The (not so) Secret Rulers of the World - Peter Mandelson and "Lockerbie"

On the 17/8/09 under the byline “Political Reporter” the Daily Mail published the following story under the headline

“LOCKERBIE DEAL CAME AFTER THE PEER MET GADDAFI SON”.

“During his Corfu holiday Lord Mandelson also met Colonel Gaddafi’s son, just a week before it emerged the Lockerbie bomber could be released from jail.

He met Seif al-Islam Gaddafi while staying at the Rothschild family villa – and discussed the case of Abdelbaset Ali ai-Megrahi, the Libyan found guilty of planting the bomb which downed a jet in Scotland in 1988, killing 270.

Only a week later it was announced that Megrahi could get an early release on compassionate grounds as he is suffering from terminal cancer.

Last night a spokesman for Lord Mandelson said his stay and that of Gaddafi’s son overlapped by a night.

‘There was a fleeting conversation about the prisoner’ he said. ‘Peter was completely unsighted on the subject’.

The spokesman said Lord Mandelson had no involvement with the decision on Megrahi, which was a matter for the devolved Scottish government. ‘It was entirely coincidental’ he said.

Nevertheless the timing is unfortunate as many people who believe Britain is overly keen to improve relations with Libya because of its large oil reserves. Lord Mandelson’s spokesman would not say whether the two men discussed the oil industry.

The pair had met on at least one occasion before – at a formal event in London. Both are mutual friends of the socialite Nat Rothschild.

Seif Gaddafi, who is expected to take over from his father as Libyan ruler in the next few years, angered Lockerbie victims relatives last years when he said they were ‘very greedy’ and ‘trading with the blood of their sons and daughters’ in their battle for compensation’.”


I found this story of particular interest in the light of a story published in the News of the World on 11/3/01 under the byline of Ian Kirby the Political Editor. There are other references to this visit on the net. Peter Mandelson had recently resigned as Northern Ireland Secretay in the wake od the Hinduja affair and left Parliament at the 2001 election to take up his appointment as Trade Commissioner.

The text reads -

“MANDY FACES NEW PROBE – FURY OVER SYRIA TRIP”.

Fallen Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson faces a fresh probe – this time over a secret visit to Syria.

Tories are demanding to know if the government was informed that the then Ulster Secretary planned three hours of talks with the country’s head of state President Assad.

Mr Mandelson was last week cleared by the Hammond inquiry over the cash for passports scandal that led to his resignation. But now he must face a new quiz over the three day unofficial trip he made at Christmas.

Tory MPs plan to table a series of Commons questions to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Foreign Secretary Robin Cooke about the visit.

Bury St.Edmonds MP David Ruffley and Shadow Foreign Secretary Francis Maude is expected to demand a full inquiry. (I am not aware this ever panned out –Baz)

Embassy


They want to know when the British Embassy in Syria was informed of the trip - and of Mr Mandelson’s ‘informal talks’.

It is a fresh embarrassment for the government as it tries to draw a line under the ,Mandelso0n affair.

Mr Mandelson – seen canvassing in his Hartlepool constituency yester-day was forced to quit after being quizzed over his links with passport applications made by the Indian millionaire Hinduja brothers. But QC Sir Anthony Hammond’s report cleared him of any impropriety. That made MP’s on all sides ask why he was REALLY made to go. Suspicion then fell on his trip to Syria. Offficials in Whitehall were alarmed about the diplomatic ramifications of the visit, which included a meeting with power broker Wafic Said.


Mr Cook was said by officials in his department to be “beyond furious”. Mr Mandelson has previously defended his trip. He said: “it took place with the Foreign Office’s approval”.

But a Tory spokesman said “justified questions need to be asked.”

(The article concludes with several paragraphs concerning the passport affair.)




If this trip took place at Christmas 2000 that was during a recess in the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist. The defence team were attempting to obtain a document held by an unknown Foreign Government possibly the same document that is the subject of a PII certificate issued by Foreign Secretary David Milliband.

In my articles “A Poisoned Pill – the Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro” and “Lockerbie - Criminal Justice or War By Other Means” I suggested one of the reasons Libya and Mr Megrahi were blamed for Lockerbie arose from Libya supplying prodigious quantities of arms and money to the PIRA evidenced by the seizure of the Eksund in October 1987 en route from Malta .

A decade later the situation in northern Ireland had been transformed due largely to the efforts of Prime Minister Blair and his Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell, brother of Margaret Thatcher's Foreign Policy Advisor Charles Powell. It was Sir Charles who advised Mrs Thatcher to collaborate in the 1986 bombing of Tripoli (the FCO may not have been consulted) and was still there when Libya supposedly retaliated. Sir Charles Powell is a close friend of Lord Mandelson and is Chairman of Wafic Said's investment company.

What is the point of an independent enquiry?

The Masonic Verses Part VII The "MIA Video" Hoax and the 1992 Presidential Election

Un Coronel machine ambition,
Se saisira de la plus grand armée.
Contre son prince fainte invention,
Et descouvert ser soubez sa ramée.


A Colonel intrigues through ambition,
He takes charge of the greater part of the army,*
Against his Prince he will feign an invention,
And be discovered wrapped in his flag.

The Prophecies of Nostradamus Century IV quarto 65


Part V of The Masonic Verses The Elephant in the Room concerned how the arrest of the PFLP-GC “Autumn Leaves” cell in West Germany on the 26th Octoner 1988 may have prevented a terrorist outrage in the six days before the 1988 Presidential Election, an attack that may have threatened Vice-President George H.W. Bush’s electoral prospects. Part VI - Chinatown was concerned with how the “Wimpey fraud” launched from a Hong Kong “bucket-shop” in July 1985, to generate a ransom for a Beirut hostage, had significant if unintended consequences.


Part VII is the story of how the successor fraud, an attempt to sell the US Government for $4.2 US million a video purporting to depict “MIAs” also had significant if unintended consequences, notably the rise of the “Militia” movement and the madness of the Oklahoma bombing together with the defeat of George H.W. Bush in the 1992 Presidential election.


Oliver North and "Iran-Contra"

The true story, indeed the true extent of the anti-communist crusade widely, if inaccurately known as “Iran-Contra”, has not been told and it is unlikely it will be. Many of the key protagonists are dead. Others have told their story in an exculpatory manner.


The phrase “Iran-Contra” is closely linked with the central figure of the scandal – the extraordinary personality of Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North who was seconded to the White House at the beginning of the Reagan Administration, along with many other military officers, to perform (on the defence budget) the functions of middle ranking officials. Before taking the White House job North had been interviewed for and declined a job offer from his fellow Texan H. Ross Perot at Electronic Data Systems. (1)


North was never a “perotista” but used Perot as an occasional cash cow. While serving in the Reagan administration North’s political hero was not Reagan but another Texan VP George H.W. Bush who in time distanced himself from “Iran-Contra” falsely claiming not to have been “in the loop”. Those convicted of Iran-Contra felonies were pardoned by George H.W. Bush some to re-emerge in the administration of his son. North remained a Bush family friend. As it may have been one of North’s scams that lost him the 1992 Election this is the most delicious of ironies.


The label “Iran-Contra” came from the supposedly shocking revelation that North and his associates had been selling arms to the hated Iranians in contravention of official US policy. The rationale for this arms dealing was threefold; firstly to ransom hostages held by Iranian backed groups in the Lebanon, secondly to increase American influence in a projected power struggle in Tehran and thirdly to use the profits to fund North’s pet cause, the Nicaraguan Contra rebels who were fighting the leftist Nicaraguan Government the funding being contrary to US law. North frequently visited the Contra base at Ologampo, Honduras where the Cuban exile Luis Postada Carriles (2) was employed by the CIA to organise the re-supply effort.


While the hyperactive North (nominally Deputy Assistant Director for Political Military Affairs at the National Security Council) had within his remit both the “Hostage” and the “Contra” portfolios North had his fingers in a number of other pies. He had become involved with the Achille Lauro hijacking and the driving force behind the attack on Libya in April 1986 were believed to be officials of the National Security Council. (North, Poindexter and Cannistraro.)


A major objective of the Reagan administration, of which “Iran-Contra” was an aspect, was the undermining of the Soviet Union by boosting US military spending and organizing, arming and financing militant Islamic groups in Afghanistan who were fighting the Soviet occupation in support of the Communist regime in Kabul.


North’s ceaseless labours on a variety of schemes in the service of his President were not entirely selfless. North had Presidential ambitions of his own, ambitions that were by no means unrealistic. North’s political gifts were quite formidable.


In 1994 North, as the Republican candidate, narrowly failed in his bid to unseat the incumbent Democratic Senator Charles Robb in Virginia. In North's campaign the former hostage David Jacobsen was presented at political rallies to praise North – in reality he was not a symbol of North’s acumen and achievements but of his failures and unfitness for office. North lost narrowly and many staunch Republicans were suspected of voting reluctantly for his opponent who had his own scandals. Had he won it would have been a step on North's road back to the White House.


One aspect of this worldwide anti-communist (or at least anti-Soviet) campaign was not seen as being part of “Iran-Contra” at all. This was the effort to exert military, economic and political pressure on the Soviet Union’s client regime in South-East Asia – Vietnam.

The “MIA” Issue:

“North regarded the hostages as ‘MIA’”

from Gavin Hewitt’s Terry Waite, Why Was He Kidnapped? (3)


One of the legacies of the Vietnam War was the claim, rumour or legend that following the US withdrawal from South-East Asia the successor communist regimes in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia had secretly kept behind thousands of US and other allied soldiers, together with numerous captured civilians as prisoners. This myth became known as the “MIA issue”. Save for a few diehard “MIA activists” the MIA issue is no longer of much interest. However in the 1980’s and early 1990’s it was a matter of intense controversy in the United States and a cause celebré amongst extreme elements of American political culture.


The central demand of the MIA movement was that the Communist Governments of Vietnam and Laos (whose own war dead numbered some three million) make a “full accounting” of the approximately 3,000 US and allied serviceman and civilians allegedly unaccounted for in the wars in South East Asia.


The “MIA issue” was central to the ideology of the loose coalition of white supremacists, religious extremists, libertarians, anti-government militants and devotees of the 4th amendment (the right to bear arms) that became known as the “Militia” movement. The movement was militantly isolationist and opposed to the UN (seeing that body as the means by which the rest of the world would subjugate America) and distrustful of the institutions and agencies of the US Government.


To some extent the extremism of the Militia movement only outflanked the vilification of President Clinton by mainstream right-wing politicians and the phenomenon of the “shock-jock.” While the Militia movement had grown throughout the Presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (who was castigated by the “activists” for supposedly covering-up the “MIA issue”) the movement reached it’s zenith in the early years of the Clinton Presidency coinciding with the challenge to Presidential authority of House speaker Newt Gingrich.


In his January 1989 inaugural address President H.W. Bush spoke not only of his determination to free the (Beirut) Hostages but to address the problem of the “missing”.(4)


Perhaps the most famous or infamous MIA “activist” was former (or “sheep-dipped”) Army Sergeant Timothy McVeigh who on the 19th April 1995 together with an unidentified associate detonated a Ryder rental truck packed with explosives outside the William P. Morrow Building in Oklahoma City killing 170 people in “retaliation” for the massacre of the Branch Davidian Church at Waco, Texas exactly a year earlier. The Oklahoma bombing marked the movement’s nemesis and the events of “9/11” marked the effective end of the Militia movement.


The movement was essentially rural and class based. A central issue for the MIA activists was that the Army that fought in Vietnam was a conscript army. While many Americans were proud to do their patriotic duty the soldiers that actually did the fighting were disproportionately poor (and black although the Militia movement was overwhelmingly white.) The sons of the American elite usually avoided the war completely and the burden of active service fell disproportionately on those who could not afford a college education or those who lacked the political clout to secure a favourable posting.

“Behind it all, he says (a Militia spokesman) is immense bitterness and pent-up anger over the Vietnam war - Who are the people running this government? Aren’t they the ones who dodged the draft and hidout in graduate school? - The festering wound is the fate of American soldiers “missing in action” in Vietnam. To this day there is a widespread belief that the U.S. abandoned up to 1,200 of its men in captivity claiming that they were probably dead. – But the MIA story remains at the root of the deep and abiding mistrust of the US federal government amongst a large strata of American society.( 5 )


Famously George H.W. Bush’s eldest son George W. Bush attended Harvard (because his father had) before being drafted as a pilot in the Air National Guard with the sons of other members of the Texas political and business elite (including the son of Clinton’s Treasury Secretary and Dukakis’ running mate Lloyd Bentsen.) Even a supposed war hero such as the 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate John Kerry spent most of his war service in Washington. Therefore as most of the combat soldiers were poor conscripts it therefore followed that most of the personnel listed as “Missing in Action” were poor conscripts.


This actually was far from true. Many of the men listed as “Missing in Action” were navy pilots (or navigators) shot down over Vietnam. (Senator John McCain being the most well known.) Many of the “MIAs” were not officially military personnel at all but pilots and other contractors fighting in the “secret” war in Laos run by US Civilian personnel from the US Embassy in Vientiene, Laos headed by Ambassador William Sullivan (later Ambassador to Iran at the time of the Islamic Revolution). Ambassador Sullivan was supported by the large CIA Station headed by Theodore Shackley. Shackley had previously been head of the CIA’s Miami Station where he organised the CIA’s campaign of sabotage and terror against the Castro regime in Cuba. (6)


One of Shackley’s associates in Vientiene, organising the CIA's notorious proprietary airlines was the former White House Press spokesman Pierre Salinger. (30 years later Salinger played a crucial role in obtaining the evidence upon which Abdel ali Baset Ali Al-Megrahi was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. Salinger had interviewed Al-Megrahi in Tripoli. In the course of the interview Al-Magrahi denied having been in Malta on the night of the 20.12.88 – 21.12.88. This denial was the most crucial piece of evidence against him.) (7 )


The theory behind the “MIA issue” was ingenious. It’s proponents argued that the communists had captured many more personnel than those prisoners returned to the USA in “Operation Homecoming” in 1973 when several hundred US prisoners of war were returned to the US. Many were simply unaccounted for. Hundreds of Americans had been captured in Laos. Only nine, captured in the last days, were returned


It was further argued that the Communist regime in Vietnam had been promised reparations and US assistance in rebuilding their ravaged country. There is some evidence that the Vietnamese were promised $3.5 billion by the Nixon Administration shortly before the President’s resignation. The MIAs were essentially hostages. However the communists could not admit to holding the MIAs otherwise the US would resume hostilities. By the same token the US Government could not officially admit to the existence of the MIAs. The Vietnamese and the US Governments were for different reasons (in the “MIA theory”) accomplices in a tacit conspiracy to deceive the US public


Essentially the “MIA issue” was an obstacle to the objective of the Vietnamese Government to normalise relations with the US in order to achieve some sort of economic recovery. It also created a vociferous US lobby implacably opposed to the normalisation of relations with Vietnam. Whenever the US moved towards the normalisation of relations the cry would go up “the prisoners will be killed”.


North and several other American members of “the Enterprise” such as retired Air Force General Richard Secord had served in Vietnam and/or Laos. North’s views on the “MIA issue” are unknown. The NSC’s spokesman on the MIA issue was Army Colonel Dick Childress a man who had clashed with Perot over his insistence the administration were “covering-up” the MIA issue.( 8 ) Childress shared an office in the Old Executive Office Building with Colonel North.


In the early years of the Reagan administration supposed “private” initiatives were made to infiltrate groups into Laos to search for the supposed PoW sites. One famous operation was headed by retired Lieutenant Colonel Bo Gritz whose group briefly entered Laos in 1983 and were arrested, fined and deported on their return to Thailand. (Gritz was later leader of an Idaho Militia.) (9) These “initiatives” may not have been quite as “private” as purported and Gritz claimed that Ross Perot had been asked by Government officials to fund such efforts.



The “Boat-people”:


The phenomenon of the “boat-people” was not just an act of mass migration. It was also one of the most lucrative criminal rackets in human history. In 1979 the Peoples Republic of China had invaded Vietnam as a punitive measure following border disputes. The Chinese were also allies of the genocidal Khymer Rouge, as were the Americans.



In the late 1970’s there had sprung up in the South China seas an extremely lucrative criminal racket known as maritime insurance fraud or “ship-sinking.” It involved extended gangs of fraudsters operating from Taiwan, mainland PRC and above all Hong Kong. Expatriate right-wing Vietnamese of Chinese origin were key figures in the syndicates. Rustbucket freighters would be supposedly loaded with goods produced from the syndicates’ industrial enterprises to be shipped to overseas associates. The goods were never loaded and indeed may never have existed. When the ship “sank” claims would be made for the hull and the cargo.


The same or similar crews featured in more than one sinking. The “sunken” vessel, with minor cosmetic changes would often reappear in another guise. For example with the application of a lick of paint the “Skyluck” became the “Kylu”. In one case the cook was ordered to prepare sandwiches for the crew’s lunch. Only when munching on one several hours later whilst sat in a lifeboat did he understand why! (10)


In response to these frauds the London Insurance Market set up FERIT the Far East Regional Investigation Team involving insurance professionals, the Navy and various Police forces. Soon after “FERIT” was established the frauds came to a halt with much self-congratulation amongst the investigators. The frauds had stopped not because of “FERIT” but because the syndicates had found a far more lucrative use for their rust-bucket freighters. They were loaded with Vietnamese refugees in Vietnam and sailed towards Hong Kong


Many of the “witnesses” who claimed to have seen live American prisoners in Vietnam escaped from Vietnam in this way. The creation of the “MIA issue” served the interests of the anti-communist Vietnamese gangsters who organised the “boat-people” racket and they had an interest in perpetuating the myth as an obstacle to the normalisation of relations with the Communist Government of Vietnam. These gangsters became US citizens and drugs, fraud and the "boat-people" racket generated colossal sums of "black" funds for use in contemporaneous "Iran-Contra" projects.


The fee for the trip was usually 5 taels, approximately 6 ounces of gold the price of which hit $1,000 dollars an ounce netting the gangs a profit of some ten million dollars a freighter. Half a million refugees passed through Hong Kong alone where they received a modicum of humane treatment. Refugees who tried to travel west suffered unspeakable privations at the hands of Cambodian or Thai pirates. On being settled in the West, primarily in the USA they provided further lucrative opportunities to the gangsters who had brought them out of Vietnam.


The "MIA Video" Hoax;


One noticeable feature of “Iran-Contra” was the overlapping of projects and the confusion of objectives. North thought it a “neat idea” that the sale of arms to Iran was (allegedly) financing the Contra re-supply effort and the arms sales in turn were supposed to resolve the Beirut Hostage Crisis. Was there a linkage between the MIA issue and the Hostage crisis with funds raised from one used for Hostage ransom schemes?


The “MIA video hoax” was an attempt made in 1985 to sell the US Government a videotape for $4.2US million dollars a videotape supposedly depicting hundreds of US POWs being held in captivity in south East Asia. Central to the MIA video hoax was its supposed vendor a man called Robin Gregson who used the alias “John Obassy.” Save for his clashes with the law notably in Thailand and Singapore and his involvement in some notable frauds little is known of him.


The “real” Robin Gregson may have been Rhodesian. Indeed, as is the nature of such fraudsters they often employ a plethora of false identities depending on whose passport they have come into possession of, usually from some pickpocket gang. The name “John Obassy” arises from altering a passport issued to an Englishman John Bassie by inserting an "O", an apostraphe and joining the "i" and "e" to form a "y" for a traveller's cheque scam. Such conmen also swap or share bogus identities to confuse the authorities.


In October 1985 “John Obassy” swore a fantastical affidavit at the office of a US Attorney Mark Waple, also an “MIA activist”, situated just outside Fort Bragg.(11) Obassy purported to be a resident of Laos and Thailand. He spoke several Asian languages and was married to a Laoatian woman from a hill tribe. He made money by buying Lao gemstones cheaply and selling them in Thailand at a fabulous profit. (i.e.he was exploiting the Lao tribesmen.)


He was able to move freely around areas of Laos not controlled by the communists and occasionally came into contact with other Europeans whom he later came to realise were American PoWs. The CIA tried to recruit him. He had filmed a 248 minute video in Laos showing Americans in captivity which he would sell to the US Government for $4.2 million dollars to finance a scheme of medical relief in the non-communist areas of Laos.


(In 1985 Obassy had flown to Vietnam from Thailand with Sean O’Toolis an IRA Quartermaster to purchase a huge quantity of weaponry from the Vietnamese authorities from stores left behind when the Americans evacuated Vietnam a decade earlier. Whilst in Vietnam O’Toolis saw a number of MIAs held prisoner by the Vietnamese.


This appears to have been an extremely sophisticated “sting”. O’Toolis was not in Vietnam at all but Cambodia and the “prisoners” were American Special Forces training the Khymer Rouge. The “arms shipment” was intercepted, the IRA lost their money and several persons were tried and convicted in Chicago.)


(As noted in The Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro (12) Ian Spiro had sought to obtain Terry Waite’s release by organising a scheme of medical relief in the Southern Lebanon. Spiro purported to be a fluent Arabic speaker and claimed the ability to move round Beirut unscathed due to his local contacts. Both “Obassy” and Spiro purported to be residents of Beirut. Spiro was seeking to sell his story for a movie deal to the James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli. Obassy too was trying to get a movie deal.) Both surfaced in Southern California.


A scheme of some complexity to hand over the “MIA video” was communicated to the US Government involving a 747 taking off at Los Angeles for an unknown destination in South East Asia. On arrival the passengers would be taken by helicopter to another destination to view the “MIA video”.


In 1986 the Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs held a number of hearings on the MIA issue under the Chairmanship of Republican Senator Dan Murkowski of Alaska. Various witnesses and MIA activists gave their “evidence” which was lightweight stuff, for example a National Geographic map of Laos on which the alleged location of prison camps was indicated.(13)


A former PoW Major Mark Smith claimed to have seen extracts of the video at Obassy’s apartment in Beirut in the presence of a senior officer of Mossad. During his testimony Smith invited a member of the committee to engage in fisticuffs in the carpark.


The Committee also took evidence from Ross Perot. “Obassy” was also scheduled to give evidence at the hearing but at the last minute declined to do so claiming that a newspaper article identifying him as Robin Gregson had “blown his cover.” ( 14 )


Despite an outstanding arrest warrant issued by the Senate Obassy travelled to California where Major Mark Smith introduced him to a purported “film producer” Jon Emr. Emr had never produced anything but made a living conning people to invest in his various film projects none of which materialised. Emr was postumously credited as executive producer of an MIA related project the TV movie “The Bobby Garwood Story”having falsely claimed to own the film rights. (15) ABC subsequently paid a considerable sum to the true owner.



Major Mark Smith had been bombarded with calls from Emr who represented himself as a major Hollywood player (he claimed his partner was Michael Douglas’ brother Joel.) Smith found the flamboyant cigar-chewing, Hawaiian shirt wearing braggart repulsive, describing him as “the king of the oilers.” Emr and Obassy hit it off immediately and were determined to make money from the MIA video. Their relationship soon soured as each tried to make money behind the other’s back.. (16)


Emr had become embroiled in a ferocious feud with another MIA “activist” Scott Barnes who claimed to have infiltrated Laos and taken hundreds of pictures of live PoWs. None of these featured in the account of his adventures “Bohica” (17) as he had given the undeveloped negatives to the CIA who claimed the film had been ruined. The CIA allegedly instructed him to return to Laos to “liquidate the merchandise”. The feud arose from Barnes selling the film rights to his book to another party having already sold them to Emr.


