Focus 580; The Price of Terror: Lessons of Lockerbie for a World on the Brink

In December of 1998 a bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie Scotland killed all of the people on board the plane and 11 people who were there on the ground this morning. And this part of focus 580 will be talking with an expert in international law who was involved in the first lawsuit brought against Libya on behalf of the victims of this terrorist act he also helped write a law that makes it possible for individuals to hold foreign governments accountable for acts of terrorism. Our guest this morning is Allan Gerson. He is currently a research professor of international relations at George Washington University and he is an authority in the area of international law. He is the co-author of a newly published book that explores this subject the title of his book is The Price of Terror lessons of Lockerbie for a world on the brink HarperCollins is the publisher of the book. It's out now. He's joining us by telephone. And as we talk your questions and comments certainly are welcome. The number if you're here in

Champaign-Urbana is 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line. And so if you would be a long distance call for you to use that number. And that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 0 3 3 3 WRAL. That's what you get if you. Match the numbers and letters 333 w o l l and toll free 800 to 2 to WY. Professor Gerson Hello. Yes hello how are you. I'm fine thank you and thank you very much for talking with us here. Before we get into the story maybe perhaps I just started by asking how it is that you became involved in this personally because not only are you the author of this book Price of Terror you're also in it. That is you're one of the people who are. And your story is is in it how is it that you personally became involved. Well I literally got my job through the New York Times. I published an op ed piece in The New York Times on July 2nd 1992 and which I

said that it is a mistake for the families of the victims of Pan Am 103 to focus. Screw simply the responsibility of Pan American Airways for the possessed or that there are new ways in international law which enable them to focus on the state that was responsible for the murder of their loved ones. And that state was Libya. So I published that I was I was a lawyer but I was also an academic and I did so really in my academic capacity. That article was reproduced in the International Herald Tribune and a man named Bruce Smith who would lost his wife Ingrid on Pan Am 103 who read it and called me and said This is exactly what I have been saying we have to find ways to go after the perpetrator and not be distracted by going after the airlines. Soon after the plane blew up and crashed investigators

got there they got to go over the wreckage something no doubt that the bombers didn't intend. It's not certain what they intend. Well I guess I guess they're that's an open question one you would think that perhaps they would have. From their viewpoint it would have been better to have this occur over the Atlantic Ocean so that there wouldn't be any wreckage it would not have known who the perpetrator was. They may have wanted to leave their mark. So why I suppose one could argue either way and you don't really know which which is the correct way. And the book itself we say that it is likely I guess the popular theory that they really meant for the bomb to go off before the plane went over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigators they got there and apparently also very quickly after look going through the wreckage and taking a look at it for a couple of days the conclusion was what perhaps they suspected right from the beginning anyway that it was indeed a bomb that it was it was in the luggage compartment it was it was in a suitcase and it was pretty clear

that's really what it was. That's correct. How did how did they. Well let's maybe first talk about the issue of who the immediate suspects were because Libya certainly was one of them but also Iran and Syria were considered us as possible suspects and certainly for the Iranians there was motive the because the United States had accidently shot down an Iranian jetliner and that was one of the possible scenarios that this was somehow engineered by Iran as as a revenge in fact for the United States having done that. How is it that though we ended up settling on this that this was ultimately this was the Libyan government that was behind this. Well initially what the investigators went on and terminate motive was as you pointed out revenge. But they had something more to go on than simply trying to figure out who

might have revenge in mind. Just a little. Over a month before the bombing of Pan Am 103 the German police had broken up the SSO in Hamburg where they discovered the radical Palestinians through the working under the ages of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. And with the support of Iran and perhaps Syria had been plotting to blow up an airplane and they had radios similar to the kind that were that were used as the vehicle for the planting of the bomb on Pan Am 103 they had the timetables they had everything else. And these individuals had been arrested by the German police. And as we. Document the book under pressure from Iran. All of those individuals except

one were released. So the immediate focus of attention was on Iran not only because they had a motive as you point out because of the shooting down accidentally by the United States of an Iranian Airbus which killed 290 people but also because the German police had actually broken up the cell with direct connections to to Iran in and now in in fact there I think there are some people who continue to maintain that. Is the explanation of what happened. There is a book that I'm not sure if it's been published yet or if it's just coming. It was written by a couple of British journalists in which they make the argument that in fact that it was it was done by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a revenge done and at the request of Iran as revenge and the ally outlined this plot. In fact you make reference to it in the book about that involves the

