Impossible to ethically continue supporting the investigation and verdict

What follows is an item posted on this blog on this date in 2010:

Old wounds that need re-opened

This is the heading over a long post on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide. The post consists of a thoughtful discussion of Father Pat Keegans's recent letter to US Lockerbie families and of the reaction quoted in the original report in The Herald from one US relative, to the effect that an inquiry into the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi would "open old wounds".

The questions that Caustic Logic poses to the US relatives are questions that can equally be addressed to the Scottish Government which, notwithstanding the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, continues to parrot the mantra that it does “not doubt the safety of the verdict against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.”

The following are excerpts from Caustic Logic’s article:

Father Keegans and many others seriously feel that something is deeply wrong with this case. It's not denial or fevered imagination telling them this, but the facts themselves. The facts presented and those hidden, all considered in detail, and weighed critically, show entirely too much grounds for doubt to ethically continue supporting the investigation and verdict without reservation.  No matter how unlikely or absurd it might seem to those with the wounds they consider closed, many are feeling constantly torn open and unhealed. And they're the better-informed. (...)

Professor Robert Black recently called the unreasonable conviction a "logjam," being used as an "excuse" by the UK (and US) governments to prevent another look, which they both greatly fear [source]. It's true. Not a single piece of relevant evidence against Megrahi can be shown to have all of these traits that real honest evidence usually has:

- physically plausible

- logically consistent with a remotely sane plan

- properly examined and documented

- obtained without entangling million-dollar dreams

- obtained from people who aren't chronic liars (like ... Giaka)

- read properly without undue dismissal of key factors like dates of key events

- no contrary facts that were simply brushed aside with no good reason

Americans may be okay with all of this, but they shouldn't be so judgmental and dismissive against those who do in fact have a problem with a sham "investigation" calling itself justice and good metaphorical surgery. The murder of 270 human beings was supposed to be investigated right, but it wasn't. It was supposed to be tried reasonably, but wasn't. These errors were supposed to be resolved in the appeals process, but weren't. That leaves us with it still needing to be fixed one way or another. It might be gotten right for the history books in a few more decades, or possibly, with some courage and vision, tenacity and luck and grace, even in news articles during our own lifetimes.

The London origin theory

[This morning, by chance, I rediscovered an article dating from July 2010 headed The London Origin Theory by Caustic Logic on his website The Lockerbie Divide. The leading exposition of this theory is now, of course, to be found in Dr Morag Kerr’s superb book Adequately Explained by Stupidity? Lockerbie, Luggage and Lies. However, Caustic Logic’s piece deserves attention, too. So here it is:]

“I want to know when the bomb was placed on the plane and by whom. We have to look more closely into the "London theory" – that the bomb was placed on the plane at Heathrow and not in Malta.” - Hans Köchler, independent UN observer at Zeist trial, 21 Aug 2009 (Source)

"If I was determined to bring down an airplane, I would have put [the bomb] on in London." - Robert Baer, 'former' CIA agent and weapons expert, who doesn't buy the Libyans-did-it story line.

The London Origin theory has emerged as the most logical explanation for what happened to Pan Am 103 on December 21 1988. The official story, all the most widely-seen revisionist arguments, and even Megrahi's defense team's curious "special defense of incrimination" drew on elements of the drug swap theory, with the bomb coming in from Germany or further afield. Megrahi's counsel William Taylor QC did however give reasons to suspect a  London origin (...) to the trial judges and summarized at trial's end in 2001:  “My submission is that all of the above render the choice of Heathrow a much more likely one [than Malta]. And when that possibility is considered, one finds that there is a compelling body of evidence that points to Heathrow as being the point of ingestion.” [day 82 p9862]

But in the earliest days of the investigation, January and February 1989, British investigators labored to clear Heathrow Airport of any lapses and ensure that the bomb's origin would have to be found elsewhere. Years of confusion ensued... (see "Counter-Arguments" below for more on the dismissal of the London theory).

Direct Evidence For the Theory

Among the first clues came from finding where the plane failed, and what luggage container the blast originated in. Container AVE4041 in forward left cargo hold, position 14L, was decided within a few days. The container's blasted out remains were found and reassembled enough to show the blast was down at the bottom of the container, in the aft outboard corner. It had been in the spot closest to the hull, only 25" from the thin and aged skin of Maid of the seas.

Unfortunately, the exact placement, origin, or even number of suitcases in that box was hard to pin down. Records and witnesses helped decide 4041 was loaded with a few bags (6-8 or so) of (apparently) interline luggage, then filled up with a few dozen cases from the feeder/first leg flight 103A out of Frankfurt. But within this generally imprecise body of memories, one stands out as of amazing possible significance.