Bohica was dedicated to the Shelton family. Charles E.Shelton was an Air Force pilot shot down over Laos in 1965 who was listed as MIA for decades. In his Amazon biography, Barnes claims to hold several unspecified degrees and besides his experience in the Army, Correctional Services, Social Services and Law Enforcement boasts of his training with the Justice Department, DEA, Treasury and in anti-terrorism at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre. (He omitted his criminal record.) He also boasts of having been present when Mrs Marion Shelton committed suicide by shooting herself with a magnum handgun at her San Diego home in October 1990. (As noted in The Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro Mrs Gail Spiro was shot dead with a magnum handgun at her San Diego home on the eve of the 1992 Presidential election).


Several years earlier whilst working as a prison guard in Hawaii Barnes supposedly received instructions from the CIA to murder an inmate, a plan he immediately exposed to the media. Being a forgiving lot the CIA had re-engaged him for the Laos mission although they later tried to assassinate him at his California home. Miraculously Barnes survived having his house shot up. (18)


In light of later developments it is interesting that Ross Perot also claims to have survived an assassination attempt at his Dallas home by a group of Black Panthers who were in the pay of the Vietnamese Government. Mr Perot made no complaint to the Dallas Police Department about this incident but is on record as complaining about courting couples parked outside his house.



According to page 107 of the Murkowski hearings Gregson had been arrested in Thailand in 1982 and convicted in 1984 of unlawfully demanding $10,000US from an Australian tourist alleged tro have been in possession of a quantity of heroin. He was sentenced to four years and released on bail pending appeal. His conviction was upheld in January 1986 and a fugitive warrant was issued.


Murkowski continued “Mr Gregson was recently arrested again, this time in Singapore, on charges filed April 3, 1986, that Gregson and a Lebanese associate Maurice Bishoti, conspired to cheat a Mr. Pigibe Olani, a Singapore businessman, of $44,000 in U.S.currency in connection with a proposal to obtain jobs in Lebanon for Sri Lankan and Indian foreign workers and so forth. Charges were withdrawn in late May after an out-of-court settlement was reached to repay Mr Pilay a major portion of the sums involved. Funding for this settlement was arranged by certain individuals in the United states who visited Mr Gregson during his detention in a Singapore jail.” These visitors included Congressman Billy Hendon although the funds were provided by Perot.(20)


Momentous events were happening elsewhere. On the 26th May 1986 former National Security Adviser Bud McFarland, Oliver North, Howard Teicher and party flew from Israel to Tehran in an attempt to achieve a dramatic breakthrough in US-Iranian relations. North was not just relying on diplomacy. Also on the plane were several pallets of ToW missiles. The mission was co-ordinated with other schemes to free the remaining hostages under the supervision of Richard Secord who was co-ordinating these complex matters in Cyprus.(21)


On or shortly after the 26th May (the second day of the Tehran mission) Ross Perot’s personal pilot Jay Coburn (former head of EDS in Iran) flew into Cyprus with $2 million US to fund a hostage ransom operation. At the same time a “Lebanese agent” was to go into the Lebanon with $30,000 US for low-level bribes amongst Hezbollah. Secord speculated that this agent ended up stuffed in a trashcan (therefore assuming he had actually gone to the Lebanon with his $30,000US).(22)


Later that year a reliable witness claims to have encountered Gregson/Obassy by arrangement at a remote beach-bar in Cyprus. Gregson/Obassy had been in touch with NBC News and agreed a meeting in Larnaca with a senior NBC reporter George Lewis who would be in Cyprus to cover the release of US Hostage David Jacobsen. Jacobsen was released in the 2nd November 1986 but the US media knew of the event long in advance and 1,000 ToW missiles had been shipped to Iran over the previous days. (23)


On his way Lewis stopped in Dallas to interview Perot who declined to be filmed or even recorded but met on a “background” basis only. Perot “conceded that VP George Bush had indeed asked him to purchase the videotape” and agreed that he had bailed Gregson/Obassy out of jail in Singapore but with-held several million dollars until the tape materialised. Perot and Lewis agreed it was a “cruel hoax”. (24)


The meeting between Lewis and Gregson/Obassy occurred in a darkened beachfront gazebo. Gregson/Obassy had not brought any evidence but spun Lewis a convoluted story concerning drugs, the CIA, Mossad ect. Lewis was keen the acquire the “MIA video” but was not prepared to entertain the demand for substantial payment in advance..



Mrs Peggy Say & “Michael Trumpower”:

Mrs Peggy Say was the sister of journalist Terry Anderson, who was held hostage for seven years. Mrs Say worked tirelessly on his behalf. In her memoirs she referred to oddballs, working in the realm of the “intelligence community” who showed up on her door.


“In the summer of 1987 I got a series of calls from a man who identified himself as Michael Trumpower. He said he wanted to help get Terry free. To establish his bona-fides he shared details with me of an initiative he claimed to have been involved with which was bank-rolled by Ross Perot. The initiative was highly confidential, but, as it happened, I had been in touch with Mr Perot and Trumpower’s information jibed with my own. I called Perot’s office for verification and was told that he did not recognise Trumpower’s name. Now I was really puzzled.” -

“Trumpower claimed he also had recorded evidence of the disinformation campaign and other devious CIA-backed manipulations concerning the Libyan bombing, information that the Libyans would pay dearly for. He said he had reliable Libyan connections.”

“Trumpower inisisted that if the CIA tracked him down they would eliminate him”.

“Trumpower claimed that, although the Libyans would be prepared to pay a great deal of money for these tapes, he was going to try to get them to release my brother and Tom Sutherland in exchange for them.”
(25)


“Trumpower” turned up at Mrs Say home in Ohio in October 1988. He claimed to have worked for the Government in the Middle East for several years and had recorded his conversations with his contact Terry Arnold. Unfortunately he had left the tapes at home that day. Trumpower proposed a bizarre scheme involving Libya where he would trade these tapes to Libya then release them to the press after the “homecoming” of the remaining hostages. (The scheme made little sense to Mrs Say either!) After some further telephone contact Trumpower called one day and before she could pick up the line was disconnected. She never heard from him again. ( 26 )



There were further strange twists in the story. On the 11th July 1991 Jon Emr’s son Roger was driving a limousine through Culver City, California. Jon Emr was in the passenger seat. Jon’s mother Renee (closely involved in Jon’s “film business”), and Jon’s girlfriend Sue Fellows were in the back of the Lincoln Continental when it stopped at a red light. A man in an SUV pulled alongside on the passenger side and immediately opened fire firing off a dozen shots before speeding off. Jon Emr and his son died instantly. ( 27 )


The killer was recognised by both women passengers. His name was Robert Suggs a former private investigator from Tocema, Washington whom Emr had taken on as his “head of security” with extravagant promises of a glittering future for Suggs in the movie business. “Head of Security” meant dealing not only with disgruntled investors but Scott Barnes against whom Emr had taken out a restraining order.. It transpired that the previous night Suggs had also murdered Emr’s father Art at his home in Arizona. Art Emr had no involvement with his son’s business and Suggs’ motive, if any, is unclear.(28)


Robert Suggs also appears to have murdered his girlfriend Susan Calkins a pleasant, kind and attractive young woman whose only fault was getting involved with Robert Suggs.


Suggs was never arrested. In a press conference given by the Culver City Police Department on Christmas Eve 1992 it was announced that Suggs body, or rather his jawbone, was found in the Mojave Desert in December 1992. Suggs was identified from his military dental records. Most of the remains of Susan Calkins were also found at the site together with what were thought to be the remains of Suggs’ German Shepherd. Police Chief Ted Cooke concluded that this was a murder-suicide. Suggs had murdered Susan Calkins then put the gun in his mouth and shot his head off.


Chief Cooke confirmed to the press that no vehicle had been found at the scene – how Suggs had got there and transported Susan Culkins was not known. When asked about the murder weapon Cooke stated that a blue duffel bag was found in the vicinity that was identified as belonging to Suggs. Two guns were found in the vicinity.


Susan Calkins sister Kathy had discovered a sealed envelope amongst Susan’s belongings marked “do not open until July 10th” (the day Suggs murdered Art Emr senior). It appeared to be a suicide note addressed to Susan. Suggs had addressed his suicide note to a person he intended to murder.

After Chief Cooke finished his briefing the Detective on the case corrected him on one issue. The guns were not found near the duffel bag but in the duffel bag. Suggs had shot himself then put the gun in the bag!
( 29)



The Perot Presidential Candidacy:

The following year Ross Perot launched his Presidential Campaign. His central (perhaps sole) proposition was to reduce the Federal deficit. The Federal deficit had exploded under the Reagan administrations as taxes were cut while the federal budget, and particularly the military budget soared.


The process had continued under George H.W. Bush who had promised “no new taxes” when hundreds of billions of dollars were required to compensate investors in the Savings & Loan fiasco in which his son Neil was personally involved.


By concentrating on this single issue the Perot candidacy was not neutral but opposed to the incumbent. Perot drew his support disproportionately from Republicans and “Reagan Democrats” unenthused by George H.W. Bush.


Even George H.W. Bush’s greatest triumph, the ejection of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, was not universally applauded, particularly by those who disdained multilateralism and viewed Saddam Hussein’s regime as a continuing insult to American power. By example one of George H.W. Bush’s fiercest critics was his eventual successor, his son George W. Bush.


By 1992 the “MIA issue” was fading as a matter of concern to many Americans as was “Iran-Contra.” Activists and extremists kept the issue alive but no longer did 75% of Americans believe prisoners were still being held in Vietnam. “Rambo” had moved on to Afghanistan.


Perot himself had not abandoned the issue and chose as his running mate the most senior former PoW, Admiral James Stockdale, a resident of San Diego. (As the main base for navy fliers San Diego was known as MIA city). An honourable and respected military officer Stockdale was a disaster as a candidate for national political office.


A story in The Times Rabbit Bush Kept on the Hop (30) identified the MIA video as the cause of Perot’s animus, perhaps even hatred of George H.W. Bush. Reporting on the attempt made in 1986 by a “Hong Kong based British Businessman”** to sell the US Government the video the paper’s Washington Editor reported that Perot had said to Bush that “there are lions and tigers and eagles in this world – and you are a rabbit.” (Perot's reference to eagles may have been to himself and his associates. Perot’s authorised biography On Wings of Eagles chronicles Perot’s heroic efforts to free EDS employees from revolutionary Iran using the skills of a former Green Beret Colonel “Bull” Simon. (31) (According to Gritz Simon had planned his 1983 incursion into Laos.)


Three weeks later on the 16th July 1992 Ross Perot withdrew from the Presidential race. At the time Perot had unprecedented poll ratings for a third party candidate. His approval rating far exceeded that of Bush or Clinton. However press scrutiny of Perot’s business practice, views and the source of his wealth were not flattering. The Republicans had recognised the threat posed by Perot and had concentrated their fire on him and exposed his limited political gifts, prickly personality and egotism. Bill Clinton, yet to be named the Democratic candidate, benefited from the let-up in the attacks on his character.


In an interview on CBS news 60 minutes that appeared two weeks before the election Perot claimed he had been told that Republicans were planning to distribute doctored photographs of his daughter, depicting her as a lesbian, prior to her wedding. His source for these allegations – Scott Barnes! (32) Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater described Mr Perot’s allegations as “all loony”.


Perot had never even met Barnes but must have been aware of his reputation for telling tall stories. Gritz for one held Barnes in very low esteem. Barnes later admitted to author Rod Lurie that the story was a hoax but claimed that Perot had orchestrated the whole affair.(33)


The episode did enormous damage to Perot’s credibility amongst his supporters many of who were wary of electing President a man who took the claims of someone like Scott Barnes seriously. Perot had re-entered the Presidential race on the 1st October 1992. By rejoining the race late in the day he avoided much media scrutiny.


The central enigma of Perot’s 1992 Presidential candidacy was whether he actually wanted to be President at all. Beyond appearing on Larry King and making a few commercials he had little stomach for campaigning and few worked out policies. Was he simply trying to publicise the issue of the deficit and was he simply positioning himself to ensure the defeat of George H.W.Bush?


George Bush had been badly hurt by revelations in the papers of Reagan’s Defence Secretary Casper Weinberger (which Weinburger had donated to a library) that Bush had lied on oath when denying all knowledge of the arms for hostages deals.(34) It was after all Bush who tried to make “character” the central issue in the election. Further Bush had performed badly in the three three-way Presidential debates while Clinton had excelled.


The election was on Tuesday 3rd November 1992. Bush received 38% of the popular vote Clinton 43%. Perot received a creditable 19% of the vote. Without the intervention of Perot would Clinton have won?


Without the foiling of the “Autumn Leaves” plot George H.W. Bush may never have become President. He may have lost the White House not because of “Iran-Contra”, or his unimpressive domestic record but because he upset a man with a big Bank balance and an ego to match who had been taken in by a hoax that emanated from an office within the Old Executive Office Building of the Reagan White House.


“History repeats itself ; the first time as tragedy the second time as farce”. ( 35 )




* While the US took control of the northern (Honduran) front of the Contra army the southern (Costa Rican) front under Eden Pastora @ Commandante Zero remained beyond US control.


** “David J. Hutcheson” the middleman in the Wimpey bribe story (see part VI Chinatown) was described in identical terms in the original Sunday Times story as “a Hong Kong based British businessman”.


(1) Oliver North with William Novak Under Fire Fontana 1992 Introduction xii.

(2) The Masonic Verses Part III Lockerbie – Criminal Justice or War by Other Means – section The Political/Historical background

(3) Gavin Hewitt Terry Waite, Why Was He Kidnapped Bloomsbury 1991.

(4) George H.W. Bush inauguration speech January 22nd 1989 featured in part II of BBC2’s broadcast Iran

and the West

(5) Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Inside the underground world of America’s secret militias

Sunday Telegraph 30.4.95

(6) Theodore Shackley Spymaster; My Life in the CIA page 87

(7) Evidence of Pierre Salinger to Camp Zeist trial Glasgow Law School Lockerbie website

see also Lockerbie Judgement para.88.

(8)Patrick Tyler The 1992 Campaign Candidate’s Record; Perot Stand on Prisoner issue Left a

Residue of Bitterness New York Times 12.5.92 (story online).

(9) Bo Gritz as a Militia leaser featured in an episode of BBC2’s Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends

(10) George Mariat The Law of the Sea Part II Far East Economic Review 4.2.84

(11) Affidavit of “John Obassy” 2.10.85 see also All the bad actors in one place at Colonel

Joe Schlatter’s MIAfacts.com website (a site dedicated to debunking the “MIA issue")


(12) The Masonic Verses Part II The Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro

(13) Transcript of the Murkowski Senate Committee on Veteran Affairs

(available from the Library of the US Embassy Grovesnor Square.)

(14) Washington Post 20.3.86

(15) ABC film of the week The Bobby Garwood Story Executive Producer Jon Emr (aired summer 1993.)

(16) Rod Lurie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood-Moviemaking, Congames and Murder in Glitter City

Pantheon books New York published 1995 page 175-6

(17) Scott Tracey Barnes Bohica (Bend Over Here It Comes Again).

(18) Lurie page 116

(20) Murkowski hearings page 107 (also Lurie page 178 and MIAfacts.com)

(21-22)Major General Richard Secord Honoured and Betrayed page 147

(23-24) Lurie 178-185

(25) Peggy Say with Peter Knobler Forgotten page 230-1 Simon & Shuster 1991

(26) Say and Knobler 230-237

(27) Lurie chapter 1

(28) Lurie chapter 4

(29) Lurie epilogue

(30) The Times Rabbit Bush Caught on the Hop by Jaimie Dettmar 22.6.92

(31) Ken Follett On Wings of Eagles William Morrow New York 1983

(32) Interview on CBS Sixty Minutes 26.10.88 Reported in NYT 26.10.88 1992 as Campaign Overview – Perot Claims He Quit to Thwart G.O.P. Dirty Tricks.

(33) Lurie page 119

(34)25-31 Oct. Iran-Contra Indictment; New Weinberger note says Bush approved deal to sell

Iran Missilies for Hostages New York Times 1.11.88

(35) Karl Marx The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon

The Masonic Verses Part VI "Chinatown" How an "Olliescam" to Ransom a Beirut Hostage lay behind the Creation of the 1994 "Cash for Questions" Affair

“In Chinatown nothing is what it seems to be”

Noah Cross (John Huston) to Jake Gittins (Jack Nicholson)
(from Roman Polanski’s Chinatown)



Introduction;

Parts VI & VII concern the consequences of two “Iran-Contra” fundraisers, attempts to raise “black” funds to ransom hostages. Both had very significant if unintended consequences, unrelated to the actual fraud.


The first, an attempt to solicit funds from Wimpey PLC, supposedly to bribe Malaysian politicians, was utilised by the Sunday Times in an example of “sponsored” journalism to pursue a campaign of mischief against the British and Malaysian Governments.


This arose from a Hong Kong corruption scandal in which the Hong Kong Government fraudulently presented an edited and sanitised account of the extent of this corrupt activity portraying it at harmless. The true story involved several murders including those of three witnesses whose statements were corruptly disclosed by the Hong Kong Government’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).


The story also involves prosecutions arising from the 1983 collapse of the “Carrian” group of companies, in which two of the defendants were charged not in the interests of justice but at the behest of No.10 Downing Street in order to facilitate a Civil action against the groups’ accountants (and perhaps their legal advisers) to recover the losses of a corrupt Malaysian Bank in order to appease the Malaysian Prime Minister.


When the case collapsed the UK taxpayer picked up the bill for the Bank’s losses through funding the Pergau Dam project. As a delicious irony the case lay behind the creation of the “Cash for Questions” affair, central to the allegations of Conservative Party “sleaze”, which was central to the disintegration of John Major’s Conservative Government.


The story also involves a colossal fraud, the $1billion (Aus) Bell Resources scam by which the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank reduced its massive unsecured exposure to Alan Bond as a necessary prerequisite of the takeover the Midland Bank.



A Dam Waste of Money;

On the 20th February 1994 the Sunday Times published the notorious story “Wimpey offered contract bribe to malaysian PM” under the by-line John Davison (1) A text insert referred to a previous story concerning the Pergau Dam.


This told the story of how in 1985 the British construction giant Wimpey had been approached by a “Hong Kong based British businessman David J. Hutcheson” soliciting funds supposedly on behalf of influential Malaysian politicians as bribes in order to award Wimpey the contract to build a (supposedly) proposed $600US million aluminium smelter project. The paper’s editor Andrew Neil argued on BBC2’s Newsnight that the story didn’t say money was offered to the Malaysian PM. (2)


The story provoked the Malaysia Government to impose a further trade embargo on the United Kingdom as it was intended to do. A decade earlier, the prickly Malaysian Prime Minister Mohammed Mahathir had imposed a trade embargo in protest at Mrs Thatcher’s policy of ending subsidies for overseas students. (Malaysians of Chinese origin preferred to study in English in the UK rather than in their third language Malay. Mahathir took the view that it was the responsibility of the UK taxpayer to educate his country’s racial minority as the British had brought his country’s racial minorities to colonial Malaya.)


In January 1983 Mrs Thatcher met with PM Mahathir at Downing Street. A package of measures was agreed to improve bilateral relations. These included measures to recover the colossal losses of the Malaysian Bank Bumiputra Malaysia to the Hong Kong Carrian Group.


While obviously an “advance-fee” fraud of a type endemic in Hong Kong and the Far East at the time this fraud was of unusual significance. The fraud was launched from a “bucket-shop” in the Empire Centre, East Tsimshatsui, a sub-prime business area at the tip of the Kowloon peninsular, on or about the 11th June 1985 13 days after David Jacobsen, Director of the American University Hospital in Beirut had been kidnapped. The man behind the scam was a notorious fraudster and later a personal friend of Jacobsen’s.(3) Indeed the alias “David J. Hutcheson” may have been some clue to this. He was also part of Oliver North’s “inner circle”.(4 )


The fraud was abandoned around September 1985 after Wimpey had foolishly paid some $100,000 to “Hutcheson”. Wimpey then made a complaint to the Royal Hong Kong Police’s Commercial Crime Bureau who launched an investigation under the supervision of Superintendent Phil Layton. The Police were unable to identify or trace “David J. Hutcheson”. The other occupants of Hutcheson’s office were unable to assist. They had merely rented out a desk space to some unidentifiable person.


At the time the Sunday Times’ Wimpey bribe story was published several UK broadsheets, Newsweek Magazine, Channel 4 news and the Sunday Times itself were showing a great deal of interest in the Pergau Dam project when in 1989 £214 million or 90% of the Foreign Aid budget was devoted to this single scheme. Even the Minister for Overseas Development Chris Patten (later Governor of Hong Kong) was baffled.


By third world standards Malaysia had a high and rising standard of living. Nearly all the Foreign Aid budget was going to a single country, one with which Britain had long had fractious relations. The Prime Minister had ignored the advice of the National Audit Office who described the project as “unnecessary, unenvironmental and a waste of taxpayer’s money”.(5)


A widely held, if untrue suspicion, was that “Pergau” was about “arms for aid”, a subsidy so Malaysia would buy British military equipment. (A consequence of the new trade embargo was that the Malaysian Air Force ended up being equipped with MiGs!). In fact it was a lot sleazier than that. (6 )


Why did the Sunday Times publish as fact an obvious fraud eight years after the event? As would become clear the story had not been approved by the Sunday Times libel lawyer.


Three weeks later, on the 13.3.94 the Sunday Times published another strange story under the same by-line of “John Davison”. Risibly titled “Victim Spends Years in Jail Without Trial” this full-page story told the story of Lorraine Osman, former Chairman of the Bank Bumiputra Malaysia who had fled Malaysia in 1983 and sought asylum in the UK. He had been arrested in 1985 and had spent seven years on remand fighting extradition to Hong Kong to face corruption charges in relation to the Carrian case.(7)


(The edition of the 13th March 1994 also carried a four page special on the “Malaysian Affair” which made numerous allegations of criminality and corruption against PM Mahathir and his associates. The piece was illustrated by a number of racist caricatures). (8)


Eventually extradited to Hong Kong in 1992 Osman pleaded guilty and served a further nine months imprisonment. On his release his extradition specialist boasted to a Hong Kong newspaper of having sold Osman’s story to a London newspaper for £5,000. (9) (If true, this would be contrary to the newspaper’s code of conduct that forbids payment for a convicted felon’s story.) According to the Independent a “freelance jounalist” had touted the story to the Observer and Independent for £5,000. But who was paying whom?


Again the story was not checked for libel and repeated defamatory comments about a Malaysian politician Tengku Rezaleigh Hamza made in the earlier Wimpey story alleging Hamza was involved in the murder of the Malaysian accountant Ibrahim Jafaar (see below).


The story referred to “Alex Carlisle MP” (now Lord Carlisle a Government advisor) “making the latest of many appeals on Osman’s behalf in the House.”(10) MPs of all parties were approached by Osman’s represntative some of whom (such as Labour’s Barry Shearman) showed him the door. Osman’s lobbying extended to the press such as an anonymous “letter from Hong Kong” placed in Private Eye (11) and a petition published in The Times “Call to End 6 Year Remand” (12)


The Sunday Times continued to print further stories criticizing Malaysia to the bemusement of readers and the embarrassment of the newspaper’s proprietor who was trying to establish Star TV in Asia and who sought cordial relations with the regions authoritarian governments. The “Malaysia Campaign” was sometimes seen as an attempt by News International to exert pressure on the Malaysian Government. In truth it probably demonstrated Rupert Murdoch left editorial control to his editors (reserving of course the right to sack the editor!)


