Juval Aviv - Interfor Report On Lockerbie

Interfor Report On Lockerbie

For more details on this topic, see Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories#CIA drug smuggling.

Aviv was employed by Pan Am in 1989 to investigate who had bombed Pan Am Flight 103. He says that he "got the information from the horse's mouth, from people who were involved directly and indirectly in the information" when investigating the bombing. In his report, he claimed that US agents had been monitoring a heroin-smuggling route operating from the Middle East to the United States, which was run by a Syrian criminal.

Aviv said that the Syrian had ties to Hezbollah terrorists, who were holding Westerners as hostages in Beirut. Aviv alleged that US agents agreed to allow the heroin smuggling to continue in return for the Syrian helping to free the hostages. At some point Turkish extremists, who worked at Frankfurt Airport as baggage handlers, swapped a suitcase of heroin for a bomb.

But, the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism examined the same allegations in 1989 and found "no foundation for speculation in press accounts that U.S. government officials had participated tacitly or otherwise in any supposed operation at Frankurt Airport having anything to do with the sabotage of Flight 103."

After the Interfor report was released, Aviv was described by diplomatic and intelligence officials as "a fabricator who had lied about his entire background." Later, Aviv stated, "I was never told directly that was wrong, I was always attacked as the messenger, as somebody who was a fabricator, a lunatic, whatever." American RadioWorks, the national documentary unit of American Public Media, looked into allegations that Aviv had never been employed by the FBI or Mossad. They found that several documents existed, including a memo from the FBI from 1982 and an informant agreement between Aviv and the US Justice Department, which refer to a past association with Israeli intelligence.