The Bedford Suitcase(s)

This was always the hard part to get around in order to reject the initially obvious Heathrow introduction theory. A Pan Am worker mentioned to police right after the attack said he saw two brown hardshell samsonite suitcases, placed on the floor of container 4041. The position of these was side-by-side from the far left of the floor, at the (loading) front of the container. If the bags had been later stacked one on the other and the top bag slid a few inches left, it would be in the perfect spot to match the explosion center - aft outboard corner, second suitcase from the bottom - where just such case detonated.

An amazing lead, investigators almost seem to have tried to not follow this one.  Since the cases Bedford saw were on the floor when he saw them, and the blast seemed to have happened one layer up from that, they decided these cases were a coincidence. They must have been moved across the container, and replaced in that lower corner with an identical case from Germany, on top of some other damaged Frankfurt-originating luggage. The leaps of faith here are simply alarming.

The Bedford story is covered in great detail at this site, with the works so far compiled at the link above.

Break-in Reported

A security guard at heathrow Airport reported a break-in at terminal 3 around 12:30 am on  December 21. Ray Manly's report, of a padlock on the floor "cut like butter" was covered up for over a decade. Even at trial in 2000, the defense was not allowed to know of this. Manly came forward in 2001 with the story, soon verified by the long-suppressed police reports. (...)

Mentioned in: Appeal Court Dismissal of the Heathrow Theory

Circumstantial Evidence For the Theory

The 38-Minute Coincidence

Aside from its crew and perhaps some cargo that (probably) doesn't matter here, the 747 Clipper Maid of the Seas landed empty at London's Heathrow airport mid-day December 21, 1988. There the plane took on a load of 243 passengers and their luggage, and took off at 6:25pm for New York as Pan Am Flight 103. Clearly, the bomb went on the plane at London, but the question that comes quickly behind it is where did it come from before that? A van in the parking lot, or another plane?

Such clues were vital to tracking down the perpetrators, and should be embraced when they're found. The time of explosion itself is a valuable clue - 38 minutes after leaving the ground - is a known hallmark of the altimeter bombs made just weeks earlier by terrorist bomb-maker and "double agent" Marwan Khreesat. He had produced four altimeter-triggered, radio-disguised bombs, set to detonate less than an hour after takeoff. Each of the others was a bit different, but the one that was captured and tested thoroughly would have blown up about 45-50 minutes after takeoff.  

The timing compatibility with a Khreesat bomb loaded at London notwithstanding, it's been officially decided and legally established that was a Libyan-ordered and set MST-13 timer that told the bomb to go off over Lockerbie. Officially, legally, by the evidence led at trial, it's an asbolute coincidence the timing so resembles the method first suspected.

Operational Security

When confronted with the official story of a Malta-Germany-London, the most obvious averse reaction of those who know air travel operations is to ridicule the notion that an airline bomb would make any sense being trusted to so many switches. Any functional security screen or time delay along the way coulld screw up the whole operation with a timer-based device as alleged. A trip from Frankfurt only is often suggested to replace this, but it too has one too many stops for a Khreesat bomb, and still a high chanced of the bomb being delayed or intercepted. If one could pierce security at any of the three airports, and it obviously happened at one of them, Heathrow would give one the best chance for success and the only way for a Khreesat bomb to have done what happened.   

Former head of security for British Airways, Denis Phipps, The Maltese Double Cross:

“If a device had been infiltrated into the system at Malta, it would have been necessary for that device to have been carried in an aircraft in the sector from Malta to Frankfurt, to have gone through a handling process, been carried on an aircraft through the sector from Frankfurt to Heathrow, and then timed to detonate during the final sector, Heathrow to New York, presumably whilst the aircraft was over the ocean to avoid discovery of forensic evidence …  one has to say, um, are - terrorists  - idiots? Don’t terrorists plan to have a reasonable degree of success?"  

Explosive Efficacy

If one places a device at the airport the target leaves from, rather than remotely through multiple flights, a new possibility is opened up - depending on the nature and depth of his penetration, a determined terrorist could place the bag himself and chose where in the container it went. As it happened, the bomb in PA103 was placed in the best spot (for the terrorists), and one of the few that could have even worked - the lower outboard quadrant, more or less on the sloping floor nearest the hull. Figure F13 (below) of the AAIB's report shows the deduced center of explosion that officially was achieved by accident. Considering even there, all that was blows from the hull was a chunk the size of a dinner plate. That's all it took, but it wouldn't happen at all if the bomb had wound up in the upper inboard corner, or even in the middle.

It is true, as some have pointed out, that there'd be no guarantee any cases placed in that deadly corner would stay there. But terrorists simply can't wait for guarantees. Certainly having it in the right spot, for sure, at one point, is better than relying on pure chance. Perhaps with this in mind, famous former CIA agent Robert Baer, who may have direct experience in this for all we know, has said:

"I used to teach explosives. The last thing you want to do is put a bomb on in a place like Malta and have two stops along the way ... you couldn't count on this thing hitting its target. ... Malta would not have been my first choice. It would have been London. If I was determined to bring down an airplane, I would have put it on in London." Flight into Darkness video, part two, 5:25

Counter Arguments Addressed

Forensics and the Frankfurt Link to the Rescue

UK and Germany had both been unsettled by the possibility their security forces had allowed the horror of Lockerbie to pass through. Some of their early wrangling is addressed in the post "What did the Germans Know?" British investigators decided the blast - 10 inches above the container floor - was above any possible non-Frankfurt luggage and therefore had to be some other brown, hardshell Samsonite from the one(s) Bedford described, that must have been from the feeder 103A. It was unsound reasoning and wishful thinking until the Erac printout emerged months later, showing an item apparently coming from Malta, to PA103, via Frankfurt.

The Malta Link to the Rescue

The Erac printout, emerging months after the attack from an employee's locker after all official copies somehow disappeared, sealed the deal for Malta origin. But the tiny island nation had already been mentioned in the evidence, as the place of manufacture for some of it. As it so happened, the Erac (Frankfurt) printout in August 1989 spurred a closer look, and the clothes were traced to a store on Malta where Tony Gauci was found...

Malta-based Libyan defector Abdul Majid Giaka was already on file with the culprits - Megrahi and Fhimah - that some hoped Tony saw one of. By late February 1991, they had a sort of identification of Megrahi from the shopkeeper.  A few months later, Giaka was finally removed to safety and first mentioned the suitcase - possibly the same model Bedford reported - seen on Malta the day before it reappeared on that dubious printout leaving there. The story is clearly false, but formed one basis of the U.S. indictment against Megrahi and Fhimah in November 1991.

And finally, Air Malta has airtight records that the 55 bags on flight 180 were all claimed by its 39 passengers. They've shown this in court, like in their libel suit against Granada television. How the bomb was sneaked around Air Malta's system was never explained or substantiated even back when Fhimah was accepted as an accomplice. Investigators tried to find evidence of Maltese collusion or corruption or incompetence, but came up only with 'well, they must have done it somehow.' After the dismissal of Giaka's Malta stories, the Zeist judges  found that accomplice not guilty, further complicating the feat for Megrahi. They admit it's hard to see just how he did it, but he must have. Guilty.

The Helsinki warning

[An article headed Administrative notice was published yesterday by Lisa Parrish on the blog The Great Whatsit.  It deals with the infamous Helsinki warning and includes a copy of the notice to personnel posted in the Moscow embassy of the USA on 13 December 1988. The article reads in part:]

Here is the full text:

To:  All Embassy Employees

Subject:  Threat to Civil Aviation

Post has been notified by the Federal Aviation Administration that on December 5, 1988, an unidentified individual telephoned a U.S. diplomatic facility in Europe and stated that sometime within the next two weeks there would be a bombing attempt against a Pan American aircraft flying from Frankfurt to the United States.

The FAA reports that the reliability of the information cannot be assessed a this point, but the appropriate police authorities have been notified and are pursuing the matter. Pan Am has also been notified.

In view of the lack of confirmation of this information, post leaves to the discretion of individual travelers any decisions on altering personal travel plans or changing to another American carrier. This does not absolve the traveler from flying an American carrier.

Eight days later, on December 21, 1988, a Pan Am flight that originated in Frankfurt, then passed through Heathrow en route to New York’s JFK airport, exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew. The flight was bombed by Libyan nationals.

What’s remarkable about this in retrospect is that the US State Department chose to alert its employees in Moscow and Helsinki, but the FAA issued no broader alert to the public about this very specific threat. The existence of this memo is not a secret – it’s covered here, with some disconcerting additional details – so I’m not adding some new conspiracy-theory wrinkle to the story by posting it here.

