- 4 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00I just wanted to show you these pictures.
00:21These were actually taken by a colleague of yours.
00:25Oh, yeah, I know about these pictures, some of them.
00:30I remember seeing the seats, yeah, but that shoe, we had a picture of that shoe on our office
00:42wall in Washington.
00:45Sort of a reminder.
00:46We weren't doing this for ourselves.
00:49We're doing it for them.
00:52Pan Am Flight 103 crashed into the Scottish village of Lockerbie.
00:59270 people, most of them Americans, dead.
01:02It was the worst terrorist attack on an airline ever.
01:05We have no knowledge of how this happened.
01:09We're trying to find out.
01:11There was an attack on America.
01:12The Lord's crime scene in history with a thousand pieces of evidence.
01:15My daughter hadn't just died in an accident, but had been brutally murdered.
01:19They killed our children.
01:20To be lied to for 30 years.
01:22I think the U.S. government had an agenda.
01:24Reagan is the biggest terrorist in the world.
01:27If it's up to our government, we might not ever know the truth.
01:34Nothing is what it seems in the Lockerbie story.
01:38Before I became an FBI agent, I was a Baltimore City cop.
01:54We had crime scenes like in a house, in an apartment, you know, on the street.
01:59Not 845 square miles that we had in Lockerbie.
02:06The wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 scattered across the Scottish countryside.
02:11Hundreds of police are involved in the searching, many of them volunteers from all over Scotland.
02:17I got the call immediately.
02:23My acting supervisor told me they had already made arrangements for me to be assigned over to New Scotland Yard.
02:34I had worked murder investigations, but not of this scale.
02:40I mean, you're talking about 270 people murdered at the same time.
02:48Nothing can prepare you for that.
02:53Teams of investigators from the British and U.S. governments, Boeing aircraft and Pan Am, are attempting to find the clues.
02:59It was an attack on America, because it was an American plane.
03:05And at that time, it was the worst terrorist act against the United States.
03:12A large amount of Middle Eastern terrorism in the 1980s was geared towards the United States and against U.S. imperialism.
03:22Because of the pervasiveness of the United States, oil companies in particular that were very active in the Middle East.
03:30And then, of course, you had the U.S. military presence and was seen as using its military as an extensive of this imperialist, capitalist, post-colonial effort.
03:45The Iranians, in particular, thought the United States had usurped power in Iran.
03:52They took it back in 1979.
03:57So this animosity ran deep, and it had been running deep for a number of years.
04:02No, no, U.S. military! No, no, U.S. military! No, no, U.S. military! No, no, U.S. military!
04:07We were suspecting the Iranians, because in July of 1988, the Vincennes, which is one of our military destroyers, accidentally shot down an Iranian airline.
04:22There was a war going on in the Middle East between Iran and Iraq.
04:32You are approaching a U.S. Navy warship bearing 0905 number of miles from you.
04:37USS Vincennes was a Navy ship.
04:40We sent into the Persian Gulf to protect tankers coming out of Kuwait, bringing oil to the west.
04:46There was an Iranian commercial aircraft near the ship.
04:55They thought on board the Vincennes that this was an incoming Iranian fighter aircraft.
05:09And it wasn't until they shot it down they realized that it was a passenger jet, and 290 people were killed on board that plane.
05:36Sunday's missile strike by the U.S. warship Vincennes killed 290 passengers on an Iran air flight over the Gulf.
05:47I won't minimize the tragedy. We all know that it was a tragedy.
05:54But we're talking about an incident in which a plane on radar was observed coming in the direction of a ship in combat.
06:03And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack from that plane.
06:11We will in due course have our own response to the American crimes.
06:16Would it be a military response?
06:18Well, I do not disclose what kind of response would be from our side, but naturally an appropriate and major response to the magnitude of the crime.
06:30So the Iranians had every reason to want to seek retribution from the United States.
06:40We thought there was no way that Iranians were not going to retaliate for that. An eye for an eye.
06:51The first suspects we had were a Palestinian terrorist group.
