Cont: The Sinking of MS Estonia: Case Re-opened Part III

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Vixen said:
The Swedish government outsourced the diving recce and the JAIC should have had access to the video. The original video which comprised over 17 hours footage IIRC was reduced down to about two and a half hours and the Estonians and Finns denied access to it and other documents. The survivors' testimonies were heavily edited by a JAIC-appointed psychologist, Bengt Shlager (_sp?) who himself resigned in protest, the JAIC had to base its entire report on former-PM Carl Bildt's early announcement, 'the accident is a replica of that of The Herald of Free Enterprise but, um, ah, it has a bow visor, so that must have fallen off first and took with it the car ramp, yes, that's right, it was just like the The Herald of Free Enterprise and um, ah, it must have been some kind of, erm, freak wave wot dunnit'.

This was some sixteen hours after the sinking and about three weeks before the bow visor was found, even though by 8 Oct 1994, sonar images picked up the outline of...a bow visor...immediately below the bulbous bow visor...yet, the JAIC announced 9 October 1994, the bow visor 'has not yet been found'. Let that sink in.

Rockwater did the dive early December 1994.
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At that time the ship was laid on it's starboard side. Any holes would not have been visible.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
How did he see a hole in the starboard side when the ship was resting on the starboard side?
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Well he reported it to a Swedish newspaper as I recall by 1999. The JAIC took three years to bring out a predetermined report and he came forward because having read the report he was surprised there was no mention of the rupture in the starboard, which he as a former Swedish Navy intelligence officer and expert diver assessed to be a clear act of sabotage, which he identified as a being caused by a bomb which appeared to have exploded inside the car deck.

Mysteriously, the divers had been tasked with assessing whether salvage of the wreck or recovery of the bodies was feasible and viable, and they reported back, 'yes' to both headers, yet the Swedish government declared the site should be covered in concrete instead. This is contrary to Swedish culture of bringing home your dead. These were private citizens not war casualties.

Even the USA today are still bringing home the remains of military personnel who died as far back as the Korean War.
 
Vixen said:
... the JAIC had to base its entire report on former-PM Carl Bildt's early announcement, 'the accident is a replica of that of The Herald of Free Enterprise ...
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The fact that Carl Bildt told the press it was starting to look as if the bow door had failed before the JAIC investigation concluded that did indeed happen does not mean they manufactured a report to match what the ex-PM had said. That's just crazy talk.

Initial reports can be confused and mistaken but it's neither sinister nor suspicious if they turn out to be true.

If you want anyone to follow you down the rabbit hole of imagining Bildt made up a story then somehow compelled the investigators to manufacture a report to support it, then you're going to have to bring some really persuasive evidence.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
At that time the ship was laid on it's starboard side. Any holes would not have been visible.
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No, it landed on its bridge after settling from sinking stern first. The bridge acted like an anchor against the ridge on the rock side stopping it from sliding fully 330° against the 30° slope.
 
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Jack by the hedge said:
The fact that Carl Bildt told the press it was starting to look as if the bow door had failed before the JAIC investigation concluded that did indeed happen does not mean they manufactured a report to match what the ex-PM had said. That's just crazy talk.

Initial reports can be confused and mistaken but it's neither sinister nor suspicious if they turn out to be true.

If you want anyone to follow you down the rabbit hole of imagining Bildt made up a story then somehow compelled the investigators to manufacture a report to support it, then you're going to have to bring some really persuasive evidence.
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Carl Bildt knew about the accident before anybody else and he remains strangely coy about how he heard of it and when, given the contemporaneous Estonian and Finnish Prime Ministers at the time remember when they heard the news vividly and at what time and where they were. How can Carl Bildt claim not to remember, when in front of many witnesses, he was called aside at his leaving party (having lost the election) in a hotel.

The Swedish intelligence knew about the accident immediately, as it was likely tracking the vessel due to the highly sensitive materiel on board. Plus there were about 70 policemen from Stockholm on board with a rumoured further contingent of American agents (the security services in Sweden are under the police umbrella) returning from a conference in Tallinn.

Truth is, Bildt and Clinton, together with their MI6 conterparts through PM John Major, believed the public were too dimwitted to question the heavily sanitised report and that it would just accept it was another "The Herald of Free Enterprise" unfortunate accident, due to miscommunication between the crew and the bridge and a weak design that was vulnerable to a 'few strong waves'. In fact, Sweden even had to set up a Ministry of Information to encourage the public to accept the JAIC report, because it knew it was unbelievable.
 
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Vixen said:
... he came forward because having read the report he was surprised there was no mention of the rupture in the starboard, which he as a former Swedish Navy intelligence officer and expert diver assessed to be a clear act of sabotage, which he identified as a being caused by a bomb which appeared to have exploded inside the car deck.
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Bring us a reference for this claim, please. Convince me that's what the diver really said and not another fairy story based on lack of comprehension or enhanced for dramatic effect. No diver has examined what's under the debris inside the car deck.
 
Vixen said:
Plus there were about 70 policemen from Stockholm on board with a rumoured further contingent of American agents (the security services in Sweden are under the police umbrella) returning from a conference in Tallinn.
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What's even slightly suspicious about police taking a ferry back from a conference? What's the relevance of rumours about American agents? What would such imagined agents have to do with the Swedish security services? Are you trying to claim the Swedish police run a state security service staffed by Americans?

This is long on innuendo and very short on sense. Or evidence.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
So you're saying he's psychic.
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Bildt declared 'the cause of the accident' before any crew member under interrogation ever said anything at all about the car ramp being open. In fact, they all say it was shut.

At a press conference 28 September 1994 he stated the cause of the accident was 'the bow visor falling off'.

His chief of defence, Svensson hot on Bildt's heels, declared the bodies should not be recovered.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
Bring us a reference for this claim, please. Convince me that's what the diver really said and not another fairy story based on lack of comprehension or enhanced for dramatic effect. No diver has examined what's under the debris inside the car deck.
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The age of the internet problems: when people are too weak to even scroll back a page, when once they had to make an effort to look something up.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13637644#post13637644
 
Vixen said:
Bildt declared 'the cause of the accident' before any crew member under interrogation ever said anything at all about the car ramp being open. In fact, they all say it was shut.

At a press conference 28 September 1994 he stated the cause of the accident was 'the bow visor falling off'.

His chief of defence, Svensson hot on Bildt's heels, declared the bodies should not be recovered.
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"Under interrogation" is a weasel get-out phrase here. You know, and we all know, that the survivors could have told lots of people what they experienced. You cannot show that this information was not passed to Bildt, and we all know that too.

Handwaving will not cover your conflation of the ramp with the visor.
 
Vixen said:
The age of the internet problems: when people are too weak to even scroll back a page, when once they had to make an effort to look something up.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=13637644#post13637644
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That lot of newspaper reports adds up to there having been a hole big enough for a diver, encumbered with air tanks, to swim through into deck 0. Where is that hole now? There's no hole at the deck 0 level.

<edit to add> It would be remiss of me not to mention, in the spirit of sauce for the goose, that you claim the diver found this hole on the starboard side. None of your quoted references say starboard. Oops.
 
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