Page 2 of 2 Libya: A hero's welcome
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
finding that there was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he was involved
in the plot (the British government had charged that he had been the person who
stole the luggage tags and placed the suitcase on the Air Malta flight), but
they did find Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder. He was sentenced to life
in prison, with a minimum sentence of 27 years.
Although the case against Megrahi was entirely circumstantial - there was no
direct evidence he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft - the
Scottish judges wrote in their decision that they believed the preponderance of
the evidence, including Megrahi's knowledge of airline security measures and
procedures, his connection to MEBO, his purchase of the clothing in the
suitcase that had contained the IED and his clandestine travel to
Malta on December 20 to 21, 1988, convinced them beyond a reasonable doubt that
Megrahi was guilty as charged. s
In a December 2003 letter to the United Nations, Libya accepted responsibility
for the Pan Am 103 bombing. (In the same letter, Libya also took responsibility
for the September 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772, a French airliner destroyed
by an IED after leaving Brazzaville, Congo, and making a stop in N'Djamena,
Chad. All 170 people aboard the aircraft died when it broke up over the Sahara
in Niger.) Nevertheless, the Libyan government continued to maintain Megrahi's
innocence in the Pan Am bombing, just as Megrahi had done throughout the trial,
insisting that he had not been involved in the bombing.
Megrahi's reluctance to admit responsibility for the bombing or to show any
contrition for the attack is one of the factors singled out by those who
opposed his release from prison. It is also one of the hallmarks of a
professional intelligence officer. In many ways, Megrahi's public stance
regarding the bombing can be summed up by the unofficial motto of the Central
Intelligence Agency's Office of Technical Services - "Admit nothing, deny
everything, make counter-accusations."
Shadows
In the shadow world of covert action it is not uncommon for the governments
behind such actions to deny (or at least not claim) responsibility for them.
These governments also often attempt to plan such attacks in a way that will
lead to a certain level of ambiguity - and thereby provide plausible
deniability. This was a characteristic seen in many Libyan attacks against US
interests, such as the 1986 La Belle Disco bombing in Berlin. It was only an
intercept of Libyan communications that provided proof of Libyan responsibility
for that attack.
Many attacks that the Libyans sponsored or sub-contracted out, such as the
string of attacks carried out against US interests by members of the Japanese
Red Army and claimed in the name of the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade,
were likewise meant to provide Libya with plausible deniability.
Gaddafi did not relish the possibility of another American air strike on his
home in Tripoli, like the one that occurred after the La Belle attack in April
1986. (A number of Libyan military targets also were hit in the broader US
military action, known as Operation El Dorado Canyon.) Pan Am 103 is considered
by many to be Gaddafi's retribution for those American air strikes, one of
which killed his adopted baby daughter. Gaddafi, who had reportedly been warned
of the strike by the Italian government, was not injured in the attack.
During the 1980s, the Libyan government was locked in a heated tit-for-tat
battle with the United States. One source of this friction were US claims that
the Libyan government supported terrorist groups such as the Abu Nidal
Organization (ANO), which conducted several brutal, high-profile attacks in the
1980s, including the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport assaults. There was
also military tension between the two countries as Libya declared a "line of
death" across the mouth of the Gulf of Sidra.
The US Navy shot down several Libyan fighter aircraft that had attempted to
enforce the edict. But these two threads of tension were closely intertwined;
the US Navy purposefully challenged the line of death in the spring of 1986 in
response to the Rome and Vienna attacks, and it is believed that the La Belle
attack was retribution for the US military action in the Gulf of Sidra. The
Libyan ESO was also directly implicated in attacks against US diplomats in
Sanaa, Yemen, and Khartoum, Sudan, in 1986.
Because of the need for plausible deniability, covert operatives are instructed
to stick to their cover story and maintain their innocence if they are caught.
Megrahi's consistent denials and his many appeals, which often cite the PFLP-GC
case in Frankfurt, have done a great deal to sow doubt and provide Libya with
some deniability.
Like Osama bin Laden's initial denial of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks,
Megrahi's claims of innocence have served as ready fuel for conspiracy
theorists, who claim he was framed by the US and British governments. However,
any conspiracy to frame Megrahi and his Libyan masters would have to be very
wide ranging and, by necessity, reach much further than just London and
Washington. For example, anyone considering such a conspiracy must also account
for the fact that in 1999 a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia for
the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772. The six included Abdullah al-Sanussi,
Gaddafi's brother-in-law and head of the ESO.
Getting two or more governments to cooperate on some sort of grand conspiracy
to frame the Libyans and exonerate the Iranians and Syrians is hard to fathom.
Such cooperation would have to involve enough people that, sooner or later,
someone would spill the beans - especially considering that the Pan Am 103 saga
played out over multiple US administrations. As seen by the current stir over
CIA interrogation programs, administrations love to make political hay by
revealing the cover-ups of previous administrations.
Surely, if there had been a secret ploy to frame the Libyans, the Bill Clinton
or Barack Obama administrations would have outed it. The same principle applies
to the United Kingdom, where Margaret Thatcher's government oversaw the
beginning of the Pan Am 103 investigation and Labour governments after 1997
would have had the incentive to reveal information to the contrary.
While the US and British governments work closely together on a number of
intelligence projects, they are frequently at odds on counter-terrorism policy
and foreign relations. From our personal experience, we believe that it would
be very difficult to get multiple US and British administrations from different
political parties to work in perfect harmony to further this sort of
conspiracy.
Due to the UTA investigation and trial, the conspiracy would have to somehow
involve the French government. While the Americans working with the British is
one thing, the very idea of the Americans, British and French working in
perfect harmony on any sort of project - much less a grand secret conspiracy to
frame the Libyans - is simply unimaginable. It is much easier to believe that
the Libyans were guilty, especially in light of the litany of other terror
attacks they committed or sponsored during that era.
Had the IED in the cargo hold of Pan Am 103 exploded over the open ocean, it is
very unlikely that the clothing from Malta and the fragment of the MEBO timer
would have ever been recovered - think of the difficulty the French have had in
locating the black box from Air France 447 in June of this year. In such a
scenario, the evidence linking Megrahi and the Libyan government to the Pan Am
bombing might never have been discovered and plausible deniability could have
been maintained indefinitely.
The evidence recovered in Scotland and Megrahi's eventual conviction put a dent
in that deniability, but the true authors of the attack - Megrahi's superiors -
were never formally charged. Without Megrahi's cooperation, there was no
evidence to prove who ordered him to undertake the attack, though it is logical
to conclude that the ESO would never undertake such a significant attack
without Gaddafi's approval.
Now that Megrahi has returned to Libya and is in Libyan safekeeping, there is
no chance that any death-bed confession he may give will ever make it to the
West. His denials will be his final words and the ambiguity and doubt those
denials cast will be his legacy. In the shadowy world of clandestine
operations, this is the ideal behavior for someone caught committing an
operational act. He has shielded his superiors and his government to the end.
From the perspective of the ESO, and Muammar Gaddafi, Megrahi is indeed a hero.
(Published with permission from Stratfor,
a Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company. Copyright 2009 Stratfor.)
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