I also do not believe he was not killed there.
Ahh what becomes the mind after a 12hr, 2 stops and 3 time changes journey home!
I cannot find no sense in that statement!
Right, so Mr Baz is ex- Honk Kong. I find much of his writing interesting and at times salient, although I find his outright dismissal together with cognizance assertion that Francovich, Goddard, Coleman et al, have posed a dilerberate hoax, unconvincing. Sometimes it would even appear, he doth protest just too much!
As for the sincerely intrepid Mr Matthew Gannon, Gup and Gannon's brother and sister provide, as one might expect, a human touch to another victim on board 103 that evening. It really strikes me sometimes that in the midst of the injustice of the crime, investigation and trial, the stories behind those poor souls who boarded the plane, and indeed living on Sherwood crescent, are crushed behind the brutal aftermaths effect and activities. A look at the passenger list is a grim reminder. 103 continued accruing it's victims long after 1988, even upto 2000, as the story of the Flannigan family is testament to.
Gannon's father in-law, George Twetten, in a curious twist and almost inevitably when we speak abot Lockerbie, was involved at a high level within the agency, and it seems played a role in the clandestine arms to Iran deal. Just down the hall from North and Cannistrano.
"By the summer of 1988, Gadhafi (sic) and Libya seemed to slip off the front pages of the news. The focus of the fight against terrorism moved from Tripoli to Beruit, where American hostages continued to be held. At that point the agency suspected that support for such terrorism came from Iran." (Gup, p188)
As is so often muted, Iran was someone whom the US could not be seen to be outrightly acceptive or even aggressive towards, and while back channels were maneuvering for hostage deals, arming and protecting Iraqi vessels by blasting, erroneously or otherwise, Iranian passengers out of their seats at 30,000ft, results in a political minefield with assured injuries. Gadaffi, unlike Saddam, would not entertain any shadow of US assistance or influence. Gadaffi, unlike Saddam, still strikes a pose across the Northern landscape of Africa and in the ME. Gadaffi could be sponsored by RayBan before 2020! Cannistrano was feeling the African heat too.
"Tensions with that country ran high in the summer of 1988. On the 3rd July, officers aboard the US navy cruiser Vincennes, deployed in the Persian Gulf believed they detected an incoming Iranian F-14 and fired a surface-to-air missile to intercept the aircraft. The target proved not to be a fighter, but a civilian Iranian airliner, an Airbus A300. Flight 655 was blown apart by the missile and disintergrated midair. Two hundred and ninety passengers and crew members were killed. Once again Iran railed against the US as the Great Satan, and once again there was a feeling in the agency of waiting for the second shoe to drop - for Iran to take it's revenge.
Five months after the downing of Iran flight 655, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center needed an Arabic speaking case officer to send to Beruit on temporary duty. A CTC officer had informed Twetten that his son-in-law had been selected for the assigment." (Gup, p188)
Gannon was assigned to be part of the network who had these channels flowing with information into trying to trackdown the location of the hostages held in Beruit. Gup, through Gannon's brother Richard Gannon, confirms Matthew's return travel plans. Originally intending to return on the 22 December, his flight was switched to Wednesday 21st on 103 just prior to his journey home. Gannon's brother states, "even had Matthew known of the Helsinki warning, he would have probably ignored it and travelled anyway. He was that laid back about threats, and had faced far greater while in Beruit." (Gup, p191) He also confirms that Gannon flew from Cyprus to Frankfurt before swtching at Heathrow onto PanAm103. No mention is made at all throughout to Charles McKee, althought in the Maltese Double Cross the PanAm ground crew noted their acknowledgement of each other at Heathrow.
I find it somewhat strange that Baz's outright and intense dismissal of the drugs possibility a 'hoax' citing lack of clear and incontrovertible evidence, while purporting that the timer was brought over by boat from Sweden or Denmark (?), loaded onto 103 through a baggage handler at Heathrow using a Khreesat (style) timer, and Gannon was not on the flight, presumably then alive and well. Displaying not only lack of this same form of evidence he calls for, but perhaps even more spurious given what is offered from various sources about a possible and probable drug sting operation, but also seemingly introducing his very own misdirectives regarding Gannon's death - or not? He even seems unwilling to entertain the possibilty that it may provide the clue as to why, not that Libya was singled out as the instigators of the attack on 103, but why investigators were clearly led off the paths of Frankfurt and Heathrow as the most obvious points of introduction for the bomb bag. One where records were almost wholly concealed and the other where security breaches only hours before the bombing were surpressed for over 12 years.
Last edited:
