Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/042792/04279926.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 34KB | 641 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 24

PAN AM 103

Why Did They Die?


Washington says Libya sabotaged the plane. Provocative evidence
suggests that a Syrian drug dealer may have helped plant the
bomb -- and the real targets were intelligence agents working
for the CIA

By ROY ROWAN


    "For three years, I've had a feeling that if Chuck hadn't
been on that plane, it wouldn't have been bombed," says Beulah
McKee, 75. Her bitterness has still not subsided. But seated in
the parlor of her house in Trafford, Pennsylvania, the house
where her son was born 43 years ago, she struggles to speak
serenely. "I know that's not what our President wants me to
say," she admits.

    George Bush's letter of condolence, written almost four
months after the shattered remains of Pan Am Flight 103 fell on
Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, expressed the usual "my
heart goes out to you" sorrow. "No action by this government can
restore the loss you have suffered," he concluded. But deep
inside, Mrs. McKee suspects it was a government action gone
horribly awry that indirectly led to her only son's death. "I've
never been satisfied at all by what the people in Washington
told me," she says.

    Today, as the U.S. spearheads the U.N.-sanctioned embargo
against Libya for not handing over two suspects in the bombing,
Mrs. McKee wonders if Chuck's background contains the secret of
why this plane was targeted. If her suspicions are correct,
Washington may not be telling the entire story. Major Charles
Dennis McKee, called "Tiny" by his Army intelligence friends,
was a burly giant and a superstar in just about every kind of
commando training offered to American military personnel. He
completed the rugged Airborne and Ranger schools, graduated
first in his class from the Special Forces qualification course,
and served with the Green Berets. In Beirut he was identified
merely as a military attache assigned to the U.S. Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA). But his hulking physique didn't fit
such a low-profile diplomatic post. Friends there remember him
as a "walking arsenal" of guns and knives. His real assignment
reportedly was to work with the CIA in reconnoitering the
American hostages in Lebanon and then, if feasible, to lead a
daring raid that would rescue them.

    McKee's thick, 37-page Army dossier contains so many
blacked-out words that it's hard to glean the danger he faced.
Surviving the censor's ink was his title, "Team Chief." Under
"Evaluation," it was written that he "performs constantly in the
highest-stress environment with clear operational judgment and
demeanor . . . Especially strong in accomplishing the mission
with minimal guidance and supervision . . . Continues to perform
one of the most hazardous and demanding jobs in the Army."

    For Beulah McKee the mystery deepened six months after
Chuck's death, when she received a letter from another U.S.
agent in Beirut. It was signed "John Carpenter," a name the
Pentagon says it can't further identify. Although the letter
claimed that Chuck's presence on the Pan Am plane was unrelated
to the bombing, Carpenter's message only stirred her suspicions.
"I cannot comment on Chuck's work," he wrote, "because his work
lives on. God willing, in time his labors will bear fruit and
you will learn the true story of his heroism and courage."

    Chuck had given no clues about his work. Back home in
November for Thanksgiving three weeks before he perished, he
wouldn't even see his friends. "I don't want to mingle, so I
don't have to answer any questions," he told his mother.
"Anyway, he didn't have time," she recalls. "He stayed up till
3 every morning studying reports. And when he flew back to
Beirut, all he said was, `Don't worry, Mom. Soon I'll be out
from under all this pressure.' "

    Almost immediately after the Pan Am bombing, which killed
the 259 people aboard the plane and 11 more on the ground, the
prime suspect was Ahmed Jibril, the roly-poly boss of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command
(P.F.L.P.-G.C.). Two months earlier, West German police had
arrested 16 members of his terrorist organization. Seized during
the raids was a plastic bomb concealed in a Toshiba cassette
player, similar to the one that blew up Flight 103. There was
other evidence pointing to Jibril. His patron was Syria. His
banker for the attack on the Pan Am plane appeared to be Iran.
U.S. intelligence agents even traced a wire transfer of several
million dollars to a bank account in Vienna belonging to the
P.F.L.P.-G.C. Iran's motive seemed obvious enough. The previous
July, the U.S.S. Vincennes had mistakenly shot down an Iranian
Airbus over the Persian Gulf, killing all 298 aboard.

