Megrahi’s family fear appeal will fail

[This is part of the headline over a report by Marcello Mega in the Scottish edition of The Sunday Times today. It reads in part:]

The son of the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has accused relatives of American citizens who died in the attack of closing their minds to fresh evidence about the atrocity.

Ali Megrahi, 25, spent some of his childhood in Scotland where his father, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was jailed.

He fears there is little appetite in the US and UK to continue to investigate the December 1988 attack.

Relatives of the only man convicted of the bombing have launched a fresh attempt to clear his name. Aamer Anwar, the solicitor representing the Megrahi family, has submitted papers to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) in the hope that it will lead to the case being referred to the appeal court.

Megrahi is especially angry with US relatives of the 270 dead, saying they would not open their minds to the evidence he believes clears his father. He points to scientific tests carried out on a timer fragment linked to the bomb, which the trial judges said proved Libyan involvement.

He says these have shown the metallurgical composition of the fragment was not the same as the tin/lead alloy of the timers sold to Libya by the Swiss company Mebo, casting doubt on the safety of his father’s conviction.

But Susan Cohen, from New Jersey, who lost her 20-year-old daughter Theodora in the bombing, said: “Talk of planted evidence and cover-ups is fake news. I put it on the same level as the guy who said the Clintons were running a sex abuse ring in Washington.

“The doubters insist Libya was framed, but where is their evidence? I saw the evidence that convicted Megrahi in court.”

Adelbaset al-Megrahi died of cancer on May 20, 2012, 33 months after his release from a life sentence on compassionate grounds. The SCCRC had referred the case back for a second appeal, citing six grounds that could each constitute a miscarriage of justice, but Megrahi abandoned the appeal in the belief that this would secure his release from prison in Scotland.

When later asked to refer it back again by Anwar, acting on behalf of the Megrahi family and UK victims who doubted Megrahi’s guilt, the SCCRC declined in the absence of a signed mandate from the family, because of conflict in Libya. Late last year Megrahi’s family managed to leave war-torn Libya to meet Anwar in Switzerland to sign papers instructing him, making it clear that they support an appeal.

But his younger son now fears the commission and the Scottish courts will try to avoid the potential embarrassment of tackling the fresh evidence.

He said: “Scotland must show that it has courage and is not a lapdog for the Americans who don’t want to know the truth.

“The new evidence proves my father’s innocence, but the Americans close their eyes and ears.

“My family feels for the victims and their families, but we were also victims of Lockerbie. Soon, everyone will know that my father is innocent. If the court does not grant another appeal, we have to find a way. The evidence never dies.”

Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh university and the architect of the Lockerbie trial held in the Netherlands with three Scottish judges and no jury, also has concerns.

Black, who was educated at Lockerbie Academy, said: “The SCCRC did not appear keen to open this up again and found a way, after seeking guidance from the courts, to justify refusal.

“Now there is no doubt Megrahi’s family is involved, there is still a danger they might seek advice from the Scottish courts, and that advice might be that it is no longer in the public interest to reopen the investigation. I fear that could kill the search for justice stone dead.” [RB: While I fear that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission may reject the current application on the “interests of justice” limb of the test they have to apply -- they can scarcely do so on the “miscarriage of justice” branch of the test, having regard to the prior SCCRC history of the case and the new evidence -- I remain confident and relatively optimistic about the Police Scotland Operation Sandwood investigation.]

The Crown Office said: “It would be inappropriate to comment on the application to the SCCRC, which has not been shared with the crown, while it is being considered.”

Appeal Court succumbs to security-vetted counsel abomination

[What follows is the text of a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2008:]

The Appeal Court in Edinburgh is to appoint a special defender to view confidential documents wanted by the Lockerbie bomber in his appeal.

It follows an extraordinary hearing held behind closed doors at which the UK Government argued that revealing the documents would compromise security.

Libyan national Abdelbaset ali Mohmed al-Megrahi is serving life for killing 270 people in the 1988 bombing.

He has been granted leave to appeal against his conviction.

The appointment of a special defence lawyer is the latest twist in the attempt to have his conviction overturned.

The UK Government argued last month it should not be forced to hand over highly confidential documents wanted by Megrahi's legal team.

Foreign Secretary David Milliband said to publish the documents, sent to the government by an un-named foreign power, would compromise Britain's national security.

