SPEAKER_07 0:20

Days before the 34th anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing, a Libyan man accused by the United States of being the bomb maker has been taken into U.S. custody. 270 people died when a Pan Am flight exploded over the Scottish borders just before Christmas, 1988. As our North America Sarah Smith reports, the suspect is expected to appear in a US federal court tomorrow.

SPEAKER_05 0:44

Just a few days before Christmas in 1988, the town of Lockerby was suddenly engulfed in flame. Pan Am Flight 103 was flying from Heathrow to New York when over southwest Scotland, a massive explosion in the cargo hold brought it down in seconds. All 259 passengers and crew died, most of them American, as did 11 others when wreckage fell on their homes. It remains the most deadly terrorist attack in British history. This is the man the U.S. authorities accuse of making the bomb, Abu Ageila Massoud, seen here in Libya where he had been jailed for unrelated crimes. Two years ago, the U.S. Attorney General formally charged Massood with making the device which brought down Flight 103. The American and the Scottish authorities have always stressed that they would never stop trying to bring other people to justice. It was five years ago that the FBI learned that Abu Aguila Massoud had confessed to a Libyan official that he had built the Lockerbie bomb. Now he's finally been arrested and is being extradited to the United States. His sister, Kara Weiss, welcomes the prospect of a court case in the US.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

It is something that we have been fighting for for over three decades. So I think there is a sense of finally justice for our loved ones.

SPEAKER_05 2:26

Some of the victim's families still have doubts about his conviction and about the arrest of Masood.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

First of all, why is it taking so long? Secondly, what's he doing in America? This was a crime committed on Scottish, well, above Scottish soil, but which came to land on Scottish soil. Therefore, it's the responsibility of the Scottish legal system.

SPEAKER_05 2:55

With the prospect of a new trial looming, the 34th anniversary of the bombing will be commemorated quietly in Lockerbie in a few days' time. Sarah Smith, BBC News, Washington.

SPEAKER_07 3:07

And let's go to Lockerbie now because our Scotland correspondent Alexandra Mackenzie is there. And it is poignant timing, Alexandra, with the anniversary just days away.

SPEAKER_06 3:18

It absolutely is. Many people here in Lockerby still vividly remember that night. It was just days before Christmas, almost 34 years ago. Many people would have been flying home for Christmas. Now some of the relatives come back here to Lockerby to visit that memorial. Some of the victims were from the UK, and 11 people died here on the ground in Lockerbie. Now, some of the UK families don't believe that Libya was involved. They don't believe that McGrawie was guilty, and they do not want to see a trial on American soil. So for some of those UK families, yes, this is a development today, but not one that they believe is going to bring the closure that they've been seeking for many years.

SPEAKER_07 4:08

Alexandra, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. You just heard a breaking news story from BBC News on December 11th, 2022, announcing the capture of the suspected bomb maker of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie almost 34 years to the day of the bombing in 1988. In this episode, we are joined by two distinguished guests, Fred Burton and Mark Zayd, and we'll be discussing counterterrorism, the intelligence community, the Lockerby investigation spanning more than three decades, and the quest for American justice. Due to the sensitivity of these topics, listener discretion is advised. Fred Burton is a former police officer, special agent for the diplomatic security service of the U.S. State Department, and a New York Times bestselling author. He served on the front lines of high-profile investigations like the attempted hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan in 1986, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, the hunt for and arrest of the mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the 1988 plane crash that killed a U.S. ambassador and the president of Pakistan, and the search for Americans kidnapped by Hezbollah in Beirut, Lebanon. His best-selling books include his personal memoir, Ghost, Confessions of a Counter-Terrorism Agent, and his other books, Chasing Shadows, a Special Agent's Lifelong Hunt to Bring a Cold War Assassin to Justice, Under Fire, The Untold Story of the Attack in Benghazi, and his fourth book, Beirut Rules: The Murder of a CIA Station Chief, and Hezbollah's War Against America. There are links to purchase these books in the episode description. Fred also consults with Fortune 500 companies on security developments and how to keep their personnel and business safe as the executive director of the Ontik Center for Protective Intelligence. He was selected by Security Magazine as one of the most influential people in security in 2021, and his nonfiction books have been featured in fictional thrillers by Brad Thor, Jack Carr, and Tom Clancy's Target Acquired by Don Bentley. Fred's website is officialfredburton.com. There is a link in the episode description. Mark Zayd is an American attorney based in Washington, D.C., with a practice focused on national security law, freedom of information constitutional claims, and government accountability. Many of his cases are very well known, such as suing Libya for the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which resulted in a $2.7 billion settlement, the largest of its kind against a foreign government for terrorist activities. Mark often represents former and current federal employees, intelligence and military officers, whistleblowers, and others who have grievances or have been wronged by agencies of the United States government or by foreign governments. He also regularly represents members of the media. Mark teaches the DC Bar continuing legal education classes on defending security clearances and the basics of filing and litigating Freedom of Information Privacy Act requests. He has been named as a Washington, D.C. Superlawyer every year since he was profiled in 2009, as well as Best Lawyer by Washingtonian magazine in 2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015, issued by Annually for his national security work. As the National Law Journal once wrote, if Agent Mulder of the TV show The X-Files ever needed a lawyer, Zayd would be his man. Mark's website is markzade.com. There is a link in the episode description. At the time of this recording, we do not know the specifics or how long the federal trial of the accused suspect will be within the American justice system. However, Fred Mark and I will be providing brief updates through this program throughout 2023 in the form of special short consolidated news briefs as new information develops. Although this topic is extremely painful to the victims' families and everyone within the Pan Am community and beyond, the upcoming trial has great historical significance and should be chronicled for education and posterity by this program. Make sure you are subscribed to this podcast so that you will be alerted to these special installments. Now on to our interview with Fred Burton and Mark Zayd. It's a great honor to welcome you to the PayAm Podcast, Fred and Mark.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Yeah, looking forward to it. Thank you. So let's talk about your backgrounds and this interesting field that both of you have been in for some time. Fred, why don't we talk about you first? Let's go back to when you were 16 years old.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Well, first, thank you so much, uh, Tom, for giving me the opportunity to talk uh today on the Pan Am podcast. Uh first, uh, I grew up in the Bethesda Chevy Chase area, which is right on the district line in many ways, uh, very close to where Mark uh operates out of. And uh when I was a kid, uh I had a a neighbor who turned out to be a very senior uh Israeli military officer, in fact, the Air Attache that uh was gunned down and murdered by a group that I would substitute learn to be the Black September Organization. This was the same group that was responsible for the Munich massacre in 72 uh at the Olympics. And um as a result of that, uh I joined uh our local rescue squad when I was 17 as soon as I could, and they were the same group that transported Colonel Alan that was murdered that night uh to suburban hospital in Bethesda. Uh and then uh I became a Montgomery County, Maryland police officer where Colonel Alan was uh killed. And then I had a wise old sergeant uh that uh encouraged me to apply to the federal government. So uh I was fortunate enough to uh get a job with uh the State Department in the 80s, uh, and uh I went out uh right out of basic agent training to be a special agent assigned to our counterterrorism division, where I would spend the next uh, I believe it was 15 years doing nothing but uh uh counterterrorism work.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

And Mark, how did you get into this interesting profession?

