Thurman and the FBI laboratory

[On this date in 1995 the FBI crime laboratory was the subject of a highly critical television programme broadcast on the ABC network. It followed disclosures by one of the laboratory’s scientists, Dr Frederic Whitehurst, about the methods adopted by some of his colleagues, including Tom Thurman. The scandal later became the subject of a book, Tainting Evidence, by John Kelly and Phillip Wearne. The relevance of this to the Lockerbie case becomes apparent in this extract from a 2008 article by Dr Ludwig de Braeckeleer:]

Thomas Thurman worked for the FBI forensics laboratory in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Thurman has been publicly credited for identifying a tiny fragment as part of a MST-13 timer produced by the Swiss company Mebo.

“When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew that we had it,” Thurman told ABC in 1991. “Absolute, positively euphoria! I was on cloud nine.”

Again, his record is far from pristine. The US attorney general [RB: through the Department of Justice’s Inspector General] has accused him of having altered lab reports in a way that rendered subsequent prosecutions all but impossible. He has been transferred out the FBI forensic laboratory. Thurman has since left the FBI and joined the faculty at the School of Criminal Justice, Eastern Kentucky University.

The story sheds some light on his formation. The [Inspector General’s] report says “Williams and Thurman merit special censure for their work. It recommends that Thurman, who has a degree in political science, be reassigned outside the lab and that only scientists work in its explosives section.”

“For what it’s worth the best information on Lockerbie came long after Zeist, when the investigation was closed. I’ve always been curious about this case and never stopped looking into it, until the day I left the CIA in December 1997,” Robert Baer told me.

“The appeals commission posed the question to me about someone planting or manipulating evidence only to cover all the bases. I told them I did not think there was an organized attempt to misdirect the investigation, although I was aware that once it was decided to go after Libya, leads on Iran and the PFLP-GC were dismissed. Often in many investigations of this sort, the best intelligence comes out long after the event,” Baer added.

“I’m fascinated to know precisely why the Scots referred the case back to the court, although they did tell me the FBI and Scotland Yard have manipulated the evidence for the prosecution,” Baer told me.

Forensic analysis of the circuit board fragment allowed the investigators to identify its origin. The timer, known as MST-13, is fabricated by a Swiss Company named MeBo, which stands for Meister and Bollier.

The company has indeed sold about 20 MST-13 timers to the Libyan military (machine-made nine-ply green boards), as well as a few units (hand-made eight-ply brown boards) to a Research Institute in Bernau, known to act as a front to the Stasi, the former East German secret police. (...)

The CIA’s Vincent Cannistraro is on the record stating that no one has ever questioned the Thurman credentials. Allow me.

“He’s very aggressive, but I think he made some mistakes that needed to be brought to the attention of FBI management,” says Frederic Whitehurst, a former FBI chemist who filed the complaints that led to the inspector general’s report.

“We’re not necessarily going to get the truth out of what we’re doing here,” concluded Whitehurst who now works as an attorney at law and forensic consultant.

Dr Whitehurst has authored something like 257 memos to the FBI and Justice Department with various complaints of incompetence, “fabrication of evidence” and perjury of various examiners in the FBI Laboratory (primarily Explosives Unit examiners).

“What I had to say about Tom Thurman and the computer chip was reported to the US attorney general’s inspector general during the investigation of wrongdoing in the FBI lab in the 1990s. I acquired all that information and the inspector general’s report from a law suit under the Freedom of Information Act and therefore the information provided under that FOIA request is in the public sector,” Whitehurst told me.

“I reported to my superiors up to and including the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the US attorney general, members of the US Congress and US Senate as well as the Office of the President of the United States that FBI Supervisory Special Agent Thomas Thurman altered my reports for five years without my authorization or knowledge. This is public information. Thurman holds an undergraduate degree in political science and I hold a PhD in chemistry.”

“Thurman was not recognized by the FBI or anyone else as having expertise in complex chemical analysis and I was. When confronted with this information Thurman did not deny it but argued that my reports could and/or would hurt prosecutors’ cases. I was very concerned about the fact that wrong information in the final reports could hurt individuals and deny citizens of this country right to a fair trial. When I raised my concerns with my managers at the FBI laboratory, all except for one of them reminded me that Thurman was the “hero” behind determining the perpetrators of the Pan Am 103 disaster.”

“I understood from that that the FBI would not expose these issues for fear that the investigation into the Pan Am 103 bombing would be seen as possibly flawed and this would open the FBI up to criticism and outside review.”

No government body has found that Mr. Thurman has done anything illegal. However he was relieved from his post in the FBI’s Explosives Unit and placed in charge of the FBI’s Bomb Data Center.

“Did Mr Thurman find the integrated circuit chip about which you have referred? After leaving the FBI, I was interviewed by Scottish defense attorneys for one of the individuals accused of bombing Pan Am 103. At that interview were two of my attorneys, two FBI attorneys and two Scottish attorneys and me. I was asked what I knew about the circuit chip. I can say that I was not interviewed because I agreed with the official version of the discovery of that integrated circuit chip,” Whitehurst wrote to me. (...)

In the world of Forensic Sciences, former FBI [special agent] William Tobin is a legend. To name but a few of his achievements, Tobin demonstrated, along with his NTSB colleagues, that TWA 800 had been destroyed by mechanical failure at the time when virtually the rest of the world strongly believed a terror act. Both the NTSB and the CIA subsequently presented compelling evidence demonstrating the scientific validity of Tobin’s conclusion.

After retiring, Tobin demonstrated that the Lead content bullet identification technique, used by the FBI for more than four decades, was flawed. Tobin was not allowed to work on this matter while at the FBI.

Tobin knows a few things about superhero Thomas Thurman. Tobin told me that, in his opinion, Thurman and other Explosives Unit examiners were prone to confirmation bias, an observer bias whereby an examiner is inclined to see what he is expected to see. Tobin’s opinion is based on “numerous interactions whereby Thurman and other examiners rendered conclusions supporting the prevailing investigative or prosecutorial theory but which were unsupported by scientific fact.

It was not uncommon to determine that items characterized as ‘chrome-plated’ were nickel-plated, ‘extrusions’ turned out to be drawn products, ‘castings’ turned out to be forgings, white residues characterized as explosive residue turned out to be corrosion products (generally Al2O3 or a non-stoichiometric form), bent nails claimed to be indicative of an explosion, and a truck axle was characterized as having fractured from an explosion (a conclusion rendered solely from an 8-1/2” x 11” photograph where the axle was a small fraction of the field of view and the fracture surface itself was not observable).

“I put no credence into any scientific or technical conclusions rendered by anyone without a suitable scientific background for that matter, until I can make an independent evaluation. Thurman was a history or political science major to my recollection,” Tobin added

“His habit, as with most Explosives Unit examiners with whom I interacted and based on numerous court transcript reviews and ‘bailout’ requests I received on several occasions (to ‘bail out’ an examiner who not only misrepresented an item of evidence but also was confronted with more accurate representations of the evidence in trial), was to seek someone else’s expertise and then present it as his own in a courtroom without attribution.”

“He would frequently come into my office, ask for a ‘quick’ assessment of something (but I would always indicate that my opinion was only a preliminary evaluation and that I would need to conduct proper scientific testing of the item(s)), then weeks later I would see the assessment in a formal FBI Laboratory report to the contributor (of the evidence) as his own ‘scientific’ conclusion,” Tobin remembers.

“I cannot imagine that he was acting alone. He was a mid-level manager without a great deal of authority and with severely limited credentials of which the FBI was fully aware,” Whitehurst answered when I asked him if he thought that Thurman had acted alone.

“The problem with having a scientific laboratory within an intelligence gathering organization is that scientists traditionally are seeking truth and at times their data is in direct contradiction to the wishes of a government that is not seeking truth but victory on battle fields.”

“The problem with the scientific data is that when one wishes to really determine what the government scientists or pseudo scientists could have known, one need only look at the data. So few citizens ever ask for or review that data. So few scientists wish to question the government that feeds them and gives security to their families.”

“Was Thurman ordered to do what he did? No one acts alone without orders in the FBI. We had clear goals which were clearly given to us in every document we received from anyone. If a police organization wished for us to provide them “proof” of guilt then they told us in many ways of their absolute belief that the perpetrators were those individuals they had already arrested. If the president of the United States tells the country in the national news that Dandeny Munoz Mosquera is one of the most fear assassins in the history of the world then every agent knows that he must provide information to support that statement. If leaders decide without concern for foundation of truth then most people will follow them,” Whitehurst said.

“Thurman did not act alone. The culture at the FBI was one of group think, don’t go against the flow, stay in line, ignore that data that does not fit the group think,” Whitehurst added.

His former colleague agrees. “I’ve seen so often where an individual who was at one time an independent thinker and had good powers of reasoning acquires the ‘us vs them,’ circle-the-wagons, public-relations at all costs mentality at the FBI,” Tobin says.

“As much as I loved the institution, I have never seen a worse case of spin-doctoring of any image-tarnishing facts or developments as I had at the FBI. Never! It seemed the guiding principle was ‘image before reality’ or ‘image before all else’ (including fact). Whatever you do, ‘don’t embarrass the Bureau’ and ‘the Bureau can do no wrong.’”

New US radio programme on the Lockerbie case

[What follows is from a programme summary on the US radio4all.net website:]

26 years on, was the Lockerbie airliner bomb planted at Heathrow Airport? Were British intelligence services involved? New revelations about 1988 Lockerbie Pan Am Flight 103 bombing with Jim Swire, father of victim Flora. Discussion and clips from Allan Francovich's documentary financed by Tiny Rowland The Maltese Double Cross. Film blocked. Break-in at Heathrow airside the night before Lockerbie bombing. "Your government and mine know exactly what happened at Lockerbie, but they're never going to tell". Oliver North ordered Oswald DeWinter to lay a false drug trail to implicate Libya. Drugs cocaine and heroin on the aircraft. Dr Bill Chasey, Dr William Chasey persecuted in the US by the CIA for trying to get justice. Vincent Cannistraro detailed by Regan to run PR against Libya then appointed to be chief investigation of the Lockerbie bombing. Dr David Fieldhouse found a body that then 'disappeared' and was smeared by the police. 

[The programme can be downloaded here.]

Scientific shenanigans

[What follows is an extract from The people who moved the world, a forthcoming book by Jim Swire. It appears here by kind permission of Dr Swire and Peter Biddulph.]

Dr Thomas Hayes was formerly head of the forensics explosives laboratory at the British Royal Armaments Research and Defence Establishment (RARDE), and was a key witness in the prosecution case. I would find his evidence at times breathtaking and worrying.

He was aged fifty three, having retired from his RARDE post ten years earlier. As a bachelor of science honours in chemistry, a master of science in the faculty of forensic science, a doctor of philosophy in the faculty of forensic science, a chartered chemist, and a member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, we might expect an outstanding memory. And yet he seemed reluctant to tell the court why or when he'd retired to start a new career as a chiropodist. When did he start work at Fort Halstead? In July 1974. And when did he leave? " The exact date of my leaving is a little circumspect, but I believe it was in 1990."

He actually retired in 1989, a year that for him may have been circumspect, but was, in relation to our trial, most significant. Hayes, I would discover from our own research, had an uncomfortable history in relation to one other major terrorist event, namely the IRA bombing said to involve seven members of the Maguire family - The Maguire Seven. In that trial Hayes and two close colleagues - including his immediate supervisor Dr Higgs - had performed a central and discredited role, and were found out by a Parliamentary investigation. To add to that Dr Higgs was also discovered to have conspired to mislead the court - with a further two RARDE colleagues of Hayes - in the case of Judith Ward, accused of a bombing in Guildford.

