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16th September 2009, 01:31 AM | #41 |
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This is bad. Why do you need to pay someone just to show up and tell the truth? Or is he simply in on this vast disinfo conspiracy?
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Great post, mate! |
16th September 2009, 05:45 AM | #42 |
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The provenance and chain of custody of the fragment are quite interesting.
It seems to be very unclear exactly who found it and where and when. If you watch The Maltese Double Cross, you'll notice that the film states the fragment survived in the open, in Kielder Forest in Northumberland, through two winters. There's a long sequence walking through the forest with a search worker explaining how stuff caught in the high canopy couldn't be recovered but they tried to get the stuff in the undergrowth, and then some severe winter storms brought more stuff down which could be recovered. This would imply it was found no earlier than the spring of 1990, which is in complete contradiction to most of the rest of the evidence, and I assumed it was sloppy reporting on the part of that production. However, the provenance is confused enough that it's worth bearing this very early version in mind (the film was released in 1994). According to de Braeckeleer (whose wider thesis I don't necessarily accept, by the way)
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Paul Foot (whose factual accuracy appears to be impeccable) doesn't go into so much detail. He says
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De Braeckeleer elaborates a bit more.
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It's been said that this standard of "chain of custody" is uniquely poor among the Lockerbie evidence. Well, I should hope so. Relabelling exhibits like that is a strict no-no, and the policeman's evasiveness is extremely peculiar. I should hope this was an isolated instance. But it's helluva funny that it's this one single absolutely pivotal piece of evidence that was affected. It goes on, but I'll do that in a new post. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 06:09 AM | #43 |
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He reportedly declined the offer. Though there was a $4million bounty to do with the case, and it's alleged that Gauci the shop owner was paid $2million
, documents pertaining to this were requested by the defense in an October 2007 hearing prior to Megrahis 2nd appeal. I am not calling anyone disinfo here, nor positing a vast conspiracy. According to his own admission Bollier, who has a history of working with Libya, was more interested in the $200million offered to him by Ghadaffi for getting Megrahi freed. See the BBC Conspiracy Files program where he is interviewed for more. *if* that's true, it calls into question much of the information collated by mebo regarding the whole timer fragment, there's bundles of it at the link I posted earlier, as well as transcripts of Bolliers original report to Scottish police on the fragment. It cetainly makes the picture more complicated, and harder to investigate. |
16th September 2009, 07:12 AM | #44 |
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Ludwig De Braeckeleer is nothing if not prolific. Having authored some 200 articles, mostly to do with the Lockerbie case, for OhmyNews International. OMNI being a South Korean online newspaper.
this quote is startling...
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Other investigoogling throws up this PDF. apparently a reproduction of the Lumpert affidavit along with Kochlers response, as well as an article by Marcello Mega in a Scottish newspaper that interviews former a police chief who admits to fabricating evidence re: the MST-13 fragment. |
16th September 2009, 07:54 AM | #45 |
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All of these arguments from incredulity are irrelevant, because it happened before. All of it.
In 1985, Sikh extremists attempted to destroy two Air India flights. They purchased tickets in Canada for the Canadian airline Canadian Pacific Airlines with a later transfer to separate Air India flights. The terrorists then checked bags containing bombs for the Canadian Pacific flights, asking that the bags be interlined to the Air India flights. The terrorists themselves did not board the planes. The bags were duly transferred once the Canadian flights reached their destinations, one in Toronto to Air India Flight 181 (which made an additional stop in Montreal to have a "podded" engine added, a standard airline method of transporting unused aircraft engines to maintenance hubs) which then proceeded to London as Air India Flight 182, and the other in Tokyo to Air India Flight 301. Air India Flight 182's bomb detonated when the airline was above the Atlantic, destroying the aircraft and killing all aboard. Air India Flight 301's bomb exploded an hour earlier, on the ground at Narita Airport as it was being transferred from the Canadian plane to the Indian plane, killing two baggage handlers and injuring four. The plotters had intended both bombs to go off simultaneously while the Air India planes were in flight, but due to a misreading of how departure and arrival times in various time zones were listed, the timer of the Air India Flight 301 bomb was mis-set, and so detonated early while the plane was still on the ground. In other words, four years before Lockerbie, a terrorist group did exactly what you find so suspiciously unbelievable in the Pan Am Flight 103 case - send unaccompanied bags with explosives through multiple baggage-check points because of multiple aircraft transfers (on entirely separate airlines, even), and set the timer in a way that flight delays or misread schedules could cause the bomb to detonate when it wasn't planned to. |
16th September 2009, 08:08 AM | #46 |
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[Sorry, this leads on from my last post, pls temporarily skip intervening items.]
