Saturday 5 June 2010

Tony Blair, Libya and Megrahi's repatriation

[What follow are excerpts from an article in today's edition of the Daily Mail headlined "Tony Blair our very special adviser by dictator Gaddafi's son".]

Tony Blair has become an adviser to Colonel Gaddafi, the Libyan dictator's son has sensationally claimed.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the former prime minister has secured a consultancy role with a state fund that manages the country's £65billion of oil wealth.

In an exclusive interview, Saif described Mr Blair as a 'personal family friend' of the Libyan leader and said he had visited the country 'many, many times' since leaving Downing Street three years ago. (...)

Last night, families of the 270 Lockerbie victims accused Mr Blair of breaking bread with people who 'have blood on their hands'.

They have in the past raised questions about Mr Blair's relationship with Colonel Gaddafi especially over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya that paved the way for the return of the Lockerbie bomber last year.

Saif made clear that the agreement - drawn up when Mr Blair was prime minister - was key to creating a 'special relationship' between Britain and Libya.

Saif suggested Mr Blair was involved in 'Africa projects' with his father, alleging: 'He also has some consultancy role with the Libyan Investment Authority.'

Mr Blair was adamant last night he had no relationship whatsoever with the LIA. However he is advising several firms seeking a slice of the massive revenues from Libya's oil reserves.

Last night, Mr Blair's spokesman said: 'Tony Blair does not have any role, either formal or informal, paid or unpaid, with the Libyan Investment Authority or the government of Libya.

'He has no commercial relationship with any Libyan companies or any Libyan projects in Africa.'

But sources close to the Gaddafi family said Saif - tipped to succeed his father as leader of his country - stands by his comments.

Colonel Gaddafi is understood to be on first name terms with Mr Blair, who saw his work in Libya as one of the great foreign policy successes of his premiership.

Mr Blair has always insisted he played no role in the return of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Al Megrahi, who was sent home last August by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds after doctors wrongly said he had only three months to live.

But Saif said Megrahi's release was 'always on the negotiating table' in discussions about 'commercial contracts for oil and gas with Britain'.

Frank Duggan, president of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, told the Mail: 'If this is true, I guess this is Tony Blair's reward from the Libyan government for what he has done.

'It's important for world peace that Libya is brought back into the community of nations but that doesn't mean that you have to honour people with blood on their hands.'

[The Mail's editorial comment on the issue headed "Peace or money?" can be read here.

Tony Blair's part in the moves which ultimately led to the repatriation of Abdelbaset Megrahi is accurately described in the following excerpt from an earlier post on this blog:]

The memorandum of understanding regarding prisoner transfer that Tony Blair entered into in the course of the "deal in the desert" in May 2007, and which paved the way for the formal prisoner transfer agreement, was intended by both sides to lead to the rapid return of Mr Megrahi to his homeland. This was the clear understanding of Libyan officials involved in the negotiations and to whom I have spoken.

It was only after the memorandum of understanding was concluded that [it belatedly sunk in] that the decision on repatriation of this particular prisoner was a matter not for Westminster and Whitehall but for the devolved Scottish Government in Edinburgh, and that government had just come into the hands of the Scottish National Party and so could no longer be expected supinely to follow the UK Labour Government's wishes. That was when the understanding between the UK Government and the Libyan Government started to unravel, to the considerable annoyance and distress of the Libyans, who had been led to believe that repatriation under the PTA was only months away.

47 comments:

  1. To anybody who has actually followed Lockerbie rather than making out the words with a dirty finger in bile laden inaccurate fascist apology for a journal of record called the Daily Mail, will know that this is a typical misleading canard that that rag produces so well. The lowest journalist (and few get lower) on that organ must know of the grave doubts about Mr Megrahi's guilt; that he didn't do what he has been convicted of, and even the august Mr Marquise is reduced to making ex-cathedra pronouncements.

    Wilfully wrong in almost every sense. But the Mail will never get it. Mr Hitler was really quite a good fellow in his time wasn't he, Lord Northcliffe?

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  2. I registered and submitted a comment there. It's not appearing, apparently "moderated in advance." Views expressed, so on and so forth. I'll recreate it later if it doesn't appear later on for copynpaste. Useless comment here, just a li'l mad.

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  3. I submitted it again, a bit different:
    ---
    Three small corrections:
    “Last night, families of the 270 Lockerbie victims accused Mr Blair of breaking bread with people who 'have blood on their hands'.”
    “Families of the 270 Lockerbie victims” should be “Frank Duggan.” And “have blood on their hands” should be “accused of having blood on their hands.”

    And finally, these said victims “have in the past raised questions about Mr Blair's relationship with Colonel Gaddafi especially over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya that paved the way for the return of the Lockerbie bomber last year.”

    No. Terminal cancer and a questionable prognosis paved the way for Megrahi’s release. Blair’s ridiculous PTA scheme paved the way for Kenny MacKaskill to “consider it” alongside compassionate release, just enough to trick Megrahi into dropping his appeal.

    Otherwise good piece, aside from the ambiguity in the word “adviser,” and aside from failing to mention Libya had nothing to do with PA103.
    ---
    I'm sure it won't show up. Looks like they stopped approving comments within hours of publishing the article.

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  4. It's the "Daily Fail", Adam, why bother? Most of its "readers" are barely literate and only buy it for the sports pages. The remainder are knuckle-dragging bigots.

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  5. Odd how I wound up posting as Adam rather than Caustic... Some stupid default. Not another new warrior, in case you were confused.

    Daily Fail is simple but brilliant in its terseness. I've never been too impressed, FWIW. I'm glad I bothered, however, since I now have something new to complain about!

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  6. We kind of knew it was you, anyway....

    "Daily Fail" isn't my invention. You'll see it used often at JREF when describing anything connected to that comic strip.

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  7. "Fail" is surely the Eye, as is the "Getsmuchworse", for the Express. Grauniad (I prefer the French flavoured rendition, which makes it sound like Grignard of neutrophilic renown), Torygraph is too well known to comment on, the "Wapping Liar" is either the Times or the Sun, or both together. "Good in Parts" is dear old Punch from the du Maurier cartoon and so on.

