end of November, to avoid possible embarrassment to his client, he stepped down as Pan Am's lead counsel, handing the case over to his associates. Juval Aviv, the government's third target, had been similarly maligned since 1989, when his confidential report linking the CIA with the bombing was leaked to the press, but after four years Justice Department officials were still frustrated in their efforts to punish him for his impudence. Evidently losing patience, they instructed the FBI to put him out of action by more direct means. During 1993, agents visited all his clients and business associates, ostensibly looking for 'evidence' to present to the Federal grand jury but in fact to inform them that Aviv was 'dishonest, unreliable and unpatriotic' and under investigation in connection with the Pan Am 103 disaster. As he discovered later, the FBI even went so far as to interfere in a case he was working on for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a blunder that could have cost the American taxpayer over $34 million in stolen bank asset.
But by the end of 1993, the focus of Washington's displeasure had broadened to include a new target. The American film producer Allan Francovich, with financial backing from Lonrho plc, had embarked on a gominute television documentary about the bombing of Pan Am 103 which seemed certain to undermine the official version of events. Already unpopular in US government circles for exposing the activities of the CIA in Europe and South America, Francovich had picked up the Trail of the Octopus at the point where the book left off and was scouring Europe with his research team for further evidence of government involvement. Countermeasures were called for.
On 27 November 1993, the Financial Times broke the news of his project under a sixcolumn headline, 'Lonrho to finance Libyan film about Lockerbie'. 'Lonrho and: the Libyan government have set up a Caribbean shell company to finance a £633,000 documentary film about the Lockerbie bombing,' the story ran. 'The disclosure of the secret partnership between the UKbased conglomerate and Libya in the film project comes just days before tough new United Nations sanctions against the country are due to come into force . . . [The project] is being funded by Metropole Hotels, which is twothirds owned by Lonrho and onethird by the Libyan Arab Finance Company, the main investment vehicle of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.'
Although the story went on to report that Francovich had said 'he had complete control of the project and could withdraw if there was any interference from Lonrho or the Libyans', the innuendo was clear. It was to be a 'Libyan film' financed by a 'secret partnership' between Libya and Lonrho's chairman Tiny Rowland, who had said 'he felt honour bound to work closely with Libya since: selling it the Metropole stake for £177m in 1992'. In otherwords, it was to be a piece of Libyan propaganda designed to get Gaddafi off the hook for the Lockerbie bombing.
22 Christopher Byron wrote in similar terms in what turned out to be his last article for New York magazine on the Lockerbie subject, denouncing Lester Coleman as a 'fantasist and a fraudster' who had 'peddled his yarn to the media [and] sold it for $18,000, to Pan Am's lawyers'. In February 1994 the new editor of New York magazine, Curt Anderson, failed to renew Byron's contract.
Francovich, meanwhile, had reorganized the production company's finances and was on course for a showing of his gominute commentary on Channel 4 in June, but he was having a bumpy ride. The accusation of 'Libyan propaganda' having not derailed the film, its opponents now sought to deny it an audience. On 21 April the Glasgow Herald printed a letter, signed by Bert Ammerman, John Anselmo and Allen Benello on behalf of '24 others' in New York and London, protesting at Channel 4's negotiations 'with a Libyanfinanced production company to purchase and broadcast a documentary about Lockerbie [that] seeks, predictably, to absolve Libya from any responsibility for the bombing'. The letter went on: 'The project's sources and researchers include an assortment of confidence tricksters who for many years have sought a market for their Lockerbie and other conspiracy stories . . . Channel 4 would not consider purchasing a documentary from the IRA about the Warrington bombing. We ask that it similarly decline to purchase material from Libya about the bombing of Pan Am 103.'
Strong stuff, considering that the production company was no longer owned by a Lonrho subsidiary in which Libya had a minority stake, and that Francovich, an independent American filmmaker, had repeatedly asserted that his contract gave him total editorial control. Coming after representations from other quarters and hints from government ministers of legal action to prevent the film being shown, the letter prompted Channel 4 to deny that there were any 'ongoing negotiations' with Francovich. There are no plans to show the film in our current schedules,' said its spokesman, apparently unaware that the station had been pressing for delivery by 22 June. He could not, however, explain why the film, provisionally entitled 'The Maltese Double Cross', had been rejected unseen. Francovich himself had no doubt about the reason. The documentary would show that Iran and Syria were responsible for the Lockerbie disaster and that the American and British governments had concealed that information to protect strategic interests in the Middle East. The project had therefore become a target for dirty tricks by their intelligence agencies. He told the Guardian on 23 April that he had heard a month earlier that five CIA agents had been sent to Europe to discredit the production. In addition, his office telephones had been tapped, his researchers harassed and staff cars sabotaged. 'This attempt to intimidate Channel 4 was meant to bring the film to a halt,' he said. 'If we are doing such a bullshit movie, why are they putting all these resources into trying to stop us?' The Guardian went on to report that, 'he believes the letter is part of a campaign that has involved smearing collaborators and the infiltration of agents provocateurs into one of America's Flight 103 groups.'
The attitude of the British families towards the film was certainly in sharp contrast to that expressed in the Ammerman letter. Replying to it in the Herald of 23 April, Dr Jim Swire wrote that, 'unlike any of those who signed that letter, some of the British relatives have met with Mr Francovich and discussed his project with him. We had first looked at his track record as a producer of internationally shown, hardhitting documentaries mainly on subjects concerned with political coverups in other fields ... Mr Francovich assured us that he has complete editorial control over what goes into the film and accepted that the film must stand or fall on its own content, plus any objective and corroborative evidence which can be produced.' Dr Swire concluded by saying that 'loose ends' in the official version of events 'leave us uneasy and uncertain as to what the truth may actually be. Mr Francovich's version of what happened should be allowed to stand or fall on its own merits.'
There was a similar exchange ofviews in the London Evening Standard a few days later, and on 10 May' the paper printed a letter from another American family challenging Francovich to call a press conference and make his new evidence public. 'If the information is onetenth as sensational as he has alleged, there would be an immediate and worldwide demand for his film,' wrote Daniel and Susan Cohen, of New Jersey. Preferring to complete the film first, Francovich may well follow their suggestion when the time comes, although he has already promised the British families that they will be the first to see the final cut. If so, given the bottomless well of public sympathy for them, they will certainly not be the last to see it. But in the end, 'The Maltese Double Cross', like the Trail of the Octopus, can do no more than affirm everybody's right to the truth. Only a public trial of the Libyans accused of the bombing can finally dispose of that part of the mystery, and only a new public trial of the relatives' compensation suit against Pan Am will leave the government coverup plain to see. The prospects of either, however, are not encouraging.
