Charles Norrie's Lockerbie theory

[CharlesNorrie]

Dear Caustic,

I am certainly not the best person to ask about suitcases, given that I believe John Parks is right. I am not sure today exactly where the blown up suitcase was found geographically. No for that matter Mr McKee's except the CIA were quick to plant the bits thay wanted to plant on that Lockerbie hillside.

I really haven't seen anything in this forum, which should at least be congratulated for picking up my story, that convinces me the experts who preen and pimp themselves here really know anything.

Sabretooth and David are of the incredulity/impossibility school of commentator and really as far as I can see belive that argument consists of a little bit of nay-saying.

Ignorance of this nature we can well do without.

 

[SpitfireIX]

Silly comments like this are not worthy of you Rolfe. I can prove I am being suppressed.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Dear Rolfe, we can dismiss the Bedford suitcases as having anything to do with it at all.

The official story is that the cases were loaded and Luqa, passed through Frankfurt undetected, and got onto Pan Am 103. The Bedford story is not part of this scenario. A suitcase conatining a bomb does not declare its nature so it can be found by a baggage loader and mysteriously loaded by another (which Mr Kamboj siad was not the case). So Mr Bedford's recall may well have been influenced by being asked for his recall by the Met police.

Oh, Rolfe can you now reall what you were doing on 1 September 1988?

 

[CharlesNorrie]

I really don't know what a film clip from Monty Pyton and the Holy Grail is doing here. Unlike the poster I was an extra in MPatHG, and got £2 for my day's work on the Ochilll Hills!

 

[Sabretooth]

Sabretooth and David are of the incredulity/impossibility school of commentator and really as far as I can see belive that argument consists of a little bit of nay-saying.

Ignorance of this nature we can well do without.

So I'm ignorant because I don't believe your opinions and I want to see some proof?

Listen, this little story you cooked up about planted evidence and government wheeling-and-dealing is nothing more than your own personal speculation.

If you want me to believe you, then show me some evidence that you are building your opinions through facts.

I'm open-minded and I'm willing to listen...but you are talking in circles and refusing to openly debate.

So...let's try again, shall we?

You say that the bomb evidence was planted.
I am skeptical that this is a true claim.
What is your source that this claim is accurate?

 

[Rolfe]

It was handed by AAIB to RARDE. If it is the chip in the plate on the side of AVE4041 PA, it would have had to turn round and be forced into the plate. Explosions don't do that you know. My inference is that AAIB gave it to RARDE, because AAIB wanted to produce a proper report and RARDE, whose investigators Hayes and Fereday, had already had cases thrown out against them in the English appeal courts, were patsies up to no good.

There was an explosion in a radio-cassette player inside a suitcase inside a baggage container inside an aeroplane. Please explain to me how everything involved only moves in a dead straight line in this situation. Please explain how it's impossible for elastic collisions to occur in such a way that a tiny fragment of circuit board (from the radio) ends up behind a plate fixed to the outside of the container.

The way you think, snooker would be an impossible game.

ETA: I'm not personally in any doubt that Hayes and Feraday (and Thurman) were as bent as corkscrews. I need more evidence that than to cast doubt on any particular piece of evidence though.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Dear Rolfe,

I'd send you my stuff first but you are so offish and sniffy, and only want to boast publicly of your inadequacies as a thinker.

Charles, stop it. Personally, I don't care, but if you go on collecting yellow cards at this rate, you'll get suspended again. The mods are obviously watching you now.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I am certainly not the best person to ask about suitcases, given that I believe John Parks is right.

Ah yes, Parkes. Members might like to read his deathless prose in his own words. It's here, http://www.mathaba.net/news/news1/lockerbie/index.shtml, but you have to scroll down a bit to the comments. Personally, I think this is the language of the raving conspiracy nutter.

I am not sure today exactly where the blown up suitcase was found geographically.

