What the hell was going on at Frankfurt?

[Rolfe]

I realised all the discussion regarding the Frankfurt cover-up in the Lockerbie saga was hidden in the "Unaccompanied bag from Malta?" thread, but it goes a long way beyond that of course.

Robert Black just blogged an article that links back to an older publication that intrigues me a lot. The Bombing of Pan Am Flight 103: Case Not Closed. This was written after the Zeist verdict and starts with the usual incredulity that the bench could have published a judgement explaining that Megrahi didn't do it then finished by saying they were going to convict him anyway. However, unlike the rest of the literature from that time, the author hasn't junked the Frankfurt bag-switch theory in favour of Bedford and Heathrow.

The rest of the article is an interesting assessment of the DEA/Jaafar drug-smugging bag-switch theory. It's well referenced, and although it gives Aviv and his polygraph perhaps a little too much credence it doesn't mention Coleman at all, and it's quite circumspect about Francovich's revelations. In fact, I recognise quite a lot of it from Coleman, but it's more succinct, properly referenced and balanced.

Here's a sample.

On October 30, 1990, NBC-TV News reported that "PanAm flights from Frankfurt, including 103, had been used a number of times by the DEA as part of its undercover operation to fly informants and suitcases of heroin into Detroit as part of a sting operation to catch dealers in Detroit."

The TV network reported that the DEA was looking into the possibility that a young man who lived in Michigan and regularly visited the Middle East may have unwittingly carried the bomb aboard flight 103. His name was Khalid Jaafar. "Unidentified law enforcement sources" were cited as saying that Jaafar had been a DEA informant and was involved in a drug-sting operation based out of Cyprus. The DEA was investigating whether the PFLP-GC had tricked Jaafar into carrying a suitcase containing the bomb instead of the drugs he usually carried.

The NBC report quoted an airline source as saying: "Informants would put [suit]cases of heroin on the PanAm flights apparently without the usual security checks, through an arrangement between the DEA and German authorities."{24}

These revelations were enough to inspire a congressional hearing, held in December, entitled, "Drug Enforcement Administration's Alleged Connection to the PanAm Flight 103 Disaster".

The chairman of the committee, Cong. Robert Wise (Dem., W. VA.), began the hearing by lamenting the fact that the DEA and the Department of Justice had not made any of their field agents who were most knowledgeable about flight 103 available to testify; that they had not provided requested written information, including the results of the DEA's investigation into the air disaster; and that "the FBI to this date has been totally uncooperative".

The two DEA officials who did testify admitted that the agency had, in fact, run "controlled drug deliveries" through Frankfurt airport with the cooperation of German authorities, using U.S. airlines, but insisted that no such operation had been conducted in December 1988. (The drug agency had said nothing of its sting operation to the President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism which had held hearings in the first months of 1990 in response to the 103 bombing.)

I think the evidence that the actual bomb introduction happened at Heathrow is overwhelming, compared to the evidence for the Frankfurt bag-switch. However, that still leaves the question of what happened to the Frankfurt baggage records, and was Frankfurt covering up for something regardless? Like this controlled drug-smuggling operation? Or worse?

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

I'll recap what we've uncovered about the Frankfurt situation, adapted from a couple of posts I made on the Black blog, which are now long buried.

Frankfurt police were half-expecting something like the Lockerbie disaster. They had busted the PFLP-GC cell in Neuss only 2 months previously, and most of the gang and most of their devices were still at large. These devices were obviously intended to be smuggled on to aircraft. The baggage x-ray operatives had all been warned to look out for radio-cassette players with Semtex inside. Also, the Helsinki warning specifically referred to a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt to New York, which category arguably included PA103.

Contemporary press reports have the Frankfurt police starting investigations at the airport within a couple of days of the crash. And yet, somehow, all the baggage records for that day vanished. The computer records were held in the system for about a week before being over-written, and we're supposed to believe that nobody thought of backing them up in that time.

Not only that, in an article on Robert Black's blog the designer of that computer system states that routine (tape?) backups should have been kept in case of claims for lost luggage (and there were inevitably going to be claims for lost luggage after what happened at Lockerbie - there were a number of unaccompanied cases on that plane).

In addition, Bogomira Erac, she of the souvenir printout, refers to both the facility to copy data to disc, and to routine printouts that came out of the teletype machines for every flight, and which were usually thrown away afterwards. But we're supposed to believe none of this was retained at all, nobody went through the waste-paper baskets, nothing.

Other records were also missing - the loading plan for PA103A was missing, and there were no records of the unloading of KM180, how many bags came off and so on. All that seemed to have been preserved were the interline writers records and the worksheets of the coders entering the bags into the computer system, none of which were of the slightest use without the rest of the records (but without the latter, interpretation of Bogomira's printout, when it eventually surfaced, would have been impossible).

And in spite of this monumental cock-up of the most vital information relating to the biggest terrorist ourtrage in Europe, we hear no explanations of how this happened, who was responsible, what steps were taken to try to recover anything that might still be salveagable - nothing.

Mrs. Erac describes the immediate aftermath of the crash, in Frankfurt, during which she saved her souvenir printout of the baggage records for PA103A. She tells of everyone talking about it, and even an assumption it had been a direct Frankfurt-New York flight, but never mentions the presence of police or security investigators, or being interviewed about the baggage records, or being aware of anyone else being interviewed. She is aware the records seemed to have disappeared, but volunteers no opinion on how this happened, and nobody asks her.

Relations between the Scottish and German police in the aftermath of the bombing were appalling. Contemporary press reports tell of bickering and blame-shifting, and repeated requests for the Frankfurt baggage records from the Scottish police being refused, saying they were unavailable, or had been destroyed.

Suddenly, in mid-August, Bogomira's printout (which she says she handed over in late January) appears from all this mess of incompetence or worse, like the sword Excalibur rising from the lake, complete with the entry for tray B8849, the only piece of evidence in the entire investigation even to hint at a possible Malta introduction for the bomb.