SPEAKER_01 11:28

So I grew up on Long Island in the New York City region, and my formative years were in the 70s and 80s as international terrorism, especially against the United States, really picked up. So I vividly remember the morning of the Beirut bombings of our of the embassy and the marine barracks. Uh I vividly remember uh Mr. Leon Klinghofer being murdered uh by the PLO in 1985. And then I was in college in 1988, uh actually first studying abroad in London in the spring of 88, came back for my senior year in the fall of 88, and of course that is when Pan Am 103 was bombed on December 21st, 1988. Two of my schoolmates were on board the flight. They were on the fall study abroad program in London, and coming from Long Island, there there was somebody from my hometown, and there were many other connections. So I was very motivated then going into law school of trying to work on terrorism issues, war crimes. Uh, my grandfather was a soldier and chaplain with the U.S. Army, liberated Dachau. So all of human rights work was really motivating me uh as I entered law school in 1989, and the Pan M 103 case became really uh center uh up in the forefront for shaping what is now a 30-year career, 30-plus year legal career.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Let's talk a little bit about the Lockerby case. So we have covered terrorism on this program um in a variety of different episodes. Uh the first one was episode six about the 1970 uh uh hijacking of four aircraft. Um in the 1960s, it was almost a novelty to be on a hijacked aircraft going to Cuba. Um, the majority of the hijackings in the 1960s. Something changed in the 1970s, and then it continued to change and become more and more dangerous in the 1980s. Let's talk a little bit about counterterrorism and terrorism in the 1980s as it pertains to aviation, and then we can talk about Lockerbie.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

Sure, I'll be happy to uh kick things off if you like, Tom. Uh, you know, I think it's important from a historical perspective as a student of global security and terrorism for context. Uh you know, if you look at uh the time of um the bombing of Lockerbie, we still had the wall up uh with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was still in Afghanistan. Uh in fact, it was the largest covert operation that the CIA had underway since Vietnam was underway in Afghanistan. And then we literally had the world on fire on my watch. Um, you know, in 1986, uh we had the Libyans that bombed uh uh the Label Disco in Germany, uh, followed up by uh two attacks that probably a lot of people aren't familiar with were two of my cases, which was the attempted Libyan assassination of our staff in Khartoum, the Sudan, and Sana'a. And as a result of Label and Khartoum and Sana'a, President Reagan decided to strike uh Tripoli with a bombing. And then you fast forward to 1988 time period, you had the horrific USS Vincent's uh U.S. Navy vessel that shot down the Iranian Airbus, uh Iran Air 655, which killed uh 290, if if memory serves me right. And then also in October of 1988, uh you had the Germans uh raid a series of safe houses uh in what was called uh Autumn Leaves, which resulted in uh a bunch of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, general command uh roll-up of uh terror cells, which led to the seizure of improvised explosive devices and to include even a Pan Am flight schedule. And then uh, as you look at uh you know one week or two weeks, I think it was actually about 10 days before the bombing of uh Pan Am 103 ever Lockerby, you had the anonymous phone call to the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki claiming that uh the Abu Nidal organization was going to bomb a Pan Am flight. So uh in the backdrop of this as well, Tom and Mark, uh, you know, we had lived through the horrific embassy bombings that Mark alluded to in Beirut caused by uh Hezbollah, which was Iranian backed, uh, in 1983 and in 1984. We had the marine barracks bombing, we had the U.S. Embassy bombing in Kuwait, uh then we had the kidnapping of the CIA station chief in Lebanon, which was another one of my cases. So uh we literally were running all over the world almost as like smoke jumpers, just doing the best we could to investigate these acts of terror, but there wasn't a lot of prevention, there wasn't a lot of proactive work on any of our part. We were just simply uh in many ways uh flying P and Am around the world, uh taking us to these locations just to investigate these attacks and and moving on or just waiting for the other one to drop.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

And Mark, what is your perspective?

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Yeah, so ironically, uh I can probably for another show talk to you about the D.B. Cooper skyjacking, because I was the lawyer on the cold case team that identified an individual as being D.B. Cooper, and I've been litigating against the FBI now for seven years uh to release secure the release of all the DB Cooper files. And of course, that was one of the earlier uh American hijackings in 1971. We just uh passed 50 plus years uh of that. And and you know, unexpected uh as Fred has said, you know, we we react to events that happen rather than prepare for them, unfortunately. So, you know, during our lifetime, if you think of all the incidents that have happened involving aircraft and then the changes that that happened as a result, uh, you know, one that jumps to my mind the the most is you know, why do we take our sneakers and shoes off before we get on board the plane? You know, thank to the one guy who tried to light his his explosives in his shoe as the sneaker bomber. Um, you know, and as many things happen, I mean most of my work is dealing with the U.S. government and representing intelligence officials and military and law enforcement who work for the federal government. And our government, as good as as it is with so many things, is horrible in dealing with problems. It uses a sledgehammer approach rather than laser precision, which is why we all take our shoes off, even though only one guy in the at least that I know of in the known history has tried to use uh uh some sort of sneaker explosive device that obviously failed, thankfully. Uh but you know, look, aviation is we we wonder, I mean aviation is one of the safest modes of transportation, obviously, uh at least in the major flights. You know, small planes cross crash all the time, and most of the time it's pilot error uh or some sort of unit's not to do with the plane, it's the weather or whatever. But major airlines like where we're talking about you know, 747. I mean, that's why when Pan Am went down, everybody who knew anything immediately jumped to the fact of uh this had to have been intentional because 747s just don't and still don't fall out of the sky. I mean, it's that secure a system. But when it does happen, the reality is hundreds of people die. So the the story becomes much, much bigger than it does, even though I don't know what the latest stats are, but what, like I remember 55,000 people a year die in car accidents, you know, far, far in excess of exponentially who die in aviation-related incidents, yet we don't have anywhere close to the the mandated safety requirements uh in roads and vehicles and things like that, because it only happens to two people here, four people here, one person here, one person there, and you know, it barely makes the news most of the time. Uh so it it's it's a very interesting history about aviation and Pan Am in particular, obviously given you know the history that that airline has uh with aviation, I mean, basically dominating uh all of aviation history uh and unfortunately uh sadly you know going down in the demise that it did.

