Susan Lindauer - Libya - Lockerbie - War on Terror

I want to revisit Libya's admission of guilt in the Lockerbie PanAm flight 103 explosion.

Recently, when I posted about Andrew Card's cousin, Susan Lindauer, being arrested as an Iraqi spy, I had a moment's question about this quote:

Gary Gambill, editor of the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, an online publication dealing with Arab politics, said Lindauer sent him a copy of her 1998 deposition in litigation related to the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. In the deposition, she said Libyan officials had been wrongly accused of orchestrating the bombing and that Libya was entitled to "financial compensation for the economic harassment her people have endured because of these blatantly false accusations." He said her arrest "raises questions about the validity of her deposition and its apparent attempt to exonerate Libya."

What I was questioning in my mind at the time was why Ms. Lindauer's arrest as an Iraqi spy would cast doubts on her information about Libya. It turns out, from the commments Ms. Lindauer is reported to be making, that she does seem a little wacky, but that's a different reason for suspicion. From things I am reading today, it looks more like this was an opportunity simply to discount her testimony about Libya - even though it doesn't make any logical sense.

Now, Libya, as you know, has recently decided to behave according to American and British design, ostensibly, according to the Bush administration, because we shocked and awed the crap out of Qadafi with our super might in Iraq.

A better reason is, of course, offered in my post in January that Qadafi saw his chance to get sanctions lifted or avoid paying out the Lockerbie settlement - and perhaps both.

Libya's prime minister said his country wants to be rewarded for opening up to nuclear inspections, and stressed that the United States must lift sanctions by May 12 or his government won't have to pay $6 million to each family of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing victims, according to an interview published Friday

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I also wondered about this quote I posted back in November:

Monday 17 NOV: PRISON conditions given to the Lockerbie bomber were yesterday criticised for being "comfortable" after a newspaper published pictures showing his cell. Tory MSP Bill Aitken said he was angry at the apparent luxury in which Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was being kept at Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison. The News of the World carried pictures of the former Libyan agent inside his living quarters, which is set apart from the rest of the prison.

Why such cushy treatment?

And then there was this barely reported charge of the Libyan prime minisiter in February, which was quickly retracted by other Libyan officials:

Relatives of the Lockerbie bombing victims voiced surprise after Libya's prime minister said his country played no part in the atrocity. Shukri Ghanem told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that damages were being paid to "buy peace" and escape sanctions.

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What's going on?

This small chapter from William Blum's Killing Hope may shed a little light on the subject.

On 21 December 1988, PnAm flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, more than half of them Americans. Five months later, the State Department announced that the CIA was "confident" that the villains who planted the bomb were members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC), led by Ahmed Jibril, based in Syria, and hired by Iran to avenge the American shooting down of an Iranian airliner. Though little could be done to apprehend Jibril and his corhots, this remained the US government's official, certain, and oft-repeated judgment, even though Syria and Iran were viewed as the keys to the release of Western hostages held in Lebanon. Then, in 1990, something strange happened. The United States was preparing to go to war against Iraq, when who should pop up as one of its allies, sending troops to Saudi Arabia in the jihad against Saddam Hussein? None other than the terrorist-haven land of Syria. And whose cooperation in the war was Washington angling for? The wicked Iran. This would not do. In early October, American officials declared that newly uncovered evidence indicated that Libyan intelligence agents may have assembled and planted the bomb. But this, they were quick to point out, did not clear Iran, Syria or the PFLP-GC of complicity. After the war, little by little, a putative case against Libya was leaked, until 14 November 1991 when two Libyan intelligence operatives were indicted in absentia as the perpetrators. The head of Justice Department's criminal division asserted the same day that there was no evidence to link either Syria or Iran to the bombing "and he brushed aside suggestions that the conclusion had been influenced by the United States' desire for improved relations with Syria." Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages held in Lebanon were released along with the most prominent hostage, Britisher Terry Waite. And the evidence against the two Libyans? Two pieces of metal the size of fingernails, allegedly from electronic timing devices. One has to read the detailed account of what the case against Libya rests upon to appreciate its full shakiness. Moreover, in December 1993, a BBC program, "Silence Over Lockerbie", presented new findings which cast significant doubt about the case against Libya and indicated that Britain and the United States may have fingered Libya to divert suspicion from Syria and Iran. The key new information was that the Swiss manufacturer of the electronic timers changed his previous story which had named Libya as the only purchaser of such devices. He now remembered that he had sold some of the timers to Eat Germany as well. There were close links between the East German secret police and the PFLP-GC and other Arab terrorist groups. Even more significant, an engineer with the Swiss company declared that the had told the Lockerbie inevetigators about the East German connection in late 1990, which means that the international investigators knew that their accusation against Libya had a large, if not fatal, hole in it either before the accusation was made public in October, or shortly thereafter. "No German judge could, with the present evidence, put the two suspects into jail," declared Voker Rath, German government prosecutor and specialist in Lockerbie, in 1994. -- pp. 288-289

Tangled. Tangled. Tangled.

As for Washington, you couldn't ask for a less reliable friend. Libya should be careful.

But I suppose Libya knows that.

What is left unanswered in all this dealing is who brought down flight 103. If it were indeed Iran through Syria, as the CIA originally claimed, but everyone is simply okay with having Libya take the blame, what does that tell us about anything that's happening in the war on terror?