According to another theory , suggested by former UK diplomat Patrick Haseldine , apartheid South Africa was responsible for the sabotage of PA 103 . The theory is rooted in an allegation made in the film '' The Maltese Double Cross '' and by '' Die Zeit '' that the United States government knew of the bomb and warned staff from its embassies in Helsinki and Moscow , as well as a high-level South African delegation , to avoid the flight . Someone allegedly contacted the US embassy in Helsinki , Finland , 16 days before the bombing , warning of a bomb on a Pan Am aircraft departing Frankfurt for the U.S. ; none of the staff at the Moscow embassy took the flight , despite it being a popular route for them over Christmas . The allegation prompted a strong statement in November 1994 from the private secretary of Pik Botha , then South African Foreign Minister , stating that " Had he known of the bomb , no force on earth would have stopped him from seeing to it that Flight 103 , with its deadly cargo , would not have left the airport . " In January 2014 , the satirical '' Private Eye '' magazine carried the following article about Patrick Haseldine : In '' The Colonel '' , the fifth chapter of the 2016 documentary '' HyperNormalisation '' by Adam Curtis , it is proposed that the Reagan administration used Muammar Gaddafi as a pawn in their strategy of creating a simplified , morally unambiguous foreign policy by blaming him for the 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks and the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing that killed US soldiers , both of which European security services attributed to Syrian intelligence agencies . Gaddafi is described as playing along for the sake of increasing his profile in the Arab world as a revolutionary . The 1986 United States bombing of Libya , 10 days after the disco bombing , is described as an operation carried out mainly for PR reasons , because the US and the UK needed Syria 's help against Saddam Hussein
1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks
1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks
Pan Am Flight 103 conspiracy theories