Pan Am 103: Unaccompanied bag from Malta: Evidence?

[Rolfe]

I had thought about that too. The thing that argues against it is that apparently the BKA contacted the Maltese authorities in early February 1989 to ask about the baggage records for KA180. The timing suggests they had a look at Bogomira's souvenir, checked off the entries against the handwritten records they already had regarding incoming flights, and identified tray 4489 at station 206 as the smoking gun.

This seems to have taken no more than about ten days or so. Yes, it would be possible to have fabricated it, but why on earth were the BKA trying to fabricate evidence to link to Malta, unilaterally, only about six weeks after the actual crash? It doesn't make a blind bit of sense.

If they'd sat on the Erac printout until August, and only then come up with the Malta connection, I'd be as suspicious as hell. It would fit in beautifully with the stuff that seems to have surfaced in September. But the Maltese baggage controller says he was contacted in February, which is when he dug up the records for KA180.

Why they sat on that until August, I have no real idea. The D&G people were apparently running around Malta getting nowhere in March, purely on account of the clothes with the Maltese labels. The BKA knew about tray 4489 and KA180 but didn't tell them. Might have made a difference if they had, who knows.

My best guess is that when they were shown the cast-iron copper-bottomed evidence that there was nothing untoward about KA180's payload, the BKA initially decided it was a dead end. (Why, when the Maltese clothes were common knowledge?) Only by August did someone decide that maybe this bit of evidence should be added to the common pool.

According to Coleman, it was the information about KA180 that took the D&G people back to Malta and this time they were led almost directly to Gauci. Which is something else I'd like to know a little more about.

I'm essentially convinced that bloody bomb went into the system at Heathrow. That it was never near Frankfurt-am-Main. Nevertheless, I'm deeply curious as to what was going on at Frankfurt, because something was going on there, for sure.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

why on earth were the BKA trying to fabricate evidence to link to Malta, unilaterally, only about six weeks after the actual crash? It doesn't make a blind bit of sense.
[...]
I'm essentially convinced that bloody bomb went into the system at Heathrow. That it was never near Frankfurt-am-Main. Nevertheless, I'm deeply curious as to what was going on at Frankfurt, because something was going on there, for sure.

Well, I'm not sure something was going on at Frankfurt - it could just be that nothing suspicious did show and to eliminate Bedford's clues, had to be hidden and perhaps replaced. I know, it sounds like I'm conflating the British lead and German interests, which seem so at odds. Allow me to explain...

First, I just have a hard time with that coincidence that a non-Maltese bag, destined for 103A, really was coded at just the time and place to appear like it was from, of all flights, KM180. If this really was in the computer, why wasn't it gotten up front and used to settle the dispute all at once and by official means? It's just too convenient, with nothing to verify it by. Quite possibly not the genuine data.

So, if it were faked/altered, and again no one could ever prove that now, it would seem to be under either BKA control post Berg, under Berg's control post-Erac, under Erac' control, or somewhere else off to the side we don't know about. Those are all Germans, helping prove the bomb did slip through their airport (Pan Am's part anyway). Hmmm... "unilaterally?"

Ultimately the Anglo-American side called the shots in this, and cold get a paper printed up with one right contact and a stack of cash. Quick job, as soon as mid-January the Brits and probably FBI knew it had to be something shady from Germany, PLEASE, IT HAS TO BE! No need for BKA policy, they could just be left holding this and puzzling for months over whether to act on it or not, since it's so weird.

But even at the official level, I'd think neither the UK nor Germany wanted the Autumn Leaves people to have struck. Better any obscure, unforeseeable, remote villain, but not those bombs. The Jordanian intelligence/BND/CIA(?) ones. We know, as they did, such would be quite obvious if it started at London. 38 minutes plus Bedford's bags? Case closed! Germany let that one slip through, and so did the UK it seems. Not too good.

So in the long-run, it was in Germany's interest to help cover up the London aspect. They create a solvable mystery by squelching the airport records and eventually what emerges? Yes, it passed through here, and it came from KM 180, huh! Wonder that's gonna lead? Perhaps there was some cohesion in the investigation after all, simply masked with the noisy substanceless snarls and counter-snarls of 1989?

