Pan Am 103: Unaccompanied bag from Malta: Evidence?

[Caustic Logic]

I don't know, but you're convincing me that the entire Erac thing needs to be looked at more carefully. It's back to the timeline, which I was chewing over in a different thread.

It really does appear to be the Erac printout that is the crucial item of evidence which sent the focus of the case veering towards Libya. I realised this while reading Coleman, who of course has a different perspective because he's writing so early in the case, before everybody started obsessing about the timer fragment.

Convincing, eh? That's cool. Actually a couple things I'm seeing lately make me less sure - possiblle time confusion, etc. - things I don't know - but this idea of the paper being faked still has the strongest pull and I think I'm in its orbit. Timelines are always great to get a usable context. At least until time starts working differently. Below, your timeline with noted corrections - the order changes.

• Up to March 1989, everybody is very excited about the PFLP-GC connection, with arrests being expected and so on.
• Mid-March 1989, the alleged conversation between Thatcher and Bush, agreeing to play down that connection. However, at first there as no alternative theory put forward in its place.
• August 1989, the Frankfurt police finally hand over the Erac printout to the investigating authorities, complete with annotations and supporting documentation to suggest an unidentified bag has come through the system on to PA103A from KM180.
• September 1989, Scottish police visit Malta for the second time, to try to trace the purchaser of the "Made in Malta" items that were identified as probably having been in the bomb suitcase. (Their first visit, in March, was apparently fruitless, as similar items had been supplied to retailers all over Europe, however after the KM180 connection was proposed they went back to concentrate on retailers on Malta itself.)
• Almost immediately, with the help of the Maltese police, they were put in touch with Gauci, who told them about the mystery shopper, and volunteered that he believed the man to have been Libyan.
• January 1990 (I think), the conference where Henderson doesn't reveal the mystery green fragment for general consideration, but mentions it to Marquise, who is quite miffed at the determination of the Scottish cops to "go it alone" on the identification.
• April 1990, the fragment's trip to Germany and the Siemens factory.
• June 1990, Thurman finally gets a gander at it and identifies it in no time flat.
• Late September 1990, the first press reports in a French newspaper allege Libyan involvement.
• December 1990, the Sunday Times and other English papers have shifted their line from Syria to Libya.

Awesome list, this is worth copy-pasting and stuff. On the order change and context, it was the timer thing that seemed to solidify what was being decided and "discovered" over the previous year. It was done with FBI/CIA help (really, oddly tandem) and with French help (Senegal timers). Somehow 'the French' wound up offering media help as well, we see, publicizing the Libya connection is official, mostly based on the Libya-Africa-terror-timer stuff backed by the previous (clothes, printout, Gauci).

So by this reckoning, the Erac printout is far more important that I had realised at first. It led to KM180, which led to Malta, which led to Gauci, who said "filthy Libyan pigs" or something like that. Nevertheless, the investigators still had nothing concrete to link it to Libya at this stage. That was where Giaka came in, and of course the MST-13 fragment.

Nothing concrete? The will to convict was. ETA: Indict, punish, distract, whatever. !!

Leaving aside the evidence of the red-circle photo (suggesting that the timer fragment was in the system in May 1989), this all looks quite neat.

And to be fair, the Maltese clothes were there - since whenever exactly, and unless the August report is false, this printout was in official hands before Feb 2, so probably done being changed.

All the initial evidence points to the PFLP-GC. <snip> Iran <snip> "controlled" drugs delivery <snip> release of the Beirut hostages. So we seriously don't want these questions asked.

This is March, OK?

There ample possible reasons to go intosome kind of panic mode - DEA, DIA, CIA, NATO, WTFKWE, might have been tripping over each other to get hold of the baggage records and control them away from whoever else, however else. Most of the history of the Lockerbie debate is based on what did and didn't happen at Frankfurt. And the police either didn't bother investigating there until February, or their earlier visits are unknown, and no one has bothered to explain which of these it is.

Is it at all possible that the Frankfurt and Maltese police were in some way co-opted to provide that chain of evidence that would lead to Gauci and "filthy Libyan pigs"? I would just mention that Frankfurt is in the part of Germany that was under US control post WW2.