CIA and drug smuggling and so forth and so their contention is that the two Libyans who were put on trial one of the most convicted were not responsible for this. I don't know. I think you're probably familiar with this argument if not with this book. What's your your thought about that you think that that's simply not correct. Well all research in the book lead us to believe and we indicated that the initial plan for the bombing took place in Syria and that the agents of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command were then dispatched into the Bekaa Valley controlled fully by Syria to meet with members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their plot to blow up an American airliner because it was an American airliner was hatched.

Now after Operation autumn leaves which I mentioned earlier. Occurred that foiled the hijackers initial efforts and the plot was then handed over to Libya. We discussed at length in the book as to whether or not the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government and Britain were as a situation going after leads that might point to Syrian and Iranian involvement as they were. And following up leads that might point to Libya's involvement. And our conclusion based on interviews and we provide the names of the retired intelligence agents that we interviewed is that in fact agents were told that it might be better if they really focused their efforts at one particular point on Libya and not on Syria and Iran

because geo political considerations made the prospect of actually doing anything against Syria and Iran if they were found to have been involved. Something very difficult to accomplish. Well certainly when you look at the three countries and the relationship between the United States and these countries you can it's plausible to think that any one of them could have been responsible. What was the the thinking of the motivation of that if indeed this was Libya. Why it is that Libya did this. Well first there was evidence that clear evidence that pointed to Libya I have no doubt that the individual that was found guilty at the trial that was concluded this last year and Holland was in fact the guilty that's the grotty and that the other person who was acquitted was also guilty although that was not enough proof that could be mustered to meet a very high standard of proof required for a criminal conviction. In terms of motivation in 1986

the United well throughout 1985 there had been skirmishes between the United States and Libyan forces although no American was was killed. But then the Libyans bombed and I can say it definitively and out of speculation because a court proceeding in Berlin concluded just a few months ago and found that in fact four Libyan agents were responsible for the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin called La Belle in 1986. It was a discotheque frequented by American servicemen and two American soldiers were killed. The response to that bombing the United States the skiver through intercept that it was Libya that was responsible. As for the dispatch of 16 F-111 jets to bomb Libyan targets in Benghazi and Tripoli only two of them were able to get through because of bad weather conditions at the time. But 40 to

60 civilians Libyan civilians were killed. The leader as Moammar Gadhafi is called was not killed but President Reagan said at the time that he would not have lost any sleep if he had been killed. His stepdaughter was however killed so clearly those events that he set in motion the possibility of a revenge killing against the United States now. What occurred after the bombing. The U.S. bombing of Libya in 1986 was a series of statements by the president and especially his Secretary of State George Shultz which indicated that Gadhafi had been put in his box that terrorism had now been contained from Libya that Libya was no longer a threat. And yet at the very same time as we document in our book The State Department was issuing releases to its various

offices around the world which demonstrated that the Libyans Libyan intelligence had been ordered to target American installations including American civilians. And according to the indictments later filed in the U.S. district court by the Justice Department it was shortly after 1986. That the Libyans began to plan for the bombing of Pan Am 103 which occurred in December of 1988. This this may be too complex a question for a show like this and maybe slightly off the point of the book but how is it that you know given the fact that here the plane exploded in flight and crashed that they investigators were actually able not only just to say this was a bomb and that it was and we expect that it was in a piece of luggage but that they could make the analysis down to the brand of luggage. The fact that it was in a cassette player. Their brand of cassette player. And how is it possible

