Charles Norrie's Lockerbie theory

[CharlesNorrie]

SpitfireIX,

The actual statement in the AAIB report says "not more than one IED", which leads me to believe that the AAIB were prepared to accept the CIA's statements that they must have been told about the package bomb in the CRAF hold.

An AAIB report is always written very defensively. Liability may be apportioned by such a report and it will be a prime statement in any litigation process. A friend of mine, an air accident lawyer has told me that the report finally written can bear no relation to previous drafts, so important what it actually says is.

By the way the Maid of the Seas was a very old Boeing 747, and had been retrofitted as part of the CRAF reserve fleet changing its name from Morning Light.

IR-655 as a nice new Airbus, but the CIA were not going to waste a nice new aircraft in the plot were they? The demand was for blood, not airframes, so an old Boeing would do.

 

[Rolfe]

I doubt that Libyans were responsible for that either for what it's worth, but that is a whole other set of threads.

As you say, a topic for another day. It's difficult for us amateurs to know just how much evil crap really was down to Libya at that time, what with Libya being the handy scapegoat for just about anything that happened and Cannistraro being only too happy to pin it on them.

As for arming the IRA - who is more culpable? Libya, which actually supplied the munitions, or the US Irish-American community, including some high-placed politicians, who funded it?

IIRC that was Feb 21st 1970. Swissair330 was downed by a barometrically triggered device that PFLP-GC claimed responsibility for. On the same day a SE210 Caravelle had a hole blown by a similar bomb in its luggage compartment, also attributed to PFLP-GC, that's the only time one of their devices failed to cause the loss of the plane I think.

Thanks for the details. That was 18 years previously. He'd been getting it right ever since, the evil vicious bastard. You could be right he was just lucky this time, but I'm not wholly convinced. While it's impossible to be certain of the placing of a particular case unless you're the loaders on the tarmac, I think you could force a good chance of a desirable position by placing luggage as described by Bedford, with the bomb suitcase flat, on the left.

If in addition the bombers had realised that the container in question was going to end up at position 41, the very place where the weakness that caused the break-up of the Air India flight was located, perhaps they realised that a big Semtex load probably wouldn't be necessary.

I am fairly convinced that the suitcase Bedford testifies to having seen added to the container he was loading, while he was on a break, is the bomb case. We do not know how it got there or who put it there, only that Bedford didn't load it, he assumed a colleague did. I am fairly sure that the Bedford case completely circumvented security and was never X-rayed, that it got into the loading area via the Heathrow breakin and it was placed there by the real bomber. I think the radio disguise was to avoid detection were the bag to have been looked at by anyone prior to even getting to Heathrow. Perhaps the bombers stumbled across a new way of getting the bomb aboard 103 late in the day, who knows.

That's as good a scenario as any, though there are other possibilities. However, there was always the possibility the case would be moved to the right, inboard side of the container. Why take the risk of using such a small amount of Semtex, if it wasn't really necessary? I bear in mind that Kamboj and his rinky-dinky radiography equipment were right there, as far as I know. Even if the plan involved circumventing Kamboj, would there not always have been the chance that someone would decide to x-ray these strange cases anyway? (But then they might so easily have been replaced in a non-optimum configuration.)

This is really something for the Heathrow introduction thread though. I don't think any of it implies that a "dark-suited Iranian gent" sabotaged AVE4041 at midnight on the instructions of the CIA!

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

He's actually reading from appendix F of the AAIB report (linked above) he states shortly after describing an 8inch approximately square hole in AV4041 as you claim that only 1 IED caused the destruction of Pan Am 103.

Ambrosia, welcome back!
Actually, and thanks for the reference, it was referring to the neighboring container AVN 7511, which had a hole in it.

