Lockerbie: The question that has not been asked

according to the early version, allegedly carried out the crime alone.

This report, by Der Spiegel journalists, following a trail that took

them to Berlin, Budapest, Geneva, and Moscow, unearths new leads leading

to Germany. The key figure, a Swiss businessman, turns out to have been

in the pay of the East German security service for almost 20 years --

and possibly worked for the CIA as well. KGB officials say they knew of

the connection -- and are astonished that the Americans have yet to ask

them about it.

A COLOUR photo, magnified 15 times, reveals only a scorched fragment

of a chip of green synthetic resin smaller than a fingernail. Only

magnification allows one to see the soldering typical of an electronic

circuit board.

Nor does the picture of a two-part plastic housing reveal much at

first glance. The upper and lower part are held together by a wire. Not

visible from the outside are two dials mounted on the plastic.

Electronics experts say the dials were used to set a timer, necessary

for the precise detonation of a bomb.

Secretive men have been presenting such photos for months to

investigators in Berlin. Swarms of secret agents from the intelligence

services of all the world are here; it is as if the Cold War had never

ended and Berlin was the spies' capital.

For German investigators, this is a ''home game''. Officials of the

Federal Office for the Defence of the Constitution, colleagues from the

State Security Service, investigators from the Federal Criminal

Investigation Agency, and public prosecutors from Berlin and Frankfurt

are trying to solve the toughest political crime puzzle of recent years:

the history of the timer.

One question is: whose hands held the clock? Terrorists may have used

such a timer to detonate the bomb that ripped apart the PanAm jumbo.

All 259 aboard, most of them US citizens, were killed, along with 11

people on the ground.

Many people thought the case was officially closed. American and

Scottish authorities claimed in November 1991 that two Libyan secret

agents, Amin Shalifa Fuheima, then 35, and Abdel Bassit Ali el-Mikhrahi,

then 39, were behind the Boeing 747 outrage. Once again, the hand of

Libya's chief of state, Moammar Gaddafi, was seen lurking behind Arab

terrorism.

The US Justice Department demanded the extradition of the two suspects

-- in vain. The United Nations decreed an embargo of Libya as a result,

and tightened it last November.

But new facts have emerged that cast serious doubt on the hypotheses

pieced together so far. Investigators and agents speak of a ''German

trail'' -- and it is hot.

Lockerbie, according to Scotland Yard, was ''the most expensive piece

of detective work in criminal history''. Fifteen thousand witnesses were

interviewed, 20,000 names checked, 35,000 photos analysed, 180,000

pieces of evidence evaluated.

One German trail was discovered almost from the beginning: in all

likelihood, the deadly luggage came from Frankfurt. According to

investigators, the suitcase bearing the bomb reached the German airport

on the morning of December 21, 1988, on an Air Malta flight and was

transferred to the PanAm jet as unaccompanied luggage.

Around 1.07pm, a computer gave the bronze-coloured Samsonite suitcase

the code number B-8849. Then, between 3.12 and 4.50, it was loaded,

unchecked, on to flight 103 to London, a stopover on the transatlantic

flight.

But there is a new German trail. It leads to East Berlin and the

former Ministry for State Security, the Stasi. Prominent names from the

ministry have recently been added to a list of witnesses to be

interrogated. Not only former Politburo members but Egon Krenz, who

succeeded East German leader Erich Honecker, have been named. Everything

revolves around one question: when was the timer given to whom, and for

what purpose?

No-one is saying that Lockerbie was the Stasi's direct work but it

seems Stasi officers may have provided key assistance to an Arab state

or terrorist group. It has been discovered that detonators of the

Lockerbie type were in the possession of the ministry.

From the beginning, the key to the Lockerbie puzzle was a piece of the

tape player that investigators found after an exhaustive search of the

crash site.

It was found burned into a shirt collar belonging to one victim, Karen

Noonan.

In weeks of painstaking work, the Scottish specialist Thomas Hayes was

able to identify the plastic fragment, production number PT 30, as part

of the detonator. That indicated that the Lockerbie bomb was of the same

type as one built two months earlier by a group of militant Palestinians

in the German city of Neuss. The explosive used in both cases was Semtex

H; in

both cases, a lump of it was hidden in a Toshiba radio recorder.

The Palestinian group in Neuss used a barometric detonator, which

would set off a bomb explosion after a change in air pressure -- for

example, when an airplane had reached a certain altitude. As a result,

the Neuss terrorists, operating under Syrian sponsorship, were long

considered leading suspects in the Lockerbie attack.

However, when it became absolutely clear that the explosives on flight

PanAm 103 were set off by a simple timer, the investigation took another

direction.

CIA analysts led investigators to the Mebo AG firm in Zurich. It deals

with electronic devices of all sorts. The timer was part of one it had

produced -- Type MST-13 -- in 1985 for use by Libyans in desert warfare.

It was both dust and water-tight.

According to the CIA, one of these timers was used in 1986 in a bomb

attack on the American Embassy in Togo. In February 1988, two Libyans

were arrested in Senegal in connection with that attack; they had 10

kilograms (22lbs) of plastic explosives and two MST-13 timers in their

possession. Though the name of the manufacturer had been scratched off,

lab technicians were able to make it out: Mebo.

Fewer than two dozen of the timers were produced, all of them

apparently for Gaddafi's people. Mebo officials told the CIA, as well as

American and British Lockerbie investigators, that the timers were sold

only to Tripoli and to the Libyan People's Bureau, or embassy, in East

Berlin. The charges against the two Libyan suspects rest largely on this

evidence.

