Spycraft - Melton [200]
“Isn’t it true that all electrical devices contain electronic components?”
“By definition,” Orkin answered bluntly.
No more questions followed.
By the end of the proceedings, there was no doubt that the timers originating with MEBO ended up in the hands of the Libyan government. Added to the mountain of technical evidence was the testimony of two Toshiba Corporation employees who confirmed that in 1988 Libya purchased 20,000 cassette recorders of the same model that concealed the bomb.
In all, the defense attorneys for the Libyan operatives called only three witnesses during the eighty-four-day trial. On January 31, 2001—more than thirteen years after Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed—the three-judge panel returned a verdict: one conviction and one acquittal. The judges wrote:
The evidence, which we have considered up to this stage, satisfies us beyond reasonable doubt that the cause of the disaster was the explosion of an improvised explosive device, that that device was contained within a Toshiba radio cassette player in a brown Samsonite suitcase along with various items of clothing, that that clothing had been purchased in Mary’s House, Sliema, Malta, and that the initiation of the explosion was triggered by the use of an MST-13 timer.
The court found Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the mastermind of the plot, guilty of murder. His sentence was a minimum of twenty years’ imprisonment. His accomplice, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who, authorities alleged, supplied luggage tags and assisted in getting the brown suitcase placed on the flight, was found not guilty by virtue of lack of evidence.
Terrorism moved from Scotland to sub-Saharan Africa when al-Qaeda sponsored bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania on August 7, 1998. These were immediately followed by credible reports that other embassies in Africa, Europe, and Asia were also in danger of attack. A U.S. embassy in the Balkans was identified as a specific target. As a precaution, U.S. personnel were temporarily relocated to a compound outside the city. Shortly thereafter, the local security service captured one al-Qaeda operative believed to be involved in the plotting but a second suspected member of the cell remained at large.
The at-large terrorist suspect, identified as a primary al-Qaeda forger who specialized in altered travel documents, was married to a local woman who claimed to have no knowledge of her husband’s whereabouts. His capture could produce a wealth of intelligence through the identification of the alias identities of other al-Qaeda operatives along with exemplars of their passports, driver’s licenses, and other travel documents. The death and injury suffered by U.S. officials in the Nairobi bombing added special urgency to the search. Finding the other terrorist became an obsession for the handful of case officers and techs.
OTS became involved in the hunt when the techs received word that communications had been intercepted between a suspected al-Qaeda cell in Western Europe and the Balkan terrorist. One particular exchange suggested that the European cell was providing logistical support and funds to the Balkan cell through a female cutout.
An operation combining OTS tracking and audio devices to find the terrorist was proposed. The concept involved implanting a tracking device as well as an audio transmitter in a package sent to the cutout who could be expected to deliver it to the target. Although a solid plan from the intelligence-gathering standpoint, the technical aspect was problematic.
Placing an audio and tracking device in a small package would be difficult, as both would be transmitting for an indefinite time. In addition, after the modified package was inserted into the European postal system, it would be outside of