    Suddenly, last November, the U.S. Justice Department
blamed the bombing on two Libyans, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi
and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah. The scenario prompted President Bush
to remark, "The Syrians took a bum rap on this." It also
triggered an outcry from the victims' families, who claimed that
pointing the finger at Libya was a political ploy designed to
reward Syria for siding with the U.S. in the gulf war and to
help win the release of the hostages. Even Vincent Cannistraro,
former head of the CIA's investigation of the bombing, told the
New York Times it was "outrageous" to pin the whole thing on
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

    A four-month investigation by Time has disclosed evidence
that raises new questions about the case. Among the discoveries:

    -- According to an FBI field report from Germany, the
suitcase originating in Malta that supposedly contained the bomb
may not have been transferred to Pan Am Flight 103 in
Frankfurt, as charged in the indictment of the two Libyans.
Instead, the bomb-laden bag may have been substituted in
Frankfurt for an innocent piece of luggage.

    -- The rogue bag may have been placed on board the plane
by Jibril's group with the help of Monzer al-Kassar, a Syrian
drug dealer who was cooperating with the U.S.'s Drug
Enforcement Administration in a drug sting operation. Al-Kassar
thus may have been playing both sides of the fence.

    -- Jibril and his group may have targeted that flight
because on board was an intelligence team led by Charles McKee,
whose job was to find and rescue the hostages.

    Investigators initially focused their efforts on examining
the procedures in the baggage-loading area at Frankfurt's
international airport. But risking the transfer of an
unaccompanied, bomb-laden suitcase to a connecting flight did
not jibe with the precautions terrorists usually take. Security
officers using video cameras routinely keep watch over the area.
An intricate network of computerized conveyors, the most
sophisticated baggage-transfer system in the world, shunts some
60,000 suitcases a day between loading bays. Every piece of
luggage is logged minute by minute from one position to the
next, so its journey through the airport is carefully monitored.
The bags are then X-rayed by the airline before being put aboard
a plane.

    But the U.S. government's charges against al-Megrahi and
Fhimah don't explain how the bronze-colored Samsonite suitcase,
dispatched via Air Malta, eluded Frankfurt's elaborate airport
security system. Instead, the indictment zeroes in on two tiny
pieces of forensic evidence -- a fingernail-size fragment of
green plastic from a Swiss digital timer, and a charred piece
of shirt.

    Even though investigators previously thought the bomb was
probably detonated by a barometric trigger (considered much more
reliable, especially in winter, when flights are frequently
delayed and connections missed), a Swiss timer was traced to
Libya. The shirt, which presumably had been wrapped around the
bomb inside the suitcase, was traced to a boutique in Malta
called Mary's House. The owner identified al-Megrahi as the
shirt's purchaser, although he originally confused al-Megrahi
with a Palestinian terrorist arrested in Sweden.

    It was the computer printout produced by FAG, the German
company that operates the sophisticated luggage-transfer system,
that finally nailed down the indictment of the two Libyans. The
printout, discovered months after the bombing, purportedly
proved that their suitcase sent from Malta was logged in at
Coding Station 206 shortly after 1 p.m. and then routed to Gate
44 in Terminal B, where it was put aboard the Pan Am jet. But
a "priority" teletype sent from the U.S. embassy in Bonn to the
FBI director in Washington on Oct. 23, 1989, reveals that
despite the detailed computer records, considerable uncertainty
surrounded the movement of this suitcase.

    TIME has obtained a copy of the five-page FBI message,
which states, "This computer entry does not indicate the origin
of the bag which was sent for loading on board Pan Am 103. Nor
does it indicate that the bag was actually loaded on Pan Am 103.
It indicates only that a bag of unknown origin was sent from
Coding Station 206 at 1:07 p.m. to a position from which it was
supposed to be loaded on Pan Am 103."

    The FBI message further explains that a handwritten record
kept by a baggage handler at Coding Station 206 was even less
specific about what happened to the suitcase. "It is noted," the
teletype continues, "that the handwritten duty sheet indicates
only that the luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 180. There is
no indication how much baggage was unloaded or where the luggage
was sent." The FBI agent's report concludes, "There remains the
possibility that no luggage was transferred from Air Malta 180
to Pan Am 103."

