Pan Am 103: Unaccompanied bag from Malta: Evidence?

[Rolfe]

I asked before but I'll ask again. Does anyone know what the extra letter codes appearing against 22 of the luggage items mean? The Mystery item has "TO" as do some of the others, while others have "BP".

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Could I also say again that this discussion is a bit futile? I seriously doubt that anyone at Frankfurt airport had had time to do more than say "What? Oh no, how dreadful" by 7.32pm GMT that night. If that. Even if the printout was really timed then, I think it would be a curiosity, no more.

However, I also doubt that "1932" is the time of the printout. There isn't an associated date of printout, which would seem essential. Also, that 4-number code appears rather isolated at the top. In the corresponding place at the bottom we see "193&SORT-ERF". I think it's at least as likely this is some sort of start codon or similar. Any thoughts, computer gurus?

I think we should be assuming we have no idea when the printout was actually made, and moving on to examine the much stranger strangeness surrounding this episode.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Could I also say again that this discussion is a bit futile? <snip>
I think we should be assuming we have no idea when the printout was actually made, and moving on to examine the much stranger strangeness surrounding this episode.

Well I've seen more futile situations rescued before, but I'm for remaining unsure, leaving it a side-point to maybe return to later. I'd say we aren't sure what time, but not "no idea." I think we'll completely bury the thread tho continuing this nerdiness. I withdraw my previous jabber about knowing such and such, but not necc. conceding anything either.

However, I also doubt that "1932" is the time of the printout. There isn't an associated date of printout, which would seem essential. Also, that 4-number code appears rather isolated at the top. In the corresponding place at the bottom we see "193&SORT-ERF". I think it's at least as likely this is some sort of start codon or similar. Any thoughts, computer gurus?

That is interesting, but as another time argument in parting, I'd rather drop, although with the correction that the bottom of the printout looks to me like 1936SORT-ERF. Another number just four higher? Four minute span from something to something? But again, this is getting tedious. We don't know when it was printed and it only matters so much.

Dan O., GlennB., you both seem to know at least something about this issue that might come in handy when we can tackle this decisively. But until then, as a time-of-printing issue, I'd rather move on. ETA: Not that ... whatever.

time zone, daylight savins, arrival and departure times, ideal air speed, the speed of phone message transmittal in 1988... all ignored in my evil vengeance on the issue that threatens my thread!

Contextual stuff:

Does anyone know what the extra letter codes appearing against 22 of the luggage items mean? The Mystery item has "TO" as do some of the others, while others have "BP".

I noticed these, as of course 8849 has the extra TO next to store. I haven't looked into it could be deduced. What special sometimes factors might apply to a luggage store assignment, and what are some German words that abbreviate TO & BP? Or find an expert or direct source that just says? It's pretty nerdy, possibly a good clue we could determine. Or a total waste of time.

For me, "next!"

I'll read back here somewhat on the printout story (I find the sheer volume of detail hard to handle - as do you all I'll bet) but having spent 20 years in I.T. as programmer, analyst, database designer and whatall I find it mysterious that such printouts could not be regenerated for a long time afterwards, as data archiving to tape prior to deletion is standard procedure. OK, this baggage loading system is probably not subject to sudden raids by auditors or irate customers chasing invoice queries, but bags do go missing, and I dare say performance might need analysing?

What the sources state is there was one week, or perhaps 8-day period where data was available, apparently in the system. I've heard tape mentioned only by Francovich, I think discs somewhere, but I'd guess large tapes. But no one speaks of phyiscal backups at all. Nor of any early deletion of the in-system data, or of police visits to the airport (from the site anyway, only from afar "someone's going there"). It's just passed off as no one bothered, and after the normal time, they deleted it, and then later Bogomira walks into the BKA with this paper. Sources are usually VAGUE on the whole issue.

So far everyone who's addressed this issue that I've seen is unanimous in agreeing that it's not right for records to vanish. There's no real proof they did, all we know is we've never heard about the computer records, aside from the printout, and that's not normal either. Official people will tell you it's just luck this record turned up, but they never elaborate on what that means, or why it was that way.

Ex, and I just love to re-quote this, Dick Marquise in his 2006 book: "her printout was the only record. This was as much a key to the solution of the case as Tony Gauci or the Mebo chip.” All things considered, it looks to me like Giaka was the master key that really lined them up. But he was proven a compulsive liar in court and his evidence (except Megrahi's JSO role) was tossed. As for the sub-keys (more tumblers within the lock maybe?) Tony Gauci changed his story more often than his underwear and got paid $2 million for it. The Mebo chip And this printout the "luck save" from an unexplained data disaster, from a locker, showing what looks kinda like an unaccompanied bag from Malta, which didn't really exist. Great company, they got a lock on this case alright.

 

[Rolfe]

Well I've seen more futile situations rescued before, but I'm for remaining unsure, leaving it a side-point to maybe return to later. I'd say we aren't sure what time, but not "no idea." I think we'll completely bury the thread tho continuing this nerdiness. I withdraw my previous jabber about knowing such and such, but not necc. conceding anything either.

I think you should fix, qualify or delete some of what you wrote on the wiki - we certainly don't know for sure that these times are GMT, and all the circumstantial evidence points to them not being GMT.

Also, I'm not even certain Frankfurt would have known what had happened less than half an hour after the explosion. ATC, possibly, but baggage control? So even if that was the time of the printout, I'm not sure it's significant in the way you originally indicated.

That is interesting, but as another time argument in parting, I'd rather drop, although with the correction that the bottom of the printout looks to me like 1936SORT-ERF. Another number just four higher? Four minute span from something to something? But again, this is getting tedious. We don't know when it was printed and it only matters so much.

You're right. It's clearly 1936SORT-ERF when you look at the clearer file on Bollier's server. That brings me back to thinking it's the time of the printout again. Time to start at the beginning, time to finish at the end. If that's realistic, for 111 lines of data plus a line or two of header and footer. Comes to around 2 seconds per line, give or take a few seconds.

