The 12/7-9/11Treadmill and Beyond

FRANKFURT AIRPORT RECORDS pt. 2

2009-11-06T00:11:00.000-08:00

COLEMAN'S CONTRIBUTIONS
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
November 6 2009
rough draft

In a previous post I outlined the publicly available records and lack thereof for the crucial Frankfurt link in the (alleged) Malta-Lockerbie bomb route. Previously I'd missed a major resource, Lester Coleman and Daniel Goddard's's epic 1993 book Trail of the Octopus. It was just published for the first time in the US, apparently on shortened form, so that may differ from the previous online posting of the relevant chapter 7. In this, he starts with the investigative shift from the PFLPGC to Libya, in conjunction with the earlier decision that the bomb had probably come from Frankfurt.

The first requirement was to get the Germans to cooperate, and the only way to do that was to show that the bomb had gone aboard Flight 103 in Frankfurt due to circumstances beyond their control. A possible solution was to show that the bronze Samsonite suitcase containing the bomb had been fed into the system at some other airport, and that it was therefore a failure on Pan Am's part which had allowed it to go aboard Flight 103 in Frankfurt without an accompanying passenger. If this could be 'proved', then the German authorities would be no more to blame than the British at Heathrow, who had also allowed the bag to be transferred from one aircraft to another for the trans-Atlantic leg of the flight. [emph mine]

The German federal police (BKA) were taken to task for some slowness; "After Detective Chief Superintendent John Orr had taken them to task in March 1989, for dragging their feet, the BKA in April sent him the files on the PFLP-GC cell they had broken up some eight weeks before the disaster..." At that time, or so I've heard, the BKA were already sitting on something that would eventually cut the previous PFLP-GC line off at the knees. This is of course the Erac printout supposedly held in private hands until at least mid-January, then handed to the BKA who didn't hand it over to the Scottish police until sometime in August. The foot-dragging had only just started in March, and their first slow moves - failing to try and get the records themselves before the airport people brought them a copy, is of the most interest to me.

What was needed to divert attention away from Frankfurt into politically safer channels was some 'new' evidence, preferably linked to the hard forensic evidence that had already been established and which, by association, would lend credibility to it. And as the police officers engaged in the field investigation could not be counted upon to cooperate in a political fix, that evidence had to be 'found' in a plausible way, even at the cost of further inter-agency bickering.

On 17 August 1989, eight months after the disaster, Chief Detective Superintendent John Orr received from the BKA what was said to be a computer print-out of the baggage-loading list for Pan Am Flight 103A from Frankfurt to London on the afternoon of 21 December 1988. Attached to this were two internal reports, dated 2 February 1989, describing the inquiries that BKA officers had made about the baggage-handling system at the airport. Also provided were two worksheets, one typewritten, the other handwritten, that were said to have been prepared on 21 December by airport workers at key points on the conveyor-belt network.

In the margin of the computer print-out, a penciled cross drew particular attention to bag number B8849 - that is the 8849th bag to be logged into the computerized system at Terminal B that day. By reference to the worksheets, B8849 could be shown to have arrived in Frankfurt by a scheduled Air Malta flight from Luqa airport and to have been 'interlined' through to Flight 103. But neither the Air Malta nor the Pan Am passenger lists showed anybody who had booked a through flight from Luqa to New York that day. In other words, bag B8849 had arrived from Malta unaccompanied but tagged for New York and had been loaded aboard Flight 103 without being matched with a passenger. And as the job of matching bags with passengers is the responsibility of the airline, not of the airport authorities or of the host government, Pan Am had plainly been guilty of lax security amounting to 'wilful misconduct'.

This tied in nicely with the forensic evidence, which had already shown that the bomb had been hidden in a Samsonite suitcase filled with an assortment of clothing made in Malta, including a baby's blue romper suit. [...] Two weeks after the BKA released the Frankfurt baggage print-out, two of Detective Chief Superintendent John Orr's men returned to Malta and, with the help of the manufacturers, traced the clothing to a shop in Sliema.

And from Silema to the Gaucis' shop and from there to history. Fishing for data points, 17 August is the date of the police report about the Malta-pointing printout. Attached were "two internal reports, dated 2 February 1989, describing the inquiries that BKA officers had made about the baggage-handling system at the airport." These I'd love to read. The date seems to be after they had the printout handed over. Any records of any earlier efforts, fruitful or not, remain under wraps. This new development sparked investigations of the airport by FBI and Scots through September and October, pretty much just as their German counterparts did months earlier, and as neither apparently bothered to do before being rung up with the news.

On the two worksheets from December 21, the handwritten one would have to be the station 206 log, with KM180's coding signed for by Mr. Koca. The "typrewritten" one is new to me, and would be interesting to learn more about. It wouldn't be included unless it had some relevance to item 8849, and probably not typed unless it was part of the computer system. And on the numbering, it seems this was not a sequentially-generated number system, but permanent ID for physical trays scattered at random. It was simply tray no. 8849 that this bag was (allegedly) put in. But I'm really no expert.

Coleman followed closely both the Lockerbie investigation and the liability cases against Pan Am that led to its downfall, almost concurrent with the Libyan indictment in late-1991. Along the way, he got a good look at what records the airline did and didn't keep at Frankfurt, as well as raising questions about the umber of of insidious unaccompanied bags thereon:

More particularly, there were problems with the computer records and worksheets from Frankfurt. For one thing, they did not tally with Pan Am's own baggage records, which although questionable as to their accuracy, were at least compiled in good faith. To this day no one knows exactly how many pieces of luggage there were aboard the doomed flight or consequently whether they have all been recovered or accounted for. Nobody even knows exactly how many suitcases were in the luggage pallet that contained the one with the bomb -- it was 45 or 46 -- or how many of these were brought in by the feeder flight from Frankfurt. (The number was also thought to include not one but four unaccompanied bags.)

The BKA estimate that 'about' 135 bags were sent through to the baggage room below the departure gate of Flight 103A, …. There were no records of luggage sent directly to the departure gate, nor of interline luggage taken directly from one aircraft to another, nor of bags belonging to first-class passengers.

Of the 135 bags mentioned by the BKA, 111 had been logged on the Frankfurt computer and about 24 taken directly to the aircraft from three other connecting Pan Am flights. The list compiled by Pan Am at its check-in desks, however, showed not 111 but 117 items of luggage, and the discrepancy has not been convincingly cleared up to this day.

The book evidences exactly my own incredulity over this alleged episode:

If the new Malta/Libyan theory was to replace the established Iran/PFLP-GC scenario, it was necessary, first of all, to believe that no one thought to ask for the baggage-loading lists for Flight 103A as soon as terrorist action was suspected -- which was almost at once.

It was necessary to believe that no one in any of the British, German and American police, intelligence and accident inquiry agencies who had a hand in investigating the disaster, or anyone who was in any way involved with airport management or security at Frankfurt or London, thought to secure the baggage lists as the one indispensable tool that would be needed to unravel the mystery of how the bomb got aboard.

It was necessary to believe that the only person who considered the lists to be at all important was a lowly computer operator at Frankfurt airport.

I can't accept these premises. Either investigators never came for the crucial evidence before its normal deletion, or it was deleted too early. THAT is why the printout wound up being the only and much-delayed record of the movements of the key bag. I suspect the printout lost NO corroboration in this early deletion. How early? According to this last snippet I'll share, the BKA had eight days to act under normal circumstances. Should have taken one or less.

The Observer's chief reporter, John Merritt, described how this came about in a story published almost two years after the disaster.
He wrote, on 17 November 1991:
A major breakthrough in the hunt for the Lockerbie bombers came to light only because of the quick thinking of a conscientious computer operator at Frankfurt airport.
The vital computer evidence, proving conclusively that the bag from Malta, identified as Item B8849, was on board as the airliner was blasted apart on the last stage of its journey from Heathrow to New York would have been lost forever if the woman operator had not kept her own record.
Acting on her own initiative, the woman, an employee of the Frankfurt Airport Company, who for legal reasons cannot be named, was working at the computer system known as KIK on the day of the disaster. She knew records relating to baggage loaded on to flights were kept in the system for only a limited time [eight days] before being wiped. So when she returned to work the next day she made her own print-out of the information and placed it in her locker before going on holiday.
On her return, weeks later, she was surprised to learn that no one had shown any interest in the computer records. She passed the print-out to her baggage section leader who gave it to investigators from the West German Bundeskriminalamt. But it was not until mid-August, eight months after the bombing, that the German authorities turned over this information to Scottish police in charge of the investigation.
The woman employee's role became known only last week when lawyers for families of the American victims took evidence from her in Germany. She had kept her own copy of the print-out and still had it in her locker.

Most of the rest of the chapter is a lengthy analysis of Juval Aviv's Interfor report. Coleman seems perhaps too accepting of this every-little-detail expose on how the bomb went on there, and I just haven't the patience to sort that wheat from that chaff. This is more than enough fiber and food for now.

PT35 MOVE CLAIMS, pt. two

2009-10-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

THURMAN AND PT/35(b): ”MONTHS” WITH THE “REAL THING”
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
October 27 2009
last update/edit 11/5

Shuttling: The First 17 Months
Part one of this series covered the 2008 interviews revealed in Tegenlight: Lockerbie Revisited, which showed a contradiction in whether the fragment of circuit board, PT/35(b) was taken to the United States. FBI SCOTBOM chief Richard Marquise and identifying FBI agent James “Tom” Thurman both told interviewer Gideon Levy that the fragment was brought to Washington and examined there, whereas British authorities and Marquise (after a short-lived change of memory) refuted the claim, insisting it stayed in the UK. This part will cover the entanglement of this evidence and agent Thurman throughout the Lockerbie case and beyond, drawing largely from the writings of Marquise. The special emphasis is on clues about whether Thurman worked from a photograph of the evidence or from the real item, as he told the documentary.

A 1991 Miami Herald article reported that Thurman was first sent to Lockerbie, on behalf of the FBI SCOTBOM investigation, two days after the December 21 explosion to help in “combing the countryside for clues." He worked right through Christmas, and in “about two months at the scene,” the article continues, he “pored over thousands of pieces of evidence.” [1] According to FBI task force chief Richard Marquise, however, the intrepid special agent had returned from Scotland by Jan 19 1989, when he gave a briefing to the FBI confirming prior assumptions that a bomb was responsible. [2, p.35]

Thurman returned to Lockerbie several times, shuttling across the Atlantic and even further out into the field, as initial clues converged on a PFLPGC attack perhaps involving Jordanian agent and bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat. Marquise reveled that “Thurman had been part of the team that interviewed Khreesat” in Jordan, November 1989. [2, p.60] This special interview, carried out with CIA brokerage, and its (reportedly ambiguous) results were kept from Scottish investigators, causing some tensions later.

On Jan 10 1990 new Senior Investigating Officer Stuart Henderson (who replaced John Orr) presented at a meeting in the UK. He did not mention the timer fragment to all, but off to the side told Marquise and FBI’s ASAC John Kelso about it. They showed interest in helping find a match, but Henderson insisted on going it alone. “This decision cost us six months,” Marquise writes. [2, p.58]

On Cloud Nine: June1990-November 1991
Actually it was five months delayed; it was at an investigator’s conference in Virginia on June 11 when Marquise relates how the Scottish authorities finally made their puzzlement over the fragment known to all – 55 companies checked to no avail. Thurman “approached Henderson and asked if he could take photographs of PT-35 and attempt to identify it. Henderson, who believed the Scots had done all they could do, agreed.” [2, p 60] This passage is crucial to move claims, and rather ambiguous. It seems to read that Thurman, in Arlington, was allowed to take a picture of evidence Henderson had there with him. It could also mean a request to retain one of the photo-prints there, or to take a picture of the single photo they brought, or fly to Scotland to photograph PT/35(b). The last option seems out, given the mechanics of identification that followed. I remain agnostic on the reading here, and on its value as one of Mr. Marquise’s sometimes confused recollections.

The Herald decided after talking with Thurman that he “meticulously compared the picture of the fragment to hundreds of other devices,” a lengthy-sounding process. [1] The agent told the show Air Crash Investigation (in early 2008?): “I spent, uh, months, literally, looking through all about the files of the FBI on other examinations that we had, uh, conducted over many many many years. […] After a period I just ran out of leads” and was forced to look “outside the physical FBI laboratory.” [3]

But Marquise said “what Thurman did yielded fruit within two days. […] Henderson and his colleagues were on an airplane headed back to Scotland;” having just left from the Virginia conference, and the discovery “would turn Henderson around quicker than he ever imagined,” putting them back stateside within 24 hours of the discovery. Further evidence against Thurman’s months claim is his own well-memorized “day that I made the identification,” recalling it as one would a wedding anniversary: June 15 1989. He had four days tops to get this grueling season of cross-checking out of the way.

What Thurman did, Marquise sums up, is know where to look. He took the photo to a CIA explosives expert “Orkin” (real name unknown), who helped locate files on a possible fit – a circuit board style found in an unclear number of timers confiscated, by the CIA, in African nations Togo and Senegal in 1986 and ‘88 respectively. The Senegal timer had somehow gone missing, although there was a photo of its circuit board, but the Togo timer was physically available for Thurman to look at the board inside. Upon confirming the similarity, “within a few minutes, literally, I started getting cold chills,” he told Air Crash Investigation, a feeling that still haunts him since he “can still see that moment so vividly in my mind.” [3] That he got these chills only after getting access to the CIA’s special stores is proof the Agency is right to claim much of the credit, for the discovery, as they have in places: “the CIA’s most important contribution in helping secure the conviction” was “when a CIA engineer was able to identify the timer […] shifting the focus of the probe from a Palestinian terrorist group to Libya.” [4]

Later a marking saying MEBO, scratched out, was identified on the Togo timer’s board. Thurman has claimed he and others labored over this, contacting manufacturers trying to identify “M580” for some time before accepting that it was Mebo, the name of a Swiss firm supplying timers to rogue governments, including Libya. Thurman said they had “some inkling that’s what it was from the beginning, but we didn’t want to say okay, it’s Mebo’s exclusive, anything else, until we were absolutely certain” that the letters on there were indeed M-E-B-O. [5] Then they decided it was definitely Mebo’s exclusive for Libya only and only usable by Libyans and unable to fall into anyone else’s hands. Except the CIA, but they can still account for 50% of the ones they’ve been known to intercept.

Marquise later enthused how Thurman’s immaculate forensic work “quickly put us on a new track leading to the eventual solution,” a solution that shaped up into the indictments of al Megrahi and Fhimah on Nov 13 1991. This was Thurman’s prime-time moment and he seized it, doing his now-famous Nov 15 interview with ABC News, followed by other moppings-up of public adoration, like that Miami Herald article (Nov 30), where he sounded like a laid-off Don Henley lyricist: "We're the blacksmiths of the FBI. The nuts and bolts. We get extremely dirty, actually, filthy dirty. … your adrenalin is pumping. You can't sleep." Driven by “his curiosity, coupled with a sense of duty and empathy for the victims … he didn't stop until he linked the bomb to the Libyan government.” [1] Once he had done so with “conclusive proof,” he told ABC, what he felt was "absolute, positively euphoria. I was on cloud nine." [6]

After the High: 95 to Present
This euphoric winning streak continued for Thurman, and he went on to big things, like pursuing the domestic terrorists behind the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. But somehow, extended highs like this are often followed by a crash; starting in autumn 1995 charges were publicized that agent Thurman and his explosives unit “routinely” manipulated findings to favor the prosecution in at least two cases, including OKC. A 1997 Justice Department Inspector General investigation found Thurman to have no expertise in explosives at all, being a political scientist, not forensic, by training. After this he was formally barred from working in the crime lab or giving expert testimony in trials, and then “retired” from the bureau. [7]

This casts new light on his statements to ABC in '91; upon the match, “I knew at that point what it meant. Because if you will I‘m ~~an investigator as well as~~ [read political scientist instead of] a forensic examiner. I knew where that would go.” He told them the board pattern similarity “really just jumps out at you … when you look at it under a microscope.” It is always startling the first time you look into one, isn’t it? Upon leaving the bureau, Thurman went on to teach explosives investigation at East Kentucky University - sort of an honorarium it seems.

It was there that the now-bearded professor accepted an interview from the BBC program Dispatches. Aired for the 10th anniversary in December 1998, the interviewer challenged him, as Levy later would: “I’m surprised that you only worked from a photograph. Umm, this can’t be ideal, um, an ideal way (inaudible).” [8] Considering with real physical evidence you can examine it in 3-D, measure its layering composition, and the nature of blast damage (gas pitting, etc.), this is a rather good point. But Thurman, missing that completely, responded quite differently than he would ten years later: “Actually, in a case like this it’s much better than the actual item. Because the photograph enlarged it, how many times? Uuuh… a number of times. So you can see the detail with the naked eye in that photograph, that you can’t see on the actual item, without the aid of a microscope.” [8]

Later he told the interviewer “See, the only thing I have is the photograph.” When challenged “but you said a photograph’s as good as the fragment,” he said “yeah, but at the same time, you can’t - it’s difficult to make an actual measurement through - through here (tapping pictures)” [8] There is so, and it’s called “scale.” What you can’t tell is things beyond the surface pattern similarities - the actual forensic details. All he did was look at a photo and a model timer and decided they were the same pattern, as any six-year-old and some dogs could do. Questioning his credentials in this area seems a little disingenuous, to say the least.

Then of course we have his 20th anniversary story shown in Lockerbie Revisited, where he told Levy “I did the real thing ... I had the real piece of evidence. … The photograph was the first thing, then the real piece of evidence was brought over … It wasn’t just a photograph.” He’s done too many interviews, giving us many points to analyze patterns. The guy clearly has a penchant for emphasizing the reality, the intensity, of things in a way suggesting some underlying dissociation. (eg, heavy use of “actually,” “literally,” “physically,” and absolutes: “absolutely,” “positive,” “certain,” “forensic,” etc. ) He seems to harbor few, but loud memories that like to exaggerate themselves. They change over time in detail, but not in volume or the tone of self-congratulation for his own rigorous diligence. Or are these really memories?

Sources:
[1] Roser, Ann. “'Nuts and Bolts’ Work Pays Off in Lockerbie Probe.” The Miami Herald. Published November 30, 1991. Link.
[2] Marquise, Richard. SCOTBOM: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation, Algora Publishing. Sept. 1, 2006. 268 pages. Google Books.
[3] Air Crash Investigation: Lockerbie. Season 6, episode one. Aired 2008. Youtube link.
[4] http://www.afio.com/sections/wins/2001/2001-06.html
[5] The Maltese Double Cross - Lockerbie. Film, Hemar Enterprises, 1994, 156 minutes. Written, produced, and directed by Allan Francovich. Wikipedia page - Google video (1hr, 6 min in)
[6] Biewen, John and Ian Ferguson. “Shadow Over Lockerbie: Mass Murder Over Scotland.” American Radio Works, National public Radio. March 2000. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/lockerbie/story/printable_story.html
[7] Peirce, Gareth. “The Framing of Al Megrahi.” September 24 2009. London Review of Books. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/peir01_.html
[8] Dispaches: The Lockerbie Trial. Reporter: David Jessel. A Just television production for Channel Four Television. Aired December 1998. Video (MP4)

PT/35 MOVE CLAIMS, pt. one

2009-10-23T01:48:00.000-07:00

"IT WAS NEVER IN THE UNITED STATES?"
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
October 23 2009
last update 10/28

The recent hubbub regarding overly-mobile Lockerbie evidence started with Dutch journalist Gideon Levy’s early 2009 video Tegenlicht: Lockerbie Revisited. It’s a well-made video, with good music, some informative bits, and an unusual format of having interviewees watch and respond to recordings of others. Its prime focus was the crucial evidence PT/35(b), the Mebo timer fragment “tying” the bombing back to Libya. It’s therefore a little embarrassing that Levy announces another famous fragment, of general Toshiba circuit board displayed on a fingertip – as the article in question. This confusion surfaces elsewhere in the film, but manages to not become a big deal.

The main attraction that has generated some buzz was a curious discrepancy revealed and captured regarding the whereabouts of this historic find during the course of the investigation. As evidence from Scottish soil it was, should have been, in control of the Scottish police investigation, headed by the Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), a spot first held by Detective Chief Superintendent (DCS) John Orr (Strathclyde police, now Sir John Orr), and then by Orr's deputy, DCS Stuart Henderson (Lothian and Borders police, whom we meet below). The Scots would work in tandem with – but not give their evidence to – the American FBI's task force for the "SCOTBOM" investigation.

Officially the fragment was definitely taken outside Scotland - in the proper hands - to a RARDE lab at Kent, England and, as we’ve more recently had confirmed, to a private lab in Germany, both times for forensics testing. The understanding of then-Lord Advocate Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, which should have been quite good: “As far as I’m aware it’s always been in the UK,” he told Levy’s camera in 2008. He obviously didn’t know everything.

Besides the trips to England and Germany, which neither Lord Fraser nor Gideon Levy seemed aware of, there’s an alleged journey by this little blue key across the big blue sea to the United States. In the first of two interviews with Levy, FBI SCOTBOM chief Dick Marquise casually states that this one crucial piece of evidence, and nothing else, physically was brought to the FBI’s main lab in Washington.

“I’ll just tell you, not one piece - no I shouldn’t say that – the evidence – no, I’m not choosing my words carefully, I just want to make sure I say the right thing – all the evidence that was found in Lockerbie never made its way to be examined by the FBI laboratory. PT/35, as far as I remember, was the only piece of evidence that made its way to the laboratory, in the possession of a RARDE examiner. He brought it, he did the comparison, and he’s a scientist, and he took it back.”

Well that's an interestingly worded twist to the story. FBI Special Agent James “Tom” Thurman, the man publicly credited with making the identification of the fragment as from a Libyan-supplied MST-13 timer, on June 15 1990, also made an appearance. Levy caught up with him, wearing his years well in retirement, at a December 2008 ceremony to marking the 20th anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster. Levy came across a bit wormy, in my opinion, using the solemn ceremony mostly to make Thurman squirm and deny he was dismissed from the FBI for altering evidence. More to the point, he challenged Thurman if comparing with a photo – as he has previously stated – was really scientific. Thus provoked, he responded:

Thurman: I did the real thing ... I had the real piece of evidence.
Levy: That pointed to Libya.
Thurman: Absolutely. Absolutely. The photograph was the first thing, then the real piece of evidence was brought over. And at that point –
Levy: It was – it was on your finger, the chip was on.
Thurman: At that point - then there was a one-to-one identification made. The real piece of evidence, to the timer, the MST-13 timer, was made in the FBI laboratory. It wasn’t just a photograph. The photograph started it, and then the authorities from England brought over the real piece of evidence. That piece of evidence was examined in the FBI laboratory, along with the MST-13. That examination was verified in the forensic science laboratory, in England. So, it wasn’t only my examination, it was verified by other peoples’ examination as well.

Suspicions condensing around the Thurman link here is natural; PT/35(b) was apparently taken outside normal channels to his lab, and put under the grip of a known manipulator of evidence. Problem is, the charges against him were not over physically altering physical evidence, but for his explosives unit allowing conclusions to be overstated in the prosecution’s favor, in multiple instances unrelated to this one. Agent Fred Whitehurst told Levy how Thurman altered his reports when he deemed that his own political science training trumped Whitehurst’s chemistry smarts.

This will and certainly should cast doubt on Thurman's general investigative even-handedness and his certainties over his own lab work (“I knew we had it,” it "absolutely, absolutely" implicates Libya, etc.). In fact why Thurman was selected is beyond me – any idiot with the two photos could affirm they’re the same, and this selectee has become a real liability. All the rage at the 1991 indictment, he was discredited and never called as a witness by the time of the big trial at camp Zeist in 2000.

But presenting this side-by-side with concerns over the “tampering with” of this evidence once taken somewhere dangerous is quite leading. The fact is, I can see no sign of tampering with the evidence, nor much of a reasons to suspect it. The problem is the thing itself, not where it was taken and who touched it in these dark corners.

At that same chilly cemetery, as the people were leaving to more private venues, Levy caught up again with Mr. Marquise, as it so happened accompanied by his Scottish counterpart DCS Henderson. When standing side-by-side with the prime guardian of that fragment Marquise was of a different recollection altogether from his first interview. Levy was granted an answer to one question, and that's about what he asked, for almost four minutes.

Levy: When I asked Lord Fraser about the circuit board, he said something that contradicted what you said. He said it had never been to the United States. And if it was in the United States, then he would have known.
Marquise: No, I don’t know that I told you the circuit board was in the United States.
Henderson: The circuit board was never in the United States.
Marquise: Let’s back up, we’re talking two different things. There was a circuit board of MST-13 timer in the United States, but the fragment PT/35 was never in the United States. Photographs of it were in the United States.”
Levy: It was never in the United States? (murmured agreement) Oh, I thought it was…
Marquise: No the fragment never came to the United States, but the circuit board was in the United States, because we had the MST-13 timer, which we turned over to the police in Scotland.
Levy: Ah, but but… Tom Thurman, who was here today, also said it was in the United States.
Marquise: No, he never said that.
Levy: No?
Marquise: The fragment PT/35 was not in the United States.
Levy: But it was in England, but it came…
Marquise: It never came to the United States
Levy: It never came to the United States.
Marquise: I don’t believe so – I’m 100% sure it was not here.
Levy: Oh, it has never been here.
Henderson: Never released out of evidence control of ourselves. Couldn’t afford to let something like that …
Levy: I thought it was brought in the possession of Alan Feraday.
Marquise: Feraday’s over in RARDE. He’s in England. It’s in his possession.
Levy: Yes, yes, but I thought he came – I thought you told me that it came in his possession to the United States.
Marquise: I don’t know that…
Henderson: His possession and my possession. But it was never released for any reason (inaudible).
Levy: And who are you?
Henderson: Detective Chief Superintendent Henderson, I conducted the investigation.
Levy: Okay. My name’s Gideon Levy, and I’m from Holland - from the Dutch television. So it has never been in the United States.
Henderson: Confirmed
From the video: Levy, Henderson, Marquise (l-r) discuss whether or not it was ever in the United States. But it wasn't? No, wasn't it?
Levy: At all.
Henderson: Couldn’t be, ‘cause it was such an important point of evidence it wasn’t possible to release it. It had to be contained to be produced to the Court, therefore you couldn’t afford to have it waved around for everybody to see because it could have got interfered with.
Levy: Aha
Henderson: So it was far too valuable to be other than made available – couldn’t be.
Levy: Okay
Henderson: Very valuable piece of evidence.
Levy: (shouting over) But you said it was in the possession of Alan Feraday and brought to the United States.
Marquise: You know, its – you’ll have to talk to Alan Feraday about what he brought to the United States. I don’t remember…
Henderson: Alan Feraday had it in his possession with me, but he did not release it to anyone
Marquise: No, no, no, he said bring it with him. Did he bring it to the, I don’t remember.
Henderson: No, they came to us to see it.
Marquise: Yes. I saw it – I saw it in London.
Levy: Oh, you saw it in London?
Henderson: They came to where we had it, see. Because it wasn’t possible to remove any evidence out of the jurisdiction of the – Scottish control.
Levy: So you were the same – you were the FBI investigator and you were the Scotish investigator. Ultimate inestigators.
Both: affirmations
Levy: Okay.
Henderson: That’s why I’m here, to go and see the relatives.
Marquise: We need to go.
Henderson: We’ll have to go. Pleasure to meet you, gentlemen.
Levy: Thank you very much.
Henderson: And by the way, there is no hidden holes to find because the culprit is in custody. (with a smile and wink) Take my word for it. Okay?