"With the two container reconstructions placed together, it became apparent that a relatively mild blast had exited container 4041 through the rear lower face to the left of the curtain and impinged at an angle on the forward face of container 7511. This had punched a hole, figure F-10, approximately eight inches square, some ten inches up from its base" --

It's that 10" up that established the bomb's height - as if blast debris only travels in directly horizontal lines. Did some rough geometric visualizations on this once.
http://lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/2010/07/container-geometry-and-blast-location.html

Charles, I warned you that if you came here planning to get banned and call that suppression, it would be shallow, unoriginal, and obvious.

Your antics are just about the speed of the debunker community here, and have made for a lively thread. For that I thank you.

 

[Rolfe]

Rolfe, the Iranians were apparently satisfied when they got their revenge when Pan Am 103 was blown up. Various groups in Iran had called for 5-12 aircraft (1500-3000) deaths is reply. The astute soldier diplomat Richard Lawless bargained with 5 Iranians 4 times at Glion.

The cover story was that the negotiations were about Lebanese hostage release, but the hostages hand been in their Lebanese cells sometimes for years at the time. Why then the urgency. Because a much more important even has happened the downing of IR-655.

The CIA has bought up most of the tame commentators of the world like Seymour Hersh. No more nice access to retired spooks if he goes seriously off message

I would be willing to propose Lawless for the Nobel prize for peace for the saving of all those others lives the Iranians were calling for.

And the moon is made of green cheese. You see how easy it is to type anything at all that comes into your mind? I could make up a tale where it was the IRA wot done it, or maybe an it was an early Al Qaida mission. Without any evidence, your assertions are worth no more than that.

I am not anti-American. The things I like about America jazz, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Catskills in the autumn don't happen to include the star-spangled banner, the creed of American exceptionalism, and the realpolitik brutality of the CIA.

You're certainly spewing a lot of anti-American bile in this thread, I have to say.

Rolfe, may I remind you that it is no defence to libel under English law that your are only repeating it. The lawyer I saw is one of the best working for people like Hugh Tomlinson, so I rather think he knows what he's talking about, don't you. I have his written opinion and in the draft I gave him I slipped in a genuine libel. He spotted it immediately, and out it came. It was of an English academic writer on the security services, and reference to it was not important to my argument in any way.

I repeated nothing. I expressed my opinion that your "Hantzauman" is an extremely transparent alias for Robert Baer. Just as "Tomas Cattermole" seems obviously to be Vincent Cannistraro as far as I can see. If it's that easy, then the use of these pseudonyms may well not be enough to deflect possible libel charges.

Still, it's probably unlikely Baer would dignify this nonsense by suing the author.

Rolfe.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Now, Ambrosia, don't you think it rather odd to bury away a claim "that there was not more than one IED at the bottom of Appendix F.

It looks rather like an afterthought.

And permit me to suggest it is a very carefully written sentence. Rolfe doesn't believe me in this, but I don't think that she has spent years reading dusty old Government policy documents.

I think there was a row between the CIA and AAIB. The CIA did not want any reference to IEDs, and in the end AAIB insisted, but it ended up tacked on like a coda at the bottom of Appendix F!

We could bicker about this for hours. Anyone want to approach Mr Protheroe or Mr Charles.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

I shall repeat my claim about libel Rolfe. You're the one doing it, not me. I actually saw that Hugh Tomlinson QC this morning.

 

[Rolfe]

I have studied the history and development of radar and have a back ground in construction and operation of radio transmitters

Realdon,

You clearly know little about radar, and in principle radar waves travel to infinity unless they meet the ground or another object. I know that from my physics "O" level, now 45 years ago.

Rolfe.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Caustic,

I'm not doing this to be anti-American. The CIA is not, thank the God I don't believe in, the be all and end all of America. Nor is HW Bush. I am not doing this to entertain myself but hoping that someone out there better placed than I will strat asking real questions about Pan Am 103 and not the sort of drossy foruming that passes for debate here.

