The CBS 60 Minutes program (June 4, 2000) has found an alleged defector from the Iranian intelligence service who says that Iran played a major role in orchestrating the mass murder of 270 people, including 189 Americans, in the Pan Am 103 bombing. But some news accounts of the CBS story gave the misleading impression that Libya had been let off the hook. This is not the case. The import of the 60 Minutes story is that two regimes -- Iran and Libya -- made the bombing happen.
Correspondent Lesley Stahl said if the defector's story can be confirmed, it would not only disrupt the trial of the two libyans charged with that bombing, it could interfere with the Clinton administration's efforts at relaxing and improving relations with Iran. But she should have gone one step further. The story could also interfere with the administration's effort to improve relations with Libya.
The Clinton Administration wants the world to believe that the two Libyan intelligence agents on trial for the bombing are the only ones responsible. This is laughable on its face. The administration approved a secret U.N. letter to Libyan terrorist leader Gadhafi letting him of the hook for his role in the bombing if he would turn over those two scapegoats. The defector told CBS that a group of Libyans had been brought into Iran for training to carry out the Pan Am bombing, but it's not clear if the two now on trial were among this group.
As noted by 60 Minutes, the CIA initially believed that Iran had planned the Pan Am 103 bombing as revenge for the accidental shootdown of an Iranian passenger plane by a U.S. Navy cruiser, the US Vincennes. Iran commissioned a Syrian-based Palestinian group to do the job. But the Palestinian group had its operations disrupted and the job was then turned over to the Libyans. Gadhafi had his own reasons to go after the Americans; his country had been bombed back in 1986 by the U.S. in retaliation over a Libyan-sponsored bombing in West Berlin that killed two American soldiers.
Former CIA employee Robert Baer, who worked with 60 Minutes, said of the Iranian defector: "He's the only person that has tied Libya and Iran into Pan Am 103, into the Lockerbie bombing. This is the first authoritative source that I've heard that connected the two countries together." Referring to the Pan Am trial, he said, "Rather than having two Libyan nationals on trial, we would have two countries on trial." He said the new disclosures could thwart the Clinton administration's efforts to improve relations with both Iran and Libya.
The defector wanted to talk to CBS first, and not the U.S. Government, because he is said to be suspicious of the Clinton Administration. He is also reported to have documents proving what he says is true. But Baer said, "His belief is that if he were to give these documents to the U.S. Government, the U.S. Government would bury them because it would have to react to them." In other words, Clinton doesn't want to face up to state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran or Libya.
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