But it was still possible to come to
some reasonable conclusions about what happened to Pak One,
if not the precise cause. And there were still outstanding,
however, disturbing pieces of evidence. A crucial piece
missing in the puzzle was what had happened to the pilots
during the final minutes of the flight because the accident
investigators found that there was no black box or cockpit
recorder on Pak One to recover. Yet, there were three other
planes in the area tuned to the same frequency for communications--
General Beg's turbojet, which was waiting on the runway
to take off next, Pak 379, which was the backup C-130 in
case anything went wrong to delay Pak One, and a Cessna
security plane that took off before Pak One to scout for
terrorists. I managed to locate pilots of these planes--
all of whom were well acquainted with the flight crew of
Pak One and its procedures-- who could listen to the conversation
between Pak One and the control tower in Bahawalpur. They
independently described the same sequence of events. First
Pak One reported its estimated time of arrival in the capital.
Then, when the control tower asked its position, it failed
to respond. At the Same Time Pak 379 was trying unsuccessfully
to get in touch with Pak One to verify its arrival time.
All they heard from Pak One was "stand by" but no message
followed. When this silence persisted, the control tower
got progressively more frantic in its efforts to contact
Zia's pilot, Wing Commander Mash'hood. Three or four minutes
passed. Then, a faint voice in Pak One called out "Mash'hood,
Mash'hood". One of the pilots overhearing this conversation
recognized the voice. It was Zia's military secretary, Brigadier
Najib Ahmed who apparently, from the weakness of his voice,
was in the back of the flight deck (where a door connected
to the VIP capsule.) What this meant that the radio was
switched on and was picking up background sounds; in this
sense, it was the next best thing to a cockpit flight recorder.
Under these circumstances, the long silence between "stand
bye" and the faint calls to Mash'hood, like the dog that
didn't bark, was the relevant fact. Why wouldn't Mash'hood
or the three other members of the flight crew spoken if
they were in trouble? The pilots aboard the other planes,
who were fully familiar Mash'hood, and the procedures he
was trained in, explained that if Pak One's crew was conscious
and in trouble they would not in any circumstances have
remained silent for this period of time. If there had been
difficulties with controls, Mash'hood instantly would have
given the emergency "may day" signal so help would be dispatched
to the scene. Even if he had for some reason chosen not
to communicate with the control tower, he would have been
heard shouting orders to his crew or alerting the passengers
to prepare for an emergency landing. And if there had been
an attempt at a hijacking in the cockpit or scuffle between
the pilots, it would also be overheard. At the minimum,
if the plane was crashing towards earth, screams or groans
would have been heard. The radio must have been working
since it picked up the brigadier's voice. In retrospect,
the pilots had only one explanation for the prolonged silence:
Mash'hood and the other pilots were either dead or unconscious
while the microphone had been kept opened by the clenched
hand of one of the pilots' on the thumb switch that operated.
I could not be ascertain if such tapes actually existed.
If they did, the clarity could possibly enhanced to separate
other background sounds from the static. Although one witness
claimed that he had listened to recordings of these conversations
after the crash to identify Mash'hood's voice, the control
tower operators at Bahawalpur denied having recorded the
conversations although they suggested it might have been
taped by the Multan airport forty miles away.In any case,
the account of the eyewitnesses at the crash site dove-tailed
with the radio silence. They had seen, it will be recalled,
the plane pitching up and down as if it were on a roller
coaster. According to a C-130 expert I spoke to at Lockheed,
C-130's characteristically go into a pattern known as a
"phugoid" when no pilot is flying it. First, the unattended
plane dives towards the ground, then the mechanism in the
tail automatically over-corrects for this downward motion,
causing it to head momentarily upwards. Then, with no one
at the controls, it would veer downward. Each swing would
become more pronounced until the plane crashed. Analyzing
the weight on the plane, and how it had been loaded on,
this expert calculated the plane would have made three roller-coaster
turns before crashing, which is exactly what the witnesses
had been reported. He concluded from this pattern that the
pilots had been conscious, they would have corrected the
"phugoid"-- at least would have made an effort, which would
have been reflected in the settings of the controls. Since
this had not happened, he concluded, like the pilots in
the other planes, that they were unconscious. He suggested
that this could be accomplished be planting a gas bomb in
the air vent in the C-130, triggered to go off, when the
plane took off and pressurized air was fed into the cockpit.
My investigations at the Bahawalpur airport showed that
planting a gas bomb on the plane that day would not have
entailed any insurmountable problems. Instead of following
prescribed procedures and flying to the nearby air base
at Multan where it could be guarded, Pak One had remained
at the air strip that day. According to one inspector there,
a repair crew, which included civilians, had worked on adjusting
the cargo door of Pak One for two hours that morning. Its
workers entered and left the plane without any sort of search.
Any one of them could dropped a gas bomb into the air vent.
I also spoke to an American chemical
warfare expert about poison gases that could have been used.
He explained that Chemical agents capable of knocking a
flight crew, while extremely difficult to obtain, are not
beyond the reach of any intelligence service, or underground
group with connections to one. He also pointed out that
a gas capable on insidiously poisoning a whole flight crew
(and leaving the pilot's fingers locked on the radio switch)
had been used in neighboring Afghanistan. According to the
State Department's special report 78 on "Chemical Warfare
in Southeast Asia and Afghanistan," which he sent me, corpses
of rebel Muejadeen guerrillas were found still holding their
rifles in firing positions after being gassed. This showed
that they had been the victims of "an extremely rapid acting
lethal chemical that is not detectable by normal senses
and that causes no outward physiological responses before
death." This gas manufactured by the Soviet would have done
the trick. But so would American manufactured "VX" nerve
gas, according to a scientist at the U.S. Army chemical
warfare center in Aberdeen, Maryland. "VX" is odorless,
easily transportable in liquid form, and a soda-sized can
full would be enough, when vaporized by a small explosion,
and inhaled, to causes paralyzes and loss of speech within
30 seconds. According to him, the residue it would leave
behind would be phosphorous. And, as it turned out, the
chemical analyzes of debris from the cockpit showed heavy
traces of phosphorous.
Such an act of sabotage would probably
leave other detectable traces. The chemical agent that killed
or paralyzed the pilots could probably be determined through
an autopsy of their bodies. If it was a sophisticated nerve
gas, it had to be obtained from one of the few countries
that manufactures it, transported across international borders,
and packaged with a detonator and fuse mechanism into bomb
that would burst at the right moment after take off. All
this could be trace back, just as the bomb on Pan Am 103
in Scotland was eventually identified and traced. Moreover,
in Pakistan, the device had to be delivered to an agent
capable of planting it on Pak One at a military air base.
And someone had to supply him with intelligence about Zia's
movements, the operations of Pak One, and the gaps in its
security. Since access was limited to a few dozen persons,
these people were vulnerable to discovery through an ordinary
police investigation. Access to American intelligence resources,
such as the technical labs of the FBI, the counter-terrorist
profiles of the CIA, and the electronic eavesdropping archives
of the National Security Agency, might also have helped
locate the source of the intelligence (especially if it
had been broadcast). But I found no such determined investigation
took place.
To begin with, as noted by the Board
of Inquiry, autopsies were never performed on the bodies
of the flight crew. The explanation told to me by the Pentagon
official, and apparently given in the secret report, was
that Islamic law requires burial within 24 hours. But this
could not been the real reason since the bodies were not
returned to their families for burial until two days after
the crash, as relatives confirmed to me. Nor were they ever
asked permission for autopsy examinations. And, as I learned
from a doctor for the Pakistan Air Force, Islamic law not
withstanding, autopsies are routinely done on pilots in
cases of air crashes. I further determined from sources
at the military hospital in Bahawalpur that parts of the
victims' bodies had been brought there in plastic body bags
from the crash site on the night of August 17, and stored
there, so that autopsies could be performed by team of American
and Pakistani pathologists. On the afternoon of August 18,however,
before the pathologists had arrived, the hospital received
orders to return these plastic bags to the coffins for burial.
