A response to Richard Marquise

[I am deeply grateful to Peter Biddulph for allowing me to post the following response written by him to Richard Marquise's recent broadcast and print contributions to Lockerbie lore.]

1. It would appear that Mr Marquise never handled the fragment [of circuit board allegedly from the MST-13 timer that allegedly detonated the bomb], never saw the fragment. All his forensic information appears to have come from Thomas Thurman, proven to be a manipulator of prosecution reports by the US Department of Justice in 36 out of the 52 Thurman cases that they investigated.

And yet Thurman too never saw the fragment or handled it. When challenged by journalists, he admitted that he had worked solely on photographs supplied by the Scottish police and Thomas Hayes. And the evidence he gave on US TV about identifying the fragment was given as a voice-over using photographs of a sample from the CIA's own laboratory in Langley, Virginia.

Thurman, by resigning and "leaving" the employ of the FBI avoided being a witness at the trial, and his claims and record regarding the fragment were never tested in court. All references to Thurman in the trial transcript took "a priori" that he was on the team who found the fragment that proved Libya did it. His questionable history was never challenged by the defence. Were they negligent?

2. Mr Marquise's senior FBI colleague Oliver Revell never saw the fragment, never handled the fragment. In a televised discussion in 1995 on UK Channel Four TV he claimed :

". . . And we were operating on the premise that [Iran] was the responsible party. But we simply could not bring to bear all of the information we had, and the evidence, and make it fit. And then when the item – the microchip – was found and was identified – and by the way it was through both RARDE and Tom Thurman of the FBI laboratory – independently – that we found the other connection, and then we started working on that." (My italics).

So, whatever might be said by the FBI now, their case in 1991 centred entirely upon the provenance of the fragment of the bomb said to have been found in July 1989 by Dr Thomas Hayes. Should Hayes' evidence be in any way suspect, the case would collapse.

Mr Marquise has claimed elsewhere that the retirement of the CIA's Vincent Cannistraro took place before the key evidence was found. He has said that to for us to say otherwise is wrong.

Well, it's not wrong. Cannistraro was busy as head of the Lockerbie team when Hayes claimed to have found the fragment. Cannistraro retired a year and a half later, in November 1990.

3. The chief identification witness, Tony Gauci, was exposed in 2005 by the very man who - in 1991 - helped with the indictments against Megrahi and Fhimah, former Lord Advocate Peter Fraser. In Fraser's own words, Gauci could not be trusted.

And now a Mr Clancy [Ronnie Clancy QC] of the Scottish Crown team has conceded in a recent Scottish High Court hearing in Edinburgh that even if Gauci's evidence is discredited, it would not significantly affect the prosecution case. A strange claim and admission indeed. Are they already conceding the case in total? [RB: What Mr Clancy said was that the Crown’s view was that there was sufficient evidence to justify Megrahi’s conviction even if Gauci’s evidence were discounted.]

4. Marquise's information regarding the British forensic tracing of the fragment came from Dr Thomas Hayes.

At the time of the trial, Hayes' record in the case of the IRA Maguire Seven (Guildford bombing) was never discussed in court. All that the judges heard was an oblique reference to "deliberate falsehoods" told by his former colleague and supervisor Dr Higgs in another IRA case, that of Judith Ward.

Since Hayes had not been part of that particular Higgs episode, he could - and did - deny all connection or knowledge of that particular Higgs conspiracy. The trial then moved on without further comment or question.

And yet Hayes was central to a Higgs conspiracy in another IRA trial, that of the Maguire Seven, in which the Hayes and Higgs were proved by Parliamentary investigation to have conspired to with-hold evidence that might assist the defence case.

But since the Maguire Seven story was not rehearsed in the Lockerbie trial, none of this could be considered by the Lockerbie judges.

I believe that if Hayes' history in the case of the Maguire Seven had been examined in court, his testimony in the case of Lockerbie would have been discredited in the same way as that of Majid Giaka, the double CIA and Libyan agent.

In his book Scotbom, and since, Mr Marquise gives the impression that American investigation was led and controlled by the FBI. In fact it was controlled overall by the CIA, and by certain people with much blood and lies on their hands. Among the White House team around that time were people proven by declassified documents to understand well the technique of the manufacture of evidence to destabilise Middle Eastern governments. These documents are now freely available. But nobody - including the media in both countries - seems to care any more. It's old news, unwelcome news. People die, so what? Life must go on etc.

All of this, naturally, never came to the attention of the Lockerbie judges. Hopefully the second appeal will offer a long overdue opportunity for the true back-story of Lockerbie to emerge.

If Mr Marquise wishes to challenge any of the above, I will gladly supply the document dates and references with appropriate quotations. I will also arrange for sections of the film and television records to be put on the web. And I will ensure that relevant sections of the trial transcript are also put on the web. People can then judge for themselves where this story might go over the next six months.