“They're never going to tell”

[On this date in 1990, members of President George [H W] Bush’s Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) met members of the families of UK Lockerbie victims at the US embassy in London. What follows is taken from the Wikipedia article Pan Am Flight 103:]

On 29 September 1989, President [George H W] Bush appointed Ann McLaughlin Korologos, former Secretary of Labor, as chairwoman of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of flight PA103. Oliver "Buck" Revell, the FBI's Executive Assistant Director, was assigned to advise and assist PCAST in their task. Mrs Korologos and the PCAST team (Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt, Representative James Oberstar, General Thomas Richards, deputy commander of US forces in West Germany, and Edward Hidalgo, former Secretary of the US Navy) submitted their report, with its 64 recommendations, on 15 May 1990. The PCAST chairman also handed a sealed envelope to the President which was widely believed to apportion blame for the PA103 bombing. Extensively covered in The Guardian the next day, the PCAST report concluded:

"National will and the moral courage to exercise it are the ultimate means of defeating terrorism. The Commission recommends a more vigorous policy that not only pursues and punishes terrorists, but also makes state sponsors of terrorism pay a price for their actions."

Before submitting their report, the PCAST members met a group of British PA103 relatives at the US embassy in London on 12 February 1990. Twelve years later, on 11 July 2002, Scottish MP Tam Dalyell reminded the House of Commons of a controversial statement made at that 1990 embassy meeting by a PCAST member to one of the British relatives, Martin Cadman: "Your government and ours know exactly what happened. But they're never going to tell." The statement first came to public attention in the 1994 documentary film The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie and was published in both The Guardian of 29 July 1995, and a special report from Private Eye magazine entitled Lockerbie, the flight from justice May/June 2001. Dalyell asserted in Parliament that the statement had never been refuted.

Twentieth anniversary of report of Presidential Commission

[The following account is taken from the Wikipedia article Pan Am Flight 103.]

On 29 September 1989, President [George H W] Bush appointed Ann McLaughlin Korologos, former Secretary of Labor, as chairwoman of the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) to review and report on aviation security policy in the light of the sabotage of flight PA103. Oliver "Buck" Revell, the FBI's Executive Assistant Director, was assigned to advise and assist PCAST in their task. Mrs Korologos and the PCAST team (Senator Alfonse D'Amato, Senator Frank Lautenberg, Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt, Representative James Oberstar, General Thomas Richards, deputy commander of US forces in West Germany, and Edward Hidalgo, former Secretary of the US Navy) submitted their report, with its 64 recommendations, on 15 May 1990. The PCAST chairman also handed a sealed envelope to the President which was widely believed to apportion blame for the PA103 bombing. Extensively covered in The Guardian the next day, the PCAST report concluded:

"National will and the moral courage to exercise it are the ultimate means of defeating terrorism. The Commission recommends a more vigorous policy that not only pursues and punishes terrorists, but also makes state sponsors of terrorism pay a price for their actions."

Before submitting their report, the PCAST members met a group of British PA103 relatives at the US embassy in London on 12 February 1990. Twelve years later, on 11 July 2002, Scottish MP Tam Dalyell reminded the House of Commons of a controversial statement made at that 1990 embassy meeting by a PCAST member to one of the British relatives, Martin Cadman: "Your government and ours know exactly what happened. But they're never going to tell." The statement first came to public attention in the 1994 documentary film The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie and was published in both The Guardian of 29 July 1995, and a special report from Private Eye magazine entitled "Lockerbie, the flight from justice" May/June 2001. Dalyell asserted in Parliament that the statement had never been refuted.

[And the following account is from the Canadian Attic blog.]

A US presidential commission issued a report on the December 1988 of a Pan American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland that had killed all 259 people aboard and 11 more on the ground. The commission said that it was not certain how the bomb was smuggled aboard the plane, but cited evidence that it was an unaccompanied suitcase loaded in Frankfurt, West Germany. The report said that the security system for US civil aviation "is seriously flawed and has failed to provide the proper level of protection to the traveling public." The commission called for greatly increased security at US airports, the creation of the post of assistant secretary of transportation for security and intelligence, and establishment of a national system for warning passengers of credible threats against airlines or flights.

Jim Swire responds to Frank Duggan's falsehood and fable accusation

[What follows is Dr Jim Swire’s response to Frank Duggan’s assertion that UK relatives are lying and promoting a fable when they refer to a member of  the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism saying: "Your government and mine know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell."]

I do not usually reply to statements in the media from Mr Frank Duggan, however he has recently very publicly accused me of lying, concerning an event which happened in the United States embassy, where Mr Duggan was present, acting as relatives' liaison officer over the Lockerbie case, I believe.

