The Controversy Over ‘Flight 103’ : A Compelling Docudrama, Whatever the Facts : Drama: ‘The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story’ doesn’t attribute where its ‘new’ information comes from. Still, it delivers on the storytelling front.

The movie is “The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story.” And it’s 90 minutes of tingles and tautness (starting at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO), ending with the inevitable, emotional crash.

Even before watching it, however, something jumps out at you: An HBO publicity blurb saying that this finger-pointing version of events leading to the explosion of that Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988 is based on first-hand interviews with key characters who include “many vital witnesses who have never before told their stories.”

Never before told their stories?

The officials who investigated one of the worst acts of terror ever directed at the United States--a bombing that took 270 lives--missed “many vital witnesses?” How?

Instead, these “many vital witnesses” saved their stories for British researchers gathering material for a television movie? Why?

Moreover, just who are these witnesses on which the movie relies? In contrast to a scholarly monograph or competent news story, “The Tragedy of Flight 103” offers no attribution.

And finally, is it proper for an entertainment program--which inevitably uses dramatic license to make its points and hold its audience--to play the role of reporter on such a complex and volatile story?

Whatever the answers to these questions, and whatever its credibility on the fact front, “The Tragedy of Flight 103” does indeed deliver on the storytelling front. It’s truly compelling while naming names.

An HBO co-production with Britain’s Granada Television, this is a sort of investigative docudrama (is this an oxymoron?), with a team of journalists from Granada’s respected “World in Action” weekly news program doing the digging for Michael Eaton’s script.

“The Tragedy of Flight 103” concludes that terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine planted the bomb that blew up the London-to-New York jet at the behest of Iran. And that Pan Am--with its misplaced priorities and appallingly lax security--made the bombing possible. As the old cliche goes, Pan Am was a disaster waiting to happen.

Producer-director Leslie Woodhead knows how to jangle nerves without stooping to cheap theatrics. Told in a lean, straightforward fashion, Granada’s “inside story” begins in 1986, with then-Pan Am chairman C. Edward Acker (Ned Beatty) launching a campaign to persuade the public that it’s safe to fly his airline internationally. Even if it’s not.

While Pan Am is playing its games, meanwhile, a bombmaker (Sasson Gabay) recruited by a Syria-based Palestinian terrorist leader (Aharon Ipale) is planning his device as part of a conspiracy bankrolled by Iran in response to the earlier U.S. shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet mistakenly identified as a military aircraft.

The terrorists here are not wild-eyed, bloodthirsty madmen, but disciplined, radicalized ideologues who regard themselves as soldiers while cooly and methodically plotting horrific violence on behalf of a cause they believe is just. These are alien minds with values and perceptions beyond the comprehension of conventional society.

All the while, their movements in Frankfurt--where the flight originated--are monitored by police who know they are up to something, but don’t know what. Later, when the suspected bombmaker is inexplicably sent on his way and allowed to leave Germany after being arrested, the frustrated Frankfurt police chief utters a crucial line: “This is not about policing, this is about politics!”

And, in this account, about profits, as Pan Am’s alleged revenue-over-safety policy is blamed for “a pattern of security failures that marked the day of the tragedy” in 1988.

Late in the movie, the camera closes on a suitcase moving up a conveyor belt into a jet at an airport in Malta. It’s the case containing the bomb, the case that will be transfered to Flight 103 and explode over Lockerbie. Tough story.