A look at Lockerbie: Iran Air Flight 655

[This is the headline over an article, the first in a projected series, published yesterday on the libcom.org website. It reads in part:]

The tragic story of the Lockerbie bombing begins in Iran, with the US downing of Iranian Air Flight 655 killing 290. Part 1 of a multi-part series.

Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Shia of Iran were asserting autonomy from Western control. Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, nervous about the influence that the revolution might have on his own country's Shia majority, invaded Iran and started the Iran-Iraq war of 1984-1988. Saddam, fully supported by the United States, felt confident that his victory would be swift. However, after a long stalemate the tide had started to turn on Iraq, and by 1987 the country was facing the serious possibility that it would be conquered by Iran. In 1988, the US, anxious to save their friend Saddam from destruction, began attacking Iranian oil platforms and ships. US operations had killed 56 Iranians by June of 1988.

One US naval vessel dispatched to the region was the USS Vincennes, commanded by Captain Will Rogers III. The Vincennes was a state-of-the-art Aegis cruiser. Designed to fight against advanced Soviet weaponry, the Vincennes was purported to be able to shoot down 200 incoming missiles at once. As Newsweek would later write in its in depth analysis of the events, “The Vincennes had a dubious reputation inside the U.S. fleet in the gulf…By early July, Rogers was widely regarded as ‘trigger happy,’ according to several high-ranking officers.” Indeed few could scarcely imagine just how apt this description would prove to be.

On the morning of July 3rd, 1988, Rogers successfully provoked gunboats into attacking his recon helicopter in Iranian territorial waters. Rogers quickly rushed to engage the gunboats despite it being a clear violation of Iranian sovereignty. When he arrived, the helicopter was no longer in any danger. However, even though the boats posed no threat to the Vincennes (which Newsweek speculates the gunboats might not have even seen), Rogers claimed on the radio that the gunboats were headed towards him and that he needed to engage in self-defense. At this time, David Carlson, the perplexed captain of the nearby USS Sides, wondered if Rogers in his billion dollar Aegis Cruiser felt threatened by the gunboats (little more than speedboats with crude weapons attached), then why didn’t Rogers simply turn around and leave? Rogers did not leave and instead received the go ahead from his commander in Bahrain to engage. However, the Aegis cruiser was designed to shoot down advanced Soviet weaponry, not lightly armed speedboats, so the task proved more difficult than Rogers first imagined it would be and he became involved in a protracted battle between his billion dollar ship and four speedboats with small guns attached to them.

Right around this time, Iran Air Flight 655, was taking off from Bandar Abbas Airport with 290 people on board. The flight was on its regularly scheduled flight to Dubai, which it ran twice every week. At the time of take off the USS Vincennes, identified Iran Air Flight 655 as “assumed hostile” and sent a computerized query to the airplane’s transponder to see if it was civilian or military. The plane’s computer identified itself to the Vincennes as civilian, but Vincennes crew-members were suspicious. Initially monitoring the situation was Petty Officer Andrew Anderson. Anderson, apparently confused by the time zones of the Gulf, did not find the regularly scheduled flight in the Navy’s book of commercial air traffic and speculated that the plane might be an F-14 fighter posing as civilian. Anderson alerted his commander Scott Lustig and his commander alerted the captain that a possible Iranian F-14 was inbound. (...)

Even if it was an F-14, the models that the Iranians owned (which were sold by the US to the Shah in the 1970s), were outdated and designed only for air-to-air combat, and therefore could do little against the Vincennes. However, after trying to hail the plane on military channels (which of course the passenger flight did not respond to because it was communicating on civilian channels) Rogers gave the green light to shoot down the aircraft. After announcing his intentions over military channels to take down the aircraft, USS Sides captain David Carlson, “wondered aloud in disbelief”, but assumed that the Vincennes must have some information that he did not. Attempting to fire, Scott Lustig pressed the wrong keys on his console 23 times before finally launching the missiles. Upon confirming that the missiles struck their target the crew of the Vincennes issued “a spontaneous cheer,” as Rogers would later recount in his farcical book, Storm Center.

