Lockerbie: London Origin Theory

[Rolfe]

Oh, you know, and there's also the blast-elevation clues.

I missed that bit.

I'll just throw this in for fun. Here is where the German cops thought the explosion was, right at the start. This was probably derived from the Scottish cops' description of the location.

Not very meaningful, no measurements, but there you go. Within a couple of weeks, Hayes was saying it was 16 to 18 inches up. That doesn't look like 16 to 18 inches to me.

In the end, Claiden said 10 inches. If you want my opinion, that was the highest the investigators could get him to place it. The bomb suitcase was only 9 inches deep.

If you really believe these results (and all that stuff about the shadowing of the base) mean that the explosion could not possibly have been on the bottom layer, then in that case the bomb came from Frankfurt. No possible question about it. How you explain what the Bedford bag was in that case, is up to you, because I can't explain it.

Bear in mind two things. One is that there has to be a margin of error in that height estimate. The other is the sloping area to the left. It's perfectly possible the case Bedford saw was already partly in that area with the left-hand-side elevated a bit. Like this.

Then again, bear in mind the storm that night. Ninety mile an hour winds up at cruising altitude, winds that delayed the feeder flight by 20 minutes, caused ATC to send the Clipper up north over Scotland, and spread the debris of the crash out into the North Sea and beyond. Do you seriously think luggage in a container couldn't shift two or three inches?

It may be that the forensics split 60/40 in favour of the second layer. Maybe even 70/30. That won't do. With that level of suspicion on the bottom layer, a case with exactly the right description that appeared from nowhere in that position, and definitely wasn't legitimate luggage, and then vanished again into nowhere leaving not a single fragment to be picked up in the mix, you need virtual certainty that the explosion was too high.

I don't believe you have anything close to certainty. If you think you do, you need to go look on the 727 for the bomb.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

The best clues pointed to London, and the first choice made was to look for the bomb anywhere but London. [....]

The evidence they had was a conflict over Iran about this would be awkward. Iraq would a natual ally, but we just had eight years of that and planners had decided with the build-up wegave, Iraq was now the threat to deal with. Plus the Iranian grievance starting the tit-for-tat was awkwardly good. The destruction of IR655 is not a good foot to start an escalating conflict on. You thought Gulf of Tonkin portended fairly for a land war in Asia...

So, the decision, I suspect, was to blame "not Iran." Core facts with a clear lead had to be stepped away from. Deciding exactly who to then blame took some months, but not as many as most people think.

Interestingly, I've had a couple of conversations with John Ashton about this, and I really can't see the sense of his explanation. He says the investigation was absolutely convinced it was the work of the Frankfurt PFLP-GC cell from an early stage, therefore they were convinced the bomb had come in on the feeder flight.

Frankfurt isn't that far from London in the grand scheme of things. It's not as if the PFLP-GC couldn't have got there. The cops also knew about the barometric timers, which would have had to have been loaded at Heathrow if the intention was to attack the transatlantic flight. So why would they exclude Heathrow to the point of ignoring an absolutely cromulent lead?

John says, oh but they wanted to pin it on the Frankfurt cell. And maybe the feeder flight was the main intended target! We must keep an open mind! All of that is a perfectly good explanation of why the cops didn't want to exclude Frankfurt as the origin of the bomb. It fails completely to explain why an investigation presumably actually trying to catch the culprits would exclude Heathrow.

I really don't know how you send out a "suggestion" to a terrorism investigation that they will please not find any evidence pointing to London's premier airport (BAA, basically) being at fault for this atrocity. I don't know why someone wouldn't squeal.

However, I find essentially no discussion at all of what the Bedford suitcase might have been in the police files. Any consideration regarding a Heathrow loading seems confined to considering whether one of the known Heathrow-origin suitcases might have contained the bomb. (I suspect they might have managed to cope with that so long as the bomb hadn't been added to the case at Heathrow.) But as they eliminated the legitimate Heathrow luggage from being the bomb bag they were also eliminating the Bedford suitcase from being legitimate luggage, although I don't think they really appreciated that. I see no discussion at all about the possibility of a "rogue bag" at Heathrow.

