The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Thursday, the final death toll In the Pan Am Jet liner crash vas put at 259 aboard the plans, investigators considered sabotage the most likely cause of the tragedy, the State Department had Issued a warning about such an airliner attack two and a half weeks ago, and in Washington, George Bush named four more cabinet members and a head of the Environmental Protection Agency. We`ll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Judy Woodruff is in New York tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: After the News Summary, the Pan Am air tragedy is our major focus. We talk first with the head of the British team Investigating the disaster. Then we hear from Paul Bremer, the Head of the State Department`s Counter Terrorism Unit, Terrorism Expert Robert Kupperman, former Airline Pilot Bud Ruddy, and airport security expert Jack McGeorge. then a News Maker Interview with the American diplomat credited together the peace agreement for Southwest Africa, Assistant Secretary Chester Crocker. Because of the airline crash we have postponed until tomorrow Part 2 of Robert MecNeil`s interview with Soviet expert George P. Kennan.

NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: It appears most likely now there was a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 last night from London to New York. It`s explosion over Scotland killed all 259 people aboard the plane and 22 others on the ground. British officials said evidence points towards sabotage. We have a report from the site of the crash by Ann Lucas of Independent Television Hews.

ANN LUCAS: Wreckage scattered for 10 miles around the town, one section blasting a crater 30 feet deep where houses once stood. Thirteen adults and four children art missing from here. Other debris smashed homes into piles of rubble. Nothing could be salvaged. The cockpit landed three miles away. It was left Imbedded in the field until crash examiners can examine it, Bodies lay nearby. An engine plunged into a farm yard sending shrapnel spinning through the air. Despite working since dawn to repair the damage, many families are without roofs or windows tonight.

RESIDENT: Well, there must be about at least six houses Just not here.

ANN LUCAS: A team of 600 have been searching fields and routes to recover bodies and evidence for the investigators.

CHIEF CONSTABLE JOHN BOYD, Scottish Police: As a result of the searches taking place today, I can advise you that I am informed that the two black boxes, the flight recorders, have been recovered. We have to carry out this investigation in a practice and thorough manner but at the same time, I know you`ll also appreciate that we have u do this with great sensitivity.

ANN LUCAS: Tonight victims are brought to a temporary morgue In the town hall to await identification by relatives.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. diplomats in Europe received a warning two weeks ago that a Pan Am plane might be attacked. According to the Associated Press, a telephone caller told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinke, Finland, a flight from Frankfurt to New York would be bombed. The report vas circulated to State Department employees in Europe and was posted last week on a bulletin board at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. In Washington today; State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley was asked while the public was not also told of the threat.

PHILLYSIS OAKLEY, State Department: Our focus has been on alerting those who are responsible for security arrangements, US went to alert those people who can do something about the threat. This is specifically to carriers and to airport security personnel who have the responsibility for the security requirements. This is whet we did in this situation.

MR. LEHRER: The Associated Press was told today the Pan Am crash vas in retaliation for the U.S. Navy`s attack on an Iranian passenger plane last summer. At that time, the Navy said the passenger Aircraft had been mistaken for an Iranian fighter plane. An Anonymous phone cellar said the Pan Am crash vas caused by a group called the Guardians of the Iranian Revolution, The Iranian Government said it had no involvement in yesterday`s Fan Am incident. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: An agreement designed to bring peace to the neighboring African nations of Angola and Namibia was signed at the United Nations today, with senior officials from South Africa, Angola, and Cuba taking part. Under the accord, South Africa agrees to let Namibia become an independent nation and Cuba agrees to pull some 50,000 troops out of Angola. Secretary of State Shultz who attended the signing said the governments involved had given the world a special gift.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary Of State: The regional settlement concluded here today represents a momentous turning point in the history of Southern Africa, with the Independence of Namibia, Africa`s last colonial question will have been resolved. As the guns fall silent across the borders of Southwestern Africa, the world will look to the nations of that vast region to turn to resolution of their pressing Internal problems through peaceful means.

MS. WOODRUFF: For the second time in a row, Israel`s two major parties put aside their differences today long enough to form a coalition government. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir representing the right wing Likud Party reached agreement with the man who will be his Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres, representing the left leaning Labor Party. The Impetus this time in the words of Shamir was largely to withstand growing world pressure to accept a Palestinian state.

MR. LEHRER: George Bush took a giant step today toward filling the remaining cop positions in his administration. The President-elect announced five selections, four to his cabinet, one to head a major agency. The cabinet choices were Atlanta Medical Educator Louis Sullivan to be Secretary of Health & Human Services, Chicago Transit Official Samuel Skinner, Secretary of Transportation, New Mexico Congressman Manuel Duhan, Secretary of Interior, and State Department Official and former Congressman Edwin Durwinsky to fill the newly created job of Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He also named William Reilly, head of the World Wildlife Fund, to lead the Environment: Protection Agency. Today` s announcement leaves Bush with only two more cabinet positions to fill, the Secretaries of Energy and of Labor.

MS. WOODRUFF: That wraps up our summary of the day`s news. Just ahead on the Newshour, the Pan Am crash, a search for the cause, and a talk with a U.S. diplomat who helped engineer the Angola/Namibia accord. Because of the air crash we ere postponing Part 2 of Robert MacNeil`s interview with Soviet expert George F. Kennan until tomorrow night.