SPEAKER_03 20:32

And you know, I would like to just follow up one brief comment that that Mark uh said that really struck me uh when he was going through what led him into this line of work. Uh you know, I'm sure if you talk to enough shrinks, they would go back to the incident that happened in my neighborhood when I was 16. But when Pan Am 103 crashed uh over Lockerbie, this was personal to us. Uh we had uh our uh special agent colleagues on that flight that were coming home from Nicosia and Beirut. Uh we had a senior justice official, we had a senior official from the DIA, uh, and then we had a senior CIA officer on the flight whose brother was also a State Department special agent. So uh when that flight uh at 31,000 feet uh fell out of the sky, uh, and this was a flight that I had been on, uh, many of us had been on. Uh our diplomatic couriers had flown on it almost religiously. And quite frankly, I was a bit surprised that we did not have uh a courier go down in that flight because it was uh just such a uh workhorse run for us uh coming home. Uh and the timing and the sequence of this uh was horrific. Uh, you know, I'll never forget the flash cables coming in that night uh as uh uh the plane vanishing. And and I think it's important to. To understand that when this happened, we had no idea who was behind it. And as part of some of the work that I did on this case myself, I know that there's still a lot of mystery surrounding that. You know, regardless of the forensics and regardless of the evidence that I know Mark and Weaver always trained to follow, there's still a lot of unknowns. And I still have a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the case myself. So it's one of these kinds of horrific events that we should never forget. And and again, this was the largest loss of American life by a terrorist attack before 9-11. And so we should never forget. And we we should always remember the individuals who were on that flight, whether they were students from the University of Rochester or Syracuse University, or U.S. government personnel, or just citizens from all over the world just trying to come home for the holidays.

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Mark, can you kind of walk us through what it was like to live in 1988 and experience this news, especially since you knew people on that that flight?

SPEAKER_01 23:25

So uh you know, not surprising to um I'm sure your audience, you know, Pan Am was pretty much where we all flew to go internationally, especially from an economic standpoint, because it was had the greatest number of runs, so it was cheaper, and and for the students that's what we all flew uh back and forth. And uh because I was fortunate enough to have been on a study abroad program in the months before, I knew people who were also overseas on their programs in that fall. So I vividly remember the news when when it was announced. All right, so the the plane went down uh just after two o'clock, probably I think hit the news no later than three p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Uh I was down in Florida because we were going on a a cruise in the Caribbean, and I I remember the news flashes that came across my my grandmother's television that the plane had gone down. Now, they weren't necessarily speculating yet as to what brought it down, it was just that it confirmed that it had gone down. And I called Pan Am right away uh to try and to go through a a list of names of friends of mine that I knew were overseas and coming back at least at some time around then. Uh and whoever I spoke to handled it properly and and could did not confirm or deny, they couldn't reveal the the privacy-related information as to who exactly was was on this flight, which was ironic because one of the criticisms against Pan Am in the aftermath was that in reaching out to family members, sometimes whoever it was actually left answering machine messages that their loved one had died on board the plane. I mean, that's how inexperienced, I suppose, and insensitive, but inexperienced in particular that they were in not knowing how to deal with this type of incident. In fact, Pan Am and the State Department went through tr tremendous amount of training, well, aviation in general, but uh government training as to how to deal with these types of incidents and notification. Uh I was on the cruise then, and I remember stopping in Puerto Rico and picking up uh like a daily news, New York Daily News, New York Post, and there was an article about Eric and Jason Coker who died on the plane. Uh Jason was a student, they were twin brothers, 20 years old, juniors, and Jason was a student at Syracuse, and Eric was a student at University of Rochester, where I went. And I can still vividly feel what my stomach felt like, sort of like when you go on a roller coaster and you go really high and then you drop down really quickly. I mean, it was like a shot to the gut. I did not know Eric. Uh I knew the other student, Kate Hollister. She was dating one of my fraternity brothers, uh, and it it was it was horrible. Uh and then coming back home uh, and so we're still on break, you know, until third week of January, give or take, uh, and learning about other connections. And we had a memorial ceremony at my school the end of January, about the first week or so when we got back, uh, and our chapel was packed, uh, standing room only. Uh and I remember actually the one student who brought most of us uh or everyone to tears was a classmate of mine who had been in London with me, and she didn't know either of the victims, but she talked about what no doubt they felt like in knowing they just had the most amazing experience of being overseas for months, and they're so looking forward to coming home from the holidays, and they bought all these presents for their family members, but at the same time they know the next day they're gonna hate the fact that they're back home and they just want to go back over to Europe and what that must have felt like uh and that we came home and they didn't. Uh, and I'll still tear up as I think about that. I still have the memorial program uh from that actually on display in a in a cabinet downstairs in my home.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

Fred, I know you you talked about having colleagues on the aircraft. Let's talk about how you heard the news and what you were thinking and how you were feeling.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

I vividly recall what happened. Uh of course, uh we had a 24 by 7 command post uh inside our building, and um because I was in our counterterrorism branch, we were always notified uh whenever anything exploded in the world or or any anomaly that occurred because we were usually uh we kept a bag pack to just be dispatched, either taking a civilian flight like Pan Am or or TWA somewhere, uh, or a U.S. Air Force special air mission that would fly us to a location. And so our command center uh notified us and said that uh there is a Pan Am flight that's uh gone off the radar, missing, uh, that that came out of London Heathrow, and um everybody was scrambling to figure out what happened to it. Now, um most people don't realize that when these events unfolded, especially in 1988, in our command post you had uh CNN, uh you had uh NPR and BBC, the open source media that you're you're listening to press reports. Uh and we we started to get notifications via what is called a flash message. You know, today everything's done via message text and email, but in those days we had cables, teletypes, if you can visualize those, that would come through uh literally our operations center. So we had flash messages that said that uh Pan Am 103 had gone down, and we were trying to get the manifest, but it looks like uh there was many U.S. government personnel that was manifested on the flight. And one of the things that um there was a lot of scrambling to try to see in those days, uh again, nobody carried cell phones, everybody was working off pagers, Motorola pagers, which didn't work really internationally. And so we really were not sure who got on a flight and who didn't. So we were waiting on some data to come through Pan Am Corporate. And one of the things that struck me and still does uh as very odd, and in fact, I I was laser fixated on this and went out and looked into this specifically, was that our U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, um Andrew McCarthy, uh, was uh scheduled to be on that flight. And um we thought that he was on the plane. And then we learned that one of our agents out of Beirut was on the flight, and then one of our agents from Nicosia, Cyprus, had been on the flight, and then, of course, we had the CIA officer out of Beirut and the DIA officer out of Beirut. And, you know, the psychology of this, it's hard to put it in a frame of reference. We had we had the CIA station chief kidnapped and missing in Beirut. We did not know where he was, we were looking for him. We had lost all these Marines in the bombing, we had lost all these CIA personnel uh in the embassy bombing. This was just another horrific, tragic event, again, that we felt overwhelmed with. That, oh my god, how could this be happening again? Um and um I think within, of course, none of us slept. Uh we had family members waiting at Dulles Airport on connecting flights. They were going to meet some of our people, so you're scrambling around trying to confirm who was missing. And then we were doing notifications ourselves, actually sending agents out to houses and doing the knock on the door that nobody ever wants to do. And then I think the next day, or you know, within 24 hours, I I was off um you know, looking into uh certain aspects of the plane crash to try to figure out uh if the reason that aircraft was targeted was because our personnel were on that flight. Again, to the backdrop of what had taken place, we had had the USS Vincennes shoot down the Iranian Airbus. Uh we had had uh the retaliation attack on Tripoli by the US government. So, was this an effort to target Americans and personally target our people because we had agents and intelligence personnel on that flight? And did someone learn that the U.S. ambassador was slated to be on that flight?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

