AAACTION

Note I have included two different articles here allowing the reader to get quick introduction to some of the circumstances surrounding the affair and in particular Mr. Monzer al-Kassar.

Most of the information supplied in both articles is accurate hwoever will be supplemented with further details and part corrections in a follow-up article. -Kamakura

The Lockerbie Bombing Trial: Is Libya Being Framed?
by Gary C. Gambill

The wreckage from Pan Am Flight 103 (Greg Bos/Reuters)

Scotland's Sunday Herald reported last week that the U.S. government placed a gag order on a former CIA agent to prevent him from testifying in the trial of two Libyans accused of carrying out the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people.

    Dr. Richard Fuisz, a wealthy businessman and pharmaceutical researcher who was a major CIA operative in Damascus during the 1980s, told a congressional staffer in 1994 that the perpetrators of the bombing were based in Syria. "If the government would let me, I could identify the men behind this attack . . . I can tell you their home addresses . . . you won't find [them] anywhere in Libya. You will only find [them] in Damascus," Fuisz told congressional aide Susan Lindauer, who has submitted a sworn affidavit describing this conversation to the Scottish court that is trying the two suspects.

    One month after their meeting, a Washington DC court issued a ruling that prohibits Fuisz from discussing the Lockerbie bombing on national security grounds. When a reporter called Fuisz last month with questions about Lindauer's affidavit, he replied: "That is not an issue I can confirm or deny. I am not allowed to speak about these issues. In fact, I can't even explain to you why I can't speak about these issues." The report quoted a senior UN official who has seen the affidavit as saying that "in the interests of natural justice, Dr. Fuisz should be released from any order which prevents him telling what he knows of the PanAm bombing."¹

    The investigation into the bombing by Scottish police and the FBI initially focused exclusively on evidence linking the blast to the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), a radical Palestinian group closely allied with Syrian President Hafez Assad and other senior officials. However, the investigation suddenly changed courses after Syria joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in 1991 and Iran stayed neutral. In November of that year, U.S. investigators issued indictments against two alleged Libyan intelligence agents and President George Bush declared that Syria had taken a "bum rap" on Lockerbie.

    Fuisz is not the first to run afoul of the U.S. government for speaking about Syrian and Iranian complicity in the Lockerbie bombing. Juval Aviv, the president of Interfor, a New York corporate investigative company hired by Pan Am to conduct an inquiry into the bombing, was indicted for mail fraud after Interfor announced its conclusion that the PFLP-GC had been responsible.² A former agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lester Coleman, was charged by the FBI with "falsely procuring a passport" while he was researching a book entitled Trail of the Octopus which fingered the PFLP-GC (Coleman left the country and published the book in Britain).³ William Casey, a lobbyist who made similar claims about PFLP-GC involvement, said in 1995 that the U.S. Justice Department had frozen his bank accounts and federal agents scoured through his garbage cans.⁴

The Case Against Libya

A courtroom sketch of Abdel Basset Al-Megrahi (center), and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima (right) during the trial proceedings on May 5. (Fred Ernst/Reuters)

    The prosecution's claim is that two Libyan intelligence agents, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, planted Semtex plastic explosives inside a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder in an unaccompanied suitcase on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, where it was transferred onto Pan Am flight 103, bound for New York via London's Heathrow airport.

    The first important chain of evidence links the bomb-laden suitcase on Flight 103 to Air Malta Flight KT180. Fragments of the Toshiba radio-cassette recorder were found inside a brown Samsonite suitcase, the only piece of luggage on the Flight 103 that was not checked by a passenger. The suitcase had entered the baggage system at Frankfurt at the same time and location as the Air Malta flight was unloading. According to prosecutors, a tattered shirt with a Maltese label containing fragments of the timing device was found by a Scottish man walking his dog 18 months after the explosion (fabric samples from the shirt were said to indicate that it was inside the brown suitcase).

    However, Air Malta's computer records show no indication that a brown Samsonite suitcase was on board Flight KT180, and the notion that an old man walking his dog would stumble across a key piece of evidence a year and a half after the explosion is a bit far-fetched. Moreover, according to a forensic report which the defense will present during the trial, a bomb in a suitcase stored in the aluminum luggage containers could not have created the dinner plate-sized hole in the fuselage that brought down the plane--the bomb would have had to be directly next to the plane's fuselage. If this true, then the prosecution's entire explanation of how the bomb arrived on the aircraft in Malta falls apart.