FOCUS - FLIGHT 103 - FATAL FLIGHT

MS. WOODRUFF: We go fine tonight to the tragic era in Scotland of a Pan Am passenger liner bound for New York City. As we reported a moment ago, at least 280 people are dead as a result of the jet crash yesterday in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. British officials at the site said the wreckage indicated the plane probably experienced some form of explosion and an official of the International Air Transport Association told reporters that sabotage is the most likely explanation for what happened, Meanwhile, it has been revealed that a bomb threat had bean made over two weeks ago against Pan Am Jet liners flying to the U.S. from Frankfurt, where this flight originated. To gee an update on the situation, I talked earlier this afternoon with Paul Channon, the Head of the British Department of Transport which is in charge of the crash investigation. He spoke with us from the studio in London.

MS, WOODRUFF: Mr. Channon, thank you for being with us.

MR. CHANNON: Thank you.

MS. WOODRUFF: At this point, can you rule anything in or out as a possible cause of this air crash?

PAUL CHANSON, Transportation Secretary: Very little. I think the one thing that we can rule out is the idea that it was only one mid air collision. All the evidence shove that there vas only one airplane in the vicinity and that It broke up at a very high altitude. So I think we can certainly rule out a mid air collision. I don`t wane to rule much else out.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about the possibility that there was a mechanical failure of some sort, a pilot error? We understand that there are clearly other signs that suggest that sabotage may have been involved.

MR. CHANNON: I wouldn`t rule out anything. The only thing I`m ruling out at the moment is, as I say, a mid air collision. My investigators, end I have a large team up there, and there are Americans there too who are coming, and we will get to the bottom of this and make sure we get the answer right.

MS. WOODRUFF: Have you been able to listen to the voice tape that was on the airplane at the time of the crash?

MR. CHANNON; I haven`t, myself, but my accident investigators have now got them and I think that they are going to study them intensely tomorrow. They`re taking them I think to the best place where they can study them.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what about the instrument black box, as I believe it`s called, has that been...

MR. CHANNON: That...

MS. WOODRUFF: Go ahead.

MR. CHANNON: I think that all...I`m told that...the information keeps changing. . . but I`m told that they`ve got all the black boxes end, therefore, that may help. But of course, that`s not the whole answer. If there`s some terrible event that takes place in the air, and no one can speak or anything like that, it doesn`t necessarily tell you what it was when you get to the black box. We`ll have to see.

MS. WOODRUFF: What have you been able to tell so far from the crash site, from the material there on the ground? Has that led you to any conclusions at all about what. . .

MR. CHANNON: Not really, not at this stage, because it`s very early. You see, my people have only been able to be on the site from dawn this morning because in the dark there really wasn`t much that you could actually establish. All you can say is that the wreckage is over an enormous area, some 13 miles, a whole swathe of countryside with wreckage on it, and some parts of the airplane are miles apart from others. So we know it confirms other evidence that the airplane broke up at a very high altitude.

MS. WOODRUFF: Which is...

MR. CHANNON: That`s really all we can say at the moment.

MS. WOODRUFF: Which is consistent with the theory that there may have been some sort of explosion on board.

MR. CHANNON: It`s certainly consistent with it. It doesn`t prove that it was that. But It`s not inconsistent with that appalling thought,

MS. WOODRUFF: What will you be looking for. If, indeed, there was sabotage of some sore involved, what will your investigators be looking for?

MR. CHANNON: Well, If there were to have been sabotage, obviously they will be looking to see if they can find a bomb. And that is possible that they would find some trace of the bomb. What is very difficult is to prove the negative and find there conclusively wasn`t a bomb. But all these things are being examined at the present time and they`ll obviously look at any questioned mechanical failure or anything else like that or structural failure. I mean, the astonishing thing was really, was It not, that there was no May Day, no emergency message or anything like that when it happened.

MS. WOODRUFF: What does that say to you as someone who`s experienced in looking into these sorts of disasters?

MR. CHANNON: I`m not going to speculate. You`ve been speculating. I quite understand why. I think it`s most unwise of me, as I`m the minister responsible for this investigation. I`m not going to speculate until I know the definite answer.

MS. WOODRUFF: How soon do you think it will be, Mr. Channon, before we begin to have some definitive answers?

MR. CHANNON: Not very long I hope, because the recorders have been found, the wreckage is being examined. There`s a very large team of experts on the site. Again, I don`t want to promise things that we can`t deliver yet, but we will...my investigators will give what`s called a special bulletin as soon as they can. And I hope that that will make the situation clearer.

MS. WOODRUFF: What information do you have at this point about the warning that we issued a couple of weeks ago about the possibility of sabotage or a terrorist act board a flight leaving Frankfurt?

MR. CHANNON: Well, I understand the FAA warned American airlines, as they do frequently throughout the year, with various possibilities that may arise. And this, as I understand, was one of the warnings do issue from time to time to the American airlines.

MS. WOODRUFF: Were you aware of that warning?

MR. CHANNON: As is the normal custom, the government, British government, was told as well as the American airlines,

MS. WOODRUFF: So is It fair to say that it vas widely known In the aviation community even if it was not made publicly known?

MR CHANNON: No, I don`t think so, I don`t think we spread the stories around. It would have been known to a fairly small group. But as I say, this was not an unusual occurrence, These sort of notices come fairly frequently.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you think it`s fair, however, under these circumstances that it might have been known by a email number of people, but not known to the people who might be traveling on an airplane?

MR. CHANNON: Well, I think chat`s up to the FAA rather than for me. But as I say, they send these notices out really fairly frequently, it`s not anything unusual. And then of course, we take them seriously and evaluate them when we get them and make our own assessment of the situation.

MS. WOODRUFF: What is the next step in this process for you, Mr. Channon? Will you go to work with your own investigators to begin to come up with conclusions? What will you be doing? What will you be looking for at this point?