Didn't you hear Cannistraro? It was Luqa and Air Malta that were co-opted by Libya, due to a high evil-distance ratio. The US is neither evil nor close to Germany. Their completely ransacked records at Frankfurt were just, yknow... hey, the paper from the locker says Malta! So Malta's carefully kept papers are all fakes! Where have I heard logic like this? Oh yeah, 9/11 Twoof people.

They've got five months to do it. According to Coleman (who isn't necessarily correct, but it's a start), all that was handed over by the Germans was the Erac printout, the handwritten worksheet from station 206, and a typewritten document. All neatly ready-annotated with the inference trail leading to KM180. Caustic Logic, do you think it's possible for the entire damn lot to have been fabricated, or at least the printout?

All is possible. Only the printout do I feel compelled to call a likely fake. I can't say what the timeline really was - five months could be it. It's just so odd that the (supp) destroyed and lost computer data had this disappeared, re-surfaced paper record of just the part they needed.

This allows for a period of concealment and control. As I said earlier, if I were such a villain in this case, I'd want the whole data set, on a tape or however they did it, in my hands and no copy left for anyone else. I'd pay millions, easy. I don't want to libel anyone in particular, but I might want anywhere from one to four inside people, depending. I'd discuss what we wanted with a few respected big-picture-thinking higher ups, leaving the secrecy to them and me. I'd use my airport contacts to help me encode that into something plausible-looking that, coupled with ("verified by") existing records, would create two points, and a line, to Libya. And then use my contacts to seed back the lead we wrote for ourselves into the 3-D world. So I guess Mrs. Erac does pop us as a suspect in this hypothetical scenario.

At any rate, given the influence the US enjoyed in West Germany, the suspicious blank spot over any timely BKA enquiries, the lack of corroboration for the Maltese bag it implies, and presence of strong contradictory clues, one should take pause, considering the weight of the frozen turkey to be perched on this slender sapling. Whether or not one is willing to question the very reality of this record, it would be foolhardy to ignore the blatant and gaping breach of the chain of evidence here. It's like someone took a hacksaw to it. The evidence should have been taken with at least a grain of salt and wasn't.

To their credit, the Scottish judges never seemed totally convinced of the printout's implications, and made show of serious nodding and concerned brow-furrowing over Air Malta's strong stance relative to the mess at Frankfurt they do not draw any unnecessary attention to. It's only in the context of a lot of other questionable stuff that they decide - I can only surmise - that somebody really, really powerful wants them to say guilty.

 

[Rolfe]

I recognise that this is a fair way down the rabbit hole, but I think the scenario is worth thinking about, if only because it manages to explain so much of the weirdness.

• I think the clothes said to have been in the bomb suitcase were really there - that bit doesn't seem fakable to me
• There were probably more clothes that were either unrecognisable or never recovered
• I'm speculating that they came from Abu Talb's collection of Maltese textiles, which may well have been part of a proposed business plan
• That would explain whay they were all of very recent manufacture, and such a mixed bunch - a babygro in with menswear
• I still don't know why the labels weren't cut off, but maybe Malta seems a long way away when you're doing this in Germany and/or Sweden
• I'd love to know where Abu Talb got his clothes collection and if any attempt was made to trace this

The point being that the existence of these clothes and their Maltese connection would give a good reason for choosing Malta as the place to shift the focus of the investigation to.

Since the bomb suitcase was agreed to have come in from Frankfurt (let's not look too closely at Heathrow and what Bedford is saying, really), the only way to do that is by implicating a Luqa-Frankfurt flight, that is KM180. Do we really know the printout was in existence by 2nd February? I'm postulating that elements within the Frankfurt police were doing this at the behest of the CIA, remember.

Of course, we don't have the native computer records, which even then I imagine could have been interrogated for accuracy and alterations. We only have a printout. I'm not sure how hard it would be to fabricate that. One way, I suppose, would be to create the entire thing de novo, using a genuine printout from a later date as a template. This would only work if other records that would show the provenance of other items of luggage on the list were unobtainable, but this seems to have been the case.

