U.S. News &
World Report, Dec 20, 1993 v115 n24 p36(4)
Qadhafi's big adventure.
(lobbying in the U.S. by Libya;
Muammar Qadhafi) (includes related article on witness to 1988 bombing
of Pan Am Flight 103)
Edward T. Pound, Brian Duffy
Abstract: Dept of Justice officials are
investigating reports that prominent US citizens met with Libyan
officials who desire to improve relations with US officials. Libya
hopes to lessen economic sanctions and resolve the legal questions that
surround the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1993 U.S. News and World
Report, Inc.
On a September afternoon in 1992, Bobby Burchfield, the top lawyer for
the Bush-Quayle campaign, ushered two men into his office. The first he
knew slightly. Gordon Wade was a former chairman of the Republican
Party in Kentucky and a respected businessman. The second man was a
Libyan. Wade introduced Mohammed Bukhari as Muammar Qadhafi's minister
of finance. Bukhari had a story to tell. The Libyan government had been
approached by representatives of the Bush-Quayle campaign, Bukhari
said; the emissaries had asked for a campaign contribution. The
Libyans, Bukhari said, had paid. That was impossible, Burchfield
replied. But if Bukhari would give him the name of the Bush-Quayle
"representatives," he would look into the matter. Bukhari thanked
Burchfield and continued. "Mr. Bukhari then conveyed to Mr. Burchfield
Libya's desire to have improved relations with the United States," Wade
wrote in a memorandum about the meeting. The memo was obtained by U.S.
News. Despite his polite questioning of Bukhari, Burchfield was aghast.
Accepting campaign contributions from Libya was simply illegal. Bukhari
had provided no evidence it had happened. "There was never any money
given by the Libyan government to the Bush campaign," Burchfield says.
"Period."
Today, Mohammed Bukhari's unusual visit to
Washington is a principal focus of a criminal investigation by the U.S.
attorney in Washington, Eric Holder. According to law enforcement
officials and people interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in
connection with the inquiry, the investigation centers on substantial
illegal payments allegedly made by the Libyan government to American
citizens to lobby government officials in Washington. Some lobbying
was directed at the highest levels of the White House. The objective:
to ease international sanctions imposed on Tripoli and help resolve a
legal impasse over the fate of two Libyan men indicted for the bombing
of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bomb exploded five
years ago this month, destroying the Pan Am jet and killing 270 people.
Records seized. Bukhari's travels in the United
States are now under scrutiny by the Justice Department. Although he
was issued a visa for the purposes of attending the annual Washington
meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, U.S.
News confirmed that Bukhari traveled to Dallas. One possible
reason: to discuss a $200 million purchase of U.S. real estate by
Libya. Investigators want to know whether the discussions involved
a man named Henry Billingsley, a son-in-law of Texas real-estate
developer Trammell Crow, a big contributor to Republican
candidates. The investigators believe that the proposed transaction,
which involved commercial property in Texas and Illinois, grew out of
Libyan efforts to secretly invest government funds abroad in order to
avoid the sanctions imposed by the United Nations and Washington. The
Libyan effort apparently fell through after U.S. investigators began
inquiring about it. Francis Hubach, an attorney for Crow, says that
"neither Trammell Crow Co. nor Trammell Crow have conducted business
with Libyan nationals now or in the past." Billingsley, whose business
records have been seized by the Justice Department, says he was
questioned by U.S. investigators, but only "in reference to someone
else." He says he has no financial relationship with Libya: "I have not
done any business with that country."
The real-estate talks appear to be the most
ambitious of many Libyan efforts to win influence and friends in the
United States. They also may have grown out of a relationship between
Mohammed Bukhari and a man named A. William Bodine, a
prominent New York financial adviser who manages investments for
Saudi Arabian businessmen and others in the Middle East. Bodine and
Billingsley were college roommates at the University of California at
Los Angeles. In the spring of 1992, Bodine and Gordon Wade met in
Geneva with Bukhari to discuss the impact the international
sanctions were having on the Libyan people. Wade recalls the meeting:
The Libyans had run out of several important medicines, Bukhari
complained, and children were suffering. Through a GOP contact, Wade
says, he arranged for the news to be carried to the Bush
administration. "Bodine took a list of medicines to the White House
that the Libyans had run out of," Wade says. Richard Haass,
the National Security Council aide for Middle East affairs, met with
Bodine but says he barely recalls what was discussed. Wade believes the
meeting was a success: The Libyans were told they would get the needed
medicines.
Making friends. That led to future contacts between
Bodine, Wade and Bukhari. It "proved to the Libyans that we knew
somebody," Wade says. "Then the next thing that occurred, they wanted
to contribute money [to the Bush campaign]." Though Burchfield insists
that no such contributions were made, people acting on behalf of the
Libyans managed to gain access to top presidential aides. "There may
have been one or more calls made to the president that he referred to
me," says Brent Scowcroft, George Bush's national-security adviser.
"The people who came to me were well-known businessmen whose calls I
would return." Scowcroft would not name those who spoke with him about
Libya. He has been questioned about the matter by federal
investigators.
Justice Department lawyers are trying to determine
whether the Libyans made payments to anyone to gain influence in
Washington. A grand jury has subpoenaed the financial records of Bodine
and Wade. Bodine declines to comment on the matter. Wade, an
international financial consultant based in Miami, says he received no
money from Libya. He recalls meeting with Bukhari and Bodine in
Washington, D.C., in September 1992. Wade was in Washington
representing another client, he says, and was asked by Bodine to meet
with Bukhari. "The Libyans wanted to contribute money to the political
candidates. Because I knew about political contributions ... I was
brought in. I said, `No, you can't do this.' " Bodine sought to arrange
other contacts for Bukhari in Washington, but it is unclear whether he
was successful. "He called me," says G. Henry Schuler, a Libya
specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He
asked who he could take Bukhari to see. He really had no idea."
