Did Abdelbaset al-Megrahi blow up Pan Am 103?

[little grey rabbit]

I am not really familiar with all the twists and turns of Libyan politics, but hasn't Libya always been over a barrel?

If the West bought this Libyan story of contrition then it makes a mockery of the West not negotiating with terrorists.



If you are an MI5 or CIA agent, you not doing a good job of maintaining your cover.

Its pretty obvious.

Rolfe's job is to try and steer people away from the high probability that the MST-13 timer was planted by the police. This means he has to construct a persona of a "truth-seeker" but whenever discussions turns to areas that implicate corruption in British police and push discussion in fantasy speculations regarding Palestinians or Iranian groups. He and his colleague Caustic Logic spend a lot of the time of the internet cyber stalking people who given testimony that they actually made the timer at the request of the CIA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebo_Telecommunications

Criminal complaint

During week 11 of the trial, Mebo lawyer Dieter Neupert filed an official criminal complaint against the Crown over what he alleged was a 'forged fragment of MST-13 timer'.[6]
[edit] False testimony

Former Mebo employee, Ulrich Lumpert, told the Scottish Court in the Netherlands that as an electronics engineer he had produced all of the firm's MST-13 timers. Lumpert agreed that the fragments shown to him in court "could be" from that timer and was asked to confirm his signature on a letter concerning a technical fault with the prototype MST-13 timer.

Seven years later, on 18 July 2007, Lumpert claimed he had lied at the trial.[7] In a sworn affidavit before a Zurich notary, Lumpert stated that he had stolen a prototype MST-13 timer PC-board from Mebo and that he had given it on 22 June 1989, to "an official person investigating the Lockerbie case".[8] Dr Hans Köchler, UN observer at the Lockerbie trial, was sent a copy of Lumpert's affidavit and issued a report on the matter.[9] Dr Köchler told the Glasgow Herald:

"The Scottish authorities are now obliged to investigate this situation. Not only has Mr Lumpert admitted to stealing a sample of the timer, but to the fact he gave it to an official and then lied in court".

So while it is true that Rolfe isn't very good at maintaining his cover, he has been given a very difficult assignment.

 

[Rolfe]

Not sure if this has been covered before, but wouldn´t the bolded part be a reason to frame Megrahi, from the US point of view - after all, with him out of circulation, that whole operation would be dealt at least a serious setback, if it isn´t stopped outright.

Nah. Doesn't fit the way the case progressed.

Anyway, Megrahi had changed jobs by the time Lockerbie happened, and he wasn't even indicted until nearly three years later.

He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and by that I mean he happened to be the frameable person who was catching flight LM147 from Malta to Tripoli on the morning of the disaster. Given the volume of traffic between Libya and Malta, with Malta being practically the only doorway to the wider world for Libya at the time, it must have been pretty short odds that some Libyan with a possibly dodgy background would have caught that plane that morning.

Caveat: Caustic Logic thinks they went after Megrahi in person from an early stage. My personal reading of it is that they didn't catch on to the potential for pinning it on a real live Libyan until nearly two years after the crash.

Due to the position of the bomb in the aircraft hold, the two possible airports of origin were Heathrow and Frankfurt. The UK authorities announced on day 9 that it wasn't Heathrow (even though the plane was loaded from empty there), and it had come from Frankfurt (the Frankfurt luggage wasn't security-screened at Heathrow). However, all the Frankfurt baggage records disappeared (or were disappeared) within a few days of the crash, from under the noses of the German cops. The German cops insisted that the bomb had gone on at Heathrow. Stalemate.

This went on for eight months. The atmosphere between the two police forces was poisonous bordering on outright warfare. The stalemate was resolved when the Frankfurt police suddenly produced a small extract from the missing baggage records which had miraculously turned up. This was ambiguous and open to interpretation, but it seemed (possibly) to show two unaccompanied bags heading through Frankfurt towards the feeder flight for Heathrow. One of these was from Warsaw and the other from Malta. Possibly. Or possibly one or both entries were merely coding anomalies.

The clothes packed around the bomb had by then been traced as being of Maltese manufacture, so they ignored the Warsaw lead, and everybody converged on Malta, leaving Heathrow and Frankfurt behind with a collective sigh of relief.