We don't have a definite date of the printout, but if that's the case it absolutely doesn't fit with the Court record that says Bogomira made the printout "on the following morning". Half past seven in the evening suggests a routine end-of-day record, rather than someone deliberately preserving evidence.

The only date on the printout is 21st December, and it appears twice. That could simply be the date of the flight appearing twice, but on balance I see no indication that this is anything but a routine printout taken in the evening of the day of departure. In my view, half an hour before the explosion, but even if it was half an hour afterwards I still feel that's too early to be likely to be a response to it.

Dan O., GlennB., you both seem to know at least something about this issue that might come in handy when we can tackle this decisively. But until then, as a time-of-printing issue, I'd rather move on. ETA: Not that ... whatever.

time zone, daylight savins, arrival and departure times, ideal air speed, the speed of phone message transmittal in 1988... all ignored in my evil vengeance on the issue that threatens my thread!

OK, OK, I agree it's a minor point, but I think it's siginificant in that it shows evidence that Bogomira's story as presented to the Court wasn't strictly accurate. You who have access to what she actually said, did she claim in so many words she made the printout the morning afterwards?

Contextual stuff:

I noticed these, as of course 8849 has the extra TO next to store. I haven't looked into it could be deduced. What special sometimes factors might apply to a luggage store assignment, and what are some German words that abbreviate TO & BP? Or find an expert or direct source that just says? It's pretty nerdy, possibly a good clue we could determine. Or a total waste of time.

I suspect it's unimportant or someone would have brought to point up, but I'd still like to know.

What the sources state is there was one week, or perhaps 8-day period where data was available, apparently in the system. I've heard tape mentioned only by Francovich, I think discs somewhere, but I'd guess large tapes. But no one speaks of phyiscal backups at all. Nor of any early deletion of the in-system data, or of police visits to the airport (from the site anyway, only from afar "someone's going there"). It's just passed off as no one bothered, and after the normal time, they deleted it, and then later Bogomira walks into the BKA with this paper. Sources are usually VAGUE on the whole issue.

So far everyone who's addressed this issue that I've seen is unanimous in agreeing that it's not right for records to vanish. There's no real proof they did, all we know is we've never heard about the computer records, aside from the printout, and that's not normal either. Official people will tell you it's just luck this record turned up, but they never elaborate on what that means, or why it was that way.

Ex, and I just love to re-quote this, Dick Marquise in his 2006 book: "her printout was the only record. This was as much a key to the solution of the case as Tony Gauci or the Mebo chip.” All things considered, it looks to me like Giaka was the master key that really lined them up. But he was proven a compulsive liar in court and his evidence (except Megrahi's JSO role) was tossed. As for the sub-keys (more tumblers within the lock maybe?) Tony Gauci changed his story more often than his underwear and got paid $2 million for it. The Mebo chip And this printout the "luck save" from an unexplained data disaster, from a locker, showing what looks kinda like an unaccompanied bag from Malta, which didn't really exist. Great company, they got a lock on this case alright.

What about the press report stating that the BKA had visited Frankfurt airport "last week", which should have been only three days after the crash? Do you think they didn't go? I think what's so telling about the report is that it shows that even just a week after the crash, the importance of Frankfurt and examining the Frankfurt part of the story (which would almost all be baggage records) was recognised. And yet they still failed to secure the records?

What about the comment from the designer of the computer system who said there should have been backup tapes, to assist in tracing any lost luggage. Considering that 40-something bags loaded at Frankfurt ended up scattered across the Dumfriesshire countryside, common sense says such a backup should not have been chucked, even if there was no suspicion that any of the bags had had a hand in the explosion.

And we know the BKS did get some hard-copy records without Bogomira's help. The hand-written worksheets and the interline writers' documents. (Somehow, though, they didn't get the tarmac records of either the unloading of KM180 or the loading of PA 103A.) They had these documents, which allowed them to make sense of Bogomira's printout.

You speculated they secured them after Bogomira came forward with her printout, but I'm doubtful about that. Jones said that when he visited on 23rd January he found nothing. Would that not suggest that these documents were missing by then? Which was almost certainly before the police started to follow up Bogomira's evidence.

My interpretation was that the BKA did visit soon after the crash, and took these documents away, and for whatever reason no copies were kept (although Jones said they should have been if the police had seized them). So we're supposed to believe that these relatively unimportant pieces of paper were preserved for a few days, so that the police got hold of them, but that the important records (and in that I include the tarmac un/loading records as well as the computer data) had already been discarded? Even though a recent air crash might have suggested at the very least that records might be needed to see if bags reported missing had been on that plane?

This is extremely weird.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I think you should fix, qualify or delete some of what you wrote on the wiki - we certainly don't know for sure that these times are GMT, and all the circumstantial evidence points to them not being GMT.

Thanks. Yeah, I'll check the damage and fix it later today.

We don't have a definite date of the printout, but if that's the case it absolutely doesn't fit with the Court record that says Bogomira made the printout "on the following morning". Half past seven in the evening suggests a routine end-of-day record, rather than someone deliberately preserving evidence.

Actually looks like she was working evening shifts, and printed it up the following night. Details forthcoming. Some troubling.

The only date on the printout is 21st December, and it appears twice. That could simply be the date of the flight appearing twice, but on balance I see no indication that this is anything but a routine printout taken in the evening of the day of departure. In my view, half an hour before the explosion, but even if it was half an hour afterwards I still feel that's too early to be likely to be a response to it.

Could go either way. If they waited 1 1/2 hours, why not 2 1/2?

OK, OK, I agree it's a minor point, but I think it's siginificant in that it shows evidence that Bogomira's story as presented to the Court wasn't strictly accurate. You who have access to what she actually said, did she claim in so many words she made the printout the morning afterwards?

Ah hah, you were already guessing. I'm formatting the rather short (on details we desire) testimony. Later...

What about the press report stating that the BKA had visited Frankfurt airport "last week", which should have been only three days after the crash? Do you think they didn't go?

