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Tags Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi , Lockerbie bombing , Pan Am 103

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Old 12th October 2009, 01:53 AM   #41
Caustic Logic
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Originally Posted by Ambrosia View Post
You can download the Dispatches program from the MEBO website by following this link which makes it easier to view rather than watching it streamed.
Dude! What worked for me was going to the video display page, and right-clicking (ctrl click) to save as quicktime movie. Bam. 38.3 MB. So it's no loss to have it at least.

Also finding other videos. Another Mebo page advertises a 60 miin introductory video, but this time it's that 60 Minutes episode from 99. Works the same, I go it too. http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/mp4/cbs-lockerbie.html
On first blush, it's like a re-make of the Dispatches episode, right down to flipping through the Fhimah diary and Bollier backed up by ol Maj Owen Lewis. Curious.
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Old 12th October 2009, 02:31 AM   #42
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
I'm not sure who it is who thinks that Lockerbie is near the coast, but it isn't. It's quite a way inland. I think that's important, because it shows how very far off-beam anyone was who was trrying to lose the evidence in Davy Jones's Locker.
I'll address that now. "Around the Scottish coastline" is a phrase I stand by for these reasons:
I'm an American from the West and think of spaces in the large sense, and/or to minimize European spaces. Nothing on Great Britain seems very far from anything else to me. This is turn ties in with relative measurements of a trans-Atlantic flight, on the scale of which the distance from Heathrow to Lockerbie or to the Scottish coast ten minutes away is relatively short. I'm not sure if they would or should know the plane's schedule, but I'd think so. I'm also not sure how on or behind schedule it was, but if it was about ten minutes, they were aiming for about the coast, farther off and their goal was shallow coastal waters near Northern Ireland as well. Only light material (like a shirt collar weighted down with only tiny bits of exploded electrics?) might be retrievable, with searchers in fishing boats instead of galoshes (or in addition to, depending on wind).

As opposed to aiming for a mid-point between the mid-Atlantic ridge and Manhattan, I would not aim for around the Scottish coastline.
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Old 12th October 2009, 05:01 AM   #43
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Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
I suppose the thing is,that there are two possible entry points. But how does the security differ? i suspect that malta wasn't that much source of problems,so they might not be under such pressure to guard against entry of explosives in bags and if they were not at that time known for problems,then other airports would skip luggages from it. So far however too much "might",unless somebody from airports,preffererebly of that time does input.

Actually, there are any number of possible entry points. However, there were only three examined at the trial and it seems as if the investigators only looked seriously at three - Luqa, Frankfurt and Heathrow.

The simple fact that has to be got round as far as the Luqa theory is concerned, is that the prosecution absolutely bust a gut trying to find evidence of something untoward at Luqa, and failed utterly.

There were 55 bags on KA180, all matched to passengers who actually flew. They were counted three times, in addition to the sniffer dogs. Nobody from that flight reported a missing bag (which rather rules out that a legit bag was taken off to get something sinister on). All 39 passengers were subjected to in-depth police investigation and they all checked out as legit.

The records from Luqa were all available, and checked out. To the point where Air Malta won damages from a TV company which broadcast a documentary with a "reconstruction" showing an unaccompanied bag going on flight KA180. (The TV company settled out of court when it saw the evidence Air Malta had that demonstrated that didn't happen.)

It's all very well assuming security at Luqa might have been more lax, or reading a post from some guy on the internet who was there once and thought he was waved through a bit quick, but the actual evidence shows Luqa security to have been on the ball, and frankly as tight as a duck's arse. The best that could be managed in court was that a manager, asked whether it was conceivably even remotely possible that something could have been slipped past, said something like, well, anything's possible. If you were asked about something that happened ten years ago, under oath, could you say anything more certain? He was adamant that to the best of his knowledge, nothing had got past and it was extremely unlikely anything could have got past.

Not only that, but it was never really disputed that getting past that security, even if it were possible, would have required Megrahi to have had an accomplice with an air-side pass. That's where Fhimah was supposed to have come in - although he'd changed jobs and no longer worked for Air Malta, he still had his pass. However, the prosecution failed to lead any evidence to show that he was even at the airport that day, and the prosecution against him was dismissed as "no case to answer". Which kind of leaves the question open, if Megrahi did get that case on the plane, who helped him? No other accomplice was suggested.

The faulty reasoning of the judges seems to have been that Megrahi bought the clothes, so he must have been the bomber. Megrahi was at Luqa airport on the morning of 21st December. There is evidence that an item of luggage was routed through Frankfurt to PA103A from KA180 out of Luqa, even though no passenger from LA180 was booked on PA103A. Therefore, Megrahi somehow must have circumvented Luqa security undetected, even if we have literally no clue how.

The difficulty there is that there are also huge problems with the "Megrahi bought the clothes" part, which could be yet another thread (and probably will be, in the fullness of time). He was never identified as the purchaser; the best that could be done was that he resembled the purchaser (except for being several inches too short, at least 10 years too young, and not heavily-enough built). And, as we're investigating, the evidence that an unaccompanied bag from KA180 was routed through Frankfurt on to PA103A is also pretty rocky.

Which is why I've concluded (and like all conclusions, this is subject to revision if more and better evidence emerges) that neither Megrahi nor anybody else put the bag on KA180. KA180 seems to be a complete red herring.

Which just leaves us with every other airport in the world.

Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
I'll quickly return to theory of two groups/two bags. One signed in malta would have electronic timer(and/or any other trigger) and small,low powered radio transmitter. Second bag somehow entering second airport(Frankfurt) has reciever and bomb itself.

If Longtabber is right (his experties is at this time however suspect)then this could explain survival of fragment and possible casing and since reciever would be in direct contact with semtex,it would be destroyed or too small pieces would remain. IIRC it could acount for some more discrepancies.

But what I don't recall and cannot check right now,how strong were transmitters at that time for given power and how well would get signal to reciever.(It must not trigger on false signals and pick up correct signal with unkown strength,unless perp would place bag close enough to transmitter and could guarantee that it is in planned distance)

Longtabber aside, this doesn't fit with the evidence. The MST-13 timer (if we take the Official Version at face value) was very close indeed to the actual bomb, whichever way you slice it. Not only in the same luggage container, but certainly within feet of the bomb, and probably in the actual bomb suitcase. It was found lodged in the collar of a shirt which Tony Gauci was finally persuaded to state he sold to the mystery purchaser. Along with bits of shattered Toshiba radio-cassette player.

Also, could you explain the point of the two-bag trick? Even assuming your timer got through Luqa because it didn't smell of Semtex to your friendly springer spaniel, what good does it do you? You've still got to get "bomb plus electronics" on somewhere, and putting the timer in a different bag doesn't make that any easier. It just adds another big risk that might go wrong. Why would anyone possibly want to put the timer in a completely different bag from the bomb?

Rolfe.
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Old 12th October 2009, 05:14 AM   #44
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
I don't know about the wrong plane story. It appealed to me for a moment because it was new. Then I realized it had problems and didn't answer any questions or add much to anything. I'd have to go back to it, maybe I didn't grasp it right.

As I said (at some length) in a different thread, what it adds is a reasonable explanation of why the bomb was set to explode at 7.03pm, by a simple timer without a barometric component. If it was actually meant to have gone on a flight that would have been way out over the Atlantic by then, you've at least answered the serious problem of why any terrorist would choose such an early time in the flight to detonate the bomb - risking a possible detonation on the ground at Heathrow if the plane has been only an hour late, risking the plane being able to make a forced landing at Prestwick (or Abbotsinch or Turnhouse) if it didn't actually break up, and risking incriminating evidence being found on the ground.

It still leaves the 38-minute Khreesat-fingerprint detonation as a huge coincidence, but perhaps a coincidence that is easier to swallow like this.

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Old 12th October 2009, 05:53 AM   #45
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
All we can really say is the bomb was loaded onto Maid of the Seas at Heathrow (unless it was on there before, who knows). Before that it could have many entry points. AFAIK the only reason to suspect it came in on the feeder from Frankfurt is the paper suggesting a bag from Air Malta KM180, plus the Maltese clothes. So just on the official line, we have Luqa, Frankfurt, AND Heathrow as possible entry points. Aside from Luqa via Frankfurt we have elsewhere via Frankfurt and elsewhere via elsewhere, depending how many other flights fed into PA103.