    A second chain of evidence links the two Libyan suspects to Malta. Detectives traced the charred remains of clothing tattered shirt to a clothing shop in Sliema, Malta, whose owner, Tony Gauci, said that he recalled selling the clothes to a tall Arab male, about 50 years old, in the fall of 1988. Investigators say he later identified the man who bought the clothes as Megrahi. However, Megrahi was only 36 at the time, and Gauci greatly overestimated his height. Moreover, a member of the PFLP-GC, Muhammed Abu Talb, was originally identified as the man who bought the clothes during the early stages of the investigation.⁵

    A third primary piece of evidence said to implicate Libya are two fragments of an electronic circuit board from the the timing device that detonated the explosives on board the airliner. Investigators traced the fragments to a Swiss company which manufactures electronic timers, Mebo Telecommunications. The head of Mebo Communications, Edwin Bollier, told investigators that the fragments came from an MST-13 timer he had sold to the Libyan government. However, Bollier recently said he had made the identification solely from looking at photographs of the fragments. When he was shown one of the actual fragments in September 1999, he concluded that "the fragment does not come from one of the timers we sold to Libya." Bollier says that it appears to come from one of the three prototypes built by his company--two of which were sold to the Institute of Technical Research in East Germany (a front for the Stasi intelligence service), while the third was stolen. He intends to testify to this at the trial, as will Owen Lewis, a British forensic expert.⁶

    A fourth important piece of evidence is the testimony of a former Libyan intelligence officer who will identify the two suspects as members of Libya's intelligence service. While details of what he told investigators are scarce, sources close to the defense have said that it is highly questionable.

    A number of irregularities in the investigation also detract from the plausibility of the prosecution's claims. The American FBI agent who was instrumental in pushing the Libya hypothesis, J. Thomas Thurman, was later suspended for manipulating evidence to favor the prosecution in subsequent cases.⁷

The Case Against Syria/Iran

    The primary hypothesis guiding the investigation for the first year was that the bombing was perpetrated by the Syria-based PFLP-GC, presumably acting on behalf of Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had vowed to retaliate for the U.S. Navy's July 1988 downing of an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf, saying that the skies would "rain blood" and offering a $10 million reward to anyone who "obtained justice" for Iran. Ayatollah Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Teheran's envoy in Damascus in 1988, was believed to have recruited the financially-strapped group for the task.

    Two months before the disaster, German police arrested 15 terrorist suspects, all connected to the PFLP-GC, and confiscated three explosive devices consisting of Semtex hidden inside Toshiba cassette recorders--nearly identical to the one used in the Lockerbie bombing ( the only major difference being that they had barometric triggers, rather than electronic timers of the type that investigators claim detonated the explosives on board Pan Am flight 103). Moreover, U.S. officials reportedly had received advance warnings that a flight to New York would be targeted around the time of the Lockerbie bombing. In fact, Stephen Green, a senior Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) administrator, John McCarthy, the U.S. Ambassador to Beirut, and several other U.S. officials were originally scheduled to fly on the ill-fated airliner on December 21, but rescheduled at the last minute.

    It's possible that the PFLP smuggled the bomb on board Pan Am flight 103 from Malta. Abu Talb was sighted in Malta just weeks before the bombing. When he was later arrested in Sweden, police found the date of the Lockerbie explosion (December 21) circled on his calender.⁸

    This and most other evidence linking the Lockerbie bombing to the PFLP-GC is largely circumstantial and difficult to substantiate, if only because the results of the FBI's early investigation into its involvement were not made public. The question is: Given the weaknesses in the case against Libya, why was the investigation into PFLP-GC involvement suspended and should it be reactivated if the two Libyan defendants are acquitted?

  ¹ The Sunday Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), 28 May 2000.
  ² The Guardian (London) July 29, 1995.
  ³ Ibid.
  ⁴ IPS Newsire, 3 May 1995.
  ⁵ The Daily Telegraph (London), 22 December 1998.
  ⁶ The Independent (London), 14 December 1998.
  ⁷ The Daily Telegraph (London), 22 December 1998.
  ⁸ AP Newswire, 29 April 2000.

