Culprits of Lockerbie a treatise Concerning the Destruction
(d) The aftermath of the shooting down of IranAir 655 Yasir Arafat renounces terror and recognises the State of Israel
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- The knock-on effect of Gaddafi’s renunciation and Arafat’s eclipse: Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC casts around for new sources of oil-money funding
- Jibril seeks a revenge contract from Iran
- U.S intelligence on preliminary meetings in the Lebanon
- Israeli intelligence from infiltrated agents
- The contract is sealed in Teheran
- Diverse accounts of the quantum of bounty
- 2. Operation “Autumn Leaves” (a)
- January 1988: Dalkamoni visits W. Germany
- Mossad alerts the U.S., West Germany and other European nations about a possible retaliatory attack against an American airliner
- The incident that triggered the operation: the attempted assassination of Hans Tietmayer
(d) The aftermath of the shooting down of IranAir 655 Yasir Arafat renounces terror and recognises the State of Israel Following their expulsion from the Lebanon in 1982 the main Palestinian faction, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), had become increasingly beleaguered and marginalised. Yassir Arafat, the PLO Chairman, was therefore driven to project a more statesmanlike image of himself and it was very widely understood that in the nature of realpolitic it would only be a matter of time before he recognised Israel and renounced terrorism. To forestall claims that he was “going soft” he supported the start of the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in late 1987 but he fooled no one. It had quickly become well known, in particular among his most virulent enemies that at least as early as March 1988 he had been conducting an exploratory dialogue with American officials and his march to respectability and the surrender of his terrorist credentials were no longer in any doubt (Emerson, S. and Duffy B., The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation, New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1990, p.103). In November 1988, the Palestine National Council met in Algiers to declare an independent Palestinian state. This was an obvious prelude to Arafat’s announcement that he intended to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York City and the Reagan Administration promptly responded that he would be denied a visa to enter the United States on the grounds that he “knows of, condones and lends support” to acts of terrorism. Determined to address the General Assembly Arafat told a group of American Jews and Swedish officials whom he met in Stockholm two weeks before the destruction of PanAm 103 that the PLO publicly accepted the existence of Israel and “rejected and condemned terrorism.” However, the terms of the announcement were still too ambiguous for the US to consider entering into talks with the PLO and so, nudged by the State Department, Arafat gave a press conference on December 14, seven days before the atrocity, using a form of words which finally proved acceptable to the US government. Recognising “the right of all parties concerned in the Middle East conflict to exist in peace and security . . . including the state of Palestine, Israel and other neighbours” he declared that the PLO “totally and absolutely renounces all forms of terrorism.” The culmination of Arafat’s would-be transition to credible national leader came with the State Department’s announcement that diplomatic channels would now be opened with the PLO. While Arafat’s host of enemies across the Middle East condemned him as a traitor to the Palestinian cause, the Americans, according to the investigative journalists Stephen Emerson and Brian Duffy, were regarded as “having meddled where they had no business [and] somehow . . . would pay for their arrogance” (op. cit., p.102). In the context of a book about Lockerbie they would seem to be asserting a link between the opening of official PLO and US talks and the atrocity but then, in going on to report that on 26 December American officials denied any link, they paraphrase the basis of the denial in terms of apparent endorsement: “no matter how sophisticated a terrorist organisation and how clever its operatives . . . it would have been impossible for any terrorist group to plan and execute a bombing in the two short weeks” after Arafat made his Stockholm declaration (ibid., p.103). So it would seem after all that, at least as far as Lockerbie was concerned, the Americans did not pay for their arrogance in meddling in the Israel-Palestine conflict. On the other hand, Arafat’s eclipse as the champion of non-compromise clearly paved the way for other contenders to step forward in his place. Gaddafi follows suit Arafat was hardly without support in the Arab world and not the only leader to make a show of renouncing terror in the period leading up to the Lockerbie bombing. Considering that Libya was ultimately