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

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Old 10th June 2010, 06:37 AM   #321
Rolfe
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I imagine that figures. The "make up about Gadaffi" expert was in charge from day 1. I wonder how long it took before it occurred to someone (Bush, probably) that it would be real handy if Gadaffi took the flak for this as well?

I read a bit more of Paul Foot last night, and he goes into a lot of detail about Giaka. What I found surprising is that he's extremely clear that Giaka said nothing at all about Lockerbie to the CIA until July 1991, despite being asked about it numerous times. Only then, when he was being threatened with termination as a source, and loss of his income (stuff about a pregnant wife and needing financial security), did he suddenly start coming out with all sorts of guff, such as seeing Fhimah at the airport with a Samsonite suitcase.

Remember, the Scottish cops started pressurising Tony to identify Megrahi as the mystery shopper in February 1991, six months before that. Giaka may well have been the original source of the basic information that Megrahi was JSO (he also thought Fhimah was, and that he kept explosives in his desk drawer at work!), but he wasn't the one who made the Lockerbie connection. On the contrary, it was after the investigators had decided Megrahi was the suspect that they started pressurising Giaka for more evidence to implicate him.

Foot makes nothing of Megrahi's presence at the airport that morning, and doesn't seem to see it as anything particularly noteworthy. It is striking though. Clothes from Malta, unidentified bag from Malta, and JSO operative in exactly the right place at the right time.

We all know the reasons Megrahi didn't actually put the bag on that plane (quite apart from all the evidence that someone did put it on at Heathrow).
  • He had no luggage that morning
  • He didn't go airside
  • He had no airside accomplice
  • The baggage records for the flight were complete and showed no unaccompanied luggage
  • The extent of the conspiracy required to fabricate these records and conceal an unaccompanied bag is implausible at best
  • Any such bag would have been x-rayed by Maier, who was on the lookout for radios of any description
  • Any such plot would have seen the plane explode much later (barring a "wrong plane" misrouting)
  • If a misrouting did occur, it just happened to time the explosion for the after-takeoff window on PA103 to fit neatly with a Khreesat bomb
So that leaves big fat coincidence, or a frame-up.

Huh. Right now I'm doubting the Erac printout, the Horton fragment, the Toshiba circuit boards, and moving on to the bloody Maltese clothes.

Rolfe.
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Old 14th June 2010, 05:51 AM   #322
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I'm just bumping this because we're actively discussing the Heathrow evidence, and it seems to me the Bedford suitcase at Heathrow and the Erac printout at Frankfurt are the yin and the yang of the competing theories.

Bedford described a "brown Samsonite" suitcase appearing in mysterious circumstances in AVE4041, in pretty much the position of the eventual explosion, and he provided that evidence before the conclusion that the bomb was contained in a brown Samsonite suitcase was made public, possibly before it was made at all.

Bogomira's printout appears to show a mysterious item of luggage entering the system at a point suggesting it had come off KM180, and this evidence seems to have appeared before the investigation knew that Megrahi (or even someone travelling on a "coded passport") was present at the check-in when KM180 was boarding.

Both of these can't be the bomb bag. One of these has to be a colossal coincidence. Unless one of them was a deliberate frame. If so, I know which one I'd put money on as being the likely frame.

Rolfe.
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Old 20th June 2010, 03:56 PM   #323
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I've been reading the written judgement from the first appeal, and it's very interesting. It's clear that (as Kochler says) the defence made a monumental error in not appealling on the grounds that the verdict was not one which a reasonable jury properly directed could come to. Instead the grounds were all about how the court didn't give proper consideration to this, that and the other. Most of the time, the appeal court just looks at the original judgement and says, yes, they really did give this due consideration. Therefore there was no error in law. The fact that after due consideration they came to a bizarre conclusion doesn't count - unless you appeal on that ground! Nevertheless the appeal court does go into all the juicy bits in a lot of detail, and the first thing they cover is the Erac printout. I think I better understand the arguments now.

All the arguments about the time on the clocks were of course designed to show that something coded at station 207 at 13.07 might have come from a different flight. An interesting point made by the prosecution that I hadn't appreciated before was that several other suitcases belonging to known passengers had been traced through the system in the same way, and everything checked. The example given was two passengers interlining from Vienna, with five bags between them. Five bags coded at two different coding stations at times when these stations were recorded as dealing with the Vienna flight duly appear on the Erac printout.

This tells us firstly that the court definitely had the coding station records from a number, if not all, of the coding stations. It was possible to tell from these records which flight was being unloaded at each station when each of the bags on the Erac printout was coded. I think it's quite likely this was checked up on for all the other 120 bags on the printout, and all the other incoming flights involved did have a passenger booked for PA103A.

Suggestions that the time was unreliable and so tray B8849 might have come from another flight aren't very robust. This would rely either on Koca's watch being very far off compared to the computer clock, or on the possible 13.16 reading of the end time for the KM180 coding meaning that other baggage had come in at the same time. As far as a very inaccurate watch is concerned, this isn't likely because bags were routinely traced through the system in exactly this way if they went missing, and if somebody was routinely getting the times very wrong, this would be spotted. And if his watch just went doolally that particular day - one more crazy coincidence we don't need. Also, as regards the 13.16 end time, there's little doubt that another flight being involved in that time period would have been recorded. More importantly, if the time was so far out that the bag came from either the flight before or the flight after, it was still an unaccompanied bag as far as I can see. It just didn't come from Malta. If we don't think this was the bomb bag, then it's still weird.

More is explained about the single-bag coding seen in September 1989, at station 206. At that time, the station was unmanned. Everyone seems to have accepted that this wouldn't have happened at 13:07 on 21st December 1988, because the station was in use. You'd have to postulate the clock discrepancy as well in order to have the station unmanned at the time. This point probably covers all the situations where a single bag might have been coded into the system, whether a "rush tag" item or something that's been pulled out as misrouted.

The point was also quite well made that the defence had not taken any opportunity to ask either of the coders involved with KM180 that day, whether they had in fact coded anything else during the same time, maybe brought to the station by colleague. They then went on to speculate that precisely that might have happened. If they really thought that was likely, why not ask?

None of that actually leaves me totally convinced that an orphan bag couldn't have found its way to that coding station at that moment, either innocently or with malice (such as maybe drug smuggling). But if it did, it still leaves us with this huge coincidence. 13:07 at station 207 means KM180, which left Luqa that morning at the same time as LN147, where "Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad" was checking in. So that just happens to be where this unidentified orphan bag was coded, without any record, to point right at Megrahi. Uh-huh.

It sticks out like a sort thumb. It's right there smack in the middle of the KM180 coding period. It points straight to Luqa, between 8.15 and 9.15.

I'm not buying it.

There's lots more in the appeal judgement, about the records at Luqa and the Bedford evidence. I'm still reading.

Rolfe.
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Old 21st June 2010, 03:57 PM   #324
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Very interesting. Obviously that's stuff I haven't read myself, but your assessment sounds good. The "single bag" things doesn't ring any bells. Glad you're finding the time discrepancy is not as big a deal as it was made, as I suspected that. The paper really does say, not 100% but most likely, that B8849 was from KM180, doesn't it? And it's just too nice a fit with frameable Megrahi for comfort. I'll have to take a look at these finer points.

You know, you've written a lot of brilliant stuff at this forum and I feel bad for not mentioning or citing you more at my blog. Would you mind if I used some of your posts/passages to help explain some points there?
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Old 21st June 2010, 04:23 PM   #325
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Oh, I don't mind one way of the other. I've relied heavily on insights made by others, anyway. Especially as regards that bloody photo, which at one point I thought torpedoed the idea of a September insertion, then I realised it doesn't.

I just got to the end of the bit about Frankfurt, and it's a bit like reading The Dark Tower. You're in full flow, and then it just stops. There was another unaccompanied bag on that printout, and there might have been more unaccompanied bags on the flight altogether, and the reason why they fixed on the one from Luqa as being the bomb bag rather than any of the others is just left hanging. (Gauci, anyone? If the guy who bought the clothes was right there, then it figures, OK?)

I seriously recomend reading that judgement. Take a little time over it. There's a lot of valuable detail. It would have been too much, early in the study of the incident, but we're familiar enough with the material now to cope with it.

Rolfe.
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Old 21st June 2010, 04:54 PM   #326
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Another point. I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that it was never entirely clear just when the significance of "Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad" was realised by the investigation. Have you any idea where that might be? It was a throwaway line, but I think it's rather crucial. Do you think there might be anything about it in the full transcript?

Of course, you realise that if the Erac printout was tampered with, this has to implicate more conspirators. Like, some people in the BKA. As I noted earlier, Frankfurt was in the US zone of Germany post 1945, and I certainly wouldn't exclude some co-operation being on the cards.

I have two basic ideas of how it could have been done. First, either the BKA got all the baggage records at the beginning but spirited them away, then when they realised they needed to produce a manipulated loading list for PA103A, they co-opted Erac and Berg to tell this slightly surreal story about the retained printout. Second, the surreal story is perfectly true (if highly convenient, they could never have fingered KM180 without it), but the incriminating line was added to the printout later.

You know, I far prefer the former version. It's far more parsimonious. It makes sense of the vanishing records, and it eliminates Bogomira's incredibly serendipitous sentimental impulse, in preserving the one single piece of evidence that actually pointed to Megrahi himself.

I just don't know how they could have secured all these records, and then managed to preserve a facade that they didn't. Wouldn't somebody in the airport have said, but we gave you that stuff? And how did they manage to secure Bogomira's and Berg's connivance, even to perjury? Bogomira does come over very genuine, I have to say. This is getting close to accusing Frankfurt airport to be as subverted by the BKA as we're scoffing at the Official Story for suggesting Luqa airport was subverted by the JSO.

On the other hand, they had Megrahi at Luqa that morning, in exactly the right place. That seems quite enough of a happy coincidence for me, without going on to believe that Bogomira just happened to preserve the exact tiny piece of evidence that was crucial to joining up these dots. If all the computer records were really gone, and the idea was to incriminate Megrahi, they were stuck, right?

Or maybe not. I've been mulling over the report from Borg that the BKA asked about KM180 in February 1989. We thought that must have been pormpted by them having spotted tray B8849, and following this up. Which would suggest the line in the printout was genuine.

But what about if this was entirely the other way around? Let's suppose Cannistraro has influence in the BKA at Frankfurt. Is that so unlikely? He knows Megrahi was at Luqa that morning. He wants to know how he can be tied into the bombing. So he asks the Frankfurt BKA to ask Luqa about their records, thinking initially that they'll be able to show the Luqa setup was leaky enough that a bag might well have gone on. But these records are watertight. Damn. So they need something at Frankfurt to show a bag came off that flight. And the only way to do that was to have a copy of the computer loading record.

But February? This wasn't supposed to be thought about until March at the beginning. And I don't like the number of people at Frankfurt who either had to be suborned or might have noticed something weird was going on.

This is a bit scary actually, I'm going to bed.

Rolfe.
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Old 22nd June 2010, 08:38 AM   #327
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I just read the appeal judgement as it dealt with the Luqa infiltration theory. I wondered if there was anything more concrete, but no. No evidence at all to support a Luqa loading, apart from Mr. Borg saying he couldn't say it was completely impossible. Well, what was the man supposed to say, under the circumstances? Declaring that something like that is categorically impossible, after 12 years, is a pretty big stretch. And of course no mention at all of the enormous effort the investigators put into trying to find some evidence of Luqa shenanigans, to absolutely no effect.

All we get is this....

Quote:
Those records [the Erac printout] demonstrated the carriage of an unaccompanied bag from Malta on flight KM180. The evidence of Mr Borg did not rule out the possibility of that happening. It was to be remembered that the Crown case was that the security measures at Luqa had been deliberately circumvented by a criminal act.

So then I was hoping for some more detail about this alleged criminal act, and what the reasons were for suggesting it had taken place - since it's something so vital, that we've got to remember. No luck.

Quote:
What the trial court can be seen to have undertaken was the task of deciding what weight to attach to any particular piece of evidence or body of evidence which it accepted, which was precisely its function as a trial court. Once it had done that, it was open to it to decide that the primary suitcase began its journey on flight KM180 at Luqa, notwithstanding the difficulty of infiltration there and the absence of any evidence about how this was achieved, because of the view it formed about the strength of the inference which it drew from the documents and other evidence relating to Frankfurt airport, and the other circumstances which it regarded as criminative and which pointed to infiltration at Luqa.

So the Erac printout trumps the absence of any Luqa evidence plus the presence of some quite suggestive Heathrow evidence, because - well, Gauci and the clothes and the MST-13.

Round and round and round she goes; where she stops, nobody knows.

Could they possibly have got this conviction without Bogomira's sentimental keepsake? I don't think so. The sheer chance involved in the survival of all the key bits of evidence here is mindboggling. All the computer records destroyed, but Bogomira happens to save that printout. Clothes are bought in a small boutique, and the shopkeeper actually remembers the sale, many months later. Although the clothes are severely damaged, a label reading "Made in Malta" is preserved. Just exactly the part of the front page of the radio manual was preserved, legible, to identify it as a model with a very large consignment supplied to Libya - even though it was only an inch or so from exploding Semtex that took down an airliner. Just exactly the part of a circuit board was preserved, to identify it as a model predominantly supplied to Libya - even though ditto.

