CIA memos reveal doubts over 'key' Lockerbie witness

[This is the headline over an article published in The Independent on this date in 2009. It reads as follows:]

A Walter Mitty type convinced the Americans he was a Libyan intelligence agent when he worked in the agency's garage

A Libyan "double agent" who was central to the CIA's investigation into the Lockerbie bombing exaggerated his importance in Tripoli's intelligence apparatus and gave little information of value, yet is still living at the US taxpayers' expense in a witness protection programme, according to previously unseen CIA cables.

Five months before the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 in December 1988, 27-year-old Majid Giaka turned up at the US embassy in Malta and "expressed a desire to relocate ... in return for sensitive information on Libya", in the words of a cable sent by a CIA case officer to his headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the same day. Mr Giaka claimed he was an agent of Libya's feared Jamahiriya security organisation, but it later turned out that he worked in the agency's garage.

More than 60 cables, uncovered in a BBC investigation, detail the relations between the Americans and a man later described in court as a real-life Walter Mitty. Mr Giaka, who said that he worked for Libyan Arab Airlines at Malta's Luqa airport as a cover, told the CIA that he wanted to remain in Malta. He promised he would co-operate fully with the CIA – in return for money.

At the time Libya was public enemy number one. But the CIA had few sources of information on the country, and Mr Giaka was put on the payroll. In return for information about Libyan officials coming and going from Malta, he received $1,000 a month and gifts. His handlers even agreed to fund $6,000 of fake surgery on his arm, so that he could avoid military service back home.

In the summer of 1989, the Lockerbie investigation was uncovering evidence which pointed to a Libyan connection, and the FBI believed the suitcase which blew up Pan Am flight 103 had started its journey from Luqa airport. The CIA hoped its Libyan agent would have inside knowledge, but the case officers reported back: "Giaka does not believe explosives hidden in an unaccompanied suitcase could be inserted into the handling process at Luqa International Airport."

The Libyan mole acknowledged that it could have been theoretically possible for officials in Tripoli to bring explosives on to the island via the diplomatic pouch, but "because Giaka believes he had the best contacts of LIA [Luqa International Airport], he does not think this type of operation could have been slipped by him".

The case officers cabled: "It is clear that Giaka will never be the penetration of the ESO [Libyan External Security Organisation] that we had anticipated ... unfortunately, it appears that our assisting him in scam surgery on his arm to avoid military service has had the reverse result that we had intended – it has also allowed him to avoid further service with the ESO, Giaka's true intention from the beginning".

But even after it turned out that he had only worked in the ESO garage, he was the only Libyan agent the CIA had in Malta, so it kept him on. By the autumn of 1989, a former Libyan Arab Airlines security official, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, was chief suspect for having planted the bomb on an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt (where it was transferred on to a Pan Am flight via London). But Mr Giaka "had no further information" on his one-time colleague.

Mr Giaka eventually returned to Tripoli in 1990 after the CIA money dried up. But the agency kept in touch with him and finally persuaded him in 1991 to come to America. Nine years later, Majid Giaka arrived at the Lockerbie bombing trial in the Netherlands. He described how he had seen Megrahi and his co-accused, Khalifa Fhimah, at Luqa airport before the bombing with a large brown suitcase. But the CIA cables confirm that nearly two years before, Mr Giaka didn't remember anything.

At the Lockerbie trial, the four judges described some of his evidence as "at best grossly exaggerated and at worst simply untrue" and concluded he was "largely motivated by financial considerations".

Legal doubt over Megrahi's guilt

[This is the headline over an article by Jason Allardyce in today's edition of The Sunday Times. The following are excerpts.]

The legal body charged with assessing the guilt of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing concluded his conviction may be unsafe because it relied on evidence provided by a discredited witness who had been paid by American intelligence services.

A report by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), due to be published later this year, is said to suggest that the testimony of Abdul Majid Giaka, a paid informer for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) should have been discounted by judges at Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s trial in the Hague in 2001. [Note by RB: This is a reference to the SCCRC's full 2007 report, only a brief summary of which has so far been published.]

Giaka testified that Megrahi was an agent for the Jamahiriya Security Organisation (JSO), the Libyan intelligence service. He claimed to have seen Megrahi carrying a suitcase containing the bomb used to blow up Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie in December 1988 killing 270 people, and to have discussed the plot with him.

However, declassified documents released during the trial revealed that American intelligence officials doubted Giaka’s claims to be connected to the highest level of Libyan intelligence and threatened to stop paying him $1,000 (£612) a month unless he provided better information.

The informant claimed that he worked in the secret files section of the JSO, but he was a garage mechanic. Giaka’s credibility was further undermined when he claimed to be related to royalty and that the Libyan leader was a freemason.

The defence alleged Giaka had been paid £1.6m by the American government to help secure a guilty verdict against Megrahi and his co-accused Lameen Fhima.

The judges at Camp Zeist in The Hague discounted most of Giaka’s testimony on the grounds that his co-operation with the American authorities was “largely motivated by financial considerations”. However, they accepted his testimony that Megrahi was a member of the JSO, a suggestion the accused denied. (...)

While the commission’s concerns about the reliability of Tony Gauci, a key Crown witness at Megrahi’s trial, have been made public, its doubts about Giaka’s testimony were kept secret.

A source who has seen the SCCRC document, told The Sunday Times: “The report says there was no sufficient explanation made of why the court discounted him as a credible witness yet seemed to accept elements within his evidence which asserted that Megrahi was a senior member of the Libyan intelligence service and was involved in the wider conspiracy.