Alternatively, if a genuine printout did exist, it would be possible to copy this with the addition of an extra item. This really gets back to the question of what happened at Frankfurt in the days following the disaster, and how those records came to disappear. The fact that everything was gone within a few days does suggest a concerted effort to cover the tracks even then, and that could have involved secreting some items just in case they might come in handy later.

I wonder how hard it would be to create such a printout away from the actual baggage system - I mean by typing in the data to another computer attached to a similar printer and using similar paper. I would have thought it might be difficult if genuine examples of such printouts were available for comparison, or if it was scrutinised in detail by someone familiar with the real thing. But of course that wasn't going to happen, was it? The Frankfurt police attested to the provenance of the thing, and I don't suppose anyone in the Scottish police force ever considered checking it out. And of course by 2000, nearly 12 years later, no chance.

It's far-fetched, of course, but then the Official Version is also quite far-fetched.

Yes, I'm speculating (purely hypothetically) that Mrs. Erac was bribed, or blackmailed, or was working for the security forces in some way already, to get involved in this. How would I know? Sometimes it's the availability of someone who will be able to do this that dictates how it's done.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Also remember they well could and should and would use all powers to remove apparent moral dilemmas prior to a good bribe. These secrets simply CANNOT become public, ma'am. If the Soviets, oh... no. The fate of the free world is in your hands.

In that situation, human psychology dictates, internal doubt will be overcome with a sense of "at least it wasn't MY decision to do a bad thing, if this is one... it was the Americans and I believe in them." This backed with other cues, the lull of money, fear of "disapproval." Otherwise expertise and discretion, and hence so far we have no evidence of any such things happening. Pure speculation.



Sorry, can't address points now. New blog post up, related to Megrahi's presence in Malta and the bag. It's actually complex enough I just put it all in one spot. I was hoping someone else could help me figure out what the hell it all means. I'll check after some sleep. Long but good night. Peace all.

- Adam
http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/11/from-zurich-to-malta-to-tripoli-to.html

 

[Ambrosia]

Here's something else, maybe nothing. Looking at the Erac printout, a four digit number I'm wondering about. In the upper left, under KIK (which was I think Bogomira's station). 1932. It's to the left of a date, so is it a time?

I'd say thats time and date the report was generated 7:32pm 21st December 1988.

Is it the time of data retrieval or printing? That's been said to be the next morning, but 1932 is evening. And the DATEI next to that, on the same data line, is 881221, not 1222. So if not access/print time and date, then what else might these represent?

Who says it was printed the following morning?

 

[Ambrosia]

This is March, OK?

Is it at all possible that the Frankfurt and Maltese police were in some way co-opted to provide that chain of evidence that would lead to Gauci and "filthy Libyan pigs"? I would just mention that Frankfurt is in the part of Germany that was under US control post WW2.

I don't buy that at all.

the way I read it is that eventually the "Made in Malta" tag on recovered clothes fragments is what lead the police to Malta and unless I am very much mistaken they didn't know about the Erac print out the Frankfurt police were sitting on until after then. The Frankfurt police were given this printout a couple of weeks (?) after the plane went down. Tho I think there is something odd going on re: baggage lists. If you asked Juval Aviv according to evidence he dug up for the Pan Am investigation there were as many as 13 un accompanied bags aboard 103. I always assumed it was SOP to grab as much info on any air accident asap, passenger lists, aircraft maintenance lists, baggage lists etc etc.

I do think the Erac printout is legit, tho I reserve the right to change my mind given sufficient evidence

there's some bits and pieces I posted a while back in another thread on declassified DIA intelligence stuff that was got via an FOIA req, there are entries that link Libya to 103 fairly early.

[all this at the moment is off the top of my head as all my notes/bookmarks/docs etc etc are on my main PC at home and not here on this laptop]

Well, I'm on a bit of a roll here. Abu Talb had a load of clothes of Maltese manufacture in his flat in Sweden. He said he was investigating a business plan to sell these clothes in Sweden. But you don't buy such clothes samples from a retailer like Gauci. Do we know where he got those clothes? Did anybody try to find out?

I assumed these were bought from Gauci but at an earlier date.

Suppose Jibril and his henchmen simply took some of Abu Talb's Maltese clothes samples for bomb packing. That's the real Maltese connection..