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  8. You don't rate Paul Foot's analysis, then?

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  9. Not today. Paul Foot's analysis was written 15 years ago, and most of the information (clues if you like) I use have been made public since that date. When I wrote my theory, I sat down afterwards and said to myself, "surely you can use your theory and by comparison you will demonstrate when PF's theory is wrong". I got a friend to do it too. But virtually none of the facts I use in my theory appear in PF's, so I can't use my theory as a critical instrument for saying PF's is wrong. PF's theory, which is essentially Swire's (and was essentially put together by the same effort) exists as a series of existential statement, which hang together, but for the most part requires the presence of individuals whom it will be never able to prove they were there or not. One variant of Swire's is that the PFLP GC brought the IED by land and sea to London, or introduced it by air in an inactivated condition and used the Heathrow break-in to plant the bomb. It is an unprovable theory.

    By contrast I have yawning gaps in my theory, but I bridge them. Take the issue of McKee's suitcase (a) by all accounts (best Johnston) it was found very quickly (my question is how). (b) the finders did not quite know what to do, so they took it to the LI HQ. (c) It had been damaged by cutting a hole in its side (my question why - to remove a bit of kit, a radio transmitter). (d) It became the subject of a famous briefing of police detectives, as the CIA said it had to be replaced where found. (e) It was. The CIA then expected the police detectives to register the finding, but they declined citing "Judges' Rules" (no interference with the evidence stream). (f) BTP finally registered the find.

    This story has never been contradicted, and even on the single account in Johnston, I take it to be true. He was threatened with precognition for his efforts.

    I then tried to put together a very modest account of what must have happened. (i) As a CIA/DIA gent, one of McKee's suitcases must have contained a radio transponder activated by the crash. (ii) He set it before he left Beirut (presumably in accordance with standing instructions) . (iii) We can conclude therefore than Mr McKee did not know he was going to his death. (iv) The crash happens and the radio transmitter is activated. (v) It is located by a CIA agent in a helicopter, who retrieves it, locates in the vicinity AVE4041 PA from which it fell, and to which the CIA will carry out certain operations (namely the planting of a pre-blown suitcase and the placing of a piece of Toshiba cassette circuitry (the wrong side of the AVE 4041 PA maker's plate). (vi) This is given by the AAIB to RARDE without comment, which means that the AAIB did not believe it, because if that chip had got there genuinely it would have given a good indication of the size of the explosion.

    I constructed this story, which I believe more compelling than the "must have been story" of the transfer of the device from Frankfurt and its subsequent use in the break in as it uses information from Johnston's book, which has never been contradicted and a statement from the AAIB report (which as a statement of fact rather than interpretation must be treated as true. It accounts for the presence of CIA at Lockerbie, puts the wanderings of McKee's suitcase in a credible contaxt, so I don't understand why it is not "orthodox"

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  10. Charles, have you studied where the various bits of evidence were actually found? There was no "pre-blown suitcase". There were bits and scraps of material gathered up from a debris trail that reached almost to the English border, and light items that blew much further east, even to the North Sea.

    You have no evidence at all that there was any transponder in McKee's suitcase, you simply made that up. You have no evidence that McKee's suitcase was one of the ones in AVE4041 (or if you have, I'd very much like the reference). You can't just invent things, and then declare that they "must" be true.

    AVE4041 itself wasn't recovered in one piece, and there as certainly nothing "in" it. It was blown to bits by the explosion and the pieces, and the pieces of the baggage, were scattered all across the landscape. Only a few small pieces of the bomb suitcase were ever picked up.

    You seem to have constructed your own fantasy of how things fetched up on the ground, and it bears no relation to the testimonies of those who were actually there and who were picking them up.

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  11. Oh, and about Paul Foot. He was writing less than ten years ago. He actually sat through the entire trial, remember? The only journalist who did that, I believe. He makes a few mistakes, and he misses some things out, and his analysis is imperfect, but it is based on the facts.

    His treatise is one of the most accessible sources of facts about the case you can find. I think you have a very long way to go before you can challenge Foot on the evidence.

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  12. Rather like my claim there was a second explosion, or that there is an exact an explicable gap of 14 seconds between the two events (or explosions) on the Maid, it isn't in the accounts.

    Like the fact I have deduced that there must have been a transponder in Mr McKee's suitcase it is something we have not been told. Don't go crying off and reading the AAIB report without realising that it reports everything factually, but makes its own interpretaion of the facts.

    Mr McKee's suitcase evidence is adduced by the fact that it seems to have been found on either the 22 or 23 December, when the hills were littered with suitcases. Now how, did that happen. Nobody is going to tell you that it's a plot device out of "No country for Old men". But find that suitcase somebody did. How else than by a transponder? Read Johnston's account of the travels and return and re-finding of the suitcase in his excellent but short reportage book, published 1989.

    Paul did not attend the whole trial, and I am not sure he attended any of it! Jim Swire and John Mosey covered it between them, I went twice, and probably saw about 5-6 days of the proceedings. Dull, isn't the word.

    Paul could have attended the trial - he died like Alan Francovitch at an airport, (in 2004) but I make nothing of that, but he was quite an ill man at the end, and he had many other interests other than Lockerbie

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  13. Sigh. Just tell me one thing. What evidence do you have that McKee's suitcase was even in AVE4041? (I don't know that it wasn't, but I've never seen any claim that it was.)

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  14. Rolfe: As one of the four "Interline" passengers from Larnaca, I think it is generally accepted that McKee's suitcase was one of the 5-6 "Interline" bags initially placed in AVE 4041 by Mr Bedford. (possibly along with Mr Carlsson's.) The bag of one Larnaca passenger Mr O'Connor wasn't loaded but was later recovered at Heathrow.

    Of course Charles fantasises that McKee was not an Interline passenger but an Online passenger and further through his technique of "remote viewing" thought he was travelling First Class. Therefore his suitcase would have gone in the first class container.