That's the one I meant by distance report. It seems they probably did go but we have no reports like "we went and found..."

I think what's so telling about the report is that it shows that even just a week after the crash, the importance of Frankfurt and examining the Frankfurt part of the story (which would almost all be baggage records) was recognised. And yet they still failed to secure the records?

I think you're likely right that they did secure the records. They just went real quiet afterwards.

What about the comment from the designer of the computer system who said there should have been backup tapes, to assist in tracing any lost luggage. Considering that 40-something bags loaded at Frankfurt ended up scattered across the Dumfriesshire countryside, common sense says such a backup should not have been chucked, even if there was no suspicion that any of the bags had had a hand in the explosion.

Agreed. They should have made at least one copy of the data. But hey, uh... well...

You speculated they secured them after Bogomira came forward with her printout, but I'm doubtful about that. Jones said that when he visited on 23rd January he found nothing. Would that not suggest that these documents were missing by then? Which was almost certainly before the police started to follow up Bogomira's evidence.

FAG and PanAm kept their own records. PA for PA flights, FAG for all others. Jones was looking at PanAm's files, which weren't there. FAG's I've seen no evidence of missing records except the unloading for KM180 which may have just never had a paper record. Or as you surmise the BKA took all relevant records and did the comparison at a remote location. Or the FAG did this all on their site to decide which records were relevant and then took copies only. I just don't know really. What do you think of the idea that outer records (tarmac) would lose meaning without the central data? (this only matters to BKA if it was deleted already when they got there).

This s of course plenty weird.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Sorry, the above was typed in haste earlier today. In short, it does seem KM180's records were missing, or at least Phipps found their absence unsettling. And this could mean such records were removed, meaning both Pan Am and FAG (paper) records went missing. Like the main computer data, and 103A's loading papers, any detailed record of KM180's unloading (ie no. of bags) that ever existed was not mentioned by the Court, indicating permanent erasure. The closes we get is this:

Production 1068: The court’s point [29] denotes this for “the evidence of Joachim Koscha, who was one of the managers of the baggage system at Frankfurt in 1988” It was his evidence that established KM180’s arrival and unloading time, 12:48-13:00. They do also cite a “record,” but provided no direct citation. It almost seems they’re just citing his memory, when normally paper records were kept.

Another question - would the BKA have authority or ability to remove PanAm files without leaving copies? Or would PanAm or American authorities have done that?

And the first posting of her full testimony I decided it would be best to post it at my blog. I'm curious what you make of it, Rolfe. I haven't absorbed it all yet myself.
http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/11/testimony-of-bogomira-erac.html

 

[Rolfe]

First, I note that Bogomira says she first heard about the crash when she was in her car driving away from the airport. Her shift finished at 10pm, but she might have left about 9.45 if all the work was finished. This indicates that news of what had happened wasn't all over the airport half an hour after it happened - I didn't really think it would have been. The news trickled out over the following few hours, and it sounds to me as if she heard it on a radio news broadcast at about 10pm - which would be 9pm GMT. I don't see any reason to doubt this.

However, the next bit is interesting. That news broadcast said the plane came from Frankfurt. No mention that it had actually come from Heathrow and that the Frankfurt flight had only been a feeder flight. Even when she printed out the baggage records, she still thought she was dealing with a direct Frankfurt to New York flight, and couldn't understand why there was so little luggage. (In fact it was a relatively small plane, with only 128 passengers, and only 49 of them were going on to New York - the other 79 got off in London. Hence the relatively small baggage load.)

This makes it clear that the Frankfurt connection was highlighted from the very beginning. This wasn't, as I had speculated, a question of everybody concentrating on Heathrow until baggage container AVE4041 was found with blast damage (first bit brought in 24th December), which led to the realisation that the bags in that had almost all come off PA103A from Frankfurt. If that had been the case, that prior to the finding of the damaged container Frankfurt was just one of a number of airports that had feeder flights for this flight, it might have been conceivable that nobody really got interested in that airport until the week after the crash. At which point the records might have vanished innocently. (Ok, I don't believe it, because there would be bound to be queries about lost bags relating to that flight, but it's possible.)

However, German radio news telling everyone on the evening of 21st December that the flight had originated in Frankfurt? And we're supposed to believe that the BKA didn't go near the airport for more than a week after the crash, by which time nobody (apart from Bogomira) had thought about it at all, and all the information had been routinely destroyed?

Oh, come on!

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

And thirdly, she says she made the printout "quite late on", on the 22nd. She was on late shift again - probably started work after lunch. That would fit with a printout time starting 19:32 and finishing 19:36. We don't have a date of the 22nd on the printout, but it's perfectly possible that it was made on the 22nd. The judges merely made a mistake in their final judgement when they said it had been printed the following morning.

So Bogomira's statement to the Court is consistent with the evidence she produced. It's perfectly possible she's on the level, though it's interesting to compare that statement with her later one to the BBC, which seems to describe a routine printout she decided to preserve.

I still view this tale with a suspicious eye, but it may be the main interest is in the illumination it sheds on the disappearance of the records.

So, Bogomira didn't go on holiday on Christmas Eve, as I had thought likely. (The crash happened on a Wednesday, she made the printout on the evening of Thursday 22nd, and I would have expected a lot of people to be disappearing immediately after work on Friday 23rd. I did that myself, struggling up the half-closed A74, past the crater that was Sherwood Crescent.) But Bogomira said, "a few days later, I went to Slovenia for the New Year." She doesn't say she worked over Christmas, but it begins to sound as if she did. She certainly doesn't speak of going off on 23rd December.

So she was around in the few days following the crash. She describes nothing about any attempts to preserve the records at that stage, and nothing about any police enquiries. In spite of the fact the Frankfurt connection had been made immediately the plane went down, and news reports dated 27th December are telling us that the BKA visited the ariport "last week".