On 31 January, a threejudge Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York astonished almost everyone who had followed the case with a majority decision upholding the judgment reached against the airline in 1992. Even counsel for the plaintiffs reacted cautiously. Asked to comment by The New York Times, Lee S. Kreindler told its reporter that Pan Am could have its appeal reheard by a larger panel of the Court of Appeals or petition the United States Supreme Court for a hearing. No doubt he was as unimpressed as most other observers by the Appeal Court's grasp of the facts.
'Few Americans have forgotten the bombing of Flight 103,' observed Judge Richard J. Cadamone, author of the 56page majority opinion. 'There were 259 Americans aboard Pan Am's plane from all walks of life.' In fact, sixteen nationalities were represented in the passenger list.
Judge Elsworth A. Van Graafeiland, the dissenting judge, was scathing in his dismissal of the case against Pan Am. 'At the outset, I want to state one clear and uncontrovertible fact,' he wrote. 'No one knows when, where or how the bomb got on the Pan Am plane except the person who put it there. The jury had to content itself with "expert" testimony, more properly described as educated guesses . . .'
And again: 'Having read the testimony of Pan Am's experts that the district court kept from the jury, I am convinced that had the jury been permitted to hear this evidence, there is a strong likelihood it would have rejected plaintiffs' contention that the bomb which: exploded began its deadly journey in Malta.'
And again: 'This district judge's lack of evenhandedness cannot be justified by his reliance on the indictment of two unapprehended, unquestioned and unapproachable Middle Eastern terrorists.' And again: 'Because the house of cards to the effect that the bomb entered the stream of commerce in Malta was constructed entirely of opinion testimony introduced by plaintiffs, simple justice required that defendant's experts be given an opportunity to demolish it ... Denial of this ultimate safeguard ... was prejudicial reversible error.' And again: 'The district judge treated this case as if Pan Am were being prosecuted for criminally violating a federal regulation and, relying on his erroneous interpretation of criminal law, precluded every attempt by Pan Am to demonstrate that it did not know or believe that the probable result of its conduct would be injury to the plaintiffs.'
And finally: 'Because I am convinced that this case should be retried on the merits, I am reluctant to detract in any way from the strength of my argument by discussing the issue of damages ... If all of the irrelevant and prejudicial evidence . . . were eliminated from this case, it could be retried in several weeks . . . Justice demands that the matter be remanded so that it can be tried fairly.' Encouraged by the vigour of Judge Van Graafeiland's dissent, Pan Am's attorneys filed on 28 February for a new hearing by a fivejudge court. As yet, a date has not been set.
There were also signs of renewed political pressure for an independent inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster following the collapse of the socalled forensic evidence against the two accused Libyans. In 1990, two years after the bombing, a tiny fragment of charred circuit board found among the wreckage was identified by CIA analysts as part of a prototype timer from a batch supplied to the Libyan government in 1985. Although there was no chain of evidence directly linking the timer to Megrahi and Fhima in 1988, the Swiss manufacturer, Mebo, was said to have sold the prototypes only to Libya, and that, according to Buck Revell, who led the FBI investigation, was enough to complete the case against the two Libyans. In 'Silence over Lockerbie', a BBC Radio documentary aired on the fifth anniversary of the bombing, Revell told reporter Gerry Northam that he felt 'very, very confident that we have identified the right people'. Robert Mueller, the assistant US Attorney General in charge of the American investigation, was equally certain. The piece of circuit board was 'indisputably from a particular timer that was purchased by Libya', he assured Northam. 'It could not have been bought by anybody else.'
Always tenuous as evidence against Megrahi and Fhima, the 'indisputable' connection with Libya had already collapsed, however. In October 1993, Edwin Bollier and Erwin Meister, the proprietors of Mebo, revealed that the: timers had also been supplied to East Germany and that two more had probably been stolen from their Zurich premises. Even more damaging: was their claim that they had told British and American investigators about this a year before the indictments were returned. Not content with demolishing the 'indisputable' forensic evidence against Libya, Mebo went on to suggest, according to the Observer, 23 January, that 'the fragment might have been planted by Western intelligence agencies seeking to frame Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's regime'.
When Tam Dalyell MP asked the Prime Minister about these developments in the House of Commons, John Major acknowledged that 'new evidence has been reported in the press casting doubt on Libyan complicity. But after five years', he went on, 'the inquiry into the bombing has not revealed any evidence that implicates any country besides Libya.' The Lord Advocate' he said, remained convinced that the evidence still justified the warrants issued for the arrest of the two Lockerbie suspects.
As MP for a neighbouring constituency Tam Dalyell had followed the Lockerbie investigation closely from the beginning, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the official position. On learning of the American government's attempt to extradite Lester Coleman for perjury, he urged the Swedish authorities in November 1993, to grant him asylum. 'From my considerable knowledgeof events surrounding Pan Am 103, I have come to the considered conclusion that Goddard and Coleman's Trail of the Octopus is convincing,' he wrote. 'But, of course, if Goddard and Coleman are telling the truth, the whole position of theUnited States government over the past few years is undermined.'
To clarify the situation, Dalyell brought Coleman's plight to the attention of the American ambassador in London, Ray Seitz, and invited the comments of Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. The ambassador replied with a copy of the Justice Department press release announcing the perjury indictment, 'which pretty much sums up what the US government thinks of Mr Coleman and his claims'. Seitz also referred Dalyell to Christopher Byron's campaign in New York magazine which 'convincingly exposes Mr Coleman as a notorious con man'.
Douglas Hogg, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, was rather more diplomatic. 'It would not be proper for me to comment on the allegations made by Messrs Goddard and Coleman,' he wrote, 'not least since I understand they may be related to the eight charges of perjury on which Mr Coleman has been indicted by a US Grand Jury . . . You may rest assured however that the Dumfries & Galloway Police continue to investigate all relevant new information on the Lockerbie atrocity.' Encouraged by the Minister's response, I wrote to Chief Constable George Esson of the Dumfries & Galloway Police on 20December:

Dear Sir, As you will see from the enclosed correspondence, I have raised through Tam Dalyell MP t e question of why Lester Coleman was never interviewed by your officers, or, indeed, by investigators from any other agency, in connection with the Lockerbie disaster. Despite a wellorchestrated attempt to discredit him, Coleman has insisted on the truth of his sworn affidavit for almost three years, at no small cost to himself and his family. As far as I am aware, nothing of substance has emerged in that time to challenge, much less refute, his eyewitness account of a DEA CIA operation in Cyprus in the spring of 1988, that may well have had a bearing on how and why the bomb was placed aboard Pan Am Flight 103, In the United States, the response to his testimony has been a campaign of vilification which reached new heights of absurdity with Coleman's indictment for perjury in September. On this side of the Atlantic, however, the only response appears to be one of complete and continuing indifference.
For my part, there is little I can add to Trail of the Octopus, but I have no doubt that Coleman himself can be of material assistance to your officers. Though naturally concerned for his safety, he is prepared, even at this late stage, to make himself available for questioning, albeit at a time and place and in circumstances of his own choosing.
If you care to act on his offer, I will gladly serve as intermediary in making the necessary arrangements..

The Chief Constable replied on 5 January 1994:

I refer to your letter of 20th January, 1993 and have to advise you that the position of the Lord Advocate is, and has always been, that anyone with any evidence pertaining to the Lockerbie inquiry should approach the Dumfries & Galloway Police.
If Mr Coleman believes that he has evidence which has a bearing on the Lockerbie investigation then my Force would be happy to receive that evidence from him personally at Dumfries or in writing.
It would be inappropriate for the Police to enter into any clandestine arrangement to see Mr Coleman, especially in view of the fact that there is no specific reason to believe that there is any need to interview him and he is a fugitive from justice [italics added].
I trust that this clearly sets out my position in this matter.

Well, it didn't entirely, and so I wrote again on 21 January:

Thank you for your letter of 5th January about Lester Coleman's offer to assist your officers with their inquiries into the Lockerbie disaster.
Having engineered a fugitive warrant for his arrest, the FBI has made it difficult for Coleman to present himself in person in Dumfries. However, as a first step, he asked me to send you a copy of the affidavit he swore out in Brussels almost three years ago as this will convey the gist of what he knows about, and considers relevant to, the bombing of Flight 103. I hope this will be of interest, although clearly, after a fiveyear investigation, you and your officers are in a much better position than he is to determine what is relevant and what is not. In his eyewitness account of events in Cyprus in 1988, he may well have omitted details that could turn out to have a significance of which he is entirely unaware.
For this reason, I was frankly amazed to learn that you saw no particular need to interview him. I was also surprised that you should assume I was proposing some sort of clandestine meeting. Coleman is prepared to be interviewed on any mutually acceptable 'neutral' ground in a Swedish police station, perhaps, or in one of several European embassies of countries unimpressed by the charges trumped up against him in the United States.
If, on reconsideration, you find any merit in his offer, I will gladly set the wheels in motion.

