An Israeli Connection?
By Dr. Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
Ambassador John Dean’s
suggestion that there was an Israeli connection
in Zia’s death has re-ignited an old controversy.
His suggestion is unlikely to interest those who
were engulfed with schadenfreude at the news that
PAK ONE had crashed within four minutes of takeoff
on August 17, 1988. However, Zia’s death continues
to be unexplained and should be accounted for, if
for no other reason than for the fact that several
others died with him.
Until Dean’s suggestion, most writers had
dealt with “how” Zia died rather than
“why” or at “whose” hands.
While Dean, who was Washington’s ambassador
in New Delhi at the time, says he has no evidence
against Israel, he does provide a motive. He maintains
that Zia became a threat to Israel the moment he
claimed that Pakistan was “a screwdriver’s
turn away from the bomb.”
Before evaluating Dean’s theory, it is useful
to review the four existing theories about “how”
it was done. One says it was caused by mechanical
problems in the C-130B aircraft. This has been put
forth by one of Zia’s personal secretaries,
two army chiefs that succeeded Zia and by the wife
of the American ambassador who was killed in the
crash. This theory fails to answer several vexing
questions.
Why did the State Department order the FBI to not
investigate the incident even though it involved
the death of the American ambassador and his military
attaché? Why did the ambassador and military
attaché not fly back to Islamabad in their
own plane? Why did Washington quickly forget that
the incident had ever occurred, even though Zia
had been such a close ally? Why is the file in the
National Archives in Washington containing about
250 pages of documents on the event still classified
“secret”? Why was only a single autopsy
performed (on the American general)? It revealed
that he had died prior to the plane hitting the
ground, which would be unlikely if the crash was
accidental. And why was John Dean, an American diplomat
with a long and distinguished career, accused of
being mentally imbalanced by Washington and removed
from service after espousing the Israeli theory?
The second theory says that the attack was carried
out by placing gas canisters containing the exceptionally
toxic and quick acting VX agent either in the cockpit
or air duct of the plane. These canisters were probably
activated by a pressure sensitive trigger that exploded
when the plane reached a certain altitude. This
is the theory laid out in the official report produced
jointly by Pakistani and American officials.
The third theory says it was caused by a skin-penetrating
nerve agent that was smeared on the controls of
the aircraft and which killed the pilots within
a few moments after take-off. The plane seemed to
go in autopilot mode and then crashed after making
a steep descent. This theory was discussed at some
length in the Sunday Times.
The fourth theory is that one of the co-pilots carrying
out a suicide attack.
None of these theories say much about who did it
or why? The first theory, based on mechanical failure,
breaks down because it assumes that the aircraft
was not flight worthy. Zia, who had become paranoid
about his security in the months preceding his death,
would not have flown an aircraft that was mechanically
suspect. Nor would have so many of his generals.
Furthermore, no evidence of mechanical malfunction
was found by those who examined the wreck.
As to who planted the gas or skin-penetrating nerve
agent, the finger pointing is enormous. Some point
to the former Soviet Union while others to the CIA.
Some point to groups such as Al Zulfikar and others
to disgruntled members of minority sects. For a
while, the minority sect theory was quite popular.
The conjecture was that the co-pilot was avenging
the death of a religious leader who had supposedly
been killed under Zia’s orders. This reasoning
is cited in Hasan Abbas’ recent book, where
he says it was given credence in certain military
circles at the time. Finally, some suspect that
someone in the Pakistani military carried out a
coup.
In his widely cited Vanity Fair article, Edward
Epstein concluded that it was an inside job since
no external party had the ability to stop planned
autopsies at a military hospital in Pakistan, stifle
interrogations or, for that matter, keep the FBI
out of the picture. Only elements inside Pakistan
would have an obvious motive for making it look
like something other than a coup d’etat. But
that would suggest it was a perfect crime, since
no “blighter has spilled the beans”
during the past 17 years. There is of course the
possibility that the killers were themselves killed,
in order to protect the identity of the person who
had commissioned the hit. Such was the case in the
murders of Liaquat Ali Khan in Pakistan, whose killer
was murdered instantly by a frenzied crowd, and
John F. Kennedy in the US, whose killer was shot
within two days by Jack Ruby.
John Dean, by bringing up an Israeli-Indian connection,
has disputed Epstein’s assertion that no foreign
intelligence service could have had the motive to
hide the act by making it look like an accident.
However, there are several questions that would
have to be addressed before his theory will acquire
any credibility.
If the Israeli objective were to stop Pakistan from
acquiring nuclear weapons, would it not have better
to decapitate Pakistan’s scientific establishment
perhaps by taking out the top nuclear scientist,
Abdul Qadeer Khan, several years earlier. Another
approach would have been to take out Kahuta where
the weapons were being developed, either from the
air like their bombing of the reactor in Iraq in
1981 or from the ground by infiltrating commandoes
from Indian Kashmir. If the objective were to take
vindictive action against Zia, they would have been
more justified in taking out Z A Bhutto since he
had coined the term, “Islamic bomb,”
and authorized its development in 1972. By contrast,
Zia was known to have pro-Israeli sentiments and
had initiated secret contacts with them. Earlier,
he h ad helped King Hussain of Jordan deal with
the “Palestinian problem” in that country
by carrying out a military operation that killed
scores of Palestinians. Furthermore, since killing
Zia did not stop Pakistan from getting the bomb,
why did the Israelis not repeat the operation on
his successor?
One hopes that John Dean will address these and
other issues in the months to come. Only then can
his theory be taken seriously.
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