MR. CHANNON: No. I think the next step is for my investigators to report on their interim findings, what they call, what we call here a special bulletin they`ll make in, I don`t know exactly when, maybe a week, maybe ten days, maybe much shorter, when they have something to say concrete, but with all this massive speculation around, what we don`t want to do is to answer every rumor, everything that`s running at any particular time. We want to make a definitive statement when there`s something definite to say, and I hope that won`t be before too long, but it`s a bit early for me to lay exactly when it`ll be.

MS. WOODRUFF: And yet, as you say, If you have chose black boxes, it doesn`t cake all that long to examine them.

MR. CHANNON: Yes, but the black box may help us rule out some things. It doesn`t necessarily prove others, I mean, again, I`m being perhaps too cautious, but I chink I should be cautious because I just want to be quite sure that when we make a statement it is absolutely accurate since there are millions of people who are interested in the outcome of this Investigation,

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Mr. Paul Channon, we thank you for being with us.

MR. CHANNON: Thank you very much for asking me, end again I`d like to say how very very sorry and upset we are for the hundreds of American families who must be grieving tonight for the loss of those, their loved ones on that particular flight. And I think you`ll find the whole of the British people are very very upset about this appalling disaster on British soil and we send our sympathies to the American people.

MS. WOODRUFF: Thank you again.

MR. CHANNON: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: In this country, today`s major question was why wasn`t the public told about the threats against Pan Am. White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said the Issue of public notification will be looked into. State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley told reporters the department informed other government agencies about threats it considered serious.

PHYLLIS OAKLEY, State Department: We receive dozens of these kinds of threats. We have to evaluate them in light of the current circumstances, in light of possibilities, as you say, in light of experience of what we`ve learned from other terrorist incidents, particularly those that have been thwarted, and then we make judgments about whit we should do. And as I`ve said in this instance, even though it was an unverified threat, we took action and we notified... let me repeat that we notified the Federal Aviation Authority, which has the responsibility for working with the carriers, with the airport security people, those people who can do something about a security threat.

REPORTER: Who has the responsibility to warn the American people when your own specialists regard a telephone threat as serious?

PHYLLIS OAKLEY: I have given you the best answer I can to that question, saying that we have established certain ways of evaluating and looking at the threats and how we can take the appropriate action in response to that threat.

REPORTER: You notified embassies but not traveling Americans?

PHYLLIS OAKLEY: We notified the people who have responsibility for security. We notified the airport authorities and we notified the carriers. We thought that that was the appropriate way to handle this because they are the people who could do something about security.

MR. LEHRER: Now some official and unofficial informed analysis of what might have happened to that Pan Am Plane last night. The official is L. Paul Bremer, the State Department`s Ambassador at Large for Counter Terrorism. The unofficial analysis comes from Robert Kupperman, an expert on international terrorism at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington think tank; Jack McGeorge, President of the public safety group which advises clients on anti-terrorism and airport security; and Bud Ruddy, a retired United Airlines Pilot and former safety representative to the Airline Pilots Association.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, why is the public not told about threats like this?

AMB. L. PAUL BREMER, State Department: Well, I think the very first thing to get straight again is we don`t know whether this was an act of sabotage or not. I think the minister made very clear it`s important that we not rule out sabotage but that we recognize this may not have been a terrorist act. Now we get. . .

MR. LEHRER: But moat of the evidence does point that way at this point, does it not?

MR. BREMER: Well, as the minister said, the evidence is consistent with that theory but it`s also consistent with the possibility that the plane actually broke up at high altitude, The FAA tells me this evening that they have clear indications there were very turbulent weather at that altitude last night.

MR. LEHRER: Thirty-one thousand feet.

MR. BREMER: Winds of over 200 knots, for example. So I don`t think we should rule anything out at the moment.

MR. LEHRER: Okay.

MR. BREMER: We certainly have not ruled out sabotage. Nov...

MR. LEHRER: all right, but...

MR. BREMER: Let M answer your question.

MR. LEHRER: Sure, great.

MR. BREMER: The...first of all, we get on a weekly basis, I would say, several dozen terrorist threats of varying seriousness, not all of course related to airlines. We take those threats seriously, we have to. We have an obligation to the American people and to the possible officials that those threats are directed against. That`s what we did in this case. We analyzed it, we decided it was serious enough to warrant telling the PAA about it, which we did, and the FAA then, it is their custom, alerted the American carriers. Mow, as Minister Channon said, this is not an unusual thing to happen. In the last three months, we`ve done at least eight such alerts through the FAA...

MR. LEHRER: Eight in the last three months?

MR. BREMER: That`s right. In the last three months, we have had more than 100 threat alerts to American embassies by the Department of State, so if you figured that out, It`s an average of more than one a day almost that we actually consider important to do an alert on.

MR. LEHRER: Is this the only one that may have led, in fact, to, or may have been related to something that actually happened, that the threat was actually acted upon?

MR. BREMER: It is true to say that in the vast majority of these cases, the threat that is alleged in the information we have does not come about. That`s correct. In most cases, even though we sometimes think it`s important to alert a particular area of the country or the airline or an embassy, those, fortunately those terrorist acts done happen. We don`t know in this case yet whether it happened here.

MR. LEHRER: Sure, right.

MR. BREMER: But I think it`s important to recognize we take very seriously and have a great concern for our responsibility for the traveling public, But as President-elect Bush said this afternoon, we also have a responsibility not to simply put out raw intelligence information, raw reports we get, because, as you can tell from the volume we have, we would be putting them out every hour.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, you can understand why people are concerned about this. This was put on the bulletin board of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, not in any kind of. . . .not for security people, for everybody, just for anybody who might see it who was traveling. It was a travel ere warning for State Department personnel. So why were they warned and not the general public? That`s really the guts of the question.