blamed it is ironic that Colonel Gaddafi had resolved to end the American–led stranglehold on his country with a decision, for the time being and on the surface at any rate, to be seen to abandon his regime’s sponsorship of international terrorism. Gaddafi saw Arafat’s formal renunciation as a perfect opportunity to gain credibility and prestige by supporting his diplomatic offensive and he followed with a formal renunciation of terror himself a few months later. (See, generally, Katz, op cit, pp.186-189.) This therefore was most definitely not the moment for Gaddafi to be involved in blowing American commercial airliners out of the sky. The knock-on effect of Gaddafi’s renunciation and Arafat’s eclipse: Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC casts around for new sources of oil-money funding However, indirectly Gaddafi did have a connection with Lockerbie, although not in the way which has been alleged for over two decades. In prosecuting his war in the neighbouring state of Chad Gaddafi had been receiving logistical support from Ahmed Jibril’s Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command, a radical splinter group of the original PFLP. For this assistance (which included the provision of a small but highly trained commando unit) and in pursuance of his wider policy of sponsoring terrorist groups engaged in attacks on the State of Israel Gaddafi had been making generous payments to Jibril. (According to Emerson and Duffy, US intelligence believed that Gaddafi’s payments to the PFLP-GC had at one time amounted to $20 million a year: op. cit., p.202.) With the termination of hostilities in Chad and Gaddafi’s desire to be seen no longer supporting terrorist factions those payments dried up. Now desperately short of funds to maintain his operation, in particular his cells in Europe, and – importantly – recognising that the moment was ripe to displace the increasingly discredited Arafat as the main hard line figure in the struggle for Palestine the PFLP-GC leader had been casting about for new and plentiful sources of oil money. Jibril seeks a revenge contract from Iran While Mohtashemi regarded the destruction of Flight 655 and the cries for revenge ringing out from the streets of Teheran as a timely opportunity to restore his influence in the face of the march of the moderates, so, equally, it has been noted, the disaster was regarded by Ahmed Jibril, too, as manna from heaven (Katz, op cit, p.194). He would have assumed that Iran preferred to stay at arm’s length from any act of retaliation and would therefore have wished to contract out the job to a third party with relevant expertise, exactly the sort which his group could offer, with years of specialist experience in blowing up airliners in mid-flight. In consequence of the efforts Mohtashemi had made in the Lebanon setting up the Shi’ite fundamentalist movement Hezbollah prior to his ministerial appointment he not only still exercised considerable influence over that faction but also enjoyed close relations with Jibril’s sponsors and patrons, the Assad regime. From Jibril’s point of view he must have seemed the obvious figure to approach. Thus, according to Emerson and Duffy (pp.125-126), shortly after the Vincennes shot down IranAir 655 Israeli intelligence intercepted several messages between Jibril’s headquarters in Damascus and the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards HQ in Lebanon, intelligence on the basis of which the Israelis immediately acted (see below, VII, 2, (a)). Subsquently, it became clear to intelligence analysts in the US National Security Agency (NSA) Office of Signals Intelligence Operations, Group G, section ALLO-34 (Middle East) at Fort Meade Florida, as they reviewed intercepted communications in the first few months of 1989, that from as early as July 4, the very day after the shooting down of IranAir 655, Ahmed Jibril had been trying desperately to arrange a meeting with Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the representatives of Mohtashemi himself, an old associate from the latter’s time in the Lebanon (ibid., pp.100 and 201-202). On the other hand, “[s]o ardent was Jibril in wooing Iran that he was covering all bets, meeting not only with representatives of Mohtashemi and the Revolutionary Guards but with other members of the splintered Iranian leadership as well” (ibid., p.203). However, for the very reason Jibril had targeted Mohtashemi – the latter’s unique relationship with Hezbollah and the Assad regime – Mohtashemi was acknowledged by those fundamentalists in the regime who hankered after revenge as the obvious person to conduct negotiations with Jibril. With some justice it might be said that the two men virtually fell into each other’s arms. Although Mohtashemi was hardly likely to have been engaged on a frolic of his own but, rather, was plenipotentiary for Komeini and the fundamentalist faction, as the highest official with most to gain from striking a blow for extremism