The routine for examining debris picked up on the ground seems to have been to send the stuff to RAERDE in Kent for forensic examination, and the piece of cloth with the fragment would be sent there because of the charring, which suggested it had been in close proximity to the expolsion. This is where the next glitch in the chain of custody comes in. Dr. Thomas Hayes was the scientist who examined it. He was the man who gave the forensic evidence that falsely convicted the Maguire Seven, and he has had a number of cases overturned on appeal. Overall, his record suggests someone over-keen to find "smoking-gun" evidence and not too particular about how he does it (I can look for the links to this later if necessary). On the face of it, he found the fragment in the cloth of the shirt in May of 1989. He described the fragment in notes in a loose-leaf folder, with hand-numbered pages. The page in question was numbered 51. However, there were five subsequent pages in the folder, originally numbered 51 to 55, which had been re-numbered as 52 to 56. The clear implication was that the page describing the fragment had been added at a later date, and the subsequent pages renumbered to correspond. Dr. Hayes was unable to explain the renumbering in court. The fragment's notes were dated, and the date appeared to match (not hard, that), but it has been suggested that the number assigned to the fragment in the examination record indicates a much later date of examination. (The judges decided that since the date was consistent, the rest of the confusion was irrelevant.) Nothing more seems to have happened at this juncture. However in September 1989 another employee at RAERDE, Allen Fereday, wrote to the Scottish police asking them to look at a photograph of this fragment. Oddly, the photo was a polaroid, and Fereday apologised for not having had a proper picture taken by a staff photographer, explaining that the polaroid was "the best I can do in such a short time". Huh? The fragment was allegedly found in May and it's now September. What sort of a backlog do the RAERDE photographers have, for goodness sake? Fereday, by the way, has been repeatedly criticised as having no scientific qualifications, and was flagged up as someone who should not be giving expert forensic evidence. I think the implication here is that September 1989 is the earliest point where there is reasonably definite evidence of the timer fragment existing in the system. Which does knock out the version presented by The Maltese Double Cross, but I still think that's fairly emblematic of the confusion that existed. I'm taking my next section from Paul Foot's account, as I said, it seems the most factual and based on evidence given at the trial. There seems to have then been a long and fruitless search for the manufacturer of the circuit board, carried out by DCI Williamson of the Scottish police. While it's clear that the May entry in Hayes's notes could well have been retrospective, I have seen no suggestion that Williamson is bent, or was not in possession of, at the very least, a picture of something that looked plausibly like the fragment exhibited as evidence. So Sepember 1989 seems to be the date to look at from this account. Williamson was unsuccessful in identifying the provenance of the circuit board, and sent it to the USA. In June 1990 Tom Thurman identified it as resembling another timer the US authorities had laid their hands on from elsewhere. However, it seems as if even then they didn't know exactly what it was, and it took more trips to look at more fragments from further timers before they finally identified MeBo as the manufacturer. It was certainly the identification of the circuit board that began the Libya connection. The first press reports naming Libya as being implicated (rather than the PFLP-GC, Syria and Iran) appeared in September 1990, apparently because the fragment resembled timers known or discovered to have been sold to Libya. That seems to be when the Lockerbie investigation turned to Giaka, who had been feeding the CIA scraps of irrelevant and inaccurate information about Libya since August 1988, including Megrahi and Fhimah whom he believed were Libyan intelligence agents. This led in February 1991 to Gauci being shown Megrahi's picture and asked if this was the man who bought the clothes. This latter part actually sounds quite genuine to me. Would someone arrange for the fragment to be planted in the evidence in September 1989 (backdating its discovery to May of that year), and then be content to sit and wait for a full year while various PC Plods ran round in circles with it? This is the narrative that could persuade me the item wasn't planted - if only there weren't so many strange happenings surrounding the thing. But as they say, hold it! Dere r moar confusions. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 08:53 AM | #47 |
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Thanks for the info about the disappearing Air India flight - I remember it happening, but not the details. Perhaps I laid out the OP in a misleading manner. The starting point for the "plant" hypothesis isn't argument from incredulity, and I possibly put too much emphasis on that aspect. The real oddity isn't the multiple transfers alleged to have been planned. It's the time of the detonation of the bomb. If you're going to do everything that was alleged, especially if you're relying on three separate flights and two baggage transfers four days before Christmas, why would you set the timer for 7pm rather than midnight? If everything goes perfectly, 7pm will see the plane just clearing Scotland or Ireland. Any delay of more than an hour, and it won't even be airborne. In contrast, setting the timer for midnight (at a rough guess) will get you an explosion over the Atlantic whether the plane is on time or several hours late. Of course, if that was the sum total of the problem, even given the extraordinary coincidence with respect to the settings of the ice-cube timers, Geni's point that someone just miscalculated would probably explain it. However, put that together with the huge questions over the provenance of the timer fragment, and it starts to look a lot more interesting. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 11:24 AM | #48 |
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16th September 2009, 11:33 AM | #49 |
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You know, this habit of presenting stuff as video rather than text can be annoying. One of the films about the Lockerbie affair has a segment of an interview with Said Gadaffi in which he freely explains that the "apology" was simply playing with words and the whole thing was done in order to get the sanctions lifted. I wish I had a bit of text to quote. As it is, I can't even remember which film.
Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 11:44 AM | #50 |
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16th September 2009, 12:04 PM | #51 |
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16th September 2009, 01:53 PM | #53 |
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It's a very big picture, and it has at least two subjects that it's unclear why they should be on the same canvas (I'm talking about the drug smuggling that was apparently going on on the plane, and the CIA operatives, and the missing body and the VIPs who were pulled off the plane at the last minute, let's not go there just yet). Here's the simple version. In the spring of 1988, the USS Vincennes operating in the Persian Gulf with a very trigger-happy captain, shot down a scheduled airline flight full of pilgrims on their way to Mecca in mistake for an attacking fighter plane. They were edgy, because they were in Iranian waters illegally, although this was initially denied. The passenger plane was an Iranian Airbus. Initially the USA blamed the Airbus, and no apology was ever offered. Instead, the captain of the Vincennes was given a medal. (And by the way, both US vessels in the area promptly sailed away, leaving the crew of the HMS York, which was also nearby and had in fact originally been blamed for the incident, to spend the next two weeks fishing body parts out of the Persian Gulf.) The Ayatollah promptly vowed to have his revenge, declaring that US airliners would rain from the skies as a result. He offered a fee of $10 million to any group which would carry out the revenge on Iran's behalf. Enter the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, a terrorist organisation based in Syria but operating a cell in Frankfurt. That cell included Ahmed Jibril, a mastermind, Marwan Khreesat, a bomb-maker, and Abu Talb, a henchman. The German police raided that cell in September of 1988, took them into custody and seized four assembled bombs made of Toshiba radio-cassette players clearly intended to be used against aircraft. The reason they were obviously intended to hit aircraft is that they were triggered by "ice-cube" timers attached to aneroid barometers, which would be inert indefinitely at sea level, but would explode 35 to 45 minutes after taking off in an aircraft. For reasons I'm not yet clear about but which may turn out to be very important, several members of the cell including Khreesat were released again almost immmediately. In spite of the fact that there was strong evidence of the existence of a fifth device that had not been recovered. On 21st December the Pan Am clipper Maid of the Seas fell out of the sky above Lockerbie, en route for the USA. 38 minutes after taking off from Heathrow. A few days later, about $11 million was deposited in a Warsaw bank account controlled by the PFLP-GC, from an Iranian source. A lot of evidence was recovered from the crash scene, and the police were initially hot in pursuit of the PFLP-GC. From January to March 1989 the press was full of it, anticipating imminent arrests. The shopkeeper who sold the clothes packed round the bomb in the suitcase, Tony Gauci of Mary's House in Sliema, Malta, identified Abu Talb as the purchaser. However, things seemed to go quiet for a while, and although stories about Palestinian involvement were still coming out, official sources seemed to have zipped their lips. In 1990, Middle Eastern politics underwent a sea change, as Saddam Hussein started to over-step the bounds of his US masters, and prepared to invade Kuwait. By this version of the story, Syria and Iran had to be neutralised as back-door threats and it was no longer politic to pursue action against them. The dogs had to be called off. However, there was still a crashed airliner and 270 dead people. Maybe an explanation is still needed. And maybe this can be used for more foreign policy advancement. There had been passing references to Libya early in the enquiry, but these were really irrelevant. However, after the MST-13 fragment was identified, Libya entered the frame. A batch of these timers had been sold to Libya on some sort of special order. And there were foreign policy reasons for isolating Libya at that point, including the fact that Gadaffi had been arming the IRA for years. It was a plausible theory. Forget the Vincennes and the Airbus. In 1986, the US carried out a series of bombing raids on Tripoli and Benghazi, in which Gadaffi's infant adopted daughter was killed. It was believed the raids were an attempt to kill Gadaffi himself. Also good reason for revenge to be attempted. A case was put together against two Libyans who were assumed to be intelligence operatives, based almost entirely on the testimony of Majid Giaka, the only double agent the USA had in Libya. He named Megrahi and Fhimah, and told more stories that were probably invention - including that Fhimah kept explosives in the drawer of his office desk at Luqa airport, and a tale about seeing Megrahi carrying a brown Samsonite suitcase at an airport (it was known that the bomb had been in a brown Samsonite suitcase). Beyond that, Gauci was asked to re-assess his identification of the purchaser of the clothes, and (allegedly with