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  15. Baz, there were only, as you say, 5 or 6 interline bags in AVE4041. This was Heathrow, a major European hub. You yourself note that flights from places such as Brussels and Vienna connected in to PA103, and I'm fairly sure there would be more.

    The 5 or 6 bags noted can't be all the interline baggage there was. By your own calculations, the CIA men coming in from Larnaca had about that many bags between them, before you even think about the other connecting flights.

    Sure, that could have been the Larnaca luggage, but I'm not aware of anyone ever confirming this. (It would be moderately interesting if it was, though.) It could just as easily have been cases from Vienna, or Brussels, or one or more of the other connecting flights with passengers coming in for the transatlantic leg.

    I'd be genuinely interested to know if there was indeed any confirmation of the assumption that the cases placed by Bedford were from Larnaca, but so far as I know it's pure assumption.

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  16. As far as I am aware the four "CIA men" coming from Larnaca (only one was officially a CIA man) had four bags between them as Mr O'Connors wasn't loaded. You might think there were more "Interline" passengers but some passengers had Interlined at Frankfurt onto PA103A. It may be that "Interline" passengers are quite rare. If you want to go to the USA you can fly from many European countries. Many "Interline" passengers might take a day or two in London. Four "Larnaca" bags, one from Brussels one from Vienna?

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  17. You yourself mentioned passengers interlining from Vienna and Brussels. Of course I don't know, but I'd be very surprised if these four or five bags were the sum total of the interline luggage for that flight. In my experience, interlining into a hub airport like Heathrow for a transatlantic flight is quite common.

    I'm just amused by Charles's speculations. First he assumes that McKee's case was in that container, no question. Then he assumes there was a tracker on the case. Then he assumes that the case landed in the same place as the container. Then he fantasises a posse of CIA men scouring the countryside for the tracker beacon, with a pre-prepared blown-up Samsonite suitcase, clothes and so on, ready to place "in the container" once they found the tracker.

    The amount ot pre-planning implicit in that is mindboggling. Within a few days the idea of blaming this on a flight from Malta has crystallised, and someone has painstakingly prepared all this false evidence to be taken to Scotland, even to a fragment of rasio circuit board to be put under the data plate on the container. For that, they'd have had to know in advance the plane was gong to go down, and have everything ready. Might have been easier just to make up the bomb suitcase with the right stuff, than substitute it, no?

    Of course the container broke up and was found in several widely-scattered pieces, and the suitcase and its contents were reduced to fragments of rubbish strewn aross the countryside. What Charles suggests is simply impossible. But clearly he's not one to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

    I was especially intrigued by the fact that his very first assumption may well be wrong. If there's no evidence to show either that these were the Larnaca cases, or that nobody else interlined from other flights, it's pure guesswork.

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  18. Many of the Interline passengers booked onto flight PA103 did not travel on that plane but took the earlier flight PA101. Were the flights from Larnaca, Brussels and Vienna the only flights that contributed Interline passengers to PA103?

    Chief Superintendent Orr claimed that "evidence from witnnesses is to the effect that the first seven or eight bags in the container were Interline bags" assuming the two extra suitcases were Interline bags.

    Obviously the five or six Interline bags placed by Mr Bedford at the back of container AVE4041 were the Interline bags that were in the Interline baggage shed when he selected that container for flight PA103. I do not know that there were but perhaps further Interline bags arrived during the course of the afternoon. We know Carlsson's bag had been at the airport since the morning at the Larnaca flight had landed. I see no reason why there would be more than a handful of Interline passengers.

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  19. Well, we just don't know. PA101 was quite a bit earlier, and a fair number of flights from elsewhere would have come in during that time. There's also the question of domestic flights from other UK airports.

    I think it's quite amazing that we seem to have no idea at all whose bags these were. It's perfectly clear that all those bags are potentially suspect, as they were in the relevant container. The bomb could have been interlined into London just as it was alleged to have been interlined into Frankfurt. Or of course it could have been smuggled into the interline baggage at Heathrow itself (as we actually suspect happened). Nothing about the bomb bag apparently being above one of the Frankfurt bags eliminates these possibilities.

    So why was a Heathrow loading eliminated? Surely, any such elimination would involve detailed investigation of the provenance of all the bags Bedford reported as being in that container before PA103A landed. However, I've seen no such investigation. I can see no reasonable grounds for its absence.

    The possibility that the bags Bedford loaded belonged to the CIA agents seems to me to be very interesting. Might this be the reason for the lack of any scrutiny? Enquiring minds want to know. Especially when one suitcase (you said two on your blog, but do I gather that's incorrect?) was left behind. Lots of people have speculated about a bag switch at Frankfurt. Should we be wondering about a possible bag switch at Heathrow?

    These matters interest me strangely. But simply assuming that these bags belonged to the CIA men (and Carlsson) on the grounds that we don't think there would have been many interline passengers at Heathrow isn't enough. I want some facts.

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  20. Paul did not attend the whole trial, and I am not sure he attended any of it!

    In contrast

    One of the few reporters to sit through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot,

    Lockerbie: Megrahi was framed, by John Pilger.

    Who's right then? Charles or John Pilger?

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  21. Rolfe: I have looked into this further and you are right. (also while writing from memory I referred in my blog to O'Connor's two bags - as they (or it) were not loaded I let it pass.)

    You refer to "CIA agents". There is evidence that one of the Larnaca pasengers Matthew Gannon was a CIA agent although I remain to be convinced he was on PA103.

    According to Lepppard (page 100) on the 28.3.89 Orr stated that;

    "Evidence from witnesses is to the effect that the first seven pieces of luggage in the container were Interline bags - the remainder was made up of Frankfurt luggage."

    Both parts of this claim appear to be quite untrue.

    Leppard wrote that the Interline bags on the first row had come from Larnaca, Brussels and Vienna.
    ("Matthew Gannon" 2 bags, Major McKee 1, Mr LaRiviere unknown and Mr Carlsson 1? plus "Vienna" bags)

    I haven't read Mr Crawford's book and would be grateful if anybody would e-mail his list of 15 Interline passengers to poisonpill@tesco.net

    According to Leppard there were in total 13 Interline bags (shared presumably amongst 14 passengers) so (presumably) a further 5-8 Interline bags arrived during the course of the afternoon and were placed in AVE4041 before the container was moved to take Online baggage.