MR. BREMER: Right. I understand. The embassy in Moscow apparently drew a judgment, and that`s a judgment that everybody has to make on their own, that because of the way people travel from Moscow, which is often by Pan American on a connecting flight Frankfurt, that there might be a large number of people from that raise mission itself; traveling at this time of year home for the holidays which would be transiting through Frankfurt, and since the threat was specific to Frankfurt, the embassy in Moscow concluded that they should alert their own people. That was a decision they made end that is certainly within the responsibility of an Ambassador to make such a decision but I again want to stress that we have an awful lot of these.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. BREMER: And we can`t have a situation where every tine somebody makes a phone call and threatens an American embassy or an American carrier we go to a red alert and sake public announcements, and the effect of that would also be rather devastating on public confidence. So we try to analyze these threats on a case by case basis, and the main purpose of what we do is to get security officials on the ground in Frankfurt, in London, airplane security officials, intelligence officials, and police to take steps to sake the thing not happen, that la to say to Improve security. And in both Frankfurt and London that happened. They did improve security.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Kupperman, what`s your view of whether or not the public should be told about these things?

ROBERT KUPPERMAN, Terrorism Expert: I kind of share the view of Ambassador Bremer. I mean, there are so many threats there`s a kind of noise phenomenon. There`s just a din in terms of the level of threats and you`ve got to analyze them and you`ve got to I think as quietly as one can do take adequate security measures. Clearly, you can be wrong.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. McGeorge, what`s your view, what would be the effect? You heard what the Ambassador said. There would be chaos If these threats were routinely passed on to the public. Do you agree with chat?

JACK McGEORGE, Airport Security Expert: Absolutely, we cannot allow our national carriers to be held hostage by someone with a quarter to drop at a telephone, If every time somebody makes a threat, if we raise the flag to the public that oh, my God, we have this big problem, people will lost confidence in our security measures, people will perhaps choose to take other routes or whatever, we will be diverting economically now business away from our carriers as unnecessary, we are going to be creating chaos and panic. We`ll have people in the airports looking at each other, making judgments as to whether or not this person sitting across the aisle is a terrorist. This dose not lead to orderly dealing with the problem. This leads to increased confusion. We aren`t serving any purpose by telling the public.

MR. LEHRER: As a former airline pilot, Mr. Ruddy, how do you feel about this? Should airline pilots know about these things? Are they now told routinely?

BUD RUDDY, Former Pilot: Generally speaking. if they consider it a serious threat, we are advised.

MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you that, Mr. Ambassador, would Pan Am pilots Involved in flights from Frankfurt to London to New York, would they have known about this threat two and a half weeks ago?

MR. BREMER: Well, I think Mr. Ruddy is the right person to ask that question.

MR. LEHRER: You don`t...

MR. BREMER: I know that the FAA informed Pan American both in Frankfurt and in their New York headquarters, but I don`t know what they. . .

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Ruddy, can you help me on that?

MR. RUDDY: Well, I`ll try. It`s A very difficult call. It range from the 25 cent telephone call up to a proceed serious threat. The government and the airlines, the Department of Transportation, they have to make a very difficult call. Shall we advise the airline, shall we advise the crews? and when they perceive it to be a serious threat, then they do. If it happens to be a 25 cent call and they think it`s a serious threat, we`ll be advised immediately.

MR. LEHRER: We don`t know In this case. Does anybody know in this case whether or not these pilots were told about that? Is this the kind of threat that they would be told about, Mr. Ruddy, do you think?

MR. RUDDY: I don`t know. I don`t know enough of the circumstances.

MR. LEHRER: Do you know, Mr. Ambassador?

MR. BREMER: I just don`t know the answer, but certainly the FAA Immediately took the appropriate steps that they should take In the case.

MR. LEHRER: Let`s talk about the people with the...who make these calls. In most cases are they disaffected members of the gang who is planning this thing or trying to actually help the United States thwart terrorism, or are they people who are trying to cause action by threats? Is there any record on this, Mr. Kupperman?

MR. KUPPERMAN: Many of the people who make the so called 23 cent phone calls are nuts. They`re just sick people. There are...I worry more about, you know, the cases where there are no threats, where there is a deliberate intent to really go through with a terrorist operation.

MR. LEHRER: That`s what I`m trying to get at. Like, for instance, this call, this specific call was received at the U.S. Embassy In Helsinke, Finland, is that right?

MR. BREMER: That`s right, on December.

MR. LEHRER: Was that perceived as a threat or as a tip?

MR. BREMER: No, it vas issued as a warning. It was a tip. The person who called in said that he thought we should know that there was somebody planning to put a bomb on a plane in Frankfurt.

MR. LEHRER: Not saying I threaten to blow up a Pan Am flight? That`s a very different thing, Isn`t it, Mr. Kupperman?

MR. KUPPERMAN: I think it`s tremendously different. Look, I mean, if you really are intent upon a serious terrorist act, you run some risks by having any organization-working for you that knows what you plan to do. There`s always a risk from that point of tips. On the other hand, you are hardly going to advertise it unless the terrorist operation la the extortion, Itself.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Let`s go to once the tip is passed on, and in this case it was passed on to the airlines and then it was passed on to the. ..the British officials said it was passed on to them and that Heathrow Airport, and assuming in Frankfurt, they did something about it. What can they do, Mr. McGeorge, when they get something like this?

MR. MeGEORGE: They can increase the diligence In x-raying luggage, checked luggage, fir example, Carry-on luggage is always checked very carefully. In Heathrow, they have or not you have personally packed that bag and has it boon out of your control. I don`t recall whether they do that in Frankfurt or not, but this is an example of what can be added in a situation like this.