the prospect of a $2 million reward plus other inducements) managed to say that Megrahi was sort of quite like the purchaser, and a day was found which, while not the overwhelmingly probable day the purchase took place (when Megrahi was nowhere near Malta), was a possible date when Megrahi was in the vicinity. Also, Megrahi was in Malta again on 21st December, the day of the crash, which was quite good because one theory was that the suitcase had been put on board in Luqa. And he was travelling on that occasion on a coded intelligence services passport, not his normal one. Also, Megrahi had close business dealings with MeBo, the firmthat sold the timer fragment. Thus a case was built against Megrahi and Fhimah, and the case against Abu Talb and the PFLP-GC cell was abandoned. Iran didn't come in against the US in the Gulf War. Instead, sanctions were set up against Libya which was refusing to extradite Megrahi and Fhimah. In the course of this, arms supply to the IRA was completely cut off. There was a standoff for ten years. We were all told that Fhimah and Megrahi were definitely guilty, and the evidence was overwhelming. But of course there could be no trial with no accused. Then in 2000 Nelson Mandela persuaded Gadaffi to agree to a deal. Extradite the accused, and pay damages to the victims' families, and have the sanctions removed and start moving back into the family of civilised nations. Gadaffi agreed, wanting western companies to develop Libyan oil, and not wanting to be the next Saddam Hussein. Hence the trial at Camp Zeist, at which all the evidence linking Fhimah to the incident completely evaporated, and he was acquitted. The court however decided that Gauci's second identification of Megrahi could be believed (even though he couldn't pick him out in court), and that the bomb went on at Luqa even though the Luqa records were as tight as a duck's arse and there was no way an extra suitcase went on there. That was enough to convict Megrahi. However, Gauci's identification of Megrahi was tentative at best, and the overwhelming weight of the evidence was that he wasn't the purchaser. Also, the court simply asserted that the case must have gone on at Luqa (because Megrahi was there that day?) even though the records showed it couldn't have. Strike those two points, and there's nothing but the MeBo timer fragment to link Libya to the incident. Enquiring minds want to know whether the pursuit of the Libyans was done in good faith, and the appalling fit-up at Camp Zeist was simply due to the age-old problem of law enforcement really really believing it has the right guy and just sexing up the evidence in the interests of justice. Or on the other hand, was there political pressure linked to the incipient Gulf War to turn away from Syria and Iran as possible culprits, and pin it on a more politically convenient patsy. The timer fragment is at the centre of all this. Its presence argues against PFLP-GC involvement, because their devices had ice-cube timers, although they could conceivably have acquired a timer from the Stazi. Libya did buy 20 of the things. And Megrahi was associated with MeBo. If the fragment is real, then that has to be factored into any explanation of the incident, including the incongruous time of the explosion. If on the other hand it was planted, as many people suspect or believe, that's a whole other can of worms. Sorry, but that really is the short version. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 02:04 PM | #54 |
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Oh thank you, that's perfect. Though I have to say, Said Gadaffi in person is quite something. So here we have the actual apology.
Originally Posted by Col. Gadaffi
Said agrees that this was word play, and it obviously is. There's no admisison of guilt. Not if you don't believe your officials did anything. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 02:10 PM | #55 |
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Yeah, still not getting it.
Are you telling me this whole thing was a setup of Libya because of their support of the IRA? This whole thing was done in order to hide the real culprits so that Libya could be sanctioned? |
16th September 2009, 02:16 PM | #56 |
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Stranger things have happenden in politics.
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16th September 2009, 02:20 PM | #57 |
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16th September 2009, 02:36 PM | #58 |
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Ok....so who decided to blame Libya? The Brits or the Americans?
And why did the other go along? It was all because Libya was an easy target? I'm sorry I'm not getting this, but I'm having a hard time understanding how and why such a ruse was set up so quickly. I mean, the fragment was found, unless what I've read is completely wrong, a few weeks after the bombing, in January of 1989. That seems awfully fast to reach the conclusion that leads weren't panning out, and that Libya was to be blamed. |
16th September 2009, 02:57 PM | #59 |
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The fragment doesn't appear for sure until September 1989.