    Also described in the teletype is an incident that "may
provide insight into the possibilities of a rogue bag being
inserted into the baggage system." On a guided tour of the
baggage area in September 1989, it was disclosed, detective
inspector Watson McAteer of the Scottish police and FBI special
agent Lawrence G. Whitaker "observed an individual approach
Coding Station 206 with a single piece of luggage, place the
luggage in a luggage container, encode a destination into the
computer and leave without making any notation on a duty sheet."
This convinced the two investigators that a rogue suitcase could
have been "sent to Pan Am 103 either before or after the
unloading of Air Malta 180."

    Lee Kreindler, the lead attorney for the victims'
families, who are suing Pan Am for $7 billion, says he can prove
that the suitcase from Malta was put aboard Flight 103. He
charges that a gross security failure by Pan Am, which went
bankrupt in January 1991 and later folded, contributed to the
disaster.

    But it was the rogue-bag theory that was pursued by Pan
Am's law firm, Windels, Marx, Davies & Ives, representing the
airline's insurers. To piece together their version of how the
bomb was planted, Pan Am's lawyers hired Interfor, Inc., a New
York City firm specializing in international intelligence and
security. If it hadn't been for the government's implausible
plottings revealed during the Iran-contra hearings, Interfor's
findings might be dismissed as a private eye's imagination run
amuck -- especially considering the controversial background of
the company's president, Juval Aviv.

    Now 45 and an American citizen, Aviv claims to have headed
the Mossad hit squad that hunted down and killed the Arab
terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics
in Munich. Israeli and U.S. intelligence sources deny that Aviv
was ever associated with Mossad. However, working for Pan Am,
he spent more than six months tracking the terrorists who the
airline now alleges are responsible for the bombing. While his
report has been written off as fiction by many intelligence
officials, a number of its findings appear well documented.

    The central figure emerging from the Interfor
investigation is a 44-year-old Syrian arms and drug trafficker,
Monzer al-Kassar. His brother-in-law is Syria's intelligence
chief, Ali Issa Duba, and his wife Raghda is related to Syrian
President Hafez Assad.

    Al-Kassar has many passports and identities. Most
important, he was part of the covert network run by U.S. Lieut.
Colonel Oliver North. During the Iran-contra hearings, it was
revealed that al-Kassar was given $1.5 million to purchase
weapons. Questioned about al-Kassar, former U.S. National
Security Adviser John Poindexter said, "When you're buying arms,
you often have to deal with people you might not want to go to
dinner with."

    It was through al-Kassar's efforts, or so he claimed, that
two French hostages were released from Lebanon in 1986 in
exchange for an arms shipment to Iran. The deal caught the eye
of a freewheeling CIA unit code-named COREA, based in Wiesbaden,
Germany. This special unit was reported to be trafficking in
drugs and arms in order to gain access to terrorist groups.

    For its cover overseas, COREA used various front
companies: Stevens Mantra Corp., AMA Industries, Wildwood Video
and Condor Television Ltd. Condor paid its bills with checks
drawn on the First American Bank (account No. 2843900) in
Washington, D.C., which was subsequently discovered to be a
subsidiary of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

    According to Aviv, agents in COREA's Wiesbaden
headquarters allowed al-Kassar to continue running his smuggling
routes to American cities in exchange for help in obtaining the
release of the American hostages being held in Lebanon. At about
the same time, al-Kassar's drug-smuggling enterprise was being
used by the U.S.'s DEA in a sting operation. The DEA was
monitoring heroin shipments from Lebanon to Detroit, Los Angeles
and Houston, which have large Arab populations, in an attempt
to nail the U.S. dealers.

    By the fall of 1988, al-Kassar's operation had been
spotted by P.F.L.P.-G.C. leader Ahmed Jibril, who had just taken
on the assignment from Tehran to avenge the U.S. downing of its
Airbus. A CIA undercover agent in Tripoli reported that Jibril
also obtained Gaddafi's support. According to Mossad, Jibril
dined with al-Kassar at a Paris restaurant and secured a
reluctant promise of assistance in planting a bomb aboard an as
yet unselected American transatlantic jet.