There were clothes from Malta in the suitcase that were shipped from the suppliers to Gauci after the last possible date Talb was there. IIRC the "Yorkie" Trousers.

I believe Gaucis testimony, I am sure he sold the clothes he said he did more or less when he was first interviewed with an unmbrella to a man that he thought "sounded Libyan" who looks similar to Megrahi but wasn't Megrahi.

I think his subsequent IDs of Megrahi and the changing of his story over time is very suspect when you consider he got paid after the trial, and the ID parade was a joke, but I think the basic premise that fragments of clothes found in the wreckage of 103 came from Gauci is a solid one.

 

[Rolfe]

I'd say thats time and date the report was generated 7:32pm 21st December 1988.

Who says it was printed the following morning?

That would be exactly an hour and a half after Maid of the Seas blew up.

There are (at least) two versions of how this printout came into being. One is that the printout existed already, presumably along with printouts of the loadings for all the other flights that day, and Mrs. Erac was about to throw the whole lot away. She noticed the printout from PA103A and realised these were the bags of the people who had been killed. She laid that printout aside and kept it in her locker as a memorial for those people. She then went off on holiday and didn't think any more about it. Only later did it occur to her that it might have evidential value.

The other version is that, knowing that the data would be wiped from the system within a few days, she took it upon herself to make a printout of the loading for that particular flight, to preserve it for evidential purposes. She then went off on holiday, yadda yadda. In this version, I think the printout is made the following day.

It seems to me that Mrs. Erac herself has related both versions, although the former is the one she tells to the Conspiracy Files.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I don't buy that at all.

I don't really buy it either, but I'm sort of trying it on for size.

the way I read it is that eventually the "Made in Malta" tag on recovered clothes fragments is what lead the police to Malta and unless I am very much mistaken they didn't know about the Erac print out the Frankfurt police were sitting on until after then.

I'm taking Coleman's version here, which may be wrong, but it'll do until someone finds a more definitive version.

According to him, there were two visits to Malta. First, the labels on the clothes led the Scottish police to Malta, and they visited in March 1989, long before they knew anything about the Erac printout. They spoke to the suppliers of the babygro and other items, but they got nowhere. The goods had been supplied to retailers across Europe, and they believed it was a hopeless quest. They came home empty-handed.

The second visit was in September 1989, and was as a direct result of the information from Frankfurt. I don't quite understand the logic here, but it seems as if the information that the bomb had (or might have) been loaded at Luqa led them to conclude that the clothes hadn't just been manufactured in Malta but had been purchased there too. On that second visit the Maltese police seem almost to have led them straight from the textile factory to Gauci.

As I said, Coleman may be wrong about this, but I don't remember reading a different version.

The Frankfurt police were given this printout a couple of weeks (?) after the plane went down. Tho I think there is something odd going on re: baggage lists. If you asked Juval Aviv according to evidence he dug up for the Pan Am investigation there were as many as 13 un accompanied bags aboard 103. I always assumed it was SOP to grab as much info on any air accident asap, passenger lists, aircraft maintenance lists, baggage lists etc etc.

This is a very peculiar aspect of the story - not just why the Frankfurt records vanished, but why nobody seems to have made a big deal about the records not being there.

Michael Jones and Dennis Phipps both say the Frankfurt records had vanished when they wanted to look at them - Jones says on 23rd January. Jones was especially puzzled by the fact that there were no copies, because in his view it would have been normal practice to have retained copies if the police had taken the originals. And in fact we know the police didn't take the originals - or if they did, they never produced them.

I do think the Erac printout is legit, tho I reserve the right to change my mind given sufficient evidence

It seems awfully complicated for it not to be legit. It's just the huge number of coincidences we're supposed to swallow to explain all the weirdness in this affar is beginning to give me indigestion - and I normally have a very high tolerance for coincidences, ask any homeopath.

Caustic Logic started this thread by questioning the provenance of the printout and I pooh-poohed him. I'm just giving it another shot.

I assumed these [clothes] were bought from Gauci but at an earlier date.

There were clothes from Malta in the suitcase that were shipped from the suppliers to Gauci after the last possible date Talb was there. IIRC the "Yorkie" Trousers.