In February 1996 the Sunday Times published a bizarre retraction and apology. According to the “apology” News International had been sued for defamation by Hamza in relation to two stories published in relation to the “Malaysian affair”. These stories were not referred to my title or content but by their dates of publication 20.2.94 & 13.3.94. (the Wimpey bribe story and the Osman story.) (13)


News International made an unreserved apology for these unspecified allegations and announced its agreement to pay substantial, if unspecified, damages. News International repudiated their unspecified source and stated that these stories should never have been published. The ordinary reader would have no knowledge of which stories it was referring to or that News International had retracted the story that provoked the 1994 Malaysian Trade Embargo.


Within weeks Andrew Neil, who had earlier described the Wimpey story as “copperbottomed” and vigorously defended his “Malaysian campaign”, stood down as editor. In his memoirs Neil continued to refer to the fictitious “David J. Hutcheson” as a real person. (14)



The Carrian Case:


“ There is no such thing as politically motivated crime – crime is crime is crime.” - Margaret Thatcher ( 15 )



The Carrian group of Companies were established in Hong Kong in the late 1970s by a\Singaporean George TAN Soon-gin who was living illegally in Hong Kong. (The name “Carrian” derives from the names “TAN” and his mistress Carrie Wu.) For a time the group prospered with interests in property, transport, taxis and pest control.



The group’s main bankers were the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Bank’s Chairman Michael Sandberg being a personal friend. (Sandberg was also a backer of Alan Bond and later Asil Nadir.) Another major backer was the Bank Bumiputra Malaysia.


This connection was a matter of controversy in Malaysia. The Bank Bumiputra Malaysia had been established with a racist mandate to support indigenous Malays (Bumiputras) rather than the more commercially sophisticated Chinese. Instead Bank Bumiputra lent nearly all it’s capital to a group of Hong Kong Chinese businessman on what transpired to be grossly inadequate security.


TAN used the services of the elite of Hong Kong’s business community. Price Waterhouse were the public companies’ accountants and John Marshall a PW partner was appointed Chairman. The groups’ Legal advisors were the Colony’s most prestigious law firm Deacons.


In 1981 Carrian pulled off the most astonishing property coup buying the Bank of America Tower, a landmark of Central District, then, almost immediately, announced its sale for 100% profit to two Hong Kong businessman the Lam brothers. Carrian’s profits soared with this coup and the share price surged. The Hong Kong property boom exploded and the Carrian group borrowed huge sums on the security of Carrian shares and mortgaged their assets to the hilt (and beyond).

An insider’s dream, the Bank of America Tower deal was a sham. As the Lam brothers later admitted they hadn’t paid a cent. The supposed “sale” was a fraud.


Following Mrs Thatcher’s ill-fated visit to Beijing in 1983, where her hopes to negotiate an extension to the lease on Hong Kong’s New Territories were dashed, the Hong Kong Stock Market slumped and the Carrian stock price fell sharply. Bankers dumped Carrian stock, depressing the price further and leading to panic selling. As the Carrian group was on the verge of collapse the Police’s Commercial Crime Bureau raided Carrian HQ. The liabilities of the Carrian group exceeded three billion Hong Kong dollars.


Also involved in the Carrian case was the Territory’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) whose sweeping powers, including the power of press censorship, made them a formidable body to cross. Often seen as rivals to the Police with whom they later undertook some supposedly “joint” investigations they actually controlled the Police investigation of Carrian and other Police cases through their control of the Attorney General’s Commercial Crime Unit (CCU) headed since 1981 by a New Zealand Solicitor and Barrister Warwick Reid. Police files left with the Legal Department were routinely copied by the ICAC.



While the plan to raid Carrian had long been in gestation the raids were precipitated by one of two homicides in the case arising from the relationship between Bank Bumiputra Malaysia and the Carrian group.


As Carrian’s financial position worsened Bank Bumiputra’s Hong Kong subsidiary made a number of loans to the group. A Malaysian auditor Ibrahim Jafaar was sent to Hong Kong by the Bank’s HQ to investigate. He was murdered in his hotel room in Kowloon and his body found in a banana plantation in the rural New Territories.


The second suspicious death was that of John Wimbush, senior partner of Deacon’s and Chairman of the Hong Kong Law Society who had handled the conveyancing on the Bank of America Tower deal. At about 9 a.m.on Monday the 28th March 1984 Wimbush was found in the swimming pool of his Peak District apartment with a manhole cover tied to his neck with nylon rope. (Despite the apparent Masonic symbolism Wimbush was not a Mason.)


His family were out of the Territory but two teenage friends of his son were staying at the flat. At about 7 a.m. they had heard Wimbush having a heated telephone conversation with a person never officially identified. He left a brief suicide note.


The case was treated as suicide, and the party with whom Wimbush was speaking on the phone never came forward. Wimbush was to be arrested later that day, and the Police had made an appointment in advance to do so. Also to be arrested, by appointment, were two other Deacons Solicitors partner Maurice Wong and his assistant Simon Poon who according to a CCB spokesman speaking on the Monday were “still out of town”.


At 11 am on the morning of Saturday 25th March, 48hrs before Wimbush’s death the two senior CCB officers on the Carrian case Superintendent Philip Layton and his sidekick Chief Inspector Rod Starling met Wong and Poon at Deacons offices in Swire House and briefed them on the case against them. They also told the two lawyers that they were free to leave Hong Kong.


The two lawyers along with many others had made fortunes insider trading on Carrrian shares through their knowledge of the Bank of America deal. They fled Hong Kong for Australia and the USA never to return. In evidence to the Carrian trial Layton stated the two had never been interviewed.


They had been tipped-off on the instructions of Warwick Reid at a meeting held earlier that morning at the Legal Department also attended by John Sulan, senior Legal Department official handing Carrian and by CCB’s no.2 Senior Superintendent Russ Mason. Layton had been told not to make any record of the interview and to remove the two from the Immigration Department stoplist. Layton was baffled by Reid’s instructions but did as he was told.

At the inquest into Wimbush’s death, despite heavy pressure from the Coroner to return a verdict of suicide the Jury returned an open verdict.




The Reid Affair;


In September 1989, Warwick Reid, now Director Designate of the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office, (with a “character reference” from Hong Kong Attorney General Michael Thomas) (17) was arrested by the Independent Commission against Corruption ICAC and two years later pleaded guilty to unspecified corruption, (being in control of assets greater than the total of his cumulative earnings.)


While in ICAC custody Reid’s “confession” statement was concocted and Reid was presented as a “supergrass”, supposedly giving a true account of his corrupt activity in order to receive a reduced sentence and keep the bulk of his fortune intact. He served a further three years of an eight year sentence all in ICAC custody.


Any reduction in his sentence was dependent on his coming up with a version of events that suited the Hong Kong Government and the ICAC, primarily that his “confession” would not incur any financial liability for the Hong Kong Government. While happy to dump liability for the Carrian collapse on Price Waterhouse they had no plans to face the bill for Reid’s systematic corruption. Reid claimed in Court he only took bribes to do what he would have done anyway and that no miscarriage of justice ever occurred from his taking money not to drop prosecutions.


Reid’s arrest may have been prompted by his planned move to New Zealand. The ICAC were doubtless aware of his corrupt activities and degenerate lifestyle for years prior to his arrest through one of Reid’s associates.


Toby Lok was a key figure in Reid’s admitted corruption. A corrupt former Detective Inspector and Sun Yee On Triad Society member Lok disappeared shortly before Reid’s arrest. (He is rumoured to form part of the foundations of the Hongkong Bank’s spectacular HQ at No.1 Queens Road, Central, Hong Kong.) Reid’s association with Lok long predated his admitted corruption and as early as 1981 Reid had scuppered prosecutions in major cases in which Lok was involved.


While other corrupt Policemen fled Hong Kong in the 1977 crackdown on Police corruption, (in which Lok’s own “bagman” his former Station Sergeant was arrested and charged) Lok remained in Hong Kong and was never arrested or charged. As an English speaker he had become a valuable informant for the ICAC who in its early days were staffed largely by masonic refugees from “Operation Countryman”.


Reid’s “confession” statement produced an edited, sanitised and quite incredible account of the extent and duration of Reid’s corrupt activity pretending he had only become corrupt in April 1986 under the pressure of his elder brother’s debts (Mike Reid was a Senior Crown Counsel, Warwick Reid’s subordinate in the CCU) and that he had made corrupt deals on just six cases.


Reid gave evidence against just three persons, only one of which, a Banker, was alleged to have actually paid him money. It was apparently a mystery who was the source of the millions of dollars paid in the other five cases. The two other defendants, Oscar Lai a Solicitor, and Eddie SO a Barrister, had, as a team, represented parties in all six cases. "Carrian", the Ka Wah Bank and a number of other cases involving the collapse of Banks such as the Overseas Trust Bank, Dominican Finance Deposit Taking Company and other less high-profile cases were expunged from the official version of events.


In relation to the collapse of the Ka Wah Bank (one of several Bank collapses that feature in the “Reid affair”) the principals of the Bank the Low brothers had fled to Taiwan.(16) According to Warwick Reid’s statement the Low brothers wanted to get their hands on witness statements made in the case and Mike Reid had spent his working hours photocopying the files with a view to selling this material (as he doubtless did in other aspects of Reid’s “covered-up” corruption.) Warwick Reid’s statement noted that “the ICAC were concerned for the safety of their witnesses.”(17) Mike Reid was never arrested or charged but was allowed to return to his native New Zealand. (18)


On the 10th September 1989 Dr David Chye was shot dead in the garage of his Sidney home. In January 1990 his sister Mrs Brenda Caleo was hacked to death at her Sydney home. Mrs Caleo was the former mistress of one of the Low brothers. Both murders remain unsolved.


In May 1990 the world famous surgeon heart surgeon (and friend of Princess Diana) Dr Victor Chang was shot dead in a street in Sydney. This time the Police had a lucky break. The professional hitman who gunned him down had dropped his wallet at the scene! (As you do!) (19)


Like Chief Superintendent John Orr of the Strathclyde Police Sydney’s finest grasped the essential principal of successful criminal investigation - “you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”, and arrested the assassin, who had been posing as a restaurant plongeur as he boarded a flight to his native Malaysia.(20) He got life.


Marketing confidential files to suspects and to the ICAC was an important revenue stream for the Reid brothers. But had Mike Reid actually sold the Ka Wah Bank papers or was this passage in Reid’s statement created to exonerate the ICAC and the new Attorney General Jeremy Mathews from their own responsibility for the murder of these three witnesses?


The Hong Kong Government had brought a crackpot Civil action against the principals of the Ka Wah Bank which recovered $200HK (£20 sterling) of the $3HK billion (£300 million) liabilities of the Bank. To provided the evidence for this civil action the Hong Kong Government engaged the services of a firm of private detectives with a personal link to a senior ICAC officer. Did these private detectives actually conduct an “investigation” or did they simply use copies of statementsgiven in confidence, passed to them illegally under the secrecy clauses in the ICAC Ordinance?


Evidence that contradicted Reid’s self-serving claims of the extent and duration of his corrupt activities was suppressed and the authorities relied on the fact they would not be trampled in the rush of Reid’s other paymasters to confess. Reid had channelled his corrupt payments (or at least the few deals that were admitted to) through a Singaporean bank account he had opened in his mother’s maiden name. The date this account was opened and the activity on the account went undisclosed in evidence.


Also not disclosed was that when 26 year old Reid joined the Hong Kong Government in 1975 he had recently divorced his wife and was supporting two children. (22) As a junior Crown Counsel, living a riotous bachelor lifestyle (23), Reid was under financial pressure as soon as he landed in Hong Kong eleven years before he supposedly became corrupt.


For the purposes of managing the “Reid Affair” the Hong Kong Legal Department (or the ICAC) imported a new DPP John Wood, former head of the UK Serious Fraud Office, who announced within days of his arrival that the ICAC had “got to the bottom of the Reid Affair.” How would he know? As a senior official of the Crown Prosecution Service Wood had become close friends with fellow Mason Graham Stockwell now the ICAC Director of Operations. (23)


As a Metropolitan Police Superintendent Stockwell had achieved a measure of fame in the Maxwell Confait case a Police abuse that nearly led to the resignation of the DPP. Maxwell Confait was a transsexual prostitute who died in a fire at his flat in 1972. Two days later two youths were seen running from a burning shed. After several hours in custody they had not only confessed to setting light to the shed but also to the murder of Maxwell Confait. Charges were later dropped and a major enquiry followed. The case led directly to the introduction of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. (PACE).


Amongst the several “covered-up” aspects of Reid’s corrupt activities was the “Carrian” case. When conspiracy charges against the two Lam brothers (the supposed purchasers of the Bank of America Tower) were dropped and they became instead “witnesses” it apparently went quite unnoticed that in court they were represented by Oscar Lai and Eddie So.

The flight of Wong and Pun was a corrupt deal three years before the “official” start of Reid’s corrupt activities. Reid knew the two Solicitors had been placed on the Immigration Department stoplist and only the Police could remove them. At the time Oscar Lai was the senior Chinese lawyer at Deacons leaving soon after to start his own firm.




P:arallel to the “Reid affair” the ICAC had arrested Police superintendent Phil Layton together with a former ICAC officer John Picken on charges that were almost unintelligible. Layton was accused of “soliciting an advantage” by looking at the possibility of working in the private sector. He was acquitted after a lengthy and very expensive trial in which his sidekick Rod Starling was a reluctant witness against him, hampered by the fact that the charges against Layton was so ethereal.


Layton, who formerly led the Police Carrian investigation was represented by Martin Thomas QC (no known relationship to Michael Thomas QC) a former Lib-Dem parliamentary candidate. Martin Thomas was also representing Lorraine Osman who was facing corruption charges in the Carrian case which may give some clue as to the Sunday Times’ ultimate source of the Wimpey bribe story.




The Carrian Trial;

The prosecution in the “Police” Carrian case took nearly two years from September 1985 until June 1987 to present its case. At the close of the prosecution case the Trial Judge Dennis Barker, sitting alone, ruled that all defendants had no case to answer a ruling against which there was no appeal. The charges arose out of the 1981 accounts of Carrian and the four defendants in the case were George TAN, his assistant Bentley HO and two relatively junior Price Waterhouse accountants David Begg and Anthony Lo. Many of their more senior colleagues, partners in Price Waterhouse, had been interviewed and given statements after having been given immunity from prosecution by Reid and John Sulan.

The prosecution of Begg and LO was for reasons other than the interests of Justice. While the accounts of the public company had been falsified to overstate Carrian’s profitability through the Bank of America Tower scam Begg and LO were being prosecuted for failing to realise it was a fraudulent deal. Were these two juniors to blow the whistle when a senior partner in the firm was Chairman?


The Carrian case was masterminded by a Foreign Office body called the Commonwealth Fraud Secretariat headed by Dr Barry Ryder, who had been one of the board that had appointed Reid to head the CCU. (Apart from the Carrian case a “Commonwealth” Secretariat had no real function). At the annual conference of Ryder’s private business C.I.D.O.E.C. held at Jesus College Cambridge in August 1994 the theme for the conference was “Making the Accountants Pay”. When this had actually been tried in the Carrian case it the UK taxpayer who ended up paying. (24)


(Had any of the Deacons Solicitors been convicted Deacons could have been facing a substantial Civil suit but John Wimbush was now dead and Wong and Poon had permanently absconded. Charges against a fourth Deacons solicitor were also dropped.)


Ryder’s sidekick was Dr David Chaikin an Australian Barrister. In 1981 Reid had supposedly recruited a South Australian Lawyer John Sulan to head the Carrian enquiry two years before the group’s collapse. In fact Sulan may have been recruited at the behest of his friend Chaikin. Sulan did not personally prosecute any Carrian case and left the Hong Kong Government in 1985 to become the Australian Special Prosecutor into Alan Bond.


Another central personality in the affair was the Attorney General Michael Thomas who was appointed in 1983. Thomas had developed a friendship with the most prominent personality in Hong Kong Baroness Lydia Dunn who had many interests in the business and political sphere (in Hong Kong there was little distinction between the two.) Baroness Dunn was a Director and later Deputy Chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank as well as thousands of other companies. Amongst her numerous positions she was Chairman of the ICAC Complaints Committee as well as being a principal advisor to the Foreign Office before leaving Hong Kong in the run-up to the 1997 handover.


In 1988 Thomas resigned as Attorney General, divorced his wife and married Ms Dunn. Despite being Reid’s supervisor for five years Thomas was unaware of Reid’s corrupt activities regarding him as being very able. (If ignorance is bliss Thomas must have been a very happy man.)


In a speech given prior to Reid’s arrest to the dinner of the Hong Kong Society of Accountants Thomas boasted of the skills and experience of the Legal Department’s (inept and corrupt) CCU but complained they were often left to pick up the pieces “after the bird has flown” and called on accountants to “blow the whistle at the earliest opportunity”. “Eternal vigilance” he pontificated “is the price of freedom”. ( 25 ) Despite sounding like he was touting for business and despite being a bit short on eternal vigilance himself the sole consequence of his ineptitude was that the ICAC dropped their annual claim to “work on the principal of supervisory accountability” from the Hong Kong Government yearbook.

Alan Bond and the "Bell Resources" Fraud ;

During the trial of Oscar LAI and Eddie SO some dirty laundry was aired. One of the interesting details to emerge concerned Michael Sandberg’s protégé Australian “entrepreneur” Alan Bond. In 1983 Bond had floated Bondcorp on the Hongkong Exchange. Bond then caused apoplexy by publicly announcing that the value of assets in Bondcorp far exceeded the offer price.


It transpired that the Police (Phil Layton) had obtained an arrest warrant for Bond in relation to this public statement. It further transpired that the Attorney General Michael Thomas had cancelled this warrant after being asked to do so by John Oates, Deputy Chairman of the HKSBC. (26) Thomas had done so “in consultation with his senior staff on the case” which included Reid and the future Australian Special Investigator of Alan Bond John Sulan.


When Sulan was appointed Special Investigator the major crime for which Bond was convicted had yet to be committed. In 1987 Bond bought a minority stake in the late Robert Holmes A’Court’s vehicle Bell Resources. Bond and cronies hijacked the board excluding other minority shareholders notably the AMP insurance group. Bell Resources was “cash-rich” earning interest from long-term cash deposits.


The new Bell board decided that these stuffy safe investments were not good enough. Instead they resolved to lend Bell Resources reserves to the financial black hole known as Bondcorp. Within two years Bell Resources had been looted of a $1,000 million Aus (this was when a billion dollars was a lot of money.) What became of the money was not explained. Little was recovered from the liquidation of Bondcorp.


The Bell Resources case was central to Sulan’s role as Special Investigator. Bond was eventually prosecuted but a “sweetheart” deal was struck. Bond pleded guilty, was sentenced to five years in prison (he was out in three) and nobody else was prosecuted. No money was recovered.


There was more to “Bell Resources” concerning a frequently mooted merger of the British Midland Bank and the Hongkong and shanghai Bank. A planned merger in 1988 had to be abandoned because of mounting losses in the Midland’s US operations and growing losses by the Hongkong Bank’s Australian subsidiary the Hongkong Bank of Australia which had massive unsecured exposure to Bond and a number of similar Australian entrepreneurs.


How Bond had financed his stake in Bell Resources was a mystery. He must have borrowed the money from somebody and the party who lent him the money might be regarded as a party to the fraud. It was no secret that the Bell Resources fraud coincided with a substantial reduction in the Hongkong Bank of Australia’s exposure to Bondcorp. ( 27 )


In 1991 BCCI collapsed. BCCI had been inadequately supervised by a “college of regulators.” (i.e. no regulation at all!) Following the 1992 General Election the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank launched a takeover bid for the Midland Bank. The HKSB engaged the former Hong Kong Minister Francis Maude, who had lost his seat in the April 1992 General Election as “consultant” for the deal.


It is suspected that personalities associated with the HKSB and the Swire group had made substantial contributions to Conservative Party funds prior to the election and Prime Minister John Major had visited the territory the previous year and whist there solicited donations to party funds.


In 1995 David Leppard of the Sunday Times ran an expose of “Tory Party funding” a story of how several prominent Hong Kong personalities, some unsavoury, had funded the Conservative Party. However the guts of the story “Bell Resources”, the takeover of the Midland Bank and the contributions of the Deputy Chairman of the Hongkong Bank, “named” insider dealer, LI Ka-shing was expunged as LI was a friend of the Sunday Times Business Editor Geoff Randall.


In order to supposedly prevent the BCCI fiasco ever occurring again (look around!) PM John Major had set up a Special Investigations Unit within the Bank of England. In response to the PM’s standard request for persons with relevant information to “come forward” the author drew the SIU’s attention to matters concerning the Bell Resources fraud and personalities associated with the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. (27)


The SIU declined to pursue the matter unless the author agreed to his information being disclosed to the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption a body who covered-up systematic and related corruption in the Hong Kong Legal Department and who had disclosed confidential information resulting in the murder of three of their own witnesses! The regulation of a UK Bank was in the hands of a Hong Kong criminal enterprise who had kept personalities associated with the Hongkong Bank "out of the frame".




.
The “Cash for Questions” Affair;


On the 10th July 1994 (a few months after the publication of the Wimpey and Osman stories) The Sunday Times Insight Team published the first of several stories on the “cash for questions affair” an attempt to test the probity of MPs by offering them money to ask questions in the House of Commons. Two Tory MPs, both Parliamentary Private Secretaries initially accepted money to ask questions about a fictitious drug. One of the two (Graham Riddick) had second thoughts and returned the money.


The Sunday Times story became entwined in revelations published in The Guardian of a more systematic attempt to subvert Parliament involving the lobbying company Ian Greer Associates who maintained a “stable” of MPs for the purpose. The Guardian story featured the affairs of Mohammed Al-Fayed and the take-over of Harrods an arcane parliamentary affair of little or no interest to people in the real world.


Al-Fayed had apparently paid more than one Conservative MP for “advice” and the story led to the libel case brought against Al-Fayed by the former Trade Minister Neil Hamilton and the imprisonment of the former Minister for Defence Procurement Jonathan Aitken.


The Sunday Times’ attempt to entrap MPs was based on the experiences of the Sunday Times’ informant a “prominent businessman” who had experience of paying MPs to ask questions in the House. The informant was widely assumed to be Mr Al-Fayed. Mr Al-Fayed, no shrinking violet, was never shy in coming forward with allegations of wrongdoing. In fact the Sunday Times’ (self-styled) “prominent businessman” was Lorraine Osman for whom paying MPs to ask questions and paying for press coverage were aspects of his futile seven year long campaign to avoid extradition to Hong Kong.


Unaware and uninterested in the true motivation behind the story the Committee on Standards and Privileges nonetheless condemned the Sunday Times for the attempt to entrap MPs. The scandal led to the establishment of the Nolan Committee on Standards in Public Life in October 1994. By coincidence a member of the Nolan Committee, Peter Shore MP headed the Foreign Affairs Select Committee investigation of Pergau but being unaware and uninterested in the true story was unable to conduct a worthwhile investigation.


