Wednesday 9 March 2011

'No question' Gadhafi ordered Pan Am bombing, ex-CIA official says

[This is the headline over a report on the MSNBC News website on 7 March. It reads in part:]

A former top CIA official who helped oversee the agency’s investigation into the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, tells NBC News there is "no doubt" that Moammar Gadhafi personally approved the bombing.

"There are two things that you can take to the bank," said Frank Anderson, who served as the agency's Near East affairs chief between 1991 and his retirement in 1995. "The first one is, Pan Am 103 was perpetrated by agents of the Libyan government. And the second thing is, that could not have happened without Moammar Gadhafi's knowledge and consent.

"There is no question in my mind that Moammar Gadhafi authorized the bombing of Pan Am 103." (...)

Anderson acknowledged that the CIA never had direct evidence tying Gadhafi to the bombing. But during Anderson's tenure as chief of the CIA's Near East affairs division U.S. and British officials were able to wrap up an investigation that uncovered forensic and other evidence linking the planting of the bomb to Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer.

While there have long been suspicions of Gadhafi's involvement, Anderson has particular credibility on the issue. As one of the CIA's top experts on Libya — he had served as a case officer in Tripoli in the early 1970s after Gadhafi first came to power — Anderson dismissed the possibility that Megrahi could have been acting as a "rogue" agent without the knowledge of the regime's top leader. By the time of the bombing, he said, Gadhafi had so consolidated his hold over the regime that there was "absolutely no way" for Libyan intelligence officials to have carried out the bombing without the dictator's authorization.

Geopolitical and other realities led U.S. officials to handle the matter as a criminal case, resulting in a federal indictment of Megrahi and an alleged co-conspirator, rather than with military force, noted Anderson, who now serves as the president of the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington-based think tank. President Ronald Reagan ordered a bombing of Libya in 1986 after U.S. officials linked Libya's intelligence service to an earlier terrorism bombing in Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen.

In a separate interview, Richard Marquise, who was the chief FBI agent on the Lockerbie case, said he and other bureau officials always assumed that senior Libyan officials were complicit in blowing up the aircraft, but never had enough evidence to build a case against them.

When Megrahi and an alleged co-conspirator, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, were indicted by a federal grand jury in 1991, FBI officials were eager to convict them in a U.S. court – and then get them to finger the higher level officials who gave them their orders, said Marquise. Some evidence against higher level Libyan intelligence officials had surfaced in the course of the probe, said Marquise. He even considered seeking "material witness" warrants that would authorize FBI agents to apprehend the suspects and force them to testify.

"We always hoped that had we gotten (access to Megrahi and Fhimah) they would start to roll," said Marquise. "There was always an expectation that we would get further up the chain."

But much to the frustration of U.S. officials, that never happened. As part of a deal to get the Libyans to turn over Megrahi and Fhimah, the U.S. agreed to allow them to be tried in Scotland — and Scottish officials agreed to restrict the case only to them, preventing the disclosure of any evidence that might point to higher-ups. (...)

[Posted to the blog from Oudtshoorn, the ostrich capital of South Africa, indeed the world.]

12 comments:

  1. U.S. and British officials were able to wrap up an investigation that uncovered forensic and other evidence linking the planting of the bomb to Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence officer.

    It would be good if he could tell us what that evidence was, and why it was decided not to present it to the Scottish Court at Zeist.

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  2. Anderson: ""There is no question in my mind that Moammar Gadhafi authorized the bombing of Pan Am 103."

    Pity all the evidence exists only in in the 'minds' of Anderson, Marquise and co.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Mission Lockerbie, 2011, doc. nr.1080.rtf., google translation german/english:

    A new forensic 'Comparison-Proof' about the crucial MST-13 timer fragment
    (DP/31(a), PT/35(b) Libya finally exonerate !
    The forensic digital images were created by the Scientific Service (Image & Data) of the Canton Police of Zurich and will published in the next few days, on
    URL: www.lockerbie.ch

    ***
    Ein neuer forensischer 'Vergleichs-Beweis' über das entscheidende MST-13 Timerfragment (DP/31(a), PT/35(b) entlastet Libyen endgültig !
    Die forensischen digital-Bilder wurden erstellt vom Wissenschaftlichen Dienst (Bild & Daten) der Kantonspolizei Zürich und werden in den nächsten Tagen veröffentlicht auf,
    URL: www.lockerbie.ch

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland.

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  5. Anderson is just another spook, paid to meddle and twist and turn things at the orders of his paymasters.

    The only good thing is that he probably didn't dress up in drag or hide behind a screen to give his interview. What he said of course means or proves nothing.

    Do spooks have even a modicum of credibility?

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  6. My review

    http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/2011/03/michael-isikoffs-forays-into-culture-of.html

    If NBC’s “national investigative correspondent” had done his job, and looked into the Lockerbie case prior to these developments, he’d have noticed [...] One way or another, investigators seem to have gotten it entirely wrong.

    Stepping into this complex milieu, Mr. Isikoff chose the investigative tack of citing the new Libyan defector and the talkative terrorist, and by talking to the men who may well have gotten it wrong in the first place.


    Mr. Anderson has perhaps just been duped, and isn’t aware how deceptive his affirmation is. His relevant expertise is on Libya and its troublesome regime, not the investigation and trial. And his conclusion that Gaddafi had to have ordered the attack is not even rocket surgery to guess in the affirmative.

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  7. Also, ostrich is good eatin'

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  8. The alternative to Libyan guilt is that the CIA colluded with Iranian pragmatists to draw a line under the Vincennes incident. Indeed the bombmaker Marwan Khreesat was an admitted CIA "asset" and with foreknowledge the CIA's Director of Operations' family became major beneficiaries of the creation of the Libyan solution.

    I suspect they also murdered their star witness Majid Giaka and that the wife and children of another CIA asset Ian Spiro (who named the two Libyan "culprits") were also murdered by agents of the US Government. No wonder they weren't interested in investigating that either!

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  9. The alternative to Libyan guilt is that the CIA colluded with Iranian pragmatists to draw a line under the Vincennes incident.

    Why start that with the word "the?"

    It's an interesting theory that explains much and is worth considering. But it's no more "the alternative" than any other theory I could cite.

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  10. Indeed, I must concur with Caustic Logic here. It is most certainly not the case that the (only) alternative to "Libya did it" is a MIHOP involving the CIA. I can think of several other scenarios which are quite plausible.

    My own favoured speculation is that the CIA had infiltrated the PFLP-GC in order to prevent the revenge attack for IR655, and got a bit too clever. Or were maybe thrown off course by a change of plan triggered by the Autumn Leaves arrests. When PA103 fell out of the sky they found themselves in the embarrassing position of potentially being seen as involved in the plot that had led to the destruction of a US airliner. Hence some of the knee-jerk cover-up.

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  11. No,I suggest this is a point that the trial Judges grasped and articulated. If Megrahi wasn't guilty then he was the victim of a conspiracy to incriminate him. I believe he was and that such a plan must have been conceived and partially implemented prior to the bombing. As the CIA must have played a lead role in this conspiracy it therefore follows (unless Megrahi did really do it) that they had foreknowledge of the bombing. Ergo the only alternative to Megrahi's guilt is CIA (and MI5)involvement.

    .

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