-Caveat Lector- [The tone of these two articles is so different from the ones published by the Guardian.] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56673-2000Oct1.html Lockerbie Conviction Chances in Doubt Printer-Friendly VersionBy Peter Finn Washington Post Foreign Service Monday, October 2, 2000; Page A12 CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands - After more than 50 days of trial, the prosecution case against two Libyan intelligence officers in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial is drawing to a close, and there is a growing sense among experts that hopes for a criminal conviction are in trouble. "This was a highly circumstantial case from the beginning," said Vincent Cannistraro, former counterterrorism chief for the Central Intelligence Agency, who worked on the early part of the bombing investigation and has continued to follow the case. "The forensic evidence has shown a link between the bomb and Libyan intelligence. What they haven't proven is the specific hands" that planted it. Libyan agents Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, 48, and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, 44, are charged with murder and conspiracy in the bombing of over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. All 259 people on the plane died - including 189 Americans - as well as 11 on the ground. The trial is being conducted at this former U.S. military base 25 miles southeast of Amsterdam under Scottish law, which prohibits lawyers in the case from discussing the proceedings. But in a unique arrangement to benefit relatives of victims, prosecutors are briefing them at the end of each session. Prosecution lawyers from Scotland, as well as U.S. Justice Department observers, continue to rebut doubters and insist that their strategy is working, relatives said. "They seem very confident," said Kathleen Flynn of Montville, N.J., whose 21-year-old son, John Patrick, was killed on the plane. She said she, too, is confident: "The bottom line is, if you have followed this carefully, it is coming together nicely." The indictment alleges that the accused worked in concert with others "to further the purposes of the Libyan intelligence service." But the tortured compromise that the British and U.S. governments reached with Libya to get custody of the two defendants for trial puts only them - not the country or the intelligence agency - in the dock. The prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the two agents specifically are guilty. "No one can say how [the judges] will rule, but the prosecution looks like it is experiencing problems" in linking the accused directly to the crime, said John Grant, professor of law at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and emeritus professor at the University of Glasgow. Since 1991, when Megrahi and Fhimah were indicted in the United States for the bombing, the American government has expressed confidence in the case against them, which was outlined in detail by administration officials at the time. But that optimism seemed to be tested last week when a supposed key witness, a Libyan double agent paid by the CIA, testifying under the pseudonym Abdul Majid Giaka, was relentlessly and, in many eyes, successfully attacked on the stand by defense attorneys. They labeled him a fraud and a liar who changed his story and concocted evidence to stay on the U.S. government payroll and collect a $4 million reward for information leading to a conviction in the bombing. Giaka, seeming hesitant and uncertain, stumbled several times under the barrage. He has been in a U.S. witness protection program since 1991 when he was whisked off the Mediterranean island of Malta, where the prosecution alleges that a suitcase bomb that destroyed the Pan Am 747 originated. In Malta, Giaka worked with Fhimah at Libyan Arab Airlines, which they both allegedly used as cover for their roles in Libyan intelligence. As an intelligence operative - the defense preferred to paint him as a self-deluded, onetime car mechanic - Giaka said he also came into contact with Megrahi. "While you have been in America, have you been able to dip into gems of American literature, such as their short story writers like James Thurber?" asked Fhimah's attorney, Robert Keene. "Have you encountered someone called Mitty, first name Walter?" The fictional Mitty is a fantasist who escapes his dreary life by imagining himself in heroic situations, and the comment from Keene was typical of the sarcasm visited on Giaka during cross-examination. There were two key elements in his testimony: that the two defendants kept explosives at Malta airport and that Megrahi arrived in Malta days before the bombing carrying a brown Samsonite-like suitcase similar to the one investigators believe contained the bomb. Megrahi was met by Fhimah, Giaka testified. Despite some pre-testimony speculation that he was an eyewitness, Giaka did not say he saw the Libyans do what they are alleged to have done: place an unaccompanied bag on an Air Malta flight to Frankfurt, where it was checked through to the New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 at Heathrow International Airport in London. "Even if you believe Giaka, and that's a big if, he didn't say anything incriminating" about the accused, said Robert Black, a professor of law at Edinburgh University, who has been dismissive of the prosecution case for months. Black helped broker the deal with Libya that permitted the trial. "And that's all there is. That's all they have. They've proven nothing. Zilch." But Flynn, the New Jersey mother, argued that Giaka "made the points he needed. If you cut through the weird world of spying, he made the connections. People ask, 'Is he credible?' Look, if a drug dealer in New York saw a murder, he may be a sleaze, but he can be credible about what he saw." Although Scottish law frowns on witness coaching, former CIA official Cannistraro said he still found Giaka's apparent lack of preparation astonishing because he has been in Justice Department hands and subject to repeated debriefings for the last nine years. "This is a second-rate and inept prosecution," said Cannistraro, who noted that earlier witnesses also failed to live up to prosecution expectations that they would clearly tie Megrahi to the purchase of bomb timers and clothing packed in the suitcase and later found in the wreckage. "The defense made [Giaka] look like a slug." Not everyone is so dismissive of the prosecution or so convinced that the trial is "over," as Black put it. "The better way to look at this trial is a jigsaw with lots of pieces that come together to create a picture," said Clare Connelly, a lecturer in law at Glasgow University who is following the trial here at Camp Zeist. "One of the difficulties with this case is that ideally one would have a witness who could speak to the two accused placing the Samsonite suitcase on board Pan Am Flight 103," Connelly said. "That was never going to happen in this case. "And therefore the focus by the media on a witness, or one or two witnesses, as being the significant pinnacles on which the trial hangs misjudges what the trial is about." C 2000 The Washington Post Company http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30291-2000Sep27.html Defense Lashes Witness At Pan Am Bomb Trial