I found only one document, dated 23rd November 1989. (That's after they're pretty much committed to Malta, of course.) Reading between the lines, it seems that Helge Tepp has asked someone in the D&G if they have identified whose suitcases it was that were at the front of the baggage container. The person being asked appears not to know what Tepp was talking about, and had to go and ask Harry Bell. Harry Bell seems to have said, oh, Tepp's referring to a statment from John Bedford that describes the last two items to be loaded in the interline shed. (Not a syllable about them appearing mysteriously, or about the left-hand one answering to the description of the bomb suitcase.) The response is just to send Tepp a copy of the list of legitimate Heathrow-interline baggage that has been identified/recovered, with the apparent implication that well, must be something on that list.

The list isn't just confined to the six items known to have been loaded into the container, but also includes luggage carried by Arnaud Rubin, Peter Peirce and Joseph Curry, which didn't go in that container at all. Also, there's no arrival times, or even order of arrival, so there's no way for the recipient even to guess at which might have been "the last two items", or items that might have arrived during Bedford's break.

It really is as if someone has thrown a SEP field round those suitcases. They just aren't on the radar at all. I can't understand why a desire to implicate the PFLP-GC would cause an investigation to behave like this over such a fantastic early lead, when surely they wanted to solve the case, and there's no particular reason why that lead shouldn't lead to the PFLP-GC anyway.

As far as blaming Iran or Libya is concerned, Reagan wanted to blame Libya right from day one. The only problem was, there was all this fantastic evidence pointing to Iran. It seems that the US authorities managed to get the focus turned back on Libya after the Iran investigation didn't lead to any arrests. But I seriously don't believe the US authorities were the ones throwing the SEP field around the Bedford suitcase in 1989.

Rolfe.

Rolfe.

 

[Tricky]

Some off-topic and bickering posts moved to AAH. Cut it out, or the next warning will be canary colored.

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

 

[Rolfe]

Caustic Logic, I was thinking more about what you said about the damage to the container arguing against a bottom-level bomb, so I went to see again what had been said. Dr. Cullis of RARDE was fairly adamant that the suitcase wasn't on the bottom. Claiden rather concurred, though not so definitely. Professor Peel who was shredded by Keen on the Mach Stem calculations was mostly talking about the damage to the plane, and I think his credibility (with his five-year research project to figure all this out) was a bit battered by the end of that. It's mainly Cullis, sort of backed up by Claiden.

My opinion is that Sidhu did not move these suitcases. There is no reason to postulate that he did, other than that if he didn't then the suitcase that was under a second-level explosion didn't exist.


If the explosion was on the second layer, then the bomb must have come from Frankfurt. That held all through the FAI and beyond. But once you realise the suitcase under it didn't exist, what are the options? I think there are three.

1. Some undocumented rush tag luggage (it would have to be two pieces) that appeared with no documentation and no owner trying to trace it, and completely vanished from the debris mix afterwards
2. The bag-shuffle, with the Coyle case on the bottom and we have no idea what was above it really
3. Cullis (and Claiden) were wrong and the explosion was on the bottom.

The first is the "special pleading" I was talking about. It's silly. The second is the scenario the prosecution sold to the Court. The third is probably what happened.

The first is argued against by the wild improbability of it all, from the full baggage reconciliation. The second is argued against by Sidhu's clear and consistent statements. The third is argued against by Cullis stating that the explosion wasn't on the bottom.

So it really comes down to, is Cullis's statement about there being another case under the bomb sufficiently 100% certain to assume either that Sidhu was wrong, and repeatedly wrong, when he had no reason to lie and was first questioned only nine days after the event, or that there really were a couple of ghost cases?

