Probers Link Luggage With Pan Am Bomb

Investigators have scored a crucial breakthrough in the Pan American Flight 103 bombing probe by pinpointing the piece of the luggage they believe was used to carry the explosive device aboard the plane, government sources said Friday.

Although the evidence is so fragmentary that the brand of the baggage has yet to be established, investigators are hopeful that further testing and related interviews will lead to identifying those behind the crash last Dec. 21.

At the same time, a government source close to the probe estimated that about 200 people in Europe, mainly of Mideast origin, are being “monitored” in connection with the probe. The 200, a figure that another U.S. investigator said was “a very conservative estimate,” are considered possible, not prime, suspects because of past activities, methods of operation and their politics.

Disclosure of the advance came as FBI Director William S. Sessions dismissed as “tabloid journalism” reports in British newspapers that authorities now know who bombed the plane and may even have arrested a suspect. Sessions, speaking to the National Newspaper Assn. here, declined to expand on his comment, which aides said was intended to deny the British reports.

The Boeing 747 en route from London to New York crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

British and Scottish investigators, assisted by the FBI, have traced the fatal blast aboard the flight to a radio-cassette player that housed plastic explosives and have determined that it was brought onto the plane inside luggage.

Identifying the luggage is regarded as crucial because that could establish who checked the bag onto the aircraft, without having to trace every bag carried or transferred to the jumbo jet by the 259 passengers and crew who perished along with 11 townspeople.

The piece of the suspect luggage was “found among the many small fragments . . . close to the bomb,” one source said. “They are now trying to figure out the brand and then will try to match luggage with the passenger--partly through the process of elimination. Some luggage already has been matched up with passengers.”

Once the style, color and manufacturer of the piece of luggage is known, the investigators apparently hope to determine, in part through interviews with family members and friends of victims, who might have used such luggage and checked it aboard.

Indication of Complexity

But as an indication of the challenge still confronting investigators, the “igloo,” or portable baggage container, that investigators determined carried the bomb-bearing luggage may also have carried “interline” bags--those transferred from other airlines. Those bags could have been transferred either in Frankfurt where Flight 103 originated or at London’s Heathrow Airport. This could add to the difficulty of determining the owner of the suspect bag, one source said.

Investigators have not yet “firmly determined” in which city the bomb-carrying luggage was put aboard Flight 103, another source acknowledged. Flight 103 began in Frankfurt on a Boeing 727 and then switched to the 747 in London.

Government sources differed over whether the estimated 200 people being monitored in connection with the investigation have any direct or indirect links to passengers aboard Flight 103. One official said some of those under varying degrees of surveillance do have ties, but another disputed such ties.

European investigators, including British and West Germans, are conducting most of the surveillance, sources said. Some of the individuals are already being monitored, and the level of scrutiny has been intensified.

However, there is “as yet no prime suspect,” a U.S. counterterrorism official said. “There is still no determination of who did it. They are getting closer, but it is very slow going.”

Determining responsibility for the bombing has involved both criminal investigators and intelligence agencies. The investigators have been painstakingly dissecting forensic evidence in Britain and conducting hundreds of interviews of next of kin of the victims, their known associates and friends.

At the same time, intelligence-gathering on the movements of possible suspects, ranging from Iranians and pro-Iranian factions to radical Palestinians, has been stepped up but has encountered problems.

Although the FBI has not finally classified the bombing as a terrorist act, the prime, general suspect among intelligence agencies is the government of Iran. Investigators suspect Iran may have used radical Palestinian operatives, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine--General Command, in the bombing.

A significant hindrance for the intelligence networks, sources explained, is that many suspects are not in Europe where their movements might be monitored, but in the Middle East. The United States has little or no reliable first-hand intelligence capability in Iran, Lebanon and Libya.

European agencies are also limited in Lebanon, where few diplomats venture from Christian East Beirut to Muslim-dominated areas in the capital or the Bekaa Valley.

In a related development, Transportation Secretary Samuel K. Skinner announced Friday that he is sending a special team to Europe to look into new reports on the bombing. He did not elaborate on the reports, but it was disclosed Thursday that airline and regulatory officials on both sides of the Atlantic had much more warning than previously known about the threat of a bombing such as the one that downed the Pan American flight.

The Skinner team will leave this weekend for Britain and West Germany and report to him on what anti-terrorism steps can be taken in advance of tightened security measures to be implemented by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

In North Adams, Mass., relatives of Flight 103 victims launched a petition drive Friday, charging that a “true cover-up” has occurred and demanding an aggressive investigation of the tragedy.

“The President of the United States has said nothing, has offered us nothing,” said Eleanor Hudson of Albany, N.Y., whose daughter, Melina, 16, died in the crash. “We want answers. We cannot go to grave sites without answers.”