Thank you. A special thanks to Jim Phillips for inviting me here. I'm a journalist who has been in the D.C. area over 20 years. I've covered lots of stories, but the Libya-Pan Am 103 case is the most tragic and maddening. It almost brings me full circle. Back in the 80s, when Pat Buchanan left CNN's Crossfire for the Reagan White House, I co-hosted for him on the show several times, once being in a position to question the then-Libyan Ambassador to the U.N., Ali Treiki, about Libya's role in terrorism. He filibustered, forcing me to say to him, "Mr . Ambassador, will you please shut up." That was the last time I co-hosted Crossfire.
He was after all, an Ambassador, who is supposed to be treated with respect. The same, apparently, goes for the Libyan dictator, Moammar Gadhafi. Well, excuse me.
The American victims of Pan Am 103 were coming home for Christmas and the holidays on December 21, 1988. George Williams, the president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, lost his only son, Geordie, in the blast. He was an Army First Lieutenant. George told me that he and his wife had tried for ten years to have a child.
I've also talked extensively to the Cohens, Daniel and Susan, who lost their only daughter, Theo, a 20-year-old college student who dreamed of being an actress. Rosemary Wolfe lost her 20 year-old step-daughter Miriam, who also dreamed of being an actress. Stephanie Bernstein lost her husband, Michael, who worked in the Nazi-hunting office of the Justice Department, leaving her with two young children, ages 4 and 7 and a half.
Gadhafi, meanwhile, is sitting pretty. A May 2nd Reuters article says, "Libya is now the international oil industry's hottest business prospect," and that business leaders from around he world are "lining up" to shake his hand.
The lesson of Pan is that, if you're an American murdered by terrorists, don't expect the American government to pursue truth and justice. Susan Cohen told me, "It is pain beyond pain to see what the government of our once proud country has become. Dictators can murder us and know they have nothing to fear."
Officially, the State Department says no concessions to, no deals with, terrorists. That's a lie. The State Department used U.N. chief Kofi Annan to make a deal with Gadhafi. It says to him: turn over two scapegoats, who stand a good chance of getting off, or serving only a few years in a country club prison, and we won't go after you or your regime.
The story in the Pan Am trial isn't whether some witnesses have changed their stories, whether the FBI botched some lab work 10 years ago, or whether the Palestinians or the Iranians or the Syrians were involved in some way. All of that is probably true. But the story is why the U.S. and British governments have made a deal with Gadhafi.
In the era of Clinton scandals, this doesn't seem to make it on the radar screen. But think back to Iran-Contra, when it was discovered that the Reagan Administration had been dealing with Iran to get hostages out of Lebanon. That was designed to save lives, but it involved dealing with terrorists. The profits went to support the Nicaraguan Contras. That scandal almost toppled a president.
Here, we have something worse: this isn't an attempt to save lives; rather, it's a deal to sacrifice lives. For what? Oil. Black gold. The profits in this case are going to American oil companies, in particular Al Gore's financial patron, Occidental Petroleum, which funnel money into political campaigns. Other companies include Conoco, Marathon and Amerada Hess.
In the Pan Am case, we have had an exchange of documents between the U.S., Britain, the U.N. and Libya about the terms of the trial, which were dictated by Gadhafi. Some family members were briefed on -- but not given -- the documents, which were approved by the U.S. and Britain. They are designed to protect Gadhafi and his regime from the impact of the trial.
If anyone has any doubt on this, please consult today's (5/4/00) Washington Post, which reports on an interview Gadhafi gave to Britain's Sky TV. It says,
"Gadhafi also asserted that he had made an 'agreement' with the United States and Britain. In return for his turning the suspects over for trial, he said, the court will not raise questions about Libyan government involvement in the bombing. 'The agreement is to try these two suspects...these two suspects only,' he said."
The documents promise that the suspects, as Gadhafi indicated, will not be questioned about the Libyan regime's involvement in this crime or other acts of terrorism. This is reflected in the assurance that the trial is not intended to undermine Gadhafi's regime. The families of the suspects are being held in Libya as "hostages," according to one U.S. official quoted in USA Today, which also guarantees their silence about Gadhafi's complicity in the crime.
Since both Kofi Annan and the State Department refuse to release the documents, I filed a Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, request for them.They consist of a letter from Kofi Annan to Gadhafi, and a related document, an annex to the letter. The State Department refused to release them, saying they were "classified." That is, documents provided to Gadhafi himself could not be provided to the American press, the public or even Pan Am family members. We believe they were classified after State received my Freedom of Information Act request.