The advocate general, who represents the UK government in Scottish courts, asked the court to appoint a security-vetted lawyer who could look at the documents on Megrahi's behalf.

He would then argue which parts of the document should be published - although judges would make the final decision about how much, if any, should be revealed.

So far the court has not published its decision, but in a letter seen by BBC Scotland, the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells says it has decided to appoint a special defender.

It will be the first time such a course has been taken in Scotland, although some English courts have appointed special defenders to examine evidence in terrorism cases.

There has been no official comment from Megrahi's legal team, although it is thought they are planning an appeal to the Privy Council, arguing the move will violate his human rights.

Dr Hans Koechler, the United Nations special envoy to the trial in the Netherlands of the two Libyans accused of the Lockerbie bombing, criticised the development as "intolerable".

In a BBC interview, Dr Koechler said it was "detrimental to the rule of law."

He said: "In no country can the situation be allowed where the accused or the appellant is not free to have his own defence team, and instead someone is imposed upon him."

It is expected the full appeal by Megrahi, who is serving his life sentence in Greenock Prison, will be heard next year.

There was only ever an illusion of a trial

What follows is an item originally posted on this blog on this date in 2009.

The framing of al-Megrahi

[This is the headline over a long and detailed article -- 6500 words -- by Gareth Peirce in the current issue of the London Review of Books. It is an utterly devastating critique of the Lockerbie trial and what led up to it and flowed from it. Anyone interested in the Lockerbie affair needs to read and digest it in full. The following are extracts.]

Only a simpleton could believe that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing, was not recently returned to his home in Libya because it suited Britain. The political furore is very obviously contrived, since both the British and American governments know perfectly well how and for what reasons he came to be prosecuted. More important than the present passing storm is whether any aspect of the investigation that led to al-Megrahi’s original conviction was also about oil, or dictated by other factors that should have no place in a prosecution process. (...)

[A] number of the bereaved Lockerbie families have of necessity themselves become investigators, asking probing questions for two decades without receiving answers; they have learned sufficient forensic science to make sense of what was being presented at al-Megrahi’s trial and make up their own minds whether the prosecution of two Libyans at Camp Zeist near Utrecht was in fact a three-card trick put together for political ends.

Perhaps the result could have been different if there had been an entirely Scottish police investigation, with unrestricted access to all available information, without interference or manipulation from outside. Instead, from the beginning, the investigation and what were to become the most important aspects of the prosecution case against al-Megrahi were hijacked. Within hours, the countryside around Lockerbie was occupied: local people helping with the search under the supervision of Dumfries and Galloway police realised to their astonishment that the terrain was dotted with unidentified Americans not under the command of the local police. (...)

Although the crime was the most hideous Scotland had ever known, the integrity of the crime scene was violated; in part because outsiders were conducting a desperate search for wreckage that it was important for them to find and spirit away. As many police investigations over the years have demonstrated, such distracting irregularities can simply be red herrings, and these intrusions may have no bearing on the question of who blew up Pan Am 103. Was it individuals? Was it a country? And if so which one? From the very beginning, in fact, it seemed that the case could and would be easily solved. Considerable (and uncomplicated) evidence immediately to hand suggested who might be responsible; it was as if giant arrows were pointing towards the solution.

In the weeks before the bombing in December 1988 there had been a number of very specific warnings that a bomb would be placed on a Pan Am aircraft. Among them was a photograph of a bomb in a Toshiba cassette radio wired to a barometric timer switch; a number of such bombs had been found earlier in 1988 in the possession of members of a small group with a history of successfully carrying out bombings, primarily of American targets. One group member told police that five bombs had been made; at least one was missing at the time of the Lockerbie disaster and never recovered. The warnings were sufficiently exact that the staff of the American Embassy in Moscow, who usually travelled by Pan Am when they returned to the US for Christmas, used a different airline. Flora Swire, who was travelling to New York to spend Christmas with her boyfriend, found it surprisingly easy to buy a ticket.

All the Toshiba cassette bombs that had been seized were found, when tested, to run for 30 minutes after they were set. (...) It was precisely 38 minutes after Pan Am Flight 103 took off from Heathrow on 21 December 1988 that it exploded over Lockerbie; when the remnants of the destroyed plane and its contents were put together piece by piece by the Dumfries and Galloway police, fragments of a Toshiba cassette radio were found. (...)