    Al-Kassar's hesitancy was understandable. He wouldn't want
anything to disrupt his profitable CIA-assisted drug and arms
business. Presumably he was also worried because West German
police had just raided the Popular Front hideouts around
Dusseldorf and Frankfurt. Among those arrested: the Jordanian
technical wizard and bombmaker Marwan Khreesat.

    The bomb that ended up on the Pan Am jet could have been
assembled by Khreesat. However, last month the Palestine
Liberation Organization reported that it was built by Khaisar
Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Elias), who is also a member of Jibril's
Popular Front. Haddad purchased the detonator, the P.L.O. said,
on the Beirut black market for more than $60,000.

    The detonator, in fact, is considered one of the main keys
to the bombing puzzle. Thomas Hayes, a leading forensics
expert, did the main detective work on a minute piece of timer
recovered from the wreckage by Scottish authorities. In a recent
book about the Lockerbie investigation, On the Trail of Terror,
British journalist David Leppard reports that "Hayes is not
prepared to commit himself publicly on whether the bomb that
blew up Pan Am 103 was originally made by Khreesat and
subsequently modified by timers of the sort found in possession
of the Libyans." In fact, adds Leppard, "his authoritative view
is that not enough of the bomb's timing device has been
recovered to make a definite judgment about whether it was a
dual device containing a barometric switch and a timer, or a
single trigger device, which was activated by just a timer."

    James M. Shaughnessy, Pan Am's lead defense lawyer, has
tried to drive a wedge into this opening left by Hayes, thereby
casting further doubt on Libya's responsibility for the bombing.
Britain's High Court ruled that Pan Am's lawyers could depose
Hayes. However, in a last-minute legal maneuver by the Scottish
authorities, the deposition was blocked for reasons of national
security. Pan Am's lawyers are now appealing that decision.

    But regardless of the bomb's design, al-Kassar still
didn't know how and when Jibril planned to use it. A Mossad
agent, according to Aviv, first tipped off U.S. and West German
intelligence agents that a terrorist attack would be made on an
American passenger plane departing from Frankfurt on or about
Dec. 18. Al-Kassar quickly figured out that Pan Am Flight 103
was the most likely target and, playing both sides of the fence,
notified the COREA unit. His warning corroborated an earlier
bomb threat, involving an unspecified Pan Am flight from
Frankfurt, telephoned to the U.S. embassy in Helsinki.

    Precisely how a rogue bag containing the bomb eluded the
Frankfurt airport security system, Aviv doesn't know. Presumably
this required the help of baggage handlers there. So in January
1990 he and a former U.S. Army polygraphist flew to Frankfurt,
accompanied by Shaughnessy. At the Sheraton Conference Center,
adjoining the airport, the polygraphist administered
lie-detector tests to Pan Am baggage handlers Kilin Caslan Tuzcu
and Roland O'Neill. Pan Am had determined that they were the
only ones who were in a position to switch suitcases and place
the bomb-laden bag aboard Flight 103.

    Tuzcu took the test three times, and O'Neill took it
twice. As the polygraphist later testified before a federal
grand jury in Washington, Tuzcu "was not truthful when he said
he did not switch the suitcases." The polygraphist also told the
grand jury, "It is my opinion that Roland O'Neill wasn't
truthful when he stated he did not see the suitcase being
switched, and when he stated that he did not know what was in
the switched suitcase." The two men continued to claim ignorance
of a baggage switch.

    After flunking their lie-detector tests, both were sent on
a bogus errand by Pan Am to London, where it was assumed they
would be arrested. But British authorities refused to even
interrogate the pair. According to Leppard, Tuzcu and O'Neill
were simply "scapegoats" and were never "considered serious
suspects." They returned to Frankfurt that same night.

    If the bomb-laden luggage replaced an innocent bag, what
happened to the displaced suitcase? On Dec. 21, 1988, the day
of the bombing, one of Pan Am's Berlin-based pilots was about
to head home to Seattle, Washington, for Christmas when he
received orders to fly to Karachi first. He had with him two
identical Samsonite suitcases full of presents. At the Berlin
airport, he asked Pan Am to send them directly to Seattle.
"Rush" tags, marked for Flights 637 to Frankfurt, 107 to London
and 123 to Seattle, were affixed to the bags.

