The 12/7-9/11 Treadmill and Beyond

Announcement: New Blog!

2011-04-24T03:13:00.000-07:00

April 24 2011

I've just created a new blog dedicated to the Libyan Civil War: critical views, concerns, complaints, conspiracy theories, and so on. I hope to make it very informative and possibly make it into a hub for multiple writers to organize some mental resistance. There's not much up at the moment (three posts, one a re-post from elsewhere), but there are over a dozen others in draft form and man, many others in the planning and research stages. An explanatory top-post will be up soon.

The blog is here:
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.com/
Anyone concerned about the war should check it once now, and again in a few days. And in-between and after, feel free to submit useful articles and links to caustic_logic@yahoo.com.

Crimes Against Reality in Libya {masterlist}

2011-04-17T17:12:00.000-07:00

Posted April 18 2011

This series seeks to shed some light on darkened corners of deception; shamelessly cartoonish distortions of truth suggest a stark and false choice of freedom vs. brutal tyranny and madness. Lies mobilize escalation to regime change in the guise of humanitarian intervention.

Reality: it could even more accurately be seen as Wall Street, western intel, and Persian Gulf tyrannies teaming up with a few thousand local Islamist malcontents and terrorists, foreign fighters and NATO fighter jets, chosing regime change as the only answer to the percieved crisis they created.

And that in turn is often underpinned by distortions and outright fakery accepted as truth by "the civilized world." It's that to which I lend my focus here.

The posts:
Part 1: Behind the Scenes of the al-Baida Massacre, posted March 30.
Feb 23, Al-Biada or somewhere not far away: Alleged Crime: 130 Gaddafi soldiers executed for refusing to follow orders and kill "protesters." Reality: "protesters" killed 130 Gaddafi soldiers and lied to an accepting world.

Part 2: A "Mirage" over Benghazi on the Cusp of Air War, posted April 5.
March 19, Benghazi: Alleged crime: government forces were violating their cease-fire, were inside the rebel's capitol city, and initiating a genocidal bloodbath, even shooting down the one rebel fighter jet that took to the sky so far in the war. Reality: Defeat, not massacre, loomed, rebels probably staged the violence that appeared as an invasion, and they most likely shot down their own jet, whose mission up until then is worth wondering about.

Part 3: The Sniped Tykes of Misrata? Posted April 17.
April 8-14, Misrata: Alleged crime: A slew of reports emerge all at once of Government snipers targeting young children in the western rebel holdout of Misrata. Reality: The only clear evidence shown so far is two children with x-rays of bullets in their chests - but the same x-ray image is used for both kids, and it looks pretty fake to me.

The Sniped Tykes of Misrata?

2011-04-17T03:59:00.000-07:00

Crimes Against Reality in Libya, part 3
April 17, 2011

Misrata: An Illusion Under Seige
Misrata (alt: Misurata, Arabic: مصراتة) is Libya’s third largest city (after Tripoli and Benghazi), boasting in peacetime about 550,000 people. [1] Considered Libya’s commercial capital, it lies in the west of the country about 130 miles east of the capitol Tripoli. It was among the amazing number of Libyan cities, east and west, that fell to rebel control within just a few days of the revolt’s start on February 17. This flash of activity was much more violent and pre-planned than the world public realizes, but that was needed to seed the impression that the whole country had “voted” by popular action to secede from the capitol.

After the initial shock of this unprecedented mutiny, the loyalists in the army and within the “liberated” cities re-grouped with an early-March roll-back. In general, rebel support was too weak to last in the west, and caved easily, and by the 19th rebel control was limited to their de facto capitol Benghazi and points eastward. The only exception to this rule was vital and sizeable Misrata, then and for the last month the only western city even partially held by rebels.

As the last bastion of illusion against this being an East-West civil war as opposed to a nationwide popular revolt, Misrata’s fate is second only to Benghazi’s. One holds the key to the east, the other maybe half a key to the whole nation. Just as a threat of losing Benghazi spurred the first western airstrikes on March 19, the continued siege of Misrata is apparently ushering in another phase entirely. With its neighborhood-scale fighting, snipers, and mortars and rockets from afar, the city has been much changed. It's been described as a living hell, with "unimaginable carnage," hospitals overflowing, bodies piling up uncounted in the streets, as many as 2,000 killed. It's been said Gaddafi is flattening the city, strangling it, and intends to slaughter every person in it.

However, on April 14, Professor Alan J. Kuperman wrote an excellent analysis citing Human Rights Watch information on Misrata "revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government." It does seem a bit more sloppy than he makes it sound, but Kuperman is probably closer to the truth of the matter than most. Since the fighting there started nearly two months earlier, he finds from HRW's numbers:

[O]nly 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties. [2]

In the roughly 45 days since the seige began, 257 is only about six deaths per day, on average. That isn't likely a complete number, but no more likely to be very far off. In really it looks less like a genocidal massacre than the six weeks of low-level but NATO-prolonged urban warfare it is. Even presuming a gross margin of unreported deaths, 400 or even 500 dead is really not that high - at most about 0.1% of the population. If the government were trying to kill "as many people as possible," with this much time to have done it, they are failing badly.

The last few days, April 14-16, have however seen a brutal new offensive by the government's forces, by rebel reports, with a few dozen more killed in rocket attacks on Misrata, indiscriminately including women, children, and elderly. [3] Cluster bombs have reportedly been found. [4] The harbor was attacked again. The rebels predict a total slaughter will finally befall them without more NATO involvement soon. What they really mean is Misrata will no longer be a rebel town.

All these concerns, taken in context, helped the leaders of the US, UK, and France, who happened to be meeting in these bloody days, to jointly denounce, among other things, the “medieval siege” of Misrata. And it finally allowed them to make some new decisions (which we'll be seeing shortly) on a core realization that all three nations have agreed on for four decades now. Essentially, Gaddafi must go. "It is impossible to imagine a future for Libya with Gaddafi in power," they lied jointly on the 15th. [5]

Mystery Snipers Killing Kids?
Worse than the fairly indiscriminate death of distance shelling, the most incendiary new allegation is the mad tyrant Gaddafi sending snipers to Misrata to sit on rooftops, picking out children to shoot dead. Or so we hear. On April 8, a statement was issued in Switzerland:

“What we have are reliable and consistent reports of children being among the people targeted by snipers in Misrata,” UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva. The information was based on local sources, Mercado said. She was unable to say how many children have been wounded or killed in this way. [6]

UNICEF, the United Nations wing for caring about children's health and well-being, was naturally alarmed enough by these reports to announce they existed but weren’t verified – they’d go and have a look and then, perhaps, we’d hear about corroboration.

A cynic might see in this echoes of the incubator-baby stories of 1991 Gulf War fame. The tale of an Iraqi atrocity in Kuwait, killing dozens of premature babies for no clear reason, gave massive and emotional public support to the war effort. Later, the story was proven to be a complete lie, concocted by the Kuwaiti royal family and public relations firm Hill and Knowlton, Inc. [7] Again, the first part of that is happening with this news spreading like wildfire. And we shall see, and in short order, that the second half is already coming into focus along similar lines.

There’s no great reason to doubt the presence of snipers in the city, given the situation. Rebels allege African mercenaries as usual, military snipers from elite battalions, and most recently special female sharpshooters from Colombia’s FARC army. [8] One Libyan exile with contact in Misrata said the snipers were “Libyan mercenaries,” as well as some “from Mauritania, 2 from Colombia, 2 women, some from Chad, and others from origins of which we are not sure.” (more from this expert below). [9]

As far as people capable of making bullets fly in a war-torn city, we also cannot rule out armed loyalist citizens, possibly gone loco and trying to demoralize the traitors by killing their young. That wouldn't exactly be a government strategy requiring regime change, but close enough for most. Or it could be a black-hearted rebel supporter trying to create another humanitarian disaster to be blamed on the regime. And it would be, of course, with no questions asked. The government itself claims snipers exist in Misrata – brought in by the rebels and affiliated with Hezbollah, says spokesman Khaled Kaim. Hezbollah denies this, and the evidence has yet to be shown [10]

Yousef bin Youssef on Snipers, Kids, and/or Targeting
A video from the Al Aan channel of the United Arab Emirates was posted April 9, with English subtitles, on rebel site LibyaFeb17.info. Entitled “Batallion snipers targeting children in Misurata,” the content is an interview with Yousef bin Youssef, onetime Misrata resident, in touch with others still there and amazingly informed (he’s the one with the sniper nationalities list). [9]

Asked if “children were actually being targeted by snipers there,” Youssef makes a long presentation with heavy use of the word for “targeted,” but only gives one bit of an answer to that question at the end. He starts with the government shelling of the city:

“[T]here are very serious risks when these populated zones are targeted – many injuries could occur … Families are being targeted daily … the targeting of children and civilians in large numbers … the targeting of Misrata is happening in every residential area … Gaddafi’s forces are systematically killing the entire population of the city of Misrata.”

He does get to children, noting that “a car with four children in it was targeted,” in fact a disputable incident at a check-point, killing one child an wounding another. [11] This is quite common in places like Iraq where a government is up against an insurgency. “In another neighborhood near Tripoli street,” Youssef added, “a child of two years was also targeted” in some unspecified way. He also lists several names with ages of “just a few” of the youngest “martyrs” killed by anything at all so far in this conflict.

He also brought cell-phone video footage of three injured children evacuated, from Misrata and Benghazi, to Turkey. One is a boy with his right arm amputated and the left one locked in a full cast, and one eye swollen shut. Another older boy is shown with both hands in casts. Both look more like mishaps in handling explosives than any sniper’s work. Their injuries are not explained. [9]

The Girl in Turkey: Right for the Heart
The only time in all Youssef’s interview where any sign of a sniper appears is with the third child, which he describes as:

“a small girl, no older than 4 years, who was targeted by a sniper’s bullet near the heart. But thank God, they removed the bullet, as you can see.” [9]

The hefty bullet is shown in a vial, and a precious little girl is shown curled up asleep in the hospital bed, barely saved from the government's mad designs. And as proof the two were once together, her x-ray is also shown to the camera. A rib cage is visible, with a bullet appearing in the upper center (top image). That looks like medical proof she was shot by someone or other. And certainly the whole medical clinic setting lends credence to it.

Luckily I happen to have a clearer blow-up of this same image (see below, explained further below) to get some better detail. It looks like possibly a sniper bullet, but with an odd orientation. Unless the kid was doing cartwheels at the moment of impact, it was apparently fired up from a low angle, an inherently illogical scenario.

Further, the bullet is perfectly shaped, with no apparent deformation from entry and plowing through tissues firm enough to stop it entirely only halfway through.

This in turn might have something to with absolutely no sign of entry revealed by the x-rays. Following back the apparent bullet track suggests it must have entered her body on the left side (lower right in the image). Any possible “hole” in her side would be invisible from a frontal view. We should, however, see any broken chunks or deformation to the curve of her ribs where at least one should have been shattered. But not a single arc of this delicate 4-year-old rib-cage is disturbed that we can see.

While I don’t have the expertise to credibly rule out a real gunshot here, It seems to me that this image shows two things:
1) The girl was never shot.
2) A bullet was made to appear in her chest.
The fakery could be done in any photo-editing program, then sent to a device for developing the image on transluscent film to look real. Or it could be a simple x-ray image of the child with a bullet laid on her chest. But that’s sure as hell not how it was preseted to the world at almost exactly the same time as that April 8 UNICEF report.

The Boy in Misrata with the Same X-Ray Proof
Furthermore, at the same time, there was another child with a family claiming proof of a very similar sniper shot. The April 10 Human Rights Watch dispatch related the story of a five-year-old boy. He's not in the main article for some reason, but is shown in the bottom picture with his mother and an x-ray image, with this extended caption:

Five-and-a-half year old Rakan Ahmed was playing in the street opposite the Italian Consulate on March 19 when a bullet entered his shoulder and passed by his heart, according to his parents, Hanan Faraj and Ahmed Muftah Burjid. There was fighting at the time about 500 meters away, they said, but no sound of gunfire close by. “Rakan’s uncle carried him inside,” Ahmed Muftah Burjid said. “We thought he fainted. There was no sound of a gunshot, no blood.” When the family arrived at the hospital, they saw the bullet from the x-rays, which the family shared with Human Rights Watch. “We were shocked,” Ahmed recalled. “We just thought he was tired.” [11]

This might sound strange, but is remarkably akin to what happened to WPC Yvonne Fletcher in London, 1984. Standing across from the Libyan embassy, she was shot by a high-powered bullet that entered the right shoulder at a steep angle, hit the heart, lung, and other vital organs, and passed out her lower left rib cage. [12] She died from all this within short order, but from the outside, she just collapsed, with no visible blood and officers at first acting as if she'd just fainted. [13] Gaddafi thug snipers pulled the trigger, it was decided, in both of these cases. Women and children were slaughtered, publics enraged. We have a precedent.

By the photo HRW ran (right), little Rakan does seem to be injured. He has bandages on his left side over the owie (the exit wound after the entry on his right shoulder?). His mom helps show us by pulling up his arm and his shirt. He looks unhappy, but quite healthy and limber for only three weeks healing time after such a massive injury to the upper body.

The x-ray image shown to the right, shared by the family, reveals a bullet is or was once in there, stopped just where it was in the girl’s x-ray. It did not exit through his side or at all. Hmmm...

The bullet shown here has the same pristine profile, same orientation and implied, illogical, low-level entry. It clearly did not enter via his shoulder, as reported, in fact just stopping in the middle of him, halfway to his right shoulder. Beside the bullet match, this x-ray shows the same strange line running across, same light and dark patches, same … undisturbed rib cage.

It’s the same image, I can safely say, (aside from the circled left shoulder in Rakan's print). See the comparison at left, complicated by low-resolution video, the different angles of view, and different backgrounds behind the translucent images (these are all corrected somewhat for the left image). Clearly they are too consistent to be anything other than the same, so this is of course my source for the above blow-up of the little girl’s chest shot.

The image could still be of a genuine child shooting, as my pathologist friend Rolfe at the JREF forum points out, but as she also notes with basic logic, it can’t be evidence for both of those kids being shot. [14] Nonetheless, it was presented within the same few-days span as just that. It should of course be noted that this doubling up is enough to change “child” to “children,” and leave the public imagining just how many. Imaginations over here tend to ignore the "reported" part and presume hundreds of things like this. But we have this kind of evidence for only two, one recovering in Turkey, the other all healed up in Misrata, neither with a single broken rib, judging by the single x-ray image between them.

All I can say is I'm glad the rebels are still able to fake these things in Photoshop and have it believed. If the international agencies like UNICEF and HRW were more exacting, we might see rebels actually shooting each others' children to leverage stronger support for regime change efforts. At the moment, I wish Gaddafi would just step down and hand his country over to Wall Street and these manipulative little domestic proxies so this absurdity can finally stop.

Sources:
[1] Wikipedia. Misrata. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misrata
[2] Kuperman, Alan J. "False pretense for war in Libya?" Boston Globe. April 14 2011. http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-14/bostonglobe/29418371_1_rebel-stronghold-civilians-rebel-positions
[3] "Rocket barrage hits Misrata, NATO says Gaddafi must go" Times of India, April 15. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Obama-Sarko-Cameron-seal-deal-Oust-Gaddafi/articleshow/7996431.cms
[4] Murray, Craig. "Clusters of Hypocrisy." April 16 2011. http://craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2011/04/clusters-of-hypocrisy/
[5] http://www.libyafeb17.com/2011/04/letter-on-libya-by-obama-cameron-and-sarkozy/
[6] Washington Post. UNICEF: Snipers targeting children in besieged Libyan city of Misrata. April 8. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/unicef-snipers-targeting-children-in-besieged-libyan-city-of-misrata/2011/04/08/AF5jO4zC_story.html
[7] http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html
[8] Daily Mail. April 15. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377349/Libya-16-women-children-rocket-blitz-Gaddafis-troops.html
[9] “Batallion snipers targeting children in Misurata.” April 9 posting of video interview with Yousef bin Youssef, on al Aan news. (Undated). http://feb17.info/media/video-interview-battalion-snipers-targeting-children-in-misurata-translated/
[10] Hezbollah denies any role in Libya’s uprising. Ya Libnan. April 14 2011. http://www.yalibnan.com/2011/04/14/hezbollah-denies-any-role-in-libyas-uprising/
[11] Human Rights Watch. "Libya: Government Attacks in Misrata Kill Civilians." April 10 2011. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/10/libya-government-attacks-misrata-kill-civilians
[12]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yvonne_Fletcher
[13] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdg0BGzKCmc
[14] "Baby Snipers...Propaganda? Or are they just that evil?" JREF discussion forum. Thread started April 8. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=205780

Behind the Scenes of the al-Baida Massacre

2011-04-12T03:29:00.000-07:00

Crimes Against Reality in Libya, part 1
March 30, 2011
last edits April 13

Fighting Back the Mercenaries
Al-Baida (aka Bayda, لبيضاء) is a good-sized city by Libyan standards at about 200,000 people strong, per Wikipedia. It’s located about 100 miles northeast of Benghazi, a center of agriculture, industry, and commerce. It was rocked by protests starting in earnest on February 17, the nationwide “Day of Rage” against the Gaddafi regime. At least one protester, and as many as 12, were killed when security forces opened fire. The BBC reported on the 17th “A regional head of security was removed from his post in al-Bayda after the violence on Wednesday, local media reported.” If that was to placate people, it was apparently a ruse, and failed anyway.

Der Spiegel spoke with one protester in his hospital bed, who explained how they all raged harder yet on the 18th, until rumors spread of about 400 African mercenaries being flown in to mow them down. Hundreds of citizens armed with no guns rushed to the airport to meet them, he said, and stormed the place to a hail of machine gun fire. “The three days after the [mercenaries] landed were bloody in Bayda; it was a battle that has become a symbol of the Libyan insurgency." By this account, in which the teller is the only one of 23 friends to survive, protesters were at first slaughtered by “the heavily armed mercenaries, who were later reinforced with tanks.”

But somehow, the protesters had taken control of the airport by Monday the 21st, as Der Spiegel reports. A video available online suggests the city at large was liberated as of the 21st, with some people chanting slogans in a small circle, with signs, mostly in English. It would seem entirely calm here, with kids involved, no repression nor threat of it to be seen. Nothing, in fact, left to protest. Whatever Gaddafi loyalist forces remained free and alive had melted away or were, perhaps, re-grouping.

A reporter from Time visited the liberated town and was allowed to see and speak with some of roughly 200 alleged mercenaries taken captive by protesters at the airport and elsehwere. These were held in an old school in Shehat, a small town five miles east of al-Baida. The report, dated February 23, said in part:

“Given their claim that there were once 325 of them — flown in from Libya's southern town of Sabha — the remaining men consider themselves lucky. Many were captured during fierce clashes between residents and Gaddafi's forces last week; in the ensuing chaos, a group of men from al-Baida executed 15 of the suspected mercenaries on Feb. 18 and 19 in front of the town's courthouse. They were hanged, says the country's former Justice Minister Mustafa Mohamed Abd al-Jalil (who has quit and joined the revolution). It wasn't entirely planned, but the people here were enraged."

So it’s been acknowledged that in this post-victory mayhem, at least 15 of these prisoners of protest were executed in the heat of the moment. And captives were being taken as of the first day of the reportedly lopsided battle against the mercs. According to the account of prisoner Ali, 325 had become around 200, suggesting a total of about 125 of them had passed away somehow in the bloody fighting.

And for what it's worth, only a very few were true foreigners, and the rest Libyan citizens, although many held dual citizenship, mostly in Chad and Zimbabwe. Ali further claimed he hadn't come to kill anyone - they were flown up from Sabha to participate in peaceful counter-protests in Tripoli, but were re-routed to al-Baida at the last minute for unknown reasons. But as the old saying goes, he would say that, wouldn't he? An official with Human Rights Watch investigated as well after visiting al Baida. Reporting by March 2, after an apparently later visit, he cited 156 soldiers who were

from the south of Libya and not from another African country. After talking to them he found out that they were all black Libyans of African descent. The soldiers have since been released by the protesters.

23 Claimed Martyrs
A further grim discovery was made and reported worldwide the same day as the Time article cited above, February 23. There are several articles available about this, many citing an amateur video, and some link to one of at least four recordings available on Youtube. These show an array of 22 corpses on a dusty patch of road amongst non-descript buildings.

The only video source I could easily find containing the video and an announcement of its significance was from Iranian channel Erasaneh, posted on Youtube. (3:00 in). Simply put, “130 Libyan soldiers have been executed for refusing to open fire on anti-Gaddafi protesters.” Everyone else agrees, or acts as if they agree, that this is just what happened here. They all cite a prominent Human Rights group, who announced the same day:

Paris - At least 640 people have been killed in Libya in protests against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi since they started last week, the International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) said on Wednesday. The figure is more than double the official Libyan government toll of 300 dead, and includes 275 dead in Tripoli and 230 dead in the protest epicentre in the eastern city of Benghazi, the IFHR's Souhayr Belhassen told AFP.

The Benghazi toll includes "130 soldiers who were executed by their officers in Benghazi for refusing to fire on crowds" of protesters, she said. Belhassen, who heads the Paris-based IFHR, said the toll was based on military sources for Tripoli and on Libyan rights groups assessments in Benghazi and elsewhere. The Libyan government said on Tuesday that 300 people had died in the protests, including 111 soldiers.

Note that Tripoli did have a death toll, and that a majority of the discrepancy was based on this large new portion of 130 against the regime. Why didn't they acknowledge the 130 loyalists they had just hours before been accused of killing?

How do we know that's what happened? "Libyan rights groups" are cited. We don't know their evidence, affiliations, or credibility. But it is this hasty and dramatic announcement by the IFHR that nearly everyone else cites as the basis for this highly useful claim against our universal enemy and avoiding the same against our good guys, the protesters and citizen-fighters of Libya. (see comments below for my enquiry to them about their evidence)

What we can know is what the video shows. The 22 corpses are uniformed in solid green, blue-ish camouflage, and civilian clothes, many black African, many Arab. They were all bound, hands behind backs, blindfolded, shoes removed, and shot in the back of the head. Brain matter, missing faces, and large pools of thick blood abound. The other 100-plus victims must be somewhere else - perhaps inside a building, perhaps in other locations and incidents altogether. Details are really that hazy.

But unless the whole world has it wrong (and that has happened, see below), this is the footage of part of that mass killing. Given the chronology above, with around 125 Gaddafi loyalists apparently slain in fighting with rebels, it's hard to imagine some other portion of those forces also slaughtering about the same number of their own amidst the chaos, for ... refusing to shoot the "protesters" ... who were fighting and killing them ... and wound up capturing a further 200 of the suspected mercenaries and/or army soldiers.

For refusing Gaddafi's orders and giving their lives in the process, these 22 were hailed by rebels and their affiliates as martyrs for the cause of freedom, heroes worthy of having streets name after them in the new capitol. But the evidence for that version of their demise was never clear. The video record of the aftermath, in itself, does little to explain why and by whom they were executed while held helpless.

Two available videos version show a 23rd body on the ground - alive. One is available here, and shows the survivor on his back in the bloody gravel and dust, in a spot between two corpse that’s empty in the other recordings. He’s wearing green fatigues with blood stains, seemingly covered in mud, but unbound and showing no visible injuries whatsoever. There is a pool of fresh-looking blood near his head, but the whole thing seems quite possibly fake. The cameraman just walks right past the living man, panning in on the gore of the others and chanting. Very strange response.

