Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

[Buncrana]

Seems to. I knew it was unarguable the minute I saw Sidhu's statement, but the rest of it certainly cements the conclusion.

Indeed. Sidhu’s statement, once realised together with Bedford and Sahota’s statements of the luggage positioning, completely undermines the whole prosecution theory and presents a number of unsustainable conclusions. This is also why I continue to find the defence’s stratagem at Zeist, who were in possession of this evidence, to be so infuriating.

The positioning of both of Michael Bernstein's cases is a bit odd, but then it's not necessarily reasonable to expect someone presumably wired to the moon in the process of setting up mass murder to do everything exactly as you'd expect.

The left-end-up position of the bomb suitcase is also slightly odd, which is maybe why they didn't get it. As LittleSwan said above, though, the condition of the Carlsson case supports that. Carlsson case damage is higher up than McKee case damage. Fancy being able to tell that much detail, but you actually can, once the arrangement of the suitcases is worked out.

It certainly appears that they weren’t getting it. However, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that Hayes clearly did give some consideration to the bomb suitcase on the floor when he postulated in Feb ‘89 that the remnant of the primary suitcase PI/911 had been supported by something substantial like the base floor - although he doesn’t seem to have considered that substantial support may have actually been from the weight of bags above. Nevertheless, the bag on the bottom layer was considered albeit seemingly briefly. And as pointed out, a cursory examination of Carlsson’s suitcase and damage to it would reinforce that conclusion. An examination of McKee’s lends further weight to this conclusion.

At the early stages not even the height should have presented an insurmountable problem being considered on the cusp of first and second layer. Of course, as things progressed, and after the Indian head tests, the height started to favour a position for the bag that was now unsustainable for it to be among the bottom layer.

I don't know. Blind spots happen. They were sitting there putting together AVE4041 jigsaw, and apparently doing it quite well. There's simply no sign that anyone even realised it was possible to put together suitcase jigsaw as well and get useful information out of it. I think if they had tried, we'd have evidence of them having tried.

It seems to me that they, like the detectives working on the same aspect, were hampered by not having been told about the nitty-gritty of Bedford's statements. The detectives at least appear to have known that the bottom-level suitcase was one of the ones loaded at Heathrow, but there's no sign anyone told them there was anything particularly suspicious about it.

They had all these suitcases and bits of suitcase, but there's no evidence they knew who owned any of them unless there were luggage labels on them. And even there, did they know who were the Frankfurt transfer passengers and who were the Heathrow interline passengers? It might have been difficult to know where to start without that.

Carlsson's case is interesting. The detectives couldn't get anyone to identify it as his, for absolutely ages. It's repeatedly hedged around with question marks in the baggage memos. There's a comment somewhere on the net about his girlfriend and his sister both declaring that what they were shown wasn't his. It's quite late on that the Presikhaaf is attributed to him, in Henderson's report, apparently identified by someone he had stayed with in Europe.

However, Carlsson's is the one case, of all of them, which can be positioned with 100% certainty from Bedford's evidence. We know exactly where it was, sitting upright almost immediately behind the IED. The minute you read Bedford's statement together with the flight arrivals data, you know that. Then last month when I finally saw that photo of the Presikhaaf, I could immediately see that's exactly where it had been. The direction it's been hit is unmistakeable. However, there's no note anywhere to suggest that anyone realised that. Complete absence of joined-up thinking.

As you are illustrating however, in reconstructing AVE4041, together with the detailed examinations of the fragments of suitcases that were being collected, and the photographs produced of the damage sustained to the suitcases, it would not/should not necessarily matter what you may or may not know about the luggage in the container and if it was legitimate or even was introduced in mysterious circumstances. Regardless, the evidence collected and examined clearly indicates an explosion occurred among the layer of luggage that corresponded with the damage on the lower sides and lower corners of at least two bags. A check on these bags probable positioning inside 4041 demonstrated in the baggage reconstructions in Jan would illustrate the prime candidate was whatever bag was on the lowest layer at the front left of AVE4041. Even the German’s had reached that conclusion by Jan 7th.

I appreciate the time it seems was taken to determine Carlsson’s case, but as you say, it also seems inconceivable that PK139 would sustain such damage if somewhat shielded by an innocent bag on the base as everyone was still asserting. The conclusion now produced in your document has been achieved in a fraction of the time these folk were taking and massively under-resourced in comparison to Rarde and the rest of the investigation.

