by Fred Burton
I go and report all the details to our CT chief. Together, we head up to Clark Dittmer’s office. When we arrive, we find him sitting stunned at his desk, watching the live CNN broadcast.
“Sir, Danny O’Connor, Matt Gannon, and Ron Lariviere were aboard. We think the ambassador to Lebanon was, too, though we haven’t confirmed that yet.”
Our boss looks stricken. He’s an honorable man who has steered a steady ship through shoals of chaos and violence for years. But today, this is the worst. Almost three hundred people are dead. And to further compound the tragedy, CNN reports that an entire exchange group from Syracuse University was aboard the flight.
There are no survivors. The plane broke up at thirty-one thousand feet. The pieces fell all around and on Lockerbie. Part of the wing and fuselage hit a housing complex. The fuel tanks exploded with such intensity that nothing in the blast zone remains. The flames consumed everything, including the residents trapped within their dwellings.
Mr. Dittmer’s face is long and sallow. His eyes reveal the pain we all feel right now. “Fred,” he says gently, “the families. They’re waiting. We’ll need to put a team together to go talk to them. They may be at the airport.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll take care of it right away.”
Mr. Dittmer adds, “Ron’s wife is pregnant.”
I can’t help but choke up.
“Let’s get this done first. Come back in a half hour and give me an update. Fred, after you take care of things, call the FBI and CIA. See what else they’ve got.”
We go downstairs to huddle with the rest of our crew. We send several agents out to find Danny and Ron’s families. It is a terrible task, but a sacred one. These families will not be alone tonight.
I return to FOGHORN and check in with the FBI and CIA. While I do, Beirut sends another flash cable. Ambassador McCarthy is unharmed. He missed his connecting flight from Cyprus and wasn’t able to get to Heathrow in time to catch 103.
But what if his schedule had been compromised? What if somebody in Beirut passed that information to Hezbollah? I make some calls on the STU-III and confirm that the ambassador was booked under a pseudonym—that’s standard procedure these days—but that still doesn’t ease my suspicions.
Thirty minutes later, we meet back in Mr. Dittmer’s office. I tell him the ambassador is safe, but that this could have been an assassination attempt. Had his travel plans been compromised, only the luck of the draw saved his life.
“That’s a good point, Fred. God forbid they went after the plane to assassinate the ambassador. Where is he now?”
I tell him.
Mr. Dittmer asks, “Okay, the CIA seems to be convinced this was a bomb. Who are our key suspects?”
“The Iranians. Hezbollah. Syria if the PFLP–GC is behind this,” I reply.
Mr. Dittmer considers this for a minute before saying, “Well, it won’t do any good to send a team to the crash site. The Brits and Scottish authorities will handle it. Our embassy in London will coordinate with them. But we do need to find out if this was an assassination attempt.”
“Yes, sir. We’re working that right now.”
“Fred, you’re going to need to go to Beirut and run this down.”
Our CT chief interjects, “Sir, if Fred goes to Beirut and there’s a Hezbollah leak, they’ll know what we’re doing.”
“Good point. You’ve got a reputation these days, Fred. If you’re seen in Beirut, the word could get out we’re conducting a CT investigation.”
“What about Cyprus, sir?” I ask. “We could set up in a safe house and bring people in through the Beirut air bridge.”
“That should work, but we need to minimize who knows you’re there and what you’re doing.”
We talk logistics for ten more minutes. I’ll go into Cyprus under a false name and passport. With the help of the RSO, I’ll set up in a safe house and bring our agents in one at a time from Beirut. If they don’t have answers, we’ll quietly send them back to get them.
“You won’t be able to tell your family, Fred,” Mr. Dittmer reminds me. “I know, sir.”
I’ll miss Christmas this year. That’s the least of my worries right now, and I have no right to complain. Just ask Ron’s wife about that.
I head downstairs to make a few more phone calls. I pack up my briefcase. I’ve already got an overnight bag with me. I keep it in the office for just this sort of emergency. In thirty minutes, I’m ready to go.
My flight leaves later that night. As we cross the Atlantic, I can’t help but think about the people aboard 103. The most recent reports we received before I left FOGHORN included a chilling tidbit. The cockpit, flight deck, and first-class section of the fuselage landed intact. People on the scene reported the pilot’s hands were still on the control column. Apparently, the nose section tore off from the rest of the fuselage. It spun through space as the rest of the aircraft fell six miles into the Scottish countryside. Two hundred and fifty-nine names are on the manifest the FAA sent us. Two hundred and fifty-nine victims. Were they alive as the plane came apart around them? Some were. Two passengers were found still breathing on the ground by locals and rescue workers. They both died shortly afterward. Others found passengers still strapped to their seats. One woman was found holding her baby.
Yeah, some of them were alive. And while they may have lost consciousness at high altitude, some of them probably came to as the fuselage hit the warmer, more oxygenated air below ten thousand feet. How long did they have to make their peace and say their good-byes? I do the math in my head.
Two minutes. Those poor people fell out of the sky and knew there was no hope, no survival. No exit but death.
The flight drones on. I can’t sleep. I don’t even try. A two-minute free fall. Our people. My friends. Children.
Hours later, I arrive in Nicosia, Cyprus, where the RSO, Bill Gaskell, greets me at the airport. Together, we drive through the city to a safe house. While there, Bill and I work out a plan to keep my arrival quiet. I won’t come anywhere close to the embassy. I won’t be sending anything back to D.C. There will be no paper trail whatsoever. Bill will arrange all the details personally so that our agents in Beirut can be brought out individually and delivered to the safe house with no one the wiser.
Our agents in Beirut are outstanding people. Most are ex–special forces and have long since learned to operate in an environment of supreme chaos and danger. Beirut is still a virtually lawless enclave, and it has long since become a playground for every intelligence agency with a stake in the Middle East. Think of it as a Dark World sandbox. Everyone plays, there are no rules, and there’s no adult supervision. It takes a unique spook to thrive in such a place.
That night, a Blackhawk helicopter lands at our embassy in Beirut. It picks up a lone passenger and darts away quickly, its crew on the lookout for shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. When the chopper reaches Nicosia, Bill meets it and hustles the agent into a car. He stair-steps through the city, running a surveillance detection route just in case somebody’s watching. In a place like Cyprus, you can bet there are spooks out there, lurking, just waiting for us to get sloppy with our field craft.
The car pulls up to the safe house, and the agent slips inside. The dwelling has been swept for electronic surveillance devices and then swept again just to make sure. It’s clean. White noise machines hiss in every room, in case somebody’s out on the street with a directional microphone.
The posting in Beirut grants these guys some latitude in their dress and appearance. My first visitor sports shoulder-length hair and a big gold hoop earring dangling off one lobe.
The agent and I talk for about an hour. He has not picked up any information that Hezbollah was planning to hit Andrew McCarthy. His informants know nothing about Pan Am 103.
Disappointed, I send him on his way. The next night, another Blackhawk sneaks into Nicosia. Another agent arrives at my door, care of Bill’s taxi service. He’s also got long hair and an earring. I’m beginning to dete
ct a pattern here.
During this interview, I discover two important things. First, it is totally conceivable that the U.S. Embassy in Beirut has been penetrated by Hezbollah agents. The staff includes a large number of local nationals, and they represent every group within Lebanon. There are Druze, Maronite Christians, and Shiite Muslims all working together to help run the embassy. Chances are, there are at least a few agents in place among the employees. It has happened before.
The other tidbit is more troubling. The embassy uses a private travel agency in the city to make all arrangements for its personnel. Using a local company in a place like Beirut is a huge security risk.
I spend Christmas Day in the safe house, waiting for another agent to arrive. Since this is a clandestine operation, I can’t even call my family. For all my dad and wife know, I’ve dropped off the face of the earth.
Each night, we repeat the interview routine, but I don’t learn anything new. We cannot prove Hezbollah penetrated the embassy’s travel arrangements, but we can’t rule it out. There are too many holes that good operatives could exploit.