Another version shared on Facebook and thence on rebel site libyafeb17.com shows some (other?) passersby responding a bit more humanely. This oddball is there described as a “dying soldier who is being encouraged to say the testimony of faith." The cameraman, translated on that page, explained how the martyr said he was sent “from Az Zawiyah, he said Mu’ammar sent him.” (Thus, not from Sabha, where the real survivors were flown from). This statement isn't shown, just explained as the cameraman is called over to look at the survivor.

The fading man is also seen begging for water, which another man dribbles into his mouth. The last line from behind the lens almost reads like a sick joke: “Alright alright, don’t give him too much, you might kill him.” The camera’s panning in on the most bizarrely decimated heads would also be consistent with a rather twisted "onlooker." Not good signs. One can be excused for wondering, as commentator Stewart at the Feb17 video's page has, if the camera crew are in with the execution crew.

Gaddafi's Copy: Behind-the-Scenes
Further, the rebel site hosting the "survivor" video touts it as “demonstrat[ing] the falsity of Gaddafi run state tv which accused the rebels of executing these soldiers after muting the audio and filtering sections of it.”

That would not surprise most observers in the slightest, but we have the video in question also available on Youtube. Upon review, it's not muting some audio that's the problem, but a whole alternate beginning. Only one video is claimed to show direct evidence of what happened behind the scenes at al-Baida the night of the 22nd. And, however they got a copy, it was shown first (and only, as far as I know, aside from some Youtube postings) by al-Libya, the new, "liberal" and "private" news station owned by Muammar’s son Saif Gaddafi.

This recording shows nine apparent military men seated on a long pinstriped couch, unbound but cowed and looking various shades of worried. The other half of the room, behind the camera and to the sides, is a noisy roomfull of people speaking Arabic, questioning and haranguing their unhappy guests. (I'm trying to hunt down someone now who can help me transcribe it, as I cannot understand Arabic in the slightest).

I have numbered the prisoners of protest from left to right. #1, 5, 7, and 9 wear Green fatigues, while #3 and 6 sport the distinctive Libyan bluish camouflage fatigues. Captives #2, 4, and 8 are in civilian clothes. Two (8, 9) look black African, the rest different shades of Arab. #1 and #6 seem the senior ones among them (balding), and a few look quite young. #4 seems around 17-18 years of age.

Captive #6 has the air of a long-serving officer, and keeps his head down, softly answering the few questions he's asked. He seems more than anything deeply sad about the things he never got around to doing after retirement. #9, a big black guy, is repeatedly questioned at great length and tries to answer (all but inaudible, unfortunately). Captive #5 is standing apart from the rest for a while early in the video, gesturing emphatically, trying to explain something to his captors, a look of urgent worry on his face. After a while he's apparently told to shut up and sit down. He sits down in the middle of the couch, looking glum.

Identified in Both Videos
That the famous video of 22/23 martyrs is the aftermath of the one shown on al-Libya is based on their own comaprison, which is highly contested (in partisan Youtube comments, anyway. Some are a hoot.). Most people should naturally be expected to reject the word of Gaddafi-regime TV, but in this case it's not just propaganda. The video is right here for anyone who cares to double-check it for themselves.

(And if it gets yanked, I have a copy saved, and will try to make sure it's available)

Their visible findings are based on three freeze-frames, each showing a certain corpse next to an image of an eerily similar person in the first video. Each is supposedly a match for skin color, build, hair, and clothing. The three they were willing to put their name to are the prisoners I numbered, 6, 9, and 8, in order of their appearance, at 4:00, 4:07, and 4:18 in the video.

Each of al-Libya’s three guesses is, in my opinion, better than the last. The one they decided was #6 might well be wrong. This corpse seems to have hair both too thick and too curly. But at this resolution and with an apparently off-center balding spot, and the wrong angle to see it clearly, I don’t feel confident ruling him out. They may have had better copies and expertise to work with.

I kind of think the body laying across the backside of their #6, with its brains all over his blue camo legs and the ground, is prisoner of protest #5, the pleader. But it's hard to tell with no face, and the network did not venture that guess. The corpse they correlated with #9 is entirely consistent and a good guess. Few, but far from none, among a contingent of 325-plus-whoever would be that build and dressed the same as him.

But the one they linked with captive #8 (at right) is the sinker, all but undeniable. With his unique white pinstripe sweater, dark green pants, gangly build, and constant slouch, he has a distinctive and downcast look bedfore his captors. This body with a slightly hunched back suggests the slouch was from more than just his mood, and helps create a correlation one cannot reasonably ignore. It's the same guy.

Or faked video. But that's special pleading, and a weak position generally to take.

Furthermore, I can see bodies that could quite possibly be captives #1, #3, and #7 in there as well, but from there I run out of clear potential matches. It would seem the distinctive-looking captives #2 and 4 are not among those filmed the next morning. Perhaps they were spared, or joined the rebellion, or were killed elsewhere.

All told, this looks a lot like at least three and as many as seven of those same nine loyalists, executed in cold blood and strewn like refuse amongst 15-19 others of similar demographics and outfitting. And nothing about this video looks fake in the slightest. It's ridiculous to imagine a regime so besieged to even bother trying to fake as explanation for any of their reported slaughters, only to have the world ignore and dismiss it anyways.

No, this is likely the truth that the world is ignoring and dismissing. The camera - usually we presume it doesn't lie. ... Usually.

The Ones Not on the Couch

Next I turn to the captors, as seen in the al-Libya video. As generally noted, they do not seem to look or operate like senior loyalist commanders offing some mutineers.

These I've numbered, a bit more abritrarily. #1 is the cameraman, obviously unseen. Captor #2, "the Imam" I'll call him, stands to the camera's left, just barely on screen in parts. We can see he's not tall, but has a long, dark, unruly beard, a good-sized nose, and soft, pink, chubby hands. He seems to hold a walking stick (?), and wears a loose, light-colored top (possibly a robe, or is that a Gandalf/Osama leap of imagination?).

"The Imam" seems to lead the haranguing, and also patiently "comforts" the distressed prisoner #5 until he gently pushes him down to re-join the others on the couch. Later he dramatically turns to the big black guy, #9, causing a brief moment of shock, as seen here, and levels some more serious questions at him, I guess.

Captor #3 is a masked young man of apparently fair Arab stock, perhaps holding a cell phone. He briefly squats down and leans on the couch to the right of captive #9. Someone on that end of the room, perhaps him, also lets a machette dangle across the screen at one point. #5 looks rather professional in his all-black, all-tight outfit. Of a middling complexion and sharp features but unclear ethnicity, he seems to stand guard on the left half of the room. #6 only pops in briefly at 1:54 to invade prisoner #9's personal space for unsure reasons. This person is also black-African-looking, and wearing something green and black.

We can also see, through the open window's lattice, that it's dark outside and a crowd has gathered to watch this all.

One commentator at Youtube was able to understand the dialog that would really help me out, and panned the whole thing.

"The comments the "news reader" made at the end were false, she said that the interrogators asked their prisoners who their "emir" was, trying to invoke fear of islamists, in truth the interrogators asked who the commanding officer was "dobaat" then asked who is the boss "raees" then "they asked who is "emir", so to try to portray them as islamists is incorrect, she was also trying to insinuate that the eastern part of libya were in a war against the western part of libya. In summary, this is the type of "news" that the people in Tripoli are subjected to 24 hours a day.

Well, that would make it more informative on at least this episode anyway, which to my knolwedge hasn't once been seen on CNN, BBC, or al Jazeera or the rest. Not even Russia Today.

Folks like this are quite sure these two videos aren’t linked by any reality, that the similarities shown are coincidence or worse. And furthermore, it's clear to them that the rebels shown in the first one are not the foreign al-Qaeda-linked Islamists Gaddafi has been shouting about. They’re just ordinary Libyans, fed-up and not taking it any more. Consider this captor shown in the video, and whom I’ll call Khalid (wearing the white jacket).

Khalid could be any local Libyan man who moved to al-Baida from Benghazi with his two daughters, after his wife died of a rare neurological disease in 2006. He might work hard in construction, struggling to make ends meet under Gaddafi’s stifling regime, hoping to send his eldest, Aisha, to college in America. But history called, and he took up arms, like this rifle, to protest. And here is Khalid about one month ago, with captor #5 guarding the left end of the room, assisting in the peaceful interrogation of these obvious outsider mercenaries.

Ironically, the Youtube commentator cited above made issue of Slavic-looking riflemen used by ... the Gaddafi regime: “There are also unconfirmed reports that serbian snipers are being used by the Gaddafi regime (only unconfirmed because the snipers were not captured alive)”

Further Awkward Insights
So it appears these regime-loyal fighters were not murdered for refusing to “shoot protesters.” Rather, it could be they were offed for refusing to join the insurgency. This goes strongly against the once-prevailing idea that the whole country had effectively mutinied, leaving an illegitimate and insanely depraved tyrant in charge with only a few paid thugs. But here we see dedication and sacrifice, and a human side to the loyalists, defending their country from an unprecedented and bewildering inside-and-out attack, that we are currently bombing to smithereens in the dozens, if not hundreds. (Armored personnel carriers carry what?)

Further we see here a shrinking roster of vile and desperate mass-murder by those who remain loyal. Could it be the reality on the ground is more nuanced and unclear than the dramatic narrative of heroism against madness that we’ve been sold? These 22 killings, plus the fifteen at the courthouse in al-Baida, and likely many others, were not done in cold blood by Gaddafi’s desperate thugs. Most likely the full 125-130 who demised in that reported sum did so at the hands of the same side, just not the side reported to the world.

Perhaps it’s time to reconsider other incidents in and around Benghazi as well, like another six soldiers, or alternately (or also?) “dozens” of mutinous soldiers “burned alive in their bunkers," we’re told, for the same crime – refusing to shoot peaceful protesters. Again, how we know the villains, their motives, and that the victims were alive when burnt, is not the slightest bit clear. We do know protesters have no problem lighting government buildings on fires. LibyaFeb17.com hosted at least one recording of this atrocity exhibition. A few corpses are shown, extremely burnt, nearly skeletal, placed in body bags but re-opened. That’s all I could vouch for, but the rest of the world has taken it through the same distorted filter as they get everything about this war. It's obviously the work of an ever-insaner tyrant who really, really, really must go, quickly! The claim is widely repeated, including at MoD Oracle, a private site sort-of-linked to the British Ministry of Defense, mostly serving service-members with general military information.

Please also consider the above information next to this hyperventilating warning from the same IFHR who are the only ones vouching so prominently for the “killed for refusing” claim.

“New credible information, and sometimes still difficult to verify, regarding the murders of soldiers refusing to follow orders [...inter alia...] suggest that Gaddafi has effectively decided to implement a mass extermination of those participating in the protests and furthermore, the systematic repression of civilians. The intention announced by Gaddafi in a speech on Feb. 22, to eradicate the “rats” should be taken seriously." [emph. mine] [source, PDF]

And on the flip-side, obviously, we’ve seen an ugly dark side of the “rats” the world is so intensely interested in protecting on their march to control of Africa's greatest oil reserves. We have here good evidence we've all been hoodwinked and are blowing up Libya to help hand it over to – in part – radical Islamists, and uncivilized war criminals, with no compunction about using unnecessarily brutal terror tactics and fobbing it off on the enemy to help secure their continued tactical air support from the “civilized” world.

Question: does an unlawful combatant (aka rebel, bandit, terrorist) posing as, and among, peaceful protesters - and seizing control of cities full of them - constitute using human shields? Or only using the more potent "Human Rights" shield and its add-ons?

A "Mirage" Over Benghazi on the Cusp of Air War

2011-04-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Crimes Against Reality in Libya, part 2
April 5
last updates April 20

Resolved to Protect Benghazi
Talk of seizing the Libyan skies started early in the civil war, fed in large part by the impression that Gaddafi's insane forces were bombing peaceful protesters from the air. Considering real atrocities, like the 130 government soldiers executed around al-Baida for refusing to shoot protesters (we heard), bloodbath and madness loomed. The world had to act, it gradually became clear, as they had in Yugoslavia, Iraq, and elsehwere, by seizing the skies away from the repressive government and using this high ground themselves for "policing" powers. Responsibility to Protest, P2P, it's called.

Three weeks into the insurrection, it was getting desperate for the rebels. They had pushed too far and been left too long as the regime pushed back. One-by-one, cities west and then east fell back to government hands, and by March 17 loyal forces were moving in on Benghazi itself. Gaddafi had promised to go to Libya's second largest city and the de-facto rebel capitol, and crush those who refused to surrender. That coming to fruition would destroy any reasonable hope of finally toppling the colonel with this insurrection.

United Nations security council resolution 1973 was voted in 10-0 at the end of a late-night session on the 17th. It called for a "cease-fire," with special emphasis on government actions. But it was never in fact to be applied to the rebels, and became a one-sided cease fire demand. The resolution also tightened sanctions, froze assets, and imposed a "no-fly zone" for government aircraft, over the whole nation.

The skies were authorized to be seized as of morning light on the 18th. As the west prepared to attack and scheduled a special meeting in Paris, Libya announced a cease-fire in the evening. The world scoffed, and noted that government forces were still rushing towards Benghazi. No one bothered waiting for the rebels to agree to stop shooting, and they never did. They couldn't topple anything without firing a whole lot more.

There is some confusion, but not as much as there should be, about the supposed siege of the city starting on the morning of the 19th. The new Wikipedia page for "the second battle of Benghazi" has the first shots fired, by Gaddafi's forces near the city, at about 7:45 am. [1] The government denied any attack on Benghazi, that hey held their positions miles away. But shelling of the city's southern areas occurred, and scores were killed and injured, according to hospital staff, Even two air strikes were reported in the early morning hours by one reporter. Gaddafi troops were fought at the gates, said one rebel commander, and government tanks were roaming freely inside the city, according to many reports.

The evidence of heavy weapons usage in the area, including Libyan army tanks seems entirely credible, but there are no photos of these attacking forces to show their context. Considering this abandoned army base on February 24, the rebels had heavy weapons early on and numerous tanks, among other things, after this siege. And the government claimed with a straight face they did none of that, that it was apparently the work of rebels with seized equipment shooting at each other to draw in the West.

Whichever the case, the West was trying its best to be drawn in. Very wealthy leaders of some handful of normal countries (US, UK, France, etc.) talked it over in Paris. By the middle of the day an urgent consensus was reached to save Benghazi by starting to enforce the 36-hour-old resolution 1973. A rather lopsided vote from 9 of the 22 members of the Arab League had already been managed, bolstering the surface-level worldliness of this trojan horse air campaign. Asked if military action would now go ahead, the British Prime Minister David Cameron said:

"Gaddafi has made this happen. He has lied to the international community, he has promised a ceasefire, he has broken that ceasefire, he continues to brutalise his people, and so the time for action has come."

Fire in the Sky: A Government Air Attack?

The last straw, merging in the news stories announcing the line in the sand, was a dramatic visual that morning from Benghazi's southern outskirts. Around 9am local time the first reports and video emerged, despite the supposed total internet blockage, of a high-speed fighter jet seen streaking over the city, then bursting into flames and tumbling from its path, apparently shot from below.

The pilot was seen to eject from the flaming jet with a parachute rather late in the sudden nose-down plunge. On impact with a residential area, a massive, dull orange fireball crusted with black expanded over the sururb and stretched into a tower of black smoke. Citizens of the rebel capitol reportedly cheered and celebrated as the jet crashed. [2]

The photo was run in huge sizes by countless news outlets that day, visualizing the situation in appropriately stark and dramatic terms. As Sky TV put it, "the aircraft crash in Benghazi appears to be the first solid evidence to contradict Libyan claims of refraining from military action." The solemn decision reached in Paris came "just hours after a Libyan ceasefire was broken" by this crash, reported The Sun. "Gaddafi appeared to openly flaunt the threat of a no-fly zone resolution earlier today as a fighter jet was shot down..." [3]

The Telegraph's Rob Crilly in Benghazi, was on the roof of a hotel where journalists stay when he saw the fighter. In a blog entry at 9:21, he wrote:

It came in from the sea, somewhere to the north. At first the residents of Benghazi cheered, believing it would herald the start of air strikes against Gaddafi forces still rumbling towards their city. “Is it European,” shouted one. Then it swung back around the city, describing, a high, slow circle even as artillery shells pounded the outskirts of the city. If it was a Mirage then maybe it was one of Gaddafi’s last.
It’s next run would have been more deadly, as it roared back across the city, this time flying low and straight – the very definition of intent – as anti-aircraft guns roared along its western path. [...] A flash illuminated the jet, somewhere near its tail. The flash grew to a flame as an explosion ripped through the plane, stopping it as if caught by an invisible hand rather than anti-aircraft fire. Slowly the plane sycamoured towards the ground where it exploding in another, bigger fireball. [4]

It's still speculated that catastrophic engine failure caused this crash, but that's an odd enough coincidence, and enough reports suggest the sound of anti-aircraft fire, that I'm presuming it was torn down with guns on the ground. Again, the government of Libya denied this was their jet on any mission for them, that they didn't intend to flaunt anything at just that moment. [2] Again, the world didn't believe the civilian-bombing regime.

Friendly Fire in the Sky? A Rebel Attack?
Just before noon, the Telegraph reported "confirmed reports from Libyan rebel leaders that the jet fighter shot down today over Benghazi was one of theirs, and not a Gaddafi aircraft." [4] The Guardian's Chris McGreal said as early as 9:45 "Some of the rebels say it’s their plane. It might have been their only plane that was shot down by Gaddafi's forces," adding at 10:19 "the rebels now concede it was their only plane."[5]

The protesters-turned-rebels were swooping over the city "low and straight – the very definition of intent"? And who shot their air force down? Previously it was presumed to be anti-aircraft fire from within the city. I could swear I saw a few whispers that it could have been friendly fire, in trigger happy wild west Benghazi. But I’m having a hard time relocating them now, aside from Rob Crilly, "tweeting" around 11:30 “rebels [are] telling us they think the plane shot down was a rebel plane – fog of war. We only saw one." [6]

A Government Attack on the Rebel Attack?
Most source leapt straight from rebels killing Gaddafi jet to Gaddafi killing rebel jet, either one meaning Gaddafi, but not the rebels, was in violation of the cease-fire-no-fly/whatever demand. Rick Leventhal told Faux News at mid-day "we don't know" who was flying the jet. If it were Gaddafi's fighter, it'd be in major violation just for flying there. But if it was a rebel jet, it was probably just aiming for the government tanks in the city, which he said "we believe" were targeting the journalists' hotel. [7] But if it had been a government jet, it may have been aiming itself for the hotel. Maybe the tanks were rebel-held and there to shoot down the plane.

Sky News' Emma Hurd said "suspicions have now been raised that the jet was a rebel-flown, stolen aircraft hit as it sought out Gaddafi's forces on the outskirts of Benghazi. ... There is still some confusion over that but what is clear is that despite claims of a ceasefire there still is fighting and it seems to be led by his [Gaddafi's] forces." [1]

Considering again the somewhat unclear location of government forces on the 19th, it needs a bit of presumption to take the rebel version that they were at and in the city. But this is all but necessary to accept they were close enough to shoot down the mystery jet. And, of course, that would also put them close enough to be targeted by it. Within just over a day, the no-fly-zone against the government of Libya became, effectively, a no-shooting-at-rebel-air-offensives-zone. That, I believe, is unprecedented.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported a bit later in the day:

However a rebel official reached by telephone acknowledged the plane was one of their Mirage fighter jets and that it had been downed by loyalists. "It was one of the insurgents' planes. It was downed by Kadhafi's forces. From what I hear the pilot is dead but I cannot confirm that," he said. [8]

Aircraft Model
The rebels held very few acknowledged aircraft at this time. Most people believed the number was zero, leading to the presumption that it was from the government. As noted above, Chris McGreal passed on rebel reports, multiply confirmed, that this "was their only plane." [5]

The rebel official had cited it as one of a few, and gave it as a French-built Mirage (unspecified model). The Telegraph however noted this was "contrary to other reports that it was a Mig-27 Flogger-D." [4] One should hope that a rebel official giving specific information would know the make. David Crilly, citing rebel sources, said "no-one able to ID it. Consensus was that it wasn’t a mig – possibly a mirage." [6]

Comments at the New Statesman suggest the craft was not a Mirage. Someone there so inclined did suggest the F-1 as compatible, the only specific model I've seen specified. [9] Other said Mig-29, and "visual identification confirmed: it's MiG 23." Live Leak's report and Wikipedia called it a Mig-23. [2] [1] This is supported by further sources, but that's perhas not it either.

I decided to overlay the jet photo with schematics of the Mirage F-1, Mig 23, and the Mig-27 Flogger D. I used perspective and skew effects on the photo to make it as "flat" as possible in overall proportions like these overheads (planar surfaces anyway, wings and horizontal stabilizers). Then I matched the body, nose-cone to tail-fin, as close as possible, and found all of them are reasonable fits, but the Mig-27 is the only one that seems perfect (note also the "shoulder spikes." likely off due to rotation). Then I looked at the wings. Both Migs have adjustable ones, but the sweep setting here also mimics the F-1's fixed angle. For size and shape the wings are a best fit best with the Mig-27, and is clearly out for the Mirage. The Telegraph had it.

update April 12: I re-did the graphics. The plane was a bit too wide before. For reference, the original version is here. Also, the rebels were recently caught flying a MIG-23, which NATO escorted back to the ground for violating the no-fly zone. Still no sign of them running any of the model used that morning. [source]

I'll spare myself (for now) the painful research of seeing just what this model means vis-a-vis Gaddafi's air force, rebel-seized Gaddafi jets, and related implications. Others better informed may perhaps have a comment to share on that.

The Wreckage and the Crew
Seen from a distance, the mystery Mig seemed to plow straight down into a residential neighborhood, and engufled it in a massive fireball. A few deaths, many injuries, and much damage should be expected. It took two days for Fox News's correspondent Rick Levental to be shown the wreckage on the afternoon of the 21st. He testified the plane was definitely rebel, painted with the old monarchy flag on its tail-fin. Dull metal sheet and engine debris was strewn around a rather large walled courtyard of an “old adoption home.” [10]

Leventhall said the pilot had directed the plane there to minimize injuries on the ground, and none at all were reported to my knowledge. The pilot did indeed eject very late, and not surprisingly, this report confirms that he died of injuries on landing. [10] One comment makes a claim the “pilot died from wounds after ejecting, co-pilot ejected and had minor injuries. 3 days later he was back up in another plane.” [11] No other sources I’ve found confirm anything about a co-pilot, however.

Musings
What if the government forces truly were too remote to have taken that shot? Only the rebels would then have controlled the ground fire in that area, as first noted in the presumption they had shot it down. They controlled the jet itself, as we found out, so absent AA fire from Gaddafi’s side, it was friendly fire, rebel-on-rebel. This seems most likely, in fact, going just by logic. But that contradicts rebel findings. ... Oh well.

But what if this wasn’t accident? All things considered, it probably was, but my over-active imagination has me wondering if it could possibly be a false flag bit of theatrics for the foreign journalists and their cameras. Perhaps it went awry, or was re-written behind the lead actor's back. Maybe the original idea was so strafe or rocket the hotel and massacre journalists, before zipping away from the hapless civilians' defenses. The rebels would clearly not have claimed it in that case. The possibilities are endless when you have a case this full of holes and mystery.

