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Sections
A News/Etfitoriak
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I12ra Year
No. 17
THURSDAY, DQCXMBEK 22, 1988
25<
Pan Am Jet Crashes in Scotland,
at Least 273
Dead Include 15 Villagers; On-Board Blast Suspected
By A- D. Home
aCtNttFWMCtffCSSC
A piece of faselage ties near tarring hooae* igaited when a Paa American Boeing 747 crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland.
A Pan American jumbo jet bound
from London to New York crashed
into a
Scottish
village
last
night,
apparently tiling
all 258 persons
aboard.
The Boeing 747 slammed into a
gasoline station and several bouses
n the town of Lockerbie 15 miles
north of the Engfish border, igniting
a fireball that rose op to 300 feet
into the sky.
j
; A police
official
in the nearby
town of Dumfries reported tbit at
least 15
villagers had been
killed.
Local
hospitals
said
seriously
burned villagers had been rushed in
for treatment.
There was no immediate indica-
tion of what caused the accident,
which took place
in clear weather
less than an hour's flight time from
Loodon.
“There were oo mayday signals,"
a Pan Am vice president, Jeff Krien-
dler,
told reporters
in New York
last night. The plane had left Loo-
don's
Heathrow
Airport
at
6c25
pjn.
local time (1:25 p.m.
EST),
and the last contact from the crew
was at 7:15 pjn., when the plane
was erasing at 31,000 feet, Krieo-
dler said. He added that it was "pre-
cisely
oo course* when
it
disap-
peared from radar screens.
As
rescue
teams
reached
Use
crash scene, about 275 miles north-
west of London, there were indica-
tions of an
explosion aboard the
-
plane. The
jet's
cabin
door
was
found about 10 miles from the rest
of the cockpit, while an engine was
found on a highway outside the vS-
lage. At least one witness said the
plane may have been oo fire before
it hit the ground.
The plane. Pan Am
Flight
103,
“disappeared from radar contact at
7:15 pjn.," British Department
erf
Transport spokesman Mike Vertt-
gans said in a telephone interview.
Kriendler gave the time the plane
hit
the ground
as
7:22.
Britain's
Civil Aviation Authority said Scot-
tish air controllers had talked to the
crew minutes before the crash and
received no indication of any prob-
lem.
British
aviation
officials
denied
repeats that the 747 may have hit
another
plane. One
British news
service report said the jet may have
broken into two before hitting the
ground. Brian Reed, a spokesman
for Britain’s Scottish Office in Ed-
inburgh, said his office had received
reports
of
wreckage
landing
in
Langholm, 10 miles east of Locker-
bie.
“All we toww is that ail those in
the aircraft are dead,* said David
Brooks,
air vice
marshal
for the
Royal Air Force in Scotland.
Pan Ain's Kriendler said the air-
fine would not release a passenger
See CRASH, A32, Cot 1
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QlasgSwS^
Dumfries*
"Lockerbie
N>.
• Carlisle
SCOTLAND
(Glasgow Edinburgh
/
.s'
|
A
•Lockerbie
Alljnri
northern:
IRELAND 6
BRITAIN
IRELAND
ENGLAND
Heathrow D *
Airport
London
Yorf
FRANCE
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_
—
— The Washington Post
Far, Am Jet En Route to New York from Londoi
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THE WASHINGTON POST
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iington Post
.
Friday, January 13, 1989 E5
JACK ANDERSON and DALE VAN AUA
TOiroristsatlie U.S. Is Reluctant to Blame
'one House wants tunvu*;
.
%
British and West German intelligence services
fiaye singledMIrliiuan-directed terrorist groups
:
S
: as the culprits. Sbrne^but hot all—of the
t
•
.
information the foreign spies have gathered has
beerisharedwiththe Central Intelligence' Agency.
:
l The British and West Germans are leery of a
CIA bias that seeks to make Libya’s Moammar
'Gadhafi the bogeyman and to blame him for the
uiiuciaiuuu wily, »u»v«s"
vy--
sharing what they know. “It’s" Hard to blame them,,
/ he said. “Look at the Reagan administration's past
shenanigans with Libyan-related intelligence.”
