Sunday June 4 7:18 PM ET

Iran Defector Blames Tehran for Lockerbie-CBS TV

NEW YORK (Reuters) - CBS television said on Sunday that a senior Iranian
intelligence service defector had claimed the bombing of a Pan Am
aircraft over Scotland was masterminded by Iran and not Libya.

The defector, now in protective custody in Turkey, told an associate
producer of the ``60 Minutes'' current affairs program that he had
documents to prove Tehran was behind the Lockerbie bombing of Pan Am
Flight 103 in 1988.

The Iranian, who had been in a refugee camp in Turkey, was now being
de-briefed by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, the program
said. The CIA would only say he ``was in Iranian intelligence,'' a
Washington official told CBS.

CBS said its producer entered the refugee complex in disguise and without a
camera to make contact with the man who claims to be Ahmad Behbahani, who
coordinated all of Iran's overseas acts of terrorism for at least the past
decade.

``He told us it was Iran, not Libya, that planned and directed the
blowing up of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270
people,'' the CBS program said in its introduction.

``If his story can be confirmed, and American intelligence is trying to
do that right now, it would not only disrupt the trial of the two Libyans
charged with that bombing, it could interfere with the Clinton
administration's efforts at relaxing and improving relations with Iran,'' it
added.

Two Libyans, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fahima, who
prosecutors say were intelligence agents, have been on trial since May 3
at a special Scottish court in the Netherlands, charged with murdering
the 270 victims.

Lawyers for the Libyans suggested they will try to prove Syrian-backed
Palestinian extremists were the perpetrators in an act of revenge on
behalf of Iran for the destruction of an Iranian plane by a U.S. warship
six months earlier.

Iran vowed the skies would ``rain blood'' after the USS Vincennes shot
down an Iran Air flight in July 1988, killing 290. It was widely assumed
at first that Tehran ordered the destruction of the Pan Am airliner with
Syrian-sponsored help.

Behbahani, who said he had lost a power struggle in Tehran, was arrested
then escaped, told the CBS producer he was responsible for the Lockerbie
attack.

Plan Proposed To Jabril

The producer said: ``It all began, he says, when he proposed the job,
along with a blueprint, to Ahmed Jabril, the radical Palestinian
terrorist.

``Jabril replied by saying he agreed with the plan and that he sent a
list of requirements which included explosives and other things that he
needed in order for the operation to be carried out.''

The producer added: ``He (Behbahani) said after that we proceeded by
bringing in a group of Libyans into Iran and training them at a special
site, which was called the Lavison School, for a period of 90 days, and
he was very proud to also mention that the bomb was so very sophisticated
that it required that kind of intensive training.''

Robert Baer, a former CIA terrorism expert, tested Behbahani for the CBS
program with a ``control question'' which no one outside the intelligence
community could have known. He answered correctly.

Baer, who worked on the CIA's Lockerbie inquiry, told CBS: ''He's the
only person that has tied Libya and Iran into Pan Am 103, into the
Lockerbie bombing. This is the first authoritative source that I've ever
heard that connected the two countries together. It was always a
mystery.''

Baer said: ``The CIA for about 6 to 7 months accepted the hypothesis that
Iran, after the shoot down of the Airbus would take revenge against the
United States.''

The former agent added: ``There were pieces of solid evidence that Iran
was planning to shoot down an American airliner, but none of it was
absolutely conclusive.

``And then once the forensic evidence was found on the ground which
pointed at Libya the prosecutors and investigators were forced to drop
the Iranian angle and look at Libya instead. It was totally forgotten.''

Behbahani also told Baer he had evidence that Tehran bombed Khobar
Towers, the U.S. military complex in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen 19 American
soldiers were killed in the 1996 attack.

The program played an audio tape of Behbahni in which he said Jabril's
group under the direction of Iran, had coordinated an attack on a Jewish
community center in Buenos Aires in 1994. His account named the hit
squad, many of them Syrians, the program said.

Before CBS could secure Behbahani's documents the Turkish authorities
took him to a more secure custody.

On Behbahani, the producer said: ``I traced the tone of someone who was
extremely bitter, and was willing to go to any lengths in order to get
revenge. He had fallen out of favor with the Iranian officials, with the
government of Iran, and he just wanted to get back at them, at any
cost.''

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