This letter was not even acknowledged. It was simply ignored .. The Chief Constable evidently saw no merit in finding out what Coleman had to contribute, which was doubly discouraging because documentary evidence had just come to hand that would have satisfied the Dumfries & Galloway Police that he had been framed on the passport charge and could not, therefore, be properly described as 'a fugitive from justice'. (The charge was that Coleman had obtained a copy of a Connecticut birth certificate for one Thomas Leavy from the state's public records office and had used it fraudulently to apply for a passport in that name. According to the FBI, Thomas Leavy was born on 4 July 1948 and died two days later. A search of the state's records, however, had already shown that no one of that name had died on 6 July 1948 Now a further search had established that no one of that name had been born on 4 July either. Coleman was therefore clearly innocent of the charge. The State of Connecticut was in no position to provide him with the birth certificate of a nonexistent person.
In the early hours of 31 April 1994 Tam Dalyell returned to the attack in a House of Commons adjournment debate. 'I am driven to the conclusion', he said, 'that Her Majesty's Government simply do not want either to find or to stumble on the truth of the Lockerbie crime.
The truth, if it were established, would be altogether too awkward, too inconvenient, too embarrassing to Britain and the United States. I have been ever more curious about Lockerbie since those last days of December 1988, when a constituent friend and police officer told me that it was extraordinary how Americans, swarming around the wreckage, were interfering with evidence within hours of the crash.'
Dalyell also found it remarkable that Margaret Thatcher had made no mention of Lockerbie in her memoirs. 'But, of course, the fact is that two American Presidents asked Downing Street to keep a low profile on Lockerbie,' he went on. 'Lady Thatcher does refer to the 1986 bombing of Libya, and she seeks to justify it on the grounds that Libya could no longer back terrorists: "The muchvaunted Libyan counterattack did not, and could not, take place."
'She, of all people in the western world,' he declared, 'must have known what intelligence was saying about Lockerbie, and her memoirs cannot be squared with information that blames Libya. 'Like the Maltese Government, the Maltese police, Air Malta, the Luqa airport authorities, and, indeed, Dr John Buon Tempo, the former Maltese ambassador to the Arab states, whose mediation efforts are, I hope, being taken seriously by the Foreign Office, I do not believe that a bomb was posted yes, posted in Malta to go through the RheinMain airport and Heathrow without detection. Nor bluntly do I, as the longestserving Scottish Member of Parliament, with a history of respect for the office of Lord Advocate, believe that the Grown Office has the evidence that it claims to have and pleads that, for legal reasons, it cannot produce.'
After insisting that Lester Coleman should be taken seriously and interviewed by the Scottish police, Dalyell demanded to know 'just what negotiations have taken place between the State Department and the Foreign Office? Bluntly, I believe that there has been a major conspiracy in Washington and London to obscure the course of justice.'
In his reply, the Foreign Office Minister Douglas Hogg failed to address any of these questions, preferring instead to review the sanctions imposed against Libya by the UN Security Council. 'Our position, together with that of the French and United States Governments,' he said, 'has been that the Libyan Government must surrender the two Libyan officials accused of involvement in the Lockerbie bombing for trial in Scotland or the United States, satisfy the French judicial authorities over the bombing of UTA 772, pay appropriate compensation and demonstrate by concrete actions their renunciation of terrorism.' And that was all. When Sir Teddy Taylor MP, who had also convinced himself of Libya's innocence, sought to intervene in the debate, the Minister left the Chamber. Determined not to let the matter rest, Tam Dalyell tabled a further question for the Prime Minister on 18 May. With the prospect of the two accused Libyans being brought to trial now increasingly remote no doubt to the relief of government prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic the last best hope of getting at the truth about Lockerbie probably resides in the determination of Dalyell and others to keep the issue alive and in the attempt by Pan Am and its insurers to win a new trial of the relatives' claims against them.
But a breakthrough is always possible. As Judge Van Graafeiland pointed out, only the people who put the bomb aboard Flight 103, know exactly when, where and how it was done, and some day one of them may choose to speak. Whether anyone in government will listen, however, is another matter.
In a Beirut courtroom on 31 June 1994 Yussef Shaaban, a follower of Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Nidal, startled the world by stating that he had planted the bomb. On trial with two others for the murder of a Jordanian diplomat, he was the first member of a terrorist organization to claim responsibility for Lockerbie, a claim that may well have had more to do with seeking attention than purging a guilty conscience, but which was at least plausible enough to merit investigation.
Responding for the Dumfries & Galloway Police a spokesman announced that they had no plans to question Shaban about his 'confession'.
As for Lester Coleman, having had his say at last in Trailof the Octopus, he is content now to let others make what they will of it. He has no plans to return to the United States. Though confident the charges against him would never stand up in court, he is far from confident that the United States government would not then invent some more.
From now on, his concern is to provide his wife and children with a more settled family life than Washington has allowed them so far. Somewhere . . . Donald. Goddard. June , 1994 Introduction | First Chapter | Afterward | - Order - | Related Article |



Strange Case of Allan Franovoich

• Born: Mar 23, 1941 in New York City, New York
• Occupation: Director, Writer
• Active: '80s
• Major Genres: History
• Career Highlights: The Houses Are Full of Smoke, Short Circuit, Inside the CIA: On Company Business, Part 3 - Subversion
• First Major Screen Credit: On Company Business (1980)

Biography

One of the best-known documentaries of Allan Francovich is his exposé of the C.I.A., On Company Business (1980). The film won him the International Critics Award for Best Documentary at the Berlin Film Festival. Born in New York City, Francovich was the son of a mining engineer and raised in various Bolivian and Peruvian mining camps. He attended Notre Dame University in Peru, the Sorbonne in France, and received a master's degree in dramatic arts from the University of California, Berkeley. He married Kathleen Weaver, a translator and writer, in 1970 and worked closely with her until they split up in 1985. Francovich's last film, The Maltese Double Cross, was released in 1994 and won first prize for a documentary at that year's Edinburgh Film Festival. Francovich died of heart failure in Houston at the age of 56. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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Forgery and more involve in this more complex plot


Excerpt of Congressional Record statement on July 15, 1994, by Senator Strom Thurmond challenging the nomination of Morton Halperin (of Pentagon Papers fame) to a Defense Department position:

CAIB 1/79: "reprints a top secret U.S. army memo on infiltrating and subverting allies--although the Army continues to deny it was an official document.''
[Fact: the Army did more than deny it was 'an official document.' The alleged 'army memo' ['F. M. 30-31B'] was exposed as a KGB forgery. See House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, hearing, 'Soviet Covert Action (The Forgery Offensive),' February 1980, pp. 12, 13 and Appendix: 'CIA Study: Soviet Covert Action and Propaganda,' pp. 66 and 67; 176-185.]

