"Most USA embassy staff skip Pan Am 103 for that specific reason."
There were at least four U.S. intelligence officers on the passenger list, with rumours, never confirmed, of a fifth onboard. The presence of these men on the flight later gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories, in which one or more of them were said to have been targeted.[25]
Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was sitting in Clipper Class, Pan Am's version of business class,[26] seat 14J. Major Chuck "Tiny" McKee, an army officer on secondment to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Beirut, sat behind Gannon in the center aisle in seat 15F. Two Diplomatic Security Service special agents, acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee, were sitting in economy: Ronald Lariviere, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was in 20H, and Daniel O'Connor, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, sat five rows behind Lariviere in 25H, both men seated over the right wing. The four men had flown together out of Cyprus that morning. There was also a Department of Justice Special Agent on the flight, Assistant Deputy Director Michael S. Bernstein. |