The principal evidence of what happened to the pilots was
thus purposefully buried.
The police investigation of those who
had access to Pak One at the airport and were involved in
its security, also appeared to be similarly curtailed. According
to a security officer who was there that day, the ground
personnel was not methodically questioned. Instead, they
said in interviews almost uniformly that they were amazed
that no one was interrogated. The only inquiry that they
saw taking place was the inquiry by the American team. The
questions by the Americans, which had to go through a Pakistani
translator, were largely confined to the aircraft's maintenance
and movements prior to take off. Other activities that day
were not explored. For example, according to a police inspector
at Bahawalpur, a policeman at the airstrip that day was
found murdered shortly thereafter, but it was not connected
to the air crash or, for that matter, resolved.
For its part, Pakistani military authorities
attempted to foist a explanation that Shi'ite fanatics were
responsible for the crash. The only basis for this theory
was that the co-pilot of Pak One, Wing Commander Sajid,
happened to have been a shi'ite (as are more than ten per
cent of Pakistan's Moslems). The pilot of the back-up C-130,
who also was a shi'ite, was then arrested by the military
and kept in custody for more than two months while military
interrogators tried to make his confess that he had persuaded
Sajid to crash Pak One in a suicide mission. Even under
torture, he denied this charge and insisted that, as far
as he knew, Sajid was a loyal pilot who would not commit
suicide. Finally, the army abandoned this effort the Air
Force demonstrated that it would have been physically impossible
for the co-pilot alone to have caused a C-130 to crash in
the way it did. And if he had attempted to overpower the
rest of the flight crew, the struggle certainly would have
been heard over the radio. But why had the military attempted
to cook up this shi'ite red herring?
There were other indications of efforts
to limit or divert from the investigation, such as the destruction
of telephone records of calls made to Zia and Rehman just
prior to the crash, the reported disappearances of ISI intelligence
files on Murtaza Bhutto, and the transfer of military personnel
at Bahalapur, which, taken together, appeared to add up
to a well-organized cover up. If so, I was persuaded that
it had to be an inside job. The Soviet KGB and Indian R.A.W.
Might have had the motive, and even the means, to bring
down Pak One but neither had the ability to stop planned
autopsies at a military hospital in Pakistan, stifle interrogations
or, for that matter, kept the FBI out of the picture. The
same is true of anti-Zia underground, such as Al-Zulfikar,
although its agents, like the shi'ite, would provide plausible
suspects ( or even, if provided convenient access to Pak
One, fall guys.) Nor would any foreign intelligence service
which was an enemy of Zia's have much of a motive for making
it look like an accident rather than an assassination. Only
elements inside Pakistan would have an obvious motive for
making it the death of Zia, Rehman and 28 others look like
something more legitimate than a coup d' etat.
The most eerie aspect of the affair
was the speed and effectiveness with which it was consigned
to oblivion. Even it involved the incineration of the principal
ally of the U.S. in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan,
the abrupt end of the American Ambassador and the head of
its military mission in Pakistan were killed in the course
of discharging their duties, and the government of one of
the few remaining allies of the U.S. In Asia was abruptly
changed; there little occurred in the way of repercussions.
No outcries for vengeance, no efforts at counter coups,
no real effort to find the assassins. In Pakistan, Zia and
Rehman's names disappeared within days from television,
newspapers and other media-- except on a few monuments in
Afghan refugee camps that had not yet been painted over.
In the United States, the State Department blocked any FBI
interest in investigating the death of its Ambassador and,
through press "guidance", distorted the event into just
another foreign plane accident. The one uncounted casualty
of Pak One was the truth.
[back
to archive]
|