Was Hayes carefully avoiding using the numbers, "1989", so as to deter the court from forming its own conclusion? When asked by friendly advocate Campbell, Hayes could not recall when he became a chiropodist. Nor did his memory improve as he faced defence QC Richard Keen.

"KEEN. Dr Hayes, you told us in your earlier evidence that you were head of the Forensics explosives laboratory at RARDE until 1989? And your change of career from forensic scientist to chiropodist would appear to coincide in point of time with the decision of the Home Secretary to appoint Sir John May to inquire into the trial of those known as the Maguire Seven. Is that true?
HAYES. I believe so. I don't recall clearly."

I am convinced to this day that Hayes really did recall the date and reason. He simply did not dare say it in front of the judges. For in May 1989, even as he examined the fragment which appeared in the evidence bag with a label signed by Detective Constable Gilchrist and altered by unknown persons, a campaign was running in Parliament to have him and his colleagues investigated for their roles in both IRA trials. The Parliamentary findings were published in 1992 and 1996, long after the November 1991 indictments of the Libyan suspects Al-Megrahi and Fhimah.

In his study of the 1976 trial of the Maguire Seven, Sir John May found that the notebooks of three RARDE scientists, including Hayes, had been consciously withheld from the court. The first of the three was Douglas Higgs, Principal Scientific Officer and head of department; second was Walter Elliott, a Senior Scientific Officer; and the third was Hayes, at that time a Higher Scientific Officer.

During the trial, results of tests for traces of nitro-glycerine on skin and fingernails of the Maguire family were firmly maintained by the three scientists to be positive and decisive. Unknown to the court, however, the three had performed a second set of tests plus a series of experiments. Both tests and experiments indicated a negative result and an innocent means of contamination. They therefore knew of evidence pointing to the innocence of the accused yet failed to inform the court. Furthermore, during the inquiry their notebooks were disclosed to Sir John May only at the final "hearing" stage of that Inquiry. Thus he was forced to view the case files only on the last day of his public hearings.

Sir John recorded his unease at the delay, and concluded: "In all the elements of the prosecution case the Crown relied on the evidence of three RARDE scientists. Their accuracy, reliability, fairness and credibility were fundamental to the convictions. In my opinion the whole scientific basis upon which the prosecution was founded was so vitiated that on this basis alone the Court of Appeal should set aside the convictions."

Then the Judith Ward case: in February 1974 twelve people were killed in an IRA bombing attack on a military bus in Guildford. Ward was arrested, and in an almost exact parallel to the Maguire case, the evidence central to her conviction was an analysis of samples taken from the skin and fingernails. These, maintained three lying scientists, were evidence of her guilt. In November of 1974 she was sentenced to life imprisonment. She would spend fifteen years in jail before her innocence could be established.

Hers was one of a spate of miscarriages of justice including the Maguire case and the Birmingham Six. In every appeal, the manipulation of evidence by RARDE forensic scientists was a major feature of the convictions, and its exposure the cause of successful appeals.

Of the dishonesty revealed in the Ward case Lord Justice Glidewell observed that the catalogue of the lamentable omissions included "failure to reveal actual test results, the failure to reveal discrepant Rf values, the suppression of the boot polishing experimental data, the misrepresentation the first firing cell test results, economical witness statements calculated to obstruct inquiry by the defence, and most important of all, oral evidence at the trial in the course of which three senior RARDE scientists knowingly placed a false and distorted picture before the jury. It is, in our judgement, also a necessary inference that the three senior RARDE forensic scientists acted in concert in withholding material evidence."

Of Higgs Lord Justice Glidewell commented "We reject Mr Higgs' account as a deliberate falsehood" Higgs was, in the words of the appeal panel "An experienced chemist… the head of a closely knit team." The words "deliberate falsehood" are clear. The man and two senior members of his organisation were nothing less than liars.

Dealing with another item of evidence, an apparently bomb damaged suitcase, prosecution advocate Campbell QC led Hayes through what seemed an endless list of items in his detailed schedule. The catalogue droned onward for seventy six pages of transcript. Suddenly Hayes reached a thirteen word sentence, almost hidden from, and mostly missed by, the court and the relatives. It was quietly read: "… The suitcase was fitted with a rigid plastics handle, bright metal trim and locks, which were devoid of any proprietary or owner's identification. A rectangular hole had been cut in the hard shell above the handle. The left-hand edge of the suitcase showed evidence of having been damaged by an explosion, with disruption and blackening of the outer skin and bright metal body frame, [etc]

The suitcase belonged to Major Charles McKee, leader of a four-man CIA team returning from Beirut. He, with colleagues Gannon, Lariviere, and O'Connor, were on a mission to explore ways of freeing a group of American hostages held in Lebanon by Iranian-based terrorists. McKee's suitcase contained something that the US government were desperate to keep from the sight of the media or the public. That something remains so important to America's security that for twenty years the White House has never even hinted at what it might be.

McKee's case had been removed by unknown persons, a rectangular hole expertly sawn just below the handle, the contents taken away and new contents put in. Security suitcases of this type were fitted with an incendiary explosive device on the interior of the case, just by the handle. Should the suitcase be opened without the use of a security code, the suitcase would explode and incinerate the contents. Hence the hole sawn into the case to enable disablement of the explosive trigger. A clean set of clothes were inserted and the case was returned to the crime scene and placed on a Lockerbie hillside so that it could be "found". The removal of evidence from a crime scene is of itself a criminal offence. Yet nothing would be said of it in the trial by the prosecution or the judges.