There are and there are that's just one of several where the thought was that individuals, specific individuals on the flight were were targeted. And uh Fred mentioned one of the CIA officers. There are actually five uh that we know of that were on board. And uh, of course, uh Tiny McKee, uh and an Army Intel officer was uh this he they call him Tiny because he was like six foot five or something like that. He was a huge guy. Uh he was doing work in particular uh trying to find our hostages uh over in the Middle East, and uh what there was one theory that maybe he was targeted. Uh and of course there were theories about uh Fred mentioned couriers, uh uh couriers that were on board, maybe on board the flight that used Pan Am. And one theory was whether or not there were some drug couriers that were on board the flight. And it turned out not to be the case, although sometimes there were drug couriers that were being used by the DEA uh for purposes of law enforcement, uh, but that led to a bunch of targeting. People had to look at some of the students. You know, one of the favorites of uh some of the Arab terrorists were to befriend American students, particularly females, and give, say, can you bring a gift to my friend back home in Brooklyn, wherever, and that turned out to be a bomb. And again, you know, you think about the notion of how do things change? Why is it that we were we were asked for so many years, did you pack your own bags? That was why we were asked, did you pack your own bags? Because that was a known exploitative mechanism to get an explosive on board uh with without uh being detected. So there were lots and lots of theories that had to be uh looked at for the Pan M 103 case and and others, uh, and those are just some of them.

SPEAKER_03 34:05

You know, and one of the points too that that Tom that I think just for uh your listening audience to understand, the flight debris because of the wind patterns was uh blasted over an 81-mile corridor or 845 square miles. And think of that in concept. You're looking at crime scenes usually that might be in a house, then look at this in an 845-mile kind of spectrum. And by the grace of God, if there has to be any saving grace with this, it exploded over land. In that although people were killed on the ground, 11 personnel, which was horrible, if that had exploded over the North Atlantic, which I'm convinced that that was the original plan, I'm not so sure we had ever figured out what had happened uh or recovered any forensic evidence whatsoever. Uh so um, again, uh poor timing on the part of the bomb maker in many ways, uh, but it turned out to be very fortuitous to us uh over time because it was able we were able to uncover evidence of uh of who might have carried out the attack just because of the diligent effort predominantly of the Scottish, the British police, uh the FBI forensics, the CIA forensics, uh, and just uh gumshoe detective work.

SPEAKER_02 35:35

Let's talk about the aftermath. Uh we really never uh talked about on this program before uh the aftermath, the motives, and how the intelligence and justice community brought and continue to bring those responsible to justice.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Uh sure, I I'll I'll start it off with with some points. So, you know, uh Fred mentioned earlier um I I think on the recording that at first you know we really didn't know who it was. We we knew it was a terrorist attack within days. I mean, once the explosive residue was detected, that that sealed it, and that obviously didn't take long. So um you know, I think even the news reports literally within days it was pretty clear that that this is uh what had happened. Um Operation Autumn Leaves was initially suspected as to have been, and probably was, I think, realistically, the planned operation, but it was thwarted by the Germans. There there was still, they recovered a bunch of Toshiba radio bombs similar to the one brought down that brought down Pan Am 103. Not identical. There was a difference between one speaker versus two speakers of the type of device, but it was it was very similar, and as far as uh I recall, and Fred can correct me if if if I'm remembering incorrectly, uh, but one of the bombs that they suspected had been made, they never did find. And they don't know if that's the Pan Am 103 bomb or not, but it was certainly being looked at, and if you look at the books that came out prior to the two Libyan intelligence officers being indicted in November of 1991, they were all looking towards uh the PFLPG PC, Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine General Command, which if you thought the PLO was bad at the time in the 80s, these guys were far to the right of the PLO. These were the let's kill everybody type situation. Uh and almost all of it, nobody that I know of, at least publicly, and Fred may have more information on the insides of stuff, but nobody was suggesting Libya. Nobody was thinking that. Everybody was thinking Iran because of Flight 65 shoot down on July 3rd of 1988, that this was retaliation for that. Uh, you know, maybe Abu Nidal and Syria and and everything. And the books that were coming out in prior to the 91 indictment were by counterterrorism experts like Steve Emerson, who has been a client of mine many years ago in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, uh, or journalists, British journalists predominantly, who were researching the case from that angle. And then uh it it came publicly to me. I was involved with the families by this time. Uh where I went to law school in Albany, New York. We had the region had six families who lost uh family members on board, and including Albany Law School family. Uh some of our alums had lost siblings on board the flight. And so I got to know the family members. I was doing programs at my law school, talking to the media about the case, what we could do. I s my work initially as a law student was how to sue terrorists uh and sue the countries as well as the terrorists uh as part of this prior to knowing it was Libya. And it was a shock to the public because we had no real indication that this was coming, that all of a sudden uh then uh I think he was deputy attorney, no, maybe he was attorney general Barr, William Barr, announced on November 13th, I think, maybe it was 14th, 1991, simultaneously with the Scots, that boom, it was Libya that did it. Uh that was quite shocking, and it changed the dynamics of everything. And I still think to this day, what would be interested to go back to the books that came out prior to that to see where maybe they went wrong, if in fact it was Libya, and I know Fred and I both believe that it was Libya, and we can talk about the details of some of the case and some of the conspiracy theories as to why people uh still believe to this day that absolutely it was not Libya, Libya is a you know a fake victim, uh a false victim. Um, but I I don't think that's true, and we can go into the details as to why.