I clearly must have held on to the memo because of the Lockerbie crash, but I don’t recall feeling outraged at the time that there had been no broader alert. And even today, I honestly wonder how much the government would, or should, reveal about such warnings. Alerting people to avoid a particular carrier’s flights could result in severe economic consequences for that airline – but should that matter if lives are at stake? Is the only humane response to send out widespread alerts, even if they create consternation and fear? Or would that be succumbing to the very “terror” that terrorists intend to foment?

[The best treatment of the Helsinki warning that I am aware of is to be found here and here on Caustic Logic’s blog The Lockerbie Divide.]

Libya and Lockerbie: A questioned past, an uncertain future

[This is the heading over an item posted today on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide.  It reads in part:]

My two big thoughts on Lockerbie these days are:

1) It's odd how even the new government is willing to cause some friction with its European sponsors to insist the Lockerbie case is closed and no one's going to be re-tried or re-jailed. The oil is negotiable, and resistant loyalists can be slaughtered on sight, but apparently handing Mr al-Megrahi back to the Brits or anyone else is such a sore spot that they'd better not try it.

2) With no Gaddafi regime left to hang the crime on, and Iran coming into the limelight again, along with its proxy Syria, the truth may be allowed to emerge now of the Iranian-Syrian(?)-PFLP-GCplot that actually did destroy Pan Am 103. It would be for all the wrong reasons, however - mainly to "justify" the next regime change project(s) of an increasingly bold and desperate grab for the world's oil reserves.

Anyway, on the justifications for destoying Libya this year, old and new, I have discovered a prominent ally. I recently ran across a video interview, in French, with Yves Bonnet, a French terrorism expert and former high counter-terror official [RB: Director of the DST, 1982-1985].  From the text summary of the September 1 [2009] interview, and what I can make out, he's explaining how Gaddafi's Libya wasn't so bad from a terrorism point of view, and didn't do Lockerbie, at least. I can make out the name Ahmed Jibril being mentioned.

Bonnet is a co-founder of CIRET-AVT (International Center for Research and Study on Terrorism and Aid to Victims of Terrorism), along with a Belgian parliamentarian and a former Algerian government minister. With this intriguing genesis, CIRET-AVT has gone on to do unusually brilliant things. Along with another group (CF2R - Center for Research on Intelligence), they wrote a rare, really good report on the Libyan Civil War and the "uncertain future" of the country after the violent, NATO-backed Islamist uprising there (see "Un Avenir Incertain" in Libya)

Unlike most who traveled to Libya on fact-finding missions, their team actually talked with Tripoli and took them seriously, allowing their report to wind up making sense.

Doubts over new Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a brief report in today's edition of The Independent. It reads as follows:]

Experts cast doubt on claims yesterday that the Libyan airline employee cleared of the Lockerbie bombing could stand trial under double jeopardy laws.

Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah was found not guilty of assisting his friend and colleague Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in planting the bomb on board Pan AM flight 103 in 1988 that claimed 270 lives.

Families of those who died had said they hoped that a new prosecution could shine fresh light on the case following the original trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands in 2001.

But Professor Robert Black QC, the architect of the legal process which led to the conviction of Megrahi, said it was highly unlikely that a new unit set up to examine unsolved cases under Scottish Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland, would go ahead with a prosecution.

[Two interesting blog posts have emerged following the Aljazeera documentary (which can be watched on You Tube here). The first, Al Jazeera on Al Megrahi..., is on bensix's Back towards the locus and the second, Two secondary suitcases?, on Caustic Logic's The Lockerbie divide.

I am delighted to see that my second home, South Africa, has now notched up 1000 unique visitors on Flag Counter. Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika!]

Abu Nidal chief jumps on the bandwagon

[The following are excerpts from a reportby Ben Borland in today's edition of the Sunday Express:]

The full details of how Colonel Gaddafi colluded with the Lockerbie bomber to blow up Pan Am Flight 103 can today be revealed by the Sunday Express.

Explosive new revelations emerging from crisis-torn Libya last night included:

- Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi’s threat to confess and expose Gaddafi unless Tripoli found a way to get him home to his family.
- The Libyan dictator ordering the execution of other agents involved to cover up the Lockerbie trail.
- Specific details of how the bomb was made in Lebanon and smuggled through the Congo.
- Gaddafi personally sanctioning Palestinian mercenary Abu Nidal to assist the terror attack.

The new allegations have come from former terror general Atef Abu Bakr, who has broken his silence as Gaddafi’s brutal 40-year reign enters its final days.

His confession could finally end the doubts surrounding Megrahi’s conviction and even see further charges brought in Scotland against a host of co-conspirators. So far, Megrahi is the only man ever convicted over the December 1988 bombing, which killed all 259 passengers and crew on board the New York-bound Boeing 747 and 11 people in Lockerbie.