    Orr's dubious deduction (aped by the FAI) that it was possible to claim that all Interline bags were in contact with the floor of AVE4041 and that the "primary suitcase" was on the 2nd or 3rd "layer". (The AAIR concluded the centre of the explosive event was 10.5 inches from the floor). Orr's deduction that the "primary suitcase" must have been Onlined from Frankfurt is even more dubious if there were several further Interline bags. (There were also according to Leppard as amny as four unaccompanied bags!)

    The "primary suitcase" could have been one of these further Interlined bags, as Rolfe argues, although I suspect that all Interline bags were recovered and reconciled to DC Crawford's list of 15 passengers (less Mr O'Connor).

    My central point is that this was not done with the two "extra" bags, including the brown samsonite, that mysteriously appeared within AVE4041, for which Orr claimed that "evidence from witnesses" was "to the effect" they were Interline bags. The witnesses (John Bedford and Sulaksh Kamboj) said no such thing but the Police were determined to prove it was either "Interline" or "Online" without considering the possibility that it was neither.

    Apologies for the length of this comment but I think it a key point.

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  22. When I said "CIA agents" I was speaking loosely, read US government agents if you like. I haven't read Leppard's book, so I don't know how likely he is to be accurate about the interline baggage. A lot of people seem to be going on pure assumption, and he could be one of them.

    Bedford's evidence is pretty consistent about there being only 4 or 5 bags apart from the mystery bags in AVE4041 before he left work for the evening. Say seven in total. There is NO suggestion that any further bags were added before PA103A landed, and if anything like that had happened, we would certainly have heard about it. So if there were indeed 13 interline bags, then at least six and probably eight must have been somewhere else. (You yourself say McKee had two bags (on the other hand you're now saying McKee one, Gannon two, can't you make up your mind?) so if O'Connor's bag was left behind, that's still at least as many bags as passengers.)

    Baz, you really can't blithely assume another half-dozen cases appeared in that container over and above the ones we know about. If there were more interline bags, as it seems there were, they must have been in a different container. There must have been quite a few containers with luggage from the Heathrow check-in desks, and the likelihood is the other interline bags ended up mixed in with that, one way or another.

    So, do we really know that the cases belonging to the Larnaca passengers and Carlsson were in AVE4041, or might they have been elsewhere? I can't see any evidence of anyone doing any more than jumping to conclusions on the subject, including yourself.

    Orr was half right about the mystery bags being interline bags. If they weren't suspicious, they were interline bags. Indeed, if they were the vehicle of introduction of the bomb, then you could say the bomb bag was smuggled into the interline baggage, or disguised as an interline bag. Orr's error, in my view, is that he seems to have completely discounted the possibility that any of the "interline" bags might have been the bomb bag. Which is odd, considering the trouble they went to to try to show that the bomb bag was interlined on to PA103A in exactly that way.

    Crawford isn't reliable. His book on his own admission was written from memory without checking anything, and he makes some very basic errors. He's good on gossip, but as for a reliable list of interline passengers, I doubt it. It's available to read online on Google Books though, just make sure you go directly to the chapter you want, as the number of pages you can access is limited.

    [contd....]

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  23. [contd....]

    Also, have you looked at the mock-up of the intact container? How many bags do you think could have been in contact with the floor? Four? There were only about 40-odd cases in there when it was piled high, and the flat part of the floor is quite restricted. They decided Karen Noonan's case (from Frankfurt) was on the floor, so it's more or less physically impossible that all the bags Bedford saw could have been on the bottom layer.

    You're also making an unwarranted assumption when you say the interline bags in the container would all have been recovered and reconciled to the relevant passengers. Come on, we don't even know which passengers we're talking about! And really, the only way they could hand-wave the Bedford suitcases away was by being completely vague about the whole thing. Oh, we're not interested in undamaged bags, we've no idea about any of these, maybe that other suitcase was moved "to some far corner of the (quite small!) container, whatever.” If there really had been a careful reconciliation of all these bags, it might have been dreadfully obvious to quite a lot of people that it didn't add up. The evidence at Camp Zeist suggests either this was never done, or if it was, it was buried very deep.

    Baz, you've been looking at this for a while. You need to do better. You need to prove that the Larnaca baggage, and Carlsson's, was in AVE4041, rather than the other half-dozen or so bags. (Indeed, you need a primary source that there were indeed 13 or 14 interline bags in total, I'm not even seeing that.) You need to get your head round the real size of that container, it's smaller than you think. And you need to stop crowing about other people being wrong. Just because you're not as wrong as Orr, or even Francovich, doesn't mean you're right.

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  24. I have the gravest doubts about the Bedford reconstruction, because it was done in the early days of 1989 when the Met and others were experimenting with ideas of what happened and not wanting the truth, which they had been told in accurate and imprecise terms by the CIA.

    The main inference to be drawn from Bedford's recollection was that two suitcases had appeared in container AVE4041 PA, and hence a reasobale theory would have be they they had been brought airside without proper security.

    As you know Heathrow had (and still has) a rotten record for security and neither the Met (nor I suspect BAA) nor MI5 wanted a further impeachment of the airport. It was only a few months after the Heathrow El Al incident.

    Again, by the time of the Bedford reconstruction Mr Manly had been interviewed by Special Branch and had handed over the broken padlock and bar. The Met knew that airside T3 had been broken into. With that information (and the risk the break in would become known) despite the timetabling problem, there was a reasonable chance that defence counsel would create an impression of a Heathrow break-in/Bedford seen suitcase scenario. I think we would have heard nothing of the Bedford recollections if the break-in had been known at the time of the trial.

    Also, Rolfe, I have much to talk over with you, for although we row a bit, I am deeply appreciative of your insights. I've just picked up an extended series from the RANDI forum, which impressed me a lot.