SPEAKER_03 40:10

Yeah, I think Mark did a very good job of summing up uh how we got here, you know, towards the Libyan angle. And you know, the forensics were amazing. Uh there was um uh a very strong uh forensic tie to the Libyan government, which surfaced as a result of uh a piece of a circuit board that was stuck to a scorched shirt that uh turned out to be a a timer that uh was only sold to the Libyan government. And then if you fast forward through the course of the of the Scottish trial and and uh the recent um apprehension or rendition, however you want to view it, of the bomb maker that that was brought to U.S. uh custody, uh he claimed that uh he was called to Libyan headquarters, instructed to manufacture the bomb, uh transported that to Malta. We always knew we had a Malta nexus and a piece of luggage, a Samsonite got entered into Malta, actually handed it to a Libyan intelligence agent that happened to work for Libyan Airlines, and he was able to circumvent uh uh the baggage screening, and that's how it entered into the process. So um ultimately uh Qaddafi would pay restitution. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mark, uh, although he never publicly admitted that he actually gave the green light to do this. Uh so uh the bomb maker, as this trial starts to come out, I think it's gonna be very enlightening as to exactly what he knows, who he spoke to, uh the circumstances and the facts, because I think in like all of these kinds of cases, facts matter. And um, although certainly the Iranians had motive for doing this, uh certainly the PFLPGC and all your radical Palestinian terrorist groups during that time frame uh certainly had motive. Uh, you know, at the end of the day, I think you really have to follow the evidence to to who was responsible for this. So I'm really intrigued to watch what's coming out on the upcoming trial.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Mark, you had mentioned uh there were other bombs that were intercepted and captured. Do we think, and this is just conjecture at this point, do we think that this bomb maker also made those?

SPEAKER_01 42:43

Yeah, I'm not sure if we know. And of course, the problem with some of this is I I too, like Fred, I am optimistic, or at least I don't know if I want to say optimistic, because I don't from a legal standpoint, I I am hopeful, that would be the better word. I am really hopeful we learn more information from this case. Uh at least from the the standpoint of the US government introducing the evidence. But at the end of the day, if Masood, the individual, doesn't take the stand, we may not learn much more than what we already know. I mean, that was the case in the Camp Zeiss prosecution of Al-Magrahi and FEMA, the two Libyan intelligence officers. We really didn't learn a hell of a lot more from the original indictment in 1991 from what the trial was because neither of them took the stand. Uh now, yeah, we learned a bunch more about a defector who worked with them in uh Malta and uh which also we knew about before the case, or at least before the trial. Uh, and there were certainly things that were filled in. But we'll have to wait and see. And in my view, now with this case, I think this is going to be the case that either continues the investigation towards higher-ups in Libya who are still around, like Sanusi, who was the Intel chief and is in somewhere supposedly in a Libyan prison. There are other senior Libyan officers who escaped in the aftermath of Qaddafi's overthrow in 2011, who were even in the hands of the British but let go for some reason. But if we convict him based on the evidence, I think the case might still continue. If he's acquitted, even if he's guilty or not, I have a feeling that's going to be the end of the case. And if we go through, I know Fred and I are of a like mind of a lot of the evidence. And I've dealt with lots of conspiracy theories overall. I mean, I've litigated the Kennedy assassination, the Lincoln assassination, the Kennedy assassination. I represented Mohammed Al-Fayed whose son Dodi was killed with Princess Diana. And I litigated that case as to who killed Princess Diana or why did she die. The DB Cooper case, like I said, lots and lots of conspiracy cases, you name it, and I deal with the intelligence community. There are always going to be issues with evidence when you look at it under a microscope. And there are going to be cracks and holes and sometimes even gaps. I'm an Occam's razor type of believer. You know, the simplest explanation is the best. So that yeah, Iran had a motive, absolutely. It had the means by which to complete this incident or attack as well. But did it, show me the evidence. I am still not aware of any actual evidence that shows that Iran put this bomb on the plane. All the evidence we know of is that it was Libya. And even though there are cracks in the eyewitness testimony of which that is to be expected, anyone who studies eyewitness testimony knows how fallible it is. And anyone who lived through the O.J. Simpson case, you tell me, do you think O.J. Simpson murdered his ex-wife and her friend, even though he was acquitted? Because they dove down and shown the cracks in the case, right? If the glove doesn't fit, you must acquit. Well, there was a reason why the glove didn't fit. And it had nothing to do with whether or not O.J. Simpson murdered his ex-wife or not. And we have to look at the Pan Am 103 case in that way, too. So the naysayers that I see all the time, who still exist to this day, uh, I say to them, uh, show me who else then perpetrated this bombing other than Libya.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

It's a very simplistic question. That I'm sure the answer to this question is complicated. But what was the motive of this terrorist attack, in your opinions? Fred, why don't we start with you?

SPEAKER_03 47:04

It's a good question. I think uh when you start examining the facts as I understand it, and from working aspects of the case, uh, I think it makes very logical sense that uh Gaddafi, air quotes Gaddafi, the Libyan Intelligence Service, wanted to get even for our US strike on Tripoli Tripoli. Having said that, Libya certainly had uh a lot of evidence uh for their Bell Disco bombing and two of my cases in Khartoum and Sana'a, which we knew directly were Libyan involved. So they kind of brought it upon themselves when uh President Reagan decided to conduct that airstrike. So um, like Mark, I've always been one to stick to the facts and follow the evidence, and and the truth will usually come to light. The problem with the intelligence community having lived in that world too, Tom, and Mark knows this definitively as well, is the intelligence community's job is to produce information, intelligence, push it out to the community. So when you have an event like this that is so catastrophic, you have foreign liaison services reporting information, you've got walk-ins, you've got cranks, you've got speculation, you've got media, and it becomes overwhelming, and it's hard at times to stay on that path of just the forensics and the evidence and where does that lead you. So, motive uh certainly the Libyans had enough of it. Uh having said that, I still wonder in my own mind, and maybe this is a failure on my investigative part from 1988, I still worry about whether or not uh someone, whether it was the Libyans or whoever else, knew that uh the president's representative to Lebanon was on scheduled to be on that flight in light of all the carnage that had happened in Beirut during that window of time. The two embassy bombings, the kidnapping of our CIA station chief, which let me say this, let me pause this and say, if that happened today in our social media world, it would be like Benghazi on steroids, and I wrote a book about Benghazi. If you had a CIA station chief kidnapped and was missing, you can't understand how volatile that would have been in the intelligence community. So um I learned a long time ago that uh at times um things just simply don't make a lot of sense when Beirut's involved.

SPEAKER_02 49:58

And to follow up to your to your point, the intelligence community is in a pretty difficult position because really the general public only knows of their failures. They don't know about the successes because, by definition, if it's a successful intelligence operation, then nobody knows about it. Correct?

SPEAKER_03 50:17

For the most part, that's correct. Uh you look at uh this handover or rendition or fugitive transfer of the bomb maker from Libya to the U.S., it's still very murky as to how he came into U.S. custody. I personally want to believe that the rewards for justice ran by my old department has uh a hand in this, that uh we got to the right people who decided to just hand this guy over. Maybe as low-hanging fruit to protect the higher-ranking Libyan intelligence official that's still languishing allegedly in a Libyan jail, he would be the big fish, the Al Capone, to be able to tell us definitively exactly what happened, provided he would cooperate.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

Mark, let's get back to that question of motive. In your opinion, what do you think the motive is for this terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103?

