This week marks the 25th anniversary of the bombing of Pan-Am 103 over Lockerbie Scotland, and people are starting to set the record straight. 259 people on the aircraft and 11 on the ground were killed, and despite other available evidence, the blame fell on Libya.
The dark path of rediscovery in this crime leads to a double-cross within U.S. intelligence and acknowledgement by the CIA that Libya was not involved and that the likely suspects were The Popular Front for The Liberation of Palestine General Command. More importantly, the subsequent cover-up protected the Iran-Contra network of Oliver North and President George H.W. Bush.
From The Telegraph.UK:
(excerpts)
“The CIA secretly held Syrian militants, rather than Libya, responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, according to newly unearthed testimony from a former US spy in the Middle East.
Dr Richard Fuisz said in a sworn deposition in 2001 that he was told by up to 15 senior Syrian officials that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) had carried out the attack.
He also testified that CIA bosses told him the PFLP-GC was responsible, according to a lawyer’s note of a second deposition. Ahmed Jibril, the group’s founder leader, who is still alive at 75, was singled out as being to blame for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland in December 1988, killing 270 people.
“Numerous high officials in the Syrian government were quite affirmative on Jibril’s involvement in Pan Am 103,” Dr Fuisz told lawyers, during his deposition in Virginia in 2001.
Dr Fuisz gave his depositions in 2000 and 2001 at the request of Megrahi’s defence lawyers. However, the evidence came too late to be used in the trial. They were first published by Channel 4 News.The CIA declined to comment.”
…”They added that blame may have been diverted from Iran in order to protect secret and delicate negotiations by George Bush’s US administration over western hostages.”
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In a July 2010 article, I described my involvement with Dr. Fuisz, who I knew was well-connected, but at the time I did not realize that he was an agent for the CIA:
In 1994 I was writing for “The Portland Free Press”, a small alternative newspaper Edited by researcher Ace Hayes. At the time, I was running a series on military C-130 aircraft destined for duty as Forest Service airtankers that were diverted to use by a group of shady CIA contractors. A source had described to me how money connected to the operation was being run through a bank called “Congress Financial”, which was a CIA front company.
I received an unsolicited phone call from the secretary of a man named Dr. Richard Fuisz, and I returned the call. Fuisz confirmed the information about Congress Financial, and told me he had called to see if I would run a story about his knowledge of the sale of huge Terex trucks that had been converted to missile launchers and sold to Iraq shortly before the first Gulf War. He had personally toured the assembly plant in Motherwell, Scotland and officials described that it was a joint operation by the CIA and British Intelligence. Fuisz ran afoul of U.S. authorities when he tried to take the story to “60 Minutes”. He had been hounded by private security firms, and had even had a personal meeting with President Bill Clinton to remedy the situation. His hope was to try to get the story in print, and I ran the article.
At the time, I realized that Dr. Fuisz was well-connected, but I had no idea that he was an agent for the CIA himself.
The Lockerbie Connection
At the same time Fuisz was feeding me information on the Terex Iraqi missile launchers, he was in contact with another Portland resident, Susan Lindauer. Lindauer was a press aide for then-Congressman (now Senator) Ron Wyden, and it’s my guess that Lindauer may have given Fuisz my article referencing Congress Financial.
It was Lindauer’s connection to Fuisz that got her in hot water when she was arrested for being an agent of the Iraqi government, which she denied. She had met with Iraqi diplomats before Bush invaded Iraq, but claimed it was on official business. Lindauer was also the cousin of former White House Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card. A deposition by Lindauer described how she was working with Fuisz, and that Fuisz knew from his Intelligence work in the Middle East that the Lockerbie bombing was actually the work of Syrians. From “The Sunday Herald” of Scotland, May 28 2000:
“Congressional aide Lindauer, who was involved in early negotiations over the Lockerbie trial, claims Fuisz made “unequivocal statements to me that he has first-hand knowledge about the Lockerbie case”. In her affidavit, she goes on: “Dr Fuisz has told me that he can identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity whatsoever.”
Fuisz’s statements to Lindauer support the claims of the two Libyan accused who are to incriminate a number of terrorist organizations, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, which had strong links to Syria and Iran.
Lindauer said Fuisz told her he could provide information on Middle Eastern terrorists, and referred to Lockerbie as an “example of an unsolved bombing case that he said he has the immediate capability to resolve”.
The Assassination of The Mckee Team
In a forgotten but incredibly revealing 1992 article, Time Magazine pieces together the story that contains clues to what actually happened.On board the flight of Pan-Am 103 was an elite counter-terrorism team led by Major Charles Mckee. They were operating out of Germany and had been tasked to locating hostages in Lebanon. What they stumbled across was a parallel operation that was connected to none other than Col. Oliver North. North it appears, was in league with Syrian Drug runners (no surprise), presumably in an effort to secure information on the hostages also. North was allegedly allowing the Syrians to use a protected DEA drug pipeline run through the airlines in Europe. In the wreckage of the crash, investigators recovered Heroin and $500,000 in cash. The cash may have been in the hands of Mckee, to pay off informants. Mckee was upset and had contacted his superiors when he found the iceberg-tip of Norths operation, believing it may have compromised his own team. Mckee was on the verge of exposing the underbelly of North’s shady dealings and the root of the entire Iran-Contra affair. According to the investigators hired by Pan-Am (Interfor, led by an ex-Mossad agent) the Mossad had warned of a possible airline bombing. The warning was ignored. The Mckee team, which was about to blow the whistle on the Iran-Contra scandal and North’s complicity in drug running, was assassinated in the bombing.
Dr. Fuisz, who was placed under a gag-order never spoke to me after the Terex missile-launcher story. He places the blame on the Syrians, who got a pass if they would support Iraq War efforts. The blame shifted to Libya.
Susan Lindauer, the former Congressional Aide who was working with Fuisz, was placed in a mental institution on a U.S. Military Base and force-fed medication to shut her up. She recently appeared on “The Thom Hartmann Radio Show”, once again explaining her story.
For more detail on this operation, please read this Time Magazine article before it disappears: LINK
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DIPLOMATS PULLED OFF PLANE, STUDENTS TOOK THEIR PLACE
A 2008 article in “The Scotsman” details how the Abu Nidal network may have been working for U.S. intelligence at the time of the bombing:
Was Lockerbie suspect working for US?
(excerpts)
“Former Labour MP Tam Dalyell and Edinburgh law professor Robert Black urged the Scottish and UK governments to answer reports there is evidence Abu Nidal was a US agent.
They have long believed Abu Nidal, who died in Iraq in 2002, and his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command were responsible for co-ordinating the bomb that blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December, 1988 with the loss of 270 lives.
Intelligence reports, said to have been drawn up for Saddam Hussein’s security services, said Kuwaitis had asked Abu Nidal, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna, to find out if al-Qaeda was present in Iraq.
The reports referred to Abu Nidal’s “collusion with both the American and Kuwaiti intelligence apparatuses in co-ordination with Egyptian intelligence”.
And campaigners said the latest evidence adds weight to the claims that Libyan secret agent Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi – who was found guilty of the atrocity in 2001 – and the Libyan government were scapegoats to cover up a wider plot.
Mr Dalyell said the reports added weight to the theory that Lockerbie was a “tit-for-tat” attack for the shooting down of an Iranian passenger airliner by the warship USS Vincennes in 1988, and was allowed by the US administration.
He said the claims that Abu Nidal was working for the Americans would explain some of the mysteries that surrounded the Lockerbie outrage. These included a notice that went up at the American embassy in Moscow warning diplomats not to travel on Pan Am flights, and senior South African figures being “hauled off” the plane before its final flight.
The diplomats were replaced by students, who lost their lives.”
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As if this wasn’t deep enough already, it appears that oil giant BP may have pulled the strings to have the accused Libyan bomber released, and relations normalized with Libya during the George W. Bush administration. From “The Herald Sun.au”:
“THE Scottish Government maintained it will help an American inquiry with new information about the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
The agreement threatens to embarrass former Labour ministers who tried to have Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi returned to Libya to secure a £550 million ($968 million) oil exploration deal for BP.”
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Summing up:
These articles suggest that the bombing was the pay-back for the shoot-down of an Iranian airbus by the U.S. Navy. U.S. intelligence was alerted of the bomb, and certain diplomats were allowed off the plane. That left the Mckee team, with half-a-million dollars in cash and enough information to expose Oliver North’s operations to be assassinated to prevent their return to the U.S.
-In military terms, the civilians killed were “collateral damage.