On the Mig/Mirage confusion, I would guess the rebels did in fact hold a very few Mirages, acknowledged, and at least the one Mig-27, unacknowledged as far as I know. If this were the case, we should ask why rebels were flying a model of jet they don't acknowledge having? Considering the first impressions that it was Gaddafi's jet, maybe it was to create that first impression? The painted tail-fin mitigates against this, but for all we know, that was painted on after the fact, to support the story they adopted, for whatever reason, if it differed from the original story, written by whoever ...

The Telegraph's Crilly said he saw the Mig-27 first come in, and the line of travel suggested “it came in from the sea, somewhere to the north.” Western airpower was sitting out there on carriers, ready to launch. It’s odd to suspect Gaddafi’s forces would launch from out on the sea or even swoop out much over it and risk shoot-down. The same might go for a rebel jet on its way to attack Gaddafi’s forces or … whatever it was “intent” on doing. Is it possible a rebel jet - or even a remote-controlled drone - was launched from naval points north? The photos of the pilot ejecting only shows a parachute and a large object from the distance seen. Again, the possibilities are endless...

Whatever was really going on there, this mysterious incident certainly wasn't the cause of the bombing raids and 110 cruise missile strikes that started later that day. It did, however, serve a nice role tipping the scale in the public mind's eye. Gaddafi never stops flaunting, will never stop the killing and the insanity on his own, but now he will go down in flames. It started to really happen with jets that were French Mirages, to much cheering, a bare eight hour later, seeking out Saddam's forces - still stationed miles from the city.

Sources:
[1] Second Battle of Benghazi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
[2] Live Leak March 19
[3] "PM: The time has come for action" The Sun. March 19. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3478243/Jet-shot-down-over-Libya.html
[4] Libya as it Happened: March 19. The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8393509/Libya-as-it-happened-March-19.html
[5] Libya military action - Saturday 19 March part 1. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/mar/19/libya-live-blog-ceasefire-nofly
[6] Libya live blog: latest developments on no-fly zone, ceasefire and ...
[7] Fox News. Coverage of Libya war, dispatch, Rick Leventhal. March 19. http://video.foxnews.com/v/4595510/rick-leventhal-live-from-libya
[8] http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/thousands-flee-as-fighting-rages-around-libyas-benghazi-20110319-1c1gp.html
[9] http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/03/jet-shot-allies-benghazi
[10] Fox News. Coverage of Libya war, dispatch, Rick Leventhal. March 21. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/03/20/significant-success-early-stages-enforcing-sanctioned-fly-zone/
[11] http://worldnewstrend.com/news/gaddafis-fighter-jet-shot-down-by-libyan-rebel-benghazi-19-03-2011/

ON THE GRANADA DOCU-DRAMA

2010-01-25T02:01:00.000-08:00

A Small-Screen Production Assists the Transition
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
January 25 2010

The first I heard about this program was in Allan Frankovich’s 1994 film The Maltese Double Cross: “In 1993, Air Malta wins its libel suit against Granada television. Granada, in a docudrama, had claimed the bomb had been placed in an unaccompanied bag on an Air Malta flight.” [MDC 1:24:45] A fuller explanation, describing its provocative Malta link, can be found in Paul Foot's Lockerbie: The Flight From Justice:

"The programme focused on a bakery in Malta and a Palestinian cell based there. The programme made the same connection as the Sunday Times had done a year earlier – between the fact that the clothes in the bomb suitcase were bought in Malta and the less certain fact that an unaccompanied bag from Malta was loaded onto a Pan Am feeder flight from Frankfurt to London and thence to Pan Am 103. To illustrate this hypothesis, the programme showed a sinister-looking Arab checking in a bag at Malta airport and then sliding surreptitiously away while the plane took off.

This was too much for Air Malta, who sued Granada for libel. Norton Rose, the London commercial solicitors, compiled a huge dossier detailing almost everything about the flight from Malta to Frankfurt on the day of the Lockerbie bombing and proving that all 55 bags checked in on the flight could be ascribed to passengers, none of whom travelled on to London. The evidence was so powerful that Granada settled the action before it got to court. They paid Air Malta £15,000 damages and all the costs of the case. The only time these matters had been tested in a legal action, the Maltese connection to the bomb suitcase was comprehensively demolished." [Foot p 7]

One should note that the Malta link was not new to this film, but aired a year earlier in the Sunday Times, presumably David Leppard's fabled late-1989 series I still need to find. From what I hear around, these managed to fuse popular assumptions of guilt, the PFLP-GC and Abu Talb and Iran, with bits of the emerging Libya narrative, which he would write in book form in 1991 as that became official. The evidence that pointed to Malta emerged during 1989; first was the clothing, discovered during the winter and spring, and in August the Frankfurt printout pointed there again by showing that item 8849. This was followed swiftly by talks with the Gauci family, who apparently sold the clothes, from 1 September onwards. Leppard seeded this crucial mental picture - an origin on little old Malta - widely by the end of 1989, and within a year Granada had made the TV movie version.

On further inspection the program was produced in 1990, jointly, by Granada Television for the ITV network, HBO for America's audiences, and Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (for German airing?). First screened in UK as TV movie "Why Lockerbie?" 26 November 1990, then in the US by HBO as "The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story." [source: wikipedia] There is currently a trailer for the the HBO version viewable online (screen caps throughout). External link (too unreliable to embed):
http://www.videodetective.com/titledetails.aspx?PublishedID=18490
Director: Leslie Woodhead
Writer: Michael Eaton
Starring: Ned Beatty as C. Edward Acker, Peter Boyle as Fred Ford, Sean Pertwee as Oliver Koch, Vincent Gardenia as Harry Pizer, Michael Wincott as Ulrich Weber, and Sasson Gabai as then-popularly-suspected bomb-maker Marwan Khreesat. Other featured characters include Ali Akbar Mohteshemi, Hafez Dalkomoni, and Abu Talb. No Libyans are involved. There is a "Maltese shopkeeper," presumably of the bakery Leppard was on about, and not Tony Gauci. Runtime: 86 minutes.
[source: IMDB]

Ned Beatty as Pan Am CEO C. Edward Acker, seen at right, always backed with prominent slat blinds (metaphorical? Subtle?) I'm not an expert on Pan Am's history, but Acker ran the company from the early 1980s, apparently on promises of revitalizing it and making it profitable again. He was replaced in early 1988, so only set up the culture lading to their alleged failure. When guys in suits are the villains, the motive is always money, and no exception here; a drive for profits led to their selective, perhaps criminal, and deeply tragic security blindness.

Some controversy was aired early on about the curious "Helsinki Warning" of early December being buried and somehow missed by Ulrich Weber, Frankfurt Airport Security administrator, until Dec 22. In the film, the narrator explains the response: "Other than screening Finnish passengers, Pan Am's procedures at Frankfurt Airport remained unchanged. There was no briefing of security personnel to update them on threat information." Mr. Weber is further quoted in the film dismissing a larger threat yet, the October discovery of multiple airliner bomb radios in existence in Germany. Speaking with an underling, Oliver Koch, who is prophetically worried about "that cell and terrorist setup in Neuss. Something about bombs in tape recorders."

"Ulrich Weber: Pan Am didn't expect us to do anything special with that one.
Oliver Koch: I recommend it should be on today's agenda.
Ulrich Weber: You are going beyond your competence, Koch! This is not in your job description!
Oliver Koch: I recommend that we take the batteries off of every single radio cassette player we find, okay?
Ulrich Weber: We tell our people to go loose on the passenger's private property and smash half the things they touch? We'd go broke paying the damage claims.
[...]
Ulrich Weber: Oliver, you've got to lighten up, pal. It's almost Christmas. When all is said and done, air travel is still safer than crossing the road." [source: IMDB]

Some clips featuring Michael Wincott as Weber were posted on Youtube, by a fan of the actor, apparently. Here, he shows great confidence and a greasy pony tail that usually indicate "confidence artist." He's arrogant, and tragic in his swagger. He should worry more, a lot more... dun dun.... Recall these were real people, then in court over their culpability over the tragedy, struggling for survival, accused of a mammoth failure to catch the bomb that got onto PA 103, when the most coherent evidence actually indicates an introduction 400 miles away in London. Ulrich Weber had nothing to do with the suitcase John Bedford saw.

pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y63KoLUkTW0
pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI8HPMbQQuo
pt 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV7Z3v0m5U0

Release Timing
The film’s airing in the UK and US in late November and early December 1990 is interesting. As noted above, it helped further ingrain a year-old idea of a Maltese bomb bag slipping through three airports. It was released approximately one year after several lines of questionable intelligence had converged overwhelmingly on Malta in late 1989 – 16 months after the printout showed it as item 8849, 15 months after starting a dialog with Tony Gauci. 12 months after Paul Gauci first changed stories and suggested a December 7 purchase was likely. Six months after Thurman’s identification of a Libyan timer fragment. One year before a formal indictment would be issued of agents not even hinted at in this portrayal.

Also, the release happened to lines up well with the announcement to all international investigators, in the run-up to the second anniversary, that US and UK investigators had decided that Maltese bag was their big lead, and it pointed to Libya, not Syria, not Iran, not any Palestinians. In his 2006 memoir, Marquise writes of an early December 1990 conference (apparently on the 6th?) of investigators in Sweden, bringing Swiss police in for the first time.

“The night before the formal conference, Henderson and I convened the other police officials in a private room above the main dining area. The Swiss were introduced and the new direction of the investigation was discussed. Because the formal agenda had been drawn up in advance, much of it was devoted to the PFLP-GC cell in Germany. However, we had always said evidence would drive the investigation, not speculation. Now the evidence had pointed away from Dalkamouni and his PFLP-GC cell. Everything we saw pointed directly at Libya.” [Marquise, p 73]

The Germans were “relieved,” Marquise recalled, but the Maltese, who were on bad terms with the investigation at the time, “were not as ready to accept the new scenario,” and “adopted the same philosophy which the Germans had employed for a time.” “Evidence [which] showed the bomb bag … had originated in Malta,” that was a year old already, “had not yet been proven to the satisfaction of Maltese officials.” But the next day’s conference went smoothly enough, and “not one word of what was discussed at the meeting was ever leaked to the media, proving that this group of law enforcement officials was trustworthy."

Three days later, however, HBO would re-air half of that new direction, the bag that Maltese authorities still couldn't see even after the first UK airing of Why Lockerbie? just days before the conference. Air Malta would of course take the issue to court as we started out, but Maltese investigators just acquiesced; on December 10, the day after the American re-broadcast as The Tragedy of Flight 103 in case that matters, "Henderson reported the Maltese were ready to let us back in to work, possibly as soon as December 17." [Marquise, p 73]
---

HARRY BELL AND PAUL GAUCI ON THE DATE OF PURCHASE

2010-01-22T23:23:00.000-08:00

TWO SHOCKING ADMISSIONS
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
January 23 2010

Among other points raised in a letter re-posted by Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc., Richard Marquise mused: “It was strange that of all the people in the world, Mr. Megrahi was in Malta the same day the clothing was purchased and was there the same day the bomb left on its fateful journey.” (emphasis mine)
I reminded him of the statement in the comments section at Professor Back’s blog, and posed the following five questions to him. Apparently he never caught them, as he never offered an answer.

1) Is it not strange that of all the days in the subset November 23 and December 7 you and the investigation had to pick the latter as the best fit for the purchase, even though that choice requires badly misreading the actual evidence?
2) What did the SCCRC find about the Christmas light going up?
3) What do local weather records say for rainfall on Dec 7 vs. Nov 23?
4) What do football schedules (Rome-Dresden) say about Paul’s absence at 6:50 pm? What does Paul say?
5) Why doesn’t November 23 work again, aside from Megrahi not being there?

For those who don't know, the clothes thought to have been packed around the bomb that took down PA 103, were traced to a shop in Malta and shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who eventually took $2 million to recall the purchase for investigators. He famously decided the accused al Megrahi resembled the purchaser a bit, and supposedly gave a date that made it at least possible for the accused to have made the buy.

The date was of key importance, and the absence of Gauci's brother, Paul, at the time of the purchase was a key to narrowing that down. Paul was at home in the evening to watch a football game, which was narrowed down to one of two Rome-Dresden matches, on November 23 or December 7 1988. For the earlier date, the accused purchaser, al Megrahi, has a solid alibi of being not on the island. For the latter date, he was present, and the prosecution decided the purchase occurred on December 7. Many have suspected it was Megrahi's presence, and not the clues provided by the Gaucis, that caused them to chose the date. This would seem a hard point to prove, but not at all difficult to indicate. (The following points will be more fully explained and sourced elsewhere - this is just a summary.)

The purchaser Tony remembered came at around ten 'til 7 pm, as Paul was watching his game at home. The December 7 game was aired app. 1-3pm local, while November 23's was aired app. 7-9 pm local. The math is clear. Tony recalled specifically the Christmas lights in his neighborhood were not yet up. As the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission (SCCRC) found years later through new evidence, those lights went up on December 6, meaning his memory if on December 7 would have been recalling they were up, had just gone up. On the 23rd, the neighborhood was still dark and cheerless, as he first recalled the evening. He recalled the purchaser bought an umbrella to deal with the rain outside. Weather records show appreciable but light rainfall in Silema the evening of November 23, but December 7 shows up dry as a bone for that time frame and all day, Island-wide.

Is that confusing, unclear, or ambiguous? The investigators were later clear that December 7 was the obvious choice and the true one, but seem to have been confused, admitting it when pressed. Detective Inspector Harry Bell, who headed the Scottish police effort on Malta and was the main contact point for the Gaucis, was interviewed in 2006 by the SCCRC. Some extracts were re-printed in Megrahi's rock-solid grounds of appeal. Excerpts from there:

DI Bell SCCRC interview (25-26/7/06)
"...The evidence of the football matches was confusing and in the end we did not manage to bottom it out..."
"...I am asked whether at the time I felt that the evidence of the football matches was strongly indicative of 7th December 1988 as the purchase date. No, I did not. Both dates 23rd Nov & 7th Dec 1988 looked likely.
"...It really has to be acknowledged how confusing this all was. No date was signficant for me at the time. Ultimately it was the applicant's [Megrahi’s] presence on the island on 7th December 1988 that persuaded me that the purchase took place on that date. Paul specified 7th December when I met with him on 14th December 1989 and I recorded this..." [Source: Grounds of Appeal]

The bolded is a shocking admission of just what many had guessed. And then, almost as an afterthought (and a quick one I'd venture) "Paul specified 7th December" as the right day, during a meeting of "14th December 1989." He even has the date memorized! No direct quotes provided there of this meeting. But two months earlier, in a 19 October meeting with the same Harry Bell, he clearly specified the other day. In a police report obtained by Private Eye and published in Paul Foot's 2000 booklet Lockerbie, the Flight from Justice, Mr. Gauci said:

“I was shown a list of European football matches I know as UEFA. I checked all the games and dates. I am of the opinion that the game I watched on TV was on 23 November, 1988: SC Dynamo Dresden v AS Roma. On checking the 7th December 1988, I can say that I watched AS Roma v Dynamo Dresden in the afternoon. All the other games were played in the evening. I can say for certain I watched the Dresden v Roma game. On the basis that there were two games played during the afternoon of 23 November and only one on the afternoon of 7th December, I would say that the 23rd November 1988 was the date in question.” [Foot, 2000, p 21]

If indeed the man was specifying the desired date two months later, that's a second admission from Bell. By December 1989 at the latest, they were trying to implicate al Megrahi, and had been trying to long enough that Paul Gauci had taken the hint.

This makes it clear why, despite his specific and useful memory, Paul was not called to give evidence at trial, and reports like this from 19 October were likewise not produced. He did however manage to secure a $1 million payment himself, probably informal sharing rights on his brothers two mil, and the same DoJ witness relocation/protection/silencing program as his brother. Three million will buy a lot of shrimp for the barbie, and it already bought the Americans one of four planks they needed to get their political fantasy to become legal reality.

A THREE-YEAR TEST DRIVE, PARKED 8 YEARS, AND THEN A HIGH-SPEED CRASH, pt 1

2010-01-13T01:10:00.000-08:00

A.M. GIAKA'S SKELETON OF FANTASY
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
completed January 22 2010

Note: what follows is the first half of a looong working essay I just had to see up even before it's done. It covers from Giaka's defection to the start of trial preparations in 1999. Part two will be long-delayed, but will call on Giaka's direct testimony via trial transcripts.

A Missing Link
Among the sources collecting the evidence against Abdelbaset al Megrahi (and/or his accused accomplice Lamin Fhimah), most mention the same three “keys to the solution of the case” given by the FBI’s lead investigator on the SCOTBOM case, Richard Marquise, in his 2006 book. He gives these as Tony Gauci, “the Mebo chip,” and the souvenir printout of the Frankfurt luggage records taken by Bogomiras Erac, which was strangely “the only record” anyone could find of this vital information. [Marquise p 210] There are other peripheral clues of importance, but few with the resonance, clarity, and specificity of these three as indicators of Libya’s guilt, via the two accused.

But missing from such formulations is a fourth and most important key – Abdul Majid Giaka [different spellings have been used], a Libyan intelligence defector turned intelligence asset for the U.S. side of the investigation. In fact, in coming on board four months before the Lockerbie bombing, Giaka’s connections with Malta, Luga Airport, and Libyan intelligence put him in a prime position to be the first to mention both accused - to his CIA handlers - in the first place. The majority of everything he said has by now been discredited and shown to be fabrication – at best enabled and at worst demanded by his American friends.

Giaka’s intelligence was transformed to evidence with some CIA/FBI alchemy, tying several loose ends together and, in essence, providing the skeleton for the ‘Libyan villains’ case to stand on. The defector’s tales underpinned the US/UK joint indictment, the years-long extradition wrangle, and was finally brought as far as the Scottish Court as Camp Zeist in 2000. But as we’ll see, it went no further and has been mentioned as little as possible since.

Effective Defector Detected
Abdul Majid started this journey as a self-described disaffected Libyan perturbed by Tripoli’s terroristic ways and Gaddafi’s Masonic schemes. A low-level intelligence agent with the JSO, and stationed on Malta, he approached the US embassy there in August 1988 offering his services. Paul Foot’s seminal 2000 booklet Lockerbie: Flight From Justice explains how this started a “long series of meetings with American intelligence officials in Malta,” 41 secret meetings total, spanning almost three years from “September 1988, the same month he started getting regular payments from the CIA.” [Foot]

For $1,000 US per month, rising to $1,500, he wasn't a huge payback at first. “His information was patchy and unreliable,” Foot reported. “He pretended he was a senior official in the Libyan intelligence organisation JSO though in reality (as the Americans quickly realised) he was a former garage mechanic who helped to maintain JSO vehicles.” The BBC Conspiracy Files program in 2008 treated this subject fairly, and summed up “not so much double-oh-seven, more WD40.” [CF 44:20] He had however “graduated to the exalted position of assistant station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines,” Foot concedes, work carried out at Luqa International Airport, on the island's near-south side.

Giaka was given the code-name "puzzle piece" by his CIA handlers, [CF, 43:29] at least one which also worked at the airport, under cover as a baggage handler. [LTBU 8/29] The agent kept tabs on him, writing cables back to the CIA that named the subject in code as “P/1” (and referred to the JSO as ESO). P/1’s job there involved aircraft security, “but he is also obliged to assist ESO operatives transitting or on missions to Malta,” according to a copy shown on the Conspiracy Files. That’s a reasonably rich source for intel reports, but the agent noted Giaka “has been a “shirker” while in Malta, generally dodging ESO assignments since his Luqa appointment.” [CF 44:12]

Whatever the defector’s shortfalls, in October 1988 he reported his first big lead – Lamin Fhimah, a “JSO agent” also working at the airport, kept eight pounds of TNT in a locked desk drawer of an office. Paul Foot again relates how two months later in December (whether before or after the Lockerbie bombing is unclear) “he was asked about the movements of JSO officials through Luqa airport. He replied that a man he regarded as a senior JSO officer, Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi, had passed through Luqa airport on 7 December.” [Foot] The names may not have meant much at first among Giaka’s other intelligence, but as soon as investigators were willing to consider a Libyan link, and it was found that both were also present on Malta December 20, the eventual suspects were clearly on file and ready to drop in place even before 1988 had closed.

Giaka and America Rescue Each Other
By the beginning of September 1989 the investigation’s scope was narrowing in, of all places, on Malta. The oddly-delayed Frankfurt printout revealed in mid-August an unaccompanied bag from Malta had apparently gone onto PA103A. At the same time, the tattered Maltese clothes from inside that bag had led to Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci, who gave his first statement about the buyer on September 1. But Giaka was probably not told these things as, on September 4th Foot maintains, “his CIA handlers in Malta told Giaka he was “on trial” until the next New Year (1990).” [Foot]

The informant likely grew nervous as his bridges to America became more precarious, his bridges on Malta stood burned, and his bridges back to Libya were threatening. The 1994 film The Maltese Double Cross featured interviews with both accused, who indeed knew Giaka, at least in passing. Megrahi confirmed he did security work there, and “he was hated by other employees there.” Fhimah added “He behaved badly towards the employees working with us, in dealing with passengers. The Maltese airport authorities know this.” [MDC 1:28:10-1:31:28] Some bias might be expected of course, but others interviewed for the film vouched that he was irresponsible, a partier and amasser of debts. And he wasn’t going to be getting any more popular trying to sell intelligence to the CIA.

One anonymous Libyan related for the film how Giaka was put up for transfer at some point: “they asked him to return back to Libya because his contract finished, for his staying in Malta.” Apparently desperate to maintain his situation there and his possible ticket away from Libya, Giaka asked the CIA to pay for a surgery to injure his arm so he wouldn’t be called away to serve in the Libyan Army. [Foot] They apparently consented and “after a few days,” the anomymous source said “[Giaka] came here after the hotel and he had a plaster on his hand” which he said was from falling down the stairs. This seemed to help him “get an extension of around three or four months to stay here.” [MDC 1:31:15]

By 1991, the regular cables were describing P/1 as “a shattered person” who “does not want to be part of the security apparatus and is certainly milking any of his contacts, including us, for whatever he can get.” [NYT] The Americans were ready to milk back - the fruit was ripe and dripping with urgent ‘get-me-outta-here’ intel possibilities. Perhaps realizing that Giaka really was the best they were going to get, the decision was made by July 11, when the Department of Justice told Mr. Giaka they would “accept or reject him" as a witness "based on his response to their Inquiries,” which would be done at leisure within the United States. The very next day, Foot writes,

“Giaka, to his intense gratification, was taken off Malta by an American warship, and interrogated there by an FBI officer, Hal Hendershot. Before long he was safe in the US where he was later joined by his wife. He was paid a regular salary in exchange for constant interrogations by the CIA and the FBI. What he told them plainly satisfied them.

In October, in conditions of great secrecy, he gave evidence to a US Grand Jury. The result, in November 1991, was a detailed indictment charging Megrahi and Fhimah with murder by planting a bomb in a suitcase on a flight from Malta to Frankfurt and thence to London – and the explosion over Lockerbie.” [Foot]

The World Dances to the Fantasist Tune (Played Real Loud)
The United States government for this point forward until now, without interruption, has accepted the core of this indictment as unassailable truth. The findings of Libyan guilt via al Megrahi and Fhhimah and others not named, the findings found primarily in Giaka’s words, has been the basis of economic sanction, diplomatic pressures, approval of clandestine operations, public vilification of Libya allowing more of the same to pass, and so on.

