The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-Opened

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Vixen said:
I should imagine they were covered by the Swedish version of the Offical Secrets Act. Certainly, the Rockwell divers were sworn to great confidentiality and had to certify it had destroyed all tapes of the dive in its possession after handing the original over to the JAIC.

Berman is believed to be speaking on behalf of a diver who was there but cannot speak about it due to gagging clauses, as Bergman has never been arrested (privacy laws are strong). However, it is inescapable that that he highlighted the presence of a hole in the side of the ship by 1999 public domain.

ETA From about 42:48 onwards you can see Professor Amdahl analyse the hole in the starboard quite comprehenisively. OK, so there is a boo-boo when he says '500 tons' instead of '500 MJ' but perhaps he though 'megajoules' would go over viewers' heads.


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Why would he think that?

How is a ton the same as a megajoule?
 
Vixen said:
Rewriting someone's eyewitness account because you disagree with how they saw events unfold is totally wrong.
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Okay, I own this. This is my error. I had wrongly believed that Carl-Eric Reintmann had simply disagreed with how his testimony had been discussed in the JAIC report. I had forgotten that he was the one who claimed that the testimony as recorded by JAIC did not match what he recalled having said. You're mostly right on this point, and I'm mostly wrong. I agree with the point you're trying to make. If the investigators record something different than what the testimony actually was, that's very wrong, very unethical if done intentionally, sloppy if accidental, and probably legally actionable if an injured party can prove it.

This is very different from the witnesses of TWA 800. We have transcripts of their statements and their interviews. To my knowledge, none has ever claimed that these records of their evidence are in error. Many claimed they saw a missile hit the airliner. But that is not really what they can testify to having seen. They saw things that they concluded were consistent with their understanding of how a missile looks when flying. The analysts then have to determine what other things are also consistent with those observations, and determine how likely those are in comparison with an actual missile, considering the totality of different kinds of evidence. the final report may end up disagreeing with what the witnesses' believe they saw, and this may distress them.

Based on what I read here it seems that there are simply two different versions attributed to Reintmann. He didn't read his statement in writing in the JAIC report until six years later, whereupon then he claims to have remembered it differently. And in 2020 he's giving interviews to that effect to newspapers wherein he also buys into the submarine-collision theory favored by the shipyard trying to clear its name.

How do we know his dispute with the JAIC report isn't later revisionism? Can he provide any evidence that he gave a different report to JAIC interviewers at the time than what they recorded? And no, you don't get to start with the presumption that JAIC is evil. You're citing this witness's experience as evidence that the JAIC work was biased, so it's circular to assume that as a premise.
 
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Vixen said:
I should imagine they were covered by the Swedish version of the Offical Secrets Act.
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So no corroborating evidence, then.

Berman is believed to be speaking on behalf of a diver who was there but cannot speak about it due to gagging clauses...
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So when Bergmark is speaking in the first person, that's deceptive? He wasn't really there? He didn't actually see any hole or photograph it? Allegedly some unnamed other person did?

However, it is inescapable that that he highlighted the presence of a hole in the side of the ship by 1999 public domain.
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He told the press a second-hand story of a hole that doesn't match the description of the hole that was eventually found.

...you can see Professor Amdahl analyse the hole in the starboard quite comprehenisively.
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I'm familiar with Prof. Amdahl's analysis. I'm asking why your two allegedly expert witnesses can't agree on what the hole looks like, much less what they think causes it.

OK, so there is a boo-boo when he says '500 tons' instead of '500 MJ' but perhaps he though 'megajoules' would go over viewers' heads.
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What's your evidence that he intended to say "megajoules" instead of what he actually said. Can you read minds?
 
Vixen said:
He said '500 tons' when he meant to say '500 megajoules'. You know, like a verbal typo?
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How do you know that's what he intended to say? Why do you get to second-guess Prof. Amdahl and correct what you think are his errors for him when you deny your critics the same right?
 
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JayUtah said:
Okay, I own this. This is my error. I had wrongly believed that Carl-Eric Reintmann had simply disagreed with how his testimony had been discussed in the JAIC report. I had forgotten that he was the one who claimed that the testimony as recorded by JAIC did not match what he recalled having said. You're mostly right on this point, and I'm mostly wrong. I agree with the point you're trying to make. If the investigators record something different than what the testimony actually was, that's very wrong, very unethical if done intentionally, sloppy if accidental, and probably legally actionable if an injured party can prove it.

This is very different from the witnesses of TWA 800. We have transcripts of their statements and their interviews. To my knowledge, none has ever claimed that these records of their evidence are in error. Many claimed they saw a missile hit the airliner. But that is not really what they can testify to having seen. They saw things that they concluded were consistent with their understanding of how a missile looks when flying. The analysts then have to determine what other things are also consistent with those observations, and determine how likely those are in comparison with an actual missile, considering the totality of different kinds of evidence. the final report may end up disagreeing with what the witnesses' believe they saw, and this may distress them.

Based on what I read here it seems that there are simply two different versions attributed to Reintmann. He didn't read his statement in writing in the JAIC report until six years later, whereupon then he claims to have remembered it differently. And in 2020 he's giving interviews to that effect to newspapers wherein he also buys into the submarine-collision theory favored by the shipyard trying to clear its name.