07:01They were suspected of planning to take out an American airliner on behalf of the Iranians because of the downing of the Iran air flight.
07:15They were the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, BFL-PGC.
07:23They had a cell that was operating in Frankfurt.
07:26We thought the bomb had probably come on the feet of flight from Frankfurt that connected with Pan Am 103 in London.
07:37It's one thing to believe it. As investigators, we need evidence.
07:42About a month after the bombing, the Scottish police hadn't brought in all the aircraft parts.
07:57We were still trying to figure out what we had in terms of evidence.
08:02But fortunately, one of the police officers was examining a piece of the cargo container that contained the suitcase that we believe contained the bomb.
08:17This particular cargo container was made out of aluminum, or as the Scots would say, aluminum.
08:24But as he was banging it on the ground, this small fragment fell out.
08:33I don't care if you have the biggest hands in the world, that's a small fragment.
08:37That fragment turns out to be from a Toshiba RTSF-16 two-speaker radio cassette recorder.
08:46Two months before Lockerbie, German police raided an apartment near Frankfurt belonging to members of the PFL-PGC and found an arsenal of weapons,
09:01including a Toshiba radio cassette player converted into a bomb like the one used at Lockerbie.
09:06When they were arrested, they had these modified tape recorders that had plastic explosive Semtex in it.
09:21So PFL-PGC, suspect number one.
09:27But the German police, from day one, wanted to insist that the PFL-PGC had nothing to do with this bombing.
09:37They said, we arrested them all, we incarcerated them in October.
09:42Two months before the bombing, this cell has been totally dismantled.
09:47Unfortunately, by December 1988, there were only two people still in custody.
09:52We got intelligence information that there may have been bombs that had been not seized when the Germans did their search of all the premises in October of 1988.
10:06That perhaps that total cell, if they were still involved, had not been totally dismantled.
10:12We really felt strongly now that PFL-PGC were responsible for the bombing of Panic Flight 103.
10:22As I recall, it was sometime in January. A man walks into the U.S. Embassy and delivers a letter.
10:45I was on the way to the DDR, over the Wien, and went to the U.S. Embassy in Wien.
10:59On the Saturday evening, I was on the americas.
11:03And gave me the letter there.
11:05There was no warning in this message.
11:11Then I went to the stairs.
11:13And there was like in a prison, in a round glass room,
11:17a soldier with his feet on the table.
11:20And I asked if there was someone from the CIA here.
11:27And then he said, no, I should go to the stairs again.
11:31And the letter is faxed to us, good old modern technology of the day.
11:46He says, I was just in Libya at this meeting,
11:49and he mentions a bunch of names, and they look like a group of thugs.
11:53And I think they're responsible for conducting the Pan Am 103 attack.
11:58Okay?
12:01But that letter didn't give us a whole lot of leads.
12:04We didn't know who he was.
12:08That tip-off meant nothing at that time.
12:12Because we were keenly interested in the PFLPGC.
12:19We managed to get copies of the German investigation.
12:23The challenge was it was all in German and Arabic.
12:26So I went back to Washington and supervised their translation of the German documents.
12:37Quite honestly, the PFLPGC and Toshiba Radio did not lead us to a lot of places.
12:44But then the hand of God, you could feel it on that investigation.
12:54That tiny piece of clothing that had bomb explosive damage was recovered in that 845 square mile crime scene.
13:06The forensic examiners in England would discover that within that fragment of clothing
13:24was a small fragment of circuit board.
13:27And that became known as PT-35.
13:35That fragment turns out to be key in this story.
13:48After the bombing, we were going to visit Lockerbie.
14:00I'm going to guess, Mom, that it was probably somewhere between two and four weeks before we went over there.
14:08Yeah.
14:10We were brought to the spot that he was found.
14:16There was a crater where he landed that was three to four feet deep to three to four feet wide.
14:29You could tell that he hit the ground pretty hard.
14:38He was sitting in one of the first intact rows that hadn't been blown up by the bomb.