She returned on 14th or 15th January. Actually, 14th was a Saturday and 15th was a Sunday. Since airports work 7 days a week that could be irrelevant, but it made me wonder if she might actually have started again on the 16th. But whichever, this is all consistent with a two-week New Year holiday. It's a nice break, but it's nothing out of the ordinary in Europe. Remember, Americans get by far the shortest holiday periods of all the First World countries, don't judge the holiday by these standards.

But then she waited another week, to some time between 20th and 25th January, before she told anyone. 20th was a Friday and 25th was a Wednesday. Jones visited Frankfurt airport on Monday 23rd January and found all the records gone.

How many people did Jones talk to? What was he told about the fate of the records, and the reason nothing was available? Did he talk to Bogomira, or (more likely) did she hear that he'd been there asking questions? Was this what prompted her to come forward with the printout? I don't know but I wonder.

We know the BKA had some documents - the worksheets and the interline writers' documents. When did they get these? Why were no copies retained in the airport?

Why are we hearing absolutely nothing about the first BKA visit to the airport, which should have happened before Christmas unless they were completely asleep at the wheel, and the huge fuss and recriminations that ensued when they found the most vital records had already been destroyed?

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Glad you had a chance to take a look so soon.

First, I note that Bogomira says she first heard about the crash when she was in her car driving away from the airport. Her shift finished at 10pm, but she might have left about 9.45 if all the work was finished. This indicates that news of what had happened wasn't all over the airport half an hour after it happened - I didn't really think it would have been. The news trickled out over the following few hours, and it sounds to me as if she heard it on a radio news broadcast at about 10pm - which would be 9pm GMT. I don't see any reason to doubt this.

While I can see quick news coming through, depending, it's true there's no reason except the time (and date) on the paper to suspect it was printed that night. Her story then makes sense here in that she'd be back the next afternoon/evening until about 10pm. After watching the evening news (6:00?) she later (at 7:32) pulled up and printed this file. It's still possible that it was then replicated later to match this, or that the paper and story were both fabricated to fit each other. All it really says is what's on the paper that, again, is the odd souvenir in the far more odd general data disaster.

I'm looking at it again in this light. It is strange this would show a time and not date of printing, but it seems so. There might be something else there I'm not getting. But this testimony makes a little more sense than I expected. It's her 2008 story changing that's more troubling then.

However, the next bit is interesting. That news broadcast said the plane came from Frankfurt. No mention that it had actually come from Heathrow and that the Frankfurt flight had only been a feeder flight. Even when she printed out the baggage records, she still thought she was dealing with a direct Frankfurt to New York flight, and couldn't understand why there was so little luggage. (In fact it was a relatively small plane, with only 128 passengers, and only 49 of them were going on to New York - the other 79 got off in London. Hence the relatively small baggage load.)

This could be German bias, in that people are more interested in what's close to them, therefore 103 started at Frankfurt. Which it of course did, in a major sense. Of course investigators in Scotland had a better picture than newscasters in Germany. But clearly people knew Frankfurt was one of two main points to look at from the beginning.

German radio news telling everyone on the evening of 21st December that the flight had originated in Frankfurt? And we're supposed to believe that the BKA didn't go near the airport for more than a week after the crash, by which time nobody (apart from Bogomira) had thought about it at all, and all the information had been routinely destroyed?

Oh, come on!

Rolfe.

Especialy given German federal police reported as investigating at Frankfurt "last week" as reported Tuesday Dec 27, so no later than Saturday the 24th, AVE4041 news or not. This is as it should be, but then they came back really quiet and that's odd.

Some extracts:

Q All right. So once you had finished looking at the computer printout, did you give it to anyone?
A No. No. I didn't see anything problematic.
Q What did you do with the computer printout, then?
A No one instructed me to make this computer printout. I just did it for myself because I was curious about the way in which the flight had been dispatched, so I took a look at it, and then I kept it as a souvenir, one might say. I hung it up in my cupboard.

We could ask as we have how she could know what was or wasn't problematic. But if all were well as far as she knew, investigators should already have this info for a flight that blew up after sort-of originating there. Therefore she'd not be at fault for putting her own, extraneous, irrelevant copy away as a souvenir.

But why is she also citing "nothing problematic" as the reason she didn't give it to anyone? (Cupboard is probably a translation issue, as she's being translated here as well).

Q Do you recollect when you returned to Frankfurt?
A I think it would have been around about the 15th of January, perhaps one day before that.
Q Did there come a stage when you told Mr. Berg that you had the printout?
A That was around a week later. When I went to Frankfurt again, I was on the early shift. It was sometime between the 20th and the 25th of January.

That confirms my hunch that "three weeks" was rounding down. It was a full month delay.

On record-keeping and data backup:

Q Thank you. Did you give the printout to Mr. Berg at that time?
A Yes, I gave Mr. Berg this printout, because I'd realised that there was actually no other documentation available.
Q Did he ask you to check the computer at that stage to see if there was any more information available?
A In the computer -- well, there was -- the data was there for one week, and after that they were written over. Mr. Berg just asked me to take a look in the archive in order to see whether there were teletype printouts. These were the things which came automatically from the computer. But I couldn't find anything.
Q Would there be any record of the baggage sent to flight 103 if you hadn't made this printout?
A Not so far as I know.
Q Thank you.

Before this:

Q And for how long would that information be kept in the computer?
A The information was kept in the computer for a few days; however, for various appraisal processes, we copied the data onto two boards. We switched between one and the other.

and later

I believe it was a KIK computer where the data were stored. They were stored in that computer for a few days, and it would be possible then to copy the data onto disks.

Otherwise the testimony mostly covers computer time issues - its irregular clock pulse and the vagaries of daily time-settings. Both can and surely did introduce imprecision into the times recorded, but we don't even know which direction, ahead or behind, is most likely, so it's just a question mark.

 

[Rolfe]

That's all to do with whether 13:07 on that printout actually matches with the handwritten 13:01 to 13:10 (or 13:16) which was the time-span of the coding of the KM 180 luggage.