SPEAKER_01 51:16

No, I agree with with Fred. The theory has always been this was retaliation for the bombing of Tripoli, of which supposedly Qaddafi's adopted daughter was was killed, a two or three-year-old uh young girl. Uh look, we our relations, we had barely any relations with Libya at the time. Libya was never a very important part publicly of our foreign policy. You know, there are uh there is a long history, the Barbary pirates going back to Thomas Jefferson and you know, the in our song, The Shores of Tripoli with the Marines, right? That's all Libya. I don't think most people probably even realize that's actually Libya. Um, but you know, Libya was never really on the radar for the most part. Uh but there there was a lot going on. And and Libya and Qaddafi, who came into power in 1969, uh, it was it's an incredibly rich oil and gas country. Uh, but we did not get our oil and gas mostly from there. It was the French and the Italians who did. So it wasn't as important in our world, so that even during you know the gas crisis that I remember in 79 with long lines, um, you know, you didn't really hear much about Libya. The only thing I remember about Libya as a kid was was uh Billy Carter, uh President Carter's brother was stupidly got in trouble with some business uh endeavors with Libya, and I'm sure most people were scratching their head as to where where the heck is Libya. Um but you know it it it's undoubtedly that's always been thought to be the motive. And you know, you sort of you look at still what the evidence is. I I went to Malta uh in 1994, so a few years after the bombing, uh, and I walked the route uh and traced where the clothing from the suitcase, which was all forensic. Uh you know, Fred mentioned, you know, they identified which suitcase, which was an unaccompanied suitcase, uh, which is also why everybody has to keep their bags with them post-1988 before it went in, and why no unaccompanied bags are allowed, supposedly, uh hopefully, on any flights because of this reason. Uh and uh they identified which suitcase it took them a while, because at first they misidentified suitcases, and they identified some students as having been potentially the mule of having brought the bomb on board, which was horrific for the families. It turned out that their suitcases were on top of or next to the actual bomb suitcase, and they recovered the clothing from the suitcase that hadn't destroyed, and it had tags. Yorkie Clothing Company, which is a clothing company in Malta, which identified, yeah, those were our stuff. And then they figured out where it was sold from, from Mary's house. And I remember going to Mary's house and talking to Gauchi, who was the individual, he didn't know who the hell I was. I was already representing the families at that time, but I I just said I was an American visiting Malta. Uh and it's right down the street from the Libyan consulate/slash embassy. I'm not sure what the status of it was uh legally at the time. Uh, and they they engage with Libyans all the time because if you ever go to this location, it's their equivalent of like Fifth Avenue in New York City. But this is the cheap store on Fifth Avenue. This isn't where people go for Tiffany's and stuff like that. So the Libyans always went to Mary's house to buy stuff, so they were very familiar with Libyans. Um and so it it it all shaped up as you looked at the evidence to point to Libya. And and I kind of go back to what I said before. You know, motive is always important, but we still don't know why Lee Harvey, and I'll say it, why Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. We still don't know the motive, you know, for that. There we don't know the motive of the guy in Vegas who killed like 60 people. Uh there are a lot of times where we do not learn motive. It would be helpful. We know why Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols blew up Oklahoma City in 95. That helped lead to uh further evidence. But sometimes we don't know motive, so you go based on what the evidence is. And the forensic evidence, unless you want to claim, as some do, that it was faked or that, oh, the CIA planted it. Yeah, I mean, good luck with with making those types of arguments. Um, because you still got to show something to the contrary as to what might have led or or would take the pit the place of that evidence. And I've I've yet to see it, and I'm more than willing to accept alternative evidence if you give it to me to take a look at. But it usually isn't there.

SPEAKER_02 56:17

You know what just occurred to me? Uh so Fred, you uh were heavily involved with many investigations, uh Pan Am Flight 73 that was hijacked in Karachi, uh, that we covered on this program earlier, um Pan Am Flight 103. And it just occurred to me that Mark and Fred, both of you, for the last 34 years, your lives intersected. Well, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

Yeah, well, and I I guess for uh for uh in indication, I'm trying to think what word what word it would be, to say I have been Fred's lawyer for I don't know how many how many years um in in once he was retired for uh helping get his books through pre-publication classification review, uh which is one of the things that that I do for folks. Uh but Fred and I had not uh interacted during the course of your federal career, as I recall. I'm pretty sure we met after you retired, right?

SPEAKER_03 57:14

My memory is better than yours, Mark. Uh I I will share uh that uh remember my office ran the Rewards for Justice program, and your efforts in getting that public-private partnership to help us uh up the reward for primarily the bombers behind the bombing of Pan Am 103 was our motive. I'll give you a little inside baseball for uh your listeners, Tom and Mark. I don't know if I you probably remember this, but we had always set at that time period the maximum reward offer, which was the 20 million for bin Laden. At the time on my watch, it was 2 million was the maximum reward. And in our eyes, we were going to pay uh the person that gave us information to the individuals responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 that maximum reward. We were gonna hold that so that person would get that reward. And um I'm highly optimistic. I want to believe, and I probably the truth will be coming out maybe uh within our lifetime, that uh the latest handover of the bomb maker, that our old program uh had something to do with that, that somebody got paid a reward because, again, this is one of the programs that operates in the shadows. Uh I used it uh for the apprehension of Ramsay Yosef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing, uh, and and many others. And so uh I would like to think that that played a part in this in some in some manner, and uh we'll probably know that uh within the next 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yeah, well, and relevant to your audience, Tom, so uh in fact, what Fred's referencing, my first Pan Am 103 client was a man named Bruce Smith. And Bruce was a pilot for Pan Am, a career pilot. He flew international routes. His wife, Ingrid, was on board the flight. Bruce obviously was not, he was already back in the States, and his wife Ingrid, who was British, was coming back from London area to come be with Bruce for the holidays and unfortunately passed away as a result of being murdered. Uh, Bruce, because he was a Pan Am pilot, was well aware that with all the screw-ups that frankly Pan Am did commit surrounding this incident, well, which we can talk about if you want, uh, nonetheless, there were no airlines, probably, other than LL, perhaps, at the time, that would have prevented this bomb from getting on board the plane other than by just pure sheer luck. But in a normal day, certainly any other American airline, even uh without the screw-ups that Pan Am committed, the bomb still would have been on board. So Bruce was one of only two that I know of of the families who accepted the insurance company's settlement offer of $100,000. Uh old timers uh like uh Fred and I will remember back in the day with the Warsaw Convention, when you flew international and you looked at the back of your paper ticket, it said the max you can receive by convention was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars unless gross negligence could be presented, which is incredibly hard to do, although it was ultimately done in the Pan Am 103 case against Pan Am. But uh Bruce accepted a $100,000 offer and because he wanted to go after the terrorists, he was hoping to get nine other family members to do the same so he could post a $2 million, literally dead or alive reward for those who committed it. Again, not knowing who did at the time, not knowing the country, not knowing the individuals. Uh he was unable to do that because unfortunately, the aviation lawyers American who and sued Pan Am within days, as I recall, certainly within weeks, uh put forth the propaganda that this is all Pan Am's fault. You know, hook, line, and sinker. Pan Am, Pan Am, Pan Am. The families hated Pan Am because they associated Pan Am with having killed their loved ones. We weren't thinking about the fact that someone else put a bomb on the plane, and in fact, Pan Am lost sixteen of its own family members, you know, who were part of the crew. Uh 243 passengers, 16 crew, 11 in the town of Lockerbie who died for 270 people. And so Bruce was a vilified enemy. I'm I spent the first couple of years suing Libya from about 93 to 95, even 96, where uh we were the enemy to most of the other family members, even though we were trying to, frankly, help all the family members, because the other lawyers uh painted us as the enemy, as bad, frankly, as Libya. But Bruce took all of the money that he had to launch a campaign effort, and he got the Airline Pilots Association and the Air Transport Association to bolster the reward program that Fred mentioned, so that that's why Al-Mahrahi and FEMA had a four million dollar award uh for their capture from 1991 to 1999 when they were finally surrendered uh by Libya uh to be tried at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands under Scottish law.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

