The Shame of Lockerbie

It was appallingly tasteless for the Libyans to turn the reception for convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi after his ‘compassionate release’ into a pep rally, and I empathize with the relatives’ families. But the British press has been concentrating on something scarcely noticed on this side of the sea: the fact that he probably didn’t do it.

Scroll back to 1989 and recall, just to get started, that the U.S. government had and still has a miserable record in getting their terrorists straight. The most recent obvious example is the bizarre search for al-Qaeda in Iraq.

But long before that our leaders have counted on the loyal lapdogs of the fourth estate to jump on terrorist acts and promptly pump up as the guilty party whomever is the Enemy du jour. The one exception is when the evidence is so overwhelming they can’t get away with it, but had the Oklahoma City bombing occurred beyond the reach of the FBI, we might still think the Ay-rabs had done it.

For example, Libya’s Qaddafi was targeted in 1986 by Ronald Reagan—resulting in a bombing that killed his 1-year-old daughter—after a notorious nightclub bombing in Berlin. That attack probably was committed by cells under the protection of Syria, not Libya. But who cares?

The most likely suspect for the Lockerbie attack was Iranian agents, not Libyans, given that a U.S. navy ship had shot down a civilian Iranian airliner full of religious pilgrims five months before. No one even apologized for that massacre—imagine our reaction if the Iranian air force had knocked out a Delta passenger jet over the Indian Ocean.

So the Iranians were plenty mad, but the Reagan gang wasn’t about to get into apologies and look soft. Having known some of them, I have no doubt that they were privately chortling over the carnage and making jokes about it.

Now Lockerbie occurred just before Christmas 1989 when westerners make pilgrimages to celebrate their religious holiday. Does that have a familiar ring?

If it had occurred today, the fit with U.S. policy goals would be perfect. But back then, Iran was needed to stay out of the first Gulf war to liberate Kuwait, and they did so. Who better to trot out as the culprit than Qaddafi who had nothing to offer at the time?

Some may object to the appalling cynicism implicit in such an accusation. How could our leaders knowingly obscure the facts of a terrorist attack on its own citizens? Then again, why wouldn’t they? Did they hesitate to use the pain of the 9/11 victims to start a war in Iraq?

The accused Libyan faced the Catch-22 of either insisting on his innocence or getting a chance to die at home. He opted for the latter and dropped his appeal but continues to insist he did not kill the 270 people at Lockerbie.

So who did? And why can’t the truth come out?