Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, killing 270 people, including 11 on the ground
A curious thing happened in the Gambia which I have often thought about since. Very soon after the Lockerbie disaster, an ex-Interpol detective came to dinner with us. He was in the Gambia investigating some kind of fisheries fraud for the EU. Over the meal we discussed Lockerbie and he said, "Oh it will all come out soon. That plane was carrying drugs to the US as part of a deal over the American hostages in Lebanon." He went on to tell us that in order for the drugs to get through unimpeded it was arranged that the cargo if the Pan Am plane would not be inspected. What happened then, he said, was that, via the Lebanese/Hezbollah/Iran connection, the extraordinary fact that the plane's cargo would travel unchecked, came to the ears of Iranians seeking revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US not long before; somehow they arranged to put a bomb on board.
Though the detective said that this story would be all over the papers in the following months, it never was. I have told it to every journalist I know, but no paper has ever taken it up-- although there was a book published years ago called The Octopus Trail, which told more or less the same tale. Last year, not long before he died, I happened to tell Paul Foot the story and he urged me not to let it lie-- which is why I am putting it into this book.
--Brigid Keenan (1939- ), Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (2005)
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