Mark, let's go back to what you said about uh Pan Am making mistakes and let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:05

So, you know, the 1980s was was really the decade of terrorism against the United States internationally. We were being hit very often uh and very dramatically and uh with you know pretty successful attacks because even when, like I mentioned, Leon Klinghoff were killed in 1985, even though only one American, or one person in fact, was killed in the Achilloro hijacking, you know, they had a huge impact on Americans going on cruises for a while. So the terrorists knew how vulnerable we are, not just by the whole notion of how sensational it can be rather than the number of lives. You know, and a quick aside, you know, bin Laden in Al-Qaeda never thought they were going to bring down the World Trade Center. They just wanted to make a huge big splash uh and just cause havoc. And just, wow, you know, the towers came down, probably to their undoing, if one remembers the 1993 attack, which killed six people and didn't do much of anything because of the of where they tried to bring the structure down. Uh it probably ended up being their undoing because it was so successful it led to us destroying al-Qaeda at the time uh and obviously ultimately killing bin Laden. So the in 1985-86, where there were so many terrorist incidents involving aircraft, some of which Fred worked on, Pan Am had the extraordinary idea of promoting a safety program where they charged a $5 surcharge on all tickets to combat terrorism, uh, that it would go into a special terrorist, anti-terrorist security budget. Uh, Pan Am took out lots of ads uh on in newspapers and maybe in television, uh perhaps I don't recall. And it turned out that the $5 went into its general operating budget because they were having some financial troubles. They put on a presentation publicly of bomb-sniffing dogs, uh German shepherds walking around all these airports, uh, wearing really cool sweaters that said bomb, you know, whatever it said on it. And the only thing those dogs could sniff was the dog in front of it, because they had no special training. It was all optics. Uh they also ran into problems with the notion of once the warnings went out in November, December of '88 about the autumn leaves and be on the lookout for possible uh radio bombs or rate or radio cassette players uh that did not work, by the way. So if you push the button, it wouldn't work because the mechanism was taken out to put the bomb in. So they sent out all these notices and uh the Frankfurt staff of Pan Am, uh, which was doing their own security, messed it all up. uh didn't didn't check the luggage going through the uh the metal not the through the x-ray machines and then the pr one of the staff members post post retroactively dated post-dated I guess right made it look like they had received it prior to or something like that. I'm I'm getting I think a little of my fact wrong but basically what they did was they they screwed up they knew of something they didn't do anything about it and then they tried to cover up the fact that they actually had tried to do something when they hadn't. There were all of these notions all of those type of things that came out in the trial against Pan Am by the family members in the early 90s that led to Judge Platt in the Eastern District of New York, which is Long Island, which is the jurisdiction for JFK Airport to rule that there had actually been gross negligence and that's why Pan Am was actually found liabing of Pan Am 103 and had to pay you know hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars ultimately in in settlements with the majority of families. There were only three trials damage trials that went uh went uh through to the to the end and then Pan Am well really it's insurance company because by this time Pan Am had ceased business because the the Gulf War had uh as as I'm sure most of your listeners know had pretty much put the death knell I guess what they sold their international routes I think to Delta then there was some issue with the with the the sale and between Pan Am 103 the Gulf War and the Delta sale that was the end of Pan Am so it was the insurance company actually that that handled the rest of the case that went into 1995 1996. But you know there are a lot of lessons learned as to how Pan Am screwed it up. Now whether or not that should have been gross negligence I will say I I'm sure reasonable minds can differ. People were surprised that Judge Platt had actually ruled against Pan Am. That was not expected I think as I recall by the legal community or or certainly the aviation community and that really did send a chilling message obviously to the aviation community presumably and hopefully to come up with better security methods or at least maybe the U.S. government to help create TSA in the aftermath with 9-11. But all of these are connected I mean anyone who does counterterrorism work or history of terrorist activities, you know, you you can't just look at 9-11 in the modern day and figure things out. All of these events are connected to one another in shaping how we handle aviation cases today.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:55

And I would like to just add Mark and that was a very thorough explanation of of what transpired that the the bombing of Pan Am 103 was a watershed moment in in aviation security. Having lived through that at that time period there's been certain aspects usually every 10 years whether you go back to the 60s to where we had the UT sniper case at the University of Texas which resulted in the creation of the University of Texas Police Department and then you look at events like the Black September Munich massacre and other attacks that creates an industry of international security managers and and Pan Am 103 did that there was a tremendous uptick in the hiring of international security managers or multinational corporations and aviation security specifically and a rush for technology to help us do a better job to screen for bombs going into the holds of aircraft. Look in 1988 there was no guarantee that 100% of any bags going into an aircraft hold was being searched by anybody for a bomb. So that that uh piece of luggage could very well have made its way into any number of holds during that time period and and we would have had the same result in in my mind.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:25

That was just uh the nature of the security industry in that space and it correct me if I'm wrong but uh it wasn't up until TSA after 9-11 that the security of airlines and airports uh was solely the responsibility of the government.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:45

