Wednesday 7 October 2015

Lockerbie: the alternate theories

[This is the headline over a long article by Katie Worth that was published yesterday evening on the PBS website to accompany Ken Dornstein's films. It reads as follows:]

The only person ever convicted for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was Libyan. And although the former Libyan dictator, Muammar Qaddafi, never accepted personal blame for the attack, in 2003 his government took responsibility “for the actions of its officials” and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to families of the bombing’s 270 victims.
But the case against Libya has never been universally accepted. Nearly 30 years since the attack, some victims’ family members, journalists, and investigators dispute the prosecution’s version of events. Among those who have found fault with the case include a United Nations observer to the Lockerbie trial, the trial’s legal architect and an independent review commission established by the Scottish government.
Over the years, alternative theories have proliferated, as have books and documentaries that purport to present the “real story” of what was one of the worst terrorist attacks against Americans before 9/11.

QUESTIONS ABOUT LIBYA

Two men were originally indicted for the Lockerbie attack: Abdel Basset al Megrahi, who was convicted in 2001, and a second Libyan, Lhamen Fhimah, who was acquitted. Over the course of their months-long trial, prosecutors alleged that Megrahi, a man U.S. investigators identified as a member of Libyan intelligence, and Fhimah, a station manager for Libyan Arab Airlines, were responsible for getting the suitcase believed to have carried the bomb onto Flight 103. The bomb was built into a Toshiba cassette recorder, and tucked inside a brown Samsonite suitcase with clothes that Megrahi was said to have purchased.
The court accepted the prosecution’s arguments against Megrahi and sentenced him to life in prison, but it acquitted Fhimah, stating that there was “insufficient corroboration” of the evidence against him.
This outcome was emphatically criticized by the United Nations observer to Megrahi’s trial, Hans Kochler, who in 2001 stated in his official report that the court’s decision was “exclusively based on circumstantial evidence and on a series of highly problematic inferences,” and that the guilty verdict “appears to be arbitrary, even irrational.”
The outcome was similarly decried by the man credited with creating the unique legal framework of the trial — a non-jury trial under Scots Law held in the neutral country of Netherlands — Edinburgh University emeritus law professor Robert Black. He has spent years blogging about his disagreement with Megrahi’s conviction, which he says was unwarranted considering the evidence, and would not have been replicated in a jury trial.
In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, after more than three years of investigating, validated several of these misgivings, concluding that “some of what we have discovered may imply innocence” and referred Megrahi’s case to an appeal court in the interests of avoiding “a miscarriage of justice.”
The commission rejected several points of contention raised by critics, saying they found no signs that evidence had been tampered with, that the Libyans had been framed, or that there had been “unofficial CIA involvement” in the investigation. But other points were worrying enough that the case merited an appeal.
One point of concern for the commission involved a key witness for the prosecution — a shopkeeper from Malta named Tony Gauci, who testified that Megrahi had purchased the clothes that accompanied the bomb from his shop.
However, the commission found Gauci’s testimony problematic. He said it was raining the day Megrahi went shopping, but weather reports show it was likely not raining when Megrahi was in Malta. And Gauci said that Christmas lights on his streets were not yet on, when there is evidence that they were.
Gauci also identified Megrahi from a lineup as the man who came into his shop — but only after being shown a picture of him in a magazine. The commission said this detail “undermines the reliability of his identification” of Megrahi.
Megrahi’s defenders say there is still more to consider. In an interview with FRONTLINE filmmaker Ken Dornstein, John Ashton, who worked as a defense investigator during Megrahi’s first appeal and has written three books arguing that Megrahi was innocent, said the origin of the timer used in the bomb is questionable. According to metallurgists hired by the defense in 2009, the timer’s circuit board was a different color and coated in a different substance than those designed by MEBO, the Swiss company that the timer was linked back to and that had a relationship with the Libyans. This discrepancy “breaks the link with those timers, breaks the link with Libya, breaks the link with Megrahi,” said Ashton.
Ashton has also dismissed the prosecution’s allegation that the suitcase originated from Malta and travelled through Frankfurt, writing in a recent opinion piece that a researcher “has effectively proved that the bomb originated from Heathrow.” This theory hangs on evidence of a security breach at Heathrow Airport in London — where Pan Am Flight 103 originated — 18 hours prior to the attack. However, an appeals panel rejected this argument as grounds for a retrial. [RB: Dr Morag Kerr’s evidence establishing that the bomb suitcase was in luggage container AVE4041 before the baggage ever arrived on the feeder flight from Frankfurt is in no way linked to, or dependent upon, the break-in at Terminal 3.]
Many of these points have never seen their day in court, because Megrahi abandoned his second appeal right before he was released from Scottish prison in 2009 on compassionate grounds due to ill health.
“The appeal, had it gone forward, would have dragged the Scottish criminal justice through the mud,” Ashton said. “I believe they wanted this buried.”

