Thirty years ago, Fred Burton found himself in a remote corner of Pakistan, investigating the crash of PAK-1, the presidential aircraft.
On Aug. 17, 1988, the Pakistani presidential aircraft, code-named PAK-1, plummeted out of the sky into a dusty field outside Bahawalpur in southeastern Pakistan. Within a matter of hours, I found myself overlooking the still-smoking crater that the C-130 Hercules aircraft had dug into the earth in a region near the Pakistani border with India. The investigation that followed, long before the days of instant internet and cellphone communications, may have been the most complex I'd ever worked in my career as a special agent for the U.S. State Department. When I close my eyes today, I can still picture the crash site. The plane had been carrying Pakistani President Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq along with several other dignitaries, including members of the Pakistani joint chiefs of staff, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Herbert Wassom and Arnie Raphel, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Raphel, like every other person aboard, had died.