The other parts could just be down to very good detective work, but the circumstances of that computer record surviving are boggling my mind, no matter how genuine Bogomira appears.

Rolfe.
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Old 22nd June 2010, 09:30 AM   #328
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There seems to be a another recurring theme here. Is it possible that indeed Bogomire retained a printout of the baggage filtering through Frankfurt, and giving scant notice to all the details on the printout, it was later doctored by the BKA with tray B8849 inserted?

So, perhaps she did keep a copy of a printout that day, but simply wouldn't remember every line of detail on the printout. If the 'locker' story is in itself true, it does suggest it was as much a grisly memento as a tribute to those who died. Either way, not much consideration was given to it's value or importance. However, her testimony would enable enough information to confirm the provenance of the printout itself thus allowing the court to then pinpoint 8849 as the probable unaccompanied bag and source?

Perhaps Mrs Horton did indeed find a page of a 'Toshiba' manual, but simply wouldn't remember every detail, being so long after the event, and once again, giving scant attention to every scrap that she picked up. However, her evidence would be enough to confirm the provenance of the page itself and by the inference made by this find and the prosecutions assertion, would also determine the precise model of the radio used?

Perhaps, if indeed clothing from Gauci's shop was found amid the wreckage of 103, and was determined, due to the scorching, it was close if not part of the bomb device, perhaps he does remember selling some items to someone. His testimony would help reinforce the theory of a Malta introduction and carriage on KM180, although on this occasion as he appeared predisposed to making wild assertions regarding a possible buyer from the first instance, some financial inducement and recompense would help embellish any such sale so as the buyer themselves was (as best Gauci could) identified?

Memory is not something to be solely dependent upon, even more so when it's 12 years after the event itself. However, if the memory can possibly confirm the general circumstances supporting the evidence 'found', then the finer details can, and could be expected to be, much more vague, perhaps even non-existent, but enough to allow the prosecution and court to infer a conclusion which is not supported by the actual witness?
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Old 23rd June 2010, 06:49 AM   #329
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
There seems to be a another recurring theme here. Is it possible that indeed Bogomire retained a printout of the baggage filtering through Frankfurt, and giving scant notice to all the details on the printout, it was later doctored by the BKA with tray B8849 inserted?

So, perhaps she did keep a copy of a printout that day, but simply wouldn't remember every line of detail on the printout. If the 'locker' story is in itself true, it does suggest it was as much a grisly memento as a tribute to those who died. Either way, not much consideration was given to it's value or importance. However, her testimony would enable enough information to confirm the provenance of the printout itself thus allowing the court to then pinpoint 8849 as the probable unaccompanied bag and source?

Well, maybe. That's been one of my hypotheses. She doesn't seem to have retained a copy, and in court she had to stop and put her glasses on before she recognised the item produced. There's no doubt it would have been possible to have re-produced the printout with an alteration - perhaps simply changing the coding station for a bag that really did come through at that time so that it seemed to come from station 206, or adding or substituting an entire line - with the right resouces. The layout, the paper, the type-face and so on would have to be exact.

The ease of doing this depends on not having the rest of the computer records, which I imagine would have made it possible to trace the actual tray around, see what it carried before and after the mystery bag and so on. The coding stations didn't make a note even of the numbers of bags coded for each flight, never mind the numbers of the trays used. The interline writers recorded even less detail. So if all you have is the coders' worksheets and the interline writers' records, you could make the single printout show anything you damn well please. Since it was accepted that not all bags went through the system, and the passenger manifest was incomplete and unreliable, then the end result doesn't even need to tally exactly with a known number of passengers from known check-in points with a known number of items of luggage.

Apart from the technical challenge, which probably wasn't great, the main problem would probably be reconciling the finding of a suspicious entry in August, with the presumed absence of one in February, when the printout was surely examined by someone, surely....

I'm still not entirely buying this, though.

Suppose Megrahi had actually done the deed. In that case, his presence at Luqa is not a coincidence, and the presence of tray B8849 is not a coincidence. What is a huge stonking coincidence is that Bogomira saved the printout, when all the records were wiped. The one place in the entire system where KM180 could be linked to PA103A. "I'd have got away with it too, if only it hadn't been for that darn woman!"

Suppose Megrahi didn't do it. Now, if this is all on the level, we actually have three stonking coincidences. The fact that he was at Luqa when KM180 departed, the fact that a stray item of luggage somehow misrouted in the Frankfurt system seemed to suggest something came off KM180, and the fact that Bogomira saved the printout.

We have a gazillion other reasons for thinking Megrahi didn't do it. So what is going on here? If we postulate that Bogomira saved the printout as described, but it originally showed nothing relating to KM180, we get rid of the second coincidence, but not the third.

The investigators see Megrahi at Luqa, coded passport and all, right when the feeder flight from the island where the clothes originated departed to connect to PA103. If there had been evidence of an unaccompanied bag at Luqa, or even if the Luqa system had been substandard, they could probably have pinned it on him with that alone (plus Gauci's identification), even though the necessary Frankfurt records had (allegedly) gone to the great bit-bucket in the sky. But hell's teeth, in February we get our hands on the Luqa records, and they're bomb-proof! Whoda thunkit, a wee backwater like that!

So what now? The Frankfurt records are either destroyed, or have been said to be destroyed. There are no records of interline bags at Heathrow due to the plane-to-plane transfer, so that's past praying for. The one bit of evidence we need, the Frankfurt computer record showing an item entering the system from the Luqa coding station and heading for the PA103A gate, is gone!

No, isn't it miraculous, Bogomira Erac just happened to save a copy of exactly the little bit we need, and handed it in to the police in January!

Er, what?

Rolfe.
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Old 23rd June 2010, 02:58 PM   #330
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
Another point. I'm fairly sure I read somewhere that it was never entirely clear just when the significance of "Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad" was realised by the investigation. Have you any idea where that might be? It was a throwaway line, but I think it's rather crucial. Do you think there might be anything about it in the full transcript?
I looked into that some. On days 29, 30, and some of the later days (I'm going off compiled docs about ten days each0 mention the Abdusamad passport. Mostly just when and where it was used, over and over. I checked through day 43 and didn't see anything about how they first learned of the alias or that meant Megrahi.

Some facts may pop up, but I fear we'll be left guessing for now. My guess, no surprise, is they realized it early. Again, I suspect Giaka gave an update on Megrahi's 20-21 DECEMBER 20-21 visit soon after it happened. The lucky break is this was one of only two or three uses of that alias.

At this point, it's CIA-held intelligence, and of limited value unless they gather more to verify/compare/expand the info. So as soon as the they decide to look closer - who knows just when - they would see airport records showing an Abdusamad where Giaka had said Megrahi should be. (I doubt Giaka himself knew the alias).

They would check the hotels, etc. and discover "oh my, he was under an alias the day of the bombing... popped in and out just long enough to have done it..." Building block number 2 (after the clothes, retroactively made block 1) is then in place as soon as Vince is ready to propose his method for backing off on the PFLP-GC. Having thought about it, I agree with you, Rolfe, that this had to be a pivotal realization. I think it explains more than anything else why such lengths were gone to to build up a case against this guy in particular.

On the timeline, all I could say is by the middle of summer, at the latest, I think it was probably put together in skeleton form. The radio ID came in arounfd then as well, a tentative clue for the early stage, and the printout after that (if BKA records backdated), followed by a pause for the rank and file to catch up before the rrest fell into place: timer fragment ID, Gauci's Megrahi ID, Fhimah's diary, and Giaka's climactic final chapter.

There are a lot of details about that last paragraph I'm glossing over. Sorry, just a broad sweep.
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Old 23rd June 2010, 03:45 PM   #331
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Think about it this way. It's the winter solstice. The midnight of the year. Things are happening all over Europe. People are travelling on planes, and trains, and buses; moving in and out of stations and airports. Millions and millions of people. Going to work, going on holiday, visiting, shopping. Preparing for Christmas.

Two things happen that day that we know about. About nine o'clock in the morning, on an island in the Mediterranean, a man is checking in for his flight home to Tripoli after an overnight stay. He happens to be a fairly senior intelligence officer, and he's using a passport in a false name that was issued to him a couple of years previously and that he's used several times since.

Eleven hours later, far to the north and close to the very edge of the continent, a transatlantic airliner blows apart six miles above a small town.

The entire issue occupying all these millions of words, thousands of hours of discussion; books, documentaries, articles, blogs, speculation, theories, counter-theories, accusations, denials, trial and error, is - are these two events directly connected?

There's only one absolutely incontrovertible fact that connects them. Right next to the man checking in for his flight to Tripoli, other people were checking in for a different flight, which happened to be going to Germany. It would have been possible, if you'd wanted to, to have got on that flight and, by changing planes twice (including a three-hour layover), eventually get on the plane that blew apart.

Nobody did of course. Nobody would have wanted to. If you'd been heading for the destination of the doomed airliner, you could have got there much more simply by skipping the layover and the double change, and simply flying directly from Germany to the USA. But it was possible.

And that's just about all we know for sure.

Is that a compelling connection, or even a suggestive one? Think about all those millions of travellers, milling around Europe, in the airports and the stations and the roads. Think about the number of airline flights departing from all the airports all over Europe - and North Africa. How many of these might have allowed you to change a time or two, maybe with a lunchtime stopover, and get on that unluckiest of flights? Many? Most? Maybe almost every airport on the continent could have booked you on a flight that would have connected to Pan Am 103 out of Heathrow on 21st December 1988.

There's something else we know, though maybe it's not absolutely quite so sure. Scattered on the winter grass in Scotland, were scraps of cloth, that came from the same island in the Mediterranean. Maybe they even came from a shop just three miles from that airport, where the intelligence officer was using his coded passport.

I say maybe not quite so sure, because sometimes it's wise not to be too sure about anything in this case, no matter how incontrovertible it looks.

Is that convincing? Not on the face of it. The clothes were bought (if bought they were, nothing in this case can be relied on to be exactly as it seems) at least two weeks earlier. Does that prove they travelled on that flight to Germany, the one nobody travelled on to die at Lockerbie? Not really. Does it prove the man going to Tripoli smuggled the suitcase that contained the clothes that contained the radio that contained the bomb, on the first stage of its lethal journey.

No, not really. Not at all, actually.

So what would the evidence look like that would join those dots, so many hundreds of miles apart?

You could show the suitcase, or the clothes, or the radio, or even the bomb, were originally the property of the man who was going to Tripoli. But let's not go there, please, because that way lies suggestion, and prompting, and coaching a witness, and blatant bribery with life-changing sums of money.

Or maybe you could show that even though there was no passenger that day from that sleepy island to the Big Apple, there was a suitcase, prepared and labelled, to make its own way through the labyrinths of three separate airports and their security systems, so as to fetch up in baggage container AVE4041, nestled just inside the skin of the airliner Maid of the Seas, in absolutely the worst place possible for the stresses and strains on the airframe.

You could try.

You could try at Heathrow itself, but you'd fail. The luggage that came that route was whisked from one plane to the other in a few minutes, without anyone even doing an accurate count, never mind noting where any of it had come from.

You could try at Luqa, where you imagine the lethal journey might have started. You could try, but again you'd fail. Not because the luggage wasn't counted, but because it was. Three times. And sniffed and probed and logged and reconciled. No discrepancies. Fifty-five items checked in, and fifty-five items every time. None of the passengers with anything to hide, nobody's luggage missing, everybody's bags right there to be picked up exactly as advertised.

Well, what about the intermediate connection, at Frankfurt? There was a whole three hours to spare there. Plenty of time and opportunity for a record to have been made. And there should have been records.

And this is where we came in. No records. All destroyed. In spite of the close Frankfurt connection with the doomed flight, and the terror alert in force at the time, nobody preserved the records. No way at all to connect these dots using evidence from Frankfurt I'm afraid.



Then, fast forward eight months, and the story changes. By pure chance, just exactly that tiny segment of the lost computer records necessary to show an item of luggage apparently coming off KM180 has appeared. Well, it appeared seven months ago actually but we didn't think it was important. And actually, we did have some of the paper records as well. Just enough to be able to decode the computer record that appeared, but still missing the other bits that might have helped build up a fuller picture of baggage movements in the airport, and maybe cast doubt on our neat little discovery. Just enough and no more to provide that dot-joining we wanted.

And we hear about Bogomira, and her morbid curiosity, and her souvenir.

This is the one single piece of evidence that demonstrates a direct connection between Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and the explosion over Lockerbie. And it has a provenance Agatha Christie would blush to invent.

What are we supposed to think?

Rolfe.
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Old 23rd June 2010, 04:07 PM   #332
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
My guess, no surprise, is they realized it early. Again, I suspect Giaka gave an update on Megrahi's 20-21 DECEMBER 20-21 visit soon after it happened. The lucky break is this was one of only two or three uses of that alias.

At this point, it's CIA-held intelligence, and of limited value unless they gather more to verify/compare/expand the info. So as soon as the they decide to look closer - who knows just when - they would see airport records showing an Abdusamad where Giaka had said Megrahi should be. (I doubt Giaka himself knew the alias).