So I would come away from this with an impression that it may well have not been in the United States, whatever Marquise and Thurman said to same guy ten minutes earlier. But I’m weird hat way, denying Henderson’s bait that I imagine was dangling there. A more normal reaction would be to get a little confused, and for many to solve that by taking their own default position. Some would just dismiss this all as faulty memory two decades on, while others will surely latch onto it as more proof of a cover-up, or at least something to make some more noise over.

My main concern with PT/35(b) is that this much-fretted over fragment may have been planted outright to begin with, or at least has been overstated as direct evidence pointing only to Libya. This hullabaloo about where the possible fraud was carted to adds little to an understanding of either level of worthwhile inquiry.

Update, 10/28: Something I saw later that fits best here: Marquise's unacknowledged about face here was short-lived. In September 2009, months later with Henderson not present, he again affirmed an American trip. This was in a response to Gareth Peirce, and sent into Robert Black's blog. I haven't been able to verify it, so do please take a grain of salt:

Once he identified the fragment, he asked Alan Feraday to come to Washington. Feraday brought the original fragment of the timer with him and they both examined it under a microscope. They independently agreed it was identical to the MEBO timer. The fragment was never out of the control of Mr. Feraday and returned with him to the lab at RARDE.

MST-13 COMPARATIVE GRAPHICS no. 3

2009-10-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

ALTERED BUT NOT SWAPPED
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
October 21 2009
last edited 10/22

Recently attention has come back onto the MST-13 timer fragment, upon which the Lockerbie investigation solidified its case against Libya, with statements the other day by Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) Christine Grahame. Following suspicions raised by Gideon Levy’s 2009 film Lockerbie Revisited, people are asking like never before was this key evidence, pulled from a shirt collar months after the attack and designated PT/35(b), taken outside of Scotland? Outside Great Britain? Outside Europe and across the Atlantic? As the BBC reported:

Ms Grahame said: "The Crown Office have confirmed to me that the fragment, PT-35, the piece of evidence that it was claimed linked Libya to the attack, was also sent to Germany in April 1990, as well as the US. [...] If there was any suspicion that the fragment had been tampered with, it could have undermined the entire prosecution case.

Clearly this is big news that people will Google, and find things like this, posted last year by Edwin Bollier, co-founder of Mebo, the timer’s makers:

Inspector Keith Harrower (Scottish Police) visited on the 27th of April 1990, this the MST-13 fragment the electronic company Siemens AG in Munich, Germany. Engineer Brosante sawed this first brown original MST-13 fragment into two parts and confirmed: "standard brown PC-platine with 8 layers of fiberglass." The green machine made MST-13 timers delivered to Libya consisted of PC-boards with 9 layers of fiberglass.

So when these “new” questions start leading right to Mr. Bollier’s claims of tampering and worse, some clearing of the waters might be useful. I turn my attention to false or dubious claims, pushed by Bollier and a handful of others, about the fragment being planted or swapped-out with a clearly different fragment, during the process of investigation.

His claims on the board being different colors at different times are too convoluted to fully explore here, but Bollier has been swearing lately that a brown prototype handed to Swiss authorities had been used as the evidence, somehow clearly visible in the first known photograph from 1989 (left), while the later photo (mid-1990, right) of an altered PT35(b) are of a replacement green board.

The MTS-13’s designer, Ulrich Lumpert, apparently spawned this with his 2007 affidavit, by which he handed the brown board over to Swiss investigators who in turn gave it to SCOTBOM, who used as evidence. Engineer Brosante also agrees it was brown, judging by Bollier’s quote (that’s the first I’ve heard of him, so don’t ask me). The official story is of course that it’s always been the same green fragment they found in the wreckage of 103.

It is true that green here seems to mean blue, and the later photo is more blue than the first. However, this (as I found it online) shows clear signs of global photo-tinting and once corrected, the color matches up quite well with the original – dark muted blue-gray, like a green/blue board that had been burnt. It does seem possible some of the carbonized surface material has been cleaned off in the latter view, but otherwise there is no hint of brown I can see in either of these photos, and no color-based sign of meaningful alteration or replacement.

Considering comparison photos of PT/35(b) alongside an intact model board (links above), There are allegations of the curved edge not matching or the “1” touchpad and its relation to the “true edge” differing. But when the outlines are superimposed to scale (right), we find a perfect fit presuming the fragment is missing a sliver off the top. And here we can see a difference with the first photos and later ones – the top is present at first, giving it the right curve of an intact board. Later, it’s gone. Two prominent cuts at right angles also appear, apparently part of forensic examination carried out so controversially in Munich, to check the board’s layering style. This apparently severed a corner piece, put back in place and displayed as separate evidence item DP/31. But the removed top is not so displayed. It’s reasonable to surmise this tiny section – app. 1cm by 1/8cm – was simply ground off to get a profile, but mysteries remain... It's not clear how many layers were really found, but as it appears a green machine-made board, I'm guessing nine.

Among Mebo the clown’s most enthusiastic claims of proven forgery is how “the letter "M" was carved into” the original “brown” item sideways next to the touch pad, while “in the duplicate no. PT/35(b) (fake) it can be clearly seen that no letter “M” was carved into it!” Lumpert mentioned but disowned this in his affidavit: “I had nothing to do with the letter "M" (possibly an abbreviation of Muster 'sample'), which appears." To true scale (at left), this tiny M seems strangely small to use as a marking, nestled in next to the “1.” In reality, as JREF forum member Ambrosia showed with the enhancement below, the M casts a faint but visible shadow, and would seem to be a 3d object, a tiny ziggy fiber of presumably shirt stitching.

Beneath this alleged etching are three small light patches bracketing the solder lines, visible above. Of these Lumpert said “I clearly recognize the scratched remnants of the soldering tracts on this enlarged digital police photograph.” A poster available online shows a blowup with German text, perhaps based on something, labeling these as “Kratzstellen von Ing Lumpert,” scratches by Lumpert. That any villains would have chosen to cut out and display as evidence just the small corner that Lumpert had marked with random micro-abrasions and could identify raises some questions.

What exactly these really are is a minor mystery – perhaps more fibers of a different kind snagged on the solder. Whatever they are they’re as gone later as the M – either the political engineers sanded these off or painted them over, or replaced the board down to he tiniest details except for these scratches, as alleged by recent Mebo pages, or they were some inconsequential surface debris since removed.

And for a preview of what lies at the bottom of this rabbit hole, realize Bollier's claiming a green replacement for a brown original fake of an alleged green Libyan timer; A 'technical report' commissioned on actual graph paper suggests for no reason I can fathom the final PT/35(b) photo is of the green replacement except the corner DP/31, which is actually a matching corner from the original Lumpert-supplied brown fake! And they didn't even use the corner with the irreplaceable "M!" (lower right corner of right view below - the part that's the same blue/green as the rest).

So to summarize, as the graphic above pretty well does, the verifiable changes were the removal of surface debris, perhaps removal of some of the charred layer, loss of a small bit of solder, an apparent flake of damaged plastic (tan under-layer?), minor changes to the touch pad surface, and the obvious cuts and/or grinding to the board consistent with cross-section analysis. Nothing else about it changed, and there’s no evidence that anything misleading was done with this after its initial fraudulent insertion into the evidence chain.

Did everyone catch that? Don’t get distracted, then, is the main point here. There are still intelligent questions to ask.

FRANKFURT AIRPORT RECORDS

2009-10-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

PAPERWORK: HARD, SOFT, AND NONE
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
October 14 2009
last update 10/15

"The records from Frankfurt were by no means complete."
- Denis Phipps, former head of security, British Airways, in The Maltese Doublecross

The Frankfurt Connection: A Grand Narrative
As connective tissue in the fraudulent case against al Megrahi and Libya as the perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing, nothing carries more weight than the faint line from one plane to another traced by an odd little computer printout from Frankfurt, West Germany. I’ve already noted the most poignant aspect of this evidence for me; that it was received in such an abnormal way AND not in any of the standard, proper ways. This suspect but key evidence is said to show a piece of unaccompanied interline luggage, thought to be the one with the bomb in it, moving through Frankfurt Airport’s system on that fateful December 21, 1988, onto PanAm103A. This was a feeder flight into the real Flight 103, a separate plane waiting at Heathrow Airport in London, ready to shoot for New York.

In actuality it takes a few documents aside from this main printout to put the whole link together, as explained below. But the picture that emerges is quite precise; to summarize the Opinion [PDF link] of the special Scottish Court at Camp Zeist, delivered in 2001 after examining the available records and testimony:

Air Malta flight KM180 arrived from Luqa Airport, Malta, and reached its parking position at 12:48GMT. The plane was unloaded between then and 13:00, and one wagon of baggage from it arrived, at 13:01, at one of two main luggage facilities, designated “V3.” This baggage and nothing else was then coded at station 206 within V3 starting in three minutes at 1304 and running probably six minutes until 1310. One particular item was coded at 13:07 into container no. 8849. It was then routed down to one of several luggage stores, HS33, for two hours until moved at 15:17 to gate B044 and later, presumably, loaded onboard 103A before its 16:53 departure. No passenger transferred from the air Malta flight to the PanAm one, so the bag thus illustrated was of the dreaded “unaccompanied” variety.

The System (I Think)
From what I gather of the whole airport system, it could be broken down to two parts; the topside is a zone of tarmac and wheels, counters, hands, wagons, and airplane cargo holds. Hard paperwork is kept for topside transactions, and activities are overseen by actual people held responsible. The Court explained “baggage for most airlines was handled by the airport authority, but PanAm had their own security and baggage handling staff.” This is key to record-keeping; the airport and the airline each would then have responsibility for keeping track of their own efforts, and both should be called on in the investigation.

From the planes, luggage is carted to a coding station, where items are placed on bar-code numbered trays (containers), one item per tray, and the computers take over. The bottomside then is what the Court described as “a computer controlled automated baggage handling system” that I gather ran beneath the airport. This vast electro-mechanic system automatically routed coded items along roller conveyors and through switching stations, at key spots scanned and logged. This system connected coding stations to the various stores, and apparently up to gates, after which they re-emerged topside and then to the connecting aircraft’s hold. Not bad for 1988.

On the paperwork kept to track this complex arrangement, the court explained “the computer itself retained a record of the items sent through the system so that it was possible, for a limited period, to identify all the items of baggage sent through the system to a particular flight. After some time, however, that information would be lost from the system.” [emph mine] One would presume law enforcement and investigative agencies would be aware of that fact.

Records on the KM180 End
Production 1068: The court’s point [29] denotes this for “the evidence of Joachim Koscha, who was one of the managers of the baggage system at Frankfurt in 1988” It was his evidence that established KM180’s arrival and unloading time, 12:48-13:00. They do also cite a “record,” but provided no direct citation. It almost seems they’re just citing his memory, when normally paper records were kept.

Denis Phipps, former head of security, British Airways, who has closely inspected the primary records of different airlines and airports connected to the disaster. He said in The Maltese Doublecross [video, 1994] “the records from Frankfurt were by no means complete." Among his concerns:

“There was no record of who unloaded that flight KM180 when it arrived at Frankfurt. We don't know who the loaders were. There was no record of the number of bags that were actually unloaded from that flight. There were no records that I could find.”

He was trying to bolster Air Malta’s reasonable claims that all 55 bags on that flight were accompanied and claimed by its 39 passengers, and none could have gone on to 103. Thus the official story here is that there was one more bag than Air Malta admits to. That Phipps found no records to support that, and the court failed to specify any, are bad omens for that damning charge.

production 1092: This is an “interline writer’s sheet” filled out by Andreas Schreiner was in charge of monitoring the arrival of baggage at V3 That bears to record one wagon of baggage from KM180 arriving at V3 at 13:01.Within V3 are seven coding stations, where luggage is placed into bar-code numbered trays to enter bottomside. They cite the sheet’s contents in table form and it seems like they had these records at hand.

Mr Schreiner’s evidence expanded beyond this, to explanations for the the Lords of how coding “would generally begin three to five minutes after the arrival of the baggage at V3,” and that “luggage was always delivered from one flight only” at any given time. The basis for these points must be taken on the man’s word, but they help simplify the Prosecution’s case. Station 206 at 13:04-13:10 means KM180 baggage and nothing else. Simple common sense would dictate a breach of this standard MO is at least possible. A stronger retort was published in Time magazine in 1992, relating a FBI memo following a look at the airport’s records and methods:

On a guided tour of the baggage area in September 1989, it was disclosed, detective inspector Watson McAteer of the Scottish police and FBI special agent Lawrence G. Whitaker "observed an individual approach Coding Station 206 with a single piece of luggage, place the luggage in a luggage container, encode a destination into the computer and leave without making any notation on a duty sheet." This convinced the two investigators that a rogue suitcase could have been "sent to Pan Am 103 either before or after the unloading of Air Malta 180."

This bag would thus appear to investigators to have been part of whatever planeload they were coding there at the time. The same could be at work with our item 8849. The conclusion of this report, sent back to Washington: “"There remains the possibility that no luggage was transferred from Air Malta 180 to Pan Am 103."

Production 1061: This was identified by witnesses Mr Schreiner and Mr Koscha “as a work sheet completed by a coder to record baggage with which he dealt.” The name of the coder in question was Koca, who was not called as a witness.” Pity, since the document shows us little detail. The court again showed this data in tabular form. Here thanks to Mebo I have an image of the evidence in question [see below]. The signatures alternate Koca and Candar, listing either container numbers or numbers of wagons of luggage, the flight number it’s from, time they started coding, and stop time. The relevant line is the last one – one wagon of luggage from KM180 started coding at 13:04, and ended at a time disputed as 13:10 or 13:16.

The difference between the a 1310 reading and a 1316 one does not affect the link with the central printout showing 8849 coded at 1307. But as eminent investigator Paul Foot notes “If the end-time was 13.16 this left a gaping hole in time when other bags may have been encoded through the same station that did not come from Malta at all.” With the worksheet here we can compare some previous codings “Beginn” to “Ende” for the previous six flights: 5 min, 5 min, 3 min, 9 min, 5 min, and 6 min, to process one wagon or one container of baggage. (the apparent “4” is probably a “1” written over a dash). And finally, either six or twelve minutes for one wagon from KM180. Unless there was something weird that screwed up the pattern (which is entirely possible), I’m calling the end time 13:10 and moving on. The hole was as big as it was, other things could well get through, but the most likely item at 206 in that time is still a bag from Malta.

Records on the PA103A End: A Blanked-Out System
Production 1062: This is the court’s code for some unspecified “documentary evidence” that “the aircraft used for PA103A arrived from Vienna (as flight PA124) and was placed at position 44, from which it left for London at 1653.” I’ll accept that as valid, but note the ambiguity of citation.

Production 1060:
This is the famous printout of the late-sought tracking data on bags destined for the PanAm flight, on a whim saved from oblivion by the diligent Mrs. Erac. [see left – r-click, new window for readable size] Obviously this covers the broad computer-managed middle stage rather than “the 103A end.” But as it is, this is the only known link showing that item 8849 continued towards the fatal feeder flight. It’s the single document that allows “the inference," drawn by the Scottish Judges, "that an item which came in on KM180 was transferred to and left on PA103A.”

It’s not that there should be more; the one record is to be expected. The unexpected is no one official got to it before it was deleted, and we had to rely on a memento copy from someone’s locker. We’re told. And the investigation was lucky to get that after a curious delay of 7-8 months.

What it shows, briefly, is 111 items listed numerically by container no. The relevant portions are highlighted in the condensed version below. PA103A is referred to herein as F1042. The relevant item 8849 was coded at station S0009, which it’s been determined means station 206, at 1307. That is a fit with KM180’s load. It then goes to Gate B044 at 1523, the same few-minute span most of it arrived. What happened from there is outside the computerized system and not recorded here.

Production Null: This is the designation – none – given to PanAm’s loading records for flight 103A. Holding to previous patterns, we’re back to tarmac and wheels space, and there should be records kept at gates 44 and 41 regarding the luggage items received and loaded onto the planes at each gate. There should be a verification that item 8849 was among them, and that it was then loaded to the plane.

Obviously the Airport authority couldn’t offer this to the court, as it wasn’t their job to load a PanAm plane or to log what they don’t do. There’s no mention in the Court’s opinion of what PanAm provided to the case; they went bankrupt in late 1991, so it’s natural they didn’t send anyone to the 2000 trial. But judging by Marquise, they also added nothing to the 1989-91 investigation, at least regarding the crucial Frankfurt link. The court adds nothing to that, only citing "evidence [...] that no baggage was left at the gate" in reasoning that " it can be inferred that all items sent there were loaded." Again, a non-admission admission that they don't really have the evidence they should.

Positive confirmation of this lack of records can be found in The Maltese Double-Cross (same section linked above). According to Michael Jones, Pan Am’s security chief with the London office [emph mine]:

I went to Frankfurt airport on 23rd of January 1989, to look for documents in relation to the preparation of Flight 103 from Frankfurt to London, and particularly the cargo and baggage loading plan, who was responsible for loading the plane and what their duties were, but these documents were missing from the daily file. … If the original documents had been taken by the authorities, and by that I mean the police, then it would be normal practice for a copy to be retained in the Pan Am file.

We have a date – one month after the disaster, and the crucial files for this plane are reportedly gone by this time. No one I know of has reported seeing them since. The computer tracking system was also gone to nearly all eyes as of January and on through August before it resurfaced to lead the case in a new direction. It would appear that investigators before that clue had no data on what went onto that plane that fed into the other plane. This in itself is a little-known but major scandal, quite likely its own crime scene that could not be traced back to foreign terrorists. Therefore, it’s to remain little-known.

Graphic Representation

Sources:
- Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield, MacLean, Case No: 1475/99. OPINION OF THE COURT delivered by Lord Sutherland in causa HER MAJESTY’S ADVOCATE v ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI and AL AMIN KHALIFA FHIMAH. Delivered January 31 2001. PDF or txt file available at: http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/index.asp
- The Maltese Double Cross - Lockerbie. Film, Hemar Enterprises, 1994, 156 minutes. Written, produced, and directed by Allan Francovich. Wikipedia page
- Rowan, Roy. Pan Am 103: Why did they Die? Time. April 27 1992http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975399-1,00.html

A DILIGENT PROGRAMMER

2009-10-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

ERAC AND HER PRINTOUT: DIFFERENT STORIES
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
October 8 2009
last update 10/9

LUGGAGE LINK
Collectively, the evidence used to convict Abdelbaset Al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am 103 indicates a Libyan-made bomb, placed by the "Libyan intelligence operative" into a specially packed brown Samsonite suitcase at Luqa airport onto Air Malta flight KM180, tagged to be transferred unaccompanied onto Pan Am 103 to blow up right around the Scottish coastline. The results could only be approximately controlled, given potential delays between thee planes and three airports.

To date the only positive evidence such a bag was even on the first of the three alleged planes is the tenuous conclusion that it later left that plane onto the second and third. The case linking back to Libya via Malta (Libya’s “backdoor to the West”) is entirely based on circumstantial clues, starting with the clothing of Maltese make, apparently packed around the bomb, followed by the timer fragment found to boldly point to Libya. Eventually some testimony was bought/mangled from witnesses like Gauci and Giaka to support the middle link of a loose bag from Malta traceable to Libyan *super-spook* al Megrahi. But this wasn’t pursued until after they had secured some kind of evidence for the bag itself.

In between Malta and the fields of southern Scotland, there might have been, and probably should have been, nothing but speculation to flesh out the official story. As it turns out, or so we’re told, Frankfurt Airport, which had supplied a feeder flight to 103, routinely destroyed its computerized luggage tracking records after a short period of just one week. Unless this means an office-fridge-style cleanout (say, every Friday at 5:00) we can presume a logical 7-day storage – enough time to retrieve anything in a special situation like this. But no one retrieved it in time, even for Pan Am 103, which had been loaded with passengers and luggage partially at that airport and was all over the news well within 24 hours for having blow the heck up.

Not that it mattered; apparently, no attempt was even made to look at such records in the first months after the incident. But by luck and fate an anomalous copy did surface, fairly early in the (looong) investigation, and made its own way to the German police and thence onto the FBI SCOTBOM investigation. It showed just the bag that the other points could later lean against to strengthen the case that emerged. “That was a key part of the investigation, which allowed us to link a bag from Malta to Frankfurt, through London and then obviously on to Lockerbie,” FBI SCOTBOM chief Richard Marquise has said [CF 6:50]. And it’s a half-decent clue, just far from conclusive and perhaps not even honest.

VERSION ONE: GATHERING EVIDENCE
This was provided, primarily, by Bogomira Erac, a computer programmer and baggage handler there on the fateful day. Her paperwork and testimony were pivotal to the prosecution case when brought before the Scottish Court at camp Zeist. Scottish revisionist Ian ferguson claims she “testified at the original trial under the pseudonym Madame X.” [IF] I can find no support for that, and the final verdict (opinion of the Court, issued Jan. 2001) referred to her by name.

Having “realised that PA103A had departed during her period on duty,” the Court summarized therein, Erac “was interested in the amount of baggage on the Frankfurt flight, and on the following morning she decided to take a printout of the information as to baggage held on the computer.” She was looking for "any useful information," but "did not at once identify any.” [OC, point [30]] She could not likely know what this data did or didn’t say without other data sources, and she did not hand it over to those who could put it in context, so its vital clues lingered unrealized.

Investigative journalist Paul Foot, one of the few people to sit through the whole Lockerbie trial, came away with about the same impression as the court, in that Erac had printed this out herself for informational purposes. Referring to the record, he wrote in his seminal 2001 report Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice:

“This was printed out on the day after the Lockerbie bombing by Bogomir Erac, who was in charge of the software for the baggage system at Frankfurt. She recovered the print-out in case it revealed anything interesting about the luggage loaded on to flight 103A to Heathrow, which linked to the separate and doomed flight 103.” [PF 18]

FBI SCOTBOM chief investigator Ricahrd Marquise, in his 2006 book, took a different view of Bogomira’s interest in the facts; “more for curiosity than anything else, she kept it in her desk for about three weeks. She was later asked by her supervisor to look for baggage records in the computer, but they were purged every week.” [RM 210] But apparently this request came after these three weeks, showing up this unnamed supervisor as both a sluggish thinker and epically ignorant of their own storage policies to bother pursuing this avenue so late. Luckily there was still the paper copy, again no thanks to procedure.

VERSION TWO: OUT OF MEMORY
Mrs. Erac told the BBC in a 2008 video interview (see left) that not only was the data deleted, their paper backups were tossed in short order as well. “We usually destroyed all the printouts. And I was just about ready to do that with this one,” the “diligent” Mrs. Erac told the camera sent for The Conspiracy Files. [CF 5:42] Had she simply forgotten that she had specifically printed this one for factual reference? But of course she didn’t clear out this deadwood; “on the spur of the moment, I just picked it up and put it on the table,” perhaps remembering why it existed. She then decided to hold onto it for sentimental reasons “in memory of the people who were on the plane." With moist eyes scanning towards Gott in Himmel she recalls this, “and then I threw it in my locker.”

In this version, it wasn’t until much later that she changed gears on the issue; “the weeks went by and to Bogomira’s surprise, no one came to ask for the printout,” the video’s narration runs. “Realizing it could be useful, she eventually went to her supervisor.” Having reversed the initiative for the meeting from that reported above, Erac next has the supervisor protesting “but the baggage list doesn’t exist anymore!” When she handed it over, “he was very, very surprised.”

THE FIRST OF FOUR KEYS
So sometime in January 1989 these two were aware of this list’s existence but presumably not its implications. The unnamed supervisor then turned it over to the BKA German Federal Police who in turn sat on it awhile before handing it over to the Lockerbie investigation sometime in August 1989, at least seven months after they’d started work. [CF 4:45]

It was a breakthrough in the case, as FBI chief Marquise wrote in his 2006 book SCOTBOM, “her printout was the only record. This was as much a key to the solution of the case as Tony Gauci or the Mebo chip.” [RM 210] He neglected to mention a fourth key, the damning testimony of witness Giaka. In fact, the evidence from Frankfurt is crucial in that without it they had no evidence (aside from Giaka) for the bomb being anywhere but Heathrow to Lockerbie. And like these other key points (aside from Giaka), which all came after the printout, there are question marks over this evidence.

1) No backup records: Deleting all copies of the data in question sounds like a dubious policy. That this one list is just good luck is itself a bad sign. That the policy was not abridged in the case of this flight, with a copy saved for investigators, is just bizarre or untrue.
2) Corollary lack of interest in looking for such records: officially the bomb in the biggest terrorism investigation in ever got on PA103 via Frankfurt, Even with a week and all the world's investigating agencies to think about it, no one checked the relevant records to see if that might be the case? The official story here, that no one checked and were dismayed by the lack of records is itself dismaying. I’m not at all sure this is really the case.
3) Conflicting stories: Did the supervisor ask Erac to look up info, or did he presume it was gone until she approached him? Did she print this out herself, or save a regular print-up? Did she save it as a memento, for personal research, or for the investigation? Time is obviously a factor, but is it the main one in these shifting details?
4) Long delays: They add up – three weeks, a few moths, and collectively, the time from unknown to openly known stretches into something like a year. Coincidentally, this could provide time to track down the info desired, to run through possible cases and scenarios and implications, and for what was desired to settle into place. If the FBI worked that way. Politically.

