For years US eavesdroppers could read encrypted messages without the least difficulty

The indefatigable Ludwig de Braeckeleer has another article on the OhMyNews website. It contends that for decades the US National Security Agency has been reading the most highly sensitive coded messages sent by most foreign governments. This is because it succeeded in subverting the Swiss company that manufactured the encryption machines that most countries use for this purpose, and thus ensured that the individual machines were rigged in such a way that the NSA could decipher any messages sent through them.

As regards the relevance of all this to the Lockerbie case, De Braeckeleer writes:

"After the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988, 'Iran vowed that the skies would rain with American blood.' A few months later, on Dec. 21, a terrorist bomb brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Once more, NSA intercepted and decoded a communication of Iranian Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi linking Iran to the bombing of Pan Am 103.

One intelligence summary, prepared by the US Air Force Intelligence Agency, was requested by lawyers for the bankrupt Pan American Airlines through the Freedom of Information Act.

'Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid 10 million dollars in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus.'

Moreover, Israeli intelligence intercepted a coded transmission between Mohtashemi in Teheran and the Iranian Embassy in Beirut concerning the transfer of a large sum of money to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, headed by Ahmed Jibril, as payment for the downing of Pan Am 103.

The Iranians were now at a loss to explain how Western and Israeli intelligence agencies could so easily defeat the security of their diplomatic traffic. The ease with which the West was reading Iranian coded transactions strongly suggested that some may have possessed the decryption keys."

Later he comments:

"In 1991, the US and the U.K. indicted two Libyans for the bombing of Pan Am 103. To the surprise of many observers, the indictment did not mention those believed to have contracted the act of terror in spite of the fact that their guilt had been established by the interception of official communications by several intelligence agencies.

To many observers, justice was not served at the Lockerbie trial. Could it be that the US and U.K. governments decided to sacrifice the truth in order to preserve the (in)efficiency of their intelligence apparatus?"

For the full text, see http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?article_class=3&no=381337&rel_no=1