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

[Andy_Ross]

It is not difficult. As Sweden on behalf of the CIA was actively smuggling out Former Soviet Union state secrets - and we know how jealously the Russians guarded them! [Preferring to blow up an entire grounded-on-Swedish-rocks whiskey class submarine than have the Swedish navy search it and delay rescue of the Kursk whilst they retrieved their secret effects] - during September 1994 and notwithstanding the new EU edict tightening the transportation of dangerous goods and chemicals on the waterways, one can correctly perceive and urgent meeting of its defence forces - headed by Emil Svensson in a hastily convened COBRA-style meeting, coming to a decision to cover the whole thing up and agreeing an outrageous The Herald of Free Entetprise cock-and-bull story to feed to the media, then we can see the wheels rolling into effect.

So, the senior crew members having by happenstance to have been rescued early by Y64 and Y74 and brought to Huddinge, they no doubt were interviewed by SäPo and Sweden not being averse to disappearing people at the request of the CIA acquiesced and decided to 'extradite' them.

This is backed up by the Estonian Embassy in Stockholm being refused access to their citizens. Survivors report being marched onto buses on arrival at the mainland whether they liked it or not, kept separated from other passengers on the cruise ferries after rescue, isolated in hospital wards, not allowed to ring home without revealing to the SäPo the ID verification of whom they were ringing. Many of the non-Estonian survivors in Finland were simply allowed to go home without any interview at all by anyone.

These will all have been decisions made as a result of urgent talks and panic about their esponiage activities being revealed to the world and POTUS Bill Clinton's 'Peacemaker in the Middle East' soiled.

Avo Piht was transferred to Turku and then onto Helsinki for the flight back to Sweden with the Swedish government bods and SäPo. He was never seen or heard again since.

Military Chief Svensson recommended on Day Two that the bodies should not be recovered. A concrete cover was concocted via Riksdag to cover the whole thing up.

A Treaty was drawn up signed by the UK - MI6 was helping CIA and KSI in Estonia - preventing anyone looking into the wreckage too closely.

It's like you ignore or forget everything that has ever been posted in the thread.

 

[Vixen]

So what? How many were on duty when the emergency began? How many sleeping? How many in the bar?

Let's look at your conspiracy theory from their end: Why did Sweden want them? Had they committed some crime the Swedes wanted them punished for? If so, what's the tearing rush to try to find them?

Were they secretly working for Sweden? Doing what? What could have required the sooper seekrit helicopter flight?

The only way I can see it working is if Sweden knew in advance. And that means the ship was sabotaged. And if the mystery 9 all knew to get in the same boat then they were in on it. They were the saboteurs.

So let's unpack that plan from their p.o.v. On Swedish orders they sabotage their own ship, in some way the survivors accounts will suggest was an accident. Then they all get off in the same boat. Then they wait for a helicopter, somehow avoiding all other boats and rafts and rescue ships and non-Swedish helicopters. Then they get found somehow and whisked away and never see their families again.

Can you see any reason they might go along with that madness? You'd have to be a raving lunatic.

Estonia was jointly owned by a Swedish government-subsidised firm, Nordstrom & Thulin and Estline, an Estonian-subsidised firm. The Swedes wanted a Swedish crew but Estline insisted on an Estonian crew and that caused employment conflicts. The Estonian crew were largely Russian naval school trained. Who knows what politics went on, with the fall of the old stalinist USSR and the Russians kicked out but straight away it becomes apparent that there would be resentment by the old speznats faithful in witnessing their state secrets smuggled out to the west. The GRU after all is just the old KGB in new wine bottles. Estonia's Defence Chief, Herman Simm, was actually a Russian spy and was jailed in 1996 for high treason.

Just as the IRA bombing campaign in the UK was directed against military targets, it was not rocket science to work out the sudden sinking of the Estonia pointed to a strong suspicion of sabotage, especially if illicit cargo was involved that the Swedish intelligence forces knew about.