that they can they can come up by going over what I'm sure is a very difficult sort of crashing that they can come up with that kind of evidence and say with that that certainty all of all of these fine details. Well it's testimony to the remarkable forensic investigative skills of the FBI and the CIA and the British counter. What's what they did is they scanned over 100 miles of green fields outside of Lockerbie for any clues. Among in all in the entire area they were able to find this tiny chip from a circuit board. They were able to trace that circuit board to a Swiss manufacturer both here who had manufactured a timing device that could be used to set off bombs based on altitude and it had been expressly or tailor

made for Libya it had been on special order. So they were able to track that. And then secondly they were able to. Find that there was a shirt there that the bomb was wrapped around. Wolf a number of shirts and they were able to somehow find the label although it was terribly charred. And then tried to get down to a store in Malta and they interviewed the shop owner and the shop owner was able to then make photo identifications of individuals who had come in too quickly purchased shirts and the photo spread that had been shown the shop owner included pictures of the two Libyan intelligence agents that had been put on trial and that shop owner was able to successfully identify those individuals so this makes up part of the body of evidence that was used

to demonstrate that Libya was in fact responsible. Let me just introduce Again our guest for this part of focus 580 was speaking with Allan Gerson. He is currently a research professor of international relations at George Washington University. His area of expertise international law. He is the co-author of this book. We're talking about The Price of Terror lessons of Lockerbie for a world on the brink that's the subtitle is published by Harper Collins and he is indeed about the bombing of PanAm flight 103 it was destroyed in flight by a bomb in December of 1988 it crashed over Lockerbie Scotland. All of the people on the plane were killed. Also a number of people on the ground and he was involved in a lawsuit against Libya on behalf of some victims of the crash he also was involved in helping to write and lobby for a law that made it possible for individuals to actually hold governments foreign governments accountable for acts of terrorism like this. And your questions are welcome three three three W I L

L toll free 800 1:58 WY. One of things in the book that you explain is that it was some time before this took place. There was a threat early in December of that same year there was a warning about the planned bombing of an airliner. Now the particulars were different but it was indeed a warning that the United States government knew about it and one of the questions that you raise and I'm sure that is in many people's minds is if the United States had taken that warning more seriously could this be. It have been prevented. Well it's hard to pinpoint it to this particular warning which is code the hell think the warning because that come about through any materials that have come to the attention of authorities in Helsinki. The fact is that there were six highly placed intelligence agents who had come onto the airplane and presumably if the

government really knew that there was going to be a bomb on board those intelligence operatives would have been warned and they would not have lost their lives. But you raise a larger more general question which is could the cover. Women have taken steps to have prevented the bombing of the Pan Am 103. Just as we have we now ask ourselves whether the United States government could have taken steps to prevent the bombing that occurred on September 11th. I believe the answer is clearly yes. We did not take out a quick measures then and we did not take adequate measures before September 11th to ensure that there would be airline security measures which were within our grasp and we certainly did not form an effective policy to deal with terrorism either before the bombing of Pan Am 103

or the bombing of the World Trade Center the Pentagon on September 11. One of the. Also there's another set of questions raised about Pan Am and their security before this took place and how it is that that bag that had the bomb managed to get on the plane without a corresponding passenger on the plane. Can one fault or how much should one fault panel and their security arrangements for the fact that the bomb got on the plane. Well Phantom was faulted and found to have acted not only negligently. Because if an airline acts negligently and he was revised the most you can recover under international law could still call the Warsaw Convention a $75000. But if you find that the airlines went beyond ordinary negligence and was guilty of willful misconduct that is to say there was not only the equivalent of a banana peel on the floor and someone slipped but it

continued to leave that banana peel on the floor after many people slip than is guilty of willful misconduct. It can be guilty of willful misconduct and in fact was found to have been guilty of willful misconduct and it was required to pay 500 million dollars in damages to the families of the Fifth. Thems but the client that I represented initially would join the suit as Prue Smith the former airline former Pan Am airline pilot himself and he continually argued that it is a terrible distraction to focus all of our energies on the airline because Whatever its faults whether it was simply negligent or worse than simply wouldn't actually guilty of willful misconduct it certainly was not the murderer certainly didn't plan the operation they didn't plant the bomb and we have to look to others. Now what Pan Am failed to do specifically was it did fail to follow FAA