14:45The blast probably rendered him, at the very least, unconscious.
14:51The initial injury was that the arteries were ripped from the heart because of the enormous pressure change.
14:59And that would have been instant.
15:01He might have had a millisecond of knowledge that there was something amiss.
15:12But we've, I think, all come to agree that he didn't suffer.
15:17We were desperate to get the personal possessions.
15:27And I heard that there had been some sort of controversy about,
15:31are we going to get the personal possessions back or not?
15:34Because there was really no budget to decontaminate things.
15:39I eventually did get John's luggage returned to me.
15:42All of his clothes, everything, all the contents were clean.
15:46And nobody, John never came back from a business trip with clean laundry.
15:51In a warehouse on the outskirts of town, volunteers have begun cleaning the belongings
15:56of the passengers and crew so they can finally be sent home to relatives.
16:00And how did it feel each time you opened a suitcase?
16:04It was strange. It depended who it belonged to.
16:07Sometimes it really got to you and other times it was just something that had to be done.
16:16I had a little red dress.
16:18The child with two, three, a baby.
16:30I would come home and cry sometimes.
16:32Oh, yeah.
16:33And my husband would say, you're not going back.
16:38But...
16:38You were there the next day or whatever.
16:41It was something I had to do.
16:51I just wanted a family to get back that thing that you could take it and cuddle it,
17:01hold it, because there was nothing else.
17:04This is Alexander's jacket that was found in the wreckage.
17:14And as you can tell, the holes, the burn holes.
17:21Of course, there's a little tiny A in here somewhere.
17:25He put this A into all his clothing.
17:27And every once in a while, when it gets chilly in here, I actually put it on and feel good about it.
17:40Each item, no matter how shredded or full of holes or burned it was,
17:46it was laundered, ironed, and wrapped in tissue paper.
17:52And that was a great, great deed that the Lockerbie people did for us.
17:57We will be forever grateful for that.
18:02We've done it with love.
18:06We did.
18:20The Scottish detectives did spend an exhaustive amount of time
18:24looking at the debris.
18:31Eventually, the investigators found a piece of clothing
18:35with blast damage that had Yorkie clothiers on it.
18:40We concluded from the blast damage that had been packed with the bomb.
18:48We were able to trace that company and Malta.
18:51That printout sheet had this unattended piece of luggage.
19:06So this suitcase was not connected to anybody on the flight.
19:16That suitcase was destined to Pan Am 103 through Frankfurt, and it came from Malta.
19:22We thought that could be the suitcase that contained the bomb.
19:35Malta is a small island in the Mediterranean, between Italy and Libya.
19:40All of a sudden, we're starting to realize that Malta is key in this story.
19:48What did you make of it when you were on it?
19:58Well, you're talking about a very small island out in the middle of the Mediterranean.
20:03Not too many people even know about it.
20:07But they're great people, great food.
20:15So we visited the Yorkie clothing manufacturer here in Malta.
20:18And they were able to tell us where they sold those clothes.
20:26And it was Tony Gauci's shop.
20:32Okay, yeah, that's where Tony's shop was.
20:35That's where a major breakthrough in our investigation took place.
20:43We interviewed Tony Gauci, and we were just astonished.
20:48He remembered this person coming into the shop because he just bought clothes at random.
20:55He didn't care what size.
20:56He bought this tweed jacket that he said had been sitting around in his shop for five years.
21:01Because in Malta, you don't wear wool.
21:06Tony Gauci didn't know this, but we'd already found a tweed jacket that we believed was in the bomb suitcase.
21:13He said if he saw him again, he could remember him.
21:17That was critical for us.
21:19We got one of our artists.
21:22They drew what he believed what the person looked like.
21:33We believed at that point that the Palestinians were responsible.
21:37So, but he remembered this person who he described as a Libyan.
21:57Libya certainly was a rogue country sponsoring terrorist incidents across the globe.
22:02The then leader of Libya was Colonel Gaddafi.
22:09In September 1969, Gaddafi waged a military coup.