The printout timeline thus bears a strangely parallel course to that of the MST-13 timer chip; first found in January 89, realized as evidence in May, and puzzled over for a full year, documented with well-spaced memos, before identified as “Libyan.”

Questions about its provenance aside, the paperwork is not as clear as made out and far less decisive. Showing only a bag originating at a certain place (station 206 of “V3”) at a certain time (13:07GMT) before being put on the feeder to London. Other records would have to be called on, linking KM108 and its bags to this station 206 in order to form the full Air Malta-Pan Am link that emerged. Apparently these more obscure records, not directly touching PA103A, were not routinely destroyed, and were made available to the prosecution with no luck cited. What all these airport records say and what they can’t say will be the subject of another post.
---
Sources:
[CF] The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie. BBC Two. Aired 31 August 2008. Prod/Dir Guy Smith, Ex Prod Sam Anstiss, Narr Caroline Catz. Youtube posting, part 3, time stamps indicated above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J55ryLvGEE4&feature=related
[IF] Ferguson, Ian. "The judges got it wrong" From the Sunday Times, Malta. May 10 2009. Reposted at Robet Black's blog: http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/05/from-sunday-times-malta.html
[OC] Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield, MacLean, Case No: 1475/99. OPINION OF THE COURT delivered by LORD SUTHERLAND
in causa HER MAJESTY’S ADVOCATE v ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI and AL AMIN KHALIFA FHIMAH. Delivered January 31 2001. PDF file available at: http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/index.asp
[PF] Foot, Paul. Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice. PDF, 32 pages, published 2001, Private Eye. 6 Carlisle Street, London, W1D 3BN. Available for purchase (5£) https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/digital_downloads.cfm
[RM] Marquise, Richard. SCOTBOM, 2006.

MST-13 COMPARATIVE GRAPHICS no. 1

2009-10-04T01:35:00.000-07:00

INVESTIGATORS’ VIEWS, 1989-90
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
October 5 2009
last update/edit 11/2/09

In this post I will relate all direct visual evidence, gathered from different sites, relating to the circuit board fragment found in the evidence of the Lockerbie bombing. These should be official photographs and documents, mostly from the British side of the investigation. My sources are a few, but mostly websites run by Mebo, the board’s manufacturers and confusing advocates in the trial and its controversies. At the risk of accepting bad evidence, I will accept these as accurte, if not the commentary, and simply lay them out in approximated chronological order with some of the available information on them.
The fragment was allegedly first gathered by DCs Gilchrist and McColm, unseen within a piece of cloth logged in mid-January 1989 as item PI/995, “Cloth (charred).” Anomalously, the label was later changed with “debris” written right over “cloth.” In the 2000 trial, Gilchrist was asked about the overwriting; the judges found his explanations "at worst evasive and at best confusing," but found no "sinister connotation" in this (and neither do I, in particular). Note also how the date (13/1/89 as on the left side) seems faintly penciled in for "introduction in case against," and the loaction found line seems written over with invisible ink. The resolution on these is not good - here I took the full tag and a clearer zoom-in (original images page) and merged them for the best effect.

One signature on this cluttered tag seems to be Dr. Thomas Hayes [wiki] of RARDE (Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment), who analyzed this material more closely on May 12, 1989, according to his lab log (on page 51, left - r-click new window for readable view). This was the first mention anywhere of the pivotal timer fragment, as item b) at left. Reportedly, the pages following this in Hayes’ journal were renumbered, which he was unable to explain in later testimony. This could well mean this page was inserted after the fact, as widely speculated, to introduce a backdated paper trail for a later plant. It's a little sloppy to my eyes, and doesn’t add much detail to the record; there is nothing about the board other than a simple note of “a fragment of green coloured circuit board." He offers no drawing, no details. Note that the paper fragments, carefully re-sketched here (five sheets, 2 sides each, lower half of page), were identified early and given the evidence no. PT/2. The exploded electrics of items a-c, on the same page here, are "raised" collectively as PT/35 “assorted materials RECOVERED from clothing PI995.” (caps in original) I think this means 31 pieces of evidence were catalogued between these identifications allegedly noted on the same day.

The first photograph to be taken of the fateful fragment was reportedly taken, on or around September 12 1989, by Hayes, or by “RARDE photographer Heines.” according to different web pages sponsored by Mebo, the board’s confusing makers. (Hayes version, Heines version). This is three days prior to the September 15 Feraday letter (see below), leading some to suspect he took the picture then. Its acual date of capture seems to be prior to Hayes' May 12 entry, as the lumpy shape to the right of the fragment seems to be the paper fragments prior to being separated and drawn therein. The famous photo shows the shirt collar and all the evidence taken from it, with the circuit board chunk circled in red in the publicly available version. Considering the quality of blow-ups possible from this (see below) it is presumably 35mm, and not one of the "polaroids" mentioned below. (Original Image)

At left is the best blow-up of this available, from a higher resolution original than is up anywhere on the Internet. Here can be noted the “1” shaped touch pad, twin solder lines beneath this, the intact top edge, rounded corner, crumbly edges. The "etched" sideways “M" and "scratches" beneath it have been called clues of forgery, but likely are fibers of fabric like those clustered on the left side. The color of this board's coating plastic, described as green by RARDE people, and as evidently BROWN by Mebo missives, seems to me no particular color, but more precisely off-black or muted dark gray-blue with a slight greenish hue. It's probably supposed to be burnt, so green-blue seems closer than brown. (source)

Another to take a crack at this fragment was Alan Feraday [wiki] the director at the time of DERA (Defense Evaluation and Research Agency), who at some point made a study using another shot, straight on, with another view of it flipped over on its back. Using enlarged photos (“approx X 3”), perhaps photocopied on paper, he added notes around the mirror-flipped dark shapes - the following are my best reading:
"straight edge" pointing to the straight top edge.
"curved edge" pointing to curved edge
"trimmed copper" pointing to solder lines. ("track pattern on underside" added)
"Green top surface" pointing to back view.
There isn’t much resolution here to work with, but that back view is totally unique. So I used a separate layer with maxxed out contrast to pop out all details (below, right). There seems to be a small bump corresponding to the middle of the touch pad, and some roughness (fracture? bubbling?) around the edges, quite a ways in at bottom and right. Otherwise little can be seen. image source

On September 15 1989, judging by the header, Feraday sent a memo to Detective Inspector William Williamson, a counterpart in the Dumfries and Galloway police (along with the FBI, they were the official investigators). This was to explain “some Polaroid photographs of the green circuit board,” which he found "potentially most important," depending on what ID the D&G could come up with. Feraday apologized for the quality of these pictures, noting “it is the best I can do in such a short time.” Some have presumed he was sending the circled photo above, but the use of plural photographs, could mean what he sent was the analysis above, having two photos in it. It’s not entirely clear what the rush was all about or why that precluded better pictures. (source)

Following this is a long gap in the timeline of what I've sorted out, from later '89 into early 1990. Investigators analyzed the fragment (though not for explosives residue), searched for matching board patterns, and so on. According to a Mebo site, on February 8, 1990 “a needle-thin section” was removed from the evidence, apparently for forensics work, “by Mr. French from CIBA-Geigy." Four days later, the site continues,

“Mr. Roderick MacDonald, withness no. 589, had been called into Strathclyde police-station to take some photographs of an allegedly Lockerbie-recovered MST-13 timer fragment with the allocated no: PT/35 (evidence: production no:1754) According to Court-documents, the alleged MST-13 timer fragment PT/35 was at that time no longer in its orginal condition and in one piece!” (source)

For a good trans-Atlantic, Anglo-American (sorry, Scots-American) investigation, it only seems appropriate to bring in some expertise from across the pond. Investigator Paul Foot (Flight from justice, PDF, page 11) reports a July 1990 call from FBI forensic authority and political scientist James "Tom" Thurman [wiki] offering a lead to DCI Williamson on the fragment Feraday told him of. Reportedly Feraday and Williamson both went to Virginia to meet him. Although some have said this fragment was physically taken there, and the controversy recently upped with Levy’s Lockerbie Revisited video, the preponderance of testimony suggests to me, so far, that it was just a photo. I may sort it out in a separate post.

At any rate, Thurman was able to get pictures also of a captured Libyan MST-13 timer and, on June 15 as he recalls (not July as Foot reported) found a perfect match to the fragment from Scotland. He kept some photos on file to show reporters later, including a giant blow-up, heavily blue-tinted, of the fragment, perhaps MacDonald's view. This is shown alongside a comparison board with unfilled solder lines and some odd spatterings off the touch pad. (this Mebo photo seems to be the same board Thurman compared to, here in odd color, a different angle, and labeled). The image at left also is from a Mebo graphic, with the backdrop only altered by me for aesthetic reasons. (Original Image) This is the earliest view I know of showing he top sliver missing, as well as the lower right corner cut out or at least deeply scored. Otherwise, it appears to be the same piece, if perhaps a bit bluer, probably due to photo tinting. Also note, the “M” is missing, supporting the idea it was a transitory fiber since cleaned off.

I’m still vague as to when the famous trial photo below was taken. Showing evidence PT/35(b) and, apparently, the separated corner labeled DP/31, compared to model DP/347(a), an intact MST-13 timer. This might seem the photo taken by MacDonald on Feb 12, which would leave one wondering why the trip to America if they already knew what to put it alongside. It may have been after Thurman’s ID in June, as a verification with cleaner sample, and done in 3-D. Or as some have stated, this side-by-side was done by Thurman himself, with access to both real items. Whenever, wherever, and by whomever it was captured, again with intense blue tinting of the whole evidence photo. Here I’ve color-corrected to the best (app) nexus of natural whites, standard blue backdrops, and fragment plastic color. I’m not sure where this model is from, but it’s clearly different from the one Thurman used for comparison.

In the end, counter-claims aside, the fragment looks the same throughout, other than the noted diminishings, so if any planting happened it was at the beginning, which could be later than the paperwork suggests. But the case was made and handed to us thusly: this was from the wreckage, near the bomb, perhaps part of it. It was handled carefully by trained and diligent professionals leaving a clear paper trail. It was rigorously matched, with photos AND microscopes, to a style used by Libyan operatives. And it all came down to a fragment of circuit board, and wound up appealing to the kind of late-90s popular TV fiction mentality needed to win crucial public/political support for the indictment. As agent Thurman bragged to the TV news just after the 1991 indictment, "when that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it." Whether by accident or staging, it was brilliant theater.

THE LONG RUN-UP TO BLAMING LIBYA

2009-09-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

PAN AM 103, SYRIA, IRAQ, AND A TIMELINE OF BLAME: 1988-1991
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
September 30 2009
last update 10/3

Following the December 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing, the congruence of original clues that the investigation were following pointed quite clearly in one direction: to the Syria-based PFLPGC group, apparently commissioned by Iran as in-kind retaliation for the USS Vincenes incident. By late 1991 the focus had long-since shifted and had come to the indictment of two Libyans, sparking a long-simmering political dispute capped with a guilty verdict and life sentence for one of them (al Megrahi) handed down nine years later.

The timeline in between is a little murky, but the investigative shift appears to coincide, roughly, with the 1990-91 Gulf War. In this context, Iran was a force one wouldn’t want too much quarrel with while focusing on their more built-up neighbor. Syria, on Iraq’s other flank, had agreed to assist the U.S effort in line with the general mindset of the Arab League. Pursuing a terror group sponsored by Damascus over the bombing would be politically inconvenient. Coincidentally of course,as case expert Paul Foot noted, after the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, “the official view of the disaster was that Syria had, in Bush's typically elegant phrase, 'taken a bum rap on this'; and that the people responsible for Lockerbie came from the one Arab state which had denounced the US role in the Gulf War: Libya.”

Col. Gadaffi's regime was already a convenient enemy known for supporting anti-American terrorism, and had their own poignant reasons for revenge – the death of scores of Libyans, including an adopted daughter of Gadaffi’s own, by U.S. bombing in 1986. And most of the clues pointing to a shift in blame started emerging, all on their own it might seem, well before the open saber rattling in the Gulf. Foot noted one of the earliest harbingers of a course change “in mid-March 1989, three months after Lockerbie,” when “George Bush rang Margaret Thatcher to warn her to 'cool it' on the subject.” Could this have been triggered by the Gulf War’s alliance system?

A 2008 BBC documentary agreed that as of mid-1989, “Britain’s biggest mass murder investigation looked like it was stalling,” unable to find the hard links to the PFLP necessary to continue. Countering the cynical conspiracy theorists that blame Gulf War politics, they report that clues pointing to Libya started coming in “from August 1989, twelve months before the invasion of Kuwait.” This, it went on, was an anomalous report from Frankfurt Airport suggesting an unaccompanied bag from Malta had gotten onto PA103 there; Malta points straight to Libya, Tripoli’s “backdoor to the West,” as the video puts it.

The most important clue would be the MST-13 timer fragment, identified in mid-1990, linked via its maker Mebo to Libyan intelligence. If the Libyans were not guilty, as seems the case, it’s almost necessary the fragment was planted. According to official paperwork (which is actually pretty dubious), this was no later than mid-May 1989, when it was first catalogued. Barring altered records, a plan to implicate Gadaffi’s team had to be in execution this early. Again, could this first huge step towards the Libyan guilt myth have been triggered by the coming showdown with the Butcher of Baghdad? Surely a rational thinker is looking here for less obvious outside reasons to look elsewhere, or simply... the evidence emerging?

Any explanation that relies solely on the coalition-building running up to Operation Desert Storm is bound to miss valuable leads; there had to be more at work with how the onetime PLFPGC suspects were handled; at least one of them was reportedly a CIA asset, and he and others had been released from prison with suspicious ease just after getting caught with bombs similar to what brought down 103, but shortly before it was brought down. Something looks embarrassing there no matter who you want to look at instead. And for what it’s worth, the pros of leaning against Libya in particular would be known and considered independently. But finally, I contend Gulf War-type thinking could also be a strong or central factor, even for the earliest of alleged shenanigans, and helps flesh out the "motive" category for any speculation.

This can be seen at the level where things seem almost "scripted" in grand strategic sweeps, a changing geopolitical zeitgeist some are privy to well before others. This timeline of the Iran-Iraq War shows the zeitgeist of mid-1988 was of the United States and its armed proxy Iraq working in tandem, partly intentional, partly accidental (or rather, the USS Vincennes incident) against a common foe. Like a tsunami the hits came down on Iran and its people, subduing Tehran into a weaker hand at the ceasefire finally agreed in late July. Almost exactly two years later the US was fighting against Iraq.

What happened in between? Most run-of-the-mill Gulf War timelines start with late May 1990 and Iraq's charges of economic warfare against Kuwait. One might guess some foreshadowing being picked up by American minds prior to this, but it's more than just shadows. The background I needed I already learned reading Ramsey Clark's The Fire This Time (1992). It’s a slanted work to be sure, but quite informative in its way. His intro timeline [p xxiv-xxv] goes into some relevant details missed by the ones I was seeing on the internet. Let's follow it backwards from May 1990 to see how far back the mindshift towards Iraq as the enemy goes:

February 1990 – General Schwwarzkopf testifies before the Senate of the need for the United States to increase its military presence in the Gulf region. He warns that “Iraq has the capability to militarily coerce its neighbors.”
January 1990 CENTCOM headqyuarters stages a game entitled Look, which tests War Plan 1002-90.
1989 War Plan 1002, originally conceived in 1981 to counter a supposed Soviet threat to the Persian Gulf, is adjusted to designate Iraq as the threat to the region. The plan is renamed War Plan 1002-90.
1988 [...] A ceaefire agreement is signed between Iran and Iraq in August. U.S. policy towards Iraq shifts dramatically. The Center for Strategic and International Studies begins a two-year study predicting the outcome of a war between the United States and Iraq.

On the evidence and time of the "dramatic" attitude shift, Clark started with the Iraqi chemical weapons attack on Halabja, March 1988. The horrifically illegal toxic slaughter of thousands of Kurds, many adults of whom had collaborated with the iranians, was largely ignored by western media and governments at the time, even after large Kurdish protests at the UN. [p 19-20] The zeitgeist of mid 1988, or simple ignorance, could explain these oversights.

Clark then noted it was on September 8, just three weeks after the Iran-Iraq cease fire, that the U.S. finally decided to announce that their erstwhile proxy had gassed a group of people that happened to be tied by ethnicity. A State Department spokesperson referred to the attack(s) (vaguely related) as “abhorrent and unjustifiable.” The same day, Iraq’s Foreign Minister was in town to meet Secretary of State Schultz, and had the chance to be barraged with unexpected questions and to respond weakly. Within a day of this well-placed slap. “the Senate unanimously voted to impose sanctions” on Iraq. Somehow this “never became law” but was seen as “a threat and a humiliation” by Iraq, and ultimately a harbinger of things to come.

So was the necessary mindset there and strong to make nice with Iraq's enemies even four months before the Lockerbie bombing? It was there, if requiring serious foresight to pick out early on. But the new zeitgeist had surely grown some in currency by, say, March '89. This does not mean it's the reason the blame shifted, but shouldn't be scratched as one of the birds to be killed with this stone.

MST-13 COMPARATIVE GRAPHICS no. 2

2009-09-25T23:48:00.000-07:00

A CHIP OFF THE OLD BOARD AND A CHIP OFF OF THAT
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
September 29 2009
Last update 10/22

Among the evidence used to implicate Libyan al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am 103, the strongest, most tangible, most sciencey, is the small but identifiable fragment of timer circuit board though by some to have triggered the bomb that brought the plane down on Lockerbie Scotland in December 1988. What we know is the style is the same, circuit-wise, as a MST-13 board, made by a Swiss company, Mebo, in a limited run of 20 (plus three prototypes) for Libyan intelligence in the mid-1980s. Notwithstanding the likelihood of anything surviving the reported type of explosion, fact is little is alleged to survive, and I will proceed on the notion that it's possible for this to be genuine, but far from a foregone conclusion.

In the course of a discussion thread started at the JREF forum by member Rolfe, examining whether the timer fragment was planted, I was able to establish some visual patterns helpful to understanding the issue. There are already numerous documented, eyebrow-raising anomalies with how this historic evidence has been handled and by whom, and I will address these elsewhere - here I hope to just make a quick post to convey, mostly with pictures, what I thought might be an important piece of new information I discovered looking at some jpeg images, available online and purporting to be genuine trial-related evidentiary photos. One may note a color shift from the first to view to the last, with an original faintly blue-tinted gray later showing as tinted blue all over the image. The board's color is referred to by all who speak of it as "green." The shape and layout of the fragment as seen in each photo, however, remains consistent enough, steadily holding the known shape of Mebo's MST-13 board.

< The first, chronologically, shows a battered collar from a "Slalom" brand shirt, from which were supposedly removed some fragments, the interesting one of which is visible, blown-up, at left. This poster is annotated, in Dutch it seems, and attributes this photo to Dr. Thomas Hayes, RARDE scientist, on September 12 1989. For convenience, I'm using this to identify the shot.

> The next is a file photo shown on ABC News in Nov. 1991 by FBI agent James "Tom" Thurman. This was presumably taken at the time of his June 15 1990 identification of the fragment as from a MST-13. There is plenty of confusion also as to whether he actually inspected the fragment or a photo of it, but here I'll just share his publicized hard copy, stretched to the same proportions as the exhibit photo (below), from Gideon Levy's totally amazing (but partly Dutch) Lockerbie Revisited video. Note the deep cuts, meeting at a right angle in the lower right of the touch pad. This does not seem to be present in the older photo.

< Exhibit PT35(b) photo - it's unknown at what time this was taken, but probably sometime around mid-1990. This is the most commonly seen view, as it clarifies just how open-and-shut the case is. Case being, does this dubious fragment match a board style similar to one usually made by... etc. The comparison model is reportedly an intact MST-13 confiscated from another Libyan intelligence agent, who had been planning some different bombing. It's supposedly just these two items side-by-side that allowed agent Thurman to make the connection.

Dr. Ludwig De Brackeleer, however, as a minor point of a detailed article largely about the fragment, disagreed:

There is a small glitch... It is obvious that the fragment PT35(b) does not come from one of the 20 machine-made MST13 timer delivered to Libya. The location of the T shaped touch pad, its absolute and relative dimensions do not match. Moreover the curvature of the fragment round edge equally differs!

< I took the corner from the intact board in PT35(b) into Photoshop and applied the 'trace contour' filter. Beneath this I scaled a blowup of the fragment until the "1" shaped touch pad and as much as possible matched. It's quite a perfect fit in fact, minus a missing top portion, in addition to missing sections left, right, and below - not too surprising.

What I do find interesting is, well, this:

The earlier view is lacking the right-angle cut marks marking the lower right quadrant, and the later one is lacking the top portion straight across. Why on Earth would the top portion of a piece of evidence just go missing, and why would someone hack lines across it like that?

I had my own elaborate thoughts about some renegade scientist who smelled a rat swiping a chunk to hold as blackmail, using a safe deposit box and a team of Swiss lawyers, and was trying to tie in both the Mossad and an elaborate car chase through the plazas of Rome. Before I got this far however, JREF member Dan O, who seems to know a lot about electronics and investigations, offered a more plausible explanation:

In order to examine the cross section of the piece for identification of the material, it must be cleanly cut through a good part of the board. They need to make two cuts at right angles to map the orientation of the fibers in the epoxy board. Obviously some of the documentation for this chip is not present or this would have been explained. link

That the gouges are deep into the board is evident looking at the middle view, Thurman's file photo. The portion above the horizontal slice is definitively darker than the section below, indicating slightly different planes catching the light differently. The board is either bent or completely cut through there. Where the vertical slice crosses the solder lines at bottom, it seems the solder was pulled along into a short connecting line. This is only hinted at in the later exhibit photo but quite pronounced in Thurman's picture. Below is a closer view, shown on 60 Minutes in 1999.

The missing top is a little more problematic. Dan O. seems to think a cross-section examination or something of that sort might explain the decapitation, but agreed with me that it's unusual to not present the evidence as whole as possible, with cut off parts either put back in or near their original places. Mebo's in-house designer of the MST-13 Ulrich Lumpert, In his highly unusual 2007 affidavit, mentioned a fragment cut up and presented as evidence. Lumpert claims he handed a non-operational brown-base prototype board to Swiss investigators for the Lockerbie investigation, and the next time he saw it was as the green/blue exhibit PT35(b) after it "had been sawed into two pieces apparently for forensic reasons."

Originally I had taken this to mean one small piece (the fragment) was presented, with the other piece (most of the board) chucked or whatever. However I'm now seeing a missing piece even of the small piece, and Mebo's "it was a fraud!" page seemed to be hinting at it when their site said the fragment itself, not the whole board, "was sawed into two parts in Scotland for forensic reasons." They specify that both were shown as evidence; "The large piece was given the police no. PT/35(b) and the smaller one was given the no. DP/31(a)." Looking back at the exhibit photo, it's got the label DP31 off to the side, right next to 35(b). Is the severed top shown off to the right, cropped off here along with the (a)? Mebo's take actually seems more on-target here after all. They seem to have decided it refers to the totally cut free lower-right corner section. The label does indeed point to that sector of the board, although it seems strange to log this as a separate piece of evidence, and it still leaves the top just gone.

The funny thing about this is, the Fraud page suggests first a full substitution - the forgers cut up Lumper's sample, as the original "brown" chip in the circled photo. Apparently they cut around the sideways letter "M" Lumpert scratched into it next to the "1" touch pad, to make sure he could recognize it later. In reality thisis more likely a fabric fiber like those hanging on the side, or perhaps some other illusion. But by Mebo's reckoning It wasn't til later that the perps realized it should be green, and this was after they'd cut up the brown one for "forensic reasons." In the exhibit photo "the larger piece," PT35(b), "was replaced with a green duplicate MST-13 fragment," carefully milled to mimick the original brown fake. This is known not so much by the color as the simple fact that "it can be clearly seen that no letter “M” was carved into it!" Oops! And for no particular reason I can discern, they decided the corner piece DP31(a) was actually from the brown original fake swapped back in to the swapped-out second replacement fake. Apparently they painted that section blue before fitting it in, so it would not stand out, since it doesn't. But you can't fool its designers, no! They see through any ruse no matter how imaginary it might be!

And nowhere in there, at least in graphics or English, did they make note of the missing top section as a glaring difference between the two fragments. For my part, I don't know what to make of it, and am willing to let it go as duly noted.

COVER-UP OVER PAN-AM 103 {MASTERLIST}

2009-09-20T02:13:00.000-07:00

Adam Larson/Caustic Logic
September 20 2009

Incident: Explosion by bomb of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, December 21, 1988.
Casualties: 259 passengers and crew, eleven victims in Lockerbie, total 270 killed.
Eventual official explanation: Libyan-sponsored terrorism, Abdelbaset Ali al Megrahi convicted, early 2001.
Outcome: Sanctions on Libya for refusing to own up, their eventual "owning up," al Megrahi's early release, and much controversy. Possibly delayed blame that could become geopolitical dynamite any time now.

The Post(s):

General Thoughts
- A Mockery of Justice? Introductory thoughts on the case, via the controversy over al Megrahi's release.
- The Long Run-up to Blaming Libya: A timeline of blame. Could it be about the Gulf War even in 1989?

The Mebo timer fragment
- MST-13 Comparitive Graphics no. 1: investigators' Views, 1989-1990. A fair amount of notes structured around nine photos/documents along the investigation, from charred cloth to
- MST-13 Comparative graphics no. 2: A chip off the old board and another chip off of that. The mysteries of the cutting up of the key evidence.
- MST-13 Comparative graphics no. 3: Altered But not Swapped - was the board tampered with? Yes. Does it matter? Probably not. Was it swapped out midstream? No. Was it a plant to begin with? I suspect so.
- PT/35(b) Move claims, pt. one: "It was never in the United States?" The big sticky thing from Lockerbie Revisited
- PT/35(b) Move claims, pt. two: A long piece outlining how the fragment worked over to the FBI and "Tom" Thurman towards it, contradictory statements on what happened next, and a few points for and against an American journey.

