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THE MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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Major Chuck McKee, head of the hostage rescue team takes the Sunday boat, the Jounieh ferry from Lebanon to Cyprus. Matthew Gannon, Beirut CIA Station Chief, travels separately, arriving on a helicopter with the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon, Tom McCarthy. The ambassador, like Gannon, is booked on Pan Am 103 December 21st.
The diplomat, however, decides not to travel on to New York.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] McKee has never contacted his mother or anybody while he was on missions abroad. Never ever anybody knew where they were. On that single occasion, upon his return, or just before he returned to the United States, he contacted his mother and he might indirectly have related to her that he was on his way back. It's unusual, that he's in distress.
[Narrator] McKee's behavior before returning to the United States is strange. He is initially booked on Pan Am 103 December 22nd, changing to Pan Am 103 December 21st.
His communications man from Beirut, through a secure link, had sent the travel details to McKee's operational control.
This same member of McKee's Special Forces Unit has confirmed that McKee hated drugs and had fired his Beiruit driver, before leaving Lebanon, when he caught him with drugs.
After McKee's death, there are stories that members of the hostage rescue team, among them McKee, had been very upset when they discovered that the agents they were asked to work with were drug dealers.
There are suggestions that McKee was on his way home to expose the drugs-for-intelligence operation.
The Drug Enforcement Agency are watching McKee.
Mike Hurley, separately, telexes McKee's final travel arrangements to the CIA Directorate of Operations in Washington, to MI-6, the British Secret Service, and to SPAG, the CIA Special Action Group in Germany, in overall control of the drugs intelligence operation.
Every spook there is, will know that McKee is flying back on December 21st.
[Man 1] Yeah, you're there? [Man 2] Yes. [Man 1] How are you? [Man 2] Oh, I'm feeling pretty good. Where you calling from? [Man 1] Well, I'm in Wiesbaden. I just got into Frankfurt to the airport, and I'm gonna just chill out here for the night. [Man 2] Are you alone? [Man 1] Well of course I'm alone. You don't think I'd be asking you questions with somebody around. [Man 2] Hold on. Wait a minute. [Pause] Hello? [Man 1] Yeah. Now tell me where you were. [Man 2] Okay? [Man 1] Let's go. [Man 2] I just turned it off. It was being taped. What do you think? What the fuck you want to know this for, man? You're with the Special Action Group in Wiesbaden? [Man 1] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, you're retired from the [inaudible] but you're still doing -- what -- consulting work, right? [Man 2] I'm sure. [Man 1] Alright, now look. Does the name Khaled Jafaar mean anything to you? [Man 2] Yeah. [Man 1] Who is that? [Man 2] He's a local guy, man, you know who he is. [Man 1] What do you mean, "local guy." [Man 2] Come on! [Man 1] What does he have to do with? [Man 2] He's the Lockerbie man. [Man 1] Okay, now when he came to Germany in '88, who met him at the plane? [Man 2] You mean that prick Lovejoy? [Man 1] Ed! No shit. [Man 2] Well, you know, man! [Man 1] Is he part of the structures? [Man 2] What the fuck, man?! Come on! You know this shit! [Man 1] Is he still part of the structures? [Man 2] Yeah. [Man 1] Alright, because, nobody's been able to locate him, and a lot of people have been looking for him, so you guys must be hiding him somewhere. [Man 2] Yeah, that too. The fucker! [Man 1] Now. When he was taken back to get on the plane to leave the country, who took him through security? [Man 2] Oh, we did. Some of my fellows and I. We took him on the plane and turned him over to Gannon. [Man 1] You mean Gannon was seated on the plane? [Man 2] That's right! [Man 1] No shit! [Man 2] That's right! First Class! That big motherfucker! Sitting right out there!
[Jafaar family member] He didn't know it was a bomb. They gave him the drugs to take to Germany. He didn't know. Who wants to die? If he knew he would never have done it.
[Linda Forsyth, Pan Am ground hostess Heathrow] Mr. [Chuck] McKee I remember, because he asked me for an upgrade and he had a certificate from that was the program that we were running at that time. And so I moved his class, and he was over the moon about it, he was just so pleased, and we sort of struck up quite a rapport in that short period of time. And then later, another gentleman came in who I found out was Mr. [Matthew] Gannon, and after that two other gentlemen came in. And they were Mr. [Daniel] O'Connor and Mr. [Ronald] Lariviere. Just from observation it was obvious that they were traveling together. They greeted each other with hugs and much relief when the last member arrived. I was told by a colleague who checked them in downstairs who had actually asked me if I would mind having them in the [inaudible] that she had assumed that they were traveling together and therefore asked if they wanted to sit together and they had denied that they were actually traveling together, that they didn't know each other, [inaudible] and she was amazed by this. [Inaudible] [Narrator] Special Forces Major Chuck McKee's hostage rescue mission becomes a suicide mission the moment he boards Pan Am 103 from the Heathrow lounge.
[Dr. David Fieldhouse, Police Surgeon] In the field near Tundergarth Church, there were a number of bodies in the bogs and the woods and around the fields. I remember particularly the [inaudible] family, I remember McKee and Lariviere [inaudible] inquiries to identify who found who.
[David Ben-Arycah, Journalist] The arc goes right around the crest of the hills overlooking where the cockpit fell. There were a number of bodies which subsequently became of great interest to a lot of people. Charles McKee, a very brave man, an expert in counterterrorism was found just off on the ridge there. Gannon, Matthew Gannon, an intelligence officer. Ronald Lariviere, another intelligence officer. Captain Curry, Special Forces, according to his memorial was killed in the line of duty. We've never found out exactly what that duty was. There were saints and there were sinners on that aircraft. There were also some very strange people whose backgrounds have never really been clarified.
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