What ended Flight 1285?

During this past year, much has been said about the role of the United States as a peacekeeper in this post-Cold War era. Here in Maine, the cost of our willingness to be so altruistic was painfully evident as we buried two soldiers who died in Somalia. And, as a nation, we recently marked the 10-year anniversary of the truck bombing in Beirut that left more than 200 Marines dead.

But each year on Dec. 12, there is a sadness which permeates the lives of a select few American families. These are the families who lost their sons at Gander, Newfoundland, on that date in 1985. Their sons are the forgotten peacekeepers, the 248 U.S. Army soldiers who completed a six-month peacekeeping mission in the Sinai and then perished in a ball of fire shortly after takeoff aboard Arrow Air 1285.

Eight years later, these families are left not only with painful memories, but also with a gut feeling that they and their children were betrayed by the U.S. government. They refuse to accept the notion that the DC-8 in question crashed because of “excessive icing.” That was the conclusion of a panel which investigated the crash for the Canadian Aviation Safety Board.

More U.S. soldiers were killed in Gander than in Beirut. This grim statistic would be easier to overlook if the two incidents in question could be sharply divided into two separate “loss of life” categories, accidental and intentional. But here the story becomes confused.

It would be wrong to suggest outright that the families of the men killed in Gander believe that no such distinction exists. The families wonder whether or not what happened in Beirut and Gander were both the result of deliberate terrorist attacks. That statement represents just one of two possible theories about what really happened.

The American commander of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) had been gunned down in Rome only a few months earlier. The men who died were part of the MFO. A French news agency in Beirut recieved a puzzling call just after the crash from an anonymous individual claiming to be part of the Islamic Jihad organization. This caller disclosed details about the crash which were not widely known.

All of these events, including the crash itself, took place in 1985, a year that was marred by numerous terrorist attacks. Add the testimony of several eyewitnesses in Gander who say that they saw the plane explode before it hit the ground. Somehow the trail of evidence that ends with a finding that icy wings were to blame goes stone cold. But what most disturbs the families of the men killed aboard Arrow Air 1285 is the response of the U.S. government, and the Pentagon in particular.

As the years pass, the families organized under the banner of Families for Truth about Gander see not only the absence of justice, but they also believe that an ironclad coverup has taken root. They believe that the Pentagon is well-equipped to engage in such classic deception operations. “Remember the Iowa” might be an appropriate slogan here.

According to one Gander parent, the families of the sailors killed by an explosion in a gun turret aboard the battleship Iowa talked with the Gander families. In that instance, the Pentagon spin machine attempted to pin the blame for the deaths of dozens of sailors on a disturbed homosexual sailor. Only months later, the public learned of the Pentagon’s plot to hang one sailor, painting him as a deranged homosexual when the Navy knew that this was simply not true. For the Gander families, the Pentagon’s completely false and fictional tale of the Iowa incident only deepened their distrust.

Two years ago, an attempt was made in Congress to initiate a thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding Arrow Air 1285. A bill (H.R. 5024) was introduced in the House of Representatives with 40 co-sponsors. It looked like it might succeed at first, but then it died in committee.

Did Arrow Air 1285 explode after takeoff not because of the actions of a terrorist group, but because it was being used as a means of moving highly explosive devices back and forth between the U.S. and the Middle East as part of the Iran-Contra transactions?

Or was the U.S. Army trying to quietly shut down another covert weapons program of its own — quite apart from the web of Iran-Contra but concealed within it? In late 1985, the whole special operations apparatus in the U.S. Army was being scrutinized. At the time of the Gander crash, the Army itself was in the process of conducting highly unusual classified court martial proceedings in Washington. The Gander families wonder now if Army corruption and weapons traffic, and not the forces of international terrorism, played the decisive role in this situation.

What are mere matters of coincidence and what is highly relevant to the tragedy that unfolded that fateful morning in Newfoundland? And why bother now that so much time has passed?

These two questions, along with so many others surrounding Arrow Air 1285, will remain unanswered for now.

Here in Maine, we know where Newfoundland lies, whereas the vast majority of Americans cannot even identify the Canadian Maritime provinces on a map. This is much more than a matter of geographic proximity. Someone wants us to forget about what happened in Gander not so long ago. Our response should be that these 248 soldiers will not be so easily forgotten.

Peter J. Brown is a free-lance writer who lives in Mount Desert.