A February 18, 2005, report in the Moscow Times refers to a book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser [excerpt on FM 30-31B below]. The report states:

Among the "smoking guns" unearthed by Ganser is a Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, which details the methodology for launching terrorist attacks in nations that "do not react with sufficient effectiveness" against "communist subversion." Ironically, the manual states that the most dangerous moment comes when leftist groups "renounce the use of force" and embrace the democratic process. It is then that "U.S. army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger." Naturally, these peace-throttling "special operations must remain strictly secret," the document warns.

A hardcopy of "FM 30-31B, Stability Operations, Intelligence - Special Fields" was among materialprovided to Cryptome in May 2001 by the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) responding to a Freedom of Information Act request for a dossier entitled "Disinformation Directed Against US, File Number ZF010868W:"

http://cryptome.org/inscom-foia02.htm

Among the material provided is a Memorandum for the Record, dated October 7, 1976, which states, "LTC Harvey has been able to determine, after checking with various Army agencies, that there is no FM 30-31B, and that therefore, the attached document is not authentic."
This is not to say that this dossier and the memorandum are not themselves disinformation nor that there is not some other version of FM 30-31B, authentic or bogus, to which the Ganser book refers. Nor should this diminish the importance of examining claims about Operation Gladio. Images of the Memorandum for the Record, label and letter to Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, and the 11-page FM 30-31B (originals poor quality):

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NOW ON PAN AMERICAN FLIGHT 103LOCKIEBE CRASH
Read the report from Answers
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The First Bin Laden
The verdict of the Scottish judges who convicted one Libyan agent, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, on 270 counts of murder at the end of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial failed to convince many observers – including relatives of the 270 victims – that justice had been done. An international observer appointed by the United Nations, Hans Köchler, called the verdict a "spectacular miscarriage of justice".[1] Such doubts spawned a number of alternative theories of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Most of these apparently disparate theories started from the premise that key evidence presented at the trial (eg timer fragment, parts from a specific radio cassette model, clothing bought in Malta, bomb suitcase originating at Luqa Airport) would have been fabricated by the US and Britain for the "political" purpose of incriminating Libya for the crime.[2]

Reopening the case

In Britain, the Conservative administrations under Margaret Thatcher and John Major refused even to countenance the idea of an independent public inquiry into PA 103. The Labour party in opposition had promised such an inquiry, but in government since May 1997 and having brought the case to trial, prime minister Tony Blair appeared to believe there was no need for any further inquiry. Labour MP, Russell Brown, whose Dumfries constituency includes the town of Lockerbie, formally called for a public inquiry in March 2002. But foreign secretary, Jack Straw, in a written statement to parliament on December 18, 2002, said the government had "decided not to initiate any further form of review on Lockerbie." However, the case would be reopened if the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) were to review the case and decide to refer it back to the High Court for a fresh appeal. Lawyers for Megrahi therefore applied to the SCCRC on September 23, 2003 asking that the case be reviewed. Just over two years later, something seemed to be happening:

• On October 10, 2005 Megrahi's lawyers said they believed that material derived from test explosions in America in 1989 had mistakenly been produced at the trial as primary evidence to convict their client.[3]
• On October 12, 2005 The Herald newspaper in Scotland reported that British, US and Libyan officials had been covertly meeting in London and Geneva to discuss moving Megrahi to a prison in Libya or a neighbouring African country, and thereafter quietly dropping his application to the SCCRC. Megrahi's transfer from Greenock jail in Scotland would undoubtedly infuriate some of the US victims' families, as well as those who believe Megrahi is innocent and demand that he should have a fresh appeal.[4]
• On October 13, 2005 Dr Jim Swire, spokesman for UK Families-Flight 103 (UKF103), wrote to The Herald:

"If Megrahi were to be transferred to Libya he would be something of a hero and might lose his keenness for further appeal. Should that happen, as one of the many deeply involved parties, I will not be alone in demanding of the SCCRC that they continue their decision-making process. It remains our right both to know why our loved ones were not protected and to see the Scottish judicial process completed without governmental interference of any kind."[5]

• On October 23, 2005 The Sunday Times reported that the former Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, who issued the arrest warrant for Megrahi, had cast doubt on the reliability of the main witness at the trial. Fraser described Tony Gauci, whose testimony convicted Megrahi, as "not quite the full shilling" and "an apple short of a picnic." Fraser argued that Megrahi could be transferred to Libya and need not serve the whole of his 27-year sentence in Scotland.[6]
• On October 28, 2005 the then Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, called upon his predecessor, Lord Fraser, to clarify those remarks about Gauci by making a public statement.[1]
• The controversy came amid mounting speculation that the SCCRC is to rule that Megrahi suffered an apparent miscarriage of justice and should be granted leave to appeal.[2]
• In an interview with The Scotsman newspaper of November 1, 2005 the architect of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial held in a neutral venue under Scots law, Professor Robert Black of Edinburgh University, vowed to ensure Megrahi's case is brought back to court for a further appeal. The law professor said it was "the most disgraceful miscarriage of justice in Scotland for 100 years." "I won't let it go," he added.[3]
• The Scotsman of November 18, 2005 reported that Dr Jim Swire of UKF103 went to meet Megrahi for the first time on Wednesday, November 15. The purpose of the meeting in Greenock Prison was to ask Megrahi whether he would still press for the SCCRC to continue its review of his case if rumours of his repatriation proved to be correct.

