U.S. News & World
Report, Dec 20, 1993 v115 n24 p36(4)
Qadhafi's big
adventure.
(lobbying in the U.S. by Libya; Muammar
Qadhafi) (includes related article on witness to 1988 bombing of
Pan Am Flight 103)
Edward T. Pound, Brian Duffy
Abstract: Dept of Justice officials are
investigating reports that prominent US citizens met with Libyan
officials who desire to improve relations with US officials. Libya
hopes to lessen economic sanctions and resolve the legal questions
that surround the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight
103.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1993 U.S. News and World
Report, Inc.
On a September afternoon in 1992, Bobby
Burchfield, the top lawyer for the Bush-Quayle campaign, ushered
two men into his office. The first he knew slightly. Gordon Wade
was a former chairman of the Republican Party in Kentucky and a
respected businessman. The second man was a Libyan. Wade
introduced Mohammed Bukhari as Muammar Qadhafi's minister of
finance. Bukhari had a story to tell. The Libyan government had
been approached by representatives of the Bush-Quayle campaign,
Bukhari said; the emissaries had asked for a campaign
contribution. The Libyans, Bukhari said, had paid. That was
impossible, Burchfield replied. But if Bukhari would give him the
name of the Bush-Quayle "representatives," he would look into the
matter. Bukhari thanked Burchfield and continued. "Mr. Bukhari
then conveyed to Mr. Burchfield Libya's desire to have improved
relations with the United States," Wade wrote in a memorandum
about the meeting. The memo was obtained by U.S. News. Despite his
polite questioning of Bukhari, Burchfield was aghast. Accepting
campaign contributions from Libya was simply illegal. Bukhari had
provided no evidence it had happened. "There was never any money
given by the Libyan government to the Bush campaign," Burchfield
says. "Period."
Today, Mohammed Bukhari's unusual visit to Washington is a
principal focus of a criminal investigation by the U.S. attorney
in Washington, Eric Holder. According to law enforcement
officials and people interviewed by Justice Department lawyers in
connection with the inquiry, the investigation centers on
substantial illegal payments allegedly made by the Libyan
government to American citizens to lobby government officials in
Washington. Some lobbying was directed at the highest levels
of the White House. The objective: to ease international sanctions
imposed on Tripoli and help resolve a legal impasse over the fate
of two Libyan men indicted for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
over Lockerbie, Scotland. The bomb exploded five years ago this
month, destroying the Pan Am jet and killing 270 people.
Records seized. Bukhari's travels in the United States are now
under scrutiny by the Justice Department. Although he was issued a
visa for the purposes of attending the annual Washington meeting
of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, U.S. News
confirmed that Bukhari traveled to Dallas. One possible
reason: to discuss a $200 million purchase of U.S. real estate
by Libya. Investigators want to know whether the discussions
involved a man named Henry Billingsley, a son-in-law of Texas
real-estate developer Trammell Crow, a big contributor to
Republican candidates. The investigators believe that the proposed
transaction, which involved commercial property in Texas and
Illinois, grew out of Libyan efforts to secretly invest government
funds abroad in order to avoid the sanctions imposed by the United
Nations and Washington. The Libyan effort apparently fell through
after U.S. investigators began inquiring about it. Francis Hubach,
an attorney for Crow, says that "neither Trammell Crow Co. nor
Trammell Crow have conducted business with Libyan nationals now or
in the past." Billingsley, whose business records have been seized
by the Justice Department, says he was questioned by U.S.
investigators, but only "in reference to someone else." He says he
has no financial relationship with Libya: "I have not done any
business with that country."
The real-estate talks appear to be the most ambitious of many
Libyan efforts to win influence and friends in the United States.
They also may have grown out of a relationship between Mohammed
Bukhari and a man named A. William Bodine, a
prominent New York financial adviser who manages investments
for Saudi Arabian businessmen and others in the Middle East.
Bodine and Billingsley were college roommates at the University of
California at Los Angeles. In the spring of 1992, Bodine and
Gordon Wade met in Geneva with Bukhari to discuss the impact
the international sanctions were having on the Libyan people. Wade
recalls the meeting: The Libyans had run out of several important
medicines, Bukhari complained, and children were suffering.
Through a GOP contact, Wade says, he arranged for the news to be
carried to the Bush administration. "Bodine took a list of
medicines to the White House that the Libyans had run out of,"
Wade says. Richard Haass, the National Security
Council aide for Middle East affairs, met with Bodine but says he
barely recalls what was discussed. Wade believes the meeting was a
success: The Libyans were told they would get the needed
medicines.
Making friends. That led to future contacts between Bodine,
Wade and Bukhari. It "proved to the Libyans that we knew
somebody," Wade says. "Then the next thing that occurred, they
wanted to contribute money [to the Bush campaign]." Though
Burchfield insists that no such contributions were made, people
acting on behalf of the Libyans managed to gain access to top
presidential aides. "There may have been one or more calls made to
the president that he referred to me," says Brent Scowcroft,
George Bush's national-security adviser. "The people who came to
me were well-known businessmen whose calls I would return."
Scowcroft would not name those who spoke with him about Libya. He
has been questioned about the matter by federal investigators.
Justice Department lawyers are trying to determine whether the
Libyans made payments to anyone to gain influence in Washington. A
grand jury has subpoenaed the financial records of Bodine and
Wade. Bodine declines to comment on the matter. Wade, an
international financial consultant based in Miami, says he
received no money from Libya. He recalls meeting with Bukhari
and Bodine in Washington, D.C., in September 1992. Wade was in
Washington representing another client, he says, and was asked by
Bodine to meet with Bukhari. "The Libyans wanted to contribute
money to the political candidates. Because I knew about political
contributions ... I was brought in. I said, `No, you can't do
this.' " Bodine sought to arrange other contacts for Bukhari in
Washington, but it is unclear whether he was successful. "He
called me," says G. Henry Schuler, a Libya specialist at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies. "He asked who he
could take Bukhari to see. He really had no idea."