They spent the next year trying to show the obvious suspects (a Palestinian gang) had smuggled the bomb on board at Malta. All they achieved was to show there was pretty much no chance anything untoward had travelled on that particular flight, or could have done. Didn't stop them (Chicago cop syndrome).

Then in the autumn of 1990 it was decided that Libya was the preferred suspect, not the Palestinian gang at all. It was then realised that someone believed to be a Libyan security officer (Megrahi) had been at the airport when the Frankfurt flight left, and that he was travelling on a diplomatic passport in a false name. Hey, paydirt.

Further investigation showed that he had no suitcase with him, checked in no luggage for his half-hour flight, never went airside, and basically behaved like any other airline passenger. And there was still no evidence that any unaccompanied luggage had travelled on the Frankfurt flight, and a lot of evidence that no such thing had happened.

The investigators had been trying to get the man who sold the clothes in the bomb suitcase to identify one of the Palestinian gang as the purchaser, and had partially succeeded - his identification of Abu Talb was at least as confident as his identification of Megrahi, if not more so.

[Oh good grief, once again as I'm typing this, the TV current affairs programme I'm watching is banging on about Megrahi again. This is situation normal of course.]

They then turned their attention to persuading the shopkeeper that it was in fact Megrahi who had bought the clothes. This has been covered ad nauseam elsewhere, and the hints and the bribery and the "well it's not the man but he looks a bit like him" and so on. It's been suggested that if they'd gone on showing him pictures of clean-shaven men with dark curly hair he'd have gone on picking out people who "resembled" the customer. It was never the sort of identification a case should have stood up on though.

So the CIA simply picked up a low-level Libyan informant and by a combination of threats and bribes managed to get statements out of him describing Megrahi having a suitcase matching the description of the bomb suitcase at the airport in Malta the day before the bombing, and about conversations allegedly implicating Megrahi in a plot to bomb an aircraft.

So I don't think Megrahi was targeted for himself. The investigation was mad keen on Malta because it wasn't Heathrow or Frankfurt. When it was decided to blame Libya, he just happened to be the Libyan who was at the airport at the relevant time, and it all snowballed from there.

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

high probability that the MST-13 timer was planted by the police.

Some background reading for you

To summarise:

The provenance of this fragment is more than a little "dodgy" it was THE piece of physical evidence used in the trial to connect Libya to the bombing. However there is not enough evidence one way or another to say for sure where it actually came from.

If you want to get into details then the thread I link above is the place to do it.

We've done the timer fragment to death already, which is a very far cry from "steering people away from talking about it"

 

[Rolfe]

Its pretty obvious.

Rolfe's job is to try and steer people away from the high probability that the MST-13 timer was planted by the police. This means he has to construct a persona of a "truth-seeker" but whenever discussions turns to areas that implicate corruption in British police and push discussion in fantasy speculations regarding Palestinians or Iranian groups. He and his colleague Caustic Logic spend a lot of the time of the internet cyber stalking people who given testimony that they actually made the timer at the request of the CIA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mebo_Telecommunications

So while it is true that Rolfe isn't very good at maintaining his cover, he has been given a very difficult assignment.

That's freaking hilarious.

Hysterical, even.

No, LGR, you're right. I don't believe the timer fragment was planted by the police.

I believe it was manufactured by Tom Thurman of the FBI and "John Orkin" of the CIA, some time in the summer of 1989, probably at the instigation of Vincent Cannistraro. I believe it was planted into the Lockerbie chain of evidence in September that year by Thomas Hayes and Allan Feraday of RARDE, and Hayes also created backdated forensics notes to make it appear as if it had been examined in May. I believe the whole boiling of them cooked up the idea in April 1989 in Maryland, while they were carrying out the famous let's-blow-up-an-airliner-in-a-way-as-unlike-Lockerbie-as-we-can-manage tests. Just before Feraday went to Japan to acquire the materials he needed to fake up the radio manual page that was also planted in the evidence.

Someone in the police persuaded Thomas Gilchrist and Thomas McColm to sign the altered evidence label that was put on the finished item, but it's not necessarily the case this person knew the evidence was fabricated - I think there was quite a lot of tidying-up of the provenance of important finds, even the ones that were on the level.