22:16He started bringing in a major change politically and economically.
22:22But very quickly, he took over as an absolute ruler of Libya.
22:27Colonel Muammar Gaddafi viewed the Western colonialism of Libya as a gross affront.
22:39He viewed Western oil interests as exploiting Libya's most precious natural resource.
22:46Libya's relationship with many Western nations was not in a good place because Muammar Gaddafi was a tyrant.
22:52He introduced his own brand of Arab socialism, and at that time, the Cold War was on, and socialism was a dirty word.
23:02Gaddafi was also sponsoring international terrorism and terrorists of different stripes.
23:09Libya was a dictatorship, but it had a small military, and terrorism was really Gaddafi's only way of getting even with the West.
23:17Good evening. The finger of suspicion is pointing hard tonight at Muammar Gaddafi,
23:22the Libyan leader in connection with the latest terrorist activities in Europe.
23:38In 1981, President Reagan was elected to office on a platform to get tough on terrorism.
23:44Let terrorists be aware. Our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution.
23:53President Reagan and Colonel Gaddafi locked into this intense personal enmity.
23:59Reagan is the biggest terrorist in the world.
24:02This mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution.
24:09In the United States, Colonel Gaddafi was seen not just as a rogue, but also as a lunatic.
24:23Relatives of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 met for more than an hour with President Bush.
24:30He heard strong complaints ranging from failure to notify passengers of the threat to State Department insensitivity.
24:37I couldn't believe that this country, which we all love so much, had allowed over 200 Americans to be blown up and then respond with utter silence.
24:47We wanted the truth. We wanted to be change makers and also force our government to hold those accountable.
25:00John's job was a lot of international travel.
25:04And I said, I'm really worried about terrorist attacks.
25:07John, here he is saying, oh, listen, dear, don't worry, because I'm always flying Pan Am.
25:13And he came in with a full page newspaper ad that said that Pan Am was the safest airline.
25:22They had launched a five dollar security surcharge for each leg of the ticket.
25:27In 1989, President Bush put together a White House commission on aviation safety and security.
25:40And I was one of only three civilians and three family members that was involved.
25:48I found out that all of the tens of thousands of dollars that they were collecting daily,
25:53none of those funds had been sequestered for security.
25:57The world was very different then.
26:04In those days, you could just basically walk onto a plane.
26:08You know, you'd check your bag maybe, but after that, you'd just walk to the gate.
26:15We were just beginning to deal with terrorism, and it was still relatively easy to fly.
26:20It's kind of amazing to think about it now.
26:23But it was events like Lockerbie which changed all of that.
26:27I traveled with the FAA red team.
26:34I was appointed the liaison with the families.
26:36And this red team would go in and try to breach security.
26:46The FBI agent would take his gun and buy one of those big gulp drinks.
26:52And he would pour out the drink, put the gun inside of that.
26:56And we would put our carry-on on the conveyor belt.
27:00And he would take his big gulp and put it on top of the scanner.
27:03And then we'd walk through the metal detector.
27:08And then he'd grab his big gulp drink and keep walking.
27:12And, you know, I witnessed them breaching security about 80% of the time.
27:23What did you think when Jim Swire took his fake bomb onto a plane?
27:28I thought he was very brave.
27:30His 20-year-old daughter died when a terrorist bomb blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.
27:36Now Jim Swire says he has proven the tragedy could happen again.
27:44I was going over, not very long after Lockerbie, to talk with the American relatives.
27:49And we were booked on a BA flight from Heathrow.
27:52A few weeks ago, Swire carried a replica of a Pan Am bomb on a flight from London to New York.
27:57I thought, I'll try and find out whether the security to Heathrow really is any good,
28:02as the government is telling everybody it really is.
28:04So I got on board and flew with that exact copy of the Lockerbie bomb from Heathrow airport to the United States of America.
28:18You know, all of a sudden, they were accidental activists.
28:22Family members who wanted to find out the truth.
28:25You know, they wanted to make sure that what we were going through wouldn't happen again.