But you said it was "in the remains of AVE4041". Where did you get that information from? You just made it up, didn't you? When I told you that AVE4041 was found in pieces, the pieces being in different places, without even an identifiable "inside" never mind a single location, you merely said, well, the suitcase was associated with the container.

You just made that up too.

I've also told you, with pictures, that there wasn't an identifiable "blown up suitcase" found anywhere either. The largest piece was just over a foot square, there was another piece a bit smaller, and most of the pieces were just scraps. They were found scattered to the four winds, and picked up one at a time by different people as the area was combed. Probably about 90% of the case was never found.

So little was found that it took the investigators some time to decide this was the remains of the "primary suitcase". Also, some of the pieces were obviously bronze while others weren't because the bronze skin had been lost, so again it took time to piece all this together.

This idea of the recognisable remains of the baggage container being found, with the recognisable remains of a blown-up suitcase and a blown-up radio-cassette player inside it is pure fantasy.

No for that matter Mr McKee's except the CIA were quick to plant the bits thay wanted to plant on that Lockerbie hillside.

But you have no idea what was or what wasn't found. You have no evidence at all that the CIA planted anything at all on the hillsides in Scotland. You're just making it up.

I really haven't seen anything in this forum, which should at least be congratulated for picking up my story, that convinces me the experts who preen and pimp themselves here really know anything.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. This forum isn't particularly expert on the Lockerbie incident at all. There are people here who have told you they have an open mind. You need to make a sound case though, and so far that's not going too well.

Sabretooth and David are of the incredulity/impossibility school of commentator and really as far as I can see belive that argument consists of a little bit of nay-saying.

Ignorance of this nature we can well do without.

You're getting dangerously close to personal attacks again. Please don't, I don't want them to suspend you again.

Sabretooth and David don't know much about Lockerbie. They want you to present the evidence you have to support your hypothesis. That's what you need to do.

So far, you haven't even shown me your source for declaring that only first-class luggage was placed in AVE4041.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Dear Rolfe, we can dismiss the Bedford suitcases as having anything to do with it at all.

Why? Just because they don't suit your personal theory?

Bedford was interviewed by the Met on 3rd January 1989, less than two weeks after the disaster. This was well before most of the suitcase fragments had been retrieved, never mind identified as forensically significant. He told the police that he'd seen "a maroony-brown hardshell suitcase, of the type Samsonite make" in container AVE4041 in approximately the position of the eventual explosion, some time before PA103A landed from Frankfurt. He told them he had not put the case there (although he was responsible for loading that container with the interline luggage arriving from other incoming flights), it and another case had appeared mysteriously while he was on his tea break.

I agree the Zeist judges dismissed this as not having anything to do with it at all. However, why do you agree with them?

The official story is that the cases were loaded and Luqa, passed through Frankfurt undetected, and got onto Pan Am 103. The Bedford story is not part of this scenario.

And your point is? The Official Version is just marginally less ridiculous than yours.

A suitcase conatining a bomb does not declare its nature so it can be found by a baggage loader and mysteriously loaded by another (which Mr Kamboj siad was not the case). So Mr Bedford's recall may well have been influenced by being asked for his recall by the Met police.

OK, let's go through this again. On 3rd January nobody in the investigation had identified a bronze Samsonite hardshell as being the "primary suitcase". So how could anyone have instructed the officers of the Met to plant such a false memory in Bedford's mind?

Oh, you say, but the pieces had already been planted to be found. No, this doesn't compute either. What was also found was a bunch of clothes of Maltese manufacture, which were later traced to a Malta retailer. This retailer remembered the sale of these clothes, only a few weeks before the bombing.

You have stated that you believe these clothes were also planted, to support the fabricated Official Version. However, the version these clothes support is the one where the bomb suitcase went into the system at Luqa and flew into Heathrow on PA103A. If the clothes were bought by the CIA with the intention of supporting that version, it was done weeks before the actual bombing.

Why would anyone order detectives from the Met to plant a false memory of a mysterious suitcase fitting the description of the bomb bag, being present at Heathrow before PA103A landed?