There is actually better evidence than that, that the bag may have come from Frankfurt. There was a good reason for the investigators to concentrate on Frankfurt from an early stage. The bomb was in baggage container AVE4041 - not on the bottom layer of bags, but probably on the second layer. (I'm sorry, that evidence is far too good, Longtabber is right up there with Bollier in wingnut-land when he suggests otherwise.) Apart from half a dozen interline bags that were put in that container at Heathrow before PA103A landed, all the bags were from PA103A. It was assumed that the half-dozen interline bags would have been on the bottom layer, ergo, the bomb suitcase came off PA103A.

The large screaming hole in this is that the assumption that the non-Frankfurt bags would all have been on the bottom layer is manifestly flawed. Even the judges went on to theorise that these bags might have been rearranged while the PA103A bags were being loaded.

All we can really say about container AVE4041 is that its involvement pretty much rules out the possibility that the bomb was in a suitcase checked in by someone who began their journey at Heathrow. It could have come from Frankfurt, or any of the connecting flights that fed into PA013A, or it could have come from a non-PA flight connecting with PA103 at Heathrow, which landed before PA103A.

Which is basically every airport in the world, as far as I can see. The only one we've really knocked off the list is Luqa!

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
Exactly. All I can say is all are theoretically impermeable. I've heard of more breaches for Heathrow and Frankfurt than at Luqa, but then I've read more revisionist stuff dedicated to denying the official story. Until we can know more about a chaotic and shifting thing like security in these airports at this time, we can't say for sure.

All we have at Frankfurt is evidence that bags were flying around in all directions, and retrospective tracking of them doesn't seem to be very easy. Also, most of the CTs that suggest the bomb was infiltrated by way of substitution for a suitcase of heroin focus on Frankfurt as the place this was happening - along with tales of a regular drug courier route out of Frankfurt that circumvented normal security.

In contrast, we have the very very peculiar story at Heathrow of the break-in the previous evening involving exactly the right part of the airport, and the mysterious "Bedford suitcase" that was loaded into AVE4041 along with the interline baggage. That lot is far, far more suggestive than anything that was ever alleged about Luqa; the problem was that there was no identified perpetrator attached to that side of the story, which would have been more of a problem for the investigators.

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
Depends. It's a small airport but one that connects North Africa, especially Libya, with Europe, so it might have extra reason to be vigilant. But then again, that might have seemed more a theoretical problem than a practical one, so again who can say?

Well, Air Malta seem to have been able to say. In that they proved to every normal standard of proof that the luggage system was secure and nothing unaccompanied got through it.

However, I note that The Maltese Double Cross provides some support for your suspicions regarding the Erac printout.

That film is worth watching. It's the only one of the documentaries to have been banned by the US authorities. Even now, it's had very few showings and is only available in that very pixillated online version. (I asked Amazon if there was a DVD, but no. Although there is clear evidence that a lot of other people have asked Amazon exactly the same question.) I suspect there may be some dynamite in there if two and two are added together in the right order. It really needs a transcript, but the bloody thing is 2 hours 35 minutes long.

Rolfe.
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Old 12th October 2009, 02:46 PM   #46
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I've been looking over the paper documentation from FA. I've re-posted the relevant doc images, Koca's interline worksheet (shed 34 at Mebo's page) and Erac' printout (shed one, reduced size here). The other page, "worksheet" at Mebo's page has less direct value. It covers an early time frame, signed Bach-Wolf, and seems to cover a PA 638/639, very sloppy... okay, I'll have to incllude this too. It's not the number PA103A had before, that's 124).

But the main thing is I was trying to figure out the discrepancy I was on about above. As I see it, none of these gate/station papers don't show the number or type of bags at all, just number of wagons or containers. I've decided the ende time is 1310, since all others are from 3-9 minutes, mostly 5 and 6 per coding.

On where the loading records are for 103A, the Cort's Opinion offers an insight, point [29], re KM180:
Quote:
Since it was not a PanAm flight it was unloaded by employees of the airport authority.
These are airport authority papers it seems, and 103A WAS a pan Am flight, so Pan Am wold have the paperwork. AFAIK the airline did not provide records to the investigation like the airport did. This is a line of questioning now, as it eliminates verification of Bogomira's printout.

On that, I did notice some good points earlier by Rolfe that have me moderating my suspicions of her apparent story change, etc. But on the other hand, I looked through that roll and found some interesting patterns.

The items listed numerically by container no., which I gather is a one-item tray, and guess the numbers are assignments for the luggage within the container(s) they’ve been loaded into. Either way, a no. refers to a single item, and this one is 8849. I haven't counted the lines myself, At the bottom of the list are “TEILSUMME: and “GES. SUMME” both at 111. So that's where Mebo's chart got the number of bags. Note below the condensed header and relevant line.

As it happens, this included an oddity I found right after making the graphic, so it's cooler than I thought. Look at the lines immediately above and below the one in question, at the right side, under "time at gate." From this it might seem bags were loaded alternately at gates B044 and B041. However the full list shows all loadings but these two are at gate 44, running as late as 1616. These other two were loaded later at 41, at1631. For whatever reason, these last-minute additions are items 8831 and 8992, flanking the suspicious Maltese item in container no. assignment, but apparently loaded together over an hour later than it, and coded over three hours later than it. I’m not sure what this indicates but it’s interesting. It makes the Maltese bag look inserted., at least to my suspicious eyes.

To get an answer I'd need to know how they assign container no.s here. It's apparently not chronological by time of coding, or of loading.


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Old 12th October 2009, 03:11 PM   #47
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I need to go back and transcribe the bit of The Maltese Double Cross that deals with the Erac printout. As the film tells it, it's not quite as transparently innocent as I originally thought. There is an account of the investigators trying to get the data and being told it was gone.

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Old 12th October 2009, 03:14 PM   #48
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
To get an answer I'd need to know how they assign container no.s here. It's apparently not chronological by time of coding, or of loading.


Well, we who are only speculating, can suggest things an official investigator or a lawyer couldn't, if they had no proof.

But as to the assignment of containers, off the top of my head, would the containers not have bar codes on them, and the clerk doing the coding just grab the next one on the stack? They'd circulate more or less at random if that was the system.

Rolfe.
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Old 12th October 2009, 04:12 PM   #49
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
Well, we who are only speculating, can suggest things an official investigator or a lawyer couldn't, if they had no proof.

But as to the assignment of containers, off the top of my head, would the containers not have bar codes on them, and the clerk doing the coding just grab the next one on the stack? They'd circulate more or less at random if that was the system.

Rolfe.
That sounds reasonable, and it should just be random, or semi-random based on partial recollection and occasional re-ordering. I haven't looked for all patterns, but loading time anyway seems pretty random running down the list. All that poops out is these two, which are given (by coincidence?) very close numbers. Only one is between them. And they were coded one minute apart at station SO541 very late, after the plane was loaded, and loaded right away put on at second gate 41 before final taxi and takeoff. Pilot carry-on or special intra-airline delivery? These would have a nice pattern of sequential trays, perhaps from a station using a narrower near-sequential set, if not for the Maltese bag slipped into the intervening container. By coindicence? Or because the third bag of this set had its coding station, leave store, and to gate times altered?

In short I only see one pattern here regarding container no. and it's interrupted by the suspect item 8849. That's another oddity that might not mean anything, but worth noting.

Quote:
However, I note that The Maltese Double Cross provides some support for your suspicions regarding the Erac printout.

That film is worth watching. It's the only one of the documentaries to have been banned by the US authorities. Even now, it's had very few showings and is only available in that very pixillated online version. (I asked Amazon if there was a DVD, but no. Although there is clear evidence that a lot of other people have asked Amazon exactly the same question.) I suspect there may be some dynamite in there if two and two are added together in the right order. It really needs a transcript, but the bloody thing is 2 hours 35 minutes long.
I downloaded the cruddy WMV version last night. It was the video, 1/3 readable subtitlles, bad piture and sound, that turned me off from videos on this at first. I'll check it out tonight: have a timestamp handy? Someone should find who holds the copyright, or original copies. Hilited is disturbing. It's an epic film for sure, and odd how Frankovich died. It's definitely a different year now.
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Old 12th October 2009, 04:22 PM   #50
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It was broadcast here, once, but unfortunately I didn't have my trusty Super-Betamax running that night. That would have given a great picture reproduction! The subtitles are legible though. If in doubt, pause the video.