It was and is - for me - a disturbing tale. How had Hayes, publicly demonstrated as untrustworthy, and working in a close-knit organisation discredited by two major criminal cases, become so central to the Lockerbie tragedy? His repeated plays on words, his professions of innocence, his claims of forgetfulness, all were greatly worrying. As a skilled forensic scientist he should have been immediately alerted by the tampering that took place between the finding of McKee's suitcase and its arrival in his laboratory. Label, name tag and contents had been removed, and a set of clothes put into the case. These were recorded as to '...show no evidence of explosive damage, as opposed to the suitcase which was damaged.' It was as if a new set of clothes had been put into the case. And when writing notes about the identification tags and name tag of the suitcase, instead of using the word 'removed', Hayes chose the words 'devoid of'; technically correct, but in the true sense meaning simply not there. What most worried me, and auguring badly for whatever verdict might follow, was the nature of Lord Sutherland's interjection. His Lordship saw intelligence service interference with the trial process and illegal tampering with evidence as no cause for concern. It seemed to me that he was not the first senior trial judge to be fooled by RARDE's economical witness statements calculated to obstruct inquiry by the defence.

"KEEN. A rectangular hole has been cut in the top of the case, and that cannot be attributed in any form to blast damage or impact damage in the disaster, can it?
HAYES. No, it cannot.
KEEN. You are presented with the alleged contents in a bag marked with the name of the owner of the case? That wasn't usual, so far as the presentation of evidence to you at RARDE was concerned, was it?
HAYES. I don't think I can helpfully answer your question. I don't know.
KEEN. You have no recollection of other cases being presented to you in this fashion, for the purposes of your forensic examination?
HAYES. A case outside this Lockerbie investigation?
KEEN. Outside this particular case on page 22.
HAYES. The suitcase?
KEEN. The suitcase.
HAYES. No particular recollection, no.
KEEN. What appears to have happened, Dr. Hayes, in respect of this case, is that it has been the subject of interference or intromission by some third party.
HAYES. The cut hole would seem to suggest that. The rest of the observations may have some quite innocent explanation.
KEEN. Well, was any innocent explanation proffered to you for the state of this evidence when it was given to you for forensic examination at RARDE?
HAYES. I never asked for an explanation.
KEEN. Was any explanation ever volunteered to you?
HAYES. I'm sorry, I don't recall."

Under further cross-examination Hayes was unable to explain his notes concerning a fragment of circuit board from the MEBO MST-13 timer which was said to be part of the bomb. He found and identified it on 12th May 1989, labelling it "PT35-B" on page fifty one of his one hundred and seventy two page loose-leaf notebook. He would maintain that he was the first person to observe this, finding it in the evidence bag signed and dated by DC Gilchrist, mentioned above.

Hayes said he always kept detailed notes, yet his sheets were strangely renumbered for all pages subsequent to that containing information on the circuit board fragment. Was that particular page later written up and inserted so as to create the illusion of a contemporaneous sequence of entries? Richard Keen tried to extract the truth:

"KEEN. Well, whether it be the date or the page number, Dr. Hayes, would you like to explain how the present page fifty one came to be in your examination notes?
HAYES. How it came to be there?
KEEN. Yes.
HAYES. I'm rather lost for words. It came to be there in exactly the same way as every other page came to be there.
KEEN. If that was the case, Dr. Hayes, the pagination of your notes would run quite simply from pages fifty to fifty six, without the need for the alterations that have been made in the pagination of the notes themselves, and the index; is that not the case?
HAYES. Well, I can understand you expressing some concern on page fifty two onwards. But to my mind, fifty two follows from page fifty one, page fifty one follows from page fifty in a perfectly normal way.
KEEN. But page fifty one can only be there because what preceded it as page fifty one has been changed to page fifty two; is that not equally obvious, Dr. Hayes?
HAYES. Well, otherwise there would be two pages fifty one, of course.
KEEN. And what would have appeared at the end of pages fifty two to fifty six now appears at the bottom half of page forty nine? That is the entry for PI/991.
HAYES. Well, the mystery -- apparent mystery of the entry on the bottom of page forty nine, PI/991, to my mind is no more complex than there was space available on the page. And rather than waste part of the page, I inserted an examination note and dated it. The pagination, to me, is of no great consequence. The date and day of the examination, to me, is of much greater consequence.
KEEN. Well, I understood you to tell us that these were contemporaneous notes that you prepared as you were carrying out your examinations; is that right?
HAYES. Yes. But presumably our definitions of "contemporaneous" are different. My -- I only mean that these notes were written on the date on the page, and that the notes were written at the time precisely of the examination, and not any time afterwards.
KEEN. Well, if that had been the case, there would have been no need for the insertion of what is now page fifty one, would there?
HAYES. Well, it is your suggestion that it was inserted. I have no recollection of an insertion of that form at all. If it was, then it was done for a particularly good and perfectly innocent reason.
KEEN. Which you can't now recollect?
HAYES. I wish I could help you. It would save a lot of awkwardness. But I cannot, no."

He was then re-examined by friendly prosecution advocate Campbell, who steered him methodically through his notes on those same pages. Suddenly, lo and behold, Hayes remembered it all.

"CAMPBELL. Does that explanation of the way in which the items detailed in examination notes are listed help to jog your memory?
HAYES. It has helped me, sir, in attempting to explain what appears to be an unfathomable mystery. And I think the solution is very straightforward. And it is this: That when I wrote these notes, I initially did not number the pages… And in numbering the pages, I mistakenly used the number 51 twice, realised my error, after numbering a few pages, and corrected it… So whereas the page numbers may be in sequential order, the dates would not be."

This sudden flash of recall under Campbell's friendly re-examination for me remains unconvincing, and differed totally from his previous explanation, namely that "… the mystery was no more complex than there was space available on the page. And rather than waste part of the page, I inserted an examination note and dated it." As I watched him playing games with the defence, I became more and more convinced that he was misleading the court so as to achieve a prosecution, and not for the first time. He may have made notes, but unlike all similar items which he found, the sole piece of material evidence, PT/35B, claimed to link Bollier and MEBO to the Libyans, was absent from his drawings. And he gave it a higher identification number in his index than a similar sized piece of material he was to examine four weeks later.

Then as Richard Keen probed further concerning the fragment of shirt collar found by Detective Constable Gilchrist, Hayes could not quite remember the moment of finding the fragment.