How did it happen that the records vanished? Were the police complicit in this? Did they ever really vanish, or were they just taken out of the equation? Is Mrs. Erac's story completely on the level, and her fortuitous preservation of exactly that one piece of evidence that cracked the dastardly secret operation to get the bomb on KM180, sheer chance? Are we even certain that tray B8849 was part of the printout she preserved, assuming her story is true? Why did the German police sit on this for nearly seven months before suddenly giving it to the Scots, all the while denying they had such a thing? So that it appeared at just the same time as everything else interesting - the tracing of the clothes to Mary's House, and the MST-13 fragment finally entering the chain of evidence.

So what is all this about? I have absolutely no idea.

I do note though, that initially anyway, the pressure seems more for the investigation not to get too close to the (Frankfurt-based) PFLP-GC than to go after Libya as such. Various people make allegations of being targeted by the US authorities with smearing, discrediting and punitive legal action in relation to their investigation of this case. These include Juval Aviv, Lester Coleman, Allan Francovich and James Shaughnessy. All of these individuals were alleging introduction of the bomb at Frankfurt, relating to the drug-smuggling allegations.

Someone said, "the answer to Lockerbie lies in Frankfurt". Even if the bomb wasn't introduced there, is Frankfurt the key to the apparent cover-up of probable PFLP-GC involvement and the gradually increasing pressure to go after Libya instead?

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

Someone said, "the answer to Lockerbie lies in Frankfurt". Even if the bomb wasn't introduced there, is Frankfurt the key to the apparent cover-up of probable PFLP-GC involvement and the gradually increasing pressure to go after Libya instead?

Perhaps.

I am pretty convinced that if anything is to be resolved from Frankfurt it is to do with the BKA and Autumn Leaves, the arrest and subsequent release of Khreesat et al rather than luggage stuff.

I do find it entirely bizarre that after such a disaster (no-one knew that it was a bomb until a little while later) that luggage records/passenger lists etc are not routinely scooped up by investigators/airline operators as a matter of course. That just seems to me like a no brainer. If was running an airline and one of my planes fell out of the sky I'd dam well want to know that I had all the information to hand I could get about who and what was on my plane at the time.


I think that it's plausible that the DEA was running drug sting operations out of Frankfurt at the time using Pan Am planes. Tho I also think that this is just co-incidental and is unlikely to have anything to do with the bombing. It certainly explains the large number of US personnel that were on the scene at Lockerbie very quickly, as well as a number of other anomalies that have been documented (missing suitcase/missing body/tarpaulins etc)

I suppose it follows from that, that the non existance of baggage/passenger records from Frankfurt and foot dragging over releasing the Erac printout might have something to do with US CYA.

 

[Rolfe]

Yay! Ambrosia's back! (I missed you!)

I am pretty convinced that if anything is to be resolved from Frankfurt it is to do with the BKA and Autumn Leaves, the arrest and subsequent release of Khreesat et al rather than luggage stuff.

I totally agree. Khreesat made one phone call to his Jordanian masters, who were hand in glove with the CIA, and he and most of the gang were immediately released by the BKA. Insufficient evidence!

Frankfurt was in the US sector of West Germany post-war. How much influence does the USA have there, or did it have in 1988 rather? There are still whacking big US bases there. Most of the Frankfurt-transfer passergers joining PA103 were US service families going home for Christmas.

So the US/CIA may have been able to lean on the BKA to release Khreesat et al. Which may have led directly to Lockerbie, of course.

I do find it entirely bizarre that after such a disaster (no-one knew that it was a bomb until a little while later) that luggage records/passenger lists etc are not routinely scooped up by investigators/airline operators as a matter of course. That just seems to me like a no brainer. If was running an airline and one of my planes fell out of the sky I'd dam well want to know that I had all the information to hand I could get about who and what was on my plane at the time.

The official announcement that it was a bomb came about eight days after the crash. However, contemporary reports recount the German police beginning investigations at the airport a lot sooner than that. And indeed, given all the warnings and what was known about Khreesat's bombs and the 38-minute explosion, I'd have thought it would have taken the BKA about five minutes to work out that a Khreesat device was at least a possibility.

I think that it's plausible that the DEA was running drug sting operations out of Frankfurt at the time using Pan Am planes. Tho I also think that this is just co-incidental and is unlikely to have anything to do with the bombing. It certainly explains the large number of US personnel that were on the scene at Lockerbie very quickly, as well as a number of other anomalies that have been documented (missing suitcase/missing body/tarpaulins etc)

Yes but I'm not convinced it's coincidental. (Of course, a lot of the reason for the CIA yomping all over Lockerbie was probably the fact that their dead agents' sensitive luggage was now spread across the hillsides which were currently being combed by a bunch of Scots....) I think there may be some connection we're not getting.

I suppose it follows from that, that the non existance of baggage/passenger records from Frankfurt and foot dragging over releasing the Erac printout might have something to do with US CYA.

Er, have a coconut? I think....

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

Yay! Ambrosia's back! (I missed you!)

thanks

Frankfurt was in the US sector of West Germany post-war. How much influence does the USA have there, or did it have in 1988 rather? ...

It was a Pan Am flight - how much influence does/did the US have over American airlines fillibustering over the handing over of documentation pertaining to their flights to foreign law enforcement?

Yes but I'm not convinced it's coincidental. (Of course, a lot of the reason for the CIA yomping all over Lockerbie was probably the fact that their dead agents' sensitive luggage was now spread across the hillsides which were currently being combed by a bunch of Scots....) I think there may be some connection we're not getting.

I can quite believe there is something we are not getting.

I think it is more likely to be coincidental than connected - for it to be connected basically cements Lockerbie as a MIHOP CT with Frankfurt as the point of ingestion for the bomb doesn't it?

 

[Rolfe]

No I don't think so. I'm not into MIHOPs.

The CIA was probably using Khreesat to infiltrate the PFLP-GC. He was supposed to be making fake bombs. But he was making live bombs. Possibly because Abu Elias was breathing down his neck.

Busting the Neuss gang in October may have compromised whatever plan they were engaged in. Khreesat said himself that if they'd waited a few days, they'd have netted all the fish. So the CIA insisted the gang be freed. Then PA103 blew up....