This is more for the "mystery shopper" thread, but here goes.

I don't believe there is any evidence Talb was anywhere near Gauci, apart from the early (and not very productive) attempts to get Gauci to identify the "mystery shopper" as Talb. Gauci really seems to have only the vaguest idea who the mystery shopper might have been (if he existed ), and the evidence that it might have beenTalb isn't much stronger than the evidence that it might have been Megrahi.

Talb was buying clothes with a view to becoming a retailer (or perhaps a downstream wholesaler). You don't buy clothes in a shop under these circumstances. It's only logical that he would have bought them (or even been given them as samples) from the factory or factories. That's what his wife says.

He went to Malta only once in October. A friend of his who has a clothes factory in Malta and Cyprus told him to go to the factory to buy some clothes to export to Sweden. He went to Malta for four days, then returned to Sweden with the clothes.

Now if I was investigating this, I'd want to know which factories he'd been to and what he'd taken away and whether any of these matched up with the clothes found at Lockerbie. It's possible this was looked into and drew a blank, but none of that information is in the public domain.

I believe Gaucis testimony, I am sure he sold the clothes he said he did more or less when he was first interviewed with an unmbrella to a man that he thought "sounded Libyan" who looks similar to Megrahi but wasn't Megrahi.

I think his subsequent IDs of Megrahi and the changing of his story over time is very suspect when you consider he got paid after the trial, and the ID parade was a joke, but I think the basic premise that fragments of clothes found in the wreckage of 103 came from Gauci is a solid one.

I certainly said exactly that right at the beginning. It's the more probable explanation, for sure. The questionable part is the identification, not the purchase itself. Except it's such a weird thing to do, if you're looking for padding for a bomb bag. There are so many less conspicuous ways to get hold of some clothes. (Dammt, rob a few washing lines!)

And if Coleman is right about the two visits to Malta, and the magical facilitation of the identification of Gauci on the second occasion, I think alternative possibilities should at least be considered.

Rolfe.

 

[commandlinegamer]

The clothes came from Malta: therefore the bomb must have been loaded at Malta.

But if the bomb wasn't loaded at Malta how came the clothes to be on board the flight?

Am I reading this part of the riddle right?

 

[Rolfe]

The clothes were purchased at least 2 weeks before the flight. They could have gone anywhere in the world in that two weeks.

Everybody who has been suspected of this bombing is a regular international traveller. Assuming it was necessary to buy new clothes for the packing material (rather than use old clothes, a charity shop, raid a clothes line or fill the damn case with bubble-wrap), why would anyone necessarily choose to make this remarkably conspicuous purchase only three miles from the airport where they were going to load the bomb?

There's a whole thread on the purchase of the clothes, guys....

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

There were clothes from Malta in the suitcase that were shipped from the suppliers to Gauci after the last possible date Talb was there. IIRC the "Yorkie" Trousers.

I need clarification of this, but I'm taking it to the "mystery shopper" thread.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Printed 7:32pm, eh?

I'd say thats time and date the report was generated 7:32pm 21st December 1988.

I'd say thats time and date the report was generated 7:32pm 21st December 1988.

Who says it was printed the following morning?

Thanks. That's what I thought too.

Opinion of the Court:

[30] Mrs Bogomira Erac, a computer programmer employed at the airport, was on duty on 21 December 1988. She heard of the loss of PA103 during the evening of that day and realised that PA103A had departed during her period on duty. She was interested in the amount of baggage on the Frankfurt flight, and on the following morning she decided to take a printout of the information as to baggage held on the computer in case it should contain any useful information.

Heard during evening ... printed following morning. These are details. Sure, maybe they just deduced this timetable based on a misunderstanding. But judges are supposed to be better than that.

IF she was spinning a false story to that effect, one must wonder why. The court's own production 1060 itself disproves the next day claim they accepted. This fits closer with the story she herself told to Conspiracy files in 2008 - that it was a routine copy one might usually make and later discard.

So does this show the judges just misunderstood? But that doesn't quite sound right either, unless they happen to routinely print these up around 7:30. It SEEMS to be instead triggered by the crash (30 minutes after), and presumably therefore for investigative purposes. So why did it wind up in her locker for three weeks rather than in investigator's hands? And later surrounded by inconsistent stories?