I think that the entire thrust of the investigation was perfectly encapsulated by Leppard’s quote, when after some obvious deliberation and disquiet among the investigation, it was concluded after the Indian Head tests that ‘Kamboj was in the clear!’ Was he ever in the frame? Well it doesn’t ever really seem so, publicly at least. Perhaps however this belies the central concern of the investigation at this stage which indicates that the bag described by Bedford and apparently said to have been loaded by Kamboj into 4041, had been viewed as a very real potential culprit. So, unaccompanied or not, Samsonite or not, that bag seen by Bedford was most certainly thought to be by investigators and the Rarde guys at the Indian Head tests, of critical importance.

Who is "they", though? Who knew about the details of Bedford's statement? Just the same people who knew about Manly's statement, and buried it? Dixon took the statements, but he had nothing to do with the case, he just passed them to Lockerbie. Who saw these statements at Lockerbie, and buried them in Holmes without the important details appearing in any of the briefing summaries that were given to the Scottish cops?

John Orr, Stuart Henderson, possibly Harry Bell. I guess.

We're right, they're powerful. That's the difficult bit at the moment. But, they work for us, when you really get down to it. We pay their wages. There are certain checks and balances associated with that.

As to why all this happened in early 1989, I can think of at least four possible reasons, but none of them seems adequate to explain what was done. On the other hand, calling it a blind spot is even less credible.

If it was nothing but incompetence, why was the Bedford and Manly evidence buried quite so effectively? Why did Andrew Hardie try to get Bedford to back down in 1990? What the hell was going on with that letter the Met sent to Teddy Taylor in 1996, saying that the Met had investigated and conclusively ruled out Heathrow? That was a complete pack of lies.

Not our problem, really. It was done. We know more or less who did it. It's up to an independent inquiry to find out why.

I'm a bit hazy about whether John Orr is still alive. There may be two John Orrs. Hmmm. You can't defame the dead. But you can't make them talk either.

I agree that Hardie’s conduct at the FAI was wholly inappropriate and appears to be nothing other than an exercise attempting to undermine and cast significant doubt on Bedford’s evidence. Why would such strenuous efforts be made at a FAI to undermine an otherwise completely trustworthy recollection of baggage loaded at Heathrow? Perhaps this, just like Manly’s evidence, showed that Bedford’s evidence and notably the description of that bag, when presented in totality of all the evidence available, forms a pattern and picture that renders any argument against Bedford’s bag not being the bomb suitcase, utterly unsustainable?

Who is ‘they’? Yeah, at least those mentioned and likely a good few others. Not everyone would have been necessarily in a position to form a complete picture. But some undoubtedly would be aware that elements were being deliberately omitted and suppressed, and yet decided, for no doubt various reasons, to keep their council, turn a blind eye, felt pressurised to keep quiet, didn’t care, those whose prejudices it played right into and those pliant enough to ‘go along with it’. Perhaps like the Hillsborough report, the manipulation was more widespread that we might like to contemplate, and perhaps, quite rationally in light of the huge geopolitical ramifications involved with Lockerbie, reaches even further up the chain of government than that particular injustice seems to stretch to.

 

[Rolfe]

One question.

How many holdalls you think were in the overhang?

Quite a few, I would imagine. More to the point, how many were damaged? I don't think we know about all of them. I think one of Karen's two blue ones was pretty much on top of the IED, to the left of Patricia's suitcase, and was blown to bits. Hence all the bits of Karen's clothes that had to be sorted out from the Maltese clothes. Her green one was only singed at one end though.

Please tell me why this is important? I'm not functioning on all cylinders today. Is there any more information we need that we don't have? Or even any more that would strengthen or clarify the argument?

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

Quite a few, I would imagine

.

Only the blue one, I think. It's not very important

 

[Rolfe]

It certainly appears that they weren’t getting it. However, I think it’s worth bearing in mind that Hayes clearly did give some consideration to the bomb suitcase on the floor when he postulated in Feb ‘89 that the remnant of the primary suitcase PI/911 had been supported by something substantial like the base floor - although he doesn’t seem to have considered that substantial support may have actually been from the weight of bags above. Nevertheless, the bag on the bottom layer was considered albeit seemingly briefly. And as pointed out, a cursory examination of Carlsson’s suitcase and damage to it would reinforce that conclusion. An examination of McKee’s lends further weight to this conclusion.

At that stage I think Hayes was simply describing what was in front of him, with minimal interpretation along the lines of which direction the blast had come at the particular suitcase from. He wasn't constructing a grand theory of how the container was arranged - and indeed he never did that.

I don't think they knew which were the cases that had been in the upright row at the back. Ever. It's interesting that Hayes drew PD/889 in that position though.

Even the Germans had reached that conclusion by Jan 7th.

I would dearly love to know who drew up that diagram and how he came to that conclusion. Was this a German policeman who was actually in Lockerbie looking at the pieces of the container for himself? Or was he in Germany, drawing something that was being described to him by the Scottish investigators on the spot? I absolutely do not know.

I appreciate the time it seems was taken to determine Carlsson’s case, but as you say, it also seems inconceivable that PK139 would sustain such damage if somewhat shielded by an innocent bag on the base as everyone was still asserting. The conclusion now produced in your document has been achieved in a fraction of the time these folk were taking and massively under-resourced in comparison to Rarde and the rest of the investigation.

I see no evidence that anyone ever figured out that the grey Presikhaaf was sitting upright immediately behind the blast. Either from the premise that it was Carlsson's, and that's where Bedford said he put Carlsson's case, or from the premise that its side had been violently blasted in by a very close explosion.

I think that the entire thrust of the investigation was perfectly encapsulated by Leppard’s quote, when after some obvious deliberation and disquiet among the investigation, it was concluded after the Indian Head tests that ‘Kamboj was in the clear!’ Was he ever in the frame? Well it doesn’t ever really seem so, publicly at least. Perhaps however this belies the central concern of the investigation at this stage which indicates that the bag described by Bedford and apparently said to have been loaded by Kamboj into 4041, had been viewed as a very real potential culprit. So, unaccompanied or not, Samsonite or not, that bag seen by Bedford was most certainly thought to be by investigators and the Rarde guys at the Indian Head tests, of critical importance.

Actually, I disagree. I think "Kamboj was in the clear" was Leppard's own interpolation. He knew about the Bedford case and Bedford's evidence, either directly from the FAI or because a cop told him after it came out at the FAI. I think he simply didn't know what to make of it, and didn't understand why or how the case had been not just eliminated but ignored. I think he decided for himself it must have been the Indian Head tests, and shoved in that line of his own.

There is no evidence at all of the investigators themselves having paid the slightest bit of attention to that suitcase.

I agree that Hardie’s conduct at the FAI was wholly inappropriate and appears to be nothing other than an exercise attempting to undermine and cast significant doubt on Bedford’s evidence. Why would such strenuous efforts be made at a FAI to undermine an otherwise completely trustworthy recollection of baggage loaded at Heathrow? Perhaps this, just like Manly’s evidence, showed that Bedford’s evidence and notably the description of that bag, when presented in totality of all the evidence available, forms a pattern and picture that renders any argument against Bedford’s bag not being the bomb suitcase, utterly unsustainable?

I think it shows that by 1990 they realised there was another line of inquiry they should have been following up, but hadn't. But by then they were convinced the bomb had come in on KM180. So Hardie tried to rubbish Bedford's evidence as a pre-emptive strike. Shows they realised it was damaging to the case they were building up then.

Who is ‘they’? Yeah, at least those mentioned and likely a good few others. Not everyone would have been necessarily in a position to form a complete picture. But some undoubtedly would be aware that elements were being deliberately omitted and suppressed, and yet decided, for no doubt various reasons, to keep their council, turn a blind eye, felt pressurised to keep quiet, didn’t care, those whose prejudices it played right into and those pliant enough to ‘go along with it’. Perhaps like the Hillsborough report, the manipulation was more widespread that we might like to contemplate, and perhaps, quite rationally in light of the huge geopolitical ramifications involved with Lockerbie, reaches even further up the chain of government than that particular injustice seems to stretch to.

I genuinely don't know. I think this is one of the main things an independent inquiry needs to look at.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

.

Only the blue one, I think. It's not very important

We know there was a fair amount of Karen's clothes in the "blast-damaged" category. They thought at one stage that the blue Tourister might have been her suitcase, and had the bomb in it. A little gift from the Jordanian boy she'd been seeing while she was in Europe.

In fact she didn't have a suitcase, she had three holdalls. Two blue ones and a green one. (Zwei graue und eine weisse.... Sorry, that song is my "party piece".) One blue one was blown to smithereens and was almost certainly on top of the IED. Hence her clothes all mixed in with the Maltese clothes. The green one is pictured, and just singed at one end. Looks as if it was in the rear half but not immediately to the left of the Carlsson case.

There must have been others, but I think identifying them would be of relatively academic interest.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Caustic Logic has done a bang-up job on the diagrams, although some suitcase handles are still arguably on the wrong side. I particularly love his version of position 3.

I suspect that's about the right angle for the suitcase. If you wanted the hot spot in a better packing position you'd just have to push it slightly further up the angle. However LittleSwan has said he thinks the hot spot was actually more like 20 cm, and possibly a bit further to the right, maybe even directly above the horizontal strut. In that case you get the better packing position without moving the suitcase at all.

Look at the position of the suitcase in relation to the cases in the back row! First there is the Carlsson case.

That's actually upside-down. The handle is to the bottom in that picture. Imagine it sitting upright, with the bent side closest to the explosion. Then compare to diagram.

Now for McKee-2, that is PD/889.

Again, more or less upside-down. Turn it around as for the Carlsson case and imagine it upright in position at the back. Then compare to diagram.

The third one in the series, not shown in the diagram, is the Bernstein saddlebag.

I have no idea which way round that was, that's not the point. Note the bits of at the bottom of the picture. That's part of the lock of the bomb suitcase. Now here is a picture showing whereabouts on that suitcase that lock mechanism was fitted.

It all fits together perfectly.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

That's a great diagram CL has put together, and illustrates very well how the damage sustained by Carlsson's and McKee's cases, in particular, is entirely consistent with the bomb suitcase on the bottom layer of luggage.

The small elevation on the left side of the suitcase caused by the lip and lower sloping edge of the luggage tin may have been set-up quite deliberately by the bomber, but speaking from experience of hardshell Samsonite, it is certainly not out of the question that it simply slid across of its own accord and/or was bumped or jolted up during the loading of the Frankfurt bags or in flight.

I have no idea if a bag was surreptitiously loaded slightly elevated like that if it would attract any more attention from baggage loaders than an introduction of an unknown suitcase loaded as you might expect?..

And I hope quite sincerely that some of those involved in this whole debacle of investigation and trial, and only too aware of their misdeeds, slept a little more uncomfortably last night!

 

[Rolfe]

That's a great diagram CL has put together, and illustrates very well how the damage sustained by Carlsson's and McKee's cases, in particular, is entirely consistent with the bomb suitcase on the bottom layer of luggage.

Isn't it great! I've never learned to use a drawing programme like that. I could have done it with pen and ink though - unlike the drawing office at RARDE. The equivalent drawings in the Joint Forensics Report are atrocious. These were what was produced in court.

Here's the excuses in the witness box.

MR. KEEN: My Lords.
Q I wonder if we could have on the screen Production 181, photograph 40.
You referred, during your examination in chief to this photograph, Mr. Feraday.
A Yes, sir.
Q Which is described as your first postulated position of the IED within the cargo container.
A Yes, sir.
Q And you indicated that the representation was not entirely to scale?
A Unfortunately not, sir, no.
Q I think if it was, then the suitcases represented in the main part of the container would be extremely small?
A Yes, unfortunately.
Perhaps I may just explain. I drew a diagram, and I am not very good at drawing. And I gave it to my drawing office to interpret it, which is fine for the approximate position, but it doesn’t show it to scale, unfortunately.

Isn't that pathetic? Wasn't this important enough for him to go back and ask them to do it right? These tiny cases make it look as if it would be very unlikely the bottom one would end up with the left-hand side on the step.

The small elevation on the left side of the suitcase caused by the lip and lower sloping edge of the luggage tin may have been set-up quite deliberately by the bomber, but speaking from experience of hardshell Samsonite, it is certainly not out of the question that it simply slid across of its own accord and/or was bumped or jolted up during the loading of the Frankfurt bags or in flight.

I have no idea if a bag was surreptitiously loaded slightly elevated like that if it would attract any more attention from baggage loaders than an introduction of an unknown suitcase loaded as you might expect?

I honestly don't know and I don't think we'll ever find out now. Nobody ever asked the baggage handlers if the left-hand case was like that when they saw it.

My feeling is it might have looked odd if it had been like that in the shed, but then it might have been relatively common to load cases like that (it would make the left-hand stack lean the right way) in which case it might not have been remarked on.

However, the container was 62 inches wide and the bomb suitcase was only 26 inches, which is less than half the width. Also, the suit carrier is a bit odd - OK it seems to have been big and heavy when it was packed, but the handle-to-the-left orientation puts its shorter dimension across the container. If the bomb suitcase was left-side-up and the suit carrier was wedging it in, I think there would have been floor showing to the right and there shouldn't have been, according to the baggage handlers.

I doubt if it would have gone left-side-up during the tarmac loading, but in-flight turbulence is a different matter. Even heavy stuff can be quite seriously flung around in a bumpy flight.

And I hope quite sincerely that some of those involved in this whole debacle of investigation and trial, and only too aware of their misdeeds, slept a little more uncomfortably last night!

Mmmm. I don't seriously care if none of them is ever charged, to be quite honest. I want the truth to come out. What happens after that is up to the authorities. I would predict a wholesale whitewash.

How are they going to bring themselves to acknowledge that the biggest case in Scottish criminal justice history was a complete foul-up from pretty much the very beginning? I foresee great difficulties.

The duhbunkers round here seem to think anyone with conclusive evidence that a big investigation has got it all wrong only has to go to the authorities with the evidence and the authorities will say, oh thank you for that we now realise we were completely wrong and we will retract.

Not going to happen. A UN resolution. Ten years of punitive sanctions against Libya. The three-ring circus at Camp Zeist. Libya being held to ransom for $6 billion or whatever it was. The enormous amount of emotional investment the US relatives and others have in the conviction. The incredible goings-on at the time Megrahi was released, the hate and bile spewed out against Scotland over the so-called "hero's welcome". The politicking over the motives for releasing him. "Remember Lockerbie" being the constant refrain justifying the military intervention by western forces to depose Gaddafi. The recent posturing about sending detectives to Libya to apprehend Megrahi's alleged accomplices.

How do we overcome all that? I simply don't know. The only thing we have going for us is that we're right. But they have all the power, and they're going to use it.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

My God! Those diagrams of the baggage positioning produced in court are utterly useless. I’d never realised quite how ridiculous they were. Did the court think everyone was travelling with a schoolbag or a box of wine!? I mean, what the hell is the difficulty with at least trying to get these items to scale?

Okay bags aren’t all a universal size, but suitcases are generally similar in size, and that diagram makes it look like you’re slotting some large bricks into a container that bears almost no relation to how those bags were actually arranged and how many you could expect to take up the depth, breadth and critically for Zeist, how many would take up the floor space.

Although they do appear to have got somewhat closer to scale with the bomb bag, but all the other additional suitcases are way out of scale.

However, the container was 62 inches wide and the bomb suitcase was only 26 inches, which is less than half the width. Also, the suit carrier is a bit odd - OK it seems to have been big and heavy when it was packed, but the handle-to-the-left orientation puts its shorter dimension across the container. If the bomb suitcase was left-side-up and the suit carrier was wedging it in, I think there would have been floor showing to the right and there shouldn't have been, according to the baggage handlers.

I doubt if it would have gone left-side-up during the tarmac loading, but in-flight turbulence is a different matter. Even heavy stuff can be quite seriously flung around in a bumpy flight.

Hmm..I see what you’re saying about the size and positioning of the Suit carrier. What space might be left, about 12-15 inches perhaps? Not enough to lay another suitcase flat, but perhaps enough for one to be standing upright?

However, this might just as easily imagined as not a sole uniform space, and perhaps might be 6inches between the bomb suitcase and the suit carrier, and 6 inches from that to the other wall of the container. In that situation it might be reasonable for it to be considered as ‘all the floor space was taken-up’ just as Bedford, Sahota and Sidhu remarked.

Mmmm. I don't seriously care if none of them is ever charged, to be quite honest. I want the truth to come out. What happens after that is up to the authorities. I would predict a wholesale whitewash.

How are they going to bring themselves to acknowledge that the biggest case in Scottish criminal justice history was a complete foul-up from pretty much the very beginning? I foresee great difficulties.

The duhbunkers round here seem to think anyone with conclusive evidence that a big investigation has got it all wrong only has to go to the authorities with the evidence and the authorities will say, oh thank you for that we now realise we were completely wrong and we will retract.

Not going to happen. A UN resolution. Ten years of punitive sanctions against Libya. The three-ring circus at Camp Zeist. Libya being held to ransom for $6 billion or whatever it was. The enormous amount of emotional investment the US relatives and others have in the conviction. The incredible goings-on at the time Megrahi was released, the hate and bile spewed out against Scotland over the so-called "hero's welcome". The politicking over the motives for releasing him. "Remember Lockerbie" being the constant refrain justifying the military intervention by western forces to depose Gaddafi. The recent posturing about sending detectives to Libya to apprehend Megrahi's alleged accomplices.

How do we overcome all that? I simply don't know. The only thing we have going for us is that we're right. But they have all the power, and they're going to use it.

Rolfe.

Undoubtedly, this presents everyone, not least those entrusted with upholding our democratic rights, with a dilemma to resolve. Of course, this shouldn’t even be a dilemma, but here we are, where by virtue of transparency of a system or department it seems to then allow for any accountability to be cast aside.

So, do we want to live with the stain of the injustice of Lockerbie and Zeist, albeit only lingering among the shadows of public debate at this time, which also entails ignoring the rights of all those murdered that night, or place some value on principles and justice by engaging and dealing with the issues that are only too apparent.

Yes, of course the primary objective is certainly to have the conviction quashed, and if this comes as a result of an enquiry into the trial and conviction, or as someone taking on the second appeal process, then that itself would be an incredible achievement.

But I don’t then see quite how this outcome could be swept quietly away. The conviction being overturned in itself would prompt searching questions about the whole process of the investigation and trial that would demand satisfactory answers. To concede that the conviction, by its very overturning, was unsustainable, or worse, in some fashion fabricated, and then for the authorities to simply ignore the issues raised, I think would be an untenable and intolerable position to adopt.

I appreciate the can of worms that this involves exploring, just as you’ve set out above. But I think any whitewash of those involved in the initial investigation and trial would amount to the condoning of gross incompetence on the part of some that led to the most dire of consequences, and of the wholesale manipulation of the legal system by others in such a way that our courts seemingly operating under the auspices of justice and law is no more than an illusion.

They do indeed have the power, but with the continued pressure of the JfM, it might just find the exact amount, applied at just the right spot, with the right people, which they most certainly have at their disposal, then, sooner or later, the lid on this scandal will be, I'm sure, eventually forced open to at least some degree.

After that? Well we can jump off that bridge at that point!

 

[Rolfe]

Even the bomb bag is way too small in their diagram. Remember, it was 26 inches wide and the container (flat part) is 62 inches wide. The whole thing is schoolboyish. It's like a kid's school project that you as a teacher want to take a red pen to. It's slapdash and lacking in careful thought.

What intrigues me is the question of whether this was deliberate or pure incompetence. It looks like pure incompetence from my perusal of the reports. Such a complete lack of imagination they didn't even think about the bottom-level case or the possibility of position 3.

Except, it absolutely mirrors the "incompetence" of the Lockerbie detectives who were also ignoring the bottom-level case when they had a completely different set of reasons to be suspicious of it. Did both sets of investigators quite independently fail to pay any attention to the bomb suitcase when both should have been suspicious of it for different reasons? (The detectives because of what Bedford said and the scientists because it was so close to the explosion it should have been considered to be in the frame.) That would have been a bit unfortunate, to say the least.

I've always had a suspicion that the detectives were telegraphing to the scientists that they didn't want a finding that it might have been the bottom-level case. This really based on the fact that the detectives never investigated that case and the contemporary accounts seem to suggest they were waiting for forensics to say the explosion had been too high. And of course Hayes and Feraday had form in finding what the cops wanted them to find.

The first estimate of the position of the explosion is the German one, and it's right there where Bedford's suitcase was sitting. But very shortly after that (19th January) Hayes issued a memo saying the height was 18 inches. On 5th May he issued a report putting the height at 35 cm (14 inches). However the April AAIB report says 10 inches, and the joint Hayes/Feraday report from June says 8 inches (though that may be 8 inches from the strut which is compatible with 10 inches overall).

However, the Emerson & Duffy book (1990) puts the height at 18 to 24 inches from the floor. Who told them that? Leppard (1991) quotes the 35 cm figure in the Hayes report, without mentioning anything about the 10-inch or 25-cm estimates. He also says several times that the Coyle case was on top of the bomb suitcase, on the third layer, without making any comment about what was on the bottom layer. (He does, however, know about the McKee case being upright at the back, which is more than the trial was told.)

My feeling is that the "pay no attention to that brown Samsonite hardshell on the bottom layer" is emanating from the higher levels of the police inquiry. It seems unlikely that the forensics guys managed to follow that script without being given a copy of it, but that's as far as I can go.

The fact is, they never mention it. It's not that they actively rule it out, it's that they never look at it. The closest they come is the "position 1" and "position 2" diagrams, both of which don't involve that case, but it's implicit, not explicit. Feraday rejected position 3 in the witness box, but there's nothing in the notes showing they thought about that in 1989 and then ruled it out.

It's the same with the police inquiry. They don't actively rule out the Bedford bag, they just ignore it, and then accept the story apparently coming from the forensics team that the explosion was too high. (Not "too far to the left" but "too high".) This is either utter incompetence, or clever calculation. Better not to mention what you don't want to draw attention to? If you go into an elaborate and flawed string of reasoning to eliminate that suitcase, someone might notice. If you simply don't mention it at all, then maybe nobody will notice. (And if they do, you come over all surprised....)

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, of course the primary objective is certainly to have the conviction quashed, and if this comes as a result of an enquiry into the trial and conviction, or as someone taking on the second appeal process, then that itself would be an incredible achievement.

But I don’t then see quite how this outcome could be swept quietly away. The conviction being overturned in itself would prompt searching questions about the whole process of the investigation and trial that would demand satisfactory answers. To concede that the conviction, by its very overturning, was unsustainable, or worse, in some fashion fabricated, and then for the authorities to simply ignore the issues raised, I think would be an untenable and intolerable position to adopt.

I think the difficult thing is to get them to accept that the investigation was wrong and the bomb was introduced at Heathrow. If that is achieved, I'd call victory. It has enormous repercussions for everything that was done since 1989, not just Megrahi's conviction but the sanctions against Libya and the money extorted from that country, and the bombing of Libya only last year. It makes everyone involved into a laughing stock. They're not going to go there without putting up a hell of a fight.

However, if they do go there, I predict no rolling heads. Everyone involved was acting with the highest integrity, they just happened to be thick as mince and with a blind spot covering their entire field of vision. It's been over 20 years. People in their forties then are retired now. And nothing will happen to them.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Something else struck me about a bit of the transcript LittleSwan highlighted several days ago. It was Hayes being asked about which bits might have been part of which suitcase, and whether the seven grey fragments could have been part of the bomb suitcase.

Q. Dr Hayes, If you think it's possible that PI/1549 is from the IED suitcase, what is your opinion about the origin of the other grey fragments you've discribed in your report. Would it be possible that these fragments are also from the IED suitcase.
A. Well,... possibly.... I don't know. We didn't perform Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) analysis to see if the grey plastic from the fragments is from the same source as the grey plastic from the IED suitcase. To be honest, we didn't perform any analysis at all. We just looked at the fragments and described them.
Q. Why didn't you perform these kind of analysis, Dr Hayes.
A. Nobody asked us to do so, sir.

Hayes is basically saying that nobody instructed him to try to discover for certain whether or not these orphan fragments represented another distinct, unidentified suitcase that had been loaded in extremely close proximity to the bomb, or not. That is, whether there was actually a second "secondary suitcase" from which by some chance only a very few small scraps had been recovered.

I don't know what to make of this. It suggests that Hayes himself was not being pro-active in following the evidence to its conclusions. He was waiting for instructions. Who from?

The bits of the baggage container weren't just described individually then shoved in a box. They were reassembled to recreate the actual structure, to allow an estimate of where the explosion had happened. However, this wasn't done in Kent, it was done at Longtown, and it wasn't just the RARDE team doing it, the AAIB people (especially Claiden) were at least as heavily involved. And it happened very early - I think the bulk of it was done by the New Year.

Once in Kent, the routine seems to have been to describe stuff. They were looking for important fragments (and overlooking them), but they weren't trying to build up a Unified Theory of what had gone on in that baggage container.

Were they expecting the cops to do that? For PC McPlod to come back and say, well Dr Hayes we need to know which suitcase was under the bomb, can you tell us if it was this one or are these just bits of something else? Wasn't it Hayes's job to figure that out, as he tried to figure out which pieces of clothing had been in the bomb suitcase and which in adjacent suitcases?

It doesn't make any sense. If they had wanted to advance the seven fragments as being all that remained of the Bedford suitcase, they would have had to have looked at them more closely, but they didn't. They had a possible candidate, but they didn't even seem to realise it.

I am completely not understanding this.

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

Quote:
Q. Dr Hayes, If you think it's possible that PI/1549 is from the IED suitcase, what is your opinion about the origin of the other grey fragments you've discribed in your report. Would it be possible that these fragments are also from the IED suitcase.
A. Well,... possibly.... I don't know. We didn't perform Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry (IRMS) analysis to see if the grey plastic from the fragments is from the same source as the grey plastic from the IED suitcase. To be honest, we didn't perform any analysis at all. We just looked at the fragments and described them.
Q. Why didn't you perform these kind of analysis, Dr Hayes.
A. Nobody asked us to do so, sir.

My goodness!, this part of the trancript isn't real. I just tried to be funny. Sorry for any confusion caused

 

[Rolfe]

Oh, I see!

To be honest, I thought you made it up when I first read it, and laughed. It was an obvious spoof, I thought. I didn't check the transcript to see. That's why I didn't make any comment at the time - I took it as a joke.

Except, since then I've been reading Hayes's testimony to the SCCRC, and you have him off perfectly! When I re-read the spoof in that context, I thought I'd been mistaken, and you'd really got it from the transcript. (I still didn't check, silly me!)

To be honest, I think it's so close to the way Hayes was working, the comments still stand.

Have you read his SCCRC evidence? It's like his Zeist evidence, but even worse. Vague, don't know, sorry can't help you, and so on. And his pagination is a shambles.

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

No. I didn't read the SCCRC evidence, but I know what you mean.