Fruitful or not, Mohammed Bukhari's efforts to
cultivate friends in Washington represent just the tip of a vast
iceberg. The Libyans are offering big money: The well-connected
Washington firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld was offered $5
million--both before and after the 1992 presidential election--to
represent the accused Libyan bombers; the firm declined the offers.
State Department records show that more than 80 people, Americans and
non-Americans, have approached U.S. officials with offers from the
Libyan government. Some of the proposals involve trying the two
defendants in the Pan Am 103 case in a third country; others have
involved offers to pay families of those who died on Pan Am 103. The
intermediaries range from small-town businessmen to former
congressmen to international financiers like Adnan Khashoggi and Tiny
Rowland, the head of the London-based Lonrho investment company. Lonrho formed a Caribbean shell company with Libya and
invested more than $1 million to bankroll a film on the bombing of the
Pam Am jet over Lockerbie; the film would have shown the Libyans were
blameless. (Lonrho backed out of the film venture last week.)
Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian, and Yaacov Nimrodi, an Israeli businessman
involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, have received a
multimillion-dollar fee from the Libyans, U.S. government officials
say. Because they are not American citizens, the fee is not improper.
It is unclear what the payment was for. Khashoggi and Nimrodi did not
return phone calls seeking comment.
The list goes on. F. Lee Bailey, the well-known
criminal defense lawyer, has traveled to Libya at that government's
expense to discuss the Pan Am 103 case. In Washington, former
congressmen David Bowen and John Murphy were fined by the U.S. Treasury
Department for illegal lobbying on behalf of Libya. Murphy traveled to
Libya with consultant Albert Grasselli, who was also fined. "It seems
everybody on the streets of Washington has met with Libya now," says
Michael Ledeen, a foreign-policy consultant to the Reagan
administration who was approached in early 1993 by a top Libyan
official to discuss the Pan Am 103 case. Says R. Richard Newcomb,
director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control:
"They are using every available means to do what they have to do not to
comply with the U.N. sanctions and try to find people who are well
connected, [even] sitting leaders."
Making money. U.S. News sent a detailed list of
questions about the Libyan lobbying activities in Washington to Col.
Youssef El Debri, Libya's director of national security. Debri failed
to reply to the magazine's inquiries.
Clearly, Libya has much to be concerned about.
Citing Qadhafi's refusal to turn over the two indicted men, the United
Nations Security Council last month voted to impose tougher sanctions
on Tripoli. The sanctions could cripple Libya financially. A chart
prepared by the U.S. Treasury Department shows a welter of interlocking
investment companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Some have
been easy to track. In the United States and
overseas today, as a result of the international sanctions, $958.1
million in Libyan assets remains frozen and unavailable for
Qadhafi's use.
RELATED ARTICLE: The prosecution's prize witness
If Muammar Qadhafi ever does allow the two men
charged with blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 to stand trial, American
prosecutors will have an ace up their sleeves: a high-ranking Libyan
intelligence officer who has defected to the United States. According
to knowledgeable U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials, the
man, Abd Al-Majid Jaaka, is currently enrolled in the Federal Witness
Protection Program under an alias. The officials say Jaaka walked into
the U.S. Embassy on Rome's Via Veneto and asked to talk to police. The
FBI's legal attache interviewed the man, and he was flown to the United
States.
Law enforcement officials say Jaaka has promised to
testify in detail about how the two indicted men, Abdel Basset Megrahi
and Lamin Fhimah, prepared the explosives used to blow up the Pan Am
jet, then smuggled them aboard a connecting flight. Not only would
Jaaka testify in court, U.S. officials say, he has also provided other
valuable evidence against the two Libyans, including a diary that
belonged to Fhimah.
A brown suitcase. Jaaka was in a position to know a
lot. A ranking officer in the Libyan intelligence service, Jaaka was
working in December 1988 as an employee of Libyan Arab Airlines in
Malta. CIA officials say Libyan operatives often work abroad posing as
employees of the state-run airline. On December 20, according to Jaaka,
Megrahi and Fhimah arrived in Malta on an LAA flight from Tripoli.
Megrahi, a senior Libyan intelligence officer, was traveling under an
alias. Fhimah, who had once run the LAA office in Malta, was not.
According to Jaaka's testimony and other evidence, the two men had with
them a brown, hard-sided Samsonite suitcase. That was the suitcase that
carried the bomb aboard Flight 103, forensic evidence shows. Fhimah's
diary entry for December 15 shows that he obtained Air Malta baggage
tags that allowed the suitcase to be loaded aboard an Air Malta flight
on December 21, transferred to a Pan Am feeder flight in Frankfurt,
Germany, then loaded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 at London's Heathrow
Airport early that evening. The plane blew up just before 7 p.m.; 270
people died.
Jaaka's testimony would bolster a highly technical
case. Forensics specialists have traced a microchip recovered from
the wreckage of the Pan Am jet to a consignment of timers produced by a
Swiss firm for the Libyan government. Several of the timers were taken from a Libyan intelligence officer
named Nayli Ibrahim after his arrest in Dakar, Senegal, on Feb. 20,
1988. Forensics tests linked the microchip recovered from the jet's
wreckage in Scotland to the timers taken from Ibrahim. Jaaka's
testimony would link the timer and explosives to the Libyans now wanted
for trial in the United States.
Bus. Coll.: 74Z2287
Mag. Coll.: 71L1233
Article A14631562