I still think it's a bit early, and the sequence of events between then and June 1990 when it resurfaces in Thurman's hands is unclear. However, it's more complicated in any case. In mid-March 1989, less than three months after the crash but even so an awful lot had already been figured out as regards the Palestinian group, it is reliably alleged that Thatcher and Bush made some agreement to "low-key" the whole affair. The investigation didn't stop, and Libya wasn't fingered until September 1990, but calls for a public enquiry were blocked at Prime Ministerial level from that date, and parliamentarians appear to have been smothered on the subject. This part is not clear, but it seems as if there was some political motive for not going hell-for-leather against the PFLP-GC and Iran as early as March 1989. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 03:07 PM | #60 |
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Those are good questions. short of new whistleblowers coming forward or leaked documents or something there'll probably never be enough evidence to answer either of them.
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13 Jan 89 a fragment of circuit board is found from a Toshiba Cassette recorder determined to have been what the bomb was in. They figure out that it's from a Toshiba casette radio in April 1989. It's not until June 1990 that the MST-13 fragment is IDed as being that. The CIA seize an MST-13 type timer from Libya in Summer/Autumn 1990 In September 1990 interviews with MeBo Zurich link Libya to MST-13 timers. August 2 1990 Saddam invades Kuwait. |
16th September 2009, 03:17 PM | #61 |
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So...it's speculation.
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The speculation is that it was planted, yes? This just brings us back to the questions I asked earlier: Who planted it? And how did they get others to go along? And how did they know where to plant it? I mean, why plant it in the shirt? Why not have a piece found on it's own? Or embedded in a piece of the suitcase?
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16th September 2009, 03:19 PM | #62 |
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I've come across more material relating to the saga of the fragment.
I don't know how far to credit de Braeckeleer. I think his assertion that the bomb was placed outside the baggage container is a bridge too far. However, he seems to have pulled together a lot of stuff about the timer fragment, much of which is corroborated by other sources. http://english.ohmynews.com/articlev...85213&rel_no=1 This seems to me to assert that the fragment was created in June 1989 in order to be introduced into the Pan Am wreckage. It's the first time I've heard of Inspector Fluckiger, which just shows how much of the trial evidence there is to assimmilate. I'm not quite sure where this part is going or why, but it all fits with Paul Foot's account - perhaps not surprisingly because de Braeckeleer seems to be basing a lot of his account on the same material, that is the Camp Zeist evidence. Anyway, the above link has a lot of very clear photos showing the discrepancies de Braeckeleer is reporting Ullpert as having identified. More photos can be found on the site MeBo has put up about it all. http://www.lockerbie.ch/ This is weird stuff, all hysterical English, big bold bright fonts, and hyperbole. I have little idea what is going on there. It's half way to the Time Cube. Nevertheless, it has pictures. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 03:26 PM | #63 |
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Uh, yes. That's what we're doing. You entirely discount the interpolated page 51 then? You're absolutely sure the fragment was really logged in May? Don't know. You seem to be up to speed with the rest of us. If you don't think there's anything odd about the story, anything that doesn't quite fit, then fine. Well, are you quite happy with the official version? Interpolated pages and altered labels and discrepancies in statements and all? Possibly, everything. Unless you just want to accept the Official Version without question. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 03:27 PM | #64 |
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Please tell me you have a better source than that article. I mean, did you at the end of the article? They have this:
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And the best you've got is a hotmail address? Just how much of his background makes him a qualified forensic scientist? |
16th September 2009, 03:42 PM | #65 |
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The prevailing theory is re Iran and Iraq, whose war had just ended. Iran was set to be implicated in the bombing but for some reason they were de-blamed, perhaps to get their support or non-interference for the coming conflict with Iraq. The scope of the investigation didn't shift for a while - 1989 or 90. Al Megrahi and Fhimah weren't officially names as suspects until late 1991. The one was sentenced in January 2001. Thus the whole time of the blame Libya phase was roughly the same time Iraq was being targetted. The phase may be ending now. Check the timeline there. Some belated blame for Iran may be coming available soon.
Now exact positive reasons why Libya would be a good scapegoat I don't know, other than past behavior, or future potential if not put under leverage and sanctions. AFAIK Libya is guilty of everything else they're accused of, like the disco bombing in Germany, shooting a lady cop, what have you. But in this case, the big one, it's really looking like politics.
Originally Posted by Ambrosia
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16th September 2009, 03:58 PM | #66 |
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It's possible you may have lost the will to live before you reached the end of my OP. I would recommend Foot, Kochler and Black. In addition, Kochler's home page is a link-mine. I had assumed you would realise these were the sources I was putting most emphasis on, not a couple of questionable-but-interesting pages I only ran across a couple of hours ago, which I mainly linked to because of their high-quality photos of the timer fragment. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 04:46 PM | #67 |
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Depending on what source you believe yes. 12th May 1989
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According to Black
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Then again according to the official verdict it was found in a storage facility after being picked up in January and not looked at by forensic scientists until May 12th 1989. Though the official verdict does talk about "overwritten labels" and that "DC Gilchrist’s attempts to explain it [mislabelling] were at worst evasive and at best confusing" [ source - official verdict PDF ] Or according to Ulrich Lumpert it was stolen by him from MeBo and handed to a person investigating the "Lockerbie Case"
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Could have notihng to do with it at all, but thats the Genesis of the CT along with the authorities "hot pursuit" of the Iranians, before dropping them completely after Libya comes up. |
16th September 2009, 05:21 PM | #68 |
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That was me, speaking ahead of my knowledge. It was however based on this (and closer). ?? 1 89. What does that mean? When the shirt was discovered, I suppose. Link to page (Mebocom).
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16th September 2009, 05:34 PM | #69 |
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Do you think Black made a typo? Six months for six weeks? Six weeks would be consistent with the January 1989 date which became official at the trial I think.
In 1994, The Maltese Double Cross made a big deal about the fragment not being discovered until the spring of 1990, in the Kielder Forest. There seems to have been quite a bit of confusion about how and when the fragment was retreived. I'm not maintaining that The Maltese Double Cross is right, but it does demonstrate that the January 1989 version was a relatively late addition to the narrative. I'm trying to relate this timeline to the political one. Until March 1989, it was all go on the Iranian connection. But in mid-March, the silencer and the brakes went on. For some reason, over a year before there seems to have been any question of implicating Libya, Thatcher and Bush decided to play down the whole thing, and prevent a public inquiry. Nobody is very sure of the reason for this. Jack Anderson, who reported the telephone conversation in which this was agreed, thought it was "because they could not do anything to avenge themselves and the Lockerbie relatives on Iran." This sounds very weak to me, and to Paul Foot also, because he suggested that "the Lockerbie bombing had exposed a gaping hole in their intelligence services which would, if the matter was fully aired, be proved to have been incompetent to stop a murderous plot they knew about." I suspect the latter is more likely. There are so many reports of prior warnings of this one. The Helsinki warning seems genuinely to have been a hoax, but there's more to it than that. The entire Iran-Syria-PFLP-GC operation was discovered so quickly, the question arises, why wasn't it busted before a plane crashed. Oh wait, it was. By the German police, in September 1988. But then they let them go again. Almost at once. Allegedly after Khreesat had made a phone call to someone. That's Khreesat, who was a double agent, and said he was making dummy bombs. Except one of the "dummy" bombs killed a German bomb disposal operative. And maybe Khreesat was a triple agent. I've only read fragments of this, but I've a feeling it's related to the damping down of the pursuit, the emerging desire not to get to the bottom of the story. Even if it doesn't turn into a species of LIHOP, in which Khreesat was released because the security forces couldn't afford to have their contacts revealed, even if that did risk a successful attack. And of course this one can go right on to suggest that through the capture and release of Khreesat, the security forces knew what was planned, and even which plane was being targeted. Which could tie in with the VIPs being pulled off the plane at the last moment. It's another rabbit hole, but it's worth a glance. It was a full year before it began to be clear that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, and the middle eastern allegiances had to be rearranged to accommodate Desert Storm. The March 1989 backpedalling really doesn't seem to have anything to do with blaming Libya. The fragment seems surely to have been present in the system in September 1989. de Braeckeleer implies a date in June for the acquisition of the timer the planted fragment was derived from. Even though the logging of the fragment at RAERDE in May seems to have been retrospectively inserted, the idea of planting the timer seems to me to be implicit in the timeline in the summer of 1989. Even though nobody seems to have thought of blaming Libya until September 1990. This is the part of the story that seems to me to support the Official Verson best. Yes, my hunch says that timer is an anomlaly, but the sequence of discovery in September that there was something interesting there, running around until June 1990 trying to identify it, then in June 1990 realising that it seemed to be a part of a timer board like one the CIA already had from another source, then looking for the manufacturer and finding MeBo in November, seems plausible. In the middle of that, it became clear that wherever the source, Libya was the country these timers were connected to. Which is when attention turned to that country, and the CIA started asking Giaka to That actually rings reasonably true. Except that a lot of people think it was a lot more complicated than that, even just based on the evidence at the trial. And then we have Bollier's semi-coherent rantings, which are either total invention, or suggest something totally other was going on, if only one could figure out what his purple prose is trying to say. Rolfe. |
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16th September 2009, 06:11 PM | #70 |
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Yes. Very much so.