Soon reality came crashing down on the crew of the Vincennes as wreckage and bodies from the civilian airliner began falling. All 290 passengers, including 66 children were killed. An entire Iranian family of sixteen, on their way to a wedding in Dubai, was killed, the children wearing their wedding clothes. It is assumed that many, if not most of the passengers were alive as they fell from the sky.

The reaction of Western leaders and the media was despicable. In an address to the UN Security Council Vice President George HW Bush said that the Vincennes acted “in self-defense,” and that “Iran, too, must bear a substantial measure of responsibility for what happened.” Bush went on saying, “There are three ways for Iran to avoid future tragedies… Keep airliners away from combat. Stop attacking innocent ships. Or, better still, the best way is peace.” An op-ed written on July 5th in The New York Times argues that Rogers “had little choice” other than to shoot down the airliner. “Blame may lie with the Iran Air pilot for failing to acknowledge the ship's warnings and flying outside the civilian corridor. Iran, too, may bear responsibility for failing to warn civilian planes away from the combat zone of an action it had initiated.” Conveniently, the Iran Air pilot, Mohsen Rezaian, was not alive to counter these accusations. Referring to US lies claiming that the Vincennes was engaged with Iranian gunboats to protect a German merchant vessel, William Safire wrote in a New York Times op-ed, “As the plane approached, ignoring repeated warnings and reportedly sending conflicting signals, the naval officer must have thought of the fate of the frigate.” Safire went on to criticize what he called, “military second-guessers”, and that “responsibility lies with the nation that started the war (Iraq) [sic] and the nation that grimly demands victory (Iran) [sic].” Never mind, of course, the fact that Iran was invaded by Iraq which attacked with the full support of the US government.

US government lies about what had occurred shifted daily as their statements became disproved. Initially the government claimed that the flight was descending in “attack mode” rather than ascending. This initial lie led to disgusting op-eds in Western media outlets speculating that the Iranian pilot was trying to fly his plane into the Vincennes. However, it would soon be proven by David Carlson and a nearby Italian naval vessel that the flight was in fact ascending not descending. Vice President Bush claimed that the Vincennes was rushing to the aid of a merchant vessel under attack, a claim which was a complete fabrication and which would later be retracted. It would then be claimed that the flight had been communicating the wrong signal, which was not true and was misinterpreted by crew members of the Vincennes. The lies were dispatched succinctly in a Newsweek article analyzing the disaster.

After news of the story broke, and a degree of international scrutiny was fixed on US actions, citizens of Vincennes, Indiana, began to pay more attention to an ongoing fundraising drive for a monument to the USS Vincennes in their hometown. (...) Robert Fisk writes, “When the ship returned to its home base of San Diego, it was given a hero’s welcome. The men of the Vincennes were all awarded combat action ribbons. The air warfare coordinator, Commander Scott Lustig, won the navy’s Commendation Medal for ‘heroic achievement,’ for the ‘ability to maintain his poise and confidence under fire’ that enabled him to ‘quickly and concisely complete the firing procedure.’” Captain Rogers retired honorably in 1991 after receiving the Legion of Merit award for “exceptionally meritorious conduct as a commanding officer (of the Vincennes).”

Following this crime, and the subsequent arrogance of the US leadership, the Iranians and people across the Middle East became convinced that the crime was committed intentionally. The Iranian leadership interpreted it as an act of war and furthermore believed that unless they retaliated the US would continue to shoot down its commercial airliners. In the months that followed, the Iranian leadership would host several meetings of bomb experts across the Middle East, and would start to forge a plan to show the West that Iran was capable of retaliating in a significant manner.

Lockerbie case 'unproven'

[This is the headline over a report on this date in 2001 on the BBC News website. It reads as follows:]

The judges hearing the case against two Libyans suspected of the Lockerbie bombing have been told it would be "unreasonable and unsafe" to convict them.

The accused have alleged that Palestinian terrorists carried out the bombing, and Bill Taylor QC, for the defence, said the prosecution had failed to dismiss that possibility.

As he made his closing submission at Camp Zeist, in the Netherlands, he said it would have been an "extraordinary coincidence" if Palestinian terrorists based in Germany had not planted the bomb which blew up Pan Am flight 103.