The “cash for questions” affair was a major contributory factor to “sleaze” the perception that MPs and particularly Conservative MPs were corrupt, and significantly contributed, to the defeat of the Conservative Government in the 1997 General Election.




(1) Wimpey offered contract bribes to Malaysian prime minister John Davison Sunday Times 20.2.94 which refers to New evidence links aid for Malaysian dam to arms deal Sunday Times 23.1.94

(2)Panel discussion BBC2 Newsnight 4.3.94 featuring Andrew Neil


(3)David Jacobsen with Gerald Astor Hostage My Nightmare in Beirut Donald I.Fine 1991 (1993 Edition ) meeting with “John Smith” p.308

(4) Gavin Hewitt Terry Waite, Why Was He Kidnapped (published in US as Terry Waite and Oliver North ) Bloomsbury 1991 Chapter 4 The Inner Circle

(5) Chris Blackhurst Patten ‘fury’at Malaysia dam deal – Minister thought Pergau not proper use of aid

Independent –

(6) The Malaysian air-force bought 18 Mig 29s.

(7) John Davison Victim spends years in jail without trial Sunday Times 13.3.94

(8) Sunday Times 13.3.94

(9) Interview with Mike Kingston SCMP (South China Morning Post) 28.8.93

(10) John Davison Victim spends years in jail without trial Sunday Times 13.3.94

(11) Letter from Hong Kong (sic) (Macclesfield actually!) from Our Own Correspondent Private Eye 6.12.91

(12) Call for end to 6 year remand from Mr M.J.Kingston and others Letters Times 9.9.91

(13) Sunday Times Feb.1996

(14) Andrew Neil Full Disclosure

(15) Statement to camera by Lady Thatcher featured on BBC TV as a
trailer. Date and time of statement unknown.


(16) “confession” statement of Charles Warwick Reid – not in public domain.

(17) Lindy Course Thomas in court denial of Reid claim SCMP 7.4.92

(18) Lindy Course Reid’s brother a ‘paid informant’ SCMP 11.2.92

(19) Sidney Police left in the dark over Hongkong link in murders Hongkong Standard 10.2.91

(20) Dropped wallet provided clue in surgeon’s killing SCMP 20.7.91

(21) Marriage cert.1853 All Saints Anglican Church Nelson, New Zealand 24.2.68

(22) Lindy Course Reid tells of lawyers’ sex and booze binges SCMP 11.2.92

(23) John Elliott Hong Kong given a morale boost Financial Times 19.10.90

(24) August 1994 Prospectus for conference of C.I.D.O.E.C. Jesus College, Cambridge.

(25) Attorney General urges accountants to report business fraud SCMP 3.10.87

( 26) Terry Porter Thomas ‘killed Bond charge’ SCMP February 1992

(27) Paul Barry The Fall and Rise of Alan Bond page 198

(28) Author’s correspondence with Bank of England’s Special Investigations Unit.

The Masonic Verses Part V

The Elephant in the Room –
Richard Lawless & “Autumn Leaves”


“I will never apologise for America; I don’t care what the facts are - I’m not an apologise for America kind of guy”. ( 1 )

Vice-President George H.W. Bush



The bombing of Pan Am 103 did not come as a bolt from the blue. It was expected and planned for. While it is widely recognised that the “Vincennes Incident” gave Iran a motive to retaliate, it is not widely recognised that the “Vincennes Incident” also gave the US Government a motive to collude in a measured or proportionate response on a calculation that any alternative course of action would result in far greater loss of life without any political benefit.


Save for those who perished, their friends and families (who at least received substantial compensation) Lockerbie and the creation of the “Libyan solution” worked out quite well. Most relatives, particularly the Americans were largely satisfied with the outcome of Camp Zeist and see no reason to question the guilt of Al-Megrahi or the culpability of the Libyan regime.


Our perception of events are conditioned by assumptions. It is widely, almost universally assumed that in the event of a threat to bomb a civilian airliner the authorities would do all in their power to prevent such an occurrence. This is not necessarily true. (for example credible claims, routinely but not convincingly denied, have been made that the Omagh bombing might have been prevented at the cost of the authorities revealing intelligence sources and surveillance techniques.)


The alternative to “Lockerbie” was not that the supposed warnings were acted on, the bombing prevented and nobody died but that different people, and perhaps many more people, would have died.


It was reputed the Ayatollah Khomeini had demanded the destruction of six aircraft in revenge.(2) Ayatollah Montashemi threatened that “the skies would rain blood”(3) while the Iranian Prime Minister stated the US “would not escape responsibility.”(4) A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in London Mohamed Basti promised or threatened “an appropriate response to the magnitude of the crime”.(5) But what was an “appropriate response” and how would the Americans themselves respond to this unspecified response?



The American Government would have held crisis meetings, the deliberations of which will be likely be secret forever, to consider each possible Iranian response and to plan the US counter-response to each possible Iranian response and to consider in turn how the Iranians would respond to each US response and so on. This is basic International Relations theory. (By pretending retaliation for the Vincennes Incident never happened the proverbial “line in the sand” was drawn and the cycle of response, counter-response, counter counter-response was broken).


The Vincennes Incident would have been top of the agenda for the Inter Agency Group that met on a daily basis in the White House situation room. Comprising representatives of the State Department, the NSC, the CIA and the Military they would have co-ordinated US policy, initially the response of official spokesmen, including the President.


Beyond what was agreed these agencies, who were not only colleagues but rivals, they may have had their own agenda as competing groups within these agencies. For example what would be the collective view of the Military towards a major conflict in the Middle East and what was the view of the Army, Marine Corp and USAF towards the Navy’s conduct in the “Vincennes Incident”?


What where the possible Iranian responses that American planners would consider?

Firstly the Islamic Republic could have decided to forgive and forget, complain to the UNSC and the I.C.A.O., make some threats for domestic consumption, but essentially turn the other cheek. Unlikely as such a response may have seemed this is supposedly what actually happened obviating the need for any US response.



A second option might be that the Islamic Republic might try to pursue the matter under the Montreal Convention, demand the extradition of Captain Rodgers and his crew and put them on trial. This was not a proposition that the USA could countenance.



A third option was that Iran might attempt to destroy several aircraft. Such a plan was conceived and practised by the mastermind of the first World Trade Centre bombing Ramzi Younis who learned his bomb-making skills at Cardiff Polytechnic (an institution also attended by Mr Megrahi) and plans for a similar scheme were thwarted in theUK in the summer of 2006.


There are indications from the “Autumn Leaves” affair in which several aviation bombs were produced that this was the option initially chosen. It may be that different Iranian factions were pursuing different policies. “Autumn Leaves” was presented as a triumph to prevent an attack before “the baton was handed on to Libya.” Was it instead an operation to prevent unacceptable retaliation that would compel the US to make a drastic counter-response?


A fourth option might be that Iran would attempt to destroy a single aircraft. Increased security might prevent this (for a time) but sooner or later “the bomber would get through”. Would the Americans attempt to control the circumstances in which retaliation occurred in order to manage the consequences?


Further possible responses might be a limited or limitless campaign of terrorism, hostage-taking and attacks on US interests. Disproportionate retaliation would lead to counter-retaliation, escalation and war. Was there a way out of the impasse? If Iran retaliated by destroying a single aircraft the US Government could tolerate that (they had few practical alternatives) but it was essential for domestic considerations to pretend that retaliation had not occurred otherwise the pressure for counter-retaliation might be overwhelming.


The Americans could have tried to deter any Iranian reaction by a threat of the use of overwhelming counter-retaliation. There are no indications in the public domain that the US attempted to deter retaliation or even that a threat to the security of US aviation was even acknowledged following the Vincennes Incident.


At a meeting in London an un-named US official told Martin Cadman, father of a Lockerbie victim “my Government knows perfectly well who did this but they will never tell”.(6) This statement may have been absolutely true.




Alleged Meetings between Iranian Officials and a US Envoy:



Following the exposure of Colonel North’s “arms for hostages” operations triggered by the publication of an article in the Beirut newspaper “Al Shiraa” in October 1986 and the eruption of the “Iran-Contra” affair in Washington it might be assumed that the attempt to trade arms for hostages had been brought to an end.


The policy had been recognised by more sober minds in the State Department as being counter-productive. Giving the hostages value only encouraged further hostage-taking, not just of Americans but any Westerner then any foreigner. By the time North left the scene there were more Americans held in Beirut than when he started, his initiative having resulted in the release of just two or three hostages.



In two articles (7) (8) in his series of Lockerbie related articles Diary of a Vengenace Fortold Professor Ludwig De Braeckeleer wrote of a number of meetings that occurred in late September and early October 1988 between a former CIA officer Richard Lawless and four Iranian officials. According to Professor De Braeckeleer the purpose of these meetings were to discuss the ongoing Beirut Hostage Crisis and resulted in the release of one Hostage Mithelswar Singh an academic and US resident who had been held captive for 20 months.


According to other newspaper reports Lawless had handled the release of a South Korean diplomat who had been kidnapped in Beirut, apparently simply as a commercial venture. While the South Korean Government denied a ransom had been paid for his release it is likely that some ransom was paid. This was allegedly paid through Lawless’ Company.(9)


These claims were first made in October 1988 by former Iranian President Bani-Sadr (a man with doubtless very good sources and perhaps an interest in thwarting any rapprochment between the USA and the Islamic Republic) who alleged that both sides in the Presidential campaign had sent envoys to Iran and that an aide to Vice President Bush had held meetings in Switzerland with representatives of the Iranian Government in September and October. (10)


According to White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwalter:-


“There is a fellow named Lawless. He is over there. What he’s up to nobody knows. But he doesn’t represent to United States….he does not represent the Vice President or the President or anybody else.” (10)


Lawless himself denies that these meetings took place or that he has even held negotiations on the Hostage issue or ever met with any Iranian official or person purporting to represent the Iranian Government.(10) Spokesmen for both Presidential candidates also denied their involvement in any negotiations to release the hostages.


Lawless’ business partner Therese Shaheen stated that Lawless’ passport and business charge records showed he was not in the area during that period, (9) a claim at odds with Fitzwater’s statement.


The “Iran-Contra” revelations had severely damaged President Reagan’s credibility. The “Hostage” portfolio was firmly in the remit of the State Department and Ambassador Paul Bremmer’s had instituted a strict policy of no negotiation and no publicity. It was the emotional appeal to the President himself that had wrecked a rational policy and Bremmer was determined Reagan’s sentimentality on this issue was not going to affect policy.


Further Vice-President George H.W.Bush was campaigning for the Presidency. Having been dogged by the claims of the “October Surprise”,* and attempting to distance himself from claims of his direct involvement in the “Iran-Contra” affair the surprise release of more hostages was probably not top of his wish list at that time.


After leaving the CIA in 1987, after the death of CIA Director Bill Casey and considerable recriminations in the agency following the exposure of aspects of “Iran-Contra”, Lawless. a Korean speaker, set up a consulting company dealing in trade with the Far East and developed ties with Taiwanese interests. There is nothing in the public record to link him with the Middle Eastern politics.


For four and a half years 2003-2007 he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defence for North East Asia dealing with the North Korean nuclear issue. The husband of his business partner Therese Sheheen was Chief of Staff to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who resigned in November 2006 and was replaced by former CIA Director Robert Gates. (Deputy Director at the time of the Lockerbie disaster).


According to a number of Internet sources Lawless was the protégé of many senior Republican figures. He served in Korea when the Station Chief was Donald Gregg President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Adviser, one of his two closest friends in politics with whom he also co-authored a book. He was associated with Dick Cheney (later George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Defence) and with other rising stars referred to collectively as the “Lawless Group.”. (Is there a pun intended?) He had been spoken of as a possible Director of a “reformed” (i.e. partisan) CIA earlier in the Presidency of George W.Bush. (11).


However his most interesting relationship was with Jeb Bush, second son of George H.W.Bush. Jeb Bush and Richard Lawless appear to be close business associates and Jeb Bush acquired considerable wealth from his participation in deals involving Richard Lawless. ( 12 ) When Jeb Bush was Florida’s Commerce Secretary Lawless’s Company won contracts to promote Florida in Asia. (13)


In July 1988 Jeb Bush left his post as Florida’s Commerce Secretary to work full-time on his father’s Presidential Campaign (as did older brother George W.Bush). Later Jeb Bush was seen as his father’s political “heir” and far more likely to succeed him that his older brother.


Did Lawless meet with Iranian officials in September and October 1988 and for what purpose? Save for the comments of Marlin Fitzwalter and the claims of Bani Sadr there is little evidence that he did and none about what was discussed. Could they have held discussions about the hostage situation, as Professor De Braeckeleer alleges, and ignore The Elephant in the Room, the shoot-down of an Iranian civilian airliner by a US warship?


The idea of having contacts with the hated Iranian regime was anathema and allegations of such contacts were strenuously denied. But if the Americans were not talking to the Iranians perhaps they should have been. The Republican party were anxious to secure the Reagan legacy and possible Iranian retaliation for the “Vincennes Incident” threatened George H.W. Bush’s road to the White House. In 1980 the Iranians had had a decisive effect on the outcome of the Presidential Election.




Autumn Leaves;

While the “Autumn Leaves” affair occurred eight weeks prior to the bombing of Pan Am 103 as an aspect of Lockerbie it relates largely to the first ten months of the investigation when the Police were convinced of a link between Lockerbie and the activities of the West German cell of Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC). While this link was discounted when evidence of the supposed “rogue suitcase” materialised the Police were probably correct. They were then unable to square the circle having “eliminated” Heathrow as the point at which the bomb was introduced. (14 )


However there are four aspects to the “Autumn Leaves” affair that are of particular significance in the build-up to Lockerbie. These are:

(a) The travel movements of Abu Talb

(b) The existence of a plot to build bombs suitable for use against commercial civilian aircraft

(c) That the Central Intelligence Agency had an active policy

(d) The timing of the arrests.

Abu Talb’s Travel Movements:

Abu Talb was an Egyptian born Palestinian militant who had been granted political asylum in Sweden. His relationship, if any, to the Lockerbie incident, remains unproven. In the film The Maltese Double Cross evidence was fabricated to “prove” a relationship between Abu Talb and Khalid Jafaar a Lockerbie victim who was central to Francovich’s fraudulent claims. (15) He was imprisoned in Sweden in 1989 in relation to attacks on Jewish targets in Copenhagen on the 21st July 1985 and Stockholm and Amsterdam 1986. He was called as a witness in the Camp Zeist trial and was hostile to the defence who were unable to obtain a full and coherent account of his activities.


Interest in Abu Talb centres around his movements in October and November 1988. He left Sweden on the 3rd October 1988 flying to Larnaca. In Cyprus he met his Hafez Dalkamoni a member (leader?) of the “Autumn Leaves group. He then flew to Rome on the 18th October 1988 where he attempted to board a flight for Libya but was ejected from the plane by Libyan security guards. At Camp Zeist he claimed that he planned to fly to Libya in order to enter neighbouring Egypt illegally overland in order to visit his mother. As a deserter from the Egyptian Army he was wanted in Egypt.


In the Lockerbie case the authorites constructed an elaborate scenario to “prove” the primary suitcase was introduced at Malta in order to incriminate Al-Megrahi and Libya. If the Autumn Leaves group planned to bomb one or more civilian aircraft might a subsequent revelation that one of the group had begun his journey in Tripoli be used to “prove” Libyan involvement?


Having been thrown off the plane to Tripoli Abu Talb flew instead to Malta on the 19th October 1988 leaving on the 26th October and returning to Sweden. Despite intense questioning by the defence team at Camp Zeist Abu Talb refused to say by what route he had returned to Sweden. He did not use the unexpired portion of his return ticket to Cyprus. The significance of the matter is that the 26th October 1988 was the date on which the West German authorities moved against the Autumn Leaves group. Was Abu Talb to collect, or did he collect, an aviation bomb on the way to Sweden?


An associate of Abu Talb’s was Imad Chabaan @ Martin Imandi. On the 24th July 1985 Imandi travelled to England by the Gothenburg Ferry to lay low for a while. Imandi had been to England before.to get married. ( 16) This is a possible route by which the primary suitcase was brought to England. As it incorporated a barometric trigger this was probably a lot safer than flying and security on a ferry would not be looking for an aviation bomb.




The objective of the “Autumn Leaves” gang


The central point of the Autumn Leaves conspiracy is that it appears to represent a plot to build several aviation bombs and therefore one mighty deduce a plan to bomb several planes. The extent of the plot are not known because the PFLP-GC bombmaker, the Jordanian Marwan Khreesat was released from custody and left West Germany soon after his arrest. While Khreesat was subsequently interviewed by FBI agents who gave hearsay evidence of what Khreesat said the defence had no opportunity to question or cross-examine him.


In the “special defence” advanced by the defence teams at Camp Zeist Abu Talb and Directors of the Mishca bakery in Malta were named as suspects (lending credence to the “Malta scenario”) while Khreesat was not. As Khreesat had not been named in the Special Defence their Lordships were not inhibited from accepting his “evidence”.


Marwan Khreesat – A CIA Informant:

It was revealed at the Camp Zeist trial that Marwan Khreesat was an “asset” of the CIA. The Camp Zeist Judgement stated that:-

“it is also to be noted that the cell’s principal bomb-maker was one Marwan Khreesat who was in fact an agent who infiltrated the cell on behalf of the Jordanian Intelligence Service. His instructions from them were that any bomb he made must not be primed. Moreover while he himself did not give evidence, there was evidence of a statement given by him to FBI agents in which he said he never used radio cassette players with twin speakers (such as the Toshiba RT-SF 16) to convert into explosive devices”. (17)



Khreesat was suspect in three earlier aviation bombings. In 1970 47 people had died when a Swissair jet from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv exploded and on the same day an Austrian Airways flight from Frankfurt to Israel survived an explosion. Khreesat was also suspect in the bombing of an El Al jet from Rome to Tel Aviv in August 1972.(18) The plane made an emergency landing.


The claim about Khreesat’s supposed instructions not to prime the bombs does not arise from his “statement”. On the contrary he “stated” (via the FBI) that he felt constrained, due to his being closely supervised, from doing this and the devices he built were fully functioning. (19)


Indeed on the 17th April 1989, following an intelligence tip the BKA returned to search the basement of a grocer’s shop belonging to one of the Autumn Leaves group and recovered two further IEDs that had supposedly been there since October the previous year. Later that day two BKA technicians attempted to disarm one of the devices in an armoured workshop at BKA HQ. The device exploded killing one technician Hans Sonntag and seriously injuring another. Contrary to the Camp Zeist Judgement Khreesat’s IEDs (if these further devices were the work of Marwan Khreesat) were lethal.(20) The West German authorities did not pursue the death of Sonntag as a criminal matter.


Their Lordships also saw no reason to question Khreesat’s reported claim that he never used a radio-cassette with twin speakers. He would have had an obvious motive to deny having built the bomb that killed 270 people and his claim may have been self-serving. His claim may however have been true.


The Lockerbie IED was allegedly concealed within a black twin speaker model SF-16, Toshiba radio-cassette player. Khreesat had built an IED within a model RT-f453D single-speaker model (recovered from the boot of Dalkamoni’s Ford Taurus on the 26th October 1988 in Neuss.) Khreesat also possessed a second 453 model single-speaker Toshiba which was also recovered.(21)


However the identification of the radio-cassette in the Lockerbie case, which was blasted to smithereens in the explosion, is extremely dubious. Essentially it is predicated on the recovery of one of the most curious exhibits in the case – a charred owners manual for a twin speaker SF-16 radio-cassette recovered eighty miles away and assumed to relate to the IED radio-cassette. (22) (No other Toshiba radio-cassette was recovered in the wreckage.)


In the official version of events Megrahi (or somebody else) built a bomb within a Toshiba radio-cassette. This was stored in Malta or flown from Libya to Malta. At some point the radio-cassette was placed in a bronze samsonite tourister suitcase together with a quantity of clothing that had been purchased at the Saint Mary’s House Boutique Silema and in the official version the timer was set. But why would they put the owner’s manual into the suitcase as well?


Some observers believe that the IED that destroyed flight PA103 was similar in construction and design to the device recovered from Dalkamoni’s Ford Taurus on the 26th October 1988. It is not known into whose custody this device was eventually entrusted and it is not impossible that this was the device that destroyed flight PA103..


The Timing;

The most significant aspect of the Autumn Leaves case was the timing of the arrests at a point when it appears that the PFLP-GC were about to put their plans into action. The arrests were made on Wednesday 26th October 1988 at which time a fully functioning aviation bomb concealed with a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder was recovered.


Wednesday 26th October 1988 was six days before the US Presidential Election held on Tuesday 1st November 1988. What would have happened if the “Autumn Leaves” group had not been neutralised and what they had planned had gone ahead?


It was George H.W.Bush who had defended the “Vincennes Incident”, George H.W.Bush who said he would never apologise for America. According to Marlin Fitzwalter it was Richard Lawless “over there” a man apparently seen as a representative of George H.W.Bush. Could a terrorist atrocity have had a major impact on the Election? (23)


In 1980 Ronald Reagan had beaten the incumbent Jimmy Carter in a landslide, only the second time in US History that an elected incumbent President had been defeated. The Iranian Government had played a decisive part in that election in holding the US Embassy Hostages. Carter was campaigning against the backdrop of the hostage situation whose release was eventually timed to coincide with Reagan’s inauguration. This was not a gesture of conciliation but tgo underscore how a US domestic election had been affected by the issue.


If Iranian revenge for the “Vincennes Incident” was inevitable it could have come at a worse time for George H.W.Bush. Although he would have to deal with the situation the election was safely out of the way. He was still Vice-President but President-elect working to organise the new administration. Ronald Reagan, who had never recovered from the Iran-Contra revelations of late 1986 where it was revealed that he had little knowledge or control over what officials were doing, was still President perhaps already affected by Alzheimer’s.


Until the announcement of the indictment in the fourth year of Bush’s Presidency (long after the end of the Gulf War) the investigation had, to the disgust of the relatives, had apparently been glacial. It was the 41st President George Herbert Walker Bush who famously announced that Syria and Iran had taken a “bum rap.”


As pointed out in Parts I & III the object of the indictment was not a trial but sanctions against Libya. These could not be introduced without the changes to the Security Council that took effect on the 1st January 1992 and the main sanctions resolution 738 was passed on the 31st March 1992. That summer Bush was to campaign for re-election essentially on his foreign policy record and presumably had some foreign policy plans for his second term involving the Middle East.

*The “October Surprise” was the claim, almost certainly a hoax, that prior to the 1980 Presidential Election the Republicans had made some agreement with Iran that the US Embassy hostages would not be released until after the Presidential Election ensuring Reagan’s victory. (In the event their release coincided with the inauguration.)

Central to this claim was a purported former CIA officer Oswald Le Winter who claimed to have been involved in arranging security for a meeting that occurred in Paris attended by Vice-Presidential candidate George H.W.Bush. Unfortunately for Le Winter’s story on this day Bush was filmed in Washington.


A claim was therefore made that another native Austrian Gunther Russbacher, who purports not only to be a master spy but a USAF test pilot had flown Bush from Paris to Washington in two hours in an experimental plane. (Russbacher’s astonishing exploits and incredible adventures can be enjoyed on the Rumour Mill website run by his ex Raylean.)

