[What follows is a commentary by Peter Biddulph on the Crown's response to Dr John Wyatt's findings as disclosed in the recent Newsnight segment.]
The recent Crown statement regarding the John Wyatt tests needs to be exposed for what it is: - an attempt to confuse the uninformed with carefully placed words such as "fragments of circuit boards" and "fragment".
The statement includes:
1. "It was reported in the BBC Newsnight Programme [6th January 2010] that tests carried out by Dr Wyatt suggest that the fragment was unlikely to have survived the mid-air explosion and that the radio used in his tests 'totally disintegrated' and 'went into tiny, tiny bits'. In fact, extensive explosive tests were carried out in the United States in 1989, some time before the fragment PT35B was extracted by forensic experts, as part of the Lockerbie investigation. …."
COMMENT: The Indian Head tests took place in April 1989, three weeks before the bomb "fragment" was discovered for the first time by Dr Thomas Hayes on 12th May 1989.
At the time of the Indian Head tests, neither Thurman or Feraday were aware of the existence of the Hayes fragment, nor of its possible link to an MEBO MST-13 timer board.
They were not tests of the survivability of any kind of bomb trigger timer board, but to establish the location of the primary suitcase and the amount of explosive used.
No mention has ever been made by Thurman or Feraday to fragment survivability testing as part of the Indian Head tests.
2. The Crown statement continues: "After a number of test explosions, a detailed search was made and circuit board fragments … were all recovered in a condition which was consistent with the debris recovered in relation to the Lockerbie disaster."
COMMENT: An aircraft body contains many printed circuit boards. Test explosions of any part of an aircraft body will therefore produce many circuit board fragments.
Note the use of the terms "consistent with" and "fragments". An uninformed reader - including an uninformed journalist such as Dave Cowan of STV, or even an uninformed lawyer - will naturally conclude a link to the next Crown paragraph:-
3. "The forensic evidence placed before the court included evidence about the appearance of 'the fragment.' And the fact that when it was recovered, it was embedded within a fragment from a blast-damaged grey Slalom brand shirt, which had been found in Newcastleton, Roxburghshire on 13th January 1989 ..."
COMMENT: The fragment was not found on 13th January 1989. The shirt collar containing it was found on that day and entered on the evidence log by DC Gilchrist under the identification "CLOTH".
It would take another four months before the fragment was discovered, well after the completion of the Indian Head tests. It was found by Dr Thomas Hayes on 12th May 1989.
At the trial, under cross-examination, Hayes insisted in reply to two specific questions from Richard Keen QC that it was embedded deep within the shirt collar, and that the police could not have been aware of it prior to his finding.
CONCLUSION
The Indian Head tests, as far as the Hayes fragment is concerned, are an irrelevance.
Either the writers of the Crown statement haven't done their homework, or they've been seriously misled by FBI misinformation. Probably a combination of both.
"In fact, extensive explosive tests were carried out in the United States in 1989, some time before the fragment PT35B was extracted by forensic experts, as part of the Lockerbie investigation."
ReplyDeleteA typical lawyer's point. Because the tests were carried out for different purposes, the conclusions derived from one test cannot be applied to the other. Somehow the nature of the consistency of science disppears under less than gimlet legal gaze.
"No mention has ever been made by Thurman or Feraday to fragment survivability testing as part of the Indian Head tests."
The tests I suspect were no more thna a demonstration, not a scientific test and neithet F or T is much of a scientist. Point 2. Worse than that. We are comparing the survivability of a particular circuit board in a particular suitcase conataining a brisant bomb and not some remote piece of equipment esseantial to the functioning of an aircraft but remote from the centre of the blast.
And (3) in my opinion the fragment buried in the collar gained its identity sometime after 22 June 1989 having been sourced from Mr Lumpert, and the shirt collar containing the fragment placed in bag label 168. Much later than 13 Januray or 12 May.
MISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteComment on BBC- documentary film, "Flaws in key Lockerbie evidence".
The chronology of the "Lockerbie Story" begins with the following manipulated date, purposefully falsified from forensic expert Allen Feraday (RARDE) for Dr. Thomas Heyes doubtful Examinations side No. 51.
On 13 January 1989, by Scottish police, 1 pieces charred T-shirt, mark "Slalom" was found in Lockerbie (police Label 168)
Angeblich wurde das Slalom T-shirt erst am 12. Mai 1989 von Dr. Hayes und Feraday untersucht, dabei kamen verschiedene Teile zum vorschein: Unter anderem ein Circuit Board Fragment eines MST-13 Timer, (PT/35). siehe Ref. Foto PP 8932 / PI 995, vom 12. Mai 1989.
Datum 15. September 1989. Das MST-13 Timer Fragment (PT/35) wurde laut einem übermittelten Memorandum (Label DP/137) von Feraday an William Williamson, angeblich erstmals am 15. September 1989 fotografiert...
Scottish Police Officer William Williamson said that Allen Feraday, the forensic examiner, had send a Fax to Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) in January 1990 about items he found blasted into a Slalom shirt, among other things the most significant item was a fingernail-size chip, This fragment bekame known as PT/35.
(Statement of FBI Task-Force chief Richard Marquise, in its log book: Scotbom (Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation).
The following chronological sequence over finding the Circuit board PT/35 (MST-13) would be correct:
12. January 1990, was found according to fax the MST-13 timer fragment and registered and photographed as PT/35.
The Police Label No.168 for the charred T-shirt, mark "Slalom" was replaced with the Label PI-995 !!!
Laut einer Schriftanalyse wurde von Allen Feraday ein ursprüngliches Polizei Label, No. PT/95 vom 13. Januar 1989, auf die Label No. PI/995, und das Datum auf den 17. Januar abgeändert, sowie der Artikel von "Cloths" auf "DEBRIS" (charred) überschrieben!
Mit diesem manipulierten Label PI/995 wollte Feraday aus kriminellen Gründen, das Auffinden des PT/35 Circuit Board (MST-13) auf das Datum vom 17. Januar 1989 zurücksetzen...
To demonstrate the liabillity the Label was later additionally signed by 5 further officials: Dr. Thomas Hayes; Allen Feraday; Derek Henderson; Ron McManus and Cal Mentoso.
MEBO Question: Did these people had to take the responsibility on themselves, if the criminal fraud would be noticed? And did each official have to secure himself face to face from the others? It is strange and not normal that the altered police Label no. PI-995 was signed by 7 officials...
(Lord Advocate Fraser's order was that police Labels must by signed by 2 officials).
continuation down >>>
continuation >>>
ReplyDeleteMit einer zweiten Datum Manipulation auf dem Police Label DP/137, vom 10. September 1990, abgeändert (gefälscht) auf den 15. September 1989, wollte Feraday beweisen, dass er das Memorandum und die erste Foto des MST-13 (PT/35) Fragments, nicht 1990 sondern bereits 1989 an Officer Williamson übermittelt hatte. Das Memorandum musste dadurch mit dem Datum vom 15. Sept.1989 neu geschrieben werden...
Um eine falsche Darstellung von den Zeugen Dr. Hayes und Allen Feraday (RARDE) vorzutäuschen, dass das PT/35 Circuit Board (MST-13) sei erst am 12. Mai 1989, im "Slalom" T-shirt Fragment, bei RARDE entdeckt worden, wurden folgende kriminelle Handlungen ausgeführt:
Auffällig ist, dass kurz vor der Beendigung des ersten Teil der "Examination Notes", von Dr. Thomas Hayes, mit dem Label PT/90 bezeichnete wurde. Allen Feraday bezeichnete seine "examination notes", mit Label PT/91.
Feraday vernichtete (destroy) um nicht aufzufallen die Label: PT/92; PT/93; PT/94; (except *PT/95 = PI/995); PT/96; PT/97; PT/98; PT/99 !!!
Dr. Thomas Hayes and Allen Feraday needed some similar police Label, with date of January 13th, 1989, also for a criminal act against Libya! Therefore the original police Label No. *PT/95, was changed/falsified to No. PI/995 !!!
Die Hintergründe dieser Manipulationen und die Fotos der manipulierten Beweisunterlagen, finden Sie auf unserer Website: www.lockerbie.ch
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
This is now the third or fourth time you have repeated this lengthy text on this blog - only recently. All in all I think it was ten times or more.
ReplyDeleteIn case you intend to destroy this blog then I cannot help. Otherwise I should kindly ask you simply to refer to your website. That can then be repeated as often as you want.
The above was of course directed to Ebol. (In case anybody doesn´t know).
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately all storys in the case of Lockerbie are repetitions with more and more completions till the Justiciary and the UN reacts !
ReplyDeleteConstant drops excavates the stone...
by ebol
Not if I can help it, Ebol. You grind your opponents down by your mastery of facts.
ReplyDeleteDear Charles
ReplyDeletetheir consideration is correct, this is a fact, why Dr. Hayes and all Feraday, whom the find of the MST-13 fragment (PT/35) booked back to the date of 17th Januar 1989...
by ebol
Constant drops are a forbidden means of torture!
ReplyDeleteMISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteAnnauncement: BBC World TV, on Saturday 16th of January, 2010, time CET at: 09:10; 19:10; 03:10
Sunday 17th of January, CET time at: 15:30
See the film of BBC World: The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie
Link: http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-327765978162851498
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
I am curious as to why Lockerbie researcher Peter Biddulph cannot make his comments in the normal way. On the previous related thread I responded to a comment from Professor Black which began "Peter Biddulph comments"-
ReplyDeleteAccording to that comment of the 8th January 2010 Mr Biddulph seemed to doubt that these tests had occurred at all. If he had perused my article "Lockerbie - The Heathrow Evidence" at http://e-zeecon.blogspot.com he would have come across a section headed "The Indian Head Forensic Tests".
The Crown Office statement claims that one purpose of the tests was to ascertain the position of the explosives. It appears the central objective of the tests was to determine the position of the primary suitcase within container AVE4041.
The purpose of the tests was to give scientific validation to the "elimination" of Heathrow.
I have no great objection to the conclusion of the tests but to the other half of the equation - John Orr's dubious deduction of the position (and attitude) of the brown samsonite that mysteriously appeared within AVE4041 at Heathrow.
Mr Biddulph still seems a bit muddled as he refers to "an aircraft body containing many PCBs." True but as far as I am aware the Indian Head tests did not involve sections of fuselage. I suspect he was confused by footage in the Newsnight programme.
As I pointed out earlier according to Leppard the test bombs (built by Feraday and triggered by a military blasting cap) incorporated distinctive circuit board. At the time the Police were attempting to "prove" that a PFLP-GC barometric bomb was introduced at Frankfurt and as far as I am aware Khreesat's bombs did not incorporate PCB.
The text of the Crown statement is that the piece of Slalom shirt was "found" on the 13th January 1989. Therefore as (in the "official version") it contained the fragment of timer that was also "found" then. It was of course identified much later.
I noted the Crown statement contained the phrase "the only appropriate forum for the determination of guilt or innocence is the Court". This exact phrase featured in a letter I received from the Crown Office in 1996 after I pointed out that the Police had made a colossal blunder in eliminating Heathrow.
Of course the then Lord Advocate, head of the Crown Office had made submissions to the Fatal Accident Inquiry based on the Indian Head tests and the the Police's dubious deductions which led to the FAI concluding the primary suitcase had arrived unaccompanied from frankfurt.
I'm very interested in the fact of Mr MacFadyeb havibg been appointed a floating sherrif based in Hamilton.
ReplyDeleteIs this not the Scottish equivalent of Siberia? Why?
Are we being prepared for something?
Is it somehat of a deck clearing exercise before the battle begins?
You will remember that he was investigated last year at Christine Grahame's insistence, but the police found he had done no wrong.
But they themselves behaved perfectly from start to finish over Lockerbie, didn't they!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteReverting to Edwin Bollier's plugging of tomorrow's BBC World Conspiracy Files - Lockerbie, you might be interested in this.
ReplyDelete"The test results from Indian Head proved all-important to the Lockerbie investigators. They already knew from interviews with baggage handlers at Heathrow that only the first row of suicases from the IED baggage pallet had been loaded at Frankfurt. The tests also meant that the mysterious brown Samsonite reported by the Heathrow luggage handler as being loaded on to the bottom layer could be ruled out: it was not the bomb bag. Kamboj was in the clear."
ReplyDeletefrom "On the Trail of Terror" by David Leppard page 140-141. (published 1991).
It was from reading tis passage that I realised the "elimination" of Heathrow marked the end of an objective investigation.
Baz, I do think you're right on target. Keep it up.
ReplyDeleteOne phrase seems to have been forgotten-- Dr. Wyatt said it was "not impossible" for the fragment to have survived. I think any attorney would be glad to have that statement to be used in any defense of the fragment itself.
ReplyDeleteBaz, you're wrong. Lockerbie was screwed up from the start, it was a CIA operation, and the commentary about the IH tests is at best a diversion.
ReplyDeleteIf the IH tests were fairly carried out, then Feraday and Thurman, who attended them would have learned that there was nothing left, pace Marshall out of Wyatt.
Leppard who changed his spots during his ST series of articles (I couldn't resist that one), but was to cause John Crawford so much grief because he felt his personal saftey was put at risk by Leppard's disclosures, was deliberately being fed, I am sure, and is not the only case of poacher turned gamekeeper during the whole story. Remember the case of a certain lady
Back to the IH tests. If they were fair, and F&T accurately knew their results (which I have never seen formally reported) and then they went on respectively to give evidence of the finding of a chip and also its identification, they have a number of serious questions to answer about their roles in respectively the trial and the investigation (if it can now be called that - staged demonstartion might be a better term). I will not derail the possible charges.
Where did the chip come from then. I have an explanation, some will know.
Feraday certainly tested a device at Fort Halstaed to see how much he could squeeze into a device and at 650g explosive began to appear through the speaker grills.
Wyatt's tests, though I thought overelaborate and a little unnecessary, for I think close police questioning of both gents should quickly reveal the truth.
Meanwhile why has Norman Macfadyen been sent to that Scottish Siberia - Hamilton - (appointment to start in February). Are the authorities expecting some horrid discloure by then.
Second rule of the realpolitician. Isolate your targets so you can target them in your own time. It was a favourite technique of Stalin. It was used on Dubchek, who was made first ambassador to Turkey and ended up as a manager of a saw mill, before being rehabilitated and appearing on a platform with Vaclav Havel.
Dear Mr Marquise,
ReplyDeleteHow about a page of manual then, which made its way across Scotland (89km), and was found by the good Mrs Horton on the morning of 22 December 1988 in her garden?
That came from a suitcase with a brisant explosion in it.
One journalist (who knows who he is) siad perhaps it was in the suitcase then! In which case why was it presented as evidence in court?
In your book you show continuing doubts about a circumstantial case (the word is yours), but the moment you have your verdict you make ex-cathedra statements that your views have an authority which cannot be doubted.
Does a verdict make circunstantial evidence undoubtable?
I have tried to reason with you, and show you the error of your ways, but I ahve given up. If you post though your ignorant views, you can be afforded no quarter.
Dear fellow researchers
ReplyDeleteSorry to interrupt the flow of this duscussion, but can anyone point me to the reference I'm looking for.
Comments on this blog within the last couple of weeks stated that Major Chuck McKee had changed his flight reservation to PA 103 on 21 December at the Eurame office in Cyprus, but I can't find the comment. Did I make it up?
I can confirm that McKee changed his tickets.
ReplyDeleteIf it was on Cyprus it was presumably that Beirut airor wa hors de comabt and a CIA couldn't reaaly use Damascus. So it was the plesant ferry trip to Cyprus, where he would have been joined by Gannon and the third gent.
At some point McKee panicked and phoned his Mum. What time from where?
Perhaps gannon was sacrificed for McKee could have reasoned that the CIA would not waste the life of a station chief. Station chiefs might be killed by terrorists, but surely not their own bosses.
[The following is from Peter Biddulph.]
ReplyDeletePlease forgive me, but I've repeatedly tried but failed to post direct onto the blogspot.
I don't know the folks who are making comments. Only that I'm not muddled about PCBs.
In the trial, witness Christopher Protheroe, of the Air Accident Investigation Branch said the following:
"Q. Can I ask you, Mr. Protheroe, about one final thing, please. Within an aircraft of the sort that you were considering, would it be common to find printed circuit boards?
A Yes, it would.
Q And why would that be?
A Because they are an integral part of a wide range of electronic equipment distributed throughout the aircraft.
Q Is it possible for you to provide us
with an estimation of how many printed circuit boards there would be within such an aircraft?
A Not numerically, but there would be a
great number."
As a native of Lnarkshire, I'm feeling increasingly insulted here....
ReplyDeleteThat's Lanarkshire, obviously....
ReplyDeleteI do envy you guys being so certain. OK, you're all absolutely certain of quite different scenarios, but at least you're certain!
ReplyDeleteMe, I'm not even certain the timer fragment is a plant. Mr. Marquise is quite right to point out that Dr. Wyatt never said it was completely impossible for it to be genuine - there's always the possibility he got something slightly wrong in the positioning I suppose.
It's all very well shouting about the improbable number of anomalies surrounding the thing, but anomalies alone don't prove shenanigans. Sometimes people are just damn careless.
We don't know about the provenance of the red-circle photo, for a start. If it has a negative proving it was taken in May, then that makes the "plant" theory much less likely. (On the other hand, if it doesn't, I suspect it makes it a lot more likely.)
There was an item of evidence designated PI955 that was logged into the records at Dextar on 17th January. What was that? If it isn't the bag Hayes opened on 12th May, what was it?
Was it something genuinely found by DCs Gilchrist and McColm on Friday the Thirteenth, but later tampered with? Or was it something else, and the grey shirt collar was later substituted? If so, when and how? Or is the entry in the Dextar log a forgery?
It seems to me a lot of people are asking the wrong questions. A few other questions come to mind.
- Who took the red-circle photo, and can the date be established?
- When was Blinkbonny Farm actually searched? (According to Crawford, somewhere only 20 miles from Lockerbie should have been searched within the first two weeks.)
- When were other items from that field and the surrounding ones logged, and who found them?
- When did DC McColm actually go out and get his hands dirty, rather than sit in the warm office, as described by Crawford?
- Where were DCs Gichrist and McColm on Friday 13th anyway, from other evidence?
Of course, it's possible for the Dextar provenance to be absolutely unshakeable, and the thing still not to be genuine. But if there was indeed a substitution, then given the evident incompetence later in the evidence trail (renumbered pages and altered labels and polaroid photographs and so on), what's the chances?
To rethink
ReplyDeleteSelbst in Dr. Hayes und Allen Feraday's eigener gefälschter Darstellungen über den Fund des MST-13 Timerfragments war ihnen ein Fehler unterlaufen !
Wie war es möglich, dass Feraday am 15. September 1989, ein Memorandum zusammen mit einer Polaroid-Photo (MST-13 board, the first time photographed) zu Inspektor William Williamsen überbracht hatte, aber anderseits bereits am 12. Mai 1989 in Dr. Hayes Examinations Seite No.51, Ref. PP'8932 das Fragment fotographiert hatte? Dann aber erst am Januar 1990 mit einem Telex SIO Stuart Henderson über das Circuit-Board MST-13 (PT-35) informiert hatte und erst nach dem 12. Januar 1990 Inspector Keith Harrower (Witness 261) make inquiries with the MST-13 (PT/35) Fragment.
Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd
Dear Rolfe and Mr Marquise,
ReplyDeleteHaving spent a few hours thinking about the probabilities, here are my conclusions.
Neither policemen nor lawyers properly understand the subject, and the reason, a policeman told me, that DNA evidence was so good in thes country (the UK) was that we had the biggest database! The worrying thing was thet he was the "DNA Queen" for his force. Lawyers, are worse with their "balance of probabilities". If probabililities balance they are 50/50, and I would not convict anyone on that.
Bet that as it may be. Dr Wyatt, is reporting as a scientist should. He is cautious. He did not find a chip in ten such blowings up, but he still has only done 10. He has not done an infinite number. (This is a variant of the "white swan" argument)
He is a little more cautious than he should be, for there were two circuit voards in the tests and which should have been recovered, if they had survived. Fragments of both Toshiba circuit board and MEBO chipwere presented in court that had come from the suitcase, one bit from the Newcastleton forest, the other from the baggage conatiner plate where it had been forced into the outer surface. (An incredible bit of physics by the way. That fragmented refuted Newton!)
I am sure Dr Wyatt properly carried out his tests and there was a model of a MEBO circuit board and a Toshiba cassette in his cases.
In his tests, nothing was recovered, so the chance of recovery of a bit of circuit goes from one in ten to one in a hundred, one in ten squared, if the destructions were independent and I can't see that they weren't.
It is a pity he did not include a sheet of paper manual, such as the one from Deccy Horton's notorious garden. Let's say that had a one in a hundred possibilitity of survival. That's now one in ten thousand.
Now look at Mr Thurman's MEBO chip. Apparaently the part that survived conatins the letters MEBO. If I broke thw MEBO circuit board randomly into small parts, of the size of the bit with MEBO on it, I bet there'd be less than a 1% chance that a piece would turn up with the letters MEBO. One apparently did. Mr Thurman "identified" it.
But fact that in with the evidence of the two pieces of chip, the survival of the manual page and now that the fragment had the letters MEBO on it makes a a one in a million chance of survival.
Such a figure is in the public's mind a test of trueness. But it's true only if all the stuff were genuinely got there and it hasn't been. It's been faked.
Now Mr Marquise will return to lecturing about he has the facts. But he decided to enter the ring to talk about probabililities. This then is my answer.
Rolfe said:
ReplyDelete"- Who took the red-circle photo, and can the date be established?"
This is one of the simple but crucial questions which really could bring us forward. Instead of rotating old theories.
Of course we cannot get help from the Megrahi-hunters. But it should be possible for the (former/today´s)legal representatives of Mr Megrahi or from somebody in their vicinity to answer precisely. They must be in possession of the files.
I am growingly irritated that we are forced to fence in the fog while answers should be at hand.
As far as the red-circle-photo is concerned I propose to look at the series of photos which it is part of. It is a rather strange parade if we believe that the red-circle-photo is made in Mai 1989.
MISSION LOCKERBIE: This is only a Babylon computer translation german/english.
ReplyDeleteFür verschiedene "Misunderstanding" kam es am Gericht in Kamp van Zeist, weil jeweils die Polizei-Labels mit je zwei verschiedenen Markierungen bezeichnet wurden:
For different " Misunderstanding" it came at the court into Kamp van Zeist, because the police labels with two different markings each were designated in each case:
1st: Für die Prozessführung wurde ein Label unter einer Produktions Nummer oder als Polizei No. oder nur als Nummer bezeichnet;
1st: For the processing a label under a production number or as a police No. was called or only a number:
2nd: Die Label-Bezeichnung selbst besteht aus einer Buchstaben und Zahlenkombination. Mit der gleichen Kombination wurde das aufgefundene Material bezeichnet.
2nd: The label designation consists of letter and number combination. The same combination the found material was named.
3rd: Beispiel: Die Gerichts Label Nummer 168 war identisch mit der Label No. PT/95 (manipuliert auf PI/995) Der Article: "cloth" (charred) wurde überschrieben mit "DEBRIS" (charred. Das Datum vom 13/1/89 wurde ergänzt mit 17/1/89.
Dieses Label wurde unterschrieben von 7 offiziellen Personen !!! Nur zwei Unterschriften wären nötig gewesen!
3rd: Example: Court the label number 168 was identical to the labels No. PT/95 (manipulates on PI/995) the Article: " cloth" (charred) overwritten with one " DEBRIS" (charred. The date of the 13/1/89 supplemental with 17/1/89. This label signed of 7 official persons!!! Only two signatures would have been necessary!
Mit dem manipulierten Label No.168 (PI/995) bezeichnete Polizei Offizier Thomas Gilchrist das Fragment eines T-shirt, Marke "Slalom", aufgefunden am 13/1/89 in Sector 1.
Zusätzlich wurden von Gilchrist weitere 3 Stück "Slalom" T-shirt Fragmente im Sector 1, aufgefunden und mit den Label PT/95= No.169; PT/95= No.170 und PT/95= No.171 (Each of these labels was part of a grey Slalom shirts.
With the manipulated label No.168 (PI/995) characteristic police officer Thomas Gilchrist the fragment one T-shirt, mark "Slalom", which was found on 13/1/89 in sector 1. Additionally Gilchrist discover further 3 pieces "Slalom" T-shirt of fragments in the sector 1, and were marked with the label PT/95= No.169, PT/95= No.170 and PT/95= No.171 marked. (Each of these labels was part of a grey Slalom shirts.
NB: Damit ist es offensichtlich, dass das MST-13 Timerfragment (PT/35) nachträglich zum "Slalom" T-shirt Rückgebucht wurde: Vom Januar 1990 auf den 13. (17.) Januar 1989, und das Label No. 168 auf Label PI-995 umgetauft wurde!