Luggage Records
- A Diligent Programmer: On Bogomira Erac and her fateful printout - a curious case for the unaccompanied bag from Malta.
- Frankfurt Airport Records: What paperwork there is - and isn't - and what each shows.
- Frankfurt Airport Records pt. 2: Coleman's contributions - additional relavant info from Trail of the Octopus

Forum Discussions I'm Involved in (JREF)
- General Thread, started 2007.
- MST-13 timer fragment thread
- Unaccompanied bag from Malta - evidence?
- Tony Gauci and the Mystery shopper

A MOCKERY OF JUSTICE?

2009-09-19T22:25:00.000-07:00

PA 103 INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
September 20 2009

I'm young enough still that I only faintly remember hearing, as kid that only catches the high points of the news, about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland just shy of Christmas 1988. In the decades since this distant bad thing, I was only dimly aware of the evolving impetus against some kind of Libyan terrorists and even less conscious of any controversies about the case. Recent events have however brought the story to my attention as something worth covering on this site. It’s not quite a false flag operation, at least not necessarily, but it does appear to be a manufactured crisis, a big lie hatched in conspiracy, foisted on the world by and for power.

It took over twelve years and epic political maneuvers to secure the only conviction in connection with the bombing, with Libyan "official" Abdelbaset Ali al Megrahi sentenced in January 2001 to 27 years to life. A few weeks ago, after serving just over 8 years, he was ordered freed by the Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill on what’s called “compassionate grounds.” Aged 57 and given but months to live due to aggressive prostate cancer, the convicted killer of 270 flew home to Libya and his family on August 20. Angry crowds along his route out of town and remote gripes from elsewhere evidence the bitterness many feel for Scottish “compassion” and for the “hero’s welcome” accorded al Megrahi on his return home. What’s worse, the stated prognosis of three months to live has been questioned – it could be as high as eight, and the convicted murderer of 270 will enjoy them, if in great discomfort, at least in freedom and among those he loves.

Al Megrahi (left) meets with Col. Gaddafi's son Saif at the plane in Tripoli, Aug 20 2009
The victims of the airliner bombing and their loved ones aren’t so lucky. Susan Cohen, who lost a daughter in the attack, is among the most vocal in denouncing the “appeasement” of the Libyan’s release, a "triumph for terrorism" that “really endangers the innocent public.” source The preponderance of Obama administration officials and U.S. Congress seem to agree with this basic sentiment, wishing al Megrahi to die in jail, judging by their recent comments, out of concern for justice and the sentiments of family members like Cohen. For example, former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, in a sharp letter to McKaskill, “your action makes a mockery of the rule of law,” and “gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that […they may] be freed by one man's exercise of "compassion."” Mueller, who explained he was speaking up based on his unbiassed knowledge of the case as “Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi,” capped this powerful missive with "most importantly, your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988." source

But comparing al Megrahi’s fate with those of the Pan Am 103 victims has its pitfalls. Of course he gets to die on the ground and after plenty of warning and time for closure, while they did not. Neither do a multitude of others who die every in plane crashes every year around the world, both before and since the bombing of Flight 103. They die violently in terror while al Megrahi revels in the splendor of his hospital bed. He isn’t responsible for everyone killed in a plane crash and mandated to somehow balance out their fates. So why the moral linkage for these 270 in particular? Ah yes, how silly of me, the conviction, following allegations, a trial, some evidence, and so on… but that’s where it starts to get confusing, if you take an honest closer look. It can get less confusing again, but only after you’ve passed through a mental shift and realize that no matter how official and how widely-accepted this story is, it is – at least all too probably is – dead wrong.

Props are due to JREF forum member Rolfe, who started a thread on the issue of the accused bomber and his case back in 2007 – recently given new life by the controversial release. In numerous under-appreciated posts Rolfe has presented an amazingly strong case that the convicted killer was wrongfully convicted, in a blatant frame-up by the CIA (and others), in a campaign supported by London and Washington and rubber-stamped by the thee-judge Scottish court (no jury) with its unanimous guilty verdict in January 2001.

I haven’t personally verified many of the details myself, there are agendas all around, unverifiable allegations, and plenty of bona fide mystery. My partial examination of the primary sources and the shifting public discourse shows strongly mixed feelings but frequent citations of the “theory” that al Megrahi is innocent after all. This startlingly different view has the backing and support of a stunning number of people involved in or familiar with the case: one of the lawyers who set up the trial, a special U.N. observer, a handful of British MPs, some of the American investigators and Scottish detectives, some victims’ family members, a whole Swiss electronics company tangled up in the case, and many other educated commentators, as well as much of the non-English-speaking world, and virtually the entire Arab-Muslim world. All these people are quite confident the case againt al Megrahi and Libya were manufactured for political reasons and history will, or should, absolve them.

If al Megrahi was indeed framed as it seems, this leaves the true culprits successful, unindcited, and free. This will absolutely piss off survivor’s families when and if they ever realize it. The thinking on culprits, which could soon turn heated, runs in two broad directions I find worth considering. The most obvious direction the case might go if re-opened is towards where the first official evidence clearly pointed – Palestinian terrorists acting on behalf of Iran, in revenge for an Iranian airliner shot down by the Americans. The reason(s) why this line was dropped in favor of a Libyan lead can only be guessed, but the most widely accepted theory is to minimize friction with Iran as the West shifted towards conflict with neighboring Iraq.

Coversely, this eclipsed line of evidence could be every bit as bogus as the one that replaced it, with actual guilt on some unacknowledged parties working for the CIA or some other Western agency. The actual evidence for this possibility would be slim and/or circumstantial, and some would consider the notion fanciful. Nonetheless, there were a number of pre-attack peculiarities followed by vigorous Anglo-American steering of the investigation and adamant refusal of any review or reversal of the hard-won conviction. Considering all this, which I plan to explore in some detail, it seems entirely worth considering that they’re covering some very touchy personal secrets.

FORTY-THREE YEARS OF DECEIT

2009-07-30T01:41:00.000-07:00

A BASIC OVERVIEW IN THREE MOVEMENTS
[NATO Sneak-Behind Armies series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
July 31 2009 - incomplete

NOTES ON METHOD
Here I offer a general overview of key events tangled up, allegedly at least, in the epic tragedy of NATO’s “sneak-behind armies” – the manipulation of Europe’s Cold War politics by Right Wing violence to keep the West safely away from the Left. These activities are widely believed to emerge from NATO “stay-behind” resistance cadres – whose job was to wait for a Soviet invasion – activated by CIA schemes and allegedly kept quite busy in the meantime. For the moment, I’m relying on two primary resources from the same source: Dr. Daniele Ganser’s NATO’s Secret Armies [Frank Cass, London, 2005], for some details, and for the skeleton a timeline compiled by Ganser I believe, for the Zurich-based Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security (PHP), supported by International Relations and Security Network (ISN). ISN is, in turn, part of the Zurich-based Center for Security Studies, at which Dr. Ganser is a senior researcher.

Collectively, this Swiss analysis seems a well-researched and a reasonable take, if slanted a bit to the left and against the United States and NATO. This is fine by me, and probably closer to the truth than the official disavowals of all links to the terrorist stuff. This instinct leads to an inclusive approach to research, possibly providing some chaff with the wheat. This too is fine as I like information and have my own filters (whch are currently at work, not finished). Here then is a broad sweep, in three phases, of the related events of 1947 to 1990. My source is usually the timeline, with uncited supporting details from various parts of Ganser’s book, with a few other internet sources linked where they appear.

GROUND RULES: 1947-1960
The story’s roots go back well into World War II and even further back, but really started becoming clear in 1947, as President Truman laid out his containment doctrine in March and the National Security State emerged with the September act of that name. The resultant Central Intelligence Agency ushered in its covert action section called Office of Policy Coordination, which was soon organizing existing Conservative/Monarchist/Fascist activists in Europe. These would in strict secrecy form networks of trustworthy “religious” types overseen by the respective nation’s Secret Services, which in turn maintained links to the CIA and the British foreign intelligence service MI6. Hidden weapon and supply caches and radio communication systems were the primary infrastructure set up in each nation.

The Anglo-American Trans-Atlantic consensus rolled ahead, expanded to the concept of the Western Union with “Free” Europe, ranged against the Soviet Bloc. This pre-NATO union operated from Paris with its “Clandestine Committee” (WUCC) created in 1948 to oversee the continent-wide stay-behind system. The following year, the union solidified around the North Atlantic Treaty into NATO, still based in Paris, and the WUCC was absorbed and renamed Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC).

Ironically, it was in France that one of the earliest stay-behind armies was exposed in late June 1947, when Interior Minister Edouard Depreux revealed the existence of a secret army codenamed “Plan Bleu” (as in, opposite of Red). This had envisioned a military coup to bring DeGaulle to power and sideline all leftist tendencies, and planning was well-along, with American and British support, before it was busted up. The stay-behind army Rose De Vents, French for “compass rose,” which is of course NATO’s logo, was formed within the SDECE military police following the scandal, keeping the network alive and again concealed. The government continued on wobbling left and right as is natural, until in 1958 a similar “Operation Resurrection” was organized, with the support of Rose de Vents, to replace the soft Fourth Republic with a right-wing state under De Gaulle. This time the government quietly surrendered and invited the change, thus leaving the coup d’etat unrealized.

The post-war ideological battle was uniquely pitched in France at the time, as it was in Italy, where the US had been recruiting the likes of the Fascist “black prince” Borghese for years, and spent 1947-48 pumping tens of millions into manipulation and dirty tricks for the anti-Communist campaigns for the 1948 national elections. This succeeded and left Italy solidly in the Right/NATO camp, to be kept there by complex networks operating largely through the CIA-linked P2 faux-Masonic lodge. Italy would in the years ahead become the main battlefield of the Left-Right secret wars of the European Cold War; sometimes involving the Italian mafia and/or the Vatican among the usual suspects, it tops the heap for both mind-boggling intrigue and deadly violence.

With the full, cold weight of East Germany pressing next door, West Germany had no allowable possibility of Communist leaning, and so the West’s networks there pulled out the stops following World war II. Intelligence types made contacts with useful former Nazis, including Clause Barbie, Reinhard Gehlen, etc. among other measures, so that well before NATO membership in 1955, West Germany’s government was in no way neutral. The original German equivalent of Gladio was known as BDJ-TD (Bund Deutscher Jugend – technical division), set up by other former Nazis, including Col. Gunther Bernau. This was trained, equipped, funded, and at least indirectly commanded by the CIA, and promised full protection from domestic and international law to any of its members accused of illegal acts.

The Iberian peninsula – Spain and Portugal – presented an unusual situation. Their long-running strong-man regimes were of the same Fascist camp as Germany and Italy had been, but they had managed to remain officially neutral during World War II. In the Cold War, context, onetime liabilities were suddenly clear assets, as in Germany and Italy. Spain’s surviving General Franco was given the blessing by NATO to keep ruling, and Spain was treated as a partner, but not allowed to join until 1982, after his death and a democratization process. Portugal however, under 36-year dictator Antonio Salazar, managed to become a NATO member immediately in 1949, but was never blessed with a domestic stay-behind army of the kind used elsewhere to keep governments in check. Spain’s president in 1981-82 Calvo Sotelo said after the 1990 revelations why there was no Spanish Gladio equivalent; "the regime itself was Gladio." This probably applies to Portugal as well, and thus Iberia had the trust to escape the leash and was used as a secure platform to support operations across the continent. The paths between violence-ridden Rome and Rightist safe-Haven Madrid is perhaps the heaviest trodden of the secret wars.

Not all the networks became violent or very disruptive, however; a Swedish stay-behind network was in operation by 1951 at latest, despite Sweden’s official neutrality and NATO non-member status. This was based on a Nazi-affiliated wartime model called Svealborg, operating under that same name and original director Otto Hallberg. William Colby, later CIA director, from Stockholm oversaw the training of stay-behind armies in neutrals Sweden and Finland, both of which were shut down early on, and the enduring branches for Norway and Denmark. By 1953, Swedish police arrested Sveaborg’s leader, and the network was partly unraveled, but Hallberg himself was let off the hook and it seems likely operations continued.

In a bizarre and devastating turn for the network’s fortune, in Germany, 1952, a former SS officer Hans Otto just walked into the police station in Frankfurt and ratted out the BDJ-TD network he’d become sickened with. He revealed all their secrets, their HQ location, their CIA links represented by a “Mr. Garwood.” Their bases raided and many arrested, it was found the Technical Division gang had been compiling lists of Leftists to exterminate on an unspecified “Day X.” The local government was furious, as many of its members were on the hit lists. The BDJ-TD was shut down, but apparently re-constituted, and ultimately those arrested were found not guilty, under pressure from the national government in Bonn. Likewise, operations apparently continued in some other name, spawning minor violence in the coming years.

In 1957, quieter troubles surfaced in Norway, where secret service director Vilhelm Evang, known as soft on the Left, protested to NATO about the “domestic subversion” of his country by this stay-behind system, and pulled his nation from the CPC until persuaded back. All these frictions in the stay-behind network’s first decade had the potential to bring it all down. The system remained intact though, simply re-forming where needed and hiding all new secrets. The friction may have contributed to the creation of a new system for managing the system, ushered in with NATO’s 1958 founding of the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) to coordinate their secret warfare under cover of doomsday planning. This system continued churning out the controversy over the following decades, but with renewed secrecy and then with a greater confidence, zeal, scope, and death toll.

THE EXPANSIVE YEARS: 1960-1974
In general NATO’s stay-behind system made steady gains in non-Atlantic Southern Europe in the 1960s. In Italy the Gladio network was heavily involved in “a silent coup d’état” called Piano (Plan) Solo - the military police persuaded all Socialist Ministers out of the government with a convincing show of military force. To the east of Italy, Greece and Turkey had their stay-behinds approved and were admitted to NATO in 1952. In Turkey, the CIA et al. Were impressed with the anti-communist potential of the imperialist/racist ideology of Pan-Turkism, as espoused by leaders of the 1960 military coup - supported by the secret army “Counter-Guerilla” - that had Prime Minister Adnan Menderes killed.

In 1964 In Greece Socialist George Pompandreous managed to take the Prime Minister slot despite being cheated of it in a 1961 CIA-supported vote-rigging operation. Soon he was trying to disassemble secret networks he found to be fused irremovably to the CIA. Instead he was removed in 1967, with a fierce and sweeping military coup d’état – involving the Greek stay-behind army Hellenic Raiding Force. The powerful Greek Left was punished for its intransigence in making Pompandreous possible with what Ganser describes as “a regime of imprisonment and torture, the like of which had not been seen in Western Europe since the end of the Second World War,” and which lasted for seven years before succumbing to a renewed revolt.

1966 also witnesses the creation, in Salazar’s Portugal, of “Aginter Press” which under the direction of French schemer Captain Yves Guerin Serac studied techniques of subversion, propaganda, bomb-making, network building to disseminate the skills to where needed. It was Aginter’s network that primarily solidified the overt notion of the “strategy of tension,” to disguise the acts of violence as Communist to turn the public against them and towards the real bombers. Within a few years they were killing resistance leaders in Portuguese Mozambique, working for Spain’s secret police, training Italians in bomb-making, liaising with their accomplished colleagues in rightist Greece, etc, thus raising the tension of the general political climate of Europe as the 60s slipped into the 70s.

But in NATO’s heartland – France – the decade went quite less smoothly. April 1961 had seen plotters within the French military with stay-behind-links and alleged CIA support, launch their concerted effort to alter president DeGaulle’s plans to surrender Algeria. The new Organisation Armee Secrete (OAS) takes over in Algiers in April, aiming for Paris next, the OAS insurgency brought the country near to civil war, but was gradually crushed by Paris and fully surrendered in March 1962; along with recognition of Algeria’s independence, the Algier Francaise scene faded, but its ideologues would carry on - like Guerin Serac (real name Guillou) who would help establish Aginter Press.

Perhaps aware of the American role in the networks that were plotting against him, or of other such interfere with France’s sovereignty DeGaulle started enacting policies that CIA felt were “paralyzing NATO” in Europe as early as 1961. Within five years it had come to a head, and in March 1966 the President dramatically canceled the country’s NATO membership, and ordered its headquarters to leave his soil. They complied and moved camp to neighboring Belgium. The stay-behind coordinating ACC was code-named SDRA 11, fused within the Belgian military secret service SGR based right next to NATO. They have never had to move again, thankfully. It must be quite embarrassing.

The mid-1960s saw secrets slipping as well, but compared to the gains, it seems the secret armies were running a tight ship. The timeline I’m citing here reports on NATO’s move to Brussels, “secret NATO protocols are revealed that allegedly protect right-wingers in anti-communist stay-behind armies.” In 1968 a British MI6 agent working with the stay-behind network in neutral Sweden willingly reveals secrets to the KGB. The first stay-behind arms caches in neutral Austria – 34 locations – were found by police in 1965, based on info they somehow forced from British MI6 agents who knew where they were.

Then one of the more ominous moments; on December 12 1969 a bank bombing at the Piazza Fontana in Milan killed sixteen ordinary people, mostly farmers; along with three other bombings in Italy the same day and an un-detonated fourth (C4, usually American) the brazen attack was quickly blamed on the Italian Left. During a 1990s trial, General Maletti, former head of Italian counter-intelligence, “claims that the massacre had been carried out by the Italian stay-behind army and right wing terrorists,” as the timeline puts it, “on the orders of the US secret service Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in order to discredit the Italian Communists.”

This was but the opening shot of the Italy’s nightmare, the fiercest years of the secret wars with an overall estimate of 490 killed between late 1969 and 1980. A year after the Piaza Fontana bombings, in December 1970 a coup d’etat led by Fascist luminary Valerio Borghese, supported by the Gladio networks, was only called off at the last minute under mysterious circumstances. On May 31 1972 a booby-trapped car exploded near the village Peteano killing three police officers; the terror fell on May Day, and insiders planted false leads implicating the local Communists, causing a crackdown and setbacks for their agendas. The crime was later traced, however, back to right-wing terrorists including Vincenzo Vinciguerra, who had fled to Spain with the help of the Italian secret services. He would be arrested, as such men often were, but he returns to our story in the 1980s. In 1974 two more massacres “during an anti-fascist demonstration" and "in the Rome to Munich train “Italicus Express”, kill 20 and wound well over 100, the timeline says. I’m not sure if these were also blamed on Communists but it was getting tense, resembling some kind of civil war.

1974 AND AFTER: ESCALATION AND COLLAPSE
It was in October 1974 that Italy’s legal system managed to push back at the right spot; General Vito Miceli, chief of the military secret service SID and prominent P2 member, was arrested in relation to the 1970 Borghese coup attempt. Perhaps intending to awe the court, he revealed that “it was the United States and NATO who asked me” to establish his “super SID,” which was involved in the coup. (The full quote varies, often a little misleading – later post). Miceli was acquitted in 1978 but at least one secret had slipped out, and the episode also spurred parliamentary moves to restructure and rein in the secret services. Gladio’s capabilities were thus limited, but the floating freelance terrorists beyond them were still at large.

In Denmark the secret stay-behind army Absalon tried in 1974 to block some Leftist academics from “becoming members of the directing body of the Danish Odense University,” but failed to do so, and somehow in the melee, “the secret army is exposed.” They never had much luck in the north, but in general the Iberian peninsula remained stable and strongly in NATO’s right hand. However in 1974 an unusual popular revolution (of the flowers) rocked Portugal and Salazar’s regime was overthrown. In the process Aginter Press and other NATO secret operations were shut down. Related operatives and operations moved to Spain before the new government could nab them, and from 1975 on cooperated with Franco against Basque separatists and Communists, as with the 1977 Atocha massacre.

In the mid-1970s, the Italian parliament, to smooth tensions with the large and permanently locked out Italian communist party, made moves to allow some Communists to join the government. This option unacceptable to the Italian Right, or to Washington and NATO, but it rolled ahead under MP and former President Aldo Moro. In 1978 Moro was taken hostage in Rome by “an armed secret unit” as the PHP timeline puts it, and killed 55 days later. The murder fits the motives of the secret armies, but the government enthusiastically blamed the Leftist Red Brigades, and cracked down hard. That story makes no sense, but fits perfectly with the Rightist “strategy of tension,” which was working.

Perhaps due to this encouragement, he terror continued to escalate into the worst single atrocity of the decades-long secret war; in August 1980 a massive bomb ripped apart a waiting room at the Bologna railway station, killing 85 and seriously injuring and maiming a further 200. It remains unknown, and one of the biggest questions, what full links Gladio had to the Bologna massacre. A later Italian Senate investigation found some evidence the explosives were from a cache established for the secret army. Perhaps for a bit of camouflage, this one was not blamed on Leftists but on less favored Right-Wing extremists, who probably had no access to Gladio’s stocks, and in turn claimed to be framed by Licio Gelli of the CIA-linked P2 Masonic Lodge, but were jailed anyway and remain there now. Aginter co-founder Delle Chiaie had been charged with association, but the charges were dropped. An Italian judge decades later charged Gelli with criminal diversion is the case.

Following the 1971 Turkish military coup d’état against Demirel’s center-Right regime, with the help of the stay-behind army Counter-Guerrilla. This network continued under state tutelage to kill hundreds in domestic terrorism; for example, in 1977 their gunmen killed 38 at a demonstration in Istanbul. Somewhere in there things were deemed to have slid into softness and in 1980 the commander of Counter-Guerrilla launched a successful coup to re-gain tighter control. Just as the violence against actual Communists in actual Europe was dying down things continued to stay brutal here; during the mid-1980s the stay behind army worked on answers to Turkey’s “Kurdish question,” killing and torturing thousands of suspected separatists.

The late 70s and early 80s saw revelations of the network increasing; In 1976 the German secret service BND secretary Heidrun Hofer was arrested for sharing secrets of the German stay-behind army with her husband. Her husband was apparently a spy for the KGB. Oops. The Norwegian police discover a stay-behind arms ache in 1978, leading to the arrest of Hans Otto Meyer who reveals the Norwegian secret army. In 1983 Dutch hikers near the village of Velp discover a large arms cache, a finding that led to the government admitting that the arms were related to NATO “unorthodox warfare” plans for the Netherlands. Other such remote arsenals were being used before X-day - In October 1980 gunmen at a Munich festival killed 13 and wounded hundreds of German civilians; a large weapons cache allegedly used by the right-wing assailants – later believed of the Gladio network - was discovered the following year near the village of Uelzen.

In 1984 Italy right-wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, on trial for the Peteano bombing of ‘72, reveals the Gladio secret army and its networks in great detail to Judge Felice Casson. Vinciguerra’s testimony remains perhaps the most vivid single summation of the alleged patterns of NATO/CIA manipulation: "You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game,” and convince them the danger came from the Left and the Right was their only salvation. After so describing the “strategy of tension,” Vinciguera was successfully sentenced to life and imprisoned. This time, the charges were NOT dropped. By 1984 the violence in Italy had mellowed from previous years, though not quite stopped for another year or two.

From 1982-1985, a series of brutal and terrifying armed attacks shocked NATO HQ’s host nation Belgium. The usual target was a supermarket in the Brabant region near Brussels, where supremely confident masked men started strafing shoppers, and freely engaging any police who dared show up. They usually targeted the same store chain (Delhaize) always escaped and were never caught, but sparked a heightened state of security and associated mindsets across the nation. The worst was November 9, 1985 – a pre-Christmas holiday there - in which 28 were killed and scores injured. The PHP timeline explains "investigations link the terror to a conspiracy among the Belgian stay-behind SDRA8, the Belgian Gendarmerie SDRA6, the Belgian right-wing group Westland New Post, and the Pentagon secret service Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).” Wow. This one I’ll have to look into. Whatever the case, the tough mindset adopted after the St. Martin’s Day massacre apparently caused the terror to go away, and no more attacks followed.

As Cold War tensions relaxed in the latter 1980s amid reforms in the USSR and Warsaw Pact, the PHP timeline shows no entries at all for years 1986, 87, 88, or 89. Things were certainly happening, but it was subtle, perhaps just sleep and maintenance mode. The ACC was still meeting in Brussels, and no one can say just what they were thinking, there had to be more uncertainty than before just how needed they would remain. In the autumn of 1989, the majority of Eastern Europe went through a string of revolutions, shaking off the Soviet cloak and toppling the iron curtain. Borders were re-drawn, countries re-named, and NATO given massive room for expansion as the Warsaw Pact dissolved. The wave of reform somehow echoed back on the Soviet Union itself in tsunami proportions – Gorbachev’s hope for New World Order was eclipsed by the end of the USSR itself, creating fifteen new nations and yet more room for the “North Atlantic” gang’s grasp.

At this point, any reason for the stay-behind network to exist should have been seriously reviewed, to say the least. Those who knew the Gladiators were there in the shadows may have wondered if the network would die in secret or grow and fester there in some different form. The question was most acute in Italy, where the worst violence was but a decade past. Judge Casson, who was already thinking along Gladio lines after dealing with Vinciguera in 1984, was again perusing military intelligence archives when his luck changed, due to a decision at Italy’s highest level. In January 1990, Casson applied to search a previousy top-secret military archive in Rome. Perhaps well-knowing the danger, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti granted the request in July. Casson quickly found a document naming Gladio as the network, givng clues to its NATO sponsorship, and the existence of other armies in across Europe.

With specifics in hand, Judge Casson was set to blow it all up. He passed this on to a parliament committee looking into the origins of the terrorism, and they in turn persuaded PM Andreoti to announce the news publicly. Having previously lied to cover up Gladio operations in the 1970s, he stood before the parliament on August 3 and explained the basic clean version of Gladio’s existence. He denied any link to the terrorist stuff – they only waited for war, he said. In Belgium the Allied Clandestine Committee met for the last time on October 23 and 24 to discuss the new realities of their loss of mission and of cover. As the meeting was happening, Andreotti repeated his revelation and explained they were still active and in congress at that moment in Brussels. NATO denied any stay-behind networks on November 5, then shifted back to their usual “neither confirm nor deny mode.”

The world media was immediately distracted with the Gulf War, but eventually pursued the story, searching out answers in the capitols of Europe in the last months of 1990 and to a lesser extent over the following years. Various public and private investigations turned up many clues, forming much of the timeline preceding . Many gaps remain. The program in neutral (non-NATO) countries of Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland is especially sensitive. Colonel Herbert Alboth promised to tell “the whole truth” of the Swiss secret stay-behind army P26 he once commanded, but instead fell on his own sword – repeatedly - and was found dead “stabbed with his own military bayonet.”