The “October Surprise” hoax was exposed in a BBC current affairs expose made by the late Alan Francovich and Jane Ryder with whom he was romantically involved. Le Winter (filmed with a bag on his head) confessed it was a hoax. A decade later Francovich employed Le Winter as his “consultant” in the fraudulent documentary The Maltese Double Cross purporting Le Winter had been employed by the CIA even after exposing the “October Surprise”. Some of the “evidence” staged by Le Winter for The Maltese Double Cross, notably a telephone conversation between Le Winter and a supposed former CIA colleague was so blatantly fabricated even lawyers at the Scottish Crown Office noticed it.


After Francovich died Russbacher dumped his wife, divorced her without her knowledge in Mexico, and married Jane Ryder in California apparently forgetting he was already married!


Oswald Le Winter ended up in gaol in his native Austria in 1999 having been convicted of having tried to sell Mohamed Al-Fayed “evidence” the CIA colluded with MI6, Prince Philip ect. in the murder of Dodi Fayed and Princess Diana. This was (according to Winter and his ilk) a CIA/FBI plot to prevent Le Winter appearing as a witness in the Camp Zeist trial. (see Other Theories of the Spiro Murders in Part II The Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro.)


( 1 ) Vice-~President George H.W.Bush quoted at a campaign rally 2.8.88 quoted in “Perspectives” in Newsweek Magazine 15.8.88.

(2) Claim attributed to Vincent Cannistraro reported in David Leppard On the Trail of Terror Jonathan Cape, London 1991 page 212

(3) Susan and Dan Cohen PA103 New American Library 2000
page 34

(4) PA 103

(5) Film library clip featured in BBC2 Correspondent The Other Lockerbie

(6) Interview with Martin Cadman featured in Alan Francovich’s The
Maltese Double Cross


(7)Former Iranian President Reveals Secret US Talks With Iran by Professor Ludwig De Braeckeleer Ohmynews International 9.10.08

(8) US Official Denies Arms for Hostages Deal With Iran by
Professor Ludwig De Braeckeleer Ohmynews International 10.10.08

( 9) Hostage Deals; Koreans Look to the US by Robert Neff 23.8.07
www.atimes.com

(10) Exiled Iranian President Connects Both Candidates to Hostage Talks

New York Times 5.10.88

(11)Tompaine.commonsense 15.11.2004

(12) Alecia Swasy & Robert Trigaux Make the Money and Run St
Petersburg Times Online 20.9.1998

(13) The Masonic Verses Part III Lockerbie – Criminal Justice or War
by Other Means section The Historical/Political Background refers
to Jeb Bush’s association with right-wing Cuban exiles linked to the
bombing of Cubanair flight 455 when George H.W. Bush was
Director of the CIA .

(14) The Masonic Verses Part I Lockerbie – the Heathrow Evidence

(15)See Francovich The Maltese Double Cross or any version of the
“Drug Conspiracy Theory”.

(16) Leppard page 184

(17) Judgement para.75

(18) Leppard page 8, 141

(19) Evidence of Hal Hendershott of interview with Marwan Khreesat
(get Glasgow Law School Lockerbie Trial website.

(20) Leppard 142

(21) Leppard p.11

(22) Camp Zeist Judgement para.10

(23) In the event Bush beat Dukakis by 426 – 111 in the Electoral College
and by 53.8% to 42.6% in the popular vote a considerable margin of
victory.

The Masonic Verses Part IV The Shootdown of Iranair Flight 655 - The "Vincennes Incident"

“All our misfortunes come from Amrika” - the Ayatollah Khomeini



The Iran-Iraq War:


In September 1979 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded Iran with the objective of annexing “Arabistan”, the Arabic speaking provinces of Iran. Saddam Hussein had become President in 1977 following a Palace coup against his predecessor. Iraq had a recent history of conflict and rivalry with the more populous (and better armed) Persian neighbour ruled by US client Shah Pavlazi who a 1953 American sponsored coup d’etat had transformed from a constitutional to an absolute monarch. Iraq had given refuge to senior Iranian clerics including the Ayatollah Khomeini who were later expelled to Paris under pressure from the Imperial Iranian Government.


The 1979 Islamic Revolution (which Iraq had done much to encourage) posed a fundamental threat to the Iraqi regime. The Iranian revolutionaries threatened to export their Islamic revolution. While there were significant Shi’ite minorities in Saudi Arabia, Western Afghanistan, Pakistan and some Gulf States the majority of Iraqi citizens, almost entirely excluded from the ruling elite, were Shi’ites. If the Islamic revolution were to be spread it would be exported to Iraq.


The revolution had fundamentally weakened Iran’s armed forces, largely concerned with crushing internal dissent rather than defending the state. Many senior officers had fled Iran or had been imprisoned or executed. Having been lavishly equipped with the most advanced American weapons, American trainers and contractors had been expelled. Spare parts and new equipment would not be forthcoming. It was Saddam Hussein’s first opportunity to flex his military muscles possibly encouraged by the United States whose citizens were being held hostage.


While the US and the West were officially neutral de facto western policy was pro-Iraq. This pro-Iraq tilt was obscured following the Iran-Contra revelations that elements of the US administration, had tried to achieve some understanding with Iran or at least purported to, as a rationale for their arms dealing activities that also became entwined in the Beirut Hostage Crisis. (For example the “Hakim accords”, negotiated by an associate of Richard Secord’s in “The Enterprise” committed the US to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein)


Iraq was supplied with weapons by the West and by the Soviet Union. More importantly Iraq was received credit from the West and it’s Arab allies, notably Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Later the Americans supplied Iraq with intelligence and satellite photography.


Iraqi forces were numerically inferior and morale on the Iranian side was high. The fighting was largely confined to the disputed territory to the East of the Shatt Al Arab waterway where Iranian human wave tactics were often met by the Iraqis resorting to the use of chemical weapons. As the war ground on it was the Iraqis who sought a way out.



The Deployment of Western Naval Forces to the Persian Gulf:


Both Iran and Iraq were major oil producers and the Iranians attempted to exert an economic blockade on Iraq and its Arab allies by attacking tankers transporting oil to the West (and East.) Geography gave the Iranians a marked advantage. Tankers headed to and returning from Basra, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern ports had a long journey through hostile waters then through the chokehold of the Straits of Hormuz, the eastern shore of which was Iranian territory (the western shore being the Omani peninsular).


The Iranians had a small navy and the remnants of the Shah’s air force. Their main weapon to harass merchant vessels were small Swedish made motor patrol boats known as “boghammers” armed with machine guns, light weapons and RPGs. They had also acquired a number of Chinese made surface-to-surface Sikworm missiles which posed a threat not only to merchant shipping but to military vessels..


In response to the “War of the Tankers” which posed a significant threat to Western oil supplies the US Government and its Western allies deployed a Naval presence to the Persian Gulf and the approaches to the Arabian Gulf, where a US Aircraft carrier was deployed, in order to escort merchantmen flying the flag. Many Panamanian and Liberian registered vessels were hastily re-flagged.


The rules of engagement were imprecise. Although supposedly neutral, in 1987 in the United States had destroyed many of Iran’s off-shore oil installations in retaliation for an attack on a merchantmen flying the Stars and Stripes and for a US Navy vessel hitting an Iranian mine.


On the 17th March 1987 occurred an incident of crucial importance to the “Vincennes Incident”. The frigate, the USS Stark, was hit by two Excocet missiles fired from an Iraqi Mirage. 35 sailors were killed and the career of the Stark’s skipper Glenn Brindel, came to an ignominious end. Iraq was not supposed to be a threat to the US Navy.


The “Stark Incident” gave rise to grave concerns amongst the press and Congress. The President was widely criticised for putting American lives at risk on some vaguely defined mission. The fact that the Iraqi jet and missiles had been supplied by France, who while far more dependent on Gulf oil than the Americans was not contributing to the Naval presence, was noted. The rules of engagement were “clarified” and extended. The US Navy could fire on any aircraft that approached within 20 miles at the discretion of the Captain in order to eliminate any potential threat. (1) (The Iraqi Mirage had launched from a far greater distance - 40 miles.)


“The ROEs (rules of engagement) were modified to underscore the responsibility of the onscene commander to exercise the inherent right of self-defence in a timely fashion

The appropriate question should be: Are the ROEs weighted to protect American lives and property?

The answer – “absolutely” - Captain William Rogers III” (2 )




The Vincennes and Captain William Rogers III:


The billion-dollar Aegis class guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes was one of the most sophisticated pieces of military hardware in the world. Packed with the most up to date computer system it was designed to be part of a carrier taskforce to fight a battle against Soviet forces and to track and intercept hundreds of incoming aircraft and missiles.


The Captain of the Vincennes Captain Will Rogers III had been commissioned in 1965 at the age of 27. He had spent the bulk of his career in staff postings. At the age of 50 The Vincennes was his first combat posting. It was a prestigious appointment. Captain Rogers was reputedly still ambitions and to reach the highest ranks of the navy would have been looking to be promoted to flag rank following a successful tour of duty. Indeed being given the Vincennes as his first command might indicate that this was the route planned for him.


The Vincennes soon acquired a reputation for aggression. The Vincennes had arrived in Bahrain on the 29th May 1988. During its first patrol on the 2nd June 1988 an Iranian frigate the Alborz had stopped a merchantman and had boarded it (as was it’s right) to search it.


The Vincennes closely approached the scene. Rogers took under his command another Navy ship the frigate USS Sides and ordered it in position close to the Vincennes. Captain Hatttan of the Sides protested to flettt HQ believing this might be seen by the Iranians as a threatening manoeuvre. The order was over-ruled and the Sides withdrew. The Vincennes was ordered to observe the search from a distance.(3)


In his memoirs Captain Rogers dates the incident as the 14th not the 2nd June and omits the dispute with Captain Hattan.(4) He also describes how, as a civilian helicopter carrying a news team flew across the bow of the Alborz, the Iranians fired two machine-gun bursts in their direction.


At 0633hrs on the 3rd July 1988 the USS Elmer Montgomery was entering the Straits of Hormuz from the Northwest side. Some 13 Iranian gunboats had emerged from their bases on Abu Musa Island and were said to be milling around a Liberian tanker the Stoval. (The Stoval may not have actually existed. It may have been a phantom created by fake radio communications to confuse the Iranians.) (5)


The Vincennes was situated south of the Straits in the Arabian Sea covering any threat from Silkworm missiles at the approach to the Straits. Fleet HQ at Bahrain ordered the Vincennes to dispatch its helicopter to observe the scene. Some thirty minutes later the Vincennes Apache helicopter was circling over the Iranian gunboats.


Under the rules of engagement the helicopter was forbidden from flying within four miles of the Iranians. The pilot, Lieutenant Mark Collier, subsequently denied being closer than two or to three miles. (He had been ordered to “investigate”.) It appears that a shot, possibly an RPG round was fired at or close to the Vincennes’ helicopter. The helicopter backed off and reported to the Vincennes. Rogers ordered the Vincennes north in support of his helicopter.(6)


Captain Rogers’ account was that he wanted to bring his helicopter under the protection of his air defence umbrella a result that could be achieved by the helicopter flying south towards the Vincennes. In 1992, Rogers later claimed that due to atmospheric conditions, communication with the helicopter was limited to 15 miles.(7)


As the Vincennes steamed north at 30 knots the Iranian gunboats were ordered by the Omani coastguard to withdraw as was the Vincennes which was warned that high-speed manoeuvres were not consistent with the rights of innocent passage.


At about this time (0840) Captaiin Richard McKenna, the surface operations commander and Captain Rogers’ immediate superior at Bahrain HQ was startled to see the position of the Vincennes and the Elmer Montgomery moving into the Persian Gulf and ordered the ships to return to their position south of the Straits of Hormuz.(8)


Also in the vicinity was the USS Sides under new Skipper David Carlson. The Sides was equipped with a computer system that allowed it to share information with the Vincennes, to “see” what the Vincennes saw. The taskforce commander in Bahrain did not have this facility.


As the Vincennes steamed north supported by the Elmer Montgomery the US ships passed two Iranian gunboats drifting in the swell. They did not seem to regard the Americans as a threat. At about this point, 0934hrs, Captain Rogers sought the permission of Fleet HQ to open fire on Iranian gunboats, which were retreating into Iranian waters. He claimed they were closing in on his position. Under the rules of engagement he did not require permission if under threat.


However the Vincennes was not under threat. A few minutes later the Vincennes (0940hrs) entered Iranian territorial waters in pursuit of Iranian gunboats that had not fired on the Vincennes. The claim the ship was under attack from a swarm of Iranian gunboats was untrue.(9)



At 0943 the Vincennes opened fire with its single five-inch gun lobbing shells at the distant Iranian gunboats that returned fire, their RPGs or mortars falling hundreds of yards short.


At 0947 Captain Rezian pilot of flight 655 commenced his take-off at Bandar Abbas Airport for the short journey to Dubai.(10) As the Airbus took off it was immediately monitored by the Sides and the Vincennes and was assigned a track number. Commander Carlson had being following the manoeuvres of The Vincennes with increasing alarm and incredulity. He was concerned at the Vincenes engaging in combat with small gunboats and felt the best course for The Vincennes would be to clear the area. (11)


On the Sides Captain Carlson followed the track of Iranair 655 as it ascended. Attempts to contact the plane on the International Air Distress (IAD) and Military Air Distress (MAD) bands met with no response. Carlson ordered that the plane be “lit-up” with targeting radar that generally served as a deterrent. The plane did not respond.


According to Carlson he made a verbal assessment that “track 4131” was not a threat. It was slow; it was ascending and did not respond to being “lit-up.” There was no precedent for an F-14 attacking a surface ship. Carlson overheard Rogers’ informing Bahrain HQ of his intention to shoot down “track 4131” if it approached within 20 miles.(12)


(Lieutenant Colonel David Evans’ analysis of the “Vincennes Incident” (13) refers throughout to the Vincennes’ perception that the plane was an F-14. The F-14 Tomcat was a formidable fighter plane 79 of which had been sold to the Imperial Air Force from 1975 onwards. The Iranian Air Force was the only overseas Air Force supplied with the Tomcat. Equipped with Sidewinder, Sparrow or Phoenix air-to-air missiles the Tomcat outclassed most Iraqi fighters. It was not equipped with air-to-surface missiles.


Captain Rogers’ memoir however refers to a message from Vice-Admiral Less of the 18th June 1988 warning of Iranian attempts to convert their Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom fighters to a ground attack role by equipping them with iron bombs or unguided Eagle missiles. (14)


Unknown to US Intelligence the Iranians may have had some new weaponry or may have acquired Excocets on the black market. These were the types of weapons the Vincennes was designed to defend against.


On board the Vincennes Captain Rogers was in the commander’s chair in the darkened Combat Information Centre (CIC) crammed with computers and VDUs. As the single gun fired there were temporary blackouts of the background lighting and as the ship rapidly charged course manuals and papers were thrown to the floor. Many of the crew were unfamiliar with the CIC and had not been in combat before.


According to the information passed to Captain Rogers the contact was not ascending but diving. (It is possible that this information was not clearly available). Attempts were made to contact “track 4131”. It is possible that Captain Rezian, several minutes into a routine flight did not realise these transmissions, if he received them, were addressed to him i.e. unidentified military plane. The black boxes were unofficially recovered by the US Navy but their transcripts were not released.(15)


While flight 655 was a scheduled flight it has been hinted that there was some confusion over the four different time zones used in the Gulf and the flight was not identified in the timetable in time. There was also confusion over the flights transponder, an automatic beacon that emits a signal identifying the flight as civilian or military.


Flight 655 was emitting a signal identifying it as a civilian flight and was identified as such by the Sides moments before it was destroyed. The Vincennes may have confused flight 655 with signals emanating from Military flights on the ground at Banda Abbas.



The Shooting-down of KAL 007:


On the 1st September 1983 a Soviet interceptor had shot-down a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 flight KAL 007 from Anchorage to Seoul over the Soviet Island of Sakhalin killing all 269 passengers and crew (including a US Congressman). Either by accident or design the flight was hundreds of miles off course. There have been allegations that the flight was deliberately off-course as part of an intelligence gathering operation.


American officials castigated the Soviet Union for the callousness with which a civilian flight had been destroyed. Speaking that day from Santa Barbara California President Reagan called it “a horrifying act of violence” and in a national broadcast of the 5th September called for “a national day of mourning” stating “this was the Soviet Union against the world and the normal precepts which govern human relations among people everywhere.”(16) The Soviets tried to defend themselves against this PR disaster claiming, as with the Vincennes Incident, the plane had failed to respond to repeated warnings.


The US rhetoric was not backed up by any reprisals. The shooting down of flight KAL 007 was essentially used for propaganda purposes to castigate the inhumanity and incompetence of the “evil empire”.



The American Response;


The first official US comments on the “Vincennes Incident” were made by Admiral William J.Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a Press conference given at 1.30 p.m. in Washington some eleven hours after the shooting down. His comments were based on the initial account of Captain Rogers. Crowe was of course a naval officer.


In his briefing, while admitting his information was incomplete Admiral Crowe claimed that flight 655 was flying outside commercial corridors, had not responded to repeated warnings, that the flight was descending and picking up speed and that the Vincennes was defending itself in international waters. Nearly all these claims were untrue. It was a mistake that an officer of Crowe’s seniority should have given a press briefing before the full facts were known.


Within 48 hrs. the tapes and logs of the Aegis system were being analysed at the Pentagon and information contradicting Admiral Crowe’s initial account began to emerge.


The Iranians took the matter of the “massacre of 290 innocent civilian passengers” (18) to the United Nations Security Council chaired by the United States. Vice-President Bush was delegated to present the US response. The Secretary of State or the US Ambassador could have responded. While evidence was emerging contradicting elements of the initial account, the Pentagon did not share these doubts with the White House. In his speech Vice-President Bush claimed the shootdown occurred as the Vincennes was rushing to the defence of a merchantman under attack by Iranian gunboats.


The Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati described it as a “dastardly attack by a reckless and incompetent naval force led by aggressive and expansionist policymakers”.

The crew of the Vincennes were awarded combat ribbons and several of the officers including Captain Rogers and a Commander Lustwig, the air warfare commander for “heroic action” “in maintaining his poise under fire”.


The Investigation of Admiral Fogarty;

An investigation into the “Vincennes Incident” was conducted by a senior naval officer based at Central Command HQ, Tampa, Florida Admiral Fogarty. The enquiry, aspects of which were made public, has been the subject of some criticism.


This criticism was that the enquiry failed to interview other senior officers who had some involvement in the incident for example Commander Carlson skipper of The Sides, Captain Rogers superior Captain McKenna and the commander of the aircraft carrier the USS Forrestal who was, electronically, observing the incident.


The enquiry, allegedly, did not properly investigate Captain Rogers’ claim that The Vincennes had been fired on a claim that could have been substantiated or otherwise by an examination of the hull. The enquiry glossed over the fact that The Vincennes was in Iranian territorial waters. Above all the investigation was criticised for its conclusion of “scenario fulfilment” to explain how the staff of the CIC concluded that track 4131 was diving and accelerating when in reality it was climbing at a steady speed.


According to the now retired Commander Dave Carlson, a critic of Captain Rogers’ actions in the shoot-down of flight 655 the Navy faced a huge problem in confining responsibility to Captain Rogers. Rogers had sought permission to open fire from his superior Vice-Admiral Anthony Less who had apparently, if reluctantly concurred.

However Less and fleet HQ were not equipped with the sophisticated computer link that allowed, for example, The Sides to view the same data that the crew of The Vincennes saw. Carlson also believed that to discipline Rogers would have brought the Navy’s training and selection procedures under unwanted scrutiny.(18)


Charles Bilyeau:


A very interesting comment on the “Vincennes Incident”, Captain Rogers and the shoot-down was made in a review of Captain Rogers’ memoirs Storm Centre posted on Amazon. Lieutenant Commander Charles Bilyeu, an officer on the Vincennes, castigates Captain Rogers giving the book one star out of five. He drew attention to the fact that on return to San Diego 32 members of the crew were arrested and discharged for drug offences. “ WAS THE CREW THINKING CLEARLY AT THE TIME IT HAPPENED” (Bilyeu’s capitals.) “The book fails to even fully disclose what did happen between July 1988 and May 1989. The NCIS, FBI, myself and those onboard know what happened but no-one is talking.” Despite this he concludes without a breath of explanation “yes, the downing was justified.” (19 )


Conclusion;

Was the downing “justified?” How do you justify killing 290 innocent civilians? Captain Rogers has been widely presented as an officer who was over-aggressive, looking to take on the Iranians on any pretext, an officer who sought to impress his senior officers. Were these the qualities looked for in an officer of flag rank? Rogers’ actions that day had done nothing but irritate his immediate superior Captain McKenna and dumped responsibility for his own decisions onto the taskforce Commander Rear Admiral Less for whom the “fog of war” arose only from Captain Rogers’ actions.


Save for the failure to respond to the transmissions, for reasons known to the US Government, who have declined to release the transcripts of the black boxes or share them with the I.C.A.O. or the Iranian authorities the pilot of flight 655 behaved correctly. He was not to know he was flying over a “fire-fight”. Indeed even the Iranian gunboats didn’t know they were involved in a “fire-fight” until minutes before the shoot-down.


In his own mind and in terms of the Rules Of Engagement Captain Rogers saw the shoot-down as justified. Captain Rogers knew there were commercial aircraft crossing the Straits. He was probably aware that the Iranians had nothing flying, even some sort of kamikaze attack, that could threaten The Vincennes.


Rogers was in a critical situation, under appalling pressure of time to make a decision, but it was a situation entirely of his own making. He had been erroneously told the target was accelerating and descending. His primary, indeed sole responsibility was to the safety of his crew and command. The Vincennes did not share the fate of the USS Stark.


At the time The Vincennes was having enormous difficulty trying to hit the Iranian gunboats with his single 5” gun and the Captain was starting to look foolish. With its array of missiles an airplane was a different proposition and The Vincennes did what it was designed to do.



The Americans did not help the situation by their response of blaming the Iranians for this wholly avoidable disaster and far greater care could have been taken with the response.


However none of this really mattered. A discussion of whether or not Captain Rogers was justified in his actions or whether the US response could have been more considered is to a large extent futile. Captain Rogers did what he did and his actions could not be undone.


Yet in the official version of events the “Vincennes Incident” had no further significant consequences. The Iranians complained to the security council and to the I.C.A.O. but with the regime on the brink of collapse following its capitulation in the Iran-Iraq war decided to let bygones be bygones and apparently accepted that the United States had every right too shoot down an Iranian civilian aircraft if it posed a potential or theoretical threat to the safety of a US warship looking for a fight in Iranian territorial waters.


There were bloodcurdling threats of revenge but these were apparently for domestic consumption despite the statements of official spokesmen such as Mohamed Beshti who said at a press conference at the Iranian Embassy in London:-

“What our response will be we do not say – but it will be an appropriate response to the magnitude of the American crime.”


A statement in English at the London Embassy was not for the Iranian public.

While there is copious evidence that the Iranians tried to retaliate in October 1988 through the PFLP-GC “Autumn Leaves” cell this effort was foiled as the cell had amongst its members at least one CIA informant. After this they gave up. The Americans were obviously too clever for them and the task of smuggling a single IED on a single aircraft was obviously beyond their capabilities. Curiously Libya managed it quite easily.






( 1 )Sea of Lies Newsweek 13th July 1992 reporters John Barry, Roger
Charles

(2) see also Captain Will Rogers comments in the postscript to Naval Science 302, Navigation and Naval

Operations II, Lesson 20 Crisis Decision Making USS Vincennes a case study byLieutenant

Colonel David Evans US Marine Corps (Retired). (online)

(3) Naval Science 302, Navigation and Naval Operations II, Lesson 20 Crisis Decision Making USS

Vincennes a case study by Lieutenant Colonel David Evans US Marine Corps (Retired). (online)


(4) Storm Centre Will and Sharon Rogers (with Glen Gregson) Naval
Institue Press 1992 page 88 – see also Newsweek Sea of Lies


(5)& (6) Newsweek Sea of Lies & Naval Science 302, Navigation and Naval Operations II, Lesson 20

Crisis Decision Making USS Vincennes a case study by Lieutenant Colonel David

Evans US Marine Corps (Retired). (online)

(7) Navy Times 3.8.92 (quoted in Evans)

(8) (9) & (10) Newsweek & Evans

(11)BBC Correspondent The Other Lockerbie features critical interviews with Commander Carlson,

Captain McKenna and “real-time” footage of the “Vincennes Incident”.

(12) & (13) Evans

(14) Storm Centre page 89

(15) BBC Correspondent The Other Lockerbie (on which Lieutenant Colonel Evans is credited asconsultant).

(16) Statement of President Reagan Santa Barbara 3rd September 1983.

(17) Newsweek Sea of Lies

(18) Security Council expresses “deep distress” at downing of Iranian
civilian plane UN Publications December 1988 (online)

(19) Sea of Lies Newsweek 13th July 1992 reporters John Barry, Roger
Charles see also Captain Will Rogers comments in the postscript to
Naval Science 302, Navigation and Naval Operations II, Lesson 20 Crisis Decision Making USS

Vincennes Case Study. by Lieutenant Colonel David Evans US Marine Corps (Retired). (online)
Also BBC Correspondent The Other Lockerbie


( 20) Review of Storm Centre by Lieutenant Commander Charles Bilyeu
USN (Retd.) at Amazon.com

The Masonic Verses Part X The Bombing of UTA 772 - 19th September 1989.

Sanctions were brought against Libya in 1992 not only to (supposedly) compel Libya to hand over the two suspects in the Lockerbie case but to compel Libyan co-operation in the UTA case. ( 1 )


In the “official” version of events the UTA case demonstrates a pattern of Libyan behaviour. For some who dispute Libyan responsibility for Lockerbie there is also a suspicion that evidence in the UTA 772 case was manipulated to implicate Libya, perhaps even to ensure French support, as a permanent member of the Security Council, for sanctions.


There are similarities between the UTA 772 case and Lockerbie as well as significant differences, not only in the way the investigation was conducted but in the different method by which UTA772 was attacked.


The evidence in the UTA case against the six Libyan officials eventually convicted is essentially circumstantial and sometimes quite flimsy. There appears to be stronger evidence against other Libyan officials and a Congolese who were not charged. The names of persons implicated in the attack will be in bold type and those accused (and convicted in absentia) in bold print and underlined.

The Bombing of UTA 772 The Initial Response;

The second demand communicated to Libya on the 2nd April 1992 subsequent to the passing of Security Council Resolution 731 was that Libya “co-operate with France in the matter of the UTA flight.” ( 2 )

This referred to flight 772 of the French airline Union des Transports Aeriens destroyed on Tuesday 19th September 1989. The McDonnell DC-10 was on a flight from Brazzaville in the Congo to Paris having stopped on route in N’Djamena the capital of Chad.


The plane exploded at 13.59 45 minutes after take-off (having crossed a time zone) at an altitude of 35,000 feet breaking up over the Tenere Desert in the neighbouring Republic of Niger. Wreckage of the aircraft was discovered the following morning 800km north-west of N’Djamena spread over a corridor of 600 sq.km by a French military flight searching for the plane. The wreckage was in four large pieces. (The front and rear section and the wings.) However the forward area between the cockpit and the point at which the wings were attached to the aircraft had disintegrated. ( 3 )


As flight 771 from Paris the DC10 arrived at Brazzaville’s Maya Maya Airport just before 7 a.m. on the 19th September. After refuelling and cleaning the plane took off for N’Djamena at 08.47 landing in Chad at 11.13 where nine people got off and took off again from Paris at 12.13. The public papers do not indicate how many passengers embarked at N’Djamena only that all 156 passengers and fourteen crew perished. ( 4 )


It is known that a diplomat at the Libyan Peoples Bureau N’Djamena, Saleh Mahdi Mansour, was booked to fly on UA 772 but failed to show taking the same flight to Paris a week later. ( 5 )


The immediate concern was with the recovery of the bodies and the flight’s black boxes. 170 bodies were recovered and transported to Paris for post-mortem many carbonised as parts of the fuselage burned after the crash. Only 105 of these were positively identified. ( 6 )


The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder were transported to Paris where initial analysis indicated no technical failure or any warning of the impending catastrophe. ( 7 )


Apart from the four major pieces of debris some fifteen tons of debris consisting largely of the forward fuselage were recovered and sent to Paris with the intention of reconstructing the fuselage. On the 23rd September traces of the explosive Pentrite were detected on parts of the forward hold recovered and a formal murder investigation was opened that day under the direction of the investigating Magistrate Jean-Louis Bruiguiere and carried out by Police Commissioner Romuald Muller. ( 8 )


Amongst the debris was found piece of the shell of a grey suitcase (later identified as a Samsonite 2000 model in Oxford grey) on the inside of which was a 3mm coat of the explosive Pentrite. ( 9 ) (There was no explanation as to how this survived an explosion).


Further forensic reconstruction indicated the IED had exploded within container 7044RK containing economy class luggage loaded at Brazzaville and positioned at the front right hand side of the cargo hold. In this position it could not have been accessed at N’Djamena. (10)


Following the explosion there were several calls claiming responsibility on behalf of several organisations. ( 11 )


The “Bruguire report” names a number of suspects in the case. It notes threats to “punish” France made by the President of Syria for France’s support in the Lebanon of General Michel Aoun (leader of the Iraqi backed “Lebanese Forces.”) It also notes the enmity between France and the Lebanese Hizbollah which was involved in the kidnapping of several French citizens and which conducted a terrorism campaign in Paris in 1986 following the arrest of a Hizbollah operative. (Throughout the English translation of this section, produced for the American civil action, “Lebanese” is mistranslated as “Libyan”) ( 12 )



The 15th May Organisation;

The use of a suitcase lined with Pentrite explosive was associated with a Palestinian group the 15th May Organisation. The organisation had been disbanded in 1986 and its members were believed to have joined other groups. The French had come into possession of one of these suitcases following the arrest of a Tunisian in Paris in 1986 and five other samples had been seized in Germany, Italy and Israel. ( 13 )


A witness in the case was Palestinian Adnan AWAD who had been sent by the organisation from Baghdad in 1982 with such a suitcase and a bomb concealed in a shoulder bag to bomb a hotel in Geneva. He had been given the suitcase by a leader of the organisation Abou Ibrahim who was in possession of a dozen such cases.(14) On arrival in Switzerland on the 1st September 1982 AWAD surrendered himself to the US Embassy. He was granted political asylum in the USA where in 1991 he was questioned by French officers investigating the UTA bombing. ( 15 )


According to the Bruguiere Report “AWAD stated that the 15th May organisation received financial and moral support from Libya.” ( 16 ) While this may well be true what he was actually reported to have said was “everybody knew that the May 15th organisation received moral and financial help from Libya” ( 17 ) Awad had received the suitcase after the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism on the 28th February 1982.. ( 18 )

Franco-Libyan Relations;

Relations between France and Libya were poor arising from Libyan opposition to France’s close “neo-colonial” relationship to several states in the region including autocratic and brutal dictatorships. In 1987 and 1988 Colonel Gaddafi had proclaimed Libya’s right to self-defence against French “aggression”. France was a supporter of the Government of Chad with whom Libya had a border dispute over the Aouzou strip and who had recently routed Libyan forces in battle. One of the UTA victims Jacques Renaudet, was an arms dealer who had been in Chad negotiating to buy captured Libyan arms and material. ( 19 )


The investigation into UTA772 also touches on a number of incidents involving attacks on French interests in a number of countries in which Libyan diplomats were implicated. These were notably a plot to assassinate the French President in the Central African Republic in 1984, an attack on French soldiers in Senegal and the bombing of another flight UTA 772 that exploded on the runway on N’Djamena Airport in May 1984 with one fatality and a number of injuries. ( 20 )


In March 1984 a Zairean dissident Celestine Ongala bombed a Kinshasha radio station and the Post Office using two suitcase bombs that he had been given by the cultural attaché at the L.P.B. in Brazzaville Mohamed Astiwi. Ongala and his friends were subsequently invited to Tripoli where they were trained in the use of SAM 7 missilies by Ibrahim Naeli. ( 21 ) Under pressure from the Zairean authorities Astiwi was expelled from the Peoples Republic of the Congo. (22)

Senegal Februatry 1988 – A Lockerbie Connection?

The Bruiguiere report mentions twice a very significant episode that occurred at Dakar Airport Senegal on the 20th February 1988 which relates to the Lockerbie case. Two Libyan men were arrested disembarking from a flight from Cotonou, Benin via Abdijain, Ivory Coast. They were said to be in possession of weapons, several kilos of semtex, explosives and MST-13 timers which were in a briefcase found on board. They were not actually carrying the briefcase. Their stay in Benin had been paid for by the L.P.B. Benin and as a result the Libyan Ambassador Mustapha Abucetta was expelled.(23) Later in the Bruguiere report the Ambassador is named as Mohamed Astiwi. (24)


The two men were travelling on Lebanese passports in the names of Mohamed al-Marzouk and Mansour Omran Saber. They were detained until June when they were released, despite the protests of American diplomats. It was suspected or insinuated that Libyan agents had bribed Senegalese officials. ( 25 )

The MST-13 Timers;

According to David Leppard the key exhibit in the Lockerbie case (a fragment of MST-13 timer) was recovered by Allen Feraday of RARDE on the 18th June 1989 melted into the remains of a suitcase belonging to passenger Karen Noonan which had been positioned directly on top of the bomb bag. ( 26 ) Leppard refers to a memo written by Detective Inspector Williamson dated the 19th December 1989 entitled “Items of Interest at RARDE – Circuit Board” outlining this discovery by Feraday in June from “part of severely explosive-damaged American Tourister.”

The memo continued that “a description of the item together with a photograph were supplied to the Productions/Property team to search for any similar material.”(27) On the 14th September 1989 Allen Feraday visited Dexstar in Lockerbie, where exhibits were stored, to examine a number of items of circuitry, none of which was a match. ( 28 ).


This is quite at odds with the version of events presented at Camp Zeist where it was claimed that this fragment of circuit board was found in a piece of cloth recovered by DCs Gilchrist and McColm in January 1989. The fragment was discovered not by Feraday but earlier by his colleague Dr Hayes. The Camp Zesit Judgement states “we are nevertheless satisfied that this fragment was extracted by Dr Hayes in May 1989 from the remnant of the Slalom shirt found by DC Gilchrist and DC McColm.” ( 29 )


It was only in June 1990 that Dr Hayes realised the fragment of circuit board formed part of the timer. At this point Vincent Cannistraro, who was in charge of the CIA “investigation”, indicated possible similarities with a batch of ten timers recovered from two men arrested in Senegal. In August (1990) officers were sent to Senegal to retrieve photographs and control samples that Dr Hayes immediately identified as being identical to the recovered fragment. (31)

The Revelations of Vincent Cannistraro;

Cannistraro retired from the CIA in September 1990 and Leppard’s book continued with some revelations of his and his insights into the bombing. Cannistraro attributed responsibility for Lockerbie to the Iranian Government as revenge for the Vincennes Incident and claimed they had commissioned “simultaneous attacks against no less than five Western Aircraft” - “there is a lot of evidence which puts this at the doorstep of the Iranian Government”. ( 32 )


According to Cannistraro bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat was not the informant within the PFLP-GC. Another member of the “Autumn Leaves” cell Ramzi Diab slipped out of Germany with Khreesat’s “fifth” radio-cassette bomb. (Four had been recovered). Diab was interrogated and executed in Damascus. With the arrest of the “Autumn Leaves” cell PFLP-GC head Ahmed Jibril sent a representative to Colonel Gaddafi asking Libya to take over the task. ( 33 )


Cannistraro claimed that in November 1988 a meeting was held at the HQ of the Libyan Intelligence service and that the CIA knew of the meeting before the Lockerbie bombing. Present at the meeting were the head of Libyan intelligence Major Jalloud and his deputy Abdullah Sanussi. Jalloud selected the men arrested in Senegal, Marzouk (real name Mohamed Al-Naydi) and Saber (real name unknown), to direct the bombing. (Ismail Naedi is occasionally referred to as “Enayli”) (34) The bomb would be smuggled into Malta where the Libyans had a network in place with an intimate knowledge of Luqa Airport. (35)



In Malta the two arranged for a third junior Libyan agent to buy clothes to wrap around the bomb. The CIA identified him by comparing photographs of Libyan agents which matched the photofit given by Gauci to the FBI. In November 1990 the Maltese shop-keeper finally identified the Maltese third man and signed an affidavit. (36) (If Gauci made a photofit it was never put in evidence and should have been disclosed to the defence team.)


Astonishingly a Libyan secret agent Mansour Omran Ammar Saber was called as a witness by the prosecution at Camp Zeist and gave evidence on the 16th November 2000. (How and why the prosecution called him is unknown). He admitted to having been arrested in Senegal in 1988 but denied any relationship with the briefcase found on the plane. Apparently Saber was travelling on a false Lebanese passport in his true name but nobody asked him about that! It is astonishing in that according to Cannistraro this person was one of the masterminds of the Lockerbie bombing! ( 37)



The I.C.A.O. Montreal 19th September 1989;

The Bruiguiere report notes another possible link to Lockerbie. On the day of the UTA bombing the International Civil Aviation Authority held a meeting in Montreal and were expecting a Libyan delegation of 40. The meeting would be discussing both the Iranair 655 and PA103 incidents. In the event no Libyans actually attended. ( 38 )



The Libyan Peoples’ Bureau, Brazzaville;

Central to the UTA case was the activities of the Libyan Peoples’ Bureau (L.P.B.) in Brazzaville, capital of the Peoples’ Republic of the Congo (PRC) and it’s involvement with the African representatives of a number of clandestine opposition groups. Due to the suspected involvement of Libyan diplomats in terrorist activities the L.P.B. was under the surveillance of Congolese Military Intelligence.


Since 1987 the first counsellor of the L.P.B. was Abdallah Elazragh. (39) Elazragh had formerly been posted to Libya’s Paris Embassy and was known to the French Security Services as a Libyan Security official. (40) (While many Libyan intelligence agents posed as diplomats the practise is not exclusively of Libyan usage!)


The case also involves a commercial company SOCALIB, a joint venture run between Libya and the Congo dealing in valuable hardwoods. The venture was run by a Libyan Mohamed Hemmali as a subsidiary of the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company. (LAFIC) ( 41)


Elazragh inherited from his predecessor a relationship with a Zairean opposition group whose leaders were Appollionaire Mangatany and his friend Bernard Yanga. Mangatany was a passenger on UTA 772 and it is the official case that the bomb was in his luggage. Mangatany’s body was not identified. Congolese Military Intelligence knew of his links to the L.P.B., doubted he had the means to buy a ticket and suspected his involvement soon after the bombing.


Mangatany had been to Libya twice, in 1986 to undertake some sort of training course with the Mathaba the Libyan organisation dedicated to supporing liberations movements headed by Gaddafi’s nephew Moussa Koussa. Mangatany’s group had become dependent on Libyan support and in 1987 there was, allegedly some talk with Libyan diplomats about bombing a UTA flight out of N’Djamena.



Ibrahim Naeli & Arbus Musbah:

Ibrahim Naeli arrived in Brazzaville late on the 23rd Aug.1989 having travelled Athens-Brussels then taken the Sabena flight Brussels – Brazzaville. (41) His alleged assistant Arbus Musbah arrived on the 24th August 1989 having flown Tripoli-Rome-Brazzaville. Naeli had been head of security at the Athens Embassy from October 1987 until December 1988 and Musbah had also been posted to Athens. In 1986 a visa had been sought for him to work at the Rome Embassy. (42)


The morning after he arrived Naeli reported his suitcase lost. This was reported as being a greyish-blue Samsonite. It appears the bag was sent by SABENA on a Portuguese flight via Lisbon and it arrived at Brazzaville on the 24th. There is no record of Naeli recovering the bag. He may just have picked it up from the luggage carousel on the bag’s arrival. The bag was not physically traced otherwise. ( 43 )


The two men initially stayed at hotels after which they were the houseguests of Elazragh or Hemmali, their expenses being met by Elazragh. (40) In the hotel Naeli called several numbers in Libya one of which was later admitted to belong to Abdelsalam Hamouda a Libyan intelligence official and assistant of Abdullah Sanoussi. (44 (45)


According to Hemmali the men were supposedly there to conduct an investigation or audit of SOCALIB on behalf of the Libyan parent LAFIC and had a letter of introduction to that effect which Hemmali could not subsequently locate despite having (allegedly) been given a further copy. (46 ) Hemmali’s mistress (who also had a relationship with the head of Congolese Military Intelligence) claimed he expressed alarm when she announced she was flying to Paris indicating Hemmali’s knowledge of a plan to bomb a UTA flight. ( 47 )


Hemmali had not been notified of this inspection and while the two men held discussions at SOCALIB nothing of substance was discussed. The enterprise’s Congolese Director never saw the two in the office.( 48 ) Hemmali surmised that their visit was a cover and indeed a legitimate inspection would not have taken almost four weeks.(49)


Naedi and Musbah left Brazzaville in the early hours of the 19th September 1989 (3 hours before UTA 772) on an Ethiopian Airways flight to Addis Abbaba. Their onward connection was not traced. They had no hold baggage.(50)


The implied conclusion of the investigation was that the two went to Maya-Maya on the 19th September 1989 simply for the purpose of catching their flight. Despite the flaws in security the investigators appear not to consider that it may also have been related to the smuggling of a bomb on board flight UTA 772. (The “official” version of Lockerbie is that the bomb was smuggled unaccompanied on board Air Malta flight 180, according to Cannistraro by possibly the same two people!)


Also on the flight to Addis Ababa was an Iranian Diplomat Emmanjomah Shadid who had arrived in Brazzaville on the 10th August as a temporary replacement for another Iranian diplomat. (51 )


On the 25th September 1991 Elazragh hurriedly left Brazzaville. He told Hemmali he was retiring (which was untrue) and he had failed to give notice to terminate the lease on his accomodation. (52) (53)



Enquiries in Brazzaville:

From May 6th to June 8th French investigators conducted enquiries in Brazzaville. They were particularly keen to interview Mangatany’s friend Bernard Yanga whose whereabouts were supposedly unknown to the Congolese authorities. They did interview Appolinaire Mangatany’s widow and three sisters. The family lived in poverty and Mangatany only announced his plan to fly to Paris the day before his flight. The family owned only one suitcase which Mangatany did not use. The family could not help to identify the suitcase that he did use but were aware he was looking for a suitcase the week before his trip. (54)


The investigators conducted enquiries at the Maya-Maya Airport where they found security to be very poor. There was poor segregation between passengers and members of the public, even after check-in and investigators found luggage checked-in at a Hotel on the eve of a flight was left unguarded overnight. There was plentiful opportunity for a bag to be smuggled aboard a flight. (Amongst the debris recovered were the corpses of two dogs and three apes). (55) (56)


Evidence of Libyan Oppostion;

Statements were taken from several opposition figures including leader Mohamed el Megarief who was visiting Chad using an alias at the time and suspected he was the target. (When Sanoussi produced another “May 15th” suitcase the Libyans alleged it had been seized from a member of Megarief’s group.) He claimed that after the bombing Abdelsalam Hamouda and Ibrahim Naeli had received special promotions (an issue that would be raised later). (57) (58)


Another opposition witness claimed to have worked with Saleh Mahdi Mansour (the Libyan booked on UTA 772) in Damascus in 1991. Mansour told him he had been ordered to miss the flight.


Another witness claimed that a Colonel Whalil Jdik had been approached by Sanoussi to participate in a mission which Jdik later understood was the bombing of UTA772. Jdik declined and joined the opposition and may have been executed. 59) The witness continued that it was “well-known” in Army circles that Hammouda and Naeli were involved in the UTA case. (60)



The Evidence of Bernard Yanga:

Following the receipt of further intelligence received about the involvement of Mangatany and Yanga in the bombing Yanga was found. Since January 1990 he had been in the custody of the Congolese Security Services and escaped in January 1992. He made a number of statements in custody and following his escape. (61) (His initial statement is not amongst the papers published by Crowell & Morning but are referred to in the Bruguiere and Muller reports).


Mangatany was President of a Zairean opposition group and Yanga the Secretary. Elazragh’s predecessor had made Mangatany “sensitive to the commission of an attack against a French plane at N’Djamena.” (62)


In August 1989 Elazragh had two Libyan guests who gave Mangatany a mission at a meeting at the Olympic Hotel attended by a Chadian. Elazragh provided Mangatany with a ticket, money and an outfit including a red tie. He also provided a suitcase a rigid dark suitcase on wheels. The purpose of the tie was so that at N’Djamena Mangatany could exit the plane and an Ivory Coast national would help him escape. (This story was amended in that this person was to board and recognise Mangatany on the plane). (64)


The precise details of how Mangatany received a suitcase from Elazragh are vague. There was some hint that he wanted Mangatany to pack then he would take the suitcase away and return it. According to Yanga Elazragh gave Mangatany the suitcase the evening before he departed. (65) (If the suitcase was empty Mangatany might have noticed the timer!)


Mangatany told Yanga the suitcase had been brought into the Congo as a Libyan diplomatic suitcase (“la valise diplomatique”) (properly translated as “diplomatic bag”.) (66) On the 20th and 28th August two diplomatic bags had arrived for the P.L.B. (67)


On the morning of his flight Yanga went to Mangatany’s "plot". Also there was Ngalina, a member of their group whose job it was to set the explosive device. Yanga accompanied Mangatany to the airport but left the taxi short of the Airport then walked as he didn’t want to be seen by the Libyans as Mangatany had been told to keep the mission secret. Elazragh was at the airport together with the two Libyans seen at the Olympic Hotel. (68)


Yanga’s statement indicates that Mangatany was quite aware his suitcase contained a bomb. However this version of events was largely untrue and had been crafted to corroborate the version of events favoured by Congolese Military Intelligence.


According to Bruguiere “In the absence of any Congolese pressure Yanga confirmed his previous statements almost entirely. The divergences (Ngalina coming over to Mangatany’s to check the bomb, pretense of the two Libyans at the airport) were due to the Congolese Polices’ pressure under torture”


In the next paragraph Bruguiere wrote “He admitted that the meeting at the Olympic Hotel had been suggested to him by the members of the Congolese Military Security.” (69)


These “divergences” altered Yanga’s story completely inventing a meeting between Mangatany and Naeli and Musbah that never happened. and creating the illusion Mangatany knew his suitcase would contain a bomb. The two Libyans could not have been at the airport – they had left for Addis Ababa hours before! Was Elazragh there? Did Yanga even go to the airport?


