Taking Another Look at the Destruction of Pan Am 103
Special Report, Pages 30-31
Taking Another Look at the Destruction of Pan Am 103
By Andrew I. Killgore
A memorial to the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 in a garden of remembrance near the village of Lockerbie in southwest Scotland. (AFP photo/Paul Ellis)
“By way of deception, shalt thou wage war.” –The motto of Mossad.
IN FEBRUARY 1986 Israeli Mossad operatives installed a “Trojan” communications device on the top floor of an apartment house in Tripoli, Libya. The six-foot-long device was able to receive messages on one frequency and automatically rebroadcast the same message on a different frequency—in this case, one used by the government of Libya.
Israeli naval commandos arriving in miniature submarines in the middle of the night had delivered the Trojan, only seven inches in diameter, to the lone Mossad agent in Tripoli, who drove a rented van to their rendezvous point on a deserted beach outside Tripoli. The agent, along with four of the commandos, then took the Trojan to an apartment building in the Libyan capital where he had rented the top floor, and installed the device. By March the Trojan was broadcasting a series of “terrorist” orders to Libyan embassies around the world.
These messages were picked up by Spain, France and the United States. Thinking it odd that normally cautious Libya suddenly would become so careless, France and Spain took them to be fake. The U.S., however, accepted the broadcasts as real—especially since Washington was assured by Israel that they were indeed genuine.
The foregoing account is taken from The Other Side of Deception, the second of two books written by former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky after he left Israel’s foreign intelligence service.
Less than two months after the Trojan was installed, on April 5, 1986, the La Belle nightclub in then-West Berlin was bombed, killing two American soldiers and a Turkish woman. At the same time a false “success” signal was sent, apparently from the device in Tripoli.
“False-flagged” by Israel, President Ronald Reagan on April 14 sent American bombers from Britain and from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean to strike Tripoli and Benghazi, killing 101 people, including the adopted young daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi when his house in Tripoli was bombed.
Operation Trojan was one of Mossad’s “great successes,” Ostrovsky wrote. By ingenious sleight of hand it had made an oil-rich and noncompliant Arab state look bad, and enhanced Mossad’s prestige and image of power—at the cost of its “ally,” the United States.
Clearly the imaginative and ruthless Mossad officers in Tel Aviv were proud of their success in tricking Washington. Would they not have been enthusiastic about the prospect of doing so again, thereby further exacerbating tensions between Washington and the Arab world? As soon as Pan Am Flight 103 crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, Mossad could see the opportunity to repeat its earlier success.
The proximity in time between the Lockerbie crash and the shooting down by the USS Vincennes on July 3 of that year of an Iran Air passenger plane over the Persian Gulf, with the loss of 290 lives, presented a perfect “revenge” scenario. That, clearly, was the initial premise of the investigators at Lockerbie. Dr. Robert Black, professor of criminal law at Edinburgh University in Scotland, told this writer that, for the first two years following the Pan Am crash, investigators were focused on Iran as having hired Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command to carry out a retaliatory bombing.
In a Jan. 28, 2009 article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, however, the late Russell Warren Howe cited the book Giddeon’s Spies by Gordon Thomas. Thomas quotes a Mossad source as saying, “Within hours after the [Pan Am 103] crash Mossad’s LAP [psychological warfare or disinformation] staff were working their media contacts, urging them to blame and publicize that ‘Libya-did-it.’”
They could have blamed Iran, of course, but that would have gone against the Israeli grain. Iran was a large, non-Arab Muslim nation—and, as such, always of potential benefit to an Israel heavily outnumbered by the Arabs. Israel had even “done business” with the Islamic Republic a few years earlier, in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. It’s also possible, of course, that the Israelis know Iran was not the guilty party.
An Unwelcome Surprise
The perpetrators of the crime against the passengers and crew of Pan Am Flight 103 had intended that it crash at sea, leaving no physical evidence and no bodies to tell the tale. But turbulent weather over Heathrow Airport had led the pilot of the giant Boeing 747 to steer slightly more northward than usual, so the plane was still over land when it crashed at Lockerbie, Scotland.
The criminals thus had to think fast. A fragment from the alleged bomb trigger device was “found” several days after the crash. However, as the BBC program “Newsnight” reported on Jan. 8 of this year, tests aimed at reproducing the blast indicated that no such fragment would have survived the mid-air explosion. The “evidence,” moreover, was placed in a sack which was labeled in a certain way—but the label was subsequently changed by an unknown person, causing suspicion that evidence was being altered. As Dr. Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the crash, has written: “Coming from a scientific educational background, I found that it was the forensic evidence at [the trial at Camp] Zeist…which first convinced me that the prosecution case was a fabrication.”