Bush Administration's Involvement in Bombing Pan Am 103

by Joel Bainerman

If the entire story behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December l988 is ever fully exposed, most people just simply wouldn�t believe it. Not only were various agencies of the U.S. Government at least partially responsible for the terrorist attack, the Bush Administration tried to cover up their involvement; and, as vice president, Bush is reported to have made as many as four secret trips to Damascus offering arms to Syria in return for the hostages held in Lebanon.

If the true story behind Pan Am 103 ever finally does come out, Yuval Aviv can take much of the credit.

I met a lot of strange characters during the research for my book The Crimes of a President (SPI Books, 1992), but Yuval Aviv was by far the most intriguing. I met Aviv for the first time in October l991. After a three-hour meeting, I walked out of his Madison Avenue office with my head spinning. Aviv had a certain charm about him that made him very likable, even if you didn�t quite trust his information or understand his motives. He claims to be a former Mossad official who immigrated to the U.S. in l978. Shortly thereafter, he opened his own investigating firm called Interfor.

Aviv told me a lot of stories, some of which I had already checked out and found to be false. Some were verified by other sources. Like most sources investigative journalists come across, some of Aviv�s information was good, some wasn�t. Where Aviv does come through with flying colors though is in his version of what happened to Pan Am 103, the plane that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland on 21 December l988.

Aviv�s firm was hired by Pan Am�s insurer in the Spring of l989 to investigate the crash. Of all the journalists and intelligence sources I met who knew Aviv, all of them agreed that his report on Pan Am 103 is the closest thing yet to the truth. The only problem is that what he has to say about the incident isn�t what the Bush Administration wants to hear. In September l989, Interfor�s report was made public. In it, Aviv claimed that a CIA team headquartered in Western Germany is largely responsible for the bombing.

That�s not what the U.S. Administration claims. For the first two years after the crash, all the evidence pointed to Syria and Iran as the culprits. It was believed that Iran bankrolled the operation in retaliation for the 3 July l988 shooting down of a scheduled Iranian airbus in the Persian Gulf by the USS Vincennes, killing 290 people. Previously, U.S. investigators had traced a wire transfer of several million dollars from Teheran to a bank account in Vienna controlled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command under the leadership of Ahmed Jibril (US News & World Report, 25 November l99l).

The outbreak of the Gulf War changed all that. When Saddam�s troops rolled into Kuwait, the Administration needed to bring Syria into the coalition effort. The following Summer, Bush sat down with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva and ushered in a new era in Syrian-American relations. As a result, focus had to be deflected away from Syrian-sponsored Ahmed Jibril�s terrorist group.

Lo and behold, in November l99l, U.S. prosecutors announced that their three-year investigation produced no evidence that either Iran or Syria were involved. Instead, they believed two Libyan intelligence officials and the Tripoli Government were responsible for the bombing (New York Times, 15 November l99l). President Bush would publicly remark: "The Syrians took a bum rap on this" (Time, 27 April l992).

The U.S. Government based its case on a tiny piece of plastic embedded in a shirt that had come from the suitcase that held the bomb. Miraculously, it survived two harsh Scottish winters. A British forensic expert matched the fragment of the bomb timer used to destroy a French DC-10 jet that exploded over Africa nine months after the Lockerbie tragedy and found them to be identical. Based on this evidence, indictments were issued for Libyan intelligence officials. (It seems the Justice Department would have looked a little silly asking Mummar Gaddafi to turn himself in to the American authorities.)

American and British investigators speculate that Iran and Libya were plotting simultaneously to blow up an American jet, but the Libyans succeeded first. Gaddafi, it was claimed, wanted revenge for the l986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi by U.S. warplanes. (Why did he wait more than two-and-a-half years to get it?) They say the bomb was first loaded as unaccompanied baggage on an Air Malta flight which departed Lauq Airport in Malta and connected with the Pan Am flight in Frankfurt. Why a terrorist would take such an indirect route and risk detection was left unexplained.