Most of the world was rather surprised at the turn of events, running counter to all the old evidence that made more sense and involved no Libyans. And was, of course, highly inconvenient for the Americans. Naturally, suspicions of cover-up flourished, especially in the UK. This was primarily channeled into an intriguing “CIA drug-running” cluster of theories (which this author considers a huge distraction) that got its biggest boost with an April 1992 cover story in Time magazine.

A Department of State press release from the same month sought to counter growing confusion at home and abroad by calmly laying out the facts in a press release. The Suitcase itself, fairly non-descript and not directly accounted for anywhere in the luggage records of three airports, was prime evidence at the time, thanks to Giaka’s incredible contributions.

“Forensic analysis has identified the bag that contained the Pan Am 103 bomb as a brown, hard-sided Samsonite suitcase. The following evidence links Al-Megrahi and Fhimah to the suitcase:
-- Al-Megrahi, traveling in alias, arrived in Valletta with Fhimah from Libya on the evening of 20 December 1988--the day before the bombing. Fhimah, the former manager of the LAA office in Valletta, retained full access to the airport. Al-Megrahi and Fhimah brought a large, brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase with them into Malta on that occasion.” [DoS]

They make it sound like the Fact they had such a suitcase is evidence they planted the bomb, but in reality, Giaka’s intelligence was the only evidence they had such a suitcase. This emerges chronologically, below. That his stories wound up matching the emerging evidence at the scene is highly troubling – the similarities are from neither truth (as we’ll see) nor likely from coincidence. It seems Mr P/1 served as a two-way intelligence conduit - milking the CIA so they could re-milk him – helping them launder propaganda into intelligence and, via FBI acceptance of that, into evidence ready for trial.

The top man who promoted Giaka as evidence, and the most likely to be fully aware of such unethical activities, would have been Vincent Cannistraro, senior director of the CIA’s own Lockerbie investigation until October 1990 [Ashton] . He continued promoting the story line he'd helped write in the years between indictment and trial. For a 1995 BBC program, he described the case modestly as:

“… overwhelming … conclusive … tremendous amount of evidence … mind boggling amount of detail … that will allow the prosecutors to present the chronology of the operation from its very inception … describe and in almost excruciating detail exactly how they made the bomb, how they secreted it, how they got it on board the aircraft, and I think that's a fairly strong case.” [FS]

His favorite part that he singled out for emphasis in that interview was “they have a live witness for one thing, who would be presented in a court of law.” [FS] Cannistraro bravely spoke to The Maltese Double Cross, again pimping Giaka, just not yet by name: “a former member of the Libyan Intelligence Service who has defected” into Justice Department witness protection, “so he would be used in a trial of Fhimah and Megrahi.” [MDC, 1:28:25]

Such a trial was demanded, in the US or Scotland, based the much-hyped amazing case. The demand was repeated often, and with force, befitting a mighty nation’s drive for truth and justice for the 270 dead. Faced with such confidence, people and whole nations started falling for it. Those comprising the UN Security Council at the moment, in particular, were collectively convinced enough to enforce the indictment with sanctions.

In 1992 and 1993, Security Council resolutions 748 and 883 imposed and tightened embargoes, diplomatic restrictions, and various other punishments. Aircraft equipment and supplies in particular were squeezed on, putting al Megrahi to work on the gray market (the likely cause behind his "suspicious" Zurich office and Swiss bank account). It was under this prolonged duress that Libya eventually relented to a compromise solution. By late 1998 the framework of a trial was established, and in April 1999 the accused were flown to the special Scottish court in neutral Netherlands. Megrahi and Fhimah were arrested at “Camp Zeist” and set to await their trial. Sanctions were immediately suspended, under threat of re-enforcement.

All this was based on an alarming mass acceptance of the American/Scottish case, in turn largely built up on “accepting” Giaka’s intelligence as evidence. The suspects, the suitcase, the materials, the plans, and the evil behind the Pan Am 103 plot were all attested to by a desperate defector, in trade for a steady paycheck, a maimed hand, and a new life in America. It had all wowed the grand jury and secured the indictment, but now that Cannistraro’s dares had paid off, it would be challenged for once, and before the whole world at that. At stake were these claims, in "job resume" format. Most of these were unknown to the public at the time, but about to see the light of day:

- Giaka’s own credentials/authority: JSO agent, high-level, secret files department – related to former King Idriss - hates Gaddafi - aware of Masonic plots between Libya and Malta.

- Has a long-standing friendship with Ezzadin Hinshiri, director of the central security section, JSO (allegedly involved in buying the MST-13 timers as used in the bombing, including an order placed for 40 more just two days before the bombing!)

- Long-standing friendship with Said Rashid, head of the operations section, JSO (also involved, allegedly, in timer acquisition and other wickedness)

- Acquaintance with Abdullah Senussi, the head of operations administration for the JSO. (convicted in absentia in 1989 for using that role to blow up an airplane (not 103). Also, Gaddafi's brother-in-law.)

– Can describe the high-level JSO connections of the accused – worked directly under the first accused – hated his boss - can testify to their movements at the airport – able to read clues from them, ranging from subtle to fictitious, revealing their plot.

– Was asked by Said Rashid, in 1986, to write a report on whether a bomb cold be put on a British plane - had someone else look, who said yeah so he wrote the report saying so. The upper levels mulled the idea over...

- Turned said report in via his boss, “Lockerbie bomber” Megrahi, who definitely saw it. Megrahi later mentioned the idea back to Giaka and said “don’t rush things.”

- Can testify to Fhimah’s personal handling of explosives, in his desk, which were overseen by Megrahi, for the JSO.

- Was invited to the final plotters’ meeting as Megrahi and Fhimah met at Luqa airport on the day of the Lockerbie bombing, with a suitcase just like the one that would do that explosion hours later, after having come in from Malta (other evidence covered that, obviously). That’s the clincher for sure.

- Has defected safely from the murderous regime, after a grueling three-year initiation, and can therefore finally reveal the secrets he held of the devious, random, and surprisingly unselfconscious scheming that climaxed five miles above Scotland four days before Christmas. That - is - evil. Thank God they've got a witness who saw it all, ready to go before the judges...

---
Sources:
[Ashton] http://www.copi.com/articles/lockerbie.html
[CF] "The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie." Prod/Dir Guy Smith, Ex Prod Sam Anstiss, Narr Caroline Catz. BBC Two. First Aired 31 August 2008. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-327765978162851498&hl=en#
[Foot] Foot, Paul, Lockerbie: Flight From Justice. Published 2000 by Private Eye. https://secure2.subscribeonline.co.uk/PEYE/digital_downloads.cfm
[FS] Frontline Scotland: "Silence Over Lockerbie" Reporter: Shelley JofreProducer: Murdoch Rodgers. Aired 1995. Transcript accessed at: http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/silence.html
[LTBU 8/29] Connelly, Clare. "Controversy Over CIA Cables Continues." 29 August 2000. Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit. .doc link: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_78571_en.doc
[MDC] The Maltese Double Cross. Produced, written, and directed by Allan Francovich, Hemar Enterprises, November 1994. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7160854996287567609&ei=EAtQS8iUNYOYqQPjnaka&q=Maltese+Double+Cross+&hl=en
[Marquise] Marquise, Richard. SCOTBOM: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation, Algora Publishing. Sept. 1, 2006. 268 pages.
http://books.google.com/books?id=JKLT360G_zAC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=Marquise+SCOTBOM&source=bl&ots=WGsIBNTRDo&sig=ZkD5iwHr
[NYT] McNeil, Donald, Jr. “Defense in Lockerbie Trial Undermines a Key Witness.” New York Times. September 28, 2000. Accessed at:
http://plane-truth.com/Documents/Defense%20in%20Lockerbie%20Trial%20Undermines%20a%20Key%20Witness.htm

AMERICANS... (sigh)

2010-01-11T02:59:00.000-08:00

MISSING COMPREHENSION AND THE MISSING BOMBER MYTH
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
January 11 2010

The British Story
I’d like to here explore the ugliness and stupidity of the American mind by looking at commentary over a narrow issue – the December 2009 allegation that “Lockerbie bomber” al Megrahi, supposedly locked under House arrest in Libya, had gone “missing.” It tied in perfectly with anger over the Scottish decision to release the dying bomber, and his failure to die within three months. Many Americans were again enflamed to anti-Arab, ant-Obama, anti-Scottish, and anti-British sentiments.

Interestingly, the story has almost no substance, and originated in the U.K., almost as if to stir up such noise. It started with a reporter from the Times of London who came snooping around Megrahi’s house on Sunday evening, December 13. For two days he couldn’t get any Libyans there to explain to him, in English, where the killer was - they seemed to indicate he was gone, and then probably tried to shoo the reporter off. Megrahi was found to not be at his usual hospital either, so the Times then called the East Renfrewshire council about a possible violation of his house arrest.

As the ones responsible for keeping tabs on him (with phone calls scheduled every second Tuesday), the East Renfrewshire council is a small-time political force, ridiculously over their heads if called on to collect a fugitive bomber overseas for a violation. On the 15th (an off Tuesday, normally), they took the news and swiftly made an unscheduled call demanding to speak with al Megrahi and clear up the situation.

Unfortunately, as reported, the man who answered (at an unspecified hour, local time) insisted the convict was too ill to come to the phone. Whatever he was thinking, during or after the call, just who he was, we do not know. But this was told to the Times but not believed by them, and the story blew up immediately, with the scoop “Mystery as Lockerbie bomber goes missing from home and hospital.” It was posted shortly after midnight GMT on Wednesday, December 16. The first comment at 12:22 was prophetic: “Born-yesterday idiots. What did they expect?” The major theme (see below) emerges immediately. It’s likely just what the Times was thinking, or wanted others to think, as they made the assumptions needed to release such a slanted story. Others picked it up, and predicted a brewing "crisis" for Scotland.

Within ten hours, the article was exposed as perhaps nothing more than a hyped misunderstanding. The Manchester Guardian was the first to announce, at 9:52 am, "concern over the whereabouts” of Megrahi “has eased after East Renfrewshire council was able to contact [him] this morning,” at approx 9:30 am (10:30 Libya time). After that, "officials had no concerns regarding Megrahi's whereabouts and would not be taking the matter further.” But it had already been taken further and wasn't going to be brought back.

The Times corrected the record with “Growing suspicion over 'missing' Lockerbie bomber” at around 4:00 pm judging by the times on the 13 comments (The alarming article from hours earlier mustered 75 responses.) Herein they started self-referentially “The Lockerbie bomber resurfaced yesterday, but not before questions had been raised about the arrangements for monitoring a man convicted of killing 270 people.”

And these questions resounded in the following days, especially in the UK, where passions run high and almost equal numbers believe him innocent as guilty. My interest though is in comments on the episode on American news pages, far less of which covered the story.

The American Response: Nuke 'Em
I’ll start first on the Liberal side of the spectrum, which tends to run closer to the middle on this particular issue. Liberal pundits and bloggers, however they treat the whole Lockerbie subject, tended to ignore this brief lost-and-found myth, with the notable exception of the Post (of Araiana Huffington), reporting with little comment on the “missing” but not found part. It seems Liberal comment posters tended to believe Megrahi really was gravely ill, and therefore was probably dead, in a good riddance sense. This erred presumption and its resolution plus an intelligent commenter (aptly “EuroMom”) pointing out Megrahi’s actual innocence, kept the jingoism from getting as thick as it might. Of 32 comments, these are the most “American” among them.

“The free world will never understand terrorists, until they stop assuming terrorists have the same values they have.”

“It's dreadful that he was released, but of course that's nothing compared to the outrage that Bush let Kadaffi, and Libya, off the hook and lifted sanctions.”

“Have they tried calling Muammar Ghadafi? They could be having breakfast together.”

“Seriously, the Brits are suprised that this guy isn't calling them? Nobody could see this coming? We all better pray this guy doesn't decide to blow another airliner out of the sky. Thanks England.”

Liberals seem a bit divided and unsure, trying to be American while bashing Bush, and hate the baddies while appearing culturally enlightened. American Conservatives, on the other hand, were far more unequivocal about the story, and discussed it with more gusto by far. They are less likely to believe he was really ill as reported, and almost entirely sure he was not only still alive, and probably up to more evil. They also tend to demand military destruction quite frequently. Consider the “Amerithot” presented by these comments following an American Thinker story “Where’s the Lockerbie Bomber?”

“…the perp is probably already in Pakistan working on the syllabus for Spring Quarter at the TTC (Terrorist Training Camp).”

“All people like Obama will get for this is people killed.”

“There is no doubt in this citizen's mind that the Islamofascists are amused with the leverage they get from liberal rot.”

“why didn't we arrest this panty waste when he was here. or better yet why not find out where he is as he likes to rub it in our face and send some people to go extradict him.”

“Not that it would be too effective, but why can't we issue some kind of sanctions against Scotland? We must have too many Scotch drinkers in DC for that to work. What a disgrace. When is the US going to collectively wake up and realize what we are doing by accepting this kind of action?”

“How many millions need to die before the idiots in the West get real and do what needs to be done. Exterminate these vermin like the animals they are.”

That last, I presume, referred not to the Scots, but to Arabs, or Muslims, or just Islamofascist terrorists, or other who refuse the Light of Christ and understand only the sword/missile. And even then you have to repeat yourself many times.

For more real insight into these Arab bad guys and their vast conspiracy to enslave the world using Liberals and Europeans, one can always count on the professional observers of Jihad Watch. Surprise, surprise: Lockerbie bomber disappears.

“Didn't those objecting to the release of this criminal warn this would happen? The outrage should be driven home with all the force possible, straight back at the British. I would rather place trust in a deceitful muslim than the British, at least you know the muslim will lie to you.”

“This is what will happen when we bow to Islam. It is not worth it. For the moment it may seem to be, but what about tomorrow? What about our children and grandchildren? There is no respect for international law or legal agreements in Islam. Just their own agenda and goal to take over!”

“Just fire a dozen Cruise missiles to Tripoli.”

Michelle Malkin posted only after the "missing bomber" was found and added only "anyone else find this phone tag game with a murderous jihadists completely insane?" No, and the sanity just poured in with 45 messages, truly "American" every one. The best:

“So the lad decides to skip-what are the Brits going to do-send a Man-o-War to Tripoli? The Brits sold their soul for oil deals and can dance to Tripoli’s tune. And what will Barack Hussein Obama do? He will congratulate the Colonel for a game well played. Eric Holder can send a Letter of Concern and give the Libyans a good laugh. Most of the victims were Typical White People-maybe Little Eichmannns- so it really does not matter.”

“I bet Megrahi is living it up on the beach with a bunch of belly-dancing babes, smoking a hookah, and laughing at the Euroweenies who bought his fatal cancer story.”

“Idiot Europeans. There will come a day when they need someone to bail them out of another national crisis, much like WWII. Will anyone help?”

"We should take a page out of his play book, and strap a bomb to him. If he leaves his house, he explodes. At least it will take care of his cancer; that is if he really has it."

"Eh … strap him to the back of a Tomahawk missile and send it through Ahmagaynutjob’s living room window."

“For every day [Megrahi] is MIA, there should be a sortie of F-111’s dropping some bombs on various government buildings in Tripoli … for Old Times Sake”

On that last doozy, it seems this person is saying as long as he remains confused by a news story related by a right-wing pundit, he would authorize endless death on a foreign people he doesn’t approve of. Now I’m reminded why true Democracy simply cannot work with this many total fucking idiots around. Unfortunately, they’re shaped by those at the top of the food chain, who cultivate this ignorance and mobilize these same aggressive attitudes to bolster their own better-informed and thoroughly wicked strategems.

"IT IS UNBELIEVABLE"

2010-01-09T00:08:00.000-08:00

ON DR. WYATT'S REPLICATIONS OF THE PA103 BLAST
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
January 9 2010

The BBC have a checkered history dealing with Lockerbie affair, from a dry but brilliant 1999 Dispatches episode to a 2008 Conspiracy Files one that tried for slick but felt just slimy with politicized distortions. They’ve now added a large bright patch with their approval a recent Newsnight episode, with Peter Marshall reporting on doubts about the key forensic clue in the case against Libya. It’s an encouraging development, a reminder that to some journalists, truth still matters more than politics after all, and the BBC will even allow those to speak up sometimes. (Or is there politics too behind a shift in perceptions at this time? Possible hidden subtexts will be considered in light of future political moves…)

Aired on Friday, 8 January, the program is currently viewable (to me anyway) here. It deals largely with circumstantial problems with the discovery and handling of the crucial timer fragment PT/35(b). Central to establishing a Libyan link to the bombing, it’s been especially bogged down with a slew of valid questions, recounted by Marshall and nothing new to me – no chemical tests to determine if it was in an explosion, unusually changed evidence label, incredulity over the slowness of identification, perhaps hints of backdating records to cover for an item planted later, etc.

James T. Thurman, the FBI political scientist credited with the visual match between PT/35(b) and a Libyan MST-13 timer, was interviewed again. He gave his usual story (more or less), saying “ahhtem” way too often. Marshhall tries to corner Thurman on failing to do real forensics and relying solely on a visual pattern-match. But this seems a little off-track on a reasonably important distinction; Thurman’s visual ID work, replicable by any trained parrot, was to identify the source of the fragment, not to replace forensic tests. The British scientists at RARDE were tasked with this (If I’m not mistaken), but it was not done, they said, as it was redundant – the fragment was clearly in the explosion, as that's what they were investigating, and the shirt collar it was lodged in was torn and burnt (and NOT labeled "made in Malta, to quibble on a small error made in the video).

Otherwise the program is excellent, mostly for what’s really new about it and has people talking - new experimental evidence indicating PT/35(b) would have never been found if it were in the explosion. These were carried out by a Dr. John Wyatt, an explosives expert retired from the British Army, with decades of hands-on experience. Currently he heads a security consulting company called SDS, and is blast consultant for the United Nations, Europe and North Africa region. The details behind how he came to test the official scenario – twenty times over - is unclear at the moment, and so far there’s been no detailed report of his methodology and precise findings. But as it appears, another serious blow to Megrahi's conviction and Libya's vilification has been landed squarely.

From what Marshall explains in voice-over, Dr. Wyatt carried out his twenty tests over time, starting with the radio bomb detonated by itself. One sample he showed the cameras is at right, a suitcase filled with random clothes, and a radio (different model than alleged, a bit larger), rigged as a bomb and set in a homemade cardboard box. Another he showed contained yet another type of radio, bright red, and a suicase he says is the same model used for PA103 (Samsonite hardside). Both were soon after blown up with the pat of plastic explosives tucked inside. Of the consistent results, Wyatt told Newsnight:

“I must admit, since the quantity of explosives we were using was only three or four hundred grams, I thought there were going to be some remnants of the radio left. But it – it – (chuckling) it just totally disintegrated. I mean really just went into tiny, tiny bits."

Wyatt elaborated a bit on method to The Times of Malta, specifying a separate timer was included and considered, as well as the general radio unit, and that the tests were done in varying conditions.

"We tried exploding the device on its own; in a radio similar to the one it was supposed to have been planted in; in a suitcase with and without clothes; surrounded by other suitcases and, eventually, in a container. In all tests, the timer and the circuit board were completely destroyed."

He later “built the tests up” to a finale – a dozen or so pieces of luggage piled in an airliner luggage container, arranged among other containers, and detonated in a field, videotaped from several viewpoints. This last was the only outdoors test; he told the Times he had done the other 19 indoors, “to make sure we could collect all the evidence.” Collecting the remains is what it was all about, of course, and so they used sparse concrete rooms (rather than a hundreds of square km countryside) and “we even painted the circuit board bright yellow to make it easier to identify any fragments among the debris. In no circumstance did we find any fragment," Dr Wyatt explained. Presumably he means no fragments of the scale of PT/35(b), since elsewhere he does mention “tiny tiny bits.” Perhaps the yellow was simply cooked off in all cases?

At right is a dramatic image from one of the tests, in a darkened room and greatly slowed down. The curly stuff is presumably the "hard-side" suitcase material, the little bars parts of its frame. The white-hot cluster at center is that 3-400 grams of explosive, semtex it should be, consuming the whole radio and vaporizing/weaponizing everything around it. Do consider that the bomb penetrated the plane's hull, after losing force bursting from the luggage container, after tearing through the suitcase lining, surrounding clothes, cardboard box, and the radio's plastic casing. The timer would be got to right away, before any energy was lost in an of those battles. Is Wyatt's testing just an elaborate (and expensive) way of proving the patently obvious?

Consider the "trial loading" below used at trial (best quality I could find, labels unreadable). This is the alleged bomb - a Toshiba RT-SF16 "Bombeat" radio with explosive, a detonator rod, battery (upper right label?) and MST-13 timer all fitting in a remarkably small case. It has the cassette assembly, about 4 inches wide, removed to allow the pat of semtex (312 grams of Semtex-H, most sources say - about 11 ounces). This makes the timer, it seems, no more than two inches from that origin of the blast - inches of mostly air, not lead. It's a chunk of this unit that survived and proves Libya's guilt? Do these people feel anything would be vaporized by an explosion like that? I feel stupid for ever even entertaining the notion.

The official story line, that whole nations have moved by, is of course that a surviving bit of circuit board from within a supposedly similar explosion was found, in a non-controlled environment (southern Scotland). Furthermore, it was a strangely readable portion of a board solidly associated with Libya alone (more or less), and constituted proof of Libyan responsibility. Presented by Newsnight host Peter Marshall with this basic notion, Dr. Wyatt stopped precisely this far short of calling it all a grand farce:

"Obviously these things are not impossible, we only carried out 20 tests, we didn't carry out 100 or 1,000 tests, but in every of those 20 tests we found absolutely no sign at all. So I find it highly improbable that you would find anything like that, particularly at 10,000 feet when bits are dropping into long wet grass over hundreds of miles. […] I do find it quite extraordinary and I think highly improbable, and most unlikely that you would find a fragment like that – I mean, it is unbelievable.”

---

AN ADMISSION OF GUILT?

2010-01-03T02:45:00.000-08:00

De Borchgrave's Allegation and its Malta Problem
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
January 4 2010
last update 1/8/10

An Atlas Twitches?
In the wee early minutes New Years Eve I posted a little analysis of the Libya confessed/didn't confess issue that was mildly valuable but not too exciting. It was quickly picked up by Professor Robert Black at his much higher-profile blog. By the evening, an e-mail was sent from Frank Duggan of Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc. to Prof. Black, subject-titled "Gadhafi admitted it!" Weird spelling aside (and there just too many spellings), it's something interesting, being spurred by an e-mail Duggan had just recieved from the renowned Arnaud de Borchgrave, recounting the admission he personally took from Gaddafi years ago.

De Borchgrave is a Belgian-born, 1926-born, globe-trotting phenomenon, plying the realm between politics and journalism from the dawn of the Cold War until today. His greatest renown is his ability to speak to world leaders, discretely one would think, and help them understand each other. (I studied the guy for 30 minutes or so - Wiki). He was briefly President and CEO of United Press International, currently an Editor-at-Large for both UPI and The Washington Times, which he has written for since 1985 (not the best recommendation). He’d previously worked at numerous outlets, including Newsweek, reportedly fired "in part for keeping dossiers on fellow employees". But a Newsweek editor has said of his reporting “despite his intimacy with major policymakers, he has never aligned himself with either side of a dispute.” (see the wiki).