So, what? The coder wasn't called to give evidence. Maybe he wouldn't have been able to swear that luggage from other sources couldn't have come through at the same time. That Damascus flight, maybe, or a stray bag being sent into the system. I simply can't see how 13:07 proves beyond reasonable doubt that whatever it was came off KM180, even if all the times are accurate.

I'm toying with two scenarios here, both involving shenanigans on the part of the BKA. (For God's sake, why has nobody asked the BKA why they didn't manage to secure that data? That's the most baffling thing about all this!)

I reckon they came in a few days after the crash, possibly over the Christmas weekend, and left scorched earth behind them. All the records, all the backups, and no copies left. And if you want to know how this might have been possible, go read Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome. A little hint of it shows in Bogomira's evidence.

Q What did you do with the computer printout, then?
A No one instructed me to make this computer printout.

What I was unsure about was whether the entire Bogomira printout thing was a retrospective fabrication to allow the introduction of selective evidence the BKA by their own account of events hadn't actually secured, or whether she was a damn nuisance, having preserved something they were trying to suppress. Her evidence does add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Maybe she did do exactly as she describes.

So, what do we make of the orphan luggage, then? It seems to say it came off KM180, but Air Malta's records show it did no such thing. Is it pure coincidence, which turned out to be so useful seven months later when there was a concerted effort to involve somewhere that wasn't Frankfurt in this mess? I'm really suspicious of the number of coincidences surrounding this affair.

Or is it possible that the printout was a fabrication, with Bogomira's data re-typed with an extra line added?

I thought I heard somewhere that Bogomira had kept her own copy as well, but I'm not sure about that. Most of the accounts suggest she didn't. (I'd have photocopied it, but that's just me.) If she didn't, then it's unlikely she would have noticed an extra line in there - particularly if an innocent line was omitted to keep the total number of bags the same.

So, three suggestions I suppose.

• The BKA removed all the evidence, then about six months later they doctored the data from the flight to include the orphan item. They then managed to persuade one of the computer operators at Frankfurt, a woman immigrant from Eastern Europe who had managed to get across the Iron Curtain 20 years earlier, to testify to a cock-and-bull story about how she saved the data. This was so sensitive that the computer operator insisted on giving evidence anonymously at the 1990 enquiries. This allowed them to produce that single item, and continue to conceal the data from other flights that might have allowed its provenance to be questioned.
• The BKA removed all the evidence, then about a month later an airport employee produced a printout of part of what they were trying to conceal. They sat on this for six months, but found its existence useful when they wanted to fabricate evidence to implicate Malta in the incident - allowing them to introduce a link to Malta into the data, then have it sworn to by the innocent Mrs. Erac, who of course didn't remember the printout in sufficient detail to notice the interpolated item.
• The BKA removed all the evidence, then about a month later an airport employee produced a printout of part of what they were trying to conceal. The entry suggestive of a link to Malta was there, but they sat on it for another seven months, fill in any one of several motives here.

And then there's number 4.

• The important evidence had all been destroyed before the BKA got there only a few days after the crash, but they seized what was left (with no copies retained). They didn't raise a huge stink about the loss of the vital evidence. About a month later an airport employee produced a printout of the most vital piece of evidence they thought was lost, and it was possible to determine that it included the record of a suspicious item of baggage. They sat on it for six months without a word to anyone.

That last is the Official Version, of course. Which one is the most probable?

As regards motives for the delay, I can think of a few. First, they wanted to keep all the glory for themselves and not involve a foreign force. (That's what the Scottish police did with the timer fragment, after all.) However, given that it would have been the work of a few days to cross-reference the documents they had, why not come triumphantly out of the woodwork as soon as that's been done? You don't get any glory by finding and characterising and documenting a vital piece of evidence if you never come forward with it!

Second, they saw what they had, and that Malta could be implicated, but they wanted to give it a few months in the hope that any records Malta might have to show the bomb couldn't have gone on at their end might have gone to the great skip in the sky.

Third, none of this even got looked at until about July, when efforts to find an alternative story to take the heat off Frankfurt, drug smuggling and the CIA began. Wonderful luck about the item fitting in with the time of the coding of KM180! Or maybe you make your own luck.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Sorry to digress slightly from the 'printout' and the current issues around Mrs Erac's story, but here is an interesting article I stumbled upon taken from Newsday, 03/04/89. As it transpires, there may be a slender, however, important link back to the Erac printout.

A breakthrough in the investigation - and Scottish police believe they are on the verge of one - could produce yet another crisis between the United States and Iran.

So, everyone is still hot on the trail of the Jibril group with Iran issuing the contract and paying for the attack. Suggesting strong evidence, links and motive are at hand. This is March/April '89.

During a sweep coordinated with American and other intelligence agencies, the West Germans arrested in Neuss, near Dusseldorf, were Haj Hafsim Dalkamoni and Fattah Ghondafar. Dalkamoni was described as a paymaster for Jibril's group.......
.....car parked near their flat in Neuss, police found a radio-cassette player containing 11 ounces of plastic explosive called Semtex, with a fuse that could be triggered by changes in barometric pressure...

Now, as far as we know, there was no records available at Frankfurt. Yes, the ties are there in Germany, but by the 23rd January according to Michael Jones, records were unavailable. It is not referred to, or mentioned in any of the quotes taken, that there is a lack of records or documentation pertaining to Frankfurt and 103A. After, they've decided to ignore Bedfords suitcases, and they've shelved the break-in at the PanAm gate, do the UK investigators have access to some form of documenation that shows the unaccompanied bomb-bag was inserted at Frankfurt?

In the next few weeks, British police believe they will pinpoint the passenger who boarded a Pan Am flight in Frankfurt early Dec. 21 and checked a bag - later transferred to Pan Am Flight 103 in Heathrow - containing a radio-cassette player that held Semtex plastic explosive.

Well, it seems they must do! Or is this just simply a tactic employed to apply pressure to the authorities and investigators at Frankfurt? Is this one big game of pass the buck? Do we have those at Heathrow with knowledge that the Frankfurt records have mysteriously vanished, and Frankfurt with knowledge that Bedrfords story and the break-in at Heathrow are being somewhat suppressed?