Although I like his drawings, Hayes seems "indifferent", he doesn't really care: wrong attitude.

 

[Rolfe]

I was skimming through the books that were published about this in 1990 and 1991, and note there that the Coyle case was said to have been on top of the bomb suitcase, and that after some time it had been discovered that the McKee case was sitting upright behind it.

That suggests some effort to figure out the arrangement of the luggage at that time (1989-90), but none of that appears in any of the reports I've read.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

No. I didn't read the SCCRC evidence, but I know what you mean.

Although I like his drawings, Hayes seems "indifferent", he doesn't really care: wrong attitude.

You know that Hayes, "one of the best forensic explosives experts in the country" according to David Leppard his biggest fan, had been with RARDE for 15 years. In 1985 he was head of whatever it was he was head of, and senior forensic scientist. He seems to have been unusually highly qualified in this context, having a PhD. Then in 1989, aged 42, he left.

To retrain as a chiropodist.

Rolfe.

 

[LittleSwan]

Yes, maybe one of the best forensic explosives experts, but not a very good forensic explosion expert. That's a hell of a difference.

 

[Rolfe]

But very good at finding evidence to support the story the police wanted to tell. Ask the Maguire Seven. And then there was the May Inquiry....

It seems to me the shambles of his notes is terribly convenient if you think you might want to add or subtract stuff at a later date. Loose pages, shambolic dating and page numbering system, jumping from one item to another like a grasshopper. I seem to remember that the way one of the miscarriages of justice these guys were caught out in causing was discovered because of the use of hard-bound lab books which show you when and what order things were one in. So now they're using single loose pages.

And cutting up developed film into individual negatives.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Leppard does say some slightly interesting things. First, talking about Karen Noonan, and her blast-damaged clothes from very close to the bomb, and her Jordanian boyfriend Jamal Bilbassi.

Could Noonan, the innocent young American student, have been the PFLP-GC 'mule'?

Only later would Orr discover that Noonan's suitcase had actually been placed directly on top of the bomb suitcase. It was a stroke of appalling misfortune which in the early months of the inquiry would cause her family great bitterness. [....]

Suitcases belonging to the young American women, Karen Noonan and Paricia Coyle were on the third level, resting directly above the bomb bag.

In fact it was Patricia's suitcase on top of the bomb suitcase and one of Karen's holdalls in the overhang section immediately to the left of Patricia's case and possibly smack on top of the actual IED. Nevertheless, this account (from two different passages in the book) is essentially right. And diametrically opposed to what was presented at Camp Zeist nine years later.

Then talking about the US security officers returning from the Middle East.

It would take months to discover that the bag belonging to Major Charles McKee, the American security officer from the US embassy in Beirut, had been resting on the bottom of AVE40401. McKee's was one of seven or eight which had been interlined on to Pan Am 103 from airports other than Frankfurt.

I don't know why, "months". Hayes drew that suitcase on 20th January, and it was known from the very beginning that McKee flew into Heathrow on CY504 which arrived at 14.34, so obviously his case was almost certainly one of the row Bedford said he placed along the back. But Leppard does get a lot of details wrong.

Leppard was of course getting his information from someone unspecified inside the police inquiry. He lionises Hayes and Feraday and several of the top cops, and has access to some of the main reports on the case, like Fuhl's report on the 25 transfer items at Frankfurt (which he describes as "meticulous" ). Even though he makes stuff up which is wrong.

This does suggest some rudimentary attempt to figure out where at least some of the suitcases were. I haven't seen any notes or memos about this though.

Leppard (and Johnson and Emerson & Duffy) recount a lot of false leads and dead ends. Coyle/Noonan, Jaafar, quite a few other people followed up as possible mules. I haven't seen any notes or memos about that either. This shows of course that I don't know everything about the lines of inquiry they followed up. However, what is not described in any of the contemporary books is any suspicion relating to a rogue bag at Heathrow. Leppard seems nonplussed about the Bedford bag, which he knows about, but doesn't quite follow how or when it was ruled out.

Of course there could be memos and reports about the Bedford suitcase, dating back to early 1989. But what can they say? There are no grounds to exclude it. And if they had anything even half-plausible, they would have presented it in court.

In 1990 they believed the bomb was on the second layer and the Coyle case was on top of it, and they realised the McKee case was behind it. But they never thought about what was under it? And they're terribly hazy about how many Heathrow interline bags there were, as if it doesn't really matter....

But I wonder why Hayes chose to draw PD/889 sitting up on its hinge end, and the arrow coming at it from the bottom. The day after he signed a memo saying the explosion was 18 inches from the floor of the container.



Rolfe.