,
He was referring to 1981 rumors about a Libyan
hit squad and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco.
West German police think the Reagan
administration hyped-—or manufactured
flimsy
evidence blaming Gadhafi for the disco bombing in
which one U.S. serviceman was killed. President
Reagan used the incident to justify a subsequent
bombing raid on Lihyan sites, including Gadhafi’s
Tripoli home.
In 1981, the CIA paid tens of thousands of
dollars to a Middle East informant who gave the
CIA what it wanted to hear. He manufactured false
reports of a Libyan hit squad out to assassinate
Reagan. The story unraveled when alert West
European intelligence officers noted that the
informant had included among the alleged hit squad
members several people who had sworn to kill
.Gadhafi; riot Reagan.
*
*
"
'
-
Now the Pan Am bombing has become the CIA
.
s
top priority! Our sources Say the CIA IS prepared to
spend “several million dollars” to find out who is
responsible. The flaw in this approach is that it
encourages gadflies to come forward with.what the
United States wants to hear—that’Gadhafi did it.
These espionage entrepreneurs know that
V
Reagan has been obsessed with Gadhafi for eight
years and might like to have the final say. The last
thing Reagan wants to hear is that terrorists
directed by Iran bombed Flight 103. Reagan has
been humiliated by Iran and is not anxibuS ,for a
r
final ignominious footnote in his dealings with
v
.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
-
That’s what makes the West European'
intelligence services so wary of sharing
Iranian-related information with th^ CIAi They
pointed out to us that U.S. Embassy officials across ^
Europe and the Middle East have pooh-poohed the
claims of a shadowy pro-Iranian group that has
been trying to assert responsibility for the
bombing.
V'
'
The group calls itself “The Guardians of the
Islamic Revolution” and claims it was motivated by
the downing of an Iranian airliner last July by a U.S.
warship. The group, in a call to London news
services, warned “there will be another present in
the new year for America” if the United States
doesn’t deport Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran’s late shah.
Iranian government officials have denied any
involvement. But to believe them is ludicrous.
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Approve ARQUM)
PLO Said to Aid
Pan Am Probe
Representatives of the Pal-
, >estme UbersUon. Organfeation
\
have provided 'helpful informa-
tiOTi^o western agents trying to
/determine who was responsible
for blowing up the Pari Am jum-
bo jet over Scotland last month,
according to ABC News.*
The television network, quot-
ing
western
intelligence
sources, reported last night that
several dozen PLO intelligence
agents
have
been' working
alongside British and West Ger-
man investigators and have de-
livered
“exceedingly
valuable”
information in the case.
The report marked the
first
confirmation
of the PLO's
in-
volvement
in
the crash inves-
tigation. It followed a pledge by
i'LO chairman Yassir Arafat to
. assist in the probe.
>
The PLO’s willingness to co-
operate is seen as an effort by
the organization; to show that it
ownot sabotage Pan Am Flight
103, which was en route from
London to New York. The main
suspects in the case are said to
be
extremist
Palestinians who
oppose Arafat's recent move to
renounce
terrorism,
and
ac-
knowledge Israel's right to ex-
ist.
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Pan Am jet crash called a ‘hit’ for Iran
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Western
intelligence
agencies
concluded last week that the bomb-
ing of Pan Am Flight 103 was com-
missioned by
Iran’s Revolutionary
Guards and carried out by Palestin-
ian terrorists — with support from
the Syrian and Libyan governments.
The bombing was one of at least
seven
terrorist
operations
con-
tracted by the Iranians in retaliation
for the downing of an Iranian com-
mercial airliner by a U.S. Navy war-
ship
in
July, Western
intelligence
sources said last weekend.
Six of the operations, organized
by terrorists of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine-General
Command
(PFLP-GC),
were
thwarted when 13 suspected mem-
bers of the group were arrested in
October
in
West
Germany,
the
sources said.