I honestly think the film is saying more than is obvious. For example, now I'm looking at it, I think he's saying Cannestraro planted the timer fragment. He's also hinting that there's something going on as regards the Erac printout.

That doesn't mean he's right, but it's worth a look. It's a lot more complex and nuanced than the later documentaries, especially the BBC effort.

Rolfe.

ETA: Jings, I just got to an interview of Lester Coleman. Now that is something you won't see in later documentaries. As I'm also struggling through The Trail of the Octopus, that is downright surreal.
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Old 12th October 2009, 06:42 PM   #51
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
To get an answer I'd need to know how they assign container no.s here. It's apparently not chronological by time of coding, or of loading.
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/br...t/fraport.html
Quote:
The baggage handling system contains all the necessary data for each flight. In addition to the departure time and ramp position, it also contains the extraction point to ensure the shortest route to the plane. By entering the flight number, each item of luggage is issued with a set destination address that is activated in combination with the container number. Automatic elevator installations feed the baggage into thesystem. During the entire underground transport, computer-controlled reading systems check the containers by means of a bar code on the outside. In this way, each container is automatically transported to its destination.
Each container would have a permanent barcode that can be easily scanned when the cart pass any reading station. The containers are independent traveling on a switched conveyor system that continuously shuffles them so the containers would be randomly assigned to any given bag. The database report that was printed was in container number order so essentially random.

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Old 13th October 2009, 03:10 AM   #52
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Originally Posted by Dan O. View Post

Each container would have a permanent barcode that can be easily scanned when the cart pass any reading station. The containers are independent traveling on a switched conveyor system that continuously shuffles them so the containers would be randomly assigned to any given bag. The database report that was printed was in container number order so essentially random.
Says copyright 2003 article. That may well describe the system in use in 1988 as well, and at least it's a reference point for what it might have been at the time.

Now I'm struggling to put this together here, but "switched conveyor system," perhaps like the kind at the opening of the Maltese Doublecross, "that continuously shuffles" the containers, between stations and such. then they "would be randomly assigned to any given bag" - I'm not sure what the bag is here. Would the container number be re-assigned each time a container is emptied and filled with a new item then? And if so, these would be generated by, what, a central computer just ticking them off airport-wide and rolling over like an odometer every so often? Two containers coded at the same station one minute apart get no.s 161 apart? 161 new assignments in a minute? Seems reasonable. But that wouldn't explain the Maltese bag coded hours earlier... was it numbered from a previous cycle?

Or is all of that nothing but confused gibberish not even worth sorting out? I plan to look at the printout some more, but for now at least I'm unsure what' supposed to be going on there.
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Old 13th October 2009, 03:54 AM   #53
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I think the trays would each have their own permanent bar code, and circulate randomly in the system. A free container would have a bag put in it, and its number would then be coded with the destination aircraft for that item of luggage. It would enter the system, which would periodically read the bar code and know where the contents currently in that tray were supposed to go. Once the luggage was removed from the tray to go on the plane, the tray would be reassigned as "free" and circulate back to the coding stations that needed more free trays.

I'm quite certain this was all possible in 1988 - it's not that dissimilar to the way big laboratories handle blood samples requiring different tests and so on. I've seen it in operation there for decades.

I suspect it might be possible to fabricate such a printout, if you're very very determined and have an intimate knowledge of the system. It's the who, when and why that I'm stuck on. I need to recheck what The Maltese Double Cross has to say about it and see if it might be airworthy.

BTW, it's also worth reading the Wiki article on the documentary.

Quote:
The televising by Channel 4 of The Maltese Double Cross on May 11, 1995 provoked an even stronger reaction from official US and British agencies. The Guardian reported, for example, that the American Embassy and the Scottish Crown Office had apparently attempted to discredit the film prior to its broadcast. The embassy had sent a letter to The Guardian — and, the newspaper assumed, to other news organizations as well — which attacked the credibility of three of the film's witnesses and argued that The Maltese Double Cross was "Libyan-financed." The film's production company, Hemar Enterprises, was part-owned by the Lonrho affiliate Metropole Hotels which, in turn, was one third-owned by a state-run Libyan investment company. The Guardian noted that the Crown Office had made similar points in an official statement and argued that they had done so “in apparent co-ordination” with the U.S. embassy. The Crown Office refused to comment on the specific allegations in the film because of the pending trial of two Libyan men, but noted “that the criminal charges in this case were brought on the basis of corroborated evidence supporting these charges and therefore inevitably conflicting with much of what is in the film." The Crown Office did publicly accuse one key witness in the film, Oswald LeWinter, of being a “notorious hoaxer” and another, Juval Aviv, of being a mere El Al airline security guard – not a member of the intelligence community as he claimed. Additionally, the FBI investigated the film at the request of the Scottish police and argued that LeWinter was “a major fabricator” and that overall the film was a sham.

It's impossible to tell if these are legitimate criticisms, or a co-ordinated attempt to discredit the film. Clearly, once the thing has gone too far to put it back in the bottle, discrediting it is the way to go for the security services.

The difficulty is that the criticisms largely depend on the assertion that there is indeed "overwhelming evidence" against Megrahi and Fhimah. In the film itself, Cannistraro leans very heavily indeed on Giaka's evidence, saying that he will be produced in court and then you'll see how we're right all along.

Well, that didn't work out too well for them.

Looking back at the film with the knowledge of what could and couldn't be proved in court leaves it looking stronger than these criticisms might suggest. And of course anyone can declare le Winter to be a hoaxer and fabricator, but no supporting evidence is given for that.

Rolfe.
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Old 13th October 2009, 03:56 AM   #54
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Originally Posted by Rolfe
...
There were 55 bags on KA180, all matched to passengers who actually flew. They were counted three times, in addition to the sniffer dogs. Nobody from that flight reported a missing bag (which rather rules out that a legit bag was taken off to get something sinister on). All 39 passengers were subjected to in-depth police investigation and they all checked out as legit.
"Were checked legit."
Group had three members allegedly,so the third unkown terrorist could make the bag legit by accompaning it to airport making sure it reached and then disappear. Didn't report,it would be easy - have same bag to show it didn't went missing. As for check,it might not be good enough.(It would be however ironical if it would be lebanese man)

However they didn't notice that bag went to wrong container.(Remember there was reported breakin,so two bag theory could be explanation to it)

Quote:
...
The difficulty there is that there are also huge problems with the "Megrahi bought the clothes" part, which could be yet another thread (and probably will be, in the fullness of time). He was never identified as the purchaser; the best that could be done was that he resembled the purchaser (except for being several inches too short, at least 10 years too young, and not heavily-enough built). And, as we're investigating, the evidence that an unaccompanied bag from KA180 was routed through Frankfurt on to PA103A is also pretty rocky.
Short,that can be impression and to miss age is too easy for arabs at least.(My experience,can be anomalous however - treat it as a anecdote)

But what could more better to attack this line is to show whether those clothes culd be traced back to Malta or if they were avalable in other shops,notably near Frankfurt.

Quote:
...
Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
I'll quickly return to theory of two groups/two bags. One signed in malta would have electronic timer(and/or any other trigger) and small,low powered radio transmitter. Second bag somehow entering second airport(Frankfurt) has reciever and bomb itself.

If Longtabber is right (his experties is at this time however suspect)then this could explain survival of fragment and possible casing and since reciever would be in direct contact with semtex,it would be destroyed or too small pieces would remain. IIRC it could acount for some more discrepancies.

But what I don't recall and cannot check right now,how strong were transmitters at that time for given power and how well would get signal to reciever.(It must not trigger on false signals and pick up correct signal with unkown strength,unless perp would place bag close enough to transmitter and could guarantee that it is in planned distance)

Longtabber aside, this doesn't fit with the evidence. The MST-13 timer (if we take the Official Version at face value) was very close indeed to the actual bomb, whichever way you slice it. Not only in the same luggage container, but certainly within feet of the bomb, and probably in the actual bomb suitcase. It was found lodged in the collar of a shirt which Tony Gauci was finally persuaded to state he sold to the mystery purchaser. Along with bits of shattered Toshiba radio-cassette player.
Transmitters small enough would have short distance,so the timer itself would have to be close to explosive bag => potential to damage we saw.

