by Robert H. Taylor
October 9, 2004
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After the conviction of a lone Libyan intelligence agent in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, the case was apparently closed. Libyan leader, Muhammar Quadaffi has even been cleared to start paying $billions in restitution to the families of those who died on the ill fated flight.
Unfortunately, truth has a way of rising to the surface at the most un-opportune time.
Four former U.S. Intelligence Agents and journalists have filed a $150 million federal lawsuit in Washington, DC October 4, 2004 that claims the bomb that killed 259 passengers and crew originated, in of all places, Houston, Texas. It was built using explosive expertise provided by the United States Central Intelligence Agency. The suit charges that the CIA sold Quadaffi 20 tons of Plastique explosives in the early 1980’s, and, most importantly, trained Libyan hit-squads to build bombs inside portable radios.
The Plaintiffs claim Libya used CIA expertise to construct the PAN AM bomb in 1988 that was contained in a Toshbia radio. They claim the CIA violated their civil rights by consipiring to silence them to cover-up the CIA – Libyan connection.
The clubs used to bludgeon the truth and silence all four are strikingly similar.
Dr. William Chasey published a book after the Pan Am bombing, titled AGENT 4221, exposing the CIA’s suspected links to Libya through the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy. Chasey revealed that the CIA Station Chief in the 80’s was Soviet Double Agent, Aldredge Ames, now serving a life sentence. The CIA’s PAN AM bomb investigator turned out to be another former CIA Rome Station staffer, by the name of Vincent Cannestraro. Records uncovered by Attorney Adler prove Ed Wilson’s Quadaffi operation was run out of the Rome Station. Chasey was demonized, his life threatened, and persecuted by a long string of federal agents, from the IRS to the FBI.
Elements of his book was used in the production of a documentary film titled: THE MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS which aired in the United Kingdom and 16 other countries around the world. The film was researched and directed by international film-maker, Alan Francovich. Francovich was an American who had moved to Europe so he could produce documentaries, a format that had fallen on hard times back home. He had made another film, ON COMPANY BUSINESS that linked the CIA to the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile, by backing the murderous Penochet regime.
Oswald LeWinter is a former CIA operative who appeared in the film. LeWinter pointed fingers at the CIA and obtained conclusive evidence that there was more to the bombing than a single minded terrorist attack. LeWinter confirmed that the bomb was carried aboard by a courier from a family linked to the CIA in an operation to capture wanted terrorists, Fawaz Younes in 1987.
Another U.S. intelligence agent appeared in the film. Lester K. Coleman had linked the bomb to a drug sting gone bad Coleman appeared on NBC Nightly News the day after the bombing, raising questions about Libya and former CIA agent, Edwin Wilson. A book Coleman co-authored with former New York Times Editor, Don Goddard also questioned Wilson’s true CIA affiliation. Wilson was a retired CIA officer the government had imprisoned for selling C-4 plastique explosive to Libya and for training Libyan terrorist to build bombs. Wilson was sentenced to 52 years in prison, and spent twenty-two years in solitary confinement, until his recent release.
The connection between the terrorist bomb and the CIA may have never come to light if not for the dogged research by Houston lawyer, David Adler. Adler was appointed by U.S. District Judge, Lynn Hughes six years ago to represent Edwin P. Wilson.
Wilson has claimed since his 1983 conviction that he was working for the CIA all along. At his trial the government presented a sworn affidavit claiming Wilson had no connection with the Agency when he did the Quadaffi deal.
It was all a CIA lie.
Attorney Adler turned up more than 900 pages of CIA documents that confirmed Wilson was working for the Agency, and that the Libyan deal was sanctioned by the CIA.
On October 27, 2003 Judge Hughes over-turned Wilson’s conviction underlined with a scathing condemnation of the CIA, and the Justice Department. The Judge ruled that the CIA had more than 80 contacts with Wilson during his dealings with Quadaffi. Judges Hughes wrote, "of course the government could have produced records supporting Wilson, that the CIA knew and even authorized the shipment of explosives to Libya, but it did not."
In 1997 Alan Francovich dropped dead while attempting to clear U.S. Customs at Houston, Texas International Airport. He had reportedly uncovered the truth about the CIA connection to Libya’s bomb making expertise, and was tracking Wilson’s story.
A few months later, in 1998, Oswald LeWinter was having lunch with Mohammad Fayad at a hotel in Vienna, Austria., Fayad was the father of Dodi Fayad, who was killed with Princess Diana in the Paris car crash the previous August. LeWinter was about to supply Fayad with some documents obtained from his handlers at the CIA when he was arrested for possessing forged documents. State police accompanied by U.S. FBI agents marched LeWinter off to jail. He was imprisoned for two years.
Six months later, in July, 1999, Lester Coleman was meeting with clients in a Lexington, Kentucky hotel when local police accompanied by federal agents swooped down and arrested him for possessing forged documents, over checks, they claimed came from overseas banks, interestingly cleared on deposit. Coleman is buried in a rural Kentucky prison.
Francovich was dead, and both LeWinter and Coleman were in jail. The two former intelligence agents had been scheduled to appear at the trial of two Libyans accused of the PAN AM bombing, but their incarceration assured their silence.
The exposed Wilson – Libyan link dates back to 1975 and 1976 when George H. W. Bush ran the CIA. It was under DCI Bush that Wilson opened ties to Quadaffi and began selling him explosives and equipment. While living in Libya under the CIA umbrella, Wilson hired former Green Berets, some of who were actually active troops posing as rogues and retirees out for money. Wilson set up an intensive instructional training program for Quadaffi that was intended to make the Libyan Colonel a credible terrorist – threat to any opponent, anywhere in the world. The operation was an unqualified success. People and things started blowing up and dying all over the place.
This would not be the first time that a so-called enemy of the United States in the Arab world would be supplied with weapons of mass destruction under George Bush’s watch. Iraqgate and the scandal around BANCO NATIONALE DE LAVORO, and Kennamental showed how George Bush had secretly armed Saddam Hussein before the Gulf War. Even Ted Shackely’s own book, The Third Option suggests that arming both sides of a conflict often is the best way to control the outcome.
While Wilson was training and equipping Quadaffi, he was also lunching with top CIA covert operative, Theodore Shackley and with Bush himself. Wilson was providing personal airplanes for Air Force General Richard Secord to fly around, using a CIA proprietary company, Consultants International, as cover.
With the January 1977 change in presidents from Ford to Carter it was inevitable that George Bush ( the elder ) would have to leave as Director of Central Intelligence. Shackley remained in charge of covert operations until December of that year. Then, as Wilson’s work and life became increasingly high-profile, The new Director, Stansfield Turner removed Shackley. It was at the same time that Turner gave 800 CIA career covert operatives pink slips and "early retirement". It was no coincidence, according to the files obtained by Attorney Adler, that the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) started investigating Wilson at the same time.
President Jimmy Carter had already begun the groundbreaking work with Menachem Begin of Israel and Anwar Sadat of Eqypt that would lead to the Camp David Peace Accords. It would not be good PR for the U.S. to be exposed secretly arming Sadat’s bitter enemy and next door neighbor, Muhammar Quadaffi, especially when Quadaffi was plotting to kill Sadat.
According to incredibly detailed reports compiled by BATF, the FBI and the CIA’s own Inspector General, the CIA was " operationally tasking" Wilson and his employees to accomplish specific objectives in Libya before, during and after the delivery of the C-4. Both the Justice Department and the CIA had witness statements that the CIA had been tasking and debriefing Wilson’s employees at exactly the same time that they were teaching Quadaffi’s people to blow up things like airliners.