Unraveling The Mystery Of Mao Crony's Death -- Lin Piao Death In 1971 Plane Crash In Mongolia Confirmed

BEIJING - In his rattling Russian jeep, Peter Hannam was bouncing across the Mongolian steppe, 200 miles east of Ulan Bator, when he spotted the solitary man astride a white horse. The rider, cloak and sash flapping in the cold wind, was the only sign of humanity on the barren plain.

Possibly, Hannam thought, the horseman would know the place where Chinese Communist leader Lin Piao's airplane had crashed mysteriously more than 21 years before. He sensed he must be getting close to the crash site. Earlier in the day, he encountered villagers who bragged of owning pots and pans made from the Trident aircraft's aluminum fuselage.

"To find the airplane," the old man said, showing no surprise at

encountering a foreigner and his small entourage on the remote steppe, "you must first find the Marshal."

Thus began the journey that led Hannam, 29, a free-lance journalist, on an international quest to solve one of the greatest mysteries of Asia: What happened to Lin, the Chinese Communist Party leader accused of a 1971 plot to overthrow Chairman Mao and who, according to some accounts, was shot down over Mongolia as he tried to escape to the Soviet Union.

Six months and six countries later in a Moscow military morgue, Hannam obtained a KGB file that until that moment had been seen by only four other men: two Soviet pathologists and the late Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov, the latter when he was head of the KGB.

According to the file, two extensive Soviet secret autopsies conducted at the site of the crash near a fluorite-mining village in north-central Mongolia proved that Lin, once Mao's handpicked successor, had been killed in the crash, as were Lin's wife and son.

ENDS YEARS OF SPECULATION

The evidence ended years of speculation and conspiracy theories about Lin's bizarre end that, in Asia at least, rivaled those surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination in the United States. Scholars of Lin's era in Chinese history praised Hannam's work, reported in articles that appeared recently in Hong Kong, Russian and U.S. publications, including U.S. News & World Report.

"In terms of the physical evidence he collected, it is a major step forward," said Kau Ying Mao, a China specialist at Brown University and author of a book about the Lin affair.

For the historians, Hannam's work was confirmation of an important detail in the era of the Cultural Revolution. Lin, after all, was the creator of Mao's "Little Red Book" of quotations. One of the most famous photos of that era shows the diminutive Lin standing next to Mao at Tiananmen Square during a review of the Red Guard.

But in an age dominated by television, Hannam's work was a throwback to an earlier era, when roving free-lance reporters went to the ends of the earth in search of a good story.

Mongolia practically was virgin territory for journalists when Hannam arrived in 1991, one of the first resident Western reporters in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

His quest for Lin began in May 1993. Hannam rented a jeep from the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and set off in search of the crash site.

Two hundred miles east of Ulan Bator, he encountered the lone rider. The Marshal recommended as a source by the rider turned out to be an elderly village gadfly so named because of his penchant for wearing Soviet medals and campaign ribbons pinned to his chest.

The Marshal led him to the crash site. For years after the crash, wolves had lived in the plane's shell. It provided roosts for eagles and vultures. But after two decades of salvaging by local residents, only a few strips of the plane, the longest at 2 feet, remained when Hannam arrived.

Other residents of Bekh led Hannam to the plot where the bodies found on the Trident 1E aircraft were first buried. Finally, two witnesses to the crash surfaced.

Back in Ulan Bator, Hannam interviewed two dozen people who had some role in the investigation. Hannam began to collect details of field autopsies by Soviet pathologists.

One source described how the Soviets severed the heads and boiled the skulls of the crash victims to remove the hair and flesh.

He also learned that the Soviets were from the Third Medical Institute in Moscow and that one of the lead pathologists was named Vitali Tomilin. Hannam flew to Moscow and found Tomilin, who refused to talk without permission from the KGB.

Hannam traveled to Washington and Los Angeles to pursue leads on a Taiwan angle of his story.

Former Taiwan intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Chang Shih-chi told him about an exchange of secret messages allegedly initiated by Lin to Chiang Kai-shek.

The messages suggested that Lin, although viewed internationally as Mao's most faithful supporter, had fallen from favor and might be willing to defect to archenemy Taiwan.

In Washington, Hannam met someone who knew Zhang Ning, the former fiancee of Lin's son, Lin Liguo, alleged by the Chinese to be one of the principal authors of the plot against Mao. Zhang, who now lives in New Jersey, had been present in the Beidaihe resort compound on the coast of China the night Lin's plane took off toward Mongolia and the Soviet Union beyond.

She described the Lin family desperation and frantic drive to the airport on that night in 1971.

When Hannam returned to Moscow, Tomilin, who had been granted permission to speak, was joined by Gen. Alexander Vasilievich Zagvozdin, a retired KGB investigator who had been part of the Mongolia Soviet autopsy team.

CONFIRMATION LIN WAS DEAD

"Virtually the second sentence in the conversation was the confirmation that Lin Piao had died in the crash," Hannam said.

The Soviets, it turned out, had extensive medical and dental records on Lin from a 1938-41 stay in Moscow, when he received treatment. Pulling out a sheaf of grisly photographs and materials, Tomilin detailed how he had matched wartime wounds to Lin's head, documented in the old Soviet medical records and in rare photographs, with grooves in the skull found at the crash site.

Tomilin said the Soviets carted the heads of Lin and his wife back to Moscow, where in all likelihood they are stored in a KGB vault.

But just to be absolutely sure about the identity, he said the pathologists returned to Mongolia a second time and dug up the bodies, searching for a trace of tuberculosis in Lin's charred lungs that they had neglected to find on the first autopsy. Tuberculosis causes the lungs to harden, leaving a bony material detectable to specialists.

The Soviets had X-ray records showing the tuberculosis. "We found it there, on exactly the same spot on the right lung," Tomilin said.

Hannam said he felt a strange letdown hearing the overwhelming proof of the Soviet pathologists.

"I guess I was hoping that they would say there was no Lin Piao among the dead. But after the first wave of disappointment, I realized that I was looking at something historic. It was the first independent proof that Lin was in Mongolia."