The Turkish baggage handler's extreme self-confidence was founded
on 24 months of experience, during which this routine had been
followed weekly without interruption. The suitcase with the
drugs would arrive by car at the parking lot. The employee would
take the bag into the workers area, and from there it would
continue into the hold of an American aircraft which would carry
it across the ocean.
The Turk and the other members of the smuggling ring knew that
everything they did was under the watchful eye of undercover
agents of the CIA and the BKA [Office of Criminal Investigation]
-- the West German security service. Both intelligence services
permitted the "secure drug channel" to operate undisturbed
because with the help of the head of the ring, Mundhir al-Qasr,
they obtained a lot of intelligence about what was happening
within the terrorist organizations in Lebanon.
At the same time,
al-Qasr promised to act for the release of the American hostages
that were being held in various secret locations in Lebanon at
the time. The BKA and CIA have denied outright the existence of
the "secure drug channel" described above, which operated under
their supervision, as it were.
Recently, this highly expected denial has taken on far greater
significance than anticipated. A few weeks ago, 'Abd-al-Basit
'Ali al-Megrahi and al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah -- the two Libyan
intelligence officers suspected of blowing up the plane -- were
extradited to the Netherlands to stand trial in the
international court in The Hague. Against this background, the
suspicion that it was the drugs route that permitted the
explosive charge to be placed on the Pan Am plane, which took
the lives of 270 civilians, might serve the case for the defense.
The person providing substance to this worrying theory is former
Israeli Yuval Aviv, author of "Gideon's Sword", who describes
himself as a former Mosad agent. Aviv, who today runs a large
and successful private international intelligence and
investigations office, prepared for Pan Am--before the airline
went bankrupt--a 27-page intelligence report detailing the
"secure drug channel."
The indictment submitted to the Hague court against the two
Libyan officers is the result of an intensive American
investigation. This investigation was conducted by the CIA, and
for this reason the finger wasn't pointed in the direction that
Aviv mentions. It accused the Libyans.
The investigation found
that the Libyan officers put the suitcase containing a
sophisticated 'Semtex' bomb onto the plane. The suitcase
exploded in the skies above Scotland after it had flown
unaccompanied from Malta to Frankfurt, passed through security
checks, was transferred to a Pan Am Boeing 727 flying from
Frankfurt to Heathrow, was again transferred to a Pan Am jumbo
jet, and only exploded after the plane had taken off on its way
to New York's Kennedy Airport.
It was not difficult for American investigators to find reasons
for a Libyan bomb to be planted on an American plane. A number
of incidents prior to the explosion could have served as a cause
for the tragic attack. The first incident took place two years
before the Lockerbie disaster. The Americans launched a lethal
attack on a chemical weapons production plant in Libya. The
second incident took place seven months before the disaster. All
the passengers aboard an Iranian 'Airbus' were killed as a
result of an unfortunate American mistake. The civilian plane
was shot down by troops aboard the American warship "Vincennes"
that was sailing in the Persian Gulf. In the wake of the
incident, all intelligence services in Europe and North America
went on high alert in anticipation of a revenge attack.
But this is not the direction to which Aviv is pointing. In a
special report that he prepared for Pan Am, Aviv claims that the
suitcase bomb was placed aboard the plane on the "secure drug
channel" that the CIA intentionally ignored. According to him,
the route's code name was "Korea." According to this version,
American intelligence elements decided to maintain a drug route
under their supervision. There were two reasons for this
decision.
The first: There were those in the CIA who maintained that when
in Rome, do as the Romans; that is to say, the best way to
obtain information in Lebanon was by making contact with and
getting close to the centers of power in the drug trade, and
from there to vital intelligence sources.
Another reason was the
massive flood of drugs coming out of the Lebanese Al-Biqa' and
flowing into the United States along hundreds of routes. The
little that the CIA could do was to try and keep tabs on a chosen
drug route and in this way catch the major drug dealers in the
United States.
The lucky person chosen by the CIA was a colorful
character on the Middle East scene: Mundhir al-Qasr. Al-Qasr
born in 1947 in Syria, is married to the sister of 'Ali 'Issa
Duba, who was head of Syrian intelligence at the time. At the
same time, he had an affair with Raja, daughter of Rif'at
al-Asad, and with Georgina Rizzaq, a former Miss Lebanon, who
was married to 'Ali Hasan Salamah, the terrorist liquidated by
the Mosad in the seventies.