Yet the Mebo version turned out to be a cover story. Edwin Bollier,

56, one of Mebo's top two executives, claims to have suddenly remembered

six months ago that there was a second client: ''the Institute for

Technical Research or something like that'' in East Berlin.

In fact, that institute, ITU for short, served as a highly-specialised

workshop for the Stasi, making specialist tools such as listening

devices and miniature transmitters for its agents.

At first, investigators believed that the Libyans had bought off

Bollier to exonerate themselves.

Investigators also paid close attention to the fact that in January,

during a Geneva meeting between US President Bill Clinton and the Syrian

head of state, Hafez Assad, in the President Hotel, an intriguing group

was in attendance: the so-called Libyan defence team, including London

lawyer Stephen M. Mitchell and the American defence attorney Frank

Rubino.

Even Bollier found his way to Geneva, where he recounted further

details on the sale of Mebo timers to East Berlin.

It is known that, in 1985, the Stasi acquired MST-13 timers. State

prosecutors say Bollier sold as many as seven of them to the East

Germans. This number comes from a copy of a bill Bollier suddenly

''found''.

Some former Stasi buyers have since admitted ordering MST-13-type

timers. A former Stasi colonel, questioned by the Federal Criminal

Investigation Agency in Munich, has said that his ministry played no

direct role in the Lockerbie explosion but that it was entirely possible

that it had passed along such a timer.

Meanwhile, the Stasi has been linked to other murderous attacks. Not

long ago, its anti-terrorism specialist Helmut Voigt was sentenced to

four years in prison for passing on the explosives used in the 1983

bombing of the Maison de France in Berlin (one dead, 22 injured).

This all raises questions about the earlier theory that the Libyans

acted alone.

Bollier may have worked for the East Germans as an unofficial

collaborator of the Stasi, providing sensitive materials for decades. At

Stasi headquarters, he was registered under file number 2550/70. Bollier

tells Der Spiegel he had no idea he had been given a code name.

In the late 60s, the East Germans had enormous need for electronic

spying devices. The Stasi created a special unit whose mission was to

listen in on the West German telephone network. Its name: Department

III.

Meeting in a Berlin hotel, the department's head, Horst Mannchen,

quickly reached agreement with Bollier. The Swiss would provide the

Stasi with special antennas, coders, police radios, and data terminals.

Mannchen wanted radio equipment for 3000 spies.

The Stasi paid Bollier in cash, hard West German marks. ''Bollier,''

says one former Stasi official, ''did well over a million marks business

with us.''

Bollier's firm also had surprising contacts within the Western

services. Bollier was thus able to obtain a device that was then a

closely guarded American secret: the ''Mark'' voice analyser. The

device, which works like a lie detector, registers subtle changes in the

voice. Stasi's top man, Markus Wolf, wanted it to test the loyalty of

his agents.

However, the Stasi people became suspicious of the ease with which

Bollier was able to obtain the machine. They decided to try to find out

who he really worked for.

Bollier travelled so much and was so active that Stasi agents were

unable to keep a tail on him, and never proved anything but the

suspicion grew that Bollier was also working for a Western service,

probably the CIA, according to one internal report.

Is it possible that a man in the service of the CIA was even

indirectly responsible for the horrible disaster over Lockerbie? German

prosecutors aren't ready to provide a final answer to that. However, one

former Stasi man told investigators: ''A man like Bollier had hidden

protectors in the West.''

When asked by Der Spiegel about CIA contacts, Bollier said simply:

''No comment.''

Mr Joachim Wenzel, a brilliant technician for Stasi, says Bollier

delivered timers to him in 1987, in his offices on Ferdinand Schultze

Street in East Berlin. The Stasi people there had close contacts to

militant Arab groups and also to the Red Army Faction of West Germany.

The timers have since disappeared. It is not clear whether they were

destroyed in the chaos surrounding the end of communist rule, or whether

they found their way into the world of international terrorism.

There were many possible takers. The Stasi's connections to Arab

terrorist groups formed a web with many spiders.

The Stasi, for example, delivered to the security division of the

Palestine Liberation Organisation around 5000 hand grenades, explosives,

and 1000 detonating devices in 1980 alone.

Many splinter groups of the Palestinian movement also found a new base

in East Germany.

The terrorist Carlos, sought around the world for his part in a series

of murderous attacks, spent time in the Palast Hotel on East Berlin's

Unter den Linden boulevard. The fighters of the infamous Abu Nidal took

a three-month course at Stasi headquarters in 1985, including training

with rocket and grenade launchers.

Only months later, the group killed 16 people in an attack on Rome

airport and four in Vienna.

Abu Daoud, who was linked to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, lived

in Berlin in the 80s, at Prenzlauer Allee 178.

But who was behind the Lockerbie attack? Was it the Iranians, furious

over the shooting down of an Airbus full of civilians by the destroyer

Vincennes over the Strait of Hormuz in 1988? Did the Syrians help?

The KGB is not convinced by the theory that the Libyans acted alone

and although the Russians are well-placed to have information on both

the Arabs and the Stasi, they have not been contacted by American

investigators. One former head of Soviet foreign intelligence said:

''They haven't asked us a single question.''

[CPYR] Der Spiegel. Distributed by New York Times Syndication Sales.