“There was no actual evidence to support that, but the court accepted it. It undermined [sic; presumably "underlined" or "supported" is what is meant] the Crown’s narrative of the offence — that Megrahi was acting on behalf of Libyan intelligence. That information came from Giaka and all his other evidence was utterly discredited — yet they accepted that element.” (...)

At the trial, Megrahi’s defence team denied their client was employed by the JSO and dismissed Giaka’s testimony as “pure fantasy”.

The SCCRC’s concerns about Giaka’s testimony are shared by Michael Scharf, who was the counsel to the US counterterrorism bureau when Megrahi and Fhima were indicted for the bombing. He believes that the case should never have gone to trial.

He claimed the CIA had assured State Department officials that Giaka was “the perfect witness” and there was an “airtight” case against Megrahi and Fhima, who was cleared. “This is a bit like the OJ Simpson case, where the prosecution, together with the US government, tried to sex up the case and tried to hide the flaws,” he said.

“Unfortunately, because Megrahi’s appeal is not going to go forward we’ll never really know the full story.”

The commission’s full report, expected to be published in redacted (edited) form within weeks, is said to conclude that the failure to disclose a document thought to pertain to the bomb’s timer device, may have led to a miscarriage of justice. The evidence belonged to an unnamed foreign country, which refused to hand the material over. The British government at the time claimed public interest immunity against disclosure.

Defector Giaka in witness box at Zeist

[On this date in 2000 Abdul Majid Giaka entered the witness box at the Lockerbie trial. His evidence extended over three days. What follows is the text of the report on the BBC News website of the first day:]

A former Libyan spy has told the Lockerbie trial he saw the accused with a suitcase similar to the one alleged to have contained the bomb.

Abdul Majid Giaka, a key prosecution witness, has been giving details of his role as a Libyan secret service officer at Luqa Airport in Malta.

The prosecution alleges that the two Libyans placed a bomb in a brown Samsonite suitcase and routed it onto Pan Am Flight 103 from Malta.

Giaka told the court he saw Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah with such a suitcase shortly before the bombing in December 1988.

Mr Giaka has been living in the US for 10 years under CIA protection after defecting from Libya.

He was escorted to the special Scottish court at Camp Zeist, Holland, by 30 US marshals.

Speaking in Arabic from behind a screen and with his voice distorted to protect his identity, Mr Giaka told the court he was recruited to the JSO (the Libyan security service) after graduating from university.

He told prosecutor Alastair Campbell QC that he started working for the Libyan security service in 1984 and in 1986 he moved to become assistant station manager in Malta.

This posting, based at Luqa Airport, was part of the intelligence service's airline security section, to protect aircraft, passengers and crew of Libyan Arab Airlines.

The two defendants also worked at the airport for the Libyan airline and were also allegedly members of the Libyan security service.

In court he identified Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as the head of the airline security section and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhima as the station boss.

BBC Scotland correspondent Reevel Alderson, who is in court, said this was the first time in the trial that Fhima had been identified by a witness.

Giaka described how, shortly before the bombing in 1988, he saw the two accused arrive from Tripoli. They were carrying a brown Samsonite suitcase.

He also said that, two years before the bombing, Fahima had showed him two bricks of what he said was the explosive TNT.

The TNT was in the drawer of a desk in the office they shared.

He said: "Fahima told me he had had 10 kg of TNT delivered by Abdel Basset (Megrahi).

"He opened the drawer and there were two boxes which contained a yellowish material."

Mr Giaka went on to outline the role of the JSO in terrorism and assassinating dissidents outside Libya and said his concerns led him in 1988 to contact the American Embassy.

He became a double agent, providing information about Libyan intelligence and people suspected of involvement in terrorism.

Defence lawyer Bill Taylor QC complained that much of what he had to say was "mere tittle-tattle and gossip," and reminded the court that hearsay can be inadmissible in a Scottish murder trial.

Giaka's appearance in court came after weeks of wrangling between the prosecution and defence.

At the heart of the objections has been the issue of the availability of notes of interviews held between Mr Giaka and his CIA handlers in America.

These papers - or cables - have been trickling out with varying degrees of censorship.

Meanwhile, it has been revealed that very few relatives of the victims are watching the trial on closed-circuit TV at four sites in the US and Britain.

Virtually no-one has been to the site in Dumfries, while even in New York there is usually only eight to 10 people watching.

[RB: A verbatim transcript of Giaka’s evidence can be found here, starting at page 2095.]

Lockerbie questions that US Attorney General William Barr needs to answer

[What follows is excerpted from an article by John Schindler published today on the Top Secret Umbra website:]

With just six weeks left for the Trump administration, speculation is swirling that Attorney General William Barr may step down before the official presidential transition on January 20. Barr has fallen out of favor with the White House since his admission last week that the Department of Justice’s investigation of our November 3 election has uncovered no significant voting fraud, contrary to the loud claims of President Donald Trump and his enraged surrogates. A longtime liberal bugbear, Barr suddenly became the Oval Office’s new whipping boy instead, and the attorney general is reportedly tired of the public presidential abuse. 

That would be the second time that Barr steps down as the attorney general (...)

Before we get to his decisions as Trump’s attorney general, we should first ask Bill Barr about what happened the last time he headed the Justice Department.

Above all, why did Attorney General Barr back in mid-November 1991 decide to indict two Libyan spies for the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988, a terrible crime that killed 270 innocent people. Barr’s announcement stunned our Intelligence Community, which had investigated that terrorist atrocity for nearly three years in voluminous detail, yet never suspected that Libya stood behind the attack.