The official U.S. Government�s version of events is quite different from that of the former Israeli intelligence official. Aviv explains that his investigation revealed that the origin of the terrorist attack was actually a rogue CIA group protecting a Syrian drug operation which transported drugs from the Middle East to the United States via Frankfurt. Aviv says the CIA did nothing to break up the drug operation because the traffickers were also helping them send weapons to Iran and to the Nicaraguan Contras.

Part of Aviv�s assertions were backed up by NBC News a year later when it reported, on 30 October l990, that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was investigating a Middle East-based heroin operation to determine whether it was used by the terrorists to place a bomb on Pan Am 103. NBC said Pan Am flights out of Frankfurt had been used by the DEA to fly informants and heroin into Detroit as part of its sting operation. It claimed the terrorists might have discovered what the DEA was doing and switched one of their bags with one containing the bomb.

The DEA denied any connection to the undercover operation (Barron's, 17 December l990). Aviv explains that the method of drug smuggling was quite simple. One person would check a piece of luggage onto the plane and an accomplice working in the baggage department would switch it with an identical piece containing the narcotics. He says that on that fatal night, a Syrian terrorist organization knew how the drug operation worked and slipped a bomb inside a suitcase on the plane.

Aviv asserts that Monzer Al-Kassar, a Syrian drug and arms smuggler, set the drug smuggling operation up through Frankfurt in l987. The CIA, the DEA and the West German secret police, the BKA, observed its activities, but didn�t interfere so as to acquire information. Al-Kassar is well connected. The head of Syrian intelligence, Ali Issa Duba, is his brother-in-law, and his wife is related to Assad.

This was the same Monzer Al-Kassar who helped Oliver North supply Polish-made weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras in l985 and l986. Along with his three brothers, Al-Kassar had built a multi-million-dollar empire on military deals in Eastern and Western Europe. Administration officials who discussed these deals said Al-Kassar had clear business links with the Abu Nidal terrorist organization (Los Angeles Times, 17 July l987).

The officials said that Al-Kassar maintained offices in Warsaw and was a major broker of the Polish-owned weapons company, Cenzin. The first arms purchase by North from Al-Kassar totaling $1 million was sent by boat to an unidentified Caribbean port in the Fall of l985 and was later distributed to the Contra fighters. In April of that year, a second shipment of Polish arms was sold to the CIA as part of this transaction (Los Angeles Times, 17 July l987). In another part of the deal, more than $42 million was laundered through BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International) accounts in the Cayman Islands. Al-Kassar earned more than $1 million (Private Eye, 25 October l99l).

Aviv wrote in his report that a special hostage rescue team was on the doomed aircraft, led by Army Major Charles McKee, who had discovered that a rogue CIA team in Frankfurt, called COREA, was protecting the drug route. According to a special report in Time (27 April 1992), COREA used front companies for its overseas operations: Sevens Mantra Corp., AMA Industries, Wilderwood Video and Condor Television Ltd. The report revealed that Condor did its banking through the First American Bank, a subsidiary of BCCI.

After explaining what he had learned to CIA headquarters in the U.S. and receiving no response, McKee decided to take his men home without the required permission. He planned to bring back to the U.S. proof of the rogue intelligence team�s connection to Al-Kassar. If the government tried to cover it up, he would release it. Al-Kassar discovered this and reported McKee�s attempt to make their own "travel arrangements" back to the U.S. through the rogue CIA team in Frankfurt (Covert Action Information Bulletin Number 34, Summer l990).

Although neglected in the American press, there were at least four, and possibly as many as eight, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agency operatives from Beirut aboard Pan Am 103 (ibid.). Could they have been the target? In his book, Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103, David Johnson disclosed that CIA investigators removed a suitcase from the crash site that belonged to McKee. It was returned a few days later, and "found" empty.

The PBS investigative program Frontline reported in January l990 that the bomb was put on the plane at London�s Heathrow Airport where a baggage handler switched suitcases belonging to CIA officer Matthew Gannon. According to the Frontline investigation, the only piece of luggage not accounted for from the flight belonged to Gannon.

Frontline claims the intelligence officials were a "strong secondary target." A May l989 report in the Arabic newspaper Al-Dustur revealed that McKee�s teams� movements were being monitored by David Lovejoy, "an American agent" whom Aviv claims was passing information to the Iranian embassy in Beirut which told the Iranian charge d�affaires of the team�s travel plans (Time, 27 April l992).