"KEEN. Do you actually recall finding this fragment?
HAYES. I think so. If I was -- it's tempting to be too helpful in answering your question and saying clearly a very important piece, you must have a memory of it. You have flashbacks of certain important items that you've looked at. I question whether those are flashbacks to the correct case examination or another case examination. So although in my mind there is no question whatever that I did find it within this neck-band, whether I have a clear recollection in my memory of teasing it out, I would prefer not to be too definite about it."

Finally Hayes' notes dated 12th May 1989 recorded the following: "Trapped in the grey material within the blackened area were A. several fragments of black plastics, B. a fragment of a green-coloured circuit board". Thus he exposed, in an unguarded moment, a serious discrepancy from the evidence previously given by DC Thomas Gilchrist.

"KEEN. Dr Hayes, you record in those notes on page fifty one that PT/35B was trapped in the collar of a shirt or in a piece of material. So that fragment could not, presumably, have come to light as far as the police were concerned, prior to it being extracted from the cloth by yourself?
HAYES. That's correct. Yes.
KEEN. It would follow that it could not have been seen by the police prior to the cloth being passed to you at RARDE and the article being extracted by you from the trapped area of material?
HAYES. I'm sure that is the case."

Thus he twice maintained that neither Gilchrist - nor anyone else - could have seen the fragment prior to his probing the collar on his workbench. So we may ask when was the label altered to "DEBRIS", and by whom? More importantly, for what purpose was the label altered, other than to draw attention to a piece of "debris" inserted into the bag by persons unknown? That discrepancy was never challenged either during the trial nor at the subsequent appeal.

In yet another puzzling exchange with Richard Keen, Hayes admitted that even though his initial conclusion was that the green fragment - PT35/B - was a fragment from a bomb timer, he failed to undertake a routine chemical trace analysis to determine whether it had been in contact with an explosion. This was quite contrary to standard forensic process, and can only be described as negligence. It contrasted with the chemical trace analyses he undertook of each of the twenty four pieces of luggage surrounding the immediate explosion of which the fragment was a component. In spite of prolonged cross-examination, Hayes could provide no logical explanation for it. Or, perhaps, did Hayes know what he would find, namely that the fragment possessed no trace of explosive? Only a controlled analysis by an independent forensic scientist might test the fragment's provenance. And that could not occur without a special form of appeal. Such would not prove possible until the year 2009, and I will return to this subject later in this book.

Meanwhile in Kamp Zeist the judges had only Hayes’ word. They knew of his record as a conspirator in with-holding evidence in a major IRA trial, and that of his immediate colleagues in a second IRA trial. They watched his contrasting explanations regarding the pagination of his notebook and the sudden return of his memory when gently steered under re-examination by the prosecution. They witnessed his word games regarding McKee's suitcase - illegal evidence tampering by the intelligence services of either the United Kingdom or America. They listened to him twice claim that he was the first to find debris - the fragment of the bomb - in the evidence bag, and that therefore neither Gilchrist nor anyone else could have seen it before he did. Yet instead of basing their judgement on what Hayes actually said, they would substitute their own explanations and believe the man implicitly.

Hundreds of fragments from the luggage container and its contents were discovered. From the remains of the Toshiba cassette recorder that contained the bomb; from twenty four items of luggage in the immediate vicinity of the explosion; from clothing and personal effects; even from a black umbrella. For me it was not unreasonable to expect many fragments from the bomb and timer, the wires, the circuits, the frame, the timer itself, to be embedded in surrounding clothing and luggage, the luggage container, the aircraft spars and structure. Yet apart from a charred shirt collar, none contained a single fragment of the bomb. The fragment too, when displayed before the court, and apart from fraying around the edges (said to have been done by laboratory processing), was almost pristine. Its bright green anti-solder covering was still bright green. Its printed circuits remained just as pristine. Both in spite of its position at the centre of a three thousand degree high explosive fireball.

In time I would watch witness Allan Feraday, who prepared the final forensic report for the trial, confirm under oath that only one fragment - the Hayes four millimetre square piece of "debris" - was ever found. That of itself seemed an unusual occurrence. I found myself asking how much other material might have been removed, or re-inserted, or even planted. One of Cannistraro's colleagues in the White House had discussed the use of manufactured evidence to destabilise a middle eastern government. If such was good for Yemen, then why not for Libya? Yet in spite of my suspicions - also shared by many of those following the progress of the trial - the miraculous fragment would pass without challenge.

CIA had duplicate timers.

"There has been some speculation about timers from that same series being provided to STASI [The East German Secret Police, prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989], and it's true that they were. But they were on brown circuit boards. The circuit board that was used in the explosion at Lockerbie was a green production model of the timer, and that came from Libyan intelligence." So spoke Vincent Cannistraro into the camera in 1993. His words were of interest, not for what he said, but for what he did not say. During that time, unknown to the public and the media, within the storeroom of the CIA laboratories in Langley Virginia lay at least one exact duplicate of an MST-13 timer. It was set on a green lacquered baseboard identical to the type from which the Hayes fragment was said to have originated.

8th June 2000.

A column of vans with blacked-out windows glided to a halt at the entrance to the court building. Shielded from public and journalist gaze several men were ushered into the rear entrance.

One of the men was witness Richard Louis Sherrow, a retired US Army veteran of twenty years' service, and an expert in firearms and explosives, who'd worked for the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Service (ATF). Prosecution advocate Turnbull led Sherrow through his evidence-in-chief. In 1986 Sherrow had been instructed by the ATF to travel to Lome, Togo, with an Edward Owen of the ATF, and James Casey of the State Department. During the visit, Sherrow observed a number of items, including explosives and several timers. One timer was of special interest to him.

"TURNBULL: Had you ever seen electronic timers similar to the ones you saw in Lome?
SHERROW: Not exactly similar, no, sir. Subsequently, I was allowed to take one timer and a sample of, I believe, three different types of explosives. They were placed in the United States diplomatic pouch and returned. I examined [the timer] at the headquarters of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, performed bench tests, functioning tests.
TURNBULL: Did you photograph it at the headquarters?
SHERROW: Yes, I did.
TURNBULL: And having performed these tests and photographed it, what did you then do with it?
SHERROW: I was requested to take it to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and give a briefing on what I found.
TURNBULL: And did you take the timer back with you?
SHERROW: No, I didn't. That was released to their custody."

Marquise's response to Peirce

[The following response by Richard Marquise to Gareth Peirce's article in The London Review of Books was sent to me by Frank Duggan, president of Victims of Pan Am 103 Inc.]

The recent piece written by Gareth Peirce entitled “The Framing of al – Megrahi” had numerous errors of fact and the record needs to be corrected. I will ask her these questions-- How many days of the trial did you attend? How many trial transcripts have you read? What do you know—first hand—about the investigation? I think I know the answer to those questions. If I am right, her credibility should be in doubt. There has been so much misinformation published about the Lockerbie case over the past several years. It is time individuals get information from real sources rather than the internet and bloggers. If one of these people who call themselves historians, architects, observers and experts would spend some time with those of us who were there and know the facts, I think a different record develop.

I found I only agreed with Ms. Peirce on one topic. The release of Mr. Megrahi was based on greed—the wishes of officials in the United Kingdom to access Libyan oil and business ventures. My own Government is no better. In 2004, when Gaddafi “accepted responsibility for the actions of his agents,” the United States allowed that to stand as his formal admission of guilt for the Lockerbie attack. It should be noted that he told a reporter, “off the record,” as far back as 1993 that his government was involved in the plot to blow up Pan Am Flight 103. Unfortunately, this “real” admission has received little publicity.

The rest of Ms. Peirce’s lengthy article had so many errors of fact that I will try and address them in “bullet” form to make it easier to follow:

• Ms. Peirce says the investigation should have been conducted by Scottish police alone without interference from other agencies or countries. Clearly she lacks a basic understanding of the world. There is no way the police in Scotland could or should have carried out the investigation alone. We live (and did in 1988) in a global society. Good police and intelligence relationships are key if we are to protect our society from those who would do us harm. These relationships were not as advanced in 1988 resulting in many missteps but we worked through the process of understanding the nuances of each system. This case would not have been solved without the FBI, Scottish police and officers from Germany, Malta, Sweden, Switzerland and England working together, as a team. No one agency could have done it alone.

• Ms. Peirce indicates this investigation should have been conducted with “utter integrity.” I and my colleagues take great exception to this slander. The investigation was conducted with integrity and we only followed the facts and presented them to a court which found Mr. Megrahi guilty.

• There is discussion of unauthorized people (FBI and CIA) at the crime scene in Scotland. This scene which would encompass over 1400 square kilometers could not effectively be secured and police had to constantly tell local citizens not to pick up debris. However, although much has been reported, not one “confirmed” sighting of an American walking unattended has ever been documented (see trial transcripts). The Americans who would eventually come to the site were those who were helping identify bodies and if one went into the field, they were accompanied by a police officer. To believe that both the CIA and FBI had the bureaucratic ability to send large numbers of people to the scene immediately and then to spirit away luggage (assuming one knew where to look in this massive crime scene) is just incomprehensible. Yes, and then there were the helicopters…..also unbelievable.

• There is much discussion about the “original” suspects—the PFLP-GC. Based on available public source information at the time, they indeed were our original suspects. This suspicion was enhanced when a piece of circuit board of a Toshiba radio was found at the crash site. PFLP-GC terrorists had used a similar (but not the same) brand of radio before. However, although this avenue was pursued for over two years, no evidence of any PFLP-GC involvement was ever found. The key word is evidence and I believe Ms. Peirce, as an attorney, knows, that is what one needs to have a court reach a finding of guilty.

• Although not said specifically, it is implied that the shopkeeper in Malta who sold clothing which had been found in the wreckage (by very capable Scottish officers) identified Abu Talb, a Palestinian terrorist living in Sweden, as the purchaser of the clothing. This is just not true. This shopkeeper only identified one photograph in a police photo array—Mr. Megrahi—in February 1991. When the shopkeeper was interviewed in 1989 he had said the purchaser had a “Libyan accent.”

• Ms. Peirce may recall that although Iran and the PFLP-GC were our original suspects and the media reported as much in early 1989, an (at the time) unidentified individual walked into the US Embassy in Austria (January 1989) and left a message for the Ambassador. In it he said that Libya was responsible for the bombing. His note said he had been in Tripoli in December 1988 and believed that if he could believe what he was reading in the press—we were focused on Iran and Palestinians—then we were wrong and investigators should look at Libya. This man would be identified nearly two years later as Edwin Bollier, the man whose company built the timer which was part of the bomb.

• The investigation would prove that only 20 of these timers had ever been made and all had been delivered to Libyan intelligence officials. A statement made nearly 20 years later by Ulrich Lumpert, a technician who worked for Bollier that he had stolen one of the circuit boards from his company and made it available to “someone who was investigating the Lockerbie case” in 1989, has no credibility. No one associated with the Lockerbie investigation had ever heard of the MEBO Company in 1989. We did not find them until late 1990. Bollier and Lumpert each testified in 1990 that they only purchased a small number of the circuit boards and made 20 or 21 timers. When the Libyans came looking for additional timers in December 1988, Bollier had none. Bollier now says he was offered $4 million to link Libya to the attack. That is not true because by the time he alleges this happened he had already linked Libya to his timers at a magistrate hearing in Switzerland. Lumpert and Bollier’s change of heart became clear in 2008. Bollier said on a BBC special he hoped to get up to $200 million from Libya if he helped free Megrahi. Lumpert, before he filed an affidavit stating he had lied at the trial made it clear that he had sought legal advice and determined he could not be prosecuted for these earlier “false statements.”