MR. LEHRER: As a matter of routine, are all bags put in the baggage compartments of planes in Frankfurt and Heathrow x-rayed for explosives?

MR. KUPPERMAN: I can`t answer that.

MR. McGEORGE: That`s probably not a good thing to talk about in detail.

MR. LEHRER: Why not?

MR. McGEORGE: Because to tip off potential adversaries . . . you have a wide audience, you should assume they`re watching.. .to exactly what we do or don`t do is not good policy.

MR. KUPPERMAN: Let me say that to get serious really effective security a client would require efforts, for example, of the magnitude that the Israelis put forth in LL, which includes hand searches of luggage as well as profile, psychological profiles, all sorts of things.

MR. LEHRER: An X-ray cannot pick up explosives?

MR. KUPFERMAN: X-rays cannot pick up explosives per sa. You can look at the shape of an object...

MR. LEHRER: So you need dogs and you need other measures to pick up explosives in a suitcase?

MR. KUPPERMAN: Dogs, sniffers, electronic sniffers that don`t work well, and potentially other means such as neutron back scattering.

MR. McGEORGE: These things are...they work technically, Some work better for sons explosives than others. Hone of them are fast and none of them are 100 percent accurate. How long are you willing to wait for your flight? LL requires you to chick in some hours before flight time. I haven`t packed hours before flight time. It isn`t practical. When you have a small airline like they do, you`re in a position to take measures that a carrier like Pan Am could not possibly do and I don`t know that they`d need to.

MR. LEHRER: And, of course, there are other things vulnerable, are there not, Mr. Ruddy? There`s other ways besides baggage...other ways besides to put it in baggage to get an explosive aboard an airplane.

MR. RUDDY: There are but they`re much more difficult.

MR. LEHRER: Like what?

MR. RUDDY: Well, the system is secure enough nowadays that it would be considerably more difficult to get a bomb or en explosive of some sort aboard an aircraft than it would be to take it aboard in carry-on baggage.

MR. LEHRER: What are some of the other ways, Mr. McGeorge?

MR. McGEORGE: Explosives, themselves, are very difficult, as Mr. Kupperman pointed out to detect. The explosive by itself accomplishes the adversary very very little. You coed something to tot It off. That is usually metallic and that can be detected by X-ray and our metal detectors that we have now. Smuggling a bomb on board an airplane, walking on with It, Is very doggone difficult. It`s not impossible, but it`s difficult. As an alternative, the adversary has in the peat apparently exploited things like having the ground crew. The airplane has to be clean, it has to be fueled, the food had to be loaded aboard. These are oftentimes different organizations doing this, It`s a lot of people moving around an airplane the size of a 747. Every one of those people is in a position to take potentially and bring an explosive device on board. How often can we check on them?

MR. KUPPERMAN: That`s why, incidentally, while, you know, let`s hope chat this particular incident as tragic as it was was not a terrorist incident, but let`s say it were, what Is being described to you are all the difficulties even organizationally in planning vise of trying to pull one of these things off. They`re not easy.

MR. LEHRER: Let`s go back to the question of what happened up there. Mr. Ruddy, based on what we know, what we had in our News Summary, what everybody has said as a pilot, what do you think the options, the possible options are as to what caused that plane to disintegrate in mid air like it did?

MR. RUDDY: Well, from all reports, it came apart and it came apart in a hurry. That could be an explosive, a criminal act, or it could be a structural failure. Whatever it was, apparently it happened very quickly.

MR. LEHRER: How could it be a structural failure, what kind? What could cause that?

MR. RUDDY: Structural failure of that magnitude have occurred, They aren`t common, they`re rare, but they have occurred. An airplane in the air is under considerable dynamic stress. It`s sort of like I guess a tire on a race car. It`s tough, it`s flexible to a considerable degree, durable, but if a failure is introduced in some fashion, it comes apart in a hurry, and this is apparently what took place In this case. Whether it vas a structural failure in the airplane that caused this catastrophic destruction, disintegration, or whether it was an explosive device remains to be seen.

MR. LEHRER: The fact chat the debris from the plane was found over such a large area, there were huge craters where it Just destroyed houses end ell of that, that would have happened no matter whet caused it to disintegrate?

MR. RUDDY: I think in all probability, if it disintegrated a high altitude. That`s why it spread so far over the countryside, and I think the results would be the same.

MR. LEHRER: What would you expect to find in the various black boxes? What kinds of clues would you get.. .assuming.. .whatever the cause... it happened just like that?

MR. RUDDY: If the recording systems were powered for a reasonable period of time after the event initiated, then they`ll have some indication of a number of things, control inputs were involved with the pilots, what the various systems were doing.

MR. LEHRER: What does that mean, I mean, what the pilots actually did...

MR. RUDDY: Yes, what they were doing, and as well as what they ware saying to one another. That depends upon how long the systems were powered in a...

MR. LEHRER: Meaning, the recorders, themselves...

MR. RUDDY: The recorders, how long they were powered.

MR. LEHRER: ...continued to function. . .

MR. RUDDY: That`s right. Just lilts your tape recorder. If you`d pull the plug in here, the lights go off end it`s ell over, end if it happened with that degree of rapidity or speed, then the likelihood of having ouch on the flight recorder or the voice recorder is going to he Halted. They`ll just have to welt and look at then and see what they have.

MR. LEHRER: Anything you want to add to that, Mr. McGeorge?

MR. McGEORGE: No, it sounds like a real fine explanation.

MR. LEHRER: Right. Back to the terrorism possibility, gentlemen.

Mr. Kupperman, you can speculate a little more than Mr. Bremer can. I`ve given him an opportunity to. But Just looking at the make up of where we are in world affairs right now, who, who or what would have anything to gain by blowing up this airplane right now?