he was probably the inspiration and driving force on the Iranian side of the plot which led to Lockerbie. U.S intelligence on preliminary meetings in the Lebanon According to Katz the intercepts relied upon by U.S. analysts were of communications between PFLP-GC bases in Syria and the Lebanon and the meeting was to take place at Ba’albek, the ancient town of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where the Iranian and Syrian backed Hezbollah movement were protected by Syrian forces (op. cit. p.194). It was noted by Emerson and Duffy that within seven to ten days, according to their US intelligence sources, Jibril’s overtures led to a series of meetings which he and his lieutenant Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni held with “Iranian leaders” in the Bekaa (op. cit., p.202). It remains unclear from Emerson and Duffy’s account if these included Mohtashemi himself in person. According to Robert Baer, a retired CIA Middle East specialist who was involved in the Lockerbie investigation, the CIA established that “a few days” after the destruction of the Airbus an officer with the Iranian intelligence service, the Pasadaran, flew to Lebanon where at the Damour refugee camp in Southern Lebanon he had a meeting with Dalkamoni and a Farsi speaking member of the PFLP-GC named Nabil Makhzumi (See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, New York: Crown, 2002, p.201). Baer claimed that Dalkamoni was one of a small group of Islamic fundamentalists in the PFLP-GC who looked to Iran for inspiration and was trusted by Iran as a true believer who could be counted on to keep silent if caught. In a documentary made for the Al Jazeera television channel (Lockerbie: What Really Happened) and aired on March 11, 2014, Baer was more specific than both his memoire and Emerson and Duffy’s “seven to day days”; he asserted that “six days” after the Airbus was destroyed “there was a meeting in Beirut [and] we know where it occurred”. He presumably meant the Damour camp, which is only 10 miles south of Beirut city centre, but the accuracy of his memory is certainly open to challenge since at p.203 of See No Evil he refers, as did Emmerson and Duffy, to the meeting having taken place in the “Biqa.” Israeli intelligence from infiltrated agents According to Katz, Israeli intelligence “operatives” on the ground were monitoring Jibril’s movements in Beirut, the Bekaa, and Damascus and Israel therefore warned the United States about Iranian plans for the tit-for-tat bombing of an American airliner to be carried out on their behalf by Palestinian proxies (op. cit., p.195, citing at n.24 the Israeli weekly Our Israel, July 20, 1990). It could be assumed that Israeli surveillance was supplemented by “deep cover” agents since Israeli intelligence has reportedly always been very successful in infiltrating them into the enemy camp. Katz also notes that Israel was almost certainly not the only state in the region to glean intelligence of PFLP-GC overtures to the Iranians and to Mohtashemi in particular from agents on the ground (op. cit., p.195). These undoubtedly included Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, the Mukabaret, and the Mukabaret of Iraq’s President, Saddam Hussein, then in alliance with the United States. A key intercept Apart from intelligence gleaned by infiltration and miscellaneous intercepts of communications within PFLP-GC and between that faction and various Iranian supported groups in the Lebanon there was one crucial intercept which Emerson and Duffy passed on from their sources in U.S. intelligence. They noted that among the volumes of telecommunication intercepts reviewed in 1989 US analysts found at least one telephone call via an open insecure line from Jibril in the Lebanon (perhaps in the Bekaa) to Teheran in which he used “elliptical language . . . in some sort of code” believed to be a reference to targets in Europe (ibid.). Citing Emerson and Duffy’s book but conceivably adding material from his own independent intelligence contacts Katz reported Jibril outlining a long list of possible American targets in Europe, the most important of which, “understanding the Iranians’ historic penchant for symmetry . . . was an American airliner – preferably a Boeing 747 jumbo jet filled with passengers” (op. cit., p.194). This was a project for which the PFLP-GC was eminently well qualified, with many years specialist experience in planting bombs on aircraft and with technical and tactical know-how lacked by Iran, and from which the Iranian government, in any event, wished to keep itself at arm’s length (Emerson and Duffy, p.203). Emerson and Duffy do not specify with whom Jibril conducted the conversation but Katz stated it was with Mohtashemi in person (op cit. p.194). Significantly, in the light of material declassified two decades later Katz specified the National Security Agency – the NSA – as the body which obtained the intercepts. The contract is sealed in Teheran Although