That Iran and the PFLP-GC were responsible had fitted comfortably with UK and US foreign policy in the Middle East. Both countries had severed relations with Syria on the grounds of its persistent support for international terrorism; both had supported Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, which ended in the summer of 1988. The obvious truth as it appeared at the time was that the Jibril group, sponsored in this instance by Iran, was a logical as well as politically acceptable fit.

Then, in August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, thereby putting at risk almost 10 per cent of US oil supplies, and the stability of the Saudi and Gulf sheikhdoms on which the West depended to preserve the status quo in the region. A sudden shift of alliances was necessary: if Iraq had to be confronted, then Iran had to be treated differently and the Syrian regime needed to be brought on board. At the beginning of 1991 Syrians joined Western troops in the attack on Saddam Hussein’s invading army.

The centre of the Lockerbie investigation had by this time ceased to be Scotland: the CIA was in charge. Vincent Cannistraro had made his mark under Ronald Reagan, with a clandestine programme to destabilise the Libyan regime. He boasted that he ‘developed the policy towards Libya’ which culminated in the bombing of Gaddafi’s house in Tripoli in 1986 on the basis of intercept evidence later acknowledged to be false. Now brought out of retirement, Cannistraro shifted the investigation’s approach. The suspect country was no longer Iran but Libya, and in November 1991, the UK and the US made a joint announcement that two Libyan Airlines officials, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, had planted the bomb in Malta on behalf of Libyan intelligence. Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, announced to the House of Commons that Libyans alone were suspected and that other countries were not implicated. (...)

The key features needed to prosecute al-Megrahi successfully were the scientific identification of the circuit-board fragment, which would in turn establish its origin, and the identification of the purchaser of the clothes in Malta. The timers, the indictment stated, were made by a firm in Switzerland; their circuit board matched the fragment retrieved from Lockerbie, and they sold the timers exclusively to Libya. Everything, essentially, hinged on those links.

Who found the fragment? And who understood its relevance? Thomas Hayes of the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) claimed the find (with his colleague Alan Feraday) and Thomas Thurman of the FBI claimed the analytical victory. All were swiftly hailed (or hailed themselves) as heroes. Thurman appeared on television on 15 November 1991, the day after indictments were issued against the two Libyans, boasting that he had identified the piece of circuit board as part of a timing device that might have been sold to Libyan Airlines staff. ‘I made the identification and I knew at that point what it meant. And because, if you will, I am an investigator as well as a forensic examiner, I knew where that would go. At that point we had no conclusive proof of the type of timing mechanism that was used in the bombing of 103. When that identification was made of the timer I knew that we had it.’ This was the claim – the hard evidence – that linked Libyans to the crime. If the claim was false the bereaved Lockerbie families have been deceived for 20 years.

On 13 September 1995 the FBI’s forensic department was the subject of a programme broadcast in the US by ABC. At its centre was a memorandum from the former head of explosive science at the FBI, Dr Frederic Whitehurst. It was a devastating indictment of a former colleague. The colleague was Thomas Thurman and the accusations related to his investigation of a terrorist attack in which a judge was killed by pipe bombs. Two years later, as a result of a review by the US inspector general, Michael Bromwich, into a large number of criminal investigations, Thomas Thurman was barred from FBI labs and from being called as an expert witness. Bromwich had discovered that he had no formal scientific qualifications and that, according to a former colleague, he had been ‘circumventing procedures and protocols, testifying to areas of expertise that he had no qualifications in . . . therefore fabricating evidence’. (...)

There were throughout two aspects of the investigation over which the Scottish authorities exerted little authority: in the US, the activities of the CIA and in particular of Thomas Thurman and the forensic branch of the FBI; in England, the forensic investigations of RARDE, carried out by Hayes and Feraday. Without Hayes’s findings, the Lockerbie prosecution would have been impossible. His evidence was that on 12 May 1989 he discovered and tweezed out from a remnant of cloth an electronic fragment, part of a circuit board. The remnant of cloth, part of a shirt collar, was then traced to a Maltese shop. A number of aspects of the original circuit board find were puzzling. The remnant was originally found in January 1989 by a DC Gilchrist and a DC McColm in the outer reaches of the area over which the bomb-blast debris was spread. It was labelled ‘cloth (charred)’ by him, but then overwritten as ‘debris’ even though the fragment of circuit board had not yet been ‘found’ by Hayes. The fragment found by Hayes, and identified as a MEBO circuit board by Thurman, meant that the thesis of an Air Malta involvement could survive. (...)

