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THE MALTESE DOUBLE CROSS -- ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY & SCREENCAP GALLERY |
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[Juval Aviv, Investigator] After the downing of the Iranian aircraft by the Vincennes, everybody expected a revenge. The Iranians had to religiously avenge what had happened. It was clear that they would teach the Americans a lesson that they can duplicate what the Americans have done to them. It was only a question of time where an American airline, a courier, it doesn't have to be a Pan Am specifically, would be downed in retaliation.
[Charles Price, U.S. Ambassador, U.K.] Revenge just creates additional problems, doesn't it? I mean after all this incident wouldn't have happened if Iran wasn't and hadn't been in the process now for a long time of attacking U.S. and other shipping in the gulf.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] We put all the ingredients into perspective and we realized that it has to be a terrorist network that has experience in that matter. Iran would never do it directly, they would pay $10 million to a terrorist network that knew how to go about it, and the contract was out. It was known at the time that there is a contract for $10 million to down an American airline.
[David Ben-Arycah, Journalist] Germany received a very specific warning that Ahmed Jibril's right hand man, Hafez Kassem Dalkamoni and a known bombmaker, Marwan Khreesat, were heading for Germany.
[Vincent Cannistraro, CIA head of Lockerbie Investigation] Following these contacts between Jibril and the Iranians, a clandestine PFLP-GC cell was set up in Neuss, Germany. And their master bombmaker, one who had developed a lot of improvised explosive devices for Jibril in the past, was also sent to Germany to work on assembling such devices. One of the targets investigated determined in the aftermath of that group's arrest was going to be an American aircraft.
[David Ben-Arycah, Journalist] The BKA, the German Criminal Police, mounted a surveillance operation in Frankfurt, and in October, 1988, Operation Autumn Leaves, arrested 17 people.
They found a massive amount of weaponry, explosives, timing devices and most significantly in the car that was being driven by Dalkamoni in which Khreesat was a passenger a Toshiba bombbeat radio cassette recorder with a primed bomb inside it designed to blow up aircraft.
[Abolhassan Bani Sadr, President of Iran] Dalkamoni spent most of the time in Tehran. He is also an officer in the Syrian Secret Service. Iran ordered the attack and Ahmed Jibril carried it out. With collaboration from the diplomatic missions.
[Narrator] Marwan Khreesat and Hafez Dalkamoni on October 26, 1988 after a shopping spree buying electronic components, the buying binge filmed by German Secret Police are in this phone booth on Haffenstrasse? where they are arrested.
Earlier the BKA have been listening to the international line as Khreesat from another phone had told Damascus, "I have made some changes in the medicines. It is better and stronger."
When taken to BKA headquarters, Khreesat insists he be allowed to make a phone call. He does. He is released soon afterwards and flies to Jordan.
[Oswald Le Winter, CIA 1968-85] I had spoken to a reporter, a German reporter who refuses to go on camera, but who is very close to federal intelligence sources here in Germany who assured me that Khreesat was an agent of the Jordanian service, and an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] Take Marwan Khreesat for example, who was a bomb maker, who served Jibril and other terrorist networks for years. He was also reporting for years his activities to Israel, Jordan, some other countries' intelligence departments.
[Oliver "Buck Revell," FBI Head of Lockerbie Investigation] The Germans did not believe they had sufficient evidence directly linking him at the time. So that was an internal judicial decision within the German government. He obviously continued to be a suspect for us and for the British authorities, as well as for the German authorities, the BKA. I personally spoke to the President of the BKA, Dr. Boga?, and he assured me that they were going to continue an all-out effort to identify everyone involved with this Jibril group inside of Germany.
[Juval Aviv, Investigator] There are times that to keep an agent who has been groomed for so many years and so much effort has been put in and even if he brings the type of information that clearly indicates that there is a bomb going to go on board or there is a bomb going to go off in a public place, you must sometime let it go.
[Oswald Le Winter, CIA 1968-85] Pressure had come from Bonn, from the U.S. Embassy in Bonn to release Khreesat.
[David Ben-Arycah, Journalist] Well Ahmed Jibril was reported to have said that the barometric detonator bombs were to be used on attacks on Israeli bases at the top of mountains. I don't know of any Israeli bases over 10,000 feet and the triggers were all programmed to become active at over 10,000 feet of altitude. So they could only have been meant to attack planes.
[Ahmed Jibril] This device could be used in a number of different ways. True, it is used to make explosions in high places, but it is possible to put this device in a car at sea level and if this car is driven to the top of a mountain, an explosion will take place. This mechanism is not unrelated to airplanes. Experts are well aware of the fact that this device could be used for many purposes. [Narrator] In April 1989, four months after the destruction of Pan Am Clipper Maid of the Seas, six months after the October arrests of Khreesat and Dalkamoni, the German police raid 16 Isarstrasse in Neuss, Hashem Abassi. That raid will lead to the discovery of three other Khreesat-manufactured bombs concealed in electronic devices in cold storage at a vege stand owned by Abassi. A fourth bomb is never found and there are rumors of a fifth. These bombs are so sophisticated the top German bomb expert is killed trying to disarm one. The German government will never request the extradition of Marwan Khreesat. The Scottish Police will never be allowed to talk to Khreesat.
Nor will the Scottish Police ever be told the details of what Khreesat told the FBI Supervisory Agent Tom Thurman, Special Agent Edward Marshman when the FBI talked to him on November 12 and 13, 1989.
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