I was browsing through some of those early articles on the 103 disaster, and thought this particular article would be of some interest in this thread.
I appreciate that very often the early articles can draw conclusions or work on the basis of events that may transpire as completely different as the investigation continues, but I also find sometimes they can provide wee gems of information, which all too often are then subsequently overlooked, which can help us form a picture in these discussions.
The Sunday Times (London)
January 1 1989, Sunday
On course to carnage; Lockerbie air disaster; Insight
[...]The bomb must have been in luggage loaded into the forward cargo bay, where the aircraft's nerve centre is bolted to a bulkhead. It is known as Station 41 and includes an electrical sub-station (big enough to power a small town), which draws power from generators on the engines to feed every system on the aircraft.
Station 41 houses the auto-pilot, radios, navigational aids and even the equipment which deploys oxygen masks in emergencies. In effect, any adjustments the cockpit crew wants to make to the aircraft's flight, speed, direction and altitude, from take-off to landing, has to be relayed through the components at Station 41.
[...]NOBODY is yet certain exactly how and where the bomb was put on board flight 103. It had begun in Frankfurt on the Wednesday afternoon before Christmas, when a Pan Am Boeing 727 took off at 4.50pm local time bound for London with 109 people on board.
It landed at Heathrow at 5pm London time and parked at Pier 7-Left in Heathrow's terminal three, immediately next to the Maid of the Seas, which would continue the scheduled 103 service to New York and Detroit.
Sixty passengers left the flight and 49 transferred to the Maid of the Seas. They were joined by another 194 passengers.
The Frankfurt baggage was manhandled off the 727 and moved across the tarmac to the 747, where it was divided. Baggage bound for Detroit and a few pieces for New York were put in a container and loaded in the rear cargo hold with the baggage checked in at Heathrow. The rest of the baggage bound for New York and first-class luggage was loose-loaded on to a pallet and placed in the forward cargo hold.
So the bomb could have been cleared in Frankfurt and loaded without going through Heathrow's security system. Equally, it could have been among the bags checked in at terminal three by passengers boarding at Heathrow. A third possibility remains: baggage belonging to a handful of passengers who had flown in from other airports was also loaded.
Pan Am officials in Frankfurt are adamant that 'security was 100% reliable'; Heathrow asserts that the bomb could not have slipped through its security net.
However, Insight's inquiries show that security systems at both airports are flawed. Through a combination of human failure and technical inadequacy, both airports' security systems appear to reduce the chances of detecting a terrorist's suitcase bomb to little more than a lottery.
ON December 7 Horst Hanstein, Frankfurt's security chief, and Martin Hupner, his Pan Am counterpart, placed the American airline's check-in procedure on the highest security alert. The US embassy in Helsinki had received a bomb threat from a caller claiming flight 103 would be bombed within two weeks.
That call is now known to have been a coincidental hoax the Pan Am 103 service is regularly threatened and the caller has been interrogated and ruled out of inquiries.
At Frankfurt the security alert that followed that call had remained in place, but Insight has established that even on the highest state of alert, Frankfurt's security measures and the safety of passengers on flight 103 still hinged on a random system of baggage searching that remained wide open to a terrorist carrying a suitcase bomb.
When the 109 passengers turned up to join the flight on its first leg to Heathrow, everyone would have passed through a routine pre-check-in procedure; the regulations say their passports should have been scrutinised and they should have been asked detailed questions about the nature of their journey, whether or not they had packed their own luggage or if they were carrying luggage for anyone else. Some of the bags would have been opened by officers of Pan Am's security subsidiary, Alert Management Systems Inc.
This routine is designed to unnerve those approaching check-in desks in the hope that an anxious terrorist might betray himself. But when a Sunday Times reporter, returning to London on flight 103, came through this same procedure just three days after the Lockerbie disaster, his passport was merely glanced at, he was not closely questioned and his bag was left untouched.
It appears the security staff assumed his innocence on the strength of his British passport. If he had been an innocent passenger duped by a terrorist into delivering a package or suitcase to Britain or America, or travelling on a false passport, he would have passed the first line of defence without discovery.