Bakr also predicted the collapse of the regime would “open the door” to Gaddafi’s involvement in a number of other bombings and assassinations.

Now a frail, balding man in his 60s, he was once second-in-command to Abu Nidal, a Palestinian terrorist who was the world’s most wanted man in the Eighties. His feared militia was linked to more than 100 murders, aircraft hijackings and bombings, as well as the kidnap of journalist John McCarthy and machine gun attacks on passengers at Rome and Vienna airports.

The group, called the Abu Nidal Organisation (ANO), had a base in Tripoli until 1999, shortly before Megrahi was handed over to the British authorities.

Nidal was shot dead in Iraq in 2003 and Bakr said he had decided to speak out because be believes Gaddafi is now powerless to punish him.

He revealed the attack on an American passenger jet was ordered in retaliation for the 1986 US bombing of Benghazi and Tripoli, in which Gaddafi’s daughter was killed.

The bomb itself was built by the ANO’s “scientific committee” in a village “in the southern part of Mount Lebanon”.

Bakr said: “I can assure you categorically that the two processes [making the bomb and destroying the plane] were the outcome of a partnership between the Abu Nidal group and the security of the Libyan Jamahiriya.

“The committee, which was run by a Palestinian, prepared explosive radios of around three or four inches in thickness and put a rule of Semtex of less than four hundred grams in the vacuum in the speakers and under the metal plate.

“Then they put the explosive in the form of a gift and sent them to Tripoli, with timers. As always in such cases, the gift carrier did not know the nature of the gift.”

Bakr, who did not explain his own role in the operation, said the deadly “gifts” were smuggled into Libya via Brazzaville, the Congolese capital, and the couriers were later murdered by Gaddafi and Nidal.

He said: “Two of the group were met by members of Libyan intelligence and under the cover of the son of leader Patrice Lumumba. The killing of the two people who belong to the group took place later, the first in Beirut and the second in Libya.”

Lumumba, a Congolese prime minister who was murdered in a coup in 1961, had four sons – Francois, now leader of his father’s party, as well as Patrice Jr, Roland and Guy-Patrice.

The bomb was then taken from Tripoli to Malta, which fits with the case built by Scottish police and proved by the Crown during Megrahi’s trial.

Bakr said: “The Lockerbie explosive came from Tripoli to Malta and was then shipped from Malta. I want to emphasise the shipment came from Malta. There were members of the group visiting Malta, sometimes using Libyan passports and cards for the Libyan Aviation Office in Malta to be able to access and to facilitate shipping.”

He added: “The Abu Nidal group has subsequently liquidated a number of elements who have played a role in this process, including an official in the intelligence community.

“For their part, the Libyans had to liquidate a number of elements, including a former official in the intelligence.”

Bakr said the head of Libyan intelligence Abdullah al-Senussi was also involved in the plot. And he claimed that Megrahi, who worked for Senussi and may have played only a minor part, promised on the night before his extradition to keep silent about Gaddafi’s involvement.

However, he later went back on his word and recently “threatened to expose the whole process unless the Libyan authorities made efforts to secure his release, which is what has happened.”

Bakr, who led a rebel faction that split from the ANO in the 1990s, also recalled how Nidal ordered his men not to reveal their role in the bombing.

He said: “Abu Nidal laughed at the meeting and said, ‘No responsibility can be claimed. I will tell you this process was for us and our Muslim brothers in Libya. But discretion must be complete.’”

Bakr himself issued a statement to reporters in Beiruit in December 1988, denying any ANO involvement and expressing his condolences to the victims. His new confession was made yesterday to Al Hayat, one of the most respected newspapers in the Arab world. (...)

[On Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide there is a recent post headed Rats, sinking ship, etc which is well worth reading, along with the Ian Bell article featured on this blog yesterday.]

What we ignore about Megrahi

[This is the headline over a section in Richard Ingrams's column in today's edition of The Independent. I am grateful to Caustic Logic for drawing it to my attention. The section reads as follows:]

In accordance with my campaign for the more widespread use of inverted commas, I am pleased to note that some papers are now putting the word marriage, as in the expression gay marriage, in inverted commas.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the expression Lockerbie bomber, as it is applied to Mr Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who is still the subject of fierce controversy following his return to Libya. There is indignation in some quarters that Mr Megrahi is still alive and scarcely veiled suggestions that he may not have been suffering from cancer at all – though most of us know how difficult it is for doctors to predict life expectancy in cancer patients.