Despite optimism among British investigators, there is widespread doubt their investigation will produce a real breakthrough. West German officials have expressed strong doubts about a central British tenet - that the bag containing the bomb originated in Frankfurt. According to one official involved in the Frankfurt airport investigation, the luggage that wound up at Heathrow was subjected to a pressure box screening at Frankfurt.

The device simulates a plane at high altitudes and thus would trigger the bomb if it were like the PFLP-GC bomb recovered near Dusseldorf.

"Why didn't the bomb explode on the Frankfurt-to-London leg of the flight?" said the Frankfurt government official. At Heathrow, the luggage was transferred by hand and sat unattended before being loaded into the 747's igloo, he said.

We have a stalemate with ulterior agenda's at play here. Added to this we have the Khreesat's devices, his arrest and subsequent release. Not only is there a dirty ongoing game of pass-the-buck back and forward, while each holding their own records and documentation close to their chests. If only we could get everyone hunting for a completely different device being used, and all these airport problems stemming from elsewhere.

Full Newsday article - http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/newsday8.html

 

[Rolfe]

taken from Newsday, 03/04/89.

Can you state whether you mean 3rd April 1989 or 4th March 1989? I think we need to use the names of the months to avoid confusion here.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Now, as far as we know, there was no records available at Frankfurt. Yes, the ties are there in Germany, but by the 23rd January according to Michael Jones, records were unavailable. It is not referred to, or mentioned in any of the quotes taken, that there is a lack of records or documentation pertaining to Frankfurt and 103A. After, they've decided to ignore Bedfords suitcases, and they've shelved the break-in at the PanAm gate, do the UK investigators have access to some form of documenation that shows the unaccompanied bomb-bag was inserted at Frankfurt?

Well, it seems they must do! Or is this just simply a tactic employed to apply pressure to the authorities and investigators at Frankfurt? Is this one big game of pass the buck? Do we have those at Heathrow with knowledge that the Frankfurt records have mysteriously vanished, and Frankfurt with knowledge that Bedrfords story and the break-in at Heathrow are being somewhat suppressed?

I think a lot of this is related to baggage container AVE4041. The explosion hapened inside that, and they soon found out that it had contained a few interline bags loaded from earlier flights arriving at Heathrow, but mostly bags rushed into the container from PA103A which had arrived late.

I think that was the reason for the very early announcement that the device almost certainly did not originate at Heathrow, and the abandonment (to the obvious huge relief of all the Brits involved) of any serious enquiries at Heathrow.

What I find so surprising is that even on the day of the crash, the Frankfurt connection was being reported, and we know that the computer records were supposed to stay around for several days at least. And yet we have no explanation of the failure of the investigators to secure these records before they were deleted.

This bit of the Erac testimony is also weird.

Q Did he ask you to check the computer at that stage to see if there was any more information available?
A In the computer -- well, there was -- the data was there for one week, and after that they were written over. Mr. Berg just asked me to take a look in the archive in order to see whether there were teletype printouts. These were the things which came automatically from the computer. But I couldn't find anything.

So there were automatic teletype printouts (something different from Bogomira's KIK printout, apparently), which were looked for on about 20th to 25th January, but nothing had been kept. Does this not seem remarkably casual?

Four days after the crash was Christmas Day. In my experience, there aren't many flights on that day and airports run a skeleton staff. Now if I were the police, who really wanted the evidence out of there, I might just choose that day to remove it.

Why am I assuming the BKA? Because they did secure some evidence, we know, so they were there at some point collecting stuff. And if they found that most of what they needed had vanished in a puff of electrons, why didn't they make a much bigger deal about this?

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

West German officials have expressed strong doubts about a central British tenet - that the bag containing the bomb originated in Frankfurt. According to one official involved in the Frankfurt airport investigation, the luggage that wound up at Heathrow was subjected to a pressure box screening at Frankfurt.

The device simulates a plane at high altitudes and thus would trigger the bomb if it were like the PFLP-GC bomb recovered near Dusseldorf.

Pressure box? Never heard of that before, and it sounds made-up. Not to say there isn't such a thing, but it just sounds more like "quit looking here!" But they had to look elsewhere than Heathrow, as the break-in was known to investigators (just not the public or the defense until it was too late). So the solution seems to have been to look towards, and then right through Frankfurt. More directly tho it says "quit looking for an altimeter, at least here. If you must look here, it'll be a timer." It would be a month or two before Brits started toward deciding the same thing (ala Hayes and PT/35(b)).

Also:

"Why didn't the bomb explode on the Frankfurt-to-London leg of the flight?" said the Frankfurt government official.

Uh, because of the pressure box screening before that? Did you forget your made-up story dummy?

So this is a little off-topic, but tangentially related anyway. Buncrana, you've been great with the old backstories. Would you be interested in regitering at the skeptic's wiki to add some of these tidbits or just whatever else? We've got a hundred million pages need started...
http://www.skepticweb.dreamhosters.com/Main_Page
Anyone else, too.

Can you state whether you mean 3rd April 1989 or 4th March 1989? I think we need to use the names of the months to avoid confusion here.

It's not clear from the page. Being American tho, I thinks it's that Newsday, I'd guess March 4, or 4 March. But it's a guess.

Why am I assuming the BKA? Because they did secure some evidence, we know, so they were there at some point collecting stuff. And if they found that most of what they needed had vanished in a puff of electrons, why didn't they make a much bigger deal about this?

Well to be fair, I think no matter what unusual happened, they'd have to keep quiet about it. The only noise they'd be expected to or accepted to make is about following procedures and getting the evidence. No such noise indicates either an embarrassing early disappearance before a BKA visit or, more likely, the same at BKA's hands.