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Bombing took place in December, 1988. Shirt was found about 1 month later, January 1989. And then the piece was found in May, 1989, which would have been about 5-6 months after the bombing. The two arguments you presented above are not contradictory.
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Of course, if we go with your version, you'd have to explain all the backtracking (I'd be interested to know who lied, and for how much).
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Because Libya was an easy target due to political messes? How does this not seem convoluted to anyone else? |
16th September 2009, 06:32 PM | #71 |
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What would the CIA's motive have been, and what was the political outcome of the attack?
I can understand your point that the timer went off earlier than necessary, failing to incorporate the risk of flight delays. Are you speculating that the plane was destroyed some other way, and this timer was planted? If so how, and why would the CIA plant such a timer when it would introduce this very dilemma? Isn't it possible that the timer detonated a bomb, and it was simply set to a sub-optimal time to detonate? If this was the case, it was mission accomplished anyway. |
16th September 2009, 08:10 PM | #72 |
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If the official line on the fragment is correct it was discovered May 12th 1989 in evidence originally collected January 1989.
If Lumperts correct it wasn't around until 22nd June 1989. Both of those dates offer plenty of leeway for it to surface as part of the evidence in September 1989. The odd evasion by Gilchrist noted by the trial verdict, the renumbering of pages & mislabelling of the evidence fits Lumperts claim, but whats so important about May 89? Is it detailed anywhere on what date such cataloging stopped being done on debris from 103? Was the Grey shirt and all it contained one of the last pieces of debris known to have been examined that was in close proximity to the bomb? If the renumbering was an honest mistake, why the confusing/evasive explanation? What motive does Lumpert have to perjure himself at the original trial? If he didn't then why admit to it in 2007? Leaving that aside for a moment. There are other "odd" coincidences about this fragment. Thurman claims to have identified the MST fragment June 1990. 19th Sep Flight UTA 772 a DC-10 explodes in middair thanks to a bomb on board. According to Pierre Péan (see Blacks blog here, and the comments) the only *physical* evidence linking the eventually convicted in absentia 6 Libyans (for which the Libyan Govt has paid compensation and "admitted responsibility") to the bombing was... a fragment of a circuit board identified as coming from the controlling device used to detonate the bomb ... identified by Thurman. Anyway if you look at the link in Blacks blog entry it gets to a piece about MST timers.
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David Leppard is the journalist that Paul Foot writes about who was on the Sunday Times Investigative team, who wrote a series of articles in 89 "based on information pieced together by Western intelligence sources" Lepppards book "shows how the bombing was planned at a secret meeting at the head quarters of the Libyan intelligence agency. Based on Scottish police and FBI files and interviews with over 100 of the key witnesses..." it's published July 1991 - but is at huge odds over the MST-13 fragments origin with the evidence presented at the trial. Outside of Leppards book I can't find any other sources that back up his version of the origin of the MST-13 fragment. |
16th September 2009, 08:24 PM | #73 |
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why?
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16th September 2009, 11:00 PM | #74 |
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Originally Posted by Ambrosia
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The other version says the cloth/hidden chip were found in January, the chip discovered in mid-May, 4.5 (or rounded to five) months after the bombing. So the irreconcilable discrepancy is one month and some wording? These both might well be describing the same sequence, in my opinion.
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Originally Posted by TriskettheKid
And just sticking to the facts on the ground, as we're doing here, there is plenty room for confusion and uncertainty, and speculation is all that can fill the gaps. However, at the bare minimum, we have an absolutely solid case for "reasonable doubt" that should suffice to overturn the conviction or spur a new investigation on a whole new track. At the most we're looking at something more serious - counter-actions against those who framed al Megrahi, new blame on Iran and new sanctions or who knows what in that direction... At any rate, if you want to be ahead of any possible curve, pay attention to this story. |
16th September 2009, 11:11 PM | #75 |
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[quote=Ambrosia;5113230]
Or according to Ulrich Lumpert it was stolen by him from MeBo and handed to a person investigating the "Lockerbie Case"
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Emphasis mine. What's up with that? Bad wording again? The difference is huge. |
17th September 2009, 01:16 AM | #76 |
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Holy crud, typed this hours ago but never submitted.