regulations which had been newly installed that required every passenger to identify his baggage before that it was loaded. Today that's a requirement but you will not get much comfort to realize that it's only a requirement on international flights. And in fact after the bombing of Pan Am 103 we have taken as a government steps to ensure that that would not recur but only by way of a bomb being placed on an airline which is coming into the United States. But if you are flying from Chicago to Tulsa Oklahoma City or anywhere else within the United States. The chances are better than 90 percent that your baggage as of today will not be. That is to say Your checked in baggage will not be properly X-rayed to determine whether or not there were explosives on board. That's something that came as a surprise to me I gather. I guess I had thought

that in in all cases the airlines made sure that if there was a bag on the plane there was also a person with that day and that that was the case for all flights including domestic flights and I guess I was surprised to learn in fact that that's not the case. To the best of my knowledge that has not yet been instituted but I can say with certainty that the screening baggage for explosives still has not been instituted. The new president's mandate requires that the airlines provide a plan for early X-ray or otherwise screening of checked in baggage which will be fully which is to be fully implemented by the end of 2002. If we live so long we have a caller to bring into the conversation. I want to. Do that callers in Champaign County are line number one. Right. Yes good morning. If you haven't discussed the law that

you said you had something to do with and I'm wondering what the scope of that law is or US won't join an international court and we have a lot of potential. I think in dieties different stripes around the world we have the example of Belgium going after Ariel Sharon now what is the actual substance of your law if you could condense that a little bit. Sure. What would you refer to the International Court deals with criminal prosecution and the law that we hope that if the Pan Am 103 families Alien Tort is a no no. The law that the PanAm 103 families working in coordination with the victims of the Oklahoma bombing families helped pass miscall the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. And this provides an alternative to simply pursuing terrorists

through the means of criminal indictments. This allows for civil actions for damages by the families of the victims against certain states that are accused of having engaged in or sponsored terrorism. These states are states that are the term and by the State Department to have engaged in such activities over a period of time. So this is a civil action and it's. Well it seems to me that it. It's a result of the fact that the U.S. won't join an international court that some of these things ought to be educated criminally and we're always pointing the figure outside the country I think there are people like Henry Kissinger who's dodging subpoenas in Paris who ought to be called to account for him I mean the family of Rene Schneider could sue him for for a loss too I think because he had something very closely to do with that case that kind of assassination in Chile.

So I think it's based on the recognition that the criminal court system is not a very good one in and of itself for yielding results that it's very very hard to get a conviction even in the best of circumstances through the criminal justice system. We know the experience of the O.J. Simpson case in the United States which teaches us I believe that defendants are given improperly so every benefit of the doubt that they are four to six really difficult because you have to have. About 95 percent certainty beyond a reasonable doubt. And if you apply that test to individuals accused of international crimes of people who are abroad and where the evidence is abroad it's exceedingly difficult to get a conviction. And it's in that context that the families the side at that there had to be another to at our disposal a tool that they were able to forge after a very long battle was the tool of the civil action so that ordinary citizens could be empowered.

That was an omnibus bill that had a lot of stuff that you might even disagree with. The sure effect of death penalty but it is hard to get an international court to decide something but there was one instance in the 80s where it did happen and that was the case of Nicaragua versus the U.S. but the U.S. just denied it. It's jurisdiction so I mean there is like a 16 billion dollar settlement for the for the Contra war but that isn't even brought up in terms of talking about who the terrorists are and they stay. But anyway I want to continue with the discussion at hand. Thanks. All right well thanks for the call. Other callers are saying they welcome you have questions comments. You can pick up the telephone give us a call again our guest Allan Gerson. He is a research professor of international relations at George Washington University here and he is also the co-author of the book The Price of Terror. It is about the bombing of Pan Am 103 and it is published by HarperCollins. The numbers here in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we also have toll free. Line good anywhere that you can hear a city's eight hundred to two to double you while. Well perhaps