    I have set up a special account for you to contact me at Lockerbie1988 At Rocketmail dot com (usual substitutions, and if you contact me there we can exchnage email adresses securely.

    I also owe you an apology. Paul Foot must have attended the trial (I never came across him) for the PE special is dated 2000. I was getting the date of that muddled with the Francovitch Affair. Please accept my apologies.

    I must report I've trawled quite a lot of your postings, and on many things (like homeopathy) we agree! I've also asked around about you, partly to make sure you were not someone else, that I have less respect for. On such things as your comments on your father's death from asbestosis, you passed with flying colours.

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  25. Yes, Gannon (according to Leppard) had a single bag, KcKee two.)

    I am not "jumping to conclusions" but relying on Leppard's account that the first five - six bags in the container were Interlined from Larnaca, Brussels and Vienna. Until Patrick Haseldine pointed it out fairly recently I didn't know Carlsson was the Brussels passenger. I do not know who Interlined from Vienna.

    My good friend Charles sent me Crawford's list of 16 names but it is not clear what it is a list of. While it features Carlsson and the four Larnaca passengers others on the list Interlined at Frankfurt or began their journeys'there.

    You should read Leppard - it is very useful. You might ask your friend Adam's unbiased opinion.

    I thought Bedford refers to 5-6 bags not 4 or 5 so including the two "mystery" bags 7-8 in total. Perhaps Leppard's total of 13 Interline bags includes the two mystery bags. I do not know.

    I take the view that if Bedford set aside container AVE4041 at the Interline Baggage shed to take Interline bags for PA103 then Interline bags were put in there. He placed the first 5-6 in there about 14.30hrs.and moved the container 2 1/2 hrs.later. If further interline bags arrived before 5 p.m. I assume they would go into AVE4041.(I do not know that any did or if Bedford made any statement on the subject.)

    I did work at an Airport and I am very familiar with luggage containers. It was from this experience that I found Orr's deductions very odd and in my view untenable.

    As far as I am aware "Heathrow" luggage was seperate from Interline (and "Online" luggage)and was put in seperate containers (as was freight).

    Yes I assume baggage recovered at Tundergarth was reconciled to a particular passenger. Wasn't that a central objectiv of the investigation?

    I do not see how Orr was "half-right" about the mystery bags being Interline bags "if they weren't suspicious". Well manifestly they were. Orr falsely claimed there was evidence from witnesses they were Interline bags. If they were then they should have been recovered and reconciled to a particular Interline passenger. However the Police were attempting to determine whether these were Interline or Online bags. The thought that they were neither does not seem to have occurred.

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  26. Yes, Gannon (according to Leppard) had a single bag, KcKee two.)

    I am not "jumping to conclusions" but relying on Leppard's account that the first five - six bags in the container were Interlined from Larnaca, Brussels and Vienna. Until Patrick Haseldine pointed it out fairly recently I didn't know Carlsson was the Brussels passenger. I do not know who Interlined from Vienna.

    My good friend Charles sent me Crawford's list of 16 names but it is not clear what it is a list of. While it features Carlsson and the four Larnaca passengers others on the list Interlined at Frankfurt or began their journeys'there.

    You should read Leppard - it is very useful. You might ask your friend Adam's unbiased opinion.

    I thought Bedford refers to 5-6 bags not 4 or 5 so including the two "mystery" bags 7-8 in total. Perhaps Leppard's total of 13 Interline bags includes the two mystery bags. I do not know.

    I take the view that if Bedford set aside container AVE4041 at the Interline Baggage shed to take Interline bags for PA103 then Interline bags were put in there. He placed the first 5-6 in there about 14.30hrs.and moved the container 2 1/2 hrs.later. If further interline bags arrived before 5 p.m. I assume they would go into AVE4041.(I do not know that any did or if Bedford made any statement on the subject.)

    I did work at an Airport and I am very familiar with luggage containers. It was from this experience that I found Orr's deductions very odd and in my view untenable.

    As far as I am aware "Heathrow" luggage was seperate from Interline (and "Online" luggage)and was put in seperate containers (as was freight).

    Yes I assume baggage recovered at Tundergarth was reconciled to a particular passenger. Wasn't that a central objectiv of the investigation?

    I do not see how Orr was "half-right" about the mystery bags being Interline bags "if they weren't suspicious". Well manifestly they were. Orr falsely claimed there was evidence from witnesses they were Interline bags. If they were then they should have been recovered and reconciled to a particular Interline passenger. However the Police were attempting to determine whether these were Interline or Online bags. The thought that they were neither does not seem to have occurred.

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  27. Baz,

    Crawford says that he and a DS from Carluke, Alex Brown, were told that they would form a "Priority Profiling Team". They were given responsibility for looking at the 15 (in actuality 16 people listed) - those most likely to be targeted or of some status that would make them a possible target.

    I do not know who drew up the list and made the selection, whether they were from the same class or not.

    I do not have but can get access to a seating plan for the aircraft, and this would sort out the class issue.

    It seems there may be others who were also interline passengers but not part of the PPS list. All 15 had boarded 103 from another flight and had therefore had had their luggage checked through an airport other than Heathrow or Frankfurt.

    Does that mean by the time the list was drawn up, the investigators had determined to eliminate Heathrow and Frankfurt from their inquiries? The team was looking for targets and stooges. Other groups were dealing with other interline passengers. Crawford gives no details of these.

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  28. I have seen your PR guy's seating plan but even he doesn't know if its true. My understanding (from Leppard) (see the opening quote from my article Lockerbie The Heathrow Evidence) wa that Orr had effectively "eliminated" Heathrow within 3 weeks.

    You write "All 15 had boarded PA103from another flight and had therefore had their luggage checked in at an airport other than Heathrow or Frankfurt". Two of the names were US executives of Volkswagen who had been visiting company HQ in Wolfsburg. I doubt they Interlined at Frankfurt.