I think Cullis is the evidence that goes. I think his opinion was only a degree of probability, not an absolutely certain statement. I think if all the evidence had been presented, 1 and 2 would both have looked like massive special pleading, and 3 accepted as being the probable answer.

This is where the prosecution were dishonest. They omitted the evidence that argued against 1 and 2, so that 3 would stand by default. They deprived the Court of the opportunity to weigh up all the evidence and come to its own conclusion.

This is quite hard to explain clearly, actually.

Rolfe.

 

[jargon buster]

This is where the prosecution were dishonest. They omitted the evidence that argued against 1 and 2, so that 3 would stand by default. They deprived the Court of the opportunity to weigh up all the evidence and come to its own conclusion.

But it isnt the job of the prosecution to produce evidence that may harm its case, the defence should have produced that evidence.
Its not the job of the prosecution to build a defence.

Rather than blame the defence you seek to make accusations that the prosecution were dishonest

 

[SpitfireIX]

But it isnt the job of the prosecution to produce evidence that may harm its case, the defence should have produced that evidence.
Its not the job of the prosecution to build a defence.

Rather than blame the defence you seek to make accusations that the prosecution were dishonest

I'm not sure exactly how things work in the UK/Commonwealth, but in the US the prosecution is required to disclose all of its evidence to the defense. Convictions are regularly overturned on appeal because the prosecution failed to do so; in extreme cases the prosecuting attorney or attorneys can be sanctioned, up to and including disbarment.

Also I believe Rolfe has stated repeatedly that Megrahi's defense team dropped the ball on several occasions.

 

[jargon buster]

I'm not sure exactly how things work in the UK/Commonwealth, but in the US the prosecution is required to disclose all of its evidence to the defense. Convictions are regularly overturned on appeal because the prosecution failed to do so; in extreme cases the prosecuting attorney or attorneys can be sanctioned, up to and including disbarment.

Great, so Rolfe has evidence that the prosecution withheld important evidence?
So now what, surely this is cut and dried?

Also I believe Rolfe has stated repeatedly that Megrahi's defense team dropped the ball on several occasions.

And she would be better sticking to that rather than potentially libeling prosecution lawyers.
Theres a world of difference in saying someone dropped the ball as opposed to an accusation of a deliberate act of perverting the course of justice.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm not sure exactly how things work in the UK/Commonwealth, but in the US the prosecution is required to disclose all of its evidence to the defense. Convictions are regularly overturned on appeal because the prosecution failed to do so; in extreme cases the prosecuting attorney or attorneys can be sanctioned, up to and including disbarment.

Also I believe Rolfe has stated repeatedly that Megrahi's defense team dropped the ball on several occasions.

It's a little more complicated than that. This evidence was not withheld from the defence. They had Sidhu's statements, and they eventually got Henderson's report although the prosecution did try to conceal it on the grounds that they'd decided against calling Henderson after all.

I happen to know that the defence team did not spot that they were being had for suckers with this one. However, even if they had spotted the trick, it's arguably a reasonable strategy to go along with it if they think they can still show reasonable doubt with the new scenario. Which in fact they could.

This isn't about the prosecution concealing evidence from the defence. This is about the prosecution presenting a false scenario to the Court. It's about the prosecution failing to lead evidence the Court should have been aware of in order to make a considered judgement whether or not they should discount Sidhu's repeated and credible statements about not having moved the cases.

It's still an attempt to pervert the course of justice if the defence are taken in by it.

Rolfe.

 

[jargon buster]

It's still an attempt to pervert the course of justice if the defence are taken in by it.

Not in this case it isnt, the prosecution did not conceal any evidence from the defence prior to trial, we have established that.
The prosecution now has to build a case on the evidence available and so do the defence.
If the prosecution chooses not to use something they believe isnt relevant to their case then its the job of the defence to counter their case with the relevant evidence.