I was also present.

Mr Duggan now claims that an alleged remark to one of the British relatives was not made.

It is hard to understand how he would know that because the remark was made 'off the record', confidentially in an aside to the father of another British victim.

I know and trust that victim's father.

The remark made to him was "Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell.”

That is not the kind of remark which any bereaved parent is ever likely to forget, but Mr Duggan could not have overheard it; perhaps he also does not understand its implications for a bereaved family.

Perhaps whatever Mr Duggan does not hear does not happen?

[RB: Jim Swire here wrote a sentence about PCAST which I have omitted because it referred to the wrong PCAST. Dr Swire has now circulated a correction. In an email to me he says: 'In demonstration of the fallibility of my memory I must also point out that Google led me to the wrong use of PCAST.' I may add that I should be happy if my own memory were only as fallible as Dr Swire's.]

I do however owe Mr Duggan and others an apology: the meeting in the US embassy in London apparently took place in February 1990 not in 1989 as I had thoughtlessly previously claimed. Forgive the weakness of an old man's memory for dates, Mr Duggan, but these days there is always Google.

Those who wish to view Mr Duggan in action may like to dig out of the net the Channel Four showing of a film about Lockerbie called The Maltese Double-Cross, which was followed by a live on air discussion where again I was present, as was Mr Duggan and where I had to ask a Mr Buck Revell of the FBI (appearing by satellite) why his son had canceled his flight on Pan Am 103 instead of getting murdered like my daughter. Mr Revell is, I understand, no longer in the FBI. If I recall correctly he told us that his son had received an unexpected change of leave dates from the army. His son was not claimed to be a member of the staff at the US Embassy in Moscow, where warnings about a terrorist threat specific to Pan Am had been posted on a staff notice board well before the tragedy. [RB: I cannot find this particular discussion online. But another instructive media performance by Frank Duggan can be viewed here.]

We have always been mystified as to why the Pan Am 103 plane was 'only' 2/3 full just before Christmas.

I won't ascribe a date to that discussion group, in case my memory might again prove defective.

There was also a British near equivalent to this amazing revelation from PCAST. In her autobiographical book published in 1993 - two years after the two Libyans had been indicted over involvement in the Lockerbie disaster. Lady Thatcher wrote, speaking of the attack by the USAF on Tripoli in 1986, itself an alleged reprisal for a terrorist bombing of a German disco:

“It turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined....the much vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place. Gaddafi had not been destroyed but he had been humbled.” (The Downing Street Years, pp 448-9)

I fear, Mr Duggan, we shall continue to seek the truth and since we are European citizens we have an inalienable right to that truth under the provisions of the ECHR. Please Google that.

Frank Duggan "not familiar with certain aspects of Lockerbie"

[What follows is excerpted from an obituary of Frank Duggan published in today’s edition of The Herald:]

Frank Duggan, who has died of cancer aged 79, was a combative and often controversial lawyer and campaigner for American victims of the 1998 PanAm/Lockerbie disaster four days before Christmas 1988. He headed the organisation Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc, representing families in the US who lost relatives in the terrorist bombing in which 270 people died.

Whether he represented all the families of the 190 American victims was never quite clear - he once told George Galloway MP he had "never really counted them" - but he was instrumental in the legal action that won $2.7 billion from the Libyan government for the bereaved families, minus a stunning 30 percent in American lawyers' fees. He reportedly worked for the families initially for no pay but is thought to have shared in those fees.

Mr Duggan was incensed when Kenny MacAskill, Scotland's justice minister at the time, decided to release the convicted bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, on humanitarian grounds in 2009. Describing the decision as obscene, Mr Duggan was vociferous in insisting the then Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi had ordered the PanAm bombing. This brought him into often bitter conflict with many of the Scottish and other UK victims' families, notably the most-outspoken UK relative, the GP Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora perished in the tragedy.

Dr Swire and many other families always believed al-Megrahi's conviction was a miscarriage of justice and that Iran may have been behind the terrorist bombing in retaliation for a less-publicized tragedy. That was when an American Navy guided-missile cruiser, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iran Air Airbus passenger aircraft over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, killing all 290 passengers and crew - more than the later total of the Lockerbie tragedy. The Americans said they thought the airliner was a fighter plane and the deaths received a fraction of the publicity worldwide that the Lockerbie deaths would receive nearly six months later.

By all accounts, Frank Duggan was a good man, a man who recovered from years of alcoholism and who sincerely fought for the American victims of PanAm 103. But he was perhaps rather naive when it came to the media, as demonstrated in a telling telephone interview with George Galloway MP for talkRADIO in 2009.

In the call, Mr Duggan admits he was not familiar with certain aspects of Lockerbie, notably the evidence of the Maltese witness Tony Gauci, who said he had sold the clothes later found to have been wrapped around the bomb which brought PanAm 103 down. Mr Galloway asked Mr Duggan why the US government had given Mr Gauci a $2million "reward,"to which Mr Duggan replied that there was no proof of such a payment and that he was "not that familiar" with Mr Gauci's evidence.

Mr Duggan then proceeded to call Jim Swire and others of being "all of these cranks." Again, Mr Galloway pulled him up for calling Dr Swire a crank. It was too much for Mr Duggan and in the end he told Mr Galloway: "I don't have time to waste with people like you. I've got to go. Bye bye." And he hung up. (...)

It was George H W Bush who in early 1989, prompted by the Lockerbie tragedy, appointed Mr Duggan to the Presidential Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) where he became a liaison between the US administration and the American Lockerbie victims.

According to a colleague at PCAST, former FBI agent J Brian Hyland, whose desk was next to Mr Duggan's, the latter had a tendency to sing or hum the patriotic Battle Hymn of the Republic (Mine Eyes have seen the Glory) to keep his colleagues in a positive frame of mind.

Despite the fact that he did not have a relative on the PanAm 103, the families - or at least a majority of them - trusted him and appointed him president of the group they called Victims of PanAm 103 Inc, and he represented them until the day of his death. In return, the families supported Mr Duggan, notably after his daughter was hit by a drunk driver and went into a coma. She eventually awoke but with brain damage.

As family liaison, Mr Duggan lobbied for their interests and listened to them with patience and understanding. After being appointed to Presidcent Bush's PCAST, he continued lobbying for the families as the trail turned to Libya. During this time, he went to work for one of the legal teams representing the families, headed by Allan Gerson, whose 2001 book noted that “for six years Duggan had worked for the families and had earned nothing for it except their trust and gratitude.”

Death of Frank Duggan reported

Today’s edition of The Times reports the death at the age of 79 of Frank Duggan, President of the US Lockerbie relatives’ organisation Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, Inc.

References to Frank Duggan on this blog can be found here. He was not himself a relative of a Lockerbie victim but was on the staff of the Presidential Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) set up after the disaster, in charge of family liaison.

The death notice in The Washington Post can be read here.

"The destruction of Flight 103 may well have been preventable"

[On this date in 1990, the Presidential Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (PCAST) presented its report to President George H W Bush. The full report can be read here. A report in The Washington Post the following day reads in part:]

A presidential commission yesterday placed much of the blame for the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 on a "seriously flawed" aviation security system, beginning with inept and confused Pan Am security at Frankfurt and London and compounded by the Federal Aviation Administration's failure to enforce its rules.

"The destruction of Flight 103 may well have been preventable," the commission said. (...)

The commission found fault throughout the government, from the FAA to the State Department, which it blamed for failing to adequately aid and inform the families of the victims. Only the US intelligence system, including the CIA, did its job adequately, the commission said. (...)

The commission said that for many months before and after the crash, Pan Am failed to follow written federal security guidelines, employed poorly trained security personnel and generally ran a lax security apparatus in Frankfurt and London. It said that despite $630,000 in fines, problems were not cleared up until 10 months after the crash when [Federal Aviation Authority administrator James B] Busey had a face-to-face meeting with Pan Am's new chief executive officer.

"It is astonishing . . . that Pan Am permitted those problems and others to continue at that level month upon month after the disaster," the report said.

The report said the commission could not determine exactly how the bomb got onto the plane, although it said there is ample evidence that an "extra" unaccompanied bag was placed on the plane at Frankfurt. A container of luggage was also left unguarded on the tarmac at Heathrow Airport in London for about 30 minutes.

The commission called the extra unaccompanied bag "the 13th bag," because an X-ray operator's list of parcels delivered from other airlines totaled 13, while other records could trace only 12 of them to passengers.

The report also did not identify any individual or country responsible for the bomb, apparently Semtex explosive hidden in a small Toshiba radio. A criminal investigation continues, and no charges have been filed.

However, [Commission chair, former Secretary of Labor Ann] McLaughlin indicated the commission may know more than it is making public. She said the panel delivered a private letter to President Bush yesterday morning with his copy of the report. She said the letter contained more specifics about dealing with terrorism but refused to elaborate.

[RB: The current president of US relatives’ organisation Victims of Pan Am Flight 103 Inc, Frank Duggan, was on the staff of the Commission, in charge of family liaison.]