Ngalina was not to set the explosive device. He was passing by Mangatany’s house that morning when Mangatany approached him in his pyjamas asking for help to tie his tie. ( 70 )


In a later statement Yanga claims he gave Mangatany 9 letters to post in Paris to avoid Congolese censorship that Mangatany placed in his suitcase - potentially very valuable evidence as to whether Mangatany knew in advance he was carrying a bomb. (71)


After the bombing Yanga wrote five letters to Elazragh (who had left Brazzavile) the Mathaba, the Libyan Ambassador and two friends. Yanga sent copies of these letters were sent anonymously to the Congolese Military Security leading to Yanga’s detention. (72) Yanga also claimed to have sent Ngalina to the L.P.B. to solicit money for Mangatany’s wake an allegation Ngalina denied. (73) (74 )



On the 30th October 1991 (two weeks before indictments were announced in the Lockerbie case) international arrest warrants were issued for Elazragh, Naeli, Musbah & Senoussi. International research notices were issued concerning Moussa Koussa and Abdusalam Zadma another employee of Libyan intelligence. (75 )



The Fragment of the Timer;

As in the Lockerbie case a piece of circuit board was found in the wreckage of UTA772, which was identified, proved to be a crucial piece of evidence particularly against Colonel Abdessalam Isa Shibani.


The date of the discovery of the fragment is not known. The investigating magistrate was made aware on its discovery on the 15th October 1991. The fragment bore no trace of explosive residue. The help of the FBI was sought in tracing the origin of this fragment. (76) (It is understood that Thomas Thurman played a role in identifying this fragment.) Enquiries were conducted after the first four suspects were named and after UN Sanctions were imposed.


The fragment was identified as having been produced by Tai Yuen Electronics Ltd. a Taiwanese Company. Enquiries in Taiwan indicated that Tai Yuen had supplied several thousand printed circuit boards to a company called Costa Electronics, later acquired by another Taiwanese concern Ming-Yong which used them in “temporising devices”, (timers). The chief engineer of Ming-Yong gave the investigators his last such timer. The fraction of circuit board recovered matched part of the circuit board in the timer. A meticulous search of the debris recovered from the Tenere desert did not turn up any fragment of the timer. ( 78)


Ming-Yong had a relationship with the Taiwanese subsidiary (Grasslin Far East) of a German Parent Company (Grasslin) who took 25% on Ming-jong’s output. In 1989 another German firm H.P.Marketing had purchased 101 timers from a German Company Kremser who had bought the timers from Grasslin. (79 )


Hans Peter Wurst of H.P.Marketing had known Colonel Isa Shabbani since 1980 and believed him to be an officer in Libyan intelligence and had previously supplied the Libyans with electronic devices. In November 1988 Shabbani asked him to provide a number of timers for use in lighting desert runways servicing some warehouses that Shabbani owned. He was asked to modify them to increase the voltage.so they could be powered by a 12 volt battery. H.P.Marketing acquired from Kremser 101 timers which were modified and sent to Libya in July 1989. Shabbani later indicated his satisfaction with the timers. (80)


While the circuit board in the sample timer supplied by Ming-Yong was identical to the fragment recovered this did not necessarily prove this fragment came from one of the timers supplied to Shabbani which involved 101 of the several thousand circuit boards supplied by Tai Yuen.


The Libyan Responseto the Arrest Warrants and Sanctions;

The Libyans purported to co-operate with the French investigation and appointed Mohamed Mursi an official of the Libyan Supreme Court to liase with the French. Mursi interviewed a number of suspects whose statements were often terse in which they denied any involvement. (81)


Of significance Mursi produced evidence one of the accused Arbus Musbah died in a traffic accident in November 1990. Naeli’s evidence to Mursi referred to Musbah having died in a painful accident. (82)


Mursi passed on to the French information concerning the Libyans being in possession of two suitcases similar to those produced by the “May 15th” group. (83) It appears that in July a senior officer of the French security service the D.S.T. was shown one of these suitcases by Abdullah Sanoussi in the latter’s office. (84)

In late 1992 the investigating Magistrate was invited to Libya to continue his enquiries.(85) The Libyans withdrew their invitation and there was no progress until 1996 when Colonel Gaddafi wrote to the French President pledging co-operation and seeking a solution that would preserve Libyan sovereignty. (86)


Commission Rogatoire in Libya July 1996;

Investigations were conducted by the investigating Magistrate and his team in Libya. A number of witnesses were interviewed iuncluding four of the six accused. Ibrahim Naeli was not questioned and Arbus Musbah was supposedly dead. The salient points were as follows.

The responsible senior officer of the Libyan Army could neither confirm or deny that Naeli and Hammouda had been given special promotions following the bombing. Neither then nor later where the French allowed to see their files. Hammouda, who admitted to being Sanoussi’s chef de cabinet, claimed he had been promoted in 1992. (88)


The administrative director of the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company (LAFIC) claimed that L.P.B. in Brazzaville had alerted LAFIC to problems in SOCILAB. (89) He was evasive as to who paid for the inspection or why Naeli and Musbah had diplomatic status. Their report was not in the file but was forwarded later and was a “bland document.”(90)


Elazragh’s administration file did not contain any document that indicated Tripoli had decided the date of his return from the Congo. (91)


Enquiries were made into the documentation proving Musbah had died on the 14th November 1990 including the reports of Traffic Police, Doctors Report ect. Which were inconsistent as to the date. The Magistrate was aware that on the 1st April 1991 Musbah had applied for a visa to travel to Athens and had actually done so between the 6th & 9th April. The Libyans claimed this was a case of mistaken identity although the same passport number featured in both the visa application and the traffic accident documents. ( 92 )


The French also took possession of the “May 15th” suitcase that the French security official had seen in Senoussi’s office. (93)



The Criminal Trial:

In 1999 the six defendants were convicted in absentia following a brief trial for which no defence was entered. The Court ordered the Libyan Government to pay compensation of $3,000-$30,000 Euros. The Libyan Government, in the form of a charitable trust controlled by Colonel Gaddafi offered $170 US million to the families of the victims. The US families rejected the offer and sued the Libyan Government and the six defendants in the US Courts.



Civil Proceedings:

A Civil case was brought in the USA Robert L.Pugh et.al. v. Libyan People’s Arab Jamariyah et.al. on behalf of the estate of the seven American victims, their relatives and dependants and the owners of the plane itself. Judgement was for the plaintiffs in January 2008 and the defendants (including the six Libyans convicted in absentia) were ordered to pay the plaintiffs in total $6 billion US dollars. ( 94 ) ( 95 )


Conclusion Concerning the Investigation and Evidence;

The depth and breadth of the French investigation of the UTA 772 and the competence and clarity of the Bruguiere report and the Muller report obscure some of the shortcomings in the strength of evidence. (96)


Firstly many of the victims were never identified due to the charring of the bodies. Regrettably this meant that it is not known for certain that Appolinaire Mangatany was on flight UTA 772 when it exploded..


Further it was never proven that the suitcase checked-in by Appolinaire Mangatany contained the bomb. Evidence that Elazragh gave Mangatany a suitcase is based on the word of Bernard Yanga who in other respects appears to have embellished his statement. According to the Muller report “the youngest sister Guillaumette affirmed that Appolinaire had informed her of having purchased a bag from the market a few days ago.” (97) It seems a fair inference that Mangatany’s ticket and expenses were paid by the Libyans but Mangatany had been to Libya twice before at Libyan expense.


It is implied the “bomb” suitcase was sent to Brazzaville as a diplomatic bag. There is no evidence of this. Alternately it was transported by Ibrahim Naeli as his own suitcase on his trip from Athens to Brazzaville. His bag was lost or delayed, possibly deliberately before it was sent on to Brazzaville. While there is no evidence of Naeli pursuing a claim for a lost bag there is no evidence he was reunited with this bag either.


In political terms there is strong circumstantial evidence of Libyan involvement which involved actions beyond those of the six individual accused.. In Legal terms was there sufficient evidence to convict the six individuals, noting the evidence was never tested and an investigation report is always more coherent than a trial. There was a case to answer against Elazragh, Naeli and Musbah. The evidence against the other three Libyans is of a different nature.


Colonel Abdullah Senoussi was implicated as head of the external service of the Libyan Secret Service, the number 2 man in the organisation. He denied being in command of Elazragh, Naeli and Musbah and his guilt is conditional on theirs. He was also in possession of a “May 15th” suitcase similar to the device that destroyed UTA 772. Was this evidence that he was at some time in possession of the suitcase that did destroy PA103? There was also hearsay evidence he had tried to recruit another officer into the plot.


Colonel Abdelsallam Isa Shibbani was implicated as the purchaser of the 101 timers from H.P.Marketing and for his failure to account for all of them. Is there sufficient evidence one of these devices was used in the bomb that destroyed UTA 772 and is there any evidence of guily knowledge? Again evidence of his involvement would have been conditional on the guilt of Elzaragh, Naeli and Musbah.


Save that he was employed by the Libyan Secret Service the evidence against Abdelsalam Hammouda was thin. Ismael Naeli had telephoned his number from Brazzaville and according to opposition sources Hammouda and Naeli received special promotions after the bombing.



Conclusion – The Link Between Lockerbie and UTA 772

The one undoubted link between the two aviation bombings is that employees of the Libyan JSO have been convicted for both cases. This may be seen and has certainly been represented as a pattern of Libyan involvement in terrorism. There is also evidence of Libyan complicity in the earlier attack on flight UTA772 at N’Djamena in 1984.

There are of course dissimilarities in the official version of events although both cases appear to involve the introduction of an IED concealed within a suitcase onto a civilian aircraft.


Lockerbie involved the supposed mimicking of the method of Marwan Khreesat and the PFLP-GC – the concealment of an IED within a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder. (According to Cannistraro’s account the Libyans actually used Khreesat’s “fifth” bomb and the two Libyans chosen to run the operation had, by astonishing coincidence, been arrested earlier that year in possession of a number of MST-13 timers.)


UTA 772 involved the use of a modified suitcase made several years earlier by the “May 15th” group. According to the UTA investigation the Libyans were in possession of at least two such suitcases prior to the Lockerbie incident but didn't use them for Lockerbie, then after Lockerbie changed a successful method.


Lockerbie (officially) involved the introduction of an unaccompanied suitcase at Luqa. The UTA 772 a “mule” at Maya-Maya Airport a method similar to the false claims that the Lockerbie bomb was introduced at Frankfurt in the luggage of supposed drug mule Khald Jafaar.


However as pointed out in my first article “Lockerbie – the Heathrow Evidence” the official version is untrue and security was subverted (or bypassed) not at Luqa Airport but at Heathrow. (and had nothing to do with Libya.)


There is however a great deal of circumstantial evidence and “intelligence” to link Libya to the UTA case and indeed much of the Bruguiere Report concerns “intelligence” rather than evidence. Libya had a motive in the UTA case.


But was the official version of events in the UTA case really true or was Bernard Yanga’s account an example of gilding the lily for the purposes of a criminal prosecution. Did Appolinaire Mangatany really check-in the bomb suitcase? The investigation revealed that security at Maya Maya was appalling.- Lockerbie supposedly involved the introduction of an unaccompanied bag with the right luggage tag.


Ibrahim Elazrhag was also at Maya Maya Airport that day, (at least according to the evidence of Bernard Yanga. However the key evidence may be the presence at Maya Maya Airport on the 19th September 1989 of Ibrahim Naeli and Arbus Mushab for their own flight to Addis Ababa, which later drew suspicion on them because it supposedly indicated foreknowledge of the bombing. But were they at the Airport simply to exit Brazzaville?


Finally one might also conclude that having decided to co-operate with the investigation the Libyan strategy was a failure. For example by pretending one of the accused had died the Libyans had not really co-operated with the investigation.. Hoping to draw a line under the case by not contesting the trial and paying compensation in order to bring an end to sanctions the Libyan strategy was shattered by the US Civil case. The quantum of compensation obtained by the relatives in the UTA case may now carry over into the Lockerbie case. .





Unless otherwise stated references are to files on the website of the Washington Law firm Crowell Moring (for which I am most grateful) who represented the US victims in the liability suit at www.crowell.com. “BR” refers to the Bruguiere Report.


( 1 ) & Matar Khalil I. And Thabit Robert W. Lockerbie and Libya A Study in International Relations
( 2 ) McFarland & Company Inc. 2004 page 24.

(3) (wreckage) BR page 19

(4) (victims) BR page 23

(5)(Libyan diplomat no-show) BR page 37 (see also 59)

(6) (victims identified/unidentified) BR 31 – full list in French original

(7) (black box) BR page 26

(8) (criminal investigation opened) BR page 27

(9) (fragment of suitcase with Pentrite) BR page 28

(10) (point of explosion) BR page 38

(11) (claims of responsibility) BR page 45-46

(12) (mistranslation) BR page 48 (French original page 60-61)

(13) (schedule of seized “May 15th” devicies) Muller Report page 91

(14) (Abou Ibrahim/”May 15th) BR 50-51

( 15) (AWAD –US asylum) BR 51

( 16) (AWAD “quote”) BR 51

( 17) (AWAD quote) Investigation Report on Mission to Washington page 4

(18) (Iraq dropped as sponsor of terrorism) Contemporary press releases

(19) (“Renaudat theory”) BR page 46

(20) (1984 attack on UTA 772-Libyan involved) BR page 93

(21) (Naeli as Sam 7 instructor) BR page 78

( 22 ) (Astiwi allegedly expelled from Congo) BR page 78 Muller 45

(23) (Mustapha Abucetta expelled as Ambassador to Benin) BR page 79

(24) (Mohamed Astiwi expelled as Ambassador to Benin) BR page 94

(25) David Leppard On the Trail of Terror Jonathan Cape London 1991 page 210 para.5

(26) Leppard page 207 para.4

(27) Leppard page 207 para 7

(28) Leppard page 208 (top)

(29) Lockerbie Judgement para.13


(31) Leppard page 208 (bottom)

(32) Leppard page 212 para. 4

(33) Leppard page 212 para.2

(34) (Naeldi described as “Enayli”) BR page 54

(35) Leppard page 214 para.2

(36) Leppard page 214 para.4

(37) www.gla.ac.uk/media/media

(38) (I.C.A.O.Montreal) BR page 53

(39) (Elazragh posted to Brazzaville) BR page 65

(40) (Elazragh security official in Paris) BR page 65

(41) (Affairs of SOCIALIB/LAFIC) BR page 52,80,117

(42) (Musbah’s posting to Rome) BR page 71 Muller report 73-74

(43) (Naeli’s lost suitcase) BR page 70 Muller report 50, 52-53, 55.

(44) (Naeli call to Hammouda Libyan admission) BR page 119

(45) (ID of Hammouda’s phone number) BR page 119

(46) (LAFIC “letter of introduction”) BR page 80 (Denied by LAFIC) BR
page 116,117 121 Muller report 63-64

(47) (Evidence of Guilhermino Araujo a.k.a. Greta) BR page 84

(48) (evidence of Francois Ntsiba) BR page 83 Muller report 69

(49) (length of inspection) BR page 81

(50) (Naeli/Musbah no hold baggage on departure) Muller report 86-87
(basis of this assertion in Muller report unstated).

(51) (Iranian diplomat on Addis Ababa flight) Muller report page 23

(52) (Elazragh departs Brazzaville) BR page 65

(53) (Elazragh lease/retirement) 82-83 125

( 54) (Interview Mangatany family) Muller report 18 90

(55) (Security at Maya-Maya) BR page 35-36

(56) (Recovery of apes/dogs) BR page 37

( 57) (Evidence of opposition) BR page 104-5

( 58 )(Libyan refusal to release military files) 105 112 122

(59) (“Evidence” ref; Sanoussi soliciting Walil Jdik) BR page 107

(60 ) (“Evidence” ref; “common knowledge involvement of Naeli
/Hammouda) BR page 107

(61) (Yanga’s evidence) BR 90 132 Muller report 20-48

(62)(Outline of opposition groups/plan in 1987 to bomb UTA) BR 72 87 Muller report 20-21

(63) (Alleged meeting at Olympic Hotel) BR 87 88 90 Muller 31

(64) (Mangatany’s “mission” financed by Libya) BR 86 88 Muller 79

(65) (Suitcase) BR 91 Muller 31

(66) (“valise diplomatique”) Muller 18

(67) (Arrival of diplomatic bags) Exhibit 41 “Yanga Deposition”

(68) (Mangatany, Yanga, Ngalina morniung of 19/9/89) BR 85 88 89

(69)(Yanga’s initial statement untrue) BR 86 90

(70) (Yanga’s false claims ref;Ngalina) 88 Muller 25,26, 31

(71) (Yanga gives Mangatany 9 letters) BR 88

(72) (Yanga copies 5 letters to Congolese Security) BR 90-91 Muller 89 Exhibit 40 “Yanga Report”

(73) (Ngalina denies soliciting cash from P.L.B.) BR 79

(74) (Yanga’s further statements Jan 1993) Exhibit 40 Yanga report

(75) See “The Responsibilty” BR 124-132

(76) (Discovery of circuit board fragment) BR 40

(77) (Enquiries in Taiwan Tai Yuen/Ming Jong) BR 41 Mueller 10-15

(78) (Search of debris) Muller report 15 (final para.)

(79) (Grasslin/H.P.Marketing) BR42

(80) (Wurst and Shabbani) BR42-3 117-8

(81) (Libyan investigation – Mursi) BR 97 Muller 56

(82) (Musbah’s “death”) BR 98-99 102

(83) (Mursi and “May 15th” suitcase) BR 100

(84) (DST view suitcase in Sanoussi’s office) BR 100 123

(85) (Libya ceases co-operation) BR 103

(86) (Letter of colonel Gaddafi restarts enquiry) BR

(87) (Hammouda/Naeli promotion) BR 112, 122

(88)(Evidence of Hammouda re; promotion) BR118-119

(89) (LAFIC & SOCIALIB inspection) BR 116, 117 &121 Muller 63-64

(90) (Bland Report forwarded) BR 121

(91) (Alazragh’s Admin file) BR 115 122 Muller 83

(92) (Musbah’s “death” and later trip to Athens) Muller 72-4 BR 120-121

(93) (Surrender of May 15th suitcase) BR 123

(94) (See evidence summary) BR 124 –

(95) District of Columbia Civil Action 02-02026 HHIC Memorandum

(96) District of Columbia Civil Action 02-02026 HHIC Judgement

(97) Muller report page 90

Part III Lockerbie -Criminal Justice or "War by Other Means" (1)

“What our response will be we do not say – but it will be an appropriate response to the magnitude of the American Crime” – Spokesman Mohammed Beshti, Press Conference at the Iranian Embassy, London July 1988.



There are two distinct yet intimately related aspects to the Lockerbie case. Firstly there is the bombing itself then the creation of the official “Libyan solution” to the crime for reasons largely (but not entirely) unrelated to the bombing itself.


Many critics of the official version of events allege or imply that the plan to blame Libya was improvised some time after the bombing, for example in order to exonerate nations whose participation or neutrality in the Gulf War coalition was needed. They assume that if Abdel Ali Baset Ali Al-Megrahi (hereafter Al-Megrahi) was falsely accused either by accident or design then the evidence on which he was charged and convicted was created or improvised subsequent to the bombing itself.


The conviction of Al-Megrahi was not a so-called “miscarriage of justice”. One does not get convicted of mass murder by accident or mistake. If there was a plan to “blame” Libya or to incriminate Al-Megrahi and his co-defendant then it must have been conceived and partly implemented before the bombing. The alternative to Al-Megrahi’s guilt is that the authorities set out to incriminate an innocent man (or at least innocent of this crime). Although not explicitly stated in the Camp Zeist Judgement this is a point the Trial Judges grasped. The alternative to Al-Megrahi’s guilt is not simply that he was “fitted-up” but that Western Governments colluded in the bombing itself.


In the official version of events these two distinct aspects do not exist. The solution arises solely from the Crime. Events prior to the 21st December 1988 may be evidence of the preparation for the crime and to some extent cast light on the motive but are otherwise of little relevance.


The Object of the Indictment – A Trial or Sanctions?


It is generally assumed that the object of the announcement of the indictment on the 14th November 1991 was the trial of the two suspects (who were eventually handed over on the 5th April 1999.) However the Western powers pursued the case not under the relevant International Law (the 1971 Montreal Convention) but by political means through the UN Security Council and the imposition of sanctions against Libya.


The Lockerbie incident was exploited in order to impose UN sanction upon Libya for political considerations that largely predated the bombing and a trial was actually unwelcome to the West, their primary objective being regime change in Libya. A study of the historical background is necessary to understanding why Libya was blamed, a background that was largely irrelevant to the criminal proceedings.


In February 1986 the United States had imposed unilateral sanctions on Libya and US plans to topple Gaddafi long predated this. The Europeans, far more dependent on Libyan oil failed to support these sanctions to the chagrin of American business interests. Unilateral sanctions were ineffectual if Libya could trade elsewhere and it was an objective of US policy to transform unilateral sanctions into UN sanctions, achieved through the Lockerbie indictment.

Crucial evidence that the objective of the indictment was sanctions not a trial lies in the movements of Lhamin Fhimah (who was indicted solely to give credence to the “Malta” scenario.) In November 1991 Fhimah was again employed by Libyan Arab Airlines and was living openly in Tunis, capital of pro-Western Tunisia. On the day of the indictment Fhimah had returned to Tripoli for a visit when he saw news\of his indictment on TV. ( 2 )( 3 ).


Did the Western intelligence agencies not know where Fhimah was living and could they not have sought his arrest and extradition by the Tunisian authorities? Or was Fhimah’s residence outside Libya an embarrassment? According to the former Lord Advocate Lord Fraser he had been asked by the Americans to “hold off” on the indictment while new evidence was developed (4) (likely the testimony of Majid Giaka) but if the object of the indictment was a trial why did they wait until Fhimah was in Libya before announcing it? Indeed the public announcement of the indictment at all was bizarre if the objective was a trial not sanctions.


From the announcement of the indictment until the trial the authorities pretended that the case against Libya was cast iron while dismissing any conflicting evidence. The prospect of a trial laid open the prospect of an acquittal. The announcement of an indictment allowed the authorities to claim the case was “solved” and to a great extent mollified the families of the victims and created a constituency to keep the issue (and the sanctions) going.


Of course if Libyan responsibility was undoubted, as the Americans proclaimed, why were they pursuing sanctions at all? The Americans had bombed Tripoli in response to a relatively minor outrage. This was something many US relatives could not grasp. Following a meeting with the FBI Director Dan Cohen commented;

“As we were leaving I asked Sessions if indictments would really be of any use, whether Pan Am 103 was something for the judicial system at all. After all, this wasn’t a drive-by shooting, it was really a military attack on America and should properly be answered in political or military terms. He thought for a moment and said, “you may very well be right”. ( 5 ) Cohen had a good point.



Lockerbie and the Vincennes Incident:


“All Imperialists are at heart paper tigers” MAO Tse-tung ( 6 )


The bombing of flight PA103 had a proximate cause. As in “Gravity’s Rainbow” ( 7 ) Tundergarth was inextricably linked to the crash site of Iranair flight 655 brought down in Iranian territorial waters on the 3rd July 1988 by two missiles fired from the USS Vincennes. Without the “Vincennes Incident” there would have been no Lockerbie.