Aaaand, since 1991 de Borchgrave has been a senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and its director of the Global Organized Crime Project, which became the Transnational Threats Project after 9/11, and also resides in groups like the Atlantic Council. (source). This in turn is dedicated to creating and using trans-Atlantic “consensus” on "appropriate responses" to "bring ideas to power" in service of “American leadership” of the world. Specifically they focus on refining policies towards Russia, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, etc. as well as promoting NATO enlargement throughout Eurasia, and relevant here “drafting roadmaps for U.S. policy towards the Balkans, Africa, Cuba, Iraq, Iran, and Libya.” (source).

It's not certain my little post spurred this twitch from a giant, but I was lancing at Libya’s non-admission admission, and this is about offering more solid proof on precisely that issue - "Gadhafi admitted it!" I’m curious enough to check the timeline:
My posting was at 12:25 am local (PST), which would be 8:25am GMT. I think that's when I started it, rather than hitting publish. But I'm not sure.
Professor Black partially re-posted it at 13:09 GMT. According to Black, de Borchgrave's line to Duggan was sent at 6.15pm GMT, and Duggan’s to Black at 7:21pm on New Year’s Eve. The Professor apparently had better things to do that evening, but not tooooo much better, and posted on it prompltly at 8:45 on New Year’s Day. I take two days for another overblown yammerfest in response. It's rather a coincidence if these developments aren't all connected. So I'm probably "touching history" I guess, a small bit of it, and so far it feels, well... not quite fuzzy.

Alright, Alright, so What the Hell is it?
The e-mail sent to Black, as he posted it, passes on of de Borchgrave's original message:

"As Gaddafi explained it to me, which you are familiar with, it was indeed Iran's decision to retaliate for the Iran Air Airbus shot down by the USS Vincennes on its daily flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai that led to a first subcontracting deal to Syrian intel, which, in turn, led to the 2nd subcontract to Libyan intel. As he himself said if they had been first at this terrorist bat, they would not have put Malta in the mix; Cyprus would have made more sense to draw attention away from Libya."

Up-front, it seems as if Duggan solicited this e-mail to support the admission he's heard about earlier. We can see three tracks worthy of note - Iranian genesis of the plot, which has been a confusing on-again, off-again sub-current in the case I need to study more. For the most part, an Iranian link (as the primary sponsors no less) played no role mentioned in renderings of "the official story" - for example, the final verdict (opinion of the Court) following the 2000 trial contains zero mentions of "Iran" in its 82 well-filled pages. There's also a potential problem for the Malta aspect of the official story (which I'll return to), and an acknowledgment that Libyan intel did agree to take some part in the (Iranian-initiated) bombing.

But the e-mail is too vague. Let's turn to the previous publication of this reported admission that likely spurred Duggan to ask for a statement. At the time of Megrahi’s release, in late August last year, de Borchgrave wrote for “The Atlanticist,” apparently a paper from Atlantis (kidding - from the Atlantic Council), on the interview he had with Gaddafi on June 6 1993. After the main session, de Borchgrave asked the leader “to explain, off the record, his precise involvement in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.” Gaddafi then “dismissed all the aides in his tent” and went candid, “in halting English without benefit of an interpreter.” Mostly he decried terrorism and offered to assist the West fight bin Laden-type terror networks (Libya is well known for realizing this threat specifically well before our 9/11, having suffered from them alongside U.S. sanctions, etc.).

Without offering an exact paraphrased quote, de Borchgrave states “Gaddafi candidly admitted that Lockerbie was retaliation for the July 3, 1988, downing of an Iranian Airbus," Iran Air 655 - shot down in a bizarre reckless action by an unusual US warship suffering a strange group psychosis while on a U.S.-engineered entrapment mission. Gaddafi explained how the Arab world could not accept that as accident (and for decent reason) and how he agreed with the Iranians:

"[R]etaliation, he said, was clearly called for. Iranian intelligence subcontracted retaliation to one of the Syrian intelligence services (there are 14 of them), which, in turn, subcontracted part of the retaliatory action to Libyan intelligence (at that time run by Abdullah Senoussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law). "Did we know specifically what we were asked to do?" said Gaddafi. "We knew it would be comparable retaliation for the Iranian Airbus, but we were not told what the specific objective was," Gaddafi added."

I see no reason to either blindly trust or blindly doubt the veracity of this remembered talk. But taking it as true, we must still consider Gaddafi's understanding may be incomplete, or his statement may be slanted to fit an audience that's already convinced of his guilt. And then there are possible translation issues. But admittedly, it does sound like he agreed, or understood someone else's agreement, to take some part in a plan he knew would likely cause destruction of an American civil airliner. That would be a noteworthy development that might affect people's thinking on the subject. Libya is usually reported as "always inisisting on their innocence." Why did de Borchgrave wait sixteen years to report it? Did he?

No he didn't. Looks almost like he waited 11 years to make it public, while reporting it behind the scenes to the CIA, with a debriefing, immediately on returning home from the 1993 interview. He explained this in an article for NewsMax, from January 2004. Therein, de Borchgrave argued that Saddam Hussein's recent fall had increased Libya's anxiety to be even less for terrorism-tyranny-WMD-whatever. This led to Libya's 2003 moves to accept responsibility for Lockerbie (see first link at top), dismantle their WMD programs, and to really, really swear off terrorism, barring further frame-ups of course. To this end he had already come clean to the writer a decade before. He said of that meeting:

"[Gaddafi] admitted Libya's guilt for the downing of Pan Am 103, but made clear that it was originally an Iranian [plot] ... “So the Iranians subcontracted part of the job to a Syrian intelligence service, which, in turn, asked the Libyan Mukhabarat to handle part of the assignment," Col. Gadhafi explained. "That is the way these things were planned in those days. If we had initiated the plot, we would have made sure the accusing finger was pointed in the other direction and we would have picked Cyprus, not Malta, where some of the organization was done. The others picked Malta presumably to frame us.""

This to me is quite interesting. It would imply that someone not Libyan - it would seem Syrians - had directed al Megrahi to use Malta for the plot - or something, if Gaddafi's second-hand words are to be believed. Or alternately, the admission could read "we were involved in part of it, just not the part you "caught" our guy doing. The Syrians did the Malta stuff." That's not too helpful when your whole case against Libya was about the Libyan intel bigwig sent to Malta, by Tripoli, to plant the bomb because of his own (known) connections there and Libya's own, non-Iranian, grievances. Two JSO operatives, commanded by JSO higher-ups, had specifically targetted PA103 via Luqa airport, and were even stealing the "taggs" to write that on. No "framed" in that scenario. Is this just another Libyan non-admission admission?

And all this when the real evidence Gaddafi may or may not have known about highly suggests the bomb went on PA103 way up in London, with nothing physically to do with Malta at all. Don't lose focus.

A response by Peter Biddulph to Duggan's "admitted" e-mail got its own post on 2 January at Black's blog. Against the whole one-on-one admission, he stated from some experts that "Gaddafi never, repeat never, was without at least one armed personal bodyguard. To be alone with an American journalist with many contacts in Washington would be, for Gaddafi, impossible." de Borchgrave also claimed to be de-briefed by the CIA on this discussion in 1993:

"When we got back to Washington, we called Director of Central Intelligence Jim Woolsey to tell him what we had been told off the record. Woolsey asked me if I would mind being debriefed by the CIA. I agreed. And the rest is history." (NewsMax)

If history here means silence, then it was so. Biddulph points out this admission of guilt never made it into many if any pronouncements from, say Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the CIA's Lockerbie probe until 1991, and could be someone privy to such a debriefing even after this. Biddulph found no reference to it in the trial proceedings, the writings of various commentators, etc., running through a pretty good listing of places this amazing admission did not get repeated between 1993 and 2009. Indeed, the earliest mention I've seen anywhere is that Newsmax piece from three years after the verdict.

Biddulph called the e-mail "disinformation," and postulated "the real reasons for this late announcement" as affecting the Libyan leadership succession (smearing Senoussi), and to distract from the imminent release of SCCRC documents." An original publication in 2004 does seem to complicate the second reason at least, and perhaps Mr. Biddulph spoke too soon, as I had dismissing de Borchgrave without knowing a flit about him. This alleged admission and the man who has alerted us to it are too much to dismiss. There are several somethings wrong about this story I can't quite put my finger on, and I suspect others more influential have their own problems with it, and so it's unlikely to make more noise now than it did before.
---

NUMBER ONE ON TOP: A SIGN FROM ON HIGH?

2010-01-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

MST-13 COMPARATIVE GRAPHICS no. 4
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
January 1 2010 (last edit 1/2)

There's a plot device I must've seen once in a horror movie - a whole village, space station, whatever, was wiped out by something horrible, left desolate and stumbled on by a ragtag group of (4-7) likable misfits banded together by fate or conscription. Among the ruins they find one survivor - perhaps a young girl - who miraculously survived. The wandering Samaritans take her in of course as they moved on to whatever their new plan became. Up front I'm wondering, hey, just how did she survive? Only too late will they learn what I shouted twelve minutes in ... she IS the disguised monster that killed the (village, space station, etc) and then kills most (but not all) of the characters we had earlier bonded with through subtle cues.

Anyway, that feeling is similar to one I get about at least two of the crucial few bits of evidence against Libya, one being that timer fragment PT/35(b). In past readings and discussions I've run across some intriguing doubts about whether any such fragment would be expected to survive the semtex explosion required to bring down a plane. I know not the forensics, and am probably not going to. I do suspect the fragment was inserted into the evidence pool, but didn't want to say, as some did, that it must be a plant simply due to existing.

But its existence is odd, first of all in being found on land when it was fully capable of hiding itself in the deep ocean. Then its loneliness - parts of the radio itself were found, but nothing else from what was added. RARDE scientist Alan Feraday's final report noted "this piece of circuit board is the sole recovered fragment originating from the mechanism of the IED itself."

Now if the explosion were not strong enough to vaporize everything, I would expect a few surviving pieces, with this probably the largest. Rather it's the single and only. Luckily it was a piece of the highly-identifiable and highly-Libya-linked MST-13 circuit board that triggered the bomb, says the official papers. Discovered within a piece of exploded clothing, the fragment of fiberglass circuit board, about a millimeter thick, itself looks hardly exploded. Note its fracture lines, left, bottom, and lower right edges - are all straight lines at right angles to each other. I imagine there are reasonable explosion-related causes for this, but it strikes me as unnatural, FWIW.

Approximately one cm square (hugely magnified above), its printed surface is dominated by a touch pad that uncanilly resembles an upright number one, and double-underlined at that. Considering the entire board (below, right - color adjusted, touch pad area outlined), there is no other spot on the board that contains a recognizable symbol. There are plenty of spots with little lines that might be shown to match, but they don't seem to really say anything. When you're like Tom Thurman, searching with intrepid zeal for the one clue you need, that must be almost a religious experience to see... bam. THE ONE, telling its discoverers "There is but one way to conviction, and it is by me. I shall be thine number one evidence, and only savior." Subtly, it evokes the PA one-oh-three it was alleged to have brought down, and wispers in our left ear "we're number one" for solving this most awesome forensics puzzle and gettin the baddies.

Or less hyperbolically, when one sees this, the temptation is too much to turn it so that's visible. But in fact, the boxed MST-13 trial exhibit DP/111 (above left) shows the readout from the front (circuitry traced here for reference). We've been reading it upside down. Consider the other trial photo at right, with upside-down board, and the area of PT35(b) indicated in red, apparently on top and to the right. What a better place for an underlined number one could there be? Bottom sucks. Left, evil. Turn the whole world upside down if need be to make sure we're number one, double underlined, on the right and at the top. And can "prove" libya did it in the process. Who's writing this stuff? Random fate? Really? You aren't believing in God by now?

In addition to the fragment's clear and powerful message, we have its perhaps-miraculous existence. Previously I had wondered if maybe such a piece could have been shielded behind a larger element attached to the board before nestling in that shirt collar. But I knew it was a bit of a stretch. At left is a duplicate MST-13 with elements attached. The photo is from the website of a Mr. Byers, who claims the CIA was making these fake MST-13s in Florida. At any rate, I don't know what these things all do or are called I've even been told but it didn't sink in. Do note the largest block is the timer dispaly, seen here from the back, and set just south of middle. The rest is surely capacitors, flux inhibitionists, and some grommets around the outer parts.

Some of these things are probably made of metal and materials stronger and thicker than fiberglass board and could shield our PT/35(b) in the chaos of explosion. But if something like that happened, then where is that protector now? Did it vaporize itself? Or plunge irrecoverably into the mud at the bottom of a Scottish loch? Maybe, but then all elements of the bomb except this "number one" corner of that Mebo-traceable, indictment-enabling layout wind up disappearing into the ether? I'm a reasonable chap but I find that harder to swallow than what so many other clues are already saying - the rest was cut or blown off elsewhere, and only THE ONE was ever near this crime scene, after being carefully selected for the job. I can't see just why fate would have any interest in making sure the evidence "says something to us." A false God playing with reality and feeling immune in orbit might just take the chance.

ON LIBYA'S ADMISSION OF "RESPONSIBILITY"

2009-12-31T00:25:00.000-08:00

AND MORE BBC MANIPULATIONS
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
December 31 2009

I recently started an interesting discussion thread at the JREF forum, fishing for thoughts on why people believe the official line on the Lockerbie bombing so fervently. I hadn't yet encountered any serious questions in the course of previous brilliant and provocative discussions - just a few drive-by statements supporting Megrahi's and Col. Gaddafy's absolute guilt, but never accompanied by evidence of any real knowledge. Among the questions and counter-points I suggested people could offer, if they knew anything, was "Libya admitted responsibility and paid out billions of dollars!" And if they had asked, I would answer like this:

There is no doubt that the Libyan government did issue a statement admitting responsibility, and agreed to pay compensation, among other measures, in 2003. It was an explicit pre-condition, inssted by Washington, to having broad UN sanctions lifted. Triploi has always defended its innocence of Lockerbie, but to function in the global economy, they had to do something. Here they managed to not explicitly break the rule, and using careful (cynical?) wordplay, managed to accept responsibility without admitting guilt. Sanctions were lifted.

There’s been much oxymoronic harping on this in the West as both an admission of guilt and an arrogant refusal to admit their guilt. The BBC’s 2008 Conspiracy Files episode on Lockerbie is a brilliant example. “For those that believe al Megrahi was framed,” snarls the narrator, Carolyn Katz, “one fact remains hard to explain away. Libya agreed to award substantial compensation for Lockerbie. Sanctions were then lifted.” Well, ignoring that they just answered their own stumper of a question, it’s a good question, and they continue: “Tripoli accepted responsibility for what it called “the Lockerbie incident.” But does it admit guilt?” Of course not, and by pretending there’s some disconnect, they’ve primed the audience to see the darkest of cynicism at work. Oops, how did that happen?

Under Prolonged Duress
Following he indictment of Libyan agents al Megrahi and Fhimah in late 1991, a process itself twisted with political machinations and riddled with a million broken questions marks, the Security Council moved to enforce the official truth with sanctions. Resolution 748 of 31 March 1992 imposed an arms and air embargo, diplomatic restrictions, and establishment of a sanctions committee. The committee’s work led to Resolution 883 of 11 November 1993, toughening sanctions. This measure “approved the freezing of Libyan funds and financial resources in other countries,” reports globalpolicy.org, “and banned the provision to Libya of equipment for oil refining and transportation.”

By late August 1998 the framework of a trial was established, and used as the measure of Resolution 1192, agreeing to suspend sanctions once the suspects were handed over to the special Scottish court in the Nehterlands at Camp Zeist. Tripoli made it happen, with help from luminaries like Prince Sultan of Saudi Arabia and Nelson Mandela of Africa. Megrahi and Fhimah were flown on a special flight to the Netherlands in early April, and on the 5th were official arrested at Camp Zeist and set to await their trial. Sanctions were immediately suspended, under threat of re-enforcement (that never did materialize).

Many suspect this was never “supposed” to happen, as the evidence behind the indictment was too weak to stand up at Trial. The Crown's prosecutors managed to swing it somehow, but it took nearly two years from the handover, and a display of mental gymnastics worthy of the Realpolitik Olympics in the scale and skill of it. On January 31 2001, the three-judge panel made it official – Megrahi was legally guilty for the plot, and Fhimah was not guilty.

From there, many insisted sanctions should be lifted to reflect Libya’s good faith through this process. But Bush and Blair balked, demanding an admission of responsibility and compensation to victims’ families before they went past suspension. It was a letter, dated 15 August 2003, from Libya’s Permanent Representative to the President of the Council Ahmed A. Own, that paved the way. Own's letter explains “the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,” as Libya calls itself, “has sought to cooperate in good faith throughout the past years” on solving the problems made theirs “resulting from the Lockerbie incident.” It was in this spirit that they “facilitated the bringing to justice of the two suspects charged with the bombing of Pan Am 103 and accepts responsibility for the actions of its officials.”

The letter also pledged Libya to cooperate with any further investigations, and to settle all compensation claims with haste, and to join the international “War on Terrorism.” It was widely (and reservedly) hailed as a bold… statement. But still evasive. It doesn’t clearly state anywhere the suspects or any Libyans were in any way actually guilty of the “incident.” Nonetheless, after a month of discussion in the Security Council, sanctions were lifted on Sept. 12 2003. France and the US insisted on abstaining, but it was otherwise a unanimous vote of 13. (source) The United States’ own sanctions would remain in full force due to the general evilness of col. Gaddafy, US officials made clear. (Additional normalizations did happen in 2007).

The Blood Libel Edits
Despite his portrayals as a crazed prophet of death, Moammar Gadaffi proved a shrewd and patient pragmatist in all this. He can't have ever believed his nation actually did the crime, but against "guilty" as a legal truth, he accepted they had no choice but to do “the time.” It’s a type of bind known to breed passive-aggressive tendencies. The Colonel’s son and likely successor Saif al Islam al Gaddafi seemed to understand it, when he was interviewed at home for the Conspiracy Files programme.

Q - Does Libya accept responsibility for the attack on Lockerbie?
A - Yes. We wrote a letter to the Security Council, saying that we are responsible for the acts of our employees, or people. But it doesn’t mean that we did it, in fact.
Q - So to be very clear on this, what you’re saying is that you accept responsibility, but you’re not admitting that you did it.
A - Of course.
(edit)
Q - That’s… to many people will sound like a very cynical way to conduct your relationship with the outside world.
A - What can you do? Without writing that letter, you will not be able to get out of the sanction.
Q - So this statement was just word play. It wasn’t an admission of guilt.
A - No. I admit that we play with the words. And we had to. We had to. There was no other… solution.

The BBC are masters, among others, of careful editing, and it helped bolster their whole “you don’t admit you’re guilty” thing where people have to explain there’s nothing to “admit” (or fail to explain that, as happened here). Thus he could, with a little imagination, appear to be saying “we don’t admit it, buuuuut of course we did it, you already know that.” Note the cut that removed some of his words from the middle of the exchange, unlikely to have been irrelevant. Thus is clearly established a cynical payout ($2.7 billion) and bit of semantics to buy up and slough off their non-admitted guilt so they could resume trade. They got away with Lockerbie using money and words and are laughing at us and making more money!

Immediately after “there was no other solution,” the video cuts right to the interviewer asking “so it was like blood money if you like,” which seems to be referring to what was just shown. But really it refers to the American victims' families, whose “money, money, money, money” attitude (well-known and spearheaded by Victims of PA103 Inc.) was “materialistic,” “greedy,” and amounted to “trading with the blood of their sons and daughters.” But with the magic of editing, it can seem to mean so much more!
---

LOCKERBIE QUOTES DUMP

2009-12-28T01:06:00.000-08:00

These are the people you've been ignoring so far.

Please see the updated list at my new Lockerbie blog: No One Seriously Doubts the Libyan's Guilt?

KEEPING THE POLITICS OUT OF ARLINGTON

2009-12-24T01:05:00.000-08:00

"THANK YOU, FRANK..."
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
December 24 2009

FRANK DUGGAN LEADS THE NEW BATTLE
In recent moths a loud new presence has dominated the U.S. government side of the Lockerbie discussion - Frank Duggan, current President of the board of “Victims of Pan Am 103, Inc.” (hereafter “the Corporation”). In an excellent article for The Scotsman, John Forsyth explains how long before his current headlining of the official “American Families Group,” Duggan’s connection started in August 1989 with his appointment, by President Bush, as "Liaison to the Families" on the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism. [1] [do please note his involvement did not start with losing anyone in the crash – he is not himself a victim of 103]. Duggan described this to Forsythe as "the Cadillac of commissions” due to “the quality of its work and the number of recommendations, some 60 of them if I recall." Its report, issued 15 May 1990, according to the Corporation’s website, “describ[ed] the lapses in security by Pan Am and the FAA and decried the lack of 'national will' to fight terrorism.” [2]

Mr Duggan maintained his contacts with the families over the years as the blame officially shifted to Libya, as leverage and negotiations led to the trial at Camp Zeist and a partial victory with Megrahi’s conviction. But only in 2008 did he become president of the Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc., which had in the years since proven a highly effective lobbying group, trading leverage for settlements from Pan Am and Libya, netting billions for survivors, lawyers, PR, board members, and so on. It doesn’t seem their shares were publicly traded, but Duggan told Forsyth:

"I could not say no to them. I told them I didn't think there was much more to do. Legally and politically the battle was over. Libya was recognized and compensation had been paid. Then they released Al Megrahi and a 20-year-old story was back on the front pages again." [3]

These developments needn’t have been a surprise to those who followed the news. In June 2007 the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission had announced Megrahi may have “suffered a miscarriage of justice” and should have his appeal heard. Duggan’s election/appointment was clearly after this omen, and perhaps (I don’t know the date) after the prisoner’s September 2008 diagnosis with advanced, terminal cancer. That would be two bad signs – “compassionate release” was known of at the time, as were prisoner transfer deals already being discussed. The increased publicity following the convict’s eventual release and inevitable “hero’s welcome” would, predictably, stimulate both anger and also attention to the case. With all this plus more evidence than ever available, 2008 was a year rife with threats to the official stasis – time to circle the wagons if ever there was one.

And Duggan is well equipped for verbal battle, tackling the growing ranks of official story critics as “Libya shills,” a “shameless band of conspiracy mavens,” and “no worse than Holocaust deniers who will not accept the facts before their faces”. [4] He told Forsyth he’s “through trying to reason with Prof Black or MSP Grahame," reasoning that seems to consist of repeating the most basic of decontextualized facts, straw man fallacies, and ad hominem attacks. [5] He also seems to suffer from a lack of sarcasm recognition. [6]

THE FRIAR'S STAND
Earnestness of the wrong kind however he's got a nose for, and used it in preparing for the 21st anniversary service, held Monday at Arlington National Cemetery. As in years past, the somber occasion was largely organized by the Victims’ Corporation, but this year’s ceremony happened under this new shadow of no one behind bars and newly loud questions upsetting the usual calm.

