What follows is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article Pan Am Flight 103 (footnotes omitted):]
On 5 December 1988 (16 days prior to the attack), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a security bulletin saying that, on that day, a man with an Arabic accent had telephoned the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, and told them that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the United States would be blown up within the next two weeks by someone associated with the Abu Nidal Organization; he said a Finnish woman would carry the bomb on board as an unwitting courier.
The anonymous warning was taken seriously by the U.S. government, and the State Department cabled the bulletin to dozens of embassies. The FAA sent it to all US carriers, including Pan Am, which had charged each of the passengers a $5 security surcharge, promising a "program that will screen passengers, employees, airport facilities, baggage and aircraft with unrelenting thoroughness"; the security team in Frankfurt found the warning under a pile of papers on a desk the day after the bombing. One of the Frankfurt security screeners, whose job was to spot explosive devices under X-ray, told ABC News that she had first learned what Semtex (a plastic explosive) was during her ABC interview 11 months after the bombing.
On 13 December, the warning was posted on bulletin boards in the US Embassy in Moscow and eventually distributed to the entire American community there, including journalists and businessmen.
The Swedish-language national newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet reported on the front page of its 23 December 1988 issue — two days after the bombing — that a State Department spokesperson in Washington, Phyllis Oakley, confirmed the details of the bomb threat to the Helsinki Embassy. The newspaper writes that, "according the spokesperson, the anonymous telephone voice also stated that the bomb would be transported from Helsinki to Frankfurt and onwards to New York on Pan-Am's flight to the USA. The person transporting the bomb would not themselves be aware of it, with the explosives hidden in that person's luggage." The same news article reports that the US Embassy in Moscow also received the same threat on 5 December, adding that Finland's foreign ministry has found no evidence in its investigations of any link to the Lockerbie crash. "The foreign ministry assumes that an Arab living in Finland is behind the phone threat to the US Embassy in Helsinki. According to the foreign ministry's sources, the Arab has phoned throughout the year with threatening calls to the Israeli and US embassies [in Helsinki]," wrote the paper. "The man who rang the embassies claimed to belong to Abu Nidal's radical Palestinian faction that has been responsible for many terrorist actions. The man said that a bomb would be placed on board a Pan-Am plane by a woman." The article continues, "This has led to speculation that a Finnish woman placed the bomb aboard the downed aircraft. One of Abu Nidal's highest operative leaders, Samir Muhammed Khadir, who died last summer in a terrorist attack against the ship City of Poros, had lived outside Stockholm. He was married to a Finnish-born woman."
[RB: Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the Helsinki warning is to be found here (Part 1), here (Part 2), here (Part 3), here (Part 4) and here (part 5) on Caustic Logic’s website The Lockerbie Divide.]
On 5 December 1988 (16 days prior to the attack), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a security bulletin saying that, on that day, a man with an Arabic accent had telephoned the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, and told them that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to the United States would be blown up within the next two weeks by someone associated with the Abu Nidal Organization; he said a Finnish woman would carry the bomb on board as an unwitting courier.
The anonymous warning was taken seriously by the U.S. government, and the State Department cabled the bulletin to dozens of embassies. The FAA sent it to all US carriers, including Pan Am, which had charged each of the passengers a $5 security surcharge, promising a "program that will screen passengers, employees, airport facilities, baggage and aircraft with unrelenting thoroughness"; the security team in Frankfurt found the warning under a pile of papers on a desk the day after the bombing. One of the Frankfurt security screeners, whose job was to spot explosive devices under X-ray, told ABC News that she had first learned what Semtex (a plastic explosive) was during her ABC interview 11 months after the bombing.
On 13 December, the warning was posted on bulletin boards in the US Embassy in Moscow and eventually distributed to the entire American community there, including journalists and businessmen.
The Swedish-language national newspaper Hufvudstadsbladet reported on the front page of its 23 December 1988 issue — two days after the bombing — that a State Department spokesperson in Washington, Phyllis Oakley, confirmed the details of the bomb threat to the Helsinki Embassy. The newspaper writes that, "according the spokesperson, the anonymous telephone voice also stated that the bomb would be transported from Helsinki to Frankfurt and onwards to New York on Pan-Am's flight to the USA. The person transporting the bomb would not themselves be aware of it, with the explosives hidden in that person's luggage." The same news article reports that the US Embassy in Moscow also received the same threat on 5 December, adding that Finland's foreign ministry has found no evidence in its investigations of any link to the Lockerbie crash. "The foreign ministry assumes that an Arab living in Finland is behind the phone threat to the US Embassy in Helsinki. According to the foreign ministry's sources, the Arab has phoned throughout the year with threatening calls to the Israeli and US embassies [in Helsinki]," wrote the paper. "The man who rang the embassies claimed to belong to Abu Nidal's radical Palestinian faction that has been responsible for many terrorist actions. The man said that a bomb would be placed on board a Pan-Am plane by a woman." The article continues, "This has led to speculation that a Finnish woman placed the bomb aboard the downed aircraft. One of Abu Nidal's highest operative leaders, Samir Muhammed Khadir, who died last summer in a terrorist attack against the ship City of Poros, had lived outside Stockholm. He was married to a Finnish-born woman."
[RB: Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the Helsinki warning is to be found here (Part 1), here (Part 2), here (Part 3), here (Part 4) and here (part 5) on Caustic Logic’s website The Lockerbie Divide.]
That can't be right. The Helsinku warning was circulated at Frankfurt. Kurt Maier knew all about it. The security guards were looking out for a Finnish woman.
ReplyDeleteIs that article referenced at all?
The Wikipedia article that this blogpost is taken from gives references.
DeletePart 5 of Caustic Logic's analysis is the most disturbing part of this story and can be found here: http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/iranian-in-london-strange-case-of.html
ReplyDeleteFor me there are just too many coincidences for the warning to be a pure hoax.
I think Rolfe is correct.By the time of the bombing, Frankfurt, Heathrow and other major airports were carrying out special screening as a direct result of the Helsinki warning. In Frankfurt, security staff were paying special attention to female Finnish passengers. This was in addition to the extra vigilance employed at Frankfurt as a result of the Autumn Leaves warnings. Once again, it seems that Wikipedia is far from accurate on Lockerbie.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about Heathrow, but staff at Frankfurt definitely said they had been alerted to watch out for Finnish women. I do get the Helsinki warning and the Autumn Leaves warning mixed up though. Certainly, Maier was aware of the Autumn Leaves warning (while Kamboj wasn't, the warning having been held back at Heathrow waiting for a good-quality colour photo of the radio-cassette recorder). I think Maier's statements also include a reference to Finnish passengers but I'd need to check.
DeletePan Am staff at Heathrow were also on alert as a result of the Helsinki warning. On returning from Helsinki where he had flown to investigate the warning, Jim Berwick, Pan Am's UK security manager, instructed Alert/Pan Am to "select" all single women traveling alone for extra screening. This instruction was intended to remain in operation until the end of December 1988. Something similar was in place in new York where screeners were to "select" all Finnish women.
DeleteI don't really want to start messing with Wikipedia articles on Lockerbie. It's too easy to get into an edit war with people with the opposite agenda. Maybe later. (Much later.)
ReplyDeleteBut basically, anyone can type anything and if it isn't challenged, it stays. Quite often, links referenced don't actually substantiate the statement in the article.