LOCKERBIE. To follow up on Scott's post over at LGM, this article on the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing is really quite fascinating. Hugh Miles suggests that the verdict and investigation may have been heavily influenced by the United States, to the extent that evidence was stacked against the Libyan defendant. Miles puts forth an alternative suspect that the investigation looked at early on, a former Syrian army captain who heads a Damascus-based Palestinian terrorist organization. It's entirely plausible that Gaddafi would give up one of his intelligence officers and the payment to the Lockerbie victims as the price of his reintegration into international society, even if he didn't believe that the officer was responsible for the bombing. One of the dangers of working with dictators is that they often lack a crisp sense of justice and the rule of law. I also have to wonder how this news will be greeted in certain hawkish foreign policy circles. Gaddafi is no longer the bugbear that he was in the 1980s and 1990s, and I have to imagine that some would welcome the opportunity to pin the bombing on a Palestinian terrorist organization with pro-Syrian sympathies.
--Robert Farley