    I don't know if I am getting my point across about the number of Interline bags. Leppard said there were 13. Bedford loaded 5-6 from flights that had already arrived. They cannot have come from flights that arrived later. The remainder may have gone in AVE4041 or anther container. Unless they were bomb damaged it is impossible to say. The only point I was making was that Orr was not in a position to say that all the remaining bags in AVE4041 (after the first 7)were all bags onlined from Frankfurt.

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  29. Baz,

    I think your referring to our mutual friend JC, and it is to him I would have referred. I have some idea of the doubts of its accuracy (similar ones arise in UT-772).

    If the point is important, which I think it is not, would it not be best to start from what JC says, and then go from there?

    We would necessarily have to analyse the potentially inaccurate material anyway, or we would be accused of not having investigated the material, wouldn't we?

    Charles

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  30. I have set up a special account for you to contact me at Lockerbie1988 At Rocketmail dot com (usual substitutions, and if you contact me there we can exchnage email adresses securely.

    Not a chance, Charles. I have no interest in holding clandestine discussions with anyone on this matter. In my experience, the most useful insights have all been generated as a result of a number of interested people chewing over the same material together. There is absolutely no need for secrecy.

    I find the blog format less than ideal for this sort of discussion, for reasons I've stated. However, if people here are unwilling to discuss on a forum, then this is what we're stuck with.

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  31. Baz, I appreciate that you're relying on Leppard, but does Leppard know, or is he simply making assumptions? Not only that, but the way you are interpreting his information doesn't actually make sense. I agree that the arrangements at Heathrow would suggest all the interline baggage would have arrived at Bedford's shed, and thus have found its way into AVE4041. However this cannot be true.

    I note that the original court judgement doesn't go into detail about how many cases Bedford said he originally placed in the container. I've seen various estimates, but never more than six. So, even if we were to concede that the two mystery bags were also interline baggage, eight cases, tops. We're figuring out that there were perhaps about 14 interline bags altogether. What about the other six (or eight, if the two mystery bags were interpolated without a bag-switch)? You're assuming they also went into that container, but not only is there no evidence that this happened, the narrative doesn't work if they did.

    The floor of the container was less than 5 feet square. Laid flat, it doesn't take many cases to cover it. Maybe six, depending on the size. Bedford put the first few bags on their spines, in a row across the back. How many cases would fit across the back of the container, like that? Probably no more than six. The two mystery bags then appeared flat on the floor of the container, in front of these. With six cases in a row along the back, there's still room for that. More than about six, no. Fourteen? Forget it.

    The cases must have been rearranged to some extent, because it seems clear the bags were all flat by the time the container was fully loaded. Five or six on their spines, plus two more flat, OK, you're still working on the floor of the container. However, if there were already 14 cases in there before the container was sent out to PA103A, that's already getting on for a third full. It's impossible to see how any case from Frankfurt could have ended up on the bottom layer, and yet that's what we're led to believe happened (Karen Noonian's, below the bomb bag). Also, there's probably no room for the number of cases that came off PA103A (49 passengers, and only "a few" cases were supernumerary and ended up loose-loaded).

    Leppard obviously isn't clear. However, the implication is that the bags Bedford describes were only about half the interline bags, and the other half must have been somewhere else. In which case, we can't say for sure that the Larnaca luggage (and Carlsson's) was in PA4041 without additional information.

    I'm distinctly intrigued by the idea that all the cases in the container before it went to PA103A were luggage belonging to US government agents, plus Carlsson's perhaps, plus the mystery cases. And that O'Connor's case should have been there too but it was left behind. However, I can't definitely substantiate that this is so on the information available.

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  32. The only point I was making was that Orr was not in a position to say that all the remaining bags in AVE4041 (after the first 7) were all bags onlined from Frankfurt.

    Baz, you need to think about this from Orr's point of view.

    There were three categories of baggage on PA103. The largest was cases taken in through the check-in desks at Heathrow. Second, there was interline baggage, which went through Bedford's station. Finally, there was the online baggage transferred directly from PA103A (so far as I know there wasn't another online connecting flight).

    Orr is noting that AVE4041 contained none of the first category. Apart from the luggage transferred from PA103A, there were only cases from Bedford's interline shed, that is, category "interline baggage".

    The completely daffy thing about this isn't the labelling of that group of cases as "interline baggage", it's the assumption that none of these cases could have been the bomb bag. Yes, Mr. Orr, we get it that the pinpointing of AVE4041 exonerates the Heathrow check-in. In that sense, "the bomb did not originate at Heathrow". And we accept that the fast and direct transfer of the PA103A luggage on the tarmac essentially absolves Heathrow of responsibility for anything that was loaded at Frankfurt, and that the possibility that a bomb could have been introduced during that exercise was really negligible.

    However, there is absolutely no a priori reason why the bomb couldn't have been among these interline bags. None at all. (Unless he was sure these bags were all the property of US government agents and maybe a UN representative, but if he was that sure I'd like to know how, and even so, what about a bag switch?) And that's even before you find out that two of these cases had distinctly suspicious provenance. Once you hear about that, surely your suspicions redouble?

    The problem is not his categorising these suitcases as "interline". They were introduced in the interline shed, so that's not an unreasonable categorisation. It's his lack of scrutiny of any of these cases. I want to know why that was.

    The Heathrow check-in might be absolved of blame. However, that's not the only way a bomb could have been introduced at Heathrow. The fact that the Official Story decided the bomb bag was interlined into Frankfurt didn't get Frankfurt (or rather, Pan Am's Frankfurt security) off the hook. Exactly the same potential for Heathrow culpability was inherent in the presence of these few non-online (if you like) bags in AVE4041.

    Why was this ignored? It's not enough just to say "Orr called them all interline bags". Call them all interline bags if you like. How could he possibly know that the bomb hadn't been interlined into Heathrow in one of them, or (as seems most likely) that the bomb suitcase had been introduced at Heathrow by "hacking" the interline baggage?

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  33. If you really need me to spell it out for you, my thoughts are going like this.

    Sure, it's possible Orr and the rest of them were just shit-scared of Heathrow having to take the rap for this. That they'd rather let the real bombers get away than leave Heathrow holding the blame. So they decided to hand-wave away all the interline bags, suspicious provenance or not, and concentrate entirely on the Frankfurt consignment.