Three decades ago, the Lockerbie tragedy loomed large in American news. A bomb inside a suitcase stowed in the Boeing 747’s forward left luggage container tore the airliner apart as it cruised at 31,000 feet, headed for New York. All 243 passengers and 16 crew on the Pan Am jumbo jet died, as did 11 people in the town of Lockerbie, which was showered by the flaming wreckage of the shattered 747. One hundred and ninety of the dead were Americans, including 35 Syracuse University students headed home for Christmas after a European semester abroad.

It didn’t take long for diligent British investigators to find the remnants of the Samsonite suitcase which contained less than a pound of Semtex plastic explosive manufactured in Czechoslovakia and hidden in a Toshiba radio cassette recorder. That trail quickly led to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, a radical Arab terrorist group that was headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army officer. In the eyes of Western intelligence, the PFLP-GC was little more than an extension of Syria’s security services.

Intriguingly, less than two months before the Lockerbie attack, West German police rolled up a PFLP-GC bomb-making cell around Frankfurt, seizing four bombs made of Semtex hidden in Toshiba radios. Since Pan Am 103 originated in Frankfurt and that was the exact same kind of bomb which took down the doomed airliner, none of this seemed coincidental. Western intelligence circles heard chatter in the autumn of 1988 that the PFLP-GC, whose fifth Frankfurt bomb was never found by police, was planning to blow up U.S. airliners. Plus, one of the men taken into custody was Marwan Khreesat, a veteran bomb-maker who was believed to be behind the downing of a Swissair jetliner back in 1970, a terrorist attack which killed 47 people.

Before long, American intelligence believed that Iran was really behind the downing of Flight 103, given known close connections between Syrian intelligence and Iranian spy agencies. Neither was Tehran’s motive difficult to ascertain. A few months before, on July 3, 1988, the cruiser USS Vincennes, on station in the Persian Gulf, mistakenly shot down an Iran Air Airbus, a terrible accident which killed all 290 people aboard, including 66 children. Iran’s revolutionary regime promised revenge, and the Intelligence Community assessed that they got it over Scotland. As I explained on the thirtieth anniversary of the Lockerbie horror, that Iran stood behind the attack:

Was the conclusion of US intelligence, particularly when the National Security Agency provided top-secret electronic intercepts which demonstrated that Tehran had commissioned the PFLP-GC to down Pan Am 103 (...) One veteran NSA analyst told me years later that his counterterrorism team “had no doubt” of Iranian culpability. Bob Baer, the veteran CIA officer, has stated that his agency believed just as unanimously that Tehran was behind the bombing. Within a year of the attack, our Intelligence Community assessed confidently that Lockerbie was an Iranian operation executed by Syrian cut-outs, and that take was shared by several allies with solid Middle Eastern insights, including Israeli intelligence.

The IC was therefore taken aback on November 14, 1991, when Attorney General Barr announced the indictment of two Libyan spies, Abdelbaset el-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, for the downing of Pan Am 103. Libya denied the accusations, as did the two Libyan intelligence officers, and it took Britain almost a decade to bring the men to trial. In a unique arrangement, the trial was held in the Netherlands under Scottish law. In the end, the court did not convict Fhimah but did find Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder in early 2001. Megrahi maintained he was framed and, suffering from cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds in 2009. He returned to Libya and succumbed to cancer there in May 2012, protesting his innocence to the end.

Quite a few people who looked at the evidence believed that Megrahi really may have been innocent, including some relatives of Pan Am 103 victims. Many in intelligence circles had doubts too, particularly because the prosecution’s star witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, was another Libyan intelligence officer who became a CIA asset. Giaka claimed to have witnessed Megrahi and Fhimah’s preparations in Malta to take down Pan Am 103 with a bomb made by Libyan intelligence. The Scottish court found Giaka less than credible, yet his claims against Megrahi stood up adequately to produce a conviction.

CIA made Giaka available to the court as the star witness, while obscuring some of their clandestine relationship with the Libyan spy. Langley offered several of its own officers to the court as well, something CIA recounted with pride in its official telling of their support to the Lockerbie trial, but the agency was careful to only produce officials who endorsed the Libya-did-it hypothesis.

There was the rub. Some CIA officers who were close to Giaka did not find his claims about Pan Am 103 and his own intelligence service’s involvement to be credible; in fact, they considered their “star” to be an unreliable fabricator. However, this secret – which raises fundamental questions about the US government’s official position on Lockerbie since late 1991 – was kept confined to spy circles for decades. Until now.

John Holt, a retired CIA officer who served as Giaka’s handler three decades ago, has broken his silence, granting a detailed interview to British media about his role in this sensational case. The 68-year-old Holt spoke out for the first time about what really happened behind the scenes with Giaka, whom he dismissed as an asset who was prone to “making up stories.” Giaka was far from a reliable source and the former American spy opined that CIA kept Holt away from the trial, since agency leaders knew that his account contradicted the official US position on Lockerbie. As he explained:

I handled Abdul-Majid Giaka in 1989 for a whole year during which he never mentioned Libyan involvement in the bombing. My cables [back to CIA headquarters] showed he was a car mechanic who was placed by Libyan Intelligence as Malta Airport office manager with Libyan Arab Airlines and had very little information about anything to do with bombs – or Lockerbie. He felt humiliated by Megrahi, who was an official with the Libyan Intelligence Service. “I was treated,” he said, “like a dog when Megrahi came to the office.” That's all reported in my cables, so CIA knew Giaka had a grudge against Megrahi.

This was a personal vendetta, in other words, one that was driven by Giaka’s needs and his changing memory, as Holt elaborated:

Every time I met Giaka, which was each month or two, I would also ask him if he had any information at all about the Pan-Am bombing. All of us CIA and FBI field officers were asked by the CIA to keep pressing our assets for any answers or clues.  His answer was always: No.