Mr Taylor, representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, pointed the finger at a cell of the Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine - General Command.

He said: "Whilst the defence cannot prove responsibility it can show the court that there is some relevant information which points away from the Crown theory and the alleged guilt of the two accused.

"The PFLP-GC German terror cell had access to similar, but not identical, Toshiba radios which experts believed contained the Pan Am bomb, and a raid on their base discovered they had stocks of different kinds of trigger devices.

He added: "There would still need to be an extraordinary coincidence that a group using such material in such a way in October 1988 in Germany was not responsible for the bombing of a flight which passed through Germany two months later."

Mr Taylor said that, before the court could find the two men guilty, it would need to dismiss that coincidence.

He told the judges: "It would be unreasonable and unsafe to take that course."

Once Mr Taylor completes his case, Mr Richard Keen QC, defending Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, will also insist his client is innocent and urge the judges to acquit.

On Tuesday the Crown dropped two of the three charges faced by the Libyans.

They had been initially charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and contravening the aviation security acts.

Now they face one charge of mass murder on 21 December, 1988.

On Wednesday prosecutors closed their case and said the evidence before the court demonstrated that the accused were responsible for the outrage.

But the Crown case closed with an admission that it was not known how the suitcase containing the bomb which destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 was placed on board the ill-fated Boeing 747.

Advocate depute Alistair Campbell QC said it was not essential to say how the bomb had got on board.

The judges on the panel are expected to retire for about a week before delivering their verdict to the court at Camp Zeist.

The neutral venue proposal

[On this date in 1994 I was in Tripoli. Here’s my explanation of how it came about:]

I first became involved in the Lockerbie affair in early 1993.  I was approached by representatives of a group of British businessmen whose desire to participate in major engineering works in Libya was being impeded by the UN sanctions.  They asked if I would be prepared to provide (on an unpaid basis) independent advice to the government of Libya on matters of Scottish criminal law,  procedure and evidence with a view (it was hoped) to persuading them that their two citizens would obtain a fair trial if they were to surrender themselves to the Scottish authorities.  This I agreed to do, and submitted material setting out the essentials of Scottish solemn criminal procedure and the various protections embodied in it for accused persons.

In the light of this material, it was indicated to me that the Libyan government was satisfied regarding the fairness of a criminal trial in Scotland but that since Libyan law prevented the extradition of nationals for trial overseas, the ultimate decision on surrender for trial would have to be one taken voluntarily by the accused persons themselves, in consultation with their independent legal advisers.  For this purpose a meeting was convened in Tripoli in October 1993 of the international team of lawyers which had already been appointed to represent the accused.  This team consisted of lawyers from Scotland, England, Malta, Switzerland and the United States and was chaired by the principal Libyan lawyer for the accused, Dr Ibrahim Legwell.  The Libyan government asked me to be present in Tripoli while the team was meeting so that the government itself would have access to independent Scottish legal advice should the need arise.  However, the Libyan government expectation was clearly that the outcome of the meeting of the defence team would be a decision by the two accused voluntarily to agree to stand trial in Scotland.

I am able personally to testify to how much of a surprise and embarrassment it was to the Libyan government when the outcome of the meeting of the defence team was an announcement that the accused were not prepared to surrender themselves for trial in Scotland. [RB: Incidentally, the Libyan government minister who broke the news to me and whose embarrassment was so obvious was Moussa Koussa.]  

In the course of a private meeting that I had a day later with Dr Legwell, he explained to me that the primary reason for the unwillingness of the accused to stand trial in Scotland was their belief that, because of unprecedented pre-trial publicity over the years, a Scottish jury could not possibly bring to their consideration of the evidence in this case the degree of impartiality and open-mindedness that accused persons are entitled to expect and that a fair trial demands.  A secondary consideration was the issue of the physical security of the accused if the trial were to be held in Scotland.  Not that it was being contended that ravening mobs of enraged Scottish citizens would storm Barlinnie prison, seize the accused and string them up from the nearest lamp posts.  Rather, the fear was that they might be snatched by special forces of the United States, removed to America and put on trial there (or, like Lee Harvey Oswald, suffer an unfortunate accident before being put on trial).