Oh, Rolfe can you now reall what you were doing on 1 September 1988?

What has that to do with the price of fish? If something came on the news right now which made me realise something I'd done at work at 4 o'clock this afternoon was directly related to a huge terrorist attack, you bet your bottom dollar I'd be able to tell the cops all about my afternoon at work, less than two weeks later.

Rolfe.

 

[Sabretooth]

Charles,
I'm reading your blog again. I came across something I find suspect.

Having agreed the Iranians could blow up a US plane, CIA officials faced a conundrum. How could they get US government personnel off a doomed flight without alarming the wider public? Once I thought about the outcome of the Helsinki warning, it was obvious that this was their solution.

On 5th December 1988, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a security bulletin. It said a man with an Arabic accent had telephoned the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, to threaten that a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt, West Germany, to the US would be blown up within the next fortnight by someone associated with Abu Nidal, a militant Palestinian group. He said a Finnish woman would unknowingly carry the bomb on board.

On 13th December, this 'Helsinki Warning' was distributed among US State Department staff. Some people are thought to have booked onto other airlines, leaving empty seats on the Pan Am flight that were sold cheaply to students and others. They became cheap and disposable bodies – I find it utterly disgraceful that the CIA treated these people this way.

The CIA chose Helsinki to minimise the public visibility of the warning, because Finland is neutral territory and not usually the target of terrorist attacks. The Helsinki warning was never properly publicised beyond US government personnel, as demonstrated by the 48 students who obliviously bought cheap tickets on Pan Am flights.

You are implying that the CIA had advanced knowledge of the PA103. But according to the information reported on wikipedia, there were 4 (and possibly a 5th) CIA officers onboard PA103.

If the CIA knew about the attack, why would they sacrifice their own agents?

 

[Sabretooth]

Another question:

Peter Claydon told the court the bomb created an 8-inch square hole in AVE4041 PA and a 20-inch square hole in the skin of the aircraft. This was, however, small compared to the size of the plane and experts were puzzled about how such a small explosion could have caused so much damage.

This really isn't puzzling at all. PA103 was at 31,000 ft. At this altitude, the air pressure outside of the aircraft was a quarter of that at ground level.

Any size rupture in the skin of a pressurized aircraft at that altitude is wholly destructive. Physics tells us that the atmosphere inside the aircraft would immediately and violently attempt to even out with the outside pressue. The skin of the plane began to "zipper" open, much like a can of beer that has been shaken up and punctured.

The structural integrity and flight characteristics of the aircraft would have been compromised in micro-seconds. Which in turn caused the disintegration of the aircraft as a whole.

I completely disagree with your assessment that this hole was too small to cause enough damage.

 

[Rolfe]

Charles,
I'm reading your blog again. I came across something I find suspect.

You are implying that the CIA had advanced knowledge of the PA103. But according to the information reported on wikipedia, there were 4 (and possibly a 5th) CIA officers onboard PA103.

If the CIA knew about the attack, why would they sacrifice their own agents?

That's easy. This version of the CT believes that the CIA wanted rid of the people it allowed to travel. Specifically, the story goes that McKee was hurrying back to the USA in a fury to expose some sort of drugs-for-hostages deal that was going on, Oliver North style, and elements in the CIA found this a convenient way to scupper that.

I would add that there appears to be no actual evidence to support the widely-held belief that PA103 was unusually empty that evening, or that there were a statistically improbable number of late cancellations on the flight. (I think Jim Swire at least half-believes this part, which I suspect is part of the reason for his fervent campaigning. But as far as I can tell, it's groundless.)

Rolfe.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

This really isn't puzzling at all. PA103 was at 31,000 ft. At this altitude, the air pressure outside of the aircraft was a quarter of that at ground level.

Any size rupture in the skin of a pressurized aircraft at that altitude is wholly destructive. Physics tells us that the atmosphere inside the aircraft would immediately and violently attempt to even out with the outside pressue. The skin of the plane began to "zipper" open, much like a can of beer that has been shaken up and punctured.

The structural integrity and flight characteristics of the aircraft would have been compromised in micro-seconds. Which in turn caused the disintegration of the aircraft as a whole.

This isn't true, if you read the AAIB report they were quite surprised that the plane had blown apart from such a small explosion. I'm writing from memory here but I believe the location of the bomb allowed pressure waves to damage major structural parts of the fuselage, causing the break up. If the bomb had been placed slightly differently it might just have blown a hole in the side, and allowed the plane to make an emergency landing.
Some conspiracy theorists have assumed the bomb must have been directly attached to the fuselage to cause the break up.

Welcome Charles Norrie, since Longtabber PE went back to his chickens the Lockerbie threads have been a bit dull. You seem to be filling his shoes nicely.

 

[Sabretooth]

This isn't true, if you read the AAIB report they were quite surprised that the plane had blown apart from such a small explosion. I'm writing from memory here but I believe the location of the bomb allowed pressure waves to damage major structural parts of the fuselage, causing the break up. If the bomb had been placed slightly differently it might just have blown a hole in the side, and allowed the plane to make an emergency landing.
Some conspiracy theorists have assumed the bomb must have been directly attached to the fuselage to cause the break up.

Welcome Charles Norrie, since Longtabber PE went back to his chickens the Lockerbie threads have been a bit dull. You seem to be filling his shoes nicely.

Ah...I see that you are correct, sir.

From wikipedia:

Shock waves from the blast ricocheted back from the fuselage skin in the direction of the bomb, meeting pulses still coming from the initial explosion. This produced Mach stem shock waves, calculated to be 25% faster than, and double the power of, the waves from the explosion itself

but, to reiterate my point, this fact that a "small" blast hole initiated the destruction of the aircraft shouldn't be such a surprise.

 

[Rolfe]

To expand on what GT said, the positioning of the bomb seems to have been extraordinarily unlucky. Or not, as the case may be.

There were a couple of earlier aircraft bombing attempts, at least one of them a Jibril operation, where the bomb merely blew a hole in the baggage hold and the plane limped back to land. I think in one case some passengers were sucked out of the hole and killed but the rest were saved.

However, in the Air India crash in 1985, which involved a 747 just like the Lockerbie incident, the plane did pretty much the same as Maid of the Seas did. This was because the bomb, planted by Sikh extremists, was (apparently by chance) exactly on a structurally weak spot where two large parts of the aircraft were joined at manufacture.

Much has been made of the cross-sectional position of the Lockerbie bomb being in precisely the spot in the container closest to the skin of the plane. However, it appears that the saggital section positioning was just as important, at the section 41/42 fuselage join. (I'm taking this from Carl Davies, who is a bit of a CTer, but this information appears to be accurate.)

The AAIB report had to do quite a bit of calculation and so on to show how the small explosion could have done so much damage. They did however conclude that there was only one device on board. Which Charles thinks means they know there were two but they're just obliquely hinting at the second to tease us.

The single baggage container with the Frankfurt transfer luggage was the last on, because there was a very small time window between the feeder flight and the transatlantic one. This seems to have been the case routinely, and as far as I know it was always at position 41. I have a suspicion that whoever planted the bomb knew enough about the baggage loading for that flight to spot this opportunity.

ETA: I'm not sure the Mach Stem effect could have been reliably predicted by the terrorists. However, the effect of position 41 was presumably predictable, after what happened to Air India 182.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Dear Zooterkin,

This is absolutely serious and is not written for your mere entertainment.

Perhaps not, but it's coming out entertaining. Any chance of less drama and more evidence? I haven't seen much for careful re-presentation of your facts, bullet lists, etc...

Dear Caustic,

I am certainly not the best person to ask about suitcases, given that I believe John Parks is right.

Didn't he just say there was a second explosion? Did he specify that the first one was also not in a suitcase?

I am not sure today exactly where the blown up suitcase was found geographically.

I sector mostly, a bit in H and K.

No for that matter Mr McKee's except the CIA were quick to plant the bits thay wanted to plant on that Lockerbie hillside.

I'm not sure where that was found either, but they cut it open to remove something. Evidence things were being planted at the time?

You decry the "ignorance" of posters here. Said ignorance is of your theory. You are now a member here. If you don't explain your theory and its supports clearly, who is to blame for that ignorance? Who else is supposed to explain it for you?

Here are some questions you could address:

- Reasons why the CIA felt the bombing had to succeed.
- How two debris trails = two bombs
- How anything else = two bombs
- What exactly the original cover-up was to be, with its early clues pointing both to Malta and London origin
- Is there anything in your original theory that you're starting to re-think yet? Do you do re-thinking?

 

[Rolfe]

Just a bit of an aside about the small bomb and the importance of positioning.

The Official Version would have us believe that the bomb was sent on its merry unaccompanied way from Malta, to be loaded into AVE4041 wherever the loaders chose to put it. I can't say what the chances were that it would end up close enough to the skin to breach the hull, even, but certainly less than 50%. Maybe 30%?

The Official Version would also have us believe that the bombers used a simple digital timer, deliberately set for 7pm. To attack a flight that couldn't have taken off before about 6.15pm, and wasn't scheduled to land until 01.40am the next day.

Now I've pointed out several times that this was crazy in that the plane could still have been on the tarmac at 7pm, for all sorts of reasons. It was very nearly delayed because a passenger with loaded luggage was a no-show at the gate, but they decided not to risk losing their slot after all. An explosion on the tarmac would have been a damp squib of course.

But there's another reason it was crazy. With no control over the positioning of the suitcase, there must have been a significant chance that an explosion at cruising altitude might not have caused the comprehensive break-up that actually happened. In that case, why choose a time for the explosion when the flight would have been within practical reach of a major airport for an emergency landing, most probably Prestwick? When setting the timer for about midnight would ensure it was way out over the Atlantic and even a controlled ditching would be in the sea?

The more you think about it, the sillier it gets.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Didn't he [Parkes] just say there was a second explosion? Did he specify that the first one was also not in a suitcase?

Unless I'm getting my CTs mixed up here, Parkes is the proponent of the "PA103 was an accident" school of thought. I don't think he's proposing there were two explosions. In essence, the suggestion is that the plane was being used illegally to transport military ordnance of a specific type, and this "flechette" bomb was accidentally triggered by the FM radio signal from ATC Shanwick, to whom PA103 was talking at the time of the explosion.

He bases this on the fact that one area of the debris field was scattered with sewing-machine needles, which were part of the plane's cargo (he thinks these were flechettes), and on an isolated observation he thinks he made of the injuries to a particular girl on the plane. The pathologist however thinks these were gravel burns caused when her body landed.

I think this CT is even madder than Charles's, because it postulates that a huge and complicated cover-up exercise was immediately launched to plant evidence suggesting the crash was caused by a terrorist bomb - when he thinks it was caused by an accident nobody could have anticipated. And yet this fabricated evidence started being found as early as three days after the crash.

I sector mostly, a bit in H and K.

As I said, all over the place. Charles needs to get this idea of an identifiable suitcase being found right out of his head. How much of the suitcase do you think was actually recovered in the end? I'd estimate less than 10% by weight at a guess.

I'm not sure where that was found either, but they cut it open to remove something. Evidence things were being planted at the time?

The legend is that McKee's suitcase was found by CIA officers soon after the crash, and removed. A hole was cut in the side. I can't remember whether it was said to have been emptied or not. It was later replaced on the spot where it was originally found, for the legitimate searchers to discover.

Johnston hasn't said much about this for a long time. It was one of the points specifically rejected by the SCCRC, which said there was no evidence anything of the sort had happened. I'm not so sure, because the story was originally quite well attested-to, and it could easily have been covered up in the intervening 15 years.