As odd as this might be, it complicates my fakery theory. If someone altered or recreated this record to show that item 8849, and had Bogomira re-sell it to the world, why wouldn't the date and her story line up? I suppose it could be a bit of reverse psychology to raise just that question. Similar thinking could be why they decided to insert this between the layer arrival bags. "Make it stick out like a sore thumb? Genius! No one will ever suspect a plant that bold!" Otherwise, I acknowledge this as a strong counter-point, but something that needs to now be considered.

Yay! A new thing.

 

[Caustic Logic]

On my e-mail to Professor Black about transcripts: he did get back to me and was quite nice. Unfortunately, copies are hard to get. If I read right, a full copy can be purchased for 10,000 GBP. Can that possibly be right? He did say there might be ways and gave me a few tips. I'll report back if anything new arises.

Select other points:

the way I read it is that eventually the "Made in Malta" tag on recovered clothes fragments is what lead the police to Malta and unless I am very much mistaken they didn't know about the Erac print out the Frankfurt police were sitting on until after then.

As Rolfe covered, both led to malta, the second more conclusively.

The clothes came from Malta: therefore the bomb must have been loaded at Malta.

By riddle I hope you mean that you don't believe that. However, if you have Maltese clothes and a Maltese-origin bag pop up, then you've got reason to suspect a crippled Maltese terrorist who can't travel far. Why exactly the second visit went so much better I don't know, but there are natural causes, such as increased confidence and a desire to not come back empty-handed twice.

The Frankfurt police were given this printout a couple of weeks (?) after the plane went down. Tho I think there is something odd going on re: baggage lists. If you asked Juval Aviv according to evidence he dug up for the Pan Am investigation there were as many as 13 un accompanied bags aboard 103. I always assumed it was SOP to grab as much info on any air accident asap, passenger lists, aircraft maintenance lists, baggage lists etc etc.

I do think the Erac printout is legit, tho I reserve the right to change my mind given sufficient evidence

It's a circumstantial case, spurred by the same suspicions I have that normally these records would be sought immediately. Perhaps they were, but that visit has been hushed up, perhaps due to something bad like the records being deleted early. OR for no apparent reason German police just sucked and didn't bother doing things. Has to be one of the two, unless we're wrong about what to expect. AND of course that when it surfaced it had yet another clue (if not perfect) stuffed inconspicuously into its collar pointing to Libya that could be teased out and followed to Gauci's shop.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Oh, and on 1932 - some times on the printout are stamped with Z, meaning UTC, standard for plane-related stuff. This time is not so marked. So I thought maybe it was local time, which would be an hour later than Z. So that would be 6:32 Z time, well before PA103 blew up. This would help the routine print story. Last items were sent to gate at 1631, loaded probably, departure recorded as 1653. Could that be it? Or is the print time probably Z as well making this a "holy crap, 103 just blew up, print the records for that feeder now" document?

 

[Rolfe]

unless they happen to routinely print these up around 7:30. It SEEMS to be instead triggered by the crash (30 minutes after), and presumably therefore for investigative purposes.

Wait a minute! I was getting my time zones the wrong way round! I said an hour and a half after the crash, because of the GMT/Western Europe time difference, but that's wrong.

That printout is timed half an hour before the crash happened, in fact just as Maid of the Seas was climbing out of Heathrow. 7.28pm Frankfurt time is 6.28pm GMT. PA103 only took off at 6.25pm GMT. This would therefore support the story that Mrs. Erac told the Conspiracy Files. That it was a routine printout that she retained, not something she printed off specially.

Courts do get stuff wrong, especially details that don't matter. It may not have seemed important, so nobody bothered to draw it to the attention of the court. Looked at in this way, it supports the printout being genuine - if you were going to fake it to fit the story you were going to tell to the court, about printing it off the next day just in case it was needed, you'd date it the next day.

I wonder what these printouts were for, though? It would seem that they must have been routine for all flights, but why make retrospective printouts of the baggage loading records at the end of the day, if you're just gonig to chuck them in the bin the following day? Strange are the ways of bureaucracies.