Perhaps if they're stored on the laptop computer stolen from the State Department we'll finally see them dribble out. Then Albright will really be furious. I mean, you can't give documents to the American people and the press that belong in the hands of Moammar Gadhafi. Why that's a breach of security!
My exchange of correspondence with the State Department is included in my report, "Getting Away With Mass Murder," available at the following web site: www.usasurvival.org
The Bush Administration originally botched the case, but the Clinton Administration has turned a disaster into an obscenity. True to form, Clinton pursued appeasement and brought in the U.N.
You might think Congress would respond on behalf of victims of terrorism. Far from it, only one staffer at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would even return one of my repeated phone calls, to rebuff my insistence that the Congress do its job and subpoena the "classified" documents in the case outlining the deal with Gadhafi.
The House International Relations Committee has been slightly better, but still they refuse to hold the hearings and issue the subpoenas required to expose the Administration's dirty deal.
Kofi Annan's legal adviser has now told Gilman in a letter that the documents are no big deal, and won't affect the trial. This is the same Kofi Annan who has appointed as an official U.N. observer to the trial a man who served as a legal adviser to the Libyan mission to the U.N.
Do you smell "fix?"
If the documents have no relevance or significance, why not release them?
By the way, the U.N. refused to release a copy of that letter to Gilman to me, saying it was confidential. I got a copy from Gilman's office.
The U.N. is sensitive because they know that Annan, under the prodding of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, went way beyond what was authorized in U.N. resolution 1192. That only permitted him to help make physical arrangements for the transfer of the suspects to Holland. He went beyond that, making a deal letting Gadhafi off the hook for the bombing.
Annan probably figured that, if he could do a good deed for Saddam Hussein of Iraq, why not do so for Moammar Gadhafi of Libya? This is the same Kofi Annan who was recently in Havana praising Castro's record on "human development" for the Cuban people. Do we see a pattern here?
The unfolding deal on Libya is evident in the decision by the State Department to review the ban on travel to Libya. This announcement, taken just a few weeks before the trial, sent Gadhafi a powerful message. The next step is removing Libya from the State Department list of sponsors of terrorism. All of these steps may be outlined in the documents sent to Gadhafi.
Senate Democrats, like Kennedy, Lautenberg and Torricelli, have actually been much better on this issue than Republicans. Lately, though, Senator Bob Smith, an independent conservative Republican, has taken up the issue, demanding the documents from Secretary of State Albright and declaring that the trial appears to be "a dangerous sideshow designed to permit Gadhafi to remain in power and enable the U.S. to establish diplomatic relations with the regime."
As I say, the powers that be in the Senate and the House have refused to use their subpoena power to get the incriminating documents. If you call over to the Helms committee, they'll tell you that they recently passed a resolution in the Senate on the matter. But it's non-binding; it essentially asks the Administration to consult with Congress as it proceeds with its pro-Libya policy.
A subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations is today holding a hearing on U.S. foreign policy toward Libya, but it's too little, too late. Critics of the policy, including Pan Am family members, had to ask to be included as witnesses.
We're told that the Scottish prosecutors have seen the incriminating documents and that they won't make any difference to their case. Being part Scotch-Irish myself, I wish I could give the benefit of the doubt to the Scottish prosecutors. But the fact is that the prosecutors have emphasized that the trial deals with two men, period. In addition, the English run the foreign policy of Scotland. The Scots are dependent on the English for the evidence necessary to press the case against Gadhafi and his agents. The May 23, 1999, London Sunday Times revealed that the British government has secret intelligence information implicating Gadhafi personally in the bomb plot. Yet the British have already restored relations with Gadhafi and have prohibited the release or publication of that evidence.
In view of that, Secretary of State Albright's claim that the Scottish prosecutors will pursue the evidence wherever it leads is false. The truth is that the administration has devised a new way of dealing with state sponsors of terrorism. The offending government is taken off the hook, in exchange for the turnover of some low-level officials who stand a good chance of beating the rap. This is what is happening in Pan Am 103, and the Clinton Administration is trying to negotiate a similar deal with Iran over the bombing of Khobar Towers.
The new counter-terrorism policy can be summarized as, "Let's Make a Deal." In Gadhafi's case, he even receives a "get out of jail free" card. He's laughing at America and counting the dollars -- money he'll use to continue work on chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Shame on Congress for letting Clinton get away with it. But, then again, Congress will be counting the dollars, too -- campaign contributions from the oil companies for making it possible. And we know for sure that the next time Gadhafi strikes America, using weapons of mass destruction, 189 dead Americans will be a very low figure indeed. (30)
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