EARLY THEORIES

The Libyans weren’t initially on investigators’ radar, according to a 1991 fact sheetreleased by the U.S. State Department: “The dominant hypothesis of the early stages of the Pan Am 103 investigation focused on indications that the bombing was the outcome of joint planning by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLC-GC).”
This theory stemmed from what the fact sheet described as “reliable intelligence” that indicated those groups were planning to attack a U.S. target in retaliation for an incident in which American warship USS Vincennes accidentally shot down an Iranian Airbus in July 1988, five months before Lockerbie.
Further, the bomb that exploded on Pan Am 103 was strikingly similar to one found in the car of a PFLC-GC militant during a raid in Frankfurt, Germany less than two months earlier. Both were concealed in a Toshiba radio and consisted of similar explosives. The PFLC-GC was also reportedly in possession of flight schedules. And the Frankfurt connection — the Pan Am 103 flight came from Frankfurt before landing in Heathrow and then departing for New York — seemed unlikely to be coincidental, some have said.
But investigators eventually turned away from this theory. Per the State Department, the Toshiba radios were different in appearance and used different bomb technology.  The PFLC-GC’s bomb used an altimeter for activation, while the bomb on Pan Am 103 used a sophisticated timer. And even though the origin of the suitcase that is believed to have carried the bomb onto Flight 103 would later raise questions, investigators said that it was most likely transferred from Malta to Frankfurt. This, the State Department memo said, pointed investigators’ attention to the Libyans, who had been traveling in and out of Malta.
Though investigators say they never found hard evidence of an Iranian-Palestinian conspiracy, last year, an Iranian defector to Germany gave the theory new life when he claimed the attack was ordered by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomheini “to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus” that had been shot down by the U.S. warship.
This theory has proved durable and, for many, convincing. In its 800-page review of the Lockerbie evidence, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission said the evidence found in the Frankfurt raid shortly before the Lockerbie bombing — including the Toshiba bomb and the flight timetable — led it to determine that “there was some evidence that could support an inference of involvement by” Palestinian terrorists.
Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter was one of the 270 victims of Flight 103, is among those who believe Megrahi was innocent. Swire has repeatedly told reporters that he believes Iran was primarily responsible for the attack, and that the U.S. did not pursue this angle because officials wanted  “to blame somebody, anybody, rather than Iran.”
Investigating the Iran link, says Swire, would have caused diplomatic problems at a time when Americans were negotiating over hostages in Lebanon.
“It seems to me that by far the most likely explanation for the blaming of Libya was to secure the release of Terry Waite and other hostages from Beirut,” Swire told The Telegraph in 2013.

A MULTINATIONAL CONSPIRACY?

The main competing theories of who was behind the attack — Libyans or a cohort of Iranian and/or Palestinian extremists — are not mutually exclusive for some of those who’ve looked into the case. After all, Libya, Iran and Palestinian terrorist groups had close ties, and had worked together in previous attacks.
Two years before Lockerbie, the State Department reported that Qaddafi had provided “safe haven, money and arms” to the PFLP-GC and had also announced a “strategic alliance” with Iran, which he hoped to “use as a foundation for joint operational planning for terrorist attacks against various regional foes.”
Nor did he express qualms about using these links to attack American targets. During a speech in 1985, Qaddafi remarked that “we have the right to fight America, and we have the right to export terrorism to them.”
Syria may have also been involved, according to some theories. Libya, Iran and Palestinian extremists all had links in Syria, and according to the State Department’s fact sheet, Syria was the primary political sponsor of PFLP-GC, and “was at least broadly aware” of the group’s alliances and operations.
So did the leaders Libya, Iran, Syria and a Palestinian extremist group collaborate to bring down Pan Am 103? The State Department did not dismiss the possibility in its 1991 memo.
“We cannot rule out a broader conspiracy between Libya and other governments or terrorist organizations,” the fact sheet stated. “Despite these links, we lack information indicating direct collaboration.”
Today, nearly 30 years after the attack, many such questions around Lockerbie have yet to be definitively answered. For some at least, that means the bombing will remain a mystery.