And one thing would be the shape. Hm. What is the model of player holding semtex? I don't know how it looked.(model is enough presuming there is an image of it online)
Quote:
Also, could you explain the point of the two-bag trick? Even assuming your timer got through Luqa because it didn't smell of Semtex to your friendly springer spaniel, what good does it do you? You've still got to get "bomb plus electronics" on somewhere, and putting the timer in a different bag doesn't make that any easier. It just adds another big risk that might go wrong. Why would anyone possibly want to put the timer in a completely different bag from the bomb?
To workaround security,if you can get in other ways.(Frankfurt)
Once you know what container it got in (Is there a way to get that info?) you can place it.(AFAIK neither of two workers knew about those extra bags)

One thing I still have on mind (so far) is,that it could become passanger-less bag when workers put it to wrong flight.(again how common it is,in 911CT it has been argued that this happend and happenes quite a lot)

Anyway is there on interent raw data,image of evidence and such? (No commentary or such) In fact from where you get info yourself people? And is that verified? (Remember there are often by CTs attempts at forgery and deception)

So far I am limitied to speculation,offering alternative anti-ct explanations naratives...
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Old 13th October 2009, 04:33 AM   #55
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Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
"Were checked legit."
Group had three members allegedly,so the third unkown terrorist could make the bag legit by accompaning it to airport making sure it reached and then disappear. Didn't report,it would be easy - have same bag to show it didn't went missing. As for check,it might not be good enough.(It would be however ironical if it would be lebanese man)

However they didn't notice that bag went to wrong container.(Remember there was reported breakin,so two bag theory could be explanation to it)

All I know is that the prosecution absolutely bust a gut trying to find a way in which they could even show it was possible for the Luqa system to be circumvented, and failed. I find it very hard indeed to imagine that your scenario might have happened, and yet the prosecution didn't even spot it as a possibility. As I understand it, the passengers on KA180 were all checked out thoroughly to see if any of them might have been a conspirator, and nothing suspicious was found.

I may not be understanding you properly, but note that the possibility of an unaccompanied bag on KA180 was essentially ruled out. All 55 bags were positively identified as belonging to someone who actually travelled on the flight. Suppose a passenger did go on with the bomb bag (knowing it wouldn't explode on that leg). What was Megrahi's role? A bit silly of him to be in the airport at all then, since he was entirely unnecessary. He didn't get on that plane, or go airside.

Then, somehow, the tag on the bomb bag which showed its original destination would have had to be switched for one routing it to PA103A and then PA103. The passenger couldn't do that, as he wouldn't have any further contact with his luggage - it would require an accomplice airside. That wasn't Fhimah, he wasn't even at the airport.

So, you're postulating a two-person conspiracy, with two completely different people who weren't Megrahi or Fhimah. One of these with a clean enough background to come through all the subsequent checks on the passengers undetected. So not a Libyan national, then, in fact presumably no visible connection to Libya or we might have heard about this person. The other a gang member with an airside pass.

This is a lot more complicated than simply accepting that the bag didn't go on at Malta!

Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
Short,that can be impression and to miss age is too easy for arabs at least.(My experience,can be anomalous however - treat it as a anecdote)

I think we should keep discussion about Gauci's identification for a separate thread. I would point out however that his job was selling clothes, which usually requires one to be a good judge of height and build. Also, this was in Malta, where Arabs are commonplace. Maltese people would not be expected to have the same difficulty with identification that most westerners would experience, being faced with a less familiar ethnic group.

Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
But what could more better to attack this line is to show whether those clothes culd be traced back to Malta or if they were avalable in other shops,notably near Frankfurt.

I have no doubt that the clothes in the bomb bag originated in Sliema. The evidence on that seems quite strong enough.

Originally Posted by Klimax View Post
Transmitters small enough would have short distance,so the timer itself would have to be close to explosive bag => potential to damage we saw.

And one thing would be the shape. Hm. What is the model of player holding semtex? I don't know how it looked.(model is enough presuming there is an image of it online)

To workaround security,if you can get in other ways.(Frankfurt)
Once you know what container it got in (Is there a way to get that info?) you can place it.(AFAIK neither of two workers knew about those extra bags)

One thing I still have on mind (so far) is,that it could become passanger-less bag when workers put it to wrong flight.(again how common it is,in 911CT it has been argued that this happend and happenes quite a lot)

Anyway is there on interent raw data,image of evidence and such? (No commentary or such) In fact from where you get info yourself people? And is that verified? (Remember there are often by CTs attempts at forgery and deception)

So far I am limitied to speculation,offering alternative anti-ct explanations naratives...

The problem is, narratives have to be consistent with the known evidence, and to be plausible. I can see no reason for putting the timer in a different bag. That doesn't improve the chance of the bomb bag getting through security, it's just one more thing to go wrong. Also, postulating that the timer alone somehow got on the plane at Luqa leaves you exactly where you started as regards the route of the bomb bag itself.

There are good photographs of a mock-up of an identical Toshiba containing the Semtex as it is believed it was constructed. Here you go.

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/510...F71A9C9BC19C35

You really need to look at the actual evidence so you can figure out what's possible and what's not. The hypothesis that an unaccompanied bag travelled from Luqa to Frankfurt on KA180, and thence to PA103A is probably the weakest part of the prosecution case. If that's wiped out, then everything becomes potentially a CT, because if the bag wasn't loaded at Malta, then Megrahi didn't do it. It's that simple.

Rolfe.
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Old 13th October 2009, 05:05 AM   #56
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1:23 in the video, Michael Jones, Pan Am security, went to Frankfurt Airport Jan 23 1989 and found loading files for 103A missing from the daily file. That does seem like a promising lead.

FWIW, the film is to long by about 150%, too full of slow-talking people of varying credibility. DeWinter and Aviv at least I don't put much stock in. The Cannistrano angle is definitely interesting. Did a quick search and found no clues on when he started that but I'll take a wild guess at a three-month range of Mar-Jun 89. I'd bet $5, which is like what, £20?

That's as far as I got this time and now I have to sleep.
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Old 13th October 2009, 05:33 AM   #57
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
1:23 in the video, Michael Jones, Pan Am security, went to Frankfurt Airport Jan 23 1989 and found loading files for 103A missing from the daily file. That does seem like a promising lead.

I'll try to transcribe that bit this evening.

Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
FWIW, the film is to long by about 150%, too full of slow-talking people of varying credibility. DeWinter and Aviv at least I don't put much stock in. The Cannistrano angle is definitely interesting. Did a quick search and found no clues on when he started that but I'll take a wild guess at a three-month range of Mar-Jun 89. I'd bet $5, which is like what, £20?

I don't know why it got that prize, but it seems longwinded to me. On the other hand, it was the first, and maybe it grips the viewer better in a darkened cinema when the brain is fully engaged.

I don't know anything about le Winter. Aviv was employed by Pan Am to investigate the incident when it was trying to defend itself against legal action for negligence by the relatives of the victims. I have no idea why they would give that task to someone who was "a mere El Al airline security guard". There's a fair bit more about Aviv in The Trail of the Octopus, which is not obvious rubbish. Also, he (unlike le Winter) features in other documentaries also.

I'd put Cannistraro's involvement later than that, personally. However I note he left the CIA completely in 1991. There should be some way to find out when he took over the Lockerbie investigation.

Rolfe.
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Old 13th October 2009, 11:45 AM   #58
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
To get an answer I'd need to know how they assign container no.s here. It's apparently not chronological by time of coding, or of loading.

I'm really not very good at this, but isn't that list just sorted by container number? Containers picked at random, data entered, then computer sorts the printout how you want, in this case by container number.

I know I'm doing it again, but the NWO shill pay scale is pretty good in these difficult times. Trying to base a CT on what appears next to an item of interest in a sorted list seems to be a stretch to me.
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Old 13th October 2009, 01:42 PM   #59
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I very much doubt that the "mystery tray" could have been an addition to the genuine printout. It's very difficult to construct a narrative to make that one work.