They must have known Iran was going to act against an airliner. They could have known the PFLP-GC were aiming to do it for them. Was the operation intended to prevent that? Except, it ended up facilitating it instead?

I realise this isn't a connection, I'm just trying it for size. The other thought is that the records were simply disappeared to conceal the evidence that Jafaar's bag had been switched for the heroin bag, which was either too embarrasing per se to be revealed, or the BKA immediately jumped to the conclusion that had actually been the bomb bag and leaped into cover-up mode.

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

I'm not into MIHOPs.

me neither - there's no good evidence I can see that supports any kind of MIHOP theory.

However the harder you look at some aspects of Lockerbie the scarier/more confusing it gets.

For instance, how much stock does one place in Juval Aviv?

He has seen the "lost CCTV tape" so he says filmed by German police at Frankfurt of the bomb case actually being loaded - and has interviewed Roland O'Neill load master for flight 103A from Frankfurt who loaded said bag in this film after calling his "CIA handler".

O'Neill gave evidence to the Zeist trial and was found to be unreliable, giving conflicting stories at different times about the reconciliation of bags with passengers.

For there to be a connection between drugs ops and the PFLP-GC I think that this has to mean i) point of ingestion was Frankfurt and ii) the PFLP-GC knew about those drug ops either as a result of the whole thing being a MIHOP and them being told about them, or the DIA/DEA having terrible security and or leaks, neither of which I think is likely.

I think "something fishy" was going on at Frankfurt but I am not sure it had much to do with the bombing.

 

[Rolfe]

me neither - there's no good evidence I can see that supports any kind of MIHOP theory.

No. I think it's preposterous per se. Particularly as regards the number of US military personnel and families on that plane, including the ordinary forces families stationed in Germany. The US people revere their troops to the point of hagiography, and I can't see an official US operation colluding in killing a bunch of them.

Jim Swire seems to believe (or at least half-believe) in a LIHOP version, because he still gives credence to the (debunked) theory that the plane was emptier than it should have been and there were a lot of late cancellations by people "in the know". I don't believe it. LIHBI (Let It Happen By Incompetence) is a possibility though, I do think.

However the harder you look at some aspects of Lockerbie the scarier/more confusing it gets.

Indeed. And nearly all the scary/confusing stuff is at Frankfurt.

For instance, how much stock does one place in Juval Aviv?

He has seen the "lost CCTV tape" so he says filmed by German police at Frankfurt of the bomb case actually being loaded - and has interviewed Roland O'Neill load master for flight 103A from Frankfurt who loaded said bag in this film after calling his "CIA handler".

O'Neill gave evidence to the Zeist trial and was found to be unreliable, giving conflicting stories at different times about the reconciliation of bags with passengers.

I really don't know. Aviv was the first to come up with the "controlled drugs route through Frankfurt" theory, which seems to have been true. But I wonder if he put 2 and 2 together after that and got 22.

If the bag was loaded at Frankfurt, then the entire Bedford story is a coincidence - which I find it extremely difficult to believe. (Bedford was being interviewed by the Met. The idea that they would prompt his recollection to implicate Heathrow over Frankfurt is absurd.)

More than that, if the bag was loaded at Frankfurt there would be no possible control over where it was placed in AVE4041, unless the Heathrow loaders were also suborned. This is essentially impossible. It would be very difficult to do, with one group or person inside the 727 loading the bags on the rocket, and a separate group or person placing them in the container as they came. And there's no way a routine drugs operation would incorporate such an exercise, as it wouldn't matter in the slightest where in the container a suitcase of contraband heroin ended up.

However, I'm perfectly prepared to believe there was a bag of contraband heroin loaded at Frankfurt. It was allegedly found on the ground (and disappeared), so it wasn't substituted for the bomb though. I wonder if Aviv discovered this, while he was looking for evidence of a bomb, and leaped to the conclusion of a bag-switch which didn't happen? All Aviv's alleged discoveries at Frankfurt could have been related simply to the drug-smuggling, and guilt and cover-up of that on its own.

For there to be a connection between drugs ops and the PFLP-GC I think that this has to mean i) point of ingestion was Frankfurt and ii) the PFLP-GC knew about those drug ops either as a result of the whole thing being a MIHOP and them being told about them, or the DIA/DEA having terrible security and or leaks, neither of which I think is likely.

I think "something fishy" was going on at Frankfurt but I am not sure it had much to do with the bombing.

Now I'm brainstorming. The PFLP-GC was inflitrated, we know that. Though it's not really clear whose side Khreesat was on, fundamentally. I think there's a decent case to be made that the CIA were going along with the operation, possibly with a view to pouncing at just the right moment, catching the lot of them and putting a very final stop to the plans. (They would then have had to start tracing and infiltrating Iran's next attempt, but hey, that's their job.)

The operation the CIA thought it was going along with might well have involved exactly what Aviv alleged - a Frankfurt loading with a switcheroo with the heroin shipment. (I don't know how they were planning on preventing the bomb blowing up over France or Holland though.) However, the Autumn Leaves raid threw a spanner in the works, and the BKA had to be told to let the conspirators go.

However, at some point unknown to the CIA, possibly as a result of them realising they'd been infiltrated, the real operation was switched to a Heathrow loading. It solved the problem of positioning the device (to some extent), it solved the problem of preventing a detonation on the Frankfurt-London leg, and it took the business end right away from West Germany with its heavy US presence and influence.

Thus (maybe) the CIA were left in the very embarrassing position of having apparently been facilitating the very operation that caused the plane to blow up, by allowing it to be integrated with an already highly dubious DEA operation. Perhaps they thought right at the beginning that this was exactly what had happened, and the bomb had got through their net at Frankfurt. So, instant cover-up mode, starting with hoovering up all the Frankfurt baggage records and vanishing them.

Just guessing. But it's a line of thought.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

It was a Pan Am flight - how much influence does/did the US have over American airlines fillibustering over the handing over of documentation pertaining to their flights to foreign law enforcement?

The biggest part of the vanishing records was nothing to do with Pan Am. It was the disappearance of the full set of computer records from the airport baggage transfer system for 21st December. Despite these being held in live memory for a week, and paper printouts being routinely made, and back-up facilities existing which we're told should have been routinely employed anyway.

Yes, paper records were "missing from the daily file" in the Pan Am records as well, though, according to Michael Jones. And no records could be found of the unloading of KM180 either, according to Dennis Phipps. I suspect these were easier to get rid of than the computer records though.

Michael Jones said he didn't think the police had taken the Pan Am files, because SOP in that case would have been to take a copy and retain that in the file. But I simply can't see who else could have taken them. If the BKA and the CIA were wroking together on a cover-up, I don't think it would have been hard to make sure the copies simply didn't get retained.

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

LIHBI (Let It Happen By Incompetence) is a possibility though, I do think.

I think this is by far the most likely explanation.

nearly all the scary/confusing stuff is at Frankfurt.

Now I'm brainstorming.

The PFLP-GC was inflitrated, we know that. Though it's not really clear whose side Khreesat was on, fundamentally. I think there's a decent case to be made that the CIA were going along with the operation, possibly with a view to pouncing at just the right moment, catching the lot of them and putting a very final stop to the plans. (They would then have had to start tracing and infiltrating Iran's next attempt, but hey, that's their job.)

Some more brainstorming...

I think that the above is more or less about the size of it. I think the whole Frankfurt thing is that the US was trying to get several birds with one brick. I think that there was some kind of arms/drugs for hostages thing being run via Frankfurt, which the authorities hoped would also nail them a terrorist ring as well fixing the hostage situation in the Lebanon for good measure and after the recent Oliver North, Contra scandal, the US absolutely, positively did not want any more news like that coming out. Thatcher has her whole "we will not negotiate with terrorists" image to uphold so the UK has a vested interest as well in sweeping anything like that under the carpet. Who knows what would have happened in a very politically unstable part of the world, thats a key player in the oil business, if this all came out. Hence you get the meeting 3 months or so after Lockerbie where it's decided not to go after PFLP-GC but to find a n other culprit. Which leads to the employ of scientists with previous form for inventing/planting/tampering with evidence

I think that there was never any bomb plot either LIHOP or otherwise to allow Iran some meaure of revenge for the Vincennes shootdown they must have been aware that such a plot was being brewed by PFLP-GC, perhaps the Autumn Leaves was a jumping of the gun and they wanted to catch some really big fish in the act so they let most of the gang go. They "knew" that the terrorists knew about Frankfurt so assumed that is where a bomb would be loaded, instead of prosecuting people for bomb making they could prosecute people for actually planting the bomb. I can't believe for a second that any law enforcement would allow a live bomb onto a plane and then allow that plane to fly, at all, ever.

However, at some point unknown to the CIA, possibly as a result of them realising they'd been infiltrated, the real operation was switched to a Heathrow loading. It solved the problem of positioning the device (to some extent), it solved the problem of preventing a detonation on the Frankfurt-London leg, and it took the business end right away from West Germany with its heavy US presence and influence.

This makes sense to me, perhaps the bombers thought that somehow the blame would get pinned on unsavoury US intelligence agents if they knew about the Frankfurt operations. I do think that the Bedford evidence coupled with the Heathrow breakin and acknowledged lax security at Heathrow, points pretty squarely at Heathrow being the place the real bomb was loaded, not Frankfurt and most certainly not Luqa.

So, instant cover-up mode, starting with hoovering up all the Frankfurt baggage records and vanishing them.

This also makes a bunch of sense.

 

[Rolfe]

I think the whole Frankfurt thing is that the US was trying to get several birds with one brick. I think that there was some kind of arms/drugs for hostages thing being run via Frankfurt, which the authorities hoped would also nail them a terrorist ring as well fixing the hostage situation in the Lebanon for good measure....

That's pretty much what I think too.

.... and after the recent Oliver North, Contra scandal, the US absolutely, positively did not want any more news like that coming out. Thatcher has her whole "we will not negotiate with terrorists" image to uphold so the UK has a vested interest as well in sweeping anything like that under the carpet. Who knows what would have happened in a very politically unstable part of the world, thats a key player in the oil business, if this all came out.

And that.

Hence you get the meeting 3 months or so after Lockerbie where it's decided not to go after PFLP-GC but to find a n other culprit. Which leads to the employ of scientists with previous form for inventing/planting/tampering with evidence.

I think it goes back earlier than that. Buncrana has been looking at some very early press reports and has shown that Reagan went after Gadaffi on spinal reflex within literally days of the bombing, although there was no evidence at all to suggest Libyan involvement at that stage. This was of course after the 1988 presidential election but before the inauguration of Bush. On the very day of Bush's inauguration we have that odd incident with the Spanish typewriter and the Vienna embassy where Bollier (alleged CIA asset) tried to blame Libyan agents. And there was something else round about that time. Of course Cannistraro was in charge of the CIA arm of the investigation, and Libya was the handy catch-all target.

I think that Bush, after the hand-over, started to think things through a bit better, and decided the best thing was to call the dogs off the PFLP-GC in the first instance. Hence that phone call, and Maggie's co-operation in shutting Channon up. Of course we have to remember that in her autobiography she essentially stated that Libya wasn't responsible for Lockerbie, anyway.

Of course the unholy trio of Hayes, Feraday and Thurman were involved from the get-go at Lockerbie anyway. Then Thurman went back to the USA, and in April Hayes and Feraday went out to join him in Maryland for the explosives tests. I think that's where the little plot to plant the evidence to point positively to Libya was hatched.

On the way back, Feraday went to Japan to the Toshiba HQ, and came away with the information that a big batch of SF16 radios had recently been supplied to a Libyan company - and that the Claiden chip was compatible with that model. He changed his identification from the 8016 he'd previously decided on, and lo and behold after that everything found was consistent with the SF16 - including the star prize, the improbable Horton fragment. Found the day after Feraday had been examining the SF16 owner's manual he'd brought from Japan.

Faking up the shirt collar with the MST-13 chip must have taken a lot longer, and it wasn't available till early September. Never mind, the loose-leaf notes could be manipulated to interpolate its examination record retrospectively, so that it seemed to be in the same run of examinations as the rest of the stuff.

Then they just waited. Since the point was to head things away from Iran and the PFLP-GC, rather than specifically to bring Libya to book, it was OK so long as the investigation wasn't getting warm. And in September it started to get very cold indeed, when the police became convinced the bomb had originated in Malta. Probably due to a red herring (the clothes) working out even better than the terrorists had hoped.

All the time the D&G boys in blue were looking for evidence the PFLP-GC/Talb had planted the bomb at Luqa, they weren't looking at Frankfurt or Heathrow, and I imagine that was fine by everybody. It was only as 1990 wore on and Saddam Hussein started making belligerent noises towards Kuwait that more active turning away from Iran and towards Libya was desirable. Thurman managed to get the as-yet-unidentified chip from Williamson, and identified it in about 24 hours flat.

That allowed them to say, definitely not a Khreesat barometric device as we'd imagined, but a Libyan digital timer. After that it really was all about Libya.

I think that there was never any bomb plot either LIHOP or otherwise to allow Iran some meaure of revenge for the Vincennes shootdown they must have been aware that such a plot was being brewed by PFLP-GC, perhaps the Autumn Leaves was a jumping of the gun and they wanted to catch some really big fish in the act so they let most of the gang go. They "knew" that the terrorists knew about Frankfurt so assumed that is where a bomb would be loaded, instead of prosecuting people for bomb making they could prosecute people for actually planting the bomb. I can't believe for a second that any law enforcement would allow a live bomb onto a plane and then allow that plane to fly, at all, ever.

I entirely agree.

This makes sense to me, perhaps the bombers thought that somehow the blame would get pinned on unsavoury US intelligence agents if they knew about the Frankfurt operations. I do think that the Bedford evidence coupled with the Heathrow breakin and acknowledged lax security at Heathrow, points pretty squarely at Heathrow being the place the real bomb was loaded, not Frankfurt and most certainly not Luqa.

I think they saw Frankfurt as getting a bit too hot to hold them, and someone had the bright idea of going for the Heathrow stop-over. Abu Elias was the expert on airport security, and I think they must have had someone on the ground at Heathrow to see what the possibilities were. Hey, look at that nicely labelled container that just sits around for hours having the odd bag added to it, waiting for the Frankfurt luggage. If an explosion happens in that, then there's a fair chance it will be thought to have been a bag from Frankfurt anyway. And there's no need to prevent a premature detonation, and if the case is cleverly planted there's a chance of forcing it to the right side of the container.

This is going a bit off the topic of the thread, but this is my current best guess as to the overall sequence of events.

Rolfe.

 

[Rolfe]

Well, to summarise, we agree the BKA were probably responsible for the vanishing baggage records. We suspect they did this either with the co-operation of the CIA, or even at the request of the CIA.

The reason we put forward for this is that the full set of records would have shown the DEA-sponsored drug contraband being smuggled on to PA103A. Worse, we suspect that the CIA, which had infiltrated the Neuss gang, might even have been co-operating with a plot involving the use of the covert drug route to introduce a bomb on to PA103 - not as a MIHOP, but as a sting. In addition, it may be that further digging would have revealed a "drugs for hostages" operation.

We suspect that the decision to remove the records was taken very early, because it was feared that the bag-switch method of introduction had actually been used, and thus a CIA operation could be directly implicated in the downing of a US airliner.

This is fairly far-out, compared to the official version, which is simply that the records were accidentally destroyed before the Frankfurt police thought of securing them. Except for the useless interline writers' records and coders' worksheets, which then turned out to be absolutely essential when the Erac printout showed up, so isn't it a good thing these were preserved!

However, I think this is in the category of "when you have ruled out the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable...." and so on. Anybody want to challenge that?

But that isn't the end of it. Eight months later the BKA suddenly sent the Erac printout to the Scottish police - after months of insisting that none of the records had survived. They said they'd had it since February. Bogomira Erac said she saved the printout as a souvenir the day after the crash, and handed it to her supervisor in late January.

This is the only piece of evidence in the entire case that any piece of luggage was transferred from KM180 to PA103A. Right smack in the middle of the six-minute time coding period for KM180, a bag appeared coded for PA103A. Without this, there would have been no case - timer fragments and Maltese clothes notwithstanding.

Do we think Bogomira is entirely on the level, and the mystery tray merely a coincidental coding anomaly? Do we think Bogomira is on the level, but her printout was later altered to introduce a tray with the desired provenance pointing to KM180? Or do we think that the entire peculiar story was invented to allow fabricated evidence pointing to KM180 to enter the case?

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

Do we think Bogomira is entirely on the level, and the mystery tray merely a coincidental coding anomaly? Do we think Bogomira is on the level, but her printout was later altered to introduce a tray with the desired provenance pointing to KM180? Or do we think that the entire peculiar story was invented to allow fabricated evidence pointing to KM180 to enter the case?

It's impossible to say.

I think Bogomira is on the level but the evidence she handed to police was not exactly what was presented at the trial, similar to Mrs Hortons Toshiba manual.

Neither witness would have taken detailed notice of their pieces of evidence, and the next time they got to see them was 12 years or so later.

If we assume that the prosecution are making up a case against Libya for whatever reason, then if the Erac evidence is not genuine, it would be necessary for them to have invented it, or something very similar to it.


I am not up to speed on the details surrounding Eracs printoutout and whether or not the interline coders worksheets point to its authenticity.

As I understand it the printout cannot be corroborated, it's the only record that exists, data from the actual computer it is from is long gone. It would be trivial for unscrupulous investigators to mock up a very similar printout but change 1 or 2 key details and later have Erac identify the fake printout as hers. We don't know much about the chain of custody of the printout or why it took the BKA some months to hand it over.

In the time that it emerges into the investigation the focus has switched to Libya(?)

I'll try and spend some more time looking at it in the not too distant future.