Within the year, based on whatever evidence, hunches, and common sense, the parliament of the European Union issued a resolution sharply condemning NATO and the United States for steering European politics with the stay-behind network. Of the involved nations, the US and UK remain the tightest-lipped. NATO continued to say nothing, the CIA refused to cooperate either with the National Security Archive’s FOIA requests or those of Dr. Ganser, or anyone else. Additional clues continued to surface from time to time. London’s Imperial War Museum in 1995 did ackowledge in an exhibit ("Secret Wars") MI6 and SAS involvement in forming stay-behinds across Western Europe following World War II. But officially, nothing.
...

“WHERE ARE AMERICANS"...

2009-07-22T02:43:00.000-07:00

...MENTIONED IN THE TIMELINE?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
[USS Liberty series]
July 21 2009
last update 7/29/09

As a side-note to my little investigation, and a cautionary note about double-checking your sources, I’ll relate an episode surrounding IDF transcripts of the air attack on USS Liberty<>, as published in the Jerusalem Post in 2004. Writer Arieh O’Sullivan had been granted a special session to hear the tapes as well as keep and publish paper transcripts, a privilege shared with but a few others, like Miami judge A. Jay Cristol. The article is only openly available on the internet in places like this discussion forum post, where I first found it. I had first relied on this version but found – as is common in fruit - the juiciest spot was also the most rotten. The placement of a key quote seemed to support the fighters at the scene spotting and reporting the US flag on Liberty - it emerged as a discrepancy when I was comparing Judge Cristol’s transcript to the Post’s and found two major differences about two minutes apart, graphed out below.

Time

Cristol

O’Sullivan

1354

L.K.: What is that? Americans?

LK What is this? Americans?

Shimon: What Americans?

X[not included]X

Kislev: Robert, what did you say?

KISLEV Robert, what are you saying?

[No one answers]

(quickly disregarding the comment, Kislev moves on)

Time

Cristol

O’Sullivan

1356

Shimon: Robert, have Royal call us on 19.

SHIMON Robert, have Royal call us on 19.

Robert: Royal to you on 19.

ROBERT Royal to you on 19.

X[not included]X

SHOMON Where are Americans?

1357

Shimon: Just a minute Kislev, we see the ship [on radar]. That’s one hell of a ship.

SHIMON Just a second, Kislev, we see the ship. (on radar) That's one hell of a ship.

The obvious point to note up-front here is that each transcript is missing exactly one line that’s in the other, and the two lines are quite similar – “what” compared to “where are” Americans. It’s quite possible this is just some error or misplacement of a line that fits better earlier in response to LK’s “hunch,” which I’ve pondered on elsewhere. O’Sullivan’s entry there has Shimon misspelled as “Shomon,” for what it’s worth. A sign of sloppy tampering?

Once I had thought out the implications, this lead became so exciting I included it in the oiginal Telex and Tapes part III. I never felt right about taking this at face value, and my main point was to just explain what the IDF’s evidence shows, vis-a-vis the flag. They insist it shows they had no such report, but it seemed the opposite was true! So I got a bit gung-ho as I was actually writing the post and went ahead and included the point so:

[the quote comes] immediately after talking to Royal flight, the second wave attackers at the scene, in an unheard exchange. […] I already noted no flag reports unless they were on another line. And here is just such a moment, about a minute into the air attack when the pilots first got up close, and the first response is “where are Americans?” According to one of the versions, at least.

With the proper qualifiers it went up and then I checked it out. Good thing, since the evidence was false. Other on-line postings of the article from Free Republic and United Jerusalem do not have the “error” - the line is in the right spot at 13:54, and not at 56. The misspelled “Shomomn” label, however, is attached to the entry in this version as well.

In each case the story’s title is given as “Exclusive: Liberty attack tapes revealed,” credited to Arieh O'Sullivan and dated Jun. 3, 2004. When I finally took the time and a few bucks to get a direct copy from the Jpost archive, I found no article of that title. The archive is supposed to have everything they’ve printed, but this version is missing. In its place is a slightly different article, by O’Sullivan, under a different name and published the next day. "Liberty revisited: the attack," published June 4, 2004 (partial re-post here).

I didn’t compare them top-to-bottom, but intro wording is slightly different, the all-caps labels were dropped, and “Shomon” has been changed to the correct spelling. I didn’t compare the transcripts closely, but my main question was answered. Apparently the first article had a typo that was fixed, along with other minor tweaks, with a second printing the next day.

And some jackass switched the order of certain potent lines in the first version to create some fake evidence for someone to latch onto. Forum member big80a2, or someone he/she trusts, got this important line scrambled to just the right wrong spot in what cannot be considered a plausible accident. This poster specifically felt that despite this curiously potent line “these tapes prove it was a onfurtune mistake.” I don’t know how widely this ruse worked, but it got me for a bit. Sort of.

By placing Shimon’s question in the right spot, all the non-altered versions leave no audible record on Shimon’s talk with Royal flight or responses. A remaining point still stands about this transaction. Cristol noted: “At this time Royal is on another channel (frequency). Royal is arguing with his controller about the fact that he is carrying napalm, not iron bombs.] It’s not clear how he knows that’s what the argument was about. As far as we know, Mr Shimon really did hear about a flag and ask about Americans, or conspicuously ignore the info and demand attack. We don’t know what was said, as there’s been no evidence revealed, that channel was either not recorded or not included in these tapes, for some reason.

Update 7/29: I was just looking at my link to the erred posting, as provided at top, and it is not in error now. I searched and found another posting of the same article by a different member at the same forum, thinking maybe that's the one I cited, but it too is correct. I know the one I copied had the error, and it was still there as i was writing my article, but now I'm not sure which one it was - the second actually looks more familiar. Whatever the case, it was changed back just recently after five years of being wrong, so probably due to this exposure.

TELEX AND TAPES, PART FOUR

2009-07-08T23:46:00.000-07:00

THE FINAL WORD: 2001-2007
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
[USS Liberty series]
July 8 2009, last update 7/31

RESPONSIVE RECORDS
Apparently spurred by the Bamford/Nowicki revalations about recorded intercepts of the Liberty attack (as covered in part two), Judge A. Jay Cristol moved to have any such tapes declassified, He was probably confident they would show what he knew the IDF communications to show (as covered in part three) – the attackers had no idea they were attacking an American vessel, and all IDF parties missed the U.S. flag until well after they had stopped “screwing her.” Cristol filed a FOIA request with the National Security Agency (NSA) in April 2001 for release of any transmissions, on the day of the attack, to or from USS Liberty, USS Amberjack (submarine, long story), or the EC-121 everyone was talking about at the time. [1]

The judge gave them nearly two years before deciding the agency had “failed to comply” and he launched a lawsuit, via the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida, in January 2003. [2] This was sufficient to jar things loose; after a brief back-and-forth over details of the request, successful declassification was announced by the NSA’s Director of Policy on July 2 2003. Searches for the first two, anything from the ephemeral Amberjack or from spy ship Liberty (verified to be near the attack) revealed “no records responsive.” However the then-secret agency did manage to gather some intel from the plane, on tapes they still had around. These were declassified, and sent to Cristol in original audio and translated transcripts. [3] These amazing primary source materials arrived only after his book had been printed, but he was missing less than you might think - the 2003 release is far more noteworthy for what it doesn’t clarify than what it does.

THE CONTENTS: REALITY OR RITUAL?
The tapes are of voice communications, in Hebrew, and cover the time frame 1429 to 1519 local time. The start point of 2:29pm is about 15 minutes after the air attackers left, and six minutes before the MTBs fired their torpedoes. Thus it starts within “the attack” time span, and ends at 15:19, a few minutes after the flag was reported by the helicopters. The 50 minutes of audio between is only of talk between the “Super Frelon” helicopters and their IAF controllers at Hazor Airfield. These two birds were never involved in the attack and only arrived well after it was done to assess the situation and offer any help needed (opinions on the type of "help" intended differ). Most of the intercept is long, dull stretches of “are we there yet?” “Where are you?” “We’re over here” type chatter. Both audio (.wav) and transcripts (.pdf) are available for download here.

The tapes do show, on this limited level, an apparent confusion about the nationality of the crew, perhaps reflecting the back-and-forth between the "hunches" of some and the heedlessness of others. En route Hazor tells them the target is an Egyptian warship, and then and Egyptian supply ship. Then some doubt becomes evident just before they got on the scene; since there was supposedly “no flag on her!” it was to imperative to figure out where they came from. It was decided that only pulling survivors from the water or landing on the ship and interrogating them would do, and both options were discussed. English or Arabic were the specified languages to listen for. Someone was always wondering about "Americans," even though they supposedly had no reason to (see hunch link and part three) until after the flag was seen. But here it starts just before.

Upon arrival, the first helicopter reports the hull number again as “CTR-5” (which still meant "noting") and no visible flag, while the second apparently reported the American flag. This must occur somewhere a little before 15:12 (around 22:50 in the audio of tape 105). Although he’s present earlier describing the scene, and does seem to confirm with the controller after this, the pilot is not to be heard actually reporting a flag, on the audio or paper versions. Preceding the flag talk is at least two minutes of the controller talking one-way with no audible input from the helicopters. At 13:10:06 he warns the pilots to “watch out for the mast there,” which is where the flag should be seen. No response. Twenty seconds later he tells the lead pilot “take 810 with you, you’re both returning home.” Again no pilot response is heard. Thirty-six seconds later Hazor says, per the transcript:

13:12:03 Hazor: RGR, QSL, I understand.
13:12:08 Hazor: RGR, understand. Did you clearly identify an American flag?
13:12:13 Hazor: Thanks (Toda), stay over the area for now.
After an eight-second pause, the pilots finally pipe in, with the distinctive “choppy” chopper signal.
13:12:21 Pilot: [unknown statement, 3 sec, transcribed as “(CL)”]
13:12:31 Pilot: [unknown question, 1.5 sec, as “(CL)”]
13:12:36 Hazor: [answer, question, as “(CL)”]
13:12:40 Pilot: [short answer, not transcribed]
13:12:41 Hazor: They request that you make another pass and check once again whether it is really an American flag.
13:12:45 Pilot: RGR.

As on paper, the question in voce “did you clearly identify an American flag?” (22:59 in the wav audio) seems to come from nowhere. He was already aware that English might be spoken on the ship, and had seemingly heard nothing about such a sign, or anything at all, from the birds on the scene. Was he asking them to go ahead and verify the question scrawled on a napkin and slipped to him, after switching their channel back on? Sometimes these tapes sound more like ritual than reality.

RESPONSIVE REFLECTIONS
This release by NSA at the least failed to specifically contradict the IDF’s story that only the helicopter pilots spotted the flag. It supports it indirectly, in that the Hazor controller was certainly privy to no conclusive American ID, although he had the notion. However, the public had yet to see the rest of the recordings, the parts with the actual attack, during which the flag was also mentioned (according to the preponderance of American witnesses). Left hanging, different people drew different conclusions.

One side claimed, as they always have, that the issue was now closed. Judge Cristol told CNN in July "I don't think there's any question that anyone who reads these tapes would be absolutely convinced there was the fog of war out there […] I think this is probably the most important link in the evidence that ought to bring closure to this matter," Cristol said. [5] Somewhat more mildly, Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev told CNN the tapes served as "further evidence that the Liberty incident was a terrible and tragic case of mistaken identity." [6] A July 9 Ha'aretz article, widely re-printed, was poorly titled "U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident." [7]

Proof that it wasn’t fully sunk, Liberty survivor and early revisionist James Ennes, wrote in September that the ship’s crew “were pleased when we learned in June that apologists for our attackers had asked the federal courts to order the release of key intercept transcripts compiled during the attack.” He was confident that such tapes “would prove our case and disprove that of the apologists,” but “instead of releasing transcripts of the attack itself,” the NSA only put out tapes of the helicopters that “came afterward to clean up,” as he ambiguously describes their mission. [8]

Ennes finds that “nothing in the documents released suggests that [the attack] was an accident.” [9] To be fair, the tapes do show apparent confusion vis-a-vis the ship’s nationality, and other IDF records generally line up on the same confusion, with Soviet thrown into the mix at least at one point. [10] To me it’s exactly this confusion that makes no sense, given the broad sweep of ignorance required, making it less “fog of war” than “super-dense thunderhead of war.” Far more blinding, that, but it requires special conditions to form.

Even accepting the confusion in these tapes as genuine, characterizing it as proving the accidental attack theory is both misleading and common. “To our astonishment,” Ennes wrote, perhaps sarcastically, “the pro-Israel PR team put their own false spin on what was released. […] This false account was […] repeated as established fact - often with quotes from Chief Apologist A. Jay Cristol, proclaiming victory.” [11] A Baltimore Sun article from July 16 published some Cristol’s triumphant proclamations:

“[Cristol] says the recordings support his conclusion that the Israeli attackers had no idea they were targeting a U.S. vessel. […] "these tapes contain nothing showing that the attack was deliberate […] to me at least, they show it was a mistake […] nothing more of significance [remains] to be found. I think it will settle the matter for all but that 2 percent of die-hard conspiracy theorists.”” [12]

I suspect his math is wrong here on the numbers who would refuse to be distracted, it’s true that the “die-hards” (they survived rockets, napalm, torpedoes) were among them. So was Steve Forslund, who responded to these “only and final "tapes" that the NSA has released” in his statement to the Liberty Survivors' Assn. “Parties state that these are the only tapes of intercepts that exist. That may very well be true, now.” [13] But he apparently remains as steadfast as ever that the actual attack traffic was intercepted, transcribed in English and printed at his station at Offutt AFB, and showed an assault proceeding despite flag reports and pilot protests (see part one). The Agency disagrees.

UNDER THE BUS
The chief NSA linguist aboard the EC-121 in question, Marvin Nowicki, had to be disappointed. Like Forslund and others, he felt the transmissions he captured were of the attack and featured the stars and stripes. In his version, of course, this stops the attack. Judging by his past advocacy for release of the exculpatory recordings he remembered, Nowicki likely did something about this snub, quietly and respectfully. But there would be no more; in early June of 2007 the NSA “finalized the review of all material relative to the 08 June 1967 attack on the USS Liberty. This additional release adds to the collection of documents and audio recordings and transcripts previously posted to the site on 02 July 2003.” What was added was fairly minor, and included no additional intercepts. Again, they clearly affirmed that all they got was "voice conversations between two Israeli helicopter pilots [...] following the attack on the Liberty." "No communications were available [...] that might reflect the attack or reaction," they regretted to inform the pubic. [14] that June 8, the exact 40th anniversary of the attack, was selected for this statement served to amplify the deliberate finality of it.

The telex witnesses of part one, and Nowicki and his teammate all maintained the tapes “reflected the attack” quite clearly, as well as the U.S. flag. The NSA acknowledges only recordings that mention the ensign but well after the attack. This is noteworthy in that it offers a plausible explanation – all these men simply heard this helicopter talk and read in that the helicopters were involved in a vicious attack. For comparison, the man who captured these signals for the NSA has said:

“For the record, we (my teammate and I) both heard and recorded the references to the U.S. flag made by the pilots and captains of the motor torpedo boats.” [15] “[O]nly later in the afternoon did we hear references to [the] flag during the attacks.” [16] ”As I recall, we recorded most, if not all, of the attack.” [17]

There is little in these distinctive helicopter communications about seeing a ship and flying survivors to shore that could be construed as a two-phase air-sea attack being either carried out or called off. Nonetheless, many rational people will now conclude, however odd such a widespread embellishment seems, that they simply must have been confused.

So, Nowicki’s last chance had come and gone; the NSA decided everything it recorded can be released publicly, and his tapes weren’t on this last bus either. To mix metaphors, he was in fact left beneath this last bus as it rolled away into the night over his previous credibility. His tapes were never to return, obliviated down the memory hole. There’s been no comment since then, but his teammate – named as Michael Prostinak - was interviewed after this final thud, and told Chicago Tribune’s John Crewdson "I can tell you there were more tapes than just the three on the Internet," he said, referring to the NSA’s 2003 releases. "No doubt in my mind, more than three tapes." After inspecting these, “Prostinak said it was clear from the sequence in which they were numbered that at least two tapes that had once existed were not there.” These other tapes, unlike those released, contained clear language indicating an attack; Prostinak told Crewdson the people he heard “were not just tranquil or taking care of business as normal. We knew that something was being attacked." [18]

The agency disagrees.
---
Sources:
[1, 2] US District Court, Southern District of Florida. A. Jat Cristol v. National Security Agency. Case No. 03-20123. Stamped 21 Januart 2003. Accessed via: http://www.fas.org/sgp/foia/cristol.html
[3] http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/liberty.html
[4] Hanley, Delinda. Those Not Invited to Speak Steal the Show at State Department Liberty Discussion. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. March 2004. http://www.wrmea.com/archives/March_2004/0403009b.html
[5, 6] Ensor, David. “USS Liberty attack tapes released.” CNN.com. July 10, 2003. http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/09/uss.liberty.tapes/
[7] Guttman, Nathan. “U.S. agency confirms sinking of USS Liberty was accident.” Haaretz. July 9 2003. Last Update: 09/07/2003. Found via: http://www.israelforum.com/board/showthread.php?t=3237
[8, 9, 11] Ennes, James M. “National Security Agency Documents on Attack on USS Liberty Prove What?” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 2003, page 25. By James M. Ennes http://www.wrmea.com/archives/sept03/0309025.html
[10] See Division 914 War Log, 1451 entry. http://www.thelibertyincident.com/israellogs.html
[12] Shane, Scott. NSA tapes offer clues in '67 attack on U.S. spy ship. Baltimore Sun. July 16 2003. Found via: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/947319/posts
[13] Forslund, Steve. Statement to USS Liberty Survivor’s Association. Undated (apparently 2003 or 2004). http://www.ussliberty.org/forslund.htm
[14] National Security Agency. Declassification initiatives: USS Liberty: What’s New? Posted January 15 2009. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/uss_liberty/
[15] Nowicki, letter to the Editor, Wall Street Journal. Published May 16 2001.
http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-wsj.html
[16] Nowicki. Exculpatory evidence supporting a mistaken attack
http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-evidence.html
[17] Nowicki. E-mail to James Bamforth [sic] March 3 2000. http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-email.html
[18] Crewdson, John. "New revelations in attack on American spy ship." Chicago Tribune. October 2 2007. Page 6. http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,1050179.story

ON THE MISSION OF THE 9/19 SOLDIERS

2009-06-25T02:44:00.000-07:00

HE WHO DARES WHAT?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
[False-Flagging Iraq series]
June 25 2009
incomplete

When two British Special Forces soldiers were arrested in Basra on September 19 2005, many questions were raised. Among the most important is the nature of the mission they were on that brought them into violent confrontation with their erstwhile allies, the local police, and in turn brought the local British forces smashing through the police and the local "lynch mob" to get them back, killing around a dozen Iraqis along the way. This had better be good...

We know the two men were (believed to be) part of the UK Army Special Air Service (SAS), an elite force famous for bold raids behind enemy lines and operating under the motto “Who Dares, Wins.” If so, what were they daring to do on this day? A Basra official, Mohammed al-Abadi, complained the soldiers “refused to say what their mission was and suggested that we ask their commander.” [1] To my knowledge, they never got an answer from above either. Different solutions to the riddle have been offered in the days afterwards, before the issue went into longtime hibernation mode. Below I’ll explore the four broad categories of theory.

1) False-Flagging Basra
The first category was the first we heard in detail - those peculiar locals saw the darkest version, that the SAS men were involved in false flag terrorism. Those with known grudges were the most vocal; Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, a spokesman for rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr, issued a press release saying “we believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets,” that this attack was to be a car-bombing, that they were “disguised as members of the Mehdi Army” (Sadr’s own group), and that the police refused to release the imposters since “they were considered to be planning terrorist attacks.” [2]

Many others far from the fray have concluded – or alluded to - the same; one critic called it “a clear instance of a foreign power attempting to fabricate a terrorist attack. Why else would the soldiers be dressed as Arabs if not to frame them? Why have a car laden with explosives if you don't plan to use them for destructive purposes?” [3] There are of course other reasons to dress like someone besides framing them, and other reasons – if few – for driving an explosive car. There’s no direct evidence I’m aware of for a booby-trapped car. There IS evidence of people stating this as fact, and for same people already believing the Coalition was behind the public bombings (this “previous reports confirm” or “prior-bias weakens” question will get its own post later).

There may have been a bomb as “reported” after all, with the evidence hushed-up afterwards, but I’m leaning the other way – the later lack of clues reveals the first reports were probably just opinionated propaganda. These reports being false doesn’t rule out some other planned provocation, which they were armed enough for, but absent a bomb there’s less reason to suspect such. Therefore, this case as I understand it does little to directly support the coalition false-flag theory.

2) Routine Intelligence Work
The UK Telegraph reported initially “the SAS men are thought to have been on a close observation patrol when they were stopped at a checkpoint.” The same piece explains how “soldiers have been told not to stop if challenged while working under-cover, as insurgents often masquerade as police officers.” [4] It would seem unlikely they were told to shoot while not stopping, although it seems that’s what they did. It makes perfect sense however that soldiers decked out as militants should not stop for possible militants disguised as police – especially since they’d already shot one of the real, militia-sympathizing Basra police officers.

Another paper, The Scotsman reported that “that the soldiers were part of an "undercover special forces detachment" in Basra to "bridge the intelligence void” and “gather human intelligence during counter-terrorist missions."” [5] One diplomat told the Guardian "We explained clearly to the authorities that they were British forces on a run-of-the mill observation mission." [6] Of course to observe out in the world It helps to blend in, hence the wigs and gauzy stuff; light-skinned as they were, Chechens might have been a good cover. Then they just panicked and started shooting at militia-police.

These are all boring missions that hardly seem worthy of such a cloak and dagger moment as 9/19. Sometimes however reality is just that – the boring choice. That hasn’t kept some from offering some enhanced versions…

3) Special Missions That Make Neat Political Points
Other sources narrow down the intelligence mission to Investigating a police-militia link, police corruption, torture, cat mutilations, and other such evils. The Herald: “Sources say the British soldiers […] were looking at infiltration of the city’s police by the followers of the outspoken Shi’ite cleric, Moqtada al Sadr.” [7] The Times, September 21: “The two soldiers are believed to have been investigating a corrupt police unit in Basra who were colluding with Shia militia leaders. Some of the men who later interrogated them are believed to be part of this same unit.” [8] Indeed, their mission proved spectacularly successful in flushing out such links, even though it seems to have gone terribly awry to do so.

In October, the Telegraph reported they finally “can reveal […] the real story,” which was that the soldiers were “spying on a senior police commander who was torturing prisoners with an electric drill.” That's certainly horrifying, and the paper described their mission as investigating “who was behind the reign of terror" at the very jail they wound up inside of. Brigadier John Lorimer, the man who oversaw the soldiers’ controversial rescue, told the paper the jail he ordered smashed down was a “very nasty place.” [9] A good way to find out what happens in the jail is to go inside it, but this was apparently not the plan, or else the costly rescue mission would not be called in to stop the process.

Another story with broader political implications and some detail to support it, was stopping roadside bombs coming in from Iran. The Sunday Times reported on the 25th, just four days after revealing their militia-police-corruption mission, that the soldiers were really “engaged in a “secret war” against insurgents bringing sophisticated bombs into the country from Iran.” [10] The deadly new bombs were made in a known Iranian style, meaning they must be from Iran. Therefore, “a 24-strong SAS team has been working out of Basra to provide a safety net to stop the bombers getting into the city from Iran,” said one source. “The aim is to identify routes used by insurgents and either capture or kill them.” [11] This system involved remote surveillance by human and electronic sensors along the routes into Basra. The Times graphic does show them headed towards the desert outside of town. “A source” also told the Times the pair was en route to another patrol to bring them “more tools and fire power” (which might explain their overabundance of weaponry) and to stop and do some surveillance, sort of along the way. [12]

Or perhaps their real mission, concealed by these more mundane stories, is the case made by the News Herlad Review on the 23rd that these “brave soldiers” were looking for the missing Weapons of Mass Destruction the war was first based on, and in the process:

“searching for clues of a suspected axis between Saddam Hussein’s regime, Al Qaeda in Iraq and elsewhere, corrupt police, Iranians, North Koreans, and Satan himself. Sources say the men were startlingly close to finding the missing link. when the devil’s minions closed in and took them to the local prison, which is believed to house one of the portals to Hell used to communicate master plans.” [13]

4) None of the Above
For my money, I’m going with “none of the above/undecided.” Of course any of the non-sinister mission types given above, could very well have caused the initial arrest situation, if natural mistrust and anxiety, perhaps some sloppiness, or simple bad luck enter the picture. However, given their hanging around police facilities and openness with firearms, it seems quite possible they were supposed to be arrested - like a dye marker injected into a system to gauge how it works.

My own hunch, or interesting hypothesis anyway, is that the mission these men were on was something involving competing interests, power and leverage, and an acutely uncertain level of trust. The trust of course failed badly however you slice it, which brings me to a point made by Micheal Keefer, writing for the Center for Research on Globalization:

"To remove these men from any danger of interrogation by their own supposed allies in the government the British are propping up […] tends, if anything, to support the view that this episode involved something much darker and more serious than a mere flare-up of bad tempers at a check-point." [14]

Hardly anyone would disagree there was more to it than that; it’s the origins of the ominous intentions over which opinions differ. I’m seeing at least some darkness on both sides, if more acutely within the Basra police; in fact I feel queasy thinking of all the others passing through their hands without an armored division being sent to fetch them back. And that’s even without believing the drill torture stories.

The abuse allegations and other political points above – police-militia-Iran links - were also floated on this story’s current whether or not that was an original reason. In particular the charges of militia sympathies and cooperation were well-proven by the incident, as it was reported. Of course the strangely blatant murder of a militia-police-link-reporting journalist by militia-police-link-assassins the very same day sure didn’t help. [15] Who decided the timing on that? The earlier murder of militia-police-link-reporter Steven Vincent had already set the trend in August. [16] The British army’s later destruction in late 2006 of another Basra jail - by bombs – exposed torture and inhumane conditions inside, strengthening the narrative further. [17] But the case of 9/19 above all, involving such a stark contrast between “allies” as well as a man on fire, is what brought to a head in the British mind the hopeless depths of Basra’s wickedness and thence to the plans for withdrawal.