That's what I believe. And it's not as if I haven't said so often enough. But it's also impossible to prove, at least not without access to the RARDE photographic records, assuming they haven't been destroyed or tampered with by now. And I think it's important to keep stressing that proving the timer fragment to be a fake is not necessary to show that the case against Megrahi was smoke and mirrors. The case remains smoke and mirrors even if the Archangel Gabriel descends from heaven and shows conclusive proof the IED really was detonated by an MST-13 timer.

What about Bollier? I think he's disinfo. He was a Stasi agent, and he really has been fingered as a suspected CIA asset, by Francovich no less. He was the person who set the investigation after Libya in the first place, and later, Megrahi. Everything he does seems to be geared to reward money, first the DoJ's $4 million, and then some ridiculous sum Gadaffi is supposed to have promised him if he can get Megrahi's conviction overturned and his $2.7 billion back. Like that's ever going to happen.

He makes statements about the timer fragment which can be easily seen to be false by looking at the pictures of the thing he hosts on his own web site for goodness sake. He has all the credibility of Giaka and half the personality.

But the date Lumpert says he handed that other timer over to "a person associated with the Lockerbie inquiry" fits in very nicely with the timetable above, so I don't discount it. It's just a shame it's all barnacled over with nonsense about an M being scratched on the board, and different bits being different colours at different times. You'd almost think someone wanted investigators to look into the allegation, see these fallacies and nonsense-claims, and dismiss it as fantasy.

But that would be a conspiracy theory, I suppose.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

It seems to me a bit odd for Libya to issue that letter and pay compensation of that amount if they (the Libyan government) had no knowledge of, or were not implicated in some manner.

What would they stand to gain from such concessions? ETA: Were they successful in convincing the world to normalise relations?

I was also shocked to read that South Africa was considered to be involved, even if only from a conspiracy theory aspect.

Would a detained suspect confess to a crime he knows nothing of? Not usually. Following torture, by jailers who know the true perps cannot be caught and the prisoner is the best alternative? It's been known to happen.

That was an illustration, not meant to read right over to this case, but the concept is similar. The world told Libya it was guilty, and punished them as if they were. Only that evasive letter of "responsibility," the massive lawyer-fattening settlement, and so on was able to change it. So they did these things, to stop the punishment.

And as you wondered, yes, it worked. At least, so far. Gaddafi has worked hard to recover from the sanctions and other pariah stuff while maintaining his own grip. It seems the hope now is to hand the fruits of that to his replacements. But that's just me musing.

Skwinty, thank you for taking a moment, as so few do, to even engage this issue. You're a bit of what I was hoping to see more of around here.

Ditto Rolfe on the South Africans theory - PH is big on making sure his voice gets through on wikipedia. He's got some kind of logic, a couple actual oddities tha could mean something, but ... No, that's not a good theory. I ditto Rolfe a lot, and vice-versa, which some take as a sign of some partner conspiracy or somethin. But really what it is is well-honed research and reasoning and logic applied to the same huge set of evidence, allegations, etc. Shady things often do look shady, certain possibilities are plausible and others aren't. Functioning minds on the right track will often wind up agreeing, as the community here generally agrees on the rational side (with side quibbles often) of a CT debate.

The fact that the rational side and the official one are NOT the same side in this particular case makes it unusual. I think the forum's having a hard time dealing with that, in a way, and doing very well in others.

Let's keep at it, pursuing rationalism even when it gets tricky and takes us into really considering this theory about a conspiracy. Or actually, Rolfe, what is the purpose of this exact thread? Let's keep doing that.

 

[Rolfe]

The thread? I started it for McHrozni, who was arguing stuff in the "Mystery Shopper" thread that wasn't relevant to the thread. In effect, he was saying he believed Megrahi was guilty but not confining his discussion to the clothes purchase. I started it to try to stop the derailing of the clothes purchase thread. McHrozni argued for a while but didn't seem to know anything about the actual evidence and kept changing his stance, and in the end he sort of went away.

The thread was dormant for a while until I bumped it when Bunntanas jointed, as a venue to allow her to present whatever case she liked to support Megrahi's guilt. You know what happened on that front.