NB: With the fact it is obvious that the MST-13 timer fragment (PT/35) later was back-booked to the "Slalom" T-shirt; from January 90 on the 13th (17th) of January 89, and the label No.168 was renamed on label PI-995!
You does a light come up!? Ist alles klar !?
Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
MISSION LOCKERBIE, attn Adam, Rolfe:
ReplyDeleteDie "red-circled photo" war zuerst im Mai 89 mit dem Toshiba Radiorecorder Fragment Circuit board (AG/145) bei RARDE fotografiert worden. Ab 12. Januar 90 wurde eine Fotomontage gemacht. Das "red-circled" ex Toshiba Fragment (AG/145) wurde mit dem Timer Fragment MST-13 (PT/35) ausgetauscht und eine Photomontage erstellt! Nur diese Logik hält stand!
Following translation is a "Babylon" computer translation, german/english:>>>
The "read-circled photo" was first photographed beginning May of 89, with the Toshiba radio recorders fragment circuit board (AG/145) with RARDE.
Starting after 12th January 90, the following photo assembly was made: the "read circled" ex Toshiba fragment (AG/145) was exchanged with the timer fragment MST-13 (PT/35) and a photomontage was provided! Only this logic should hold now...
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
MISSION LOCKERBIE, correction, apology:
ReplyDeleteLabel No.168= PT/95= (PI/995, manipulated), the Article: "cloth" (charred) overwritten with one "DEBRIS" (charred). The date of the 13/1/89 supplemental with 17/1/89. Each label was signed with 7 signatures !!!
Label No.169= PT/96; No.170= PT/97; No.171= PT/98 (Each of these labels was part of a grey Slalom T-shirts, marked as "cloth". Each label was signed only with 2 signatures.
These labels were not recorded in the Feradays/Hayes report 181!
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
The recovered fragment DID NOT contain the letters MEBO. The fragment was compared to a real timer and the comparisons were made between the solder lines on the fragment and the real timer which was dissembled and at that time the MEBO name was found. The timer fragment was identified by ALL the MEBO principals in 1990 as resembling theirs and this was confirmed not by sight but by microscopic comparison. No lectures coming from me.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Richard Marquise, for the clarification. As long as you do not want to debate your own doubts into the official case it is still of great assistance when you shoot down obvious factual nonsense.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr Marquise,
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected. The recovered part did not contain the MEBO letters, but it contained a chip was identifiable of coming from a MEBO board. Mr Thurman's identification was quite positive.
In other words, how could it be distinguished from any other circuit not coming from a MEBO board.
Now consider the probability of that. Mr Protheroe was asked the question of how many circuit boards and aircraft (and presumably all those in passengers' luggage) contained.
Let's make an intelligent guess 10,000 circuit boards, perhaps?
Say 100 microchips per board, that 1,000,000 microchips. Really, quite a large number. And one of those was found in the Keilder forest outside the
debris area indicated by the AAIB debris plot.
And the right one was recovered?
Seems improbable, doesn't it?
How can they prove it doid not come from another board?
I doubt if anyone has tried to calculate the odds against recovering that chip from the circuit board.
Now, while my original statement that the letters MEBO were recovered is wrong, the fact that it was a chip that was recovered is just as bad if not worse.
A timer circuit board is pretty standard, and I doubt if the chips on it were particularly remarkable.
Mr Bollier could probably tell us the type of chip that was identified. A standard industry timer chip, for example?
How many of those would there have been on the aircraft. Say 1% of that 1,000,000 chips. That's 100!
I doubt, Mr Marquise, whether you have ever tried to approach Lockerbie from a statistical point of view. I have spent ten years doing so.
I doubt whether Mr Bollier has either. So the statement, that the chip was identified by "All the MEBO" principals is misleading. They were not asked how common that particular chip was. That gives a very different picture.
The question of microscopic identification is an irrelevance.
It ws identified as a MEBO chip as it had come from a MEBO board and that was, I infer, planted in the evidence stream.
MISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteDear ex FBI Task Force Chief Mr. Marquise,
that is the point, you says it correctly resemblance! The timer fragment was identified by ALL the MEBO principals in 1990 as resembling theirs and this was confirmed. I have between 14th-16th September with Procurator Mirian Watson in Dumfries Scotland, the original section DP/31 (a) personally examined.
Das kleinere Fragment DP/31(a) wurde vom original MST-13 Fragment bei Firma Siemens am 27. April 1990, als Teilstück No. 419 (DP/31(a) abgetrennt und stammte zweifelsfrei von einem braunen Prototyp circuit Board ab; (standard PC-board mit 8 Fiberglaslagen)!
Das grössere original Fragment PT/35(b), marked mit dem Buchstaben "M" konnte ich nur auf einer FBI-Foto begutachten !
Das grössere MST-13 Fragment (PT/35(b) No. 353 welches mir in Dumfries zur Begutachtung gezeigt wurde war nicht das ORIGINAL, sondern ein grünes DUPLIKAT, welches keine Markierung "M" aufwies!
Bitte erklären Sie uns:
1.) wieso auf dem original MST-13 (PT/35B) Fragment, abgebildet auf der RARDE Gerichts Beweisfoto No. 334, ein Buchstabe "M" eingekratz ist, aber beim Besuch in Dumfries und am Gericht in Kamp van Zeist ein grünes *DUPLIKAT PT/35(b), ohne Buchstabe "M", mir als Zeuge No.548 gezeigt wurde? *(Farbe grün mit 9 Lagen Fiberglas).
2.) Wieso musste Kommissar P. Flückiger (BUPO) die FBI- Foto mit der Abbildung des original MST-13 Timerfragment mit Markierung "M" zurückerstatten und wieso konnte diese spezielle Foto bis zum heutigen Tag, trotz Aufforderung der Schweizerischen Bundesanwältin, nicht erbracht werden ?
3.) Besides: In case you are the real Richard Marquise you admit hereby that FBI had examined forensic, the original MST-13 fragment (PT/35) ?
Thanks
Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
Charles
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that a chip of the type used in a timing circuit may also be found in the avionics systems of an aircraft.
However that item found was not a chip or integrated circuit but a fragment of a printed circuit board.
I think the press have probably described it as a chip of a circuit board as in chip of glass, wood etc.
David
Dear David,
ReplyDeleteOnly a fragment of circuit board? No chip was identified by Mr Thurman, then? There is a problem about the circuit board in itself, for there is some dispute as to whether it was green or brown, and the number of plys.
I should think there are more types of chips that circuit boards about.
I shall suspend my judgement here until a properly informed person says exactly what was claimed to have been found on the ground at Newcastleton, for I seem to be in error that it was a chip, if you are right.
If it was a chip, exactly what kind of chip (saying that it was one that was used on a MEBO board, just won't do), and if it was a pcb, what sort of pcb.
I am sorry to have to be so pedantic, but the evidence looks flakier and flakier every time someone tries to explain it, and the question of its uniqueness to MEBO the more so.
For the purposes of argument three sorts of chip were on the ground at Lockerbie; call them avionics, consumer and MEBO.
Until we know categorically from Mr Bollier that his stuff was never used in avionics or consumer and it could only have been used on MEBO boards, we can go no further. Or somebody else can prove it.
The identification by Mr Thurman is actually the wrong way round. He had to show that the chip or piece of board could not have come from anything but a MEBO board, not that it was part of a MEBO board.
Such a subtlety, I think Mr Thurman does not quite comprehend.
Can you help us Mr Bollier, please?
Ebol said:
ReplyDelete2.) Wieso musste Kommissar P. Flückiger (BUPO) die FBI- Foto mit der Abbildung des original MST-13 Timerfragment mit Markierung "M" zurückerstatten und wieso konnte diese spezielle Foto bis zum heutigen Tag, trotz Aufforderung der Schweizerischen Bundesanwältin, nicht erbracht werden ?"
Do you have an affidavit from Mr Flückiger or any other documentation for that?
Yes Mr. Bollier, I am the "real" Richard Marquise that met you on several occasions in 1991. I believe in providing facts even though many on this list seem to doubt that my "facts" are correct. I will say again--for the millionth time--I am not aware and do not believe that any evidence was planted or manipulated. While there may have been many "circuit boards" on the plane. the one from the MST-13 timer was recovered in a piece of cloth with fragments of the radio and a piece of the radio instruction manual. Those are facts. I am not involved in statistics. The fragment found was identified as part of the MEBO timer. MEBO--a company linked by evidence to both Libyan intelligence and Mr. Megrahi-- delivered 20 of these timers to the Libyans in 1985 and the Libyans were looking for more in December 1988-- in the week before the bombing. The fragment found had the corner cut to fit into a box--similar to the Senegal timer found with Libyan officials 10 months before Lockerbie. The tracking on the timer fragment found at Lockerbie was identified as one manufactured by MEB)--there were only 20 made--not millions-- 20-- I do not know about those statistics. That seems to be compelling evidence to me.
ReplyDeleteEbol said:
ReplyDelete"Das kleinere Fragment DP/31(a) wurde vom original MST-13 Fragment bei Firma Siemens am 27. April 1990, als Teilstück No. 419 (DP/31(a) abgetrennt und stammte zweifelsfrei von einem braunen Prototyp circuit Board ab; (standard PC-board mit 8 Fiberglaslagen)!"
where is the documentation for this? Is there any other person who can testify?
Dear Mr Marquise and Mr Bollier,
ReplyDeleteI have always believed the Mr Marquise who blogs is utterly genuine, and his blogs sound like his book and email style.
I appreciate the time he has taken to reply to criticisms, and it must be galling to him that some of us fail to understand him.
Repeating a statement, of course does not increase its validity and is little more valuable than turning a Tibetan prayer wheel or telling a rosary.
I am sure Mr Marquise is not aware of falsity.
It would be interesting to know when he joined the Lockerbie Investigation, for it was later than the date at which the misdeeds were carried out, and thus he can bear no responsibility whatsoever. I have never suggested, accused or implied that he has ever done anything improper or wrong over Lockerbie. I simply consider him to be misguided, quite a different kettle.
I am not going to dispute the fact that the fragment (chip or pcb) was part of MEBO timer. All I ask him if he can assert that all the other pcbs or chips on the aircraft could not be found on a MEBO board. That is the test.
In fact Mr Marquise's latest posting suggests that the conspirators had anticipated that, for the curved part would have been unique to a Senegal type MEBO board (which may well have been identical to a board supplied to the Stasi, the DDR's "security" organisation.
But whether the prosecution could prove beyond all doubt that uniqueness is a problem to me.
Ebol said:
ReplyDelete"The "read-circled photo" was first photographed beginning May of 89, with the Toshiba radio recorders fragment circuit board (AG/145) with RARDE.
Starting after 12th January 90, the following photo assembly was made: the "read circled" ex Toshiba fragment (AG/145) was exchanged with the timer fragment MST-13 (PT/35) and a photomontage was provided! Only this logic should hold now..."
Where is the documentation for this? Or is it simply a fairy tale made in Switzerland?
Charles said:
ReplyDelete"I am sure Mr Marquise is not aware of falsity."
That is propably true, when it comes to the technical "evidence" in the case. I am sure he has never had the timer fragment in his hands. He had to rely on people like Mr Thurman or Mr Feraday or Mr Hayes.
Thou8gh, Mr Marquise was the person who prepared desaster witness Giaka for the trial.
Richard Marquise said:
ReplyDelete"MEBO--a company linked by evidence to both Libyan intelligence and Mr. Megrahi-- delivered 20 of these timers to the Libyans in 1985 and the Libyans were looking for more in December 1988-- in the week before the bombing."
Maybe we could start a small conversation on this, Mr Marquise?
1. You are right that there is evidence that MEBO was linked to both Mr Megrahi and Libyan intelligence.
2. You are right that there is evidence that MEBO sold timers to Libya in 1985.
3. You are right that there is evidence that Libya asked for more timers in November/December 1989 and that Mr Bollier went to Libya with (different) timers in December (in the days ahead of the Lockerbie bombing).
4. But do you really believe that this acute interest in timers was for the Lockerbie bomb? Why then 20? Why tests in the desert with aerial bombs?
5. The theory behind the accusations against Libya was that the bombing was in retaliation for the American Raid on Tripoli in 1985. Do you think that the Libyans needed 3 years to prepare the retaliation and then - one week ahead of the date - they suddenly detected that they had forgotten to buy a timer?
6. Furthermore: All the reports (inclusive a few intelligence reports) that I have read assess that Libya had absolutely no interest in a repetition of any American raid - which could become the outcome of the Lockerbie bombing. Please Mr Marquise, ask your profilers and they will endorse my view.
7. Mr Bollier offered timers (more modern than his) which would fit much better into the radio bomb. For instance because you could set a precise date and time and had not to find out how many hours the whole action would take (Malta-Frankfurt-London-Lockerbie). Nevertheless the Libyans wanted the robust MST timers (which they used to blow up abandoned army depots in their various desert wars).
8. The outcome of Mr Bolliers visit in Libya was that he DID NOT sell MST timers to the Libyans because he had none. So in case the Libyans had panicked to get any MST timer for the bombing purpose The DID NOT get any. So from where does then the (alleged) MST timer in the bomb come from?
9. The connection Bollier-Libya-MST Timer-Lockerbie is obviously an optical legerdemain which is produced by focussing only on time and not on logic and background.
Your turn Mr Marquise!
MISSION LOCKERBIE, attn.Adam, Charles, Mr. Marquise
ReplyDeleteA very good summary of Adam.
Das angeblich aufgefundene MST-13 Fragment (PT/35B) abgebildet auf der ersten Gerichts-Beweis-Foto, No. 334 von RARDE, mit Markierung "M", war mit 100% Sicherheit von einem Circuit Board von meiner Firma MEBO Ltd. Dieses original Fragment (PT/35) wurde 100% von einem Prototype MST-13 Circuit Board hergestellt.
Es wäre heute noch beweisbar, dass der kleine Teil des MST-13 Fragments, das DP/31(a), No. 419 (abgetrennt von Fa. Semens) aus 8 Lagen Fiberglas (standard) bestand. Siehe die Polizei-Protokolle vom 14.-16. September 1999 in Dumfries.
Die erste Foto des original MST-13 Timerfragments (PT/35B) No.334, mit ersichtlichen "M", wurde vom Gericht u.a. ebenfalls als Beweis anerkannt.
Das grüne DUPLIKAT- Teilstück PT/35(b), ohne "M" steht noch heute im Archiv der Scottish Justiciary für eine polizeiliche Untersuchung zur Verfügung.
Das original Teil PT/35(b) Prototype mit "M" und die FBI-Foto des original MST-13 Fragments bleiben unter "National Security"!
When Mr. Sherrow return to the USA in October 1986. He take one *MST-13 timer and parts of three different types of explosives, placed in diplomatic pouch !!! and retourned to USA. Mr. Sherrow return in his own headquarters and he was requested to take it to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
This *MST-13 Timer landed already on April 1989 by FBI experte Tom Thurman,s Laboratory! After the delivery of the "Libya" MST-13 timer to Thurman, he should know which was demand from it …
Es stand in der Verschwörung gegen Libyen spätestens ab April 89 fest, dass ein Fragment eines MST-13 Timers gefunden werden muss, um Libyen mit der Lockerbie-Tragödie in Verbindung zubringen! Man organisierte dafür einen MST-13 Circuit Board via BUPO, von Ing. Lumpert, am 22. Juni 89 !
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
Dear Adam,
ReplyDeleteYou are wonderfully deep and claerer thinking than most of us.
Please continue
Charles said:
ReplyDelete"Only a fragment of circuit board? No chip was identified by Mr Thurman, then? There is a problem about the circuit board in itself, for there is some dispute as to whether it was green or brown, and the number of plys.
...
Can you help us Mr Bollier, please?"
Hint - this is not how to solve the "dispute." Try looking at photos - show me some brown, anywhere.
Charles said:
"The identification by Mr Thurman is actually the wrong way round. He had to show that the chip or piece of board could not have come from anything but a MEBO board, not that it was part of a MEBO board."
It is clearly a fragment from a MST-13 board. No special tests are needed - we can all see if. It's that "Number One" corner, when looked at upside-down. Thurman was plenty qualified to match these two shapes. However...
Richard Marquise said:
"One phrase seems to have been forgotten-- Dr. Wyatt said it was "not impossible" for the fragment to have survived. I think any attorney would be glad to have that statement to be used in any defense of the fragment itself."
Do you realize how weak this sounds? Dr. Wyatt's tests show however that any board packed into a radio with 3-400 grams of Semtex detonating would not be vary likely at all to yield large recognizable chunks like this. The probability is slim enough to round it down to zero.
Therefore, any large fragment s like this were probably NOT involved in the explosion. If not, then how would it get in the evidence unless planted? And why plant something that doesn't clearly implicate Libya (to the extent a simple circuit board can?)
It's not as if its miraculous survival is the ONLY problem with this evidence. The "anomalies" are more consistent by far than anything (factual) leading one to accept the fragment as part of the bomb.
“A circuit board fragment, allegedly found embedded in a piece of charred material, was identified as part of an electronic timer similar to that found on a Libyan intelligence agent who had been arrested 10 months previously, carrying materials for a Semtex bomb”. From the wikipedia
ReplyDelete== There are at least three accounts of this finding; the one given in court- (1) police on their hands and knees – (2) a lover and his lass – (3) a man with a dog.
== Why any of them should have thought “this must be important”, when what they must have picked up must have seemed to them to be a bit a bit of burnt cloth, is immensely odd as Dr Hayes did not see the embedded chip in it until 12 May 1989 at RARDE, Fort Halstead
== The next improbable (for Mr Marquise this means it's true) point is that what we're looking at is a part of a circuit board that had been milled or shaped by MEBO, and therefore could not have come from anything but a MEBO board that had been processed by the company. MEBO shaped that circuit board to fit a case, and but for MEBO's intervention, it could not be uniquely MEBO. No other discovered item could have fitted this condition. The probability of breaking up a board so that the bit that survived randomly is I expect about 1%.
==This is a crucial and utterly unlikely survival, but let it pass, it did. Mr Thurman has got the statistical test round the right way. No other fragment coming from that plane could have come from any other component than a MEBO circuit board. Was he aware of it?
== The other Toshiba fragment found in embedded in the wrong side of the plate on AVE4041 PA (please Mr Marquise, I do Newtonian mechanics as well as probability) had to pass the lower test of coming from a Toshiba Cassette recorder circuit board, and I am sure did so.
== You must admit that the plotters are very, very sophisticated and they have left nothing chance in their logical chain of reasoning. (Anecdote: One reason Himmler was caught by the British after WWII was that a man with perfect documentation ( not in the name of Himmler) was arrested by them, and they rationalised that this was too good to be true at that stage of the war, he must be a fake; he was - Himmler).
== That's proper logic for you.
== This is a process called straining at gnats!
== I made an error in the number of tests Dr Wyatt did. It was 20 not 10, so the probability of chip survival is reduced four fold for the circuit board fragment and chip combined. Using Mr Marquise's curious notion of probability that the more unlikely event, the more likely that its occurrence is true, simply means that it sis four times as likely, as a 4,000,000:1 finding is “more likely” than a 1,000,000
== To take a comparison the odds against winning the UK lottery every week are 14.2M:1, so the odds against identifying the chip are not of a dissimilar order.
== No doubt, Mr Marquise invests in the US equivalent every week, and by the application of these curious inverse probabilities, is a very rich man indeed. Mr Marquise who says facts are facts and this is what we found, will also not understand the irony of this statement.
This thread has moved far away from Mr Biddulph's comments about the Indian Head Forensic Tests to more debate about the timer fragment. I thought the tests themselves and their conclusions were of crucial importance.
ReplyDeleteI find Charles' comments almost unintelligible (even without the endless typos and spelling errors) and therefore am baffled by his assertion "Baz, you're wrong" because "Lockerbie was screwed up from the start, it was a CIA operation". How does that make me wrong?
Peter Biddulph's comment (via Robert Black - does he really not know how to post a comment?) quotes a witness at the Camp Zeist trial that an aircraft fuselage contains a lot of PCB. This does not negate my point that he seemed a bit muddled. He wrote "test explosions of an aircraft body will therefore produce many fragments of circuit board". True, I said, but as far as I was aware the Indian Head tests did not involve sections of fuselage.
What he seems to be saying is that there would have been an enormous amount of PCB at the crash scene (unrelated to the IED) which is true but not really relevant to the Indian Head tests.
Aku - there is some information on the Eurame Travel Agency in Goddard/Coleman's "On the trail of the Octopus". I did comment on Major McKee's travel noting it was curious that he took the Ferry rather than bumming a lift with the Ambassador and Matthew Gannon but perhaps he wanted to get to Nicosia rather than the Airport. I also commented on Gareth Peirce's claim that McKee was a CIA officer returning to the USA to "blow the whistle".
According to Charles' "book" McKee then chartered a private plane from Cyprus to Frankfurt so I would take what he can "confirm" with a pinch of salt!
Baz,
ReplyDeleteBaz, you are a bit of blackpot calling there, and I am sure you are aware that your own writing is not perfect. You suffer from some systematic failures and my are only typos.
Please don't continually try to score points off people, for your own account is complicated, unclear, unpublished and involves a man called Spiro.
I'm only here to work out the truth, and then I want shot of Lockerbie. 20 years is rather too long.
How Mr McKee got to Frankfurt is not very material, but his suitcase got into AVE4041 PA, via 103A and there a device went off. It was not in McKee's suitcase.
You have proposed no mechanism for how the suitcase got onto AVE4041 at Heathrow, and by now you should have been able to work that one out. IMO there wasn't a suitcase. That was a plant.
If the break-in was exploited, then it could not have been a suitcase for a gent looking like a passenger or minor functionary. Therefore it was a stick on, or a plastique, attested to by Claydon at Zeist.
Any suitcase left around airside after the midnight break in would have be placed on the first flight to NY, 101. As I'm assuming and deducing a PFLP GC mimic device, the explosion would have been on 101 at about 1pm.
You are baffled by my criticisms, for while I have taken a long time to read yours and correct its more eccentric and egregious grammar and rather simple-minded "theory of international politics"
What happens at the Indian Head tests is only applicable as far as it goes. It did not blow up an aircraft and therefore a lot of the mess that was Lockerbie was missing.
I still don't know whether F&T found any remains of blown up suitcases from the IH tests. What was the result of them.
Was it just a demonstration that suitcases could be made to go bang or was their a proper test and analytical protocol. I haven't seen one.
Now, let's try to be polite to each other.
Baz said:
ReplyDelete"I find Charles' comments almost unintelligible (even without the endless typos and spelling errors) and therefore am baffled by his assertion "Baz, you're wrong" because "Lockerbie was screwed up from the start, it was a CIA operation". How does that make me wrong?"
It's true. Charles, you appear to be losing it.
Yes, the Indian Head tests, which helped steer investigators away from Heathrow, is important. Another thing I will study more. I don't like to run around getting confused over semantics and start arguments on an issue I don't understand yet.
Charles, are you familar with the "Bedford suitcase?
How is that not an excellent "mechanism for how the suitcase got onto AVE4041 at Heathrow"?
Can you maybe slow down a bit and get a better grasp?
And Baz is too critical of everyone. There, I said it. He mostly behaves decent here though, and I agree we should all be polite to each other.
He did not find a chip in ten such blowings up, but he still has only done 10.
ReplyDeleteNo, he did 20.
Apparaently the part that survived conatins the letters MEBO.
No, the piece that survived did not contain the letters MEBO.
it was a chip that was recovered
No, it was a small piece of printed circuit board which was recovered, not a chip.
If it was a chip, exactly what kind of chip (saying that it was one that was used on a MEBO board, just won't do), and if it was a pcb, what sort of pcb.
I am sorry to have to be so pedantic, but the evidence looks flakier and flakier every time someone tries to explain it, and the question of its uniqueness to MEBO the more so.
Charles, pictures and descriptions of what was found are easy to find. I've only been looking at this in detail for about six months, and I could probably draw you a picture of that fragment from memory.
Indeed, the uniqueness of the fragment to the MEBO MST-13 timer is not in dispute. Before Mr. Thurman identified it in June 1990 the Scottish police hawked it round Europe, visiting a large number of PCB manufacturers, trying to find a match. For whatever reason, MEBO wasn't on their list, and they drew a complete blank with all the others.
It's not that hard to figure out what is and isn't known about the item (and to come up with the question about the date of the red-circle photograph). You claim to have been thinking about obsessing about the Lockerbie incident for 20 years. And yet you don't seem to have the slightest grasp of some of the basic facts.
I think you need to do some more homework before presenting the world with your theory. Because if the above is a sample of the accuracy ot your assumptions, you're in for a hazing.
You cannot start from facts. That's unscientific.
ReplyDeleteYou've got to start with a thesis. Make it the best you can. Then test it against the facts you have.
Then modify the theory, and test again and keep on doing that until you are literally blue in the face.
There seems to be some sort of idea here that the suitcase Mr Bedford saw or did not is the bomb case.