you can talk a little bit more about how it is that you managed to get this law passed that would allow individuals to to essentially to to go to court against another government something that before that this law came along that it wasn't an option. Well we managed to get it passed but with enormous enormous difficulty because I initially went into court the U.S. District Court on behalf of Bruce Smith. It was alone among the PanAm families decided that we should try to find a way of holding a foreign government accountable. And I was essentially laughed at or dismissed by many lawyers who argued that. Don't you know you can't do that. Fine governments are protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity which is like the term implies something out of the 19th century that the

government is sovereign responsible to no one other than itself obligated to no one else and certainly not to its citizens. Well we argued that the doctrine may continue to exist and it's found in black letter U.S. law. But certainly. The drafters of that law could not have intended for a foreign government to deliberately murder American citizens and then go into court and hide behind the skirt the sovereign immunity that was implicit. If you bomb an airplane you forfeit your right to that privilege. We thought that might be a winning argument. Unfortunately when we began to make that argument the government of Libya was joined by the government of the United States whose lawyers these are my former colleagues at the Justice Department came in Libya's side to defend the doctrine of sovereign immunity and they filed briefs in the U.S. District Court the Court of Appeals in the United States Supreme

Court in opposition to our efforts to say that the doctrine of sovereign immunity was not applicable. They sought to make sure that it was up a couple because you know even the United States government cannot be sued unless there is a specific exception in the law. And unfortunately as a result of that intervention and because we could not get the judges to be a little bit more innovative we lost and we were really. Just know that the end of our game when we have the terrible bombing in Oklahoma in 1995 in April of 1995 the Al from our office building. And as a result of that bombing there was a renewed increase within the United States Congress and elsewhere for passage of an anti-terrorism law. And although the Oklahoma bombing concerned something domestic and domestic terrorism there emerged because so many of the Pan Am especially one person of a Pan Am families went out to

provide a tremendous emotional hope and sustenance for the families of the Oklahoma bombing. So then came about a political union whereby the families of Pan Am 103 were prepared to help the families of Oklahoma get what they wanted which was the effective death penalty so that they would not be endless habeas corpus appeals and that the average person sentenced to death would be able to be on death row for an average of 15 years nationally and in return the Oklahoma families joined the Pan Am families in urging Congress to adopt legislation which would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to prevent lawsuits against terrorist states as a reserve. Thought the families were able to overcome the difficulties that they had in the courtroom by having new legislation emerge and that legislation was called the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. But even after it emerged we

have to face a battle that lasted about two years. The fight with Libya arguing and not on the basis of international law but now on the basis of US Constitutional law but the law itself was unconstitutional. Fortunately this time we have the benefit of having the United States State Department of Justice Department come in on our side and the validity of that law was finally upheld. Which brings us to our current situation where we are now in pretrial discovery and hope to go to trial in the early part of next year. How long would you expect overall that it take for this this case to be heard. Oh it shouldn't take more than a couple of months or so. So you thought that there would be in sometime next year that there would be at least an initial resolved. Right. And then but I was in the possibility of Appeals. You know after that possibility of appeal that is of course the the potential difficulties in collecting a judgment once you have once you have a judgment.

Do you expect that. Given the fact now that this this avenue is open to people that there would be some individuals who lost family members on September 11th that would attempt to bring civil action. I suppose there the question is against whom. Well they have two problems of bringing civil action the first is as you point out against whom. That remains to be determined. And there are certain difficulties of that which I can get into. But the second layer of problems is that they are essentially being offered in a very lucrative way. The prospect of immediate compensation. If they waive their rights to go after either the airlines or any other body and city government

than they have been responsible for the September 11 bombings. So we don't even get to that question for the September 11 families. If they signed that waiver and most of them I would imagine due to the you know press of financial circumstances and the enormous difficulty that they will have and finding out who was actually accountable and going after that person or entity. So we don't even get to that second question but I'm but I believe there will be among the September 11 families those who when faced with the choice of either obtaining immediate financial relief but not with the benefit of having the perpetrators pay but rather the United States government or opting to not take immediate relief but to pursue the longer route that some of the families many of the families in pain and want to flee undertook which is to really try to hold the perpetrators to record accountable.