Yes, I think so too. If Giaka was telling tales about Megrahi in early December, there's no reason to think he wouldn't have told them about the visit to Malta on the 20th too. He would get his knowledge from observation - how would he know what passport was being presented?

Maybe they didn't immediately figure it out exactly because the name didn't pop up on passenger lists, but the CIA isn't stupid, how long would it take them?

I think I recall reading that it was never made clear exactly when the investigation realised that Megrahi was there at the inception point of KM180, or that he was Abdusamad. Or how they found out.

I'd dearly love to know. Because either we have the most colossal coincidence of all time, suggesting Cannistraro may have been bribing his patron saint as well as Gauci, or there's something very fishy indeed about that printout.

Rolfe.
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Old 25th June 2010, 07:58 AM   #333
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
I just finally had an important insight I wish one of us all had already thought of. First, a graphic that helps visualize the situation - useful for anyone wanting to get involved but too confused. I hope this doesn't come through tooo huge:



Number of bags can't be seen not because they didn't count it at the plane. They wouldn't. Wagons to coding stations - standard procedured meant a certain time = a certain flight's luggage. So the full computer tape should have so many items coded then = number of bags from flight.

If all records available like normal, this could be established - only so many wagons could be needed for 55 or 56 bags from KM180. Just one maybe? So you check how many stations took that luggage and at what times was it coded? Items were coded at station x between, lessee, paper says 1304-1310. The time difference was a real issue it seems, known and app. corrected for. Checking the computer system for S0009, 1303-1309 frame. Ah, 55 items. A seconds counter might really help here, perhaps that was optional data. plus distinct work pauses between coding flight batches. Anyway...

But the full data set is needed to pull it up under different headings. According to Bogomira's printout, exactly one item was coded there at that time. And of course that's because this is just a snapshot, only those items destined for PA103A and routed to gate 44, or alleged items.

This is a very old quote from Caustic Logic, which I didn't really pick up on at the time. I'm just slow on the uptake, but it's taken me till now to process it to this stage.

There seem to be a number of stages of documentation of baggage travelling through the airport.
  • Unloading records from the incoming flight (KM180 in this case)
  • Interline writers' records (Koscha in this case)
  • Coding station records (Koca in this case)
  • Computer records of each tray, where and when it came in and where and when it was spat out
  • Loading records for the outgoing flight (PA103A in this case)
Different things seem to have happened to the different categories. We know the computer records all vanished when they were routinely over-written a week or so later, without any copy being made by or for the investigators, and the routine printouts from the teletype machines also vanished, and there were no routine backups kept either.

We also know that some of the paper records were unaccountably missing. This is the relevant transcript from The Maltese Double Cross.

Quote:
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.

Mr. Phipps is referring to the first item on the above list, and Mr. Jones to the last. Both missing, and never subsequently recovered. We don't know whether the equivalent documents were missing for every flight that day, or just these flights, or even whether other days that week had the records present as expected, but the specific ones required were missing.

As CL so perceptively points out, the first one would be especially important, as it would corroborate the Malta evidence about the 55 bags. (Or not as the case may be.) If a clear record of 55 bags unloaded had been present, this would have provided confirmation of the Malta records. If on the other hand there had been 56, bingo.

This has got nothing at all to do with the wiping of the computer files, it's a paper-only record. This is quite separate from the over-writing of the computer data. Same thing for the loading plan for the outgoing flight. It's not so easy to see what information that would have provided, but again it might have allowed various possibilities to be checked.

The main computer files were of course the biggie. With the whole set, it would have been possible to have traced everything coded at station 206 in the appropriate period, and checked that against known passenger movements. It would have been possible to follow tray B8849 round the system. A proper picture of what came off KM180 could have been built up. All gone.

In contrast, the interline writers' records and the coders' worksheets were uninformative. The first, just a record of the number of wagons of luggage coming from a flight. (I'm not quite clear if this was just luggage going on to other flights, or if luggage going to baggage reclaim for the passenger to pick it up would have been included. I suspect the latter, and the coders had a code for baggage reclaim.) Anyway, no way to tell if there was an extra bag. The second is worse. Just the time window during which a flight was entered into the automated system. No record of numbers of bags, and no record of where they were going (or even where they were tagged as having come from, come to that).

On their own, these two categories are useless. And yet, it turns out (in the end) that a full set is available. We can tell how many wagons came off any flight we choose that afternoon, and we can tell which station each was coded at, and when. Utterly useless for finding what we want, but somehow they're not missing.

Which is quite handy. When the Erac printout finally surfaces, it's only a tiny snapshot of the day's movements. We can't trace any of the other luggage coded into the system from KM180. We can't see what else tray B8849 was doing earlier or later that day. We can't put the orphan bag in any sort of context.

But we can spot it. On its own, the printout would have been useless. Even if KM180 was always coded every day at station 206 just after 1 o'clock, the court would never have accepted that as evidence. Koca's worksheet was essential for the printout to be any use at all. And hey. we have it! (And we have Koscha's record, equally useless in isolation.) But we still don't have any of the specific unloading records from KM180.

Where did they go, when the useless stuff that turned out to be vital after all was retained?

What is going on here?

Rolfe.
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Old 25th June 2010, 04:30 PM   #334
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Is anybody there, said the traveller...?

I thought I'd port this section of a post by Buncrama, from the heathrow thread.

Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
I spent much of this afternoon on a document viewer browsing through some old editions of the UK newpapers from Dec'88 upto June '89. Interesting stuff, but unfortunately no links to these articles. I've only quoted small pieces of the articles, but what was the most interesting aspect was that, without fail, there was not one single reference to Malta by anyone involved in the investigation - most notably by any of the German spokespeople who gave any official statements.

There is a few refernces to a possible inflitration of the bad by a Heathrow employee, to the bag coming interline via Frankfurt, originating in a 'Middle East country'.

Here's a few snippets. If you want to read the full articles of any in particular, just pm me.

Originally Posted by Financial Times (London,England)

December 29, 1988, Thursday

Bomb Caused Pan Am Crash

BYLINE: Michael Donne, Aerospace Correspondent

SECTION: SECTION I; Front Page; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 846 words

An International operation was under way last night to trace the bombers responsible for Britain's worst air disaster after the Transport Department formally confirmed that it was caused by explosives.[...]

"Much investigative work remains to be done to establish the nature of the explosive device, what it was contained in, its location in the aircraft, and the sequence of events immediately following its detonation."

The statement means police and security investigations will intensify at London's Heathrow airport and at Frankfurt to discover whether the bomb originated at Heathrow. The alternative is that the bomb was in an item of luggage on the connecting 727 jet from Frankfurt and was transferred to the jumbo in London. [...]

In Frankfurt, the state prosecutor's office said the West German investigations were continuing "but we have nothing new to report. We have no new knowledge and no hot lead."

So, eight days after 103's downfall, the German investigations are continuing. Investigations that didn't include securing the records of 103A?? Yeah, okay....

OK, that does it. They were there well before the computer data storage was over-written. One of the commentators suggested nobody "realised" the data would be over-written. Oh, come on. That was 1988. Nobody would assume computerised records were there forever. Lots of people knew it would be over-written.

Bogomira says routine printouts were made by teletype. She also says the data could be copied to disc. (I even wonder if she did that, to make the printout from her own computer.) The designer of the system says backups were kept as well. And none of this was preserved.

And the unloading records for KM180 disappeared. As did the loading plans and records for PA104A. Never to be recovered. Is this some new benchmark for German efficiency we never knew about before?

(Personally, I'd love to know what went on in Frankfurt Airport on Christmas Day.)

Rolfe.
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Old 26th June 2010, 02:51 AM   #335
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Sorry, a bit all over over here. Glad you revisited this line and appreciate it differently. A few points:

Quote:
On their own, these two categories are useless. And yet, it turns out (in the end) that a full set is available. We can tell how many wagons came off any flight we choose that afternoon, and we can tell which station each was coded at, and when. Utterly useless for finding what we want, but somehow they're not missing.

Which is quite handy. When the Erac printout finally surfaces, it's only a tiny snapshot of the day's movements. We can't trace any of the other luggage coded into the system from KM180. We can't see what else tray B8849 was doing earlier or later that day. We can't put the orphan bag in any sort of context.
Bingo on the bolded. The master key that made the peripheral papers make sense disappears. One copy that only unlocks the part we need reappears. We can't be at all sure it's the right key, but it does fit all the tumblers. At least all the ones it can (Air Malta didn't cooperate, the "suborned" bastards!).

With paper alone, you can't see anything - the data is shut down. It would seem shut down for good until someone made it clear it was for renovation only and the part we need is right here and oh wow, look what it shows. London AND Frankfurt are off the hook, more or less. Thanks BKA, for the strange delays, unexplained alleged derelictions, and then this paper.

I would like to add that on the "missing" records of KM189's unleading, it's possible these just weren't done at all. I do't know if that makes sense, but if they used the centrlal data to extrapolate counts, counting it at the plane as well might have been phased out. Just a small thought.

BUT PA103A's loading papers were missing, as stated by jones and supported by the Zeist judges being left "inferring" all luggage went aboard. So one end of paper verification WAS apparentlly disappeared. The other end doesn't exist if it ever did, and all we have is the word of that printout.

Excellent finds lately, Rolfe, in the appeal documents. I'll have to absorb that more fully sometime soon.
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Old 27th June 2010, 01:02 PM   #336
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What makes you think there were no unloading records for KM180? Denis Phipps seems to think there should have been.

The computer data disappeared - not just the write-over, but the teletype printouts (which may have been put in the bin, but how often do they empty the bins and why wasn't anyone chasing the paper recycling plant or the landfill or whatever) and the backups that were supposed to exist.

The loading records for the 727 disappeared.

Nobody mentioned the interline writers' records or the coders' worksheets - and yet when they were required, to make sense of Bogomira's printout, there they were. Where did they come from? Who had been sitting on them for all that time?

Why does Bogomira not mention people looking for baggage records in the days after the crash? Why do Jones and Phipps not tell us what excuse was given to them for the absence of the records they were looking for? Why is there no account of furious recriminations, blame and buck-passing when it was realised vital records had not been secured?

Why did Berg ask Bogomira to look in the files and see if any routine printouts had been kept, at the end of January?

Rolfe.
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Old 28th June 2010, 05:56 PM   #337
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I don't know that I'm getting over what I'm thinking here. The Erac printout seems to be a different category from the rest of the stuff.

If the MST-13 timer fragment was genuine, that doesn't prove that much - Jibril's group could have acquired one. Same thing with the stereo Toshiba. That's not even all that incongruous - even if a big consignment was sold to Libya, why couldn't another bunch of Arabs have got hold of one. (It's the sheer improbability of the Horton fragment surviving that makes that so suspicious, not its inherent incongruity.)

There's very good reason to suspect these items might be planted, but even if they're not, even if they're genuine, they're capable of incorporation in a theory where the PFLP-GC still did it.

I still don't know what to make of the clothes purchase from Gauci, because the whole performance is incongruous, but in one thing's for sure, he didn't identify Megrahi as the purchaser, so as evidence against Megrahi or indeed anyone in particular, it doesn't go anywhere.

The Erac printout is different. It's not hard to cast doubt on it. There are several ways to hypothesise how tray B8849 could have materialised in the system without having anything to do with KM180 (though they do get shakier on closer examination). However, there are two sorts of doubt, and both of them have problems.

The easy hypothesis, where B8849 is simply a mistake, a stray piece of luggage taking the scenic route, just giving the appearance of having come from KM180, is easy in one way, in that it doesn't require any fancy conspiracy to induce an airport IT worker to perjure herself with a weird story about an impulse to take a private copy of the records. That's the attractive option. Just a coincidence.

However, I'm having problems with the size of the coincidence. It's one thing to say, by coincidence Megrahi was in Luqa when KM180 was checking in, and that coincidence allowed him to be linked to the bombing. But then we have this extra layer of coincidence where a misrouted bag in Frankfurt just happens to pop up in exactly the right place to provide that link - it's getting a bit much for me. If the Erac printout is on the level, then it's a pretty big coincidence we're swallowing here. If the bomb was introduced into the system in Heathrow, tray B8849 has no right being there.

This is a similar incongruity to the one that started me off on the timer chip. If the plane blew apart only 38 minutes after takeoff, that timer has no right being there. We look more closely at that fragment, and it starts to look very fishy.

We look more closely at the Erac printout, and in one sense it also looks extremely fishy. Where the bloody blue blazes did the original, complete records go? How suspicious is this story whereby a single miraculous copy of just the one extract that contains the desired information was covertly preserved? Not to mention the almost equally miraculous appearance of the complete set of exactly the part of the written record that would be useles on its own, but was essential to decode the miracle printout. And then (like the timer fragment), there's the inexplicable delay, while investigators who should be leaping about shouting Eureka, sit on the evidence and say nothing for six months.

It's not just tray B8849 that's miraculous about this. Looking at the rest of the evidence, it's hard to see how they could have got a conviction without that printout, accepting that the Gauci evidence was never strong. Given the watertight nature of the Luqa evidence, and the Bedford bag, I can't see how the connection could have been made. Even if Megrahi was suspected of buying the clothes, it wouldn't have been enough.