• One remark (actually interspersed throughout the piece) stated that the CIA took control of the investigation. When I shared that with my colleagues in Scotland, they were amused because somehow, no one had ever relayed that message to them. The Scottish police were always in charge. Yes, we negotiated and often disagreed about what we would do next, but the FBI and Scottish police worked together, neither side forgetting where the crime scene was and who had “primary” jurisdiction. At no time was the CIA (or any intelligence service) “in charge” of the investigation. They supported the police in Scotland, just as the FBI and the other police agencies around the world did. Vincent Cannistraro did retire in 1990—before the EVIDENCE led us to Libya and he did not come back. In fact, if you speak with any police officer in Scotland, I doubt any of them ever met him and I only recall him being at one meeting involving this case. It was not in a leadership capacity.

• A number of assertions were made about the type of timer which was used at Lockerbie. We had initially assumed it was a barometric timer favored by the PFLP-GC. This timer would have exploded after reaching an altitude above 15000 feet. The timing mechanism was erratic (based on examination of similar devices found in Germany) and could have exploded from 1 minute and as long as an hour after being triggered, if it exploded at all. We believed the timer used as part of the bomb was one manufactured by MEBO and given to Libyan officials.

• Ms. Peirce’s attack on the FBI laboratory had more erroneous information. Tom Thurman was not barred from the FBI laboratory and was used as an expert witness after the IG report was written; however, I have no intention of using this forum to do what I consider a needless defense of him. The issue is the FBI lab. The identification of the fragment which led to the MEBO timer was done by Mr. Thurman based on a photograph. As an investigator—something most lab examiners are not—he was able to figure out where to go to look for a possible match to the fragment recovered by Scottish police officers. Once he identified the fragment, he asked Alan Feraday to come to Washington. Feraday brought the original fragment of the timer with him and they both examined it under a microscope. They independently agreed it was identical to the MEBO timer. The fragment was never out of the control of Mr. Feraday and returned with him to the lab at RARDE.

• I am not an attorney and have no idea what Hans Kochler saw at the trial which caused him to doubt the verdict. I do know he is neither a policeman nor is he an attorney. The case which was presented was circumstantial and these cases are often more reliable than those having eyewitness identification

I have only addressed part of Ms. Peirce’s concerns. However, for all of these “circumstances” to have been true as accepted by the three original trial judges, the overall case must have been credible. In order for it all to be wrong, there would have to have been a conspiracy of the grandest order and I will state without hesitation—that is false! Wrong! To somehow believe that dedicated law enforcement officers would somehow take world politics (US-UK intervention in Kuwait) to make a case against an innocent party does not know what makes us who we are. We followed the evidence. To state or even imply otherwise is an insult to all of us who only sought a righteous solution and justice for the victims.

A gaping hole

[On this date in 2007 I posted an item on this blog which reads in part:]

I have often on this blog had occasion to bemoan the apparent blindness of the mainstream media and commentators in the United States to the shakiness of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi, to the weakness of the evidence on which it was based and to the fact that it has now been referred back to the High Court by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission because there may have been a miscarriage of justice. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I draw attention to an article on the Congressional Quarterly website, CQ Politics by their National Security Editor, Jeff Stein. In this article, he outlines the problems with the official US/UK version of events and explores the most compelling of the alternative scenarios, with quotes from US security and intelligence operatives who doubt the official version. A welcome transatlantic breath of fresh air.

[Mr Stein’s article no longer appears on the CQ Politics (now Roll Call) website. However, it is to be found at other locations, including Ed’s Blog City. It reads as follows:]

Libya is close to getting off the hook for millions of dollars in payments to relatives of the 189 Americans who died in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103, amid a stiff new challenge to the 2001 verdict and rapidly warming relations between the erstwhile terrorist state and Washington.

It was 19 years ago this weekend that the airliner, bound from London to New York with 259 passengers, 189 of them Americans, exploded in the night skies over Scotland, killing all aboard as well as 11 residents of Lockerbie, the village where the fiery chunks of steel and other debris came crashing down.

A memorial service was planned for Friday at Arlington National Cemetery to mark the anniversary.

Back in 1988, Iran was immediately suspected of authoring the mass murder, in retaliation for the accidental downing of one of its own airliners by a US Navy warship in the Persian Gulf a few months earlier.

US intelligence agencies, in overdrive to find the culprits, quickly compiled evidence that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, or PFLP-GC, had carried out the plot on behalf of Iran and Syria. (The PFLP-GC was formed to opposed PLO leader Yassir Arafat’s movement toward detente with Israel.)

Nevertheless, on Jan 31, 2001, a panel of three Scottish judges found Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, officially the head of security for Libyan Airlines, guilty of carrying out the plot and sentenced him to life in jail. A Libyan co-defendant was set free.

Libya always denied any guilt in the crime, but agreed to compensate relatives of the dead to open the door for normal relations with the United States. It also agreed to compensate victims of the 1986 bombing of the LaBelle discotheque in West Berlin, a gathering place for US soldiers. Libya also denied complicity in that attack, which killed three and wounded scores more, but likewise agreed on compensation payments.

Megrahi, now serving a life sentence in Scotland, could be freed soon, British authorities hinted on Thursday, as part of a broad normalization of relations with Libya.

Only a day earlier, the Bush administration managed to stave off a congressional effort, led by Sen. Frank R Lautenberg , D-NJ, to deny it funds to build an embassy in Tripoli until Libya completed payments to the relatives of those who died on Pan Am 103.

While Lautenberg lost that battle, he and his allies in the House did manage to prohibit the administration from giving Libya any US aid until the payments are completed.

‘A Gaping Hole’

The ranks of critics of the 2001 verdict have steadily grown through the years.

Among them is Hans Koehler, the eminent Austrian jurist who was appointed by the United Nations to ensure the trial was conducted fairly.

“It is highly likely that the sentenced Libyan national is not guilty as charged and that one or more countries other than Libya, through their intelligence services and/or financial and logistical support for a terrorist group, may have responsibility for the crime,” Koehler said in a formal statement this year.

Likewise, Robert Black, the senior University of Edinburgh legal scholar who devised the trial of the Lockerbie defendants in the Netherlands under Scottish law, noted that the prosecution never produced any direct evidence tying the defendants to the bomb that brought the plane down.