"Megrahi was happy for me to make it known that he is determined to pursue a review of the case, no matter what might evolve concerning his future detention," said Dr Swire. He added: "It is very important to the members of UKF103 campaign group that there be a full review of the entire Lockerbie scenario through an appropriately empowered and independent inquiry, but absence of a further review of the court case would also damage our search for truth and justice." Dr Swire said even if Megrahi did not continue with his appeal bid, the campaign group would press the SCCRC to complete its review of the case, as interested parties.[4]

• In March 2006, Dr Swire met Iain McKie – the father of policewoman Shirley McKie, who was wrongly accused by Scottish Criminal Record Office (SCRO) fingerprint experts of leaving her thumb print at a murder scene in 1997. Mr McKie is lobbying for a judicial inquiry to be held into his daughter's case, which allegedly has links with the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial. Dr Swire and Mr McKie are keen for such an inquiry to investigate not only these links but also a number of other questions such as the role of Harry Bell, the former head of the SCRO and a key person in the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Dr Swire said he, the McKie family and observers all over the world needed the answers to these questions:

"The reputation of our country and its criminal justice system will depend upon how these cases are sorted out."[5]

• On May 4, 2006 the Scottish Executive announced that a panel of five Judges sitting in Edinburgh were to hear Megrahi's appeal against his 27-year minimum jail sentence on July 11, 2006, when Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, was expected to argue that the sentence imposed on Megrahi was too lenient. However, defence lawyers and others, including PA 103 relatives, expressed concerns about the timing of this appeal against sentence, and were keen for any appeal against conviction (that the SCCRC might decide upon) to be heard at the same time. Addressing these concerns, a court spokesman said:

"There might be a referral from the commission [SCCRC], but there might not be."[6]

• Lawyers for Megrahi later insisted that both appeals (against sentence and conviction) ought to take place at the special Scottish Court in the Netherlands – where his trial and first appeal against conviction were held – rather than in Edinburgh. The Crown disputed the move on security and cost grounds but, on June 8, 2006, the Scottish Court of Criminal Appeal decided to postpone the July appeal against sentence until October 2006. The three-month delay thus allows time to settle both the venue issue and whether the SCCRC is to grant Megrahi a second appeal against conviction.[7]

• On November 1, 2006 Megrahi was reported to have dropped his insistence that the new appeal should be heard at Camp Zeist, Netherlands.[8]

"Framing" of Libya

Muammar al-Gaddafi's Libya has a long and well-documented history of support for international terrorism. An indisputable fact is that, during the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddafi supplied large quantities of Libyan weapons and explosives to the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Other incidents that have been attributed to Libya are not so clear cut:

• The 1984 murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in London was blamed on Libya and led to a long-term rupture of diplomatic relations. No prosecution has taken place but Libya has paid compensation to WPC Fletcher's family.
• US president Ronald Reagan was convinced that Libya was responsible for the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing – in which two American servicemen were killed and another 50 injured – and, in retaliation, ordered the bombing of Tripoli in Operation El Dorado Canyon. In 2001, a Libyan and two Palestinians were convicted and imprisoned by Berlin's Supreme Court, and in 2004 Gaddafi agreed to pay $35 million in compensation to the non-American victims of the Berlin bombing.
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• The September 19, 1989 bombing of French UTA Flight 772 for which a Paris court convicted six Libyan nationals in absentia. France at the time supported Libya's neighbour Chad in a border dispute.[7]

However, Libya has never formally admitted that it committed any of these outrages. In 2003, in respect of the sabotage of both Pan Am Flight 103 and UTA Flight 772, Libya told the United Nations that it "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials" and agreed to pay compensation to the relatives of the victims.[8] In an address to a conference of law officers in August 2001 (seven months after the PA 103 verdict) the Scottish Lord Advocate, Lord Boyd, refuted any suggestion that Libya had been framed and denied that this was a politically-driven prosecution, instead blaming conspiracy theorists for such allegations: "Conspiracy theorists have alleged that the investigators' move away from an interest in the PFLP-GC was prompted by political interference following a re-alignment of interests in the Middle East. Specifically it is said that it suited Britain and the United States to exonerate Syria and others such as Iran who might be associated with her and to blame Libya, a country which we know trained the IRA. Accordingly, evidence was 'found' which implicated Libya. This is best answered by looking at the evidence."[9] The Lord Advocate went on to list the various pieces of evidence found to prove that the PA 103 investigators' interest in Libya was "as a result of the evidence which was discovered and not as a result of any political interference in the investigation". He reiterated: "There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there was political interference. The investigation was evidence-led." Lord Boyd dealt with each piece of evidence, as follows:

• Toshiba radio cassette fragment:

"evidence was obtained from Toshiba [by DERA's Alan Feraday] which showed that during October 1988 20,000 black Toshiba RT-SF 16 radio cassettes, the type used in the Pan Am bomb, were shipped to Libya. Of the total world-wide sales of that model 76% were sold to the General Electric Company's subsidiary in Libya, whose chairman was Said Rashid.[information added]"

• Mebo timer fragment:

"In June 1990, with the assistance ultimately of the CIA and FBI, Alan Feraday of the Explosives Laboratory was able to identify the fragment as identical to circuitry from an MST-13 timer. It was already known to the CIA from an example seized in Togo in 1986 and photographed by them in Senegal in 1988. That took investigators to the firm of Mebo in Zurich. It was discovered that these timers had been manufactured to the order of two Libyans Ezzadin Hinshin, at the time director of the Central Security Organisation of the Libyan External Security Organisation and Said Rashid, then head of the Operations Administration of the ESO."

• Clothing material:

"In September 1989 Tony Gauci, the shopkeeper, was interviewed by Scottish police officers. He convincingly identified a range of clothing which he had sold to a man sometime before Christmas 1988. Among the items he remembered selling were two pairs of Yorkie trousers, two pairs of striped pyjamas, a tweed jacket, a blue babygro, two slalom shirts collar size 16 and a half, two cardigans, one brown and one blue and an umbrella. He described the man, and subsequently identified him as Megrahi. More importantly at the time he was in no doubt that he was a Libyan."