16 comments:

  1. DOSSIER LOCKERBIE, 2015:

    Ken Dornstein's Filmstory "My Broder's Bomber", ist ein Ballon dem die Luft ausgeht. Das angeblich aufgefundene MST-13 Timerfragment (PT-35) ist ein Beweisbetrug mit einem manipulierten Circuit Board ! Neuste offizielle Dokumente eröffnen, dass das Circuit Board nicht von einem MST-13 Timer, welche nach Libyen geliefert wurden, abstammen kann !
    Bei Firma Siemens Comp. in Deutschland wurden auf Order von Police Officer, William Williamson, das PT-35) Fragment (Prototyp fabriziert aus 8 Lagen Fiberglas) in zwei Teile getrennt (PT-35/b) und (DP-31/a) und die entscheidenden Merkmale, 3 Kratzspuren und der Buchstabe "M", (für Muster) ausgeschliffen, damit auf ein grünes Duplikat (PT-35/b, fabriziert aus 9 Lagen Fiberglas) gewechselt werden konnte.
    Begründung: Nur mit einem grünen , MST-13 Timerfragment mit 9 Lagen Fiberglas, konnte man Libyen mit dem "Bombing" auf PanAm 103 über Lockerbie verkoppeln. Neue offizielle Dokumente werden demnächst veröffentlicht.
    Der Film dient nur dazu, das schlechte Gewissen zu beruhigen, wegen der Annahme des Blutgeldes von der Kadhafi Foundation GIFCA, über US$ 2,7 Milliarden.
    Abdel Basset Al Megrahi & Libya have nothing to do with the attack on PanAm 103 over Lockerbie!
    Mr. Al Megrahi was innocent in prison 10 years - He remains the political victim No. 271!

    Please visit also Information on link, Clearing House: Lockerbie : $2.7 billion Sham and Shame !
    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm

    by Edwin Bollier, MEBO Ltd Telecommunication Switzerland. Webpage: www.lockerbie.ch

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  2. What a fine piece of work, so rarely seen from a professional writer with rather limited time to dig into a deeper understanding.

    Ms. Worth
    https://twitter.com/katieworth
    http://www.katieworth.com/
    has just gained herself a fan!

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    1. What, really? I think she completely blew it with her lazy misrepresentation of the basis for the Heathrow introduction theory.

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    2. Dear Rolfe

      Wow! Should we send a warning to other journalists who'd write something spreading the words of Megrahi's insanely unjust conviction, that if they don't get it 100% right we us the word 'lazy' here?

      Have I misunderstood something? Did Ms. Worth have had considerable time to to study the subject, e.g. financed by an employer?

      I thought she was a freelance journalist that needs to pick up and produce in a matter of days or, rarely, weeks (and with concurrent doings).
      Being able to do that is a condition for getting read in the first place. Only by productivity you can create a name and a position for yourself. So there must be, and will be, an inverse relationship between time spent on details, and the number of people who read what you write.

      Your book is one of the most impressive pieces of work that I have had in hand. Written by an amateur in the best sense of the word (= 'one that has heart and mind in matters' (which professionals often does not, it's just their work)) with the mental capacity and the detailed knowledge to see through the myriad of info.
      But as an introduction for anyone that can devote limited to the matter – casual readers or journalists - it is of course just not it.

      Unlike Ms. Worth's article. We will be talking about readers who know nothing else than that Libya+Megrahi did it, and that he returned as a hero on top of it.

      In that light it is in an article that conveys the truth better than we could ever have hoped for.

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    3. The article is on the web site of PBS, as an accompaniment to the Frontline documentaries. I would expect that an article published in that context would be informed by the research carried out to support the thesis presented in these programmes. What's the point, otherwise?

      What it says to me is that the Frontline team ignored or sidelined or entirely failed to appreciate the nature of the Heathrow evidence. This isn't just A. N. Other journo publishing in the general press, this has the PBS imprint on it, and hence the Frontline imprint.