How do you feel about that line of thinking?

 

[Rolfe]

Too convoluted, I think. Sometimes coincidences happen. The clothes being from Malta and tray 4489 seeming to have come from Malta is within my tolerance zone.

I'll give it some more thought though.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Alright. Well, I've got to get back to the Divide now.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Sorry, some kind of terseness-inducing breakdown moment. Nothing personal.

 

[Buncrana]

I remain highly suspicious of the whole Erac printout story and it's apparent divine intervention corroborating the Maltese clothes purchase. I think this piece of evidence has earned this cynicism, due not just to it's very convenient nudge towards Malta, but down to the superabundance of inconsistencies and suspicious surroundings of the other 'key' pieces of evience presented at Zeist.

Given we know that the judges themselves conceded there was a huge hole in the prosecution case illustrating any possible method in which Megrahi inserted the bomb-bag at Malta, nevertheless deciding he must have somehow, without the Erac printout it would have rendered their even highly tenuous (non-existent) presumption absolutely impossible. Erac's printout presented a bridge between the two areas where there was not a solitary piece of evidence uncovered throughout all the years of investigation.

ETA: Sorry i wasn't being completely clear above. The 'two areas' I refer to that are bridged are the departure of the bag from malta and the arrival of the bag at Frankfurt. No evidence whatsoever, over the 11 years of every LE agency the US and UK could muster (and others no doubt) investigating, aside of course from Mrs Erac's and the BKA's printout.

 

[Rolfe]

I have to agree, but I'm awfully torn. We know the story says Bogomira made the printout on 22nd December, and put it in her locker either that evening or later. She didn't say anything about it over the next few days when she was apparently at work, as she speaks of a "New Year" holiday, not a Christmas one. I do find this strange, because surely the BKA were all over the place that week?

Except, if they were, how come the data that should still have been on the computer weren't saved? But if these data were already gone for some reason, why wasn't there an all-points bulletin out for anything that might still exist? It seems inconceivable that the BKA didn't go there, dammit, even the newspaper reports from the time say they did. But even if they didn't, how come the airport security and baggage security people themselves weren't trying to save the data, and searching for anything that was still available? This is the first oddity.

However, she wasn't prompted to volunteer the information about the printout at that point, and off she went to Slovenia for a fortnight. Lucky girl. She got back in mid-January, and a couple of days later something seems to have reminded her about the printout. I speculated earlier that it might have been the visit of the Pan Am security man from London (Jones?), which he describes in The Maltese Double Cross. She goes to Berg and tells him she has the printout. He's very surprised as he believes all the data were wiped. He then tells her to search the filing cabinets in case anything else was inadvertently kept.

That's weird. Didn't they carry out such a search earlier, when they realised the data had been wiped from the computer? I can't find any reasonable explanation at all for the apparent failure to secure the evidence at Frankfurt, and even more so, for the absence of any descriptions of a real search, or why the information was wiped before it could be saved, or any furious recriminations flying around. Even Jones doesn't volunteer any explanation.

We're close to the end of January now, and Berg takes the printout to the BKA. The BKA take a look at it and presumably check through the entries against the paper information they have secured. They fix on tray 4489 quite quickly as apparently coming from KM180, and since there was no passenger booked from KM180 to PA103A, they decide this is significant.

They contact Air Malta in early February, and ask for the baggage records of KM180. Air Malta digs the stuff up and obliges. The BKA discover that the Maltese records (in marked contrast the the Frankfurt ones) are tighter than a duck's arse, and there was no unaccompanied bag. So they just shelve the whole thing, tell nobody, and leave it. Only six months later do they decide to pass this information to the Scottish police.

Bogomira could be lying, but she comes over fairly credible. The printout she kept could have been altered (re-typed with an extra line, or with a line substituted), which would be in line with what we suspect happened to the Horton manual page. However, the evidence suggests that if this was done, it happened in late January 1989, which is awfully early for directed shenanigans.