If those two guys being on some alleged psychological operation doesn’t seem to make sense, it’s worth asking if the normal rules really apply in this case. The original suspicions of bombing had the intent of retaining control through fake terror – Gladio in Mesopotamia. In the end what happened served brilliantly to tilt the scale towards the British relinquishing responsibility for the south of Iraq. And it may even have been intended that way. If you’re going to leave anyway, why not make a few points towards your myth of “why we gave up in Iraq” on your departure?
---
Sources:
[1, 4] Blomfield, Adrian and Thomas Harding “Troops free SAS men from jail.” The Telegraph. September 20 2005.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/20/wirq20.xml
[2, 14] Keefer, Michael. "Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reports." Center for Research on Globalization. September 25 2005. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=994
[3] Hutaff, Matt. “Fake Terrorism Is a Coalition's Best Friend.” The Simon. September 20 2005. www.thesimon.com/magazine/articles/canon_fodder/0961_fake_terrorism_coalition_best_friend.html
[5] Ahmed, Nafeez. “Caught red-handed: British Undercover Operatives in Iraq. Zarqawi, eat your heart out.” The Raw Story. September 23 2005. http://rawstory.com/news/2005/CAUGHT_RED__0923.html
[6] Mansour, Osama and Michael Howard. "Britain refuses apology and compensation for Iraqis caught up in Basra riots." The Guardian. September 26 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/26/military.iraq
[7] Nimmo, Kurt. “British “Pseudo-Gang” Terrorists Exposed in Basra.” Another Day in the Empire. September 20 2005. http://www.uruknet.info/?p=15936
[8] McGrory, Daniel. “Police station raid was diversion as SAS squad rescued comrades.” The Sunday Times. September 21 2005.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article568898.ece
[9] Rayment, Sean. “Captured SAS men 'spying on drill torturer.'”The Telegraph. October 16 2005. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1500740/Captured-SAS-men-spying-on-drill-torturer.html
[10, 11, 12] Smith, Michael and Ali Rifat. “SAS in secret war against Iranian agents.” The Sunday Times. September 25, 2005.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article570571.ece
[13] Don’t be silly; of course I made it up. But it does seem to fit the pattern, doesn’t it?
[15] Knickmeyer, Elen and Jonathan Finer. “British Smash Into Iraqi Jail To Free 2 Detained Soldiers.” Washington Post Foreign Service. Tuesday, September 20, 2005; Page A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091900572.html?nav=rss_world
[16] Worth, Robert F. “Reporter Working for Times Abducted and Slain in Iraq .” New York Times. September 20 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/international/middleeast/20basra.html
[17] Santora, Marc. “British Soldiers Storm Iraqi Jail, Citing Torture.” New York Times. December 26 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/world/middleeast/26iraq.html

TELEX AND TAPES, PART THREE

2009-06-21T01:48:00.000-07:00

SESSIONS WITH THE IDF TAPES
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
[USS Liberty series]
First posted June 20 2009
Major re-write 7/12/09

Note: This article has been re-written since my original copy of the Jerusalem Post transcript was fraudulent I had previously made a central point of discrepancies between this and Cristol’s version, but the actual article from its original source does not have the same differences. The altered re-post and its contradictory implications are covered at another post now.

A JUDGE AND A JOURNALIST
As parts one and two covered, memories from the American side of the event have perhaps exclusively stated the air attack on the Liberty revealed reports of the American flag flying over the ship. Some cite the attack commencing despite this, some called off due to it. I’ve mentioned how Israeli military sources insist this was not the case at all, with no mention of the flag until well after both the air attack and torpedo assault were finished. The American claims are based on intercepts passed through Air Force intelligence channels, but no one has been able to show a recording or transcript to back up their memories. The Israelis, on the other hand, have produced both recordings and transcripts of (at least part of) the attack.

The tapes they’ve got are apparently normal procedural recordings of conversations between air units and their ground controllers. For decades these were held tightly in military circles, used in official investigations, sometimes quoted in these reports, and therefore present as hints in other works. Accident advocate Aharon Jay Cristol (a Florida judge) explains how England’s Thames TV produced a documentary in 1986, first talking with the survivors, then speaking with IDF personnel, expecting the standard “no comment.” Instead, a few there, including Lt. Col. Matti Greenberg, achieved a PR coup by sharing some of their records, including “transcriptions and translations of audiotape of the attack.” This decision, as Cristol writes, unexpectedly changed the whole approach of the film from critical over to neutral-leaning-to-accident. [Cristol pp 175-76]

A select few people outside the military loop have been allowed to actually hear the tapes, as well as getting transcripts. Judge Cristol was among these, sitting in on a June 1990 session that included several Hebrew linguists and original air controllers. He repeated the privilege on September 7 2001, in a similar session. He published his transcript and notes in 2002 as appendix 2 in The Liberty Incident [pp 209-223]. The tape he listened to ran nearly eight hours, from 13:43 until 21:30, with the last entry dealing with the Liberty at 18:57. I’ll cover the details of what it says below.

By the time Cristol’s version was published, James Bamford had re-invigorated the controversy with new evidence in Body of Secrets, released in 2001. Bamford’s charges that the flag was seen and the attack continued anyway snowballed over the following years, and the IDF again looked for a coup, offering paper copies and a listen to Jerusalem Post writer Arieh O’Sullivan. His article featuring another much shorter version of the transcript was published in the Post in June 2004. (full re-post here) It was accompanied by supporting thoughts and a controversial interview with lead attack pilot Yiftah Specter, in which he accused the survivors of (perhaps) being anti-Semitic, and being pretty dishonest considering they should be dead.

This widely-read version only runs from 13:50 up to 14:14 and the calling-off of the air attack. The transcript was compiled in this case anyway from two tapes, one air-to-ground (pilots and controllers), and the other ground-to-ground (chief and regional air controllers). The audiotapes themselves were not released,” he wrote, but only “a mix of the two tapes into one transcript, which explains the time overlaps.”

For reference, the parties on the tapes are chief air controllers at Air Control South, Air Control Central, and at General HQ in Tel Aviv (“Menachem,” “Robert,” and “Kislev”) Other regular players include deputies for these men and the attacking forces; lead Mirage jets commanded by Specter and code-named “Kursa,” and the second wave napalm-carrying jets designated “Royal.” A planned third wave with iron bombs is oddly tagged “Nixon,” mentioned but not in the discussion. The Motor Torpedo Boats are even represented with one boat in communication with Kursa – this shows as “Migdal” in the transcript.

Between all these, in twenty-four minutes, there is no mention of a flag, except in the negative (no flag reported at attack's end). There is a peculiarly high number of random mentions of the word “American” or “Americans,’ but these could not have been triggered by flag reports unless those came in on another line or were edited out.

WHAT IS THIS ABOUT AMERICANS?
The first of these pops out of nowhere at 13:54, about two minutes before the shooting started, when weapons system officer Lazar Karni (L.K.) injects as his only line “what is this, Americans?” This is fairly well agreed on by both transcripts for time and content. As I wrote earlier, with no flag in sight, O’Sullivan explains this was “a hunch”, and Cristol cites the man’s testimony as making a valid logic point worthy of blurting and then of being “immediately retracted.” The “American” lines following this begin immediately:

Time	Cristol	O’Sullivan
1354	L.K.: What is that? Americans?	LK What is this? Americans?
	Shimon: What Americans?	Shimon: Where are Americans?
	Kislev: Robert, what did you say?	KISLEV Robert, what are you saying?
	[No one answers]	(quickly disregarding the comment, Kislev moves on)

O’Sullivan noted how at some point “suddenly, in the middle of the attack, an unknown voice cuts in from the side: "What is this? What about the Americans?" The similar line attributed to “Shimon” is neither unknown nor “in the middle of the attack.” Was this line left out of the paper version?

We know that not every transmission was heard; at 1400 and 1401 at least Cristol notes (presumably mundane) transmissions from Royal flight missed or blocked and not present in the audio. Others were left out due to being on the non-included channel 19; right before the 1357 mark “Shimon” asks “Robert” to have Royal call in on channel 19. The conversation they have is not included in the tapes or transcripts. Cristol noted: “At this time Royal […] is arguing with his controller about the fact that he is carrying napalm, not iron bombs.” [p 213] It’s not clear how he knows that’s what the argument was about – but I already noted no flag reports unless they were on another line. And here is just such a moment, about a minute into the air attack when the pilots first got up close.

F----D BY THE NAVY
The next point of interest is where the Post version ends, with a slight time offset between the two versions and a slight translation difference as well but no substantial disagreement.

Time	Cristol	O’Sullivan
1413	Menachem: Kislev, what country?	X[later]X
	Kislev: Possibly American	X[later]X
1414	X[no 1414]X	MENACHEM: Kislev, what country?
	X[no 1414]X	KISLEV: Apparently American
1415	Shimon: Kislev, maybe you know which countries are around here. …	X[ends 1414]X

This itself is an odd statement, as no one is supposed to have reported a flag, nor to have understood the hull number to be anything other than non-Arab (or an Arab ruse?). Some discrepancy in tape mixing or transcription is most likely reason for the one-minute maximum time difference, but Cristol’s 14:14 slot being empty could suggest no dialogue there, for at least a minute, and certainly no shouting. This is interesting because a later slot cryptically refers to someone’s "theory” I’m now curious about:

1439
Unknownn: Robert, did you hear my theory? Just when the navy saw we’re getting them off, they began shouting.
1440
Robert: Kiselv shouted “Americans.” [It was Kislev at 1414]. [220]

The brackets are Cristol’s notes – it would seem likely he’s referring to the earlier “possibly” line and this means nothing but citing the wrong minute. It may also be a case of the transcripts not matching the tapes he heard. The 1413 line was apparently not a shout, but witnesses told Cristol that shortly after hearing the hull number at 1412, Kislev had blurted out “damnit! The navy has f---ed us again.” [p 47] This line is definitely not in either transcript, so perhaps his shout included both this and the word “Americans.”

At any rate, Cristol notes “Kislev remembers that, at 1412, he concluded that the target of Kursa and Royal Flights was American. It is clear, however, from the recordings that during the remainder of that afternoon, as the tragedy was unfolding and he was listening to the radio traffic on his headset, he changed his mind several times, still thinking that the ship might be Egyptian.” [p 47] Indeed, as the torpedo boats re-identified and attacked the Liberty at 14:35 and machine gunned it for some minutes after, Kislev was apparently done with shouting about the damn navy fucking them over the American ID. My own impression is he seems unconvinced, but going with the flow as “Robert” and “Shimon” at Air Control central lead them all back to Egyptian ID, which isn’t fully abandoned for another half-hour, until it’s quite clear the navy had failed to sink it anyway.

MISSING PARTS?
That the transcripts are incomplete relative to the tapes may be taken to indicate the tapes themselves are complete and unaltered. There’s nothing in there proving that at all, and the fact that they contain none of the flag reports mentioned by American listeners is evidence in fact that they aren’t complete. One of the attack-the-flag transcript witnesses commented on O’Sullivan’s version "There is simply no way that [is] the same as what I saw. […] The fact that the Israeli pilots clearly identified the ship as American and asked for further instructions from ground control appears to be a missing part of that Jerusalem Post article." [Crewdson]

Taking his source seriously, John Crewdson wrote in his Chicago Tribune article how O’Sullivan “said the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces,” and that “he assumed those blank spaces occurred while Israeli pilots were conducting their strafing runs and had nothing to communicate.” [Crewdson] Perhaps this was an unjustified assumption, but to be fair, O’Sullivan also had the advantage of hearing the gaps. But then, realistic gaps can be created in a professional remix operation. What to conclude?

---
Sources:
- Cristol, A. Jay. The Liberty Incident” The 1967 Israeli Attack on the U.S. Navy Spy Ship. Brassey's Inc. 2002.
- O’Sullivan, Arieh. “Liberty Revisited: The Attack." Jerusalem Post. June 4, 2004. Features, page 20. Verified by JPost archive, 7/11/09.
- Crewdson, John. "New revelations in attack on American spy ship." Chicago Tribune. October 2 2007. (Additional material published Dec 2). Page 4. http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,1050179.story?page=4

9/19 BASIC GIST AND GRAPHICS

2009-06-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
June 18 2009

For quick reference, I present a post based entirely on an informative graphic published by the Times online about the "SAS rescue" of September 19 2005. First, my own maps I created based on theirs and satellite imagery, and then a timeline of the events marked on their map. This will serve as a basic run-down of the battle of the police station, from the British official perspective. It's the only one I've seen yet that offers times for much of anything, so Ive been using it as a source. My respects to its creators.

Above: Greater Basra, with British HQ locations, initial arrest, and later rescue locations indicated. (right-click, new window for larger view). Below: detail of the prison area and militia house the soldiers were rescued from.

THE RESCUE
Early on Monday Two British undercover soldiers are stopped at a checkpoint and arrested by the police.
10:40 Monday The soldiers put out an emergency call to say that they are in trouble. Troops are dispatched to assist them.
15:15 Cordon put into place around police station
16:30 Mob gathers, petrol bombs are thrown and two Warrior armored personnel carriers set on fire
19:26 More violence Known agitators seen leading another mob towards police station
20:50 Intelligence revealed that the soldiers have been moved away from the police station.
21:00 Decision is taken to attack the police compound and search for the two men
22:00 Force detached to search nearby villa. They force entry and, after a gunfight, rescue the soldiers.
0200 Yesterday Operation complete. Two freed prisoners flown to Baghdad for debriefing and three British soldiers treated for injuries.

9/19, THE FIRST HALF: THE ARREST

2009-06-17T02:36:00.000-07:00

WHAT THE BASRA POLICE DISCOVERED
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
June 17 2009

IN CUSTODY: A MURKY BEGINNING
In charge of security for the mostly-Shiite southern city of Basra, the British military enjoyed a generally placid command relative to, say, the Sunni triangle. Relations started worsening, however, in autumn of 2005, starting with three British soldiers killed in the first weeks of September. Several coalition arrests of prominent spiritual leaders on the 18th increased tensions, spurring protests and possibly further problems. The burden was shared, thankfully, with the Coalition’s Iraqi partners in peace and stability, like the Basra police force, who were also on guard as the morning of Monday, September 19 2005 drew up over them.

Accounts differ or are vague on almost all details about the events of that morning, starting at a time I’ve seen best narrowed down to “before dawn.” [1] The troubles began with two occupants of a well-used white car, similar to a later model Toyota Cressida. The car’s direction of travel is not clear from available sources, nor the location of this crossing-of-paths; it’s alternately been described as a police station or a police checkpoint. We do know that the two men inside sported traditional gauzy Arab shirts, short beards, curly black hair and some kind of head scarves, in an unspecified style. Of course these were disguises; they were really British Special Forces soldiers, generally reported as SAS, doing something undercover.

Accounts and reports differ on just what happened between the soldiers and the police attempting to halt them. It’s agreed by all that the men in the car fired shots at the police, but all other details remain murky. The first reports from Iraqi authorities were that at least two people had been shot, one fatally and one not. Later reports, for the most part, repeated these. Whether both were police or one civilian, and if so which was killed - variations have been reported. BBC's first is typical; the charge was "allegedly shooting dead a policeman and wounding another." [2]

About a week after the incident, “Iraqi police involved in their arrest” gave a Sydney Morning Herald reporter “detailed accounts of last Monday's events.” The article itself is a gratuitously slanted piece, taking every chance to imply that one of the thousand lurid Arab evils permeating the Basra system had to exculpate the Brits entirely (see below). Nonetheless, it cites:

Captain Ahmed al-Shimari, who was on duty last Monday, said the soldiers had been spotted taking photographs from a car. Three officers, Fadil Hadi, Allah al-Bazuni and Qutayba Sa'ami, ran towards the car. Mr Hadi fired two warning shots and the soldiers returned fire, hitting Mr Sa'ami in the leg. [3]

According to this version, that was the only injury caused by the soldiers. All reports of a death were errors – or worse – from hostile local officials. But whatever the details, somehow the two men were apprehended alive and taken to the local police station for questioning. By then it was discovered that under their terrorist-like garb the men were quite Caucasian – Chechens? One Basra official said “they refused to say what their mission was and suggested that we ask their commander.” [4] The closest they had to identification on them said the same thing – laminated cards saying "In an emergency, please call US and UK forces,” providing different phone numbers for Basra and two other cities in southern Iraq. [5]

A graphic provided by Times Online (London) indicates it wasn’t until 10:40 am – apparently with their “one phone call” – that the soldiers put in an emergency call to headquarters. [6] Soon British forces were talking with the Basra police captains and local officials; they acknowledged the two as their own, and negotiations for their release began, as a military detachment was assembled to back up their bargaining position.

In the meantime, the two were held at the jail compound in southwest Basra, about midway between British military HQ and the Coldstream Guards HQ. In a room with yellow chipped-paint walls they sat hands-bound on an ugly “granite look” aggregate floor, as Arab news cameramen were allowed in to film them (see images above). [7] The two men were apparently beaten or injured in capture, though not badly, sporting bandaged heads. I would presume the blood staining the lighter haired guy’s pants is his own. Note the darker-haired guy has a black scarf around his neck; in later shots this is removed and he’s clearly been doused with water. Both carry an air of defiance, a thin smirk of nonchalance. I think they look pretty scared.

WEAPONS: STANDARD OR MASS DESTRUCTION?
Also on display was their confiscated tool kit, including among a car jack, various rucksacks and plastic cases, BBC’s Reporter Richard Galpin acknowledged “assault rifles, a light machine gun, an anti-tank weapon, radio gear and medical kit.” Speaking with British forces, Galpin passed on that “this is thought to be standard kit for the SAS operating in such a theatre of operations.” [8] I'm not sure if that's ridiculous or not, but it seems a bit much for what a British diplomat in Basra told the authorities was "a run-of-the mill observation mission." [9] But hey, you never know when you'll run into an Al Qaeda tank.

Top: whole cache as shown by basra police. Middle right: shirts and wigs the soldiers used for disguise. Rest: close-ups of weapons. Right-click, new window for larger views.

There is little disagreement over the above weaponry, but the most important variable for understanding what happened that day, and what the police were thinking, is the possibility that the car was rigged with heavy explosives. Official British and friendly sources only acknowledge this has been reported. China’s Xinhua news agency reported on the 19th, citing an unnamed source at the Iraqi Interior ministry (which oversees the police), “the two soldiers were using a civilian car packed with explosives.” [10] Fattah al-Shaykh, member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al Jazeera as the crisis began of the “booby-trapped car laden with ammunition [that] was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market.” [11]

Sheik Hassan al-Zarqani, a spokesperson for Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, quickly issued a press release telling the world "what our police found in their car was very disturbing — weapons, explosives and a remote control detonator […] These are the weapons of terrorists. We believe these soldiers were planning an attack on a market or other civilian targets, and thanks be to God they were stopped and countless lives were saved." Zarqani further alleged the disguise the men affected had been of Sadr’s militia, the Medhi (Mahdi) Army, and that they were to bear the blame for the planned bombing. [12] Zarqani’s release also addressed the British demands for the bombers’ release: “The police refused as they were considered to be planning terrorist attacks, and as they were disguised as members of the Mehdi Army, the police wanted to know who their target was.” [13]

Many readers will deny these sources out-of-hand, and they do seem to have an untrustworthy bias-to-information ratio. I’m not so sure what the police or courts there said about the alleged bomb, and on what evidence. There are no photos or video taken of a bomb. One photograph connected by one researcher to this story [below] shows the car cordoned off by military vehicles as if it were dangerous itself. This photo was posted by researcher Sara Meyer shortly after the events, and I can’t find another source. It was coupled with an explanation, un-sourced, how the car “was later removed by the British.” [14]

TO MAKE BAIL OR BREAK JAIL?
There was at the time little to clarify what was the intent of the SAS men – “they refused to say what their mission was” and their commanders weren’t adding much. Similar but more open disagreement surrounds the intent of the police. They claimed to be holding suspicious men engaged in violent criminal behavior, and that fits a lot of the facts. However by parading cameras by them and such, one may sense a little more enthusiasm than simply protecting public safety would explain. The British military took the view – and quite firmly – that the Basra police force was infiltrated by anti-coalition militia sympathizers. Among the charges, the Sydney Morning Herald’s article named Police Captain Yasser al-Bahadli, “a known Mahdi Army sympathizer” as the overseer of the men’s captivity. [15] Their stated belief was thus that their soldiers were in grave danger of falling into enemy hands and must be released.

This concern could of course conceal some other motive for demanding their release, but whatever the case, the Ministry of Defense explained to home audiences how a seven-person military legal team had been dispatched to the prison to try and work things out that way. [16] Preparation for a larger extra-legal military effort were also set in motion. One diplomat, Karen McLuskie, told the Guardian "we explained clearly to the authorities that they were British forces on a run-of-the mill observation mission." [17] Certainly along the way they reminded their colleagues that “under Iraqi law,” as the BBC reported, “the soldiers should have been handed over to coalition authorities.” [18] The Brits pulled strings with the national government in Baghdad and reportedly got the Interior ministry, responsible for police, to issue an order for their Basra people to release the men. It would seem that this order was ignored by the involved locals.

Probably around this time, Brigadier John Lorimer "had good reason to believe that the lives of the soldiers were at risk,” as he told the BBC, and he decided to get “near the police station to help ensure their safety by providing a cordon.” [19] By a quarter after three a small force under Lorimer’s command was at the scene, and a security cordon established around the compound. [20].

In the meantime, anger in the streets had grown, based on whatever people had heard about the soldiers at the jail. It’s difficult to say if the reportedly slain officer, or the planned bombing, or simply the attempts of the British to circumvent Basra justice, was most paramount in anyone’s mind. The Independent reported “one witness said Iraqis were driving through the streets with loudhailers demanding that the soldiers should be kept in the police station, and then jailed.” [21] But some potent combination of factors mobilized dozens – then hundreds - to the jail for a spontaneous citizen’s assembly (or militia-sponsored mob, depending which side of Operation Iraqi Freedom you’re on). The villain Captain Yasser al-Bahadli, watched as the British tanks and roiling crowd gathered ouside the station, the Herald’s article reports, and “put out word two "Israelis" had been arrested - certain death had the mob reached them.” [22]

Despite all this, the authorities behaved as if all was under control and proceeding normally - A provincial council spokesman for Basra, Nnadhim al-Jabari, announced that the two captured soldiers “were likely to go before an Iraqi court,” the Independent reported. [23] But al-Jabari didn’t have all the facts; as it turns out, the suspects would not go in front of the judge. Eventually they went home, but where exactly they went in the following hours is of great interest and some mystery.
---
Sources:
[1, 4, 7, 21, 23] McCormack, Helen. "The day that Iraqi anger exploded in the face of the British occupiers." The Independent. September 20, 2005. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0920-05.htm
[2, 8, 16] BBC news. "Iraq probe into soldier incident." 20 September 2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4264614.stm
[3, 15, 22] Rayment, Sean with special sorrespondents. “Britons had visions of their throats being cut.” Sydney Morning Herald. September 26 2005. http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/britons-had-visions-of-their-throats-being-cut/2005/09/25/1127586747136.html
[5, 9, 17] Mansour, Osama and Michael Howard. "Britain refuses apology and compensation for Iraqis caught up in Basra riots." The Guardian. September 26 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/26/military.iraq
[6, 20] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1790311,00.html
[10] Xinhuanet. "Iraqi police detain two British soldiers in Basra." September 19 2005. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/19/content_3514065.htm
[11] Chossudovsky, Michel. “British "Undercover Soldiers" Caught driving Booby Trapped Car.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=972 (Text of report by Qatari Al-Jazeera satellite TV on 19 September)
[12, 13] Keefer, Michael. "Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reports." http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=994
[14] Meyer, Sara. Basra Shadowlands. Index Research.
October 19 2005.
http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2005/10/basra-shadowlands.html
[18, 19] BBC News. "UK soldiers 'freed from militia'" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4262336.stm

TONKIN GULF OPINIONS

2009-06-10T00:40:00.000-07:00

WHERE MOïSE AND I DISAGREE
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
June 10 2009

Since it’s all I have to offer anyway, I will momentarily skip out on further analysis and state my opinions on the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, Okay, I’ll cite a few supports, but the point is this might suffice as my final post on the subject, which is quick, since I’ve only put up three previously. I'm not even tempted to make any cool graphics for this one, after looking at the endless nonsensical scribbles Edwin E. Moïse had to wade through to re-construct the reality behind the two-hour circus of blunders.

From a cursory skim of some of the evidence, I find the faint possibility that some real vessels firing real torpedoes were involved, at least in the first part of the reported two-hour attack. This is the only aspect that might mean anything new; it would to me strongly imply a false flag operation involving RVN torpedo boats on a heavily-modified OPLAN 34-A raid. However, such a possibility raises many questions, and my guess is that it would not hold enough water to bother looking into it.

Aside from this intriguing distant possibility, I see little need to examine the actual non-events of August 4, 1964. All reputable and most non-reputable sources by now agree, from the overwhelming body of evidence, that no attack took place where one was claimed and aggressively pushed as the pretext for an endlessly escalating yet endlessly losing war of choice. Among all the surviving then-experts at NSA, CIA, Pentagon, various fleet commands, etc., one can find no surviving belief in the reality of this history-making engagement. Moïse’s Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War cites “profoundly disturbing” attempts by the U.S. Navy, as late as 1986, to pass the alleged attack off as real with an impressive-looking official history. [p xii] By now however even the Navy has given up the cause; as researcher John Prados explained in 2004, “the history of U.S. destroyers carried on the Navy's official website no longer contains any reference to a naval engagement having occurred on August 4.” [Prados]

Remaining questions encompass the area of unprovables – what did the active parties think and believe as they set this faux pas into motion? Opinions will differ, as mine and Moïse’s do; he feels the second attack reports were “not a deliberate fabrication” by the United States, as the North Vietnamese charged at the time. “I was quite sure that President Johnson had been making an honest mistake when he bombed the DRV in “retaliation” for an action the DRV had not committed.” [p xv] That author admits being embarrassed explaining this view to his Vietnamese hosts, who surely rolled their eyes, mentally at least. I’m not convinced he really believes that interpretation, what with former White House advisors and top generals and the like to interview, it might serve one well to avoid making such bold accusations – even if they seem warranted.