It makes it even more strage about the vanishing records though. Computers are an arcane mystery to many people (more so in 1988 than now), but a piece of paper is a piece of paper. Why wasn't someone shouting "don't throw these away!"? Why weren't they rooting through the bins looking for the things?

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

My goodness. Ms Erac was indeed very efficient. I would concur that the date on the printout she retained suggests : 1932 881221. 7.32pm on the 21 Dec 1988. However, surely this cannot be correct? The "following morning" as determined by the painstaking judges at Zeist does appear, and sound, far more plausible.

The crash occurring at 1903, it would indeed be prolific for Ms Erac, in Frankfurt, working at her desk, to have known and been absolutely confirmed that a crash had taken place over the Scottish border, involving an aircraft which had been fed from Frankfurt, and decided to do her own quick printout by 1932?? No one else in Frankfurt thought to keep records we are told except for the diligent Erac? Even a week later? And then by 23 Jan when Michael Jones visits Frankfurt, and no records are available.

However, yet again, not so it seems. Reported on Dec 27th, we have officers already at Frankfurt in the first few days looking for those very records relating 103a.

The New York-bound flight originated as a Boeing 727 from Frankfurt, West Germany, with a change of planes at London's Heathrow airport. Federal police in West Germany and the commander of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad last week began investigations at those airports.

http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/az3.html

 

[Buncrana]

Sorry, double postings there.

I always thought the Erac printout had been done for 'sentimental' reasons. After the plane had crashed. However, it was retained for sentimental purposes, not printed. Yes? It was already printed as a matter of course after the flight had left Frankfurt, and she simply decided to keep a copy.

 

[Rolfe]

Sorry, double postings there.

I always thought the Erac printout had been done for 'sentimental' reasons. After the plane had crashed. However, it was retained for sentimental purposes, not printed. Yes? It was already printed as a matter of course after the flight had left Frankfurt, and she simply decided to keep a copy.

Yes, that's what she said in The Conspiracy Files. That she was about to throw away the printouts for the previous day, but she stood holding that one in her hand and thought about the people who had arrived at the airport with these bags, and laid it aside on her desk as a memorial.

The crash occurring at 1903, it would indeed be prolific for Ms Erac, in Frankfurt, working at her desk, to have known and been absolutely confirmed that a crash had taken place over the Scottish border, involving an aircraft which had been fed from Frankfurt, and decided to do her own quick printout by 1932??

Time zones, Buncrana! You can get Stundied for ignoring these! It's clear, if the time on the printout is reliable, that it was printed out before the crash actually happened.

What were the investigators thinking of, to let all this evidence escape them?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

However, yet again, not so it seems. Reported on Dec 27th, we have officers already at Frankfurt in the first few days looking for those very records relating 103a.

The New York-bound flight originated as a Boeing 727 from Frankfurt, West Germany, with a change of planes at London's Heathrow airport. Federal police in West Germany and the commander of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad last week began investigations at those airports.

http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/az3.html

That's fascinating. The crash happened on Wednesday 21st December, and that article is dated Tuesday 27th December. So even by then, if it's correct that the Frankfurt computer records were purged after eight days, they should still have existed. The article says "last week" however, which would take the investigations back to within three days of the actual crash (taking Saturday 24th December as the end of "last week").

The implication there is that it was the German police who were investigating Frankfurt in the first instance. And that they started soon enough to have secured everything. How often do they empty the wastepaper bins anyway? What the hell was going on there?

Now if we were being told that there was a huge search in the airport for the single printout relating to the flight in question which was unaccountably missing, and this turned up later in the possession of an employee who had put it away in her locker before going off on her Christmas holiday, I'd find it more convincing. But that's not what we're being told. We're being told that pretty much everything was missing, even three days after the crash, even the actual computer records which shouldn't have been purged so soon, and it was pure chance that this one printout was retained.

Given how early the fuss seems to have started, how on earth did these computer records come to be purged, and how come the binned printouts couldn't be recovered, and why have we not heard more about this?

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Yes, that's what she said in The Conspiracy Files. That she was about to throw away the printouts for the previous day, but she stood holding that one in her hand and thought about the people who had arrived at the airport with these bags, and laid it aside on her desk as a memorial.