Why? I can see no evidence of it. No-one will tell me why it was put in AVE4041 PA rather than the corresponding container for the midday flight.
Whatever the Scottish police did with the fragment is irrelevant. For it had not been identified as part of a MEBO circuit board then. In fact it begs the question, why were the Scottish police so convinced that it was part of the vital circuit board, and not one amongst dozens or hundreds of others.
When the piece was first found by Dr Hayes, it did not say to the world it was a piece of the timer, so why did the forensic scientist latch on to say it so.
There's an interesting reversal of logic going on here. Why was only one piece hawked around the world as part of a bomb mechanism.
A little fairy story, perhaps?
I think I have grasped more of the facts than most, for the majority of the world thinks Megrahi dunnit (not a spelling error Baz, a colloquialism), so we are well ahead of the rest of the world.
So why not come with me that last step of the way, and try to understand that we are at the moment inverting the detective story and allowing the conclusion to driven the argument.
Then perhaps it will be possible to understand what I am driving at.
That seems to be compelling evidence to me.
ReplyDeleteCompelling evidence of what, Mr. Marquise?
I may not be note-perfect on this bit, but I'll try. Libya was supplied with 20 MST-13 timers in 1986. These were on green circuit boards, and these were all there were.
(I discount Mr. Bollier's confused accounts of substitutions and brown prototypes, because the photographic evidence shows no substitution of the fragment after its first appearance in the chain of evidence, and because - despite the absence of appreciable colour in any of the photographs - it is consistently described as being green.)
A fragment of one of these 20 timers, then, appears in the Lockerbie debris. Even if we silence all our doubts about its provenance, and accept that it really was part of or intimately associated with the bomb which destroyed the plane, where does that get us with the evidence?
1986 to 1988 is two years. Two timers showed up in Senegal, another 2 in Togo. We know that Libya was at that time supplying armaments and munitions to half the world's terrorists. They were arming the IRA, dammit. Do we really have firm information that they kept all these timers to themselves, and didn't pass any of them on to any other terrorist groups?
Well, they appear to have had none left by December 1988, and were trying to source more. What can they conclude from that? That they suddenly needed one for this aircraft bombing they'd been planning for over two years? If so, they didn't get one beause MEBO couldn't supply. That they'd just used the last one they had in the PA103 bomb, and urgently needed to re-stock?
Well, maybe. Or how about, they'd used some themselves and they'd supplied some to other groups and maybe the odd one or two had been stolen or otherwise passed on, and December just happened to be when they decided to try to re-stock.
It's easily as plausible as any of these "smoking gun" theories. Frankly, if that's Mr. Marquise's idea of "compelling evidence", then I don't think much of his skills as an investigator.
You cannot start from facts. That's unscientific.
ReplyDeleteYou've got to start with a thesis. Make it the best you can. Then test it against the facts you have.
Then modify the theory, and test again and keep on doing that until you are literally blue in the face.
Of course you have to start with the facts. These are what your theory has to fit, after all. Anyone proposing any explanation of what happened at Lockerbie needs to be intimately familiar with the facts. I'm not there yet, but I seem to be ahead of you in a number of crucial areas.
There seems to be some sort of idea here that the suitcase Mr Bedford saw or did not is the bomb case.
Why? I can see no evidence of it. No-one will tell me why it was put in AVE4041 PA rather than the corresponding container for the midday flight.
That depends entirely on what its tag said. While that detail doesn't appear explicitly in the evidence, it's reasonable to assume the tag was for PA103, otherwise Mr. Bedford would probably have noticed and would almost certainly have said so. Baggage handlers put baggage on the flight it is tagged for, if it has not already left. They don't unilaterally decide to send it ahead on a different flight. (Indeed, even if it has missed its intended flight, they don't just shove it on the next flight to the same destination as far as I know - it has to be re-booked into the system and given a new tag.)
We don't know how or when that suitcase was introduced into the baggage shed, if it was indeed the bomb suitcase. We don't know where it was, before Mr. Bedford saw it in the container. We can reasonably assume its tag said PA103. I really don't see your problem here.
Assuming Mr. Bedford was neither lying nor grossly mistaken, how do you account for the suitcase he described? It was in pretty much exactly the right place to be the bomb bag. It was a bronze Samsonite, exactly as the bomb bag was identified to be. It was not identified anywhere else in the wreckage. Where do you think it went?
Whatever the Scottish police did with the fragment is irrelevant. For it had not been identified as part of a MEBO circuit board then. In fact it begs the question, why were the Scottish police so convinced that it was part of the vital circuit board, and not one amongst dozens or hundreds of others.
ReplyDeleteWhen the piece was first found by Dr Hayes, it did not say to the world it was a piece of the timer, so why did the forensic scientist latch on to say it so.
There's an interesting reversal of logic going on here. Why was only one piece hawked around the world as part of a bomb mechanism.
A little fairy story, perhaps?
I think you are in desperate need of familiarising yourself with the saga of the timer fragment.
I write this assuming the evidence was not tampered with in any way. As I have said, I am agnostic on that point. However, any doubts about that have to take into account the known facts as they are presented.
The piece was found by Dr. Hayes when he was performing a detailed examination of a piece of cloth which had been picked up from a field behind Blinkbonny Farm near Newcastleton, during the search for evidence. This piece of cloth was of interest because it exhibited charring.
You must understand that the plane did not explode, it fell apart. Nothing was on fire as it fell to earth, and only the wing assembly (including the engines) caused a fire on the ground. That created the holocaust that was Sherwood Crescent. Thus, anything found outwith the Sherwood Crescent area with evidence of charring was highly likely to have been in close proximity to the bomb. Blinkbonny Farm is 20 miles from Lockerbie, as the crow flies.
Dr. Hayes dissected the piece of cloth, and found a number of penetrating burn holes in it. At the bottom of these holes he found pieces of debris, including a fragment of paper which turned out to be from the Toshiba manual, several featureless pieces of plastic and metal which were consistent with having been part of the Toshiba radio, and the MST-13 timer fragment. This is clear provenance suggesting these items were all intimately associated with the IED.
The real puzzle at this stage is why Dr. Hayes seems to have thought nothing more about the "fragment of green circuit board" at the time. He spent some time detailing the paper fragments, but merely bracketed the piece of circuit board together with the bits of plastic and metal, and filed it. I totally fail to see why he didn't instigate an enquiry into the provenance of that fragment right then and there.
However, this didn't happen until September, when Mr. Feraday seems to have been reviewing the evidence, found the fragment or the reference to the fragment, and decided it was worth investigating. He contacted Wille Williamson and asked him if he could put his "lads and lassies" on to it. Presumably it was soon realised that this wasn't another part of the radio, and thus was likely to have been a part of the IED itself.
Unless you think that there were lots of fragments of aeroplane that managed to get themselves lodged at the bottom of burn holes in charred fragments of cloth?
I think I have grasped more of the facts than most, for the majority of the world thinks Megrahi dunnit (not a spelling error Baz, a colloquialism), so we are well ahead of the rest of the world.
Being slightly ahead of the rest of the world who have not spent 20 years obsessing about the subject, is really nothing to boast about.
So why not come with me that last step of the way, and try to understand that we are at the moment inverting the detective story and allowing the conclusion to driven the argument.
Then perhaps it will be possible to understand what I am driving at.
If you start with a thesis and try to make the facts fit it, then you are absolutely allowing the conclusion to drive the argument. And I think this is what you are doing.
MISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteWilliamson said that Allen Feraday, the forensic examiner, hat sent a fax to Henderson in January 1990, about items he found blasted into a Slalom shirt.
Nach der Faxübermittlung von Allen Feraday an SIO Stuart Henderson, am 12.Januar 1990 wurde das in einem verkohlten Stück "Slalom" T-Shirt aufgefundene MST-13 Timer Fragment als Circuit Board PT/35 registriert. (Court Prod. Photo No.334).
Zur Abklärung, ob es sich beim Circuit Board PT/35 um ein von Hand gefertigtes PC-board mit 8 Lagen Fiberglas (standard), oder ob es sich um ein industriell hergestelltes PC-Board mit 9 Lagen Fiberglas handelte, hatte Officer Witness, number 261, Inspector Keith Harrower, am 27.April 90 die Fima Siemens besucht.
Bei Siemens wurde das original MST-13 Circuit Board Fragment (PT/35, Foto 334) in zwei Teile zersägt.
Das grössere Teilstück wurde später in Scotland neu unter der Label No.353 = PT/35(b) registriert.
Das kleinere Teilstück wurde unter der Label No.419 = DP/31(a) registriert.
Für einen kriminellen Akt von Dr. Hayes und Allen Feraday (RARDE) musste verdeckt werden, dass die zusammengehörigen Fragmente nicht gleichzeitig mit fortlaufender Nummer bezeichnet wurden!
Wieso wurde die höhere Label No.419, dem Teilstück mit dem Zusatz (a) zugeteilt und für das Teilstück mit dem Zusatz (b) eine niedere, No.353 verwendet ?
Erst zwischen Mai und September 1990 wurden von Detective Inspector Michael Langford-Johnson, Strathclyde police, witness no.118 und Chief Inspector William Williamson, Witness No.994 die beiden Teilstücke neu markiert.
Das kleine Teilstück DP/31(a) wurde als ORIGINAL mit der Label No.419 registriert. Weil das grössere braune original MST-13 Teilstück mit dem eingekratzten Buchstabe "M", PT/35 zwischen Mai und September 1990 von einem grünen DUPLIKAT Circuit Board (Libya Type) ohne "M") ausgetauscht wurde, musste man für eine vorsätzliche Rückbuchung auf 1989, eine Label Nummer von Mitte 1989 verwenden.
Wieso existiert keine Zusatzbezeichnung (a) ?
Durch die Zusatzbezeichnung (b) bei der Markierung PT/35 (b), kann mit grosser Wahrscheinlichkeit davon abgeleitet werden, dass es sich bei diesem Fragment nicht um das braune ORIGINAL handelte, sondern um ein zusätzlich erstelltes grünes DUPLIKAT !!!
NB: Die 20 Stück MST-13 Timer welche nach Libyen geliefert wurden, waren mit grünen Circuit Boards ausgerüstet. Mit dem braunen MST-13 Circuit Board-Fragment mit dem Buchstabe "M" konnte man Libyen nicht mit dem Absturz der PanAm 103 in Verbindung bringen, darum wurde auf ein grünes MST-13 Fragment gewechselt!
More Information on our Website: www.lockerbie.ch
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
The real puzzle is this. How did the Scottish police know that that the material said to have been discovered at Newcastleton was important before Mr Thurman made his identification in a CIA office in Washington?
ReplyDeleteI can see no evidence that there is anything about the fragment itself that says it MUST have come from a bomb timer circuit, yet the Scottish police tell the FBI of their find of a significant fragment.
How the hell could they have known that fragment was significant before Thurman's identification. In a typical police investigation you don't go round trying to identify one piece, when you are awash with many possible clues.
This is as clear a case of cart-before-horse as I have ever come across.
Isn't the most reasonable conclusion that the police knew it was a plant in February 1990, and it would take Thurman another six moths not to identify as part of a bomb timer, but to identify it as a part of a MEBO timer.
The issues are entirely independent, and if it the early months of 1990 the investigation had been honest, it would have been looking at dozens of microchip remains, not one.
Rolfe, are you familiar with Karl Popper and his account of the scientific process. I think you aren't.
Charles said:
ReplyDelete"The real puzzle is this. How did the Scottish police know that that the material said to have been discovered at Newcastleton was important before Mr Thurman made his identification in a CIA office in Washington?"
I fully agree. One of several cart-before-the-horse-aspects of this cart-before-the-horse-case.
BTW maybe we should all be more polite to each other.
Dear Adam,
ReplyDeleteMay I agree with you. It's simply I get so frustrated when the solution (to me) is so obvious. I apologise for apparent rudeness, but it's rather enthusiasm.
Indeed I tried to forswear anything to do with chips, as it is at best a distraction, or worse a mire.
As you know my view is that an Iranian placed the first device, and the CIA (or certain elements of it the second).
How else does one explain the two explosive lobes on debris?
The reason it's taking me so long is (a) much of the evidence did not become available until 2006, the UTA civil case, and (b) there are very few out there who want to hear. This is one of the best places to talk to those who do.
The real puzzle is this. How did the Scottish police know that that the material said to have been discovered at Newcastleton was important before Mr Thurman made his identification in a CIA office in Washington?
ReplyDeleteI can see no evidence that there is anything about the fragment itself that says it MUST have come from a bomb timer circuit, yet the Scottish police tell the FBI of their find of a significant fragment.
How the hell could they have known that fragment was significant before Thurman's identification. In a typical police investigation you don't go round trying to identify one piece, when you are awash with many possible clues.
Sigh. They thought it was impostant because Alan Feraday thought it was important and told them so.
Alan Feraday thought it was important because it was found at the bottom of a burn hole in a singed rag of shirt collar. Something blasted the fragment into the fabric, and something singed, charred and burned the fragment. Since the only source of burning in this incident (outside of Sherwood Crescent) was the IED itself, then common sense says the fragment was blasted into the shirt collar by the explosion of the IED and was intimately associated with the IED.
Now you can assert and try to prove that this whole thing was a plant, perhaps assembled from material used at Indian Head, but the basic narrative is not inconsistent or problematic as regards identifying the fragment as something important.
Indeed, the main question is how come it didn't shriek "I am an important CLUE!!" to Hayes in May.
Dear Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteMay I sigh in return. Mr Feraday didn't have much credence left and he had been burnt three times (I think that's right) by the English appeal court. So why would the Scots trust him and unless they had learned somehow that if they were to believe him, they'd secure their conviction?
It's perfectly clear that they did liaise with him and accept his findings as a forensic expert. Whether they were wise to do so is another question.
ReplyDeleteDo you have any evidence any of the Scottish constabulary takes the slightest interest in what happens in the English appeal court?
The evidence may have been fabricated. However, taking it at face value, the explanation for the timer fragment being recognised as a potentially important clue is perfectly rational.
I merely want to know why Dr. Hayes didn't spot its potential sgnificance in May.
There can be little doubt, Rolfe, the timer evidence was fabricated - see FERADAY AND FRAUD?
ReplyDeleteThe Fort Halstead 'partners in crime' Feraday and Hayes must share the blame for fabricating the 'fragment of the imagination' that their US counterpart Thomas Thurman visually 'identified' as coming from a Swiss MEBO timer (MST-13).
Charles poses the question: So why would the Scots trust [Feraday] unless they had learned somehow that if they were to believe him, they'd secure their conviction?
The answer was given in June 2007 by UN observer at the Lockerbie trial, Dr Hans Köchler, who expressed his surprise at the SCCRC's focus of review and apparent bias in favour of the judicial establishment: "In giving exoneration to the police, prosecutors, and forensic staff, I think they show their lack of independence. No officials to be blamed, simply a Maltese shopkeeper."
Thus Köchler does not single out the 'forensic experts' for blame, but includes the Scottish police and the Crown Office prosecution involved in the fakery which led to Abdelbaset Megrahi's wrongful conviction.
Dear Patrick,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your intervention.
Exactly how we can proceed, I am unsure, but it should be almost immediately clear once the second and proper Lockerbie investigation gets under way.
Given the Scots have failed so miserably, may I suggest an outside force, say the Austrian Federal Police, are called in.
Or am I jumping the gun as usual.
Let us not forget what Richard Marquise wrote about Feraday:
ReplyDelete"Feraday at RARDE was a road block. He had insisted on reviewing all evidence personally and was not interested in having any help. He wanted to ensure he was accurate and no one could fault him for that."
This is fairly enigmatic. If I want to be totally sure that I am accurate - then I, like all reasonable people, ask friends and and collegues to have a close look at it.
Only people who have to hide something or who want to arrange something in favour of a thesis is afraid of witnesses.
I think, here we may have the clue to the many strange rearranged pieces of evidence in this case.
The quotation was from "Scotbom..." page 90.
ReplyDeleteThe result of, I believe, Mr Feraday's caution is that he did not report his findings until after the charges of November 1991.
ReplyDeleteSo the charges were brought without proper forensic back-up.
What is the date on his forensic report?
Maybe it is also of interest what Richard Marquise wrote immediately before the above quotation:
ReplyDelete"...Before the day concluded, we agreed there was not enough evidence to indict anyone anyway, so this discussion was premature.
Feraday at RARDE was a roadblck..."
I believe you are right, Charles, but I cannot find it just now.
ReplyDeleteMaybe anybody else has it?
Thank you,
ReplyDeleteNennt mich einfach Adam!
Having been here 20 years, I'm really not going to lose it now.
It's lovely to be amongst congregation of disbelievers.
Charles
Popperian philosophy. The falsifiable hypothesis. The first attribute of a useful hypothesis is that it must be falsifiable. The second is that the proponent must be prepared to accept that it has been falsified.
ReplyDeleteA hypothesis made up without knowledge of the facts is going to be knocked down pretty quick. However, if the proponent refuses to consider that the hypothesis might have been falsified, then everyone is wasting their time.
I could suggest that PA103 was brought down by a weapon wielded by space aliens, or pixie dust, and if I then brushed aside the actual facts, you'd find it hard to shift me.
I think some people here are getting a bit close to that.
On 4 January 2010, Rolfe posted this little gem here:
ReplyDelete"May I remark that Professor Black's blog, though an invaluable resource and a very useful discussion platform, isn't especially suited to working through a process of argument. Some of us, including myself and Caustic Logic, have been trying to discuss the matter on the JREF forum, rather hindered by the subject not being of much interest to many people there. (Very surprising given the huge volumes of debate on 9/11 conspiracy theories in that forum, but there you go.)
"I believe the forum format is a better one for more complex discussions, and JREF is generally well moderated and a good venue for debate. Might I suggest that those with theories they want to test out and debate might consider joining that forum?"
Might I suggest that Rolfe, and others of his ilk who suggest that PA103 was brought down by a weapon wielded by space aliens, or pixie dust, should repair immediately to his preferred JREF site? Which site was described by baz as follows: "I tried the [JREF] link but was blocked by the Internet filter as the site is classified as 'Occult'."
Oh, very droll.
ReplyDeleteMISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteThe mysterious memorandum (Court Prod. no.333) of Allen Feraday (RARDE) delivered to Chief Inspector William Williamson, was not created on 15/9/1989, but created on 15/9/1990 and later with a DUPLICAT or a manipulated date together with the altered police Label DP'137 (Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary), completed. The date of the memorandum was booked back to the date of 15/9/1989 !
There is evidence which suggests that some productions were interfered with before they reached RARDE, and the label relating to PI 995 was irregularly.
What had to cover up Feraday and partner with the memorandum and the manipulated date of 15th September 1989?
Was the real Datum 15/9/1990 not fit for Feraday's intent ?
The Memorandum:
Subject: Fragment of green circuit bord.
"Willy, enclosed are some Polaroid photographs of the green circuit board.
Sorry about the quality, but it is the best I can do in such a short time. The diameter of the curvature of the edge is 0.6 inches IE."
"Sorry about the quality, but it is the best I can do in such a short time."
MEBO: And there's the representation of the diameter of a circle of .6 inches agrees with the curvature of the MST-13 Timer circuit board.
Das manipulierte Memorandum mit dem Datum vom 15/9/1989 sollte beweisen, dass das MST-13 Timerfragment PT/35 bereits im September 1989 und früher gefunden wurde.
Der Text jedoch widerspricht: "so any light your lads/lasses can shed upon the problem of identifying it would be most welcome."
Da das MST-13 Fragment PT/35 angeblich bereits am 12/5/1989 von Feraday und Dr. Hayes auf der Examinations Seite No.51, registriert und fotografiert wurde, gab es keinen Grund das Problem von Chief Inspector William Williamson überstürzt zu lösen!
Vor einer anderen Situation stand Chief Williamson, nach dem Besuch von Inspector Keith Harrower, bei Fima Siemens in Germany, am 27. April 1990. (Keith Harrower, was witness, number 261).
Williamson und Partner wussten durch die Untersuchungen bei Siemens, ab Mai 1990, dass das MST-13 Fragment aus einem standard Circuit Board bestand (8 Lagen Fiberglas) und somit von einem braunen Prototyp MST-13 Timer Circuit Board abstammte!
Chief Inspector Williamson und Partner wussten, dass mit einem MST-13 Fragment eines Prototyp Circuit Board, Libyen nicht mit der Lockerbie Tragödie in Verbindung gebracht werden konnte, weil die nach Libyen gelieferten 20 Stück MST-13 Timer (1985-86) mit grünen Circuit Board ausgerüstet waren.
Zwischen Mai und September 1990 wurde deshalb ein grünes MST-13 Fragment PT/35 DUPLIKAT fabriziert um Libyen mit dem PanAm 103 Attentat in Verbindung zubringen!
continuation below >>>
continuation >>>
ReplyDeleteEin DUPLIKAT des PT/35(b) Fragment No.353 wurde aus einem grünen MST-13 Circuit Board fabriziert und von Allen Feraday mit dem Memoradum vom 15. September 1990, zusammen mit Polaroid-Fotos Inspector Williamson übermittelt. Das Problem für für Williamson und Partner war gelöst und der Text auf dem Memorandum war passend:
"The diameter of the curvature of the edge is 0.6 inches IE.
Sorry about the quality, but it is the best I can do in such a short
time. so any light your lads/lasses can shed upon the problem of identifying it would be most welcome."
MEBO, important: On the braun colored Prototyp MST-13 circuit board, the diameter of the curvature of the edge was not 0.6 inches IE, only by the green colored MST-13 circuit board!
Shortly after the delivery of the memorandum and the photos from Allen Feraday, Inspector Williamson and his team were ready visit to Switzerland...
Excerpt, Court Kamp van Zeist:
+++ Q- And if I can just quote this following account: "In early September 1990, members of the Scottish Lockerbie inquiry team, together with officers of the British Security Service, were making arrangements to travel to Switzerland. Their intention was to meet members of the Swiss police and intelligence service. The purpose of the meeting was to take forward a line of inquiry suggesting that the company MEBO might have been the manufactures of the MST 13 timing device.
Such a device had already been identified as forming part of the improvised explosive devise responsible for the destruction of PanAm 103. Prior to the departure of these officers, a request was made by CIA to the British Security Service to deter or delay"-- I'll read that again--" to deter or delay the members of the Scottish Lockerbie inquiry team from making the visit. "This request was refused, and the visit proceeded as planned. Separately, officers of the CIA met with the Swiss police and intelligence service on the day before the visit made by the Scottish Lockerbie inquiry team and the British Security Service."
Now, Mr. Williamson, were you made aware of these steps to deter or delay the members of the Scottish Lockerbie inquiry team from making the visit to Switzerland? A- Absolutely not, sir. Q- These were never disclosed to you? A- I have no knowledge of that information you've just read out wathsoever. Q- Was it disclosed to you that the day before you met with the Swiss police and intelligence services on the first visit the CIA had already met with them? Mr.TURNBULL: Don't answer that. +++
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
Ebol said:
ReplyDelete"The mysterious memorandum (Court Prod. no.333) of Allen Feraday (RARDE) delivered to Chief Inspector William Williamson, was not created on 15/9/1989, but created on 15/9/1990 and later with a DUPLICAT or a manipulated date..."
I know, I know, English as a second language and all, but still, something tells me you'll be unable to support that statement.
You were givng them letters to implicate Libya from January 1989. They find a fragment in May 89. You insist your employee gave it to them in 1990. Do you have any proof, Bollier, that YOU did not hand the board over - pre-fragmented or whole - between Jan-May 1989?
On the "occult" forums with "pixie dust theories," indeed, all should stay away.
ETA: I don't BELIEVE "ebol" is the original source, just noting it's possible and wondering what reason there is I shouldn't consider it as an option.
ReplyDeleteebol?
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteYou have every right to criticise where a fact is material to an argument, and for example how McKee got to London is quite irrelevant.
The point is, he got there and a suitcase of his ended up in AVE4041 PA, and by perfectly regular means.
I believe that as a good CIA case officer he set the radio transponder it contained before he left the Eastern Mediterranean, and it was designed to be activated by any large mechanical shock, and this is how a member of the CIA could find it on the ground about 4km to the east of Lockerbie.
That is a typical one of my hypotheses, for how did the CIA find the remains of AVE4041 PA? Magic?
It cannot be deduced from any evidence on the ground which was cleared up by the other CIA personnel, who probably had very little knowledge of what they were doing or why, and until a proper police investigation is carried on as to what happened on the ground, it will remain a hypothesis, and some of the details will go to the grave with the CIA plotters concerned.
Johnstone gives a partial account in his book which says the CIA located McKee's suitcase; one consequence was that he was offered a meeting, even with Mrs Thatcher if he would tell how he got his information, which he declined and at the same time he was threatened with being precognosced, i.e. interviewed as a witness to a crime, which cannot be of the crash of the aircraft itself, but of some later act of malfeasance.
You are entitled to say "but Mr Norrie, where are your facts", and I reply to you "but there are none for any of your theories either".