I expressed my opinion to the FBI that Giaka was nothing more than a wannabe who was not a real Intel Officer for the Libyans. He had no information [about] Lockerbie, and I told the CIA all this in comments I made in my cables. He went back to Libya at the end of 1989 and I moved on to another assignment.  

In 1991, Giaka told the CIA that he had been exposed and the Libyans would kill him. When he was told he was useless to our intelligence services, he began making up stories. It was only when he needed desperately to get some financial and logistical support from the US to flee Libya in 1991 that he started telling the CIA things relevant to the Pan Am 103 bombing.

This fix was in, however, and Holt found his first-hand view of the case sidelined by his own agency. His cables which illuminated Giaka’s unreliability as a source were not shared by CIA with the Scottish court, while Langley declined to let Holt provide evidence at the trial. “We now all need to admit we got the wrong man, and focus on the real culprits,” Holt explained, pointing a finger at Bill Barr:

I have reason to believe there was a concerted effort, for unexplained reasons, to switch the original investigations away from Iran and its bomb-making Palestinian extremist ally the PFLP—General Command. Now we should focus a new investigation on the Iranians and their links with the bomber…I would start by asking the current attorney general, William Barr, why he suddenly switched focus in 1991, when he was also attorney general, from where clear evidence was leading, toward a much less likely scenario involving Libyans.

In May of this year, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ordered a fresh look into Abdelbaset el-Megrahi’s conviction. So far, this review has revealed claims that the prosecution presented a distorted version of the late Megrahi’s alleged role based on “cherrypicked” evidence in order to obtain a conviction. Bill Barr won’t be attorney general for much longer and he ought to avail himself of the opportunity to explain why credible information from veteran intelligence officers like John Holt was ignored to make a case against Megrahi, who may not be guilty of his supposed role in the murder of 270 innocent people.

Nearly a year ago, Attorney General Barr delivered remarks about the Pan Am 103 tragedy at a memorial service held at Arlington National Cemetery. He commemorated the dead of Lockerbie: “The Americans who died that day were attacked because they were Americans. They died for their country. They deserve to be honored by our nation.” Barr added that the case remains far from over for him: “In 1991, I made a pledge to you on behalf of the American law-enforcement community: ‘We will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice.’ That is still our pledge. For me personally, this is still very much unfinished business.” The thirty-second anniversary of the Lockerbie attack is two weeks from today. If Barr meant what he said about resolving that tragedy’s unfinished business, John Holt’s testimony is an excellent place to commence the search for the full truth about what happened to Pan Am 103.

CIA Giaka cables and perverting the course of justice

[It was on this date in 2000 that two members of the Camp Zeist prosecution team viewed, at the United States embassy in the Netherlands, CIA cables relating to Abdul Majid Giaka. What follows is an excerpt from an article published in The Herald in March 2012:]

A key witness against Megrahi was a former Libyan Arab Airlines colleague, Majid Giaka, who was also a junior intelligence officer and CIA informant. At trial the defence were provided with partially redacted CIA cables about him.

After two of the Crown team had viewed almost complete cables on 1 June 2000, the Lord Advocate assured the court that the blanked out sections were of no relevance.

However, when less redacted versions were eventually released they cast further doubt on Giaka’s credibility. In their application to the SCCRC, Megrahi’s lawyers, who were not those who represented him at trial, argued that the failure to release the full, unredacted cables breached Megrahi’s right to a fair trial.

Remarkably, the SCCRC was not allowed to view the full cables, but having read the partially redacted ones, it commented:

It is difficult to understand the Lord Advocate’s assurances to the court on 22 August 2000 that there was “nothing within these documents which relate to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Mr Majid on these matters”. The matter is all the more serious given that part of the reason for viewing the cables on 1 June 2000 was precisely in order to assess whether information behind the redacted sections reflected upon Majid’s credibility.

[RB: These events form the basis of one of the nine allegations of criminal misconduct in the Lockerbie investigation, prosecution and trial made by Justice for Megrahi and which are currently under investigation by Police Scotland. What follows is an excerpt from the section in JfM’s press outline relating to this allegation:]

The witness who testified to having seen Mr al-Megrahi and Mr Fhimah with the suspicious-looking suitcase [at Malta’s Luqa Airport] was one Majid Giaka, a Libyan national who had worked for the Libyan security services and who was a CIA informer. Giaka was originally the Crown’s star witness, and without his evidence it is likely that the indictments would not have been issued against the Libyan suspects in the first place.

Giaka’s testimony was originally contained in contemporaneous cables sent by his CIA handlers to Washington when he provided the crucial evidence - mainly in 1991. These cables were presented in court in a severely redacted form, raising the question of whether the redacted passages might contain information damaging to the Crown case. In June 2000 members of the prosecution team were for the first time allowed by the American lawyers present to see the cables in an unredacted form. The defence applied to the Bench to have similar sight of the cables, however this request was strenuously opposed by the prosecution.

During the course of the discussion of this matter, Lord Coulsfield specifically asked the Lord Advocate Colin Boyd whether the redacted passages contained anything which might possibly bear on the credibility of the witness Majid Giaka. The Lord Advocate then consulted a colleague on the prosecution team who had had personal sight of the unredacted cables. After receiving his reply, the Lord Advocate informed the Bench that “.... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters.”

Despite this assurance the Bench did in fact order the unredacted cables to be provided to the defence team. The contents of the redacted passages demonstrated Giaka to be entirely untrustworthy, and by referring to these passages Mr Taylor for the defence was able to mount a successful challenge to the credibility and reliability of Giaka’s testimony. It is abundantly clear that the reassurance given to the Lord Advocate and passed on by him to the Court was wholly false. It was accepted by the court that there was no evidence at all to connect either accused to a brown hardshell suitcase, at Luqa or anywhere else.