Emerson and Duffy refer only obliquely to “meetings in Teheran” (op.cit. p.203) Katz specifically noted a meeting between Jibril and Mohtashemi in the latter’s Teheran office when what had hitherto been regarded as a matter of concern now “solidified . . . into outright worry” with a handshake which sealed the fate of Pan Am 103 (Katz, op. cit, pp.195-196). Citing a US official involved in the Lockerbie investigation, Emerson and Duffy provided an important pointer as to the approximate date of the meeting (op. cit., p.203): six to eight weeks after the shooting down of the Airbus Mohtashemi gave Jibril the go-ahead. This put the crucial Teheran meeting in the second half of August 1988, an indication corroborating key information furnished subsequently from another source importantly giving the date and identifying at least one other significant person present. Diverse accounts of the quantum of bounty Diverse accounts have circulated as to the quantum of bounty. Although Emerson and Duffy, writing in 1990 (op. cit., p.203) cite “knowledgeable analysts” to assert that there was no hard information about a precise amount that was paid for executing the commission, Neil Livingstone and David Halevy, writing in the same year, reported a rumour that the handshake had resulted in a $2 million advance into a PFLP-GC account in Damascus (Inside the PLO, New York: William Morrow, 1990, p.215). According to an American television station report, the balance, believed to be $8 million, was delivered following the destruction of Pan Am 103 (“The Bombing of Pan Am 103,” Frontline, WGBH-TV, Show No. 802, aired January 23, 1990). In another narrative Iran paid Syria $10 million with Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian President, keeping half the contract sum and paying half to Jibril to execute the mission (John Frick Root, “U.S, Stupor on Pan Am 103 Report,” The Jerusalem Post, May 17, 1990). A Defence Intelligence Agency Report from 1989, declassified in 2010, suggested a rather more modest figure: one million US dollars, a tenth of which was to be paid in advance (DIA Information Report, September 24, 1989, http://www.dia.mil/foia/public-affairs/pdf/ panam103.pdf, uploaded 18 March 2010, cited in Miller, above, n.32). According to Robert Baer’s memoire See No Evil two days after Lockerbie $11 million was transferred to a PFLP-GC account in a Swiss bank in Lausanne, then moved to another of the group’s accounts at the Banque Nationale de Paris and then on to a third account at the Hungarian Trade Development Bank (cited in Ashton, Megrahi, p.278). Baer reported that the Paris account number was found in Dalkamoni’s possession at his arrest on October 26, 1988 (see below). 2. Operation “Autumn Leaves” (a) The run-up Hafez Dalkamoni Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni, Ahmed Jibril’s principal lieutenant who was involved in the revenge negotiation with Iranian Justice Minister Mohtashemi, was born near Nazareth in 1945 but left Israel in his teens, only returning in 1969 in command of a small band of terrorist fighters intent on destroying power lines in Galilee. The explosive device he was carrying detonated prematurely and, seriously injured, he was abandoned by his men and taken prisoner by the Israelis. In hospital his mutilated left leg had to be amputated and he was subsequently sentenced to life for plotting terrorist acts on Israeli soil. He was given his freedom in a large-scale prisoner exchange negotiated with Jibril in 1979 and rapidly rose in the PFLP-GC to become Jibril’s right-hand man (see Emerson and Duffy, pp.118 and 124). January 1988: Dalkamoni visits W. Germany In January 1988, he visited West Germany, staying in Neuss, a suburb of Dusseldorf, with his sister Somaia and her husband Hashem Abassi Kassem in their flat at 16 Isarstrasse. When he registered his address with the local police, as he had to do under German law, he used the alias Hafez Mohammed Hussein but the Federal Criminal Police Office – the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) – were reportedly aware of his true identity and carried out occasional checks on his movements. According to US intelligence sources cited by Emerson and Duffy (op. cit. p.124) the BKA believed he was on a mission to buy weapons for shipment to Lebanon and Syria, an activity which, according to those sources, the W. German authorities permitted in the interests of German business, provided he refrained from targeting sites or persons in Germany or Germans abroad. The authors note that senior German police and intelligence officials have vehemently denied the existence of any such understanding (p.125) and, indeed, that such an understanding seems unlikely may be attested to by the fact that in August 1987 the detonating of a bomb placed on the railway line in the village of Hedemünden in Lower Saxony as an American troop train was passing (with no injuries) was linked by police to Dalkamoni and other suspected members