      If you're right and it's merely another hurried journalistic cobbling-together from a few easily-accessed sources, then the author should not invent facts not in evidence. The source of the sentence about the Heathrow origin being "essentially proved" was John Ashton's article from last Sunday. That article said nothing at all about this proof being simply that there had been a break-in the previous night. She made that bit up, apparently in order to dismiss the point. This is both lazy and incompetent in my book. It also speaks to a desire to dismiss concrete evidence indicating Megrahi's innocence.

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    4. "What it says to me is that the Frontline team ignored or sidelined or entirely failed to appreciate the nature of the Heathrow evidence."

      Have you ever considered that it is not that simple to pick up?

      I don't have your book right here, but I remember the conclusion 'The Bedford suitcase was the bomb, beyond reasonable doubt'. Maybe on page 100 or so?
      Show me the journalist who has time for that, and I will show you a very slim one with a virtually non-existing reader-base.

      Have you ever considered publishing a half-page bullet-pointed synopsis?
      A "press-kit"?

      Duncan, Linklater. They are a sorry bunch, put in their position to be be deaf, dumb and blind, for a reason. Nothing you could write would have any effect, ever.

      But for the rest, offering whatever time they have and trying, it can never be too easy.

      "She made that bit up, apparently in order to dismiss the point. This is both lazy and incompetent in my book. It also speaks to a desire to dismiss concrete evidence indicating Megrahi's innocence."

      Oh, come on! In this matter we are like people being invited to a Rijsttafel, me thinking it was a terrific dinner, you, being a connaisseur of 'sambal kacang', peanut sauce, one of at least twenty-five elements, are furious because it wasn't right, and accuse the chef for deliberate trying to sabotage our evening.

      Too appease you the chef just came running with a statement about the failed peanut sauce: the paragraph has been corrected and a note has been added. While it will not make you enjoy the dinner it might shake your thoughts that the sauce was deliberately spoiled.

      Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that the theory that the suitcase bomb believed to have taken down Flight 103 originated from London was based on evidence of a security breach at Heathrow Airport. However, this theory has been argued independent of the suspected breach.

      - - -

      Please write the bulleted synopsis, and let's make sure it is easily findable, also for people visiting this page. There are times where even I - or especially I? - could use it.

      And please let's be kind to our growing number of professional friends, despite the shortcomings that they, compared to the world's foremost experts in Lockerbie matters (you and Robert), are bound to have.

      "Adequately explained by the conditions under which people work."

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    5. Well, let's not fight about it. My argument is not with the journalist particularly, but with the Frontline investigative team. While you might excuse a journalist for omitting to read every source in detail, this excuse cannot be made for an investigative team that has been examining the case for over three years.

      Yes, there is a problem, in that journalists in general are not picking up on what I have written. Excellent reviews were published by Private Eye and by the Irish edition of Big Issue, but there it stops. I had a short exposition published in iScot, the January 2015 issue, but again no follow-up interest seemed to be generated. Perhaps it's simply Lockerbie ennui. (I have a different explanation, myself.)

      Nevertheless Ken Dornstein knows I exist. We had dinner together with Robert Forrester in late 2012, when I tried to explain my thesis to him as it was then formulated - unfortunately this happened before I had sight of the crucial baggage photographs in February 2013. He simply evaded the points I was making, instead asking me if I would change my mind if conclusive proof of Megrahi's involvement was discovered. (My answer was that I'd have to see the proof and judge it for myself.)

      Forgive my irritation, but in almost two years not one single person who has read my thesis has come to me and said, I disagree with you because of [some rational argument]. Instead I am ignored, abused as a "conspiracy theorist" and so not worth reading, and misrepresented. Ken Dornstein and/or some other member of the Frontline investigative team has to have read the book. To fail to do so would be an unthinkable oversight given the subject they were investigating. It seems they have taken the "ignore" approach.

      Well, I'm getting tired of it. If there is a flaw in my analysis or my reasoning, explain it to me, debate it with me, and try to point out my error. But if you can't find one, you can't go blindly on behaving as if nothing has changed and the bomb can be assumed to have been introduced on Malta.

      Yes, the article has been changed. It looks as if Frontline don't want a succinct explanation of my analysis (750 words) on their web site.

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  3. .... a researcher “has effectively proved that the bomb originated from Heathrow.” This theory hangs on evidence of a security breach at Heathrow Airport in London — where Pan Am Flight 103 originated — 18 hours prior to the attack. However, an appeals panel rejected this argument as grounds for a retrial.

