http://www.informinc.co.uk/LM/LM61/LM61_Libya.html
Two Libyan men stand accused of planting the bomb
that blew up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in
Scotland, killing 270 people, in 1988. They are
being framed, says James Heartfield
Framing Libya
According to Lester Coleman, a former agent of
America's Defence Intelligence Agency, American
and British authorities have conspired to blame
Libya for the Lockerbie bombing when the evidence
points elsewhere. Having written a book exposing
the frame-up, Coleman has fled to Sweden, where he
has been granted asylum.
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa
Fhimah have been charged with planting the bomb by
the Western authorities. But Colonel Muammar
Gadaffi, the Libyan leader, is the real target of
the frame-up. His regime is a convenient
whipping-boy for Western powers which want to
demonstrate their authority on the world stage.
Being seen to push the 'terrorist state' around
can make Western leaders look far stronger than
they do at home.
Under pressure from the USA, Britain and France,
the United Nations has now imposed sanctions
against Libya to force Gadaffi to hand over the
two accused. Quite apart from the suffering
sanctions themselves will cause, the demonisation
of Gadaffi's Libya is paving the way towards more
Western military strikes in the Middle East.
Drugs smugglers
Furthermore, the Americans, who have pushed the
case against the Libyans the hardest, know that it
is not true. Indeed, according to Lester Coleman,
it was an American government agency, the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA), that established the
procedure which was used to evade security on Pan
Am flight 103.
Coleman's book, Trail of the Octopus, describes in
detail how the DEA established a route through
which drugs could be smuggled from the Lebanon to
the USA. The DEA was trying to infiltrate the
Lebanese drugs trade.
The detection-proof route they established for
smuggling drugs was later used to plant the bomb
on the American airliner flying from Frankfurt to
JFK airport, New York. Those responsible were, in
all likelihood, militant Islamic supporters of the
Iranian regime, active in the Lebanon. They simply
used the DEA-established drugs route, substituting
a semtex bomb at the last minute.
Something like the Lockerbie affair is inevitably
shrouded in intrigue, disinformation and
counter-charges, which make the truth elusive.
However, Coleman's story does chime with the
initial report commissioned by Pan Am from Juval
Aviv, an Israeli private investigator. Aviv's
report found that the Americans had several
warnings of the bombing, both from the Israeli
secret services and from Arab sources, but seemed
to go out of their way to ensure that the package
was not intercepted. Coleman suggests that
American intelligence assumed the package was
drugs, and wanted to protect their smuggling
route.
The bombing was a retaliation for the American
attack on an Iranian Airbus, carrying mostly
pilgrims from Bandar Abbas to Mecca, in July 1988.
The USS Vincennes was patrolling the Persian Gulf
in Iranian waters when, claiming that it was under
attack from an F-14 fighter, it blew the Airbus
out of the sky, killing all 290 passengers. The
Vincennes air-warfare coordinator was awarded a
Commendation Medal for his 'heroic achievement'.
The truth about who planted the Lockerbie bomb
does not suit the requirements of US and British
foreign policy. So they have gone to enormous
lengths to disguise it. Juval Aviv's report of
American involvement in setting up the bomb route,
and the congressman who leaked it, James
Traficant, were pilloried in the press.
Lester Coleman, the Defence Intelligence Agency
(DIA) agent who stumbled across the story by
mistake, was framed by his employers on charges of
giving false information on a passport application
- as he had been told to do by the DIA. The
American authorities are still trying to persuade
the Swedes to hand him over.
Pinning the blame for Lockerbie on Gadaffi's Libya
fits the stereotype of international terrorist
that the West has worked hard to create. Libya was
first declared a 'terrorist regime' in 1977. Since
then the West has attacked Libya on several
occasions, most famously in 1986, when a joint
US-British airstrike against Tripoli and Benghazi
killed scores of Libyans, including Gadaffi's
adopted daughter.
The '86 raid was justified as retaliation for the
bombing of the La Belle Discotheque used by
American servicemen in Berlin. In fact, West
German anti-terrorist police chief Manfred Ganscho
found all the evidence pointing at Syria instead
of Libya. Then the Americans released a
translation of a tape purporting to be a coded
message from Libya's East Berlin bureau to
Tripoli.
According to Ronald Reagan, the message read that
'the attack would be carried out the following
morning'. The West German authorities translation
was less conclusive, reading only 'something will
happen tomorrow when Allah wills it' - hardly
damning evidence (Observer, 27 April 1986).
Manufacturing evidence of Libyan responsibility
for the Berlin bombing fitted the stereotype of
Gadaffi the international terrorist, and allowed
the Western powers to look tough by launching a
raid against soft targets. By contrast, taking on
Syria, a regional power which the Americans were
keen to court, would have been more difficult and
dangerous.
Similarly, at the time of the Lockerbie bombing,
it suited Western purposes to point the finger at
Gadaffi's men rather than pro-Islamic Lebanese
guerrillas. The Islamic militants in Lebanon were
holding American hostages. More importantly, the
Reagan government was trying to rebuild its links
with Iran through the 'arms-for-hostages' deal set
up by Oliver North. Disturbing the delicate web of
intrigue in the Lebanon seemed a lot less
attractive than pinning the blame on the
all-purpose villain, Colonel Gadaffi.
Today's sanctions are in keeping with the
vilification of the 'terrorist state'. The
assumption of Libya's guilt is built into the UN
resolution that imposes sanctions, demanding full
compensation for crash victims and the breaking of
all ties with international terrorism. This
amounts to a demand that Libya not only hands over
its citizens for a showtrial in the West, but also
pleads guilty to the bombing before sanctions can
be lifted.
The photofit of Gadaffi as godfather of
international terrorism is a Western invention.
While the Libyan leader talks up his opposition to
the West among his own people, in practice the
Libyan government has been trying to ingratiate
itself with Western leaders. Earlier this year the
Libyans offered to share their intelligence on
Irish republicans with the British authorities.
By playing up the threat of 'international
terrorism', the Western powers depict themselves
as the victims rather than the aggressors in the
third world. The Lockerbie bombing was a response
to Western military intervention in the Middle
East. But by pinning the blame on Libyan
terrorism, the West separates the bombing from the
attack on the Iranian Airbus. Consequently, the
Lockerbie bombing is seen as the fanatical act of
ideologically motivated terrorists, instead of a
desperate retaliatory blow in a war between the
Western powers and the people of the Middle East.
Once the Libyans are caricatured as terrorists,
and sanctions imposed, it is but a short step to
further military 'retaliation' by the USA and its
allies. Attacking Libya is a virtually risk-free
way of demonstrating Western firepower in the
Middle East. Libya itself has a population of only
3.5m, most of whom are farmers or herdsmen. Libya
is isolated from its more conservative Arab
neighbours and vulnerable to attack. Attacking
Libya could provide the USA and Britain with the
sort of uncomplicated show of military strength
that has eluded them of late, as Western forces
have become bogged down in Somalia and the
Balkans.
Showtrial
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa
Fhimah stand little chance of a fair trial if they
are forced out of Libya to face the charges. The
full weight of Western security and diplomatic
forces have been brought to bear in order to pin
the blame on Libya. They are not likely to let
anything as unimportant as proof stand in their
way.
And, when the West again frames Gadaffi for
involvement in 'international terrorism', the
sentence on the Libyan people may well be carried
out by the US Air Force and the RAF once more.
Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie,
Inside the DIA, Donald Goddard with Lester K
Coleman, Bloomsbury, £16.99 hbk
Reproduced from Living Marxism issue 61, November 1993
