Terrorism In Search of Answers

By Scott MacLeod

The Rt. Rev. James Whyte, head of the Church of Scotland, spoke for a horrified world. At a memorial service in Lockerbie last week, he condemned last month's bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 as an act of "human wickedness" and "cold and calculated evil." With Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and some 100 relatives of U.S. victims among the mourners, Whyte said those responsible must be brought to justice, but cautioned, "The uncovering of the truth will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of law may be hard to obtain."

Whyte alluded to what some investigators concede is a distressing possibility: the Pan Am bombers may never be identified, much less punished. Despite suspicions that focus on Palestinian terrorist leaders Ahmed Jibril and Abu Nidal, no clues have turned up so far that prove either of them orchestrated the atrocity. As an American intelligence official put it, "There's nothing out there."

In leading the probe, Scotland Yard is getting unprecedented cooperation from security agencies in Europe and the Middle East as well as in the U.S. The FBI is providing substantial assistance, and the National Security Agency is scanning its records for evidence that might be contained in the electronically intercepted telephone and radio conversations of known terrorists.

With an estimated 90% of the Boeing 747's fragments now recovered, experts have begun reassembling the aircraft piece by piece in a warehouse south of Lockerbie. They are attempting to learn exactly how and where the bomb was placed and whether it was constructed from Semtex, a Czechoslovakian-made plastic explosive.

Investigators on both sides of the Atlantic have started interviewing relatives and friends of Flight 103's passengers to determine if any of the victims had suspicious associations or could have unwittingly carried the bomb onto the plane. Officials last week discounted a theory that Arab terrorists surreptitiously planted explosives in the luggage of Khalid Jafaar, a Lebanese-born student who had been visiting his grandfather in Beirut; Jafaar's suitcase was recovered intact.

West German officials also ruled out the possibility that the bomb had been slipped into one of four uninspected U.S. military mail pouches loaded onto Flight 103 at its point of origin at the Frankfurt airport. It turned out that the mail was intended for American military personnel stationed in Britain and was unloaded at Heathrow Airport before the Pan Am plane's ill-fated takeoff for New York. But according to some West German reports, British investigators now suspect the bomb was planted by a worker at London's Heathrow Airport. British officials called the claim "pure speculation."

In a dubious journalistic test of airport security last week, a / correspondent and producer for France's TF-1 television network tried to place suspicious packages on three flights leaving John F. Kennedy International Airport. When an alert TWA employee spotted one of the packages, he found a note inside saying, "Congratulations! You have found our phony bomb." The two men were arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiracy to violate air-safety laws.

Investigators privately admit that in the end they may have to depend on getting a tip from an informer to learn the identities of the terrorists. Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat agreed to assist the investigation last week, but the initial results of his offer only served to show how frustrating the probe could become. Even though Arafat maintains an extensive network of security men who keep an eye on Palestinian extremists, an Arafat spokesman said that "so far, the P.L.O. does not have any clues."

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/London