The seventh operation was
the
sabotage
of a U.S.
civilian
airline
that intelligence agencies now be-
lieve was the bombing of Flight 103.
The Pan Am Boeing 747 jumbo jet
exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland,
Dec.
21, killing all 259 persons on
board and 11 on the ground.
The PFLP-GC
has
denied
in-
volvement in the Pan Am bombing.
For the Pan Am bombing, the in-
telligence sources
said, the PFLP-
GC used a “drug mule” — a courier
ferrying
illegal
narcotics —
to
unwittingly carry the bomb aboard
the jet when he checked his luggage
at
Frankfurt,
West Germany —
Flight 103’s point of departure.
West German officials have iden-
tified the courier but have not re-
leased his name in order to protect a
possible case against the blast’s per-
petrators, the sources said.
According
to the sources, West
German authorities obtained details
of the bomb
plot
last week from
Khalil Dalkamoni, a PFLP-GC com-
mander.
Mr. Dalkamoni was arrested Oct.
26 along with
12 other suspected
PFLP-GC
terrorists and
is
still
in
West German custody. He had
re-
mained silent since his arrest, but
began
talking
to
authorities
last
week, the intelligence sources said.
Mr. Dalkamoni said several other
members of the group remained at
large and were not identified at the
time of the arrests. These Palestin-
ians are believed to have carried out
the Pan Am bombing, the sources
said. They did not disclose the iden-
tities of the suspects, who are the
subject of a global manhunt.
Although some of Mr. Dalkamo-
ni’s testimony surfaced in news re-
ports
last week, State Department
officials denied having reached any
conclusions about the bombing.
The intelligence sources agreed
to discuss details of the case with
The Washington Times because they
said the State Department does not
want to face the serious implications
of naming three countries — Iran,
Syria and Libya — as being respon-
sible for the terrorist attack.
“Qualitatively,
this
is not just a
group of 20
radicals,” one source
said yesterday. “These are nations
waging war. We’re not talking fac-
tions; we’re talking countries who
have supplied the ingredients” for
the bombing and
other
planned
attacks.
If Syrian and Iranian involvement
see CRASH, page A10
A senior House Democrat wants
a new dialogue with Iran. Page A1 1
.
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PAGE A10 / MONDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1989
2T||C
25lUC$
CRASH
j
From page A1
i
!
was officially sanctioned, the “next
j
question” the United States will have
,
to ask is, “What are we going to do
|
about it?” the source said.
{
“Iferrorism isn't an ‘ism,’ it’s a po-
i
litical act,” said the source. “That is
|
what State [Department] has tried to
i
avoid.”
!
President Bush has promised to
j
“seek hard” and “punish severely”
l
those responsible for the attack,
j
State Department
officials,
the
!
sources
said, have disclosed some
<
investigative findings because they
•
fear the
public’s misapprehension
,
that the bombing was a radical Pal-
j
estinian retaliation for the United
States’ opening of a dialogue with
>
the
Palestine
Liberation
Organi-
j
zation.
j
L.
Paul
Bremer,
the
State
De-
partment’s ambassador-at-large for
,
counterterrorism,
said
yesterday
that it was “premature” to say any-
one
in
the
U.S.
government
has
reached conclusions about the per-
pretrators.
“I’m
confident
we’re
getting
closer, but we haven’t reached any
conclusions yet,” Mr. Bremer said.
A State Department official, who
declined to be named, said he was
unaware that Mr. Dalkamoni talked
to West German authorities. The of-
ficial denied
that
the department
was attempting to downplay the evi-
dence.
As for the revenge theory outlined
by the intelligence sources, the offi-
cial said,
“It’s a plausible explana-
tion. It may very well come out that
way.”
Information obtained during
in-
terrogations of Mr. Dalkamoni con-
firmed facts that U.S. and British
investigators had gathered about the
bombing, including details about the
type
of
explosive
used, how
the
bomb was smuggled aboard andlhe
motivation
for
the
attack'
' the
sources said.
