Behind the Lockerbie letter

By ARTHUR HERMAN
New York Post
http://www.nypost.com/
July 29, 2010


In Washington, what people say is happening and what's actually happening tend to be two different things -- especially these days.

Tuesday, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) announced that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was going to suspend its hearings on the sudden release last year of convicted Lockerbie bomber and Libyan citizen Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

Menendez claims the reason he had to stop the investigation that he, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other Democrats have been screaming for is that the British witnesses they wanted to question on the possible link between Megrahi's release and a big BP offshore-drilling deal with Libya refused to testify.

Congressional Dems stopped a probe that would have disclosed what Obama and AG Holder knew about the release of Libyan terrorist Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.


The real reason is that the probe might also have had to disclose what President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder knew and when they knew it. That's because the London Times on Sunday published a letter written by deputy US ambassador Richard LeBaron in the days before Megrahi was set free, telling Scotland's first minister that, while the Obama administration opposed the terrorist bomber's release, it was nonetheless "far preferable" that he be sprung on compassionate grounds than be moved to a Libyan prison.

At the very least, the letter undermines Obama's statement that he had been "surprised, disappointed and angry" by the release last August. It turns out that he knew all along and that his anger and disappointment didn't extend so far as to make a diplomatic big deal about it.

At the time, an outraged Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said the release of the man convicted of murdering the 189 Americans on Pan Am 103 on grounds of "compassion" turned the meaning of the word on its head. It seems Obama was one of those doing the headstand.

Now that the Lockerbie hearings have been suspended, we may never get to the truth of what happened in those crucial days in mid-August or read the transcript that the White House is withholding of a conversation Holder had with his Scottish counterpart before the release.

That's unfortunate, because the truth would help us answer a more important question: How serious is this president about fighting and winning the War on Terror?

Certainly, Obama's defenders haven't been slow on damage control on that point. They say that the Times has "Sherroded" him -- that the letter was quoted out of context. They say the full text of LeBaron's letter shows that the White House demanded proof that Megrahi had only weeks to live, as the Scots were claiming. It also wanted the Libyan terrorist, if he was to be released, to be kept in custody in Scotland -- not returned home in triumph.

They also say that there's no doubt that the real culprits in the case were the British, whether BP was involved or not.

All the same, it's unimaginable that Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or John McCain would have allowed such a letter linking "compassion" to the fate of a terrorist bomber to be sent.

It's also hard to imagine that a Republican president would have let Megrahi return to Libya unmolested. More likely, on White House orders, US fighters and a special-ops team would have diverted Megrahi's flight to an extradition-to-the-US-friendly airport.

Some might cry that such a move would've damaged our "special relationship" with Great Britain.

In fact, it's hard to see how Anglo-American relations could get any worse.

In the last few weeks, Obama has waged a campaign to vilify and cripple Britain's biggest corporation and besmirch the integrity of the British government by suggesting it has sold out to BP. Whoever was behind the letter's publication clearly was engaged in retaliation. Indeed, ever since he returned Britain's present of a bust of Winston Churchill, Obama has turned the "special relationship" into a train wreck.

But there's a more troubling issue lurking behind this scandal.

Obama's feckless handling of the Megrahi affair seems to be part of a pattern. It includes making the release of terrorists from Gitmo a top priority, his notorious apology tour and "we feel your pain" speech to a Muslim audience in Cairo and his top terrorism adviser John Brennan's May 26 pronouncement that jihad is a legitimate religious practice. It includes the effort to turn NASA into a Muslim-outreach program, Obama's steady harassment of Israel compared to his reluctance to challenge the Tehran regime and now his silence about the building of a mosque at Ground Zero.

In short, whose side is Obama really on? Is there more sympathy and compassion at the White House for Islamicist terrorists than there is for those they killed on 9/11 and over Lockerbie -- and those they're still killing in Afghanistan?

Americans need to know the answer before they can have confidence in Obama's conduct of the War on Terror. They need to know what he knew, and when, about the Lockerbie bomber release.

Unfortunately, it may take the election of a Republican Congress in November before we can get those answers.

Arthur Herman's most recent book is "Gandhi and Churchill."