This provides prima facie evidence of an attempt to pervert the course of justice on the part of those members of the prosecution team who were aware of the contents of the redacted cables, and gave the Lord Advocate information they knew to be false, knowing that he in his turn would communicate this false information to the Court.

These facts have been in the public domain since June 2000, and it is unclear why no action has ever been taken against those members of the legal profession responsible.

One might have expected more in the way of hard evidence

[What follows is the text of an article by Ian Ferguson that was published on this date in 2000 by Middle East Intelligence Bulletin:]

Set in the tranquility of the Dutch countryside, the trial of the two Libyans accused of bombing Pan Am flight 103 and killing 270 persons on December 21, 1988 has not yet reached it's 50th day in session, yet it is already clear that the prosecution's case is showing signs of major cracks. The investigation, which led to the charges being brought against Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, was heralded as the largest criminal investigation in history. With the combined resources of the Scottish Police, the FBI and the CIA being brought to bear on this case, one might have expected a case which contained more in the way of hard evidence. Thus far, however, the Crown has presented a case composed entirely of circumstantial evidence and recent revelations at the trial show that some of it may be fatally flawed.

In the last few weeks we have seen an issue develop at the trial concerning the evidence of Libyan informer Abdul Majid Giaka. Prosecuting authorities on both sides of the Atlantic have for many years now indicated that this man would be their star witness. Skeptics were told to stay quiet and await his testimony at the trial. Giaka, who has been in the U.S. Witness Protection Program since July 1991, arrived at Camp Zeist on August 14 expecting to testify at the trial. The nearest he got to the courtroom was driving past it in his motorcade of US deputy marshals who provide his protection and he flew back to the United States on August 31. During those two weeks, instead of hearing the testimony of Giaka, the court has been preoccupied with legal submissions and arguments over a number of classified CIA cables sent by Giaka's handlers in Malta back to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The legal row erupted on August 22 when the court reconvened after the summer recess. William Taylor, QC for Megrahi, informed the judges that there were some 25 CIA cables relating to Giaka and that he had been informed the day before that the prosecution had seen much fuller versions of these cables than had been provided to the defense, thus placing the defense at distinct disadvantage. The Crown admitted that they had been shown a version of these cables on June 1 and that what they had seen was "blacked out" or redacted from the version given to the defense.

The Lord Advocate of Scotland, Colin Boyd, told the court that what Advocate Depute Alan Turnbull QC had seen was irrelevant to the defense's case and was also information which could be a threat to the national security of the United States. The judges were not impressed with this argument and ordered Boyd to use his best endeavors to approach the CIA and have these edited portions made available to the defense. Meanwhile, the court agreed with the defense that they could not hear the testimony of Giaka until the issue of the CIA cables was resolved.

Alongside the CIA cables, the defense also challenged another item--a diary belonging to Fhimah that the Crown wished to present to the court. The court was told that the diary was obtained without a search warrant and as such they challenged its admissibility.

By Friday of that week, Boyd had produced for the defense and the court the largely unedited versions of the CIA cables. The contents were regarded by the defense as being "highly relevant" to their case. During lengthy legal debates we were treated to some of the "irrelevant" information that the Crown had decided should be denied to the defense. The idea that the Crown saw themselves as the arbiters of this information was at best an appalling lack of judgment and at worst an attempt to suppress information damaging to their case.

The new information showed that the CIA agents in Malta had questioned the value of Giaka as an informer. In a cable dated September 1989 (over a year after the CIA recruited him as an informer), they contemplated cutting off his $1000 per month salary as he had not provided them with the quality of information they had hoped he would. They doubted that he was an agent for the JSO (Libyan External Intelligence) and had decided to inform him that he would be put on "trial" status until January 1990. This is hardly a ringing testimonial for any informer and its importance to the defense was enormous.

If the CIA agents closely involved with Giaka held this opinion in September 1989, what happened in the intervening period to July 1991 to alter this opinion and make his testimony so crucial to this trial? If he possessed any information linking either of the two accused to the Pan Am 103 bombing, why was it not offered in the months leading up to the attack in December 1988, at which point Giaka had already been on the CIA's payroll for four months? Could it be that he was not able to supply them with this information until a decision was made to shift the focus of the investigation from Syria and Iran to Libya?

Evidence already given at the trial by a senior Scottish Police detective, Harry Bell, shows that a photograph of Megrahi was first shown to Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci in February 1991, after Bell was contacted by Special Agent Philip Reid of the FBI. Once again we are forced to ask why it took so long for Giaka to implicate Megrahi or Fhimah. Did it take from August 1988 until February 1991 for Giaka to implicate either of the accused? We certainly can deduce that it must have been at least after September 1989, when coincidentally his source of CIA money was threatened with withdrawal.

The use of information gathered by paid informers is already a contentious issue before courts in many jurisdictions and it has certainly become a major issue at this trial. The issues relate to motivation and credibility. Giaka would have been made aware that the US Department of Justice was offering a huge reward (around $4 million) for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and this may prove to be yet another hurdle for the prosecution to overcome.

The defense, sensing that the CIA may hold further information on Giaka, as well as on other groups that were originally the prime suspects in the investigation, successfully petitioned the court to once again have the Lord Advocate use his "best endeavors" with the CIA and request that it hand over all information it had on Giaka and the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), specifically Mohammed Abo Talb, a member of the PFLP-GC.