 

[Rolfe]

It's impossible to say.

I fear so, but sometimes by speculating we can get an idea of what is possible and what is very unlikely.

I think Bogomira is on the level but the evidence she handed to police was not exactly what was presented at the trial, similar to Mrs Hortons Toshiba manual.

Neither witness would have taken detailed notice of their pieces of evidence, and the next time they got to see them was 12 years or so later.

If we assume that the prosecution are making up a case against Libya for whatever reason, then if the Erac evidence is not genuine, it would be necessary for them to have invented it, or something very similar to it.

I also have difficulty doubting Bogomira's sincerity. It's just such a convenient story! However, for it not to be genuine we'd also have to postulate that Berg was in on it and lying to the court, which multiplies the problem of that being a conspiracy.

You're right that she didn't recognise it in detail in court. She has to stop and put her glasses on before she confirms it's the same item. I suppose the risk might be that she'd taken a photocopy when she handed her souvenir over. It's clear from her account of giving it to Berg that she didn't (she takes it straight from her locker in his presence and hands it over), but I'm not sure how the BKA could have been certain of that.

However, if the BKA were on the level and the baggage evidence was accidentally lost, why sit on this until August while the D&G were howling for exactly that information? I speculate, because they were still in "there are no surviving baggage records" mode until then.

Until August 1989 it was a simple pissing contest between Heathrow and Frankfurt. Each blamed the other, Heathrow by declaring that AVE4041 didn't have Heathrow baggage in it, and Frankfurt just sitting there denying that any records existed and declaring they had (unspecified) evidence the bomb went on board in London.

However, in the spring, Pan Am had employed Juval Aviv to look into the disaster, and Aviv majored on Frankfurt. He must have spent most of the summer nosing round there, doing lie detector tests on the baggage handlers and getting hold of CCTV footage he says was suppressed after he handed it over. A lot of what was in his report seems to be spurious, but he seems to have been right about the existence of the controlled drugs deliveries in general, and possibly even that one was on PA103 that day.

Oops.

I think Frankfurt began to realise they couldn't fend that off forever by simply stonewalling, and that the proverbial was likely to hit the fan if they couldn't come up with something better than "we lost all the records". They had all the records of course, but they couldn't release them for the reasons we've already gone through - essentially, Aviv was on to at least part of why the records were being concealed.

As blaming Heathrow was beginning to look like a non-runner, what they then needed was evidence to push responsibility the other way, to an airport interlining into Frankfurt. Since the Frankfurt security for PA103A was Kurt Maier, and Kurt Maier (like Sulkash Kamboj) was an employee of Alert Security (not the airport itself), and Alert Security was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pan Am, then that would do it.

They needed to find a way to release evidence pointing somewhere else, but as a snapshot, not by revealing the whole thing. Just the loading record for the central system transfers to PA103A, plus the interline writers' records and the coders' worksheets, would do it. The latter two classes of document contained so little detail there was no problem about releasing the whole lot, so they just pretended they'd had them all along even though they hadn't been able to secure anything actually useful!

Bogomira's little souvenir was an awfully handy way of providing only the loading list for PA103A without any of the surrounding detail that might be analysed to very embarrassing effect. I suppose it's one of the coincidences that she actually did keep the souvenir, so it was available to save them having to dream up some other explanation. Sigh. Coincidences are so unsatisfactory, but they happen.

I am not up to speed on the details surrounding Eracs printoutout and whether or not the interline coders worksheets point to its authenticity.

As I understand the court evidence, it seems by and large to be authentic. It appears that all 111 entries have been traced through the relevant coding stations to the incoming flights in question (or the check-in desks in many cases). I think all but two entries match with known passengers on KM180, which suggests that the coders' timings weren't much out from the computer clock in most cases.

The two entries which don't match are B8849 which seems to come from KM180, and another tray which seems to come from a Warsaw flight which also had no passenger transferring to PA103A. Although Bill Taylor asked why nobody was investigating the latter as being the bomb bag, this was simply hand-waved away.

As I understand it the printout cannot be corroborated, it's the only record that exists, data from the actual computer it is from is long gone. It would be trivial for unscrupulous investigators to mock up a very similar printout but change 1 or 2 key details and later have Erac identify the fake printout as hers. We don't know much about the chain of custody of the printout or why it took the BKA some months to hand it over.

It would be extremely difficult to fabricate all this from scratch, convincingly (and if one did that, one wouldn't choose to include the Warsaw bag I don't think). It would be quite easy to mock it up if one had the entire set of genuine records squirrelled away. It would be child's play to re-create an existing printout of the required data, changing only one line slightly to read station 206 at 13.07, so long as no other copy existed in the wild.

The printout looks real, but I would assume the BKA +/- the CIA would be able to get the right paper and the right printer and so on. Then you just have to let a lot of people have a look at it and highlight a few lines and make a few marks, and it looks fine. (Actually I'm surporsed these marks are there - surely the investigators should heve been using photocopies for their rough work?)

I suspect there were two unaccompanied bags initially, and one of the two was simply doctored to look as if it came from KM180. It would have been prudent to change as little as possible. Either that or the whole thing is genuine and the fortuitous coincidence of Bogomira having saved the printout is compounded into incredulity by the fortuitous coincidence of there actually being a genuine coding anomaly that pointed straight to the middle of the KM180 coding slot.

In the time that it emerges into the investigation the focus has switched to Libya(?)

No, not really. Not overtly.

It appears just about the same time the D&G were getting interested in Malta, because the detectives spent some time in the latter part of August going through the blast-damaged clothes (Crawford's book). An earlier trip to Malta had been unproductive because the babygro had been supplied to retailers all over Europe, but they then started trying to trace the Yorkie trousers. According to Crawford it was the "Made in Malta" label on the babygro that made them think of looking in Malta for a Yorkie connection, after checks round Yorkshire woollen mills and so on had drawn a blank.

All this happened in late August, but from Crawford's book it wasn't prompted by the release of the printout on 17th August. Other sources however say it was; I don't know if that's just an inference from the timing though. It does seem as if the printout showed up just about the same time the detectives were at RARDE photographing the clothing fragments and probably before the Yorkie label was traced to Malta.