Aviv believes that the CIA team in Frankfurt allowed Al-Kassar to continue to smuggle drugs into the U.S. in return for help in arranging the release of the American hostages. The drug operation, he says, went as far back as Spring of l987.

In the Fall of l988, Ahmed Jibril, leader of the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, discovered the operation. So as not to interfere with Al-Kassar�s activities, Jibril originally targeted an American Airlines plane, but the Mossad discovered this and tipped off the airline. When the plan changed and the target became a Pan Am airliner, once again a Mossad agent tipped off German secret police 24 hours before the flight. When a BKA surveillance agent keeping watch over the suitcase supposedly filled with drugs noticed that this time the luggage was a different color and size, he passed this information on to the CIA team, who relayed it to their superiors. They reportedly said, "Don�t worry about it. Don�t stop it � let it go" (Barron's, 17 December l990).

Aviv says the BKA did just that.

A lengthy article on Aviv�s report in the financial weekly, Barron's, quotes one Mideast Intelligence specialist in the government as suggesting, "Do I think the CIA was involved? Of course they were involved. And they screwed up. Was the operation planned by the top? Probably not. I doubt they sanctioned heroin importation � that came about at the more zealous lower levels. But they knew what was going on and didn�t care." The expert went on to say that his agency has "things that support Aviv�s allegation, but we can�t prove it. We have no smoking gun. And until the other agencies of the government open their doors, we will have no smoking gun."

These government agencies didn�t open their doors. In September l989, Pan Am subpoenaed the FBI, CIA, FAA, DEA, National Security Council, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department, requesting documents relating to the case. According to Pan Am�s attorney, Gregory Buhler, "the government quashed the subpoenas on grounds of national security" (ibid.).

Further signs of a cover up were revealed by investigative columnist Jack Anderson, who claimed that President Bush and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher held a transatlantic phone conversation after Bush�s inauguration in which they agreed that the investigation into the case should be "limited" in order to avoid harming the two nations� intelligence communities. Thatcher has acknowledged that the conversation took place, but denied she and Bush conspired to interfere with the investigation (Covert Action Information Bulletin Number 34, Summer l990).

In its investigative report, Time revealed that a former agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Lester Knox Coleman, III, has signed an affidavit which described the CIA-sanctioned operation. In l987, Coleman was transferred to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and was assigned to Cyprus, where he witnessed the growing trade in heroin originating in Lebanon. Coleman�s DEA front in Nicosia was the Eurame Trading Co. Ltd., located near the U.S. Embassy. His job was to keep track of Al-Kassar�s movements and report to the DEA attaché in Cyprus, Michael Hurley. Coleman says he was paid in checks drawn on the BCCI branch in Luxembourg (27 April l992). (Read Trail of the Octopus: Behind the Lockerbie Disaster, Donald Goddard with Lester K. Coleman, 1994 � although this was only published in Great Britain and is a bit hard to get a copy of. ARH.)

A number of investigative journalists believe that Aviv stumbled onto just one piece of a larger puzzle. In August l991, Larry Cohler, a writer for the Washington Jewish Week, reported on a set of secret negotiations which took place between Syria and the United States Government over the release of the hostages and which led to a number of covert trips by Bush to Damascus.

Over an all-you-can-eat Indian lunch one afternoon, Larry told me an incredible story that compliments Aviv�s conclusions.

According to a confidential Pentagon memo that Cohler gained access to, for reasons still unknown, officials in the Reagan Administration failed to pursue a series of Syrian offers to free the American hostages held in Lebanon. The Syrian overtures began in l985 and continued through mid-l989.

A number of former government officials involved in the secret Syrian negotiations say they were never told why the Syrian offers were not acted upon, while others say the Syrian offers were not genuine. Still others claim there was too little preliminary action by the U.S. Government to determine for certain whether the initiatives were genuine or not (San Francisco Chronicle, 21 July l99l).

