In just two weeks, it will be twenty-eight years since Pan Am Flight 103 exploded at 31,000 feet over Lockerbie, Scotland – killing all 259 passengers as well as eleven citizens on the ground. And in a little less than one week, on December 14th, the “living wounded” of Pan Am Flight 103 will finally get their day in court. 

Sixteen days before this tragic act of terrorism, which included the murder of thirty-five Syracuse University students aboard, the U.S Embassy in Finland had been tipped off that a bomb was set to be placed on a plane out of Frankfurt. Obviously, the brilliant minds in Helsinki did nothing to stop this act of barbarism that eventually led to the bankruptcy of Pan Am in 1991. In fact, “U.S. officials later said that the connection between the call and the bomb was purely coincidental.” Sure, just like in 2000 when Roger Clemens hit Mike Piazza in the head at Yankee Stadium with a vicious fastball that caused him to miss the All-Star game. Watch this and tell me if you think that too was “purely coincidental.” But I digress.

In 2008, Libya finally had to pony up and pay the families of the U.S. Lockerbie victims. But the game was hardly over, since the George W. Bush Justice Department negotiation gave Libya “immunity in U.S. courts from further terror claims once the funds had been paid,” according to an October 31, 2008 report by ABC News.

And that brings us to today.

So who are these “living wounded” of the Lockerbie tragedy? Quite simply they are fifty former senior Pan Am pilots -- most with extensive military backgrounds -- who got screwed out of their pensions, their livelihood, and their health insurance -- the whole shootin’ match.

Everybody in their right minds knows the Lockerbie incident was part and parcel of the downfall of Pan Am. Even company heads are prepared to testify to this in court. But thus far, justice has eluded the pilots and next week the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission (FCSC), an agency of the U.S. Justice Department, will hear oral arguments on the case, according to pro bono attorneys for the plaintiffs, Kirstein & Young PLLC. And this will be the pilots’ only day in court -- no appeals, no nothing. If they lose this one -- its strike three, you’re out.

After all the antics of Loretta Lynch and her cronies, perhaps we should put the words Justice Department in air quotes. If memory serves, the scales of justice which are supposed to be blind, have been tipped by many a State Department caper. Dare we enumerate? (No, that would be too much of a digression.) So who is to say finagling between Justice and State won’t happen again? To date, “Justice” has done just about everything in its power to keep these pilots from getting any kind of compensation, none of which would be taxpayer money, according to plaintiff attorney Joanne Young. No, these little guys haven’t gotten their hands on one red cent. They are merely the peanut gallery sitting so far up in the grandstand they look like little pinheads on your flat screen.

These aging pilots, now living on limited means and scattered across the country, boast an average tenure of twenty-three years flying for Pan Am. They are, quite simply, the prototype little guy about to be screwed by the government in a tangle of red tape so long you’d have to hit the ball out of Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas to dead centerfield to draw a comparison.

And the shame of it all is this: even by today’s standard, where terrorism is, if not rampant, at least a fairly commonplace part of civilization, Lockerbie stands as a heartbreaking catastrophe of epic proportions. It not only killed hundreds of innocent people, it brought down a giant of American aviation. The wreckage of a bomb strapped to a cassette tape recorder is no longer just strewn over Lockerbie, Scotland but over a quarter century of injustice for just about anyone who has had anything to do with Pan Am.

In case you haven’t already guessed, it will be two Obama part-time appointees who will make the decision on the future of these pilots. Perhaps we should hold out hopes for a delay of game until a new umpire is called onto the field. At the very least the manager should come out of the dugout and call for a challenge -- something, anything. Otherwise this may become just another of the myriad egregious examples of a federal bureaucracy running roughshod over ordinary Americans. But if things go as planned and the unfair scales of the Justice Department are allowed to finish out this particular match up -- it’s game over for these elderly pilots.