What is extraordinary is how little attention has been given to the strong grounds for thinking that Mr Megrahi is not only innocent, but that he was framed with the connivance of the British and American governments. The chief witness for the prosecution, the highly unreliable and inconsistent Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, was subsequently paid millions of dollars by the CIA and forensic evidence against Mr Megrahi was provided by two scientists working for the British government who had been previously discredited in trials of IRA suspects falsely accused of bomb-making. Anyone interested should read campaigning lawyer Gareth Peirce's long account of the story, now reprinted in a little book, Dispatches From The Dark Side (Verso).

Responses to Debra J Saunders

On 28 December 2010 the San Francisco Chronicle published an article by conservative columnist Debra J Saunders headlined "Libya, Lockerbie and commercial warfare" which I referred to at the time in this post. Today on his blog The Lockerbie Divide Caustic Logic publishes two responses to Ms Saunders's article, one from Michael Follon and one from Caustic Logic himself. They can be read here.

Gauci on al-Megrahi: Part II

The second part of Caustic Logic's video on Tony Gauci's "identification" of Abdelbaset Megrahi at the Zeist trial can be viewed here on The Lockerbie Divide blog.

Video: Gauci on al-Megrahi

This is the heading over a post on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide. It is subtitled "A little bit like exactly" like a non-identification. The post consists of the first part of a two-part video setting out the evidence of Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci that the Zeist court regarded as justifying the conclusion that Abdelbaset Megrahi was the purchaser of the items that surrounded the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103. The perverseness of this conclusion was one of the reasons founded on by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission in deciding that Megrahi's conviction might have amounted to a miscarriage of justice.

Old wounds that need re-opened

This is the heading over a long post on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide. The post consists of a thoughtful discussion of Father Pat Keegans's recent letter to US Lockerbie families and of the reaction quoted in the original report in The Herald from one US relative, to the effect that an inquiry into the safety of the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi would "open old wounds".

The questions that Caustic Logic poses to the US relatives are questions that can equally be addressed to the Scottish Government which, notwithstanding the findings of the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, continues to parrot the mantra that it does "not doubt the safety of the verdict against Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.”

Richard Marquise at Syracuse University

The FBI lead investigator on the Pan Am 103 bombing that killed 270 people in 1988 will speak at 7:30 pm Thursday as part of the 2010 Syracuse Symposium at Syracuse University.

Richard A Marquise, a retired special agent with the FBI, will speak on “Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation” in room 001 of the Life Science Complex. The event is cosponsored by SU’s Forensic and National Security Sciences program, and is free and open to the public.

Marquise will also take part Friday in an invitation-only seminar “International Terrorism: Threat in the U.S. and Proactive Measures.”

The bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec 21, 1988. The terror attack killed 270 people, including 35 SU students returning from a semester abroad and five others with ties to Central New York.

Marquise was involved with the Lockerbie bombing investigation from its inception through to the indictments and trial. He received the Attorney General’s award for Distinguished Service.

He is the author of Scotbom: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation, Algora Publishing, 2006.

Marquise is an expert in counter terrorism and crisis management and is a senior research associate with the Institute for Intergovernmental Research in Tallahassee, Fla.

[From a report on the Syracuse website. Further details can be found on the website of Syracuse University newspaper The Daily Orange.

Caustic Logic on his blog The Lockerbie Divide suggests a number of pertinent questions that members of his audience might care to raise with Mr Marquise.]

Crashing the petition

[This is the heading over a post today by Caustic Logic on his blog The Lockerbie Divide. It reads in part:]

Conspiracy theories naturally arise among many commentators [RB: referring to commentators here, on this blog], naturally I think given the duplicitous handling of this case from the beginning. Others have voiced a more generous interpretation. For example, Robert Forrester (as "Quincey Riddle") said somewhere in there, three days ago, when people were starting to voice suspicions:

JFM deals in verifiable facts only. The facts concerning the current difficulties on the Scottish Parliament Petitions Site are at present:
1 The site crashed in the early hours of 21/10/10.
2 BT is still working on a solution.
[...] Speaking personally, I do not hold with the contention that those whom JFM is confronting on the Lockerbie/Zeist case are attempting to sabotage the petition. There are far more effective methods of dealing with us, also including the tried and tested 'just-ignore-them' tactic. To do something as blatant as this would simply present JFM with yet another weapon to use against them.

That's a darn good point, and considering the known issues with the occoasional ill-managed government site, and how inundated as this one was by signers and viewers, something along these lines should be the obvious default conclusion. But the days dragged on without a fix and, by number, the comments espousing the paranoiac view are predominating. (...)

