The Soviets were not, as it turned out,
the only nation to pointedly threaten Zia. In Delhi, Rajiv
Gandhi, the prime minister of India, informed Pakistan on
August 15 it would have cause "to regret its behavior" in
covertly supplying weapons to Sikhs terrorists in India.
The Sikhs, who were attempting to secede from India and
create an independent nation called Khalistan, were a crucial
problem for Gandhi. They had assassinated his mother when
she was prime minister and, with some 2000 armed guerrillas
located mainly around the Pakistan border, the death toll
from this civil war was approaching 200 a month. Zia had
been meeting with top Sikh leaders, according to Gandhi,
and providing guerrillas with AK-47 assault rifles, rocket
launchers and sanctuary across the Pakistan border. In response,
India had organized a special unit in its intelligence service,
known by the initials R.A.S., to deal with Pakistan.
It was not unlike Agatha Christie's
thriller Murder on the Orient Express, in which, if one
looked hard enough, every aboard the train had a motive
for the murder. When Zia's eldest son, Ijaz ul Haq, a soft-spoken,
impeccably dressed man now living in Bahrain, described
to me how his father was persuaded to go to the tank demonstrations
that day by his generals, despite his misgivings, and then
General Rehman's sons told me how their father was manipulated
into going on the same plane, it raised the possibility
that the assassination was the work of a faction in the
army. After all, as I learned from Zia's son, Zia had planned
to make imminent changes in the military.
Zia's great game had also even offended
the United States. It was explained to me at the Pentagon
that the CIA had become concerned that Zia was diverting
a large share of the weapons being supplied by America to
an extreme fundamentalist Muejadeen group led by Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar. Not only was this group anti-American but its
strategy appeared to be aimed at dividing the rest of the
Afghan resistance so that it could take over in Kabul--
with Zia's support. American anxiety was also increasing
over the progress Zia was making in building the first Islamic
nuclear bomb. His clandestine effort included attempts to
smuggle the Kryton triggering mechanism and other components
for it out of the U.S., which had only added to the tensions.
In any case, with Zia death, the U.S.
could foresee an amenably alternative: the replacement of
the Zia dictatorship, with all its cold war intrigues, with
an elected government head by the attractive Harvard-educated
Benazir Bhutto. With this prospect, the State Department
had little interest in rocking the boat by focusing on the
past, as the new American Ambassador, Robert Oakley, told
me in Islamabad. This decision was apparently made just
hours after the charred remains of Zia were buried. Flying
back from the funeral, Secretary of State Schultz recommended
that the FBI keep out of the investigation. Even though
the FBI had the statutory authority for investigating crashes
involving Americans, and its counter-terrorism division
had already assembled a team of forensic experts to search
for evidence in the crash, it complied with this request.
During his confirmation hearings before
the Senate Foreign Relation Committee, Oakley explained
"the judgment of the State Department and the Defense Department
was that [the FBI forensic experts] would not add any expertise
to the team and that it might create complications because
we had already obtained something rather extraordinary,
that is, the permission of the government of Pakistan to
have U.S. investigators fully involved, with full access
to everything which had occurred, involving the death under
mysterious circumstances of the President of Pakistan."
The result was that the U.S. team assigned to Pakistan's
Board of Inquiry included only seven air force accident
investigators-- and excluded any criminal, counter-terrorist
or sabotage experts.
An unrestricted investigation by the
FBI also could have opened up a potential Pandora's box
of geo-political troubles. What if, for example, it pointed
towards a superpower, a neighbor, or Pakistan's military
itself? It could undermine everything the United States
was striving to achieve by damaging detente, leading to
armed confrontation on Pakistan's borders or even de-stabilize
the new and shaky Pakistan government. Why chance such uncontrollable
consequences when the change in power could be attributed
to an "accident" or "act of god?
The State Department evidently decided
to work to control media and public perception of what had
caused the crash. Just before a summary of the Board of
Inquiry' findings was to be released to the press, Oakley
sent a classified telegram from Islamabad providing "press
guidance." He advised in a follow-up telegram "It is essential
that U.S. Government spokespersons review and coordinate
on proposed guidance before commenting to the media on the
GOP [Pakistan] release".
This spin control effectively deflected
press attention from the report's conclusion actual conclusion
that the probable cause of the crash was sabotage. On October
14th, 72 hours before that release, the State Department
leaked a pre-emptive story to theNew York Times headlined
"Malfunction Seen as Cause of Zia Crash". It began " Experts
sent to Pakistan ... have concluded that the crash was caused
by a malfunction in the aircraft". But on October 17, when
the summary was released, the headline had to be changed
to "Pakistan Points to Sabotage in Zia crash". TheTimes
now correctly reported that Pakistan's Board of Inquiry
had concluded "the accident was most probably caused through
the perpetuation of a criminal act or sabotage". But unnamed
administration spokespersons, continuing with their pre-prepared
press guidance, added to the story that "the Pakistani findings
were not the same as findings by American experts." They
even suggested a psychopathological explanation for the
Board's finding, saying that it reflected a"mind set" among
Pakistan military officers who wanted instability so they
had an excuse for continuing their military rule.