of the PFLP-GC. Then, according to a BKA log dated 2 February, 1988, Israeli intelligence sent a warning that the PFLP-GC had conducted tests and training for the purposes of attacking American military trains in W. Germany. On 26 April a bomb was once again detonated on the railway track at Hedemünden as an American troop train was passing through the village. If there had been an understanding Dalkamoni had clearly violated the terms. It is difficult to believe the Germans would have been so consciously indulgent as to continue to leave Dalkamoni alone and yet Emerson and Duffy note the absence of any evidence of an increased level of surveillance on him (ibid.). The explanation may be nothing more than a lack of due diligence and a belief that there was as yet insufficient evidence to justify stepping up counter-measures. Whether it may have reflected an unconscious resentment against the Americans, with a lingering feeling that their forces were still in occupation after four decades, or similarly adverse feelings towards the Israelis would be purely speculative. In any event Dalkamoni was subsequently indicted, convicted and sentenced for the troop train bombings. Mossad alerts the U.S., West Germany and other European nations about a possible retaliatory attack against an American airliner It has already been mentioned (at VII, 1, (d)) that very shortly after the shooting down of IranAir 655 on 3 July, 1988, Israeli intelligence intercepted messages between Jibril’s headquarters in Damascus and the Sheikh Abdullah Barracks, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards HQ in Lebanon. On the basis of the intercepts Mossad warned the intelligence agencies of several countries, including of course the United States and W. Germany, of an emerging alliance between Jibril, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, and that the PFLP-GC or Iran might launch a retaliatory attack against an American airliner in Europe (Emerson and Duffy, p.126; Katz, Jibril, pp.197-198). U.S. military installations were put on a higher state of alert but, according to Emerson and Duffy, the German authorities initially appear to have taken no additional precautions, with Dalkamoni continuing to move about in Germany under only intermittent observation. That he was not yet being kept under constant surveillance watch will presumably explain why those authors and Robert Baer were able to assert (as already mentioned at VII, 2, (d)) that not many days following the shooting down of IranAir 655 Dalkamoni was in Lebanon taking part in a series of meetings with Iranian representatives. In August 1988 an Israeli handball team was touring W. Germany and the Israelis alerted the Germans that the team might be the target of a terrorist attack (Emerson and Duffy, p.126). Still there was no increased surveillance. The incident that triggered the operation: the attempted assassination of Hans Tietmayer However, everything changed with an attack on the West German political establishment itself. On 21 September, 1988, Hans Tietmayer, state secretary in the Federal German Republic Finance Ministry, was about to be driven to work when masked gunmen opened fire on him with shotguns but missed. Responsibility was claimed by the Khaled Aker Brigade, named after the terrorist who had died in the notorious PFLP-GC powered hang-glider raid on the Israeli town of Qiryat Shemona near the border with Syria the previous November, one of a number of incidents which was widely believed to have heralded the start of the first Intifada. (b) Autumn Leaves commences Around the time of the Tietmayer incident German intelligence operatives had picked up Hafez Dalkamoni’s trail and followed him from Bulgaria to the PFLP-GC’s safe house and their “forward base” for European operations in the Yugoslavian town of Krusevac. Coming on the back of the warnings from Israeli and U.S. intelligence sources that the PFLP-GC was planning a major terrorist offensive to be carried out by its West German cell it was these incidents which finally persuaded the West German authorities to mount a complex and wide-ranging counter-terrorist operation against the PFLP-GC. In early October one of the BKA’s foremost anti-terrorist officers, Manfred Klink, and the Federal Prosecutor in charge of anti-terrorism together set up Herbslaub (“Autumn Leaves”), a major operation involving round-the-clock surveillance by more than seventy BKA agents to be assisted by officials in the BfV (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz – the interior intelligence agency) and the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst – the external intelligence agency) and telephone interception of 16 suspected members of the PFLP-GC across six federal states, with the recording of hundreds of hours of videotape (see Emerson and Duffy, p128; Katz, Jibril, pp.197-198, Ashton and Ferguson, Cover-up of Convenience, p.46). 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