The Libyan government attitude remained, as it always had been, that they had no constitutional authority to hand their citizens over to the Scottish authorities for trial.  The question of voluntary surrender for trial was one for the accused and their legal advisers, and while the Libyan government would place no obstacles in the path of, and indeed would welcome, such a course of action, there was nothing that it could lawfully do to achieve it. (...)

Having mulled over the concerns expressed to me by Dr Legwell in October 1993, I returned to Tripoli and on 10 January 1994 presented a letter to him suggesting a means of resolving the impasse created by the insistence of the governments of the United Kingdom and United States that the accused be surrendered for trial in Scotland or America and the adamant refusal of the accused to submit themselves for trial by jury in either of these countries.  This was a detailed proposal, but in essence its principal elements were: that a trial be held outside Scotland, ideally in the Netherlands, in which the governing law and procedure would be that followed in Scottish criminal trials on indictment but with this major alteration, namely that the jury of 15 persons which is a feature of that procedure be replaced by a panel of judges who would have the responsibility of deciding not only questions of law but also the ultimate question of whether the guilt of the accused had been established on the evidence beyond reasonable doubt.

In a letter to me dated 12 January 1994, Dr Legwell stated that he had consulted his clients,  that this scheme was wholly acceptable to them and that if it were implemented by the government of the United Kingdom the suspects would voluntarily surrender themselves for trial before a tribunal so constituted.  By a letter of the same date the Deputy Foreign Minister of Libya stated that his government approved of the proposal and would place no obstacles in the path of its two citizens should they elect to submit to trial under this scheme.

The “Libya model”

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Peter Lee entitled North Korea’s ‘H-bomb’: No ado about something that was published yesterday on the Asia Times website (and the previous day on his China Matters website):]

One of the most interesting riddles of North Asian diplomacy is why the United States does not respond to Kim’s rather backhanded nuclear overtures and take this opportunity to stick it to the PRC [People’s Republic of China] by conducting a bilateral Myanmar-style rapprochement with North Korea, instead of continuing to endorse the PRC’s Six-Party-Talks formula for Beijing’s continued dominance of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea]’s foreign engagement.

Of course, the United States is hobbled by President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize-worthy commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, and the awkward fact that North Korea will never give up its nukes, thanks in part to President Obama’s distinctly non-Nobel-Peace-Prize-worthy effort to acquire some Arab Spring cred by backing the bloody deposition of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

In addition to creating a black hole of dysfunction, anarchy, and terror in what used to be one of the more prosperous enclaves in North Africa, the Libyan adventure undid one of the few foreign policy accomplishments of George W Bush: the denuclearization (and renunciation of all WMD ambitions) by Gaddafi in an extremely expensive deal, whose outlines are worth repeating:

Gaddafi revealed and decommissioned his nuclear and chemical WMD programs under international inspection, acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention, re-opened Libya’s oil industry to foreign investment, and ponied up over US$1 billion in compensation for the Lockerbie bombing (if, as some suspect, Iran engineered Lockerbie as retaliation for the US shootdown of Iran Air 655, the mullahs of Tehran must be grateful indeed).  In return, Libya got normalized relations, a US shield from terrorism lawsuits, visits from Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair, and the pleasure of receiving, incarcerating, and abusing repatriated anti-Gaddafi dissidents.  The “Libya model” was actually touted as a precedent for bringing North Korea in from the cold.

Today, the “Libya model” works the other way.

North Korea’s jaundiced view of any security guarantees the US might be willing to provide is encapsulated in one of the rare examples of eloquence one encounters in its US-language press releases.  In announcing the “H-bomb” test, the DPRK stated:

Genuine peace and security cannot be achieved through humiliating solicitation or compromise at the negotiating table.

The present-day grim reality clearly proves once again the immutable truth that one’s destiny should be defended by one’s own efforts.

Nothing is more foolish than dropping a hunting gun before herds of ferocious wolves.