No forensic scientist knows when he conducts his examinations whether or when there will be a prosecution that will depend on them; this makes it all the more important that his notes are exact. Hayes confirmed that it was his practice to draw pieces of circuit board where he found them – for instance in the vicinity of blast-damaged material – but he made no such drawings of this item, nor had he given it an exhibit reference number as he had every other exhibit being designated at the time, nor did he carry out a standard test for traces of explosive. Almost a month after his inspection of the timer fragment, Hayes was identifying and drawing exhibits which were given reference numbers smaller than the number of the vital exhibit. He recorded his finding on page 51 of his notes, but the pages originally numbered 51-55 had been renumbered 52-56 at some point. Hayes stated that he had ‘no idea’ when the change in pagination was carried out. The inference put to Hayes was that the original page 51 and the following pages had been renumbered, an original page removed and space made to insert what was now page 51 of his notes.

Curiously, a memorandum from Hayes’s colleague Feraday, written on 15 September 1989, to a detective inspector working on the case, referred to a fragment of green circuit board: ‘Willy, enclosed are some Polaroid photographs of the green circuit board. Sorry about the quality, it is the best I can do in such a short time.’ No one was able to explain why there should have been any shortage of time to make available in September 1989 photographs of an item that had been found on 12 May. Feraday’s note continued: ‘I feel that this fragment could be potentially most important so any light your lads or lasses can shed upon the problem of identifying it will be most welcome.’ Again no one was able to explain what light the lads and lasses could shed on something it was most curious they had not seen before now, given that Hayes had recovered it in May. Clearly it could not have been seen by the police before the cloth was passed to Hayes at RARDE and the fragment extracted by him. If Hayes had photographed the exhibit, as was his normal practice, then Feraday would not have needed to rely on Polaroids of dubious quality. The issue of his notes’ pagination was described by Hayes as ‘an unfathomable mystery’. In view of the importance of exhibit PT/35(b), how could the court have been satisfied by this evidence? (...)

To discover that al-Megrahi’s conviction was in large part based on the evidence of scientists whose value as professional witnesses had been permanently and publicly demolished ten years before his trial is astounding. The discovery nearly two decades ago of a large number of wrongful convictions enabled by scientific evidence rightly led to demands that the community of forensic scientists change its ways. Similarly, a series of catastrophic misidentifications required the introduction of sound new practices for evidence based on that most fragile of human attributes, visual memory. Witnesses must not be prompted; a witness’s memory, as far as possible, must be as safely protected from contamination as a crime scene. The first description is vital. If a witness makes a positive identification of one individual, no subsequent identification of a second is permissible. Equivocation and uncertainty are not enough. Even if the science that convicted al-Megrahi had not offended against every minimum standard, then the second pillar of the prosecution case, his identification by Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper, would remain spectacular in its noncompliance with any safeguard. He described al-Megrahi as ‘6’0’’’ (he was 5’8’’), ‘50 years old’ (he was 37), and ‘hefty’; said that he ‘had been to the shop before and after’, ‘had been there only once’; that he ‘saw him in a bar months later’; that he ‘will sign statement even though I don’t speak English’; that al-Megrahi ‘was similar but not identical’, ‘perhaps like him but not fully like him’, and, fatally for any identification of al-Megrahi in the first place, that he was ‘like the man in the Sunday Times’ (in other words, like Abu Talb, whose picture Gauci had initially identified). But Gauci’s evidence was needed and, reports suggest, handsomely rewarded. He apparently now lives in Australia, supported by millions of US dollars.

That a court of three experienced judges convicted on such evidence and that an appeal court upheld the conviction is profoundly shocking. Köchler, the UN observer, reported finding the guilty verdict ‘incomprehensible’ in view of the court’s admission that Gauci’s identification was ‘not absolute’. We had come to believe that such an outcome, resting on invalid identification, was no longer possible. ‘The guilty verdict’, Köchler wrote, was ‘arbitrary, even irrational’ with an ‘air of international power politics’ present ‘in the whole verdict’, which was ‘based on a series of highly problematic inferences’. He remarked on the withholding of ‘substantial information’ (‘more or less openly exercised influence on the part of actors outside the judicial framework’) and on the very visible interference with the work of the Scottish prosecutors by US lawyers present in the well of the court. But most seriously, he set out his ‘suspicion that political considerations may have been overriding a strictly judicial evaluation of the case’. All of this harks back to the bad old days when a blind eye was turned to the way convictions were obtained.