But the records were all gone! Vanished! Wiped! Gone to the great bit bucket in the sky! Even if Cannistraro was desperate to fake up evidence of a suspect bag coming off KM180, how could he have done it? Except, Bogomira happened. Even the idea that the printout itself was subsequently doctored to add tray B8849, doesn't make this much less of a miracle. Dammit, we must show something going through Frankfurt! But we have no records! Oh, here's this printout that computer operator handed in, isn't that handy!

Really?

This all tends to suggest Bogomira herself is a plant. However, that has its problems too. She didn't just give her trophy directly to the BKA, she gave it to Berg. So if she didn't, Berg is also in the conspiracy. Her story is internally consistent, and she comes over as genuine. She relates a decent employment history with the computer manufacturer and then the airport, she shows up to give evidence more than once, and she even gives an interview to a BBC documentary about it.

Then again, Borg relates that the BKA asked him about the loading records for KM180 as early as February 1989, which on the face of it suggests the BKA had analysed the printout and spotted tray B8849 exactly on cue, shortly agfter Bogomira handed it in.

So which way do we jump? Can Bogomira, Berg and the Frankfurt BKA be taken apart in the same way as Hayes and Feraday? Or do we have to swallow a coincidence bigger than I'm entirely comfortable with? Or did Megrahi do it all along?

Rolfe.
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Old 30th June 2010, 04:24 AM   #338
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Given the interesting questions posed in the recent posts by Rolfe, I think this is best suited in this thread. A very interesting article from October '89.

Quote:
The Independent

October 30 1989, Monday

German police 'hamper Lockerbie hunt': Trail of clues links terrorist bombing of Pan Am jet with a boutique in Malta, David Black reports

BYLINE: DAVID BLACK

SECTION: Home News ; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1598 words

CORRECTION (PUBLISHED 16 APRIL 1991) APPENDED TO THIS ARTICLE
THE BOMB-SCORCHED remnants of a baby's jumpsuit, recovered from the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103, were the first evidence in a trail that was to take to Malta Scottish detectives investigating the murder of those who died in the disaster.

It was a trail that was to exacerbate to breaking point and beyond relations between the Lockerbie investigators, headed by Det Chief Supt John Orr, of Strathclyde Police, and West Germany's Federal Police (the BKA).

The Lockerbie team, which believes it is close to bringing a successful case against a number of individuals, says it has been hampered and obstructed by the Germans at every turn. It claims it has been denied access to interrogate suspects and witnesses; had information and documents withheld; and had requests to gather evidence denied.

One senior officer said: 'It's gone all the way to Mrs Thatcher. She has been fully briefed on the situation with the Germans, and the word that has come back from Number 10 is 'Get the evidence gathered first, then we'll sort it out'. But the Germans are barely talking to us now.'

[....]

Then the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, in Kent, established that the suit had been in the case containing the bomb. That initially turned attention towards two women passengers who died on the aircraft; it was thought they might have been duped into carrying the bomb aboard.

However, further forensic science work at Fort Halstead uncovered other clothing, including a pair of trousers, which also came from from the same Maltese factory - Yorkie Clothing. Further police work identified possible common outlets on the island for the items.

A senior Scottish detective told The Independent: 'It was only after this information was passed on to the BKA as part of our usual exchanges that they said 'Oh you'd better have a look at this, then', and handed over the Frankfurt loading lists.'

Scottish detectives went to Malta, and headed for a family-run boutique in Sliema, a small town near the island's capital, Valetta. Their target had been identified through Yorkie's records as having received goods similar to those found at the crash site. The detectives had hit the jackpot.

[...]

The team then began interviewing airline and airport staff, and discovered the list of luggage checked into the hold against passengers' names on Air Malta KM 180 to Frankfurt bore no resemblance to what the passengers had checked in. The Air Malta list was a shambles, one officer said.

Of the 39 people who flew out that morning, most would stop at Frankfurt. However, four were heading on for Prague, one to Dusseldorf, two to Munster, one to Bremen, and four for Miami who were originally booked on PA103.

They aroused suspicion after the bombing, especially as they were on the checked-in luggage list as having one bag among them. However, the group was the family of an Air Malta employee. They changed bookings on discovering a quicker flight with Lufthansa.

[...]

A senior source told The Independent: 'From the start we have not been allowed to carry out interrogations. We would have to provide a list of questions, the Germans would ask them, and weeks later we would get the answers. Technically they have co-operated, but otherwise, no. The Germans have been releasing information to suit themselves. Often it creates more questions than it answers.'
As I said before, the Erac printout provides the precious bridge between Malta, where Megrahi was checking in right at the optimun time frame for KM180, and Frankfurt, where all other records were withheld, or destroyed, showing the baggage operations relating to 103A. Not a single shred of evidence was either recovered, or disclosed, aside for serendipitous decision made by Mrs Erac on the 22nd December. Certainly,as Rolfe points out, the other pieces of evidence discovered, even if bona fide, don't explicitly rule out any possibility of involvement of a group other than the Libyans, however Erac's printout does not only shift attention away from themselves at Frankfurt Main (to a degree), but also shifts the investigation away from Neuss, and most significantly points straight to Megrahi at the Luqa check-in desk, and thus Libya.

Given everything that was in the public domain regarding the threat from Iran in seeking revenge, the Neuss BKA raid and undoubtedly a wealth of intelligence and police information never released, the fact that one woman working in Frankfurt provided this all crucial clue, is a huge and difficult pill to swallow. In this world, stranger things of course have happened, but not many.

I think it would unrealistic not to expect that almost every major security agency would have employees, or assets, working in major ports of travel, and certainly hubs of mass movements of people such as Frankfurt or Heathrow were, under the pretenses of being a straightforward airport employee. I could even believe some 'contacts' or 'assets' could be in place for years and not be necessarily called upon.

The four weeks between Erac printing her list, going on holiday and then returning, before revealing her piece of fortune, while no one else either secured the very same record, or anything else apparently, and then the BKA don't reveal anything for 6 months, does raise ,naturally, some serious misgivings about this document and it's content when it is, finally, made available.

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Old 30th June 2010, 07:57 AM   #339
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That's a stellar find, Buncrana! In that version, the Maltese origin of the clothes wasn't public or even disseminated knowledge in the early months. The BKA didn't know about it, and so didn't think anything about the apparent Maltese origin of B8849. Then when the D&G police told them, they produced the printout. That actually makes reasonable logical sense. Not that I necessarily believe it though, because the rest of it just confirms that the BKA were behaving as if they had something to hide.

As an aside, though, remember when this was. The wall fell in November 1989.

There's another aspect worth highlighting.

Quote:
The team then began interviewing airline and airport staff, and discovered the list of luggage checked into the hold against passengers' names on Air Malta KM 180 to Frankfurt bore no resemblance to what the passengers had checked in. The Air Malta list was a shambles, one officer said.

Of the 39 people who flew out that morning, most would stop at Frankfurt. However, four were heading on for Prague, one to Dusseldorf, two to Munster, one to Bremen, and four for Miami who were originally booked on PA103.

They aroused suspicion after the bombing, especially as they were on the checked-in luggage list as having one bag among them. However, the group was the family of an Air Malta employee. They changed bookings on discovering a quicker flight with Lufthansa.

I have heard before about this family that was going to New York. I have a suspicion that one of the documentaries actually shows the family, but that could be mis-remembering. I was wondering if that was correct though, because I've seen several articles since declaring that there were no passengers bound for the USA on KM180. I think these articles are just more examples of people typing up assumptions though.

What I didn't know was that these people were originally booked on PA103A. The version I saw merely said that they had flown direct Frankfurt-to-New York (Miami?) and had arrived there before news of the disaster broke. However, if you work it out, they must have been way out over the Atlantic when PA103 exploded. Suppose the Lufthansa flight left around 2pm local time, that's 1pm GMT, that puts it about six hours into its flight.

That flight was my reason for proposing one of the "wrong plane" theories - if the bomb bag had been supposed to go directly from Frankfurt to New York (as one of the documentaries erroneously showed in a graphic, it was the German documentary so I don't know what they really meant), then that detonation time would have been about right. But if it was a Lufthansa flight, why would any of the usual suspects have wanted to bomb it? All the threats were against US carriers.

This is assuming the Indie is correct. It's a quality newspaper and usually reliable, but there's a lot of wrong stuff flying around everywhere. The bit it seems they must be wrong about is the reliability of the Luqa baggage records. If they really were as shambolic as suggested, this case would look entirely different.

Rolfe.
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Old 30th June 2010, 05:15 PM   #340
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I always said I was open to arguments suggesting Megrahi did it after all. Since none of the official-story supporters ever came up with anything, I thought I’d have a shot at it myself. So here it is, tell me how it sounds. If tray B8849 is entirely on the level, it can’t be entirely disregarded.

The starting point is the assumption that Gadaffi wanted revenge for the 1986 bombings of Tripoli and Benghazi, just as the official version says, but he couldn’t come up with a plan until something happened in October 1988 that provided inspiration. We assume he (or his minions) knew the PFLP-GC and were aware of what they were doing. This is plausible, because the PFLP-GC were using Semtex, and Libya was the main supplier of Semtex at the time. Besides they’re all flaky Arab terrorists, they probably went to each others’ dinner parties.

So Gadaffi found out about the Autumn Leaves raid, and what was seized - the Toshiba BomBeat radio and the barometric timer. He realised that the Palestinians’ plan to give Iran its revenge for the Vincennes incident had been scuppered. So he hatched a plan to carry out a copy-cat bombing, so that his revenge for 1986 would be blamed on the PFLP-GC and Iran. (Why it would be any good to have his revenge attributed to a completely different group taking revenge for a completely unrelated incident, I have no idea.)

PA103 was targeted because of its connection with Frankfurt, the base of Jibril’s group. I don’t know why they didn’t go for a direct Frankfurt to New York flight, but on the other hand I don’t know if there was a suitable flight operated by a US carrier. The neat trick was going to be that instead of a barometric device, a simple timer would be used, set at the time a barometric device would explode if it had been primed at Heathrow. However, this device would actually be introduced at Malta, which would of course have been impossible for a barometric trigger, which would throw the investigation off the scent.

The Libyans got a Toshiba BomBeat radio, but they didn’t realise there were two models called BomBeat and they had the wrong one. They just got the one that was in all the shops in Tripoli. They got the Semtex, which they had by the ton, and they used an MST-13 timer instead of the barometric timer. They packed it all up neatly in the radio’s original box.

Now the neat trick. The Libyans also knew that Abu Talb had been buying Maltese-manufactured clothing, and had a lot of it. So they decided to pack the bomb suitcase with new clothes of Libyan manufacture, in the hope that if any rags were found, again the PFLP-GC would be blamed. So they identified a small shop in Sliema, which sold mainly Maltese-manufactured stock, and where one of the owner’s sons was a bit dim. Megrahi popped in one evening while he was there.... Sorry, I can’t so that bit, it’s bloody obvious he didn’t buy the clothes. A different Libyan conspirator, an older and taller guy, heavily-built, popped in one Wednesday evening when Tony was alone in the shop, and bought some likely-looking stuff.

The whole thing was assembled somewhere, maybe in Libya, and smuggled undetected into Malta. And Cannistraro was right, the Libyans had all the officials and baggage workers at Luqa subverted, so that they were able to get the bag on KM180 without leaving any trace. Megrahi took the case to the airport when he was checking in for LN147, and was able to avoid anyone seeing him with it, and passed it through into the airside area. None of the Maltese staff ever slipped up over the next 20 years, or felt they had to say something, in spite of the operation resulting in 270 deaths.

From there it was transferred to KM180, and at Frankfurt it became tray B8849 and was loaded into PA103A. At Heathrow it was transferred to AVE4041, very fortuitously in exactly the optimum position to destroy the aircraft, even though an interline bag had been in that position at the start of the loading. Although PA103 might well have been delayed, because one of the passengers with luggage on the plane was left behind, the decision was taken to take off anyway. As a result the plane was only 15 minutes late, which was within the time window which would cause the MST-13 to trigger the device within the time window that would be consistent with a PFLP-GC style barometric trigger.

This explains quite a lot of the disparate evidence.
  • The strange purchase of new clothes for the bomb bag
  • Not taking the labels off the clothes
  • Megrahi at Luqa with a false passport
  • The radio being a BomBeat but a different model
  • The MST-13 fragment
  • Tray B8849
  • The 38-minute explosion
There are still quite a few snags though.

Such a plan would have left a clear trace of the bag through Frankfurt airport - tray B8849 should have stuck out like a sore thumb when the full records were analysed. So we also have to postulate that some of these LAA employees at Frankfurt were able to whisk away all the baggage records for that day before the BKA got there. Even though the BKA got there before the computer files were routinely over-written. And the BKA accepted this without making a fuss. But then when they heard about the Malta connection with the clothes, they came forward with the Erac printout without continuing to try to conceal the evidence.

There was also a big risk Maier would spot the bomb. Actually, he really should have. I have no idea how this plot got round that one.

The plan also carried a big risk the device would explode harmlessly on the tarmac if the plane had been only an hour late - at Heathrow, in winter, at a peak travel period. Right. Maybe this wasn’t considered to be that important. Maybe it was assumed that the MST-13 wouldn’t survive the explosion anyway, and everything else would point to the PFLP-GC - maybe one of their timers malfunctioned?

