Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

[Rolfe]

You know, I sort of wonder how much the terrorist was wetting himself as PA103A was delayed and delayed. Everything set up, and the feeder flight didn't show up.

I don't know whether PA103 would have waited indefinitely for the feeder flight or not. As it was supposed to connect, I imagine they would have waited unless the feeder flight had had some sort of complete and rare disaster. If they hadn't waited, I imagine the baggage in AVE4041 would have been loaded anyway, but it might have been at a much greater risk of being moved around, possibly the cases being shifted to a different container.

What could easily have happened is that the lateness of the feeder flight might have caused the transatlantic leg to miss its slot. Another ten or 15 minutes and that's exactly what would have happened. They could leave Basuta running for the gate, but they could hardly take off while PA103A was taxiing to its stand. And if that had happened, how long would they have been delayed? We hear of planes waiting two or three hours on the tarmac in that situation sometimes. It could easily still have been on the ground at 7.03.

If the bomb was on a barometric timer, the terrorist's panic would have been only moderate. So long as the bag got airborne sometime, and nobody moved it inboard, the plan would still work.

If the bomb was on a countdown timer, they must have been in a flat spin.

Anybody really think that bomb was on a countdown timer, whether it was loaded at Heathrow, Malta, Frankfurt or Kathmandu?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

So what is the official version of what happened? (Please excuse me if I refer only to the left-hand Bedford bag. Adam has some interesting theories which take account of the possibility that the right-hand bag also matched the description of the bomb bag. He may be on to something, but my current feeling is that only the left-hand bag matched the description.)

Bedford went off to have his leisurely cup of tea with Walker, leaving the container in the shed with maybe eight cases stacked upright along the back. (Maybe fewer, but given the description that some of them were resting at an angle on the sloping part of the floor, probably about that number.)

While he was away, Kamboj x-rayed a couple more cases for that flight, and although he wasn't paid to put them in the container and usually didn't, this time he did put them in the container out of the goodness of his heart. But as he was thinking about Arsenal's chances for the Cup or something, he promptly forgot all about it. The left-hand case was a maroony-brown Samsonite.

Bedford comes back and sees the extra cases. He asks Kamboj about them, and he confirms he put them there (this was before the "forgot all about it" part).

Bedford then wheels the container to the build-up shed and leaves it there before knocking off early, as agreed with Walker. Or maybe as not agreed with Walker, whatever. Walker may or may not remember this bit.

About 45 minutes later, Sidhu comes along and wheels the container out to PA013A which has just landed. Bedford usually does this but he had gone home by this time.

As the luggage is starting to come off PA103A, Sidhu (or just possibly Sandhu) sees one of the first cases is a 29-inch American Tourister. He decides he wants that on the floor of the container rather than the 26-inch Samsonite that's there at the time. (Note we're already assuming that the Bedford suitcase s the bomb bag because that's the size of the bomb bag. We have no independent information about the size of the Bedford suitcase, except that, with its fellow, it took up the remaining floor space of the container, So it wasn't a particularly small case.) This is a rather anomalous case, because it seems that none of the passengers had such a case, but it belongs to a legitimate passenger anyway, we've decided.

He takes the Samsonite out of the container and lays it aside on the tarmac. He takes the Tourister off the conveyor and places it where the Samsonite had been.

He makes no attempt to replace the Samsonite in the container, but continues to fill it with luggage from the conveyor. By pure coincidence one of the next couple of cases to come off the conveyor is an identical Samsonite, which happens to be the mysterious suitcase that was loaded unaccompanied at Malta without any evidence being left that this had happened, and transferred to PA103A at Frankfurt, as noted on the miraculously preserved Erac printout. Sidhu puts this on top of the Tourister, still ignoring the identical case sitting on the tarmac.

He goes on loading the container, with the help of Sandhu. Neither of them decides to load the original, Heathrow-origin, Samsonite until the container is well over half full. Hell, maybe it was one of the cases that went over to be loaded loose!

Whatever happened to it, the original Samsonite was far enough away from the bomb not to be damaged by it (because it wasn't among the 24 blast-damaged items that were recovered and tabulated). And it seems it fell into Sherwood Crescent or somewhere, maybe into the Winterhope reservoir, because it was never found. Which is slightly odd, because the rest of the luggage in the container was found, be there you go. But this one wasn't.

And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell you.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

This is nuts.