    As Prof Black notes, this is an extremely serious error in the PBS piece. The source of their reference to my work on the Heathrow introduction seems to be nothing more than the short mention in John Ashton's recent piece in the Sunday Herald. The assumption that my reasoning is based on the break-in seems to be their own inference entirely, as John certainly said no such thing.

    I find it absolutely incredible that the Frontline team carried out their years-long investigation into the Lockerbie evidence without reading my book and forming an opinion on the merits of my argument - which of course doesn't relate to the break-in at all. Especially as I spoke to Ken Dornstein personally in Edinburgh in 2012 and outlined an early version of my theory to him. My argument was all about the luggage positioning and not at all about the break-in.

    If there is a flaw in my reasoning which still admits of the possibility of a Malta introduction I would be very grateful if someone would point it out. My book has been out for almost two years, and so far nobody has even tried. Instead my work has been ignored, misrepresented and badmouthed in the press (yes Magnus Linklater, I'm talking about you). This is the latest in that series, and whether the misrepresention is deliberate or indicative of no more than ignorance and abysmal research I don't know.

    I posted the following comment on the PBS article about 10 o'clock this morning, which is of course the middle of the night in America. We'll see if it's approved once they all get up and get to work.

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    1. .... a researcher “has effectively proved that the bomb originated from Heathrow.” This theory hangs on evidence of a security breach at Heathrow Airport in London — where Pan Am Flight 103 originated — 18 hours prior to the attack. However, an appeals panel rejected this argument as grounds for a retrial.

      As the researcher concerned, please allow me to correct this very serious misconception.

      My proof that the bomb originated from Heathrow (rather than flying in on the feeder flight from Frankfurt, the route alleged by the Crown to support the Malta theory) has nothing whatsoever to do with the break-in at Heathrow which occurred about 18 hours before the departure of Pan Am 103.

      The original investigators were convinced, on very questionable grounds, that the exploding suitcase was on the second layer of luggage in the container, not on the bottom layer. The suitcases in the second layer were all from the feeder flight, therefore they concluded that the bomb must have travelled on the feeder flight. This is the contention that I have proved to be in error.

      Detailed analysis of the pattern of explosion damage to the suitcases surrounding the bomb suitcase (and to the airframe under the floor of the container) proves beyond any doubt that the bomb suitcase was in fact on the bottom layer, not the second layer. This analysis is not complicated or esoteric, but it was unaccountably not carried out by the original investigation.

      The position of the bomb suitcase reconciles without doubt to the position of a mysterious "brown hardshell, the type Samsonite make" which was seen by a baggage handler in that position in the container in the loading shed at Heathrow, an hour before the feeder flight landed. That suitcase appeared while the baggage handler was on his tea break, and nobody was ever identified who admitted to putting it in the container.

      The bomb suitcase was identified as a Samsonite Silhouette hardshell, in a sort of brownish-maroon colour, matching exactly the description of this mysterious suitcase. No such suitcase was checked in by any of the Heathrow transfer passengers, and all luggage checked in by these passengers was recovered on the ground and can be excluded from being in the "under the bomb" position (which is where the case described by the baggage handler would have been if the bomb suitcase had indeed been on the second layer). In addition, none of the blast-damaged cases recovered at Lockerbie can be matched to the case the baggage handler described, apart from the bomb suitcase itself.

      This is the basis of the proof that the bomb was introduced into the container in the loading shed at Heathrow, not on Malta as alleged by the Crown. The fact of the break-in is neither here nor there, other than observing that once it is realised that the bomb did indeed originate from London, the break-in seems likely to be relevant. Nevertheless, airside security at Heathrow was widely agreed to be abysmal, and the break-in is in no way essential to the thesis.

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    2. [continued] I am astonished that a team which has been researching the Lockerbie evidence for several years seems unaware of this crucial aspect. It was published in detail in my 2013 book "Adequately Explained by Stupidity?", which I would have thought would be essential reading for anyone genuinely interested in establishing the truth of the matter. Indeed, I outlined an early version of my proof to Ken Dornstein himself, when we met in Edinburgh in 2012.

      No matter who Megrahi knew, or travelled with, or consorted with, this fact must be taken on board. The crime occurred at about 4.30 pm GMT in London, not in the morning on Malta. At 4.30 pm GMT on 21st December 1988, Megrahi was verifiably in Tripoli, 1,000 miles away.