Through his family and social ties, al-Qasr would travel freely
in Lebanon. This route made him so wealthy that he ceased his
terrorist activity and did everything to protect the goose that
lay the golden eggs that had landed in his lap. So much so,
according to Aviv, that he did everything to prevent a terrorist
act being carried out via Frankfurt Airport. Aviv claims that
for this reason, al-Qasr and his associates were the ones who
issued the warning about the impending terrorist action at the
airport two days before the Lockerbie explosion.
But it was al-Qasr, the person who wanted to protect his source
of income, who unwittingly enabled the suitcase bomb to be put
on the plane. How did this happen? According to Aviv, al-Qasr
had a courier by the name of Khalid Ja'far, the leader of a drug
ring in Lebanon's Al-Biqa', who would regularly fly the
Frankfurt-New York route with suitcases full of drugs. According
to Aviv, Ja'far fell into a trap laid for him by Ahmad Jibril.
Aviv claims that Jibril had an account to settle with the
Americans over their intensive actions against the terrorist
organizations in Lebanon, and he came to the conclusion that the
drug route was his opportunity to plant a bomb on an American
plane.
Among other things, the report Aviv gave Pan Am says that on 13
December 1988, Ja'far was invited to a secret apartment in Bonn
where he met Jibril. There was another man in the apartment with
Jibril. According to the report, this man was called the
"professor" -- a Libyan citizen who specialized in assembling
sophisticated bombs. The report claims that Jibril proposed that
Ja'far smuggle an additional consignment for him, all the income
from which would "serve the sacred cause." Ja'far agreed without
knowing that he had thus sealed his own fate and that of 269
other people.
According to Aviv, Ja'far was given a suitcase similar to the
drug suitcase that was regularly carried through the Pan Am
cargo terminal. This suitcase also held a "Toshiba"
radio-cassette containing 568 grams of "Semtex" explosives. Four
similar explosive charges (including "Toshiba" radio-cassettes)
were seized a few months earlier in a secret terrorist apartment
in Germany.
In order to prove this version of events, Aviv even points to
the existence of a recording of a conversation between an
employee at Frankfurt Airport who was involved in the drug route,
and a security service official who was his supervisor: "On the
day of the disaster, the employee noticed that the suitcase that
arrived was slightly different in shape and color. He contacted
the man from the security service, consulted with him about the
suitcase, and was instructed 'to let the suitcase pass.' At the
time, all Pan Am employees' conversations were recorded because
of a wave of unauthorized private calls. As a result, that
fateful conversation was recorded and will be played before the
judges' bench."
Aviv's involvement with the Lockerbie affair got him into hot
water. Irrespective of whether this fact points to the truth of
his conclusions or not, one cannot ignore the fact that in 1995,
a short time after the contents of the report he submitted to
Pan Am were leaked to the press, Aviv was arrested by FBI agents
under suspicion of defrauding senior 'General Electric'
officials and of receiving money for work he was supposed to
have carried out.
During the trial, it transpired that the alleged episode took
place five years earlier. 'General Electric' hired Aviv's
services to conduct security checks on the Caribbean islands
prior to a vacation by the company management. The vacation went
ahead as planned and passed without incident. 'General Electric'
neither complained about Aviv nor did it seek any investigation
against him.
According to Aviv, he discovered that at least two
of the FBI agents who conducted the investigation against him
over the 'General Electric' affair were involved in the Pan Am
investigation. His lawyer told the court: "In 20 years of
practice, I have never seen such dedication by official
investigative bodies looking into a civil matter that took place
five years ago."
At the end of 1996, Aviv was acquitted of all charges. A federal
jury in the Manhattan court decided that Aviv had been set up
"in the wake of his position in the Pan Am report." The judge
said for the record: "The conduct of the FBI investigation, and
the fact that it did not arise from any external complaint leads
to the impression that the investigation arose for other
reasons, and the only plausible reason is the investigation (by
Aviv) into the Lockerbie affair."
Aviv himself told the 7 Yamim supplement that while the trial
against him was in progress, FBI agents came to many of his
clients and tried to discourage them from continuing to use his
services. "They made a big effort to hang me out to dry," he
says. "All my contracts with government elements, including
contracts with the FBI itself, were put on ice. The FBI tried to
deny these in the court. Their problem was that I had documents
attesting to the fact that they used my services from 1982 to
1989. The judge asked them sarcastically how they could claim
that I was a fraud after they had worked with me for years."
The British journalist John Ashton is working on a full-length
feature on the Lockerbie episode for a BBC subsidiary. He
pointed to Yuval Aviv as one of a chain of people who had
investigated the affair and been harmed by it. Ashton: " In June
1996, I published a report in the newspaper Mail on Sunday about
the attempts to harm various people because of their position on
the Lockerbie affair. Apart from Aviv, I pointed to a long list
of publishers, film directors, and movie-theater owners who
received threats, had their businesses broken into, and in one
case set on fire, after they had expressed a willingness to
screen a film or publish a book that supports this theory. If
everything they say is invented, it is hard to understand why
someone is trying to discourage people from expressing their
view on the matter."
