NBC News: Senate cancels Lockerbie hearing; BP, Brits ‘stonewall’ Committee had planned to explore company's lobbying for release of convicted bomber

By Michael Isikoff, National Investigative Correspondent, NBC News


WASHINGTON, D.C. — A U.S. Senate committee has canceled a much-publicized hearing slated for this Thursday on the release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber after the panel was turned down in its request for key witnesses from BP and the British and Scottish governments.

An aide to Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who was slated to chair the hearing, informed family members of the 270 Lockerbie victims this afternoon that the Foreign Relations Committee was unable to secure testimony from any of the witnesses it wanted — including outgoing BP chief executive Tony Hayward and Mark Allen, a former top British spymaster who, as a BP consultant, lobbied for an agreement that would have allowed for the Lockerbie bomber’s release.

The committee had hoped to focus the hearing on BP’s lobbying of the British government on behalf of a prisoner transfer agreement that would allow for the release of the convicted bomber, Abdelbaasset al-Megrahi. He was convicted of murder by a Scottish court in 2001 for the bombing of the Pan American World Airways jet, which fell near the town of Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988.

BP has confirmed that Allen, the former MI6 spymaster turned BP consultant, had twice called Jack Straw, then the British Justice Minister, to urge him to expedite a prisoner transfer agreement—a move that the Libyan government had insisted upon as a condition for approving a multi-billion dollar oil deal with the British government.

In an exchange with the Menendez aide, two family members expressed their anger over the move and suggested that the committee convene the hearing anyway — with an empty chair where the putative BP witnesses would sit — or seek a Senate resolution censuring BP, according to source who participated in the phone call.

But instead, Menendez issued a public statement late Tuesday angrily accusing BP—as well as the British and Scottish governments—of having “stonewalled” the committee. He added that he planned to expand the panel’s probe into a full blown inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the release last year of Megrahi.

“In the case of BP, it is hard to imagine that a company on such thin ice with the American public after devastating our Gulf Coast would not fully cooperate in getting to the bottom of the release of a terrorist who murdered 189 Americans,” Menendez sai