The Libyan connection
Putting Libya in the frame has been orchestrated from Langley by Vincent Canestraro, head of the CIA counter-terrorist section. In his book On The Trail of Terror: the inside story of the Lockerbie bombing, published in October 1991, David Leppard tells us this while completing one of the most amazing somersaults in investigative history. Let one example suffice: his own prime suspect throughout his Sunday Times series in 1989, Abu Talb, gets a first mention on page 174.
Turning his back on his excellent earlier work on this case – I am indebted to him for much of the story so far – Leppard decided to embrace the new Langley line. His book and subsequent activity by CIA personnel in Malta, Cyprus and Germany have sought to establish the guilt of Libyan agents and to unpick the case against Talb. After lengthy sessions with CIA personnel, the Maltese shopkeeper who had previously recognised a photograph of Talb – a 35 year-old Palestinian – apparently changed his mind and fingered a Libyan airline official in his fifties. This identification, along with allegations – later disproved – that a Swiss-made timing device for the Lockerbie bombing was supplied exclusively to the Libyan intelligence service, led to charges against two Libyans and sanctions against Libya.
Syria and the oil war in the Gulf
In August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. James Baker’s feet didn’t touch the ground for weeks as he flew round the world making alliance deals – either provide men and armour or pay your oil dues: a mercenary force was in preparation. It was vital to bring on board a number of key Arab states to avoid the enterprise being characterized as anti-Arab or anti-Islamic. Crucial to the creation of the alliance was President Hafez ah Assad, the dictator of Damascus. Instead of supporting a fellow Arab state confronted by Western imperialism, Assad was persuaded to join the crusade to ‘restore democracy’ to Kuwait. Later, in November 1990, Bush met Assad and American sources claim that much of the meeting was devoted to Lockerbie and the suspected involvement of the Damascus-based Jibril.
Meanwhile the Lockerbie investigation had undergone an extraordinary redirection. The control centre of the inquiry was switched from Scotland to Langley. A commission of inquiry set up in the US reported in May 1990 without mentioning Jibril, Syria or Palestinians, and Bush famously declared that ‘the Syrians took a bum rap on this.’
The octopus surfaces
What is the explanation for this unbelievable piece of political camouflage? The only credible answer to date is supplied by Lester Coleman, who claims to have been an agent of the CIA and the lesser known Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) for eight years. In his Trail of the Octoptus: Front Beirut to Lockerbie -Inside the DIA (Bloomsbury, 1993), written with Donald Goddard, Coleman claims that the US government is implicated in the Lockerbie bombing.
Coleman tells us that he was recruited as a Middle East-based agent with the CIA and DIA between 1982 and 1990, and used his journalist background as cover. He informs us that the DIA, the joint intelligence service of the US Army, Navy and Air Force, has 57,000 employees and a budget five times that of the CIA. It appears that one of its main roles is to monitor the clandestine activity of other US government agencies.
Coleman’s DIA job was to spy on the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which operated out of a base in Cyprus. Coleman alleges that the DEA is supervising, and the DIA is manipulating, the drugs and arms trafficking which is a part of the currency of power in the Syria-dominated part of Lebanon, as well as Syria itself. He tells us that the purpose was to attain some influence over hostage trading and, more significantly, to influence the politics of Syria, regarded as a key Middle East state.