I suspect that many of the September 11 families might also decide to choose that it will do for the people. Who lost family members on who run Pan Am 103 is there those who have been who have decided to pursue this. Is there is it for them mostly a matter of principle. That is they want some justice at least in the sense that the person the person or persons who were to be responsible will be publicly identified as such or they actually thinking that there might be at the end of the line might be some kind of compensation. The principal motivation is accountability. Its to have a trial where all of the facts can be to be shown to the public. And you have to remember that the civil action was instituted long before this criminal action ever occurred and at that time what the family saw was one there was really no prospect of any military action against Libya. And so it seemed

highly unlikely that the individuals were ever going to be released by Libya to stand trial and three even if they were released to stand trial. It didn't really in the final analysis matter all that much because these were low to mid level operatives they were not the kingpins the masterminds which was the ruler of that country. And there would be no compensation to be paid but compensation has a larger goal thats not merely to compensate its actually to deter and therefore the damage component. Has two aspects one is compensatory damages and the second is punitive damages and the logic component is the component that deals with punitive damages and the aim here is to deter further acts of terrorism by making the sponsors the state sponsors of terrorism and I emphasize state sponsors because both the families of Pan Am 103 came to believe with enormous conviction was that what makes contemporary terrorism

possible on a large scale the kind I want to flee or September 11th is the fact that it is state sponsored and therefore one way of preventing or deterring further acts of state sponsorship is to making the state pay a hefty price for their crimes. We have another caller to bring into the conversation this is in Champaign. And line one. Hello. Hello. There's been an awful lot of questions raised about the process that went on in the Netherlands that identify the convict these Libyans. Most of it not the American papers but the British press for example is full of articles saying that basically it was a kangaroo court and the report that the Security Council asked for the secretary general nominated a special observer and he produced a report on it last spring. That's never seen the light of day. Apparently the US UK got suppressed when it came out. Do you know

anything about that report and what about the suggestion that the whole process in the Hague was pretty much a put up job. It wasn't in The Hague. It was in a special camp called Camp. OK. Which are which was undertaken under Scottish law. You had three not one judge but three of the top Scottish judges. And so I believe that this thing was a kangaroo court would be to indict the British system of justice and the Scottish judges. That's pretty easy to do after those last couple of weeks is an indictment of the Anglo American system of justice. I mean drumhead courts and whatnot. I don't think so. I think that my review and this is all public information of what was done and it's a complete transcript shows that they were scrupulous in looking at the evidence. Now there was an appeals process and it's under it's under way right now. Professor Alan Dershowitz of the Harvard Law School and participated in the

O.J. Simpson case is now joined favor of torture a couple weeks ago and I like I finish my sentence. I have now joined the Libyan defense team. So you have an appeal. I will wait and see. You know what occurs. I myself am satisfied that the that the courts acted properly as a as a matter of fact I believe that there were grounds for the conviction of the second individual who who was acquitted. Why was the secretary general's report on the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands of the report period repair for the secretary general not not released. I don't know about that you know but it was a we familiar with you heard if you heard of the report at all. I heard there was a report but I don't know what the stage is or why it wasn't released. I'm not aware of its contents and since it was suppressed I guess nobody is aware of its contents. Well it seems to me that the you know that that's sort of a bad sign right there precisely since that was the oversight that the