As Spitfire has already said you have admitted that the defence "dropped the ball" then it may be wise to stick with that rather than creating a conspiracy where there is none.

 

[Buncrana]

All this analysis by Rolfe is undoubtedly devastating information which crushes all available arguments that can be raised against the suitcase that Bedford witnessed at Heathrow as being the bag which contained the bomb.

Doing something that was never acknowledged by the investigators, publicly at least, and by drawing on all the evidence that is available, I think Rolfe has illustrated beyond any reasonable doubt that any argumentation or theory disputing Bedford’s bag as the culprit cannot be sustained and would require special pleading of the parallel universe variety.

Nonetheless, it’s worth remembering that a conspiracy of the parallel universe variety is something that has been held up as a truth for almost 24 years now, so I hardly expect a rush by the authorities, or sadly the wider public, to demand a resolution of the irrefutable discrepancies, inconsistencies, contradictions and falsehoods that are embedded within the accepted theory of Pan Am 103, Lockerbie and the guilt of Megrahi and Libya.


With Amarjit Sidhu’s statements however, and the very fact this severely undermines the forensic assertion regarding Ms Coyle’s suitcase, there is no substantive argument for those who wish to deny the overwhelming rational that the suitcase witnessed by John Bedford contained the bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 and led to the murder of 270 people. Not only does the description of the bag not correspond to any luggage known to be in possession of those who arrived early at Heathrow, but none of the known legitimate luggage exhibits damage consistent with a bag that would need to be immediately below and in direct contact with the bomb bag.

The bag seen by John Bedford was illegitimate, introduced illicitly, and matches all the characteristics of the known primary suitcase. It was also never moved before being loaded onto 103 and ultimately was within an inch or two of the determined location of the explosion. This point regarding the precise location of the explosion within AVE4041 is the only question around this suitcase being the culprit, but given that it fits, exactly, all other conditions required and there were some uncertainties over the precise height from the base of the explosion which were initially debated – and challenged – then it would surely clear any bar set for ‘beyond reasonable doubt’?


Of course, this whole aspect doesn't even begin to discuss the evidence that was suppressed from the defence and trial at Zeist such as the break-in to airside at Heathrow at the very the terminal from where Pan Am 103 departed. Nor do we have to explain the 38min timeframe that it took between the Maid of the Seas departure and its eventual disintegration over Lockerbie.

 

[Rolfe]

Here in fact is the biggest problem for that theory. This is an extract from Dr. Cullis's evidence in chief. Turnbull (damn his eyes for a duplicitous bastard) was anxious to get Cullis to say the explosion hadn't been in the bottom case.

Q And taking then together the absence of shattering and the absence of pitting and the absence of sooting to the floor of the container, what does that tell you about the location of the explosion?
A I would conclude that the device was not in a suitcase that was on the floor of this container.
Q Do you mean immediately on the floor?
A Immediately on the floor, in contact with the floor.
Q Thank you. If there was one or more suitcases on the floor of the container, and there were, on top of those suitcases, others, and within one of those on the second level, there was an explosion, would there be anything in what you see consistent with that location?
A Yes.
Q What would that be?
A Well, looking at this region immediately in the corner nearest to me, there is an indent that looks like the imprint of a suitcase that has been impulsively driven into the base of the container.

Cullis was RARDE, and it is my belief that RARDE were given to understand at an early stage that the second layer of luggage was the Right Answer. Claiden more tentatively concurs with Cullis.

This seems to me to be opinion only, albeit the opinion of an explosives expert. If Keen had said to him, "Dr. Cullis, from your observations is it absolutely impossible that the device could have been in the bottom case?", I think he'd have had to say no. (Much as the prosecution got Borg and Mifsud to admit to a small theoretical possibility that what the Crown wanted to say just might have been the case.) I don't know what the percentages would be in this case. 10% chance it was on the bottom? 20% chance? There are so many imponderables, and every explosion is different. I don't think 0% flies.