    (You know, that rushed transfer across the tarmac was very very lucky for Heathrow. If the connection hadn't been so tight, the online luggage might have gone through the airport systems as well, and left Heathrow in the firing line whether it liked it or not....)

    OK, maybe it was pure backside-covering. But how would Orr and others get away with that? Wasn't someone involved in the enquiry, maybe someone not that bothered about protecting Heathrow, going to say, hey what about these bags?

    On the other hand, if the bombers (by accident or design) had managed to introduce the bomb bag right in among a small group of cases that all belonged to US government agents, might that be why any enquiry into the provenance of these cases was choked off? And one of these cases was left behind, too....

    There's a rabbit hole here, and I'm looking at it dubiously, but are you with me so far? However, before we could venture into it, we'd really need to be sure these really were the Larnaca suitcases, and not some innocent family's from Innsbruck.

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  34. I have thought about this from Orr's point of view. Rolfe states, as Orr believed, that there were three categories of bags on board PA103 - Interline, Online and bags originating at Heathrow.

    I am suggesting, and believe the evidence is overwhelming, that there was a fourth category comprising the primary suitcase and the other "extra" bags.

    I find Leppard very accurate and his book contains some gems. However his is the story of the investigation (and in my view where the investigation went wrong.) The story of the "extra" bags is there for all to see in this 1991 bags. Yet Lepppard goes along with the official story that the Indian Head tests "eliminated" the Interline bags and to quote Leppard "Kamboj was in the clear".
    Leppard sees nothing wrong with Orr's claim that the extra bags were Interline bags, that the primary suitcase was amongst the Online bags and must therefore have been an Online bag.

    To make the simple but crucial point yet again the only way to prove the brown samsonite seen by Bedford was an Interline bag was to recover it and link it to a specific Interline passenger - but this suitcase was never recovered (unless it was the primary suitcase). The extra bags were "eliminated" in theory but not in reality.

    According to Leppard there were 13 bags that came off other flights at Heathrow. I do not know how this figure is arrived at. I emphatically do not assume they were all placed in AVE4041. I do not know and neither did Orr. As I have pointed out the only way to know for sure if a bag was in AVE4041 was if it was bomb-damaged. There were a number of "candidate" bags both Interline and Online that were placed in AVE4041. That does not mean that the two "extra" bags must have been Interline or Online. The point I was making was that Orr was not in a position to say that all the remaining bags in AVE4041 (after the first 5-8) had come from Frankfurt.

    Orr tried to "prove" that the primary suitcase was amongst the "Online" bags not the "Interline" bags. Therefore in Orr's logic it must also be an Online bag.

    You could argue that there is no "a priori" reason that the primary suitcase was not an Interline bag but there is no evidence that they were despite Orr's claim that his assumption was supported by evidence from witnesses. My argument is that the primary suitcase must have been the brown samsonite seen by Bedford and could not have been an Online bag as the official version of events claims.

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  35. I have thought about this from Orr's point of view. Rolfe states, as Orr believed, that there were three categories of bags on board PA103 - Interline, Online and bags originating at Heathrow.

    I am suggesting, and believe the evidence is overwhelming, that there was a fourth category comprising the primary suitcase and the other "extra" bags.

    == I think you have created two categories of extra bags here, the Primary suitcase (origin mysterious) and two other bags, as seen by Bedford and denied by Kamboj. I find Bedford not a very reliable witness, always drinking cups of tea with Mr Walker and blagging off from his job early, because the arrival of Pan Am 103A took him over the end of his shift. The court decided to accept Mr Bedford's evidence, perhaps because it was the Crown's and it is always deferential to the prosecution's position.

    == On the face of it the Bedford suitcases were detrimental to the Crown's position, for they implied that suitcases had ended up in AVE4041 PA by unusual means. But perhaps the story of the suitcases was known to the defence, and there would always be the possibility that they would ambush the prosecution by presenting Bedford themselves. Always, as Crown, obey the rule that when you've got potentially damaging revelations, produce them on your own terms. It wasn't the first time the Prosecution would do that; they did it with Talb. He was produced in court, for although Taylor could practically accuse him of being a bomber, there wasn't a shred of evidence that related dates, let alone access to Malta or Heathrow airside areas.

    == So too Bedford. And Bedford had taken part in a reconstruction in the January, where the extra suitcases played a starring part. No can anyone interview Bedford after the 21 December events and those of the reconstruction in the the January and say they will unfailingly reveal what Bedford recalled and can be accurately placed in a timetable. The question of true and false recall is the root of Gauci's testimony problems, especially the fact he was worked on many, many times.

    == Unlike a court, the police are allowed to come and come again in the process of building a case, especially where a witness isn't the one in the dock.

    == Here's a case in point. Some years ago I came across the Patrick O'Brien “Jack Aubrey” novels. I liked it so much (Jane Austen meets the Royal Navy) that I sat down and read the whole canon. At the start I had an almost perfect recall of the plot of that first novel. But, as I read through the canon I found that clear recall of the first novel disappearing under the weight of the stories in the other novels. A simpler test might be “Can you remember your first day at school”. If you can, can you recall the second, twenty second or seventieth. Of course not. Reconstruction, where it involves parties involved in the original finding/evidence are notoriously prone to “false memory” syndrome.

    == In any case, the Bedford reconstruction was highly problematic, for the obvious conclusion to me from it was that two cases had been introduced into AVE4041 PA by illicit means, and despite the timetabling problem the most logical way of introduction was by the break in discovered at 00:05 on 21 December 1988 by Mr Manly, the BAA security guard. That evidence was not produced until the appeal. I believe the Met/MI5 did not want evidence of another failure of Heathrow security to become known, especially so soon after the Hindawi/El Al scandal, where destruction of an Israeli aircraft was only prevented by the operation of superior Israeli security, which was based on profiling passengers and not on blunt, stupid technical means.