My general opinion with this one is that it happened too early to be likely to be part of a conspiracy/coverup. I agree, there do seem to be two parts to this proposed conspiracy, and part 1 might have involved something like this. I mean, part 1 being the misdirection to try not to lay the blame on Jibril's group and part 2 being the positive incrimination of Libya.

I just have trouble with the idea of two quite separate fabrications and plants in this story (one pre Cannistrato and one post?), and also with the idea that the printout is planted but the timer fragment isn't!

However, I'm open to persuasion.

I think the two lines to consider with the printout are either the suggestion that it's a complete fabrication (as opposed to a line being inserted), or that it's perfectly genuine, but the "mystery tray" has nothing to do with KA180.

I wonder where Bollier got all that "John Hubbard" stuff.

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Old 13th October 2009, 02:09 PM   #60
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I see the link to the Toshiba picture didn't work. I'll try again.

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/xc/510...F71A9C9BC19C35

Rolfe.

ETA: Maybe it did, and my browser just hiccuped. Oh well there it is again.
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Old 13th October 2009, 02:25 PM   #61
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Okay, so it seems I was confused and numbers are permanently set for each physical container.

Originally Posted by Rolfe
I just have trouble with the idea of two quite separate fabrications and plants in this story (one pre Cannistrato and one post?), and also with the idea that the printout is planted but the timer fragment isn't!
Well it's not like there's a cosmic watcher saying "alright, buddy, you want a cover-up? You're only allowed one planted piece of evidence, because two, c'mon, that's just crazy." If there are signs, then maybe they mean what they point to. So far we have all this data narrowed to one woman's privately held copy, and reportedly the verifying paperwork was disappeared as well. That totally makes the printout suspect. Of just what I can't say for sure, but we know what made it important later.

I'm working on a transcript of the MDC section with Phipps and Jones, and will look again at the printout more widely. So I'll be back.
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Old 13th October 2009, 03:30 PM   #62
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Oh sure, don't let me stop you. I can think of a motive for fabricating the printout early on. There was a reason for not going after Jibril. This again is another thread. By March we know there was a Bush/Thatcher agreement to soft-pedal the PFLP-GC connection.

Jibril's group was based at Frankfurt. So maybe we want to direct the search for the starting point of the bomb away from Frankfurt? Well, where? Malta was the source of the clothes in the suitcase, and it's a handy entrance to Europe from a fair chunk of the Middle East. Malta is a natural choice. So let's trail the possibility that something came through from Malta.

(I wonder how soon it was realised that the Malta security was so tight? Might have been little reason to question Luqa before the printout was discovered and checked - up till then it was just one of many airports two hops from PA103.)

So this could have been done early, while Jibril was still Scotland's Most Wanted, simply to get the hounds away from Frankfurt, where the presence of the bomb in a luggage container mostly filled from PA103A had directed the enquiry in the very early stages.

Then later, once the Bush-or-high-level-strategic-chief decision was made that pinning the blame on Libya would kill quite a few birds with one stone, and there had been some very peripheral mention of Libya already (Gauci always said the mystery shopper was a Libyan, and one of Jibril's bomb experts was originally wrongly identified as Libyan), so hey, who knows maybe that can be arranged, let's appoint our Libyan dirty tricks expert to head the case and see what he can find, off you go Vincent, and you know where we want this to go....

Maybe an earlier, successful fabrication encouraged the idea that maybe a second one would work just as well....

OK, Agatha Christie might think it was overkill, but it isn't intrinsically impossible.

Rolfe.
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Old 13th October 2009, 04:59 PM   #63
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
1:23 in the video, Michael Jones, Pan Am security, went to Frankfurt Airport Jan 23 1989 and found loading files for 103A missing from the daily file. That does seem like a promising lead.

OK, got it.

Originally Posted by The Maltese Double Cross
Michael Jones, Pan Am security, London

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.

Denis Phipps, former head of security, British Airways

The records at Frankfurt they were by no means complete. One was not able to get hold of the detailed records. Particularly what concerned me was, 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.

Michael Jones

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.

Narrator

In 1993 Air Malta won its libel suit against Granada television. Granada, in a docu-drama, had claimed the bomb had been placed in an unaccompanied bag on an Air Malta flight.

Denis Phipps

At Malta, the records of the handling of that flight, KM180, were made available for me to see. There was no evidence of any unaccompanied bags. All of the bags that were carried as passenger baggage on that flight had been checked in by a passenger who actually travelled on the flight.

Narrator

When in October 1989 the FBI visited Frankfurt airport, the agent sent back this telex to Washington. "No evidence of any bag transfer from an Air Malta flight." The only evidence showing a transfer bag, a computer printout used to prepare this German police report. An airport employee, Mrs. Erac, claimed to have stored in her locker a copy printed off the destroyed original computer tape.

Denis Phipps

The computer printout does not say where the bag came from. They tried to tie that bag to KM180 from the worksheet which was maintained, and as we found, the worksheet is completely unreliable, and in any case, even if you accept that the worksheet was approximately right, we have nobody that can account for, or was in charge of, or can tell us who or how those bags came from the actual aircraft KM180 to that coding station. And for more than one kilometre, while they were in there waiting, those bags were under nobody's control or supervision, they were not counted, we don't know how many should be there, and it would have been possible to put another bag in there along any of that route or at any time.

Michael Jones

I've never seen any documentation whatsoever produced by Pan Am or anybody else to show there was any interline baggage from the Air Malta flight on the 21st of December 1988.

It seems we also have to explain the disappearance of so much of the original records and information. This doesn't entirely sound like, sorry officer, you're just too late, if we'd know you wanted this stuff - but it was all thrown out a week ago.

Phipps doesn't seem to be saying that, he seems to be saying that flight in particular was missing, and didn't seem to have been given to the police because where were the copies.

Did you have a date for Bogomira coming forward with the printout, and also for the Frankfurt police finally handing it over to the investigation? If so, source?

Rolfe.
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Old 14th October 2009, 12:47 AM   #64
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Great on the transcript. I'll come back to that in a bit.

This film is pretty amazing in what information he had at the time. It was made in Nov. 1994, wasn't it? So why does i have the $4 million reward poster for the FBI program ushered in in mid-95? Can't re-locate it now, but It's different - no Megrahi or Fhimah pics, but the same case and the headline "we'll give you $4 million reasons to fight terrorism" with app. small print beneath it.

I dunno about LeWinter; from here I though 'old ex-CIA guy that's spent years repeating disposable CIA CT claims as if he knows all about them, gettin' a little slow at it now.' Others then said long-time hoaxster, so I'm like - meh. On Cannistrano his gist does make sense - it seems he was Reagan's 'make ***** up about Gaddafi' guy, and here he's in charge of the investigation that wound up, parallel to the criminal one, doing just that. His Giaka teasers are classic. The set-up between that and the total teardown in court is jaw-dropping.

On when he was put in charge, there's little around. Dr. Swire's site HAD a dedicated page on him with details, sourced at Wikipedia, no longer there. It almost feels like a dead spot around these Qs, like Feraday's getting wikipedia to pull his profile. Or maybe not. But he was reportedly the CTC "Chief of Operations and Analysis" from 88-91, so would it make more sense for him to head the investigation up-front, or only after the normal guy was swapped out? We only have LeWinter's statements that he wasn't in charge at first. We can agree on guessing it was in no later than the end of 89 anyway, right?
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Old 14th October 2009, 01:38 AM   #65
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I'm doing some "analysis" on the printout data. FWIW, this post only deals with more of my fumbling for patterns there, If boring to you, skip it.

Here's a question to lure an expert on statistics, combinatorics, odds, etc. to step in. I'm still finding the bunching of the two late arrivals (at gate 41 if not the plane) is statistically unlikely, though possible. Since there are 111 slots, by pure chance the odds that the other late arrival should happen to have the closest container no. as the one from station 206 is about 1 in 110, if I'm not wrong. That the other late loader should have the next closest number is itself 1 in 109. Right? So that both happened would be 1 in 110x109 or 1 in 11,990.

But what this bunching could mean is beyond me so far. Probably nothing. I wasn't trying to find some debunk code, as I don't usually believe in those. But this was odd and stood out.