Ten days later, I’ve learned all that I can. Bill books me on a flight home.
Before I leave, we head out across the Green Line and drive through Turkish Cyprus until we reach an ancient Greek port called Kyrenia. We find a place overlooking the harbor. Moored boats bob on the water, and couples walk hand in hand along the quay that leads to an amazingly intact Greek castle. Built hundreds of years before Christ, it has withstood the ages. I marvel at it. Its massive turrets and thick stone walls served as a sentinel to the past two thousand years of human history. No doubt, those ramparts will stand watch over the passing of our own era someday. It is a humbling thought and reminds me that all this is just a transient moment in human evolution.
Bill picks this time to give me an update on the 103 investigation. There was a bomb on board. It looks like it was placed inside a suitcase that the baggage handlers stowed in the 747’s forward cargo bay. With Pan Am’s help, a suspicious bag—a tan hard-shell Samsonite—has been traced to a flight originating in Malta. It was put onto a Malta Air flight that landed at Frankfurt. The ground crew at Frankfurt routed it to Pan Am 103A, a 727 that took it to Heathrow. It was checked through to JFK. It made it through the entire system without getting screened, even though it was an unattended bag. It did not belong to any passenger on any of the three flights.
Somebody studied our security gaps and then exploited them. And that somebody wasn’t Hezbollah, Syria, or the PFLP–GC.
It was the Libyans. Some highly classified intelligence just came in that condemns Qaddafi once again. The nature of the intelligence is so sensitive that it can’t be released to the public. For now, the fingers will continue to point at Iran and Syria. Meanwhile, the investigators will keep sifting through the wreckage of Pan Am 103, looking for hard evidence that we can use to condemn Libya in a public venue.
It won’t be an easy task. When the 747 came apart, pieces fell across eighty-one miles of Scottish countryside. The investigators are combing through some 845 square miles, trying to find every sliver that fell from the sky that night. To do so, the Brits and Scottish police have launched the largest criminal investigation in their history. It is a process that will take months, if not years.
That night, after we return to Nicosia, I pull out my moleskin journal and make another notation. Chances are not good that we will ever catch the intelligence agents or terrorists who planted the bomb in the baggage stream in Malta. The Dark World tends to shield these anonymous operatives from justice. They move through the cracks in society, cause their mayhem, and vanish as silently as they came. Still, I have to believe that some day we’ll get lucky.
I leave Cyprus and spend New Year’s Eve in the business-class section of a Pan Am 747. The entire flight home, I ponder the ambiguity of my report. I can’t rule out an assassination attempt on the ambassador. Could the Libyans, or Hezbollah, or anyone else have targeted the plane because our agents were aboard? It is maddening to have loose ends that cannot be tied up. The neat little Hollywood endings seen in James Bond films just don’t exist out here in the darkness.
I return to Virginia Avenue to give my report orally to Mr. Dittmer. As I stand in his office and finish up with my inconclusive conclusions, I can tell he doesn’t like it any more than I do.
When I reach my cubicle, I find a layer of cable traffic and other reports waiting to be read. As I leaf through them, I see with dawning horror one question has been answered. The rescue crews in Lockerbie found several passengers among the wreckage whose dead hands still clutched crucifixes. One couple was still strapped in their seats, hand in hand.
These people knew their fate.
The horror of Lockerbie is complete. And it is at times like these that an active imagination is not a blessing for a special agent of the DSS. The nightmares come. Long after midnight for weeks, I cannot help but replay what those final moments must have been like for those people who did nothing wrong but choose the wrong plane to fly home on for the holidays. Night after night, week after week, my imagination becomes a plague. I cannot escape it. I can only try harder, work harder. See more. Do more. It is our job to prevent these catastrophes. My countrymen depend on us to keep them safe. How can I say we didn’t let them down?
And what of justice? Even if we do manage to catch the culprits, is that enough? A prison term or death sentence for them seems trivial compared to the horrors they inflicted on innocent men, women, and children. Will justice be enough to comfort Ron Lariviere’s child in the years ahead as he grows up without a father?