The final stages of the Lockerbie trial

[What follows is excerpted from a report published on this date in 2001 on the BBC News website:]

Two of the three charges faced by the Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing have been dropped in the final days of the trial.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah had been charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and contravening the aviation security acts.

But following the summing up of senior prosecutor Alistair Campbell on Tuesday, the men now face one charge - that they murdered 259 people on board Flight Pan Am 103 and 11 in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. (...)

Earlier on Tuesday he had said: "The Crown have proved the case against each of the accused beyond reasonable doubt.

"Your lordships will require to be satisfied of guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

"Mathematical certainty is neither necessary nor achievable.

"In my submission the Crown have proved the case against each accused beyond reasonable doubt.

"The evidence comes from a number of sources which, when taken together, provided a corroborated case both as to the commission of the crime and the identity of the perpetrators.

"I invite you to convict of murder." (...)

The trial could now be over within weeks after defence teams for the accused caused surprise on Monday by saying they would offer no further evidence.

The decision by advocates for the pair came after the Syrian Government refused to hand over evidence which was considered vital to the defence case.

Mr Al Megrahi had been expected to give evidence as part of the defence's attempt to establish that Palestinian terror groups, and not Libyans, were responsible for the atrocity.

The prosecution called 230 witnesses, none of whom saw the bomb being placed on the doomed jumbo.

Instead, those leading the case have relied on evidence which they say when put together proves the guilt of the two men.

The defence is expected to argue this evidence is no more than coincidences and fails the tough test which must be passed to gain convictions.

[RB: A short time before, I had written an article on TheLockerbieTrial.com about the options open after the closing of the prosecution case. The following is an excerpt:]

The conventional wisdom amongst criminal defence lawyers regarding the presentation of evidence on behalf of their clients is "less is best." If the prosecution case is a weak circumstantial one, the preferred tactics would be to point out and emphasise the deficiencies in the prosecution case rather than to present a positive case for the defence. In particular, subjecting his own client to the ordeal of giving evidence is something that defence counsel is normally reluctant to do unless the Crown evidence is so strong that acquittal is unlikely unless the accused person himself can explain it away or create a doubt in the mind of the trier of fact. It is, of course, ultimately for the accused person himself to decide whether to leave the dock and enter the witness box, but most clients will seek the advice of their legal representatives on this matter and will usually follow it.

It would therefore not be surprising (particularly if the missing pages of the "Goben Memorandum" have not as yet been retrieved from Syria under the Letter of Request and the judges reject any request by Megrahi's representatives for a further adjournment to enable it to be obtained) if Megrahi's team decided, perhaps after leading a few witnesses to clarify some minor points, not to lead further evidence (including the evidence of Megrahi himself) and Fhima's team decided to lead no evidence at all. On this scenario, the evidence-taking stage of the trial could be concluded in a very short time indeed.

Once that point is reached, the proceedings continue with closing speeches from (1) the Crown (2) counsel for Megrahi and (3) counsel for Fhima. In normal Scottish practice the prosecutor is expected to commence his speech as soon as counsel for the defence intimate that the defence case is closed. It is not standard practice for the prosecutor to be granted, or indeed to seek, an adjournment to prepare his submissions. It will be interesting to see whether the Crown ask for such an adjournment in the present case and, if so, how they respond to any suggestion that they have already had ample time since the Crown case ended which could and should have been devoted to the preparation of their closing submissions. It will also be interesting to see how long prosecution and defence counsel take for their closing speeches. Even in very serious criminal cases in Scotland, it is unusual for any closing speech to last more than one hour. In the special circumstances of the Lockerbie trial (where there is a full transcript of all of the evidence available for counsel to refer to, which there is not in a normal Scottish jury trial) it is to be expected that the closing speeches will be somewhat longer than this. But I would be (slightly) surprised if any single speech lasted more than one court day.

After the final defence speech, the court must retire to consider its verdict, which may be determined by a majority of Lords Sutherland, Coulsfield and MacLean (the fourth judge, Lord Abernethy, has no vote). The verdict must be delivered in open court by the presiding judge. If there is a verdict of guilty the court must, at the time of conviction or as soon as practicable thereafter, give a judgement in writing stating the reasons for the conviction. There is no requirement for written reasons if the accused are acquitted (which could, of course, be by means of either Not Guilty or Not Proven verdicts) but I would be somewhat surprised if the court did not choose to give reasons for acquittal. I would also be somewhat surprised if any verdict was other than unanimous.

Media mistakes

[What follows is excerpted from an article headed Silence in the West as Libya falls deeper into the abyss published yesterday on the libcom.org website:]

Reading the CNN coverage of the truck bombing today that killed 65, CNN fails to even once mention that Gaddafi was unseated by NATO intervention instead writing simply, "Demonstrations against Gadhafi in 2011, as part of the broader populist Arab Spring movement, led to a civil war that climaxed with Gadhafi's October 2011 killing by rebel forces in his hometown of Sirte." Anyone who is familiar with the situation in Libya in 2011 knows that rebels would not have lasted a month without NATO intervention, however for some reason CNN doesn't feel that this information is relevant to their readers. Following suit, NBC's article on the truck bombing mentions only that "Libya slid into chaos following the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi."

Similarly, the BBC fails to mention any NATO involvement in Libya: "Libya has been hit by instability since his overthrow in 2011, and there is concern Islamic State (IS) militants are gaining a foothold there." Instead of mentioning that the NATO plans of replacing Gaddafi with a neo-liberal Western state are failing catastrophically, the BBC instead writes in a passive tone, as if to suggest some natural disaster is befalling Libya that we in the West have no control over.

When it came time to bomb the media positively gushed with enthusiasm and dutifully played its part as a propaganda outlet. A report of mass rape by the Libyan army was widely circulated uncritically. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders would later prove that the reports were unfounded. Similarly videos were released purporting to show the bodies of Gaddafi soldiers killed for trying defect. Later, video footage was found of the men as prisoners of the rebels before they were killed, meaning that the rebels had killed prisoners and then blamed the Gaddafi regime.

And while we are on the subject of media mistakes in Libya, it went below the radar of most everyone that a recent Al-Jazeera documentary has finally proven once and for all that Gaddafi was not responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270. A high level Iranian defector has confirmed what was always suspected, that the Iranian regime, working through the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, carried out the bombing as a retaliation for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 by the US navy.

[RB: Al-Jazeera’s three Lockerbie documentaries can be viewed here, here and here. A fourth is in course of production.]

Getting to the truth about the Lockerbie disaster

[What follows is the text of a letter from Dr Jim Swire that was published in The Herald on this date in 1998:]

Mr [Philip] Mulvey's letter, Getting to the truth about the Lockerbie disaster (December 30 [1997]), raises important issues. We look hard and often at Langley (the CIA). They are heavily involved in linking the hard-won evidence from the crash site to ''items only available to Libya''.

Vincent Cannistraro, the head of Reagan's CIA unit charged with convincing the American public of Libya's total involvement in any terrorist outrage, was also put in charge of the CIA's input to the Lockerbie investigation.

The question of the baggage belonging to McKee and Gannon may well be crucial to understanding the motives for a major cover-up by US authorities. The removal of their possessions and the activities of ''American agents'' with their white helicopter(s) were a factor which helped draw Tam Dalyell, MP, into this tragedy in the first place.

Mr Mulvey may also be aware of the strange case of Police Surgeon David Fieldhouse. He found, and certified death in, a number of bodies before the site was fully organised and before the helicopters had left.

Later it transpired that among the bodies he found were those of McKee and Gannon. His meticulous records show one more body in that immediate area which was never recorded in the police data. Were there in fact 271 killed, not 270, and if so who was the missing person? The discrepancy has never been explained.

It would seem likely that the answer to this mystery could indeed only come from Langley, that both Dr Fieldhouse and the police got their counts correct, and that those in the ''unmarked helicopters'' removed one body, as well perhaps as other ''evidential material''.

One would have thought that the Crown Office would have done everything possible to provide an answer to this part of the riddle, which occurred on their patch. It might well be crucial to understanding the American actions.

[Philip Mulvey’s letter contains the following:]

With respect to Mr Dalyell, Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the crash and who speaks for the victims' relatives, and your front-page report, may I suggest that people trying to get to the truth are facing the wrong way? (...)

