after October 1988, because the arrests in Germany meant the PFLP-GC was unable to complete the operation. Other supporters of this theory believed that whoever paid for the bombing arranged two parallel operations intended to ensure that at least one would succeed; or, that Jibril's cell in Germany was a red herring designed to attract the attention of the intelligence services, while the real bombers worked quietly elsewhere. Iran A number of journalists considered the Iranian revenge motive (retaliation for the shooting down of the Iran Air Airbus by USS Vincennes) to have been prematurely dismissed by investigators. They drew attention to a comment by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in her 1993 memoirs, where she seemed to discount the Libya revenge motive (for Operation El Dorado Canyon, the 1986 bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi by the United States Air Force): Additionally, Abolghasem Mesbahi, former head of Iranian intelligence in Europe, eventually defected and "told [German] investigators that Iran had asked Libya and Abu Nidal, a Palestinian guerrilla leader, to carry out the attack on Pan Am 103." The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) alleges that Ali Akbar Mohtashamipur (Ayatollah Mohtashemi), a member of the Iranian government, paid US$10 million for the bombing: Part of report, which is dated September 24, 1989, cites information acquired at Ft. Meade, MD: and In 2013 a former CIA agent told The New York Timess Robert F. Worth that "the best intelligence" supported Iran as the culprit. Although the evidence supporting it is classified, many in US intelligence believe the theory, the agent said. CIA drug smuggling This theory suggests that U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents had set up a protected drug route from Europe to the United States—allegedly called Operation Corea—that allowed Syrian drug dealers, led by Monzer al-Kassar (who was involved with Oliver North in the Iran-Contra scandal) to ship heroin to the U.S. using Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence on Palestinian groups holding hostages in Syria. The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, as the theory goes, terrorists exchanged suitcases: one with drugs for one with a bomb. Time introduced another version of this theory, claiming that the American intelligence officers on PA 103—Matthew Gannon of the CIA and Maj. Charles McKee of the DIA—had found out about the drug operation, and