‘
“What Dalkamoni told us tracks
with
[information
obtained
from]
other sources and findings of the in-
vestigation,” one intelligence source
said.
Mr. Dalkamoni said Iranian Revo-
lutionary Guards and other Leba-
nese Shi’ite fundamentalists met in
Beirut, Lebanon,
last
fall and De-
cember with PFLP-GC leader Ah-
mad
Jibril, a former Syrian army
captain and explosives expert, the
sources said.
The Revolutionary Guards, one of
Iran’s two military forces, asked the
PFLP-GC to carry out the terrorist
operations in West Germany in re-
taliation for the July 3 downing of an
Iran Air jetliner, the sources said.
All 290 persons on board the Iranian
plane were killed.
According to the sources, Libyan
government agents
supplied
cash
for
the PFLP-GC
terrorist
oper-
ations. The
Syrian
government,
through
its
ties
to Mr.
Jibril, pro-
vided intelligence support and travel
documents, the sources said.
“The Libyan government paid the
bills, and there was active support
from
Syrian
intelligence,”
said
a
source.
Syrian
support
was
de-
scribed
as
“large,”
although
the
sources declined to elaborate.
West German
authorities may
have “turned up the heat” on Mr. Dal-
kamoni to make him talk in order to
counter
international
criticism
of
West German
corporate
involve-
ment in building what the Bush ad-
ministration has
said
is a chemi-
cal-weapons
plant
in
the
Libyan
desert, the sources said. Of the 12
others arrested with Mr. Dalkamoni,
eight have been released.
The bomb used in the Pan Am ex-
plosion contained Semtex H, an ad-
vanced,
plastic
explosive manu-
factured exclusively
in the Soviet
bloc, and was detonated by a sophis-
ticated barometric mechanism de-
signed to go off at high-altitude air
pressures.
Flight 103 exploded at 31,000 feet
about a half hour after taking off
from London’s Heathrow Airport.
The sources said the terrorists’
plan was to have the Pan Am jet ex-
plode over the Irish Sea. But strong
winds forced the jet to take a more
northerly course before turning east
over the ocean en route to New York.
Since
the
plane exploded
over
land, investigators were able to col-
lect evidence they would not have
found in the sea.
Chemical residue of Semtex H
was found on a luggage pallet recov-
ered from the wreckage of the jet,
along with evidence of narcotics, the
sources said.
That
evidence
first
linked
the
bombing to the PFLP-GC because it
was the same type of plastic explo-
sive West German authorities found
in a bomb discovered in the group’s
weapons cache in October.
The bomb found in West Germany
was built into a Toshiba portable ra-
dio, using Semtex H and a triggering
device connected
to a barometric
sensor that sent an electric pulse
when
it
sensed
high-altitude
air
pressure.
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The Washington Post
Hijack Alert Issued Before Lockerbie
Lawmaker Calls FAA Bulletins to Airlines ‘Dangerously Inaccurate’
By Laura Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer
In the month before the bomb-
ing of Pan Am
Plight 103 over
Lockerbie, Scotland, U.S. security
officials were bracing for a poten-
tial airline hijacking, not a bomb-
ing, according to documents
re-
leased yesterday by a House sub-
committee.
In
a
security
bulletin
dated
Nov. 4, the Federal Aviation Ad-
ministration
cautioned
U.S.
car-
riers operating
in Europe about
the
possibility
of
a
hijacking
in
Europe
“in the
first
half of No-
vember.”
Pan American World Airways
also posted an additional lookout
at
the
airport
in
Frankfurt
to
watch for passengers who fit the
FAA profile of a terrorist, accord-
ing to the documents.
Subsequent
bulletins
warned
airlines to be on the watch for a
bomb
concealed
in
a
radio-cas-
sette recorder. But even after the
Dec. 21 bombing, the FAA was
still concerned about
a
possible
hijacking. A bulletin dated Dec. 24
listed the names of 13 people be-
lieved to be planning a hijacking.
