Jim Swire responds to Frank Duggan's falsehood and fable accusation

[What follows is Dr Jim Swire’s response to Frank Duggan’s assertion that UK relatives are lying and promoting a fable when they refer to a member of  the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism saying: "Your government and mine know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell."]

I do not usually reply to statements in the media from Mr Frank Duggan, however he has recently very publicly accused me of lying, concerning an event which happened in the United States embassy, where Mr Duggan was present, acting as relatives' liaison officer over the Lockerbie case, I believe.

I was also present.

Mr Duggan now claims that an alleged remark to one of the British relatives was not made.

It is hard to understand how he would know that because the remark was made 'off the record', confidentially in an aside to the father of another British victim.

I know and trust that victim's father.

The remark made to him was "Your government and ours know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell.”

That is not the kind of remark which any bereaved parent is ever likely to forget, but Mr Duggan could not have overheard it; perhaps he also does not understand its implications for a bereaved family.

Perhaps whatever Mr Duggan does not hear does not happen?

[RB: Jim Swire here wrote a sentence about PCAST which I have omitted because it referred to the wrong PCAST. Dr Swire has now circulated a correction. In an email to me he says: 'In demonstration of the fallibility of my memory I must also point out that Google led me to the wrong use of PCAST.' I may add that I should be happy if my own memory were only as fallible as Dr Swire's.]

I do however owe Mr Duggan and others an apology: the meeting in the US embassy in London apparently took place in February 1990 not in 1989 as I had thoughtlessly previously claimed. Forgive the weakness of an old man's memory for dates, Mr Duggan, but these days there is always Google.

Those who wish to view Mr Duggan in action may like to dig out of the net the Channel Four showing of a film about Lockerbie called The Maltese Double-Cross, which was followed by a live on air discussion where again I was present, as was Mr Duggan and where I had to ask a Mr Buck Revell of the FBI (appearing by satellite) why his son had canceled his flight on Pan Am 103 instead of getting murdered like my daughter. Mr Revell is, I understand, no longer in the FBI. If I recall correctly he told us that his son had received an unexpected change of leave dates from the army. His son was not claimed to be a member of the staff at the US Embassy in Moscow, where warnings about a terrorist threat specific to Pan Am had been posted on a staff notice board well before the tragedy. [RB: I cannot find this particular discussion online. But another instructive media performance by Frank Duggan can be viewed here.]

We have always been mystified as to why the Pan Am 103 plane was 'only' 2/3 full just before Christmas.

I won't ascribe a date to that discussion group, in case my memory might again prove defective.

There was also a British near equivalent to this amazing revelation from PCAST. In her autobiographical book published in 1993 - two years after the two Libyans had been indicted over involvement in the Lockerbie disaster. Lady Thatcher wrote, speaking of the attack by the USAF on Tripoli in 1986, itself an alleged reprisal for a terrorist bombing of a German disco:

“It turned out to be a more decisive blow against Libyan sponsored terrorism than I could ever have imagined....the much vaunted Libyan counter attack did not and could not take place. Gaddafi had not been destroyed but he had been humbled.” (The Downing Street Years, pp 448-9)

I fear, Mr Duggan, we shall continue to seek the truth and since we are European citizens we have an inalienable right to that truth under the provisions of the ECHR. Please Google that.