    It so happened that the flight from Berlin to Frankfurt
was delayed. While all the passengers ultimately made the
connection to London, 11 suitcases, including the pilot's two
bags, remained behind in Frankfurt. They were entered into the
airport computer system and rerouted via the Pan Am flight. But
only one of the pilot's suitcases was recovered at Lockerbie.
The other had been mysteriously left behind in Frankfurt, and
arrived safely in Seattle a day later. That story, which TIME
has corroborated, doesn't prove Pan Am's claim that terrorists
used al-Kassar's drug pipeline to pull a suitcase switch in
Frankfurt. But it does support the theory that a rogue bag was
inserted into the automated baggage-control system, as the
secret FBI report indicates was possible.


    To gather further evidence that the bomb was not contained
in an unaccompanied bag from Malta, Pan Am lawyer Shaughnessy
recently interviewed under oath 20 officials who were in Malta
on Dec. 21, 1988, including the airport security commander, the
bomb-disposal engineer who inspected all the baggage, the
general manager of ground operations of Air Malta, the head
loader of Flight 180 and the three check-in agents. Their
records showed that no unaccompanied suitcases were put aboard
the flight, and some of the staff Shaughnessy interviewed are
prepared to testify under oath that there was no bag that day
destined for Pan Am Flight 103.

    Although Shaughnessy subpoenaed the FBI, CIA, DEA and four
other government agencies for all documents pertaining to both
the bombing of Flight 103 and the narcotics sting operation, he
has been repeatedly rebuffed by the Justice Department for
reasons of national security. Even so, with the help of
investigators hired after Aviv, he has managed to obtain some
of the documents needed to defend Pan Am's insurers in the trial
scheduled to begin April 27 at the U.S. District Court for the
Eastern District of New York. The stakes are enormous, and the
incentive is high for Shaughnessy to demonstrate the
government's responsibility for the bombing. In addition to
defending against the compensation claims of $7 billion, he is
bringing a claim against the government for failing to give
warning that Pan Am had been targeted by the terrorists.

    The man who has been Shaughnessy's key witness in these
proceedings is hiding in fear of his life in a small town in
Europe. His real name is Lester Knox Coleman III, although as
a former spy for the dia and DEA he was known as Thomas Leavy
and by the code name Benjamin B. A year ago, the stockily built,
bearded Coleman filed an affidavit describing the narcotics
sting operation that Shaughnessy claims was infiltrated by
Jibril.

    It wasn't until July 1990, when Coleman spotted a
newspaper picture of one of the Pan Am victims and recognized
the young Lebanese as one of his drug-running informants, that
he realized he might be of assistance to Pan Am. He was also
looking for work. Two months earlier he had been deactivated by
the DIA after being arrested by the FBI for using his DIA cover
name, Thomas Leavy, on a passport application. Coleman claims
that the DIA instructed him to do this. "But such trumped-up
charges are frequently used to keep spooks quiet," says A.
Ernest Fitzgerald, a Pentagon whistle-blower and a director of
the Fund for Constitutional Government in Washington, which has
been looking into Coleman's case.

    Coleman spent three days in jail. His official pretrial
services report, filed with the U.S. District Court of Illinois
for the Northern District, began, "Although Mr. Coleman's
employment history sounds quite improbable, information he gave
has proven to be true."

    Raised in Iran, Libya and Saudi Arabia, Coleman, now 48,
was recruited by the dia and assigned to the still classified
humint (Human Intelligence) MC-10 operation in the Middle East.
In early 1987 he was transferred from Lebanon to Cyprus, where
he began his work for the DEA. However, he says he was
instructed not to inform the DEA there of his role as a DIA
undercover agent. By this time even the DIA suspected that the
freewheeling narcotics sting operation was getting out of hand.

    In Nicosia, Coleman saw the supposedly controlled
shipments of heroin, called kourah in Lebanon -- inspiration for
the CIA operation's code name COREA -- grow into a torrent. The
drugs were delivered by couriers who arrived on the overnight
ferry from the Lebanese port of Jounieh. After receiving their
travel orders from the DEA, the couriers were escorted to the
Larnaca airport by the Cypriot national police and sent on their
way to Frankfurt and other European transit points. The DEA
testified at hearings in Washington that no "controlled
deliveries" of drugs through Frankfurt were made in 1988.