Excerpts
of 27 FAA
security
bulletins issued
in 1988 and
six
bulletins issued through Feb. 16
were made public by Rep. Cardiss
Collins
(D-Ill.), who
chairs
the
House
Government
Operations
subcommittee on government ac-
tivities
and
transportation.
She
criticized
the
bulletins
as
being
ineffective
and
“dangerously
in-
accurate.”
The
bombing
of
Flight
103,
which killed 270 persons, is likely
to bring a closer examination of
FAA security measures, existing
security rules and
the emphasis
placed on information the agency
gives to airlines. Collins said yes-
terday she plans to hold hearings
on those subjects next month.
Sen. F/ank R, Lautenberg (D-
N.J.), cnairman of the Senate Ap-
propriations
transportation
sub-
committee, last week called for a
presidential
inquiry
into
the
bombing.
FAA spokesman John Leyden
said
the agency would have no
comment on the documents Col-
lins released until it had a chance
to review them.
Generally, the FAA allows air-
lines to develop their own secu-
rity programs, dictating only that
planes
be
secured
against
the
threat of boinbings or hijackings.
Th§
bulletins
issued
last No-
vember prompted Pan Am to sup-
plement examination of carry-on
baggage
with
additional
hand
checks. But Pan Am’s increased
security for checked baggage in-
cluded
only
an
additional
X-ray
inspection, despite an FAA warn-
ing that some sophisticated bombs
can
pass
through
X-rays
unde-
tected.
The bomb that exploded aboard
the Boeing 747 jumbo jet was con-
cealed
inside
checked
baggage.
Officials
believe
the
bomb was
made of a plastic explosive known
as Semtex that can elude X-ray
machines.
A
British
Transport
Depart-
ment memo written Dec. 29 said
bags transferred to the Pan Am
jetliner
at
Heathrow
from
a
Frankfurt flight did not receive a
second security examination, ABC
News reported yesterday.
Two weeks after the November
warning about a
possible
hijack-,
ing, the FAA issued a general bul-
letin
to
airlines
about
a bomb
seized by West German police in
an
Oct. 26
antiterrorist
raid
in
Frankfurt. The bulletin said a To-
shiba “Bombeat 453”
radio
had
been seized by police in the arrest
of 16 people believed to be con-
nected with the Popular Front for
the
Liberation
of Palestine-Gen-
eral Compand.
According to the
bulletin, the
device
contained
approximately
REP. CARDISS COLLINS
.
.
. plans hearings on FAA measures
11 ounces of “a pldstic type explo-
sive wrapped in a metallic coated
‘Tobler*
brand
candy
wrapper.”
The bomb contained an electrical
detonator and
“a barometric de-
vice
connected
to
a
computer
chip, which was believed function-
al and apparently part of the trig-
ger or arming function.”
The
bulletin
continued:
"The
potential
target cannot be
iden-
tified at this time although it was
identified that the
[bomb] would
be very difficult to detect via nor-
mal
X-ray
inspection,
indicating
that
it might be intended to pass
undisclosed through areas subject
to
extensive
security
controls,
such as airports.”
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CLOSING kftON PAty>M BOMBER:
A London newspaper, thejweekly Sunday 1
; press, reported Sunday that the’ person who mat
the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 is a Lib>
an known to international security officials as “The
Professor” because of his knowledge of explosives.
The Express, quoting unidentified detectives,
Salso said a Lebanese student, 21 -year-old Khalid
"Jsgyar, of Dearborn, Mich., unwittingly carried the
bomb onto the flight in a radio-cassette player given
i. toTum as a gift. It did not say who gave it to him.
;
Investigators have concluded that the jet was
; blown up by plastic explosives hidden inside a ra-
I dio-casette player.
;
Also Sunday, Britain acknowledged that a Dec.
19 warning about possible bombs on airliners was
. not mailed until after Jan. 1 — at least 1 1 days after
the Pan Am jet blew up Dec. 21, killing all 259 peo-
«plc aboard and 1 1 people on the ground.
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