John Ashton says that the most detailed evidence about drug
activity along this route was supplied by the journalist Lester
Coleman. After writing the book "Trail of the Octopus", which
deals with the blowing up of the plane above a Scottish town,
his life became hell.
In the mid-eighties, Coleman, 43, was an
adviser to the Cyprus arm of the US Government's Drugs
Enforcement Administration. In the course of his work in Cyprus,
Coleman gained information that CIA personnel were involved in
giving the green light to drug smuggling from Lebanon.
Coleman was fired from the DEA, according to him, after he got
into a conflict with his supervisors who ignored his warnings
about the lack of professionalism of various agents who were
active in Lebanon, and about the fact that Lebanese agents
turned into double agents and betrayed their American
dispatchers. Administration officials claimed that Coleman's
statements were unfounded and that he was fired for
inappropriate conduct. In an interview with the British
journalist Ashton, Coleman said that despite his suspicions, he
didn't dare think of a link between the American drug route in
Cyprus and the Lockerbie disaster.
According to him, certain things happened that aroused his
suspicion: There were rumors among the volunteers searching for
wreckage from the Pan Am plane about the discovery of large
quantities of heroin. At the same time, Coleman learned that
among the plane's victims was an American of Lebanese origin
named Khalid Ja'far. Coleman claims that he knew Ja'far from his
activities in the CIA station in Cyprus, and that he was a key
figure in the drug route.
Aviv's stories about the Lockerbie affair, as well as other
evidence that supports his version, do not really impress the
Israeli intelligence community. The main dispute centered around
Aviv's security past. He describes himself as a former Mosad
agent and refuses to elaborate. ("I wish to have the opportunity
to continue coming to Israel without getting into trouble;
therefore, I do not engage in discussions about my past"), but
many former members of Israel's security apparatus describe him
as a charlatan and claim that he has no idea about intelligence
matters and flight security.
According to them, Aviv never served in the Mosad and was simply
an El Al selector who was fired after a few months' work. They
claim that most of what he writes in the report was previously
published in the world press.
Two well-known Israeli
intelligence officials with an impeccable reputation told 7
Yamim that they have serious reservations about Yuval Aviv and
described him as a "professional Walter Mitty." Another person,
who is still working for the Mosad, says that as far as he knows,
Aviv did in fact carry out many operations for the Mosad, and he
should be recognized for them.
A clue to Aviv's possible connections with the security services
can be found, of all places, in the FBI documents that were
deposited with the federal court in Manhattan during the trial
against him. Two facts can clearly be ascertained from the
uncensored parts of these documents: one is that for a long time
the American security services suspected that Aviv was a Mosad
agent in the United States. The second is that for a number of
years Aviv was a paid adviser to two American investigative and
intelligence agencies.
Whatever Aviv's security history, everyone is agreed that both
the Mosad and El Al's security department believed that it was
only a matter of time before a bomb would be placed on a plane
departing from Frankfurt Airport. It transpires from a
comprehensive research paper written by three of Israel's most
senior former security services personnel (Yitzhaq Yafet, a
former senior member of the General Security Service [GSS] and
head of El Al's security department; Avino'am Avivi, who held a
senior position in the GSS; and Colonel (Reserve) Yosi Langozky)
that Pan Am's security set-up looked like an open invitation to
terrorism. Yuval Aviv agrees with them: "It was clear to any
amateur that this company's security arrangements existed only
on paper."
But the main point is that too many people learned about the
"secure drug route" at the airport. During the two weeks prior
to the bomb being placed on the American plane, at least two
warnings were given by the Mosad. British Member of Parliament
[MP] Tam Dalyell claims that one of the warnings that was
received at the beginning of December 1988 was most detailed. In
the wake of this warning, an official document of one
intelligence organization said: "A terrorist act by Palestinians
who are not members of the PLO can be expected against American
targets in Europe, including Pan Am and US military
installations."
A senior Israeli intelligence official says: "I
don't know if the 'Korea' operation is a product of Aviv's
hallucinations, but the involvement of espionage organizations
in the international drug trade is not his private invention nor
a unique CIA innovation. Over the years there have been several
suggestions that American espionage elements have closed their
eyes, facilitating the drug trade at various times along the
Turkey-Lebanon-Cyprus-United States route."
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