REPORT OF THE - Archives - Syracuse University

Nor did Pan Am then have any set procedure at either Frankfurt or Heathrow for
distribution of FAA security bulletin information, such as that for the Toshiba radio
device. There was no pre-shift briefing of security personnel to update them on
developments. The information could be put 'drop boxes" for employees who might not
check the boxes for days. Otherwise, the information was passed on orally, in hit-or-miss
fashion.
Helsinki Threat Bulletin
On December 5, 1988, an anonymous caller telephoned the American Embassy in
Helsinki, Finland, stating that sometime within the next two weeks a Finnish woman
would carry a bomb aboard a Pan Am aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States.
The caller, who spoke with a Middle Eastern accent, provided names of two individuals
who he said would engineer the bombing and who had ties to the Abu Nidal terrorist
organization.
Shortly after the call, the Embassy notified the State Department Operations Center in
Washington of the threat. On December 7, the Embassy sent a classified cable to the
State Department which was copied, for informational purposes, to the American
consulate in Frankfurt and to other agencies, including the FAA. The Regional Security
Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt immediately notified Pan Am officials there of
the threat information.
Upon learning that Pan Am already had the information, the FAA decided to issue a
security bulletin concerning the Helsinki threat even though the threat was anonymous
and its credibility had not been fully assessed.
The FAA's reasoning, agency officials told the Commission, was that the State
Department cable said that the local authorities take such calls "very seriously." The
threat mentioned the Abu Nidal organization at a time when other world events made an
attack by that terrorist group plausible. FAA personnel also said they wanted to ensure all
U.S. carriers operating in Europe had accurate information, rather than having the threat
information spread by rumor and second-hand reporting.
FAA sent out Security Bulletin ACS-88-22 on the evening of December 7 to all of its
U.S. regions, as well as to FAA representatives in locations as disparate as Tokyo, Rio de
Janeiro, and Amman. As a matter of course, the FAA also provided its security bulletins
to the State Department for redistribution, so that U.S. embassies in the areas affected by
the bulletins would be in a position to assist U.S. carriers through liaison with foreign
government security officials.
In a standard distribution which mirrored that given the FAA security bulletin by FAA,
the Department of State on December 9 forwarded the text of the Helsinki threat bulletin
to all European diplomatic posts, and to U.S. embassies in locations such as Singapore
and Dakar. The Department of Defense also transmitted the warning to its security units
in all of its worldwide commands.
By conservative estimate, thousands of U.S. Government employees saw the Helsinki
threat information.
By December 10, the Finnish police had concluded the threat was not a credible one. The
threat information in the December 5 call closely paralleled information in calls received
by the Israeli Embassy in Helsinki earlier in 1988. The Finnish police informed senior
U.S. officials of details of their investigation, and of their firm judgment that the call was
not credible.