Allan Francovich's film The Maltese Double-Cross can be viewed here and Lester Coleman's book Trail of the Octopus: From Beirut to Lockerbie can be read here.
The links are supplied because it was recently suggested to me that these sources were hard to find. As most readers of this blog are aware (though from past experience some few clearly are not) my provision of a link to a Lockerbie-related document does not in any way imply endorsement of its contents.
This might be a slightly better copy of the Maltese Double Cross. It's not such a responsive player, but it doesn't have that stripe down one side.
ReplyDeletehttp://archive.org/details/The-Maltese-Double-Cross
Fantastic film. Probably completely wrong about the modus operandi of the bombing, but I think it was brilliantly made.
Somewhere, somewhere, there has to be a decent copy. With the credits still on.
Trail of the Octopus is a helluva good cure for insomnia.
Mission Lockerbie, 2012, doc. nr.8157.rtf. (google translation, german/english):
ReplyDeleteThis film - like "The Maltese Double Cross" - is an example of a perfect Intelligence Agency disinformation (with targeted Iniskretion or untrue information). Such films are "game material" for influencing, respectively for the misleading the media transposed up - often with false documents and information.
Tiny Rowland went on to finance the 1994 documentary 'Lockerbie: the Maltese Double Cross' in which he made the amazing claim that a 23-strong South African delegation - including foreign minister Pik Botha - were booked on Pan Am Flight 103 of 21 December 1988 but had been warned by "an unimpeachable source" not to travel on that flight...
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch
Mission Lockerbie, 2012, doc. nr.8157.rtf. (google translation, german/english):
ReplyDeleteThis film - like "The Maltese Double Cross" - is an example of a perfect Intelligence Agency disinformation (with targeted Iniskretion or untrue information). Such films are "game material" for influencing respectively for the misleading the media transposed up - often with false documents and information.
by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd. Switzerland. URL: www.lockerbie.ch
It was a blatant hoax in which at least two and perhaps three of the supposed "witnesses" were invented.
ReplyDeleteJohn Ashton's (researcher for "The Maltese Double Cross") recent book Lockerbie The Evidence, with it's references to Khalid Jafaar's "fiancee" gives some insight into how this garbage was created. Indeed Mr Ashton has made a career from making spurious and racist claims about the only Arab victim Khalid Jafaar none of which of course have panned out.
(i.e.he was a drug trafficker, a member of Hezbollah and a "named" member of the PFLP-GC!)
Apparently in an (supposed)interview with "the Relative" (a person claiming to be a relative of Khalid Jafaar who claimed to have some knowledge of Lockerbie (hoping to trade this knowledge for permission to smuggle drugs into the USA) he claimed that "at the airport" Jafaar was given a radio cassette recorder containing drugs by a "Hezbollah" leader who told Jafaar he could marry his sister! (Hence the "fiancee"!)
According to the Maltese Double Cross this cassette recorder was taken off him and returned with the bomb inside it! (How "the Relative" knew this waqs not explained!)
Another Maltese Double X claim was the claim Jafaar travelled to sweden and met Abu Talb evidenced by the creation of fictitious witness "Mr Goldberg" who (allegedly) manifested himself only to a Pan Am employee before disappearing for ever. Apparently Talb gave the 19 year old bachelor a blue babygro garment evidenced by a phone call Jafaar supposedly made to his sister. More guff from "the Relative"?
Ashton has a nerve refuting Jslil's claims about Megrahi's stipend.
The Maltese Double Cross was a hoax or if such a thing is possible a double hoax. It attempted to "prove" Juval Aviv's Interfor Report (for which Aviv produced not a shred of evidence) as well as the "refinement" of Interfor that "the terrorsits" smuggled both a bomb and a suitcase of heroin. (Why they would do this was not explained.) The film relied not simply on spurious evidence but created non-existent persons as "witnesses".
ReplyDeleteThe film's "researcher" John Ashton's recent book gives some insight into how this fantasy was created. The book refers to Khalid Jafaar's "fiancee". Ashton has created this "fiancee" from a claim supposedly made to him by "the Relative" who told him some yarn about a Hezbollah leader giving Jafaar a cassette recorder containing drugs. The Hezbollah leader told Jafaar he could marry his sister hence "the fianacee".
(Cover-up of Convenience claimed Jafaar was a memberb of Hezbollah evidenced by the recovery of a Hezbollah T shirt which it transpires belonged to Major McKee!)
(According to The Maltese Double Cross the cassette recorder was taken off Jafaar in germany and returned with the bomb inside it.)
The Maltese Double cross also sought to "prove" Jafaar went to Sweden to meet Abu Talb. A witness "Mr Goldberg" was created to "prove" this. According to the narrator Brian Cox Talb gave the 19year old bachelor Jafaar a blue babygro evidenced by a phone call Jafaar supposedly made to his sister! Again part of "the Relative's" story.
I think Ashton has a nerve trying to refute Jalil's claims about Megrahi's stipend. he has come up with a myriad of far dodgier claims.
Lester Coleman was of course another Maltese Double Cross "witness" claiming to have seen Jafaar at the DEA's Cyprus office (a claim for which Ashton came up with some spurious corroboration). Coleman is an associate of the Maltese Double Cross' "consultant" the drug trafficker, conman and convicted fraudster Oswald Le Winter (described by Ashton as "a sophisticated CIA disinformation specialist").
Perhaps EBOL is right it was a CIA hoax!
I never knew lewinter..
ReplyDeleteMet him once in palm springs in 1997. Lester coleman. 2012.