The loading was done in a hurry. The transatlantic flight was sitting virtually ready to go. The two extra cases Bedford saw took up all the floor area of the container that remained after the row at the back had been positioned. Why would anyone be so picky as to want to remove one of these two cases, just to replace it with a slightly larger one? Why not just sling the larger one on top?

Even if Sidhu really, really wanted the larger case on the bottom layer, why leave the Bedford case sitting on the tarmac for so long? Usual behaviour would surely have been to chuck it back in, on top of the Tourister, especially as everyone was in such a gosh-darned hurry. But apparently he didn't.

Apparently a virtually identical suitcase just happened to come off the conveyor at that precise moment, so he put that on top of the Tourister instead. The original Bedford case sat on the tarmac for a bit and wasn't loaded till later. And then it vanished, so that only the remains of one brown Samsonite were found, but that was the bomb bag which had come from Malta, not the Bedford case which belonged to one of the interline passengers. Except it vanished. And none of the interline passengers had such a case. Except they must have had.

Who are these guys kidding?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm going to sleep now. But the next question is, what are the more likely explanations for the loading patterns on the tarmac, given the evidence in the case.

See you later.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

I'm astonished that neither Bedford, nor latterly the court, seem to have conclusively known how many, and belonging to which passenger, bags were supposed to be loaded into 4041 at the Interline shed that afternoon. Surely that's an elementary condition of loading any container? How many should I be expecting to load, and who do they belong to?

So, if I am a loader, and I'm expecting 6 bags to come through via Interline to be loaded by me in 4041 bound for NY, and actually 8 come through, then who do these additional 2 suitcases belong to and are they to be loaded into my container?

In respect of the bomb bag, I can't see any possibility of baggage manipulation from the point 103A lands and 4041 being loaded onto 103. The final opportunity for the bag to be positioned, or perhaps repositioned, would be outside the Build Up shed, under the supervision of Walker, and while sitting on the ramp outside. On this ramp 4041 was not visible from the Build Up shed, and was also directly adjacent a work access route. This would have been busy with all sorts of airport and construction workers at this time given the refurbishment happening at Terminal 3. I've been unable to confirm if this 'access route' is also the same 'route' referred to by Ray Manley to explain where the breach of the airside doors had taken place and used as a shortcut by workers.

If one (the left side one in particular, which Bedford was adamant was definitely a Samsonite) of the Bedford cases was the primary suitcase containing the device, it would seem that the would-be bomber wouldn't have to attempt to rearranged the bags whilst outside the Build Up shed, as Bedford hadn't moved them from the position we know the explosion occurred.

Unless - after x-raying the bags, Kamboj had placed them in the manner described by Bedford on his return from his break, at the Interline shed, and they were not disturbed by any relocation by Bedford before he took 4041 to the Build up shed awaiting the arrival of the Frankfurt flight. However, if it were actually the right-hand suitcase observed by Bedford which actually contained the Toshiba bomb, then perhaps, at some point in the 45min window that 4041 was left unguarded and not visible, the would-be bomber returned and placed the right hand suitcase case on top of the left hand Samsonite (or made any manner of rearrangement really), and then could all but hope that neither Walker, or the final loading procedures made on the tarmac on 103A's arrival and unloading by Crabtree or Sidhu, wouldn't disturb the two cases now both placed nearest the sloping edge of 4041 and thus would be at the nearest point to the fuselage of 103.

The tight schedule between the Frankfurt arrival and 103's departure to New York was probably something that favoured the bombers in their hope that the bags wouldn't be rearranged in 4041. Time was tight enough to get 103 away from the gate by 1800, that anything that would take any unnecessary time up, for instance someone wanting to start rearranging the baggage in 4041, would be dissuaded by the tight timeframe working around. Furthermore, given there were son few bags actually inside 4041, I would image this lent itself to the possibility that no rearrangement would be required, which once loaded in the desirable position, would be likely to stay there.

 

[Rolfe]

I don't think the baggage transfer thing works quite like that, or it didn't at the time. Malta was into obsessive bag-counting, certainly, but Pan Am relied on x-raying the luggage not counting it. In any case, I don't believe Bedford would have known how many cases he was expecting. This was 1988, and computerisation wasn't what it is today. How would Bedford know how many cases someone was checking in at Larnaca, for example? I think he and his colleagues just looked at the tag of every case that came in on the conveyor and put it in the right container. Another case or two with the right tags wouldn't ring any alarms at all.

However, not knowing to any degree of certainty whose cases were in that container after the event is absolutely ridiculous, and suggests incredible negligence in the investigation. It had only interline baggage from Heathrow, and only about ten cases max of that, and the transfer baggage from Frankfurt. It's a known fact where each of the 243 passengers came from, so sorting out a list of everyone who interlined into Heathrow should have been child's play.

In fact there is such a list. I overlooked it earlier, but someone pointed me at Crawford's book and I've just checked. It's there. I'm going to re-type the passage from Google Books because I think it's important.

Just after being set up in this format we were told that a team of us would form the Priority Profiling Team. Both Alex [Brown, a DS from Carluke] and I would be responsible for taking a close look at the so-called "first fifteen" of the interline passengers: those most likely to have been targeted or of some status that would make them a possible target.

All fifteen had boarded 103 from another flight and therefore had their luggage checked through at an airport other than Frankfurt or Heathrow. Our task was to examine every aspect of the person, obtain as much background as possible, examine every detail we could find and eliminate them from further enquiry as a target or possible 'stooge' who had been tricked into carrying anything on board. Another four groups were dealing with other interline passengers.

The people I had to profile were -

Michael Bernstein A Nazi hunter who was employed by the US State Department and was returning from a job in Austria to the USA.

Bernt Carlsson A United Nations Commissioner who was heavily involved in negotiations regarding the independence of South West Africa (Namibia).

Richard Cawley An American businessman with no known links to any State function.

Joseph Patrick Curry A 31-year-old US Special Forces captain who had been attending an international security conference in Italy.

Robert Fortune Another American businessman, again no links with any State authority.

James Fuller Vice President of Volkswagen in America returning to the US - no links with any State authority.

Matthew Gannon A US State official who had been operating in Beirut.

Ronald LaRiviere Another US State official who had been operating in Beirut and who had travelled from there to Cyprus with Gannon and McKee in a military helicopter.

Charles 'Tiny' McKee A Major in the US Army working in Beirut. A 40-year-old communications and code specialist, he had travelled to Cyprus with Gannon and LaRiviere.

Louis Marengo Marketing director of Volkswagen in the US. Along with his fellow senior executive James Fuller, Marengo was returning home from a business trip. He had no links with any State authority.

Daniel O'Connor Another US state official who was responsible for security at the American embassy in Cyprus. He had flown from Cyprus in company with Gannon, LaRiviere and McKee.

Robert Pagnucco An American businessman returning from a business trip in Europe. No links with state authority.

Peter Peirce A US citizen returning from a postgraduate course in Italy.

Arnaud Rubin A Belgian national who was returning from a holiday at his parents' home in Belgium to his work in America.

James Stow An Englishman living in New York. He had been in Switzerland on a business trip.

Elia Stratis Another American businessman returning home from a trip. No links with any state authority.

It was not an easy task establishing all we wanted to know about each. [snip] We eventually produced a report on all fifteen to the SIO, each person had their own story and as many antecedents as we could gather. The other teams had also finished their profiles of their group of interline passengers. None of them had found anything which could categorically put any of the interline passengers into any frame as a target, dupe or anything else other than a victim of a crime.

First, contrary to what Crawford says, I think that's the lot. He says there were three other teams looking at three other groups of interline passengers, but we know he's often wrong. (For example, he says that a police team found the Toshiba manual, "almost shredded beyond recognition" high in the hills, at about this time.) I think the other three teams were looking at the Frankfurt passengers, of whom there were about 44 I think. But I think this list is right. Although he says he's doing the whole book from memory, this has the feel of copied-from-notes about it.

Time-wise, it all makes sense. This part of the enquiry is happening very early - Crawford went straight to it after finishing the ground search on his patch, and reports that the tag end of the ground search was still going on by the time the passenger survey was completed. This probably puts it in late January or February 1989, after AVE4041 was identified as the site of the explosion, and after Bedford had told the Met about the mystery bags.

He's got all the individuals we know about, including those with no particular reason to believe there was anything odd about their background. He's even got the VW executives, which come to think of it makes sense as the geographical position of Wolfsburg makes travel to Frankfurt to pick up the feeder flight fairly pointless - they probably flew in from Hannover.

Fifteen passengers, all of whom almost certainly had at least one case, and some definitely had more than one piece of checked-in luggage. No more than about ten cases in AVE4041, even including the mystery two. Some of these people's bags must have gone into the build-up shed, which Bedford said did happen. It's possible some of the luggage was only checked in as far as Heathrow, forcing the passengers to pick it up from baggage reclaim and re-check it.

But these are the set of passengers from whom the interline cases in AVE4041 must have come. Anybody willing to bet that the police didn't find out very very exactly what luggage each one had been carrying, and if anything hadn't been recovered, and if so, what sort of bag is was thought to have been? Even if Crawford didn't include that (and if he did he's not telling us), we have Mowatt's findings telling us that Derek Henderson did.

Just how soon the investigation was passed the statements from Bedford about the brown/maroon Samsonite I don't know, but it must have happened at some stage, probably pretty early. Maybe Adam can tell us how soon they knew the primary suitcase was a brown/maroon Samsonite, but again I think it was early.

They have this list of fifteen people, and they must know what luggage each one was carrying, and what of that was found. If anyone in that group even might have had a brownish Samsonite that would provide a benign explanation for the Bedford suitcase, it's inconceivable we wouldn't have heard about it. If there had been a genuine investigation that has ruled this out as the bomb bag, we'd know about it.

And this was all happening in the early stages of the investigation, before the Thatcher/Bush telephone call and before any suggestion of the Malta connection. Somebody has decided not to follow up or admit to the possibility that the bomb was smuggled in at Heathrow, this early. In spite of clear evidence that this might well have happened, including the break-in come to think of it. And nobody can blame the Americans for this.

Excuse me, I'm pretty shocked. Someone high up in the investigation has decided it's more important not to have Heathrow blamed for allowing the Lockerbie attack to happen, than catching the perpetrators.

And I'm watching TV right this minute, headline news item tonight is even more outrage about the release of Megrahi, pictures of Maid of the Seas on the grass as usual.

Meh.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

This isn't where I was intending to go with this train of thought, but I'd never really seen it in quite this light before. [And the TV screen is full of Lockerbie again, more up-to-the-minute news, top item again.]

The investigators knew the bomb was in a brown-ish Samsonite suitcase, in AVE4041. They knew a brown-ish Samsonite-type suitcase was seen in AVE4041 before the Frankfurt flight landed, and even that it had appeared under rather suspicions circumstances. They even knew the suitcase was placed very close to the actual location of the explosion. They knew that none of the 15 people whose luggage that suitcase might legitimately have been had been carrying a brown-ish Samsonite suitcase or anything resembling one. And they knew there had been a serious breach of security in that part of the airport only hours previously.

And they ignored the lot. Wilfully.

I suppose part of this is the sheer number of people involved in the investigation. Each little part is unearthed by a different person, who isn't necessarily going to be told about the other parts. So they don't necessarily suspect that anything really significant is being ignored or avoided.

Looking at this all together though, it's appalling. Even before any of the machinations we've been tracking to avoid getting too close to the PFLP-GC and to blame Libya instead, machinations to deflect clearly justified suspicion from Heathrow were alive and well.



Rolfe.

 

[pete2]

According to Marquise,

Interviews of the American relatives as well as those who had last seen the passengers who boarded the aircraft revealed little additional information. None of them owned or had a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase.

 

[Rolfe]

Getting back to the arrangement of the luggage.

The scenario suggested by the court is that the Bedford bag was removed from the container to allow the navy blue canvas American Tourister suitcase with maroon trim (which belonged to Patricia Coyle, not Karen Noonan, we've discovered) to be put in its place. The Bedford bag was then allowed to sit on the tarmac for maybe five minutes or so while the container was filled with bags from the conveyor, and only reloaded into the container when it was almost full.

This isn't impossible, of course. It's just not all that likely. We're told the two Bedford bags pretty much covered the remainder of the floor of the container left by the row of cases at the back. The loaders were in a big hurry. Why not just throw Patricia's case on top? Then again, if there was some compelling reason to take the trouble to lift the Bedford bag out, why leave it to the side rather than reload it immediately? Even on these basic principles it's not a very probable sequence of events.

Crabtree said sometimes loaders would re-jig luggage that was already in a container to get a better fit, and he'd seen it done. Nobody asked him how common this was. We have to remember that (contrary to my earlier opinion) Bedford was trying to load the container so that nobody would have to re-jig anything - witness his comments about putting the handles of soft-shell cases inwards to allow better stacking of bags on top. Nobody asked Crabtree whether it was likely the particular re-jigging being proposed would have happened. (It seems to me more likely that re-jigging would happen when there were non-standard-shape items in the way, and that doesn't seem to have been the case here.) Nobody asked him whether loaders working on a plane that was more than half an hour late and with the next leg of the flight straining at the leash fifty yards away would have been so pernickety. I think it's quite unlikely, just as it stands. Unlikely, but conceivable.

It's the rest that gets more murky.

Instead of throwing the Bedford bag back on top of Patricia's case, it just so happened that another maroony-brown Samsonite came down the conveyor from Frankfurt just at the crucial moment to be thrown there instead. That was the bomb bag. And the first maroony-brown Samsonite was, by some unlucky chance, never recovered after the crash. And it could never be discovered who had owned it, even with a set of only 15 passengers to pick from.

And the fact that Patricia's case was under the bomb bag wasn't realised until after the FAI. The FAI was told that the original maroony-brown Samsonite was never moved, and the second maroony-brown Samsonite was loaded from Frankfurt right on top of it. And then somehow the entire inquiry forgot the first one was a maroony-brown Samsonite at all. Only later, the investigators changed their minds. Which was kind of handy, because nobody on the defence team was going to buy the theory that no trace of the suitcase under the bomb bag had been found, and that case mysteriously answered to the same description as the bomb bag.

I simply don't believe a bloody word of this. Either Bedford hallucinated the whole thing and his suitcase never existed, and frankly his coming out with that story less than two weeks after the crash and before anyone had any idea the bomb suitcase fitted the description he gave of the mysterious bag makes that one stonking, incredible coincidence, or that case was the bomb.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

According to Marquise,

Interviews of the American relatives as well as those who had last seen the passengers who boarded the aircraft revealed little additional information. None of them owned or had a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase.

Nice one Pete, that entirely fits.

Of course as far as the investigators were concerned (Crawford as well as Marquise), they were trying to figure out if a passenger's luggage had been interfered with to insert the bomb, or a passenger had been tricked into carrying the bomb. So finding that none of the passengers had such a case was fine, it showed the bomb had been in a piece of unaccompanied luggage.

What they obviously didn't realise, and probably never really picked up on even after Zeist I suspect, is that establishing that also established that the Bedford suitcase wasn't an innocent piece of interline baggage.

Rolfe.

 

[pete2]

Looking at Adam's graphic, (lockerbiedivide.blogspot.com/2011/01/video-two-hard-cases-solve-another.html) those Bedford bags do appear to be in the way of someone wanting to load the remaining bags, unless he has arms like a gibbon. So one way to improve access to the back of the container quickly would be to shove one on top of the other. Maybe.

 

[Rolfe]

I don't know about that, because I don't know for sure what the various ways of stacking the container would be.

Bedford indicated that he might well have put these two bags exactly where they were, had he been handling them. Even though the row at the back were upright, it seems to be agreed that the front cases were flat. The description of the explosion damage was predicated on both the blue Tourister and the bomb bag having been flat. Why take out one flat case just to put another in its place?

The back row was already full, to the point where there were cases at an angle resting on the sloping part of the floor. I don't think the loaders would have wanted or needed to do anything more to that row. It seems natural to me that they would have started stacking at the front at that point, and it seems the front cases were flat. Why not just sling in the cases from the conveyor on top of what were already there?

EAT: I don't think the loaders normally stepped inside the containers. I think it was all done from ground level. So it wouldn't be the case that the back of the container would be filled first by standing on the floor of the container, then the front while standing on the ground. It would all grow more or less as a whole. I have a number of reasons for thinking this, including the restricted space in the containers, the fact that Bedford was packing the container hopefully so that it would not need re-jigging and he said he would normally have put the next two cases flat on the floor, and there was only one loader when PA103A was being unloaded (Sandhu was helping, not acting as one of a team), which makes clambering in and out of the container with cases impractical.

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Thanks for reproducing that list of names of the Heathrow interline passengers Rolfe.

Perhaps this picture gives us all an example, albeit not exact, of the loaders and the baggage container size etc : http://cdn.wn.com/pd/f1/e3/9b50da51c803b799dfe6a7b84240_grande.jpg


So, Karen Noonan's blue tourister is not referred to at any stage during the FAI, because as the cases spotted by Bedford at Heathrow had not been moved and the explosion was on the second layer, it thereby lends itself to a suitcase containing the bomb arriving on the Frankfurt flight and going on top of Bedfords unknown cases.

Although, given that the FAI would be aware of Crawfords interline passengers who's luggage was loaded in 4041 by Bedford, and none of which matched the description of a brown/bronze/maroon samsonite he observed, then quite clearly we definitely have one, possibly two, cases exactly matching the primary suitcase and with no known corresponding passenger - and loaded in highly suspicious circumstances??

The case(s) seen by Bedford then just simply vanishes from the whole equation. It wasn't the bomb bag, because it wasn't on the 2nd layer, and nothing was recovered matching the suitcase. Except for the primary suitcase, but it wasn't Bedfords suitcase because it arrived on 103A!

Jings!

So, now we're presented with an actual criminal trial at Zeist in 2000, and the prosecution know only too well, that that particular scenario will not was with the defence, nor likely the judges.

But this time we have a bag arriving from Frankfurt which ended up on the floor of the container, and rather than the case Bedford saw now ending up precisely on the 2nd layer, where the explosion still is determined to have occurred, it actually must have ended up in some far flung corner of the baggage container - because we already know the bomb bag came on 103A via Malta. However, there is still no remnants or any indication of the bag Bedford saw.

Nevermind the nonsense of a magic bullet, here we have the ultimate magic bag, that was in the container which housed the explosion inside Pan Am 103 at the FAI, and still accepted as inside the container at Zeist, but nothing, nada, ziltch, was ever recovered of this suitcase. And no interline passenger, who's luggage was loaded by Bedford, ever possesed or were carrying a brown samsonite on 21st Dec 1988.

I've heard of the irrationality of coercing belief, but this is takes the notion to new heights and levels of absurdity.

 

[Rolfe]

I can't see a third possibility. Either Bedford hallucinated that suitcase, and was havering when he told the guy from the Met on 3rd January that he'd seen a suitcase matching the description of the case that would subsequently be determined to be the bomb bag, or it was the bomb bag. The alternatives are fanciful.

First, we need to get a matter of ownership straight. We've all been misled about the blue case being Karen Noonan's. It wasn't. It was a navy blue canvas suitcase with maroon trim, an American Tourister. And it belonged to Karen's friend Patricia Coyle. Karen herself had three bags, and they all seem to have been smaller, holdall-type things.

You have the situation right as regards the FAI and Zeist. It's clear from the findings of the FAI that Mowatt was told to find that the bomb had interlined into Frankfurt. He almost says so. The reasoning is pretty threadbare, in the absence of Bogomira Erac or any mention of the word "Malta".

Although the description of the layout of the baggage container appears in the findings, and we know that Bedford's description of that case was given in evidence at the FAI, the fact that the case was a dead ringer for the bomb bag seems to have been overlooked by absolutely everyone. The logic is simply that the loaders probably didn't move the cases, so as there was nothing on the second layer at Heathrow, it must have been a Frankfurt bag. The next bit (which is completely barking) is that as most of the blast-damaged bags (actually 24 out of about 40, I think) were interlined into Frankfurt, then the bomb bag was also interlined into Frankfurt.

However, at the FAI, it is stated categorically that none of the passengers had a suitcase that could be described as a brown Samsonite. This seems quite innocuous in context, just showing that the bomb suitcase didn't belong to any of the passengers. Nobody has noticed that this statement also means that the Bedford suitcase didn't belong to any of the passengers.

Crawford's work seems to confirm that none of his "first fifteen" had such a bag, even though he didn't say so in so many words. Clearly, he was looking for any evidence that one of these passengers might have been an unwitting mule whose luggage was interfered with, and he says he found none. Having a brown Samsonite suitcase would have rung all sorts of alarm bells. This is particularly important as, if the Bedford suitcase was legitimate, it should have belonged to one of these 15 people.

Pete's little gem of a quote from Marquise provides further support. It seems they even asked people who had been in contact with the passengers when they began their journeys to find out what they had been carrying.

At Zeist, all this was turned on its head. As you say, it looks as if they realised that the FAI story wasn't going to fly when they couldn't dictate the agenda, so the suitcase placement was rearranged. Patricia's suitcase is now placed under the bomb bag, to prove the Bedford suitcase must have been moved. At the same time all the information about the luggage and its reconciliation with the passengers that we know they had, disappears. In particular, the possibility that one of these 15 passengers did have such a case, is left open. Hey, guys, we don't know. We didn't ask!

The cynicism is breathtaking. In particular, the wilful turning of the proverbial blind eye to the accumulating evidence that Bedford saw the bomb bag, which was all there long before they started chasing rainbows on Malta, is appalling. As I said, it really seems that someone put saving Heathrow's blushes at a higher priority than catching the people who blew up the plane.

If you look at the Zeist transcripts, you see that every one of the passengers on KM180 (or their statements) is trotted up so we find out who they all are, why they were travelling, and how many bags they have. In some of the cases, we actually get a description of the bags, or at least the assurance that it wasn't a brown Samsonite.

It's quite inexplicable that we don't have the relatives or colleagues (or European hosts or whatever) of these 15 interline passengers taking the stand to tell us what luggage they were carrying, plus forensic evidence of what luggage found on the ground was matched to these people. It's a no-brainer. But we're not even given that list of people at Zeist, never mind the information about their non-possession of a brown Samsonite.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

While I don't dismiss the possibility that the right-hand case was also a brown Samsonite, I don't actually think it was.

We have to remember that all the evidence all the way through is that only the remains of one brown Samsonite were found. Not two, and certainly not three. Suppose the forensics has actually found the remains of more than one Samsonite. Is it really likely they would have fudged it so that there was only one? The left-hand Bedford bag, if nothing else, was a serious problem, and they realised this before Zeist if not at the time of the FAI. It would have been just peachy if they had another brown Samsonite corpse in the frame, to be able to say, this is the Bedford suitcase, and it wasn't the bomb bag - that one was.

But they didn't. One brown Samsonite only. The Bedford bag or bags mysteriously disappeared, don't ask awkward questions.

I think there was only ever one brown Samsonite. The one to the right may have been "similar", but I don't think it was the same.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

While I don't dismiss the possibility that the right-hand case was also a brown Samsonite, I don't actually think it was.

And I gather you have reasons. I'm inverted - I don't dismiss that I'm just reading it too literally, but I think it was a matching set. It's simple enough I'll repeat why, not for your sake of course, but others less versed.
- two cases appear in the container in the same short span on a slow afternoon (unsure if they came in at the same time or spread-out)
- Bedford: "They were [both] hard cases, the type Samsonite makes"
- "One of them was brown in colour and the other one, if it wasn't the same color, it was similar." Similar enough to merit as same or similar. Steep coincidence.
- "In size, they took up the remaining base area of the tin," as two Silhouette 4000s would do almost perfectly (sure, so would two of a lot of things, or a lot of mixed pairs... )

We have to remember that all the evidence all the way through is that only the remains of one brown Samsonite were found. Not two, and certainly not three. Suppose the forensics has actually found the remains of more than one Samsonite. Is it really likely they would have fudged it so that there was only one?

Yep. It seems they invented some blue foam to concoct a softshell replacement for Hayes' "relatively immovable surface." I could easily see them deleting the one duplicate piece they found that proved two cases, if there even was one in this maybe 40% of one case's worth of debris they found. We can accept that half the bomb case can vanish, why not roughly 100% if the blast were a bit bigger than accepted (as some evidence suggests anyway)?

No one much comments on the asymmetry of it, but there are tiny bits and then big ones, and a two-foot span of gossamer lining material. I suspect all these large pieces came from the same half of the case, but bombs usually detonate uniformly in all directions. So if a case is blown to bits on one side and the other left in large chunks, I don't think the bomb was inside it, but against one side.

That's just what I think looking at it, however, and I have no forensics training to back it up. I also have no hard time imagining fragments as small and smaller than those shown being never found, ground into mud, etc. So there's certainly no implied magic to this mysterious disappearing suitcase. Nor is it hard to imagine the investigation allowing that ambiguity to come out seeming like a lone case compared to Bedford's two.

The left-hand Bedford bag, if nothing else, was a serious problem, and they realised this before Zeist if not at the time of the FAI. It would have been just peachy if they had another brown Samsonite corpse in the frame, to be able to say, this is the Bedford suitcase, and it wasn't the bomb bag - that one was.

It's true that one's inescapable - it had better have been moved to a far corner... I'm relieved they didn't plant an extra Samsonite or two, leaving us arguing that it was planted, rather than what it is - just friggin' not there when it should be.

But they didn't. One brown Samsonite only. The Bedford bag or bags mysteriously disappeared, don't ask awkward questions. I think there was only ever one brown Samsonite. The one to the right may have been "similar", but I don't think it was the same.

Rolfe.

I tried compiling all the damaged suitcase material once, and there was some gray hard-shell case or two heavily blasted, but nothing else, as I recall, similar to brown. Definitions of similar vary, usually veering far from "same or similar." So in this version, the second, similar, irrelevant Bedford bag must have been moved to some remote corner or simply never recovered.

As I said, at least my disappearing bag has an explanation.

BTW, you guys are quoting some things I don't remember seeing. Bags in the slanted portion? Must have just glossed over some parts and then set what I thought I gleaned into stone? It happens sometimes.

Pete2, great find. Marquise helps underline the relevance of this interline shed sighting of a pair of cases owned by none of the interline passengers. That means they are ... something else, something unusual and unexplained, and remarkably like the bomb bag in description. Huh.

 

[Rolfe]

Oh, I'm not trying to debunk your take on this. I just have a different take which I think is also valid. I'm happy to let you continue with the thoughts about how it might have happened if there were two brown Samsonites in the container when Bedford saw it, and I'll take the scenario where there was only one. Hopefully, one or other will draw ahead as we explore the possibilities.

Fundamentally, I think the case for one of the bags Bedford saw (probably the left-hand one but I'll let you carry on with the thoughts on the right-hand one) being the bomb bag, is extraordinarily strong without having to say exactly how the bag was moved in order for the explosion to have occurred where the damage to the container suggests it occurred.

I don't think anyone could dispute that it's eminently possible to dream up several plausible scenarios where one of the Bedford bags ends up in a position to have been the centre of that explosion. Add that to the fact that the Bedford bag seems to have been ruled out as the property of an innocent interline passenger, and there being no evidence of any brown Samsonite suitcase being recovered at Lockerbie other than the bomb bag, and it's QED as far as I'm concerned.

However, having said that, I think it's good to get our heads round the various possibilities regarding how the explosion came to be in the place where it apparently was, as the counterbalance to the wildly improbable "far corner of the container" scenario dreamed up by the judges.

You take the two-brown-Samsonites possibility, and I'll take the single, 'K?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

By the way, the bit about some of the upright cases being in the sloping section comes from the court transcript. Apparently Bedford was asked to load a container as close as he remembered to the way he last saw AVE4041 that afternoon, and the result was photographed. That photograph was produced at Zeist, and he was asked about it.

The back row in that photograph is described as being so full that several cases have their spines resting not on the flat floor, but on the sloping part, and are thus leaning into the container. That seems to me to be much more consistent with there having been ten cases in the container at that point (which would be eight on the back row), than six (which would be only four on the back row). My guess is that the flat part of the floor would have taken about six cases, depending on the depth of each one. Oddly, though, the FAI findings indicated the lower number, even though all Bedford's evidence was available to that court.

If there were some cases in the sloping section, this makes it easier for one of my possible scenarios to be considered, which is that the second Bedford suitcase was actually one the terrorist removed from the back row and placed to the right of the bomb bag as a sort of place-holder, to guard against the bomb being casually slid to the inboard side of the container. It would have been possible to take one of the ones in the sloping part for that purpose, without leaving an obvious gap in the line-up.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Fer sure on divergent views. I just took the chance to make sure my reasoning was on the record. Did it better than I expected this late, with plenty of snark.

For various reasons, most people who've made a study of this, argued for its relevance in court, etc., has gone with the one-bag route. Even if you wound up agreeing with me, I'd want you to try and take that stance, for fullness of approach, etc. Because for the life of me, I can't take that line and hold it long, always slipping to plural again.

Much else to talk about here, but not for me right now.

Oh, and thanks for the tip on Bedford's loading exercise. I'll have to review that sometime and try to make a new graphic. All that would be relevant to what happened next.

 

[Rolfe]

Too late to edit my earlier post on the one-or-two brown Samsonites question, so I'll add my extra thought here.

As you know, I cannot make the Maltese clothes into anything innocent or planted, no matter how much I want to or how much I think about it. I can only conclude, unlikely as it originally seemed, that these clothes were genuinely purchased from Tony Gauci before the bombing, by someone connected to the terrorist gang, and were then packed in the primary suitcase. The fact that some reasonably substantial pieces of some of these items survived, is to me a very strong argument against the primary suitcase itself having vapourised, and the pieces being from a different brown Samsonite.

Now I realise you can work on the assumption that the clothes were in the second suitcase, not the bomb bag, and that it also was prepared and planted by the terrorists. It's not impossible, which is why I say, please carry on and try to convince me. However, I don't completely disbelieve all the evidence of bits of plastic and other pieces of the radio having been found blasted into the fragments of the clothes, and this suggests these clothes were in the same suitcase as the bomb. I also don't entirely disbelieve the theory that the blue Babygro was wrapped round the radio, and shreds of that were found blasted into a number of other items. Again, that suggests identifiable material surviving from the primary suitcase.

On the other hand the mountain rescue team said they found the Babygro intact, so please carry, on, don't let me stop you!

Rolfe.