It was dormant again until October, when Bunntamas herself bumped it a few days ago to accuse us of having gone all quiet - well, this thread was quiet because we were discussing stuff in other threads.

So I guess the thread is for anyone to present whatever case they like to support the view that Megrahi (note, I specified Megrahi, not Libya in general) carried out the Lockerbie bombing.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

That's freaking hilarious.

Hysterical, even.

No, LGR, you're right. I don't believe the timer fragment was planted by the police.

I believe it was manufactured ...

Yeah, but you don't accept Lumpert's version, which was in a fancy affidavit, and has been re-posted a zillion times.

Bollier is the ultimate expert for the CT side now, and once for the prosecution (one of only three important witnesses AGAINST Megrahi at trial) As I said and offered a link where it's explained, he was the first person on earth to offer to help the CIA frame Libya. I think the idea stuck and became what we've seen. Bollier stayed very helpful throughout the indictment assembly into late 1991, and only in the mid-1990s started telling (slightly) weird stories that during and after the trial got stranger and stranger. But as the maker of the timer, he's accepted by many as gate-keeper of the MST-13 evidence, supplier of the leads to "prove" its fabrication (he's used several, some mutually exclusive). Rolfe mentioned some of the extremes, actually quoted and illustrated here.

Hints to LGR:
1) Don't say that something is pretty obvious if you haven't done your homework.
2) On second thought, never mind. You are a funny little rabbit when you accuse Rolfe of being an "obvious" agent and a chuckle is nice.
3) Go re-read what Lumpert said about the color of the board he handed over, then try and find a photo of the evidence used against Libya (fake as hell but hard to prove) and check its color. See any problems yet?
4) Keep digging, it gets interesting. If you'd rather not question Bollier and Mebo, I recommend ignoring them and focusing on another of the many amazing aspects of this case. Like either of the other two shady witnesses brought in to prove the fictituous case written by the CIA sometime in 1989. (hint- both last names are 5-letters long and start with G)

 

[Caustic Logic]

The thread? I started it for McHrozni, who was arguing stuff in the "Mystery Shopper" thread that wasn't relevant to the thread. In effect, he was saying he believed Megrahi was guilty but not confining his discussion to the clothes purchase. I started it to try to stop the derailing of the clothes purchase thread. McHrozni argued for a while but didn't seem to know anything about the actual evidence and kept changing his stance, and in the end he sort of went away.

The thread was dormant for a while until I bumped it when Bunntanas jointed, as a venue to allow her to present whatever case she liked to support Megrahi's guilt. You know what happened on that front.

It was dormant again until October, when Bunntamas herself bumped it a few days ago to accuse us of having gone all quiet - well, this thread was quiet because we were discussing stuff in other threads.

So I guess the thread is for anyone to present whatever case they like to support the view that Megrahi (note, I specified Megrahi, not Libya in general) carried out the Lockerbie bombing.

Rolfe.

Ah, we've gone badly off-track then. Bunntamas is arguably the closest to on topic, in addressing Megrahi's clan/tribe affiliation. It's evidence against Megrahi himself, just not very good evidence. The network she's looking at is probably several thousand people wide, and something or other sets Megrahi apart from the rest.

Hint: it has to do with Malta, clothing, luggage tags, etc.

Perhaps Skwinty, or a lurker, could bring a question - a pretty solid sounding charge among those listed on the Wiki page, or something, to see how on earth we could address THAT.

 

[Rolfe]

Lumpert's basic story is seductive, because of the timing. Thurman and Orkin must have got a sample circuit board from somewhere, after all. There were one or two floating around unaccounted-for though, and then there was a story of a company in Florida making counterfeit models for the CIA. And then there's Lumpert.

Wherever they got it from though, they got it in the summer of 1989. Lumpert claims to have handed over his example in late June 1989, which fits in that respect. However, didn't he say it was a brown board? The colour of the thing is tantalising, as the photographs don't show the colour clearly at all. I don't understand that, because the colour of the pics of the brown circuit board from the radio is perfectly faithful. However, the timer fragment doesn't change colour throughout the investigation, and Hayes's original notes specifically describe it as green, so why would he call it green if it was brown?

The later tales about part of the exhibit being substituted and it being half green and half brown at one point are just silly. The photographs show nothing of the sort. The photographs are of the same item all the way through, with modifications consistent with the recorded manilulations performed by the investigation.

The "I scratched an M on it" is silly as well. The scratch isn't a clear M, it's a squiggle. So Lumpert knew he should identify the timer he handed over, and exactly the right bit of the right circuit board was what the conspirators fortuitously chose to make into their "evidence", without realising it had been marked. I don't think so.

I'm not sure what the M is, but it seems to be part of a pattern of scratching that's more intense lower down, between the printed circuit lines. I don't think it's fluff. It seems to have been scratched superficially before it was photographed as if to remove a surface sooty deposit. Later more efficient cleaning has then removed all trace of these scratches.

This is the thing that was never tested for explosives residue, of course. Though why that's such a big deal I don't know, I'm sure it could have been arranged for it to test positive if that was what was wanted.

Was it a bit of a board from a timer Lumpert handed over? I don't know. I do know that the rest of the Lumpert/Bollier story is horse-feathers and demonstrably so. Which makes me wonder, why publish such evident rubbish?

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

Yeah, but you don't accept Lumpert's version, which was in a fancy affidavit, and has been re-posted a zillion times.

There's a problem with Lumpert. Namely he's a liar.

Either he lied to the Zeist court when giving evidence. Or his affidavit is lies. Which do you believe?

Bollier is the ultimate expert for the CT side now, [...] Bollier stayed very helpful throughout the indictment assembly into late 1991, and only in the mid-1990s started telling (slightly) weird stories that during and after the trial got stranger and stranger.

Bollier is a snake. I think the Conspiracy files BBC program interview of Bollier pretty much nails him. He's a seller of anything to anyone for the right price. Arms, bombs, bomb timers, and who knows what else to anyone who has the money and he doesn't care in the slightest who those people are. He's well aware of the substantial rewards offered and is motivated by money and little else.

The investigators don't need Bollier at all or his company to make up the MST-13 fragment and add it into the evidence chain.

e.g. They have the timers they seized from Senegal or whereever it was in a vault somewhere, know they can tie them back to Libya and only Libya (via someone known to the investigation already, who shares an office building with Megrahi) they chop one up appropriately, give it to the Scots police and let them stumble around with it for a while, before someone through much "painstaking work" finally matches it up with the MEBO timer.

 

[Rolfe]

2) On second thought, never mind. You are a funny little rabbit when you accuse Rolfe of being an "obvious" agent and a chuckle is nice.

You know, I love it when twoofers start engaging with Lockerbie. The results are always completely off-the-wall.

I'd have thought that twoofers might have had Lockerbie sussed already. Or I thought that about three years ago, until I tried to find out. I mean, they're such tenacious researchers, and so alert to all the possibilities of official malfeasance, surely they'd have found the right end of the stick?

No, not on a bet.

Most of them ignore it completely, which is probably a blessing, but odd. The largest school of thought, led by David Shayler, has decided Megrahi actually did it. Shayler says, basically, the cops framed the right guy, trust me on this. (Maybe I'd trust him a smidgin more if he didn't also think he was Jesus or something.)

And then we have the ones who think it's got to be a more complex CT than it really is.

LGR believes Edwin and Lumpert, bless his furry little heart. I love him to bits.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

There's a problem with Lumpert. Namely he's a liar.

Either he lied to the Zeist court when giving evidence. Or his affidavit is lies. Which do you believe?

Neither, if that's a valid answer.

Bollier is a snake. I think the Conspiracy files BBC program interview of Bollier pretty much nails him. He's a seller of anything to anyone for the right price. Arms, bombs, bomb timers, and who knows what else to anyone who has the money and he doesn't care in the slightest who those people are. He's well aware of the substantial rewards offered and is motivated by money and little else.

Yes, but why is he making those thousands of spam posts that everybody ignores, alleging stuff that seems to be about 30% reasonable and 70% complete batsqueak crazy?

Why does he have that bizarre web site which nevertheless has some really useful images of primary evidence on it? If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have the images of much of the important production material from Zeist.

And why has he induced Lumpert to tell quite such a transparent fairystory about a brown circuit board? (Unless that bit's true, but then they realised all the boards sold to Libya were green so they simply couldn't use Lumpert's board - does that fly?)