Many commentators and legal practitioners remain unconvinced, however. Warning against over-reliance upon forensic science to secure convictions, Britain's foremost criminal lawyer, Michael Mansfield QC, in the BBC Frontline Scotland TV program Silence over Lockerbie, broadcast on October 14, 1997, said he wanted to make just one point: "Forensic science is not immutable. They're not written in tablets of stone, and the biggest mistake that anyone can make—public, expert or anyone else alike—is to believe that forensic science is somehow beyond reproach: it is not! The biggest miscarriages of justice in the United Kingdom, many of them emanate from cases in which forensic science has been shown to be wrong. And the moment a forensic scientist or anyone else says: 'I am sure this marries up with that' I get worried." A number of news media also investigated the bombing and the various theories that were put forward to explain it. One news team headed by Pierre Salinger accused the prosecution of disinformation, and of attempting to steer the investigation toward Libya. Salinger fired one member of his investigative team, because of suspicion that she was attempting to manipulate its inquiry.[10]

Seven alternative theories

CIA in Lockerbie

Within days of the December 21, 1988 bombing, Lockerbie was awash with rumors: heroin and money had been found, and the CIA had arrived in the town. None of these rumours was ever officially confirmed. Two teenagers claimed to have found travellers cheques worth $547,000 and an envelope upon which that figure had been marked. Several polythene bags containing white powder were found, according to Edinburgh's Radio Forth reporter David Johnstone (Johnstone 1989). No evidence of these finds was presented in court.
Another rumour was that a mountain-rescue leader walking east of Tundergarth was approached by a police officer and told he could proceed no further into a particular field where he could see a large red or orange tarpaulin. Other witnesses allegedly confirmed they had seen it too, and that there was a white helicopter hovering overhead with a marksman waving away anyone who came close to the tent. One witness told journalist Paul Foot that underneath the tarpaulin was a container, which was too large to be the flight recorder (Ashton and Ferguson 2001).
Whatever the tarpaulin was covering, most of the apparent intelligence activity in Lockerbie seems to have surrounded PA 103 victim Major Charles McKee or, more particularly, the contents of his suitcase. McKee was believed to be the leader of a Special Forces team that was about to attempt the rescue of American hostages held by Hezbollah in the Lebanon. His heavily censored public file, available through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, reveals that he was a career spy, highly thought of and that he undertook dangerous missions. [9]American intelligence sources told journalists that McKee's suitcase contained details of his latest assignment, including the layout of buildings where the hostages were believed to be located. The suitcase was found by a dog-handler a few days before Christmas on Carruthers Farm, near Waterbeck. Two Americans, who said they worked for Pan Am, quickly came to remove it. They brought the suitcase back to the same spot later, minus much of its contents. On Christmas Eve, a group of Scottish police officers were asked to accompany the two Americans to find the suitcase. Before they arrived at the site the officers, realizing they were being duped and were expected to log it in as if for the first time, made their excuses and left. Two British Transport Police dog-handlers allegedly found the case for the Americans later on that day (John Ashton and Ian Ferguson 2001).
No evidence has emerged to support these allegations but, since so many journalists were told about them, it is widely assumed there is some truth in them. Lawyers for the two accused Libyans were concerned that if, as the stories indicated, the CIA was in fact removing evidence from the hills around Lockerbie, the integrity of the chain of evidence, crucial to a fair trial, may have been disturbed. Such concerns led to claims that the CIA not only removed evidence but planted it, too, in order to pin the blame for the PA 103 attack on Libya. In 2005, a retired senior Scottish police chief gave defence lawyers a signed statement, which confirmed the claims made in 2003 by a former CIA agent that his CIA bosses actually wrote the script to incriminate Libya. [10]

Iran, the PFLP-GC, and operation Autumn Leaves

A number of journalists considered that the Iranian revenge motive (retaliation for the shooting down of the Iran Air Airbus by USS Vincennes) was prematurely dismissed by investigators. They drew attention to a comment by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in her 1993 memoirs, where she seemed to discount the Libya revenge motive (for the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi by the United States air force):

"It turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan-sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined. ...There were revenge killings of British hostages organized by Libya, which I bitterly regretted. But the much-vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place... There was a marked decline in Libyan-sponsored terrorism in succeeding years" (Thatcher 1993, pp448-9).

Libya and Abu Nidal

Abu Nidal was widely regarded as the most ruthless international terrorist until that mantle was assumed by Osama bin Laden. Nidal (aka Sabri al-Banna) was reported to have died in a shoot-out in Baghdad on August 16, 2002. A former senior member of his group, Atef Abu Bakr, told journalists that shortly before his death Abu Nidal had confided to Bakr that he had orchestrated the PA 103 bombing on behalf of Libya's Colonel Gaddafi. After settling in Tripoli in 1985, Nidal and Gaddafi allegedly became close, Gaddafi sharing what The Sunday Times called "Abu Nidal's dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that he was a man of destiny."[11] According to Atef Abu Bakr, Gaddafi asked Nidal to coordinate with the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, an attack on the U.S. in retaliation for the 1986 bombing of Benghazi and Tripoli. Nidal then organized the hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi on September 5, 1986 killing 22 passengers and wounding dozens of others. In August 1987, Abu Nidal allegedly tried again, this time using an unwitting bomb mule to carry a device on board a flight from Belgrade (airline unknown), but the bomb failed to explode. For PA 103, Senussi allegedly told Nidal to supply the bomb, and Libyan intelligence would arrange for it to be put on a flight. No evidence has been produced in support of this theory.