Another astonishing factor was that the Crown (the prosecutors) ignored evidence of a break-in of the Pan Am luggage area at Heathrow early in the morning of that fatal December day. One wonders whether Pan Am had been alerted to security problems at Heathrow by Isaac Yeffet, the former head of security at Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, where security is airtight. In an article in the March 1989 issue of the now-defunct Life magazine entitled “The Next Bomb,” Edward Barnes wrote, “in 1986 Yeffet was part of a team commissioned by Pan Am to survey 25 of its branches around the world…Yeffet now runs a security consulting business in New Jersey.”
Dr. Swire, who has described the Court’s conviction of Megrahi as “a cock and bull story,” is not alone in his skepticism. Hans Köehler, the U.N. observer at the trial, has described the verdict as “incomprehensible,” and Dr. Robert Black has denounced the guilty verdict in equally dismissive language.
Thus the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 remains a mystery. If two years of investigating Iran produced no evidence, and the evidence used to convict Megrahi was fake, who was responsible for the horrific crime?
Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
| &larr Waging Peace: Billboards Urge New Mexicans to End Military Aid to Israel | Waging Peace: SF Activists Fast Outside Egyptian Consulate to Protest Gaza Blockade &rarr |
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Y-m-d H:i:s |24.255.118.xxx| Richard Marquise
This article is another example of individuals having no knowledge other than what they have read in blogs on the internet offering an "opinion" of the evidence at Lockerbie. The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 does not remain a mystery as stated in Killgore's article. Mr. Megrahi was rightly convicted in a Scottish court and the Government of Libya has acknowledged it's responsibility for the attack and has paid compensation for it. Professor Black may be a legal expert but his opinion about the Lockerbie verdict is only that--an opinion. Some of what Killgore has written does not even make sense. He said the perpetrators intended the plane to crash over the sea leaving no evidence--not sure how he knows this but agree it is plausible. He then said " The criminals thus had to think fast." What does that mean? I am not sure they could do anything about the crime scene once the plane began to fall.
I am afraid that Killgore has no knowledge of what the evidence is that convicted Mr. Megrahi but relying on blogs and comments made by people having no legal or law enforcement background (Koehler) or those who choose to interpret the evidence to suit their own purposes (Black), these kinds of "articles" do a complete disservice to the public, many of whom think that whatever is written on the internet is fact! Sad.
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Y-m-d H:i:s |Registered| Patrick Haseldine - Lockerbie: questioning the US and Scottish investi
Subject: Awaiting answers from Richard Marquise and Stuart Henderson
From: patrick.haseldine@btinternet.com
Date: Friday, 26 March 2010
Dear Mr Marquise,Lockerbie target: seven questions
On 15 March 2010, I asked you two questions:
1. Did the FBI 'establish antecedents' on Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson?
2. If so, will you publish the relevant FD402 report in full?
Earlier this week, I posed a further five questions for you and your Scottish counterpart, Detective Chief Superintendent Stuart Henderson, to answer:
3. Could you please tell us about the previous attack on Bernt Carlsson’s aircraft?
4. Could you please publish DC Crawford’s report on Bernt Carlsson?
5. Does the fact that in December 1988 the diamond mining and trading company De Beers was facing prosecution under the UNCN Decree for illegally exploiting Namibia’s gem diamonds over a 20-year period (estimated value $18.7 billion) make Bernt Carlsson a PA 103 target?
6. Does the fact that in December 1988 the owners of the Rössing uranium mine were facing prosecution under the UNCN Decree for illegally exploiting Namibia’s uranium oxide over a 14-year period (estimated value $1.2 billion) make Bernt Carlsson a PA 103 target?
7. Does the fact that the Rössing uranium mine is part-owned by the Iranian government, who were clandestinely receiving shipments of Namibian uranium oxide in 1988-1989, make it likely that Iran targeted Bernt Carlsson on PA 103?
Thanking you and DCS Henderson in anticipation of an early and full response to each of the seven questions,
Yours sincerely,Patrick Haseldine
HM Diplomatic Service
(1971-1989)
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Y-m-d H:i:s |Registered| Patrick Haseldine - Reply by Dr Jim Swire to comment from Richard Marq
Dr Jim Swire, father of Lockerbie victim Flora Swire, has replied to former FBI agent, Richard Marquise, as follows:
How remarkable that a man of your stature, Mr Marquise, should publish a comment which starts by claiming that those who wrote this article and those who do not believe that the Megrahi verdict was correct 'Have no knowledge other than what they have read in blogs on the internet offering an "opinion" of the evidence at Lockerbie....'