I think it's quite possible McKee was carrying sensitive documents or other material in that suitcase, material the CIA would really, really prefer not to be found by the official Scottish searchers. That being so, Charles's suggestion that there was some sort of tracking device in the suitcase isn't entirely implausible - possibly incorporated in the structure of the case itself, hence the need to cut a piece out of the case to remove it. That would explain its being found so quickly by the US personnel.

So they located the case, retrieved it, cut out the tracking device and removed whatever sensitive material they wanted to remove, and then replaced the case to be officially "found". A reporter found out about this, and somebody over-reacted in the heat of the moment. The reporter had a very peculiar visit from some very aerated policemen. He ignored this and never heard anything about it again. Because cooler reflection obviously dictates that it's far better to pretend this didn't happen than to escalate the incident.

I just don't see that this need have anything at all to do with the actual explosion.

You decry the "ignorance" of posters here. Said ignorance is of your theory. You are now a member here. If you don't explain your theory and its supports clearly, who is to blame for that ignorance? Who else is supposed to explain it for you?

I rather think Charles is attacking the alleged "ignorance" of others to cover up his own ignorance. Here's what he won the July Stundies for, at a canter.

It is interesting that Rolfe asks for more facts. In my opinion facts is just what we don't need, as they are likely to be misleading or simply a distraction.

He seems to have spent far more time free-associating or brainstorming about this, than actually studying the evidence. Hence, after allegedly having studied the case for 20 years, he knows less about it than those of us who haven't studied it for 20 months.

Intriguing ideas are all very well, and I've had my share of them in relation to this case, but if you come up with a concrete fact that contradicts the idea, the idea has to go. That's what Charles hasn't yet learned.

Here are some questions you could address:

- Reasons why the CIA felt the bombing had to succeed.
- How two debris trails = two bombs
- How anything else = two bombs
- What exactly the original cover-up was to be, with its early clues pointing both to Malta and London origin
- Is there anything in your original theory that you're starting to re-think yet? Do you do re-thinking?

Don't hold your breath. I'd settle initially for being given the source for his claim that AVE4041 held only first-class luggage (and Karen Noonan's suitcase!), as I'm interested in any information that's to be had about the contents and loading of the container. He hasn't even come back with that one.

Rolfe.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Rolfe, there is no point in trying to discuss things with you, until you tell us exactly what is your theory of what went on.

You are unwilling to do the basic reading (which I have done, and you have not). You seem to have a short fuse and a low incredulity level. I don't know where you believe the device was introduced or when. Such little things matter you know. I don't know whether you believe in the Bedford story (and his telling of it or not). I'm not certain why the Bedford story was introduced at the trial as it appears to fly in the face of what is the Crown's contention that a timer bomb was flown without difficulty from Luqa to London via Frankfurt having been labelled there with one of Mr Fhimah's famous tags. If that is so surely it would have been transferred on the tarmac at Heathrow when 103A arrived at 17:40? So what is Bedford describing as the two rogue suitcases. Mr Kamboj had no recollection of them. It is Kamboj's word versus Bedford's and he had taken part in a reconstruction with the Met police, a reconstruction that may have influenced his recollection. If you notice it is nowadays not standard police procedure to have recosnstructions as it can induce a false recollection syndrome.

It is general held that AVE4041 PA held the first class baggage (first off at JFK).

Rolfe you are a very difficult woman of fixed but unclear views, who loves to wallow in unclear detail, is prepared to blog but not to slog, and I have come to hold your views in contempt. Such a pity when you are quite capable of being a creative imaginative think.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Rolfe, if you follow my thesis, that an Iranian by the needs of qesas had to plant the first device, or no qesas, it was probably done to a IA plan. The main point of the first explosion was to turn the radr transponder off and damage the pressure hull with a relatively small 15 by 15 inch hold, which had been 8 by 8 at the exit from the container