Shadows are cold places to be in December, as Friar Pat Keegans knew 21 years ago, and as he was just reminded. He was parish priest of Lockerbie at the time Flight 103 came down nearby. Through natural outreach following the disaster, he connected early with many of the victim’s families, becoming especially in-tune with Dr. Jim Swire, who has steadfastly denied the official Libyan villain storyline. Nonetheless, Duggan explains “in previous years, we have asked [Keegans] if he would like us to read a statement from him, as a number of US families are very fond of him.” [7]

These past submissions were presumably read to those gathered, and since he was invited back this year, I suspect any support for Megrahi’s innocence was muted if present at all, and tolerable with he safety of his conviction and imprisonment. But on the 21st anniversary, the divide of the Lockerbie Line was more pronounced, and Friar Keegans stated in part:

I want to say very clearly that I believe, irrespective of guilt or innocence, the release of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi on the grounds of compassion was the right decision. […] I hold that it was the right decision to make and it took great courage. The doubts concerning the conviction, the evidence and the reliability of witnesses have been well documented and led to an appeal.
...
I know that this is not the view generally held within the United States of America; however it a belief held by me and many others in Scotland who have been closely and personally involved since that dark day of December 21st 1988. I do believe that he is an innocent man and that in time the truth of that will emerge. But he was not released because of doubt concerning his conviction. He was released on strict legal grounds and because of the important element of Christian compassion which has influenced the legal systems of Scotland and Europe. [8]

It’s his feeling and opinion, tastefully stated without pushing it down any throats. Should the introduction of questions somehow lessen the importance of remembering the lost? Of course not – variant opinions should be embraced as part of the eternal search for truth these guys are always on about. But that‘s not really the issue, now, is it?

NOT A PLACE FOR POLITICS
The friar’s statement was pre- screened by Mr. Duggan and the Corporation, and it clearly rubbed them the wrong way. It may have been cast in a different tone than in previous years, or perhaps just the different circumstances had changed the standards. “We would have read his note this year,” Duggan explained in an e-mail to another journalist, “except that it was deemed by the Board, not by me, to be inappropriate for a memorial service.” [9] He made the distinction due to reports it was his own decision - in fact it would seem to be systemic to the Corporation. Doubts had no place in "a day to remember 270 innocent souls murdered in an act of state sponsored terrorism,” [10] so “Fr Keegans' note was sent out to the families on our mailing list rather than read at the cemetery on December 21st.” [11] So it's not outright censorship, but Keegans was denied a very tall soapbox for his "controversial" beliefs (another "Libya shill," and the world's getting crowded with them).

I don’t have the Corporation’s rules book in front of me, but from Duggan’s characterization, we have as reasons for the decision to nix Keegan's statement the following: “It is not a day for politics, a discussion of the bomber's trial and conviction or of his health." And “We try to avoid any political statements or any discussions of the convicted bomber." Friar Keegans’ remarks are “politics” in a real sense, using a platform to amplify his message of conscience. And political interpretations are not a good fit at the solemn parts, with the silence pierced by a ringing bell and the names of the victims. To penetrate that sanctified space with an upsetting statement of Megrahi’s innocence would be tasteless.

But of course no one ever suggested Keegans’ remarks would be said in that part of the ceremony. The other presenters did, as I had guessed they would, speak well past that hallowed point, into the anger or sense of justice or injustice emanating from the attack. Ignoring any hint of the false premise of the official story is tacitly accepting it as the de facto basis of all the post-remembrance activity. What was finally spoken was far worse than tacit acceptance, and in retrospect it’s just a bit clearer than before the ceremony that the dismissal of certain “political” views was nothing if not political in itself.

BRENNAN’S VERY TALL SOAPBOX
It would not take long to test these rules in action. President Obama sent John O. Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, to represent the team at the cemetery. It’s not clear whether he had his comments pre-screened, or used any coercive force to demand his lopsided views got a prominent airing on the backs of others’ sorrow. Whatever the case, the results are a horrific breach of memorial protocol.

Thank you, Frank, for your introduction and for your stewardship of this incredible organization ... on behalf of President Obama, and on behalf of his administration, let me say this. The evidence was clear. The trial was fair. The guilt of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was proven beyond a reasonable doubt. His conviction stands. The sentence was just. And nothing—not his unjustified release and certainly not a deplorable scene on a tarmac in Tripoli—will ever change those facts or wash the guilt from his hands or from the hands of those who assisted him in carrying out this heinous crime.[12]

The mention of "those who assisted him" is of course highly political, aiming the cartoon narrative (with a 50% conviction rate so far) at Libya in general. The "unjustified" release, actually justified on established "compassionate grounds" by the prisoner's near-death state, is a verbotten reference (in the negative) to Megrahi's health issues and "controversial" release. In another jab at this issue, Brennan quipped

Indeed, for any who truly seek it, it is here, in Arlington, among this gathering of families and friends, where you will find “compassionate grounds.” And that is where your government will always be — here, with you and your families.

Wow, that doesn't sound manipulative in the slightest! Solemn and loving memorial with no political spin whatsoever! I suppose Mr. Duggan will announce his regret that the Administration chose his event to air its controversial views? Would that really be too much to ask since the mission here is accomplished anyways? It needn't be, and perhaps can't be, sincere even. To just flat ignore, or tacitly approve, this violation, would show some real temerity, audacity. gall, chuztpah, impudence, nerve, forvovenhed, طيش, تهور, unbesonnenheit, наглость, 蛮勇, and shameless brazen double-standarded effrontery and hypocrisy. On behalf of the Obama administration of course.
---

Sources:
[1, 3, 5] Forsyth, John. "After 21 years no end in sight to wrangles over Lockerbie." The Scotsman. 21 December 2009. http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/After-21-years-no-end.5926777.jp
[2]http://www.victimsofpanamflight103.org/node/8
[4] http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/12/lockerbie-doubters-branded-holocaust.html
[6] http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/12/another-call-on-malta.html
[7] http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/12/compare-and-contrast.html
[8] http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/12/fr-keegans-remarks-are-not-being.html
[12] http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/12/arlington-address-by-john-o-brennan.html

IA 655 AND THE CESSATION OF THE IRAQ-IRAN WAR

2009-12-15T01:51:00.000-08:00

[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
December 15 2009 update 1/6/10

Note 1/6/10: Too many small errors to fix. Don't cite this piece but do feel free to follow leads and double-check.
---
Tonkin Gulf and the DESOTO Precedent
For some indirect insight on Lockerbie, allow me to turn to two prior events – one decades past, the other bare months. The title of this post is inspired by Edwin E. Moïse’s book “Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War.” (Chapel Hill /University of North Carolina Press. 1997. 255 pages). It was actually two Tonkin Gulf incidents, one overblown and the other complete fantasy, that enabled the widening of the conflict. These were sparked by a naval tactic called the “DESOTO patrol,” in which an unescorted destroyer specially equipped for communications surveillance, was sent as far as possible into the coastal waters of Communist Asia. The twin goals were to flaunt the enemy’s concept of territory while collecting intelligence for eventual hostile use. The missions were always marked by high tension. [Desoto patrols explained ]

Under Admiral Thomas H. Moorer’s guidance, such patrols were increased along the coast of North Vietnam in mid-1964, as US-engineered coastal raids (OPLAN 34-A) were also increased to put the DRV forces further on edge and stimulate “chatter” to analyze. The mission given to the USS Maddox in August has been described as “the delicate task of stimulating coastal defenses without provoking an attack,” a balance made harder by the added agitations. [1] The attack on the Maddox that was finally reported triggered a third and hidden (or unanticipated) power of the Desoto patrol – to start a war. And that crucial second attack didn’t even occur in reality - not for lack of trying.

The escalated Vietnam War of course went sour over the years, in the shadow of that initial dubious incident. It was the same type of patrol the USS Pueblo was on when disastrously captured by the North Koreans in early 1968, and a possibly similar mission that led to the USS Liberty incident the year before that. These plus lesser mishaps led to a decision in 1968 to stop such missions. The awkward U.S. loss of Saigon, plus Watergate and so on, changed the political calculus of manufactured crises. The “Remember the Maine” mentality just wasn’t going to work in the 1970s.

But the same notion of highly-portable naval sovereignty, with all the firepower to enforce it, continued - in, for example, the Persian Gulf in the latter 1980s.

Different Gulf, Different Decade, Different Moves
After Iraq attacked Iran in 1980, with tacit U.S. approval, Washington took Iraq’s side to ensure it didn’t lose in the bitter, grueling war that ensued. Towards this end, the U.S. re-flagged as its own supply and oil vessels coming to or going from Iraq - largely Kuwaiti oil tankers. This made them off-limits to Iran’s attempt at blockade. In Operation Earnest Will, U.S. Naval forces escorted them as well, enforcing its own blockades while denying Iran’s. Instances of Americans opening fire on Iranian forces and facilities rose steadily as well as the conflict dragged on; Operation Praying Mantis responded to Iranian mining with escalated U.S. attacks on Iranian gunboats, oil platforms, and tankers on April 18 1988. [2]

The covert US-Iraq alliance had intensified in latter 1987. Ironically, this was following the accidental Iraqi air attack on the USS Stark – with 37 sailors killed, it proved exactly to Iraq what the USS Liberty incident was to Israel, but in miniature; American cooperation increased. Advisers went to Baghdad full time, originally to prevent further such mishaps, “but the end result,” explained a 1992 Nightline report on America’s secret war, “was that the United States helped Iraq conduct long-range strikes against key Iranian targets, using U.S. ships as navigational aids. “We became,” as one senior U.S. officer told us, “forward air controllers for the Iraqi air force.”” [3]

Two conjoined decision of Late April 1988, following Operation Praying Mantis, set the stage for the IA655 incident: the expansion of shipping protection in the Gulf to all neutral vessels and the dispatch of the USS Vincennes to bolster the force backing it up. [4] The high-tech vessel (a Ticonderoga class AEGIS guided missile cruiser, introduced 1985 and also called "Roboship") was equipped for advanced surveillance of just about every frequency except, apparently, civilian air control traffic. Its combat speciality was surface to air engagements, a poor fit for the surface-surface work it was sent for. But the more aggressive attitude in the Gulf was well embodied by The Vincennes’ commanding officer, Captain William C. Rogers; according to those who worked behind him in the Gulf he was overly-aggressive, but then he may have been privy to certain unusual standards they weren’t.

The details of the incident are still new to this author and beyond the scope of this article, but the story of how the Vincennes came to do battle with Flight 655 seems highly dubious. Around 10:00 local time, the cruiser’s amazing receivers picked up two distress calls from neutral vessels under attack by Iranian vessels, and sent it heliopter to look, which in turn reported being fired on. According to information uncovered by ABC Nightline and Newsweek, one of these signals was later denied by the boat’s captain – he never came under attack nor asked for help. The other was from a completely non-existent “Liberian” vessel. [5]

Both signals were themselves forgeries - pure radio signal fakery as part of a U.S. plot to draw Iranian vessels out to join in the fake melee and become exposed to counter-attack by the Navy. Lt. Col. Roger Charles told Nightline the Navy thus “enticed, in fact, entrapped the Iranian gunboats into a situation where we could then say that there’s been a hostile action by them … And that then allowed — under this kind of specious rule of loosened hot pursuit — us to take military action.” [6] It was to the aid of these ghosts that Captain Rogers sped, like a duck hunter headed to where the decoys were laid, ready to pop any attackers lured out or any threat to his expensive ship.

The Incident and the American Message to Iran
Into this dangerous situation flew Iran Air Flight 655. An Airbus A300B2 with 290 passengers aboard (mostly Iranians, including 66 children), it departed from Bandar Abbas at 10:17 for its 28-minute flight to Bahrain Airport. It seems the plane was talking normally with ground control (in English), was well within an established civilian air corridor, climbing up rather than swooping down for an attack, and transmitting the right civilian transponder code that clearly means don’t shoot. [7]

But the Vincennes had the wrong equipment to hear the control chatter, and apparently the wrong crew for everything else. They misread the transponder signals as being from a MiG fighter jet. They misread its location as several miles outside the civilian corridor. They somehow missed the civil flight listing that would identify it by flight number. They may have failed to properly transmit their warning signals, as the “fighter” refused to turn away. These and other errors all happened at the same time in that dense fog-bank of war effect that only materializes under peculiar conditions like this, and quite often benefits the U.S. of A in no-longer-surprising ways.

So to summarize, on this poorly-run duck hunt, they decided that a fighter jet had been lured out as well as the gunboats - and that’s a bigger and more exotic prize. So with all the storm of mental short-circuits aside, it made perfect sense to fire two missiles at it. 290 non-combatant souls were snuffed out – some in the explosion that made the plane disintegrate, the rest after a three-mile fall to hit the Gulf’s warm waters. Video shows the ship’s crew elated to have hit the bad guy – they weren’t told until hours later what they’d really done, and apparently they didn’t figure it out in the meantime, even with the ship's data records to review.

One overriding message the United States government sent to Iran, aside from vague “regret” over this accident, can be seen in its public pronouncements. Consider the last sentence of President Reagan’s first statement of July 3: “The only U.S. interest in the Persian Gulf is peace, and this tragedy reinforces the need to achieve that goal with all possible speed.” [8] It sounds nicely utopian, but it surely wasn’t meant that way. White House media handler Marlin Fitzwater made the message a little more explicitly a week later:

Only an end to the war, an objective we desire, can halt the immense suffering in the region and put an end to innocent loss of life. Our goal is peace in the Gulf and on land. We urge Iran and Iraq to work with the Security Council for an urgent comprehensive settlement of the war pursuant to Resolution 598. Meanwhile, United States forces will continue their mission in the area, keenly aware of the risks involved and ready to face them. [9]

That is, as the Iranians likely read it, wey’ll keep on shooting at anything that might possibly be a threat as long as we “have to” hang around there, which is until Iran surrenders. Charles Price, US Ambassador to UK later said “this incident wouldn’t have happened if Iran wasn’t, and hadn’t been in the process now for a long time, of attacking U.S. and other shipping in the Gulf.” [10] This is certainly a contributing factor, along with the U.S. decision to fake some of these attacks electronically and lure hem into a fight, the decision to equip, staff, and deploy the Vincennes in such a way that it became deadly to civil airliners, etc. For that matter it wouldn’t happen if the airplane had never been invented. So many variables and alternate outcomes riddle this case, that Price picked on Iran’s small role, played with such limited options, shows the issue at hand – their options were narrower yet and they’d better stop shooting altogether.

Iran Surrenders / A Leaf on the Wind
Since Iraq started the war in 1980, its course had been a grueling back and forth, with steady but modest Iranian gains into Iraqi territory by the end of 1987. UN Security Council Resolution 598 had called for a return to pre-war boundaries, making Iran reluctant to agree, even as the pain deepened. Then Iraq started another push-back in early 1988: long-range bombardment increased, and American assistance got more hands-on as well, as we’ve seen. The balance might have shifted back yet again but for what happened in July.

The shooting down of IA655 undoubtedly contributed to hastening Iran’s effective surrender. However, the precise role it played – minor, major, or peripheral, is difficult to know. Adding to new anxieties, just days after the incident, Iraqi forces “dropped chemical cyanide bombs” on the Kurdish village of Zardan on the Iranian side. Again hundreds were killed and “the enraged Iranians considered a huge rearming and nuclear weapons, but decided that this was beyond their means” by that time. [11] So July was a bad month for Iran - on top of the cumulative effects of years of similar woe, the loss of the Airbus to Americans in particular put a deeper fear than ever across the Persian mind. As an Iranian scholar stated at a conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center (paraphrased)

“[A] turning point in Iran's thinking came with the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in July 1988 by the American cruiser USS Vincennes. That incident apparently led Ayatollah Khomeini to conclude that Iran could not risk the possibility of U.S. open combat operations against Iran and he decided it was time to end the conflict." [12]

There’s every reason to believe that’s just what the Americans wanted to get across, after the tragedy if not shortly before as well. This author is not eager to conclude there was any design to kill hundreds of innocents – but there are some very hard questions to address at another date.

The fighting did continue but Iran’s mindset was definitely shifting and quickly – hostilities officially and physically ended just six weeks after the Vincennes incident, on August 20. Iranian organized revenge meeting were already taking place by then, and their selected contractor groups were making their airliner radio bombs by the time the “Autumn Leaves” were shaken loose in Germany in October. It seems all too likely one of these Iranian grown leaves drifted right across the English Channel and lighted itself in the belly of PA103 on 21 December, less than six months after Captain Rogers’ duck hunt. A half hour after takeoff, it exacted an exact revenge, leaving 259 to deal with five miles of pure gravity however they did before dying against the cold winter soil of Scotland.

That, or the Iranians just gave up after the Germany bust, and the Libyans took their own incidental revenge for something else at just that time, as the FBI, CIA, USG, Scottish Police, Camp Zeist judges, and others claim to believe.

---
Sources:
[1] 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
[2]Operation Praying Mantis. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
[3, 5, 6] "The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War" ABC Nightline, Aired July 1 1992. Full Transcript, with extensive notes.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/ir655-nightline-19920701.html
[4] Kelley, Stephen Andrew. Better Lucky Than Good: Operation Earnest Will as Gunboat Diplomacy. (Naval Postgraduate School. June 2007. PDF link:
http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA470423
[7, 8, 9] Ghasemi, Shapour. “Shooting Down Iran Air 655 [IA655]” Iran Chamber Society: History of Iran. 2004. http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/shootingdown_iranair_flight655.php
[10] The Maltese Double Cross - 32:00 mark
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Iraq_War
[12] http://wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.print&news_id=90411&stoplayout=true

ANOTHER CALL ON MALTA

2009-12-10T23:54:00.000-08:00

ADMIT IT ALREADY!
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
December 11 2009

Note: The Following does not necessarily reflect the author's true views in all regards

The Status Quo
Two previous posts explained al Megrahi’s Malta-based plot to destroy Pan Am 103. First we witnessed the keen memory and staunch bravery of eyewitness Anthony Gauci, standing alone against an uncaring island subdued by Libyan barbarians. Next I chronicled the complete subjugation of Air Malta and its security operations at Luqa Airport, allowing the PA103 bomb to hurtle uncontrollably to Lockerbie. And finally, at the end of the second piece, I just started hinting at their infuriating denials after the fact that any such plot ever did pierce their magical force field.

It’s noteworthy that Air Malta has avoided the notoriety and bankruptcy that sunk Pan Am following this disaster. How, when their initial “failure” is what gave Pan Am its chance to fail as well? As usual in a world rife with anti-American plots, the true villain escapes unharmed, allowed to live and thrive, while the innocent passerby is shot to death. The distatsteful status quo is thus the Americans got their (little fish) bad guy, but lost a major airline, while the Libyans have paid up and admitted responsibility, while cynically denying responsibility, and all Malta had to do was keep quiet on its part. It’s a more than fair deal for the government in Velletta, and one should think they’d be grateful. And normally they act that way.

Demands of the Disgruntled
Some have agitated to upset that stasis, but so far the calls on Malta are quite one-sided, encouraging them to “clear their name” of the Lockerbie taint altogether. These pleas usually come from a small, well-known group of people who would like to de-blame Libya itself. Now if that doesn’t illustrate the axis of malice between Velletta and Triploi, nothing does.

Just in the last couple of months, Lockerbie trial “architect” and general grumpy gus Professor Robert Black piped up in late August. He opined “the Maltese government should be pressing very hard within the EU for an enquiry into Lockerbie,” and criticized the Scottish judges for accepting that Megrahi’s bag from Malta ever existed.

On 25 October that one UN guy, Köchler, that was at the trial and said some bad stuff about it, called for a Maltese probe of Gauci in particular: "If they are committed to the rule of law, the Maltese authorities should open their own investigation and interrogate Mr Gauci," One must wonder how much Gaddaffy is paying Herr Köchler to get at the hero of Silema like the lurking Libyans never were able to?

Never Enough Proof
The Maltese authorities have really done a great job “clearing their name” without the encouragement, but with it they went haywire. On 31 October the UK Daily Telegraph reported “Malta to investigate evidence of key Lockerbie witness.” This was based on an unnamed “Maltese legal official” who said “Tony Gauci is an area where we have to investigate more thoroughly and we are preparing for this. There was never enough proof, to be frank, on the circumstances of his evidence and there is pressure coming from many quarters on Malta to move to resolve the issue." There’s not enough proof in the world, apparently.

The following day, 1 November, the Justice Department specifically denied such preparations, disowning any comment that may have been made. However, their press release took the chance to repeat the infuriating claim that since 1988, the Maltese government has "always maintained the bomb which downed Pan Am flight 103 had not departed from Malta and ample proof of this was produced.” Oh, so now the mountain of proof of a Maltese-origin bomb, that’s “never enough,” is trumped by that tired old paperwork? It becomes clearer.

To top off this cowardly dodge, on the same day, Prime Mnister Gonzi affirmed their disinterest in Gauci. “Over the years we cooperated with every investigation,” he explained, which is technically true. But like the others, he ignores the terrorist plots hatched there that were uncovered by these efforts. “Our position,” he pronounced, “was always that Malta had nothing to do with the terrorist attack.” Well they did host the whole thing except the explosion, so presumably he means nothingconsciously to do with it. But this too is in doubt. When asked if his decision not to re-question Gauci was due to pressure from the U.S., Gonzi replied “it is totally untrue.” Indeed, their own embarrassment seems more at stake than America’s in again contrasting Tony’s sharp eye with the complacent approach everyone else in Malta takes towards the Libyans.

I’d like to quote Stuart Henderson, that proper Scottish copper who led the whole police investigation of Lockerbie. He wasn’t specifically referring to any of the Maltese vomiting this vile venom above when he spoke about Megrahi's release in August. But those who doubt the official story, as most Maltese seem to, “make my blood boil” and are “an insult to our police officers … an insult to the Americans, to the Germans, to the Swiss and the Maltese officers.” That’s right, you guys are slandering your own who helped prove just exactly how the Libyans killed 270 with a bomb your lame-ass airport just “missed” and somehow you can’t just admit it.

Another Call and Surely Not the Last
But it didn’t end there, as proved by a 29 November letter, urging Malta to “defend itself,” issued by the Orwellianly-named “Justice for Megrahi campaign.” The letter was signed by, among others, British MPs Tom Dalyell and Teddy Taylor, plus Noam Chomsky - all outspoken Leftist weirdos who argue that Megrahi is an innocent little lamb framed by “the West” (i.e. – the New World Order, aka “Illuminati”). Professor Chomsky, not surprisingly, called the proper conviction based on proof of a terrorist mass murderer "a remarkable illustration of the conformism and obedience of intellectual opinion in the West". Oh, Chomsky… yawn-skip-yawn-skip-yawn-skip… "I think the trial was very seriously flawed,” he further opined to the Times of Malta, “including crucially the alleged role of Malta. There is every reason to call for a very serious independent inquiry." Certainly Triploi has the roster for it drafted already, and a few more bought souls from now we might see Justice turned on its head, to Chomsky’s delight.

And finally to quote again then Minister of Home Affairs, Tonio Borg, quite a while back in early 2000: "We have no proof that these two Libyan suspects were involved in anything illegal in Malta regarding this case, particularly the placing of this bomb on Air Malta Flight ... 180.” I had hoped he would be fired since then, especially after the trial at camp Zeist shortly put the lie to such claims. Rather, he’s prospered just like Air Malta; since then he’s been Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Justice (ironically), and is currently honored with the titles Deputy Leader of the Nationalist Party, leader of the House of Representatives, and Deputy Prime Minister. Would Germany have been tolerated promoting its holocaust deniers like this?

The Final Call: Pull Malta Back From the Dark Side
Clearly this talk of a UN inquiry, under Libyan control, torturing Tony Gauci into recanting his story, and all the rest, has got to stop. That is hardly worth mentioning outright it's so elemental. But while we’re at it, we must ask if this tiny, easily manipulated island nation was really just used by the Libyans against its will? Or have they been swayed to the dark side all along? The petitioners seem to bet on the latter.