But even if that's the explanation (and I'm rather warming to it), why the nonsense about the two-tone exhibit, and the M?

But on the other side of that coin, why can't we tell the colour of this "green" board in the photographs? If I look inside the mouse I have in my hand, it has a green circuit board, and the colour is unmistakeable. It should show in a photo no trouble at all.

I've always regarded this "disinfo!" accusation as being a bit silly. But I do wonder about Edwin. Definitely Stasi, probably CIA at least until the wall fell, and managing to get a complete pile of horse-feathers accepted as the likely solution to the conundrum of the MST-13 fragment. A pile of horse-feathers that will obviously blow away if anyone tries to look at it critically.

I don't know on what grounds the SCCRC said it could find no evidence to substantiate the allegation that the timer fragment was fabricated. I won't believe it until I see the evidence, and it better include the original negative of the red-circle photo, traceable to 12th May 1989. But could it be that they investigated Lumpert's allegations, and found them to be baseless?

The investigators don't need Bollier at all or his company to make up the MST-13 fragment and add it into the evidence chain.

e.g. They have the timers they seized from Senegal or whereever it was in a vault somewhere, know they can tie them back to Libya and only Libya (via someone known to the investigation already, who shares an office building with Megrahi) they chop one up appropriately, give it to the Scots police and let them stumble around with it for a while, before someone through much "painstaking work" finally matches it up with the MEBO timer.

That's entirely true. That's what we were working on as a hypothesis before Lumpert's story was in the equation. At best, as I said, it maybe that they originally tried to obtain a usable sample item from MEBO, were given a brown one, and only realised later when they compared it with the file copy that it was the wrong colour to implicate Libya.

And of course they had to retain one example to serve as the comparison. So it might not have been as straightforward as all that to get hold of a suitable item. This could explain why the plan started moving in April, but PI995 wasn't ready to be fed into the chain of evidence in September and had to have its provenance backdated to 12th May.

 

[Bunntamas]

Its pretty obvious.

Rolfe's job is to try and steer people away from the high probability that the MST-13 timer was planted by the police. This means he has to construct a persona of a "truth-seeker" but whenever discussions turns to areas that implicate corruption in British police and push discussion in fantasy speculations regarding Palestinians or Iranian groups. He and his colleague Caustic Logic spend a lot of the time of the internet cyber stalking people

And bullying....

Thank you, LGR!

~ B

 

[Bunntamas]

As an aside, I wonder how Bunntamas herself would react to the accusation that she must have carried out some atrocity, personally, solely on the grounds that some of her extended family, or some people she worked with, were implicated in crime?

Here's how Bunntamas reacts: WOW. Comparing me to a convicted terrorist, with a seemingly veiled threat. You are WAY out of line with that one. Consider yourself reported. And then some.

 

[little grey rabbit]

I believe it was manufactured by Tom Thurman of the FBI and "John Orkin" of the CIA, some time in the summer of 1989, probably at the instigation of Vincent Cannistraro. I believe it was planted into the Lockerbie chain of evidence in September that year by Thomas Hayes and Allan Feraday of RARDE, and Hayes also created backdated forensics notes to make it appear as if it had been examined in May.

Great, Rolfe. But seriously who cares what you believe if you have no evidence for it? Mebo saying the circuit board in evidence was not provided by them to Libya and appears like a fake is evidence. It is a statement from people in a position to know. An affidavit from a Mebo employee sworn before a Swiss judge that he stole parts and provided them to a British or American official is evidence - he is in a position to know. Your views on "John Orkin" are not evidence.

Just before Feraday went to Japan to acquire the materials he needed to fake up the radio manual page that was also planted in the evidence.

Except we have some very respectable Scottish citizens who quite clearly remember finding it and finding it in almost completely undamaged state. And have been interviewed on TV swearing blind that it must have been damaged during police custody prior to being presented to the court. Or are they disinfo agents too?

Why would Ferady have to go to Japan to acquire materials to fake up a radio manual page? You have taken a very simple story, with lots of evidence and replaced it with wild unsubstantiated rubbish.