As I've point out my Pan Am 103 score on Google has now improved from 58 to 1300

 

[Rolfe]

As I've said I believe any factual statement in the AAIB report but not the written padding, by Protheroe, an exceptionally talented civil service writer, you may have drafted the Paul Channon "bomb was among baggage from the Frankfurt flight" reply. Some of my friends are civil servants who write such answers to PQs for Ministers.

So you believe Protheroe and the entire AAIB team knew there was a second, larger explosion, but concealed this. But rather than simply omit any hint of such a thing from the report, Protheroe was employed to play with words in such a way that an alert conspiracy theorist would be able to crack the code and realise the report really presented evidence of the second explosion?

As for explosive decompressions. there was only one, when the pressure hull of Pan Am 103 was breached when the IED went off. The cab air was have blown out of the aircraft in rather less than half a second.

The second explosion went off 14 seconds later, but the aircraft was in the dark, or with emergency lighting only and diving at an angle of rather more than 45 degrees. It took place at 19000'

Evidence?^TM

No great knowledge of engineering is needed to place an explosive, and the Iranian operative who placed the IED probably had none. But told where to place it it would be child's play, if he were instructed where.

And how could he be instructed where? When Bedford simply wheeled out the container of the right specification that was closest to hand that afternoon! You don't even seem clear about whether it was AVE4041 itself that was sabotaged, in the interline shed, or AVN-whatever, in the baggage build-up area. If they were even there, at midnight.

Rolfe.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

\rolfe,

Posting silly animated characters may be your idea of how to conduct an argument, but it isn't mine.

I hope I have a good general scientific eduction, and knowing a little of how radar works is part of it.

Please grow up, rather than sounding off like a teenager in a civic studies class.

 

[Rolfe]

As you know, Rolfe, I think the Bedford story is nonsense, but thank you for confirming the fact he was a witness at the FAI.

My belief is that the Bedford bags may have been part of an MI5 disinformation operation, but I have no proof of that. They certainly liked the Libyan attribution for it did not amount to a breach Heathrow security.

I remember all that stuff about check baggage reconciliation versus X-ray scans at the FAI. I nearly laughed when I realise how irrelevant the discussion in court had been.

Charles, if you want to get rid of the Bedford story, you'd be far better off simply hand-waving it away as a coincidence, as the Zeist judges did.

You don't simply have no proof this was an MI5 disinfo operation, the very idea makes precisely zero sense, as has been explained by several posters in this thread.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

May I warn everyone here about libel. Not mine, yours. I have pointed out it is no defence to libel that you are only repeating it. Consider the case of the acquitted alleged murderer John Bodkin Adams. The newspapers had declared him guilty of murder before his trial and when he was acquitted he had a fine old time touring newspapers' offices collecting damages. and also that Malta won a libel case against Granada TV for libel over the security of baggage operations at Luqa Airport.

Perhaps you would like to point out any statements here by other posters that you think are libellous? You could even report the posts to the moderators, as it's against forum policy to allow libellous statements in the forum, I believe.

Rolfe.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

You can do that for yourself, Rolfe. Libel is a very forum based thing and US laws are different to English. I had my stuff checked by an English libel lawyer of known reputation and his professional standing rests upon advising his clients correctly.

 

[Zep]

You can do that for yourself, Rolfe. Libel is a very forum based thing and US laws are different to English. I had my stuff checked by an English libel lawyer of known reputation and his professional standing rests upon advising his clients correctly.

...and collecting his fee.

Wasn't Rumpole, by name, was it?

 

[Rolfe]

There is a loading plan. All airlines and flights have them.

And you have a copy of the plan for PA103 on that day? And you can show that Bedford was required to retrieve AVE4041 and no other, from where it had been stored since the previous day?

Thought not.

I propose

Now you see that's your problem there. You're just making it up as you go along.

that the containers that arrived from NY mid afternoon of 20 December 1988

Er, you'll have to explain this. Which flight did these containers arrive on, mid afternoon on 20th December? What was the flight number, and which actual aeroplane was involved?

were trundled round the the baggage shed when empty and lined up.