However for the authorities, in particular the US Government, it was imperative to deny the link between the “Vincennes Incident” and Lockerbie, to pretend that retaliation had not occurred and to draw a line under the incident for the simple reason that they would be compelled by public opinion to do something about it, to respond in turn. In the unique circumstances of the “Vincennes Incident” their policy options were extremely limited. Short of war there was nothing they could do. Yet having shot down a civilian airliner and decorated those responsible on what moral basis could they “go after Iran”? ( 8 )


Their only practical policy option was to pretend that Iran had not responded to the USA destroying a civilian airliner, blame somebody else (in pursuit of existing policy objectives) and “move on” which is precisely what occurred. Of course the central objective of this policy is to deceive the public. At some level the US and British Governments knew perfectly well what transpired. The Lockerbie story is essentially the story of the authorities denying (very successfully) the tru story. Of course those responsible for the Lockerbie disaster also know the truth from which they have drawn their own conclusions.


In the official version of events the primary suspects in the case, Iran and Syria were not just ignored. President George H.W. Bush went out of his way to exonerate them. In the official version a plan by the PFLP-GC plan to bomb several planes had been thwarted by the prompt action of the German authorities. It is therefore hard to comprehend how the state sponsors of the PFLP-GC had taken “a bum rap”.

“At a funeral for some of the victims, thousands of Iranians chanted “death to America” and the president of Iran called for vengeance. “The Iranian nation and officials assert that they reserve the right to take vengeance in any manner and at any place, and God willing, they will exact revenge with force.” A few days later a US State Department computer bulletin board warned that in response to the downing of the Iranian plane “threats to US interests worldwide has increased significantly ….we believe Iran will strike back in a tit-for-tat fashion – mass casualties for mass casualties….targets could include aircraft, airports….we believe Europe is a likely target for a retaliatory attack” ( 9 )



Yet if Lockerbie had nothing to do with Libya why would the authorities go out of their way to exonerate the primary suspects, downplay or ignore completely the “Autumn Leaves” affair and instead incriminate a man and a country that they knew had nothing whatsoever to do with the case? Did they simply get a kick out of it or were there perfectly intelligible reasons for the creation of a false solution?

As Dan Cohen wrote “But the Libyan indictments were of a different order. It’s highly unlikely that the government would have fabricated such detailed evidence in order to frame two innocent individuals, and quite possibly an entire country, for a monstrous crime they had nothing to do with.” ( 9 ) Why was it unlikely?



The Historical/Political Background;


Lockerbie arises from a complex relationship between a number of “actors”. These are primarily nation-states notably the United States, the United Kingdom, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Great Libyan People’s Jamahriya (Libya). In due course as Lockerbie was linked to the UTA772 case the French Republic became a major “actor” particularly as a permanent member of the Security Council.


Libya’s sponsored numerous armed “liberation” movements, characterised by the USA as terrorist groups (who supported similar groups known as freedom fighters) often opposed to allies and clients of the United States who were also “actors” when the Lockerbie case came into the realm of the United Nations.


The relationship between Britain and Libya through the IRA (another “actor”) may be secondary only to the relationship between the US and respectively Iran and Libya in understanding the creation of the “Libyan solution” to Lockerbie. It may even be the primary motivation behind the creation of the “Libyan solution”.


The relationship of other countries to the USA may be of great importance in understanding aspects of the Lockerbie story notably the. timing of the indictment.

Luis Posada Carriles and Cubanair Flight 455

In 1976 Cubanair flight 455 was destroyed by a bomb shortly after take-off from Barbados on route from Venezuela to Cuba killing all 73 on board. Police in Trinidad subsequently arrested two Venezuelan who claimed to be following the orders of a right wing Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who worked for the Venezuelan secret Police, and another Cuban Orando Bosch. Carriles escaped from a Venezuelan Prison in 1985 and went to work for the CIA in Honduras in support of the Nicaraguan Contras.


In 2000 Carriles and three associates was convicted of conspiring in Panama to murder Castro (and his audience) by blowing-up the students’ Hall at the University of Panama during an address by Castro. Carriles was subsequently pardoned by the Panamanian President. Carriles moved to Miami where Orlando Bosch is a folk hero and an associate of the Governor Jeb Bush, whose father was CIA Director at the time of the Cubanair 455 bombing. The US authorities decline to extradite Carriles (now in his eighties) to Venezuela.


On the 1st January 1992 Cuba (and Yemen) lost their seats on the Security Council at which point the Western powers prepared to introduce the motion to impose sanctions on Libya. It is unlikely that Cuba (and Yemen) would have supported sanctions particularly in view of the Cuban experience in relation to Cubanair 455 (and indeed to the totality of US efforts to achieve “regime change” in Cuba and other leftist regimes through sanctions, sabotage and violence).


The timing of the indictment was not determined by the progress of the investigation, or considerations relating to the Gulf War but by the composition of the Security Council.


Iranian-US Relations;


The key relationship was that between the United States of America and the Islamic Republican of Iran. Diplomatic relations were beyond glacial and anti-Americanism was the central principal of Iranian Foreign Policy arising from recent historical experience.


The key event in US-Iranian relationship was the overthrow in 1953 of the conservative parliamentary government of the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh in a coup organised by the CIA. Mossadeq had begun the process of nationalising the Iranian oil industry then controlled by the British on terms grossly unfair to the Iranians. The CIA financed coup abolished parliament and put the Shah in absolute power. ( 11 )


In 1979 during the throes of the revolution against the regime of the Shah revolutionaries had captured the US Embassy holding US diplomats hostage. Later that year Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran possibly with tacit US backing.


During the eight year Iran-Iraq War the West was supposedly neutral and purportedly imposed an arms embargo on both sides. However an Iranian victory would not be tolerated. Iraq was supplied with arms but more importantly with credit.


The Iranians saw the West as the de facto allies of Iraq. In particular the US and other naval patrols in the Arabian Seas and Persian Gulf, while supposedly supporting the principal of freedom of navigation were de facto supporting Iraq and it’s Arab allies. Following an Iranian attack on a US registered merchant ship in 1987 the US Navy had done enormous damage to Iran’s offshore oil installations while an Iraqi Excocet attack on the USS Stark, which killed a number of sailors, was ignored as an embarrassment.


In 1988 the collapse of the Soviet Union was three years away. Secretary Gorbachov was seen in the West as a politician whose reforms might strengthen the moribund Soviet Union. In Washington policymakers predicted that the end of the Iran-Iraq War would mean the overthrow of the defeated Government. No regime in history had survived defeat in war. The only predicted alternative to the Islamic Republic was a pro-communist regime.


In an attempt to bring to an end the Beirut Hostage Crisis a handful of US officials associated with the National Security Council and the head of the CIA William Casey ran a “covert” foreign policy attempting to free the hostages by means of a number of increasingly ambitions arms deals with Iran. The rationale for North’s arms dealing was not simply to free the hostages but was intended to support supposed moderate factions in the Iranian regime.


Despite or because of it’s recent history the United States was looking to improve or even normalise relations with it’s “natural ally” Iran. As the Islamic Republic was staunchly anti-communist the authoritarian and Islamic nature of the regime posed no problem. The US enjoyed cordial relations with other authoritarian Islamic regimes and was organising and funding Islamic militants in neighbouring Afghanistan.


From the Iranian point of view the USA remained the “great Satan” the implacable enemy of the Iranian revolution. This applied to both “moderate” and “hard-line” factions within the regime. With the exposure of the “Iran-Contra” affair, possibly by a “hard-line” faction to embarrass pragmatists political and even physical survival in Tehran necessitated an anti-American political line.


Into this potent mix was thrown the “Vincennes Incident” an unpredicted and from the American point of view a quite unwelcome development. The incident arose out of America’s pro-Iraq anti-Iran stance and both sides responded as prisoners of their history. Iran denounced the American Crime and threatened revenge.


The Americans, possibly initially misinformed as to what had transpired blamed the Iranian pilot and decorated the crew. Iranian demands that Captain Rogers and his crew be handed over for trial were instantly dismissed. Even a Court Martial of Captain Rogers would have been seen as an unwarranted concession to the hated Iranians. At the beginning of a Presidential Campaign there were no votes to be gained in attempting to conciliate Iran.


Subsequent to defending the US position in a speech to the UN on the July 1988 Vice-President and Presidential candidate George H.W.Bush responded to questions posed by journalists “I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don’t care what the facts are.” ( 12 )


Libya and the USA;


“Was my daughter’s life, and the lives of all the others on Pan Am 103, of no value to our government?” Susan and Dan Cohen - PA103 (13)

It may be that the lives of Theodora Cohen, a vibrant and talented actress, and all the other victims was of great value to the US and British Governments or acquired great value in how their sacrifice was exploited. In order to bring an end to sanctions Libya moderated and changed it’s policies and was forced to renounce support for a number of liberation/terrorist groups. This support was not just financial but involved the supply of weapons and explosives.


From the overthrow of the monarchy in 1969 Colonel Gaddafi sought to spread the Libyan revolution against the evils of Colonialism and Imperialism. Money and weapons were sent to dozens of terrorist groups around the world. Later training camps were established within Libya. The Colonel saw himself as the leader of a world-wide campaign against oppression and claimed the right, as the USA does, to interfere in the internal affairs of any country. Besides his sponsorship of terrorist groups the Libyan regime undertook a campaign of assassination against anti-Gaddafi exiles, the so-called “stray dogs” in Western Europe, Egypt and other countries.


Gaddafi gave support to the Nicaraguan Contras and supported Basque, Breton and Corsican terrorists as well as German terrorist factions such as the Baader Meinhof group and the Italian Red Brigades.

“A detailed Israeli intelligence report states that in the mid-1980s Qadhafi was supporting some fifty terror organisations and subversion groups, in addition to more than forty radical governments in Africa, Asia, Europe and America. Here it is noted that for the Middle East alone Gadhafi was then supporting George Habsh’s PFLP, Jibril’s PFLP-GC (General Command) Naif Hawatmeh’s Democratic Front, the Saiqa, the Popular Struggle Front, and Abu Nidal. In addition there was Libyan support for many national movements in other regions (some groups already mentioned) Many countries – among them Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Lebanon, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Phillipines – have at one time or another accused Qadhafi of supporting dissident or terrorist groups in their country.

One Israeli report suggested that Libya’s support for international terrorism in the 1980s was less than often supposed. Out of a total of more than 400 terrorist incidents in 1985, Libyan hit squads were judged to be responsible for only eleven, and these involved eight Libyan victims. At the same time, Abu Nidal, supported by Qadhafi was responsible for about two dozen terrorist acts. The Libyan involvement in terrorism was not in doubt: there was debate as to it’s scale.” ( 14 )


A demand made of Libya subsequent to the imposition of UN sanctions further to the demands concerning flight PA103 and UTA772 was that Libya;

“Cease all forms of training for “terrorists” in Libyan camps, stop supporting and aiding them; co-operate with Western requests regarding those organisations by handing over any information or even personalities” ( 15 )

Even if Libya had immediately handed over the two suspects in the Lockerbie case sanctions may have continued.


From the start of the Reagan Presidency Gaddafi was represented as being behind numerous terrorist incidents real or imagined. Even prior to the inauguration it was widely publicised that Libya had dispatched hit-teams to the USA to assassinate Reagan. The source of these claims transpired to be an Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar who was later to emerge as a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.


A long-term plan to overthrow the regime and eliminate Gaddafi was one of the Reagan administration’s top priorities. ( 16 ) The Libyan “threat” was played-up to support the US Military build-up and the funding of the Contras.


A key official whose brief included coming up with schemes to harass the Libyan regime was Vincent Cannnistraro who later led the CIA purported “investigation” of Lockerbie. Because of disinformation and exaggeration it is difficult to assess whether the US case against Libya was credible or grossly exaggerated. The central point is not whether US policy was justified but that this was US policy. The attempt to decapitate the regime in April 1986 failed. This did not mean the policy was abandoned.


This may not have been the first or the last attempt by Western Governments to assassinate Gaddafi. On the 27th June 1980 an Itavia Air DC9 Flight 870 from Bologna to Palermo plunged into deep waters off Ustica, Sicily with the loss of 81 lives. The investigation continues to this day with no definitive result but with the suspicion that certain Governments and Italian officials and military personnel have been involved in a cover-up. It is likely that the plane was struck by two missiles. Warplanes from the US, France and Italy were on exercise in the area. One theory is that the plane was destroyed in a botched attempt to shoot down another passenger plane carrying Colonel Gaddafi from Libya to a conference in Europe.


In 1998 David Shayler, a former MI5 officer, who claimed or believed himself to be on the “Libya desk” within MI5 claimed that in 1996 British intelligence had colluded with Libyan Islamists to murder Colonel Gaddafi a claim that was ridiculed by the authorities.( 17 )



Libya and Great Britain: The Enemy Within-The Enemy Without:


One aspect of Libyan/UK relations was the real or purported juxtaposition of the “enemy within” the Irish Republican Army (15) and more controversially the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with the enemy without, “Libya”. Central to this mix was Stella Rimington who was head of Department F2 of MI5 dealing with the 1983-5 Miners Strike which put her on the path to head the service.


The truth of the extent of MI5 involvement in defeating the strike is not within the public domain but allegations involve phone-tapping, the infiltration of agents into the National Union of Mineworkers, co-operation with right-wing extremists, the propagation of false stories and the manipulation of the press. ( 18 )

On the 17th April 1984 24 year old WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered while policing an anti-Gaddafi demonstration outside the Libyan People’s Bureau in St.James Square, London. The protestors were demonstrating against the recent public execution of two students in Tripoli. A sub-machine gun was fired at the protesters from the Embassy and Miss Fletcher was mortally wounded. No arrests were made at the time and diplomatic relations with Libya were broken off. The incident caused widespread revulsion.


Several months later the Chief Executive of the NUM Roger Windsor was sent to Libya to meet with Colonel Gaddafi and was photographed warmly embracing the Colonel. According to the NUM Windsor’s mission was to persuade Colonel Gaddafi to halt exports of Libyan oil to Britain as this was weakening the strike. According to Windsor’s comments he was there to seek financial support for the miners strike fund. In the light of the murder of Yvonne Fletcher this caused outrage in Britain. ( 19 )

It is curious that only Libya was approached to support an oil embargo and perhaps Windsor’s gaffe was not seeking funds but talking about it.


Under the cover of parliamentary privilege Windsor was subsequently named in the House of Commons as an MI5 agent. When the allegation was repeated outside the Commons Windsor successfully sued and decamped to France. ( 20 )


The affair was re-ignited in 1990, long after the strike collapsed, but before the Government announced the abolition of the coal industry. In 1990 the left of centre Daily Mirror, then owned by Robert Maxwell ran a number of stories concerning the NUM President Arthur Scargill and funds supposedly supplied by Libya. ( 21 )


The source of the story was Roger Windsor, handsomely compensated by the Mirror, Scargill’s former driver/gofer and a Briton of Pakistani origin with links to the security services. The Sunday Times ran a similar story alleging that a trip to Paris by Scargill to meet his French counterpart was actually a cover for a meeting with a senior member of the Libyan Government. Similar allegations were made by a TV investigative journalist Roger Cook on The Cook Report using the same sources. ( 22 )


The allegation was that Scargill and Peter Heathfield, another senior NUM official had been given £160,000 of the Libyan money in cash which they had used to pay off their mortgages. Curiously Scargill never sued although an enquiry by a prominent QC on behalf of the NUM found that the allegations were completely untrue. Twelve years later the Mirror’s former editor admitted his serious doubts about the story at the time and published a frank apology. Windsor became embroiled in a French Court case involving funds donated to the NUM by the French mining union which concluded that documents submitted by Windsor supposedly bearing Scargill’s signature were forgeries. ( 23 )


In the 1984 Brighton bombing an IRA terrorist Patrick Magee had attempted to assassinate Mrs Thatcher. It is rumoured Magee was trained in Libya as had other prominent IRA volunteers. She survived virtually unscathed but four others died in the bombing, while many suffered serious and permanent injury. Mrs Thatcher’s two closest friends in politics had both been murdered by Republican terrorists.


On the 30thOctober 1987 French customs intercepted the Panamanian trawler the Eksund off coast of Brittany en route from Malta to Ireland. It was crewed by four IRA volunteers. On it’s way it had stopped in Libyan waters and taken on a cargo or arms and explosives destined for the IRA. Investigations revealed that this was the fifth voyage of the Eksund on this route and that Libya had already supplied hundreds of tons of weapons to the IRA in four earlier shipments made between June 1985 and September 1986. The shipments included 2,000 AK-47’s, two million rounds of ammunition, surface to air missiles and 10 tens of Semtex allowing the IRA to carry on it’s “armed struggle” almost indefinitely. ( 24 ) ( 25 )


This was a staggering blow to British strategy against the IRA whose objective had been to starve the IRA of cash and weaponry. This weaponry had been passed to the IRA without the knowledge of the security services and it was believed to be a condition of the Libyans that these arms were not to be used until the shipments were completed.


In April 1986 Mrs Thatcher had supported the US raids on Tripoli and Benghazi. This was a scheme that originated within the US National Security Council by the same officials who were seeking to arm Iran. The pretext for the raid was intelligence linking Libya to the bombing of La Belle discothèque in March 1986, intelligence that the Americans declined to make public. According to President Reagan “our evidence is direct, it is precise, it is irrefutable”. ( 26 ) The American’s case was dubious but they were more concerned with demonstrating American military power than in publicly stating the case against Libya.


The central objective of the US raids was to kill Colonel Gaddafi himself by bombing sites associated with him in particular the Al-Aziz barracks. Indeed there was no other rational objective to dropping 2,000lb. bombs on sleeping civilians and the French Embassy. According to one source North had planned to use Terry Waite to ensure Gaddafi was in position when the bombing began. Waite was to arrange a meeting at Gaddafi’s quarters then leave shortly before the attacks began. ( 27) The assassination of foreign leaders was forbidden by US law but President Reagan was prepared to “take the heat”.


Commenting on the bombing Mrs Thatcher famously wrote that “But the raid on Libya was a far greater success than I could ever have imagined and put a stop to Libyan sponsored terrorism for years to come. Libyan retaliation did not and could not happen”. ( 28 ) Some observers saw this statement as a denial of Libyan responsibility for Lockerbie as indeed it appears to be. Mrs Thatcher’s words make it appear that Libya, having been bombed on a pretext, abandoned support for the IRA and other terrorist groups and ceased to be a threat. But Libya did continue to send arms to the IRA as the Eksund incident undoubtedly demonstrated.


While claiming that the raid was a success it was in fact a failure and had not put a stop to “Libyan sponsored terrorism” at all. Rather than being compelled to claim everything she did worked it would have been better if Mrs Thatcher had admitted that the raid on Libya was a failure. But if the raid had not deterred Gaddafi and it was discovered with the Eksund incident that his support for the IRA had continued how was he to be stopped?

One of the demands made of Libya subsequent to the imposition of UN sanctions was that Libya ;

“Cease all support and aid to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and provide the British authorities with all available information regarding that relation.” ( 29 )

According to newspaper sources the Libyans “named up to 20 leading IRA figures, gave details of their training, listed the weapons supplied, indicated the scale of the funding and how the support had been provided” (30).


By happy coincidence the identification of the two Libyans as the “culprits” in the Lockerbie case gave the British the means to exert economic and political pressure on the Libyan Government.


As noted in the previous article “A Poisoned Pill – the Mysterious Life and Death of Ian Spiro” Dame Stella Rimington boasted on national television that it was MI5 who “identified the two Libyan culprits”. ( 31)


In a recent article Richard Marquise, who headed the FBI’s Lockerbie investigation, summarised the evidence linking Al-Megrahi to Lockerbie, or at least to the official version of events. He laid particular stress on his arrival in Malta on the 20th December 1988 in the false identity of Abdulsamad and his departure on the morning of the 21st December 1988. This is a crucial matter as in reality the primary suitcase was introduced at Heathrow not Malta. Marquise wrote that Al-Megrahi’s visit was discovered by “another American intelligence agency” but does not state which one. (32) How Al-Megrahi was identified as Abdulsamad does not feature in the transcript of the trial.


While Al-Megrahi was in Malta on the 21st December 1988, the bomb wasn’t. Al-Megrahi’s visit to Malta is not evidence of his guilt but evidence of a plan to incriminate Libya and Al-Megrahi in advance of the bombing itself.






The author is a graduate in Modern History and International Relations.
Comments of a reasonable length (i.e.shorter than the original article) are welcome on this blog or at poisonpill@tesco.net.


(1 ) Clausewitz On War “War is merely the continuation of policy
by other means”.

( 2 ) “The Maltese Double Cross” writer/director Alan Francovich

(3) Interview with Lhamin Fhimah (following his acquittal) featured
in “Cover-up of Convenience” by John Ashton & Ian Ferguson
Mainstream Publishing

( 4 ) Ashton & Ferguson Interview with Lord Fraser

( 5) Cohen, Susan and Daniel Pan Am 103 New American Library
2000 page 139

( 6 ) The Thoughts of Chairman Mao

( 7 ) Thomas Pyncheon “Gravity’s Rainbow” (a novel).

( 8 ) Oliver “Buck” Revell Channel 4 The Lockerbie Debate

( 9 ) Cohen page 32

( 10 ) Cohen page 156

( 11 ) William Blum Killing Hope (US Military & CIA Interventions
Since World War II) Zed Books London 20004 Chapter 9 Iran
1953 – Making it Safe for the King of Kings see also Chapter
Libya 1981-1989 Ronald Reagan Meets his Match for a
comprehensive account of US efforts to overthrow or eliminate
Colonel Gaddafi.

( 12 ) Vice-President George H.W.Bush (quoted in Newsweek
21.7.88)

( 13 ) Cohen page 45

( 14 ) Geoff Symons Libya and the West from Independence to
Lockerbie 2003 The Centre for Libyan Studies 124-5

( 15 ) Matar Khalil I. And Thabit Robert W. Lockerbie and Libya A
Study in International Relations McFarland & Company
Inc.2004 page 24

( 16 ) Newsweek 3.8.81

( 17) Various sources

( 18) “What Stella Left Out” Seumus Milne Guardian 2.10.2000

( 19 ) Various sources

(20) Hansard 22.7.93

(21) Daily Mirror 1990 (dates untraceable)

(22) Sunday Times 28.10.84

(23) “Sorry Arthur ” by Roy Greenslade Guardian 27.5.2002

(24) Brendan O’Brien The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Fein O’Brien Press 1999 http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/abstensionism/obrien99.htm

(25) BBC TV The Age of Terror( part III) Ten Days of Terror written and presented byPeter Taylor

(26) Best Laid Plans by David C.Martin quoted in Gavin Hewitt’s Terry Waite, Why Was HeKidnapped page 156

( 27) New York times 15.4.86

(28) Margaret Thatcher The Downing Street Years

(29) Kalil & Thabit page 24

(30) Geoff Symons Libya and the West from Independence to
Lockerbie 2003 The Centre for Libyan Studies (note 15 to
Chapter 7 at page 198)

(31) Dimbleby lecture Security and Democracy is there a Conflict?
Broadcast on BBC2 12.6.94 British Film Institute Library (note
the official transcript on the MI5 website is wildly inaccurate).

(32) Richard Marquise Megrahi’s Tale a Tissue of Lies Sunday
Times 14.12.08

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