[The following are excerpts from a report in The Sunday Times of 29 November 2009. The document referred to is a US State Department press release dating from April 1992 which appeared on the State Department website for many years and is well known to all who have taken the trouble to follow the Lockerbie case. What motivated the newspaper to draw attention to it again in November 2009 remains a mystery.]
The Lockerbie bomber was implicated in the purchase and development of chemical weapons by Libya, according to documents produced by the American government.
The papers also claim that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi sought to sponsor Latin American terrorist groups and to buy 1,000 letter bombs from Greek arms dealers while working as a Libyan intelligence officer. The documents, which were prepared by the US State Department, reveal the extent of Megrahi’s alleged terrorist activities. (...)
In 1987, Megrahi was appointed director of Libya’s Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS), which served the Department of Military Procurement. In a section headed “Procurement of chemical weapons precursors”, the documents state: “An al-Megrahi subordinate operating in Germany in 1988 played an important role in acquiring and shipping chemical weapons precursors to Libya. Megrahi is also linked to a senior manager of Libya’s chemical weapons development program.” (...)
Bill Aitken, justice spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives, said the documents made a mockery of Britain’s ongoing trade links with Libya and the decision to release Megrahi. (...)
Frank Duggan, president of Washington-based Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, said that the documents shed further light on Megrahi's terrorist activities.
"It was pretty clear that investigators from the US and Scotland knew they had a bad penny with Megrahi. I had never heard of Megrahi being linked with chemical weapons but his involvement doesn't surprise me. This strengthens the case against Megrahi as being the Lockerbie bomber."
Tony Kelly, Megrahi’s lawyer in Scotland, said he was unaware of the existence of the State Department documents but was sure they were based on “unsubstantiated and unattributed intelligence rumours”.
“If there was any evidence backing any of this up I am absolutely certain it would have been introduced at trial, and it wasn’t,” he said.
The best authorities on this story are two members of the White House team at the time, Howard Teicher and Vincent Cannistraro. Cannistraro had been Colonel Oliver North's task force officer during the brutal covert Nicaraguan war in which the huge bullying state of America attempted to bring down the left-wing government of tiny Nicaragua. Some 70,000 citizens were killed using mercenaries armed and trained with manuals of invasion and killing promulgated by Cannistraro and colleagues. It was part of the world-wide US covert campaign known as Iran-Contra. The aims were simple: a take-over of policy and trade in favour of American companies and influence.
ReplyDeleteFollowing the end of Iran-Contra both Teicher and Cannistraro moved to the Libyan desk in the White House with the task of destabilising Libya with a campaign of lies and propaganda. In a filmed interview in the 1993 documentary "The Maltese Double Cross", Teicher explained: "Mr Cannistraro and myself were the co-ordinators of Libya policy within the NSC [National Security Committee], and did have a direct role in co-ordinating the papers written by [Department of] State with input by the CIA and the Department of Defense and other agencies." And in another filmed interview Cannistraro boasted: "I developed the policy towards Libya. In fact, I wrote the draft paper that was later adopted by the President." Cannistraro was then put in charge of the CIA Lockerbie bombing investigation team. It is today proven that there is a strong possibility that key evidence was planted at the Lockerbie crash site.
Typical of American arrogance, the film The Maltese Double Cross was banned in the US and never seen again. A compliant British government obliged its masters and attempted to ban the film. It was shown in a cut-down version on Channel 4 and a couple of other places.
The above post is but one example of US disinformation in action. Anonymous sources quoted with no evidence. The intention: To plant in the mind of a nation's population and media something that will be consciously forgotten, but will stay in the subconscious when political opinions are formed.
I've tried very hard to substantiate the allegation that evidence was planted at the crash scene but so far I have failed. Some items certainly look as if they should be plants and an awful lot that is mysterious would become plain if they were planted. That much is certainly true. I would very much like to be able to show that these things were planted as it would make the job of figuring all this out a hell of a lot easier. But I can't make the evidence show it. Funny old world.
ReplyDeleteI agree. Things are mysterious. I was referring to the mystery of PT35(b). It has the visual appearance of being part of an MST-13 timer. But it is now proved not to have come from a batch of 20 MST-13 timers supplied to Libya in 1985. In the words of Allan Worroll, a Ferranti scientist who was asked by the police to analyse it, it appears to be "home made".
DeleteFormer CIA middle eastern specialist Robert Baer firmly maintains that Iran and Syria were behind the attack. If Baer is correct, then PT35(b) must be a plant, since the PFLP-GC group funded by Iran employed only "ice-cube" timers in their IED's.
So, it is all a mystery. We can, however, be certain that if a second appeal were to be allowed, the Crown case would collapse for several reasons, including the doubts surrounding PT35(b).