But nobody challenged this all the way through the 1990s. The FAI accepted it, because it was in nobody's interest to finger the Bedford bag at that hearing. The person who got closest was Jim Swire, and he didn't really spot it, he just submitted to the Inquiry that the possibility of a Heathrow introduction had not been sufficiently considered. The reason being that nobody had figured out that the Bedford bag didn't exist as legitimate luggage.

Then in 1999 the prosecution have to use the same material, and they now have a defence which will go after the Bedford bag, no doubt about it. They begin by assuming it will be possible to devise a reasonable explanation for what the Bedford bag was, and so get it off the table. They discover that is not possible. The Bedford bag is not legitimate luggage. Oops.

So, the forensics guys are insisting that the explosion was on the second layer, but the bag on the bottom layer, under it, turns out to be a rogue bag. Worse still, the man who saw it describes it as a brown or maroon Samsonite hardshell, and we know the bomb bag was a maroony-brown Samsonite hardshell. Even worse, the only bits of maroony-brown Samsonite hardshell recovered from the ground were bits of the bomb suitcase. And in fact there were no bits of anything else unidentified which might have been a suitcase below the bomb, even if we assume the description of the mystery case wasn't accurate.

Oops, again.

The only thing stopping that from being the bomb is Cullis's opinion, and it doesn't look as if Cullis's opinion has a hope in hell of standing up against that evidence. The explosion was just too close to the position of the mystery bag, and luggage can shift a little in a container in a turbulent flight anyway. Never mind the margin of error.

Basically, they are screwed. They need a different scenario, to keep that one off the table. They desperately need a candidate for something that was under the bomb bag, and none of the Heathrow luggage will do. The only case they have is Patricia's.

So they don't lead Sidhu, so that the court won't hear him repeat that he didn't move that bloody luggage, how many times do I bloody well have to tell you! And they don't lead the baggage reconciliation in the hope that the rogue nature of the Bedford case won't become apparent.

All the defence had to do was lead Sidhu, lead the baggage reconciliation, and find their own expert who would say that nobody can say with certainty that the explosion wasn't in the bottom case. And if they'd done that, the entire investigation would have been a laughing stock. But first you have to spot that the submission that the Bedford case had been moved is a Trojan Horse. Which they didn't.

IANAL, but someone who is has said that this amounts to an attempt to pervent the course of justice. (Apparently there is no offence of perverting the course of justice. The offence is the attempt, and whether or not it succeeded is beside the point. Also, it is irrelevant whether the defence could have spotted it and didn't.)

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

[...]

IANAL, but someone who is has said that this amounts to an attempt to pervent the course of justice. (Apparently there is no offence of perverting the course of justice. The offence is the attempt, and whether or not it succeeded is beside the point. Also, it is irrelevant whether the defence could have spotted it and didn't.)

Rolfe.

The suppression, withholding and non-disclosure of evidence, the systematic distortion and misrepresentation of actual evidence available, and the blatant lying in the court, must be viewed as nothing less than an attempt to pervert of the course justice - in anyone’s world no matter the context.

Those heading the Scot’s end of the investigation, and those at the forefront of the Crown offices efforts are most certainly central to this corruption of the evidence, investigation and trial. For too long, miscarriages of justice, once uncovered, have resulted in more often than not simply a celebration that the innocent victim has been cleared and released. Meanwhile those involved and responsible for the actual miscarriage in the first instance have escaped unpunished or at worst faced some half-hearted criticism or if it was viewed as really, really naughty, forced to retire/resign from their positions.

If someone like Sheridan can be hauled over the coals and dumped in chokey for perjury (which, let’s be honest while intolerable, hardly amounted to the same injustice around the deaths of 270 people) then most certainly those entrusted with upholding the values of law and justice, when found the have deliberately set out to conceal and corrupt evidence collected, should face far more severe and stringent punishment.