There was also a very big risk the bomb bag would be in the wrong place in the luggage container, and the explosion not be powerful enough to bring down the aircraft. I have no idea how this plot got round that one either.

Maybe the Libyans weren’t all that concerned about the plan going wrong. They were taking a bit of a flier. If Maier had caught it, or it had exploded on the tarmac, or in the wrong place in the container, then never mind, it was worth a shot? If the timer is destroyed in the explosion, then hopefully everyone would just go right on assuming it was a PFLP-GC operation gone a bit wrong. (Except, if Maier had caught it, the timer might well have been recovered intact - or maybe they were hoping for the thing to be made safe by a controlled explosion.) Maybe they just crossed their fingers real hard and got real lucky.

Oh, and Bedford was just mistaken, in a huge fluke, where he thought he saw a case very like the bomb bag in pretty much the place the bomb bag ended up, but before PA103A landed. He was thinking of a different day. Or he really did see it, but it was moved to the other side of the container and fell into the Winterhope reservoir where the trout ate it.

And Iran were so pleased with the result they paid Jibril anyway, simply assuming he’d done it.

The US investigators figured all this out, but they knew that tray B8849 alone wasn’t enough evidence to convict Megrahi. So they persuaded Gauci that he bought the clothes, even though he didn’t. And they pressurised Giaka into making up more evidence so they could get a conviction of the right guy.

And all the repagination and suspicious provenance of the RARDE investigation was entirely innocent. Even though the guy doing it was quietly “let go” in the middle because he was instrumental in fitting up the Maguire Seven....

OK, that’s the best I can do. Is it any better or worse than anything else we’ve come up with?

Rolfe.
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Old 1st July 2010, 04:46 AM   #341
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Above all else, it's a tale that genuinely has a right being in the 'conspiracy theories' forum.

It really does highlight the absolutely senseless and totally incoherent logic that Megrahi (and his accomplice...no, megrahi on his own) apparently considered, or didn't, in the planning and execution of their terror and retribution masterplan. And all with the full force and support of the old experienced warhorse Libyan state?

So many unknowns, countless opportunities for it the whole operation to fail and just as much chance the entire plan will be exposed at one of the many security processes that must be negotiated. Not only does this cunningly and carefully thought out mission carry high odds of being uncovered, but in that position, also of the true perpetrators being uncovered.

Cue a few more billion dollar fighters and missiles overhead.

The circumventing of the three airport security systems is simply inconceivable in itself, without the utterly staggering suggestion that after all this has been successfully bypassed, we are to believe that the bag would then be loaded in precisely the position required to complete the attrocity.

I just don't buy it. Try as I might sometimes.

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Old 1st July 2010, 09:36 AM   #342
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It's really just the Official Version with an added twist to make the findings more plausible. If we postulate that Gadaffi was trying to mimic a PFLP-GC operation from Heathrow as regards timing of the explosion, but was sneakily feeding the bomb in at Malta to confuse the investigation and so using a digital timer instead of a barometric one, then we explain a number of things that are otherwise anomalies.

However, we have to ask why he would do that, and we don't have an answer. This modus operandi was never suggested at the trial. We also have to assume he was fairly relaxed about whether it would actually work or not, given the number of things that might have gone wrong.
  • We still have to postulate the complete and continuing subversion of the Maltese aviation authorities, something which was investigated to destruction and no evidence found for it.
  • The suitcase might have been misrouted in the system - goodness knows, it happens often enough.
  • One of the planes might have been delayed sufficiently for the explosion to have occurred at ground level - again not an uncommon occurrence in northern Europe in the middle of winter.
  • Maier would really have been expected to spot the radio and pull out the case for manual inspection - there's no plausible explanation in the Official Version of why this didn't happen.
  • The trail of the case through Frankfurt airport would have been expected to have been perfectly obvious, if the records hadn't vanished - postulating wholesale destruction of Frankfurt baggage records by Libyan agents is actually preposterous.
  • It would have been impossible to have influenced the positioning of the case at Heathrow, unless we're also going to postulate Libyan infiltration of the precise personnel at Heathrow who performed that baggage transfer - again a fairly preposterous suggestion.
There was a pretty fair chance that plane simply wouldn't have come down, and also an excellent chance of Megrahi's involvement being discovered by way of the Frankfurt baggage trail and his presence at Luqa. The possibility of the case being intercepted intact and the MST-13 discovered (and possibly even fingerprints and DNA, which was just emerging as a crime detection method at that time), wasn't negligible either.

I just like it because it explains tray B8849, which I still haven't convinced myself is a plant, and the utter weirdness of anyone choosing to buy clothes to pad out a bomb suitcase in the way we're supposed to believe happened here, and it reconciles the MST-13 and the 38-minute explosion, and the two different radios both called BomBeat.

It's that or Hayes, Feraday and Thurman plotting to plant the timer fragment, Feraday planting the radio manual, and some explanation I still don't understand for both the whole Frankfurt luggage disappearance scenario coupled with the Erac printout, and the terrorists buying new clothes for the suitcase in a small shop.

I like to feel my understanding of the situation is increasing when I put it like that though.

Rolfe.
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Old 1st July 2010, 04:27 PM   #343
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I suppose - we have some features which seem to suggest Lbya, and some which look extraordinarily like the modus operandi of the PFLP-GC.

Is this then
  1. A Libyan operation deliberately designed to look as if the PFLP-GC did it
  2. A PFLP-GC operation, with retrospective manipulation of the evidence to implicate Libya
  3. Something else?
The first one seems more parsimonious, but leaves a huge number of questions unanswered. The second involves postulating the fabrication of evidence by the investigating authorities, which is always less parsimonious, but has a lot going for it. The third is Charles, and the guy who thinks it was an accidental detonation of cargo ordnance, and the baying mob shouting "the Jews did it!".

The bits I'm hung up on are the Frankfurt records and Bogomira, and the Maltese clothes.

Rolfe.
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Old 2nd July 2010, 02:14 AM   #344
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As an addition to everything you've stated above Rolfe, are we seriously proposing that after the BKA raid on the PLFP cell in Germany in October, discovering a considerable cache of arms and explosives, and crucially, a radio cassette manipulated into a bomb, Gadaffi then formulates a plan to exact his revenge for the '86 US raid, obtains all the relevant parts and semtex, and send the bomb from Malta straight back to the heart of where these devices were initially discovered just a few weeks before: Germany, and Frankfurt Airport?

This could be the most ill-conceived and amateurish attempt at implicating another group in bombing ever. It's not so much the proposition that Libya may look to take advantage of the methods known to the security authorities, it's the suggestion of the method utilized, Malta via Frankfurt via Heathrow,that simply runs contrary to any logic. Had someone suggested this plan by the Libyan's was carried out with Heathrow as the point of introduction of the device, then it certainly offers more cogency and most importantly offers substantially greater chance of a successful mission.

Of course, Heathrow wouldn't want any responsibility left at their door.
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Old 2nd July 2010, 03:42 AM   #345
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Just to let you guys know, I'm still reading as much of this as I can daily. It's an awesome experience.

One point I guess, a question. From the Independent, above
Quote:
The team then began interviewing airline and airport staff, and discovered the list of luggage checked into the hold against passengers' names on Air Malta KM 180 to Frankfurt bore no resemblance to what the passengers had checked in. The Air Malta list was a shambles, one officer said.
Can anyone tell me, being reasonable, is there any known evidence on which to reasonably conclude that KM189's records were, or appeared to be, "a shambles?" Or is this just some convenient statement of "oh don't you worry, everything lines up fine with our new leads." ?
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Old 2nd July 2010, 04:35 AM   #346
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
As an addition to everything you've stated above Rolfe, are we seriously proposing that after the BKA raid on the PLFP cell in Germany in October, discovering a considerable cache of arms and explosives, and crucially, a radio cassette manipulated into a bomb, Gadaffi then formulates a plan to exact his revenge for the '86 US raid, obtains all the relevant parts and semtex, and send the bomb from Malta straight back to the heart of where these devices were initially discovered just a few weeks before: Germany, and Frankfurt Airport?

No, not very seriously. I'm just trying out theories for size. We still don't have a narrative I'm especially comfortable with insofar as it reasonably explains all the main facts as we have them, so one must continue to consider all possibilities.

The possibility that Megrahi had a hand in it can't be dismissed while we still lack a reasonable explanation for B8849. I felt this all along, but then dismissed it with the observation that we have no real clue where B8849 came from, or what was in the tray. As Paul Foot remarked, it could have been a case of wine or a bag of golf clubs. There are a number of possibilities that have to be considered as regards its origin, once you accept that the evidence from Luqa says there was no unaccompanied bag actually on KM180 - it's not an open-and-shut connection. In addition, if B8849 went on the plane, it was x-rayed by Maier. Careful, conscientious Maier who was aware of the threat from Toshiba BomBeat radios.

However, I can't get over the sheer size of the coincidence. Megrahi really was at Luqa that morning, travelling as Abdusamad. For some random piece of mis-routed luggage just to happen to appear in the system in such a way as to make it look as if there was a rogue bag on KM180 is one helluva big coincidence. The sort of coincidence Cannistraro and Marquise would have given a major body part for, in fact. The whole business of the vanishing records and the divine intervention of the Erac printout only compounds the mystery.

So, I tend to favour the possibility of some distinctly non-divine intervention in the Frankfurt department, over this huge and remarkably convenient coincidence. The trouble is, this introduces its own problems. First, it adds a whole new chapter to the proposed conspiracy. Not only do we have the Hayes/Feraday/Thurman triumvirate in a position to manipulate the evidence found at Lockerbie, we have to postulate involvement of Frankfurt personnel - principally the BKA, but also quite possibly Erac and Berg. Second, it's not nearly so easy to pick holes in that story as it is to find anomalies in the RARDE investigation. It's a completely bizarre sequence of events, but accepting that, it holds together fairly well. Either we still have to accept a degree of coincidence in that Bogomira fortuitously saved a printout that later turned out to be exactly what was needed to support a fabricated trail of evidence leading to Megrahi, or she is one helluva actress.

Paradoxically, if we were forced to accept that the timer fragment and the radio manual were wholly genuine and Hayes and Feraday the soul of integrity, this wouldn't really to my mind give huge weight to the Libya theory, as there's no real reason Jibril's group couldn't have acquired these items. They certainly don't implicate Megrahi personally, and unless you can support the "Megrahi introduced the bag at Luqa that morning" part, you simply don't have any sort of a case. However, there's every reason to suspect Hayes, Feraday and Thurman of shenanigans, and the timer fragment and the radio manual to be fabrications.

Conversely, it's relatively difficult to hand-wave tray B8849 away without postulating a positively supernatural coincidence, and yet if you don't do that, you very definitely have specific evidence suggesting a connection to Megrahi. I'm not quite sure how you square this circle.

This is why I was trying out a variant of the Official Version, to see if there was any possibility it might fly. I like it in that it explains tray B8849, and it actually explains the bizarre purchase from Gauci, which I otherwise simply can't get my head around. It's unsatisfying as regards the timer fragment and the radio manual, as it assumes these are genuine, despite the very strong reasons for suspecting they're anything but. On the other hand, this again reduces the extent of the postulated conspiracy (down to basically bribing Gauci and Giaka to provide the extra evidence that would be necessary to get a conviction).

It also reopens most of the enormous objections that have dogged the Official Version all along - all but the 38-minute explosion, that is. We still have absolutely no idea how the case was got on the plane at Malta, despite huge efforts on the part of the investigators to crack this aspect, and actually the distinct possibility that someone involved might have talked by now. The theory provides no explanation for the disappearing Frankfurt records, though in fact such a disappearance would have been essential to the central premise of the proposed plot - that the Malta introduction wouldn't be identified, and so the PFLP-GC would take the blame. It also leaves us with the Bedford suitcase being a huge unexplained coincidence, and frankly that is nearly as big a coincidence (if it wasn't the bomb bag) as tray B8849 would be (if it wasn't the bomb bag).

But most of all, we have the problem of Frankfurt security. If that bomb came through Frankfurt, Maier should have picked it up. Frankfurt was on the alert for a device of exactly that nature. You can suggest after the event that Maier must have missed it, if you like, but the idea that a terrorist who was aware of the alert at Frankfurt nevertheless decided to press ahead regardless in the hope that a device still had a decent chance of getting through undetected is pretty far-fetched. (At least the Frankfurt bag-switch theories postulate that Frankfurt security and Maier were deliberately and actively circumvented, rather than assuming the device sailed through entirely unaided.)

Finally, we have the problem of the positioning of the bag in the luggage container, which was vital, but which this theory has no possible way to influence. We've really just swapped one set of problems for another, and we have to decide which set we prefer. In fact, for the "Gadaffi was trying to mimic a PFLP-GC attack" scenario to work at all, we really have to postulate not only that the Luqa airport security was completely subverted, but that Frankfurt was too, and the BKA weren't that bothered about it - and that Gadaffi also had at least one agent among the loaders who transferred the interline baggage on the tarmac at Heathrow. This is getting just as ridiculous as suggesting that the BKA were into some sort of cover-up, following which they co-operated with Cannistraro's little scheme.