Forrester continued, helping put this in perspective:

Once the petition comes down on the 28/10/10, we will be able to assess any impact this breakdown may have had. However, given that the JFM petition went online on the 8/10/10 and was around the 1,500 mark at the time of the crash, there are good grounds for concluding that it had already broken existing records for the number of signees over time. [...] the average number of signees per day has been around a steady 100 plus. [...] the phenomenal response to the petition has already made a very significant point, and one which cannot easily be ignored, even if the site remains down right up to the 28/10/10. [...] I believe in sporting circles that could be described as something of 'a result'. (...)

Let's do what we can to keep the word out there for a few more days, encourage e-mail submissions unless/until the petition is restored. And then come Thursday it'll be time to move on to the next things as we wait and see. Any evil plot that may lurk here has already failed (unless it's very clever and will unfurl itself in our midst later on...).

[How to sign by SMS is explained here and how to sign by e-mail here.]

Of grasshoppers and skyscrapers

This is the heading over a thoughtful essay posted today by Caustic Logic on his blog The Lockerbie Divide. The essay is subtitled "Some thoughts on truth, belief, and stakes" and poses the question why the official explanation of Lockerbie is still so readily accepted (by relatives and by the mainstream media, among others) notwithstanding the exposure of the problems with that version (on The Lockerbie Divide, The Lockerbie Case, the Lockerbie thread of the JREF forum and elsewhere).

Rewards and bribery

This is the heading over a post published today on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide. It reproduces the text of a long contribution by our own blog treasure, Rolfe, on the JREF forum's Lockerbie thread. In it Rolfe outlines the evidence regarding the role that money played in the Pan Am 103 investigators' dealings with witnesses in Malta, including Tony Gauci. It can be read here.

Help wanted for The Lockerbie Divide blog

[Caustic Logic's most recent post on his excellent blog The Lockerbie Divide reads in part:]

[I]t's been almost single-handedly that, over the last eight months, I've made this a valuable destination for those wanting to learn more about the case against Megrahi and Libya. Using tags (the cloud of different sized names and phrases on the right-hand sidebar) and the "search this blog" window, quite a bit of the relevant info, some unavailable anywhere else, can be located all at one site.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of information I haven't addressed, fully or at all. At one point I was creating blank posts to fill in later, but I wasn't getting back to them and stopped. And as things stand, I'll be having considerably less time to work on the site or do much other discussion in the next several months at least. (...)

However, I have noticed many new commentators appearing at The Lockerbie Case and elsewhere, in addition to the numerous informed commentators on both/all sides of the issue. I'd therefore like to repeat an earlier faint request for contributions and help. Are there any specific aspects or points of view that you're excited about or have done some research on? Encyclopedic collections of facts, opinions, theories, all are welcome for submission (especially the first). Ideally, I'm thinking of semi-scholarly, sourced essays, and I probably won't post anything that's patently absurd or useless in my estimate. ANY opposing viewpoint supporting Megrahi's guilt (within social norms, etc) that is submitted will be hosted for argument's sake, but I will own the comments. So keep it sharp, if possible.

If you see an existing post that you can add something to, fill in the gaps often labeled "forthcoming," drop me a line via a comment there or by e-mail. (...) Anyone interested in doing original research for a detailed post can ask me about sharing links and source material they may not have, and for tips on where to look for info.

Shock! FBI think they got the right man!

[What follow are excerpts from an article in today's edition of The Christian Science Monitor.]

But to Richard Marquise, the lead FBI investigator into the bombing, the public doubts expressed about Megrahi, who was convicted by a tribunal of three Scottish judges in 2001, are puzzling and frustrating. In his 31 years at the FBI, Mr. Marquise said he's rarely seen a "stronger circumstantial case" than the one against Megrahi, who was also caught repeatedly lying to investigators and reporters. "There's nobody else that I'm aware of anywhere in the world that has such evidence pointing to their guilt," he says. (...)

Marquise says that "there were other people that we strongly believed were involved in terms of the planning process and ordering process.... Megrahi was the guy who was assigned to get it done. We think at least six were probably involved if you only had to make an intelligence case, but in terms of making a criminal case, we didn't have strong enough evidence." (...)

But many remain unconvinced -- though, as Marquise and others point out, there's no evidence to support any of a myriad of alternative theories about his guilt. One popular alternative theory, advanced most recently by The Herald newspaper of Scotland on Friday, is that Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian convicted of carrying out other attacks in Europe in the early 1980s on behalf of a Palestinian group, carried out the bombing.