In particular the notion that there was some baggage tag lurking on a Scottish hillside waiting to be found can be discounted.
Mr Marquise asserts to Mr Henderson's belief that one day one of his "lads and lasses" in his rather puerile phrase would come in bearing the precious item. It was never to be for in my theory there was no such tag for there was no such bomb suitcase flying on the aircraft. It was dumped in the remains of AVE4041 PA later.
My theory is no worse than those who assert it was a suitcase that blew up on the aircraft, and for disbelievers, like me, please go back and read Peter Claydon's evidence at Zeist, before blogging again.
I cannot prove that negative, for there is no way that one can, but I have put forward a quite reasonable account for its absence, though it apparently unpalatable to some for its suggests an unprecedented level of criminality by some elements of the CIA.
I am probably the only person here who has been approached by a complete loony (Russell Hotel gents, 1990) who asked me about the UFOs at Lockerbie. I sent him packing.
"The mysterious memorandum (Court Prod. no.333) of Allen Feraday (RARDE) delivered to Chief Inspector William Williamson, was not created on 15/9/1989, but created on 15/9/1990 and later with a DUPLICAT or a manipulated date..."
ReplyDeleteCaustic Logic, I would merely point out that Herr Bollier bases this on a label which seems to have been written after the event, on which the year seems to have been altered. It looks as if whoever was writing that label (probably when the memo itself became "evidence") originally wrote the year wrongly and then changed it. The date on the memo itself is perfectly clear and has not been changed. 15th September 1989.
15th September 1989 was a Friday. 15th September 1990 was a Saturday. Of course we can't be sure, but it seems unlikely that Feraday was pulling weekend shifts on this case as late as 1990, nearly two years after the crash.
Also, if you're going to produce a fake memo which says clearly "15th September 1989", it seems a bit stupid then to attach an evidence label to it giving away the "true" date. I know some of this seems sloppy, but that's ridiculous.
None of that means that the 15th September 1989 memo can't have been dreamed up retrospectively, of course. However, the date on the memo is clear and unaltered and 15th September 1990 is a red herring.
I am not certain. Feraday did not publish his final RARDE report until after the charges were bought in 1991. He was still polishing his results. See Marquise for moans on this. Marquise says that there was a political hurry up from the British side to get the charges out before the end of 1991. Thatcher did not want to go into election year with Lockerbie hanging over her.
ReplyDeleteFeraday must have thought he had got away with it and that the RARDE reports would simply end up in a dusty file. He must have been shaken when he found that he had to defend his work in court, but that prosecutor's court was not going to let him down. Shame on Lord Sutherland and the other deluded judges of "fact, fiction and law".
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteYou have every right to criticise where a fact is material to an argument, and for example how McKee got to London is quite irrelevant.
The point is, he got there and a suitcase of his ended up in AVE4041 PA, and by perfectly regular means.
I don't really know why you're addressing that to me. I never questioned how McKee's case got on to PA103. As far as I know, he came in to Heathrow on a connecting flight and so his was one of the interline bags that was legitimately added to AVE4041 before PA103A landed. If there's a conspiracy theory surrounding that, it's not one I'm familiar with.
I believe that as a good CIA case officer he set the radio transponder it contained before he left the Eastern Mediterranean, and it was designed to be activated by any large mechanical shock, and this is how a member of the CIA could find it on the ground about 4km to the east of Lockerbie.
That is a typical one of my hypotheses, for how did the CIA find the remains of AVE4041 PA? Magic?
It cannot be deduced from any evidence on the ground which was cleared up by the other CIA personnel, who probably had very little knowledge of what they were doing or why, and until a proper police investigation is carried on as to what happened on the ground, it will remain a hypothesis, and some of the details will go to the grave with the CIA plotters concerned.
You're going to have to explain yourself a lot better than that. Who says it was the CIA who found the remains of AVE4041? As far as I know, the first part was found on Christmas Eve in the course of the normal search. And it was only bits of twisted metal. There were no suitcases in it.
McKee's case itself, now I have heard snippets of conspiracy theories surrounding that. Allegedly, it was found by the CIA and removed, and a hole cut in the side to allow the contents to be removed/examined, before being replaced where it originally fall. In some versions empty, in others, not.
This was one of the grounds of appeal rejected by the SCCRC. Not that that proves much, but the hole-cutting part of the story is pretty implausible to start with. If you want to see what's in a case, isn't it a bit less conspicuous to open it in the normal way?
It wouldn't surprise me a great deal if there was indeed something in Charles McKee's luggage that the CIA didn't want found. And that they therefore took care to find the case and sanitise it before it entered the normal chain of evidence. I'm not really aware of the transponder part, but it's not entirely implausible in context.
Nevertheless, there seems to me at the moment to be no evidence that this was in any way connected to the actual bombing. I could well imagine exactly the same procedure would have been activated if the plane had been hit by lightning.
You seem to be conflating the finding of McKee's case with the finding of AVE4041. The former was certainly in the latter during the flight, but after the latter had blown apart, the suitcases scattered to the four winds.
Johnstone gives a partial account in his book which says the CIA located McKee's suitcase; one consequence was that he was offered a meeting, even with Mrs Thatcher if he would tell how he got his information, which he declined and at the same time he was threatened with being precognosced, i.e. interviewed as a witness to a crime, which cannot be of the crash of the aircraft itself, but of some later act of malfeasance.
Yes, I remember that. Somebody panicked. Then they learned the lesson that it's more effective just to ignore press reports you don't like, because if you do, probably everybody else will too.
I still haven't seen any hard evidence that the CIA interest in McKee's luggage (which I am perfectly prepared to believe happened) was directly related to the bomb.
[contd....]
[contd....]
ReplyDeleteYou are entitled to say "but Mr Norrie, where are your facts", and I reply to you "but there are none for any of your theories either".
Sorry? What are you smoking? As a scientist (at PhD level, by the way), I understand that theories must be founded on the facts that are available. The space aliens and pixie dust was a joke, in case you didn't get it.
You seem by that sentence to be acknowledging that there are no facts to support your theory - whatever it is, I'm still a bit hazy on that one. Well, fine, the writing of fiction is an honourable trade, but it doesn't get us any further in deciding what actually happened.
In particular the notion that there was some baggage tag lurking on a Scottish hillside waiting to be found can be discounted.
I suggested no such notion. You asked what reason there was for the Bedford suitcase to have been loaded in a container destined for PA103. I replied that the probable reason was that it had a tag for PA103. In the unlikely event of that tag having survived, it would have been separated from the suitcase anyway, so talking about finding it is silly.
Yes, the break-in at Heathrow was on the evening/night of 20th December. However, what do you imagine happened after that? What was the purpose of the break-in? In fact, beyond theorising that it was related to the bombing and connected to getting the bomb suitcase on board, we don't know. Nevertheless, the conspirators couldn't simply have left a suitcase lying around with a label saying "please put on the next flight for New York". A proper airline tag of some sort would have been essential, and that tag would indicate not just the destination but the flight.
You seem to be asking, if the conspirators were all set to go by the morning of the 21st, why didn't they tag the bag for PA101? I have no idea, but the simple answer is, why should they have? Maybe they wanted to give themselves extra time in case there were delays in the proceedings. Maybe they were specifically targetting a flight they knew would be carrying CIA personnel. Maybe they weren't all set up to go in the morning.
Putting it simply, the fact that the break-in was the previous evening carries no imperative that PA101 must carry the suitcase. The bombers had to tag it for a particular flight, and I see no great inconsistency in the fact that they tagged it for PA103.
Mr Marquise asserts to Mr Henderson's belief that one day one of his "lads and lasses" in his rather puerile phrase would come in bearing the precious item. It was never to be for in my theory there was no such tag for there was no such bomb suitcase flying on the aircraft. It was dumped in the remains of AVE4041 PA later.
Now, here's those pesky facts again. No suitcase was found in the remains of AVE4041. AVE4041 was found in several mangled pieces at various places in the Scottish countryside. Bits of brown Samsonite suitcase were also found at various places in the Scottish countryside.
I have no idea what you're referring to at the start of that paragraph, either. It was Mr. Feraday who used the phrase "lads and lassies" in his memo of 15th September 1989 to Mr. Williamson regarding the fragment of green circuit board. Presumably he was hoping the SCRB people (you know, the ones who did such a sterling job in the Shirley McKie case....) would be able to identify it. Nothing about airline tags, and nothing to do with Messrs. Marquise or Henderson either.
[contd....]
[contd....]
ReplyDeleteMy theory is no worse than those who assert it was a suitcase that blew up on the aircraft, and for disbelievers, like me, please go back and read Peter Claydon's evidence at Zeist, before blogging again.
I cannot prove that negative, for there is no way that one can, but I have put forward a quite reasonable account for its absence, though it apparently unpalatable to some for its suggests an unprecedented level of criminality by some elements of the CIA.
I don't think you have even begun to support the contention that there was no bomb suitcase. The first bit of blast-damaged AVE4041 was found on Christmas Eve, and the rest of it, and the bits of suitcase and its contents, came in from various search teams in the days following. The appearance of these items was such as to convince a whole slew of people that a brown Samsonite suitcase in the second layer of that container had blown up, and caused quite specific damage to the container and surrounding objects.
You can't simply shout "Mach Stem Effect" and wave all that away. If you think all that evidence was fabricated and planted, you have to have some proposal as to who, and how. Bearing in mind that this was happening three days after the crash and involved stuff spread out across the countryside.
It is difficult to construct a theory that accounts for all the facts of the case. However, that's what has to be done. You can't just ignore anything you think is inconvenient and blithely declare it to be fabricated. Fabrication and fraud on that scale isn't exactly straightforward, you know.
I have been trying to make an important and fundamental point about the Indian Head tests - that their central purpose was to collaborate Orr's claim that the primary suitcase arrived from Frankfurt. Charles however is more interested in the fact of Mr "McFagyeb havibg" been appointed Sherrif in Hamilton making the ludicrous equation of Hamilton with some Soviet gulag.
ReplyDeleteThe central point about the suitcase seen by Bedford is this - if it wasn't the primary suitcase then whose suitcase was it - why was it not recovered and linked to a specific Interline passenger?
Charles told me I was wrong because "it was a CIA operation". I have often stated my view that there were was official collusion in the bombing. My recollection of Charles' book is that he claimed the idea of blaming Libya only emerged in 1991 following a trip to Washington by the magistrate investigating the UTA 772 case. Why was I wrong?
I still find Charles' comments largely unintelligible although the typos have improved. According to his comment of the 18th January "how McKee got to Frankfurt is not very material but his suitcase got into AVE4041PA via PA103A and there a device went off"
Who (apart from Charles) says that McKee got to Frankfurt or that his luggage was on PA103A?
Charles continues "You have proposed no mechanism for how the suitcase got into AVE4041 at Heathrow - by now you should have been able to work it out".
Well frankly I do not know the "mechanism" I suspect the primary suitcase came to England on the Gothenburg Ferry but have no evidence of this. I am merely drawing attention to compelling evidence the primary suitcase was in AVE4041 before the arrival of flight PA103A. (Tagged or not!)
Charles theory is that an IED was affixed to the interior of AVE4041 on the evening of the 20.12.88 by some Iranian wandering from the Airport with a pair of bolt-cutters in his trousers. The central crippling flaw in this theory is the complete absence of evidence that AVE4041 would have been marked up 16-18 hours before the flight. Indeed according to another aspect of his "theory" AVE4041 would have been on its way to New York! However as Charles' said "you cannot start from facts -you have to start with a thesis"!
Charles keeps promising to publish his theory, which he has recently compared with the works of darwin and Einstein. Where is it?
I try to be polite to all including Mr Duggan and Mr Marquise. However it was Charles who described Stuart Nichol as a "useful idiot". At least he's useful!
p.s. The fragment of MST-13 timer was of particular significance (in the official version of events) because it was embedded in a piece of cloth, along with fragments of the user's maual and had therefore originated from within the IED. the "primary suitcase" and therefore formed part of the IED.
baz said:
ReplyDelete"p.s. The fragment of MST-13 timer was of particular significance (in the official version of events) because it was embedded in a piece of cloth, along with fragments of the user's maual and had therefore originated from within the IED. the "primary suitcase" and therefore formed part of the IED."
First the Toshiba Manual is found by that nice Lady on a farm and handed in to the police? Then it - in pieces - pops up in a shirt collar that is found in a different part of Scotland? A magic manual?
And if there were two Toshibas or even more in the PanAm? Toshiba was a one of the greatest producers of mobile radios in those days. And such a radio recorder was a nice present for christmas. Furthermore: When that nice lady found a manual from a Toshiba radio that was not involved in the bombing itself - where is then that Toshiba? Or parts of it?
Very strange indeed.
I have no idea what you're referring to at the start of that paragraph, either. It was Mr. Feraday who used the phrase "lads and lassies" in his memo of 15th September 1989 to Mr. Williamson regarding the fragment of green circuit board. Presumably he was hoping the SCRB people (you know, the ones who did such a sterling job in the Shirley McKie case....) would be able to identify it. Nothing about airline tags, and nothing to do with Messrs. Marquise or Henderson either.
ReplyDelete== Mr Feraday does use the phrase lads and lsses, but I recall Mr Marquise does also in his book in reference to Mr Henderson.
== Mr Ferday's reference was in relation to the polaroid photograph that took him 4 months to produce.
First the Toshiba Manual is found by that nice Lady on a farm and handed in to the police? Then it - in pieces - pops up in a shirt collar that is found in a different part of Scotland? A magic manual?
ReplyDeleteAnd if there were two Toshibas or even more in the PanAm? Toshiba was a one of the greatest producers of mobile radios in those days. And such a radio recorder was a nice present for christmas. Furthermore: When that nice lady found a manual from a Toshiba radio that was not involved in the bombing itself - where is then that Toshiba? Or parts of it?
== The nice lady you are referring to is Mrs Deccy Horton of Longhorsely Northumberland who tried to hand in what was claimed in the court at Zeist to be a Toshiba manual, but was not recognised by her.
The lame police explanation is that it had suffered during examination (something that is said of no other item).
There is no reason to believe what Mrs Horton handed in was a Toshiba manual in Arabic or any other language. It might have been a mual for any other piece of consumer electronics, and it may have just been dicraded by its owner and blown into her front garden.
"...The lame police explanation is that it had suffered during examination (something that is said of no other item)."
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean that the police understood the Horton manual and the shirt collar manual to be the same?
BTW:
ReplyDeleteThe official conspiracy theory tells us that the Toshiba manual pieces were found to have been in the famous Slalom shirt collar. Where on the red-circle-photo can I find those pieces? Can anybody help?
What is the shirt collar manual? Life is surely too complicated if a shirt collar needs instructions.
ReplyDelete"Welcome to you new shirt collar XYZ123. May we at "Collars" take this opportunity of welcoming you to the best in neck attire"
And so on.
Unless I am wrong, the manual fragment is claimed to have been found in Mrs Horton's front garden at Longhorsely in Northumbria, and the shirt collar with chip embedded in the Keilder forest outside Newcastleton, Scotland.
Or am I wrong, again.
From the Zeist judgement:
ReplyDelete"Subsequently, when the blast
damaged clothing was examined in detail there were found embedded in two different
Slalom brand shirts, a Babygro, and a pair of tartan checked trousers, fragments of
paper which on examination proved to be from an owner’s manual for a Toshiba
RT-SF 16 BomBeat radio cassette player."
It would be "pages" here and pages there. I'm not too familiar with the Horton find tho it doesn't sound right. I think that was one page only, found intact, later torn. From inside the IED bag? Hmmm...
ReplyDeleteNME Adam said:
The official conspiracy theory tells us that the Toshiba manual pieces were found to have been in the famous Slalom shirt collar. Where on the red-circle-photo can I find those pieces? Can anybody help?
image link
Composite of photo with Hayes' notes describing paper bunch. It's a good fit and indicates the photo was done before the May 12 journal entry, where the papers are shown separated (sketch, not photo)
Dear Caustic,
ReplyDeleteYes, the Deccy Horton finding can be dated precisely to 22 December 1988, when the good lady found a page in her front garden 89km east of Lockerbie, and I reckon with the prevailing wind that night it would have taken two hours to get there. So by about 9:30 pom on 20 December 1988.
She found it the next day (Thursday) and, presumably because of what was happening over the border was told to come back to the police station later.
It was received by a policeman who gave evidence at the trial, and seemed to recognise it with more certainty than Horton. Horton said words to the effect that it was pristine when she handed it in, and the police officially explained that it had suffered during the investigation, though I am not sure what sort of forensic investigation requires singeing of a paper record.
Mr Horton was not questioned on its content, though since by the trial it has become a page from an instruction manual for a Bombeat Toshiba cassette recorder in Arabic is probably the explanation. Discarded instruction manuals are not exactly uncommon, and I am sitting here in my sitting room with a dozen or so for discarded bits of consumer tat.
I am sure Mrs Horton's find was entirely innocent and genuine, and it was put to use by the authorities.
It looks suspiciously like a CIA piece of placement or re-interpretation, I prefer the latter, one that would do either against the Libyans or the PFLP GC.
I believe John Parks and the brisant explosion. If the manual page was in the suitcase, it would not have survived, (see the results of the Wyatt tests). I don't care what Mr Marquise says - "I've got the facts, you only theories, Mr Norrie" - but I doubt if he reads this blog, but if he continues to assert to the validity of this survival why should I continue to believe any of the rest of his wretched book, which I think he and his mentors are beginning to regret he had ever written.
It escapes me why a grown-up terrorist should put an instruction book in with the cassette-recorder and there is the suggestion (also pace Wyatt) that that recorder was in its original cardboard box. But to convert a Bombeat to a bomb, (sorry, it must have been a PFLP GC joke, for they invented the original type of device) you would have to take it out of its case, take the back off and stuff the explosive in, as Mr Fereday showed it could be done to the court, when he managed to get 650g of "explosive", probably marzipan, in,before it appeared through the speaker grills. So why pack it back with the instruction manual in its original cardboard case?
A senior journalist (who knows who he is) said to me that perhaps the instructional manual or part thereof was not in the suitcase. Then why was it produced at the trial. No baggage loader places a manual on its own in a container!
It has every fingerprint of being a contrived plot to persuade the police that what they are looking at is genuine.
I do not know who did the singeing, but I suspect it was not someone from RARDE.
MISSION LOCKERBIE, attn. Rolfe:
ReplyDeleteI say: The mysterious memorandum (Court Prod. no.333) of Allen Feraday (RARDE) delivered to Chief Inspector William Williamson, was not created on 15/9/1989, but created on 10/9/1990 and later chanched with a DUPLICATE with falsified date" !!!
I guarantee and want to supplement: that the memorandum (evidence, Prod. no.333, of Friday 15th September 1989, written by Allen Feraday, was a DUPLICATE (fake) memo belong together with the overwritten police Label DP'137!
Reason into german language: Das erste reale Memorandum von Allen Feraday an Inspector Williamson wurde mit gleichem Text, jedoch nicht am 15th September 1989 geschrieben, sondern am 10th September 1990 zusammen mit 4 Polaroid Photos (Abbildung des MST-13 Fragment PT/35) an Inspector Williamson übermittelt !
Das reale Memorandum wurde bei (Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary) mit dem Polizeilabel DP'137, am 10th September 1990 registriert und von zwei Offiziellen unterschrieben.
Damit das Memorandum "DUPLICATE" mit "the criminal interface" in Feraday's Report 181, und dem angeblichen "Fund" des Fragment's (PT/35), am 15/9/1989 übereinstimmt, musste Feraday das reale Datum auf dem Polizei Label, DP'137, vom 10th September 1990 auf das falsche Datum 15th September 1989 überschreiben !
Da der 10th September 1989 ein "Sunday" war musste das Label DP'137 vom "Monday" den 10th September 1990 auf den "Thursday" den 15th September 1989 überschrieben werden !
Hiermit ist bewiesen, dass es sich beim Memorandum vom 15th September 1989, um ein DUPLICATE handelt !!!
Eine Schrift-Analyse von Allen Feraday bestätigt, dass das Memorandum vom 15th September 1989 ein DUPLICATE war, weil die Schrift- Veränderungen zwischen den "EXAMINATIONS"- Seiten vom 12/5/1989, verglichen mit der Schrift auf dem "fake" Memorandum, weisen eindeutige Veränderungen auf ! (Analysiert wurde der Text: "a fragment of a green coloured circuit board" vom 12/5/1989 mit dem Text auf dem Memorandum: "the green circuit board" und mit Feraday's Texten von Ende 1990)...
Mit diesen Tatsachen kann Allen Feraday einer weiteren Beweis- Fälschung, in einem besonders schweren Fall, überführt werden.
See ilustration pictures, on our
website, : www.lockerbie.ch
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
I say: The mysterious memorandum (Court Prod. no.333) of Allen Feraday (RARDE) delivered to Chief Inspector William Williamson, was not created on 15/9/1989, but created on 10/9/1990 and later chanched with a DUPLICATE with falsified date" !!!
ReplyDeleteI guarantee and want to supplement: that the memorandum (evidence, Prod. no.333, of Friday 15th September 1989, written by Allen Feraday, was a DUPLICATE (fake) memo belong together with the overwritten police Label DP'137!
You may see me beating my head on the computer monitor here.
I have no idea whether the memorandum was really written on 15th September 1989 or not. It may have been. On the other hand it may have been later, and backdated. We don't know, for as they say, paper takes on anything.
However, the timer fragment was certainly present in the investigation and being looked into by the Scottish police by January 1990. There is evidence of its being hawked round Europe to try to find a match between then and the summer of that year.
If the memorandum was backdated, when would it have been written? No idea, but most probably before the end of 1989, in the interests of getting the documentation in place.
The fact that someone apparently made a slip of the pen when writing out the label being attached to the memo, at the time when it itself became evidence, has no bearing on anything. It certainly doesn't prove that a memo clearly dated 15th September 1989 was written on 15th September 1990 (a Saturday, as I said).
BTW:
ReplyDeleteThe official conspiracy theory tells us that the Toshiba manual pieces were found to have been in the famous Slalom shirt collar. Where on the red-circle-photo can I find those pieces? Can anybody help?
I think Caustic Logic answered this. In the red-circle photo, the pages from the manual appear as a single compacted block, as they were described by Hayes before he teased them apart. This is situated immediately to the right of the timer fragment, and very slightly lower. At first sight it may be mistaken for a separate part of the shirt collar, but in fact comparison with the sketches on Hayes's notes shows the shape to be consistent with the manual pages. In addition, enlarging the photo shows the fabric construction of the shirt collar quite clearly, while the paper fragment has no weaving in it.
More in hope than expectation, I'd like to ask a question of Herr Bollier here.
Herr Bollier, you persistently refer to that photograph as a polariod. Why do you say that? What evidence do you have that it is a polaroid? Why would Hayes or his photographer have been using a polaroid camera for routine work on 12th May?
What is your reason for declaring that the photograph was taken on 12th May? Is there a statement somewhere within the case that says it was taken on that day?
For everyone else, I'll repeat what I've said before. The detailed pattern of damage on the fragment that can be seen when enlarging the red-circle photo is still there in the latest photos available of the fragment (the pictures of the court exhibit). This is far too detailed to have been faked. While the fragment has been cut up in the interim, and a little bit more damage inflicted, there can be no doubt that the same item appears in the red-circle photo and the court exhibit photos.
Sorry, I have looked at the red-circle-photo again and again. But I cannot believe that the "compact block" is the manual.
ReplyDelete1) no piece of paper next to the bomb would have survived the explosion.
2) Should it miracuously have happenend, why should it form such a "compact block"?
3) I doubt that this tiny "compact block" could bee unfolded to look like the manual as shown in court.
Charles said:
ReplyDelete== Mr Feraday does use the phrase lads and lsses, but I recall Mr Marquise does also in his book in reference to Mr Henderson.
== Mr Ferday's reference was in relation to the polaroid photograph that took him 4 months to produce.
You know, I spent some time composing a fairly detailed post, so detailed I had to split it into three. That was probably the least important matter in there by quite some way.
When posters pick out a tiny aside to quibble about, and ignore great swathes of argument, I start to wonder how firmly-based their conclusions are.
What is the shirt collar manual? Life is surely too complicated if a shirt collar needs instructions.
"Welcome to you new shirt collar XYZ123. May we at "Collars" take this opportunity of welcoming you to the best in neck attire"
And so on.
Unless I am wrong, the manual fragment is claimed to have been found in Mrs Horton's front garden at Longhorsely in Northumbria, and the shirt collar with chip embedded in the Keilder forest outside Newcastleton, Scotland.
Or am I wrong, again.
Yes, you are wrong again. For someone who has spent 20 years thinking about this, you have a surprisingly weak grasp of the known facts.
It's a basic fact of the case that Hayes described finding a compacted scrap of the Tosiba manual, composed of five pages forced together, in one of the burn-holes in the Slalom shirt collar. There is a photograph of it, and a facsimile of Hayes's notes where he drew the separated pages, and a lot of discussion about this - all available to the enquiring mind.