If you recall 39 out of the 79 passenger survivors relate hearing or feeling a 'series of bangs' prior to the 'accident' or a feeling of a collision - a sudden stop and start - and also the crew, including Sillaste, who reports 'two heavy bangs' and Linde, who says the bow of the ship pitched upwards so violently he was almost swept off his feet.

The sudden list shortly after to starboard was hardly normal, either.

So the evidence points to: (a) explosions and (b) a collision, and possibly both.

The Swedes probably were not expecting this so swooped in to interrogate the senior crew.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

It is not difficult. As Sweden on behalf of the CIA was actively smuggling out Former Soviet Union state secrets - and we know how jealously the Russians guarded them! [Preferring to blow up an entire grounded-on-Swedish-rocks whiskey class submarine than have the Swedish navy search it and delay rescue of the Kursk whilst they retrieved their secret effects] - during September 1994 and notwithstanding the new EU edict tightening the transportation of dangerous goods and chemicals on the waterways, one can correctly perceive and urgent meeting of its defence forces - headed by Emil Svensson in a hastily convened COBRA-style meeting, coming to a decision to cover the whole thing up and agreeing an outrageous The Herald of Free Entetprise cock-and-bull story to feed to the media, then we can see the wheels rolling into effect.



So, the senior crew members having by happenstance to have been rescued early by Y64 and Y74 and brought to Huddinge, they no doubt were interviewed by SäPo and Sweden not being averse to disappearing people at the request of the CIA acquiesced and decided to 'extradite' them.



This is backed up by the Estonian Embassy in Stockholm being refused access to their citizens. Survivors report being marched onto buses on arrival at the mainland whether they liked it or not, kept separated from other passengers on the cruise ferries after rescue, isolated in hospital wards, not allowed to ring home without revealing to the SäPo the ID verification of whom they were ringing. Many of the non-Estonian survivors in Finland were simply allowed to go home without any interview at all by anyone.



These will all have been decisions made as a result of urgent talks and panic about their esponiage activities being revealed to the world and POTUS Bill Clinton's 'Peacemaker in the Middle East' soiled.



Avo Piht was transferred to Turku and then onto Helsinki for the flight back to Sweden with the Swedish government bods and SäPo. He was never seen or heard again since.



Military Chief Svensson recommended on Day Two that the bodies should not be recovered. A concrete cover was concocted via Riksdag to cover the whole thing up.



A Treaty was drawn up signed by the UK - MI6 was helping CIA and KSI in Estonia - preventing anyone looking into the wreckage too closely.

Lots of gaping holes in your plot. How would sinking the Estonia "cover up" the fact that smuggled electronics had been transported aboard the Estonia on two previous occasions? How would "disappearing" its officers have covered anything up when there is no reason to suppose anyone on the ferry itself had been complicit in the smuggling? Why are there no first hand accounts of anyone seeing the "disappeared" men?

What is the probability that an early helicopter flight (which didn't really happen) by complete fluke rescued the exact 9 men Sweden wanted to disappear for no clear reason?

 

[Andy_Ross]

These were drowning people who needed urgent saving. Why would any rescue helicopter divert to somewhere else first when there is already a top-world-class medical team at the scene? Huddinge is only a general hospital.

JAIC 7.5.4

There were helicopters already at the scene. Fresh medical staff were picked up.

Notice that the Navy helicopters were sent at one hour intervals. If they had all gone at once then they would all have run out of fuel and crew time at once.
How long were the medics that were there from the start supposed to stay on duty?
Helicopters are restricted in the dark, they can't see anything on the surface that isn't in their searchlight. They work far better in daylight.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Estonia was jointly owned by a Swedish government-subsidised firm, Nordstrom & Thulin and Estline, an Estonian-subsidised firm. The Swedes wanted a Swedish crew but Estline insisted on an Estonian crew and that caused employment conflicts. The Estonian crew were largely Russian naval school trained. Who knows what politics went on, with the fall of the old stalinist USSR and the Russians kicked out but straight away it becomes apparent that there would be resentment by the old speznats faithful in witnessing their state secrets smuggled out to the west. The GRU after all is just the old KGB in new wine bottles. Estonia's Defence Chief, Herman Simm, was actually a Russian spy and was jailed in 1996 for high treason.