It was entirely “circumstantial,” he said, based on a single computer print-out of a baggage manifest, which was contradicted by other evidence. “A gaping hole in the prosecution’s case,” he called it.

But more sinister factors were at work in the investigation, Black and other authoritative sources close to the case told me.

Black told me that he suspected Libya was framed to avoid a case that would hold Iran and Syria responsible.

The first Bush administration needed Syria to stay in the broad Middle East coalition that it was readying to oust Iraq’s troops from Kuwait.

“I have been told by persons involved in the Lockerbie investigation at a very high level, that a public announcement of PFLP-GC responsibility for the bombing was imminent in early 1991,”

Black told me, confirming earlier UK press reports. “Then suddenly, and to the mystification and annoyance of many on the investigation team, the focus of the investigation changed to Libya.”

Robert Baer, the former CIA officer who was based in Paris at the time and tracking Iranian terrorist operations, agrees.

Baer told me the Scottish commission reviewing evidence in the case was able to confirm that Iran and Syria paid the PFLP-GC to carry out the bombing.

Indeed, Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the CIA’s investigation of the crash, was quoted several times in 1989 blaming Iran, and right after the 1991 verdict he said it “was outrageous to pin the whole thing on Libya.” (Oddly, last week he told me the evidence “always pointed to the Libyans.”)

But Baer says, “Everybody” in US intelligence knew about “Iran’s intention to bomb an American airliner” in response to the downing of one of its own only months earlier.”

“We knew that,” Baer added. “We had that solid.”

The Defense Intelligence Agency also thought the Iranians paid the PFLP-GC to do it.

Patrick Lang, chief of the DIA’s Middle East section at the time, told me he “signed off” on the DIA’s conclusion that “The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorized and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi-Pur), the former Iranian minister of Interior.”

“The operation was contracted to Ahmad Jabril” [the head of the PFLP-GC] . . . for $1 million,” said the Sept 24, 1989, memo, first reported last week in a London tabloid. “The remainder was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.”

Lang said on Friday, “I still agree with that. We felt quite sure that this was a PFLP thing.”

“The CIA wouldn’t listen to that,” Lang added, because it couldn’t find proof of Iranian or Syrian complicity and was under immense pressure to solve the case.

Just last week, a Scottish newspaper, citing “sources close to the investigation,” recently cited specific transactions that the SCCRC allegedly had uncovered, including amounts and dates.

“This doesn’t exonerate Libya,” Baer cautioned. “Iran and Syria and Libya could have been working together.”

Plenty of Theories

Conspiracy theories have grown like barnacles on the much-questioned verdict, including far-fetched allegations of Israeli and even South African involvement in the crime.

On the Internet, some bloggers see the hand of the White House in the growing evidence of Iranian complicity in the Pan Am bombing, suggesting that the administration is further laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran.

The available evidence, however, suggests that the administration is primarily interested in getting Western companies’ access to Libya’s oil fields.

A particularly persistent rumor is that key witnesses were paid off by American intelligence to finger the Libyans.

Edwin Bollier, head of the Swiss company that was said to have manufactured the timer used to detonate the Pan Am bomb, has claimed variously that he was offered “bribes” by the FBI and CIA to finger Libya.

Bollier’s company did in fact supply the circuit boards to Libya, he admitted, but also East Germany, where the PFLP-GC had an office.

Since Bollier had ongoing business with the Qaddafi regime, his veracity has often been questioned.

In response to my query, a CIA spokesman ridiculed Bollier’s accusations that it offered or paid him anything.

“It may disappoint the conspiracy buffs, but the CIA doesn’t belong in your story,” he said, insisting on anonymity.

An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed, however, that the bureau met with Bollier in Washington in 1991, but denied he was offered anything to implicate Libya.

In a formal statement, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko emphatically rejected any suggestions of a payoff.

“Any accusations that any witness was paid to lie are complete fabrications and these ridiculous statements should be immediately discounted as the untruths they are,” Kolko said. “That is not the way the FBI operates.”

Likewise, allegations have persisted that Tony Gauci, a shopkeeper on Malta who testified, in spite of contrary evidence, that he sold Megrahi clothing that ended up in the suitcase bomb, was paid to finger the Libyans.

But Gauci was paid approximately $2 million from the State Department’s USA Rewards program, an authoritative source told me, along with another, still unidentified witness.

Together, they were paid somewhere between $3 million and $4 million for information leading to the conviction of Megrahi, the source said.

The State Department acknowledged to me that rewards were paid.

“A reward was paid out in the Lockerbie-Pan Am 103 case,” a spokesperson there said on condition of anonymity, “but due to operational and security concerns we are not disclosing details regarding specific amounts, sources, or types of assistance the sources provided.”

Freeing Megrahi

All this — and much more questionable evidence related to the electronic timers and witnesses — may soon be moot.

A British Ministry of Justice spokeswoman confirmed on Thursday that Foreign Minister Jack Straw had been in contact with Scotland’s justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, about a deal that would send Megrahi back to Libya.

Such a move could well make irrelevant a Scottish appeals court’s expected judgment that a “miscarriage of justice” occurred in the case.

Reopening the investigation to present evidence of an Iranian/Syrian connection to the Pan Am bombing would be extremely difficult if not impossible, in the view of all observers.

The commercial pressure against such a move would be extreme. Western oil companies are eager to develop Libya’s reserves.

How this will affect Libya’s stalled payments to relatives of the Lockerbie and LaBelle discotheque victims is unknown, but if past patterns hold true, they cannot be optimistic.

In July 2006, a lawyer for the LaBelle families was about to finalize a deal with Libya when the State Department announced its intention to take Libya off the terrorist list.

The deal evaporated, said attorney Thomas Fay.

“They had made an offer and we accepted and at their request had every client execute release of claims forms” he told me by e-mail late Friday.

“In short, we were not close to a deal, we had made the deal,” Fay said. “They just refused to pay when they came off the terrorist list.”