It is because you constantly spew out such demonstrable nonsense when the true facts are so strong is the reason you are very easy to spot.

He was a Stasi agent, and he really has been fingered as a suspected CIA asset, by Francovich no less.

He was an engineering company that sold components across the Iron curtain, as was quite legitimate. I do not know the specific details of his commercial dealings but it was normal practice for STASI to create front companies not just for dealing with Western companies and individuals - but also for dealing with their own citizens. Alternatively, they might use a genuine firm or state owned enterprise as a front when they wanted to source something. None of this rules out that Bollier was a Stasi agent, but it is not a necessary explanation.

But gee, it so much easier to breathlessly say "Stasi agent" wink wink nudge nudge, "GLPC" wink wink nudge nudge, "Oil contracts" wink wink, nudge nudge and pretend your wild rantings actually have some substance behind them.

Of course he if did sell components to the East Germans - quite possibly they ended up in the West Berlin disco bombing and that was how he came into the orbit of the CIA in the first place.....wink wink, nudge nudge

 

[Bunntamas]

Great, Rolfe. But seriously who cares what you believe if you have no evidence for it?

But gee, it so much easier to breathlessly say "Stasi agent" wink wink nudge nudge, "GLPC" wink wink nudge nudge, "Oil contracts" wink wink, nudge nudge and pretend your wild rantings actually have some substance behind them.

Bavo, LGR!
I'm quite Certain that "Walls of (repeated for years on end, "but it's there was no clothing purchase by Megrahi! The bomb did not originate in Malta!" non-evidence CTs again) of text, by Rolfe, and "yeah, that's right!" CT cheerleading by CL will follow. Ooooohhh, I can hear the clicking and clacking of the keyboard now, as they compile the ever so strategic argument, which ultimately is nothing but repetitive nonsense, which, in 22+ years of opposition to Megrhai's guilt, has gone NOWHERE (sans release of him by Scottish and UK oil whoreing politicians, bowing to Megrahi's CLAN affiliations) - Hmmmm wonder why? wink wink, nudge nudge.
I also anticipate Yawwwwwning (not unlike skimming Bollier's blather) at predictable, transparent CTs, who get SO bummed out when their alleged facts, which they deem "evidence" get relegated to the CT forums - sub forums, whatever you want to call them (Ambrosia), they're still CTs, NOT evidence.

~B.

 

[Ambrosia]

Great, Rolfe. But seriously who cares what you believe if you have no evidence for it?

Perhaps you missed some of the earlier posts I made about the nature of the webforum you are posting on. As the answer to the above statement is "pretty much noone cares what Rolfe believes on Lockerbie, we do care about what can be backed up with evidence"

You appear to not understand so one can only apologise if this comes across as patronising.

I shall spell this out for you LGR a little more simply.

James Randi is a world wide famous sceptic. He founded the JREF which is an organisation to promote scientific and critical thinking and has a long standing Million Dollar Challenge, still unclaimed, to anyone who can prove any paranormal event ever.

As a spinoff from the JREF these forums were established to provide a place where people can discuss "skepticism, critical thinking, science and the paranormal, in a friendly and lively way."

Now well established, these web forums attract very many intelligent and educated people, many of whom hold the scientific method in very high regard and are dyed in the wool sceptics.

Sceptics by definition won't believe ANYTHING without evidence that proves that it is true.

You are arguing on the internet with a bunch of sceptics LGR, and we don't give a stuff as to what someone believes, only what can be proven with evidence.

Mebo saying the circuit board in evidence was not provided by them to Libya and appears like a fake is evidence.

You are conflating the legal definition of evidence with the scientific definition. However if you want to go down that road there is also the evidence to consider where Lumpert stood up in court and testified pretty much the exact opposite. Which evidence do you choose to give most weight to? What other evidence might there be that is consistant with either of the above pieces of evidence so as to corroborate one or the other?

(manual page discovered by Mrs Horton)Except we have some very respectable Scottish citizens who quite clearly remember finding it and finding it in almost completely undamaged state. And have been interviewed on TV swearing blind that it must have been damaged during police custody prior to being presented to the court.