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  36. == Indeed I believe that Mr Manly may have been produced at the appeal to get the damaging nature of his evidence out of the way. Appeal courts are notoriously unwilling to uphold new defence evidence of the first occasion; consider the Jill Dando murderer and the Colin Stagg case, to say nothing of the Guildford four and Birmingham Six.

    I find Leppard very accurate and his book contains some gems.

    == I have met Leppard, and he is a driven man with that typical “I know more that you can ever know” attitude some journalists adopt.

    However his is the story of the investigation (and in my view where the investigation went wrong.) The story of the "extra" bags is there for all to see in this 1991 bags. Yet Leppard goes along with the official story that the Indian Head tests "eliminated" the Interline bags and to quote Leppard "Kamboj was in the clear".

    == But, imo, Kamboj was cleared. There is nothing in his subsequent career to suggest he had made a lot of money planting a bomb case, and no one every made any accusations against him, to the best of my knowledge.

    Leppard sees nothing wrong with Orr's claim that the extra bags were Interline bags, that the primary suitcase was amongst the Online bags and must therefore have been an Online bag.

    To make the simple but crucial point yet again the only way to prove the brown Samsonite seen by Bedford was an Interline bag was to recover it and link it to a specific Interline passenger - but this suitcase was never recovered (unless it was the primary suitcase). The extra bags were "eliminated" in theory but not in reality.

    == And you think you can reality them in practice?

    According to Leppard there were 13 bags that came off other flights at Heathrow. I do not know how this figure is arrived at. I emphatically do not assume they were all placed in AVE4041. I do not know and neither did Orr. As I have pointed out the only way to know for sure if a bag was in AVE4041 was if it was bomb-damaged. There were a number of "candidate" bags both Interline and Online that were placed in AVE4041. That does not mean that the two "extra" bags must have been Interline or Online. The point I was making was that Orr was not in a position to say that all the remaining bags in AVE4041 (after the first 5-8) had come from Frankfurt.

    == Nobody is going to give you material they believe to be irrelevant. You can join the forlorn hope of a call for a “proper inquiry” - UKFF103, but they have been calling for one for twenty years. No dice, and unlike you and me, they have a proper reason. Lockerbie must be solved on the evidence that is there, and we have to put forward with what has been produced a story so likely to be right, so damning that the authorities are forced to respond.

    Orr tried to "prove" that the primary suitcase was amongst the "Online" bags not the "Interline" bags. Therefore in Orr's logic it must also be an Online bag.

    == That's a claim, not a deduction, and virtually a tautology. Orr is a candidate for the Golfer. He left as Lockerbie SIO in 1996 and was promoted to CC of Strathclyde Police, which in terms of promotion in the police hierarchy, DCS to CC missing out ACC and DC is a hell of a promotion. Then went on to get a knighthood in 2001 and given a retirement project of writing a “parades report”.

    You could argue that there is no "a priori" reason that the primary suitcase was not an Interline bag but there is no evidence that they were despite Orr's claim that his assumption was supported by evidence from witnesses.

    == What witnesses.

    My argument is that the primary suitcase must have been the brown Samsonite seen by Bedford and could not have been an Online bag as the official version of events claims.

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  37. "That's a claim, not a deduction, and virtually a tautology". Tedious semantics is what that is. It was a deduction.

    "What witnesses"? Orr said "evidence from witnesses is to the effect" ect. I suppose you will hhave to figure out what witnesses he was referring to.

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  38. Baz,

    If you don't mind, you placed the word prove in inverted commas. I tend to think such a demarcation suggests that the author does not place the words at face value. It is not an emphasis as the inline bold and italics are available for that!

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  39. If it was a deduction what were the premisses?

    You are always keen to tell others to back up their arguments, but when presented with a straightforward issue on what Orr said and how his argument is backed up, you duck.

    Yet another two points to me, Baz!

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  40. It's not a game, or a competition. It's a blown-up airliner, a town in flames and a lot of dead people.

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  41. I know. At the risk of saying something obvious, I have been there, not that tragedy and not a victim.

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  42. Yes. You should know better.

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  43. I don't know the point of that comment, Rolfe, so I shall ignore it.

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  44. In case you really need it spelled out, Charles, your comment about "points" was crass and tasteless.

    You of all people should know this isn't a rhetorical jousting-match.

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  45. Dear Rolfe,

    There is no point in addressing you while you are in this mood. I find my attitude to Lockerbie and its various tragedies entirely self-consistent, even as my understanding of where I think the blame lies changes.

    If the agencies I feel are responsible had just had a rule as I believe MI6 does "not we jobs" the Pan Am 103 atrocity (and I regard it as an atrocity would not have happened. I regarded much that is said about Lockerbie (such as some of the US relatives attitude towards Mr Megrahi and what his position should be) as so much maundering sentimentality created by political and criminally inclined intelligence circles in the US, who have shamelessly allowed a series of outright lies to be promoted and promulgated. Even if HW Bush, the CIA, the CTC of the CIA, the FBI, the SD, the DoJ and the rest were to hold up their hands today and say" "this is actually the truth", and tell us it, it would appear as just another patina of lie, not to be swept away but polished up by conspiracy theorists. Fot CTs are not folk looking for a solution but an ever-indulgent ritualistic bath in the bloody remains of how terrible things are. Nothing can be done.

    My point, which was directed at some unimportant point Baz had written, at not a you Rolfe did not call for me to express elephantine crass heart on your shirt sympathy. If you do not know what I feel and think by now, find somewhere else to blog. How about the anti-homeopathy circles (about which I have much sympathy with your position).

    If you don't like what I write, please complain to Black, but so far nothing I've said has apparently caused him alarm, though he says he has somewhat eccentric standards.

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  46. I'm quite sure Professor Black is not offended by your comments. He has a very tolerant attitude to his blog posts.

    However, I'm still entitled to express my opinion that talking about scoring points, as if this was a game of Cluedo, is grossly insensitive.

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  47. That is why I do not treat it as a game. Numbers of CIA officials, senior government personnel, forensic scientists and the like face any number of charges ranging from perjury to murder.

    I want to see them in the dock. I do not see my position as point scoring. And one doesn't score points in Cluedo.

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