No. Nothing can rewind the clock and abort this catastrophe. Best case, justice will be but a paltry sop to those whose lives have been devastated by this single senseless act.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue it. After all, once the last pieces of Pan Am 103 are collected from the Scottish countryside, what else can we do?
twenty-nine
STREET DANCE
Bethesda Bagels
February 1993
For those connected to Pan Am 103, the nightmare will never really end. The investigation continues, but for me, a deluge of cases come and go since those ten days in Cyprus. The years have started to blur together now that I’m the old man of the CT office. Just as Gleason was once the institutional memory, I have earned that title now, thanks to my seven years on the job.
I’m sitting in a bagel shop in our little D.C. suburb on a cold midafternoon. I came inside for coffee and a cinnamon and raisin bagel. Right now, I’ve draped my Barbour Beaufort jacket over the back of the small café-style chair I’ve selected by the window. It has a great view of the street outside.
And I’m studying the street today. People watching is a popular pastime around D.C. Folks will sip coffee and watch the world go by, enjoying the sights. For me, people watching is part of our daily game of survival. We’ve got to be good at it—my agents and I. Otherwise, we will not survive in the field.
I check my watch. Today’s operation started about twenty minutes ago. We’ll see who gets burned. I take a long drink from my coffee cup and peer out the window. So far, I don’t make out anyone. They’re getting better, that’s for sure.
I need to be on my toes, but I feel weary. The burden we’ve carried all these years hasn’t changed, it has just evolved. If anything, the world is even more dangerous now, even with the fall of the Berlin Wall. We have new threats emerging from strange corners of the world, leftover consequences from the end of the Cold War. I’m not sure we’re prepared to deal with them. Our eyes are elsewhere, as usual.
But at least there have been some moves toward justice. When West and East Germany reunited, we gained access to the Stasi’s secret files. The East German police had their hands in all sorts of bloody ops, one of which proved to be the La Belle Discotheque bombing in 1986.
I shake my head. That seems so long ago. I was so fresh-faced and naïve. The world was a big blank
slate to me. Now I know its colors and contours. I know just how dangerous it can be. And I’ll never forget the victims. It is hard for agents not to get jaded after all we’ve seen.
The East German files revealed some interesting details. A Palestinian named Yasser Shraydi working for Libyan intel masterminded the disco operation. He worked out of Libya’s East Berlin People’s Bureau and organized a team that included Musbah Eter, another Libyan intel type, and a Lebanese-born East German named Ali Channaa. Channaa was a Stasi operative who worked closely with Qaddafi’s spooks. His wife was the one who actually planted the bomb.
All of them are currently at large, but at least we know who needs to be hunted down and apprehended. That’s a big step forward. Such information is usually frustratingly rare.
Across the street, there’s a man in a jogging suit loitering at a bus stop. He’s wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. He looks cold and underdressed. He’s been there since I came into the shop.
I’ll have to keep my eye on him.
Do the people around me have any idea of the ruthless depths of the world they live in? Do they have any clue what lurks around them? I certainly didn’t eight years ago. Perhaps that ignorance is a good thing. Living life in perpetual fear is not a life at all. In truth, there are moments where I miss that blissful ignorance. Knowledge and a top secret clearance do not equal happiness. I’ve found that out the hard way.
I have a copy of today’s Washington Times with me. I open up the front page and pretend to read. My eyes are focused over the top of the paper and on Mr. Jogging Suit at the bus stop.
The end of the Cold War helped solve the La Belle case. Justice has not been served yet, but we have a long memory. If they slip up, we’ll catch them. Same with the Pan Am 103 bombers. Two big breaks in 1989 led President George H. W. Bush to publicly point the finger at Libya the following year. In ’91, we were actually able to indict two Libyan agents for the crime. We can’t get at them. They’re somewhere inside Libya, protected by Qaddafi’s regime. At least we were able to impose sanctions on the country. Libya does not deserve to be a part of the international community. Not after all the violence and chaos it has caused.