On September 21, the court will hear whether or not the Lord Advocate has been successful in his requests to the CIA. If he is unsuccessful in his "best endeavors" route, the judges have left the door open to revisit another submission from Richard Keen QC for Fhimah, which they rejected in favor of asking Boyd to explore his present course of action. The legal remedy sought by Keen was for formal "letters of request" to be submitted to the U.S. government so that a federal judge can review all the pertinent documents held by the CIA and sanction the release of such documents (excluding those which pose a real threat to American national security). The judges originally rejected this request because Boyd informed the court that this procedure might take anywhere from six months to two years, during which time the court would have to be adjourned. Such a lengthy adjournment would likely be greeted by an outcry from many of the families of those murdered on Pan Am flight 103, but it may be the only solution for the judges to ensure that the accused receive a fair trial.

In any case, the Crown still has other problems with regard to the testimony of another contentious witness: Mohammed Abo Talb, who is currently serving a life sentence in Sweden for terrorist attacks in Copenhagen. Talb was originally the prime suspect in the Pan Am 103 bombing and has been named in the special defense cited by lawyers for both accused Libyans.

Talb has been linked to a PFLP-GC cell that was operating in Malta during 1988 and police found a diary in his Swedish apartment in which the date of December 21, 1988 (the day of the Pan Am bombing) is circled. Needless to say, this circumstantial evidence incriminates Talb at least as much as the note in Fhimah's diary saying "get Air Malta taggs" (sic) incriminates the accused. When Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci was asked to look at the photograph of Megrahi, he commented that this photograph "most resembled the man who bought clothes" in his shop, but went on to say "other than the picture of the man shown to me by my brother." The other picture Gauci was referring to was a photograph of Talb shown to him by his brother Paul.

The clothes in question are alleged to have been bought by Megrahi on the December 7, 1988, remnants of which the Crown alleges were found among the wreckage of the Pan Am plane. The defense will claim that the clothes were bought earlier by Talb and will present evidence of this to challenge the prosecution's claims.

So we have as good an identification of Talb as we have of Megrahi. Moreover, Talb is a convicted bomber with connections to a group that was making bombs hidden in Toshiba tape recorders that were nearly identical to the one alleged to have brought down Pan Am flight 103. We have also learned that Talb has agreed to testify at the Camp Zeist trial in return for a reduction in his sentence. A senior source in the Swedish police, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an arrangement has been reached between the UK and Swedish authorities which will allow Talb to apply successfully for a "time limit" to be put on his sentence in return for his cooperation with Scottish prosecutors.

Talb, who has consistently refused to be interviewed by the defense, was thought extremely unlikely to attend as a witness and, as the Scottish court has no power of subpoena, there has been speculation for months as to why he would even contemplate attending. It is now clear that the prospect of a release date was the price for his cooperation, but it will no doubt be another issue raised prior to or during his testimony. Whether the case against the Libyans will stand up to scrutiny in court cannot be predicted, but clearly the events of the last few weeks have been the biggest setback to the Crown since the trial started on May 3.

Amid all of the publicity generated by the CIA cables about Giaka, the Crown has tried to reassure the families that all is not lost, that its case does not rely on the testimony of a single witness. For years they have been hinting at DNA, fingerprint and other hard evidence which we were told would be produced at the trial. With the Crown's case admittedly on their last evidentiary chapter, we are still waiting.

Trial examines 'secret' CIA papers

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2000. It reads in part:]

The Lockerbie trial has been shown the CIA documents at the centre of a dispute between prosecution and defence lawyers.

Scotland's senior law official, Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, said the papers - which contain details of cable communications - featured new information.

He said the documents included remarks made by Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka, who worked as a CIA agent at Malta Airport and whom the prosecution wants to call as a witness at the trial.

Mr Boyd said: "This is the first time the CIA has produced evidence for a foreign court.

"It may also be the first time that cables themselves have been used in any court either in the US or outwith.

"It's been emphasised to me that the amount of information now in the public domain far exceeds that ever put in the public domain before by the CIA in relation to these events."

Mr Boyd said he watched last week at the US Embassy in The Hague as a CIA records custodian identified as William McNair undid deletions in the cables from Giaka, whom crown prosecutors refer to as "Mr Majid".

He said: "I can tell the court that everything Mr Majid is reported to have said in these cables is revealed except for three matters."

These refer to the identities of CIA informants and methods of operation.

Newly revealed information included references to CIA payments to Giaka and his request for "sham surgery" to secure a waiver from military service in Libya.

There is also mention of payments from the CIA he could receive in return for giving evidence.

Giaka has been living for the last 10 years under a witness protection scheme in the US and is regarded as a crucial witness against the accused men. He is expected to take the stand later this week. (...)

Arguments over the CIA papers have dominated the last few days of the trial of the two Libyans who are said to have bombed Pan AM flight 103 over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie.

The special court in the Netherlands was adjourned on Monday to give the defence time to consider the new information.

[RB: What follows is part of an account of the CIA cables saga written by me for The Scotsman  some ten years ago:]

The behaviour of the Crown in the Lockerbie trial was certainly not beyond criticism - and indeed it casts grave doubt on the extent to which the Lord Advocate and Crown Office staff can be relied on always to place the interest of securing a fair trial for the accused above any perceived institutional imperative to obtain a conviction.

To illustrate this in the context of the Lockerbie trial, it is enough to refer to the saga of CIA cables relating to the star Crown witness, Abdul Majid Giaka, who had been a long-standing CIA asset in Libya and, by the time of the trial, was living in the US in a witness protection programme. Giaka's evidence was ultimately found by the court to be utterly untrustworthy. This was largely due to the devastating effectiveness of the cross-examination by defence counsel. Their ability to destroy completely the credibility of the witness stemmed from the contents of cables in which his CIA handlers communicated to headquarters the information that Giaka had provided to them in the course of their secret meetings. Discrepancies between Giaka's evidence-in-chief to the Advocate Depute and the contents of these contemporaneous cables enabled the defence to mount a formidable challenge to the truthfulness and accuracy, or credibility and reliability, of Giaka's testimony. Had the information contained in these cables not been available to them, the task of attempting to demonstrate to the court that Giaka was an incredible or unreliable witness would have been more difficult, and perhaps impossible.