MR. KUPPERMAN: Assuming It was a terrorist incident.

MR. LEHRER: That`s what I`m saying.

MR. KUPPERMAN: One possible group would be the more radical Shiites and some of the...and possibly members of the Iranian Government who were, whose power base is threatened by normalization with, the normalization, formal normalization process that`s going on with the Vest. Another, of course, are the splinter groups such as Abu Nudal of the Abu Mudal Organization, that are opposed and have often threatened to kill the Yasser Arafat and are particularly angry with America at this point,

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, based on the record thus far, what do you think the chances are of our finding out? Let`s assume just for discussion purposes that somebody put J bomb on there and killed these people. What do you think the chances are of finding out who did it?

MR. BREMER: It`s very hard to tall. A lot of it will depend on the quality of the kind of forensic evidence and the evidence we can get from the actual site, itself. Some of it will depend on the kind of intelligence follow-up we can do in investigating any clues that come our way, and some of it may depend upon whether or not we get additional claims from terrorist groups which we can validate. I think it`s important to remember that always after a major disaster like this. it`s not unusual to gee phone calls from lots of people claiming to have caused It and. . .

MR. LEHRER: There was one today.

MR. BREMER: There were several actually.

MR. LEHRER: Is that right? You all got some more?

MR. BREMER: We didn`t get them, but Pan American did.

MR. LEHRER: Pan Am did.

MR. BREMER: And I think you have to look at chose carefully. It`s important not to jump to a conclusion as to who might have done it if it is proven to have been a terrorist act which remains to be seen.

MR. LEHRER: But generally speaking, the record is fairly good, it is not, that eventually over a period of weeks and months, somehow it comes out as to who did these things.

MR. BREMER: Looking At the recent record on aircraft sabotage, I think that`s right. Most of the major aircraft sabotage acts, which have been conducted by terrorists, we`ve eventually gotten to the bottom of them, but it sometimes takes quite a lot of time.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. McGeorge, that reminds me, the British official told Judy that they hoped they might find parts of the bomb. What`s he talking about there? What kind of traces would be left from a bomb, if, in fact, there was a bomb aboard this plane?

MR. McGEORGE: Quite a number of things. The bomb, the explosive, probably had a wrapper. It is unusual for the terrorist to unwrap the explosive. Even though we have a large fireball from an explosion, that wrapper oftentimes remains at least partially intact.

MR. LEHRER: What`s it made out of?

MR. McGEORGE: It can be most often waxed paper, East European explosive we could assume in this case, perhaps waxed paper is common or plastic. The bits and pieces of the fuse, wire, it`s very difficult to destroy a piece of wire. That wire had to be cut with something. That will leave tool narks that can often be linked one bomb to another. The PBI is particularly clever at doing that. There will be potentially batteries, a barometric switch, a timer, something of that nature. These things are typically not totally destroyed. Mow there`s 10 square miles of field it looks like that they`ve got to search for those little pieces. That makes it very difficult to find them.

MR. KUPPERMAN: You`d also find the trademark of some of the terrorists, for example. Abul Ibram, he made barometric bombs.

MR. LEHRER: What`s a barometric bomb?

MR. KUPPERMAN: One where there`s a barometric switch, a given height that would explode.

MR. LEHRER: I see.

MR. KUPPERMAN: You can...

MR. LEHRER: So when this...

MR. KUPPERMAN: ...find the techniques and you`ll be able sometimes to identify, correlate at least the style, the nature of the manufacturer of the bomb with the terrorist...

MR. LEHRER: You can set a bomb to go off at 31,000 feet?

MR. KUPPERMAN: Yes.

MR. McGEORGE: Sure.

MR. LEHRER: Based cm hare again what we know end what`s been described on this program and elsewhere as to what the magnitude of what the explosion was, at cetera, how,... show me, show us how big a space that would take to make that kind of bomb?

MR. McGEORGE: It depends entirely on where the boob was placed on the airplane, getting back to Mr. Ruddy`s comment on the structural failure. If the bomb caused the subsequent structural failure of the airplane, It could have been a relatively small device, something you could hold in your hand perhaps, if it was placed in the plane et soma critical point. If the bomb was in a much less critical spot, then to cause the plans to break up substantially, it has to be a such larger bomb. I...

MR. LEHRER: There`s no way of knowing.

MR. McGEORGE:: At this stage there is no way to know. You can reasonably say looking at the cockpit it probably wasn`t there.

MR. LEHRER: You as an the bomb wasn`t there?

MR. McGEORGE: That you could reasonably state, that if that was a bomb, that`s not where It was.

MR. KUPPERMAN: A little tiny device comparatively knocked a big hole in the fuselage of a 727 in 1985.

MR. LEHRER: TWA.

MR. KUPFERMAN: 840. . .and sucked out four people.

MR. LEHRER: Gentlemen, this is not pleasant work speculating like this, but I appreciate your doing it for us tonight. Thank you very much.

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight the historic agreement signed today at the United Nations in New York. As we reported earlier, Angola, South Africa, and Cuba, put their names on two documents that will lead to Independence for Namibia and the withdrawal of Cuban troops for Angola, The negotiations were mediated by the United States. And the results are due largely to the efforts of one man, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker. We`ll have e News Maker Interview with Secretary Crocker In a moment. But first Correspondent Charles Krause has a background report on what he has accomplished.

CHARLES KRAUSE: For Cheater Crocker the signing of today`s agreement culminates eight years of diplomacy and hard work. The principal architect of the Reagan administration`s policies in Africa since 1981, It was Crocker who first proposed an active U.S. role in Angola and Namibia. He called his strategy for trying to end conflicts there "constructive engagement". In Angola, the administration`s principal objective to secure the withdrawal of Cuban troops has been achieved at least on paper with the signing of today`s agreement. The Cubans have been in Angola since 1973 at the request of that country`s Marxist Government, They are there to help the Soviet backed regime defend itself against a tough and resourceful guerrilla force backed by the Vest called UMITA, led by Jonas Savimby. So far, 13 years of civil war have left an estimated 90,000 Angolans and 10,000 Cubans dead. Another 600,000 or more Angolans ere homeless. Yet, even now, the war continues and the number of Cuban troops has grown from a few thousand a decade ago to more than fifty thousand today. But Cuban troops and their Soviet weapons have not guaranteed success for the government. Savimby`s guerrilla forces still control 1/3 of Angola`s territory. URITA`s support ha, traditionally come from white ruled South Africa. A year ago, South Africa escalated its Involvement further, again, sending its own troops to fight alongside Savimby`s men Inside Angola. For the peat several years, Savimby has also received political support and covert military aid reportedly worth 15 to 20 million dollars a year from the United States.

PRESIDENT REAGAN: (Feb. 4, 1986) You are not alone, Freedom Fighters, America will support you with moral and material assistance, your right not just to fight and die for freedom, but to fight and win freedom.

MR. KRAUSE: But while the administration was supporting Savimby, it was also trying to resolve the conflict In Angola and get the Cubans out through diplomatic negotiations. Its key player and strategist for the pest eight years has been Chester Crocker, what Crocker proposed from the beginning vas to tie a Cuban withdrawal from Angola to a South African withdrawal from neighboring Namibia. Once a German colony, Namibia has been controlled by South Africa since World War I. Over the years opposition to South Africa`s colonial rule of Namibia has grown stronger. In 1971, the International Court of Justice In the Haig ruled South Africa`s presence in Nemibia Illegal. Since then, the U.N. has regularly demanded that South Africa grant Namibia its independence. Meanwhile, SWAPO, Namibia`s armed independence movement, has gained increasing legitimacy and international support, But it was not until last May that Crocker`s proposal gained momentum. Throughout the summer and fall, representatives of Cuba, Angola, and South Africa met at least five times, The Soviet Union played a key role behind the scenes. But It vas Chester Crocker who served as mediator for the talks and who has received most of the credit for today`s dramatic agreement.

GEORGE SHULTZ, Secretary of State: I am very pleased to take note of the fact that Assistant Secretary of State Dr. Chester Crocker is here and he was the mediator and a person that we all know played a very important role in all of this. But on behalf of my government and on behalf of the parties, themselves, Angola, Cube and South Africa, I am honored to presented to the community of nations through you the agreement just signed by these ministers.

MS. WOODRUFF: Essentially the agreement signed today in New York has two principal points. In Angola, it require Cuba to begin a phased withdrawal of its troops by next April. All Cuban troops are to be out by July 1991. In Namibia, the agreement requires South Africa to withdraw all but 1,500 of its troops by early next year. They are to be replaced by a U.K. peacekeeping force which will supervise elections in Namibia within a year. Yesterday I talked with Chester Crocker and asked him why he thought the agreement finally succeeded.

MR. CROCKER: The approach we have taken as a mediator is that, there would never be a settlement of these inter-locked conflicts, and I should stress that there are three wars involved in this situation, unless there was something in it for everybody; this has to be a peace without losers. And so there have clearly been some tradeoffs made for the South Africans, this means the end of a situation of de facto control of large territory which is facing a guerrilla Insurgency led by SWAPO. It means the end of a drawn out and open ended involvement by themselves In Angola. In exchange for that, they, of course, are getting the departure from Southern Africa of 30,000 Cuban troops, These tradeoffs, in turn, in our view will lead to much strength in prospects for regional stability and the transformed regional security climate.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there any question in your mind that the South African pullout from Namibia can be verified? Is that at all an issue In any of this?

MR. CROCKER: The South African pullout from Namibia?

MS. WOODRUFF: Yes.

MR. CROCKER: There will be a large UN presence, both military and civilian, deployed to Namibia under UN Resolution 433, and one of its major functions is to assure that that does take place to provide the basis for a free and fair election and to lead Namibia right up to the point of independence.

MS. WOODRUFF: And how can we be assured that those elections will be free end fair? What Is the mechanism in place to assure that?

MR. CROCKER: There will be a large number, as I`ve said, of election observers, election monitors. There will be s substantial presence of diplomats and press from overseas. I think this will be one of the most heavily scrutinized transitions and elections ever been witnessed In the third world as It has emerged from colonial rule to Independence since 1943.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, If SWAPO were to win that election, could this agreement then have been considered to be in U.S. interest? After ell, the United States has opposed SWAPO.

MR. CROCKER: I wouldn`t say that`s accurate. We are not opposing SWAPO, Our view has been that all political parties in Namibia should receive fair and equal treatment, including impartial treatment by the UN system. That is not the same thing as saying that we oppose SWAPO. What we have opposed is the claim by some that SWAPO deserves the status of sole and legitimate representative of the Namibian people. SWAPO has not yet earned that title and In our view, the election is what will decide who represents the Namibian people. But I think that the, the people in SWAPO are realistic enough to recognize that assuming they play a role in a future Namibian Government, they will have to come to terms with the realities of their country end their region.

MS. WOODRUFF: On the Angolan part of this, of this settlement, Mr. Secretary, why did the Cubans agree to leave?

MR. CROCKER: Well again these are questions, some of them, that should be put to the parties directly, but as far as we understand it, the Cuban Government has made a decision that this is the right time to leave Angola with its head held high in light of the reality that the conflicts that affect Angola have no military solutions. The Cubans would argue I`m sure if they were in the studio that they have not beer defeated. It`s equally apparent to us that military solutions that they`re involved In cannot win either. So now perhaps is the moment for everybody to recognize that these three Inter-locked wars that I referred to before have no military solutions and need to be resolved at the conference table so that everybody gets something out of a peaceful settlement.

MS. WOODRUFF: Will all the Cubans leave Angola who are now in Angola?

MR. CROCKER: The agreement provides a schedule that has already been negotiated end will be involved in the signing ceremony today in New York for the departure, the total departure of all Cuban forces from Angola, the redeployment to the North, end the phased and total withdrawal of all Cuban forces from Angola, chat`s correct.

MS. WOODRUFF: And are you satisfied that a UN peacekeeping force of just what troops will be able to monitor that adequately?

MR. CROCKER: A good deal of work has gone into the discussion of this verification document which WAS developed by the UN Secretary. It was scat to the Security Council several days ago, and it was passed by the Security Council on Tuesday evening unanimously. It is our view that this program can be credible if all parties involved in the verification process take their exercise seriously. We hope they will, in addition, I would add that we have high confidence that this mechanism in conjunction with our own means of gathering information will enable us to know with considerable certainty exactly what is going on on the ground in terms of the good faith adherence of all parties to their commitments.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why does the agreement, Mr. Secretary, say nothing about how the civil war in Angola is going to be resolved, the UNITA, the future of UNITA, end what happens to it now?

MR. CROCKER: Well, I would point out that it`s not a normal thing for Internal conflicts, civil conflicts, to be resolved at an international conference table, And of course the Issue has been discussed for many many months between the three parties who are signing this tri-partied agreement. If there were an insistence on one side to put the internal civil war, the internal conflict on the table as an agenda item, it is totally predictable that the other side would say, well, okay, what about your internal problems. And before you know it, we could be rewriting the constitutions of not just one country but of Cuba and South Africa as well. That would expend the agenda beyond the range of feasibility I think. So this is a matter for Angolans to resolve and I would underscore the fact that Dr. Jonas Savimby of UNITA has welcomed this agreement and has welcomed the sequencing of events that is taking place here, because ha believe this agreement by removing foreign elements and foreign forces will strengthen the chances for Angolans to communicate directly,

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you agree with that? What do you think la going to happen to UNITA?

MR. CROCKER: Well, I can assure you of this, that this administration and our government did not engage in the process of mediating peace between Angola, Cuba and South Africa in order to enable them to make UNITA a victim. We have no Intention of allowing that to take place. We don`t think it will take place, We think, if anything, what this agreement will do is to underscore to everybody concerned again that there are no military solutions and furthermore, to make it easier, less embarrassing, if you will, more probable in political terms, that one side and the other can send some signals, get an indirect and then direct negotiation going, which can lead to peace and reconciliation in that country.

MS. WOODRUFF: Will the United States continue to support the UNITA rebels?

MR. CROCKER: We have made it abundantly clear that we intend to maintain our relationship with UNITA until such time as there is reconciliation in Angola. We have not negotiated about that relationship at any point during this negotiating effort and have no intention to start doing so now,

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me ask you, Chester Crocker, about your role in all of this. You`ve been at this for eight years. How do you feel now that it`s finally come to a resolution?

MR. CROCKER: Well, it gives one satisfaction, I can assure you. It has been a long slog. On the other hand, it`s been for causes that are very very important I think for everyone In our country to support. These are important stakes. This is a major zone of conflict. It`s a trouble spot. It`s the kind of area that could blow out of control and we`ve been trying to find ways to bring it to a successful conclusion, this negotiation. It is very rewarding to know that throughout this long period I have received super support on every side. This is not the work by any means of one person or a email group. Many people have been involved as negotiators, we`ve had outstanding support frost the President, from the Secretary, even when it looked like they were not such good prospects; people have stood with the effort because it made sense.

MS. WOODRUFF: This went on, as we were just saying, for years and years. For a long time It looked as if there were virtually no movement, and then all of a sudden within the past year there has been a greet deal of movement. Why do you believe it came together here at the end?

MR. CROCKER: Perhaps because its logic has been Inescapable and after the parties have tried a number of other approaches, Including efforts to bloody each other and to waits their treasure, they have seen that logic more clearly. What we`ve tried to do is to lay out from the very beginning, from 1981, a clear negotiating structure, with a logic, knowing full well that they might not necessarily immediately come to endorse it, but that over time they would see that it was sensible end that there was that alternative available when they were ready to pursue It.

MS. WOODRUFF: And let`s wrap this up on another personal note. What`s next for Chester Crocker? Here we are at the end of the Reagan administration. Where do you go next?

MR. CROCKER: Well, these days, Judy, I`m planning my life one day at a time, so I really haven`t looked that far ahead, and besides, as you well know, all these matters depend on the desires of the President-elect and I`m looking at a variety of alternatives.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, Mr. Secretary, we thank you very much for being with us and congratulations on your efforts here.

MR. CROCKER: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, on the Pen Am Jet liner crash in Scotland, 259 people on the plane and 22 on the ground are confirmed dead. Most signs point toward there having been a bomb on the plane, but that has yet to be officially confirmed. And in Washington, President-elect Bush announced four more members of his cabinet, including Dr. Louis Sullivan to be Secretary of Health & Human Services Finally, a reminder that we will broadcast the second part of Robert MacNeil interview with George Kennan tomorrow night. Good night, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Good night, Jim. That`s our Newshour for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Judy Woodruff, Thank you and good night.