They should ask why, in the aftermath of the crash, when a ban on all but military helicopters was imposed, was an - unmarked - white civilian helicopter able to hop from field to field looking for a specific piece of luggage? And why, when Pan Am was trying to be as unhelpful as possible to the press, were there so many of its ''staff'' in Lockerbie, wearing company baseball hats, who seemed to know little about the company - and less about planes?

Please be assured I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor an Internet anorak - just a reporter who seems to be putting the two and two together that others are starting to do as well.

[What follows comes from the obituary of Philip Mulvey published in The Herald on 5 September 2002:]

Scottish journalism has lost a unique talent with the tragically early death of Phil Mulvey at 45. (...)

In 1978 he moved to the Aberdeen Evening Express, then regarded by Fleet Street as one of the best training grounds in the UK for talent. By1984 he was off again, this time to achieve his schoolboy ambition of working on the Daily Record.

He shone there, but was particularly remembered for his superb coverage of the Lockerbie disaster inquiry. His skill at taking such a complex issue and turning it into a ''good read'' without deviating from the facts was hugely admired by all, including the advocates and families of the victims.

Official Report of Justice Committee discussion of Megrahi petition

The Official Report (Hansard) of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee held on Tuesday, 5 January has been published in draft. It can be read here. The verbatim account of the committee’s discussion of Justice for Megrahi’s petition calling for an independent inquiry into Megrahi's conviction (PE1370) is to be found at columns 48 to 50.

Uncovering real cause of Lockerbie tragedy was politically inexpedient

[What follows is excerpted from an article by Trowbridge H Ford entitled MI6's Sir John Scarlett: A Career of Increasingly Dangerous Failure that was published on this date in 2008:]

By this time [December 1990], Scarlett was busily arranging the set up of Libya for more terrorism. On December 21,1988, Pan Am Flight 103 had blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, including Charles McKee's CIA investigative team returning from Beirut where it had been uncovering the deepest secrets of the Iran-Contra scandal - apparently Syrian Monzar Al-Kassar's efforts to free hostages there, and in Africa for the French in return for continued protection of his drug-smuggling operations. While this was going on, Al-Kassar's people learned everything they needed to know about how to stop it from returning to the States. When CIA's handlers of Al-Kassar in Washington learned of this, they allowed a suspicious suitcase on the plane despite a NSA warning of an attack on an airliner, thinking, it seems, that it was just more of his drug operations when, in fact, his associates slipped a Semtex device on the flight originating from Frankfurt.

Uncovering the real cause of the Lockerbie tragedy was most politically inexpedient as London and Washington were increasingly focusing on a showdown with Iraq's Saddam Hussein. In any confrontation with the dictator, it was essential to have both Syria and Iran at least on the sidelines, something impossible if Al-Kassar, brother-in-law of Syria's intelligence chief, and lover of its despot Hafez Al-Assad's niece, were ever indicted for the crime. As in the Palme assassination, the failure to find some apparent culprit for the mass murder - what could increasingly not be simply blamed on unknown terrorists - was putting more and more pressure onWest Germany's counterterrorists for apparently allowing it to happen. The real story had to be buried, as Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen wrote in The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, "in the graveyard of geopolitics." (p 286)

Scarlett, it seems, was the grave digger. On September 19, 1989, a Union des Transport Aériens (UTA) flight exploded over the Sahara in Niger while on its way from Brazzaville to Paris, via N'Djamena in Chad, killing all 171 passengers, including American Ambassador to Chad Robert Pugh's wife Bonnie, leaving "...a scene all too reminiscent of Lockerbie, Scotland." (Ted Gup, The Book of Honor, p 310) The similarity was not missed by France's DST, and Scarlett, the SIS resident in Paris, either, and they soon started connecting together the two bombings at Libya's expense.

Robert Pugh was the deputy chief of mission in Beirut who had had to clean up the mess when the American Embassy was bombed in April 1983, and the resulting CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC) to stop such atrocities required a no-holds-barred solution to the Lockerbie bombing. Inter-agency cooperation of the highest degree, both domestic and foreign, was required if any culprits were ever to be caught, given the new legal restraints on how intelligence operations were to be conducted.