Yet the Crown strove valiantly to prevent the defence obtaining access to these cables. At the trial, on 22 August 2000, when he was seeking to persuade the Court to deny the defence access to those cables in their unedited or uncensored form, the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd QC, stated that the members of the prosecution team who were given access to the uncensored CIA cables on 1 June 2000 were fully aware of the obligation incumbent upon them as prosecutors to make available to the defence material relevant to the defence of the accused and, to that end, approached the contents of those cables with certain considerations in mind.

Boyd said: "First of all, they considered whether or not there was any information behind the redactions which would undermine the Crown case in any way. Second, they considered whether there was anything which would appear to reflect on the credibility of Majid... On all of these matters, the learned Advocate Depute reached the conclusion that there was nothing within the cables which bore on the defence case, either by undermining the Crown case or by advancing a positive case which was being made or may be made, having regard to the special defence... I emphasise that the redactions have been made on the basis of what is in the interests of the security of a friendly power... Crown counsel was satisfied that there was nothing within the documents which bore upon the defence case in any way."

One judge, Lord Coulsfield, then intervened: "Does that include, Lord Advocate... that Crown counsel, having considered the documents, can say to the Court that there is nothing concealed which could possibly bear on the credibility of this witness?"

The Lord Advocate replied: "Well, I'm just checking with the counsel who made that... there is nothing within these documents which relates to Lockerbie or the bombing of Pan Am 103 which could in any way impinge on the credibility of Majid on these matters."

Notwithstanding the opposition of the Lord Advocate, the court ordered the unedited cables to be made available to the defence, who went on to use their contents to such devastating effect in questioning Giaka that the court held that his evidence had to be disregarded in its entirety. Yet, strangely enough, the judges did not see fit publicly to censure the Crown for its inaccurate assurances that the cables contained nothing that could assist the defence.

Lockerbie files show Scots police doubted key witness

[This is the headline over a report in today's edition of The Times. It reads in part:]

Scottish detectives distanced themselves from a key Lockerbie witness, it has emerged, casting further doubt on the conviction of the only person ever found guilty over the attack.

Abdul Majid Giaka, a Libyan agent turned CIA informant, gave evidence that Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi collected a brown Samsonite suitcase from a Maltese airport the day before the 1988 bombing.

However, newly declassified files show that Scottish officers investigating the case admitted that his involvement had put them in a “delicate position”.

“The ‘birth’ of that witness was totally the making of the Americans,” they said in a document from 1991 that was marked secret.

It emerged this week that American prosecutors were seeking the extradition of the Libyan operative Abu Agila Mohammad Masud, accusing him of making the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103, killing 270 people. He worked under Colonel Gaddafi and is serving a ten-year sentence for other crimes in a Tripoli prison.

The FBI is also believed to be interested in Abdullah Senussi, Gaddafi’s brother-in-law and security chief, who is suspected of overseeing the bombing and is in prison with Masud.

Lawyers carrying out a posthumous appeal on behalf of al-Megrahi, who died in 2012, say that the case against him was first made by Mr Giaka, whom they describe as “discredited”. They say that any charges levelled against Masud would fall apart if al-Megrahi’s conviction was overturned.

A report by the joint intelligence group of Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary has been declassified and placed in the National Archives at Kew. The dossier, seen by The Times, dates to October 1991, when reports of Mr Giaka’s emergence as an American asset began to circulate.

The document, written by Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson, the senior investigating officer, says: “The development of the ‘new witness’ has placed us in a delicate position. The ‘birth’ of that witness was totally the making of the Americans. The Americans must be ‘as one’ with us in anything we propose to expose to the Maltese.”

The document also mentions Tony Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper whose evidence played a decisive role in al-Megrahi’s conviction at a Scottish court convened in the Netherlands in 2000. It states: “The Americans are keen to approach the witness Tony Gauci and ‘ascertain’ if he feels insecure or otherwise. Their intention is to take Gauci to America.” (...)

However, in 2005 Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, the former lord advocate who drew up the indictment against al-Megrahi, expressed doubts over Gauci’s testimony, describing him as “not quite the full shilling”. Last month appeal judges were told that Mr Gauci had asked for money in return for giving evidence.

The court was also told that Mr Gauci had been shown a photograph of al-Megrahi before he picked him out in an identity parade.

Aamer Anwar, the lawyer representing the al-Megrahi family, said: “These documents shine a light on dark and desperate actions taken by the US intelligence services over Lockerbie.

“We can only surmise that the ‘new witness’ who had been ‘birthed’ by the Americans was Abdul Majid Giaka.

“Megrahi’s family understands he was first accused of being involved in a conspiracy by Giaka. There has always been a suggestion that Giaka may have fabricated matters to make himself more valuable to the Americans. If the conviction of the late Megrahi was overturned then the case against Abu Agila Masud is likely to fall apart.”

John Holt, a former CIA agent who worked closely with Mr Giaka, claimed that the informant was a fantasist and an opportunist.

“I handled Giaka in 1989 for a whole year during which he never mentioned Libyan involvement in the bombing,” he said. “He was a car mechanic who was placed by Libyan intelligence as Malta airport office manager with Libyan Arab Airlines and had very little information about anything to do with bombs or Lockerbie.