Historically, the Maltese are notoriously soft on Islam, and perhaps by now sympathetic to the anti-American Jihad. At the very least they’re likely to slide that way if Libya’s evil grip is allowed to continue unaddressed. Therefore, let’s make it more explicit and issue a new international call on Malta to “Admit it! You're Tripoli's little pet and happy about it!” Sign the informal petition by leaving a comment below. We are all Americans now, worldwide, and we will get our perps, be they Libyan, Maltese, and also otherwise. The case is open!

I specifically speak to Brits – Scots, Welsh, English, Etc. It must be asked if all this was caused by the UK letting go of the island’s hand in this world crowded with evil. Recall that after you freed Malta from the Freemason French, you cared for them and left your names all over, until you set them loose in the hippie 1960’s. But as usual permissiveness breeds wickedness and by 1988, planes were falling on the UK itself due to losing Malta. If those people can’t behave responsibly and face up to the consequences of their long dance with Libya, perhaps independence should be seriously re-considered.
---

WHILE MALTA SLEPT?

2009-12-09T01:37:00.000-08:00

HOW MALTA LET LOCKERBIE HAPPEN
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
December 9 2009

Note: The Following does not necessarily reflect the author's true views in all regards

A previous post addressed the fateful clothes purchase by Lockerbie bomber al Megrahi on the island of Malta, well-known as occurring on December 7 1988 at the Gauci family’s shop Mary’s House. But this is only a sliver of the terrorist mastermind’s larger plot with many steps taken all within a few square miles around Silema, under the watchless eye of the Maltese authorities - especially at nearby Luqa airport where the main action went down.

Abdelbaset al Megrahi was a Libyan intelligence bigwig personally carrying out some hair-brained revenge by Col Gaddaffy for a two-year old US bombing of Libya that had killed his adopted daughter. Megrahi had connections at Luqa airport via his own Libyan Arab Airlines links, but the experts agree he could not likely do this all alone without at least one accomplice inside the airport. His exactly one (known) accomplice, Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, also worked for LAA at Luqa and was a Libyan intelligence operative, high-level.

Of course Fhimah was later found not guilty on a technicality, that being the evidence against him, and the other incredible details flowing from star witness Abdulmajid Giaka, was found “inadmissible” by the three presiding judges. This was one of their more cautious and wimpy moves – a key witness ignored over a few piddling doubts raised by the defense about his meager repayments and the doubts of some memo-writer.

To be clear on this point, the prosecution and the CIA (who first worked the witness) have always known Mr, Giaka was honest and credible, with high-level connections at Luqa and in Libyan intelligence, and a knowledge both vast and intimate of the Megrahi-Fhimah plot. The judges didn’t specifically counter this, and any disinterested observer can note his story is still effectively true, as it mirrored the prosecution case. For the prime example, Giaka swears he saw both accused arrive at the airport with a mysterious brown Samsonite suitcase. That’s dynamite info, and all the other evidence proves they did exactly this. That his story so closely resembles that truth can hardly be coincidence, and his dismissal is but a technicality.

Giaka also alerted his handlers of genuine clues that panned out, like Fhimah’s diary entry noting he needed to get “TAGGS” (in English but misspelled). What business would an airline employee have with luggage tags besides planning to use one of them (with a few spares to practice on) to get a bomb onto PA103? It’s been suggested the diary explains he was taking sample tags to a local printer to get more made, but the question that begs an answer then is why write something this boring in your diary when you could jot down clues to your terrorist plot? In English? The critics cannot answer that.

Within that brown suitcase Giaka saw, we know Megrahi had the bomb, ready made with a flexible Mebo timer the Libyans were famous for having by then, packed into a radio with the memorable clothes and umbrella he didn’t need anymore. Fully confident in his ability to walk right through Luqa airport, he decided to send this bundle of malice right from there, correctly presuming gross negligence would repeatedly fail to stop it on its complex chosen path. It was perhaps the sheer arrogance of those “above the law” that made Megrahi time the bomb to just deny the ocean’s anonymity, and leave these scattered clues to be found on land and traced back to Mebo and Gauci and himself. It all makes sense in hindsight, and fits established and understood patterns of criminal behavior. For example, the professionals who write up James Bond villains know just this type all too well and should not be surprised at such mundane contrivances.

As to how this perfectly predictable plot continued on to fruition unopposed, that’s more troubling. All it took to penetrate “Mary’s House” and buy just the right clothes was a little money. It was Luqa Airport that really mattered, and that too proved easy enough for a determined mastermind to part like the Red Sea. The airline Air Malta ran security there, essentially the host airline. Air Malta security director Wilfred Borg has been quite defensive, always speaking up about their “stringent policies” of double-checking the number of bags, and reconciling each with the right passengers. They have produced the documentation for investigators and news cameras alike, to “prove” their case. But paper is just so darn thin as evidence when clearly a bag with a bomb DID come out of Malta.

Unaccompanied bags are not allowed, so couldn’t happen, the logic ran. Strangely, the Matlese police agreed as if they know anything about airports. Outside “experts” like Denis Phipps, former security director for British Airways, have found these records “reliable,” and as showing 55 pieces of luggage, all claimed by 39 passengers, with none unaccompanied. The answer, presuming for argument’s sake these are legitimate records, is that the 56th bag was simply not documented. Why would a terrorist be so stupid and arrogant as to allow his bomb bag to de recorded on the official paperwork to be traced back?

KM180 landed in Frankfurt at mid-day, and it was there the suitcase wormed its way onto PA103, using…. Yep, that “TAGG.” These magical tickets were the perfect tool; in the 1980s, airports routinely searched only bags without tags. One with proper tags was considered “good to go” and sent along. The proof it was sent along was provided by the diligent German Federal Police, BKA, who had sprung into action within days of the crash. It was widely reported in Germany that Flight 103 originated in Frankfurt, which it only sort-of did. So it’s understandable they would visit the airport, as they did on or around Christmas at the latest, looking for the luggage records, computer files and paper forms, relating to 103 and what went on it.

Now it’s no secret that police can goof things up and usually do. They forgot to get the records for what went onto Flight 103 when they were there, and the airport deleted that data a few days later with no official backup or paper copies kept. Luckily, a souvenir printout that an upright employee handed to the BKA in late January proved that an unaccompanied bag was routed from KM180 onto the ‘first leg’ of Flight 103. The BKA investigated the airport again and agreed, six months later alerting Scottish police. And that, good people, is solid proof of an unaccompanied bag from Malta, no matter what the Maltese and their apologists claim.

Few have the guts to openly verbalize the presumption one must make on considering all this. One exception is Vincent Cannistraro, head of the CIA’s Lockerbie investigation, who had been tenaciously telling the truth about Libya for years already before working with Giaka to ‘simulate’ it. In a 1994 documentary (Frontline Scotland: Silence over Lockerbie), Cannistraro told the truth about their northern island possession, masterfully dismissing the claims of Air Malta and their ilk:

“They have vindicated themselves on paper in terms of the security procedures, but if their security personnel are suborned by hostile intelligence service, and they are completely vulnerable to whatever that hostile service would want to put on their aircraft, with baggage tags, without baggage tags. Once you have basically infiltrated the security apparatus there is no barrier to doing exactly what Fhimah and Megrahi DID." (emph. Mine)

They aren't saying it aloud like this, these days, but that MUST still be the official story stood by in Washington and London. Malta was suborned into letting Lockerbie happen and have at least tacitly helped confuse this basic fact. Consider this outrageous claim by Malta's Minister of Home Affairs, Tonio Borg (any relation to the compromised Wilfred Borg, hmmm?): "We have no proof that these two Libyan suspects were involved in anything illegal in Malta regarding this case, particularly the placing of this bomb on Air Malta Flight ... 180.” The suspicious security breach, which they could just admit to but disown as a mistake, was now to be compounded with an equally dubious refusal to admit their … failure? It’s seeming less and less like a failure and Borg is sounding sort of like a German railroadman denying his part in the Holocaust.

Disingenuous and disgusting. I hope he's been fired or at least demoted since then.

To be continued...

REMEMBER REMEMBER SEVEN DECEMBER

2009-12-07T03:43:00.000-08:00

THE BABYGRO TREASON AND PLOT
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
December 7 2009
updated Dec 10

Note: The Following does not necessarily reflect the author's true views in all regards

Today, December 7 2009, marks an inauspicious anniversary in American history. Yes, December 7, 1988 was the date of purchase by convicted Lockerbie bomber al Megrahi of the Maltese clothes stuffed around the bomb he used to take down PanAm 103. 21 years ago today, he made a fateful purchase from one Anthony Gauci, then of Silema Malta, a purchase Gauci remembered all too well. This we know because of a nice confluence of clues that investigators were clever enough to recognize and rigorous enough to assemble into nice neat indicator of a design out of Tripoli.

The mystery shopper was eventually found to sort of be resembled by al Megrahi (once his face was famous enough). Everyone had at one point decided Gauci had sold the stuff to Mr. Abu Talb, a suspect found in possession of more Maltese clothes. While memory is never perfect, time usually improves it and by the year 2000 Gauci was able to point to el Megrahi in court, when the man was sitting in the dock in the special accused gown costume. Justice was served, thanks to Gauci’s sharp memory and clear conscience. This purchaser did originally seem at least four inches taller, broader of build and perhaps darker in complexion than Megrahi, and perhaps 20 years older than either him or Talb. But again, this just shows the natural variation of eyewitness testimony and is not suspicious in the least.

The date which I mark is known as the fateful one because Megrahi was known to be on Malta that day and on no others that mach Mr. Gauci’s given clues. Tony, as some call him, recalled the setting for investigators. It was near closing time, around 6pm. It would be dark, and he recalled it was raining outside. Tony recalled he was alone in the shop, as .his brother Paul had gone home early for a football match (Rome-Dresden). Such a match was aired on December 7 at 1pm, and over by about 3:00. Paul apparently did some other thing after the game hat kept him from returning to help close. It’s fine. The Christmas lights were already up.

The purchaser bought many unusual clothing items, with little care to if they fit or made sense. He seemed like a Christmas shopper, a Libyan one, with “more money than time.” The list of items bought was initially unsure and contradictory to the evidence found scorched and scattered across Scotland. But the roster was generally ironed out over 20-ish interviews with Scottish police (many of them still not erased from view), and agreement was reached that the mystery shopper bought too much of the unusual selection in the bomb bag to be coincidence.

The blue “baby gro” is the most memorable of the clothes. Its own tag said made in Malta, and Maltese Gauci recalled selling it for Megrahi’s Maltese plot. By relating to babies it also shows two important clues: it reflects megrahi’s awareness that this was revenge for the U.S. bombing that killed Gaddafi’s 4-year-old adopted daughter, who may have worn such an outfit when younger. A handy timeline also shows the clear relation – the 103 bombing happened after that 1986 attack, clearly showing the cause and effect relation. The choice also shows how Megrahi was aware that children exist and might be killed in his plot, as they were. It was a sinister final touch for the bomb stuffing that just screamed Libyan guilt and wickedness of spirit.

The only item of utility the buyer picked up was an umbrella, since it was raining enough to warrant one. Local weather records show no appreciable rain in Silema that day, but these aren’t always perfect, perhaps kept poorly in Malta. In fact, that records don’t show this is a vital clue that Maltese authorities might have willfully altered these to cover up their failures. Perhaps they missed the rain on accident after all, but it rained December 7 and that same umbrella Megrahi bought for that was packed and found at the crash site. This suspicious behavior is therefore a good clue of Megrahi’s guilt and Malta’s (unwitting?) complicity.

Open-minded investigators did heavily consider November 23 as another fit for Tony’s evidence – it had appreciable rainfall recorded, and a Rome-Dresden football match from 5-7 pm local, a better fit for Paul being absent still at 6pm. But Megrahi was clearly not there on that day, so that can’t be it. Football times and dates you just don’t get wrong, but Malta’s weather records are now suspect, so Dec 7 it must be, with unrecorded rain and Paul gone not for the game but for post-game activities. And I for one see no reason that the babygro treason should ever be forgot, especially since the mass murderer has been "compassionately" sent home to plot more American deaths. I will in fact elaborate on Megrahi's Maltese plot and the strange failure of Malta as a whole to prevent it or even admit the truth afterwards. This behavior demands a response.
---
Note: A helpful reader has alerted me that I forgot to address an important point, being Mr. Gauci's payments following his many statements and testimony. Yes, he did receive a small reimbursement, in relative to his troubles; I've read his accounts, and Libyans were hanging around, looking at him and not buying anything. To face such dangers you need some money. It's not a perfect world, obviously. I'm not sure on the amount, I think it was at least a few thousand dollars, and it wasn't even mentioned at all until after Tony had given the police all their information, so any question of influence or leading is ridiculous. In fact, to keep him honest, they had led Gauci to believe he'd be unable to receive ANY money, and in fact made to pay the police a £8 "witness processing fee." It worked, elicited the purest strain of truth, and the gesture of faith was repaid, modestly. Thank you for the reminder, anonymous reader, to toss this straw-man argument aside.

LIGHTLY EXPLOSION-DAMAGED

2009-11-28T00:26:00.000-08:00

Two Scientists, a Purple Bag, and a Possible Clue
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
November 29 2009

Going through the court transcripts of the Lockerbie trial at Camp Zeist, one point of interest that I ran across concerns the testimony of RARDE scientist Allen Feraday. This was on June 15 2000, day 21 of the trial (read the LTBU daily report in .doc format, outlining some of the controversies). The witness himself reportedly has little in the line of formal qualifications, citing a “higher certificate in applied physics” as his qualifications; He’s still conceivably capable of brilliant professional work; but judging by some previous high-profile anti-terrorism cases he’s been involved in, he could be seen as more of a “manager” of evidence than a reasonable assessor of it.

Feraday’s scientific findings relating to the Lockerbie investigation are inextricably linked and confused with those of his underling, Dr. Thomas Hayes, who has a proper PhD. I don’t know the arrangement, but Ferraday mentions analysis of the luggage and clothing that “was essentially done relatively early on, by Dr. Hayes, and then, obviously, checked by me.” (p 3328) The two are more famous for their handling of the miraculous timer fragment PT/35(b); Hayes found it in a shirt collar and alerted Feraday, who passed the news on to Williamson, and thence to Henderson, Marquise, Thurman, “Orkin” and the history books. In testimony Feraday also clarified the interchangeable nature of their collaboration “I did not always, when I was looking at [evidence], make any difference between myself and Hayes” (p. 3332)

The prosecution generally seemed to feel the same way; their habit of asking questions of Feraday better suited for the earlier witness led Mr. Keen to lodge for private audience with the judges. Once Feraday was sent from the room, Keen argued in part:

According to the evidence of this witness, he prepared the final report on the basis of his examination of certain matters, and by considering Dr. Hayes' notes. What my learned friend appears to be inviting is hearsay evidence […] I object to the Crown canvassing hearsay evidence, even in the context of what is referred to as a joint report, in respect of such a matter. If they wish to take direct evidence on this issue, then they had ample opportunity of doing so with Dr. Hayes. And in my submission, it is not competent for them to take hearsay evidence on this matter from Mr. Feraday. (pp 3215-3216)

Nonetheless the questioning continued in a similar line, a hundred pages later coming to my point of interest, the unusual collaboration on another piece of evidence: a damaged piece of luggage, described as “a purple-coloured holdall” and labeled PH/137. This bag, Feraday had wrtten in his final report of 1989, had within it two metal fragments “which both originate from the primary IED suitcase,” so it should be of some interest. Mr. Keen for the Defense addressed Dr. Hayes' draft report during his questioning of Feraday. He cited page 23 as listing categories including "Likely Explosion Damaged Luggage,” and noted that one item listed in that heading is PH/137. Feraday confirmed these facts while comparing with his own copy.

Q So from Dr. Hayes' draft report -- and I think you just told us he prepared this part of the report -- we can see that he designated this as explosion-damaged luggage?
A I think it was lightly --
Q Lightly explosion-damaged luggage?
A Yes.(pp 3330-3331)

This attitude would help explain Feraday’s own notes, Production 1498, in which Keen noted “that nowhere in the index” and in fact “nowhere in your examination notes does the item PH/137 appear.” The witness confirms to both “that's correct, sir. Yes.” Of course lightly blast-damaged was a fudging statement and further probing shows him to believe it wasn’t in the explosion damage at all. Next Mr, Keen pulled up a photograph of this item. (Production 181, photograph 91)

Q It is apparent, is it not, Mr. Feraday, that you have not signed the label as it is photographed in photograph 91?
A That's correct, sir. Yes.
Q But your signature now appears on the label PH/137 in court?
A Yes, sir.
Q When did you sign that label, Mr. Feraday?
A When I had the bag back to write this -- the final report.
Q And what date was that, Mr. Feraday?
A I can't tell you without looking it up again on a list, I'm afraid.
Q Are you saying that that was before December 1991?
A I think it must be, yes. I finished the report by then, so yes.
Q And are you saying that you examined PH/137 before you finished the report?
A Yes, sir.
Q Where are the notes of that examination, Mr. Feraday?
A Well, there aren't any, because as I said, I did not always, when I was looking at them, make any difference between myself and Hayes -- although in this instance I did, and I told him so, that in my opinion you couldn't necessarily put that in the explosion damage. I couldn't convince myself that it was explosion damage. Prior to that, Hayes had written this preliminary report for another purpose -- I think the Fatal Accident Inquiry -- (pp 3331-3333)

So if I’m reading this right, he disagrees with the actual PhD scientist, but did no detailed, documented, admissible examination of his own to back this up. He couldn't recall when he made his divergent inspection, but did immediately recall that he made no notes for it. His lack of notes in turn is justified "because" they agree on things, "although" not in this case. Got it.

Notes or not, the reason for Feraday’s divergence seems to be an unexplained lack of conviction, with which Hayes lodged no disagreement:

Q And you recall --
A Sorry, I'm waiting for the --
Q I don't think you had finished, Mr. Feraday, so do finish your answer if you wish.
A Sorry. I came to the conclusion that I couldn't myself put it in the explosion – necessarily in the explosion-damaged baggage. I'm not saying it isn't, but I couldn't convince myself. And I still can't. And for that reason, I had a word with Hayes, and we agreed to put it in the second section.
Q So you -- you recall discussing this with Dr. Hayes, do you?
A At some stage I discussed it with Dr. Hayes, but I can't remember exactly when or if, in fact, it was when the -- I wrote the final report. And then Hayes certainly came in, obviously, and read it all and then signed, and we went through each item then. We through the report, if you like, line by line.
Q Line by line, Mr. Feraday?
A Well, he read through it, obviously, line by line. (pp 3333-3334)

This implies no disagreement; Hayes was able to check Feraday’s findings and found no problem with the exclusion of PH/137 that Feraday had already decided on and reported. Next, Mr. Keen turned to Feraday’s given reasoning, in that report, to support his agnosticism.

Q If you would like to turn for a moment, Mr. Feraday, to your report 181 at page 51.
A Yes, sir.
Q Now, we can read this section for ourselves, but I'd like to look in particular at the third paragraph on that page, which you corrected during your examination in chief chief [a meeting just before his questioning - ed] by proposing the insertion, after the fourth word in the first line, of the word "other"?
A Yes, sir.
Q Now, taking the paragraph, of course, in its context, can we read that corrected paragraph. It states: "As there are no other penetration holes in either the holdall or the plastics bag, it appears most likely that these two fragments, which both originate from the primary IED suitcase, were picked up and placed inside the plastics bag, which was then itself
placed inside the purple holdall for convenience of carriage."
A Yes, sir.
Q Now, I have to suggest, Mr. Feraday, that if you insert the word "other" into that paragraph in the context of this section, the paragraph is deprived of sense or content.
A Is ... ?
Q Deprived of any sense or content. It tells us absolutely nothing if you correct it in that way. What do you say to that?
A I am not sure what you mean. But what it would then say is as there are no other penetration -- at the top of the page, I am talking about the ragged horizontal cuts which, obviously, one can see as penetrations. I see them as cuts. Now, in dealing with, first of all, the holdall, there are no other penetration holes in it, other than those that I've already said about the cuts. And in the plastics bag, there were none, the plastics bag which contained the two fragments of metal from the suitcase. So I was left scratching my head as to how they can get inside there, in a plastics bag, if they didn't come through any part of the bag.
Q Do you --
A I can't convince myself they come through the ragged cuts.
Q You recollect the label attached to the plastics bag, Mr. Feraday, having said "two pieces of metal, charred, found within baggage."
A Yes, I do, sir.
Q And you recollect finding penetrations in the side of the bag that went right through to the interior of the bag?
A Horizontal cuts, yes, sir.
Q But you felt it pertinent to remind us that there were no other penetrations in the bag, Mr. Feraday; is that right?
A Not big enough for the -- for anything to do with the two pieces of metal. That's correct, sir, yes.
Q But the penetrations you'd already found were big enough for the penetration of the two bits of metal?
A Oh, yes, sir.
Q Well, that might be an appropriate point, My Lords, if there is to be a short adjournment.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Yes, very well. We'll adjourn for 15 minutes. (3334-3336)

I can only paraphrase Michael Palin in The Holy Grail “what a strange person.” Mr. Feraday’s stated reasoning then seems to be that even though these shards could fit through the penetrations if explosively hurled there, he couldn't convince himself this was what happened and chose to think of them as surface "cuts." Who knows what caused these cuts - perhaps the hold-all fell through a tree before landing. And the two unrelated IED suitcase bits were found elsewhere and simply put in the bag far carrying, with no note about being found elsewhere. His report first supported this saying there were "no penetrations" in the bag, corrected only in his examination in chief (a meeting just before his questioning) to "no other pentrations," aside from the "cuts" that they probably did enter through.

His references to the plastic bag is curious. This would clearly seem an ad hoc evidence bag (probably not a proper one or he’d teerm it as such), into which the shards were placed after being found. This would be a careless and illogical move, but I don't see anything else making sense. Transferring these also into a bag they weren’t found in makes this faux pas worse – something Mr. Feraday should have reported rather than just using it as he did to remove the explosion from PH/137. A lack of damage to this evidence bag is also cited as a clue these didn't fly in thru the cuts: “[T]here are no other penetration holes […] in the plastics bag […] which contained the two fragments of metal from the suitcase. So I was left scratching my head as to how they can get inside there, in a plastics bag, if they didn't come through any part of the bag.” This in particular is a ridiculous non-sequitur, but another clue to Feraday this was not explosion damage.

In the most rational explanation for this thought process, perhaps he just meant, "obviously, the bomb didn't put these metal shards in the plastic bag, one of our people did. Therefore, they probably got the scraps from somewhere else, but threw them in there instead." And perhaps if we could see the evidence we'd see why he felt the shards did not just enter through the tears. But for whatever intention, he effectively erased this piece of evidence from the bomb site picture – where Dr. Hayes had already placed it - based on his unexplained solution.

Although he comes across looking incompetent – nearly always looking at the wrong exhibit and frequently befuddled - I suspect Feraday is not actually an idiot. Therefore, if he seems like one, he may be playing dumb and that's often a clue. However I simply don't have the information to know just what this might mean. Detailed information on loading procedures at Heathrow could tip us off to where this bag might have wound up. Was the location of this item relative to, say, the Bedford suitcase, troubling in some way? Considering Feraday's strained logic over this issue, I suspect we may be looking at a valuable clue, if just another on the pile indicating he was not playing on the level with this investigation.