I sat, Mr Marquise, in the court at Zeist throughout the main trial and the first appeal: were you there? Frequently I still refer to the full set of transcripts to try to ensure that I make as few mistakes as possible. But I would add that it is what is not there that is often so interesting.
I presume you know, sir, that the trial judges were forced to report that it was 'a difficulty for the prosecution case that no evidence was led as to how Megrahi breached security in Malta'. Perhaps with your resources Mr Marquise, you can tell me, why was it that the break-in the night before Lockerbie at Heathrow airport was concealed from the main trial? It only emerged after 12 years: too late for the trial court to use.
Why was that? If you were indeed in charge of the case, presumably you know the answer. The Crown Office tell me they didn't know about it during that time either, what do you think? Did you know about it yourself? You were in charge you say of the investigation. If you knew, why didn't you tell, if you didn't know then it can't have been a very careful investigation can it? One or the other must be true. Did you know or not?
You must know by now that the break-in gave an unknown intruder access to Heathrow airside close to where the PanAm baggage container (later shown in court evidence to have contained the IED) had stood unguarded the following evening. Where the man loading that container gave evidence at Zeist that he had seen an unauthorised bag which he failed to remove, and that he'd seen it before the Frankfurt feeder flight (PA103A) had even landed at Heathrow.
What verdict do you think their Lordships at the main trial would have reached had they been required to compare the evidence from Luqa airport with the break-in evidence at Heathrow? Would they really then have been able to surmount the hurdle of 'reasonable doubt'? Their Lordships in the trial knew from the evidence led that terrorists had access to IEDs stable at ground level for days or even weeks, but designed always to explode around 40 minutes after take off, courtesy of their air pressure sensitive switches. No human intervention required in airside, except to get one into the target airplane. What if the Heathrow intruder brought one of those in with him? What if he left it with a message in the IranAir facility nearby?
So many queries because there was no scrap of evidence that the break-in was responsibly investigated at the time, that was not your fault, sir, because proper investigation, to be effective, would have had to start before the disaster had occurred, would it not?
Yes, I know that President Bush was trying back-channel negotiations with the Iranians in those days, despite the embarrassing shoot-down of an Iranian airbus by the US Cruiser Vincennes six months before, for which Iran had sworn revenge. That attempted negotiation wouldn't be a legitimate reason for interfering with a criminal trial would it? Not unless one was working in intelligence on one's country's behalf rather than as a criminal investigator.
Might not that break-in be the reason why my daughter's life was snuffed out in an explosion over Lockerbie 38 minutes after take-off from Heathrow with its now proven failed security perimeter?
Before you say 'Ah, but despite the Heathrow evidence, the first appeal failed' let me point out that Megrahi's defence had decided they would not challenge the 'sufficiency of evidence' led in the main trial. That extraordinary decision meant that their Lorships of appeal had no obligation to sift through that main trial evidence. That in turn meant that their belief that the 16 hours between the break-in and the take-off meant that it might be too long for it to be relevant may have been reached without the detailed knowledge of the nature of the available IEDs of which the main trial knew so much.
Did you know about the Heathrow break-in while the trial was in progress Mr Marquise, or did you not?
Do not fear, we are only after the truth, and I don't blog on the internet either. The fact that other well informed people do, makes it very difficult to conceal things for ever these days, doesn't it?
(Source http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2010/04/surely-mr-marquise-should-know-answer.html)
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Y-m-d H:i:s |Registered| Patrick Haseldine - Apartheid South Africa was responsible for Pan AmQuote:Thus the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 remains a mystery. If two years of investigating Iran produced no evidence, and the evidence used to convict Megrahi was fake, who was responsible for the horrific crime?
Or, put another way:Why Pan Am Flight 103? That’s the Wii
Officially
Why did the Libyans do it is the Wi question.
Libya’s motive in sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988, according to one school of thought, was to avenge the death of Colonel Gaddafi’s daughter in the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. In which case, PA 103 was Gaddafi’s second bite of the revenge cherry since he was alleged to have sponsored the September 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, when 20 passengers were killed.