I'm also finding little patterns at work. Ex: "time leave store" to "time at gate" is almost all six minute intervals. A few slowed items (up to 20 min so far) and late items (1600 and after) move faster - from 3 down to even one minute (at gate 41, 1631) Container numbers run up to 12244 only, so it's a partial 5-digit system, stopping well short of 99999, unless some huge random sector is just not represented. I figure about 13,000 distinct tray ID numbers?
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Old 14th October 2009, 02:29 AM   #66
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
I'm doing some "analysis" on the printout data. FWIW, this post only deals with more of my fumbling for patterns there, If boring to you, skip it.

Here's a question to lure an expert on statistics, combinatorics, odds, etc. to step in. I'm still finding the bunching of the two late arrivals (at gate 41 if not the plane) is statistically unlikely, though possible. Since there are 111 slots, by pure chance the odds that the other late arrival should happen to have the closest container no. as the one from station 206 is about 1 in 110, if I'm not wrong. That the other late loader should have the next closest number is itself 1 in 109. Right? So that both happened would be 1 in 110x109 or 1 in 11,990.

But what this bunching could mean is beyond me so far. Probably nothing. I wasn't trying to find some debunk code, as I don't usually believe in those. But this was odd and stood out.

I'm also finding little patterns at work. Ex: "time leave store" to "time at gate" is almost all six minute intervals. A few slowed items (up to 20 min so far) and late items (1600 and after) move faster - from 3 down to even one minute (at gate 41, 1631) Container numbers run up to 12244 only, so it's a partial 5-digit system, stopping well short of 99999, unless some huge random sector is just not represented. I figure about 13,000 distinct tray ID numbers?
I don't intend this to be snarky, but I can't figure out a way of saying this without it possibly sounding that way.

That post reminds me of the bible code, or the comedian's (Eddie Izzard?) joke 'A funny thing happened on the way here tonight, I saw a car with the registration FN05 QVC, what are the odds of that?'

You can't do statistical analysis like that on a single data point (one loading list). If you had several hundred, you could maybe identify something unique about PanAm103A's, otherwise you are looking for patterns in a big list of numbers, which you will find. Lots of them, but they mean nothing.
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Old 14th October 2009, 02:37 AM   #67
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Originally Posted by The Maltese Double Cross
Michael Jones, Pan Am security, London

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.
Isn't this just what my theory said? I don't trust this guy or anyone, exactly. But he's saying that the records are gone, as they must be. He seems to be implying the CIA. Someone else at Pan Am maybe. And they were working with Aviv at the time (94). Heroin suitcases, implications, ulterior motives. But he's painting a dead spot in daily paper records re: the loading of the fateful flight with a certain finality. By 1/23 makes sense - he's not a primary investigator, and only might be looking for curiosity, so no rush. By a month later anyway this was gone. I already knew the Court didn't mention these logs in the positive, but didn't see if they note the absence.

ETA: word searched the verdict, and Pan Am appears exactly once, in naming the crime. So no, they just completely glossed over this.

ETA: OOps, PaAm nospace has several hits.

Now on Bogomira's printout - this would not and did not show the loading. It seems the hard paperwork applied in tarmac-and-wheels areas: planes, wagons, and coding stations these fed into. What the system tracked was (pardon my perhaps stupid characterization as I'm picking it up) the computerized system of roller conveyors, switching stations, bar-code-scanners, and such in a large underground system: connecting coding stations, stores, and apparently up to gates.

I wonder if the luggage stores had people in them keeping paper logs? No mention of store "HS33" logs where people wrote down tray no.s as they came in and out. That sounds insane. Just letting the computers running it keep track sounds smarter, but again, aren't records important? Backup tapes seems the smartest way. How hard would it be to buy a few and keep them for, say a week? Not too hard, that's what they did. Investigators should have been there well within that week. They probably were. It was probably as blank as Pan Am's daily file. Which is why they write a police report later on the printout - it was probably the first they saw and not for sluggishness on their own part.

Frankfurt's records were incomplete all right, in some very poignant ways.

Quote:
Denis Phipps, former head of security, British Airways

The records at Frankfurt they were by no means complete. One was not able to get hold of the detailed records. Particularly what concerned me was, 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.
Speaking in '94 after having recently looked at/for primary documents. The Airportt authority was responsiible for unloading and should have records, like the one for coding station 206. The Cort had the records presented and for 180's unloading was production 1068 “the evidence of Joachim Koscha,” which established KM180’s arrival and unloading time, 12:48-13:00. They provided no direct citation of record. No numbers, no papers AFAICT. Hmmm. Was someone afraid these would be found the verify Air Malta's claims that the same number claimed was unloaded? Or is it a coincidence these records also weren't kept?

Quote:
Denis Phipps

At Malta, the records of the handling of that flight, KM180, were made available for me to see. There was no evidence of any unaccompanied bags. All of the bags that were carried as passenger baggage on that flight had been checked in by a passenger who actually travelled on the flight.
So - we have proof a wagon of unknown number of bags from KM180 arriving at station 206. We're to believe the number of bags is one higher than Air Malta admits to. Sorry, no verifying record, take our word for it. The number admitted all claimed, a remaining item from 206 at the right time is then recorded being routed to the gate 103A loaded from. No investigators anywhere bothered getting a verifying record of this even tho the data was officially available for a week. But then we should have a record at the gate of items arriving and going in containers and onto the plane, that should show item 8849 among them. Sorry no records available to verify this.

Someone hands SCOTBOM a sheaf of paper in August 89 and Marquise says: “her printout was the only record." Damning indictment of a blanked system? Nahhh "This was as much a key to the solution of the case as Tony Gauci or the Mebo chip.” Or Giaka, don't forget Giaka. Lots of prime moments in this mammoth exemplary investigation.

August 89 is from Conspiracy Files, part 3, 4:45, as the month the inv. first learned of the printout. I saw that verified somewhere else, I forget where. No details tho.

Quote:
When in October 1989 the FBI visited Frankfurt airport, the agent sent back this telex to Washington. "No evidence of any bag transfer from an Air Malta flight."
That is interesting. I wonder what the source was for this conclusion?

Quote:
Denis Phipps

The computer printout does not say where the bag came from. They tried to tie that bag to KM180 from the worksheet which was maintained, and as we found, the worksheet is completely unreliable,
I think I disagree here. All it showed was station 206 dealt with KM180's baggage, some amount of it, at the same time the printout showed 8849 coded there. Is the airplane origin listed unreliable, or did they get their station number wrong? Or is he just referring to how it's not reliable to assume ONLY KM180 stuff was going on, or the 1310/1316 debate? Nitpicking, IMO. This one paper is fine.

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Old 14th October 2009, 03:47 AM   #68
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Originally Posted by Guybrush Threepwood View Post
I don't intend this to be snarky, but I can't figure out a way of saying this without it possibly sounding that way.

That post reminds me of the bible code, or the comedian's (Eddie Izzard?) joke 'A funny thing happened on the way here tonight, I saw a car with the registration FN05 QVC, what are the odds of that?'

You can't do statistical analysis like that on a single data point (one loading list). If you had several hundred, you could maybe identify something unique about PanAm103A's, otherwise you are looking for patterns in a big list of numbers, which you will find. Lots of them, but they mean nothing.

Fair comment, but he's not actually claiming anything here. Sometimes you actually have to look that closely at the data to convince yourself thre's nothing to find.

Personally, I think there are three possibilities here.

1. The printout is entirely genuine, with the history as described, but the "mystery tray" has been misinterpreted - it was a perfectly innocent piece of luggage either from another flight (as suggested by Paul Foot), or misdirected to PA103A and later corrected (as apparently suggested by Edwin Bollier).

Here is what Paul Foot said, taken from evidence and arguments presented at the trial.

Originally Posted by Paul Foot
Indeed, another flight, from Damascus, had arrived at Frankfurt at almost the same time as the Malta flight. Most of the bags from Damascus had gone to coding stations 202 and 207. And one-and-a-half wagons of luggage from that flight could not be accounted for. “It seems a not unreasonable inference,” concluded Mr Taylor, “that some of this baggage, even if only half a wagon, was encoded at station 206 between 13.04 and 13.16.”