 

[Rolfe]

Pressure box? Never heard of that before, and it sounds made-up. Not to say there isn't such a thing, but it just sounds more like "quit looking here!" But they had to look elsewhere than Heathrow, as the break-in was known to investigators (just not the public or the defense until it was too late). So the solution seems to have been to look towards, and then right through Frankfurt. More directly tho it says "quit looking for an altimeter, at least here. If you must look here, it'll be a timer." It would be a month or two before Brits started toward deciding the same thing (ala Hayes and PT/35(b)).

As this has never been mentioned by anyone involved in the inquiry, I think the "official" in that source was mistaken.

Uh, because of the pressure box screening before that? Did you forget your made-up story dummy?

Well, there's a problem with this idea anway. The Khreesat bombs had both an altimeter and a timer. There was a half-hour delay after reaching the trigger pressure before the bomb went off. Did they hold the luggage in the pressure box for over half an hour? No I didn't think so.

So this is a little off-topic, but tangentially related anyway. Buncrana, you've been great with the old backstories. Would you be interested in regitering at the skeptic's wiki to add some of these tidbits or just whatever else? We've got a hundred million pages need started...
http://www.skepticweb.dreamhosters.com/Main_Page
Anyone else, too.

Anything that will encourage more Buncrana posts, is a Good Thing.

Well to be fair, I think no matter what unusual happened, they'd have to keep quiet about it. The only noise they'd be expected to or accepted to make is about following procedures and getting the evidence. No such noise indicates either an embarrassing early disappearance before a BKA visit or, more likely, the same at BKA's hands.

You ever met a police force who showed up promptly to find someone had already destroyed the evidence, and kept quiet about it?

I find it extremely difficult to see how that vanishing evidence at Frankfurt was accidental. I think it either has to be airport insiders who didn't want the drug-running operation exposed, in which case the police really have to have been complicit in the concealment, or it was the police who were the prime movers.

The reason I suspect the latter is that some of the evidence was indeed preserved, to be produced by the police months later. If it had been a management scorched-earth, I'd have expected the worksheets and so on to have gone the same way as the computer records.

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

Blegh - bogged down with work still so can't spend anything like as much time as I'd like on this.

re the 19:32 time being before the plane exploded. Maybe time of generation of list rather than time of retrieval? maybe the system clock on such systems runs to a standard time zone for software reasons?

I didn't realise the baggage handler had two different versions - I've been going with the one she states on the Conspiracy Files video.

Pan Am ultimately went bankrupt over 103 - I can't help thinking that the investigation surrounding the point of ingestion of the bomb was a giant game of pass the buck with UK German and US interests all wanting to make dam sure none of them got sued by many angry relatives further down the line.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Blegh - bogged down with work still so can't spend anything like as much time as I'd like on this.

Nor as much time as I'd like.

I didn't realise the baggage handler had two different versions - I've been going with the one she states on the Conspiracy Files video.

Ah, well that's a big point. The earlier version she told the court has a certain correlation with the paper itself, seeing its date is unclear and its time matched with an evening shift. So it's her later story that doesn't fit with the rest at all. Age-induced memory problems? Non-real story-generated memory problems?

Pan Am ultimately went bankrupt over 103 - I can't help thinking that the investigation surrounding the point of ingestion of the bomb was a giant game of pass the buck with UK German and US interests all wanting to make dam sure none of them got sued by many angry relatives further down the line.

This would indeed seem part of the picture. PanAm of course got the full buck passed to them in the end and sank. Oddly, their bankruptcy was finalized just after the indictments against al Megrahi and Fhimah were issued, so by what exact mechanism I don't know but their fate seemed tied, in a negative way, with the case that unfolded, almost as if it were a case against them.

 

[Rolfe]

re the 19:32 time being before the plane exploded. Maybe time of generation of list rather than time of retrieval? maybe the system clock on such systems runs to a standard time zone for software reasons?

The 19.32 seems to fit OK with what Bogomira told the court, that she printed it out later on in the day following the crash. I don't think it's possible for the clock to be anything other than local time because (a) there are several references to its time being compared to people's watches, with no suggestion of a time zone discrepancy, and (b) the time of the last bags out of store fits with the known time of take-off of the plane in local time.

Given that the time at the start of the printout is 19.32 and the time at the end is 19.36, I think it's time of actual physical printing, as about 4 minutes to generate that list seems fairly realistic, at about 2 seconds a line.

I didn't realise the baggage handler had two different versions - I've been going with the one she states on the Conspiracy Files video.

I just did a transcript of that segment, for comparison withwhat Caustic Logic has acquired.

Narrator
The first breakthrough came from Germany. Frankfurt airport was central to the investigation. It was from here that many of the passengers on the fatal flight started their journey. They flew to London and then transferred to the 747 bound for America. After the crash, surprisingly, the German police hadn’t fully investigated all the luggage records at the airport. But luckily for them, Bogomira Erac, a computer programmer in baggage handling, had been more diligent. Her records tracked the luggage through the system.

Bogomira (speaking in German, voice-over translation)
We usually destroyed all the printouts, and I was just about ready to do that with this one, when on the spur of the moment I just picked it up and put it on the table. Later on I looked at it again and thought, well, I’ll keep this in memory of the people who were on the plane, and I put it in my locker.

Narrator
The weeks went by, and to Bogomira’s surprise, no one came to ask for the printout. Realising it could be useful, she eventually went to her supervisor.

Bogomira
And my supervisor said, “But the baggage list doesn’t exist any more.” And I stood up, went to my locker, and showed him. He was very, very surprised.

Narrator
Her printout showed that, on the day of the crash, one piece of luggage was transferred on to the Pan Am feeder flight from an Air Malta flight. A check revealed no passenger had transferred with it. The bag had travelled unaccompanied.

How do we reconcile that with her evidence in court? I'm struggling a bit.

Pan Am ultimately went bankrupt over 103 - I can't help thinking that the investigation surrounding the point of ingestion of the bomb was a giant game of pass the buck with UK German and US interests all wanting to make dam sure none of them got sued by many angry relatives further down the line.

Coleman's book has a lot of detail about the lengths the US government went to to withhold documentary evidence from Pan Am that they needed for their defence and counter-claim. They even went to far as to prosecute Pan Am's solicitor for daring to question the official version of events - if you believe Coleman. Sounds a lot like the "public interest immunity" submissions to prevent evidence being disclosed to Megrahi's appeal.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

For immediate comparison, here's the relevant section of Bogomira's court evidence.

Q Were you working the next day?
A Yes, I was doing the late shift the next day as well.
Q And did people at the airport speak about the crash?
A Yes, we talked a lot about this crash. In fact, that was virtually all that people talked about.
Q Did you decide to do something with the computer?
A Well, actually, it was quite late on. We've got -- we had a television in our unit. It's the news, I saw the images.
Q And did you then decide to make an inquiry in the computer system?
A Well, I was actually curious about that flight. A day earlier there had not been any problems, so I was interested to see how much luggage there had been. And so it was really because I was curious that I made a printout.
Q What did you make a printout of?
A I've got a KIK computer, and I made a printout of the plane from the day before, on the 21st of December.
Q Would you look at the screen with me, to Production 1060, image 1, please. Can we magnify to the top, please. Thank you. Do you recognise this document, Mrs. Erac?
A One moment, please. I've got to put my spectacles on.
Q Can we see the flight number?
A Yes. Yes, you can see the flight number.
Q And is it flight Pan Am 103?
A Yes, it's flight Pan Am 103, 1988, from December 21st was the date. It indicates the counter where the luggage for Pan Am 103 was checked in.
Q And is this the information that you asked the computer to print out?
A Yes, that's the information I wanted about the luggage which went through the luggage transportation system for that flight.
Q What did you do with the computer printout?
A Well, I took a look at it, and I was really surprised that so few pieces of luggage had been checked in whilst there were so many passengers on board. Generally, at that time of the year -- at that time, anyway -- Americans had much more luggage. I took a look to see whether all of the items of luggage came out of the system, the ones that had been checked in, and whether they were on time. And I saw that as far as the computer was concerned, nothing remained in Frankfurt.
Q Did you realise at the time that the Frankfurt flight had connected with a larger aircraft in London?
A No, I only found out about that later on.
Q All right. So once you had finished looking at the computer printout, did you give it to anyone?
A No. No. I didn't see anything problematic.
Q What did you do with the computer printout, then?
A No one instructed me to make this computer printout. I just did it for myself because I was curious about the way in which the flight had been dispatched, so I took a look at it, and then I kept it as a souvenir, one might say. I hung it up in my cupboard.
Q Were you due to take some holiday leave about this time?
A A few days later, I went to Slovenia. That was what I did every year; I went to Slovenia for the New Year.
Q Do you recollect when you returned to Frankfurt?
A I think it would have been around about the 15th of January, perhaps one day before that.
Q Did there come a stage when you told Mr. Berg that you had the printout?
A That was around a week later. When I went to Frankfurt again, I was on the early shift. It was sometime between the 20th and the 25th of January.
Q Thank you. Did you give the printout to Mr. Berg at that time?
A Yes, I gave Mr. Berg this printout, because I'd realised that there was actually no other documentation available.
Q Did he ask you to check the computer at that stage to see if there was any more information available?
A In the computer -- well, there was -- the data was there for one week, and after that they were written over. Mr. Berg just asked me to take a look in the archive in order to see whether there were teletype printouts. These were the things which came automatically from the computer. But I couldn't find anything.

I suppose in The Conspiracy Files she doesn't actually say she didn't make the printout herself. At a stretch, you could imagine that account starts at the same place as "I kept it as a souvenir." She printed it for her own information, to see if she could see anything odd about it, but when she saw nothing she volunteered nothing, because "No one instructed me to make this computer printout." She was about to throw it out, because that's what was usually done with printouts, but "on the spur of the moment I just picked it up and put it on the table. Later on I looked at it again and thought, well, I’ll keep this in memory of the people who were on the plane, and I put it in my locker."

I can just about make this the same story, especially if I postulate that Bogomira told the fuller version (where she made the printout out of curiosity the next day) to the BBC interviewer, but the early bit was cut for length. Could just be reportage that has made the court judgement and the Conspiracy Files version appear to be different.

Indeed, if you look at her first words ("We usually destroyed all the printouts, and I was just about ready to do that with this one"), it sounds very much as if she has said something else about "this one" prior to that. I suspect about how she came to make the printout.

So either she has been telling a reasonably consistent story because it's the truth, or she has stuck to more or less the same fabricated story all the time.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Now can we look again at two salient points from the court evidence?

Q What did you make a printout of?
A I've got a KIK computer, and I made a printout of the plane from the day before, on the 21st of December.

[....]A Yes, I gave Mr. Berg this printout, because I'd realised that there was actually no other documentation available.
Q Did he ask you to check the computer at that stage to see if there was any more information available?
A In the computer -- well, there was -- the data was there for one week, and after that they were written over. Mr. Berg just asked me to take a look in the archive in order to see whether there were teletype printouts. These were the things which came automatically from the computer. But I couldn't find anything.

[....]

the baggage -- I believe it was a KIK computer where the data were stored. They were stored in that computer for a few days, and it would be possible then to copy the data onto disks.

So Bogomira made a printout specially, using her KIK computer. This was the sort of computer the baggage data were stored on.

Does this suggest she transferred the data to "her" computer to make the printout?

She also mentions two other ways of retaining information from that system - you could transfer the data to discs (5.25 floppies, I suppose), or there were "teletype printouts, the things which came automatically from the computer."

But hey, "In the computer -- well, there was -- the data was there for one week, and after that they were written over."

One week. A whole week after this horrendous crash, with the BKA supposedly there at least by that time, knowing that flight might be implicated. And automatic printours floating around as well as Bogomira's little production, and the facility for copying it all to floppies. Not to mention the backups spoken of by the designer of the system, mainly because I have no idea how to search Robert Black's blofg to find the relevant entry.

But, "After the crash, surprisingly, the German police hadn’t fully investigated all the luggage records at the airport."

Give us a break!

Rolfe.