Security Council called for and the negative comment on the on the trial itself which as I say was fairly common in European papers. Seems not to have got this far but perhaps. Perhaps some of that will turn up in the appeal process. Well OK any further than you want waiting for is waiting for an appeals process and I mean the caller doesn't have you know as much faith as I do and the and the ability of the courts of England to provide impartial justice but I think one looks. I don't know what else one can do one has a transcript. It's transparent one can review the record. It's all transparent it's on appeal whatever the secretary general's report is. I'm sure there will also be released but this is a this is a public trial. There's nothing there's nothing hidden. There is an appeal process. People are free to you know to form their own group. But that's why we're operating

under the rule of law. We have just about six minutes left on the program. I'd like to introduce Again our guest Ellen Gerson he is research professor of international relations at George Washington University and he is also the co-author along with Jerry Adler who is a senior editor at Newsweek. They're the co-authors of this book that we've mentioned it's titled The Price of Terror lessons of Lockerbie for a world on the brink. It is published by Harper Collins and it deals with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in December of 1988 came down over Lockerbie Scotland all of the people on the plane were killed. Also some people on the ground. And our guest Professor Gerson's involvement was that he worked as an attorney and brought a suit against Libya on behalf of some of the victims and also was involved in writing a law that made it possible for individuals to hold foreign governments accountable for acts of terrorism. We do have time for one or two more calls of somebody calls for a quick 3 3 3 W while toll free 800 1:58

W while certainly the United States government has come comes in for criticism in the book in part as you mention because initially they actually took the side of Libya. And in defending the idea of national. Sovereignty obviously because they the United States didn't want to be the subject of lawsuits. It seems that in other ways that when one asks How did the United States do in responding to the needs and the questions of the families who lost family members in this they answer that question is very poorly correct. No the I don't like the situation that that that exists today with respect to the families of the road Trade Center victims or the Pentagon victims where they're being dealt with and the psychiatrists and others that the that the bodies of the families the bodies of the victims of the Pan Am 103 passengers came back and forklifts at a warehouse.

It was it was a very different era. But beyond that it was a different era in terms of the government taking seriously the fight against terrorism. We had two American presidents who called the bombing an attack against America but there was no there was no effort of a military response. Clearly we were less than vigilant in determining the nature of the terrorist threat and it took us September 11 to really issued a wake up call. I'm reminded of the statement that President George W. Bush made in Atlanta on November 8th when he said we would use to be in a state of denial. I think what he was saying was that he refused to remain in a state of denial because if it's not before certainly after the bombing of Pan Am 103. We began to enter into the state of denial deluding ourselves into thinking that the airlines were received were secure or that we were actually

adopting meaningful policies to deal with international terrorism or that we could rely solely on the criminal justice system to bring perpetrators of terrorism to justice. Well try to get one more call here. Someone on a car phone line for oh hi yes i was wondering if your guest could explain to the lay person why Libya would bother to defend themselves and an American court or ultimately why would they even submit such judgement. Well that's a good question because two other states that were sued under the 96 act. Iran and Cuba didn't bother to appear in court as a consequence. What it was called a default judgment were entered against them. Well Libya had number one a strong economic motive of the United States. The UN Security Council found that Libya was responsible for the bombing. At least it had believed that the evidence lead to that conclusion and impose sanctions against

Libya in one thousand ninety one of those sanctions cost Libya over the course of a decade by its estimates about 30 billion dollars by us in the World Bank estimate something closer to 18 to 20 billion dollars. So Libya had a financial incentive to get out of sanctions. And they realize that the only way that the sanctions regime the only way that it would ever end would be if the demands of the families. And the demands of the U.N. Security Council resolutions that the families be compensated justly were met. So that provided and incentive. Beyond that they had good reason to believe it would seem to me that with the aid of good lawyers and with the aid of this doctrine of sovereign immunity they could actually go into court and and went. So that's what that's what they have done and I think they've done it on a probably. They've been in court for the last nine years fighting us. I believe

they have indicated in court that the very outset that they don't plan to make a charade out of the justice system and that if they're in court it means that if there was a judgment that they will abide by the judgment so I take them seriously at their word. We are going to have to stop because we've used our time we just just scratched the surface of the subject so people are interested you should look at the book we mentioned it's titled The Price of Terror lessons of Lockerbie for a world on the brink it's published by Harper Collins by Allan Gerson and Jerry Adler. Our guest Alan Gerson is research professor of international relations at George Washington University. Professor Gerson thanks very much for talking to us. Thank you very much.