2. The printout is entirely genuine, with the history as described, but what it reveals is in fact the introduction of the bomb suitcase at Frankfurt itself, possibly at coding station 206. This is the possibility explained in The Trail of the Octopus. This is a closer examination of the October 1989 FBI teletype (shown in The Maltese Double Cross), which seems to be a report by FBI investigators who went to Frankfurt to try to clarify whether or not there was indeed a bag from Malta on PA103A.

Originally Posted by The Trail of the Octopus
The baggage computer entry 'does not indicate the origin of the bag which was sent for loading on board Pan Am 103. Nor does it indicate that the bag was actually loaded on Pan Am 103. It indicates only that a bag of unknown origin was sent from Coding Station 206 at 1:07 p.m. to a position from which it was supposed to be loaded on Pan Am 103.'

The handwritten record kept at Coding Station 206 was no more explicit. According to the teletype, 'the handwritten duty sheet indicates only that the luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 180. There is no indication how much baggage was unloaded or where the luggage was sent.' On the agent's reading of the evidence, 'there remains the possibility that no luggage was transferred from Air Malta 180 to Pan Am 103 and that a piece of luggage was simply introduced at Coding Station 206.'

The teletype also disclosed that, on a guided tour of the baggage area in September 1989, Detective Inspector Watson McAteer and FBI Special Agent Lawrence G. Whitaker had actually seen this happen. They had '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'. From this they concluded that a rogue suitcase could have been 'sent to Pan Am 103 either before or after the unloading of Air Malta 180'.

3. The entire printout is a fabrication, designed to be consistent with the surviving paper records and show a bag that appeared to come from KM180 going on to PA103A.

The fourth possibility, that the data were covertly retained (in spite of the investigators finding nothing on 23rd January) and subsequently doctored to add the mystery tray before persuading/threatening/bribing Mrs. Erac to "find" the printout in her locker, seems very far-fetched compared to these three scenarios.

The problem, I suppose, is that neither of my first two suggestions satisfies the feeling of incredulity over the entire "no we lost all the relevant information relating to this huge terrorist incident" followed by "oh, fancy that, here it is after all" story.

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Old 14th October 2009, 04:05 AM   #69
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
I think I disagree here (referring to the worksheets being unreliable). All it showed was station 206 dealt with KM180's baggage, some amount of it, at the same time the printout showed 8849 coded there. Is the airplane origin listed unreliable, or did they get their station number wrong? Or is he just referring to how it's not reliable to assume ONLY KM180 stuff was going on, or the 1310/1316 debate? Nitpicking, IMO. This one paper is fine.

Paul Foot's account doesn't think much of the accuracy of these worksheets in general.

Originally Posted by Paul Foot
It depended on two pieces of paper. The first was a worksheet of the operator who coded the baggage from the Malta flight into the computerised baggage system at Frankfurt. This man’s name was Koca. He was crucial to the prosecution case, and was listed as a prosecution witness, but was not called to give evidence. No explanation for Koca’s mysterious absence from the witness box was offered by the prosecution.

Koca’s worksheet showed that he started coding the bags from the Malta flight at 13.04 on the afternoon of 21 December 1988. The time he finished coding the bags was, and still is, a mystery. Mr Koca’s handwriting was so vague that the finishing time could have been 13.10 or 13.16. The difference between the two turned out to be crucial since the entire supposition that a bag from Malta went on the flight to Heathrow depended on the coincidence in time between Mr Koca’s worksheet and a print-out from the computerised records at Frankfurt airport. [....]

Mr Campbell for the prosecution explained: “The printout shows that at 13.07 on 21 December 1988, tray number 8849 was coded in at a coding station with reference number S0009. The interpretation document shows that reference number S0009 means coding station 206. Each tray holds one piece of luggage. From that it may therefore be concluded that a bag from KM 180 (the Maltese flight) was transferred as an interline bag from KM 180 through the computerised baggage system to Pan Am 103A. As all the passengers recovered their luggage and none were booked for onward travel to the United States, it may be concluded that the bag was an unaccompanied bag.”

Perhaps naturally, Mr Campbell did not emphasise that his conclusion, so vital to his case, depended entirely on the coincidence in timing between the bags from Malta being coded at station 206 in between 13.04 and 13.10 or 13.16 and a bag for Pan Am 103A being coded at the same station at 13.07. [....]

There were however huge holes in the coincidence that depended upon such split-second timing. Mr Taylor for Megrahi emphasised the point that no one could say what kind of bag had gone on 103A at Frankfurt, or even whether it was a bag at all. It could have been a wine crate or a set of golf clubs. Nothing in the computer system described the bag on tray number 8849.

The only proof that it had come from Malta was the time it was encoded – 13.07. The whole proposition, said Taylor, depended “on your Lordships accepting a degree of accuracy in relation to documentation, time recording and work practices, none of which are warranted”. The whole theory depended on the exact and coincidental accuracy of the computer clock at Frankfurt airport and the watches of the coders from which they took the times they entered on their worksheets. The picture was made all the more confusing by the absence of Mr Koca – the witness who was directly involved.

Mr Taylor spent much of 12 January 2001, the second day of his four-day submissions, showing in the most meticulous detail how the timings on the coders’ worksheets could go wrong, or how the computer clock could slip out of line with the coders’ watches. Staff at Frankfurt airport in December 1988 were under great pressure to shift luggage fast, and the coders were far more interested in the destination of luggage than in where it had come from. Even the slightest discrepancy in time, he argued, could ruin the coincidence on which the prosecution relied, and could jeopardise the possibility that a bag from the Maltese flight went on to 103A.

I think Paul Foot is suggesting that the worksheets were only approximate, and simply could not support the weight of inference being put on this one. I've read elsewhere of other stray bags being noted in that printout coming in from uncertain origins (reference?). Part of his thesis seems to be that the end-time may be 13.16 because actually half a wagon or so from a completely different flight showed up at station 206 at the same time as the KM180 luggage and got coded along with it, and one of these bags happened to be tagged for PA103A.

Oh yes, and note yet another important witness somehow not being called. Maybe he would have been so vague about what he was coding and where it came from, it would have destroyed the entire house of cards.

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Old 14th October 2009, 04:18 AM   #70
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Originally Posted by Guybrush Threepwood View Post
I don't intend this to be snarky, but I can't figure out a way of saying this without it possibly sounding that way.

That post reminds me of the bible code, or the comedian's (Eddie Izzard?) joke 'A funny thing happened on the way here tonight, I saw a car with the registration FN05 QVC, what are the odds of that?'
I had that same thought, and glad you said it so succinctly since I had so much else to say. Can't cover ALL bases without busting a fuse. I think the odds are about as I say, pure statistics only. And it's only when arranged by container no. - other arrangements would reveal other oddities. I also emphasize that I can't see a reason behind or a clear clue in this, at least not one applicable to the 3-D world and that isn't pretty weird. It COULD be a clue to the reasoning behind and info set-up thing, but if so it's a pretty stupid one. But stupid is a type of real. So I dunno. Can't say. I'm ready to move on.

Quote:
You can't do statistical analysis like that on a single data point (one loading list). If you had several hundred, you could maybe identify something unique about PanAm103A's, otherwise you are looking for patterns in a big list of numbers, which you will find. Lots of them, but they mean nothing.
This is a set spread, and presuming random sampling due to uncontrolled shuffling of trays, certain statistical probabilities apply. Pure chance would only yield this result about once in 12,000 tries, I think. That's all.

Quote:
2. The printout is entirely genuine, with the history as described, but what it reveals is in fact the introduction of the bomb suitcase at Frankfurt itself, possibly at coding station 206. This is the possibility explained in The Trail of the Octopus. This is a closer examination of the October 1989 FBI teletype (shown in The Maltese Double Cross), which seems to be a report by FBI investigators who went to Frankfurt to try to clarify whether or not there was indeed a bag from Malta on PA103A.
Entirely possible. Any person doing this would have to know they were framing Libya. Unless it's a bizarre coincidence they used Maltese clothes and picked just the station and time where KM180's bags were processed. Not my leasing thought just yet, but interesting...
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Old 14th October 2009, 05:02 AM   #71
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
This is a set spread, and presuming random sampling due to uncontrolled shuffling of trays, certain statistical probabilities apply. Pure chance would only yield this result about once in 12,000 tries, I think. That's all.
That's true, but the point is it is equally true for every possible ordering of the list, if you only have one list it is a 1 in 12000 shot that you got that one, whichever one it is.
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Old 14th October 2009, 05:42 AM   #72
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
Any person doing this would have to know they were framing Libya. Unless it's a bizarre coincidence they used Maltese clothes and picked just the station and time where KM180's bags were processed. Not my leasing thought just yet, but interesting...