I merely want to examine all reasonable possibilities (so far as any possibility meets the criteria of "reasonable" in this case). We're not the "Megrahi didn't do it" campaign on any point of principle, and a reasonable conclusion that Megrahi did it would be as acceptable as any other reasonable conclusion. It's not looking promising though.

Rolfe.
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Old 2nd July 2010, 03:08 PM   #347
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
It's not so much the proposition that Libya may look to take advantage of the methods known to the security authorities, it's the suggestion of the method utilized, Malta via Frankfurt via Heathrow,that simply runs contrary to any logic. Had someone suggested this plan by the Libyan's was carried out with Heathrow as the point of introduction of the device, then it certainly offers more cogency and most importantly offers substantially greater chance of a successful mission.

That's all very well, but if you're going to introduce the device at Heathrow, and you want to mimic the PFLP-GC, you might as well use a barometric timer in the first place, and completely avoid the risk of the thing blowing up on the tarmac.

My main reason for embarking on that line of speculation, however, is tray B8849. That's the one single solitary piece of evidence for the entire "Megrahi put the bomb into the system at Luqa" hypothesis. If that wasn't there, Megrahi would just be one more slightly shady airline passenger going about his slightly shady business that morning. I'm finding the "coincidence" theory a bit hard to swallow, so as well as considering the possiblilty that the record is a fabrication, I'm also considering the possibility that somehow the Official Version could be correct all along.

It's really just a secondary attraction that the MST-13, the SF-16 and the purchase of the clothes can all be fitted into that explanation as well. The main issue is B8849. Libyans putting the bomb on board at Heathrow wouldn't explain that.

Rolfe.
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Old 2nd July 2010, 03:48 PM   #348
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If we are inclined to think that Feraday/Hayes/Thurman have contrived the evidence against Megrahi, which appears very possible, especially given the subsequent accusation and criticism which caused Thurman to 'leave' the Bureau and what was known about Rarde's, and specifically Feraday's conduct in previous investigations and his evidence given in court, then I think it's reasonable to presume they did not initiate these decisions of their own volition. So, given this position it would necessitate decisons taken from higher.

The German's and the BKA were perhaps in an even more precarious position than either the UK or US authorities given the public knowledge of the uncovering of the PLFP cell, and even more concerning and damaging, if it were confirmed that this group or it's devices were the cause of the 103's destruction, and the Germans had simply let the known bomb maker, whom they had caught red-handed with bombs designed for aircraft, go free from custody and disappear out of the country.

What was going on at Franfurt in the first few days after the disaster and the records and details they must have secured? What the hell were they doing withholding a computer printout from late January until August which showed an unaccompanied piece of baggage entering their system around the time KM180 was unloaded, even although the records at Malta appeared to show no such luggage? All the while the PLFP are prime suspects, investigators are scouring europe for confirmation of Toshiba radios, and recriminations are intensifying between the UK and German investigators as to the source of the bomb bag? Was it also known during this time that, Talb a known associate of the PFLP, was also known to have visited Malta?

If there is the suggestion that certain hand-picked US and UK investigators were engaged in some sort of surreptitious plot to implicate Libya and perhaps latterly Megrahi, would it be so preposterous to think that the German's wouldn't also have a strong vested interest in such machinations?

I can see the implication that this involves, but I don't neccessarily concede that Berg would also be required to be privy to this plot. From the information we have gleaned, I accept that Erac would have to be likely party to this, and yes, that does then present the unusual premise that someone apparently outwith the internal investigation would need to be induced in some respect in the scheme. Sadly, given everything we aleady know about the conduct of the US, UK and German investigators assigned to the critical discoveries of this case, I do not find this scenario or suggestion implausible.



I've some more newspaper articles from the first few months of the investigation coming up. Sorry Rolfe, it seems for some strange reason, that the document viewer I'm looking through for these old articles, includes all the major UK broadsheets, except the Herald!
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Old 2nd July 2010, 03:59 PM   #349
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
Can anyone tell me, being reasonable, is there any known evidence on which to reasonably conclude that KM189's records were, or appeared to be, "a shambles?" Or is this just some convenient statement of "oh don't you worry, everything lines up fine with our new leads." ?

You know, you really need to be less suspicious. Journalists can make mistakes without it having to be part of some deliberate misinformation plan!

Not only is there no known evidence so far as I can tell that the records were a shambles, subsequent events indicate that this simply can't be true. Air Malta were successful in more than one legal action they took against accusations the bomb got on that aircraft, and I can't see how they could have done this if the records were a shambles.

Other sources make it pretty clear that the investigators absolutely bust a gut trying to blow a hole in the Luqa records, going as far as to tap the private telephone calls of the baggage handlers, and found nothing. We can see how eager the judges were to grasp at any straw that would let them favour the Official Version, but they had no such straw as regards this issue. If there had been any problem with these records, I'm quite confident we would have heard about it as justification for the final baseless assumption that "he must have done it somehow".

I think someone has misrepresented the situation to the journalist, maybe out of frustration or misunderstanding. It's extremely unlikely to be deliberate.

It makes me wonder how much credence can be put on the rest of it, the account of who the passengers were and where they were going. However, as far as I remember it checks with other acconts I've read.

I suppose this is all examined in the court records, though.

Rolfe.
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Old 2nd July 2010, 04:10 PM   #350
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Interesting article, for various reasons, for I think there is one small pertinent paragraph..

Quote:
The Independent (London)

March 25, 1990, Sunday

German police set to charge Pan Am lawyer

BYLINE: From LEONARD DOYLE in New York

SECTION: HOME NEWS PAGE; Page 3

LENGTH: 860 words

WEST GERMAN police plan to charge an American lawyer acting for Pan Am's insurance underwriters with attempting to extort confessions from Frankfurt airport baggage handlers over the Lockerbie disaster, a lawyer for the handlers says.

The New York lawyer and an American detective working for a private Israeli investigation agency are to be accused of making an attempt to pin the blame on the handlers.

It is alleged that they illegally persuaded two handlers to go to London in an attempt to show that they were responsible for the explosion and to get them into the hands of the British police. That incident brought a diplomatic rebuke from West Germany to the US embassy in Bonn.

The handlers' West German lawyer has decided to lodge a formal complaint, and the Frankfurt prosecutor, Achim Thiele, is expected to submit criminal charges against the two men this week.

The two handlers, Roland O'Neill, a West German, and Kilins Aslan Tuzcu, a Turkish immigrant, underwent lie-detector tests about the bombing in January at the suggestion of the Pan Am insurance lawyer, James Shaughnessy. They allegedly failed the tests and were asked to go to London under false pretences. Mr Shaughnessy apparently expected British police to interview them. The plan backfired, however, when the British police refused to co-operate and tipped off the West German federal police, the BKA, that the men were in London.

Mr O'Neill spent the day sightseeing in London, and Mr Tuzcu remained at Pan Am's Heathrow terminal, unaware that an attempt was being made to implicate them in the disaster, according to their lawyer, Countess Rudt von Collenberg.

Mr Shaughnessy gave a 34- page handwritten statement to Scottish police, a copy of which has reached The Independent on Sunday.

The West German authorities were angered by the incident. Last month, the US ambassador in Bonn, Vernon Walters, sent an urgent cable to the Secretary of State, James Baker.

The cable, a copy of which has also been obtained by The Independent on Sunday, said that ''a number of actions taken by American attorneys involved in PA-103 litigation . . . have sorely irritated German authorities and may lead to German criminal prosecution of US citizens''.

He added: ''Among charges allegedly under consideration, are kidnapping and extortion.'' In an interview in New York last weekend, Mr Shaughnessy said that he and the detective, James Keefe, had done nothing improper or illegal. Because of a lack of official information, they had been forced ''to try to find out the facts and the truth about what happened'', to mount a legal defence in the $ 300m lawsuit started against the airline by the families of the 271 people killed when flight PA-103 exploded over Scotland.

Pan Am and its insurance underwriters are being sued for ''wilful misconduct'' for failing to provide adequate security.

''Three individuals in Frankfurt were given polygraph examinations, they were not kidnapped and they were not extorted in anyway,'' Mr Shaughnessy said.

West German authorities have been embarrassed by revelations that the BKA did not co-operate fully with Scottish investigators and was withholding vital information to protect covert sources.

German authorities have also been blamed for bungling an earlier tip-off about a terrorist cell, after which Marwan Khreesat - the man the authorities believe made the bomb which destroyed the plane - was set free after being arrested in September 1988 in the belief that he was a mole for Jordanian intelligence services. Mr Khreesat appears to have been a double agent who was stringing the Jordanians along.

In his report to the police, Mr Shaughnessy described how Mr Tuzcu, who speaks only Turkish, Mr O' Neill and another employee all signed statements that the lie-detector tests were voluntary. Mr Tuzcu was asked through a Pan Am interpreter ''if he was involved in switching a bag . . . and whether he was aware that the bag that was switched contained a bomb'', according to Mr Shaughnessy. He denied all knowledge. He was then subjected to a 20- minute lie-detector test, which he allegedly failed.

Mr O' Neill's interview took place at the Sheraton Hotel in Frankfurt on 23 January. Mr Shaughnessy told the Strathclyde police that he agreed to be polygraphed after ''considerable reluctance''. After the polygraph, Mr Keefe said that he ''had lied in several respects . . . specifically that he did not know that bags had been switched on flight 103 . . . that he had not ordered or instructed Tuzcu to switch the bags . . . that he did not know that the bag that was switched contained a bomb''.

Mr Shaughnessy himself then flew to London and contacted the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, telling them that Mr Tuzcu, Mr O'Neill and the third employee ''were the only three individuals who were in a position to have switched a bag on flight 103''. It was then that the plan went awry.

British police refused to speak to either of the two baggage handlers and they were interviewed by the BKA on their return to Frankfurt where, according to their lawyer, they ''were cleared of suspicion in the case''.
I'm presuming the accusation of the bag switch is not from the possibility of an unaccompanied bag, such as B8849, was substituted, but as the article suggests in the middle of the article, that as part of the "covert activities", this was the bag that was switched.

ETA: I meant to say, I can fully appreciate withholding information from the public to protect the investigation and possible sources, but to withhold information from your own co-investigators and the police investigating a crime of this magnitude, is astonishing. And pretty damning as to a hidden agenda imo.

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Old 2nd July 2010, 06:30 PM   #351
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Another article that appears to confirm my earlier suggestion that Talb's visits to Malta were known to the Germans, UK and US investigators pretty early on.

So, by February '89 the BKA apparently have, in their possession, the Erac printout showing the rogue B8849 enter their baggage system, unacompanied and destined for 103A, and indicating it's arrival from a Malta Flight KM180.

Also in February, everyone is made aware that a Toshiba Radio was the housing for the bomb that exploded, and it 'most likely' arrived via Frankfurt.

In March the suitcase is identified, and in mid-March there are claims that the culprits are known, which is later denied.

In May Talb and his associates are arrested in Sweden on other terrorist charges. Details of Talbs visits to Malta are uncovered as is clothing from Malta. It is claimed, some of these clothes were also from Gauci's shop Mary's House.

May, Feraday and Hayes make their apparent discovery of clothing and scraps of timer. Their notes and procedures from this period, however, appear highly questionable.

In May however, the German investigators still decide that B8849, coming unacompanied from Malta and headed straight to 103A, is of no interest to the investigation.

Late August the Scottish police along with the FBI, visit Malta, and only at this stage do the BKA then confide with the Scottish police and announce to everyone that they have a printout, kept by an airport worker, which shows B8849.

Quote:
The Guardian (London)

December 18, 1989

Lockerbie: A Year On / Theories abound, but facts to pinpoint guilty remain thin
BYLINE: By DAVID PALLISTER

LENGTH: 838 words

Few stories have exercised the febrile imagination of journalists as has the plot behind the bombing of Pan Am's Flight 103.

Complex international terrorist outrages have always been fair game for speculation: Abu Nidal or Ahmed Jibril are the least likely people to encounter such speculation by hiring expensive libel lawyers in London, and "sources" - usually in the police and intelligence world - are never identified.

In the past year four Palestinian groups and three Middle East states, have with differing degrees of reliability been suggested as the perpetrators. Some of the more fanciful reports add in the German Red Army Faction, the Italian Red Brigades or the Japanese Red Army.

For real conspiracy theorists, there is scope for a mix of CIA, Israeli intelligence, an international drugs syndicate and shady arms dealers.

As for the means, it has been variously reported that the bomb was placed on a feeder flight in Malta or Cyprus, at Frankfurt or Heathrow. It was either accompanied by a passenger who had been duped or slipped aboard by a baggage handler. Investigators from half a dozen countries have offered "briefings": while the circumstantial evidence is powerful, the facts are thin.

Within a week of the disaster, after Ministry of Defence scientists examined a metal luggage container, it was announced that a bomb was responsible. By January 10, its location was pinpointed, in the forward luggage hold; the explosive was said to be "probably" Semtex.

A month later, Detective Chief Superintendant John Orr, the Scottish detective leading the murder inquiry, said it had been hidden in a radio cassette recorder "probably" loaded at Frankfurt, on the first leg of Flight 103's journey to Heathrow, New York and Detroit.

By March Lord Fraser, the Lord Advocate, was able to announce that the suitcase containing it had been identified. Since then the Scottish police have made no formal announcements, other than to say that they visited a lot of countries and interviewed a lot of people.