The Herald writes that the "Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) is understood to have uncovered new evidence that strengthens the case against Talb" without actually explaining how this is "understood" or what additional evidence, if any, exists to tie him to the murders. The article also asserts that Mr. Talb was "arrested in connection with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103" in 1989.

Marquise says that last assertion is false and that Talb's arrest in 1989 dealt with a different terrorism case. While Megrahi was proven to have traveled to Malta on a false passport (which he had originally lied about), and to [have] been there on the date that the explosive was placed on the plane, Talb was in Sweden at the time.

The key piece of evidence against Megrahi was a fragment of the timer used for the bomb at Lockerbie, which was of an unusual design. "There were maybe as many as 25 of these timers ever made -- 20 really with a couple of circuit boards left over," says Marquise. "All 20 were hand-delivered to Libyan intelligence."

Another theory floating about is that the British government squashed possibly exculpatory evidence about Megrahi at the time of his trial and has been hiding it ever since. The Guardian newspaper quoted a Scottish human rights lawyer last week as saying that there is a "secret intelligence report" that "is believed to cast serious doubts on prosecution claims that Megrahi used a specific Swiss timer for the bomb."

Again, it isn't clear who believes this or how they could possibly know such the contents of a "secret" document.

"I don’t know if some of these people are reading too many of these spy novels or what," says William Chornyak, another former FBI investigator. "But a lot of the people making these suppositions simply weren't there. It's easy to say, 'I'm going to assume there's some secret document' ... that proves Megrahi is innocent. But where is the document?"

Mr. Chonyak says he's "absolutely" convinced that Megrahi's conviction was accurate. "The evidence is pretty specific, the guy even admitted using a phony passport, and he was caught lying. If a guy is going to lie in one instance, and you have the documentation that proves he lied, he’s going to continue to lie."

"I feel bad for the families," says Marquise. "They got partial justice."

[Readers are invited to compare the above with Lockerbie: A satisfactory process but a flawed result and The SCCRC decision.

Caustic Logic's commentary on The Christian Science Monitor article can be read here on The Lockerbie Divide blog.]

Medical mystery behind bomber's release

This is the headline over an article just published on the website of The Wall Street Journal, in which the medical evidence available to the Cabinet Secretary for Justice when he took his decision is described and a number of US oncologists express disagreement that it warranted the conclusion that Mr Megrahi's likely life expectancy was three months. An accompanying article headed "Lockerbie release flawed: Scotland lacked medical consensus in returning convicted bomber to Libya" can be read here.

A report on the BBC News website headed "Lockerbie bomber Megrahi's cancer not fake - Sikora" can be read here. A further article on the BBC News website headed Can you really predict a prisoner's death? deals with the cases of Ronnie Biggs and Abdelbaset Megrahi and with the general problem for doctors of attaching a period to the survival of a patient with a terminal illness.

On his valuable blog The Lockerbie Divide Caustic Logic is currently running a series on the known influences on the release decision.

Megrahi release "a strategic error by London"

The heart of a Conservative-led foreign policy must be the Special Relationship, the most important and successful partnership of modern times. It is the beating heart of the free world and the engine that drives the global war against Islamist terrorism. Under Obama and Brown, the Anglo–American alliance has been weakened through a combination of Washington’s indifference and a series of strategic errors by London, including the appalling release last year of Libyan Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi. Disappointingly, the US President has never even mentioned Britain in a single major speech, both before and since entering the White House.

The next Prime Minister should make the full restoration of the alliance with the United States a top priority. He should also ensure that Britain’s freedom to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with America is not constrained by the Treaty of Lisbon and the relentless drive toward ever-closer union in Europe.

[I am grateful to Caustic Logic for drawing my attention to the article entitled "Four Key Principles for a Conservative British Foreign Policy" by Nile Gardner, US right-wing pundit and Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation. What appears above is the first of his "key principles". It was, of course, the Edinburgh, not the London, Government that took the decision to release Mr Megrahi. But there can be little doubt that if the decision had rested with London, repatriation would have been accomplished considerably sooner than it was, albeit through prisoner transfer rather than compassionate release.

Mr Gardner also blogs on the website of the Conservative-supporting UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.]

UK and US politicians' attitudes on Lockerbie

The most recent post on Caustic Logic's blog The Lockerbie Divide compares and contrasts the stance taken by elected politicians in the United Kingdom and the United States in relation to the Lockerbie case and the conviction of Abdelbaset Megrahi. This interesting piece can be read here.