CIA-protected suitcase theory

A theory for which no evidence has been produced suggests that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had set up a protected drug route from Europe to the United States—allegedly called Operation Corea—which allowed Syrian drug dealers, led by Monzer al-Kassar (who was involved with Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. using Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence on Palestinian groups based in Syria. The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, as the theory goes, terrorists exchanged suitcases: one with drugs for one with a bomb. Another version of this theory is that the CIA knew in advance this exchange would take place but let it happen anyway, because the protected drugs route was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on PA 103 – Matthew Gannon and Maj. Charles McKee – had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors. The former version of the protected suitcase theory was suggested in October 1989 by Juval Aviv, the owner of Interfor Inc, a private investigation company based on Madison Avenue, New York. Aviv was a former Mossad officer who led the Operation Wrath of God team that assassinated a number of Palestinians who were believed to have been responsible for a massacre in 1972, when 11 Israeli Olympic athletes were killed by the Black September Palestinian group in Munich (see Munich massacre). Aviv sold his story to Canadian journalist George Jonas, who published it in 1984 as Vengeance, later made into a movie entitled The Sword of Gideon and in 2005 used as the basis for Steven Spielberg's movie Munich. After PA 103, Aviv was employed by Pan Am as their lead investigator for the bombing. He submitted a report (the Interfor report) in October 1989, blaming the bombing on a CIA-protected drugs route (Barrons December 17, 1989). This scenario provided Pan Am with a credible defense against claims for compensation by relatives of victims, since, if the U.S. government had helped the bomb bypass Pan Am's security, the airline could hardly have been held liable. The Interfor report alleged inter alia that Khalid Jafaar, a Lebanese-American passenger with links to Hezbollah, had unwittingly brought the bomb on board thinking he was carrying drugs on behalf of Syrian drug dealers he supposedly worked for. However, the New York court, which heard the civil case lodged by the U.S. relatives, rejected the Interfor allegations for lack of evidence. Aviv was never interviewed by either the Scottish police or the FBI in connection with PA 103. In 1990 the protected suitcase theory was given a new lease of life by Lester Coleman in his book Trail of the Octopus.[11]. Coleman by his own admission was a self-proclaimed former freelance journalist-turned-informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Cyprus. Coleman claimed to have seen Khalid Jafaar in the DEA office in Nicosia, Cyprus once again implying that Jafaar was a drugs mule, but this time for the DEA instead of Syrian drug dealers. Despite no evidence being advanced to support Coleman's claims, the theory gained some credence when British journalist Paul Foot wrote a glowing review of Coleman's book for the London Review of Books.[12] But on March 31, 2004—four months before his death—Foot reverted to the orthodox Iran/PFLP-GC theory in an article he wrote for The Guardian entitled "Lockerbie's dirty secret."[13]




For many months after the bombing, the prime suspects were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), a Damascus-based rejectionist group led by former Syrian army captain Ahmed Jibril.
In a February 1986 press conference, Jibril warned:"There will be no safety for any traveler on an Israeli or U.S. airliner" (Cox and Foster 1991, p28). Secret intercepts are believed to have recorded the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran) in Baalbeck, Lebanon making contact with the PFLP-GC immediately after the downing of the Airbus. Jibril is understood to have received $11 million from Iran (although a banking audit trail to confirm the payment has never been presented). The CIA allegedly intercepted a telephone call made two days after PA 103 by the Interior minister in Tehran to the Iranian embassy in Beirut, instructing the embassy to hand over the funds to Jibril and congratulating them on a successful operation.
A verifiable fact is that Jibril's right hand man, Hafez Dalkamoni, set up a PFLP-GC cell which was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany in October 1988, two months before PA 103. During what Germany's internal security service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), called Operation Herbstlaub (Operation autumn leaves), the BfV kept cell members under strict surveillance. The plotters prepared a number of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) hidden inside household electronic equipment. They discussed a planned operation in coded calls to Cyprus and Damascus: oranges and apples stood for detonating devices; medicine and pasta for Semtex explosive; and, auntie for the bomb carrier. One operative had been recorded as saying: "auntie should get off, but should leave the suitcase on the bus" (Duffy and Emerson 1990). The PFLP-GC cell had an experienced bomb-maker a Jordanian, Marwan Khreesat, to assist them. Khreesat made at least one IED inside a single-speaker Toshiba Bombeat 453 radio cassette recorder, similar to the twin speaker model RT-SF 16 Bombeat that was used to blow up PA 103. However, unlike the Lockerbie bomb with its sophisticated timer, Khreesat's IEDs contained a barometric pressure device that triggers a simple timer with a range of up to 45 minutes before detonation.
Unbeknown to the PFLP-GC cell, its bomb-maker Khreesat was a Jordanian intelligence service (GID) agent and reported on the cell's activities to the GID, who relayed the information to Western intelligence and to the BfV. The Jordanians encouraged Khreesat to make the bombs but instructed him to ensure they were ineffective and would not explode. (A German police technician would however be killed, in April 1989, when trying to disarm one of Khreesat's IEDs). Through Khreesat and the GID, the Germans learned that the cell was surveying a number of targets, including Iberia Flight 888 from Madrid to Tel Aviv via Barcelona, chosen because the bomb-courier could disembark without baggage at Barcelona leaving the barometric trigger to activate the IED on the next leg of the journey. The date chosen, Khreesat reportedly told his handlers, was October 30, 1988. He also told them that two members of the cell had been to Frankfurt airport to pick up Pan Am timetables.