Just as the IRA bombing campaign in the UK was directed against military targets, it was not rocket science to work out the sudden sinking of the Estonia pointed to a strong suspicion of sabotage, especially if illicit cargo was involved that the Swedish intelligence forces knew about.



If you recall 39 out of the 79 passenger survivors relate hearing or feeling a 'series of bangs' prior to the 'accident' or a feeling of a collision - a sudden stop and start - and also the crew, including Sillaste, who reports 'two heavy bangs' and Linde, who says the bow of the ship pitched upwards so violently he was almost swept off his feet.



The sudden list shortly after to starboard was hardly normal, either.



So the evidence points to: (a) explosions and (b) a collision, and possibly both.



The Swedes probably were not expecting this so swooped in to interrogate the senior crew.

Magical thinking which does not address the gaping holes in your plot.

 

[Vixen]

Aftonbladet is mistaken, that happens when early reports are made by the newspapers on partial information.

Why is Svensson a 'false hero'? he did what is detailed in the report.

Of the 22 aircraft listed by the Swedish government, Y64 is joint 13th with just one rescued, together with three others. The seven below it had none rescued.

Obviously some will just be reconnaisance or back up helicopters who found only empty rafts or the dead.

I believe Aftonbladet. The JAIC simply left it out because it made the number of survivors too high.

 

[Vixen]

Are you now claiming that as the ship was sinking someone removed the buoys and carried them 200kilometers and put them in the water?

If they were removed and put in the water elsewhere they would have activated if they were automatic buoys and their signal would have been picked up.

Installation means putting them in their containers on the bridge wings. There is nothing else to do with them.

If a saboteur - and let's face it many serious organised crimes are 'inside jobs' [cf Brinks-Mat] - then it is easy enough to set things up in advance.

 

[Andy_Ross]

It was the hydrostatic release unit. This is triggered when water [=hydro] of about one to four metres envelopes the casing. It releases an automatically activated buoy up to the surface whereupon it commences to emit a signal to copsas-sasart.

No, the buoy wasn't an automatic unit, the containers fitted have a hydrostatic release so they will work with automatic buoys. The manufacturers produce just one container, it is designed to hold both automatic and manual buoys as they have the same dimensions. If they made a container that didn't open and release the buoy automatically it would be possible to fit an automatic buoy in to a manual container and defeat it's purpose.

Both automatic and manual buoys are supposed to be removed from the container and switched on before throwing them in to the sea. Automatic release and activation is a fallback system and isn't supposed to be relied on.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

...

The Swedes probably were not expecting this so swooped in to interrogate the senior crew.

More precisely, by what magical power did the surprised Swedes manage to pluck the officers out of the sea before anyone else noticed them?

Why would they want to interrogate the senior crew when all they knew was the ship had foundered?

Why, if by some total miracle they found they had rescued all the senior officers, did they need to "disappear"?

Fill the holes. So far this plot is so incoherent it wouldn't even make a Dr. Who story.

 

[Vixen]

How would they have been in a lifeboat?
How would it have easily been spotted by a helicopter in the dark?
How would this secret helicopter have known who, if anyone was aboard the boat?

Being senior crew, they knew exactly how to undo the davits, unlike the poor desperate passengers.

All of the survivors were picked up pretty much by 0700 am. The earlier you were spotted the better your chance of survival. Life boats are easier to see, especially if they were equipped with flares and torches or whatever,

 

[Andy_Ross]

Who knows what politics went on, with the fall of the old stalinist USSR

The what?

