TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/112789/11278900.044

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.1 KB | 122 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 33

Keeping Lockerbie Alive


Questions still burn for relatives of the Pan Am 103 victims


    When Wendy Giebler finishes her job as a video production
manager in Haverstraw, N.Y., each day, she starts a second
shift of a more passionate nature. At home she spends five hours
writing letters, preparing testimony, drafting speeches and
devouring all the information she can find on how and why Pan
Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, last December,
killing 270 people. One of the victims was William Giebler, 29,
a bond broker who had married Wendy less than a year earlier.
"I have nothing else left to live for," says Giebler, who
transformed her grief into action. "This is what I consider my
career."

    Giebler has joined hundreds of relatives of Flight 103
victims in an organized attempt to change Government and airline
policies and win compensation for their loss. Embittered after
countless run-ins with unresponsive and evasive officials, their
early efforts to lobby for improved airline safety quickly
hardened into demands for the British, German and U.S.
governments to disclose what they know about the bombing. Bert
Ammerman, a high school assistant principal who lost his brother
Tom and now heads a group called Victims of Pan Am Flight 103,
calls Washington a "cesspool of unaccountability." After months
of lobbying Congress and a meeting with President Bush, the
families finally persuaded the Administration to establish a
Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism, which began
hearings last week.

    Earlier this month, Ammerman accompanied a six-member
delegation of American and British families to West Germany to
quiz investigators and government officials on terrorist links
to Flight 103. The group emerged from three days of talks with
little new information. But they left the Germans with the clear
impression that their persistence will not fade.

    Nor has the European press lost its appetite for unraveling
the Pan Am mystery. Since last summer, newspapers and magazines
in Britain and Germany have bannered a disturbing mix of
unsubstantiated charges and possibly valuable clues about the
bombing.

    The accusations and finger pointing give many Flight 103
families the sense of being trapped in an impenetrable web of
international politics and terrorism. Says Eleanor Bright,
whose husband Nick died over Lockerbie: "I feel as if I've been
dropped in the middle of a bad spy novel." Among the
disclosures:

    West German police apprehended 16 suspected terrorists but
then released all but two of them in October 1988, after
discovering a cache of explosives and a bomb similar to the one
used to destroy Flight 103 eight weeks later. Marwan Khreesat,
a Jordanian who some authorities believe assembled the Pan Am
bomb, was among those set free. Published stories contend that
Khreesat was also a German intelligence agent; German
authorities deny it.

    Pressured by a $300 million lawsuit for compensatory
damages filed by more than 100 families, Pan Am has subpoenaed
records of six U.S. Government agencies including the CIA, the
Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department. The
subpoena suggests that Israel or West Germany relayed serious
warnings of a bombing to the U.S. -- and that the warnings were
not passed on to Pan Am. The Flight 103 families say Pan Am may
merely be trying to shift the blame so it can wriggle out of
paying huge claims.

    In the wildest allegation so far, an internal report by an
investigator for Pan Am's insurance carrier suggests that the
CIA unwittingly allowed the bomb aboard Flight 103 to protect
a hostage-for-drugs operation. The report states that Monzer al
Kassar, a Syrian arms dealer, was permitted to ship drugs
through a "protected" route at Frankfurt in exchange for
promises to help free American hostages in Lebanon. The
subpoenas filed by Pan Am suggest that the CIA may even have a
videotape of the bomb-laden suitcase being loaded in Frankfurt.
The CIA and British authorities categorically deny these
allegations.

    After months of being kept in the dark, however, the
families no longer discount any theory. "I believe (the CIA
scenario) is more than possible," says Giebler. She is not alone
in her suspicion, nor in her anger about the offer by the Bush
Administration to compensate the families of victims killed in
the downing of an Iranian passenger jet by the U.S.S. Vincennes
in July 1988. Some security analysts conclude that Iran ordered
the bombing of Flight 103 to avenge the Iranian Airbus disaster.
The families do not disagree. Jeannine Boulanger, whose
21-year-old daughter Nicole was killed over Lockerbie, remembers
vividly the day the Iranian plane went down. "Little did I
realize that my daughter would pay the price for that," she
says. "Iran paid for this bombing, yet Americans must sue to get
compensation."

    The families' estrangement from the Government and anger at
Pan Am began almost as soon as Flight 103 fell from the sky. As
television displayed the plane's splintered wreckage, relatives
were told to wait patiently for the State Department to return
their calls. Some sat seething by their telephones for as long
as three days while calls bounced between agencies. When
relatives of John Ahern, 26, went to New York City's Kennedy
Airport, they were directed to a livestock warehouse where his
body was forklifted off a plane in a cardboard box. No Pan Am
or Government representative was present to help them. "They
stripped him of his dignity," says Ahern's sister Bonnie
O'Connor. "He should have come home with an American flag on his
coffin."

    The families say their quest for answers will persist until
they learn who killed their relatives and how it was allowed to
happen. Nor will they back down until air travel is made safer.
"We are answering to our loved ones," says Ammerman. "We have
all made a commitment not to stop until we satisfy that need."
No one who has come up against them doubts the sincerity of that
promise.