I find it quite incomprehensible that anyone who has given a lot of thought to this case, and has even constructed a theory about what happened, doesn't have such basic matters at his fingertips.
Sorry, I have looked at the red-circle-photo again and again. But I cannot believe that the "compact block" is the manual.
ReplyDelete1) no piece of paper next to the bomb would have survived the explosion.
2) Should it miracuously have happenend, why should it form such a "compact block"?
3) I doubt that this tiny "compact block" could bee unfolded to look like the manual as shown in court.
Have you looked at the link Caustic Logic provided? This demonstrates it rather well, I think. I know I did a huge double-take when it was first pointed out to me, but this is indeed the paper.
As to your points.
1. A very reasonable objection, and one I am in no position to answer, not being an explosives expert, but see 2 below.
2. The supposition is that this small block of compacted pages was formed by a small hard object being blasted into the manual by the explosion, and forcing the paper that was behind it into the shirt collar. That hard object must then have fallen out of the fabric, I think, because I don't think it was the black plastic or the bit of circuit board. That object would also have protected the small paper fragment from the explosion.
I have no idea how plausible this is; I also find the alleged survival of any paper that close to the explosion to be improbable. It's a point that sits alongside the doubts over the survival of the fragment of circuit board.
3. The more I read about this, the more I am inclined to favour the theory that what Mrs. Horton found was a piece of random litter. However, could you explain what you mean by "the manual as shown in court"? Hayes does maintain that the tiny scraps he teased out from that block were consistent with having come from five pages of the Toshiba's manual.
NME Adam: I'm not sure the clump does make sense, but it's a match between photo and notes was my point there. It's supposed to be the small bits, labeled PT/2 he sketched out here:
ReplyDeletehttp://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/page_51.jpg
Interestingly, they seem to all be found together, but ALL the electronics bits on left, timer chip and other crumbs, are labeled PT/35, 33 entries after the paper bits PT/2. So ???
Ebol: ----
Rolfe: You are blessed/cursed with way too much patience!
Charles: A few of the things you say show you have looked at some advanced stuff and have some insights in there (ex: the problem with the bits in the container info plate), but man... you are coming across like a clown on the most basic stuff.
Then again, what's basic to one person or another and why? Hey, maybe the CIA did it WITH pixie dust! Then we all win!
I missed a bit.
ReplyDeleteUnless I am wrong, [....] the shirt collar with chip embedded [is claimed to have been found] in the Keilder forest outside Newcastleton, Scotland.
No. Though an awful lot of other people make this mistake. Including Alan Francovich, which probably explains the other people.
The shirt collar was recorded as being found in an open field of rough grazing on the side of Blinkbonny Height, just behind the steading of Blinkbonny Farm. This is indeed just outside Newcastleton, in Roxburghshire in Scotland, and the field actually borders on the Newcastleton Forest on two sides.
The Kielder Forest, though not very far away, is in England, and has nothing to do with the matter.
"The more I read about this, the more I am inclined to favour the theory that what Mrs. Horton found was a piece of random litter. However, could you explain what you mean by "the manual as shown in court"?"
ReplyDeleteThat is essentially my opinion. If you are referring to me, Charles, of what was shown in court, I say it was (a) singed (b) unrecognised by the lady, (c) apparently was something from a manual to a Bombeat cassette recorder.
I reject (a), because a man with far more explosives knowledge that I shall ever, have says that a suitcase, let alone a sheet of paper could not survive a brisant explaosion. I accept that. (b) I dismiss the police accounts for it being damaged by forensics (they could have itemised each one of those damages during the investigation process, but failed to do so, (c) what sensible terrorist would place an instruction manual with the device he was using to hide an explosives device, especially as it would have had to have taken the cassette recorder out of its packing, removed the back, inserted the charge and explosive and screwed the back back on. Indeed Mr Watt's reconstruction seems to show the orinial box. This is quite nonsensical, even to a terrorists as incompetent as the ESO/LSO.
On the other hand as a deductive link in proving a case to the Scottish police, it's entirely credible.
I think it's important to distinguish between the small fragments of paper found by Hayes inside the shirt collar, and whatever it was Mrs. Horton found. I can just about imagine the Hayes fragments surviving the explosion in the manner described - they were very small, and very damaged, and had been blasted into a piece of cloth. I can't imagine any page of the manual surviving in an undamaged form under those circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what to make of the fact that the police seem to have attched some credence to the Horton find, but it does seem likely to have been random litter.
I don't have such a huge problem with the idea of terrorists packing the radio bomb back into its box, manual and all. The whole suitcase was put together to look as if it was genuine luggage. What better way to pack the lethal device than to put it back in its box, and at the same time making it look like a brand new item perhaps being carried as a Christmas gift for someone?
I'd propose for the Horton page:
ReplyDeleteSemi-damaged luggage, radio inside as present - manual comes down somewhere - one page page flutters down - turned in as possible evidence. Given an "evidence" slot even though it's just rubbish. Slot is later filled with a bit of handy planted evidence to point to Libya (they bought most RTSF-16s. right?) Or for whatever they wanted to paint. It's a stupid plant as we know it wouldn't survive if next to the friggin bombeat radio.
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteI fear that's unworthy of you.
Really, it takes the biscuit if you think security at Luqaa Airport (which I shall have to hasten to add in my opinion the device that exploded never was), if they had opened the suitcase and found a harmless cassette recorder would have taken screwdriver and prised the back off it!
I'd propose for the Horton page:
ReplyDeleteSemi-damaged luggage, radio inside as present - manual comes down somewhere - one page page flutters down - turned in as possible evidence. Given an "evidence" slot even though it's just rubbish. Slot is later filled with a bit of handy planted evidence to point to Libya (they bought most RTSF-16s. right?) Or for whatever they wanted to paint. It's a stupid plant as we know it wouldn't survive if next to the friggin bombeat radio.
Actually, CL, that's a very clever idea. Or alternatively, page of random litter floating around Northumberland quite independently. I wonder if it flies? Was the Horton page indeed the main source of the identification of the model of Toshiba?
We should take that to JREF, because it needs proper working out. We don't have a thread on the radio-cassette yet though. Ambrosia seems to know stuff about that item.
Dear Mr Logic,
ReplyDeleteThe explanation why there was no page from a manual fluttering down is brisant explosions. See: http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-62667.html
Randi isn't to everyone's taste, but it conatins gems in the dross.
Really, it takes the biscuit if you think security at Luqaa Airport (which I shall have to hasten to add in my opinion the device that exploded never was), if they had opened the suitcase and found a harmless cassette recorder would have taken screwdriver and prised the back off it!
ReplyDeleteI don't think the device was ever anywhere near Luqa Airport either, so that's irrelevant.
Would security anywhere, if they had had cause to open that suitcase, been less likely to prise open the radio if it was in its original box? I have no real idea. However, I can't see any reason for the terrorists not packing the whole thing back in its box. It was a new item, they had the box, why not? Can't do any harm, and might promote the assumption that it was a pristine, untouched item.
As an evidential point, it's neither here nor there.
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you agree the device never went near Luqaa Airport, but you do not do service to your conclusion.
It didn't.
I cannot really believe that given the fact that security had opened the suitcase and found the device, it would have become suspicious.
As I recall having had to show such equipment to security in the past, before the days of scanners, the test was "did it operate". If it did OK, if not suspicion.
I'm am not sure that any security has ever unscrewed consumer equipment (with any regularity) and, for example, Hindawi's girlfriend was investigated at first not because she was carrying a "present" that her boyfriend had given to her to take to Israel, but because El Al security could not understand why an Irish chambermaid was travelling to Israel in the first place.
The explanation why there was no page from a manual fluttering down is brisant explosions. See: http://forums.randi.org/archive/index.php/t-62667.html
ReplyDeleteRandi isn't to everyone's taste, but it conatins gems in the dross.
Huh? That's a thread I don't remember ever seeing before, but the main CT propounded in it is the accidentally-triggered illegal cargo of ordnance one. I can't see how that flies at all, to be honest.
I'm quite intrigued by this post.
Originally posted by Stateofgrace (seems to be deregistered)
I live very close to Lockerbie.
I drove past the scene the day after the event, although I saw very little of the actual crash I did see masses of emergencies services at the scene.
At the time I had a friend who was in the RAF mountain rescue service. He and his dog were employed at the scene to recover those that unfortunately perished in this event.
I have seen a couple of cters try to bring this flight up as some type of conspiracy before. I don't even bother addressing them, they are a waste of time and totally disrespectful of this event
if just one, any one of these idiots who promote conspiracies theories should come to Scotland and go to Lockerbie. I would gladly show them round. I would take them to the memorial garden that is set up and I would actually get hold of my friend who was involved. Maybe they would like to talk to somebody that really was involved.
It is the simple failure by the cters to realise that real people were involved in these events and the failure to understand that real people suffer the consequence of these dreadful event that maddens me so.
Am I expert on Lockerbie? No. I am just a guy that lives close by, saw bits of it and spoke to another guy who was involved in the clean up.
I do know one thing though; I would never get in my car drive a couple of miles and start pissing on graves. Nor would I talk about unfounded conspiracies there. But then again I don't live in a paranoid world of delusional fantasies, where I simply copy and paste there thoughts of those have never been there. I live in reality, very close to Lockerbie.
Dearie me. So he lives close to Lockerbie. And he knows there were real people involved. Well, so do we. About 60 miles from Lockerbie in my case. I drove past two days after the crash. I still get upset every time I see that picture of the flowers with the note about the little girl in the red coat. Every time I get on a plane, I remember these people.
But living near the town doesn't give you any special insight, and the fact that 270 real people were killed has absolutely zero bearing on whether or not the right person was convicted, or whether or not there was any manipulation of the investigation.
Naturally many people will get annoyed because we choose not to shut up.
ReplyDeleteAs some of you know, I am the brother of someone who dies by terrorism - the UTA crash.
I knew my brother well enough to know that he would be of the same mind as me as wishing to know about the things related to his death, if I decide they were important.
My blood runs cold whenever an account of the last seconds of the Maid is described, and I find it more disturbing than reading about the blowing up of my brother's plane.
I am not delusional. It is those who accept the CIA lies, fabrications and the failure of the Scottish police, forensic scientists and legal system who are.
I have never "pissed on a grave", ugly, ignorant and hurtful phrase that it is, and the author should be thoroughly ashamed of writing it.
The relatives of Pan Am 103 in the UK as a whole know that wrong has been done, and they are trying to right that wrong.
If you cannot understand their need, I must call upon you to be silent.
I cannot really believe that given the fact that security had opened the suitcase and found the device, it would have become suspicious.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall having had to show such equipment to security in the past, before the days of scanners, the test was "did it operate". If it did OK, if not suspicion.
I recall the same. I see no great advantage to putting the radio back in its box, but I see no disadvantge either. I don't see why they shouldn't have done it, so I don't see the fact that this seems to be what was done to be in any way suspicious.
MISSION LOCKERBIE, attn. Rolfe:
ReplyDeleteI examined on 14th-16th September 1999 with my questioning at Crown Office, by Procurator Mirian Watson in Dumfries, important pictures an Originals about the MST-13 Timerfragment PT/35;
PT/35B ;PT/35(b), DP/31(a) on Polaroid photos, and no. 335; 334; 336; etc.on normal photos.
The colors brown or green could not be determined in no photos 100%!
Please do not let be deceive from the term Polaroid photo. Senior photographer Stephen Haines, (RARDE) made all photos in a good analogous quality on a professional Polaroid-camera "Haselblatt" mark, for Dr. Hayes and Allen Feraday. Only the colour of the pictures was not identical.
Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd.
Thank you Herr Bollier, that is very helpful. You are certain that these pictures were taken by the photographer and not by the scientists?
ReplyDeleteCan you explain which of these pictures is the "red-circle" one?
I am also very confused by the lack of natural colour in these pictures. Nevertheless, I presume the actual fragment as exhibited in court could be seen to be green?
I have been trying to make an important and fundamental point about the Indian Head tests - that their central purpose was to collaborate Orr's claim that the primary suitcase arrived from Frankfurt. Charles however is more interested in the fact of Mr "McFagyeb havibg" been appointed Sherrif in Hamilton making the ludicrous equation of Hamilton with some Soviet gulag.
ReplyDeleteYes, I absolutely take your point. Maybe not quite in that way, but the central purpose was certainly to establish where the primary suitcase was situated and how much explosive was in it. And yes, if you like, to test the theory that the suitcase was in container AVE4041 as suggested by the evidence recovered on the ground.
I still fail to see how any demonstration that the bomb suitcase was in AVE4041, no matter how conclusive, could possibly prove the suitcase must have arrived from Frankfurt. Yes, if that container had been taken empty out to the tarmac and filled there from empty, then being loaded on to Maid of the Seas without going back into the terminal building, that would do. But that's not how it was.
The central point about the suitcase seen by Bedford is this - if it wasn't the primary suitcase then whose suitcase was it - why was it not recovered and linked to a specific Interline passenger?
Yes, exactly. I am still in complete shock over the way the Camp Zeist judges hand-waved that one away.
Nevertheless, it goes beyond that. Even disregarding Bedford's evidence about the two mysteriously-appearing bags for the moment, any of the seven (or so) suitcases which were loaded into that container in the terminal could have been the bomb bag. All of them were close enough to the right position, allowing for a little bit of rearrangement when the Frankfurt bags were being loaded. Where did they come from? Who did they belong to?
The judges accepted in their conclusions that the suitcases loaded in the terminal building could have been moved around when the Frankfurt baggage wa added, and so might not necessarily have ended up on the bottom layer where they started. Thus, any of them could have been the bomb bag. This completely undermines any suggestion of a Heathrow introduction being ruled out - even discounting the Bedford suitcase evidence.
What it does appear to rule out is that the bomb was in a suitcase checked in by a passenger beinning their journey at Heathrow. But that is an entirely different matter.
Charles told me I was wrong because "it was a CIA operation". I have often stated my view that there were was official collusion in the bombing. My recollection of Charles' book is that he claimed the idea of blaming Libya only emerged in 1991 following a trip to Washington by the magistrate investigating the UTA 772 case. Why was I wrong?
The MST-13 timer fragment was identified as such in June 1990. It is frequently suggested that the identification of this item led to the Libya hypothesis. The fragment (unidentified) was actually present within the chain of evidence from at least early 1990.
These timings are completely inconsistent with the idea of a Libyan responsibility not emerging until 1991.
[contd....]
[contd....]
ReplyDeleteI still find Charles' comments largely unintelligible although the typos have improved. According to his comment of the 18th January "how McKee got to Frankfurt is not very material but his suitcase got into AVE4041PA via PA103A and there a device went off"
Who (apart from Charles) says that McKee got to Frankfurt or that his luggage was on PA103A?
Nobody I know of. As far as I know, McKee flew into Heathrow on an earlier interline flight, and his luggage was one of the five cases noted by Bedford in AVE4041 before PA103A landed.
But then I haven't been obsessing about this incident for 20 years so I may be mistaken.
Charles continues "You have proposed no mechanism for how the suitcase got into AVE4041 at Heathrow - by now you should have been able to work it out".
Well frankly I do not know the "mechanism" I suspect the primary suitcase came to England on the Gothenburg Ferry but have no evidence of this. I am merely drawing attention to compelling evidence the primary suitcase was in AVE4041 before the arrival of flight PA103A. (Tagged or not!)
I would agree. I can't comment re the Gotherburg ferry, however I speculate about its arrival on another flight. This could explain the presence of the MST-13 timer, assuming this is genuine - it might have been used to allow the suitcase to be transported to Heathrow without activating a barometric Khreesat-type device, allowing flexibility as to which flight it was then placed on, all without anyone having to open the suitcase to arm the device, which could be a difficult operation airside, where baggage handlers are not supposed to be opening luggage.
Charles theory is that an IED was affixed to the interior of AVE4041 on the evening of the 20.12.88 by some Iranian wandering from the Airport with a pair of bolt-cutters in his trousers. The central crippling flaw in this theory is the complete absence of evidence that AVE4041 would have been marked up 16-18 hours before the flight. Indeed according to another aspect of his "theory" AVE4041 would have been on its way to New York! However as Charles' said "you cannot start from facts -you have to start with a thesis"!
That's nuts. It's far less probable than any of the "improbabilities" he complains about in other suggestions. Talk about straining at gnats and swallowing camels?
I've heard suggestions that Maid of the Seas herself was sabotaged using a shaped charge. That is also unlikely, for many reasons. However, it's a shoo-in compared to the idea that some random bagage container could be sabotaged many hours earlier, without anyone noticing. The number of problems with this idea is beyond the scope of this blog to enumerate.
Charles keeps promising to publish his theory, which he has recently compared with the works of darwin and Einstein. Where is it?
That's a shame, when he first appeared I hoped he had something plausible. It appears not.
MISSION LOCKERBIE, attn. Rolfe:
ReplyDeleteDie vermutliche Photo-Montage No. 329, (PP'8932; PI 995) mit dem roten Kreis, habe ich zusammen mit dem abgebildeten MST-13 Timerfragment mit der Markierung "M" seit November 1990 bis nach dem Prozess in Kamp van Zeist im Jahr 2000 nie gesehen, Dieser Photographie wurde die No. 329 zugeteilt.
Ich hatte Anfang 1991 bei einer Befragung im Scottish Police Camp near Glasgow, das gleiche Photo ohne roten Kreis gesehen, auf welchem nicht das MST-13 Circuit Board abgebildet war, sondern das Circuit Board (AG/145)) von Toshiba Radiorecorder -RT-8016 !!!
Babylon computer translation german/english>>
The supposed Photo-Montage No.329, (PP' 8932; PI- 995) with the red circle, I have together with the shown MST-13 timer fragment with the marking; M" since November 1990 until the process in Kamp van Zeist in the year 2000 never seen, this photography the No.329 was assigned. I had seen with a questioning in the Scottish policy Camp near Glasgow, the same photo without red circle to at the beginning of of 1991, on which the MST-13 Circuit board was not shown, but the Circuit board (AG/145)) of Toshiba radio recorder - RT-8016!!!
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd,
Dera Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteWould you please stop traducing what I am saying.
Your own understanding of the facts of Lockerbie is not entirely perfect.
It seems I have made a mistake about Mr McKee's travels, and unlike others here, I am prepared to admit to error.
Mr McKee was a CIA operational agent of some standing. He was returning from a mission. I have inferred that there must be a standing instruction that says such people must carry a suitcase or suitcases in which a radio transponder is carried, which if subject to large mechanical shock is activated and emits a signal. Before he left the Near East, Mr McKee who had some doubts about his return, for he'd phoned his mother and asked her to collect him from an airport in Pennsylvania, activated that transponder in accordance with his instructions.
He flew to London and his suitcase is placed in AVE4041 PA is the usual way.
The previous evening, an Iranian gent has broken into the airport ("padlock cut like butter" - Manly) and stuck a "plastique" on the side of AVE4041 PA.
The are two facts and one inference as to why it had to be a plastique, and I've touched on them before.
I infer an Iranian because there'd been a deal to allow the Iranians "a one and one only revenge" bombing for the Airbus IR-655. The deal had been disguised as talks about hostages, but the Iranians had much more important things on their minds than hostages in the Autumn of 1988.
It must be an Iranian who placed the device for such a revenge is governed by the traditional code (1200 years older than Islam) of "qesas".
I can't see why sophisticated thinkers can't see that an hand-off to a Palestinian, possibly of the Sunni strain of Islam does not cut the mustard.
Having placed the device (which may have been manufactured by the CIA, qesas does not require the avenging party to provide his own device) the Iranian simply left the airport, his job done.
Deep researchers may be aware who he was.
That plastique mimiced a PFLP GC device, for that was the CIA's target for the attack at the time.
The Iranian knew which container to attack, as baggage operations are standardised as far as possible, so it was not hard to work out in advance that McKee's suitcase would go into AVE4041 PA, though the container wa not labelled at the time.
The CIA can easily work out the route the aircraft will leave the UK, and have a man on the ground or in a helicopter well in advance of the crash which will alert them when McKee's suitcase transponder is triggered.
McKee's suitcase is not in AVE4041 PA when they both land, but presumably they will roughly be in the same location, as it reasonable to say that they broke off in the same part of the aircraft for example.
I am sure the CIA monitors Black's blog, as there is more good thinking here than on any other site, and some people's misconceptions may be put here by people who, unlike me, are not innocent seekers after the truth.
I already have my doubts about some. But until I have decent publicity for my story, I shall only give hints at what I've learnt, and more importantly inferred, so I won't say more.
It's pretty grim reading. Lockerbie is a disgrace to the Agency, the presidency of HW Bush, for whom this farce was staged, for the Scottish police, the UK government, the Scottish legal and prosecuting system, the British forensic and security authorities, and even the dear old AAIB has much to own up to.
I am sure the CIA know who I am and can find me, but I have taken steps to protect myself.
MISSION: SPEDOIKAL
ReplyDeleteAttn all:
I said above, stay away from the occult Randi forum. I was kidding of course. At least check out the threads we've got there. Rolfe in particular is a shaping member of the "emerging consensus," I call it. I'm a bridge builder by nature, see, even if it means burning bridges to the bridge-burners. Discuss, evaluate, etc. Debunker types that predominate there grumble at out work in their midst, but know better than to challenge it (to our dismay at times). The collective discussion momentum of Rolfe, me, and a half-dozen others occasionally verges into hyper-speed learning sessions. BS artists are spotted there and called out. Ebol may not enjoy it there. Genuine-type discussions tend to flourish. Though some fun dummies appear a times and duh-bunk you and you can argue and watch them splendidly fail to comprehend.
again:
http://forums.randi.org/
joooooiiin uuusss
specifically, mostly, this forum:
http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=91
120 comments - wow!
ReplyDeleteRolfe's two comments of the 20th January 2010 dealt with my previous comment concerning Charles' theories. Charles was kind enough to respond on the 21st January 2010 to confirm everything I said.
Rolfe wrote "I still fail to see how any demonstration that the bomb suitcase was in AVE4041 no matter how conclusive, could possibly prove the suitcase must have arrived from Frankfurt."
I deal with this in more detail in my article "Lockerbie - The Heathrow Evidence". However briefly because of the absence of "pitting" on the container floor in the Indian Head tests it was concluded that the primary suitcase was not in contact with the floor as the 5-6 "Interline bags" and the two "Kamboj" bags (supposedly) were. Therefore it was on the second or third "layer" which had come from Frankfurt. Indeed the Police purported to be able to prove not only that the bag came from Frankfurt but that it had been Interlined there as these bags were (supposedly) loaded into AVE4041 last. (The centre of the explosive evident was allegedly 10.5" off the ground!)
The IED could not have been within any of the Interline bags. It had to be within an antique bronze Samsonite Tourister. Further I presume the Interline bags loaded first were reconciled to their owners!
I take the comment "that's nuts" to refer to Charles' theory not what I wrote!
In his comment Charles' gracefully concedes he may have been wrong about McKee travelling to Frankfurt. But his "book" asserts (without evidence) he chartered a plane to get there. Unfortunately if you point out such errors Charles' usual response is to first argues the toss, then says it is of no relevance (as he does here.)
However he continues to state that "McKee was a CIA operational agent". No he wasn't he was an Army Officer. Charles' speculates his suitcase contained a transponder. Earlier he claimed McKee phoned his Mum "in a panic." Who says? Now "having doubts about his return" he phones Mum to meet him at the Airport. So what?
Charles' has hinted at his new theory that there were two bombs on board PA103 (a claim I would not dismiss out of hand) but that they were introduced by different parties!
He continues that "the Iranian knew which container to attack as baggage operations are standardised as far as possible" -"though the container was not labelled at the time"! However according to Charles' theory of standardised baggage operations AVE4041 would have been on its way to Kennedy Airport on PA103 on the 20.12.88!
Charles' is quite welcome to his daft theories - I simply objected to his dismissal of something important because "Lockerbie was screwed from the start - it was a CIA operation". Well if it was why is this Iranian wandering round the Interline Baggage Shed on the late evening of the 20.12.88 with a pair of bolt-cutters stashed in his trousers?
He concludes "I am sure the CIA know who I am and can find me but I have taken steps to protect myself". I think he's pretty safe.
MISSION LOCKERBIE:
ReplyDeleteThere was no explosion in container AVE 4041 PA !!!
MEBO is certain that the explosion did NOT occur in container AVE 4041 PA, rather than at the POSITION/STATION /700 directly at the interior wall in front of the container AVE 4041 PA. MEBO declares why ?
New forensic pictures of the explosion site in the cargo room of Pan Am 103 are in the possesion of MEBO Ltd. They show clearly that the explosion happened directly on the fuselage skin, at the intersection of Frame no. 700 and stringer no. 39L, at station 700 and NOT in container AVE 4041 PA, position 14L!