At the check-in desk, flight 103's passengers checked-in their bags, which were fed into the second line of defence against terrorism Frankfurt's computerised baggage handling system, reputed to be one of the most sophisticated in the world.
BECAUSE of the alert, the bags (as with all items of Pan Am luggage following the December 7 warning) were taken by conveyor belt to a special security bay, where they went through an x-ray machine and were subjected to a 'sniffing' device, designed to 'smell' the odour of explosives. It is here that the system's first major flaws appear.
A detailed report into the Air India disaster in 1985 severely criticised reliance on this standard x-ray machinery and sniffing equipment to detect bombs, especially plastic explosives. The report reveals that the x-ray equipment cannot detect plastic explosives which can be moulded into the shape of innocuous objects, such as bars of chocolate, or hidden in radios, cameras or the lining of suitcases. The report also described the sniffing equipment as 'highly questionable'.
If the second line of defence was next to useless, then the third was only marginally better.
After the x-raying and sniffing, security staff divided the bags into two groups. Those belonging to passengers who did not hold a US passport were 'pulled' automatically to be hand-searched by Pan Am's team of baggage handlers. But those belonging to US citizens continued through the system. Only one in every three items of luggage was chosen at random for a hand-search. Again, the security procedure relied too heavily on a passport to clear a passenger.
Middle East experts insist that false American, British and European passports are easily obtained by terrorists; it is known that terrorist leaders have recruited from the ranks of Arabs studying in America and the Continent whose acquired accents are identifiably Western.
Insight has established from Pan Am sources that of the 70 items of luggage loaded on to the Boeing 727 at Frankfurt, seven or eight were automatically searched because they did not belong to US nationals. The rest passed through the random search system.
If a terrorist with a discernible American accent travelling on a false US passport had boarded flight 103 at Frankfurt, and left the flight at Heathrow, he stood better than a 60% chance of ensuring a suitcase bomb was loaded on to the Maid of the Seas.
AT HEATHROW, where the Boeing 727 carrying these 70 bags touched down after a 65-minute flight, the defences were equally flawed. For a start, the warning that had triggered the tightening up of security at Frankfurt had not been communicated to Heathrow Airport's controllers, who take charge of checking passengers as they board flights. It is even unclear whether Pan Am's own security firm, which operates at all airports used by the airline, was on a high level of alert.
What is known is that the bags arriving from Frankfurt for the Boeing 747 connection to New York and Detroit were not checked, as Pan Am's baggage handlers rushed to transfer them from one flight to another.
They were up against the clock. The loose bags from Frankfurt had to be taken off the first aircraft, sorted and reloaded on the second aircraft in less than an hour.
Inside Heathrow's terminal three, the method of screening the 194 passengers checking on to flight 103 was different from that at Frankfurt, but similar gaps in security existed.
At Heathrow, Pan Am's Alert Inc officers greeted passengers approaching the check-in desk with a similar question and answer technique to the one practised at Frankfurt. Those with US passports were allowed to check their baggage unchallenged unless they aroused suspicions. Non-US passport holders had to put their bags through an x-ray machine before checking in, but few were hand-searched at this stage.
The baggage was then put on the conveyor belt and transported to the baggage handling area. Nobody will comment officially on what happened to the baggage there, but Insight has been told by sources inside the handling area that unless there is a high security alert at Heathrow and there was not no further security measures would have been taken between the journey from check-in to aircraft.
In effect, the cool terrorist travelling on a false US passport who stood better than a 60% chance of planting a suitcase bomb aboard at Frankfurt, stood an even better chance of escaping security at Heathrow.
THERE can be no better example of the laxity that was apparent at Heathrow on the night flight 103 took off on its course to carnage than the experience of Jaswant Singh Basuta, a New York businessman, who checked his baggage on to flight 103 but did not board the aeroplane.
I appreciate that very often the early articles can draw conclusions or work on the basis of events that may transpire as completely different as the investigation continues, but I also find sometimes they can provide wee gems of information, which all too often are then subsequently overlooked, which can help us form a picture in these discussions.
