Ex-CIA Agent Ties Pan Am Bombing to Iran

A former CIA official says that the United States is “very close” to getting indictments against the terrorists who bombed Pan Am Flight 103 and that it also has evidence that Iran is responsible for the disaster.

U.S. officials investigating the December, 1988, bombing over Scotland had initially suspected that members of the Syrian-based Palestine Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command were responsible.

But Vincent M. Cannistraro, who retired two months ago as chief of operations and analysis at the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, said the PFLP-GC guerrillas abandoned the project at the last minute after a police raid on their safehouses near Frankfurt.

Cannistraro said the job was taken over by Libyan agents who planted the highly sophisticated Semtex explosives in the forward hold of the plane and timed them to go off soon after takeoff from Frankfurt.

Cannistraro said the Pan Am bombing was ordered by the government of Iran in retaliation for the accidental downing of an Iranian passenger jet over the Persian Gulf in July, 1988, by the U.S. cruiser Vincennes. The scheme was known to Iran’s top leadership, including its current president, Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Most of the 270 people killed by the blast were Americans, and the United States has been seeking sufficient evidence for indictments that would stand up in a court of law.

Cannistraro, taking the unusual step of speaking to reporters soon after leaving the agency, said investigators have made great progress in determining how the bomb was placed on board and by whom. He did not elaborate.

But, he added, the indictments won’t make much difference because the perpetrators probably are “beyond the reach of U.S. law.”

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield declined to address the substance of Cannistraro’s remarks.