Technical details:
All named figures are available in the official report of the AAIB 2/90.
The forensic photographies show clearly that frame no. 700 at the intersection of stringer L39 was cut through due to direct contact with explosive material. (Figure 11)
Also, a 20 cm long piece of the light metal stringer no 39L was cut oblique through. The structures of the cut surflaces are typical signs of explosive material coming into direct contact with frame no. 700 and stringer no. 39L (figure F-11 and B-15)
Another sign is the well viewed deformation of the opposite frame no. 680, at the same height as stringer no. 38, 39 and 40. Such deformation could only happen in the case of a very strong negative schockwave vectoring from the centre of the explosion (frame no. 700) horizontal upon the frame no. 680. The fibreglass cover/shell of those frames work to thicken the protective walls in moment of explosion. (figure F-11)
If the explosion had taken place inside container AVE 4041, the explosive schockwave would have:
1) been strongly weakened and softened by the radio recorder, the clothes, the hardened Samsonite suitcase walls, the container metal wall and the fiberglas-cover of the frames. Additionally, the biggest part of the schockwave would have hit the frame no. 680 vertically and could not have caused such kind of deformation of frame no. 680 (figure F-11).
2) Not been able to damaged the outer wall with the broad structured impact and would not have downed the plane, as 300 grams of explosive Semtex-H would not have been enough to cause a major schockwave pressure! Had the explosion found place in container AVE 4041, the negative and positive schockwaves, would have been far to weak. Also, the distance from the center of the explosion to the skin area affected by the blast is a far to large distance for causing the specific damage of the fuselage. The AAIB put the distance to 25 inches or 63,5 cm. (Figure F-12)
4) A stringer is in aviation terms a horizontal U-shaped aluminium profile which intersect the vertical frames in a distance of 25 cm. The frames are very stable vertical put, milled double T profiles with a width of 18 cm, that are put to each other in a distance of about 55 cm and keep the fuselage together. On the liught metal stringers, the outer skin of the fuselage is attached with bolts. The stringers are situated between the frames.) (Figure B-14)
Additionally, the secured metal parts of and around frame 39L show exact rupture structures, that could only have happened if they have been close to the center of the explosion! (Figure B-15)
Fiberglass plates (dm 1,7 mm) with a width of about 55 cm are attached with screws over the frames and contain a sort of space with a width of 20 cm between the outer and inner skin of the fuselage. (It is currently not possible to determine whether the Boeing series 747-100 contain such fiberglass cover plates.)
by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland
Baz, I totally understand the initial reasoning behind the assertion that the bomb bag was not one of those loaded at Heathrow. These were all assumed to have been on the bottom layer of cases, while the bag that exploded was not in contact with the floor of the container.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you look at the judges' subsequent reasoning, it falls apart. Why was the Bedford Samsonite not identified at Lockerbie, as one of the bags close to the explosion? Oh well, perhaps the loaders out on the tarmac moved it to "a far corner of the container" while they were loading the baggage coming off PA103A. Implying that it had thus been recovered with minimal damage and returned to its rightful owner's family, unremarked by anyone.
That's ludicrous. If that were to hold water, the theory ought at least to have been investigated. There were very few bags involved, and the identities of the owners (people who had flown in to Heathrow on earlier connecting flights) not hard to establish. It should have been simplicity itself to trace that suitcase, if it had been a legitimate item of interline baggage. This was not done, or apparently even attempted, but the judges just decided that "must" have been what happened.
What they seem not to have realised is that as soon as you allow that the initial 7 bags might have been moved within the container at the time the rest of the luggage was added, you admit the possibility that one or more of them might have ended up on the second layer. Where the bomb bag was.
That's why I say you can't exclude any of these bags. Clearly, the brown Samsonite Bedford described is the obvious candidate, as we know the bomb bag was such a suitcase. However, the same re-positioning argument could have been applied to any of them. While the first 5 bags were apparently legitimate and reconciled to their owners, there remains the possibility of a bag switch or similar. I'm not advancing this as a probable theory, merely to point out the ridiculous nature of the early assumption that the bomb could not have been introduced at Heathrow. An assumption apparently arrived at within days of the crash.
[contd....]
[contd....]
ReplyDeleteAnd about the positioning. Recall that Bedford didn't place the bags flat. It's described in the court judgement.
These cases were placed on their spines in a row
along the back of the container. He said that he had left the interline shed to have a
cup of tea with Mr Walker in the build-up area. On his return, he saw that two cases
had been added to the container. These cases were laid on their sides, with the
handles towards the interior of the container, in the way that he would normally have
loaded them.
So, how clear is this? The first 5 cases were definitely "on their spines". Not flat. The two mystery cases were "on their sides", which could mean anything, really. I take it to mean, not flat, though others may interpret that differently. However, "in the way that he would normally have loaded them". He loaded the first 5 "on their spines", so to me that implies that "on their sides" means essentially the same as "on their spines". Not flat. (There is apparently a photograph of the arrangement, which would settle the matter, but I have not seen it.)
Have you ever seen an aircraft luggage container being put on a plane where the bags were on their spines rather than flat? No, me neither. The details given indicate that some rearrangement must have been necessary at the later loading stage, so that the first few cases which were put on their spines (for whatever reason, I don't know, maybe it made it easier to read the tags), ended up flat.
This to me suggests a perfectly reasonable possibility that any of the first few cases might have ended up on the second layer. It's certainly far likelier that a baggage handler would move a 20kg case a small distance to the layer above, than that he would gratuitously consign it to "some remote conrer of the container". The judges, however, took the opposite view and suggested that if it could have been moved up a layer, it could have ended up anywhere, poof! the Bedford suitcase disappears from the radar.
This is nuts.
There is also the little matter that if the positioning of the explosion is correct, then 10.5 inches from the floor of the container could indeed be the second suitcase up, but 10.5 inches from the floor of the plane suggests the suitcase was on the bottom layer after all. Pace Indian Head and the lack of pitting, that still leaves me with the impression that one of the suitcases Bedford saw was the bomb bag.
I agree entirely that the totality of the evidence overwhelmingly supports the bomb having gone on board at Heathrow.
Rolfe's two comments of the 20th January 2010 dealt with my previous comment concerning Charles' theories. Charles was kind enough to respond on the 21st January 2010 to confirm everything I said.
ReplyDelete== I'm not sure I agree with that!
Rolfe wrote "I still fail to see how any demonstration that the bomb suitcase was in AVE4041 no matter how conclusive, could possibly prove the suitcase must have arrived from Frankfurt."
I deal with this in more detail in my article "Lockerbie - The Heathrow Evidence". However briefly because of the absence of "pitting" on the container floor in the Indian Head tests it was concluded that the primary suitcase was not in contact with the floor as the 5-6 "Interline bags" and the two "Kamboj" bags (supposedly) were. Therefore it was on the second or third "layer" which had come from Frankfurt. Indeed the Police purported to be able to prove not only that the bag came from Frankfurt but that it had been Interlined there as these bags were (supposedly) loaded into AVE4041 last. (The centre of the explosive evident was allegedly 10.5" off the ground!)
== The Indian Head test are irrelevant because they did not test the alternative – that the device was not in a suitcase. They accepted the argument that the bomb was in a suitcase, and it was their assumption. Can you prove from the AAIB report that the device was in a suitcase? I can't. Hint, I've read it from cover to cover, many times.
In his comment Charles' gracefully concedes he may have been wrong about McKee travelling to Frankfurt. But his "book" asserts (without evidence) he chartered a plane to get there. Unfortunately if you point out such errors Charles' usual response is to first argues the toss, then says it is of no relevance (as he does here.)
== Poor use of language there, Baz. The correct word is graciously. And you lecture me on the use of language! A man who is hazy about the proper use of “its” and “it's, but is a no more than a fairly accurate typist.
== And I have redacted my claim on the means by which McKee reached London, and as I have pointed out, it is irrelevant, as he would have primed the transponder before leaving the Middle East and would not have deprimed it until he reached NY or a regional airport in Pennsylvania.
== And, of course, there is no evidence of a transponder, yet by Christmas Day, the day on which AVE4041 PA was officially located, McKee's suitcase was in the temporary Lockerbie HQ, and the CIA briefed the police that said item was to be returned to where it had been found, and then officially “discovered”. Read pages 68-72 of Johnston. Helicopters had been rattling overhead the nearby farm since 22 December 1988. Why?
== And don't go on that the suitcase was not in AVE4041 PA. I know that. The point is how did the CIA find where McKee's suitcase was.
== And Baz, your unintelligible theory includes your ex-wife and the mysterious Spiro. I've never managed to fathom what that's about.
However he continues to state that "McKee was a CIA operational agent". No he wasn't he was an Army Officer. Charles' speculates his suitcase contained a transponder. Earlier he claimed McKee phoned his Mum "in a panic." Who says? Now "having doubts about his return" he phones Mum to meet him at the Airport. So what?
= That Mr McKee phoned his mother is a matter of record, however much Baz doesn't want to believe it.
ReplyDelete== He was ostensibly an officer with the DIA. You don't actually believe what the CIA tells you, do you Baz? Or are you working for them? Are you trying to extract the maximum information from me, before sending the team in.
Charles' has hinted at his new theory that there were two bombs on board PA103 (a claim I would not dismiss out of hand) but that they were introduced by different parties!
== I'm glad you accept that. Have you read the AAIB report, critically? Again, I thought not. Reading government documents critically is too much hard work!
== Would they have been introduced by the same party? Getting Mr Megrahi to introduce one bomb on the Maid is hard enough, two is of Wildean ridiculousness.
He continues that "the Iranian knew which container to attack as baggage operations are standardised as far as possible" -"though the container was not labelled at the time"! However according to Charles' theory of standardised baggage operations AVE4041 would have been on its way to Kennedy Airport on PA103 on the 20.12.88!
== That's a silly conclusion. When do you think AVE4041 PA arrived at Heathrow? Can you prove it? Do you have any idea of baggage operations.? It appears not.
Charles' is quite welcome to his daft theories - I simply objected to his dismissal of something important because "Lockerbie was screwed from the start - it was a CIA operation". Well if it was why is this Iranian wandering round the Interline Baggage Shed on the late evening of the 20.12.88 with a pair of bolt-cutters stashed in his trousers?
== Because, Baz, and this is what you don't try to understand, what was Lockerbie about?
In my view, it was to give Iran the opportunity to carry out a “qesas” revenge, and that was an agreement reached between Iran and the US, brokered at Glyon, and from the US end set up by the CIA. Otherwise HW Bush's election was in doubt.
== A qesas revenge simply would not do. It had to be an Iranian, preferably a relative of someone who had died on the Airbus, or in default of that, an Iranian government employee.
== Have you read anything about Iranian jurisprudence? No, I thought not. Haven't you read how angry all Iranian opinion was about the Airbus, and how even moderate Government spokesmen were saying that Iran would have its revenge at the appropriate time? Again I thought not.
He concludes "I am sure the CIA know who I am and can find me but I have taken steps to protect myself". I think he's pretty safe.
== Baz, your entirely negative approach to logical thought, is being to make me think you are on an agenda for someone else.
== You claim you are an expert in international relations, yet you have apparently not read Machiavelli, and have the haziest grasp of real life Realpolitik.
Dear friends, when we start to discredit each other in the way the latest comments do then this blog is soon going to go astray.
ReplyDeleteI think, almost every theory is better than the official conspiracy theory.
And it makes no sense to accuse each other of being paid by the CIA, the MI5/6, the Mossad or the Libyan intelligence. Maybe some are - so what! What should matter are the best arguments.
Dear Nennt, or may I call you Adam,
ReplyDeleteI would heartily endorse your peacemaking, and indeed I am rather a pacificist myself with a somewhat Quaker background, though I do not believe in any god.
I shall withdraw the suggestion I made of Baz without reserve, for there are those out there who will see our squabbles and say, why should we listen to this Polish Parliament of discord.
That reference is to the fact that at one point in its history, the said body required unanimity the carry a decision, and that, I fear, no more than the PP will we ever achieve.
May I annoy you all again and come back to the Toshiba user´s guide:
ReplyDeleteIn the red-circle-photo (photo-# 329) we see that little white "block" that is supposed to consist of (the residue) of five pages). In photo-# 269 we see the "unfolded block" or rather page 1 of the five pages.
The white block has the approximate size of 1.8 cm x 1.3 cm. It does not seem to be thick. The unfolded block has the size of approximately 12 x 12 cm.
Is it only me who has problems to imagine that the tiny block can be unfolded to that latter size?
(Not to be misunderstood: I do not put questions to collect endorsements but for discussion. Though I think that people like Mr Feraday and Hayes and... deserve that we question every step of theirs.)
Dear Nennt,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good question, so shouldn't we go about it from the opposite angle.
There's the block of paper.
There's Mrs Horton's "discovered sheet"
Is there story that the prosecution is saying that:
(a) there are fragments found at once place in Scotland and (b) a sheet found 40 km away in England, and we may infer, because we are honest decent forensic scientists, that the two go togther.
Bells and legs again, in my opinion!
We can't prove they made it up, but do we really have to accept what they are saying.
There's a lot about Charles's ideas I don't follow. Yes, McKee phoned his mother. Yes, he flew into Heathrow and transferred to PA103. Yes, his suitcase was in AVE4041.
ReplyDeleteThere are stories that his suitcase was recovered on the ground by the Americans, some contents removed, then it was replaced to be "found" officially. This was specifically rejected by the SCCRC. That might not prove a lot, but it does suggest the story can't be proven. It seems to be in the same category as the stories about the suitcase of heroin and the missing body and the CIA badge. Maybe they happened, but nobody is prepared now to declare they know that first hand. So what does Charles know that we don't?
So, he believes McKee's suitcase was located improbably quickly, and so asserts that there was a transponder in it. Actually, the sort of device an airline would have a fit about if you tried to get it on board, as a potential danger to the airliner.
Is there any evidence to support this?
He also asserts that McKee's suitcase was found along with or in the remains of AVE4041. That isn't so - the cases in the container were scattered and the container itself found in pieces. He also suggests that McKee's case was underneath the bomb bag - but the case underneath the bomb bag was supposed to be one of the Frankfurt cases, according to the evidence.
And so on.
What I don't really follow is, supposing any of this were actually true, why is it necessarily anything to do with the explosion? Would the CIA not have been just as anxious to get hold of his case if the plane had been struck by lightning?
I also don't understand about sabotaging the luggage container many hours in advance. I know nothing about airport baggage handling, but it seems to me very unlikely that the same containers were always in the same place every time. (In fact impossible on a daily basis as some would be on the wrong side of the world to repeat their trip, but it even seems unilkely on a rotational basis.)
ReplyDeleteI would therefore welcome some evidence to show that it would have been possible, to a high degree of confidence, to identify the correct luggage container 12 hours or so before the plane took off.
Rolfe, these comments are rather directed to your witterings
ReplyDeleteThe fact that something was specifically rejected by the SCCRC is immaterial, because essentially the job of that body is to look at new claims of innocence of Mr Megrahi as sceptically as possible.
The SCCRC starts with a bias in favour of the current findings, that Mr Megrahi was properly convicted. The appeal courts do the same. Court systems hate being told you got it wrong. Too musch prestige and the public's belief in the court system is at stake.
That's why I support UKFF103's claim for an independent inquiry, except I want it to be given teeth and have the right to force witnesses to attend and be required to answer questions.
Have you read David Johnston's "Lockerbie the Tragedy of Flight 103". Johnston, an IRN reporter with Radio Forth, and I cannot think has any grounds to lie, asserts to the CIA presence, and helicopters and the finding of the suitcase and its return to where it came from.
I have no reason to doubt him and he was threatened with being precognosed by the police. The book is ISBN-0-312-92212-4.
You can but it from Amazon for a couple of quid + P&P.
"That might not prove a lot, but it does suggest the story can't be proven."
When you've read Johnston, I don't think you would continue to make that claim. It is straight news reportage.
I am sure you do not "need to get airline permission", and would that worry the CIA. No! Indeed, they could point out that the flight of the aircraft would when the apparatus was deployed would be doomed anyway. I do not think it would have been operated until it suffered a large mechanical shock, so it wasn't emitting radio noise all the time. The airline would thus never know about the device and it would be a secret unto McKee and the CIA themselves. Have a look at "No country for old men" for ideas.
I cannot work out another way that the CIA could have located Mr McKee's suitcase given there were up to a 1000 there on those dim dark remembered hills and the suitcase was found about 4 km for the main centre of the debris. On the other hand the farmer near where McKee's suitcase was found asserts (in Johnston) to hearing helicopters overhead his house from 22 December. It is my reasonable conclusion that one of them could have been looking for that suitcase. I think that is a very reasonable conclusion, but if you care to argue that (a) they were lost, (b) taking a sightseeing trip, (c) visiting their grannies, I can't prevent you, but those ideas are quite frankly daft.
I have repeatedly pointed out that McKee's suitcase would not have been in the AVE4041 container
when it landed, but the suitcase was in the same container minutes before and knowledge of the location of the suitcase would have simplified the finding of the container. I can't tell you why did the CIA did not alarm the container itself, but it would have required a further operation in the Heathrow baggage shed.
I have never said that McKee's suitcase was underneath the bomb bag, and I really don't know where you got that idea from. If you are saying it was underneath where I inferred the stuck on device was, I never said that, and I claim throughout that a Samsonite was dumped in a blown condition in the remains of AVE4041 PA.
You might spend a little time thinking about why a detonator was not recovered from the crash site. One was from the corresponding UTA explosion and it was a standard of standard ICI manufacture.
(continued)
ReplyDeleteYou might spend a little time thinking about why a detonator was not recovered from the crash site. One was from the corresponding UTA explosion and it was a standard of standard ICI manufacture.
Again, the container handling problem boiled down to trying to work out the most reasonable method for baggage containers to be operated and I came to the conclusion that to handle a flight on a routine basis you need two sets. One is on the ground and one in in the air or travelling from the origin.
When the incoming flight that was to become 103 of 20 December 1988 arrived in Heathrow all the containers were unloaded and when emptied placed in their respective positions for the evening flight of 21 December. They were not labelled at that point, which was done early in the morning of 21 December.
The fact that the operation of 103 was more complex that that (in from San Francisco, back to NY and Chicago, does not alter the essence of this observation)
The airport closes down for the night, the Iranian gent breaks in (I don't quite understand why you have a problem with that fact, Rolfe, somebody did, and they cut the hasp of the padlock like butter, it was a break-in and not a break-out as the Crown sort to assert and showed every sign of being a professional job. In break-outs the door was forced. Do you remember why the gent has to be Iranian? Correct - the qesas requirement. Revenge had to be by an Iranian hand. The CIA's the PFLP GC's Talb's or anyone else just wouldn't do. This is almost a personal grudge match between the representatives of the relatives of the dead Iranians and those under the protection of the "God's Country")
The device is planted (why don't you ask me what sort of glue was used) and the Iranian gent disappeared the way he came taking his bolt cutters with him. I don't see why you have a problem with this scenario, for its identical to what yours must have been, though my man does not brandish a suitcase with him.
If you don't agree to a stick on please read Peter Claydon's evidence again.
There is evidence that baggage handling is very precisely organised and planned well in advance. There must be diagrams of each day's working prepared well in advance.
One of the background stories to the T5 opening mayhem is that BAA had to integrate two different teams of baggage handlers, in reality overnight, and it just could not be done.
A plan which baggage would go where would have been made out long before the evening of 21 December for 103, and I expect the labels placed on the containers on the morning of the 21st were accompanied by a sheet telling exactly how each container would be used.
It that's not done chaos ensues, and there was nothing to suggest from the baggage handling angle the operation of 103 was other than entirely normal, with the sole exception of the break-in.
I could go through this at length with you.
What you've got to do is dream yourself into the dark suit of clothes and overcoat of an Iranian patriot, into Mr Manly's boiler suit and into the very seat McKee is slumped in as he relaxes into its first class depth, knowing that nothing has happened so far, and he'll soon be home.
Until you can actively think Yourself through all these roles and a dozen more, you can never develop understanding.
In his comment of 21 January 2010, baz wrote: The IED could not have been within any of the Interline bags. It had to be within an antique bronze Samsonite Tourister. Further I presume the Interline bags loaded first were reconciled to their owners!
ReplyDeleteHaving arrived at Heathrow on flight BA 391 at 11:06am, UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was an Interline passenger. According to Carlsson's girl friend, Sanya Popovic: "[Bernt's] bag was sitting at Heathrow, in the baggage area, from early that day. There is quite an important question about it, as neither I nor his sister [Inger Carlsson-Musser] was able to identify the bag. Just didn't seem like his (it was apparently immediately underneath the one containing the bomb, and quite considerably shattered). Not to mention the size was totally off (much too small).
"I was quite surprised to find that despite our reactions to that bag, the Crown chose to say there was a definitive identification. Which there certainly wasn't."
So it would appear that Bernt Carlsson's Interline luggage was not reconciled with its owner!
I think Charles' comments speak for themselves and for a supposed seeker after the truth he has a funny way of going about it. There are Legal, Criminal, Political and Moral issues involved in Lockerbie. I also recognise there are psychological ones.
ReplyDeleteHowever I would point out I do not have an ex-wife, I do not disbelieve Major McKee phoned his mother, (why would I?) and I do not believe everything the CIA tell me because they don't tell me anything! I don't know when PA4041 arrived at Heathrow but from what I can figure out from you "theory" it arrived on flight PA100 on the morning of the 21.12.88. The idea that I am trying to get information about him before sending in the hit squad is just barking. You have nothing to say that is a threat to the CIA.
To Ebol(and Rolfe). I appreciate the point you are making and it is not something I would dismiss. However I am dealing with the "official version" of events that the IED was contained within a bronze Samsonite tourister. I appreciate that the Judgement undermined Orr's deductions (and the conclusion of the FAI. The point is that the "Kamboj" Samsonite had to be eliminated in theory because it was not eliminated in reality and I don't think the Judges considered whether or not his had been recovered.
To Patrick - for once you have made an interesting point. It does make sense that Mr Carlsson would leave his bag at Heathrow as "Interline luggage". Of course you would need more information as to what bag was supposedly recovered and what his sister and girlfriend were expecting.
Really, explaining to you takes a lot of doing. If you accept my theory then AVE4041 flew into Heathrow from the same flight the day before the 20th.
ReplyDeleteIt sits there on there ground empty and unlabelled until and midnight an Iranian gent breaks in a places a device in it.
If you can demonstrate that AVE4041 PA arrived on PA100 on 21st, my theory is dead until it can be rewritten, but it is your job, not mine to prove that AVE4041 PA arrived on PA100. Not mine.
That is the essence of the sort of theory I have produced is that it contains a testable hypothesis and waving yours arms in the air and saying that there was no Iranian gent with a bolt cutter in his trouser pocket is just guff.
You've got to come up with an idea that can be tested. I have. Your move.
I am sorry about suggesting you have a wife whom you don't and perhaps the Spiro allegations are nor yours as well. I never understood your theory and it is beholden on every investigator to be as clear about his theories as can be. I don't find you so.
You must tell me where your theory can be faulted, not that it is something that "must be true.
I wonder what the psychological ones you are thinking of.
Look forward hearing your reply, but until you can demonstrate AVE4041 PA came in on PA100 of 21 December 1988, my theory stands.
Witterings, eh? Well, here are some more.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the SCCRC rejecting the suitcase thing means little, so let's drop it. Nevertheless, interference with McKee's suitcase isn't something that's well and independently documented. Since you've read Johnston's book (I've only heard him interviewed), why don't you tell us what he says? He can hardly have been an eye-witness to the finding, identification, removal and replacement of the case - with running commentary for his benefit from the CIA personnel too, I suppose?
We know there were FBI personnel there from the start. It's not a secret. They had baseball caps and all. Thurman was one of them. Given that there were CIA casualties in the crash, it's hardly a surprise there were CIA personnel there too, though maybe without the baseball caps. Big deal.
Of course there were helicopters. You think they were looking for McKee's suitcase. You seem to think the alternative explanations are that they were lost, or sightseeing, or visiting their grannies. I think perhaps they were searching for and recovering bodies. The authorities initially vowed to get all the bodies off the hills and under cover with dignity by Christmas Day. They didn't quite make it, but they wouldn't have made even a dent in the task without the helicopters.
You assume Johnston is correct about the early recovery of McKee's suitcase, then you come to the completely unsupported conclusion that this coudln't just have been good luck, but there was a transponder in it. It's speculation, no more. Against it is the obvious objections airlines would make to something which could interfere with aircraft control if it accidentally activated in flight. Though it's possible the CIA could over-rule that.
But even if all these speculations are true, why does that necessarily have anything to do with the bombing? Would they not have been anxious to recover any secret information in that case even if the plane had been struck by lightning?
By the way, sorry for my mistake about McKee's suitcase being under the bomb bag. Patrick said Carlsson's was there, and I got mixed up.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the court judgement the suitcase under the bomb bag was an American Tourister, which came from the Frankfurt flight.