Al-Megrahi’s trial constituted a unique legal construct, engineered to achieve a political rapprochement, but its content was so manipulated that in reality there was only ever an illusion of a trial. Dr Köchler recorded at its conclusion that it was ‘not fair’ and that it was not ‘conducted in an objective manner’, so that there were ‘many more questions and doubts at the end than the beginning’.

Lockerbie father calls for restraint

[This is the headline over a report published on the BBC News website on this date in 2001, four days after the aircraft attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It reads as follows:]

The father of one of the victims of the Lockerbie disaster has called for caution in any retaliation for the US terror attacks.

John Mosey, a leading member of the Lockerbie support group, wrote to the prime minister to express support for action, but also of his concerns.

The UK Families Flight 103 group wrote to Tony Blair after he pledged unqualified support for any reprisals the US should take.

It reminded Mr Blair of the 1988 tragedy, in which 270 people were killed, and said care should be taken so that more innocent people are not hurt.

Mr Mosey's daughter Helga, 19, was among the victims when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie.

''The utmost care must be taken that whatever path is eventually pursued is successful and does not harm innocent people thus producing another batch of terrorists,'' Mr Mosey wrote.

He said the civilised world clearly had to support the US in taking ''drastic and effective action to root out this network of evil''.

But he added: "We must find a better way of dealing with our international differences than simply picking up a bigger stick with which to beat the other guys."

Mr Mosey said his daughter and those who died in Lockerbie were victims of ''aggressive American foreign policies'' either in the Gulf or Tripoli.

He also expressed the sadness felt by the Lockerbie support group over the US terror attacks and for the victims' families.

''Our feelings go out to the many in whose homes there is an empty place today, who are eagerly watching their TV screens and waiting desperately for information regarding someone who is missing."

Mr Mosey said he wrote ''as an individual whose family has been a victim of a terrorist attack''.

Tuesday's attacks in the US brought back memories of 13 years ago to the families of victims and residents of Lockerbie.

Pamela Dix, whose brother Peter died in the Lockerbie bomb, said: "It's times like this that those of us who have experienced something of this nature are drawn together.''

Arab League set to back Libya on Lockerbie trial

[This is the headline over a Reuters news agency report from this date in 1998, as published on Safia Aoude’s Pan Am 103 Crash Website. It reads as follows:]

Arab League foreign ministers are expected to throw their diplomatic weight behind Libya this week in their first meeting since Britain and the United States agreed to hold the Lockerbie trial in a neutral country.

“The Lockerbie issue is on the front burner,” said an Arab official of the two days of talks starting on Wednesday.

“It is a priority based on the degree of attention which will be given not only in the official work of the council but on the sidelines as well.”

The Arab official said the Arab League was expected to call for clarification through UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

“The Libyans are worried Holland might be used as a conveyor belt,” he said.

“There is already an environment of mistrust and the language of take-it-or-leave-it is not helpful.

“So the work of the League will focus on supporting Libya's legitimate rights to seek more clarification and guarantees. We believe this will strengthen the Libyan position,” he said.

In their last talks in March, the foreign ministers of the 22-member League renewed support for Libya's call for an end to the UN sanctions imposed on Libya after it refused to give up for trial the suspects in the bombing which killed 270 people.

But Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi apparently wants more than lip service this time.

On Sunday, the Libyan news agency said Libya had abolished its ministerial portfolio charged with promoting Arab unity and emphasised that Libya belonged to the African continent.

The last task for Libya's Unity Affairs Minister Jomaa al-Fezzani will be to attend this week's Arab League meeting. Diplomats saw the move as timed to pressure the Arab League into backing up words with deeds, as African states have done.

The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May [RB: actually June] called for an end to the sanctions and this month seven African leaders broke the embargo by flying into Libya without UN permission.

No Arab country has followed suit. Asked to comment, the Arab official said: “I would understand sometimes it's frustrating, but we are not competing with the OAU and Arabs cannot violate UN resolutions collectively. It should be decided country by country,” he said. “We have given strong collective diplomatic support to Libya.”

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.’”