Libya Can't Buy Us Off By Daniel Cohen and Susan Cohen http://online.wsj.com Commentary May 30, 2002 We have just been told that our lawyers have negotiated a "historic" settlement with Libya regarding the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Our 20-year-old daughter, Theodora, was one of the victims. The Libyans will shell out a record $2.7 billion to victims' family members. If the offer is for real (which has been cast into doubt by Libya's state-run news service), we stand to make $10 million. That's a lot more than any of the 9/11 victims' families are going to get. We could be counted big winners in the terrorism compensation lottery. Outraged But somehow we don't feel like winners. We feel angry, outraged and betrayed. It's not that we are shy about taking money from Libya. Not in the least. We would be happy to foreclose on Col. Moammar Gadhafi's air-conditioned tent, and auction off his fancy dress uniforms on eBay. But we are not winners, because we know there is a price attached to the proposed settlement -- a big one. We get paid only after the U.S. government makes certain concessions to the Libyans. The first $4 million is paid when U.N. sanctions against Libya are lifted. These sanctions have already been suspended, but before they are officially lifted Libya is also supposed to take full responsibility for the bombing, and essentially come clean. No word about any of that in the settlement agreement. In effect, we will have to agree with, or at least accept, whatever statement of responsibility that oil-rich Libya can hammer out with a compliant State Department and an administration filled with oil men. We get the second $4 million when and if all of the U.S. commercial sanctions against Libya are lifted. U.S. companies have been lining up to invest billions in Libya. This will greatly enrich the Gadhafi clique and give them plenty of money to purchase more of those nasty little chemical and biological weapons many in the intelligence community fear they are stockpiling. It will also give them plenty of money to continue meddling in neighboring North African countries, and ensure that Gadhafi will still be in power long after George W. Bush is a distant political memory. The last $2 million comes after Libya is removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. We guess that means if you haven't blown up any American planes recently all is forgiven. If you live long enough and have enough money you can get away with anything. That's a nice message to send in the middle of a war against terrorism. Some Pan Am 103 family members have been transformed into remarkably successful lobbyists. The Libyans are well aware of this. Over the past decade we have received letters, phone calls, even a personal visit from a variety of folks who told us they could make it worth our while if we just weren't so stubborn and recognized that Gadhafi had really changed. The current settlement structure, as announced, is another Libyan attempt to buy our support for the rehabilitation and enrichment of the guys who killed our daughter -- or at least to shut us up. For example, if we begin arguing that Libya's statement of responsibility is unacceptable, we would be arguing against our own financial interests. Even today the Libyan government is still insisting that it had absolutely nothing to do with the bombing. What kind of a statement of responsibility do you think Gadhafi will issue? Besides, what moral authority would we have left after agreeing to this big-bucks bribe? Who would listen to us? Who should? Those Pan Am 103 family members we have spoken to are hostile to, or at least very uneasy with, the proposed deal. But the vision of a check with seven or eight figures on it has, as the Shadow often said, "the power to cloud men's minds." Our lawyers are telling us that a huge settlement really is an acceptance of responsibility by the Libyans, and that somehow it's justice, retribution and a victory in the war against terrorism because Libya has to "pay." We wish we could believe that, because it would really enrich our lives. But unfortunately we are sadly deficient in the useful quality of self-deception. The settlement proposal is none of the above. It is a garden variety quid pro quo business deal. We get rich, our lawyers get rich, Gadhafi gets even richer, more powerful and more respectable. But what about the victims? What about a short, dark-haired and irrepressibly lively drama student from Syracuse University named Theo Cohen? Somehow she, and the 269 others who died horribly that December day over 13 years ago, have been lost and forgotten, in those chummy little dinners described in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, in a private room in Paris's elegant George V hotel, where the proposed settlement offer was hatched between our lawyers and lawyers for a mass murderer. We Can't Forget This is not a product liability suit. It's not even a suit against an incompetent and indifferent airline like Pan Am. And it's certainly not about making vast sums of money. Mass murder and terrorism are at the very core of this and even though over a decade has passed we can't forget that. And we won't. We would have been willing and even eager to accept a no-strings compensation agreement-even if it was far less than the fabled and historic $10 million. But to tie compensation to the enrichment and rehabilitation of Moammar Gadhafi and his clique -- we can't do it. As a result we may lose the compensation lottery and wind up with nothing. So be it. We are not particularly brave, moral or crazy and we certainly aren't rich. In the end we just have to be able to live with ourselves. ---------- Mr. and Mrs. Cohen are the authors of "Pan Am 103: The Bombing, The Betrayals, and a Bereaved Family's Search for Justice" (New American Library, 2000).