Sorry, premature post.
ReplyDelete"A Samsonite was dumped in a blown condition in the remains of AVE4041."
That's just silly. The Samsonite was in pieces all over the landscape, as were its contents. The container itself was found in separate pieces. There was no finding of the container with a blown-up suitace in it.
Again, the container handling problem boiled down to trying to work out the most reasonable method for baggage containers to be operated and I came to the conclusion that to handle a flight on a routine basis you need two sets. One is on the ground and one in in the air or travelling from the origin.
ReplyDeleteCharles, it sounds as if you have no more idea how aircraft baggage containers are deployed than I have. Which is to say, none at all. You can't just decide for yourself how you think it's done, then built a house of cards on the assumption you're right.
Is this another example of starting with the theory, regardless of the facts?
If you could produce someone who works in airport baggage handling to testify that this is how it's actually done, and that every container has its own pre-determined role, then you might be starting to make sense. But even then, you'd have to explain how an outsider could break into the airport during the night and figure out which container he wanted from all the scores that would be lying around. It's not that simple at all.
Lacking any evidence that this is indeed how containers are deployed, this is so much moonshine.
Look forward hearing your reply, but until you can demonstrate AVE4041 PA came in on PA100 of 21 December 1988, my theory stands.
ReplyDeleteNo, until you can demonstrate that your assumptions about baggage handling logistics are correct, your theory isn't even worth taking the time to read.
Funny how nobody else spotted all this had to be "an Iranian gent", but believe it was possible, acceptable and indeed likely the Ayatollah would pay someone else to do it.
Test your theory by finding out how baggage containers are deployed.
I will concede a point.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, McKee's suitcase was replaced from where it had been found.
p73, Johnston. "Early on Christmas Day a small group of detectives were called into the LIR for a briefing from members of the investigation team and 2 CIA officers.
One member of the team addressed the group at some point, but seemed to be evading the main point.
Eventually one of the CIA men interrupted him to clarify what was planned for that day. McKee's suitcase had to be returned to Carruthers Farm, to the exact position from where it had been taken..."
I agree that wasn't in AVE4041, PA, but I can correct that minor error.
The suitcase was then meant to be rediscovered by the police and placed in the evidence trail. Local police refused to do this so it had to be done by uninformed BTP policemen.
At this point, then, the CIA were still struggling to get the co-operation of local police.
As I keep saying the transpondered suitcase was a secret between McKee and the CIA that went to his grave. It would not be in the interests of the CIA to talk about it, of the Lockerbie story would have been broken.
The CIA has consistently misled us all on Lockerbie and the fact that they utilised a piece of equipment they have never owned up to having is obvious, isn't it. The CIA does not want the real story out.
So I agree that it was not dumped in the remains of AVE4041 PA. Careless writing, but hardly affects the main thrust of the argument.
Yes, the CIA could rely on the fact that helicopters were being used to recover bodies, so it was a good cover for their own nefarious activities.
As for AVE4041 PA, some of my more knowing friends say that what is shown in the publicity photographs is something of a botch up.
Presumably the CIA were worried that if the real amount of damage done to AVE4041 PA were shown, the idea would get about that things such as the Horton manual page would not have survived.
I actually think Johnston documents the McKee suitcase stuff well, and it is much better than the muddled stories that appeared in court.
Your information that Thurman arrived immediately after the crash is news to me, though I am not surprised. Thurman cannot be treated as an innocent FBI man, and it is interesting he was kept away from the trial. Did he appear before the Federal Grand Jury, a place for launching prosecution lies. Marquise did, but not at the trial.
Do you know how many of the other "usual suspects" turned up. You should know who I mean!
This is a very productive and useful discussion and its by a dialectic between different bodies of fact that we can move forward.
Thank you.
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteYou may have a PhD, but you do not know a thing about hypothesis tasting.
It is my claim that the baggage container had to be on the ground in the shed by at 23:00 on 20 December.
My theory does not work if it is not.
There is no point in doubting my theory until you can get hard fact that it is wrong.
Perhaps you have friends in the baggage handling trade. I don't, but I can theorise a real hypothetical system.
Then the Iranian (and you don't seem to understand the basic reason why it had to be an Iranian) broke in and planted the device.
Anyone who decides the break-in was the way the device got on the plane is faced with explaining (a) was it the break-in that was used (b) if not how else was it achieved. In one of my early arguments I created a statistical inference model which showed that the odds were about 6:1 on that the break in was connected with the destruction of the aircraft, and I can't see any other mechanism.
It's all right saying that the suitcase appeared in AVE4041 PA, but you've got to explain exactly how.
No handwaving or must have beens is allowed.
Charles, the existance of a transponder is your own assumption. Whether or not it is a likely assumption, it remains an assumption. You have no other evidence to support it.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, let us assume that Johnston is right, and the CIA did indeed locate that suitcase very quickly, take it away for investigation and presumably removal of some contents, and replace it.
Why must you necessarily assume that had anything to do with the cause of the crash?
You acknowledge that a lot of helicopter flights were being made to recover bodies. What evidence do you have that any of the helicopters seen were doing something different? It's hardly surprising that a farmer who had a lot of the contents of the plane fall on his land was aware of frequent helicopter flights, you know. You supposition that "one of them was looking for the suitcase" is only that. Supposition.
But again, supposing this is true, why does it necessarily have to have anything to do with the crash? If the CIA were concerned about sensitive documents lying about the countryside, with reporters roaming the hills, is it not quite reasonable they would have done exactly that? Even if the plane had been struck by lightning?
As for AVE4041 PA, some of my more knowing friends say that what is shown in the publicity photographs is something of a botch up.
ReplyDeletePresumably the CIA were worried that if the real amount of damage done to AVE4041 PA were shown, the idea would get about that things such as the Horton manual page would not have survived.
That's pretty peripheral. We know the baggage container as photographed was "a botch-up". It's no secret that this was reassembled from a number of pieces found scattered on the hillsides. The reassembly was done to show where the explosion was supposed to have happened, not to pretend the container was found in that condition!
Why anyone imagined for a second that the page Mrs. Horton says she found could possibly have been from a document right beside the expolsion, I have absolutely no idea. It's ridiculous.
Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteI know it's ridiculous. But is was presented in court as evidence to convict Mr Megrahi and Mr Fhimah.
And for no other reason!
Charles
It is my claim that the baggage container had to be on the ground in the shed by at 23:00 on 20 December.
ReplyDeleteThere is no point in doubting my theory until you can get hard fact that it is wrong.
You know, that's hilarious. You think you can make any wild statement you like, and it's up to someone else to prove you wrong? Would that scientific discovery were so simple!
It is my theory that the Earth's core is made of green cheese. There is no point in doubting my theory until you can get hard fact that it is wrong!
It is up to you to test your theory, to find the facts that support or refute it. Until you do that, it's no more than fantasy. Find someone in the baggage handling business, and make enquiries. The world is not unarguably the way you say it is or want it to be until someone else has gone to the bother of showing it isn't.
And you have to explain why the majority of commentators on this incident, including middle eastern experts, are wrong when they accept it was possible, indeed likely, that the Ayatollah would subcontract his revenge, and indeed that he paid Jibril about $10 million for doing the job.
I agree it seems very likely the break-in was connected to the placing of the bomb. However, I do not have to explain exactly how it was done, because I don't know and neither do you. There are many possible explanations, all speculative. You can't deduce reality by deciding what's probable.
The test of a theory is that it can be falsified. You can falsify my theory by proving that AVE4041 PA was not in position in the Interline Shed at midnight.
ReplyDeleteIt is not my job, it's yours. That's what science is about, making a claim that cannot be proved wrong not one that can be proved right.
Go and read Darwin's Origin and you will see what I mean.
You argument is one based on incredulity. Because you cannot personally believe AVE4041PA was in the Interline Shed and midnight, I am wrong, not your belief.
Then you move to the wisdom of crowds. How many people believed in the consequences of relativity before Einstein (the first time I've mentioned him, btw) before he gave his theory to the world.
Precisely none.
And how many just after. Precisely one. Eddington.
When asked about the third, he said he didn't know of him.
I was incredulous when I worked out my theory, and though you may not like it, that's your own business and you must lump it, or prove me wrong.
Charles, if you ever read anything about logical fallacies and the testing of hypotheses, you didn't understand it.
ReplyDeleteIt is your job to test your own hypothesis. Nobody else's. You have to bring it to the table well-supported. Common sense should surely show you this is true.
In science, there are no points for dreaming up fantasies. Even reasonably likely fantasies. Nobody gets paid for making assertions, and nobody gets published if they don't provide the evidence to support their thesis. (Unless you're into complementary medicine, that is!)
Your take on this, that anyone can simply make any assertion they like, point out what work is required to falsify it, then rest on their laurels while someone else does that work, and if they don't feel like doing it you claim vindication, is simply ridiculous.
I can just as easily assert that baggage containers are sent to a convenient central store once they have been unloaded, and are available there as required. Loaders requiring a container simply take the next one handy and label it up as appropriate. This is just as likely as your suggestion, perhaps more so as it eliminates the problems caused by having to locate a specific container when it's needed.
You don't settle this by trying to decide which suggestion is the more likely. You settle it by finding out how it's actually done. Personally, the logistics of assigning baggage containers is not something I'm concerned about. You, however, are concerned about it. It is central to your hypothesis that it should be done a certain way. The onus is therefore on YOU to find out.
By the way, Charles, you got one of your alleged logical fallacies wrong. When I pointed out that Middle East experts are content to accede to the suggestion that the Ayatollah would most probably have contracted-out his revenge, and that he appears to have done exactly that, it wasn't the wisdom of crowds.
ReplyDeleteIt was an appeal to authority.
The thing about appeal to authority is, it's a valid argument if the authority actually knows what he's talking about.
I don't know which Ayatollah you are referring to.
ReplyDeleteThere are several.
If you mean Khomenei, he doesn't seem to be a big player in Lockerbie and the blowing up of 103 was arranged by straightforward intergovernmental negotiation.
It was not contacted out. Qesas does not allow that.
Authority is OK if it is valid, but you've got to look at the reasons beyond the authority.
Nevermind. I was using "Ayatollah" as shorthand for "the Iranian government".
ReplyDeleteYou need to learn the difference between evidence and assertion. All you have is the latter. You said some time ago that you rigorously tested your theories against the facts. You don't even know the facts. You only pay attention to facts you can twist to support your already-decided theories.
Post after post, you demonstrate that you're so lost in the fantasy-land of your own theorising that you're simply unaware of a lot of what is already known, facts that anyone can pick up in a few weeks if they read for information rather than cherry-picking to fuel the fantasies.
Have you found anyone who can tell you how baggage containers are organised? Remember, I theorised, quite logically, that they are returned to a convenient store when emptied, and loaders who need a container simply choose a suitable one from there. At midnight, nobody would have known which container to sabotage. If you can't prove me wrong, you'll just have to lump it.
Or maybe I theorise that the baggage containers always stay with the plane. In which case AVE4041 landed at Heathrow at noon, when Maid of the Seas touched down from San Fransisco. At midnight it was in California. The onus is on you to prove me wrong. If you don't, I must be right.
Both times.
Might I make a suggestion, Charles and Rolfe: could you both please re-read paragraphs 19-25 of the Lockerbie Judgment?
ReplyDeleteIn particular, para 25, which says: "It was submitted that there was evidence that an American Tourister suitcase, which had travelled from Frankfurt, fragments of which had been recovered, had been very intimately involved in the explosion and could have been placed under the suitcase spoken to by Mr Bedford."
But, according to Sanya Popovic-Bogdanich the suitcase belonging to Bernt Carlsson "was apparently immediately underneath the one containing the bomb, and quite considerably shattered."
So, did the American Tourister belong to Carlsson? If so, it came from Brussels - not Frankfurt. If not, is it true that Carlsson's suitcase was immediately underneath the one containing the bomb?
Referring to your last paragraph, who knows?
ReplyDeleteI pointed out that part of the court judgement earlier, twice. It's not stated as definite that the Tourister was there, just that it was believed to be there. On the other hand we only have a relative's recollection that she was told Carlsson's suitcase was under the bomb.
Fog of war, I suspect. This was all pieced together from bits scattered around the Scottish countryside. They were mainly concentrating on characterising the bomb, the rest is probably less certain.
At a guess, I'd say the American Tourister (from PA103A) was probably under the bomb, as the forensic evidence apparently points that way, and Carlsson's suitcase (from Brussels) was badly damaged and someone has suggested to his sister that it might have been under the bomb.
The point is: the American Tourister suitcase - whether beneath the bomb bag or not - was identified.
ReplyDeleteCarlsson's bag however could not be identified (nor even a 'single shred' of his belongings). According to girl friend Sanya Popovic-Bogdanovich (and sister Inger Carlsson-Musser): "I was quite surprised to find that despite our reactions to that bag, the Crown chose to say there was a definitive identification. Which there certainly wasn't."
So, what happened to Carlsson's luggage?
Charles, the existance of a transponder is your own assumption. Whether or not it is a likely assumption, it remains an assumption. You have no other evidence to support it.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, let us assume that Johnston is right, and the CIA did indeed locate that suitcase very quickly, take it away for investigation and presumably removal of some contents, and replace it.
== Spelling, Rolfe. Something that is an assumption has, be definition a “finite probability”. And that is not a finite probability of zero. You say as much in your own statement, but I am not really sure that you understand what you've said. What you've conceded that if the circumstances I propose in my theory could have happened, it cannot be discounted until it can be shown (your or others job, by the way) that a fact that my theory is wrong.
== I take Mr Johnston seriously, because he was a IRN journalist. His book, which most have caused disquiet to the CIA over his claims, is entirely overlooked by any official accounts or the commentocracy. Clearly, he is not part of the CIA's plot. He would not have been threatened with being precognosed, if he were, and that threat was never carried out. In other words, like Mrs Horton he was a reliable witness of what he saw.
The reported honestly, and pretty fully.
== I have explained at length that the CIA are not going to tell us about the transponder, and if asked for reasons, they might say "we never discuss operational matters", or if that were too revealing simply stay mum. With McKee dead, the only knowledge of the transponder could have come from the CIA. My proposal for finding Mr McKee's suitcase works, and yours would have required hundreds or even more CIA men drafted in to find the case, for I think you accept they found it. It was potentially findable in about 20 square miles of hillside, but it was, and was then in the Lockerbie Investigation centre ready to be replaced by Christmas morning. It must has been found well before that. How?
Why must you necessarily assume that had anything to do with the cause of the crash?
== I say, and just stop repeating yourself, and listen for once,that it was nothing to do with the cause of the crash. But the operation of the transponder in McKee's suitcase, caused by the crash (NOT caused the crash), allowed the CIA to locate it, a private matter between them and McKee, which has never been revealed and is not in the CIA's interests to reveal. Do you think the CIA really wants you, Rolfe, to know what happened? They don't. They want you to believe the evidence that has appeared in court, or listen to "real" (i.e. safe commentators), like Mr Hersh who say the Airbus was an accident.
== It is nothing to do with the cause of the crash, which was the stick on by the Iranian gent, seeking "qesas"
You acknowledge that a lot of helicopter flights were being made to recover bodies. What evidence do you have that any of the helicopters seen were doing something different? It's hardly surprising that a farmer who had a lot of the contents of the plane fall on his land was aware of frequent helicopter flights, you know. You supposition that "one of them was looking for the suitcase" is only that. Supposition.
== You cannot be surprised if I turn that question round the other way. Have you proved that all such flights were to do with body recovery or wreckage location. They could well have been looking for something else such a McKee's suitcase, and how on a Scottish winter's day do you find something as small as that in an area of 20 square miles.
(Charles, continued)
ReplyDeleteBut again, supposing this is true, why does it necessarily have to have anything to do with the crash? If the CIA were concerned about sensitive documents lying about the countryside, with reporters roaming the hills, is it not quite reasonable they would have done exactly that? Even if the plane had been struck by lightning?
== Logic there. If McKee's suitcase did have a transponder in it, and it had operated, surely the CIA would have used that fact?
== How do you know the CIA was concerned about documents lying around the countryside.
As usual the story must have originated with them, and can be safely dismissed as from the CIA, like Giaka is and unreliable witness.
I have always though the documents story to be rather a distraction. Indeed the operation could have been described as a failure, as money was found on the ground as were drugs,, and apparently a map of a hostage flat in Beirut. So what were the more damaging documents? It may even be a disinformation exercise, for the cover story for the Glyon negotiations was that were about hostages, (however unlikely and thin that lie seems today). A bit of artful confetti about flats in Beirut would have be a perfect CIA distraction trick.
==It is my claim that the baggage container had to be on the ground in the shed by at 23:00 on 20 December, 20 December 1988.
==There is no point in doubting my theory until you can get hard fact that it is wrong.
It has finite probability that is true, and then must be proved wrong by a fact!
You know, that's hilarious. You think you can make any wild statement you like, and it's up to someone else to prove you wrong? Would that scientific discovery were so simple!
== The statement is not “wild”. We're taking about a baggage container not, say, an elephant.
== What is wrong with my claim? It is a pity that someone who has had an eduction to apparently postgraduate level cannot tell one end of an argument from another. But it seems to be true. If it makes you laugh, it might just be because it is right!
It is my theory that the Earth's core is made of green cheese. There is no point in doubting my theory until you can get hard fact that it is wrong!
== This is being silly. For one thing the density calculations for the Earth, known for a good 200 years would be wrong, and your pathetic attempt at humour is not very funny.
We do not need samples of the core, which in fact we have not got to known the core of the Earth is not a cheese.
It is up to you to test your theory, to find the facts that support or refute it. Until you do that, it's no more than fantasy. Find someone in the baggage handling business, and make enquiries. The world is not unarguably the way you say it is or want it to be until someone else has gone to the bother of showing it isn't.
== You've made the elementary error of misusing the word "test". To test a theory is to break it. A theory can either be broken or not, and there is no half-measure. You have not read Popper, or you would not make such silly statements. It is not my job to find someone in the baggage handling industry and prove I am wrong, it's yours, or people like you. The baggage container could have been on the ground since 23:00 20 December 1988 or before, and it's not my job to disprove it.
Hey... what if... the Bedford suitcase was a plant? I mean, it was found damaged, cause of where Bedford recalled it being loaded. But then messed up worse, to seem like THE bomb bag, and matched with Maltese clothes scraps and the Libyan electronics debris. Then Bedford's recall becomes crucial, but visibly dismissed, leading the inevitable conspiracy theories to latch onto it - it matches the "bomb bag!"
ReplyDeleteWhy would they want us discussing THE bag like that? I bet we've never heard of it and nary a trace was ever found. Sorry, I don't "bet" that, I'm just fantasizing.
And really as Charles says maybe the container was sabotaged. That might fit better with the break-in, a better use of their window of time then leaving a bag that might look suspicious after a break-in. But as I think Rolfe pointed out, there's the problem of loading. If you rig one side hoping it's agaainst the hull. it could backfire and get loaded the other way. Damaged luggage and probably a turn-around to re-land then.
McKee and a transponder is an interesting possibility. But I'm not seeing the relevance to the bombing or the coverup of anything other than that. The evidence was put back, perhaps missing something, prob. because the police like to collect things where they fell, so they can study the patterns of where things fell.
There was rumored a helicopter and red tarp lifting something large away from the debris field. Watchers were reportedly warned back by a sniper rifle on board, indicating they were serious. (Paul Foot's book? For real or urban legend?)
Patrick - I will have to check the Judgement at home. I am baffled how anyone can say if a particular suitcase was underneath or on top of the primary suitcase. This may however be the suitcase of Karen Noonan in which (according to Feraday) the fragment of MST-13 timer was embedded.
ReplyDeleteFor those readers who are interested in the Indian Head tests (and do not dismiss them as "irrelevant" because they did not take account of some crackpot theory) I found the following gem in David Leppard's fabulously useful "On the Trail of Terror."
On another thread I responded to Peter Biddulph's question of how the Indian Head tests could (according to the Crown Office) recover fragments of PCB when RARDE was yet to recover PT35B.
I replied "The simple answer is that they were not based on knowledge of the existence of PT35B or the operating manual" which I believe to be true.
However page 106 of Leppard refers to a memo titled "The Significance of Explosion Damaged Clothing" appressed to "Dear John" (Orr?). The date of the document is not given but it appears to have been created before March 1989 when officers were dispatched to Malta to investigated the label "Malta Trading Company" (not "Made in Malta") in the babygro garment.
This document "defined the fundamental principles of the forensic investigation into the bomb suitcase clothing" that
"Where explosive damaged clothing carries fragments of any or all of (a) the explosive device (cassette radio), (b) the cassette radio instruction manual and (c)" -ect.
"The cassette radio instruction manual" ?
Perhaps Lockerbie researcher Peter Biddulph or Dr Swire might raise this with Gareth Peirce.
Rolfe: I found out some time ago there is no point in trying to engage Charles in any sort of rational discussion. It is just a complete waste of time and you will just be dragged into a quagmire of ludicrous assertions.
ReplyDeleteI respnded to his dismissal of the significance of the Indian Head tests because in his words "Lockerbie was screwed up from the beginning - it was a CIA operation". Apparently he also thinks the tests are irrelevant because they did not take into account his own (unintelligible) theory. My point was that the tests were to give scientific credence to the decision to "eliminate" Heathrow".
I asked Charles if it was "a CIA operation" how this fitted with his claims of an Iranian wandering round the Interline Baggage Shed on the evening of the 20.12.88 with a bomb, a roll of masking tape and a pair of bolt-cutters stashed in his y-fronts.
He comes up with his usual response - a series of utterly irrelevant questions couched in a hectoring and aggresive tone - "have you read Machiavelli?" (what bit of Machievelli is of relevance you are supposed to guess) - "have you studied Iranian jurisprudence?" "have you read the AAIB report?" "why do you put an apostrophe in the word "it's"?
For good measure he accuses me of denying Major McKee phoned his mother, which is not what I said at all, he made some creepy comment about my ex-wife (I have never met or spoken to Charles nor wish to) and for good measure he accuses me of conspiring to murder him! (and I am accused of being impolite!)
Now it is up to me to "prove" AVE4041 arrived at Heathrow on flight PA100! I don't know how it arrived at Heathrow. As far as I can understand from his rambling and tedious "book" he has a theory that airliners always carry the same containers. This is not something he supports with evidence. Presumably it is up to me to disprove it!
So according to this theory of "sets" AVE4041 is always on PA103 so on the basis of his theory it would be on it's (!) way to New York on the evening of the 20.12.88so it would come back on the 21.12.88 on PA100. So now it is up to me to "prove" his theory that I think is bonkers anyway!
I suggest you just try an ignore him - while he claims his theories with "revolutionise Lockerbie thinking" they actually make Stuart Nicol's "Pan-Am What Really Happened" look like a work of genius.
May I try to clarify things a little? I am very old and been around a bit and as well as being a former diplomat, I also worked for a while for BAA at Heathrow where I worked in Operations Research analysing baggage handling systems for wide-bodied jets such as the Boeing 747. There are hundreds, probably thousands of 747-compatible baggage containers lying all over Heathrow. Most are the property of individual airlines and bear that airline's logo, but each aircraft certainly does NOT have its own set of containers. Any one of dozens of containers could have contained the IED. As it happens it was AV4041, probably because that was the container closest to hand at the loading area when a container was needed. I believe that any theory which has the IED actually attached to the container more than a couple of hours before departure time is a non-starter. It would be possible to attach the IED to the container within the final couple of hours before dpearture, although it would be quite difficult to conceal and therefore very risky. Baggage containers a quite flimsy and are of an open disign which means you can see the entire interior and most of the exterior at a glance. You would have to stick the IED to the underside of the floor to avoid the it being spotted. Even then, there is a good chance it would be spotted when the container was lifted on the loading lift to get it on board the aircraft. A lot of the comments on this post seem to presume that Heathrow (and Frankfurt) are orderly places where things are kept in place and everything is accounted for. This is not so. Heathrow is (and was even more so in the 80s) utterly chaotic and shambolic. Thefts and break-ins were common, suitcases are to be found lying around all over the place having fallen of the conveyor or off loading trucks, or have been sent to the wrong loading bay and then have been manually carried over to the right one. I remember several occasions where I found suitcases lying about in the airside area and picked them up and took them to where their tag said they should be. It would have been (and still would be) VERY easy to insert a rogue suitcase into the baggage handlling system at any big airport. And on another, related, matter, it is not at all unusual for containers to be repacked after having been filled with suicases. Nor do all suitcases lie on their sides in a container. Baggage handlers will place them in the most secure way. Sometimes this will be with all cases on their sides, sometimes (especially with rigid-sided cases), the handers might leave the cases on their spines for all or part of a row of bags, depending on the size, weight or rigidity of the case. I'm afraid you just can't say that X container belonged to Y aircraft and that z suitcase was on the bottom or middle row of cases in the container just because that's where the handler put it there originally.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Aku, for this clarification. It matches what every frequent flyer assumes.
