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also an extremely close friend of al-Kassar. It is widely believed Am overalls, set about ransacking the crash sight in a desperate that the influx of 30,000 Syrian troops into the Beqa'a Valley dur- search for incriminating evidence. For two days they searched for ing the 1980s had as much to do with protecting the lucrative the luggage of the dead DIA team and frantically sought the suit- opium fields as with separating Lebanon's warring factions. case containing the heroin shipment. One suitcase was recovered, Al-Kassar agreed to negotiate on behalf of the US for the flown out and later returned empty, to be 'rediscovered' by the release of the US hostages. His side of the deal was to get an forensic team scouring the wreckage. It belonged to Major agreement that the US would protect the Syrian drugs pipeline Charles McKee. Curiously, one unidentified body was snatched that shipped through Frankfurt airport to the USA. The CIA from the wreckage and never returned. allegedly established a group, known as "CIA One", which would Les Coleman believes it would be wrong to blame the CIA in oversee and protect the drugs route. If publicly discovered, the toto for the Lockerbie atrocity. Intelligence outfits do not work as response was to say that the 'protected' drugs shipments were part — cohesively as many outsiders believe. There is a great deal of of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 'sting' operation, rivalry and fragmentation at work. DCI Bill Casey had plenty of dedicated to tracking distribution networks inside the USA. detractors inside the monolith he directed. Some worked hard, Unknown to North and his cohorts, there was also a secret five- feeding their favourite journalists with unattributed information man DIA team working in Lebanon. The team, headed by Major _ that was designed to damage Casey and, hopefully, lead to his Charles "Tiny" McKee, was independently removal. Others were known to operate as tasked with locating and rescuing the US part of a small and secretive core that has hostages. During the course of his work, ous variously been identified as "the Enterprise" McKee stumbled across al-Kassar's CIA Sitting on vast reserves of or "the Octopus". The latter is said to oper- Greed in eon Repoinehis | crude oil is also a weaned in akan pol raged at the lack of response, McKee booked significant factor for laundered money and any other commodity Kassarleared of Mekevs activites and was | Libya's treatment at the | tr rocseds of ese legal activities are also informed of his flight plans. Anxious hands of the US. siphoned back into the 'black' budgets of the that McKee would put a stop to his activities, CIA, or fill the pockets of participants, or he contacted his CIA One handlers who, in The fact that most of this both, isn't entirely clear. turn, communicated with their ‘control’ in oil flows to Western Despite Coleman's caution, the CIA's infa- Washington. . . mous history—stretching over 50 years— European oil companies clearly suggests that US foreign policy clearly doesn't cut much and private gain 'coalesce' into a game ice with the US plan that benefits various parties. . Some ‘intelligence watchers' point to Rivalry b h the wealth of some long-term CIA offi- Iva ry etween is. cers and ask how they amassed their European and U business elite is as intense as ever. CONSPIRACY ON THE LOCKERBIE TRAIL Against this insidious backdrop, other, unrelated, covert plans were being hatched. Following the July 1988 shoot-down of an Iranian Airbus by the US Navy battlecruiser Vincennes, hard- line Iranian ayatollahs demanded swift retaliation for the 290 lives lost. They hired the Syria-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command (PFLP-GC), for a tit-for-tat attack. Led by Ahmed Jibril, and with ANTI-LIBYA CAMPAIGN a US$10 million Iranian bounty, the By attributing the responsibility for PFLP-GC searched for a suitable target. An expert at bombing Lockerbie to Qadhafi, the US administration was following in the aircraft, Jibril soon learned of al-Kassar's Frankfurt-based dope well-worn footsteps of many predecessors in similar situations. fortunes based on salaries of US$60,000 a year. It is a valid ques- tion that can equally be addressed to former and serving politicians and senior government bureaucrats. CORRUPTION BEHIND THE pipeline and persuaded al-Kassar to place a bomb inside the hero- It's a technique as old as the hills. Caught virtually red-handed in in-laden suitcase. Pan Am Flight 103 was scheduled for destruc- massive illegality, the first thought is to cast around for a suitable tion. scapegoat. Meanwhile, Germany's Federal Police, the Bundeskriminalamt As Lester Coleman said when I first spoke to him, Qadhafi is an (BKA), received a warning that a bomb was to be substituted for easy target. Independently-minded and unwilling to align himself the dope shipment aboard Flight 103. They alerted CIA One, who with US Middle Eastern policy, he became a target of the US. passed the information on to their Stateside ‘control’. The reply His past bankrolling of 'terrorist' causes—and one-time expan- came back: "Don't worry about it. Don't stop it. Let it go." sionism—also did him no favours. It's a case of, "If you're not for On 21 December 1988, Pan Am's Jumbo 747, "Maid of the us, you're against us." Seas", exploded high above the Scottish village of Lockerbie. All Sitting on vast reserves of crude oil is also a significant factor 259 passengers perished. A further 11 people died as wreckage for Libya's treatment at the hands of the US. The fact that most of from the aircraft hurtled down to earth. this oil flows to Western European oil companies clearly doesn't Within hours, a host of CIA agents arrived at the crash scene. It cut much ice with the US. Rivalry between the European and US is thought that the CIA search team arrived via helicopter from a business elite is as intense as ever. US oil companies can't be US Special Forces facility located at Machrihanish, on the Mull of _ pleased that they are effectively out of the picture. In that sense Kintyre.’ The speed of their arrival suggests they had foreknowl- Continued on page 92 edge of the bombing. In any case, the CIA agents, dressed in Pan significant factor for Libya’s treatment at the hands of the US. European and US business elite is as NEXUS - 37 crude oil is also a | oil flows to Western Rivalry between the intense as ever. Continued on page 92 FEBRUARY - MARCH 1997