Libya still on her terror list

Victoria Cummock's husband died on Pan Am 103, blown up by a Libyan agent 17 years ago. She asks: Why forgive Libya?

It was shortly before Christmas 1988, and John Cummock was eager to get home to his family in South Florida.

Cummock, a marketing executive with Bacardi liquors, had finished his work in London so he caught a flight a day earlier than expected. Not long after takeoff, he, 258 other passengers and 11 people on the ground were dead - the plane blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, by an agent of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Now, 17 years later, the tragedy of Pan Am 103 is only a vague memory for most Americans. Gadhafi agreed to scrap his weapons program in 2003, and last month the United States removed Libya from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. At least six American companies have resumed exploring Libya's vast oil reserves.

Victoria Cummock is appalled.

"What kind of war on terror is this? You're sending a very strong message to rogue states that the U.S. government is willing to sell out its citizens and national security for commercial interests."

Widowed with three small children, Cummock became an advocate for disaster victims. She went to Oklahoma City and the ValueJet crash near her Miami home. She pressed for a federal law that authorizes the American Red Cross to assist victims of airline disasters. In May, she was elected to the organization's board of governors.

For her efforts, Cummock has been called a "media monkey" and worse. Former Secretary of State James Baker accused her and other Pan Am families of being on a witch hunt. Similar jabs are now directed at Sept. 11 widows, whom conservative commentator Anne Coulter blasts as "witches and harpies" using their husbands' deaths for political gain.

Cummock, 53, shrugs off such criticism.

"I pray to God that she would never have to walk in any of our shoes. There's a lot of work that needs to be done for the good of the American people, and for these families to be doing that is very commendable. I wish our government would be more responsible in terms of protecting its citizens. That's why this whole issue of Libya isn't over with even though it's been 17 years."

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It was late on the night of Dec. 21, 1988, that John Cummock's boss knocked on the door, looking terrible and asking whether Victoria had heard about a plane crash.

"I was incredulous - I couldn't believe no one was calling us officially telling us anything," she says.

As reporters and photographers arrived, she repeatedly phoned Pan Am, only to be bounced from person to person. It was hours before an airline vice president called back to let her know there had been a John Cummock on Flight 103 and he was thought to have perished.

"The State Department abdicated their role to Pan Am, and Pan Am didn't want to talk to us because they were going to get sued," Cummock says. "There was no crisis management."

Increasing the torment were long delays in returning the bodies from Scotland. Some families were told to pick up a "parcel" at the airport, only to find body bags with notes warning the remains were too badly mangled to view. One doctor, whose daughter was among 35 Syracuse University students killed, decided to look - and discovered the body wasn't hers. Other bodies also had been misidentified.

Death certificates were slow in coming, too, creating financial hardships for families that needed them to probate wills. Although she had her own interior decorating business, Cummock struggled with a sharp drop in income when she lost her husband's salary. Some widows faced eviction.

As she commiserated with other families, Cummock got a Republican fundraising letter seeking contributions for earthquake victims in Armenia. Cummock's children attended the same school as Jeb Bush's kids, so she called him.

"I said, 'It's a wonderful humanitarian service you've done, but I think charity begins at home. Do you understand what's going on with Pan Am 103?' "

That led to a meeting with then-President George Bush and appointment to a White House commission. Some, but not all, of the panel's suggestions were incorporated into the 1990 Aviation Security Improvement Act.

Cummock grew even more frustrated when she served on another commission, this time under Vice President Al Gore.

The group made numerous recommendations for improving airplane safety, the professionalism of security personnel and the screening of passengers and cargo. But the final report was so watered down that Cummock refused to sign it. Critics accused Gore of selling out to the airlines in exchange for more than $600,000 in campaign contributions.

As she watched the World Trade Center burn a few years later, Cummock was heartbroken but not surprised.

"Based on all the briefings I'd gotten at the White House, I knew only minimal changes had been done and that the writing was on the wall. When the first plane crashed, I said, 'We're being attacked. It's terrorists.' "

That's why she's had a hard time accepting the about-face on Libya, a country with a history of terrorism.

During Gadhafi's 37-year rule, Libya has provided assistance to Palestinian militants. The country remains the primary suspect in a 1986 Berlin disco bombing that killed two U.S. soldiers and in the 1989 bombing of a French jetliner that killed 170 passengers. As recently as two years ago, it was accused of plotting to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia.

Gadhafi long refused to cooperate in the Pan Am investigation, but in 1999 finally handed over two agents suspected of planting the bomb. A Scottish court sitting in The Hague, Netherlands, convicted one of the men and freed the other.

In 2003, under a deal that ended 11 years of U.N. sanctions, Libya agreed to take responsibility for the "actions of its officials" while not admitting to any government involvement. It also agreed to pay $2.7-billion in compensation to the Pan Am 103 families.

Cummock refuses to accept the money.

"There has been no accountability for the murder of these Americans, and without accountability there is no justice and there is no deterrence. Why should our country force us into a no-fault settlement - how insulting!"

The United States resumed some economic and cultural ties with Libya when Gadhafi - afraid his country would be the next U.S. target after Iraq - revealed his secret weapons program. On May 15, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Libya for its "excellent cooperation" in the war on terrorism and said full diplomatic relations would be restored.

One expert called the move "good news" at a time when the United States needs as many friends in the Arab world as it can get. But, he added, it also shows the U.S. government has essentially abandoned efforts to determine who really ordered the Pan Am bombing.

"We have not gotten to the end of the line on Pan Am 103, and it looks like we won't," Daniel Benjamin, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the New York Times. "That seems to me a regrettable fact, but on the other hand, this is probably useful to our broader interests."

Cummock has no doubt that restoring diplomatic relations is useful for Libya, a country long isolated and impoverished by years of sanctions and the policies of its eccentric leader.

On a recent visit to Washington, she met some Libyan diplomats. They told her their country was raking in so much money from U.S. oil contracts that it would more than cover the billions in compensation paid to families of those killed on Pan Am 103.

"It's appalling," Cummock says. "We've opened our door to the same terrorist regime we've kept out of this country for 30 years. What's next - are we going to forgive Osama bin Laden and forget all about 9/11?"

St. Petersburg Times