On March 17 there was a small sensation. Several newspapers, including the Guardian, reported that the identity of the bomber was known, as was where the device came from and where it was planted. The Sun had the man "under close arrest". All this, it emerged, was nothing more than the outcome of a journalists' lunch with the then transport secretary, Mr Paul Channon, at the Garrick Club.

In Washington, meanwhile, the FBI fingered the usual suspects and pointed out the most-favoured motive. While the Libya-based Fatah Revolutionary Council of Abu Nidal has remained a recurring candidate, suspicion has stuck with Ahmed Jibril's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command. Jibril's group, based in Syria, rejects the PLO recognition of Israel, is also close to Iran and is fundamentalist. Hence the supposition that radical elements in Iran were paymasters for an American target, after an Iranian Airbus was shot down over the Gulf last year by a US warship.

Evidence for Jibril's involvement came from West Germany and later Sweden. In October 1988 police broke up a PFLP-GC cell and in a Frankfurt flat found a Semtex bomb in a radio cassette player. Jibril has admitted that a central committee member, Hafez Dalkamoni, was arrested with the bomb.

Three similar devices were discovered, with the hallmarks of being made by a man whom the Germans had also arrested. Inexplicably, he was released - despite an international arrest warrant against him; there has been talk of him being a double or even triple agent.

In May a group of suspected Palestinian terrorists was arrested in Sweden. Four men accused of bomb attacks against Israel and American targets were tried, and the verdict will be announced on Thursday. From leaked travel documents and German briefings, the group has been shown to have associated with Dalkamoni in Germany, and more significantly, in Malta.

At Lockerbie, police discovered clothing in the suitcase which had been made and sold in Malta. Mohammed Abu Talb, one of those held in Sweden, apparently met Dalkamoni in Malta before the bombing. Suddenly this month he was named as a suspect by Scottish Detectives in an Uppsala apartment. Jibril has denied that the group belong to the PFLP-GC, but Talb's chequered history as a Palestinian fighter aligns him with the faction.

Although some newspapers have ridden their chosen hobbyhorses, there is as yet no official evidence of the bomb's origin and route.

Most observers dismiss the tantalising diversions floated by Pan Am's insurance investigators. Pan Am is in financial trouble, and the Lockerbie claims against it are exspensive.

Subpoenas issued by it on the US intelligence community - to show that the suitcase bomb was inadvertently allowed through airport security because of a covert CIA operation to smuggle drugs from Frankfurt, in return for help in releasing the American hostages in Beirut - carry little weight.

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Old 3rd July 2010, 03:37 PM   #352
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
Interesting article, for various reasons, for I think there is one small pertinent paragraph..

I'm presuming the accusation of the bag switch is not from the possibility of an unaccompanied bag, such as B8849, was substituted, but as the article suggests in the middle of the article, that as part of the "covert activities", this was the bag that was switched.

ETA: I meant to say, I can fully appreciate withholding information from the public to protect the investigation and possible sources, but to withhold information from your own co-investigators and the police investigating a crime of this magnitude, is astonishing. And pretty damning as to a hidden agenda imo.

That's a very interesting article. It's the other side of the story told in The Trail of the Octopus, in which Shaughnessy is the hero lawyer fighting to uncover the truth, and Aviv is the ace investigator. I think there's some truth to both sides of the story. Shaughnessy was doing his best, but he was barking up the wrong tree.

I also agree, the information about the cover-up at Frankfurt is the more important part of the article. It's a common theme in a lot of the narrative from this time period. I really, really want to know what they were covering up. Not the actual introduction of the bomb, that's almost certain. Possibly they thought they were covering up the introduction of the bomb? Or were they actually covering up these controlled drug shipments?

I wonder if and when the CIA started pressurising Frankfurt anyway? As I said, Frankfurt was in the US zone of the FDR, post-war. And all this was happening at a pretty fraught time in Germany anyway - the wall fell in November 1989, and the cracks started appearing that summer. Remember the film of lines of cars laden with German families' entire possessions driving to the West through the newly-opened Czech border. That was the start, and it was July or August 1989.

This lot rather supports my original suspicion that the disappearing baggage records at Frankfurt were "disappeared" by the BKA in the day or two following the bombing. Possibly taking advantage of Christmas Day. Then, when it became politic to do so, the Erac printout with B8849 was revealed.

How much of this was lies and fabrication though?

Rolfe.
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Old 4th July 2010, 06:22 AM   #353
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I suspect the assertions often made that "the BKA did not co-operate fully with Scottish investigators and was withholding vital information to protect covert sources", is true, although in terms of the wider investigation, not entirely. Perhaps indeed they weren't happy to deal with the lowly D&G police in their enquiries, however, I do not imagine that information and intelligence was not being shared with the American CIA and UK's MI6 investigators by the German intelligence.

Just as the UK investigators had confirmed AVE4041 had contained the bomb, and had determined that, given the majority of the luugage in that container had been interlined from 103A, it was 'on balance' likely the device had been loaded at Frankfurt, while also well aware of the Khreesat arrest and devices uncovered, they were extremely keen, and undoubtly relieved, to place responsibility away from Heathrow. Perhaps however, if the BKA were also aware that the UK authorities were withholding the details of the Heathrow 'break-in', and lax security around the interline luggage shed, then accordingly, there was some sensitive information about Frankfurts operations that day that they would not allow to be disclosed.

All the while the D&G are drip-fed only the information and 'evidence' that suits the requirement of both airports to be, by and large, exonerated from absolute and sole culpability. Obviously, the fact that, given the later discoveries of the Maltese implication, one way or another the bomb had come through both systems, but at least neither would be left holding the can for this attrocity on their own. While the break-in was filed away, Bedford's suitcases were deemed immaterial, the knowledge of the Neuss bust, and most crucially due to conatiner 4041, the UK investigators had placed the responsibilty firmly in the German's court as to the origination of the device, it was now down to the German's to find an exit from this tricky position. I've no doubt the strained relations, often commented on between the investigators, was as a result of very pertinent information being supressed at both airports and other information being cast aside as though of no relevance.

Perhaps the intelligence services were long aware of Megrahi's position with Libyan intelligence, but it does seem absolutely crucial as to the point when investigators became aware of Megrahi presence at Luqa airport on the 21st.
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Old 4th July 2010, 03:56 PM   #354
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
Another article that appears to confirm my earlier suggestion that Talb's visits to Malta were known to the Germans, UK and US investigators pretty early on.

So, by February '89 the BKA apparently have, in their possession, the Erac printout showing the rogue B8849 enter their baggage system, unacompanied and destined for 103A, and indicating it's arrival from a Malta Flight KM180.

Also in February, everyone is made aware that a Toshiba Radio was the housing for the bomb that exploded, and it 'most likely' arrived via Frankfurt.

In March the suitcase is identified, and in mid-March there are claims that the culprits are known, which is later denied.

In May Talb and his associates are arrested in Sweden on other terrorist charges. Details of Talbs visits to Malta are uncovered as is clothing from Malta. It is claimed, some of these clothes were also from Gauci's shop Mary's House.

May, Feraday and Hayes make their apparent discovery of clothing and scraps of timer. Their notes and procedures from this period, however, appear highly questionable.

In May however, the German investigators still decide that B8849, coming unacompanied from Malta and headed straight to 103A, is of no interest to the investigation.

Late August the Scottish police along with the FBI, visit Malta, and only at this stage do the BKA then confide with the Scottish police and announce to everyone that they have a printout, kept by an airport worker, which shows B8849.

Why are you so sure the Frankfurt BKA had a printout showing B8849 in February, or indeed in May? I agree Bogomira's story is consistent, but that doesn't mean the printout always showed a tray coming from KM180. And indeed, the entire story where all the records vanish, then suddenly when it's convenient it turns out that just this single extract that we need to show what we want to show is available - well, it's remarkably convenient, to put it mildly.

However, there's an especially interesting bit in that statement of yours. It is clamied that some of the clothes in Abu Talb's possession came from Mary's House? Where did you get that from?

This really belongs in the mystery shopper thread, but that's a bit dormant so here will do for now. I had assumed that Abu Talb would not be buying clothes from a retailer. If he was interested in selling Maltese clothes in Sweden, then surely he would have sourced them from the factories?

I've never been able to make any sense of the clothes purchase. No matter which terrorist group carried out this atrocity, it makes no sense to buy brand new clothes from a small shop only weeks before the mission, to pack round the bomb. The world is full of old clothes that could never be traced back to their manufacturer.

It always made better sense that these clothes came from Abu Talb's stash. If the bombers weren't thinking too hard about the clothes, and Talb had all these clothes hanging around, then then it's not unreasonable to imagine someone just grabbed some of what was available without thinking that the stuff was new enough to be traced. But I didn't think it was likely any of Talb's stuff came from Gauci.

And yet, the evidence that at least some of what was found on the ground came from Mary's House is quite strong. The tweed jacket and the Yorkie trousers at least. Which didn't entirely compute. However, if there is reason to believe that some of Talb's stash did indeed come from Gauci, then it begins to make a little bit better sense.

Gauci's original description of the purchaser doesn't really match Talb either. He was also too young and not heavily built. However, I'm not all that impressed by Gauci's story about the shopper anyway. Nine months later, and Tony's not that bright to start with. David Wright's evidence suggests he may be conflating more than one event. Even if he's describing a real purchase on 23rd November, there's no certainty this was the purchase of the bomb clothes. The police would inevitably have had to start talking to him about particular items of clothing, and if he remembered this particular incident, then these clothes might have become attached to that memory in the early stages of the interviewing. Exactly what the mystery shopper bought is a bit hazy anyway - anything the polce wanted hi to have bought, it seems to be.

So, what's your evidence that Abu Talb had bought some clothes from Mary's House?

Rolfe.
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Old 4th July 2010, 04:14 PM   #355
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
Perhaps the intelligence services were long aware of Megrahi's position with Libyan intelligence, but it does seem absolutely crucial as to the point when investigators became aware of Megrahi presence at Luqa airport on the 21st.

If they believed what Giaka was telling them, undoubtedly. He was telling them about Megrahi even before the bombing. He told them Megrahi had visited Malta on 7th December.

I read something somewhere about the discovery that Megrahi was also there on the 21st, but it was before I realised how important this was. I suspect Giaka told the CIA about this relatively early bt I don't know.

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Old 4th July 2010, 11:02 PM   #356
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
I suspect the assertions often made that "the BKA did not co-operate fully with Scottish investigators and was withholding vital information to protect covert sources", is true, although in terms of the wider investigation, not entirely. Perhaps indeed they weren't happy to deal with the lowly D&G police in their enquiries, however, I do not imagine that information and intelligence was not being shared with the American CIA and UK's MI6 investigators by the German intelligence.
A couple thoughts about that issue. The article said:
Quote:
"West German authorities have been embarrassed by revelations that the BKA did not co-operate fully with Scottish investigators and was withholding vital information to protect covert sources."
First, I'm not sure that it's true. The British were always mad that the Germans weren't cooperating, and "embarrassing" "revelations" need have no basis in fact.

And second, it doesnt sound like it's abbout the printout - "covert sources" indicates human intel, terrorist info - they were also supposdly holdin out on that at one point, so said Orr et al at LICC. Couldn't get a full list of names for the Autumn Leaves gang, whom they were sort of pursuing.

The printout complaints never break the surface that I've seen, until after it was "resolved" with that prodigal souvenir. Silence ... silence ... silence ... Erac printout emerges - hey, what took you so long? We've been asking for that... (at least outwardly, in the media, it seems that way, or am I wrong?)

Food for thought. Otherwise, not much to add.
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Old 5th July 2010, 02:39 AM   #357
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Originally Posted by Rolfe View Post
Why are you so sure the Frankfurt BKA had a printout showing B8849 in February, or indeed in May? I agree Bogomira's story is consistent, but that doesn't mean the printout always showed a tray coming from KM180. And indeed, the entire story where all the records vanish, then suddenly when it's convenient it turns out that just this single extract that we need to show what we want to show is available - well, it's remarkably convenient, to put it mildly.

However, there's an especially interesting bit in that statement of yours. It is clamied that some of the clothes in Abu Talb's possession came from Mary's House? Where did you get that from?

This really belongs in the mystery shopper thread, but that's a bit dormant so here will do for now. I had assumed that Abu Talb would not be buying clothes from a retailer. If he was interested in selling Maltese clothes in Sweden, then surely he would have sourced them from the factories?

I've never been able to make any sense of the clothes purchase. No matter which terrorist group carried out this atrocity, it makes no sense to buy brand new clothes from a small shop only weeks before the mission, to pack round the bomb. The world is full of old clothes that could never be traced back to their manufacturer.

It always made better sense that these clothes came from Abu Talb's stash. If the bombers weren't thinking too hard about the clothes, and Talb had all these clothes hanging around, then then it's not unreasonable to imagine someone just grabbed some of what was available without thinking that the stuff was new enough to be traced. But I didn't think it was likely any of Talb's stuff came from Gauci.

And yet, the evidence that at least some of what was found on the ground came from Mary's House is quite strong. The tweed jacket and the Yorkie trousers at least. Which didn't entirely compute. However, if there is reason to believe that some of Talb's stash did indeed come from Gauci, then it begins to make a little bit better sense.