Which baggage shed? There were two sheds for departing baggage - the build-up shed and the interline shed. They were separate. Only one container from the interline shed went on PA103, and it was AVE4041. That's hardly "lined up".

(Some critics say this is impossible, and baggage containers are selected at random, but I reject that criticism. Airlines work in a rational well ordered world).

Airline baggage seems to work one step ahead of total chaos as far as I can see. And sometimes not even that one step.

Your proposed system of rigid pre-planned baggage container circulation is simply unworkable, and anyone with any experience in airport baggage handling will tell you so. I believe they have told you so, too.

Tell us again the number of the flight you believe these containers arrived on the previous day? And which aircraft it was?

Have you worked out how many containers would be sitting idle at every airport at any one time, if they were routinely required to sit on the ground for 30 hours or so between flights? How much storage space would be required for this? How difficult it would be to secure the correct containers every time, from this enormous mass of superfluous kit?

The loading plan (which was probably obtained by the CIA at Heathrow from Pan Am) would have been furnished to the Iranians (a member of the Pasdaran, with which the CIA had worked over the US hostage and Iran-contra affairs).

Ah yes, you were going to show proof that this loading plan existed prior to midnight, and that it specified the use of particular containers that the baggage handlers were obliged to go and find, irrespective of where they were located.

They may have even supplied him with the device, as qesas makes no demands on the revenging party to use his own weapon. (A man using qesas the avenge the murder of one of his kin, could well pick up a knife belonging to the man he is accusing of murder and stab him).

The planting must be done by an Iranian.

Oh yes, and you were going to show us the Middle East experts who have confirmed this to be the case, and who have explained this to the mainstream Lockerbie opinion which believes Iran simply paid Jibril to do the job.

Actually there was a bit of a muddle. The container AVE4041 PA was meant to have been loaded not at position 14L but at 13R but, Ambrosia, bear this in mind this was near enough to destroy the power and control harness running along the aircraft from nose to the body. A degree in aviation engineering is not needed to plant a bomb!

No, but actually knowing that Bedford was required to find AVE4041 for that job, and that AVE4041 was already in the interline shed before midnight, is essential for your theory. You have proved neither.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

...and collecting his fee.

Wasn't Rumpole, by name, was it?

Doubt it. Rumpole specialised in criminal defence.

Rolfe.

 

[Zep]

Rolfe, I think when it gets to the stage that dear Charles threatens legal action against you, you invite him to proceed and show him how to start, and he then expects you to prosecute yourself on his behalf...the game is over. Sanity has not prevailed with your interlocutor.

 

[Zep]

Doubt it. Rumpole specialised in criminal defence.

Rolfe.

And bloodspots.

But a little bit of civil action would have kept "she who must be obeyed" happy about the bills.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Rolfe,

You know I haven't the plan. I've told you where the holes in my theory are, and the inferences I've mad to explain them.

You don't think that the CIA will help in demonstrating their criminality do you?

Inference is a perfectly good way of crossing a gap. Sometimes you get a clue from what data is available.

I had worked out the IED was a stick on (I thought about A4 sized at first) and then blow me Peter Claiden is banging on about a hole 8" by 8". A4 is about 10" by 8".

I have thought about this in very great detail and have refined my views to their Occam's razor minimalism.

Zep, I am not the one going to be proceeding against Rolfe. I'm just telling her to be careful.

 

[CharlesNorrie]

Which baggage shed? There were two sheds for departing baggage - the build-up shed and the interline shed. They were separate. Only one container from the interline shed went on PA103, and it was AVE4041. That's hardly "lined up".

That actually makes my theory simpler. Tanks for that. I'm always will to learn.

Speaking of things being simpler...using the Quote tag makes it much simpler for members to follow the discussion. You have been asked to use them when quoting posts - please do so. If you need help, PM me or any member of the Mod Team. If you continue to refuse to do so, escalating moderation action including suspension or banning may apply.

Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar