Note to readers: From 2001 to 2008, I worked as an air accident investigator for Kreindler & Kreindler. I was not assigned to the Pan Am 103 case. 

It is all well and good to focus on the bad guys responsible for the 1988 downing of Pan Am 103. In the recently released Netflix limited series, filmmakers make it clear how crime fighters determined the government of Libya and its agents produced a bomb and concealed it in a suitcase that would be boarded onto the Boeing 747 bound for New York.

Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah and Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi

Flight 103 departed London on December 21, 1988 and exploded over Scotland killing all 259 people on the flight and 11 people on the ground in the small town of Lockerbie.

Air Accident Investigation Branch photo

What baffles me about the docudrama, even as it focused on the narrow whodunit, is how much of the chicanery was left out.

In real life, the list of bad actors includes not just Libyans but folks from many countries, including Americans. They were fabulists, corporate fraudsters, scheming lawyers and a sexual predator whose antics contributed to the terrorists’ success in getting the bomb on the airplane.

These facts that seem like fiction are recounted in a book from an unlikely author. Ninety four year old Ruth Kreindler is the widow of Lee Kreindler, a lawyer representing many of the families of Pan Am 103’s victims. Lee died in 2003 at the age of 78. He is at the center of  Fight For Justice – Lee Kreindler and Lockerbie.

Through two decades of civil proceedings, Ruth Kreindler had an essential but behind-the-scenes role as her husband’s advisor, sounding board and diarist. Her story is his story and it is more compelling than you can imagine.

Here are just few highlights.

Pan Am’s accounting switcheroo diverted passenger security fees

Airline bombings were not uncommon in the eighties. In the 10 years before Lockerbie, there had been 13, including three on U.S. carriers. Not surprisingly, air travelers were apprehensive. Pan Am instituted a $5 per ticket security fee in 1986. The money would pay for beefed up security, bomb sniffing dogs and suitcase scanners. The airline ran newspaper and television ads, boasting about all it was doing to keep travelers safe.  These security fees generated $18 million, but it wasn’t spent on security.

Instead, it was deposited into the airline’s general account.  When Fred Ford, the head of Pan Am’s in house security arm complained about the switcheroo that same year, he was fired.

A sex-charged, underqualified security team in Frankfurt let the bomb get on the plane

By the middle of the eighties, Pan Am (and other airlines) were ordered to follow strict rules imposed by the Federal Aviation Administration including how and which bags to inspect before they were loaded onto airplanes. Yet, the lawyers representing the victims’ families discovered the Pan Am security office at Frankfurt was a shambles.

They heard salacious accounts of company parties held at strip clubs and inexperienced people who were hired and promoted in exchange for sexual favors. Meantime, little attention was being paid to incoming security advisories. Two were sent to the Frankfurt office in the month leading up to the disaster. Neither were shared with screeners. Rules for how to handle unaccompanied bags, like the one containing the bomb, were ignored.

A “fraud of monumental proportions”

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the Pan Am 103 tragedy is the one involving Lester Coleman, a former colleague of mine from the early eighties.

We worked together at a television station in Hartford, Connecticut. Where he went after I joined CBS News, I cannot say. But following the Pan Am disaster, Coleman and Yuval Aviv, a controversial self-described security specialist, presented an elaborate alternate theory about the bombing to Pan Am. It was a doozy.

Coleman told Pan Am, which in turn entered his sworn statement to the court, that the US Drug Enforcement Administration had been infiltrated by terrorists. One of them had brought the bomb onto Pan Am 103. According to Coleman, the DEA was covering it up.

Pierre Salinger at ABC News

The headlines that made! Pierre Salinger, then with ABC News, ran with the story as did Time magazine, Barrons, The London Times, CNN and many other news organizations. With these accounts Pan Am could deny the allegation that it had engaged in “willful misconduct,” or as Ruth Kreindler explains, “The gist of all these reports was that Pan Am’s insurance company and defense lawyers cooked up the phony tale to avoid having to pay fair damages to the victim’s families.”

Ultimately, Coleman was charged with perjury for making false statements to the court. He served time in prison and was handed a thirty thousand dollar fine.

In today’s post-truth world, some people might say, “well, companies do bad things and that’s just the way it is.”  Lee and the other lawyers did not do that. They went to extraordinary efforts and succeeded in proving Pan Am engaged in willful misconduct. It was an “almost impossible standard” to meet, according to Lee and Ruth’s son, aviation attorney Jim Kreindler.

“If it wasn’t for us, this proof would have never been developed,” he said, referring not only to the finding against Pan Am, but to the follow-on civil case they won against the Libyan government in 2003. Jim Kreindler said it was, “The first and only time a state sponsor (of terrorism) compensated its victims.”

These victories, not to mention the stories that led to them, would have been unimaginable early on.  As the years dragged on the lawyers racked up huge expenses for the investigations. In the fight against Pan Am and their insurers, United States Aviation Underwriters, both the law firm and Lee and Ruth’s personal finances were at risk.

“They were up against someone with unlimited financial resources,” she recalled of those years. “Their goal was to bankrupt the firm and they almost succeeded.”

You won’t learn about that roll of the dice in the Netflix series either. But Lee was betting they’d win, with compensation for the families, a payday for the firm and a full accounting of what happened and why.

They got the first two and with Ruth’s book, the third. The most intriguing and provocative parts of the Pan Am 103 story have now been told in fascinating detail.

Watch a short clip of Ruth talking about the book. Right click to show video controls and be patient with me as I learn how to use videos in my posts.