28:29The fake bomb was not detected by security at London's Heathrow airport.
28:34The bomb had a dummy detonator, timer, batteries and a pressure switch.
28:38Marzipan was used to simulate the plastic explosive material.
28:41Marzipan did you ever question yourself?
28:46Yes, uh, of course it was an obsession.
28:50But then I was pretty crazy at that time.
28:54Because of the freshness of the bereavement.
28:57I'd have done anything I could for Chlora.
28:59I reached a point where, in my mind, based on what I understood, the Palestinians couldn't have done it.
29:24They just didn't have that presence and connections on the island of Malta.
29:33And then you had to think back.
29:35Tony Gauci said Libyan.
29:38He knew the difference between a Palestinian and a Libyan.
29:46Years ago, I worked on Libyan intelligence, terrorist investigations.
29:52And we knew at that time that Malta was a place that the Libyans would transit,
30:00coming from Libya eventually to the United States.
30:05So they had a major presence here.
30:08So I went to my supervisor and I said, you know, I don't really think it's the PFL-PGC.
30:14Our focus needs to turn to the Libyans.
30:24Relations with Libya were already strained, but the catalyst for increased escalation
30:29of U.S.-Libyan tension occurred with the bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in West Berlin in April 1986.
30:38The Reagan administration was strongly suggesting a Gaddafi connection to the weekend bombing of a West Berlin discotheque
30:44in which a U.S. serviceman was killed.
30:47The estimate of those injured in the blast was revised upward from 150 to over 200.
30:52It was just before 2 a.m. when the bomb exploded with devastating results.
31:01The disco is in the American sector and a favorite night spot for off-duty United States servicemen.
31:07The Americans felt that this was a direct attack on American citizens, so they wanted to obviously punish Gaddafi.
31:17America's allies clearly are concerned that this U.S.-Libyan dispute could explode into war.
31:22One option open to President Reagan is to send F-111 bombers against Libya from this base in Britain.
31:29You have starts and stops in any investigation, and sometimes things pan out, sometimes they don't.
31:48Now, PT-35, the fragment of circuit board that was found blown into that clothing.
31:54Well, the Scottish police spent six months going to 17 countries, 55 companies.
32:01They cannot figure out what PT-35 is.
32:05No criticism.
32:08So we asked, can we take this out now and do something with it? And they said yes.
32:16They give Tom Thurman, who works in the FBI laboratory, permission to do it.
32:20And he talks to his contact, bingo.
32:25We match PT-35 to a circuit board that goes to a timer manufactured by a company called Meebo in Zurich, Switzerland.
32:50The Swiss police came here in 1989, so, and he showed us a photograph of the FBI.
33:05On this photographic side was this fragment, which was found, from the FBI found.
33:11I saw that it was a fragment of a MST-13 timer.
33:22We explained to them only, that we bought the timer and delivered the timer to Libya.
33:31It's the same, which was the first because of the photography dediess.
33:33The phone itself is an electronic e-mail.
33:34The phone itself is a electronic and handheld, which is that you can't help us the internet.
33:38The phone itself is an electronic e-mail so that we can program up with this digital turn.
33:48It's about 15 hours to 99 hours.
33:49A timer is the same as, in principle, an eier timer.
33:56And they certainly didn't cook with that,
34:00but the military needed it to achieve their things.
34:07But then Edwin Bollier says,
34:09Gee, I didn't think you found me because of this timer that I built.
34:13I thought you found me because of that letter I dropped off at the embassy.
34:16And we all went, what?
34:19He's telling us in 1989,
34:22I don't think the Palestinians did this.
34:24I think the Libyans did this.
34:26Now, why he would want to point the finger at one of his benefactors,
34:33somebody that had given him millions of dollars of business over the years,
34:39I don't know the answer to that.
34:42And it may well be a moment of conscience.
34:46Do you ever think about what happens with your electronic equipment?
34:49No, no, no, no.
34:51It's really business.
34:52It's really business.
34:53It's really business.