      There are very many very bad people in the middle east, and indeed all over the world. Whether or not Megrahi was one of these is of secondary importance, unless he can be linked to this particular crime. As the evidence stands, it appears that he has an unbreakable alibi.

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    3. Interesting. Frontline have approved a comment made before mine, and now a much more recent one by Frank Duggan no less, but no sign of mine. I wonder why?

      I've posted a one-word comment, merely to correct a bad spelling mistake in Frank Duggan's comment, so we'll see if that passes muster.

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    4. I really, really hope that your comment(s) gets there.
      Anything else would be 'adequately unexplainable...' :-(

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    5. I've had an email from Frontline, saying that they have "corrected" the article. The passage (above) which originally read

      .... writing in a recent opinion piece that a researcher “has effectively proved that the bomb originated from Heathrow.” This theory hangs on evidence of a security breach at Heathrow Airport in London — where Pan Am Flight 103 originated — 18 hours prior to the attack. However, an appeals panel rejected this argument as grounds for a retrial.

      now reads

      .... pointing to research conducted since the trial that he writes, “effectively proved that the bomb originated from Heathrow,” where Flight 103 departed from.

      A link to my book is now included, which is a positive, but the sentence is now pretty short and a bit mangled, and I doubt if anyone will actually take it on board.

      It seems they are not going to allow my comment which actually explains the reasoning behind this conclusion to see the light of day.

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    6. We progress. I'm now drafting a 400-word version. If that goes through, then stand by for ad hominem abuse from Frank Duggan. (Last time we met in a BTL comments section, he derided the very idea that he might read my "self-published" book. I didn't bother to point out to him that Richard Marquise's execrable offering Scotbom was also self-published.)

      I can understand the derision sometimes heaped on fiction authors who go down the self-publishing route, though that's becoming less and less justifiable by the year. It remains the case that a good fiction book should be able to find a publisher if the author is persistent enough. (Though Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was rejected by almost every publisher in the business before being accepted by Bloomsbury, and I wonder what scorn would have been heaped on it if Rowling had given up and decided to self-publish before getting to Bloomsbury!)

      Non-fiction is a different matter. Many non-fiction books are nîche products that are never going to sell millions. I don't believe John Ashton's books, published by Birlinn, have sold more than a few thousand. My particular reason for going down the self-publishing route was speed, as it became increasingly obvious in mid-2013 that neither of the publishers who had expressed an interest had the slightest intention of getting the finger out and publishing the book to catch the December 25th anniversary of the bombing. This became a particularly acute concern when one publisher indicated the necessity for having a lawyer go over it line by line to check for possible defamation. (Professor Black had already looked at it in that light and was confident that there was nothing in it that anyone would sue over, but that's not the same as a legal opinion that nothing in it could conceivably be grounds for a defamation suit!)

      It dawned on me pretty forcefully that no publisher was going to get the thing out in time, but not only that, it was possible I'd be forced to water it down quite substantially to get it past any publisher's lawyer. I went to Troubador, and they provided an excellent service. Defamation was covered by my signing an undertaking to take sole responsibility for the content in that respect, something I was entirely prepared to do.

      But, you know, it's self-published. So it's obviously rubbish and can be ignored. Just like A Detective's Tale and Scotbom, presumably.

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  4. Ha! Trust a man like Duncan to use 'self-published' as an argument against the quality of a piece of work.

    Is it the idea, that if an established publishing company think it will appeal to a sufficient percentage of readers out there, then it must have some quality beyond that too? In that case I should rather have bought '50 Shades of Grey' which must be in the order of a million times better value for money than 'Adequately explained...'

    At the very best you can say that if a piece of work is filled with nonsense and factual errors, then the publishers review process might catch it, as selling it would backfire on the company.

    But as far as I know nobody has yet pointed out any weak argumentation in 'Adequately explained...'.

    For the verdicts of Megrahi. however, it might have been good that nobody had to let it go through a publisher.
    "Sorry, guys, thank you, it is, eh, a nice piece of work, but it is a bit long-winded on a thin background, and our reviewers say that the conclusions are very poorly supported..."

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    1. Frank Duggan is certainly into ad hominem. His comment on the PBS article consisted of a complaint that Hans Köchler's report on the trial wasn't "official" as he wasn't required to produce one as a UN observer, and none of the other UN observers did.

      As usual, no attempt at all to address the content of the report, simply try to discredit the author. He invariably plays the man rather than the ball, on any pretext he can dream up.

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