Printer-Friendly VersionBy Peter Finn Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, September 28, 2000; Page A20 CAMP ZEIST, Netherlands, Sept. 27 -- In a daylong attack on the credibility of the key prosecution witness in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial, defense attorneys today used CIA cables to argue that the former Libyan double agent is "a liar" who invented information about the bombing in an attempt to keep himself on the CIA payroll. The attorneys zeroed in on why the man, a Libyan who formerly worked for the CIA and the Libyan government, waited 2 1/2 years before coming forward with crucial parts of his account and why his testimony differs from what CIA reports show he told the agency years ago. Identified by the pseudonym Abdul Majid Giaka, the man testified Tuesday that two Libyans accused of planting the bomb kept explosives at the airport in Malta, where the bomb originated. He also said that, just days before the plane's destruction on Dec. 21, 1988, one of the men arrived in Malta from Libya carrying a suitcase like the one in which the bomb was hidden. Now living in the United States under the federal witness protection program, Giaka has been heralded as the prosecution's star witness. In his testimony, he has described suspicious activity by the two men has not offered an eyewitness account of a crime. "I suspect [Giaka] was damaged" by the cross-examination, said John Grant, professor of law at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., who has followed the case closely. "He's a critical witness because there is no other direct witness who can point the finger at the accused. But whether anyone believes him is another question. In one sense, after 10 years in witness protection, he's bought and paid for." "There is a growing feeling that the . . . case is weak," said Grant, who added that a verdict of not guilty is now possible for at least one of the defendants. The prosecution alleges that the defendants, working for Libyan Arab Airlines in Malta, placed an unaccompanied suitcase containing a bomb on a flight that went to Frankfurt, and then to London. There, prosecutors contend, the bag was transferred to the Pan Am flight, which blew up in midair over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people--189 of them Americans. Much of today's questioning, conducted through an interpreter with Giaka's face concealed from spectators and his voice disguised electronically, centered on his financial situation and the pressure U.S. authorities allegedly placed on him to come up with information. Lawyers also made much of the fact that Giaka became a CIA informant in August 1988--four months before the bombing--but did not mention the brown suitcase or the arrival of one defendant, Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi, at Luqa airport in Malta until July 1991, according to CIA cables. "My future is dark," Giaka said at a 1991 meeting with a CIA official, according to a CIA account read in court today. In a cable, the official described him as "shattered" and "desperate." A day later, Giaka met with Justice Department investigators on a U.S. warship in the Mediterranean and was whisked to the witness protection program in the United States. "I suggest to you it was indeed dark," said defense attorney William Taylor. "That's when the lies began to be concocted in your mind. . . . Come up with something and the future is rosy. . . . The very next day you came up with a brown Samsonite suitcase." In tones that implied contempt for the witness, defense attorneys also challenged parts of his testimony that appear to be contradicted by, or simply are not mentioned in, a series of cables released by the CIA about its dealings with the paid agent. For instance, Giaka testified Tuesday that the second defendant, Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, kept 22 pounds of TNT in a desk drawer at the offices of Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa airport, where both defendants worked, allegedly as cover for Libyan intelligence operations. Giaka testified that the material was still there when he told the CIA about it on Oct. 5, 1988, but, according to the cable account of the same meeting, he said at the time that it had been given to a Libyan diplomat in Malta between April and July of that year. Taylor said Giaka, to burnish his shaky bona fides, had invented the story he told the CIA because it was "uncheckable" by the agency--which, if it thought explosives were still in the desk, would surely have tried to have them confiscated. Taylor said Giaka had forgotten his original story when he testified Tuesday. "A liar needs a good memory," said Taylor. Giaka repeatedly denied that he had lied and claimed that he could not remember every detail of his conversations with the CIA. Nor, he said, could he be responsible for the content of CIA cables, which he said he has never seen. At one point in interviews with investigators, Giaka said he expressed concern about the security of traveler's checks at the airport office. Defense attorney Robert Keene expressed astonishment that Giaka expressed no similar concern about the explosives, particularly since Fhimah smoked at the desk where they allegedly were hidden. "Wasn't it a little risky sharing an office with a smoking man who had 10 kilos of high explosives?" asked Keene. "The smoker always has an ashtray," said Giaka, in one of a number of tense standoffs between witness and defense. Giaka also testified Tuesday that a senior Libyan intelligence officer had asked Giaka in 1986 to study the feasibility of placing unaccompanied luggage onto a plane at Luqa airport. Giaka concluded it was possible, he testified. When Megrahi heard about the study, he said "don't rush things," according to Giaka's court testimony, which prosecutors contend is evidence a bombing was being planned, but for later. But until 1992, four years after the bombing, Giaka never mentioned the comment to the CIA, FBI or Scottish police, according to documentary evidence presented by Taylor today. At a meeting with the CIA in December 1990, Giaka was specifically asked if he had any information about getting unchecked baggage onto a plane. He said that this would require a "detailed feasibility study" and that he "was never asked to do" such a study. Reading from the agency cables, Taylor and Keene detailed the CIA's increasing doubts about Giaka's intelligence value and its exasperation over his financial demands, which the CIA described as "milking" the agency. At one point, Giaka asked his handler for $2,000 to buy bananas, which he hoped to sell for a profit in Libya. In September 1989, the CIA reported internally that "it appears that [Pan Am Flight 103] may be a non-subject" for Giaka. [NOTE: The Post is distorting what the cable said, dammit. From the NYTimes article: This, despite a 1989 C.I.A. cable that said: "It appears that Pan Am 103 may be a non-subject with his colleagues. He could not provide any additional information." His colleagues to whom Pan Am 103 was supposedly a "non- subject" included his boss, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, one of the accused. ] C 2000 The Washington Post Company <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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