Gander Different Crash, Same Questions

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ALSO ABOARD THE DOOMED JET were about 20 members of Task Forces 160 and 163. These elite counterterrorist units included helicopter pilots, crew chiefs, mechanics and other support personnel often used on hostage-rescue missions. Zona Phillips picked up an intelligence report suggesting that they belonged to Seal Team 6, the commando unit poised to recapture the Achille Lauro off the Egyptian coast before the cruise ship's hijackers surrendered.

"Task Force 160 may have actually attempted but failed to free the hostages," says Wheaton. He points out that North had precise intelligence on the hostages' location. Five of the six Americans were being held in Building No. 18 in the Sheik Abdullah barracks in the Baalbek region of Lebanon. "Very possibly," adds Wheaton, "North ordered the raid after irate Iranian officials threatened to retaliate for a shipment of the wrong Hawk missiles." In fact, three days before the Gander crash, North revealed both his determination to continue the Iranian arms shipments and his concern for the hostages' safety. "To stop now in midstream," he wrote, "would ignite Iranian fire. Hostages would be our minimum losses."

Another mystery surrounding the Gander crash are the lingering ailments that plague many of the fire fighters and other rescue workers, whose liver enzyme rate was found to be abnormally high. They had been warned to watch out for nerve-gas canisters. However, Wheaton says, "the real hazard was possibly radiation poisoning from nuclear backpacks, portable units with timing devices that Special Forces personnel sometimes carry to blow up bridges and block their pursuers."

The suspicious symptoms of the rescue workers have been hotly debated in Canada. A Health and Welfare department study attributed the illnesses to "mass hysteria," "post-traumatic syndrome" and "eating too much moose meat," since many of the men were avid hunters. But M.P. George Baker claims that the investigating physicians took no blood samples or X rays, attempting merely to compile what he called a "theoretical study." He also asserts that two of the three doctors refused to sign the final report. The threat of radiation poisoning may explain why General Crosby wanted to bulldoze over the wreckage so quickly.

While the wreckage in Lockerbie was meticulously sifted for bomb clues, no such effort was made in Gander. Yet there was good reason to take seriously the Islamic Jihad's boast that it had blown up the Arrow Air jet. Telephone calls claiming responsibility for the crash were immediately received by both the U.S. consulate in Oran, Algeria, and Reuters news agency in Beirut. The Beirut caller even knew that the plane had been delayed for five hours in Cologne, and explained that was why it blew up over Canada instead of over the U.S. He said the Shi'ite Muslim extremist group planted a bomb on board to prove "our ability to strike at the Americans anywhere."