    Coleman's DEA front in Nicosia, called the Eurame Trading
Co. Ltd., was located on the top floor of a high-rise apartment
near the U.S. embassy. He says the intelligence agency paid him
with unsigned Visa traveler's checks issued by B.C.C.I. in
Luxembourg. Additionally, the DEA country attache in Cyprus,
Michael Hurley, kept a drawer full of cash in his office at the
embassy, which he parceled out to Coleman and to a parade of
confidential informants, known by such nicknames as "Rambo
Dreamer," "Taxi George" and "Fadi the Captain." Hurley admitted
in a Justice Department affidavit that he paid Coleman $74,000
for information.

    The informants, Coleman reported, were under the control
of Ibrahim el-Jorr. "He was a Wild West character who wore
cowboy boots and tooled around in a Chevy with expired Texas
plates," he says. "I was told [by el-Jorr] that in the
Frankfurt airport the suitcases containing the narcotics were
put on flights to the U.S. by agents or other sources working
in the baggage area. From my personal observation, Germany's BKA
[Bundeskriminalamt, the German federal police] was also
involved, as was Her Majesty's Customs and Excise service in the
United Kingdom."

    After deciding to become a witness for Pan Am, Coleman
phoned a friend, Hartmut Mayer, a German intelligence agent in
Cyprus, and asked if he knew how the bomb got aboard Flight 103.
Mayer suggested calling a "Mr. Harwick" and a "Mr. Pinsdorf,"
who Mayer said were running the investigation at the Frankfurt
airport. "I spoke with Pinsdorf," says Coleman. "From his
conversation I learned that BKA had serious concerns that the
drug sting operation originating in Cyprus had caused the bomb
to be placed on the Pan Am plane." Mayer and Pinsdorf gave
depositions last year at the request of Pan Am. But the German
Federal Ministry of the Interior ruled they couldn't discuss
law-enforcement matters relating to other nations. Mayer did say
he knew Coleman.

    "It took three informants just to keep tabs on al-Kassar,"
claims Coleman. He said the informants reported that al-Kassar
and the Syrian President's brother Rifaat Assad were taking
over drug production in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, under
protection of the Syrian army. Coleman also says he learned that
the principal European transfer point for their heroin shipments
was the Frankfurt airport.

    In December 1988 al-Kassar picked up some news that
threatened to shut down his smuggling operation. Charles McKee's
counterterrorist team in Beirut that was investigating the
possible rescue of the nine American hostages had got wind of
his CIA connection. The team was outraged that the COREA unit
in Wiesbaden was doing business with a Syrian who had close
terrorist connections and might endanger their planned rescue
attempt.

    Besides McKee, a key member of the team was Matthew
Gannon, 34, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut and a
rising star in the agency. After venting their anger to the CIA
in Langley about al-Kassar, McKee and Gannon were further upset
by headquarters' failure to respond. Its silence was surprising
because Gannon's father-in-law Thomas Twetten, who now commands
the CIA's worldwide spy network, was then chief of Middle East
operations based in Langley. He was also Ollie North's CIA
contact.

    McKee and Gannon, joined by three other members of the
team, decided to fly back to Virginia unannounced and expose the
COREA unit's secret deal with al-Kassar. They packed $500,000
in cash provided for their rescue mission, as well as maps and
photographs of the secret locations where the hostages were
being held. Then the five-man team booked seats on Pan Am 103
out of London, arranging to fly there on a connecting flight
from Cyprus.

    McKee's mother says she is sure her son's sudden decision
to fly home was not known to his superiors in Virginia. "This
was the first time Chuck ever telephoned me from Beirut," she
says. "I was flabbergasted. `Meet me at the Pittsburgh airport
tomorrow night,' he said. `It's a surprise.' Always before he
would wait until he was back in Virginia to call and say he was
coming home."

    Apparently the team's movements were being tracked by the
Iranians. A story that appeared in the Arabic newspaper
Al-Dustur on May 22, 1989, disclosed that the terrorists set out
to kill McKee and his team because of their planned
hostage-rescue attempt. The author, Ali Nuri Zadeh, reported
that "an American agent known as David Love-Boy [he meant
Lovejoy], who had struck bargains on weapons to the benefit of
Iran," passed information to the Iranian embassy in Beirut about
the team's travel plans. Reported to be a onetime State
Department security officer, Lovejoy is alleged to have become
a double agent with CIA connections in Libya. His CIA code name
was said to be "Nutcracker."