In 1988 and before it was the responsibility of the airline which in an aviation business perspective puts a disadvantage to American carriers because the foreign carriers such as British Airways Liftanza Air France Alitalia for instance they were all subsidized by their governments which means that their governments took care of their security correct that's correct uh you had uh a look in the private sector security space uh security is a cost center it's not a profit center therefore companies are always cutting costs when it comes to security operations and uh when you step back into that time period uh you still had people smoking on planes I remember actually going out uh in the 88 crash and and flying somewhere into cyprus I believe and uh there was folks lighting up cigarettes on aircraft that that was just the the nature of the time and space and in the sector and whether they screened my bag I just don't remember uh you were lucky to have somebody that was paying attention if there was an X-ray machine somewhere to hope that there was uh no bomb in that carry-on anything else you'd like to add gentlemen um especially about the families and the families perspectives uh we just recently had the 34th anniversary of the bombing and I went to the memorial ceremony as I do every year at Arlington where we've been since nineteen ninety five if I'm remembering correctly uh we have there's a memorial cairn that's there uh actually the someone from the Pan Am family always puts a wreath to the flight crew uh that were lost in in the bombing as well and I will tell you every year I think I've only missed one ceremony in thirty or so years and uh it's it's smaller every time uh you know thirty-four years have gone by a lot of the family members have passed away uh at least the most immediate ones I go there and there's mostly faces I don't recognize many of whom weren't even born at the time uh there's a lot of there's a lot more government personnel actually that outnumber family members uh in fact which is kind of interesting but uh you you never get over something like this I mean I've represented a lot of victims of of terrorism over the years now or uh just folks that have for whatever reason lost a loved one and you know it's been interesting to see how uh folks react differently if it's a child versus a parent versus a sibling versus a spouse uh and because the average age on this flight was twenty seven years old which meant you know out of 270 people there were killed let's put 259 as far as on the f on the flight uh that meant a vast majority of them were under the age of 21. They were kids so the family members were mostly parents uh and I know some of them right they never changed the room of their child uh it was as if you know they were just waiting for their kid to come home from winter break or studying abroad uh whereas others obviously moved on with their lives if they lost their spouse they remarried uh etc but it never you can never fill the the void that this happens especially when it's inter when it's intentional so to to have this new criminal case it's it's very emotional and overwhelming to many of the family members uh and it invokes a different reaction from many of them uh some of them want nothing to do with it because it just reopens the wound that they've tried to at least cover up to some extent and move on whereas others they're seized with it and they're gonna go to all the court proceedings or at least as many as they can. You know my role even after all these years even though we have no active litigation for anyone uh and I'm not being paid by any clients or anything like that but you know my goal is still to properly represent the families for the truth and full accountability. And you know Fred mentioned Benghazi earlier I represented several of the CIA officials who were there in Benghazi the day the ambassador was murdered. So if anyone saw the movie or read the book 13 hours those were my clients I got that book cleared just in the way I I get Fred's books cleared through classification review. The the fact is I remember asking my clients who were CIA case officers and and CIA essentially bodyguards etc so here you are operate in Benghazi in the year or so after Qaddafi had been overthrown were you making any efforts to find out more information about the bombing of Pan Am 103? Were you making any efforts to see where FEMA uh uh the not FEMA FEMA but FEMA uh Khalifa FEMA one of the bombers uh alleged bombers he was acquitted do you know where he's located do you know where I think Almagrahi I believe was still he might have just died. You know, do you know any additional information? Are you looking for evidence to find out? Are you looking to buy evidence in the way we did in the collapse of the Soviet Union when we bought tons of KGB files because the system had just collapsed around them and we went in as the CIA to just and and reporters did the same to buy information. Were we doing any of that? And the answer every single time was no I never heard the word lockerby of Pan M103 mentioned. So you know people like Fred and I who have not only a personal connection but a professional one we're we're here in at least as long as we still have breath in our bodies to keep pushing forward on this case uh to lock down either as we believe Libya did it or to find additional evidence that indicates anything else but also to hold accountable anybody who participated in this bombing. And we'll see what happens as we said earlier with respect to uh Massood being prosecuted here in the United States in DC over the course of probably the next 15 months.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:38

And from my end uh Tom uh when you when you look at uh what happened during that time period you you certainly can't replace the loss of life uh but you certainly can also never forget uh I know uh my organization the State Department's diplomatic security service uh religiously attends these events uh our agents' names are on the law enforcement memorial just like the CIA officers uh on the the hall of honor at uh Langley headquarters and and I think too look uh let's let's give a shout out to the Department of Justice and uh the FBI no doubt behind the scenes as well uh that uh made an effort to bring this bomb maker back uh I know how easily it would have been to just say well it's not worth the time and effort we've got Ukraine going on uh we've got the South China Sea we've got never ending COVID and the just the general general geopolitics of the world but someone made an effort to bring this guy back to stand trial and and hopefully justice will be served and he might be able to answer some of the missing pieces that we all still have surrounding this case so um I I really applaud the Department of Justice for going the extra mile to to make this happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:11

Well I would like to thank both of you uh I know it's a difficult topic um complicated topic and it's part of your life's work so I definitely appreciate your time coming on the program. Any closing comments as we wrap up this episode?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:27

Well for my and Tom uh I would like to thank you uh and uh the Pan Am Museum for caring uh for addressing a very difficult topic that obviously uh is near and dear to the hearts of many still uh especially Pan Am and uh you know thank you for covering some of these very difficult and challenging issues yeah I I appreciate this time as well I I'll say even uh I have another connection strangely enough uh even it goes beyond uh this but one of my uh good friends who I helped do a book with uh about the comic book world of all things uh Mark Voz he he wrote a book not too long ago about Pan Am Pan Am at War how the airlines World War II uh maybe you've had him on I'm not sure if you have had him on not yet uh but you should I can connect you to him but Mark and I have worked together on many things and it was just a weird interaction of when you just think about small world type things of uh of he that he did this book on Pan Am. I mean any anyone who who lived in into the time of Pan Am's demise, I mean Pan Am that if you can't talk aviation history without talking Pan Am. And you know if you want to talk about motive just to kind of wrap it up the whole reason why we all believed Pan Am itself was hit by whomever and then turned out to be the Libyans was because of the big American flag that it had on its tail fin. You know this this wasn't an attack on Pan Am in order to put Pan Am out of business. It was an attack on America and and us. And Pan Am was representative of that unfortunately so I I appreciate that you keep the memory alive of of a great airline that has its ups and downs but um is is really reflective of the history of aviation not only in the United States but also the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:40

And uh like Fred what you've told me earlier um people point fingers people blame the government people blame you know the airline Pan Am. But really the only person at the end of the day that we should be blaming is the people that carried out this attack.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:55

From my eyes and where I sit uh that's what I firmly believe. Uh I hold the people responsible that put together this operation uh decided to go the green light to carry it out and uh put that bomb on the aircraft. They're the ones that are responsible for this tragedy.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:14

And hopefully we will see justice in the very near future. Uh again thank you very much uh for your time and uh happy new year and uh we will have you back on the program. Sounds great.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:27

Thank you Tom