“He felt humiliated by Megrahi, who was an official with the Libyan intelligence service, so the CIA knew he had a grudge.”

Mr Holt claimed that Mr Giaka changed his story in 1991 after fearing that his cover had been blown.

This month Mr Holt said: “When he was told he was useless to our intelligence services he began making up stories. It was only when he needed desperately to flee Libya in 1991 that he started telling the CIA things relevant to the Pan Am bombing, like hearing Megrahi and another man talking about a plan to bomb an American airliner.” (...)

CIA Giaka cables surface at Lockerbie trial

[What follows is the text of the report for 22 August 2000 from the University of Glasgow’s Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit:]

The Lockerbie trial started again this morning following summer recess. Proceedings began with Bill Taylor, defending the first accused making a submission to the court. He said that cable communications  which had been made available to both the Crown and the defence initially had sections which had been blanked out. It has come to light that the Crown had recently obtained further copies of these documents which showed the full text. His submission was that the full documents should now also be made available to the defence.

These documents are significant as they allegedly communicated information provided by Giaka via another CIA agent to the USA prior to the Lockerbie disaster. Giaka, who is expected to give evidence this week is currently on a witness protection programme in the USA and is alleged to be a former Libyan agent who worked under cover as an Libyan Arab Airline employee in Malta from 1986. In August 1988 the Crown allege that he contacted US representatives in Malta and operated for a period as a double agent in Malta. The defence wish sight of the full text of these cable communications in preparation of their cross examination of this witness. Under the European Convention on Human Rights the principle of equality of arms may persuade the judges that the defence claim for this information is well founded. The question remains, however, whether the Court can grant access to unedited versions of such sensitive information when it does not belong to them. The Lord Advocate has stated that he does not have copies of the unedited documents nor does he have the authority to compel the US authorities to hand them over.

The Lord Advocate addressed the court after a lengthy adjournment. He stated that there was nothing in the cable documents that would either assist or hinder the defence case and also in the interests of US security the documents should not be handed over. He claimed that the deleted sections of the cables related to sensitive intelligence information and operations not related to Lockerbie. All of the judges asked the Lord Advocate questions. It was highlighted that the accused, if given sight of the information which relates to other operations, may doubt its accuracy and this in turn would raise questions of the credibility and reliability of information provided by Giaka.

The court adjourned for lunch without the matter being resolved.

The court heard further submissions from the Lord Advocate this afternoon relating to the Defence submission raised this morning regarding access to unedited copies of cables sent by a CIA agent in Malta to Headquarters in Washington. These cables allegedly contain information supplied by Giaka (also referred to as Mr Majid).

Lord Sutherland indicated that while he accepted that certain names and operations required to be protected and not disclosed in these cables that his concerns rested with the submission of the Crown that the redactions included irrelevant information. Lord Sutherland appeared unconvinced that the Crown were necessarily in a position to determine that this information was indeed irrelevant to the credibility of the evidence of Giaka and the defence case.

It was disclosed that the unedited cable documents were made available to the Crown on 1 June 2000 but the defence only became aware of this fact yesterday. It also appears that the documents were consulted in The Netherlands and possibly at Camp Zeist by Mr Turnbull QC, Advocate Depute and Mr McFadyen, the Procurator Fiscal. Lord Sutherland stated that as the court were discussing a document that the Crown had lodged as a production, he was concerned that information contained within the document was now viewed as being irrelevant.

Bill Taylor, QC, addressed the court again. He said that the consultation by the Crown of the cables in June resulted in their positions, which were previously on the same footing in relation to the cables, now being inequitable. If there were security considerations regarding the content of the cable he asked what assurances were sought by the USA and given by the Crown. He further asked why the information could be given to one side and not the other and referred to the concession by the Lord Advocate that information disclosed to the Crown may assist in the establishment of the credibility of the witness.

He referred to problems encountered when precognosing witnesses related to the cables. This was done in the presence of US Department of Justice Attorneys instructed by the CIA. He said the precognition process was characterised by long silences, by "take 5" (to allow consultation with attorneys) answers of "not relevant", refusing to answer and "I've seen the unredacted cables and had no part in the redaction process". He commented that it was of no assistance to the important precognition process when witnesses are instructed by foreign governments not to answer questions. He admitted that he did not know the exact content of the information edited out in the cables but did view it as material in his cross-examination of Giaka.

He requested that the Judges make no orders but invite the Crown to use best endeavours to ensure that the defence receive copies of the cables with no deletions or editing. He said that having read the document he did not agree with the Lord Advocate's suggestion that the blanked out sections were of no relevance. He further noted that US security may already have been breached by the Crown having access to these documents.

Richard Keen, QC, wished to enquire if the Lord Advocate had checked that the defence would also be able to consult the unedited Cables. He said the US Government had upset the balance of fairness in the trial by their actions. He viewed the Lord Advocate's suggestion that the defence were conducting a fishing exercise as unfounded and stated that during precognition CIA agents had referred to offers and counter offers for information being made to Giaka.  Further, the unedited cables may disclose that some defence witnesses are in fact Libyan intelligence agents and if this was only known by the Crown it would prejudice the defence.

The Lord Advocate submitted that all payments which have been made to Giaka were listed in a production. Lord Sutherland said that the issue was not merely how much had been paid but also the negotiations and the witness’s motivation in giving the CIA this information. These issues are relevant to the witness’s credibility.

The judges retired to consider the submission and when they returned one hour later invited the Lord Advocate to use his best endeavours to ensure that the information on the unedited cables was disclosed to the defence. It is now unclear when Giaka will give evidence as the dispute over the cables will require to be resolved first.