So, I'm torn. I can't quite figure out a secnario where - or maybe when - that printout was interfered with.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I suppose the sequence I'm imagining is that it was the printout, and identifying that an item seemed to have come from KM180, that prompted the BKA to contact Air Malta in February. The timing just fits so well. This would suggest that tray 4489 really did exist on the printout originally.

I suppose the only other thought might be that they contacted Air Malta because of the clothes. If they were simply trying to find some other airport to push the blame back to, I suppose they might have thought of Malta because of the clothes, and just tried out KM180 on spec. Then when they found the records were watertight, they just backed off.

In that scenario, although Bogomira is on the level, the printout shows nothing interesting. We then have to propose that the BKA then decided, in August, to implicate KM180 anyway, and to use the printout to do it. They copied it exactly, only with that extra line about tray 4489 inserted. Hey presto, Malta it is.

I'm not that enamoured with this explanation, partly because it seems daft to decide to frame KM180, if you already know that plane has a set of luggage records that refute your suggestion. But it's a thought. What think you?

Rolfe.

 

[Buncrana]

Yeah, I'm perplexed as to the scenario which fits with the whole tale being contrived, but, as I say, given the other crucial pieces of evidence, and Bogamire's documents significance to the whole prosecution's picture, it's surely natural to be wary? In my initial scenario, perhaps the BKA had indeed secured most, if not all, of the relevent records for baggage movements around Frankfurt on 21 Dec, and were horrified at the amount of stray and unaccompanied baggage that was swilling around the system? Some of which were either known to be loaded onto, or were certainly destined towards the parked 103A.

The FBI had reported after all, despite the 103 disaster, that in Sep '89, operations around the baggage areas were certainly not tightened-up, and they had reported how a airport worker had wandered up and placed two bags onto the belt at a coding station without noting or recording these bags. So, if the baggage system was this lax after the 103 bombing, then what the hell was it like before? The same, probably worse?

So, if the BKA have a list of records, showing unrecorded baggage that doesn't tally with the completary airline's records, then that is a huge problem for the airport and the security officials assigned to deal with this. I wonder if phoning Malta was simply part of a larger exercise in which the German's had spotted a rogue bag entering the system at the time Air Malta had been unloaded and checked into the coding station, but were never at all sure where it had actually arrived from, apart from the timing coincidence? Did they also contact Syrians about their flight, did they also contact Quantas about an earlier flight were unknown baggage had entered the system at the same time that flight's baggage was introduced into the Frankfurt system.

The fact that the BKA contacted Malta in late January does not with certainty mean they were working from the discovery of Bogamire's printout. It may have simply been a routine BKA check against airlines who had coincidentally touched down and were unloaded at Frankfurt as yet another bag/bags had entered their handling system without any trace-back record as to their precise origin. Of course, we wouldn't know had they ever contacted anyone else, as no one else bar Air Malta mattered by the time of the trial came.

And again, I simply can't envisage that securing the full records was not considered by anyone in the BKA on the 21st or 22nd Dec. To suggest the records from this airport, and to 103A, weren't even given a thought by anyone for more than a week is preposterous. That's even if we accept that 'a week' was the cut-off for the computerised records, which in itself has been disputed.

If Bogamire did take the list a some sort of weird memento, she surely didn't study it that closely, given it was simply dumped in her locker, and therefore could it have been manipulated by the BKA to show 8849 neatly tucked in the list, and she would inadvertently confirm it's details and source?

 

[Caustic Logic]

Good thoughts, and Buncrana welcome back to the discussion. My main computer died today, and I'm not sure what's lost. Just seeing a third voice here again, and being on the Internet at all has improved my foul mood. Lest I lose the comment again this foreign browser with no undo...

 

[Rolfe]

That flies pretty well, Buncrana. It's an interesting reason for the disappearing records that I hadn't thought about. I was thinking, maybe the tales about the controlled drug deliveries and Jafaar being a courier and so on were at least partly true, and that the records might have vanished because it was possible to spot this sort of activity, and to see that it was being condoned (or at least blind-eyed) by the authorities.