Can't anyone in this case just simply state their story and not embellish, contradict or become confused to the time elapsed to the point where each story, statement, or evidence presented, becomes incompatible? It would seem something as straightforward (and unknown to be absolutely critical) as to how and when the printout was initially obtained, should not be subject to such incongruity.

Time zones, Buncrana! You can get Stundied for ignoring these! It's clear, if the time on the printout is reliable, that it was printed out before the crash actually happened.

What were the investigators thinking of, to let all this evidence escape them?

Rolfe.

Indeed, I had missed the obvious time zone discrepancy. And a quick check on being Stundied would not be a welcome award! However, it doesn't fully resolve the conflicting Erac story? The printout being generated at 1832 GMT, just as 103 left Heathrow on 21st, and on her returning to work the following day noticing this printout, decided to retain a copy in her locker/desk? Nobody was either already looking for this particular document or was to even enquire about it for the next 2 weeks while she was on holiday? I'd be interested to know how long Ms Erac had worked at Frankfurt before 1988, and indeed if she continued working out of Frankfurt subsequent to 1988.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Holy cow this ran on ahead o me! On the above, I momentarily thought 1631 almost matched 1832. Duh. You add 12 not 10 for the AM dummy. So this is not a routine printing upon loading, unless it's routine to do these two hours after a flight leaves. Which is possible, maybe routine but delayed... Is that routine to print up records hours later, or is it Z time after all? Or someone psychically guessing it would blow soon?

On the posts above:

It makes it even more strage about the vanishing records though. Computers are an arcane mystery to many people (more so in 1988 than now), but a piece of paper is a piece of paper. Why wasn't someone shouting "don't throw these away!"? Why weren't they rooting through the bins looking for the things?

I just can't think of a good reason why not. Ergo, I would suspect they did try to collect such data. The silence about it is eerie.

[QUOTE-Buncrana]The crash occurring at 1903, it would indeed be prolific for Ms Erac, in Frankfurt, working at her desk, to have known and been absolutely confirmed that a crash had taken place over the Scottish border, involving an aircraft which had been fed from Frankfurt, and decided to do her own quick printout by 1932?? [/QUOTE]

I can see word traveling that fast, people suspect bomb, send out word to make sure records are kept in case. So you print. Perhaps if faked, this time was chosen just to make it look that way, but the stories got crossed somehow.

No one else in Frankfurt thought to keep records we are told except for the diligent Erac? Even a week later? And then by 23 Jan when Michael Jones visits Frankfurt, and no records are available.

She wasn't even diligent really, she says, Just passively interested. It was a whim. shrugs shoulders. All these stories have a common theme - there was never any interest or urgency, and therefore, nothing wrong with suppressing it. If this is a true impression, someone needs to get after the BKA and all the people who might have prodded them on why the heck not?

I always thought the Erac printout had been done for 'sentimental' reasons. After the plane had crashed. However, it was retained for sentimental purposes, not printed. Yes? It was already printed as a matter of course after the flight had left Frankfurt, and she simply decided to keep a copy.

Sentimental was the reason in the story where it was routine, as to why she put it in her locker and not the shredder. In the one where she printed it, it was for curiosity, maybe for the investigation, but she couldn't tell what it said and decided it wasn't important so it went in the hole.

Also, considering the BKA only went out to the ranch on it seems Feb 2, I'm guessing the general "three weeks" line is a fudge job and it wasn't handed over til the last days of January, a month or more after the crash. But then again, the BKA seem pretty darn slow on all this, huh?

Oops, missed the cool find - investigators there within days. So it wasn't slowness, necessarily. What did they find? Why did they never say? I'll have to read that.

Time zones, Buncrana! You can get Stundied for ignoring these! It's clear, if the time on the printout is reliable, that it was printed out before the crash actually happened.

Not necessarily, mate. Check above and consider with proper care. And besides, afaik, this whole thing was forged, and if so it's in what form they thought it should like and the time stamp is only an indirect clue.

ETA: Apologies all for the little extra caustic lately. I've been both fired up and frustrated, I think it's mellowing now.