So why would they have picked on Malta for the redirection entry? It's inevitable the investigation as a whole - CIA if not BKA - would have known about the Maltese origin of the babygro, so that seems plausible.

What I simply don't know is whether even at this point the intention was to implicate Abdusamad/Megrahi who was at Malta when that flight took off, or whether he was simply a wholly unexpected Easter Egg which emerged later. It's tempting to suspect the latter, but if so, I find it hard to explain why the D&G were allowed to spend the next year or so trying to train Tony Gauci to identify Abu Talb as the clothes purchaser.

This to me is the big puzzle. If it comes down to tray B8849 being real, then the Luqa records and the presence of Maier dictate that it's a coding anomaly. It's just such an enormous coincidence if that's the case - not just that the anomaly was there, but that Bogomira preserved the printout as she did, so that it was there to emerge from the black hole of the Frankfurt cover-up just when they needed something to draw attention away from what Aviv was finding out. And that it pointed to the flight from the island where the clothes had been purchased, and where there was a convenient JSO officer present to pin the crime on.

So one concludes that Malta, almost fortuitously, seemed to be a good place to point the investigation. And yet, it seems too early to be a deliberate attempt to frame Megrahi, so what else could it be?

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

However, if the BKA were on the level and the baggage evidence was accidentally lost, why sit on this until August while the D&G were howling for exactly that information? I speculate, because they were still in "there are no surviving baggage records" mode until then.

Until August 1989 it was a simple pissing contest between Heathrow and Frankfurt. Each blamed the other, Heathrow by declaring that AVE4041 didn't have Heathrow baggage in it, and Frankfurt just sitting there denying that any records existed and declaring they had (unspecified) evidence the bomb went on board in London.

Presumably because of the mother of all lawsuits that was going to be dropped on whomever could have been proved to be negligent in allowing the bomb onto the aircraft.

Eventually it was Pan Am that got hit with that.

However, in the spring, Pan Am had employed Juval Aviv to look into the disaster, and Aviv majored on Frankfurt. He must have spent most of the summer nosing round there, doing lie detector tests on the baggage handlers and getting hold of CCTV footage he says was suppressed after he handed it over.

I don't credit Aviv much for what it's worth. He's still in business as a security consultant last I checked. Colemans credibility was destroyed by the US Govt. and is presently incarcerated last time I checked. I do think Coleman is more or less about right in most of what he claims about Lockerbie.

If Aviv is right and Pan Am have CCTV footage of the bomb being placed aboard at Frankfurt, why in the world has this video not been released by now? I would guess that such a video doesn't exist and that Aviv is lying.

I think Frankfurt began to realise they couldn't fend that off forever by simply stonewalling,

I red somewhere and now can't recall where that Frankfurt were being obstinate unhelpful so and so's until something happened during the investigation that made them change their tune, can't remember what that thign was, or when it happened though. I shall try and refresh my memory soon.

The two entries which don't match are B8849 which seems to come from KM180, and another tray which seems to come from a Warsaw flight which also had no passenger transferring to PA103A. Although Bill Taylor asked why nobody was investigating the latter as being the bomb bag, this was simply hand-waved away.

I'll go digging through transcripts soon and see what I can see about this other bag.

 

[Rolfe]

Presumably because of the mother of all lawsuits that was going to be dropped on whomever could have been proved to be negligent in allowing the bomb onto the aircraft.

Eventually it was Pan Am that got hit with that.

Yes but it was more than that. For a Heathrow ingestion there was then the implication that the bomb might have been constructed in England, by a terrorist group in that country that the the police were entirely unaware of.

In a sense Pan Am were really guilty as charged, because the alleged deficiencies at Frankfurt were exactly replicated at Heathrow, only worse. At least Maier knew about the Autumn Leaves warning. Kamboj appeared to be completely clueless. However, if the bomb was smuggled through the airport perimeter, or if the terrorists got into the airside space for any reason during the plot, then BAA were equally culpable at the very least.

I don't credit Aviv much for what it's worth. He's still in business as a security consultant last I checked. Colemans credibility was destroyed by the US Govt. and is presently incarcerated last time I checked. I do think Coleman is more or less about right in most of what he claims about Lockerbie.

If Aviv is right and Pan Am have CCTV footage of the bomb being placed aboard at Frankfurt, why in the world has this video not been released by now? I would guess that such a video doesn't exist and that Aviv is lying.

I agree, but that's not quite the point. Aviv was poking around Frankfurt asking awkward questions, and seems to have uncovered the controlled drug delivery operation. The Frankfurt authorities might actually have believed that was how the bomb got on board. However wide of the mark or flaky Aviv was, he was a big threat to Frankfurt with what he was doing.

I red somewhere and now can't recall where that Frankfurt were being obstinate unhelpful so and so's until something happened during the investigation that made them change their tune, can't remember what that thign was, or when it happened though. I shall try and refresh my memory soon.

I'm just speculating that Aviv might actually have been the something that happened. However, if you have another candidate, can you remember what it was? Crawford is quite unhelpful. According to him the investigation was busy finding its way to Malta by way of the Yorkie factory, when out of the blue the BKA suddenly sent the printout over.

I'll go digging through transcripts soon and see what I can see about this other bag.

It's certainly mentioned in both judgements.

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

I red somewhere and now can't recall where that Frankfurt were being obstinate unhelpful so and so's until something happened during the investigation that made them change their tune, can't remember what that thign was, or when it happened though. I shall try and refresh my memory soon.

I'm just speculating that Aviv might actually have been the something that happened. However, if you have another candidate, can you remember what it was? Crawford is quite unhelpful. According to him the investigation was busy finding its way to Malta by way of the Yorkie factory, when out of the blue the BKA suddenly sent the printout over.

Found it.

... this event so angered German authorites that they had an overnight conversion.

