The Victims of Terrorism: An Assessment of Their Influence and ...

CHAPTER THREEPan Am 103: The Predecessor to 9/11The achievements of 9/11 victims’ groups are due in part to the lessons their leaders learnedfrom the victims’ groups that emerged 15 years earlier in response to the Pan Am 103 bombing(Sheehy, 2003). The Pan Am groups were the first effectively organized terrorism victims’groups in the United States, and they essentially set the stage for those that would later form asa result of the 9/11 attacks. We begin this chapter by describing these groups, focusing on thefour formed in the United States. (A fifth was formed in the UK.) At the end of the chapter,we compare the Pan Am groups to those that were formed after later attacks.Pan Am 103: A New Voice in the United StatesOn December 21, 1988, at 7:02 p.m. local time, a bomb containing less than a pound ofSemtex-H 1 plastic explosive detonated in the baggage hold of Pan Am flight 103, en route fromLondon to New York, while the aircraft was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland. With the deathsof all 259 passengers and crew on board (plus 11 people on the ground hit by the flamingdebris) (Cohen and Cohen, 2001, pp. 1 and 3), the bombing acquired the infamous distinctionas the largest terrorist attack against the United States to date in terms of loss of life. Questionsfrom the families of those killed quickly surfaced about how such a tragedy could haveoccurred and specifically how a bomb could even have gotten onto the plane. When answersto these and other security- and intelligence-related issues were not immediately forthcoming,shock and horror turned to anger and determination, as the Pan Am 103 victims’ families andfriends resolved to learn for themselves what had happened and, more to the point, how suchfuture tragedies could be prevented. Thus the country’s first terrorism victims’ group, Victimsof Pan Am Flight 103 (VPAF 103), was born. It would, however, soon splinter into rival factionsas disagreements over objectives, goals, and the means through which to achieve themsurfaced (Cohen and Cohen, 2001, pp. 78–79, 97, and 99).The sources of division among Pan Am 103 families eventually led to the establishment offour separate groups (a fifth represents victims living in the United Kingdom). The two mainones are VPAF 103 and Families of Pan Am 103/Lockerbie. VPAF 103, as the parent organization,not surprisingly has the largest membership of the Pan Am 103 groups, claiming to repre-1 Semtex® is a registered trademark of Explosia, a.s.17