Of course he was also speaking with much of the epically befuddled destroyer crews who honestly believed the string of BS they reported that night. He doesn’t seem to feel anyone consciously made up anything, and proceeds examining how such massively erred reports originated absent any dishonesty. I’ve already expressed the possibility that the destroyer crews consciously made up the attack, and this would explain the consistency of error that reigned during the two hours an impossible attack was being reported. This is not a case I’ve seen anyone else make, and of course it’s entirely possible that an amazing string of errors in the tense climate triggered the hysteria after all. As the Pentagon set about constructing the story they’d stick with, the pressure from Washington to deliver an attack may have effected the crew only subconsciously, making their continued misinformation just more honest mistakes. Human memory can be, or can be presumed to be, infinitely strange.

Whatever the mindset behind the reports, it’s the pressure from above that matters - the suction of retaliation already in progress, that pulled out a bit more evidence, to the extent it even mattered once the wind was blowing that way. The force of that shift is clearly illustrated by President Johnson’s haste to hit back before figuring out whether there was really an engagement or not on August 4. The first draft of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was done up and discussed with some in Congress within nine hours of the first reports, and retaliatory air strikes underway five hours after that. And those were considered far behind schedule.

The military moved along the path blazed by the President’s decisive headlong rush to war. From what I’ve read, they did this with private reservations about the pretext, but otherwise with gusto and enthusiasm and no outward doubt. The first order of business was too get hostilities opened, the second to establish their collective cover story for the pretext, which wound up being a half-ass amalgamation of carefully screened evidence. This is the essence of fabrication, in its original sense. Separate threads were somehow brought together and were consciously woven by a pre-designated pattern; a “fabric” was undeniably formed, and a major and brutal war was then sewn from that fabric.

But was it deliberate? Moïse found “no evidence,” nor any “reason to suppose” anyone in the Washington leadership had any doubts about the incident during the crucial three days between its occurrence and the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. He did find evidence that President Johnson had passed from doubts about the attack’s veracity to little doubt it was all bogus within “a few days” of the incident, with his famous “flying fish” comment. [p. 210-211] Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara was initially and for a long time publicly certain their pretext was sound, privately expressing some doubts years later, and only deciding out loud that it was probably not real in 1995. He was clearly aware from at least mid-September 1964 that the President didn’t believe his own case, according to recorded conversations between the two declassified in 2001.

My opinion is if these people were inclined to any caution, they must have at least suspected the attack was unreal, grossly exaggerated, unverified, or something other than what they presented it as. Downplaying genuine doubts and presenting something other than what happened is, in a sense anyway, “deliberate fabrication.” Again, there is no way to prove whether LBJ, MacNamara, any of their subordinates or advisers or the generals and planners and escalators or the destroyer crews themselves knew they were selling bullshit. They might have honestly thought it was something wholesome and real, not realizing the stink. In my opinion, it all comes down to how fucking stupid you believe these guys were.

Sources:
Moïse, Edwin E. “Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War.” Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina Press). 1997. 255 pages
Prados, John. Essay: 40th Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. National Security Archive, George Washington University. Posted August 4 2004. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm

THE PRESIDENT’S HASTE

2009-06-09T02:11:00.000-07:00

BLAZING THE TRAIL TO WAR
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
June 9 2009

PRIME-TIME MATERIAL
In his 1997 book Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War, Edwin E. Moïse made an excruciatingly thorough examination of all available information and found “no evidence,” nor any “reason to suppose” President Johnson or Defense Secretary MacNamara had any doubts about the reported incident during the crucial three days before passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. [p 210] Of course the evidence was always ambiguous, contradictory, and unlikely at best, and all the doubts they needed were available to such high officials from the get-go. Instead, as Moïse writes:

“McGeorge Bundy has said that President Johnson decided at an early hour on August 4 – from his description of the timing, this might even have been before the shooting started, when all Johnson had were reports that the destroyers might be attacked – to use the incident as an occasion to get Congress to pass what was to become known as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. […] Johnson had made up his mind. He had done so without first asking whether it was absolutely certain that an attack had actually occurred. [...] MacNamara [in seeking verification of the attack] was “asking on behalf of a president who had already committed himself to having a resolution and a speech and had the air time.”" [p 209]

Retaliatory bombing is serious, and should only be done based on verifiable, logical evidence of something to retaliate for. Very few if any doubts should be allowed, not “many,” as Commander Herrick warned along with his report. If you wait for daylight to look for evidence, as Herrick recommended, but find none, that should strengthen, not weaken, the doubts. Some solid visual contacts at least should be required, some damage to the ships verified as not caused by the other ship. Something resembling what the DRV was even capable of might be a good benchmark, and another that the August 4 reports failed to meet.

If one wants to avoid an honest mistake, a little time should be allowed to figure out questions like the above. But the President had his plan and his timeline; having been handed the attack reports conveniently at the working day’s beginning, he committed to go to war with it, to have strikes underway and announced live on national TV before too much of the nation was asleep for the night.

To fit this schedule, LBJ put immense pressure on the Defense Department to gather any verification possible and prepare counter-strikes for launch as early as possible. The military scrambled, complting a surface scan for evidence of a battle (negative), bringing in a second aircraft carrier, flying in extra jets, fueling, arming, target selection, pre-reconaissance, rules of engagement, so on. MacNamara and Johnson grew impatient as the evening deepened over the eastern seaboards and stated threatening their westward audiences. [p 214-16]

”AS I SPEAK…”
Once the air attacks were apparently, arguably, underway enough, the President was on the air at 11:37pm – about fourteen hours after first learning of the alleged attack. He announced to the world:

“[R]enewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply. […] That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight. Air action is now in execution…”

In fact, the attacks were about to begin, and LBJ jumping the gun to make the late news slot put the retaliatory mission in jeopardy. In fact, Vietnamese records reveal that whatever defenses they did erect against the air strikes were based on interception of this speech, which aired live well before the planes were in striking range, and just before the first radar readings were reported. [p 222]

That haste had only limited effect on the mission’s success and losses, but the brinksmanship is telling. Politics dictating military strategy Is nothing new, but it didn’t just set the timing of retaliation – it also guided what the military would have to “decide” about what happened in the Gulf that night.

VIETNAM BURNING OR WASHINGTON?
Once the first 24 hours had passed, it may have seemed to some that their job, aside from executing retaliation, was to find support for the vital war effort and the President’s snap decisions. There was certainly no order to this effect, but reality is capable of writing its own script once decided on and set in motion. The belli was rolling, and the casus would have to justify it, and the alternative may have looked rather ugly and dangerous to career military men.

Evidence was gathered, mostly at the hands of skilled Pentagon lawyers who “redebriefed” all classes of witnesses extracting legally admissible clues [p 186-187] Defense Department, Joint Chiefs, Pacific Fleet, etc. had their initial doubts, but allowed them to be quickly corrected by partial sightings, supporting intercepts (some just doctored together), more testimony and recollections and opinions leaning towards a genuine engagement, and most importantly “the flow.”

Johnson’s haste, which set the tempo of all this, might be effected by his famous engagement at the time in pressing domestic issues. All summer had been consumed with passing the Civil Rights Bill and related issues of the Freedom Summer era. Some in the south took it as a bit like a war, and three enemy agents – civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwermer - had suspiciously disappeared in Mississippi in late June. News that their bodies had been found by the FBI task force there reached the President on the night of the 4th, as he was waiting to announce the air strikes. [p. 216]

The episode of their killing – as fictitiously portrayed in 1988 movie Mississippi Burning - offers an interesting metaphor for what happened in Washington a month later. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film, but I recall in the dead of night, the assassins with their police powers catch the three men driving alone on a back road and get them pulled over, unjustly harass them on some bogus explanation, and then begin the brutal violence. It’s painfully obvious this is the kind of infringement that gets you in trouble if witnesses talk about it. At this point it becomes clear they have passed all possibility of turning back on the course they’ve set, and one participant drawls with sinister pleasure something to the effect “well, we’re in it now boys!” However it really happened, the killers shot all three men dead, hid the bodies, concoct alibis and flaunted the feds, essentially declaring a war they would eventually lose.
---
Source: Moïse, Edwin E. “Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War.” Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina Press). 1997. 255 pages

DESOTO PATROLS EXPLAINED

2009-06-05T00:08:00.000-07:00

STIMULATE/RECORD/JUSTIFY?
[Tonkin Gulf Incident series
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
June 5 2009
last update 6/5 3am

ORIGINS: CHINA SWALLOWS ITS PRIDE
It’s impossible to understand the Gulf of Tonkin Incident without first knowing the chain of decisions that brought two American ships into the place and the mindset necessary for the non-events that triggered a war. This mission was a “Desoto patrol,” a recent invention dating back to early 1962. As NSA historian Robert Hanyok later explained, these missions had twin objectives: “to collect intelligence in support of the embarked commander and higher level authorities and to assert freedom of navigation in international waters.” [1]

In a Desoto patrol, an unescorted destroyer, detached from the seventh fleet, sails as far as possible into enemy waters, flaunting their concept of territory while collecting intelligence for eventual hostile use. The first such mission was carried out by USS DeHaven, captained by RADM. James W. Montgomery, who later wrote of his experience penetrating the defenses of the People’s Republic of China. [2] Whether by direct order or prerogative allowed by the mission, they ignored all warnings, including the “serious” and “last” kind, each time answering with the ship’s name only. As the tense situation dragged on for days, it became essentially a high-stakes game of chicken with the risk of triggering a major war. There were psych-outs and elevated blood pressure on both sides of the coast line, but luckily (??) no shots were fired before the DeHaven finally left. Montgomery explained the importance of such a dangerous mission:

“The special operation was a then highly-classified intelligence gathering and probing excursion by USS DeHAVEN into waters that had not been visited by Pacific Fleet men-of-war since the late 1940s.” [3]

Desoto is of course the name of a famous Spanish explorer and Conquistador, which seems apt since these patrols were meant for re-exploring closed-off foreign territories, in support of Imperialist ambitions against Communist Asia. Montgomery however cites the name origin as an acronym for his own mission: “DEHAVEN Special Operations off TsingtaO” (DESOTO), which would better read DESOOT if that had the same resonance. [4] Whatever its name, the endeavor had the effect of forcing China to swallow its pride and keep swallowing ‘til it choked, as well as learning some nifty tidbits.

PATROLLING VIETNAM: JUST IN CASE
As Washington fretted over the devolving situation in Vietnam in 1964, direct military leverage against North Vietnam (DRV) was being considered. As William Rust explained for an excellent 1984 article in US News and World Report, the idea was to curb the North’s example to and support for the rebellious parts of the Capitalist-ruled, U.S.-supported South Vietnam. The principles for possible war were laid out by National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy on May 25; an initial strategy of "selected and carefully graduated military force” if push were to come to shove. [5] This decision was passed from the White House to the Pentagon, who set to working out specific details.

Desoto patrols had been carried out regularly in the interim, including along the North Vietnamese coast, but at this time it was decided to expand them; on July 15, Rust reports, the commander of the Pacific Fleet proposed new missions to gauge DRV coastal defenses. [6] The article cites this as being Admiral Ulyses S. Grant Sharp, but according to some sources, he had been replaced with Adm. Thomas H. Moorer nearly a month prior. [7] So whichever Admiral or on whatever date, the ensuing activity was certainly overseen, and enthusiastically, by Adm. Moorer. Earlier, when he had commanded the Seventh Fleet, he issued a directive in early 1963 “broadening the conduct of the Desoto Patrols,” writes merchant marine researcher Steve Edwards. Moorer also “relaxed the restrictions on approach distances,” allowing ships as close as four nautical miles from enemy land, which is key to what happened the following August. [8]

Again, the objectives here were to “collect intelligence and to assert freedom of navigation in international waters.” [9] The first appears to have some possible merit in this case, which I’ll discuss below, but the second, asserting “rights” as with the first such mission is troubling. In fact they had no right, as Rust reported for US News:

“The instruction to approach no closer than 8 nautical miles to the coast, and 4 miles to the offshore islands, had a provocative edge: Although Hanoi had never publicly announced the width of its territorial waters, naval-intelligence officials suspected that Hanoi would claim the 12-mile limit observed by other Communist nations. In effect, the Maddox had the delicate task of stimulating coastal defenses without provoking an attack.” [10]

The danger in agitating defenses is clear; just recall that the best sort of defense is often though to be offense. NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok may have been saying the same thing (depending on what was redacted here), while tying it together with the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) mission:

“U.S. intercept sites in the area were alerted to the real reason for the Desoto missions, which was to stimulate and record North Vietnamese [***** redacted text *****] reactions in support of the U.S. SIGINT effort.” [11 emph. in original, but italics]

Presenting the two aspects more separately, CINCPAC Sharp later explained the first objective "was to update our overall intelligence picture in case we had to operate against North Vietnam.” [12] The first strikes following the non-events of August 4 were by aerial bombardment, as they had likely decided from the start. This only seems natural and hardly worthy of mention, except that coastal defense information seems only slightly related to the planned operations.

Determining what kind of radar and anti-aircraft installations they have along the shore might prove useful, if they ever had the go-ahead to start bombing. In the meantime however, the gathering of peripheral information for potential air strikes risked a deadly incident that would necessitate… ahhh, well now it makes sense. Their dual mission could, if found intolerable enough, trigger a third and hidden aspect of the Desoto mission – to start a war. Only from this highly cynical point of view does a continued patrol regimen seem like an indisputably good idea. Rust explains how it was accepted:

“The Joint Chiefs and civilian authorities promptly approved Desoto; on July 17, the destroyer Maddox received orders to locate and identify radar transmitters, collect navigational information and conduct electronic surveillance along the North Vietnamese shoreline.” [13]

The ship was equipped with special listening booths attached to the deck – small trailers filled with equipment and room for the Naval Security Group detachment “whose presence defined this cruise as a DeSoto Patrol,” writes National Security Archive-associated researcher John Prados. [14] She set off from Taiwan, the patrol course was set, and Maddox got to work in Tonkin Gulf on July 31.

OPLAN 34-A: DOUBLE-SHOT STIMULATION
Recalling the observations above about the delicate art of stimulating defenses without eliciting an attack, the Maddox’s passes of the gulf were always in the shadow of yet further provocations - confusing commando sneak attacks designed in part to stimulate communications to spy on. [15] If not by design, these ventures also wound up increasing the likelihood of a challenge to an American destroyer’s right to be there (up to and including attack with intent to sink).

The rubric for these extra missions was something usually called “OPLAN 34-A.” These were joint ventures with South Vietnamese and other forces to cause “pinprick” damages to the DRV. Activities ranged from espionage to covert land strikes and, relevant here, coastal attacks by swift patrol boat raids in the dead of night. The United States generally has denied any involvement in these "purely Vietnamese" operations, but of course it was the Pentagon that coined the 34-A name, and at the very least they favored and promoted the strikes, and kept close track of their effects.

Desoto patrols and 34-A actions were in fact seen as feeding each other in a cycle. NSA’s Hanyok describes one side: “in early July, General Westmoreland requested more intelligence on Hanoi's forces which were capable of defending against an expanded OPLAN-34A program. […in response…] Admiral Sharp, CINCPAC, issued a new directive for a Desoto patrol whose purpose was "determining DRV coastal patrol activity." [16] John Prados shows the other: “In fact the mission of the Maddox was specifically to record North Vietnamese radar and other electronic emissions which could be expected to spike after a 34-A raid.” [17] More raids = better intel = better raids = more intel = what???

The Maddox was ordered to stay close to the coast, and as close as four miles from any of the gulf islands. Including Hon Me, attacked by South Vietnamese commandos on July 30, followed by nearby strikes on August 1 and 2. Maddox captain John Herrick was at first not even informed how much more difficult his balancing act had been made, and was completely surprised in the afternoon of August 2 when three highly-stimulated DRV PT (patrol/torpedo) boats shot out from behind Hon Me and gave chase.

The boats were small with smaller guns of minimal range, but their torpedoes were potentially lethal even to a destroyer. In this case, the Americans flinched and ran, shooting back along the way. The PT boats were no match for the destroyer’s five-inch guns and the air cover swiftly arriving from the USS Ticonderoga. Between defensive actions and orders from on high to cancel the unapproved and stupid attack, it ended with no American deaths or injuries and no damage to the Maddox, compared to 2/3 of the attacking force being sent to the bottom. There was thus little actual danger of a follow-on attack, but that was probably not as clear the men of the Maddox.

DAY OF DECISION: AUGUST 3
Prados notes that the battle of August 2 took place in International Waters, but noted that “the North Vietnamese made the logical connection that the 34-A raids and the destroyer's appearance were related.” [18] And of course they were closely related – evil conjoined twins of each other in fact. Herrick was therefore finally told about the 34-A missions around his beat, and that more were planned. He asked to have the patrol cancelled as an “unacceptable risk.” Admiral Moorer ordered it continued a essential to “adequately demonstrate United States’ resolve to assert our legitimate rights in these international waters.” [19]

President Johnson was following the events, concurred with Moorer, and personally suggested the patrol be beefed-up with a second destroyer – USS Turner Joy - perhaps to make the babies feel safer. [20] At the same time, the president had decided against moving too hastily on one attack alone; Eric Alterman writes “despite some tough talk directed at subordinates, Johnson decided to hold off on a full-fledged retaliatory attack,” hoping to convey “an impression of firm resolution as a contrast to the perceived trigger-happiness of his expected opponent Barry Goldwater.” [21] However, he was determined to appear and be “firm as hell” if the Vietnamese continued to act this way, which of course they probably wouldn’t.

Since not backing down was the order of the day, more OPLAN 34-A raids were executed on the night of August 3 in advance of the next day’s Desoto patrol. Steve Edwards describes how around 1500 four patrol/torpedo boats left Da Nang “with South Vietnamese commandos and Norwegian mercenary boat crews.” Around midnight they carried out their missions to “bombard a North Vietnamese radar installation at Vinh Son and a security post on the south bank of the Ron River.” [22]

“By 0730 all MACSOG 34-A operators were breakfasting at the compound in Da Nang,” Edwards writes, and from there the stage was set for the fateful day of August 4 as the two destroyers again moved in for a nerve-wracking day. [23] At the other end of it, they would be sending reports halfway around the world that would give the White House its second apparent “unprovoked’ attack, to which there could only be one answer, and it would keep being delivered for about a decade.

---
Sources:
[1, 11], Hanyok, Robert J. "Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds, and the Flying Fish:
The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery, 2-4 August 1964." Originally published in Cryptologic Quarterly, Winter 2000/Spring 2001 Edition. Declassified for general reading later, now available here: http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/skunks.htm
[2-4] Montgomery, James W. Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (ret). The First DESOTO Patrol. Publish date not given. http://ussdehaven.org/first_desoto_patrol.htm
[5, 6] [9-10, 12-13] Rust, William. "The "phantom battle" that led to war; can it happen again?" US News and World Report. July 23, 1984. Posted online December 3 2005. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/051203/3phantombattle.htm
[7] "U.S. Pacific Fleet." Wikipdia. Sub-heading "Commanders." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Pacific_Fleet
[8, 22-23] Edwards, Steve. Stalking the Enemy’s Coast [From PROCEEDINGS, February, 1992] http://www.ptfnasty.com/ptfStalking.html
[14, 16-18] Prados, John. Essay: 40th Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Poster August 4 2004. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB132/essay.htm
[15, 19-21] Alterman, Eric. When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences. Viking. 2004. pp 185-86

USS MADDOX ATTACK REPORTS

2009-06-02T14:34:00.000-07:00

HERRICK’S WORDS AND TWO TRANSLATIONS
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
June 2 2009
last edit 6/5 2am

THE STAGE IS SET: HERRICK TO ELLSBERG
When I was debating Pearl Harbor at the JREF forum a few months back, Screw Loose Change co-creator “Brainster” countered any design for loss on FDR’s part with the observation that “zero US deaths on the USS Maddox led to [the war in] Vietnam.” “Too true!” I responded eagerly, knowing just enough about this incident, continuing:

“And look at how well that war went! Can you imagine if FDR had tried to base WWfrigginII on some fake out boat incident deep inside Japan's sphere of influence? You think hippies on campus caused a problem, right wingers have guns and such... I know it sounds a stretch to say the event shapes the war, but on some level it does, the question is how much.” [1]

This passing thought came back to a point when I learned – last night - that Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon insider-turned dissident who was among the chief actors in the war’s undoing - was there as it started on the wrong foot. In his memoirs he reveals he was the man at the Pentagon who first received Captain Herrick’s reports about the attack, opening his book on the war of lies with this episode, and so I’ll open my Tonkin Gulf inquiry here as well.

”On Tuesday morning, August 4, 1964, my first full day on my new job in the Pentagon, a courier came into the outer office with an urgent cable for my boss. He'd been running. The secretaries told him Assistant Secretary John McNaughton was out of the office; he was down the hall with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. They pointed him to me, his new Special Assistant. The courier handed me the cable and left. It was easy to see, as I read it, why he had been running.

It was from Captain John J. Herrick, the commodore of a two-destroyer flotilla in the Tonkin Gulf, off North Vietnam in the South China Sea. He said he was under attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats and he had opened fire on them.
[…] Within ten minutes he was back to me with another cable from the same series: "Am under continuous torpedo attack." […] A few minutes later, Herrick reported another torpedo had run by him, and that two more were in the water. […] The messages were vivid. [...] "Have. . . successfully avoided at least six torpedoes."

Nine torpedoes had been fired at his ships, fourteen, twenty-six: the sea was awash with torpedoes. More attacking boats had been hit, at least one sunk. This action wasn't ending after forty minutes or an hour. It was going on, ships dodging and firing in choppy seas, planes overhead firing rockets at locations given them by the Turner Joy's radar, for an incredible two hours before the stream of continuous combat updates finally ended.” [2]

I’m having a hard time locating any clear versions of these early communications besides snippets like these re-printed from obscure works, but their gist is clear – a major prolonged attack supported by many fast-moving reports.

MANY DOUBTS/MY TRANSLATION
About an hour after the last battle message, however, there came a “full stop,” Ellsberg recalls. “A message arrived that took back not quite all of it, but enough of it to put everything earlier in question.” [3] This follow-up message introducing doubts is more widely quoted and read thus:

“Review of action makes many recorded contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects and over-eager sonarman may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action.” [4]

Well this is certainly a bizarre thing to say after an hours-long battle one had barely survived. This incongruous uncertainty triggered what witer Eric Alterman called “a flurry of pointed inquiries from the highest levels of the Pentagon” [5] which in turn prompted another rosier report with more evidence of attack after all:

"Further recap reveals Turner Joy fired upon by small-caliber guns and illuminated by searchlight. Joy tracked two sets of contacts. Fired on 13 contacts. Claim positive hits 1, 1 sunk, probabe hits 3. Joy also reports no actual visual sightings or wake. Have no recap of aircraft sightings but seemed to be few. Entire action leaves many doubts except for apparent attempted ambush at beginning. Suggest thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft.” [6]

Captain Herrick seems to be operating here in a world different from the three-dimensional one we all inhabit, and his words are less reflection of coherent truth than impressionist brush strokes suggesting a possible reality that could be taken or left. From my intuition and the moderate amount I know about this incident, he seems to be saying “we were viciously attacked, maybe, probably not, but maybe, definitely we think – look, we don’t know, if you think we did then we did. Check it out yourselves, if you want, but that’s our report. We got attacked. Can we go home now?”

Rendering an accurate translation takes a knowledge of context, foremost the “Desoto patrol” that had both Maddox and its danger-zone company Turner Joy sent again into this Gulf to spy and to defy attacks. This was carried out alongside “OPLAN 34A” provocations feeding off-Desoto intel and stirring up more. Some stimulated reactions, the President had already decided, could only be met with military firmness. Maddox had been attacked two days before, on August 2. LBJ seemed to feel he needed two such events in order to get firm while seeming well-justified, and the provoke-then-patrol system was continued.

The Maddox was given a partner, Turner Joy for the mission of the 4th and promised air cover. Herrick had been alerted of new 34A provocations, and received Pentagon warnings of another imminent attack, and yet his protests to just cancel it as an “unacceptable risk” were denied. Thus the captains of both ships were given every reason to both worry about torpedo strikes and sinking, and to think about why they were being exposed to such danger. It seems possible that this inspired them to simply imagine the inevitable attack hoping - perhaps unconsciously - that a false report would give the leadership what it wanted without the pain and death of a real attack. This is just an uniformed impression from a cynical blogger, but there it is.

THE BASTARD PIMP LBJ’S TRANSLATION
President Johnson and his top aides all claimed to believe the attack reports, at least at first, when it mattered. But LBJ’s words on September 18 show he was aware there was no attack, that his own case upon which the war was escalating by his choice, was fraudulent. White House recordings, released in 2001, transcribed by Eric Alterman for his book When Presidents Lie. In a discussion with Secretary of Defense MacNamara, Johnson reminds him that “you just came in … a few weeks ago and said that “Damn, they are launching an attack on us – they are firing on us.” When we got through with all the firing we concluded maybe they hadn’t fired at all.” [7] This is both an accurate summary of what happened in the Gulf, and a metaphor for the larger movement of the national “we” and its reaction of retaliatory bombing and resolution-passing.

“I have found over the years that we see and we hear and we imagine a lot of things in the form of stacks and shots and people running at us,” he sad, apparently explaining why the erred reports both make sense and annoy him. It would “make us very vulnerable,” he told MacNamara, if it that were the case here, and the reported attack they were then starting a war over “just wasn’t true at all.” He shows signs of believing just this, while proceeding full-tilt in that vulnerability. “It looks like to me they would hear a shot or see a shot or do something before they get worked up […] I want to be tough where we … are justified being tough … But I sure want more caution on the part of these admirals and these destroyer commanders … about whether they are being fired on or not.” [8]

He seemed less concerned with the truthfulness of the reports than with their ambiguity. “I don't know why in the hell, some time or other, they can't be sure that they are being attacked.” There are only two alternatives to flase attack reports, and it’s not clear which he’s looking for – no attacks, as had been happening so far with Hanoi trying to avoid a confrontation, or true reports of real attacks. [9]

Finally, this bastard summoned the chutzpah to re-state himself thus: “I don’t want them just being some change o’life woman running up and saying that, by God, she was being raped just because a man walks into the room!” [10] This from the man who approved and endorsed the system that had their “women” regularly sent into rooms already crowded with leering, pornography-addled men (buzzed-to-drunk on liquor air-dropped just before their women arrived) – to “assert their right as women to go where they please” and study the psycho-sexual behavior of the "men" in the "room."