34:54Here now, speaking from the White House, is the President of the United States.
35:12My fellow Americans, the evidence is now conclusive that the terrorist bombing of La Belle Discotheque
35:20was planned and executed under the direct orders of the Libyan regime.
35:25At seven o'clock this evening, eastern time, air and naval forces of the United States launched a series of strikes against the headquarters, terrorist facilities, and military assets that support Muammar Qaddafi's subversive activities.
35:40Within sight of our seafront hotel, a series of flashes and the low rumbling indicated that the intended targets were well within the city.
35:52The command and living center of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was a primary target of the American raid.
35:58The bombs came right to the front door.
36:02At the central hospital, the senior doctor estimated that between 60 and 100 casualties had been brought in.
36:08Two other hospitals have also been taking in casualties.
36:11Members of his family had been targeted, and that was personal.
36:16That was an animosity he bore against Reagan.
36:19I had been to Libya in the year before Lockerbie to cover a speech by Qaddafi and walked into a shop and found this set of stamps, commemorative stamps of the attack on Tripoli.
36:38It's a really gruesome illustration of American warplanes and Libyans literally bleeding and in hospital beds.
36:47You don't have to look too long to realize they think Americans are terrorists.
36:52I don't think it achieved any purpose.
36:55It was not the right way to deal with Qaddafi.
36:58Qaddafi was humiliated by that.
37:01His nose was bloodied.
37:03So I think he had enough motive to have revenge against America.
37:17I believed that the Libyans were responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
37:29I sat in my office in the embassy.
37:32I thought I needed to get a full understanding of the Libyan presence on the island.
37:39And so I did something that might have been unprecedented at the time.
37:43I knocked on the door of the CIA and said, I need your help.
37:51Back in those days, the relationship between the FBI and CIA wasn't that good.
37:58I was told, hey, don't be working with the CIA.
38:02Well, like I said, I felt compelled.
38:04They could do things that we couldn't do, the FBI couldn't do.
38:11They could come up with informants, double agents, who they were, what role they played for the Libyan government.
38:21And they came up with the name of Lamine Fema.
38:27He turns out to be the Libyan Airlines manager who's working at the airport here on Malta.
38:37The CIA found out that his friend was Abdelbasid al-Megrahi, who they said was an intelligence officer.
38:47And then we looked more into his background and found out that he also was connected with the airlines back in Tripoli.
38:57He was Libyan Airlines head of security.
39:03Bingo.
39:06Because we were looking at how a piece of luggage could have gotten into the airline system with an explosive in it.
39:14It had to be somebody that was probably connected to the airport.
39:23Then we realized that Lamine Fema owned a travel agency called MedTouris here on the island.
39:30We were able to go into that office and as we were looking around, I saw this diary sitting on this desk and it turned out to be Fema's desk.
39:43It was in Arabic, but there was one word that was in English that said tags. T-A-G-G-S as I recall.
39:54We talking luggage tags?
39:56So we had to translate it.
39:59Take tags from Air Malta.
40:05And on another page, it said take tags from the airport for Abdelbasid.
40:13That's Megrahi.
40:14And this was like another aha moment.
40:22So we needed to find our Megrahi.
40:25But the problem is we didn't have a picture.
40:27I asked my CIA partners if they could find a photo somewhere in the world, and I mean the world, of Megrahi.
40:47I got a call.
40:48Czechoslovakia Security Service gave us a passport picture of Megrahi.
41:03We were doing high fives and low fives and hugs and stuff like that.
41:07Then we find out that Abdelbasid Al-Megrahi has another office in Zurich, Switzerland, down the hall from the Meibo office.
41:22It's like, okay, we're on the right track.
41:24We're on the right track.
41:31Here, this office is, well, is Meibo.
41:35And then on this side was the office from Abdelbasid.
41:43Megrahi had an office across the hall from Edwin Bollier.
41:49It just seems so extraordinary to be a mere coincidence.
41:52It's not.
41:54It's absolutely not a coincidence.
Comments