How do we know his dispute with the JAIC report isn't later revisionism? Can he provide any evidence that he gave a different report to JAIC interviewers at the time than what they recorded? And no, you don't get to start with the presumption that JAIC is evil. You're citing this witness's experience as evidence that the JAIC work was biased, so it's circular to assume that as a premise.
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AIUI Reintamm gave his statement a couple of days after the accident and that would have been to the police. Bengt Schager was a psychologist hired by JAIC to go through passenger survivor statements and summarise them.

He wanted to interview passengers for himself but he only managed one. He would have had to sort through statements in three different languages, not all fully translated into Swedish. Police aren't trained to interview about marine accidents either, so the JAIC missed a golden opportunity to interview the passenger survivors but instead looked for commonalities that fit with their own time line. For example, after his initial police statement, Paul Barney was never contacted again, when one would have thought with only 137 of them - of which 58 were crew and staff - it would not have been a particularly onerous task.

I expect the police are still in possession of the original witness statements.

Reintamm also claims JAIC changed his words from 'a lot of water' in deck one, to a 'thin trickle of water'.
 
Vixen said:
My critics? Any hope of concentrating on the current affairs topic which I posted as current affairs?
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Any hope of getting an answer to this question you've been asked several times? You're putting words in Prof. Amdahl's mouth in the same breath with which you're complaining that someone did that to a witness.
 
Vixen said:
I haven't looked closely at the Titanic details for quite a while so can't debate it.
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Then why bring it into this debate?

Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg at nearly flank speed while ignoring ice warnings from ships which had either cut their speed or shut their engines off to wait for daylight. We can play, Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda all day but the fact is that had Titanic slowed down they'd have sailed into New York on time and continued sailing until the Germans probably would have sank her during WWI, as the did Carpathia and Olympic, and Britannic .
 
Vixen said:
I don't see how it is a problem survivors giving conflicting accounts. I would be suspicious if the accounts were all identical. (cf JAIC)

If some survivors perceived the ship cut in half and others didn't maybe the former were just more observant on the day or nearer to the evidence, as they were right, whereas the others likely just didn't notice.
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And yet you are cherry-picking survivor quotes to fit the CT narrative while casting aspersion on quotes supporting the official findings.
 
Axxman300 said:
And yet you are cherry-picking survivor quotes to fit the CT narrative while casting aspersion on quotes supporting the official findings.
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What exactly is the 'CT narrative'


Facts:

  • There *is* a hole in the starboard side
  • the three sovereign states have amended to law to investigate it
  • At least twenty-nine survivors (of just 137) reported sounds and/or sensations of a series of explosions and/or an enormous collison.
  • These survivors used the words 'explosion', 'collision', 'scraping', 'hitting rocks', 'a crash'.
  • Marine collisions expert, Professor Amdahl, assesses that it was a 500MJ impact that could have caused such damage to the starboard, if it took place before it sunk.

This is as reported in the mainstream press.

Which part is 'conspiracy theory'?

Yes we should treat all preliminary issues with heightened scepticism but that doesn't make it a 'conspiracy theory'.
 
Vixen said:
What exactly is the 'CT narrative'


Facts:

  • There *is* a hole in the starboard side
  • the three sovereign states have amended to law to investigate it
  • At least twenty-nine survivors (of just 137) reported sounds and/or sensations of a series of explosions and/or an enormous collison.
  • These survivors used the words 'explosion', 'collision', 'scraping', 'hitting rocks', 'a crash'.
  • Marine collisions expert, Professor Amdahl, assesses that it was a 500MJ impact that could have caused such damage to the starboard, if it took place before it sunk.

This is as reported in the mainstream press.

Which part is 'conspiracy theory'?

Yes we should treat all preliminary issues with heightened scepticism but that doesn't make it a 'conspiracy theory'.
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The conspiracy theory is random submarines smashing into the ferry with nefarious Russians involved somehow.
 
Vixen said:
I was already aware of it.
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There's no evidence you were. Further, you don't know what a joule is, as evidenced by your attempt to multiply a mass times a velocity and get a value in those units.

What is your evidence that Prof. Amdahl really intended to say "megajoules" instead of what he actually said?
 
Vixen said:
What exactly is the 'CT narrative'


Facts:

  • There *is* a hole in the starboard side
  • the three sovereign states have amended to law to investigate it
  • At least twenty-nine survivors (of just 137) reported sounds and/or sensations of a series of explosions and/or an enormous collison.
  • These survivors used the words 'explosion', 'collision', 'scraping', 'hitting rocks', 'a crash'.
  • Marine collisions expert, Professor Amdahl, assesses that it was a 500MJ impact that could have caused such damage to the starboard, if it took place before it sunk.

This is as reported in the mainstream press.

Which part is 'conspiracy theory'?

Yes we should treat all preliminary issues with heightened scepticism but that doesn't make it a 'conspiracy theory'.
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All the stuff about submarines, explosives and spies would be CT.

He did not say 500MJ he said tons.
 
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