You should check the "all of it" part. I agree that this 'unlikely' scenario is entirely possible, weird things happen, and I'm no expert. And this is a good counter-point, like others above. But one thing here is this alleged timed bomb happened to blow up 38 minutes after leaving Heathrow, while (coincidentally?) the PFLP bombs recently IDd were designed to blow up 35-45 minutes after takeoff. Consistent with one of these planted at Heathrow, OR a badly-timed time bomb earlier. I'm willing to call it undecided there. |
17th September 2009, 01:27 AM | #77 |
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I don't get it, why go through all this trouble to exonerate Al-Megrahi without also going through the trouble to make sure that it was "evil" American agents who themselves put the bomb on the plane (presumably before going somewhere to kill puppies for sport)? If you're going to create a thread just to piss off Americans don't half ass it, make sure you have President H.W. Bush himself giving the order to bomb the plane then laughing maniacally while thunder claps in the background.
Sorry if I sound grouchy but your slanted take on the USS Vincennes shootdown reveals a bias here. |
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17th September 2009, 01:47 AM | #78 |
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17th September 2009, 03:55 AM | #79 |
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Could I point out the title of the thread? Was the MST-13 timer planted in the wreckage? This isn't about exonerating Megrahi, or providing exact details of motive, means and opportunity for everyone involved as regards everything done. It's about trying to figure out whether the claims that the timer fragment was planted are credible. Bear in mind that this incident is at the very least, one third the size of 9/11. In fact it's really bigger than that. Although there was only one plane involved, that flight is surrounded by far more mystery and anomaly than any of the 9/11 flights. You've not just got multiple threads on 9/11, you've got a whole damn sub-furum. You would need a dozen threads on PA103 at the very least, to start covering all the aspects to the incident. If we start dragging every point into every thread, it'll flounder. We've got the mysterious release of Khreesat. We've got the VIPs pulled off PA103 shortly before takeoff. We've got the US officials appearing within three hours of the crash, searching the wreckage and apparently interfering with the evidence. We've got the suitcase full of drugs. We've got the missing body. We've got the red tarpaulin and the helicopter. We've got the anomalous time of the explosion. We've got the anomalies in the evidence trail of the timer fragment. We've got people claiming that the timer fragment was manipulated. We've got the pressurising and bribery of witnesses. We've got the prosecution relying on evidence from someone they knew was a liar, and concealing this knowledge from the defence. We've got the anomalous behaviour of Megrahi's defence team, both in parts of the trial and the first appeal. We've got a bunch of judges bringing in a guilty verdict on the basis of evidence that was quite clearly unsound. After acquitting the co-defendant, who in the original indictment was essential to the operation as postulated. And that's before we even start down the rabbit hole of the more fanciful suggestions, such as the explosion not taking place in the baggage container, or the entire slalom shirt being a fabrication, or the suggestion that it was Giaka who bought the clothes from Gauci.... Now we could have threads on every one of these points. But I can't cope with all of them simultaneously, so if anyone wants to discuss one or more of them now, then start a thread on it. I picked the timer fragment, because that seems to be the key anomaly. I can see reasons for suspecting it could have been planted, but I can also see reasons for thinking it's perfectly genuine. If it's genuine, then the theorising has to accommodate its existence. If it was planted, then the affair is altogether stranger. Who had motive, means and opportunity to do that? Was Williamson involved? Although it's de Braeckeleer and Bollier who are making the most fuss about the fragment, and they're not quite the full shilling on the subject, a number of perfectly reputable commentators also believe the item was a plant. So I think it's worth looking at that aspect in detail. Is there any sense in what de Braeckeleer and Bollier are saying? Do these pictures, which I never saw before yesterday, show what they allege they show? I tried to outline the wider suspicions to explain why it was worth examining the fragment. Maybe that was a mistake. So could we maybe concentrate on the actual fragment, rather than peripheral matters, in this thread? Oh, and by the way, I'm just repeating all the news commentary I've read and seen about the Vincennes. Oh, that and the accounts of one of the people I work with very closely, who was on the HMS York and saw the whole thing. Rolfe. |
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17th September 2009, 04:39 AM | #80 |
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Hmmm... We all have our biases. I'm sure Rolfe's no different, right?
Travis, forumside biases aside, do you feel there's been any reasonable doubt cast on the court's conviction? If not, let's not get sidetracked too much and focus on the thread's issue mostly. What can you say about the provenance of this timer fragment? How can we know it was actually found at the scene and put there by the explosion? Ambrosia: Thanks, I presumed as much, after scanning the document. It was just such an interesting goof. Rolfe, I was getting the tl;dr shut-down with your post at first - does your computer have a terseness filter you can switch on? lol. But then I got the point, that being, with a million confusing tangential things we could go off on, we should stick to the main issue of this thread.
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That's a nudge, folks, use it. Specific claims are being made... debunk!
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ETA Rolfe, have you put down your Vicennes case elsewhere? If not maybe something that would be cool to look at both sides, some day. Not here now tho. Alright, soldierin on. |
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