    Lawyer Shaughnessy uncovered similar evidence. His
affidavit, filed with the federal district court in Brooklyn,
New York, asserts that in November and December 1988 the U.S.
government intercepted a series of telephone calls from Lovejoy
to the Iranian charge d'affaires in Beirut advising him of the
team's movements. Lovejoy's last call came on Dec. 20, allegedly
informing the Iranians that the team would be on Pan Am Flight
103 the following day.

    In his book, Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103,
Scottish radio reporter David Johnston disclosed that British
army searches of the wreckage recovered more than $500,000 cash,
believed to belong to the hostage-rescue team, and what appeared
to be a detailed plan of a building in Beirut, with two crosses
marking the location of the hostages. The map also pinpointed
the positions of sentries guarding the building and contained
a description of how the building might be taken.

    Johnston also described how CIA agents helicoptered into
Lockerbie shortly after the crash seeking the remnants of
McKee's suitcase. "Having found part of their quarry," he wrote,
"the CIA had no intention of following the exacting rules of
evidence employed by the Scottish police. They took the suitcase
and its contents into the chopper and flew with it to an unknown
destination." Several days later the empty suitcase was returned
to the same spot, where Johnston reported that it was "found"
by two British Transport Police officers, "who in their
ignorance were quite happy to sign statements about the case's
discovery."

    Richard Gazarik, a reporter for the Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, Tribune-Review, spent many months probing the
major's secret mission. He found, hidden inside the lining of
McKee's wallet, which was retrieved from the Pan Am wreckage and
returned to his mother, what he assumes was McKee's code name,
Chuck Capone, and the gangster code names (Nelson, Dillinger,
Bonnie and Clyde) of the other team members.

    The theory that Jibril targeted Flight 103 in order to
kill the hostage-rescue team is supported by two independent
intelligence experts. M. Gene Wheaton, a retired U.S.
military-intelligence officer with 17 years' duty in the Middle
East, sees chilling similarities between the Lockerbie crash and
the suspicious DC-8 crash in Gander, Newfoundland, which killed
248 American soldiers in 1985. Wheaton is serving as
investigator for the families of the victims of that crash. "A
couple of my old black ops buddies in the Pentagon believe the
Pan Am bombers were gunning for McKee's hostage-rescue team,"
he says. "But they were told to shift the focus of their
investigation because it revealed an embarrassing breakdown in
security." The FBI says it investigated the theory that McKee's
team was targeted and found no evidence to support it.

    Victor Marchetti, former executive assistant to the CIA's
deputy director and co-author of The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence, believes that the presence of the team on Flight
103 is a clue that should not be ignored. His contacts at
Langley agree. "It's like the loose thread of a sweater," he
says. "Pull on it, and the whole thing may unravel." In any
case, Marchetti believes the bombing of Flight 103 could have
been avoided. "The Mossad knew about it and didn't give proper
warning," he says. "The CIA knew about it and screwed up."

    The CIA may still be trying to find out more information
about why McKee and Gannon suddenly decided to fly home. Last
year three CIA agents, reportedly following up on their
hostage-rescue mission, were shot dead in a Berlin hotel while
waiting to meet a Palestinian informant.

    Beulah McKee has given up trying to find out if Pan Am's
bombers were after her son, although she says, "The government's
secrecy can't close off my mind." Twice she called and
questioned Gannon's widow Susan, who like her husband and her
father Tom Twetten worked for the CIA. "The last time, I was
accused of opening my mouth too much," says Mrs. McKee.

    Yet memories die hard, and mothers never quite get
accustomed to losing a child. Beulah McKee keeps her son's
bedroom all tidied up, as if she still expected him to come
home. His pictures, diplomas, miltary awards, even his
chrome-plated bowie knife, decorate the walls. In a cardboard
carton under the made-up bed are the heavily censored service
records of her son, which may contain the secret of why Pan Am
103 was blown out of the sky over Scotland.