Free Ghost by Fred Burton Page A

the slipstream whipped around the surviving passengers with such force that several received gashes and cuts. A stewardess handed out linen napkins to the wounded, who used them to stanch the bleeding while the captain told everyone to remain calm. He promised to have the plane down in ten minutes. It took thirteen, and he executed a perfect emergency landing.
    Who pulled this off? The truth is we don’t know, and that’s a real issue right now. The administration wants a smoking gun that points to Libya. If this is retaliation for the Gulf of Sidra, Reagan will strike back hard. But the evidence needs to be overwhelming. So far, we have a few clues, but nothing that implicates the Libyans. In fact, Qaddafi denounced the attack, calling it “an act of terrorism against a civilian target, and I’m totally against it.”
    It was hard not to laugh when we heard that one.
    On the day of the attack, the press in Beirut reported they’d been given a handwritten statement from a group called the Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells. Kassam was a Palestinian cleric who led a revolt against the British in 1935 and subsequently died in the fighting.
    The Arab Revolutionary Cells is a front name used by Abu Nidal’s organization. A few days before this attack, it took credit for kidnapping two academics in West Beirut. Leigh Douglas, a British professor of political science, and Philip Padfield, the director of the language center at American University of Beirut.
    The communiqué, if we could get the original, might reveal some further details. The handwriting and verbiage can be analyzed, and we might be able to connect Flight 840 more directly to Abu Nidal. In this case, however, trying to pry loose the original from the media outlet in Beirut may just prove impossible. The press is not fond of us over there.
    We are forced to rely on the Greeks, who do not have a very robust intelligence service. Nor do they have a first-rate counterterror group that can investigate Flight 840 as well as we can. We offered to assist. They froze us out. The Greeks don’t like us much, and they’ve stonewalled our efforts to assist in the investigation. It is terribly frustrating, but the root of this ill will goes back eleven years to the 1975 assassination of the CIA’s Athens station chief, Richard Welch. A radical Greek group called 17 November executed the hit, and the subsequent investigation led to very bad blood between the U.S. and Greek authorities. A Colt .45 pistol was used in that assassination, and in the years to come, the same weapon was used in numerous assassinations and assaults.
    Earlier today, the Greeks did provide us with some details of what they’ve found in the Flight 840 investigation, but there’s little more there than what’s already been reported in the news. Seat 10F had been occupied earlier by a woman named May Mansur, sometimes known as Elias May Mansur. She’s a Lebanese radical with ties to various terror groups. She’s been associated with Abu Nidal in the past, as well as the Palestinian terror group 15 May. She boarded the plane on the morning of April 2 in Cairo. The 727 flew on to Athens, where Mansur exited the plane. According to the Greeks, she waited in the international lounge for seven hours before taking a flight to Beirut. Meanwhile, the 727 flew to Rome, where it became Flight 840, then headed back for Athens. It was supposed to terminate in Cairo, but of course it never made it back there.
    Our own intelligence sources show that Mansur flew from Beirut to Cairo a few days before the attack. She arrived late at the airport and the Egyptians actually drove her out to the plane in a car so she wouldn’t miss the flight. The Egyptians are adamant that she went through a thorough screening. Somehow, I doubt it was thorough enough.
    Her own movements that day are circumstantial evidence to her involvement. Yet, according to the media, she has denied all responsibility for the