ReplyDeleteWise diplomatic words from Aku! And as usual a helpful contribution from Adam.
ReplyDeleteAll the secrets of the universe will apparently be revealed if we go to baz's website, but baz says we should ignore Charles because 'his theory is bonkers anyway'!
Rolfe gets apoplectic whenever I mention apartheid South Africa in the context of the Lockerbie bombing. And Rolfe and his tag team mate Caustic Logic insist that we should be forensically investigating the PA 103 intricacies not on Professor Black's blog but on their own preferred JREF website. However, baz who uses the computer in his local public library cannot access JREF because it is classified as an 'occult' site.
So how about Rolfe and Caustic Logic withdrawing to the relative obscurity of the JREF website?
That way, we can keep the number of comments on the Lockerbie Case Blogspot posts to manageable numbers!
keep in mind that in almost all cases it is better to address other editors' reasoning than it is to accuse them of being on a team.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tag_team
Also, Patrick, please bite me.
Yay, I killed the discussion at 165! How's that for limiting the amount of debate, Patrick?
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Aku - exactly my experience when I was a Detective Inspector based at the Police Station of a major airport. Charles' "theory" doesn't explain why this "Iranian" stuck his bomb on the container supposedly designated (in his "theory") for PA103 and not PA101.
ReplyDeleteto Caustic Logic: Leaving aside whether the IED needs to be close to the hull if you place the IED on the sloping side of the container it will always be adjacent to the hull whether on the port or starboard side of the plane.
My theory does actually. It is one of the strongest points. The traditional Iranian law of retribution (dating from the tine of Cyrus the Great, 1200 years before Islam) permits only a relatively of someone who has been wrongly killed, or possibly a members of the Iranian Government to seek revenge.
ReplyDeleteI think is a very powerful argument and more so than the CIA based claim that Iran paid the PFLP GC to carry out the attack.
The author of the comment that I am wrong will not do any basic background research into his theories, and if he was a DI, he is no better than the class of detecetive that cocked-up Lockerbie.
Which airport Baz? Heathrow perhaps?
The device was never on the sloping part. Have you looked at Appenix 7 of the AAIB report?
Cyrus the Great said members of the Iranian Government can seek revenge?
ReplyDeleteThe "CIA based claim Iran paid the PFLP-GC to carry out the attack"?
I didn't say the device was on the "sloping part". I said if it was on the "sloping side".
Kaitak.
Of course not a whisper about Aku's sensible post. Whatever anybody says AVE4041 was in the Interline Baggage Shed on the evening of the 20.12.88 and the "Iranian" knew this was to take Interline luggage for a flight more than 18 hours later even if it wasn't marked-up as such because containers are in "sets". As I said Charles is incapable of rational argument.
Come on Charles publish and be damned!
First of all, I am sorry I wrote "relatively" for the word "relative", and I meant the latter word.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Iranian Revolution happened in 1979, it was motivated by those who hated the Shah and his American modernisers and wanted to return to traditional values.
I was in Iran in 1978, and converstaion with ordinary Iranains convinced me that many were very unhappy with the Shah, but I confess I have no more personal knowledge than that, and my view of "Iranian revenge theory" is based upon my reading of "Iranian law and jurisprudence".
It may be weak and unstructured but I think is sound.
As an example of Iranian demands for revenge, consider this item from the Times reprinted in the Huffington Post from October 2009:
"The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards today vowed to take revenge against Britain and the United States whom he claims backed the group that killed six commanders."
I don't think the Pasdaran was involved with Lockerbie for Iranian anger was much too deeply felt and widespread for that, but they may have been behind the claims of seeking to down five to a dozen aircraft. in revenge.
I cannot see what is wrong with the CIA based claim. It is probably what would have happened if the neceassity of the Libya attribution had not come about.
By sloping side, I took you to mean that it as on the sloping part. It would have been clearer to have said "the side that must lie outboard become of the shape of the cargo hold". One must be immensely clear in what one writes.
I expect the Iranian was told exactly by the CIA which baggage container to put it in.
I too am re-reading Appendix 7 of the AAIB report, which is very instructive.
I am not going to offer the whole of my heory to Baz, simpy for it to be trashed by a "conspiracy theorist", who doesn't know one end of a conspiracy from the other.
Kaitak must be a reference to Hong Kong, and is presumably the airport where you served as a DI.
I personally have very little doubt that the Lockerbie disaster arose from the Vincennes Incident as my several articles would confirm. However my "Iranian revenge theory" is not based on my reading of "Iranian law and jurisprudence". I do not believe the Nazis persecuted the Jews because it was mandated by the Nuremburg decrees.
ReplyDelete"I cannot see what is wrong with the CIA claim. It is probably what would have happened if the necessity of the Libyan attribution had not come about". (unintelligible I am afraid).
"I expect the Iranian was told exactly by the CIA which baggage container to put it in". Clearly Aku was labouring under the delusion you are "an innocent (?) in search of the truth". Did you even to bother to read what he said? Is he wrong and your "theory" right?
"I too am re-reading appendix 7 of the AAIB report" - as well as whom?
Unlike yourself I am not a "conspiray theorist". I am
concerned with evidence, having, unlike yourself, actually conducted criminal investigations. I am however very disappointed that you are keeping your theory to yourself. Firstly I would be interested in other people's opinions of it and secondly I could do with a laugh.
p.s. My friend Caustic Logic (to whom my remark was addressed ) wrote "if you rig one side hoping it's against the hull. It could backfire and get loaded the other way". I was merely pointing out this is not the case, that it is always against the hull. Is that too difficult for you to grasp?
Dear Baz,
ReplyDeleteYou seem to be addressing me.
I really don't follow your argument about Nuremburg, and there is a saying about blogs that he who mentions Nazis first has lost the argument. You just lost.
I shall therefore classify you with Mr Duggan, who has said the most dreadful libellous things about me, and is ever the more stupid for that.
It is worth understanding what the Iranian in the street would think about the Airbus incident. And so having a look at the background to recent social, religious and political cahnges in Iran, don't you think.
You might think that only Americans practise democracy, but in their own way, Iranians do too.
And issues such as the disgraceful handling of the hanging chadds, suggest to me that American democracy is only about process and is not truly felt except in the most superficial and state serving kind of way.
What is unintelligible with my sentence that you criticise. It is after all written in grammatical English. It has a subject and a predicate. Perhaps you don't like it's meaning.
Thre is no need to tried to curry favour with other bloggers in your inept campaign against me.
I take it you then still have not read the AAIB report and understood it. It takes a deal of understanding. Perhaps you are not up to it.
If it were not for conspiracies, there would not be conspiracy theorists, so don't try that one, or are you pot-calling again.
I was never a policeman, but at one time I wouldn't talk to any below Superintendant, except to tell them what to do.
My police contact book probably outranks yours.
But what special training in thinking and logic did you receive to carry out investigations.
I read a lot of detective fiction, singling out GK Chesterton as my favourite. You can see elements of three of Chesterton's plots in Lockerbie, starting with "The Twelve True Fishermen".
Now don't claim a friendship with Mr Logic. He is, of course, on the running for the Dalyellian Chair in Lockerbie studies. You aren't.
The phrase was written in (almost) grammatical English. It is not that I didn't like what it meant I just didn't understand what it meant!
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest - you are incapable of rational discussion. Was "Aku" just making it up?
Do you think the Dalyellian Chair in Lockerbie studies should be a Lawyer, a Political Scientist a Criminoligist, an expert in Iranian jurisprudence or a Psychologist?
sorry, I never did pop back with an "aha" about the *side that's partially slanted*
ReplyDeleteSo that would hep this possibility I'm willing to think about a little. I'm not sseeing what kind of bomb could be placed in/on a container and not be spotted afterwards. Maybe I missed that explanation somewhere in the million posts above.
Sorry, nothing else to add.
The Dalyellian Chair in Lockerbie Studies is open to all who believe a coherent and rational account of that atrocity is achievable.
ReplyDeleteContenders for the chair must demonstrate a thorough understanding of Lockerbie issues, have their own considered theory, and be able to defend it in the most aggressive and searching of forums.
Imagine it as being Mastermind on speed. (Namericans must be told that Mastermind is a quizprog from the BBC, iconic of the genre.
Contestants answer a round of a topic of their own choosing and a general round. They do not compete aginst other contestants.
The questions are put by a leading BBC anchor, who prefers to call himself a presenter and the current incumbent is on R4's Today programme, the most incisive such in the universe, and against which this blogger has been up about three times (not about Lockerbie). The most singular incident led to the outing of Sukri Ghanam, PM of Libya.)
So far, neither a seat of learning, nor funding of the chair has been organised, though there are allegedly many Departments of Lockerbie Studies around the world.
My current list of contenders include Dr. Jim Swire, Professor Ludwig de Breackeleer, Mr Caustic Logic and Mr Gideon Levy.
Others, including Mr Marquise, Mr Henderson, Mr Baer, Mr Cannistraro, Mr Macfadyen, Lord Fraser and Lady Thatcher are regretfully barred as having too much previous on the matter.
The Crown's statements about the Indian Head tests are typical irrelevant lawyer's remarks.
ReplyDeleteThe point is that if the Wyatt tests (carried out 20 times, no less) mimicked in protocol what had been done at the IH tests, and they mimicked Lockerbie, no fragments of suitcase, circuit board from timer or Toshiba manual page would have been recovered. Period.
The order in which the tests were carried out is irrelevant. The brisant explosion created in either test (if properly carried out) would not have left any suitcase or content remains. Period.
It is significant that the IH tests did not test out, it seems, alternative arrangements for the disguise of the bomb, From what little that has been published, it would seem the only configuration that was tested was of a bomb in cassette player in a suitcase, I do not think the alternatives of a stick-on, a lined explosive suitcase, a throw in, or any other configuration was tested.
So how did the organisers of the IH tests know that they had to copy in April 1989 to try out the configuration they did? Had they as I suspect been told to try this particular configuration and no other?
If so, who told them? Our friend from the CIA, Mr pseudonym Orkin?
It is typical of the IH tests that they were a publicity stunt, and little else. Pretty pictures of suitcases blowing up in baggage containers might make good telly, but are not science and I have yet to see a full analytical study on what survived.
Oh, the perpetrators of Lockerbie hang themselves very slowly, and it's a short, short drop, and in the end, if we keep hammering on at the inconsistencies and illogicalities we'll get there. And then the fun really will begin. Conspiracy theorists will roast conspiracists!
Charles, back to the subject. Aku has explained that there would have been no question of the baggage containers regularly going the samw route, or the containers that would be used on a 6pm flight being at the airport and identifiable 18 hours earlier.
ReplyDeleteThis is only common sense. Planes are delayed and re-routed all the time. If loaders were expected to use a pre-determined baggage container for every flight, this would cause massive and escalating disruption every time a flight was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not to mention the time wasted trying to find the exact containers you want, every time.
Not only that, keeping containers on the ground, inactive and unproductive, for 18 hours in a day, is business nonsense. You don't want these things sitting on the ground empty taking up storage space, you want them full od cases in the air.
Common sense says your theory is wrong. Aku says that in his personal experience of baggage handling, your theory is wrong.
I don't think Aku said that.
ReplyDelete!
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ReplyDeleteFirstly, he said that there were lots of empty containers sitting around at Heathrow, meaning in effect that they're there to bring order to baggage operations and the sensible airline baggage manager would organise a "suite" system arranging for the same containers to go out regularly on an alternate day basis, replacing one only as it became damaged or in major reorganisation, not carried out daily. That makes your comment about "you don't want containers sitting on the ground, you want then full of cases in the air", very silly.
One of the important lessons of operational research is "de-bottlenecking". When I modelled the Crown Court system, in England and Wales, it was obvious that the major problem was a lack of judges. The simple solution was to appoint more. You did not solve the problems of court delay by building more prisons, or courts, but by turning lawyers into judges. It was one of the more respectable arguments for solicitor judges.
Common sense says my theory is likely to have a grain of truth in it. Planning is the essence of good operational research, whether it's efficiently sweeping the seas for submarines (Coastal Command, WWII rea of sea swept, not time in the air of searchers was the important criterion), organising the unloading of blast furnaces will a single crane and bucket, loading a pallet with boxes of Kit-Kat efficiently or determining rubbish collection rounds, or mobile libraries once specialities of mine. Very similar problems.
So baggage containers are organised around 747 flights, not the other way around. Though we do have Douglas Adams' example of being held up on the ground at Heathrow, because the breakfast hadn't been loaded, and he'd only taken the plane to be certain of an early meeting in Leeds! A pilot who believes that people fly to eat airline breakfasts, is surely in need of certification!
Picking containers at random at about 7:00 when Pan Am staff arrived and then labelling them is far too simplistic.
A baggage loading pattern would have been established on paper in an office and then the plan as sticky labels taken and placed as far as possible on the pre-lined up suite of containers that had be landed the day before and occupied the spaces that the outgoing containers for the outgoing 103 of 20 December 1988 had.
Sensible and simple. First containers could have been going to all sorts of destinations other than NY. Some might br transferring to other airlines, some just to NY. It is not something than can be held in the head or dreamt up at the last minute.
"Planes are delayed and re-routed all the time." As little as possible. A big fog and the delays in bringing the system back into operation can far exceed the length of the fog.
(continued - limit exceeded again!)
ReplyDeletePan Am was, par excellence, a full-service airline. The passenger arrived at the check-in desk and his baggage was disposed of never to be seen again until just before customs at the final airport. Ryanair and their like made their money by having the passenger manage his own baggage. Airline models of operation were derived from the US railways, where the separation of bag and passenger was similarly complete. In Europe, you kept your bag with you, or became your own baggage master, putting the bag in the guard's van and getting it off. Fewer things likely to go wrong!
If the system is really as unorganised as you think, it was not and a loading plan would have to have been worked out will in advance.
As you know I believe that the Iranian gent was a very small pert of the operation, and he was working to a CIA plan (well actually CTC). Baggage loading plans are not secret, and I am sure the CIA informed itself of them in advance and so the Iranian gent could be told which container to hit, and it had to be the one that would contain Mr McKee's transpondered suitcase. That in essence is the real mystery you've got to explain. How did Mr McKee's suitcase end up in the container with the bomb in it. McKee's suitcase did not contain the bomb, we know that
.... the sensible airline baggage manager would organise a "suite" system arranging for the same containers to go out regularly on an alternate day basis, replacing one only as it became damaged or in major reorganisation....
ReplyDeleteI entirely disagree. The sensible way to organise this system is to have sufficient containers to ensure that there is always one (or more) available when required. Unloaded containers are taken to a convenient storage area, and are collected from there when needed. They're only glorified supermarket trollies after all.
Anything else would be extremely inefficient. You only need one plane to be re-routed or significantly delayed, and your entire schedule is haywire. Just one wrong container being grabbed for a flight, and the whole thing escalates. Some idiot has started loading the wrong container for a flight that's due to depart, do you delay everyone while you unload it and put the luggage in the right one? By your way of thinking, you'd have to. It's bad enough getting the planes back in the right places after a major disruption, but to have to get luggage containers back to their "proper" places on the other side of the world - it's ludicrous.
It's also, as I said, inefficient. It requires containers to sit, unused, in the airport, for many hours. This means more containers are likely to be required, and more storage space. Instead of just taking the one nearest you when you need it, you may have to scramble around the storage area manoeuvring the one you need out from behind a dozen others.
If your speciality is logistics, heaven help your clients.
Look again at what Aku said.
I am very old and been around a bit and as well as being a former diplomat, I also worked for a while for BAA at Heathrow where I worked in Operations Research analysing baggage handling systems for wide-bodied jets such as the Boeing 747. There are hundreds, probably thousands of 747-compatible baggage containers lying all over Heathrow. [....] Any one of dozens of containers could have contained the IED. As it happens it was AV4041, probably because that was the container closest to hand at the loading area when a container was needed. I believe that any theory which has the IED actually attached to the container more than a couple of hours before departure time is a non-starter.
He then goes on to deal with the manifest difficulties of using the container to carry the bomb, even if you were able to plant it after the container had been selected for the flight in quuestion. I suggest you go back and read that bit too, because it's very pertinent.
But you know what? This isn't a matter for speculation. This is a matter of fact. It is essential for your theory that baggage handling has to be the way you say it is. It is therefore up to you to establish that you're right.
Aku, who has actual experience in the subject, says you're wrong. You cannot continue to assert your theory until you have cleared this up and shown Aku to be mistaken.
I will be extremely surprised if Aku is wrong.
Dear Rolfe,
ReplyDeleteI have to address this to you.
You may has a PhD, but I don't think you've done any operational research. At one time I earned my daily crust doing it.
You approach research in a hermeneutic way. You take a text and expound upon it. All right for sermons in Church, but not for real research. The sensible way is to engage with Mr Aku, and ask him what he exactly means by what he writes. Your job, by the way. So far, I am unconvinced by Mr. Aku's claim that it would have been impossible to have attached an IED to a container more than a couple of hours.
You actually have to split up the issues of the iED and its attachment. They are different.
I do not at the moment have to respond to any of your criticisms, as you have not addressed the issues of why I am wrong, and your views on container operation are, I think, balderdash.
In essence, any IED attached to a container being or mimicking a PFLP GC device could be placed minutes, hours, days, weeks or months before, and it would be quite safe until it was flown and the IED activated by that sophisticated barometric/timer device.
That's what you've actually got to disprove.
And then of course you have to deal with the question of how the baggage container was blown up in your scenario.
Introduction, mechanism, process, opportunity and method. My theory has all of these, and I STILL don't know what yours is.
Following the Wyatt tests, suitcases are out!
I hope you accept that, at least.
I don't have to prove or disprove anything. You're the one with the theory, it's up to you to support it.
ReplyDeleteAku is presumably reading this blog, and will comment if he feels it appropriate. I have, in any case, no other way of contacting him.
It is you who has no clue about "operational research". Just for information, I'm earning rather more than a crust as a diagnostic pathologist. If I were to say, well, my theory about the cause of death is such-and-such, my job's done, it's up to anyone who disagrees with me to order the tests to prove it, I'd be out on my ear. In particular, I'd be laughed out of court in my expert witness work, and nobody would ever employ me again.
"Why were these tests not carried out, Dr. Rolfe?" "Oh, that's your job, Mr. Advocate. You have to order the tests. If you can't prove me wrong, you must accept what I say!" I don't think so.
Aku has explained to you that you're wrong, from a position of personal knowledge. You can say you're unconvinced by this till you're blue in the face. It's only the Internet after all. However, you've lost all credibility.
If I were to email a friend who works in the airline industry (baggage control at Gatwick) and ask him this question, would you pay any more attention to his answer than to Aku's? I suspect not. You're too wrapped up in your own certainty to listen to actual facts.
I don't have a theory. I don't know what happened. I hoped you might have a plausible scenario worth exploring, but it appears not. Your theory is far-fetched, implausible, resting on discredited premises, and lacks substantiation. Not good enough.
By the way, what on earth is a "solicitor judge"? As far as I know, there's no such thing. I'm aware of solicitor advocates of course, having worked with several, but as I understand it solicitors aren't even allowed to be JPs.
When I modelled the Crown Court system, in England and Wales, it was obvious that the major problem was a lack of judges. The simple solution was to appoint more. You did not solve the problems of court delay by building more prisons, or courts, but by turning lawyers into judges. It was one of the more respectable arguments for solicitor judges.
I call BS on this little lot. The term "Walter Mitty" comes inexprably to mind.
You're wrong their Rolfe. I have a theory. You have to knock it down!
ReplyDeleteA diagnostic pathologist is not an operational researcher. Your eminent qualifications in the path field do not equip you to pontificate on OR.
The line you take about your path conclusions was exactly the line taken by Professor Basutill of Glasgow (I think that's correct) who saw complete bodies at the site of the nose of the aircraft but could retrieve only small body parts at the site of Sherwood Crescent. The reason for the break-up of the bodies. Air Friction, he said. Perhaps you could tell me of the theory of air friction. Those bodies had been diced by something in a large explosion.
He has never been challenged properly about this incredible conclusion.
As to test results. Why did Dr Hayes carry out the minimum number of gas cromatograph tests hecould get away with?
Mr. Aku has not replied to the hermeneutic explanation you have given.
e shall await his contribution.
And I shall go on saying what I am saying until I am blue in the face or YOU CAN PROVE I AM WRONG.
Please email your friend in baggage at Gatwick, remembering, of course that what happened in 1988 might be different from today.
"I don't have a theory". Well you do, it is that I am wrong! So how was the Maid blown up, or perhaps you are that curious subset of people who believe it wasn't!
How can you say I have a "discredited premise", when youclaim you don't have any.
Solicitors can be made High Court Judges. There is a "Judge Norrie", the first so appointed and as far I can tell, no relation.
So you don't believe I worked on a computerised model of the Crown Court System. I think I know more about my own career than you do!
The phrases, naive and arrogant academic "indulging in speculation in his ivory tower" come to mind!
Yawn.
ReplyDeleteUntested speculation is not a theory. No scientist sits back and tells others what they have to do to test his speculations. He gets on and does it himself.
You can shout all you like about your personal fantasies, but they remain fantasies until you gather the evidence for them. It's not my business or anybody else's to do that.
And I see no reason to email my friend in Gatwick, when you have already made it plain that you won't accept any information that contradicts your own baseless fantasising, no matter how authoritative the information might be.
Just for interest, if you have, by purely intellectual means, managed to divine the perfect baggage handling system, and you're so sure it's so perfect that Heathrow must have been doing it that was in 1988 - why would they have changed it?
Until you get off your backside and do your own work to test your theory (and accept the information that is given to you), I'm done.
This exchange with you is now closed, until you get off your backside and (a) learn something about hypothesis testing, (b) stop saying that ideas you personally do not like/believe are feasible are necessarily wrong (c) adopt a more humble approach to fact, (d) try to understand that there must be a mechanism that the plotters used to blow up the Lockerbie plane.
ReplyDeleteMy hypothesis is testable, and you essentially have said no more than that you have a personal distaste with it. Mr Aku must explain himself at more length, before I can accept his arguments.
A PLFLP GC device, or one that mimics it is perfectly stable, unless it is flown above 8000'for 30 minutes; that it why it is so fiendishly clever.
Nobody has shown that it would have been detected either in the form of a stick on or a bag. Baggage handlers are not security officials and would not think that a patch on a baggage container was suspicious inherently (I've got pictures of baggage containers with quite visible patches on them. No reasonable baggage handler thinks that a suitcase is the wrong place is a bomb.
I have given my reasons why I think the device was a patch and not a bomb.
You continually fail to understand what hypothesis is about, and I can only ask you to read Karl Popper and light may begin to dawn.
As I have said it is not my job to prove my own theory wrong, it's yours or anybody else's. But your own views of my theory are rooted in nothing more than your personal distaste and are irrelevant.
You are not the only person who thinks I am wrong. Patrick Haseldine still has his bag switch theory and Dr Swire his suitcase theory. Mr Marquise continues to hang on to the discredited theory that Mr Megrahi did it, despite the only single half fact of his being at Luqa Airport being the only valid remaining part. Mr Cannistraro who probably follows this blog more assiduously than any has not dared to comment on the analysis of the confection (of Mr Mergahi's guilt) he and others put together, and I suspect is trying to keep a very low profile.
You have novel grounds for not believing my conclusions, but there is an insufficient flexibility in your way of thinking, and until you correct it, you're not going to get there either.
May I thank you for taking the time to at least try to understand what I am saying, and you are no UFO fantasist, one of whom has been my misfortune to come across. Your tone has occasionally been a little hectoring and ill-mannered, but perhaps that's your style.
But until your approach to thinking changes you will remain in ignorance. I have continually changed my thesis in the light of fact, which is the approach to try out, and in fact you only need that little bit of effort to get yourself over that sticking point you are now at.
Charles, get this. I do not CARE whether or not you choose to do the work needed to back up your own speculations. I do know that neither I nor anybody else will, or is obliged to do it for you.
ReplyDeleteI put forward a couple more suggestions which were just as plausible as yours, on the facts available. Not because these are part of any theory of mine about what happened, but to illustrate to you the ease of armchair speculation - and at the same time the futility.
The way to test, or refute, my suggestions, is just the same as the way you acknowledge is the test of your own - to find someone who can attest to the actual baggage handling logistics at Heathrow in 1988. As you claim it should be my obligation to test your hypothesis, then by the same token, it should be your obligation to test mine.
By finding out how these baggage containers really were assigned to flights, whether AVE4041 was really on the ground at Heathrow at midnight, and if so, would a burglar be able to identify it as the one earmarked for that flight and that position?
You show no sign of doing this. Does that mean you accept my hypothesis? It seems to me you must do that, unless you can prove me wrong.
As I said, I don't care. It's of no interest to me how these containers were allocated, as I have no theory that depends on this.
You have such a theory. I suggest you either take the trouble to find the necessary supporting evidence, or shut up about it.