The public sentiment, after being coerced into wars on false premises, the expenses scandals, the banking bailouts, and the exposing of collusion between politicians, media and police over phone tapping, has reached beyond toleration and streched the previously meek acceptance of such flagrant disregard for laws by people in power beyond breaking point.

Never perhaps has the term, strike while the iron is hot, been more suited.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, you heard Linklater. You're alleging an enormous conspiracy, so you must be wrong. Dear Magnus, first nobody is alleging a huge conspiracy, they're alleging confirmation bias and groupthink, and secondly, it wouldn't exactly be the first time this happened.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Meanwhile those involved and responsible for the actual miscarriage in the first instance have escaped unpunished or at worst faced some half-hearted criticism or if it was viewed as really, really naughty, forced to retire/resign from their positions.

[....] those entrusted with upholding the values of law and justice, when found the have deliberately set out to conceal and corrupt evidence collected, should face far more severe and stringent punishment.

Regarding that. Remember, we have always said Colin Boyd lied to the court about the redacted cables. If you look at the detail of what was said, Boyd actually seems to consult with another lawyer before he answers the question. It was Boyd who said it, but Boyd quite possibly didn't realise he was lying because he was only repeating the information he had been given.

The person who actually chose to present the court with a lie (via Boyd) was the PF for Lothian and Borders, whose name I know but maybe not on a public forum. A little bird told me that after that episode, this gentleman was absolutely terrified, fully believing that he would be reported to the Law Society and subject to professional discipline for lying to the court. He thought his career was over.

Not only wasn't it over, but he had been serially promoted and has prospered markedly. Nothing happened to him at all. At some point someone raised this with the judges, querying why no action was taken. The response was along the lines of, oh, we forgot all about that.

Rolfe.

 

[jargon buster]

The person who actually chose to present the court with a lie (via Boyd) was the PF for Lothian and Borders, whose name I know but maybe not on a public forum. A little bird told me that after that episode, this gentleman was absolutely terrified, fully believing that he would be reported to the Law Society and subject to professional discipline for lying to the court. He thought his career was over.

Not only wasn't it over, but he had been serially promoted and has prospered markedly. Nothing happened to him at all. At some point someone raised this with the judges, querying why no action was taken. The response was along the lines of, oh, we forgot all about that.

A little bird hey?
Well name him on a public forum or not, you have identified him and called him a liar.

 

[Buncrana]

On the March 28, 1989, Chief Investigating Officer Chief Superintendent John Orr addressed the co-ordinating committee of the Lockerbie investigators at the Control Centre in Lockerbie. In reviewing the evidence to date Orr stated that in respect of the loading of AVE 4041-

"Evidence from witnesses is to the effect that the first seven pieces of luggage in the container belonged to Interline passengers and the remainder was Frankfurt luggage."

I'd like to hear Orr's reasoning, logic and details of the passenger baggage reconciliation he was working from to allow such a conclusion of those passengers who had arrived at Heathrow with 7 pieces of checked luggage. Because as the FAI was made aware of, DC Henderson was tasked with collating all passengers to legitimate luggage. And there should have been, according to his inquiries, only six legitimate items in the container AVE 4041 belonging to Heathrow interline pasengers:

1. Grey hardshell - Bernt Carlsson
2. Grey Samsonite - Charles McKee
3. Grey hardshell - Charles McKee
4. Navy blue soft Samsonite - Matthew Gannon
5. Tan soft American Tourister - Michael Bernstein
6. Tan soft holdall - Michael Bernstein


All enquiries into other interline passengers showed that they were in possession of only hand luggage for PA103. The only other item of luggage he could possibly be referring to would be Hubbard's case. But he was neither an interline Heathrow passenger and his suitcase did not exhibit damage consistent with a bag that would need to be directly underneath the bomb bag. Which is where it would need to be if you accept Bedford's statement of its position when last seen, and that Sidhu did not move any of the bags Bedford loaded before adding the Frankfurt luggage.