That's still a possibility, and I still quite like the idea, but the thought that the records simply showed such a shambles that nobody wanted to air that linen in public is also interesting. I just wonder, would a mere shambles be enough to prompt such a cover-up, or would it take the extra motivation of positive evidence of wrongdoing?

It would indeed be interesting to see whether the BKA phoned a number of airports at about the same time. And again, do we know when the clothes were identified as of Maltese origin? Even if the Scottish police didn't formally contact Frankfurt about that, they could well have found out about it (was it in the news?) and thought of checking on KM180 for that reason. It could be just coincidence that it happened very soon after Bogomira produced the printout.

I'm still astonished by the very low-key approach of everyone to the vanishing Frankfurt records. It simply seems to be dismissed with a shrug by everyone, or at the most, a raised eyebrow. Did the BKA really get the lot and then pretend they hadn't, or is it possible the airport's own security people wiped the files before the BKA got there, and then simply wrung their hands and pleaded "routine"?

CL, I had a computer die on me just over a year ago and had to get a data recovery firm to retrieve my files. Expensive, but worth it, as they say. Backups, my boy!

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I'm bumping this thread because SnidelyW's mentioning of the Erac saga in the other thread got me thinking about it again.

I'm really quite taken with Buncrana's 12th March suggestion that the enquiries the BKA made of Air Malta in February 1989 might not in fact have been as a result of analysing the Erac printout and fingering tray 4489/coding station 206 at 13.07/KM180, but merely routine enquiries made to all carriers who had flights into Frankfurt on the morning or early afternoon of the fatal day. Borg's account tends to back that up, in that he refers to a general enquiry about flights heading in that direction, not to a specific request relating to KM180.

Thus we may be back to the possibility of the Erac printout being manipulated in August to introduce that orphan bag apparently pointing to KM180. While it seems that the BKA must have known that the Luqa records relating to that flight were clean, it's possible they calculated they could make enough mud stick to do the job - which is what actually happened, after all.

This all relates back to the fact that Megrahi really was at Luqa when that flight checked in, and using a false name into the bargain.

I wonder how many flights went into Frankfurt on the morning of 21st December, that might conceivably have connected with PA103A? Possibly quite a few, but still a finite number. Possibly most airports in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa had flights that might have made that connection. But even so, for a JSO officer to have been right there at the check-in desk when one of them was departing, must look like a pretty interesting lead to anyone. When we realise that it wasn't just any airport either, but the one located on the island where the bomb-damaged clothes were manufactured - well, wow.

We can pick apart tray 4489 till the cows come home. It's perfectly clear that even if genuine, it could have come from just about anywhere. Hubbard's unaccompanied Christmas presents, or pretty much anything. It's also fairly clear it couldn't have come off KM180 as suggested. Nevertheless, the simple, clear and obvious interpretation of the data as presented is that this tray represents a bag coming off KM180.

The flight where Megrahi just happened to be present at the check-in.

So is this all one huge big fat coincidence, that this orphan luggage tray that came from somewhere not-Malta and just happened to be coded in such a way that it looked as if it had come from Malta, just happened to point right to the place where Megrahi (under his false name) just happened to be that morning?

Or was the coincidence merely that Megrahi was at Luqa airport when a potential feeder flight for the doomed aircraft was departing, and the pointing was manufactured to take advantage of that?

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

I'm really quite taken with Buncrana's 12th March suggestion that the enquiries the BKA made of Air Malta in February 1989 might not in fact have been as a result of analysing the Erac printout and fingering tray 4489/coding station 206 at 13.07/KM180, but merely routine enquiries made to all carriers who had flights into Frankfurt on the morning or early afternoon of the fatal day. Borg's account tends to back that up, in that he refers to a general enquiry about flights heading in that direction, not to a specific request relating to KM180.

Thus we may be back to the possibility of the Erac printout being manipulated in August to introduce that orphan bag apparently pointing to KM180. While it seems that the BKA must have known that the Luqa records relating to that flight were clean, it's possible they calculated they could make enough mud stick to do the job - which is what actually happened, after all.

Awesome bump. That whole notion didn't sink in for me first time around, but it sounds interesting. If indeed Borg saw, or there was no, special BKA interest in KM180, that's odd if they DID have the paper. So back dating could make a bit more sense yet and time opens up to negotiate the solution it presents - the VIA-Frankfurt from Malta non-London theory. I'll have to study that angle, on down my list a ways.

I'll be out of town for a day or so, so no one demand instant responses from me and blow a gasket.

 

[Rolfe]

Borg's evidence on that point was as follows.

Q Looking at those exhibits, Mr. Borg, have you ever seen them before?

A Yes, I did.

Q Would you tell the ladies and gentlemen what those documents are, the whole package?

A That is the flight file or the ship's papers for Flight KM-180, destined to Frankfurt in Germany on the 21st of December 1988.

Q When did you first see this particular flight file?

A I saw this flight file, the first time, in February '89.

Q What were the circumstances under which you saw the flight file at that time?

A Our office in Germany had received a request from the German police requesting us whether we had any passengers or baggage connecting to Pan American flights out of Frankfurt. They said they were investigating this, they wanted this information in view of the Lockerbie incident in December, '88.

Q And what did you do with respect to their request?

A The request was passed along to me by our office in Germany. I requested the manager responsible to keep these records, to give me this relevant flight file. I went through it and gave the relevant replies to the German police.

It's impossible to say, one way or the other. I can't tell if the BKA were specifically after the records for KM180 because they had reason to believe something had come in on that flight, or whether it was a request of a more general nature.

The timeline is that Bogomira gave the printout to Berg on or just before 25th January. Berg probably gave it to the BKA fairly soon after that. The next date is of a report prepared by the BKA regarding baggage movements into and out of Frankfurt, which was dated 2nd February. Then the BKA requested these records from Air Malta some time in February.

It seems intuitive that this chain of events was precipitated by Bogomira's printout. That it took the cops about a week to go through the printout and the ancillary documentation they somehow acquired, and pick out tray 4489 as apparently having come off KM180, and then making enquiries of Air Malta as a result. Perhaps at the same time they made similar enquiries of other airports with bags aparently coming into that list, and it was Borg's insistence that there were no bags or passengers on KM180 booked through to PA103 that first pinpointed that entry as significant.

If that is the case then it seems to me impossible for tray 4489 to have been a fabrication. It's simply too early and there isn't enough time. It doesn't make any sense.

However, the other thing that makes no sense is the subsequent six-month utter silence. If the BKA got that far that quickly, to the point where they had the printout and they had the evidence of a mysterious orphan bag apparently having come through from KM180 (and it was hardly a secret that blast-damaged clothing of Maltese origin had been found on the ground, as far as I know), why did they say nothing?

Why get it pretty much sewn up in February, and not breathe a word of this until August? Didn't they want to present the fruits of their great detective work to the main investigation as soon as possible?

The alternative is that the February enquiry to Air Malta wasn't related to Bogomira's printout or tray 4489 at all, but was merely a routine enquiry to all airports that had flights coming into Frankfurt that morning or early afternoon. If that's the case, then it still leaves open the possibility that tray 4489 was an interpolation introduced in August specifically to point to the flight from Luqa, specifically because Megrahi was known to have been standing right there when that flight checked in.

I don't know. I'm speculating.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

When I started looking at this, I thought it was the timer fragment that was the key piece of evidence. It logically shouldn't be there, but there it was. Was it for real? However, while I'm still mightily interested in it, I can see it swings both ways. Even if it's entirely on the level, it's still possible it was something Jibril or Khreesat got hold of to refine their methodology.

As far as implicating Megrahi personally, it's nothing. Megrahi's connection to Bollier never had anything to do with these timers, and he was never known to have had such a timer in his possession. Even if you were to decide that the presence of such a timer necessarily means it was a Libyan plot, there's nothing specifically to implicate the Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in its execution.

Then of course there's Gauci. Of course, if Megrahi really did buy these clothes, then he's guilty, string him up and throw away the key. But he didn't. It's blindingly obvious that Gauci was pathetically anxious to please earn a nice fat reward, but that if the alleged purchase ever took place it was on a day when Megrahi wasn't there. If the investigators hadn't had other evidence suggesting Megrahi was a suspect, they'd never have pushed Gauci to identify his picture in the first place.