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Yu keep saying he saved six, together with another helicopter crew Y74, who got the actual credit. How jolly sporting of the JAIC to hand Svensson the booby prize!

I don't know what you mean by this. Y 74 is credited with bringing six of Svensson's rescuees home because that's what happened. Svensson is credited with pulling them out of the water because that is also what happened. The rest of the Y 64 crew doesn't get credit for rescuing those six because that didn't happen.

I should say that if anything, the fact that Svensson went above and beyond by volunteering to take over after the Y 74 rescue man got hurt makes him more of a hero, not less of one.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

If a saboteur - and let's face it many serious organised crimes are 'inside jobs' [cf Brinks-Mat] - then it is easy enough to set things up in advance.

A saboteur set up a 22m by 4m gash in the hull which, when photographed, looks like a 4m by maybe 1.5m gash above the water line?

 

[Andy_Ross]

Of the 22 aircraft listed by the Swedish government, Y64 is joint 13th with just one rescued, together with three others. The seven below it had none rescued.

Obviously some will just be reconnaisance or back up helicopters who found only empty rafts or the dead.

I believe Aftonbladet. The JAIC simply left it out because it made the number of survivors too high.

Y 64 had to leave because it's winch failed. It was an anti submarine helicopter. It did not have the same winch dedicated search and rescue capability as a dedicated helicopter.

It had to leave it's rescue man in the water and call on another helicopter for assistance. It then delivered the survivor it had aboard and went to base for repair.

What was 'left out'? You mean your entire fictional mission that it is supposed to hav performed earlier in the night when it wasn't flying?

 

[Andy_Ross]

If a saboteur - and let's face it many serious organised crimes are 'inside jobs' [cf Brinks-Mat] - then it is easy enough to set things up in advance.

How would that be done?
How would they steal the buoys without being noticed?
How would they put them in the water without them activating if they are automatic buoys as you claim?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

... It releases an automatically activated buoy ...

It releases a buoy.

You know this, we know this. Automatic activation is your dishonest weasel claim crowbarred in hoping nobody would bother to contradict your deceit.

 

[Vixen]

What is your evidence for this?
How do you know that when they abandoned the ship the passengers were still asleep in their cabins?
By the time the power failed the ship had a considerable list and it is doubtful that anyone was still asleep.
Why is it the responsibility of the engineer to alert the passengers?
That is the job of the command crew and the crew members tasked with that particular job.

Should they have stood bravely saluting on the boat deck as the ship sank under them?

Linde, Treu and the newbie guy were all together in the same life raft wearing survival suits even as Tammes was sending his mayday. That tells you something. By an amazing stroke of luck, Sillaste, who claims he didn't leave the Engine Room until 01:30 on jumping out of the funnel perchanced to see Linde, Treu and the other guy passing by and managed to join their raft!

Interesting that a witness saw a 'tall guy and a short guy' come out of the tunnel having an altercation of some sort.

Let's face it, the captains of the Oceanos and Concordas didn't hang around.

Why do you think they were charged with criminal gross negligence? Likewise David Lewry of the Herald of Free Enterprise.

Obviously someone somewhere doesn't think this behaviour is right.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Being senior crew, they knew exactly how to undo the davits, unlike the poor desperate passengers.

All of the survivors were picked up pretty much by 0700 am. The earlier you were spotted the better your chance of survival. Life boats are easier to see, especially if they were equipped with flares and torches or whatever,

Why would the 'senior crew' know how to launch the lifeboats? Do you think the captain had ever launched a lifeboat in a storm?


Don't you think it would have been noticed that the entire command team were launching a lifeboat?

If you are the crew launching the boat, how do you then get in it when it has been launched?

 

[Vixen]

Your own quote says the buoys were turned off.

Why would you quote something that contradicts the point you are trying to make with the quote?

You can turn off an automatically activated buoy. Of course you can.

 

[Vixen]

It's not the job of the report to list all those that were rescued.
Why would you think it was?

It was a public inquiry...?