Many in Germany were not convinced the PFLP-GC cell was involved in
the Lockerbie bombing, but now some members of that group were responsible
for the death of one of their own. The BKA did something unprecedented. They
invited Scottish police officers and FBI agents to participate ln a series of
searches and interviews of at least fifteen individuals having a connection to the
suspected PFLP-GC cell or Jaafar. Despite these efforts nothing of substance
was developed and no evidence connected to Lockerbie was found.

As winter turned to spring the evidence collection process slowed considerably.
During early May, the lock of the IED suitcase was recovered and was
linked to a number of pieces of suitcase which had been located in the fields
around Lockerbie. A shirt wlth blast damage was recovered. By the end of May
618 bags had been recovered and 503 of them had been identified.
The German BKA turned over to the FBI 42 volumes of reports concerning
their investigations of both the PFLP-GC and their investigation into the
bombmg of Pan Am Flight 103.
While the BKA had willingly provided the information, there was a caveat specifying the information could be shared neither with the Scottish police nor the CIA. We later learned the same information had been shared with the Scottish police.

[from my timeline thread]
13th April 1989 [pg 43] - BKA find 2 of Khreesats bombs in a grocery store, one of which explodes killing a technician (Hans Sonntag) and seriously injuring another (Thomas Ettinger)[pg 114]. This incident angers the German Police and after this time they share much more information gained from the Autumn Leaves raid prior to 103’s bombing.

Even so Marquise says that the April incident where the German bomb technician was killed was the catalyst for BKA being much mre co-operative, it's not until August according to Crawford that the Erac printout is handed over, thats still 4+ months later.

Not only that but why on earth would BKA hand over a ton of documents but then say, 'you can't share these with the police force that is running the enquiry' ??!

That does seem rather odd.

 

[Rolfe]

That's fascinating. But it's not about the Erac printout or the Frankfurt baggage transfer. It's about the PFLP-GC and Jafaar.

They may well have got more co-operative on that front after their officer was killed. Especially if the scorched-earth policy on the luggage records at Frankfurt showed every sign of being successful. But if they were being so all-fired co-operative, it makes them continuing to sit on the Erac printout even more inexplicable.

This is a bit like realising that all the while Hayes had just noted "fragment of green circuit board", filed the notes and forgotten all about it, the rest of the investigation was going mad trying desperately to find more bits of circuit board to identify!

I'm still quite suspicious that it was Aviv's unwelcome poking around at Frankfurt that spooked them into changing tack. Rather than keep on trying to push the blame on to Heathrow, which wasn't actually getting them anywhere, they would shove it in the other direction.

Rolfe.

 

[Ambrosia]

That's fascinating. But it's not about the Erac printout or the Frankfurt baggage transfer. It's about the PFLP-GC and Jafaar.

It's both the way I read it. "42 volumes of reports concerning
their investigations of both the PFLP-GC and their investigation into the
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103."

Doubtless it'll take some time to go through 42 volumes and dig up useful info, but several months?!

Also if they were instructed not to share this information, and presumably the FBI did as they were asked, then can August possibly be the date that the BKA seperately shared some or all of those 42 volumes with the Scottish police?

Marquise does not say when such information sharing happened, only that his office became aware of it "later".

But if they were being so all-fired co-operative, it makes them continuing to sit on the Erac printout even more inexplicable.

Yup.

I'm still quite suspicious that it was Aviv's unwelcome poking around at Frankfurt that spooked them into changing tack. Rather than keep on trying to push the blame on to Heathrow, which wasn't actually getting them anywhere, they would shove it in the other direction.

It's certainly possible.

Aviv starts his poking around in spring 1989 and publishes his report in September 1989. Much of Avivs investiagtions centred around Frankfurt, his actions would have certainly been noted by the BKA seeing as he was in fact actively investigating them.

Eracs printout is handed over from the BKA to Scots police on 13th August.

it's interesting to note that according to Coleman:

The Observer's chief reporter, John Merritt, described how this came about in a story published almost two years after the disaster.

He wrote, on 17 November 1991:

...

A major breakthrough in the hunt for the Lockerbie bombers came to light only because of the quick thinking of a conscientious computer operator at Frankfurt airport. ... when she returned to work the next day she made her own print-out of the information and placed it in her locker before going on holiday.

On her return, weeks later, she was surprised to learn that no one had shown any interest in the computer records. She passed the print-out to her baggage section leader who gave it to investigators from the West German Bundeskriminalamt. But it was not until mid-August, eight months after the bombing, that the German authorities turned over this information to Scottish police in charge of the investigation.

The woman employee's role became known only last week when lawyers for families of the American victims took evidence from her in Germany. She had kept her own copy of the print-out and still had it in her locker.

So Erac has her own copy in 1991, apparently still in her locker.

 

[Rolfe]

It's both the way I read it. "42 volumes of reports concerning
their investigations of both the PFLP-GC and their investigation into the
bombing of Pan Am Flight 103."

I still think that could imply the possible role of the PFLP-GC in the bombing of PA103. It certainly seeme to be the case that they divulged nothing about the baggage system at Frankfurt until 17th August.

Doubtless it'll take some time to go through 42 volumes and dig up useful info, but several months?!

Also if they were instructed not to share this information, and presumably the FBI did as they were asked, then can August possibly be the date that the BKA seperately shared some or all of those 42 volumes with the Scottish police?

Marquise does not say when such information sharing happened, only that his office became aware of it "later".

Well, most of that is just a boggle; whatever was going on it's just beyond me. I'd quite like to hear it from the BKA point of view, but they're not telling.

Aviv starts his poking around in spring 1989 and publishes his report in September 1989. Much of Avivs investiagtions centred around Frankfurt, his actions would have certainly been noted by the BKA seeing as he was in fact actively investigating them.

I just have a feeling that something made the BKA decide very suddenly in mid-August that they had to change their strategy, and Aviv seems to fit.

Eracs printout is handed over from the BKA to Scots police on 13th August.

it's interesting to note that according to Coleman:

So Erac has her own copy in 1991, apparently still in her locker.

No, I don't think so. I think it's rather clumsy English, but he's saying that back in December 1988 she had kept her own copy of the baggage records, and still had it in her locker in January 1989.

Rolfe.