The problem with this press guidance
was that it was misinformation. There was no such divergence
between the American and Pakistanis experts involved in
the investigation, and no separate American conclusion of
a "malfunction". Nor was it a conspiratorial Pakistani "mind
set" that had ruled out a malfunction as the cause of the
crash. This was the conclusion the six American Air Force
experts, headed by Colonel Daniel E. Sowada, that comprised
the U.S. Assistance and advisory team, which was supported
by laboratories in the United States. They, not the Pakistani,
had actually written the sections of the report that investigated
all possible mechanical failure of the aircraft that led
the Board to state it had been " unable to substantiate
a technical reason for the accident." This was confirmed
to me by both the head of the Pakistan investigating team
and an American assistant secretary of defense. Colonel
Sowada himself gave secret testimony before the subcommittee
on Asian and Pacific Affairs that acknowledged that no evidence
of a mechanical failure had been found.
The conclusion of sabotage became inescapable
after the accident investigators eliminated virtually all
other causes. Sherlock-Holmes like detective work is contained
in a red-bound 365 secret investigation report, which the
relevant sections of were read to me by a Pentagon official
in his office. Like Sherlock Holmes, it used on a process
of elimination. First, they were able to rule out the possibility
that the plane had been blown up in mid air. If it had exploded
in this manner the pieces of the plane, which had different
shapes and therefore resistance to the wind, would have
been strewn over a wide area-- but that had not happened.
By re-assembling the plane in a giant jigsaw puzzle, and
scrutinizing with magnifying glasses the edges of each broken
piece, they could established that the plane was in one
piece when it had hit the ground. They thus concluded structural
failure--ie. The breaking up of the plane-- was not the
cause.
Nor had the plane been hit by a missile.
That would have generated intense heat which in turn would
have melted the aluminum panels and, as the plane dived,
the wind would have left tell-tale streaks in the molten
metal. But there were no streaks on the panels. And no missile
part or other ordinance had been found in the area.
They could also rule out the possibility
that there was an inboard fire while the plane was in the
air since, if there had been one, the passengers would have
breathed in soot before they died. Yet, the single autopsy
performed, which was on the American general seated in the
VIP capsule, showed there was no soot in his trachea, indicating
that he had died before, not after, the fire ignited by
the crash.
The next possibility they considered
was that the power had somehow failed in flight. If this
had happened, the propellers would not have been turning
at their full torque when the plane crashed, which would
have affected the way their blades had broken off and curled
on impact. But by examining the degree of curling on each
broken propeller blades, they determined that in fact the
engines were running at full speed when the propellers hit
the ground. They also ruled out the possibility of contaminated
fuel by taking samples of the diesel fuel from the refueling
truck, which had been impounded after the crash. By analyzing
the residues still left in the fuel pumps, they could also
tell that they had been operating normally at the time of
the crash.
They deduced that the electric power
on the plane had been working because both electric clocks
on board had stopped at the exact moment of impact, which
they determined independently from eye witnesses and other
evidence.
The crash had occurred, moreover after
a routine and safe take off in perfectly clear daytime weather.
And the pilots were experienced with the C-130 and in good
health. Since the plane was not in any critical phase of
flight, such as take off or landing, where poor judgment
on the part of the pilots could have resulted in the mishap,
the investigators ruled out pilot error as a possible cause.
They thus came down to one final possibility
of mechanical failure: the controls did not work. But the
Hercules C-130 had not one but three redundant control system.
The two sets of hydraulic controls were backed up, in case
of a leak of fluid in both of them, by a mechanical system
of cables. If any one of them worked, the pilots would have
been able to fly the plane. By comparing the position of
the controls with the mechanisms in the hydraulic valves
and the stabilizers in the tail of the plane (which are
moved through this system when the pilot moves the steering
wheel), they established that the control system was working
when the plane crashed. This was confirmed by a computer
simulation of the flight done by Lockheed, the builder of
the C-130. They also ruled out the possibility that the
controls had temporarily jammed by a microscopic examination
of the mechanical parts to see if there were any signs of
jamming or binding. (The only abnormality they found, which
led to a long separate appendix, was that there were brass
particles contaminating the hydraulic fluid. Although they
could not explain this contamination, they found that it
could have accounted only for gradual wear and tear on the
parts, not a sudden loss of control).
Having ruled out all the mechanical
malfunctions that could cause a C-130 to fall from the sky
in that manner, the American team left it to the Board to
conclude "the only other possible cause of the accident
is the occurrence of a criminal act or sabotage leading
to the loss of control of the aircraft".
This conclusion was reinforced when an
analysis of chemicals found in plane's wreckage, done by
the laboratory of Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco
in Washington, found foreign traces of pentaerythritol tertranitrate
(PNET), a secondary high explosive commonly used by saboteurs
as a detonator, as well as antimony and sulfur, which in
the compound antimony sulfide is used in fuses to set off
the device. Using these same chemicals, Pakistan ordinance
experts reconstructed a low-level explosive detonator which
could have been used to burst a flask the size of a soda
can which, the Board suggested, probably contained an odorless
poison gas that incapacitated the pilots.
But this was as far as the Board of
Inquiry could go. It had not had autopsies done on the remains
of the crew members to determine if they were poisoned.
It acknowledged in its report that it lacked the expertise
to investigate criminal acts. What was needed was criminal
investigators and interrogators. It thus recommended that
the task of finding the perpetrators by turned over to the
competent agency, which meant, as one of the investigators
explained to me, Pakistan's intelligence service--the ISI.
When I got to Pakistan in February and
called upon General Hamid Gul, the Director General of the
ISI, I found out that political events had apparently overtaken
this mandate. He told me that his agency had called off
its investigation at the request of the government and had
transferred the responsibility for it to a "broader based"
government authority headed by a civil servant called F.K.
Bandial. It was not using the resources of his intelligence
service and, as far as he knew that committee had not begun
the work. His tone suggested that, he did not expect any
immediate resolution of the crime.
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