We know that much of what supposedly "implicated" Megrahi and Fhimah was the invention of Giaka. He told a lot of porkies about brown Samsonite suitcases and explosives in desk drawers and so on. But some of what he related was true, for example he told the CIA even before the plane blew up that Megrahi was in Luqa on 7th December. Which he was.

I'd like to know when the CIA first discovered that Megrahi was checking in at Luqa on the morning of 21st December, at the same time as KM180 was departing.

It's a bit of a coincidence that Megrahi, a JSO operative, was right there when a flight from the island where the blast-damaged clothes were manufactured took off to connect to PA103A. However, he was a frequent flyer in that part of the world, so mabe it's not such a big stretch. It's a coincidence of a whole different order that the computer printout that miraculously emerged from the total wipe-out of the Frankfurt baggage records appeared to show an orphan bag coming into the system from that very flight. This is what makes this, for me, the really crucial piece of evidence. It's the one thing that really does connect to Megrahi in a way that can't be hand-waved away.

Now we know that Megrahi couldn't have got anything on that plane. He didn't go airside while he was at the airport, and the entire alleged plan necessitated an airside accomplice to take the suitcase he (allegedly) checked in and divert it to KM180. And Fhimah, the alleged airside accomplice, wasn't even at the airport that day, and no other possible accomplice was ever identified.

We also know that nothing was smuggled on to that plane, to the limits of where certainty can take us in such matters. The Luqa loading records were tested to destruction again and again and they held up.

So please. It's a coincidence that Megrahi was there at all, but maybe not such a big one. But to take that coincidence further, so that the apparently extraneous line in the Erac printout, which must (if genuine) have been due to some other piece of luggage being coded at station 206 just when the KM180 bags were going through, seems to point right to where Megrahi actually was - well, what are we supposed to think?

In an affair bedevilled by coincidences that boggle the imagination, this one takes the biscuit. So, when did the CIA discover where Megrahi was on the morning of the day in question? If it was after the publication of tray 4489 (that is, 17th August 1989), then I suppose we have to swallow it. But if they knew earlier than that, is that the crucial point?

Is it possible the CIA discovered some time in July or August 1989 that a JSO officer was conveniently present at Luqa airport right when a flight that connected to the bombed aircraft was checking in, and then proceeded to manufacture a case against him? Consisting of an extra line added to the printout Bogomira Erac had turned in, a fragment of a timing mechanism traceable to Libya and to a manufacturer Megrahi had had business dealings with, the substitution of an unrelated piece of debris with a page bearing the model number of a type of radio mainly sold to Libya, and the torturing of Gauci's evidence to turn Megrahi into the purchaser of these clothes?

It's possible I'm on entirely the wrong track, but otherwise the coincidences are doing my head in.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

This is all about cheese.... Sorry, being facetious. Cheese and ducks, of course.

Following on from the unfortunate damage to my car caused by hitting a pair of suicidal mallards at speed just outside Lockerbie on 7th May,

I was shopping in my favourite butcher's shop on Friday and took advantage of a special offer they often have available - Lockerbie cheese (a variety of cheddar). Obviously, I'm supposed to sit up and take notice again.

Sorry for the frivolity. I'm just sad so many people are enjoying spending time chewing up the FOTL, or examining every minute detail of the Meredith Kercher murder, but hardly anybody seems enthused to get to grips with this one. I'll be serious, really.

Caustic Logic, have you any idea how to go about finding out when the CIA first became aware of Megrahi's presence at Luqa on the morning of 21st December 1988?

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

Crap, that poor duck. Did the other one die as well? That's really sad because ducks often mate for life. So a pair is often like husband and wife, though they've also been known to gay up their marriages I hear. You drove all the way home like that?

Excellent quality road kill however, and a shame not to have it eaten by someone.

I don't know off the top of my head the answer to that Q or where to find it. I'd imagine it could be found out almost anytime, considering he was on a short list of Libyans active on Malta and these people (??) can surely think quick. I'll keep in mind to see if I can find that when it's convenient. It's likely in the transcripts somewhere.