Gauci's original description of the purchaser doesn't really match Talb either. He was also too young and not heavily built. However, I'm not all that impressed by Gauci's story about the shopper anyway. Nine months later, and Tony's not that bright to start with. David Wright's evidence suggests he may be conflating more than one event. Even if he's describing a real purchase on 23rd November, there's no certainty this was the purchase of the bomb clothes. The police would inevitably have had to start talking to him about particular items of clothing, and if he remembered this particular incident, then these clothes might have become attached to that memory in the early stages of the interviewing. Exactly what the mystery shopper bought is a bit hazy anyway - anything the polce wanted hi to have bought, it seems to be.

So, what's your evidence that Abu Talb had bought some clothes from Mary's House?

Rolfe.
I'm not sure at all that the BKA had the B8849 printout. They had all the relevant records from Frankfurt and 103A's loading, but I'm highly suspicious that B8849 ever existed until it became clear that Malta was the source of the clothes found and it was suitable for Megrahi to be pinpointed at Luqa airport. I don't think it existed because why would they not reveal this information, and clear indictaor of an unaccompanied piece of baggage coming from Malta, when Talb, known associate of PFLP, suspected of bombings, was arrested in Sweden with clothing originating from Malta?

As I said, it was claimed about the clothing found at Talb's apartment. Again, the somewhat contentious evidence of a "Blue Babygro" presented as evidence against Megrahi, supposedly purchased from Mary's House, was also reported that this same make (and colour I believe) of Babygro was discovered in Talb's apartment when arrested in May '89. I suppose the fact that I'm still of the opinion (of which I could be swayed) that some of the clothes packed around the bomb may well have been purchased from Gauci, then I'm prepared to allow for the fact that given it was known Talb had visited Malta, and although he was known to have connections to people involved in the manufacturing of clothing distributed around Malta, there was a possibility that some of his purchases came from Gauci himself. I'm aware we've discounted pretty much anything Gauci claims about any purchaser, but if we accept the provenance of the clothes, then we have to accept someone may well have purchased them from Mary's House - or possibly the same brands that were regulary delivered to Mary's Shop.

It's actually David Lappard himself who made the possibily tenuous connection between Talb and Gauci:

Originally Posted by The Sunday Times
He had links with some of the PFLP-GC gang in Germany and was in Malta buying clothes in early December 1998. At one point Gauci is said to have identified him from a photograph as the buyer of the clothes. When police raided his home in Sweden, they found clothes that had been bought in Malta. Some reports suggest some of these clothes could be traced to Gauci’s shop. A police phone tap revealed that before his home was raided one of his associates was told: “Get rid of the clothes.” A calendar in his home had a ring around 21 December, 1988 – the date of the Lockerbie bombing.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2009603.ece

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Old 5th July 2010, 03:25 AM   #358
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Originally Posted by Caustic Logic View Post
A couple thoughts about that issue. The article said:

First, I'm not sure that it's true. The British were always mad that the Germans weren't cooperating, and "embarrassing" "revelations" need have no basis in fact.

And second, it doesnt sound like it's abbout the printout - "covert sources" indicates human intel, terrorist info - they were also supposdly holdin out on that at one point, so said Orr et al at LICC. Couldn't get a full list of names for the Autumn Leaves gang, whom they were sort of pursuing.

The printout complaints never break the surface that I've seen, until after it was "resolved" with that prodigal souvenir. Silence ... silence ... silence ... Erac printout emerges - hey, what took you so long? We've been asking for that... (at least outwardly, in the media, it seems that way, or am I wrong?)

Food for thought. Otherwise, not much to add.
I agree, and did say as much...

Originally Posted by Buncrana
I'm presuming the accusation of the bag switch is not from the possibility of an unaccompanied bag, such as B8849, was substituted, but as the article suggests in the middle of the article, that as part of the "covert activities", this was the bag that was switched.
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Old 5th July 2010, 03:29 AM   #359
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And yet another fascinating article taken here from October '89.

Originally Posted by The Independent
The Independent

October 31 1989, Tuesday
Correction Appended

Leading Article: Lockerbie: the German scandal

SECTION: Editorial ; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 705 words

TEN months after the death of 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing, evidence continues to mount for the view that West German police are hindering efforts to discover who was responsible. At first sight, this seems an extraordinary suggestion. What possible motive could the West Germans have for obstructing the hunt? They enjoy a reputation for efficiency, and have achieved some notable successes in the struggle against terrorism. If Strathclyde Police blame them for lack of progress in the Lockerbie investigation, it might, on the face of it, be no more than a way of shifting attention from the failings of Scottish detectives. Moreover, the latest discovery by the Scots, that the clothes in the suitcase containing the bomb were obtained in Malta, does not at first sight reflect discredit on the West Germans.

Last February, the West German federal police, the BKA, obtained a copy of a list from Frankfurt airport's handling authority showing that the suitcase now known to have contained the bomb was checked through Frankfurt from Malta and onto Pan Am flight 103 to London and Miami. The BKA did not pass on this list to the Scots until August, after the Royal Armaments Research and Development Establishment at Fort Halstead, in Kent, had established that various items of clothing manufactured in Malta were in the suitcase with the bomb.

The Scots have further discovered that two members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) cell based in Neuss and Frankfurt visited Malta in October 1988. There they met a group of Palestinians identified by intelligence sources as a PFLP-GC cell on the island. The two visitors from West Germany were well-known to the BKA. On 26 October 1988, the West Germans arrested 16 members of the Neuss-Frankfurt cell, thereby foiling a Palestinian plot to blow up a Spanish airliner flying from Madrid to Tel Aviv on 29 October. This was a brilliant coup by the Germans.

But the fruits of the triumph were thrown away. Within 15 days, all but two of the suspects had been released, even though the raids had uncovered a large quantity of guns, ammunition, explosives and a bomb-making factory. One of those still detained, Hafez Dalkammoni, had been to Malta in October 1988. He was arrested with a man called Marwan Khreesat. In the boot of their car was a Toshiba cassette recorder containing a bomb. It was a device of this sort which blew up the airliner over Lockerbie. Scottish police also received a report that the boot contained a suitcase similar to the one containing the bomb, but when they requested photographs of the car, they received pictures taken only after the boot had been emptied and cleaned.

Khreesat was released, although he was thought to be the maker of the bomb in the boot and the Chief Federal Prosecutor had urged that he be held. An internal BKA report, bearing the title 'The greatest police scandal in the history of the Federal Republic', says that three other bombs were overlooked in a shop in Neuss which was also raided on 26 October 1988. These were not found until April 1989. Four days after that, one of the bombs exploded, killing one member of the BKA and crippling another. A fifth bomb which Khreesat is thought to have made has never been found. It probably exploded over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

A desire to cover up this catalogue of blunders provides the most plausible explanation for the West Germans' reluctance to co-operate with the Scots. According to one senior Scottish officer, 'the Germans are hardly talking to us now'. The BKA insisted, for example, that surveillance logs on the PFLP-GC cell which were kept before the October 1988 raids did not exist. The Scots had a video still from last month's Panorama programme on Lockerbie enlarged, and found it showed the surveillance logs.

No police force is infallible, as we in Britain have recently and painfully been reminded. The West German government must explain the uncooperative attitude of the BKA, and end it. The fight against terrorism is vital: it must not be impeded by an attempt to conceal error, even error so serious that it may have cost 270 lives.

CORRECTION:
Dumfries and Galloway Police are conducting the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing, not the Strathclyde force, as was incorrectly stated in a leading article on 31 October. We apologise for the error.
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Old 5th July 2010, 04:31 AM   #360
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Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
I'm not sure at all that the BKA had the B8849 printout. They had all the relevant records from Frankfurt and 103A's loading, but I'm highly suspicious that B8849 ever existed until it became clear that Malta was the source of the clothes found and it was suitable for Megrahi to be pinpointed at Luqa airport. I don't think it existed because why would they not reveal this information, and clear indictaor of an unaccompanied piece of baggage coming from Malta, when Talb, known associate of PFLP, suspected of bombings, was arrested in Sweden with clothing originating from Malta?

I've been ruminating on what you're saying here, and there's something we haven't really been emphasising. The BKA at Frankfurt must have been in the pockets of the CIA before this even started. We know the controlled drug deliveries made by circumventing Frankfurt security did happen - this is admitted. The story simply is that they weren't happening in December 1988. Such an undertaking inevitably requires co-operation between the CIA and the BKA.

Then again, we have the Autumn Leaves operation. The story goes that when Khreesat was arrested at that time, he made one phone call to his CIA handlers, and was promptly released by the BKA for "lack of evidence" - despite having been caught red-handed with an IED of his own making, obviously designed to bring down an airliner in flight. The implication is that the CIA said "release this guy", and the BKA complied. This was only a couple of months before the Lockerbie crash.

It's not that surprising. Even in 1988 and early 1989, US influence in the former US zone of West Germany was strong. It's perfectly possible, indeed highly probable, that the CIA was in a position to direct the Frankfurt branch of the Lockerbie investigation as it saw fit, from day one. This surely colours what we're thinking about the disappearing baggage records, no?

Originally Posted by Buncrana View Post
As I said, it was claimed about the clothing found at Talb's apartment. Again, the somewhat contentious evidence of a "Blue Babygro" presented as evidence against Megrahi, supposedly purchased from Mary's House, was also reported that this same make (and colour I believe) of Babygro was discovered in Talb's apartment when arrested in May '89. I suppose the fact that I'm still of the opinion (of which I could be swayed) that some of the clothes packed around the bomb may well have been purchased from Gauci, then I'm prepared to allow for the fact that given it was known Talb had visited Malta, and although he was known to have connections to people involved in the manufacturing of clothing distributed around Malta, there was a possibility that some of his purchases came from Gauci himself. I'm aware we've discounted pretty much anything Gauci claims about any purchaser, but if we accept the provenance of the clothes, then we have to accept someone may well have purchased them from Mary's House - or possibly the same brands that were regulary delivered to Mary's Shop.

It's actually David Lappard himself who made the possibily tenious connection between Talb and Gauci:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle2009603.ece

Ah, the Leppard who changed his spots, according to Paul Foot. He was writing articles reporting how the PFLP-GC carried out the bombing until the autumn of 1990, when he suddenly launched a series of articles blaming Libya. Or is it his actual book I'm thinking about here? Paul Foot's opinion is that he was printing what his official sources were handily leaking to him, as opposed to doing independent journalism.

That 2007 article is interesting in that it seems Leppard is starting to back-track towards his original position. He's still over-stating the case against Megrahi (for example he fails to mention Giaka was exposed as a lying fantasist who was making stuff up for money), but he's definitely wavering.

Quote:
The evidence implicating Talb in the Lockerbie attack is best described as “strongly circumstantial”. He had links with some of the PFLP-GC gang in Germany and was in Malta buying clothes in early December 1998. At one point Gauci is said to have identified him from a photograph as the buyer of the clothes. When police raided his home in Sweden, they found clothes that had been bought in Malta. Some reports suggest some of these clothes could be traced to Gauci’s shop. A police phone tap revealed that before his home was raided one of his associates was told: “Get rid of the clothes.”

Well for goodness sake, the evidence against Megrahi was never more than circumstantial either.

Gauci "identified" Talb in the same way as he "identified" Megrahi. He was being pushed by the detectives to pick the right guy out of the photospreads, and when he figured out which photo it was they were interested in, he said "that guy looks a lot like him". This was at the point where the Scottish detectives were still trying to find evidence to implicate the PFLP-GC. I think though that Talb was still too young and not the right build to fit the original description.

Nevertheless, Leppard knows a great deal about this case. His sources are reputable. If he says there were reports that the clothes could be traced to Gauci's shop, then this is likely to be correct. (Whether the reports are correct is another matter of course.)

It would be so much simpler if we could establish there is no strong evidence that any of the things found at Lockerbie actually came from Gauci's shop. Talb is said to have had a great deal of new clothes of Maltese manufacture in his flat in Gothenburg. The story is that he was trying to set up a business retailing Maltese textiles in Sweden. The scenario that the bombers simply grabbed stuff that was handy when they were packing the suitcase is very attractive.

Then, we could postulate that when the authorities were looking for the source of the clothes found at Lockerbie, the manufacturers pointed them to Gauci because he had ordered similar items. Gauci then came up with his story about an Arab shopper on the evening of 23rd November, and embellished it to fit in with the direction of questioning.

I'm not entirely clear about the details of this, and I need to get closer to the original sources. However, another poster has shown evidence that at least some of the things found at Lockerbie actually did come from Gauci's shop, rather than simply being similar items. The Yorkie trousers, I believe, were supposed to be a very small batch all supplied to Mary's House. The story about the tweed jacket seems to ring true also.

I still can't get my head round the concept that the bombers, whoever they were, deliberately went to Mary's House to buy stuff for the bomb suitcase. It's nuts. The world is full of old clothes that will never be traced back to their purchaser. However, if the stuff was bought in Mary's House for another purpose, then carelessly grabbed for packing by someone who wsn't thinking about traceability, that makes a lot more sense. If Talb did buy some of his stock of clothes in that shop, then that leaves this possibility entirely open.

Rolfe.
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