[sarcasm]What it was on TV?!! - well it must be true! [/sarcasm]

Eyewitness testimony is not good evidence, according to the scientific definition. (this is a scientific/sceptical forum remember)

LGR a plane was blown apart in midair at about cruising altitude. Tore itself to pieces and fell to earth along with it's contents. There is nothing unusual about finding scattered pieces of manuals of electronic radios amongst the wreckage some time later.

(What is unusual is how the prosecution can so definitively tie this particular page of manual exactly to the bomb case, and how damaged the scrap shown in trial evidence is compared to the Horton testimony, both captured in interviews near the time and much later, we've already discussed this in older threads. There is nothing to prove one way or another whether or not the fragmented page of manual is the same as that recovered by Mrs Horton at all. Furthermore even if it IS the same page there is not very convincing evidence that can place it within the bomb case, and there is evidence that suggests any manual packed close to a high explosive of the type and size that was required to blow PA-103 from the sky would have even survived such a blast at all.)

It is because you constantly spew out such demonstrable nonsense

I can honestly say that I don't know of anyone who is better researched and knows more about the evidence of Lockerbie as a whole, and who I think is more credible than Rolfe. Thats just my personal opinion though take it however you want.

If you want to discuss the MST-13 fragment in some detail then post some thoughts to the MST-13 thread I linked earlier and we can go through all that there, though if you bring up the same stuff as is already talked through in the thread I'll just link back to it and post laughing dogs.

 

[Ambrosia]

Neither, if that's a valid answer.

Well of course he can also be lying twice over.

Yes, but why is he making those thousands of spam posts that everybody ignores, alleging stuff that seems to be about 30% reasonable and 70% complete batsqueak crazy?

Why do people believe assorted claptrap about the 9/11, moon landings, JFK, Reptillians, intelligent design, homeopathy, religion etc etc and continually makes posts to web forums the world over with a little truth and mostly rubbish?

I think Bollier is simply motivated by money and thinks he can get paid off BIGtime by Ghadaffi if he can convince people that the offical story is wrong. I'd wager that he knows a good deal more than he's letting on about what actually happened, and as well as posting a bunch of what he knows on his website is also spinning stories and exaggerating this and that to make himself seem more important to anyone that cares and to try to make what he says seem more believable.

Which sadly tends to devalue his evidence some.

 

[Ambrosia]

whatever you want to call them (Ambrosia), they're still CTs, NOT evidence.

~B.

You know you are free to make more than one post. There's also a nifty "preview" feature where you can re-edit posts as much as you like before comitting them to the forum.

Handwave away whatever you like and dismiss anything but the official version as a silly CT with no evidence if it suits you.

Thing is we are not pushing any alternate theories really. We are holding up the offical version to scrutiny and asking what evidence is there to support it. That's the vast bulk of the collected posts on this topic here by myself, Rolfe, CL, and others.

Time and again there is no evidence to support the offical story. There's also a bunch of conflicting evidence that could support an alternative version or versions.

All we can say for sure is that we don't know who blew up PA-103, and there sure as hell isn't enough evidence to convict Megrahi.

 

[Caustic Logic]

It occurs to me to note
that there is a lack of agreement
on the meaning of the word "evidence"
evident in this thread.

On the one hand, the best definition to me, is a measurable trace, effect, imprint, etc. of a certain real-world action or event. Ex. - a broken window that was taken as evidence of a break-in to a house where the occupant was shot and robbed.

But since no one can know for sure what happened in most cases, we can't wait to be sure it's a sign of the one, factual reality. So in a second-best meaning of "evidence", the window becomes a possible reflection of any number of possible events theorized, by investigators, prosecutors, judges, or conversants in a forum, as the case may be.

One person might suggest the broken window, rather than showing a break-in (nothing was stolen, no sign of entry) might still be related to the bullet that killed the house's occupant, suggesting a shot fired through the window. Ideally, as the Occam's razor thing says, the simplest explanation that accounts for all known facts (the second half is often under-appreciated by people who excel at lacking facts) is the best.

So anyway, it would be helpful to the discussion if we could all agree on the varying definitions of evidence, proof, theories, etc. to avoid talking past each other, which seems the order of the day as usual anyways, so never mind. Who's got the time for that cat-herding job? We're just speaking different languages here, and going by vastly different worldviews / philosophies.