- Caustic (swish sound)

 

[Rolfe]

I suspect they knew quite early on, but it's hard to be sure. He was travelling under a false name, so it wouldn't have been immediately apparent just from looking at passenger lists. On the other hand, Giaka was a busy little bee, telling the CIA quite a bit about his movements.

The thing is, though, the initial questioning of Gauci, from September 1989, wasn't concentrating on Megrahi at all - if anything, they were trying to get him to identify Abu Talb. From the expert witness reports on Gauci's evidence, I think he wasn't shown a picture of Megrahi until February 1991. Does that mean the investigators had no idea Megrahi might be implicated at all until two years after the incident? Or is it a question of the CIA running a game of their own (centred on Giaka), and keeping these cards very close to their chest?

I'd very much welcome any information that's to be had on this.

I'm certain I killed a brace of ducks. They were in the middle of the road, necking, in a shallow dip, and I didn't see them until about a nanosecond before I hit them. What I didn't realise was that the male had become wedged in my radiator gille, and I drove all the way home from Lockerbie with it. Look, it was about 4.30am and I'd been up all night at the election count in Dumfries. (The picture is a bit of a fake though, because I didn't think to photograph it until after I'd pulled the duck out. It was originally wedged much tighter and I think head-first with the arse sticking out. After I'd been to the garage to get an estimate for the damage, and the repair man had pulled out some loose bits of grille, I went home and arranged the corpse artistically for the photograph.)

From my background, eating that would have been a bit like eating something out of the post mortem room, and we have cultural taboos on that idea!

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I suppose this will do in this thread.

I've challenged some of the Official Story supporters to explain the points of evidence that convince them Megrahi is guilty. Lots of tumbleweed, but nothing else. However, there are certain points, and the Malta baggage is the biggie.

Megrahi was checking in at Luqa for his flight to Tripoli at the next check-in desk to KM180, at the same time. And when Bogomira's printout was analysed, never mind all the other possibilities about what tray 4489 might be, the straightforward interpretation of the data is that it was something that came off KM180.

In one of the other threads, I've speculated that the decision to make this all about Libya was surprisingly early - pretty much about the time of the Thatcher/Bush phone call if not earlier. Cannistraro was appointed head of the CIA investigation, with a nod and a wink that this was one more thing he could pin on Gadaffi, because Bush sure as hell didn't want the PFLP-GC operation dissected in court.

At the same time, the CIA was talking to Giaka, who wanted to be a double agent but had the problem of not really being an agent in the first place. He contacted them in September 1988, and was passing over whatever meagre information he had all through the Lockerbie incident and investigation. He was talking about Megrahi and Fhimah as being JSO agents even before Maid of the Seas blew up.

We're led to believe by Paul Foot that the idea of blaming Megrahi didn't occur to anyone until late 1990, after the timer fragment was traced back to Bollier. And it certainly looks as if the Scottish police had no thought of any other culprits than the PFLP-GC throughout the first year of their interviews with Gauci.

This doesn't really gel, to me. If we assume I'm right about Cannistraro, then Bush decided Libya would make a handy scapegoat less than three months after the bombing. By sheer chance, evidence appears that the bomb bag may have come from Malta, and this is followed up in detail for a time. Then, much later, it actually transpires that one of the guys Giaka has been telling us are JSO agents and potential terrorists and bombers, was right there when the suspect flight was checking in.

If that's how it happened, Cannistraro must have thought he'd died and gone to heaven.

I can think of only three possible explanations here.

• This was a huge coincidence, which quite by chance completely screwed Megrahi.
• Cannistraro was right all along and Megrahi did it, God knows how.
• Megrahi was framed.

Discuss.

Rolfe.

 

[Caustic Logic]

FWIW, Re: Cannistraro, Leppard p. 211 says he "retired from the CIA in September 1990 after nearly two years leading the American intelligence investigation..."
How's that for LIHOP?
Doesn't seem to specify a date, but as the then-head of the Counter-terrorism center at CIA, I'd suspect he was in charge by default from the beginning.