Fruitful or not, Mohammed Bukhari's efforts to cultivate
friends in Washington represent just the tip of a vast iceberg.
The Libyans are offering big money: The well-connected Washington
firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld was offered $5
million--both before and after the 1992 presidential election--to
represent the accused Libyan bombers; the firm declined the
offers. State Department records show that more than 80 people,
Americans and non-Americans, have approached U.S. officials with
offers from the Libyan government. Some of the proposals involve
trying the two defendants in the Pan Am 103 case in a third
country; others have involved offers to pay families of those who
died on Pan Am 103. The intermediaries range from small-town
businessmen to former congressmen to international financiers like
Adnan Khashoggi and Tiny Rowland, the head of the London-based
Lonrho investment company. Lonrho formed a
Caribbean shell company with Libya and invested more than $1
million to bankroll a film on the bombing of the Pam Am jet over
Lockerbie; the film would have shown the Libyans were
blameless. (Lonrho backed out of the film venture last
week.) Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian, and Yaacov Nimrodi, an Israeli
businessman involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, have received a
multimillion-dollar fee from the Libyans, U.S. government
officials say. Because they are not American citizens, the fee is
not improper. It is unclear what the payment was for. Khashoggi
and Nimrodi did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The list goes on. F. Lee Bailey, the well-known criminal
defense lawyer, has traveled to Libya at that government's expense
to discuss the Pan Am 103 case. In Washington, former congressmen
David Bowen and John Murphy were fined by the U.S. Treasury
Department for illegal lobbying on behalf of Libya. Murphy
traveled to Libya with consultant Albert Grasselli, who was also
fined. "It seems everybody on the streets of Washington has met
with Libya now," says Michael Ledeen, a foreign-policy consultant
to the Reagan administration who was approached in early 1993 by a
top Libyan official to discuss the Pan Am 103 case. Says R.
Richard Newcomb, director of the Treasury Department's Office of
Foreign Assets Control: "They are using every available means to
do what they have to do not to comply with the U.N. sanctions and
try to find people who are well connected, [even] sitting
leaders."
Making money. U.S. News sent a detailed list of questions about
the Libyan lobbying activities in Washington to Col. Youssef El
Debri, Libya's director of national security. Debri failed to
reply to the magazine's inquiries.
Clearly, Libya has much to be concerned about. Citing Qadhafi's
refusal to turn over the two indicted men, the United Nations
Security Council last month voted to impose tougher sanctions on
Tripoli. The sanctions could cripple Libya financially. A chart
prepared by the U.S. Treasury Department shows a welter of
interlocking investment companies in Europe, the Middle East and
Africa. Some have been easy to track. In the
United States and overseas today, as a result of the international
sanctions, $958.1 million in Libyan assets
remains frozen and unavailable for Qadhafi's use.
RELATED ARTICLE: The prosecution's prize witness
If Muammar Qadhafi ever does allow the two men charged with
blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 to stand trial, American prosecutors
will have an ace up their sleeves: a high-ranking Libyan
intelligence officer who has defected to the United States.
According to knowledgeable U.S. law enforcement and intelligence
officials, the man, Abd Al-Majid Jaaka, is currently enrolled in
the Federal Witness Protection Program under an alias. The
officials say Jaaka walked into the U.S. Embassy on Rome's Via
Veneto and asked to talk to police. The FBI's legal attache
interviewed the man, and he was flown to the United States.
Law enforcement officials say Jaaka has promised to testify in
detail about how the two indicted men, Abdel Basset Megrahi and
Lamin Fhimah, prepared the explosives used to blow up the Pan Am
jet, then smuggled them aboard a connecting flight. Not only would
Jaaka testify in court, U.S. officials say, he has also provided
other valuable evidence against the two Libyans, including a diary
that belonged to Fhimah.
A brown suitcase. Jaaka was in a position to know a lot. A
ranking officer in the Libyan intelligence service, Jaaka was
working in December 1988 as an employee of Libyan Arab Airlines in
Malta. CIA officials say Libyan operatives often work abroad
posing as employees of the state-run airline. On December 20,
according to Jaaka, Megrahi and Fhimah arrived in Malta on an LAA
flight from Tripoli. Megrahi, a senior Libyan intelligence
officer, was traveling under an alias. Fhimah, who had once run
the LAA office in Malta, was not. According to Jaaka's testimony
and other evidence, the two men had with them a brown, hard-sided
Samsonite suitcase. That was the suitcase that carried the bomb
aboard Flight 103, forensic evidence shows. Fhimah's diary entry
for December 15 shows that he obtained Air Malta baggage tags that
allowed the suitcase to be loaded aboard an Air Malta flight on
December 21, transferred to a Pan Am feeder flight in Frankfurt,
Germany, then loaded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 at London's Heathrow
Airport early that evening. The plane blew up just before 7 p.m.;
270 people died.
Jaaka's testimony would bolster a highly technical case.
Forensics specialists have traced a microchip recovered from
the wreckage of the Pan Am jet to a consignment of timers produced
by a Swiss firm for the Libyan government. Several of the
timers were taken from a Libyan intelligence
officer named Nayli Ibrahim after his arrest in Dakar, Senegal, on
Feb. 20, 1988. Forensics tests linked the microchip recovered from
the jet's wreckage in Scotland to the timers taken from Ibrahim.
Jaaka's testimony would link the timer and explosives to the
Libyans now wanted for trial in the United
States.
Bus. Coll.: 74Z2287
Mag. Coll.:
71L1233
Article A14631562