No. This was way too early for framing Libya. I don't think they started framing Libya until early in 1990, at the earliest.

If this is fabricated, it would be about drawing attention away from an introduction of the bag at Frankfurt (where Jibril's gang was based) to a completely different airport. If so, I would speculate that they picked KM180 precisely because of the clothes, to make the whole scenario seem to hang together.

At this point, we have evidence that Jibril's involvement was to be down-played, but no evidence of an alternative Libya hypothesis being promoted.

(I still favour the view that the printout isn't fabricated, though.)

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Old 14th October 2009, 01:04 PM   #73
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
Very quickly:URL is to a cache server/proxy which refuses my connection,could you please find different location or original loaction?

Anyway is there any place with raw(UNALTERED) images of evidece and data?
Rolfe is right,if I don't see it I just cook from water.(Don't know how this turn of pharse is international)

Anyway I may be answer rest of post,but I am now trying to do too many things in 24hour long day already without this. (Unfortunately I suspect that we all are sort of speculating and any results will be dependent upon poster)
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Old 14th October 2009, 02:16 PM   #74
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Try this page. The image is smaller, but you'll get it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1145884.stm

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Old 14th October 2009, 03:52 PM   #75
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
No. This was way too early for framing Libya. I don't think they started framing Libya until early in 1990, at the earliest.

If this is fabricated, it would be about drawing attention away from an introduction of the bag at Frankfurt (where Jibril's gang was based) to a completely different airport. If so, I would speculate that they picked KM180 precisely because of the clothes, to make the whole scenario seem to hang together.

At this point, we have evidence that Jibril's involvement was to be down-played, but no evidence of an alternative Libya hypothesis being promoted.

(I still favour the view that the printout isn't fabricated, though.)

Rolfe.
On the timing, there was no final and complete decision even now to blame Libya. Officially, yes, but the old line(s) of inquiry still resides in many peoples' minds. Likewise, before the shift there may have been the future case in some minds but not others. There seems to be a period of interweave in 1989, fading into 1990 with no movement allowed on the one track that fades as the action on the other solidifies. I believe the notio to bame Libya was there to some degree from the beginning. The Naltese clothes and the bag transfer ARE both early signs pointing vaguely to Libya, but not necc. part of that plan.

It does minimize attention on Frankfurt, by showing all we need to know is this slender thread running back to the Med so all they did was unwittingly pass the evil along. The printout shows all you need - from KM180 to 206, to store HS33, to gate 44, to 103A, and gone - no closer examination needed.

I could well accept that the printout is genuine, just delayed, even though I find that 206 connection just as suspicious as SCOTBOM found it useful. But either way, I think at the least this genuine copy was held at bay on purpose, along with the blanked system (within a few days of the crash I'd guess) and disappeared loading papers. Maybe they (CIA?) just wanted to make sure all was kosher before letting anyone else see what wen onto PA103A. Except the loading papers didn't resurface AFAIK. If it wasn't okay, they'd fix it, and if it was okay and didn't show any heroin suitcases, Jibril-conneting flights, or what have you, they'd release it as is, with a sigh of relief that no complex faking was necc. , to reveal what it does - a bag from station 206.

You're icon's getting spookier all the time, BTW. More mysterious and noir, which seems to fit the terrain here.
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Old 14th October 2009, 04:35 PM   #76
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There's a thread in Community doing Hallowe'en transformations on people's avatars. I have been peculiarly blessed.

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Old 14th October 2009, 04:56 PM   #77
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
But either way, I think at the least this genuine copy was held at bay on purpose, along with the blanked system (within a few days of the crash I'd guess) and disappeared loading papers. Maybe they (CIA?) just wanted to make sure all was kosher before letting anyone else see what wen onto PA103A. Except the loading papers didn't resurface AFAIK. If it wasn't okay, they'd fix it, and if it was okay and didn't show any heroin suitcases, Jibril-conneting flights, or what have you, they'd release it as is, with a sigh of relief that no complex faking was necc. , to reveal what it does - a bag from station 206.

If that was really done at that stage of the enquiry (that is, within the first four weeks), it almost inevitably implies some degree of LIHOP going on.

This whole thing really does have the air of a security services sting (or similar) getting completely f-ed up and going horribly and tragically wrong. How much of it is Khreesat, believed to be a Jordanian spy (thus aligned with the CIA) and so released from custody, but actually making live bombs which kill a German policeman - and 270 people at Lockerbie? How much of it is Jafaar and the drug smuggling, which may have been DEA sanctioned? How much of it was related to the CIA officers on the plane, maybe?

I don't necessarily mean LIHOP as in "we know it's going to happen and we're OK with that", but somewhere between "we've a pretty good idea something is going to happen and we can't stop it because it would expose our sources and operatives" and "PA103 is the target but we're not going to cancel the flight."

I suspect this examination of the evidence is leading that way in the end, but if the baggage records at Frankfurt were really spirited away in advance of the legitimate investigators, I can't see an innocent explanation for that.

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Old 15th October 2009, 12:55 AM   #78
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
If that was really done at that stage of the enquiry (that is, within the first four weeks), it almost inevitably implies some degree of LIHOP going on.
Not necessarily. There are more routine non-explosive secrets that would normally move in an out of records unnoticed, but when police are likely to come looking, and you really don't want that info seen, you'd make sure it disappeared and laid low in some "locker" until things cleared up and blew over.

Quote:
This whole thing really does have the air of a security services sting (or similar) getting completely f-ed up and going horribly and tragically wrong. How much of it is Khreesat, believed to be a Jordanian spy (thus aligned with the CIA) and so released from custody, but actually making live bombs which kill a German policeman - and 270 people at Lockerbie? How much of it is Jafaar and the drug smuggling, which may have been DEA sanctioned? How much of it was related to the CIA officers on the plane, maybe?
I get the same vibe, but I haven't given much close thought/study to what positively DID happen there, as opposed to what didn't. So many variable, so many real leads and misdirecting hoaxes tangled together, such grave accusations and tinfoil that starts growing if you try and figure it out...

Quote:
I don't necessarily mean LIHOP as in "we know it's going to happen and we're OK with that", but somewhere between "we've a pretty good idea something is going to happen and we can't stop it because it would expose our sources and operatives" and "PA103 is the target but we're not going to cancel the flight."

I suspect this examination of the evidence is leading that way in the end, but if the baggage records at Frankfurt were really spirited away in advance of the legitimate investigators, I can't see an innocent explanation for that.

Rolfe.
Innocent being a relative word, totally agreed. This is some shade of shady. Thanks for the tips here!
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Old 15th October 2009, 04:39 AM   #79
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So I put all this stuff together in a big blog post:
http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/1...t-records.html
It's still a little rough, I'm sure, and I haven't got all my sources and links lined up yet but I just needed to get it up.

Along the way I double-checked the Court's opinion and found suspiciously little on any info from PanAm e: Frankfurt. Referring to the court's "production number" evidence system, I called this section "production null"

Quote:
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. According to Michael Jones, a 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. 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.
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Old 15th October 2009, 04:45 AM   #80
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Do you really think the first reaction of airport authorities and managers, faced with a completely unexpected air disaster to a plane which hadn't even taken off from their airport, would be to conceal a heap of baggage loading records, just in case?

I think it's quite hard to postulate even in the situation where some spooks and law enforcement people are more than half-expecting an incident and hope to cover it up if it happens. It's surely kind of hard to swan into a major airport and make the people there co-operate with your cover-up without being exposed by someone.

That's the trouble with this affair, it's just crawling with weird anomalies, but they aren't necessarily easy to explain either innocently or as some sort of cover-up. You expect some anomalies in any incident like this, that in the end simply have to be written off as "stuff happens", but the sheer number fouling up this case is extremely peculiar.

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