By God, the President doesn’t want to hear some prudish false charges. Under the circumstances, should a real rape be so hard to come by? Or at least a more convincing made-up one? Those Texas knuckles are aching to make contact with a genuine rapist’s face! If the guys in the Gulf made the call I outlined above, it worked in the end, and the beatings did commence, even if the chief was frustrated with his silly little "women."

Sources:
[1] http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=136679&page=2
[2], [3] Ellsberg, Daniel. Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers Chapter one. http://www.kean.edu/~ggluck/EllsbergChapterOne.htm
[4, 5, 6] Alterman, Eric. When Presidents Lie. Viking. 2004.Page 188.
[7, 8, 9, 10] Alterman. pp 201-202.

USS LIBERTY FLAG THOUGHTS

2009-05-31T02:38:00.000-07:00

O SAY, CAN YOU SEE? NO, REALLY, CAN YOU?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
[USS Liberty series]
May 31 2009

So far in my investigation of the Liberty incident, I’ve reached a similar conclusion to that of many survivors – the ship’s identity was likely well known to its Israeli attackers, both at the tip of the spear and at the shoulder of command. However, one of the lynchpin arguments of the survivors - that the American flag flying from their main mast had to be visible and known throughout the day – comes in far down the list of egregious and persistent “mistakes” by the Israeli Defense Forces. These moves all share the common denominator of justifying the attack, with varying degrees of plausibility from the humdrum to the absurd, and beyond. I find failing to note Old Glory relatively believable, and, as if my opinion matters, I’ll explain why.

In my first arguments, I started to question how the pilots could miss the huge friggin’ American flag, but then decided I’d better check if I could see the thing. It took a little while to find a clear enough shot to even make out the little scrap nestled up there, less visible than the nearby signal flags. Along this line, accident advocate Dr. Marvin Nowicki makes a valid point:

”In reconstruction of the attack, the Liberty crew makes much of flying the American flag, as if it would somehow protect them in harm's way. Little does the crew appreciate the difficulty of identifying a ship from an aircraft merely on the basis of a flag or even a hull number (GTR 5 displayed by the Liberty). […referring to photograph below…] This crisp overhead photo does not clearly show the identity of the American ship. So how could the attacking Israeli forces conclude this was a friendly ship?” [1]

This is the photo in question, here with the flag area actually highlighted with realistic colors. It’s still hardly more than a speck. Now I do see a clear difference between the flag and the hull number, well-illustrated by the same photo, which does in fact identify the ship with or without the flag being noticeable. No one has had any doubts if the hull was fully extended or drooping and unreadable; the “5” in particular is ten feet high, all letters of the solid block type, with offset drop-shadows to enhance clarity. This designation belongs to only one ship in the world.

Among the Liberty’s own mistakes that clearly brought it on themselves, per IDF, are “failure to signal,” changing direction, “running away,” hiding under smoke, trying to guilt trip them with the dead guys bleeding on deck, etc. (okay, I made up the last one) “Another grave error” discussed in Col. Ron’s report is that “it seems that the ship made every effort to conceal her identity” by, for example, “flying a small flag which was unidentifiable from a distance.” [2] He doesn't clarify whether the flag was smaller than it should have been or just small enough to offer as an excuse.

IDF records have admitted absolutely no reports of a flag from their the eight-plus aircraft orbits conducted over the day. Official records show the attacking planes never noticed such a flag, nor the Motor Torpedo Boats that nearly sank the Liberty. As Judge Yerushalmi’s report put it (once translated) “throughout the contact no American or any other flag appeared on the ship, and it was only a helicopter, sent after the attack in order to render assistance--if necessary--which noticed a small American Flag flying over the target.” [3] This total absence I find both unlikely and at least faintly possible.

The Hull number on the other hand was something they couldn’t even pretend to miss, and was reported multiple times. The first such acknowledgment came after the 0600 Noratlas overflight; the accurate reading “GTR-5” generated a precise ID as the USS Liberty, which was almost instantly erased for still-debatable reasons. It was eight hours later when the hull no. was reported again as “CTR-5” - not enough to name the Liberty but enough it had the air attack called off after a fierce fifteen minutes. This failed to prevent the MTB surface attack, which was finally cancelled after all but one of its torpedoes were spent. It wasn’t a flag they explained this with, but the same hull no. seen again, not far from the bungalow-sized hole they just blew out of the hull. [details on this]

That’s a powerful identifier, and could have averted catastrophe, rather than just tripping it up a bit. If GTR hadn’t been erased, CTR would mean something, so this decision trumps the more wiggly flag issue in my mind.

At times it seems keeping this particular issue front and center is more motivated by symbolism and appeal patriotism than by pure evidentiary considerations. What it really does is dramatize the patriotic war/sacrifice/vengeance/etc. aspect and taps into the old us vs. them mentality. Consider the painting on the cover of James Ennes’ book – Star of David vs. Old Glory, emphasis on “vs.” Interestingly, it seems this painting is based on the same photo of the ship as above, but with the barely visible real flag eclipsed by the mammoth symbolism. Hardly any dedicated patriot can’t help but be effected by this dichotomy – whether it’s toward questioning the accident or away from it is bound to vary.

FIFTEEN THOUGHTS: PRO AND CON
Now, clearly the U.S. flag is a crucial clue that should have been seen at some point. And given the general pattern of errors and missed signals in IDF command that day, I have a hard time accepting that – again - all parties had genuinely missed the flag from sunrise until just after the attack. Taken on its own, however, I admit it seems possible, and not even bizarre. So I can see both sides on this one and don’t normally go on about the flag when there are stronger cases to make. However, here are some final flag thoughts from both sides – “pro” means a point supports that the flag should have been seen and reported, and “con” indicates a reason maybe it wouldn’t be so clear.

Con: At one point at least, the flag then flying was found to be tarnished "tangled in the lines [...] dark with soot and badly tattered," according to James Ennes, who caught it and ordered a new flag up shortly after 0700. [4] This may well have been a factor in the 0600 sighting, which ironically was the only pre-attack inspection of the Liberty that yielded an accurate ID.

Con: Both the tarnished flag and its replacement were quite small relative to the ship – app. five by eight feet (see picture above, and K.J. Halliwell’s examination of flag size).

Pro: The ship’s weather log plus speed and heading shows the flag should have been at least largely unfurled as the air attack began; Ennes concluded 12 knots relative wind at 1300 (5 knots from ship speed. plus 7 of wind on a similar line back) [5].

Pro: Wind would probably be similar at 1400 as IDF sources cite “a run over the ship” by the fighters prior to attack, looking for a spread flag (“but found none”). [6] The witness record seems to show immediate attack. IDF transcripts show nothing but a one-minute distance survey (“warship” was the only conclusion) prior to strafing. [7] That someone apparently made up the looking for a flag, or removed the episode from the tapes, supports that the flag was visible.

Pro: unfurled or drooping is not as relevant as its made – if they could see it well enough to identify spread, they could have identified it limp as well, if they cared to. US would appear prominently as red and white jumbled, or “splashed” together, perhaps looking pink from a distance, with a blue corner visible even drooping. Either a Soviet or an Egyptian (U.A.R.) flag would stand out like – well, a red flag. Solid red is vivid, and it wasn’t there to see.

Pro: A photo as above is not a good model – they’d see the any flag moving over time, rippling even if subtly. You might glimpse a red-white-pink flicker, zero in and see a wobbling dark blue patch cover it, with no bold red visible. What flag can that be?

Con: As Nowicki wrote: “Based on my experience of flying many "low and slow" reconnaissance flights over ships in the Med and Atlantic with VQ2, unless the flights are almost overhead, target identification is virtually impossible." [8]

Pro: The attacking aircraft supposedly felt it was possible enough to try, they were directly over the ship, at close and low quarters, passing over it from different angles for at least five minutes each wave. In the early part of the attack at least the flag and hull no. should have been discernable to one of the pilots on one of the passes, at the very least.

Pro: Several witnesses (including Nowicki) claim they heard transmissions or saw transcripts of same showing the IDF pilots did spot the U.S. flag and reported it, either before the first strafing run, which was ordered regardless, or during the attack, causing it to be broken off. If so, this means the IDF altered their records, further illustrating guilty conscience.

Pro: If they were unable to verify a flag when it was up, the pilots became strangely able to know when it was down; the decisive “there’s no flag on her!” was reported at the end of the air attack, 1414, alongside the hull no. report. [9] By this time the statement was actually true; the halyard line it swung from had been severed in the attack, and the flag lay face down on the burning deck. This indicates to me he knew where it had been and wasn’t anymore.

Pro: The motor torpedo boat crews were perhaps close enough to actually observe the larger (8x13?) replacement flag being hoisted for their arrival, and it almost certainly should be visible by binoculars once they got closer. The ship was sailing at something over ten knots due north before they hit it, so some cross-wind should have been lifting the holiday colors.

Pro: The MTB crew don’t acknowledge (in their log, or that of Navy HQ) seeing the flag until the helicopters told them about it at 1512, after they’d spent the better part of an hour hanging out within a mile or less of the ship. This reeks more of omission than of anything else.

Con: The ship was of course by then emitting a mass of smoke from the air attack. The fires were partly under control, but still factors of some visibility impairment.

Con: In the photo above the flag seems perhaps 6-800 feet from the camera – the MTBs were app. ten times as far off (accounts vary), perhaps too far to identify, when they decided to drop their torpedoes at 14:35.

Pro: The IDF records flaglessness finally runs out with the second rescue helicopter pilot who finally saw the stars and stripes and reported it as such, verified in a second pass. It was 15:12. As a journalist reported of a 2003 talk with James Bamford, “if the helicopter pilot saw those identifiers, Bamford asks, why didn't the fighter pilots and torpedo boat crews?” [10] There may be legitimate technical explanations, but we can’t ignore the common theme among those who failed to see – they were the ones shooting the ship, perhaps sent to simply attack, not look at stuff.

Sources:
[1]Nowicki, Marvin. Exculpatory evidence supporting a mistaken attack. Undated message to James Bamford. http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-evidence.html
[2]
[3]
[4] Ennes, James. Assault on the Liberty. 1979. P
[5] See [4]. pp 245-247 (Appendix H)
[6]
[10] Shane, Scott. NSA tapes offer clues in '67 attack on U.S. spy ship. Baltimore Sun. July 16 2003. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/947319/posts

TELEX AND TAPES, PART TWO

2009-05-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

THE MEN BEHIND THE TRANSCRIPTS WEIGH IN
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
[USS Liberty series]
May 28 2009

NOWICKI AND BAMFORD: INFORMATION MISUSED?
Part one of this series listed the witnesses to secret attack-the-flag transcripts of the USS Liberty attack - translated copies of American (NSA) intercepts of the IDF communications proving the Israeli intent to attack a known American ship, for whatever reason. Therefore, perhaps the most informed witnesses would be the guys who made these recordings, apparently stationed on a US Navy controlled EC-121 aircraft circling 15,000 feet over the general war zone.

The plane was on a NSA SIGINT mission, and staffed to effectively spy on both sides. This plane contained the normal retinue of Russian and Arabic linguists, as well as three trained Hebrew Linguists (called “special Arabic” at the time). [1] Relative newcomers to the world of public scrutiny, two of the three NSA Jew-spying-spooks listening in from above have been named.

Dr. Marvin Nowicki is the more famous one of the two, starting with an e-mail to NSA’s nom d’plume James Bamford in March 2000, as he was assembling his magnum opus Body of Secrets. The insider enclosed five documents, including Assault on the Liberty: The untold Story from SIGINT, which explained their presence above the Liberty and what they heard there. This became the kernel of Bamford’s chapter on the attack, which came out highly critical of the IDF and supportive of the crew’s views. That Nowicki’s account was seamlessly worked into supporting this meant distortion was afoot, and he complained publicly in a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

“My position, which is opposite of Mr. Bamford's, is that the attack, though terrible and tragic especially to the crew members and their families on that ill-fated day in June 1967, was a gross error.” [2]

Accident advocate Judge Cristol took up Nowicki’s case, re-publishing this letter and all the materials sent to Bamford, who “claims the Nowicki letter told him that the tapes establish that the Israelis knew they were attacking a US ship,” Cristol explains. “Dr. Nowicki did not agree with Bamford's interpretation.” [3] The judge points to the e-mail and its five enclosures, which collectively offer a cogent and well-researched Cristol-light attempted absolution. He felt the attack on an ally was a mistake, and ironically that was from hearing and re-examining the same transmissions several others had said proved, once in print, that it was a purposeful decision. And his familiarity with the material didn’t end when he handed it over to the NSA’s analysts.

“[T]he next time I saw those voice tapes […]completely re-transcribed […] was over a year later when I was ordered to NSA for duty in 1968. […] Up to this point, I always felt the evidence we collected showed the Israelis attacked the Liberty by mistake in the heat of battle. All my conversations with colleagues in G643 and reading of the voice transcript confirmed as much to me.” [4]

The NSA had the audio, but decided against admitting it, or even acknowledging the plane was there. James Ennes’ 1979 book was written in complete ignorance of the flight, and it remained secret for another two decades past that. Nowicki’s second attachment explained his efforts to have it all publicized to quell the rumors.

"Several months before I retired in 1979, I even wrote a personal letter to the Commander of the Naval Security Group, Rear Admiral Eugene Ince, saying I thought it was time to make the information public. Admiral Ince surely knew about the VQ-2 tapes because he was the senior NSG officer on the staff of CINCUSNAVEUR in 1967 during the attack on the Liberty. I received no reply from him.” [5]

Nowicki points only to one phase of attack halting as evidence of mistake theory, which fails to explain why it was brutally resumed minutes later. Apparently the tapes would make it all clear once publicized. By 2000 this had still not happened, and we had only the chief’s account to Bamford, the case it was woven into for Body of Secrets, and the rebuttals.

IN HIS OWN WORDS: NOWICKI VS. IDF
It’s true that Nowicki told Bamford up-front that “our intercepts, never before made public, showed the attack to be an accident on the part of the Israelis.” [6] The author could have mentioned this sentiment in the book but failed to. Otherwise I see no misrepresentation. He simply used the words to support a general picture already painted by plenty of other people and evidence. His account is high-quality, detailed and well-assembled, and of clear historical significance. Some key quotes mined from the various sources [emph mine throughout], with comparative notes added:

"After a couple of hours of hard work, I received a heated call on the secure intercom from Hebrew linguist [deleted]. [deleted] excitedly proclaimed something to the effect, "Hey, Chief, I've got really odd activity on UHF. They mentioned an American flag. I don't know what's going on." I asked him for the frequency and rolled up to it. Sure, as the devil, Israeli aircraft were completing an attack on some object. I alerted the Eval, giving him sparse details, adding that we had no idea what was taking place. The activity subsided." [7]

By this, the chief missed some of the audio, including the flag report, before getting the phones on to hear the end of an air attack. Such a report is not in the IDF’s tapes at all, with no flag mentioned (except once in the negative – “there is no flag on her!”). Air Force recordings, as now available, make no mention of a US flag at all until the rescue helicopters arrive, shortly after 15:00 – a half hour after the attack was finally called off, and nearly an hour after the attacking jets left the area.

"After some time passed, Petty Officer [deleted] called me again. He told me about new activity and that the American flag is being mentioned again. I had the frequency but for some strange reason, despite seeing it on my spectrum analyzer, couldn't hear it on my receiver, so I left my position to join him to listen at his position. I heard a couple of references to the flag during an apparent attack. The attackers weren't aircraft; they had to be surface units (we later found out at USA-512J it was the Israeli motor torpedo boats attacking the Liberty). […] Despite replaying portions of the tapes, we still did not have a complete understanding of what transpired except for the likelihood that a ship flying the American flag was being attacked by Israeli air and surface forces." [8]

There’s a time delay after the chatter subsides, maybe correlating to the air-MTB intermission of about ten minutes. Then the flag was mentioned again, multiple times during the renewed attack by torpedo boats. This is a new twist the other witnesses didn’t catch. He feels it’s this flag report that finally has the attack called off. If they said U.S. flag multiple times and the EC-121 heard it, that’s interesting since any such report during this time failed to make it into either the MTB or Navy logs.

“My personal recollection remains after 34 years that the aircraft and MTBs prosecuted the Liberty until their operators had an opportunity to get close-in and see the flag, hence the references to the flag.” [9]
"Although the attackers never gave a name or a hull number, the ship was identified as flying an American flag." [10]

This is just about dead backwards from the IDF’s tapes of their communications. As I’ve found, their records show it was not a flag, but rather the hull number GTR-5, and perhaps the name Liberty, that had the attack called off twice. The second time it was said these indicated a Soviet ship.

“We have no idea what time any […] information about the American flag was made available in the war room. I think it was probably during the MTB attack because the torpedo boats halted their attacks when they could have finished off the Liberty.” [11]

We know now what time they claim anyway – 1512 local time. Torpedo hit was at 1435.

“[O]ur intercepts […] showed the attack to be an accident on the part of the Israelis.” [12]
“Our intercepts further showed that perhaps the attack was a mistake.” [13]

Just how? The fact that the "flag" stopped it? That's not the reason the IDF settled on. This dangerously aberrant version has direct knowledge of American ID running openly throughout the attack, rather than concealed in double-talk as it seems from the available sources. Any report of a flag failed to make it into the IDF air control tapes and failed to prevent the ridiculous re-identification as El Quseir leading to the deadly torpedo assault [see above link]. The recollection he shares does seem vague enough that it’s open to interpretation – in the same data one person might see intent, the other confusion. Both see the stars and stripes specifically failing to stop the attack, in direct contradiction of the IDF's documentation.

CORROBORATION: PROSTINAK COMES FORWARD
The “teammate” cited by Chief Nowicki, the one excited about "something crazy on UHF," is apparently Petty Officer Michael Prostinak. He did not talk to and remained unnamed by Bamford, but did come out in his chief’s wake and spoke to John Crewdson for his 2007 Chicago Tribune article. Since those days intercepting war chatter, Prostinak had settled down in a small North Carolina town to be chief of police and later a town administrator. He told the paper "everyone we were listening to was excited. You know, it was an actual attack. […] We copied it until we got completely out of range. We got a great deal of it." Although this accounts is much thinner, at least once edited into the article, it verifies Nowicki’s recollection of flag reports at this time: “During the attack was when mention of the American flag was made." Crewdson explains how “[Prostinak’s] Hebrew was not good enough to understand every word being said, but that after the mention of the American flag "the attack did continue.”” [14]

Again, Crewdson was able to “twist” this into fitting with the shoot-the-flag transcript reports. It wasn’t difficult, since it has more attacking after the identification, just like Nowicki’s account. Both the linguists’ stories differ from what other witnesses in some key ways - the flag is not apparently not reported before either phase of assault, and they mention no pilots protesting or resisting their orders. So far however, all knowledgeable American sources agree that the flag was reported by the attacking forces and this somehow failed to halt the attack. Prostinak does not say that it was an intentional mistake – for all we know, he feels it’s just a mix-up in communications. Nowicki specifically says it was accidental, but many others from a wider field reached the opposite conclusion on seeing it in print. Nowicki summed up the answer to the dilemma as well as the other side might:

”How can I prove [my version]? I can't unless the transcripts/tapes are found and released to the public. I last saw them in a desk drawer at NSA in the late 1970s before I left the service.” [15]

Apparently spurred by the Bamford/Nowicki revalations, Judge Cristol filed a FOIA lawsuit against NSA in April 2001 to get the tapes. Not far from his home turf, Cristol wrangled with the Florida district court system and NSA’s lawyers for release of any transmissions to or from USS Liberty, USS Amberjack (submarine, long story), or the EC-121 everyone was talking about [16]. The lawsuit would eventually yield results, but this would take years to unfold, and one more post, part three, before I can use that to close up this story line with a final twist in part four.

Sources:
[1] Bamford, Body of Secrets p. 205
[2], [15] Nowicki, Mavin. Letter to The Wall Street Journal. Published May 16, 2001, page A-23. http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-wsj.html
[3] Cristol. Nowicki Documents. http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki.html
[4], [5] Nowicki, Marvin. Postscript to the attack on the Liberty. 2000? http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-ps.html
[6] Nowicki, Marvin to James Bamford. E-mail, March 3, 2000. http://www.libertyincident.com/nowicki-email.html
[7]
[14] Crewdson, John. "New revelations in attack on American spy ship." Chicago Tribune. October 2 2007. (Additional material published Dec 2). Page 6. http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newspaper/printedition/tuesday/chi-liberty_tuesoct02,0,1050179.story?page=6
[16]A. Jay Cristol, Pro Se, Plaintiff, v. National Security Agency, Defendant. U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida. Case No. 03-20123. Various documents. http://www.fas.org/sgp/foia/cristol.html

AIRCRAFT PHOTO ANALYSIS

2009-05-26T02:21:00.000-07:00

1245 RECONNAISSANCE OF LIBERTY?
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
May 25 2009
incomplete

THE PROOF IN THE PUDDING
At least one photograph of presumed reconnaissance aircraft (above) has survived and is published on the USS Liberty survivors association image index web page with the following caption:

Israel says there was no pre-attack reconnaissance. Any aircraft we saw, they say, were high in the sky carrying troops to the battlefield. Not so. Here is an Israeli reconnaissance airplane that circled the ship about an hour before the attack. The pilot was heard reporting to HQ that he saw an American flag and men sunning themselves on deck. [1]

First, it does seem to be checking the ship out. It’s quite close, low, passing starboard side to the aft and clearly turning as if to keep circling. This is not a casual disinterested high-alt pass-over. However, that flag-n-sunbathers report is news to me, and so far I see no source aside from this image index. And also I’m pretty sure the time frame “about an hour” before the 1400 attack is wrong.

This photo would perhaps have been taken by Petty Officer Charles Rowley, the ship’s photographer, reportedly in the lab most of the morning during the earlier aircraft recon. [2] It could have been someone else as well. The picture was apparently taken from the aft (rear) portion of the ship, looking back and to their right of the rear antenna mast (visible at left). Its crossbars extend left and right, across the beam, and the small lights (lower corner) are fairly low to the deck, so the camera is apparently at main deck level and pointed up at a moderate angle. At right is a wire mesh thing I can’t locate in photos, and apparently anchoring cables for some antenna. My right-side reference is thus un-anchored. Should be TRSSCOM housing there (Here's a good view of the rear of the ship, seen from the middle - TRSSCOM is the big dish, rear antenna mast behind that).

Anyway, the aircraft is quite close off the port aft, not very high above the waves, banking and turning left. Both the fuselage shadow on left wing and the light falling on the mast and its lights shows the sun is quite high in the sky, meaning, in general, around mid-day. I checked with a solar calculator the lat-long points, date, year, time, and found solar noon on the Liberty's path would fall one second after 11:44 local time. (selecting Cairo, June 8 1967, UTC offset -2, will get you close).

WHAT THE PLANE TELLS US

In my previous analysis of aerial reconnaissance reports, I got a general grasp of what different craft are said to have circled the ship. Anywhere near mid-day we first have two delta-wing Mirage fighters orbiting the ship thrice at about 1000 or 1030 (accounts vary). This is clearly not one of those, and both slots seem too early for the sun here. This was followed by two or three visits, at perhaps 1030, and certainly at 1057 and 1126, by a craft thought by the crew similar to a “Flying Boxcar”, and called by its Israeli owners a Noratlas. The two do indeed resemble each other, but not the plane in this photo. So barring a problem with the accepted timeline, this must be after 11:26, and presumably after the subsequent course change at 11:32, where they turned thirty degrees to the north.

The aerial visits after that point are more sketchy for detail, but this photo is said to be “about an hour” before attack, so it could only be the last visit, what Ennes cites as another visit of the “Flying boxcar” at 1245 (second-hand – he was having lunch) [3] But as we’ve established that’s no Noratlas, and it seems the sun is no match for that late in the day either. Jundge Cristol describes a1200 flight, way up at 30,000 feet, and the wrong aircraft to boot; he cites as a “Vatour,” but it would actually be a Vautour, which is French for vulture. [4]

The plane we see here is not a fit with any of the over-flying craft I’m aware of. It’s non-descript, generic, bulky body, low-set wings with engines beneath like any smaller cargo plane or airliner. Something tells me those are propellers, not jet engines. I’m really no plane buff. It is a possible fit with one other reported aircraft never reported close by - [56, 50] a “fat little prop plane, maybe a light bomber” repeatedly traversing the beach, “just skimming the sand dunes.” This was first reported before 0700, with no specific mentions after. But as Ennes noted explosions ashore between 1130 and 1200, he did note “the little bomber that had patrolled the beach all morning could no longer be seen.” [5]

With no other planes besides Noratlas and Mirage jets mentioned before the 1132 turn, this is probably after that but apparently not much after. The next plane alleged is 11:45, a fit for the time of the explosions. This is one of the less verified, only mentioned in a list in the Salans Memo with no details (see previous post, link above). Who saw what plane do what at that time? Ennes was officer of the Deck, and would have seen such a plane, but there is no mention in his book, just the Noratlas again in his absence at 1215 and 1245. [6] Wrong plane and time for this case. Again with the time, how do I know what time it is here?

WHAT THE EGYPTIAN SUN TELLS US
11:45 is one minute past local solar noon, with the sun at its highest elevation (82° above the horizon, so nearly overhead). and with an azimuth (direction to sun) of 180° - due south. First I presumed this was after the 11:32 course change, so I set my model on a 283 heading and set to narrowing down the solar azimuth angle which helps me get a close time estimate. I found the light angle, approximate, from the rear mast (lower left corner) by analyzing light fall-off around the mast’s curve and and shadow patterns on its attached lights. They indicated one general direction, which I marked with arrows – some to and some from the sun, whatever.

This I pasted back on the ship at the proper angle (not to scale, that doesn’t matter). To hit the mast at that angle with the ship at 283 true, the azimuth would be somewhere around 168, or in a range of, say, 162-174. This is consistent with a general noon-ish time frame indicated by the high solar elevation. And the Azimuth is much better at setting time - the change I'm seeing here is close to one degree per minute!

The exact minute is not to be taken too literally given the margins of error in each step – but the resultant azimuth range for a 162-174 spread is between 1132-1141 local time. I simply can’t see anything outside this range explaining that photo. Either this is Ennes’ 1126 misidentified “flying boxcar” (and the Captain’s 1126 “unidentified”), lingering quite a bit, or it’s the unknown rounded-to-1145 plane that Ennes missed as he wrapped up his shift.