So what are the 7 items of legitimate luggage that Orr has declared as identified and thus able to direct the investigation away from Heathrow? Or is he perhaps just wanting to make this conclusion while knowing full well that the bag described by Bedford, and not moved by Sidhu, (which by this time matches the known characteristics of the primary bag) has not been matched to a corresponding interline passenger and no one knows how it got into AVE4041?

 

[Buncrana]

There is, of course, an important distinction between legitimate scepticism and ‘conspiracy theory’ as it is now commonly used in a pejorative way. Using the term on its own, stripped of the qualifying context, it is meaningless and it becomes the pejorative term and insult now commonly used as in public debate. Precisely as Mr Linklater was attempting to insinuate on Saturday. However, if a conspiracy theorist is anyone who believes a conspiracy theory, even just 1, then pretty much everyone is a conspiracy theorist, rendering the term completely pointless.

Stefan Kiszko
The Birmingham Six
Sally Clarke
Barry George
Amanda Knox (bizarrely this was the acceptable face of conspiracy theorising and scepticism)

All miscarriages of justice that involved corrupt individuals, individuals that were corrupted by others, those who turned a blind eye, those who may fear repercussions for treading outside the group thinking or those who are nothing more than wholly incompetent. Sometimes the conspiracy can include all the aforementioned.

Watergate
Iran Contra
Extraordinary Rendition
The Iraq Dossier
TP-AJAX - 1953 Iranian coup d'état.
RUC and Loyalist collusion in N Ireland.

All involving many different actors, offices and institutions that collaborated in an effort to deceive, on a massive scale, the true nature of events, and decisions made, often at State level. Did they all need to gather in one room and plan it like Bond villains? I doubt it.

All of which Mr Linklater would imply that, “for the conspiracy theorists, who have excluded reason and logic, the preposterous is all that remains.”

Despite this, there remains an enduring implication and inference that 'conspiracy theorists' share a certain mind set, and that, for example, believing that Tony Blair wished to go to war in Iraq for reasons other than those he openly admits to, or the Queen is a subterranean shape-shifting lizard creature in disguise, or it was remote controlled planes that were used on 9/11, and then those who harbour scepticism or legitimate concerns over potential miscarriages of justice are all degrees of the same thing.

Certainly however, there are undoubtedly conspiracy theorists that buy into all of these wholesale without really thinking critically. Nevertheless, this could applied to almost an area of debate where blind fervor overshadows logic and reason.

That said, on Saturday Mr Linklater spoke confidently about this kind of simplification of plausibility of ‘conspiracy’ which would also describe the career of professional propagandists like David Aaronovitz, a man who guffs into the faces of the collective public with every offensive and ignorant article or book he writes.

Legitimate scepticism and inquiry should not and cannot be simply dismissed disparagingly nor neither used as a tool to belittle the argument by consigning it to a pejorative meme. Nevertheless, as Mr Linklater is testament to, it continues to be so, as if no ‘conspiracy theory’ has ever been subsequently proven to be, in reality, a ‘conspiracy fact’.

 

[Rolfe]

On the March 28, 1989, Chief Investigating Officer Chief Superintendent John Orr addressed the co-ordinating committee of the Lockerbie investigators at the Control Centre in Lockerbie. In reviewing the evidence to date Orr stated that in respect of the loading of AVE 4041-

Evidence from witnesses is to the effect that the first seven pieces of luggage in the container belonged to Interline passengers and the remainder was Frankfurt luggage

I'd like to hear Orr's reasoning, logic and details of the passenger baggage reconciliation he was working from to allow such a conclusion of those passengers who had arrived at Heathrow with 7 pieces of checked luggage. Because as the FAI was made aware of, DC Henderson was tasked with collating all passengers to legitimate luggage. And there should have been, according to his inquiries, only six legitimate items in the container AVE 4041 belonging to Heathrow interline pasengers:

1. Grey hardshell - Bernt Carlsson
2. Grey Samsonite - Charles McKee
3. Grey hardshell - Charles McKee
4. Navy blue soft Samsonite - Matthew Gannon
5. Tan soft American Tourister Maroon soft Samsonite suit carrier - Michael Bernstein
6. Tan soft holdall - Michael Bernstein

All enquiries into other interline passengers showed that they were in possession of only hand luggage for PA103. The only other item of luggage he could possibly be referring to would be Hubbard's case. But he was neither an interline Heathrow passenger and his suitcase did not exhibit damage consistent with a bag that would need to be directly underneath the bomb bag. Which is where it would need to be if you accept Bedford's statement of its position when last seen, and that Sidhu did not move any of the bags Bedford loaded before adding the Frankfurt luggage.

So what are the 7 items of legitimate luggage that Orr has declared as identified and thus able to direct the investigation away from Heathrow? Or is he perhaps just wanting to make this conclusion while knowing full well that the bag described by Bedford, and not moved by Sidhu, (which by this time matches the known characteristics of the primary bag) has not been matched to a corresponding interline passenger and no one knows how it got into AVE4041?

[FIFY, that list is wrong. Item 5 should be maroon soft-sided Samsonite suit carrier. I think I read a note about Lawrence Bennett's suitcase by accident and made a wrong entry earlier.]

That's interesting, I didn't know that. I wonder why he said seven? I have no clue where he got that from. Where is your source for that quote? I'd like to read a bit more of that little lot. The FAI itself, in the findings, actually says "six or seven", twice. Clearly aware that there is some lack of clarity about that.

The seventh item of Orr's can't be Hubbard's case. I can't see any sign that the Scottish investigators even realised it was a possibility it might have been. Fuhl's report muses that it might have travelled to Heathrow via Hamburg, but then says, oh well the Scottish police want to treat it as a Frankfurt item. (This does suggest they discussed it but I don't know when.) Besides, Hubbard wasn't an "interline passenger" by any stretch of the imagination.

My reading of the investigation during 1989 suggests that they simply assumed that the provenance of the Bedford suitcase would become clear once the baggage reconciliation was complete. I'm not sure at what point they realised that had not happened. In late November, a query from the BKA about the Bedford case was answered simply with a list of the complete Heathrow interline baggage as identified, without even specifying which items were in AVE4041 and which weren't. Of course that could have been obfuscation, if they'd realised by then. If the realisation came later than August 1989, it wouldn't be heeded anyway because they were in full cry to Malta after that.

Interesting that Orr said seven in March 1989 though.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I was checking something out in the Zeist transcripts. (Taylor has bought into the "rearranged luggage" meme, hook line and sinker - obviously because it lets him say the Bedford suitcase was replaced on top of the Coyle case.)

The full transcript of the FAI was there in the court to be referred to when wanted. This happened on a number of occasions when witnesses who had given evidence at the FAI were reminded of what they had said there, for example Bedford, Walker and Claiden. There is however no acknowledgement that the FAI worked on the basis that the cases had not been moved on the tarmac, or why that was so. There is no acknowledgement that the Zeist scenario is completely different from the FAI scenario.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

OK, I got the source. Leppard quoting his unnamed police informer.

By the way, we really should give Baz a bit of credit here.

http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=384142&rel_no=1

Assuming he's telling the truth, he wrote to John Major (then PM) in 1996, pointing out that the police may have made a colossal blunder in eliminating the Bedford suitcase. This was based only on having read about it in Leppard. He got a standard brush-off letter saying that the FAI had found that the bomb came from Frankfurt. Of course Major wasn't going to listen. The FAI was told to come to that finding, anyway.

Unfortunately he's not good at adapting his explanation to accommodate his readers. All he can do is repeat the same form of words and disagree violently if you express the same concept in a different way.

Rolfe.