The task was to link Libya as having "...been ultimately responsible for both Pan Am 103 and UTA 772." (Ibid) While authorities were searching the desert for the wreckage of the French airliner, they apparently found the circuit board which was responsible for the IED explosion - what reminded investigators of what had happened to the same UTA flight back on March 10, 1984 when it exploded without loss of life while parked on the tarmac in Brazzaville - and now Anglo-American authorities worked together to create the same scene in the Scotland wreckage. A CIA agent planted parts from the same kind of detonator in the wreckage area of the Lockerbie crash while looking for belongings of its deceased personnel which was found by Bureau agents in early 1990 while they were searching for evidence of what caused the crash.

As in the Palme fiasco, Scarlett worked with the former SIS agent in Oslo, Robert Andrew Fulton apparently aka Mack Falkirk, who became its chief agent in Washington. While Scarlett was persuading his superiors to allow the CIA and FBI complete access to the Lockerbie crash site, Fulton was priming their superiors back in Washington to make the most of the opportunity. Scarlett put the icing on the cake, it seems, by persuading Abd Al-majid Jaaka, a Libyan intelligence officer who had defected to the British embassy in Tunis, to tell his story to the Americans in Rome, and claim that two former colleagues had prepared the bomb which blew up the airliner in revenge for the UK/USA bombing of Tripoli after the Palme assassination. The ruse was so successful that by the time Libya finally handed over the two fallguys for trial in Holland, Anglo-American covert operators were completely in charge of the prosecution. [RB: I know of no evidence supporting the statement that Giaka defected to the British embassy in Tunis rather than from Malta via a US Navy ship.]

Scarlett's particular contribution to their conviction, as MI6's Director of Security and Public Affairs, was to persuade disgruntled MI5 whistleblower Daivd Shayler to join SIS, and to claim that Gaddafi's destruction of Pan Am flight 103 had so angered SIS that it had plotted to assassinate him, with Al-Qaeda's help, in 1995/6. As Shayler and his former mistress Annie Machon have written in Spies, Lies & Whistleblowers: while there was no credible evidence that the Iranians were behind the Lockerbie bombing there was no question that Gaddafi was. With everyone fixed on the alleged SIS assassination of the Libyan leader, it helped make their claim about Lockerbie tragedy a foregone conclusion.

To add injury to injury, Machon and Shayler made it sound as if Scarlett was the victim of some kind of British Stalinism where intelligence service chiefs were obliged to go along with what their political bosses demanded. As Dame Stella Rimington had explained her appointment to head the Security Service in her autobiography, Open Secret, as learning to go along with her superiors, so Scarlett became SIS director general after his time as head of the Joint Intelligence Committee where he supinely agreed to the doctoring of the 'dodgy dossier' on Iraq's alleged WMD to suit the demands of Downing Street. They added:

"David has always said that the intelligence services are anything but meritocratic, with those not rocking the boat more likely to be promoted than those who stand up for what is right. Scarlett's appointment has provided more than ample proof of that." (p 357)

To show that this was anything but the truth, Scarlett then arranged for his buddy Andrew Fulton to officially resign from SIS, and take up a visiting professorship at Glasgow's School of Law, though he had had no legal training, much less any legal degrees. In 2000, he volunteered his services as legal advisor to the Lockerbie Commission on briefing the press about the trial [sic; a reference to Glasgow University's Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit], and his handiwork became so notorious that he was forced to resign, once his background became known. For a sample of it, see what Machon and Shayler did with the British media's attempts to exonerate Qaddafi for Lockerbie.

We can be confident that the Scottish prosecutors got the right man

This is the headline over an article by Magnus Linklater in today’s edition of the Scottish Review. He regards his already well-known views as being supported by Ken Dornstein’s recent films. Here is a link to an article by one (of several) commentators that disagree with him: A response to the Dornstein documentary. And here is a link to earlier articles by Mr Linklater and responses by John Ashton, including calls by Ashton to Linklater to address certain issues, calls which have gone unanswered.