The center of the controversy was a memo dated 17 March l987, which described a meeting attended by Lawrence Ropka, Jr., a principal deputy of Assistant Secretary of Defense for National Security Affairs Richard Armitage. Written by Ropka�s military assistant, Lt. Andrew Gambara, it claimed that American businessmen and a former executive secretary to Richard Nixon, Robert D. Ladd, told Pentagon officials in December l985 that he had a contact with a Lebanese businessman who introduced him to Fasih Makhail Ashi, a judge in Syria�s inspector general�s office. The judge claimed he had information regarding the fate of the seven American hostages held in Lebanon. Ashi said: "the Syrians were prepared to assist in the release of the hostages if Reagan called Assad and requested his support" (San Francisco Chronicle, 21 July l99l).

Syria�s aims were simple enough: It wanted closer ties with the United States. The memo said that once Reagan called, "Syria would facilitate the release and transfer of the hostages without any quid pro quo from the U.S." It said further that Ladd had already brought this to the attention of Oliver North at the National Security Council (NSC) and that someone would follow it up. A former official in Armitage�s office said the memo was sent to a special government agency, the Vice President�s Task Force on Terrorism, a group of high-ranking officials from the White House, State Department, NSC and the CIA.

Two of Armitage�s aides acknowledged that the Syrian initiative was discussed during a number of interviews with Ladd and his attorney. Ladd said that, after hearing the Syrian offer, he arranged for Ashi to come to the United States; he was then questioned over a period of a number of days by the Task Force. Ashi asserts he spoke in the name of General Ghazi Kenaan, head of Syrian military intelligence, and even passed on details about the fate of kidnapped CIA chief in Beirut, William Buckley.

Ashi returned to Syria but received no reply. In February l987, he contacted Ladd and again said Syria would help the Americans release the hostages. Ladd tried unsuccessfully to persuade government officials to meet in Paris with Ashi. A longtime senior aid to Armitage claimed Ashi could not prove the offer was genuine. "It was my sense there was nothing there," he said (San Francisco Examiner, 21 July l991). "I was told there wasn�t enough information from Ashi to run it upstairs."

However, a former official in Armitage�s office said that he thought Ashi�s overtures should at least be checked out, as the American Government could have sent someone from the Paris embassy to meet him. Ladd said that, only because of his persistence, U.S. intelligence officials eventually agreed to meet with Ashi. Then, in the early part of the Summer of l989 the CIA, without any explanation, canceled the meeting.

Despite the cancellation, Ashi called Ladd back saying that the hostages would be released if Ladd would come to Damascus for them. In August, Ladd was prepared to fly to Damascus when Ashi called back to take back the offer, saying that a tug of war over releasing the hostages had developed between Kenaan and other factions of the Syrian army.

The Congressional investigators did look into why the Administration didn�t follow up on these initiatives and why, when Syria offered to help release the hostages, they were put on hold. They questioned a number of individuals, including a former Pentagon official, Peter Probst, who took part in some of the meetings; he told Cohler that it was one of several he and other officials had with Ladd on the Syrian overture. He said nothing further on the matter.

Could the Administration have been pursuing another path to free the hostages? Cohler learned from different sources that Bush made as many as four secret trips to Damascus in early l986, allegedly offering arms to Syria in return for the hostages. Congressional investigators were told by their sources that in the Spring of l988, in the middle of the presidential campaign, Bush made one final trip to Syria, telling the Syrians that the time was right to make a deal. Then, the Syrians stalled.

At that point, the Syrians might have grasped the leverage they actually had over Bush and wanted to up the ante (In These Times, 7 August l991). It�s also possible that Bush might have been attempting an "October Surprise" of his own by having the hostages delivered to a Republican White House just in time for the Presidential election in November l988.

Aviv says that when these overtures failed, Bush and the CIA turned to Al-Kassar as a middlemen. (A covert deal made with drug smugglers is less likely to be exposed than one with a government or head of state.) Al-Kassar had some experience in these types of operations and at least one victory under his belt: He was used by the French Government in March l988 to free its hostages held in captivity in Lebanon.

George Bush may have wanted the same deal. M

[Joel's book, The Crimes of a President: New Revelations on Conspiracy & Cover-Up in the Bush & Reagan Administrations, is (as its back cover says), "an important document of our times and necessary reading for all who want to know what really went on during the Bush-Reagan years." We highly recommend it.

Joel also publishes The Israel Technology Letter, P.O. Box 387, Zichron Yaacov, Israel 30900; Voice: 972-6-639-6673; Fax: 972-6-639-8880; E-mail: [email protected]]

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