Edited transcript of interview with Scott Wheeler, chief correspondent for the American Investigator television news magazine program. Wheeler's 1999 documentary, Gunrunner's Suite, exposed a Libyan munitions smuggling operation. He discovered that Libya was trying to smuggle U.S. munitions for a Libyan weapons of mass destruction complex.This interview was conducted by Cliff Kincaid on the Peoples Radio Network on April 6, 2000.

Q: You uncovered through your work a smuggling operation on U.S. soil through Canada and Germany to Libya. What did you find?

A:We discovered through a source that two former U.N. Ambassadors to the Caribbean were looking for certain kinds of U.S. munitions - which were illegal to buy on the open market and illegal to export to particular countries -- so this raised our curiosity. We set up a sting. We wired a hotel room. We met with the former ambassadors who now live in New York City. They handed us a list of items they were searching for...and what they were worth on the black market and it was in the amount of about $35 million. So we continued to pursue it. One of the Ambassadors was concerned and wanted to be an outside participant. We pursued the other people involved in the chain. That led us to Montreal,Canada where there was a front operation there for Libyan equipment and a materials acquisition project. ...Later we traced the key middleman...to Germany. I ultimately met with him wearing a wire. I presented myself as a U.S. arms dealer who could work the black market....They believed my story. I was able to get close to the German middleman who said he had been dealing with Libya on illegal equipment for 22 years.

It was at that same time that Yossef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, had been studying a link between a Libyan weapons of mass destruction complex and the acquisition of equipment through Germany. My antenna went up. This was a weapons of mass destruction complex built in Libya in conjunction with Iraq and Sudan.

Q: You thought the U.S. Government would follow-up. What did they do?

A: They ended up trying to impede my investigation, despite the fact that I was willing to share all of the evidence that I gathered. I thought it was because they were concerned that it was a matter of national security. But it's been 9 or 10 months since we reported our investigation and there's been no arrests, no indictments, never any real hot pursuit of the former U.N. Ambassadors. There was a very foolish and half-hearted attempt at getting the German middleman.

In retrospect, I wonder if the reason could be because the administration was attempting through very quiet and low-key diplomatic activity through the U.N. to reintegrate Libya into the global community.

Q: As part of this documentary, you interviewed the Libyan Ambassador [Abuzed Omar Dorda] to the U.N. He said some interesting things on and off-camera.

A: To my surprise, he seemed very jubilant with President Clinton and the State Department over their handling of Libya now, compared to how they were handled before. That raised serious questions in my mind about what was going on behind the scenes that we could not get to.

Of course, the UN would absolutely not talk to us about this matter and neither would the State Department. By that point, U.S. Customs Strategic Investigations had shut off any discussions we had had with them on the record -- official discussions anyway. I still had contacts with some off-the- record people over there who were good, honest people.

[Libyan Ambassador to the United Nations] A.O. Dorda seemed to be very convincing in his own defense of Libya being involved in the Pan Am 103 case. He said Libya had nothing to do with it. I asked why then did the U.N impose sanctions on Libya? He said they did not choose. It was the special role of the U.S. in the Security Council that caused the sanctions to be put in place and that there was a frenzied period at the time when they adopted the resolution. What's interesting is that he said, behind the scenes, U.N. officials were telling him that they didn't think the sanctions were just either, that they were being pressured by the United States. (30)

 

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