THE TESTIMONY OF BOGOMIRA ERAC

2009-11-23T00:08:00.000-08:00

Camp Zeist, Netherlands, 30 August 2000
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
November 22 2009

The following is the first online posting of the full testimony, before the special Scottish Court at Camp Zeist , Netherlands, of Frankfurt Airport employee Bogomira Erac. Her importance to the Lockerbie investigation was previously explained in another post. This somewhat short discussion is extracted from Day 47 (of 86 days) of the full digital transcripts I just received copies of. Transcripts: Day 47, 30 August 2000, pages 6659-6671 (re-formatted with page numbers marking page breaks)

6659
MR. TURNBULL: The next witness, My Lords, is number 787 on the list, Bogomira Erac, who will give evidence in German.
THE MACER: Witness number 787 on the Crown list, Your Lordship, Bogomira Erac.
WITNESS: BOGOMIRA ERAC, sworn
LORD SUTHERLAND: Advocate Depute.
EXAMINATION IN CHIEF BY MR. TURNBULL:
Q Are you Bogomira Erac?
A Yes.
Q And do you live in Germany?
A Yes.
Q What age are you?
A 57.
Q Where were you born, please?
A In Crnomelj, Slovenia, in ex-Yugoslavia.
Q And did you live there for some time before living in Germany?
A I lived in Slovenia until '66.
Q Thank you. Do you now work at Frankfurt Airport?
A Since the 1st of January 2000, I am no longer working at Frankfurt Airport.
Q When did you begin working at Frankfurt

6660
Airport?
A On the 1st of May 1974 I started to work for a firm, and then in '75, I started to work for the Frankfurt Airport directly.
Q When you worked -- I'm sorry, was the firm you mentioned called ISI?
A Yes. The first firm was ISI from Berlin, and the one which I now work for is the FAG, Frankfurt.
Q What was your job when you worked with ISI at Frankfurt?
A I was a programmer when I worked for ISI. I also did some operating. And when I started out with FAG, I started out as a programmer, and later I did operating.
Q Did the firm ISI develop the software that was used to control the baggage conveyancing system at Frankfurt Airport?
A Yes.
Q So from your first involvement with Frankfurt Airport, have you worked with the baggage

6661
conveyancing system?
A Yes.
Q And were you working at Frankfurt Airport in December of 1988?
A Yes.
Q And did you work as an operator in the computer system at that time?
A Yes. Yes.
Q Was that the same department as Kurt Berg?
A Yes.
Q Was he your supervisor?
A Yes, he was my supervisor.
Q In December of 1988, was it possible to ask the computer to print out information about the baggage sent to a particular flight?
A Could you please repeat the question once again?
Q Was it possible to ask the computer to print out details of the baggage sent to an outgoing flight?
A Yes, that was possible.
Q And for how long would that information be kept in the computer?
A The information was kept in the computer

6662
for a few days; however, for various appraisal processes, we copied the data onto two boards. We switched between one and the other.
Q All right. Were you working in the computer department on the 21st of December of 1988?
A Yes, I was on the late shift.
Q And what time did you finish?
A Officially, we stopped at 22.00 hours, but we finished around about a quarter of an hour earlier, and so we were allowed to leave earlier, if we had finished our work earlier.
Q When did you hear about the crash of flight 103?
A I heard about it in my car when I was driving away from the airport.
Q And did you realise that that was a flight that had been handled during your shift?
A On the news it said the plane came from Frankfurt, and actually, I didn't know anything further about it. I thought it was a direct flight. I didn't know anything more than that.
Q And did you think that it had been one of the flights that had been dealt with during your shift?
A I was sure about that time, the

6663
afternoon we had dealt with all of the planes which were leaving Frankfurt in the afternoon.
Q Were you working the next day?
A Yes, I was doing the late shift the next day as well.
Q And did people at the airport speak about the crash?
A Yes, we talked a lot about this crash. In fact, that was virtually all that people talked about.
Q Did you decide to do something with the computer?
A Well, actually, it was quite late on. We've got -- we had a television in our unit. It's the news, I saw the images.
Q And did you then decide to make an inquiry in the computer system?
A Well, I was actually curious about that flight. A day earlier there had not been any problems, so I was interested to see how much luggage there had been. And so it was really because I was curious that I made a printout.
Q What did you make a printout of?
A I've got a KIK computer, and I made a

6664
printout of the plane from the day before, on the 21st of December.
Q Would you look at the screen with me, to Production 1060, image 1, please. Can we magnify to the top, please. Thank you. Do you recognise this document, Mrs. Erac?
A One moment, please. I've got to put my spectacles on.
Q Can we see the flight number?
A Yes. Yes, you can see the flight number.
Q And is it flight Pan Am 103?
A Yes, it's flight Pan Am 103, 1988, from December 21st was the date. It indicates the counter where the luggage for Pan Am 103 was checked in.
Q And is this the information that you asked the computer to print out?
A Yes, that's the information I wanted about the luggage which went through the luggage transportation system for that flight.
Q What did you do with the computer printout?
A Well, I took a look at it, and I was really surprised that so few pieces of luggage had been checked in whilst there were so many passengers on

6665
board. Generally, at that time of the year -- at that time, anyway -- Americans had much more luggage. I took a look to see whether all of the items of luggage came out of the system, the ones that had been checked in, and whether they were on time. And I saw that as far as the computer was concerned, nothing remained in Frankfurt.
Q Did you realise at the time that the Frankfurt flight had connected with a larger aircraft in London?
A No, I only found out about that later on.
Q All right. So once you had finished looking at the computer printout, did you give it to anyone?
A No. No. I didn't see anything problematic.
Q What did you do with the computer printout, then?
A No one instructed me to make this computer printout. I just did it for myself because I was curious about the way in which the flight had been dispatched, so I took a look at it, and then I kept it as a souvenir, one might say. I hung it up in my cupboard.

6666
Q Were you due to take some holiday leave about this time?
A A few days later, I went to Slovenia. That was what I did every year; I went to Slovenia for the New Year.
Q Do you recollect when you returned to Frankfurt?
A I think it would have been around about the 15th of January, perhaps one day before that.
Q Did there come a stage when you told Mr. Berg that you had the printout?
A That was around a week later. When I went to Frankfurt again, I was on the early shift. It was sometime between the 20th and the 25th of January.
Q Thank you. Did you give the printout to Mr. Berg at that time?
A Yes, I gave Mr. Berg this printout, because I'd realised that there was actually no other documentation available.
Q Did he ask you to check the computer at that stage to see if there was any more information available?
A In the computer -- well, there was -- the data was there for one week, and after that they were written over. Mr. Berg just asked me to take a

6667
look in the archive in order to see whether there were teletype printouts. These were the things which came automatically from the computer. But I couldn't find anything.
Q Would there be any record of the baggage sent to flight 103 if you hadn't made this printout?
A Not so far as I know.
Q Thank you.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Mr. Taylor.
MR. TAYLOR: I think Mr. Davidson is leading on this issue, My Lord, but I have no questions.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Mr. Davidson.
MR. BURNS: I have a number of questions, My Lord.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Very well, Mr. Burns.
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. BURNS:
Q Mrs. Erac, can I ask you, please, something about the procedure in relation to the computers.
A Yes, go ahead.
Q In 1988, am I right in thinking that at the beginning of each day the baggage conveyancing system computers needed to be switched on?
A The computers were all switched on. We didn't switch them off at all, but every day we started

6668
anew, working with the standardized state, so that was with the baggage -- I believe it was a KIK computer where the data were stored. They were stored in that computer for a few days, and it would be possible then to copy the data onto disks.
Q All right. What I really am interested in knowing is whether, at the beginning of each day, the time needed to be entered into the computer system.
A Yes, at the start, the date and the time had to be put into the computer.
Q And the time would be taken, would it, from the person's watch, or an office clerk, at the time when the time was entered into the computer?
A I'm afraid I haven't quite understood what you mean with this question. Could you please repeat the question?
Q Where would the operator get the time which was entered into the computer at the stage we are talking about?
A You get the time from the main clock in the computer, or from one's own watch, or from another clock.
Q Now, during the course of the day, would the time that the computer showed start to deviate from the time that the clock showed, for instance?

6669
A Yes, that's correct, but it's a physical phenomenon. Computer time, after about 4.00 or 5.00 in the afternoon, one would note differences of two or three minutes, let's say. It's a physical phenomenon. We were aware of this. It's because of the frequencies.
Q All right. So because of the electrical frequencies that powered the computer --
A Yes.
Q -- the computer time would deviate from other times shown on, for instance, clocks or watches; is that the position?
A Yes, there were small deviations.
Q Do you know whether the power company had been -- by December 1988 had been contacted about these problems in the power -- in the electrical frequencies?
A Well, I wasn't actually in charge of that. I didn't deal with the hardware side of things. I don't know whether they had been contacted.
Q Could the deviation between computer and clock time increase beyond three minutes?
A Well, you have to know which time you are referring to; not in such general terms, but at what time are you referring to?

6670
Q Well, you've told us that by 4.00 or 5.00, the time difference would be two or three minutes. What I am interested to know is whetherit's -- the difference ever became more than three minutes.
A Well, I didn't really pay much attention to these differentials, because I was in charge of the luggage side of things for the software, not of the hardware.
Q Thank you very much indeed.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Mr. Davidson.
MR. DAVIDSON: No questions, My Lord.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Advocate Depute.
RE-EXAMINATION BY MR. TURNBULL:
Q Can I ask you one more thing, please,
Mrs. Erac. Whose job was it to set the time on the computer in the morning?
A Well, it was the operators when we started the computers.
Q Did you sometimes do it?
A Yes, almost every morning, either my colleague or myself.
Q When you were doing it, where did you get the time to enter into the computer?
A Well, from the clock in the computer, or

6671
sometimes from my watch. But that was identical, really. I presume, anyway.
Q Was there another computer, then, apart
from the one that you were setting the time for?
A Well, I'd like to know exactly what computer you are referring to when you refer to this other computer.
Q You mentioned, I think, getting the time from the clock in the main computer; is that correct?
A Well, in the central computer we entered the time, and the central computer then transmitted the time to the KIK computer, or the other computers.
Q I see. Thank you.
LORD SUTHERLAND: Thank you, Mrs. Erac. That's all.

FROM ZURICH TO MALTA TO TRIPOLI TO MALTA TO…

2009-11-17T04:15:00.000-08:00

A DECEMBER DANCE OF ACCUSER AND ACCUSED
[Pan Am 103 Series]
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
rough draft posted November 16 2009

One of the stranger patterns I’ve seen recently in connection to the Lockerbie case is the tight web of alleged movements of the two accused - and of Mebo co-founder Edwin Bollier - in the days preceding the PA103 attack. To start with, the close connection between the first accused, al Megrahi, and Mr. Bollier’s company is no secret. From the Camp Zeist Opinion of the Court [hereafter "verdict", paragraphs 54 and 88]:

[54] We also accept Mr Bollier’s evidence, supported by documentation, that MEBO rented an office in their Zurich premises some time in 1988 to the firm ABH in which the first accused and one Badri Hassan were the principals. They explained to Mr Bollier that they might be interested in taking a share in MEBO or in having business dealings with MEBO. …
[88] [Megrahi] also appears to have been involved in military procurement. He was involved with Mr Bollier, albeit not specifically in connection with MST timers, and had along with Badri Hassan formed a company which leased premises from MEBO and intended to do business with MEBO.

The questionable choreography begins when the Libyans had just finished employing the Mebo MST-13 in a carefully packed Malta-themed gift bag they had set to drop bits all across western Great Britain. In case the trail wasn’t obvious enough, they decided then to bring the talkative Mr. Bollier back to remind him with a new attempt to purchase a double order of the same nifty gadgets. The court cited Bollier’s evidence that Badri Hassan, Megrahi’s partner in ABH, “came to MEBO’s offices in Zurich at the end of November or early in December 1988 and asked the firm to supply forty MST-13 timers for the Libyan Army.” [verdict, para 46] Megrahi was apparently on a visit to Zurich at the same time, and from there the dance begins. Below is a timeline, compiled from a variety of sources, to illustrate how strange the patterns are.

> Nov 20 – Dec 20 Megrahi and Fhimah “did between 20 November and 20 December 1988, both dates inclusive, at the said premises occupied by MEBO AG, in Zurich aforesaid, … order and attempt to obtain delivery of 40 further such timers from the said firm of MEBO AG [indictment, para J]
> Around Dec 1 – Hassan’s order, in Zurich, for forty MST-13 timers. [Verdict, para 88]
> Early December - Megrahi had “traveled to Zurich in early December.” [Wallace]
> Dec 7-9 - Megrahi stays at the Holiday Inn in Silema, Malta. December 7 is the date the court decided he bought the Maltese clothes from talkative shopkeeper Tony Gauci at nearby Mary's House. [verdict, para 88]
> Dec 5 and 15 – Having no MST-13 timers on hand, Bollier buys 40 of the Olympus make instead, in two batches, on the open market. [verdict, para 88]
> Dec 15 – Fhimah diary entry “Abdelbaset coming from Zurich” [Lockerbie.ch]
> Dec 16 Bollier books a flight to Tripoli to bring the wrong timers [Verdict, para 88]
> Dec 17 – Megrahi returns to Malta on the 17th “and then on to Tripoli Libya, where Lamen Fhimah joined him.” [Wallace]
> Dec 18 - Bollier flies to Tripoli, meets no one, leaves timers at office of one Ezzadin Hinshiri [Verdict, para 88]
> Dec 19 - Hinshiri said that he wanted MST-13 timers and that the Olympus timers were too expensive. “Nevertheless, he retained the timers and directed Mr Bollier to go to the first accused’s office in the evening in order to get payment for them. From about 6.00pm Mr Bollier sat outside that office for two hours,” but “did not see the first accused,” being of course Megrahi. [Verdict, para 88]
> Dec 18-20 “in Tripoli aforesaid, and elsewhere in Switzerland and Libya,” Megrahi and Fhimah did “order and attempt to obtain delivery of 40 further such [MST-13] timers from the said firm of MEBO AG.” [indictment, para J]
> Dec 18-20 “we accept that Mr Bollier visited Tripoli between 18 and 20 December in order to sell timers to the Libyan army, because that is substantially vouched by documentary evidence and it was not challenged in evidence.” [Verdict, para 88]
> Dec 20 – “Al Megrahi was instructed by his boss Ibrahim Bishari to travel to Malta on December 20, 1988 for a security order (not in connection with the bombing of PanAm 103)” [Bollier]
> Dec 20 – “Abdel Baset and Lamen Fhimah returned to Malta on 20 December” with an alias for Megrahi and the bomb suitcase. [Wallace]
> Dec 20 – After a final dispute with Hinshiri, Bollier returns home with his Olympus timers, “flying by direct flight to Zurich rather than via Malta (as he had expected) where he would have had to spend that night.” [Verdict, para 88]
> Dec 20 (presumably) – “On his return to Zurich Mr Bollier claimed to have discovered that one of the timers had been set for a time and a day of the week which were relevant to the time when there was an explosion on board PA103.” Herr Meister confirmed this to the court. Libyans had been fiddling with them, absent-mindedly… the court dismissed Mebo’s claims as “so inconsistent that we are wholly unable to accept any of it.” [verdict, para 46]
> Dec 20: Upon returning to Zurich, Bollier is said to have testified in 2000 "a suitcase which had been in the Mebo office prior to Mr Bollier's departure, which the witness understood belonged to Mr Badri Hassan, was not seen again after Mr Bollier left on this trip." [LTBU]
> Dec 20: [indictment, (m)] (both accused) “did on 20 December 1988 at Luqa Airport, Malta enter Malta” with Megrahi under alias Abdusamad, and both “did there and then cause a suitcase to be introduced to Malta.”
> Dec 20-21: [Indictment, (n)] Megrahi “did on 20 and 21 December 1988 reside at the Holiday Inn, Sliema, aforesaid under the false identity of Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad.

Bollier has added to this tight web of movements across the Mediterranean in those fateful days, in response to recent comments by myself and others at Professor Black’s Lockerbie case blog (this post, in comments beneath). His messages there are a complex mix of German and mixed English; one relevant part in German renders roughly as “today we know that the new order at the end of 1988 "to produce for the Libyan army, immediately further 40 pieces of MST-13 timers from a person; H.B." on behalf same western security services one made!” H.B. could be Badri Hassan, but this seems to imply that a Western agency placed the order (through him?). Perhaps these were the same folks who compelled Hinshiri or whoever to program PA103’s explode time into one of his Olympuses. And what ever DID happen to that suitcase, Mr. Bollier?

Documents indicate that originally the CIA and an other western intelligence service planned also to involve Edwin Bollier (MEBO Ltd.) together with Mr. Abdelbaset Al Megrahi into the PanAm 103 plot!

Edwin Bollier was told at the check-in at Tripoli airport that his already booked direct flight with Swissair to Zurich on December 20,1988 was fully booked and he should travel via Malta to Switzerland on the same day - the same flight on which Abdelbaset Al Megrahi was booked (*flight KM 107, on December 20, 1988 from Tripoli to Malta). According to a new statement Megrahi did not know that Bollier was planned to travel on the same flight as he was !

Bollier was suspicious because he didn't see many people on the airport and went to the Swissair Station Manager who told him that there were many empty seats on the Swissair flight to Zurich. So he took the direct flight to Zurich on December 20, 1988. Only Abdelbaset Al Megrahi (alias Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad) traveled with flight KM 107 from Tripoli to Malta on December 20, 1988.

Therefore Bollier was not in Malta on the same day as Abdelbaset Al Megrahi. The CIA was confronted with a new situation and the same intelligence people decided to involve the station manager of 'Libyan Arab Airways' , Mr. Lamin Khalifa Fhimah, into the complot.

*Al Megrahi was instructed by his boss Ibrahim Bishari to travel to Malta on December 20, 1988 for a security order (not in connection with the bombing of PanAm 103) ...
On September 14, 1997 former foreign minister, Ibrahim Bishari, died in a car crash in Egypt ... [Bollier]

Strangely for someone so nearly “framed” in the web set for Libya, Bollier was the first to try implicating Libya for the bombing of Flight 103 at all, with a letter delivered to American authorities in January 1989, well before they started finding any clues pointing that way. [see for example, verdict, para 47] This he claims he was compelled to write by - gasp! - Western agencies acting then through him to implicate Libya, a claim he’s made before and elaborates on in the same comments (worth a read for serious scholars). This letter and the claims around it will deserve their own post eventually, but something is entirely not level here, and Bollier is entirely too at the center of it. Somehow this whole byzantine Mediterranean waltz leaves me with the words and mood of the 80s poets Wham in Careless Whispers:

"Now I'm never gonna dance again, guilty feet have got no rhythm. Though it's easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool..."

---

Sources:
[verdict]
[Wallace] Rodney Wallace Lockerbie the story and the lessons 2001 page 62
[Lockerbie.ch]
[Indictment] Actually I think that's a verdict http://www.terrorismcentral.com/Library/Legal/HCJ/Lockerbie/TheIndictment.html
[Bollier]
[LTBU] Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit: report 78554 - 16th June 2000. Original site:
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/schooloflaw/news/lockerbietrialbriefingunit/
text doc direct link: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_78554_en.doc

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.

Second update, Nov 24 2009: Mr. Marquise responds to the confusion that indeed the fragment did come to the US, and he and Henderson were both confused by the tone of Levy's Arlington ambush. Again from Black's Lockerbie Blog:

With regard to the "travel" of PT-35-- once again-- it was the sharing of information which led to the solution of this case. If the fragment had remained behind in Scotland, never shared, it would possibly be unidentified today. No one would ever have discovered it was a piece of one of 20 timers given to Libyan intelligence. It is clear no one ever attempted to "cover" that up-- I freely admitted it in my book, Mr. Henderson stated such in his precognition and I again said so to Mr. Levy. My "confusion" at Arlington last December over whether it had come to the US or not, was due more to the tone of the question, the setting and the allegation I may have lied to him when he first interviewed me. Unlike Mr. Megrahi, I do not tell lies when it comes to the evidence in this case. I said it right when Mr. Levy first interviewed me. We had nothing to hide because we did the right thing and there has never, never, never been one scintilla of proof that PT-35 was altered or changed in any way.

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
started September 20 2009
Last Update 1/27/10

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.

Please see also my new site The Lockerbie Divide

The Post(s) here:
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?
- Keeping the Politics Out of Arlington: Frank Duggan, the Corporation, a Scottish friar, a presidential adviser, a memorial service, a suppressed viewpoint, and a bolstered official lie.
- On Libya's Admission of "Responsibility" Their 2003 letter, not an admission of guilt. Why is that surprising? It's not! But the BBC had other ideas...
- An Admission of Guilt?
- Americans... (sigh) Just sticking to one misreported story, a slew of ill-informed venom, captured in on-line comment. Ex: “For every day [Megrahi] is MIA, there should be a sortie of F-111’s dropping some bombs on various government buildings in Tripoli … for Old Times Sake”
- Lockerbie Quotes Dump subtitled "These are the people you've been ignoring so far." Emphasis on quotes supporting Megrahi's innocence or fatal problems with his trial.

The Mebo timer fragment
- "It Us Unbelievable"; On Dr Wyatt's simulations of the PA103 Blast, revealed in January 2010. The timer fragment should not have survived.
- 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 urgent mystery.
- 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.
- MST-13 Comparative graphics no. 4: Number One on top: A sign from on high? I know accidental symbolism happens, but why her, on top of everything else.
- 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/Bag From Malta
- On the Granada Docu-Drama: An early and visible promotion of the slim evidence for an orphan bomb bag from Malta - a TV movie releaded in late 1990.
- 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
- The Testimony of Bogomira Erac: Full Q and A testimony, August 30 2000.

Call on Malta Series (not sarcastic at all)
- Remember, Remember, seven December: The babygro treason and plot. On the date of the alleged meeting between Megrahi and shopkeeper Tony Gauci.
- While Malta Slept?: Megrahi's plot zipped about the island uncontested. Was this a failure, really?
- Another Call on Malta: Admit it already! They let Lockerbie happen and still deny their link, even as accident.
- Professor Robert Black gets it

Other Specific Evidence
- From Zurich to Malta to Tripoli to Malta to... A december Dance of Accuser and Accused. The weird comings and goings of accused Megrahi and Fhimah, and prosecution witness Bollier, roughly Dec 1 to Dec 21 1988.
- IA655 and the Cessation of the Iraq-Iran War: Some suspect - with damn good reason - this is what the Lockerbie bombing was revenge for. If you dare study it close, you'll understand all the better why they would want that revenge. Wouldn't you? Don't we?
- A THREE-YEAR TEST DRIVE, PARKED 8 YEARS, AND THEN A HIGH-SPEED CRASH: Extended essay on Giaka's fantasy constructs that the Lockerbie Libyan villains case was built on
- Lightly Explosion-Damaged: A look into a RARDE Scientist's (apparently) bizarre mind, regarding damaged luggage PH/137 (from trial transcripts)
- Two shocking admissions: Harry Bell and Paul Gauci on the date of purchase - Bell admits it was Megrahi's presence that made him decide it was the one day, and that someone got Paul Gauci to change his story to that.

Forum Discussions (JREF)
- General Thread, started 2007.
- MST-13 timer fragment thread
- Unaccompanied bag from Malta - evidence?
- Tony Gauci and the Mystery shopper
- Dialog on Lockerbie Theories
- Motive Behind the Lockerbie Bombing
- Identification of the Toshiba radio from PA103
- Lockerbie: London Origin Theory
- Did Abdelbaset al-Megrahi blow up Pan Am 103?
- Where in the World is "Abu Elias"?

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.