Former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro, who had worked on the PA 103 investigation, was interviewed in the 1994 documentary film Maltese Double Cross, and offered another scenario. Cannistraro said he believed the Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government (in revenge for the July 1988 shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the US Navy). The Palestinians then sub-contracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the PFLP-GC’s bomb-making cell in Neuss had been disrupted by the German police and could not complete the operation.
Officially, then, the Wi question remains open.
Why that particular flight and date is the Wii question.
The Wii question was never actually addressed during the trial in 2000 of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. An explanation can however be divined from the Court Judgment, which states:
Quote:From the evidence which we have discussed so far, we are satisfied that it has been proved that the primary suitcase containing the explosive device was dispatched from Malta, passed through Frankfurt and was loaded onto PA 103 at Heathrow.So, it appears the official answer to the Wii question is that Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 was sabotaged for a simple, mechanical reason: the bomb suitcase had been ingested as unaccompanied baggage at Luqa Airport in Malta, conveyed by Air Malta flight KM180 to Frankfurt International Airport, and transferred there to a connecting feeder flight PA 103A to Heathrow Airport, where it was put into the interline baggage container AVE 4041PA and loaded onto PA 103 in the forward cargo hold.
Alternatively
Why did the apartheid South African regime do it? (Wi)
The alternative answer is that the apartheid regime was motivated entirely by self-interest: economic and political. In December 1988, the United Nations was planning to take legal action against De Beers/Anglo American to enforce UN Council for Namibia (UNCN) Decree No 1, which prohibited the exploitation of Namibia's natural resources - particularly diamonds and uranium. The UNCN Decree provided for the payment of damages to the future government of an independent Namibia. A former senior De Beers employee, Gordon Brown, has estimated that from 1967, when South West Africa (Namibia) became the responsibility of the United Nations, until the territory gained its independence in 1990, De Beers illegally removed diamonds valued at £11.0 billion ($18.7bn).
On 22 December 1988, the day after the Lockerbie disaster, apartheid South Africa was set to surrender control of Namibia to the United Nations upon signature of the New York Accords at UN headquarters, thus ending its illegal occupation of the territory in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 435. Once Namibia was under UN control, De Beers and the apartheid State faced prosecution under UNCN Decree No 1.
Why that particular flight and date? (Wii)
The alternative answer to the Wii question starts with what former MP Tam Dalyell called a "Faustian agreement" whereby Washington agreed with Tehran to sacrifice one American aircraft in revenge for the Iranian airbus - rather than the ten demanded by Iran’s minister of the interior at the time, Ali Akbar Mostashemi (see Mail on Sunday, 16 August 2009, The truth about Lockerbie? That's the last thing the Americans want the world to know).
To prevent the awful truth about this agreement from emerging, Washington secretly delegated the 'eye for an eye' task to Pretoria which accepted, but on condition that it had a say on choosing the sacrificial aircraft. Thus, the apartheid regime’s newly-fledged Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), having been assigned the task by the CIA, then selected Pan Am Flight 103 and 21 December 1988. That just happened to be the flight on which Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was booked to attend the signing ceremony in New York and to take charge of Namibia. The CCB had ample time to plan and execute the crime since Bernt Carlsson’s movements and travel arrangements, dictated in part by De Beers in London, were known well in advance. At one stroke, PA 103’s destruction met the requirement of the "Faustian agreement" and, by targeting the UN Commissioner for Namibia, achieved the objective of apartheid South Africa: to stop him prosecuting De Beers for the illegal exploitation of Namibia's natural resources (see "South Africa Inc: The Oppenheimer Empire", pages 117-121, and World in Action documentary "The Strange Case of the Disappearing Diamonds", which featured strong criticism of De Beers by Bernt Carlsson).
Upshot
As of March 2010, there has been no criminal investigation into Bernt Carlsson’s murder. The decision not to investigate was taken by Scottish policeman, Detective Constable John Crawford, on the basis of information supplied to him by "a very helpful lady librarian in Newcastle" (see "The Lockerbie Incident : A Detective's Tale", by John Crawford, pages 88/89).
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Y-m-d H:i:s |41.5.240.xxx| gordon brown - another look at Lockerbie
A good start would be to post the Court Record of the trial on the internet for all to see.
Robert?Adam?Richard?
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Y-m-d H:i:s |91.208.219.xxx| Baz - Take Another Look? Take a Proper Look!
This was a terribly poor article. Victor Ostrovsky's claims in his supposed memoirs "By Way of Deception" (possibly a work of fiction) do not constitute evidence and as far as I can see this anecdote is of no relevance anyway.
Gordon Thomas' book Gideon's Spies isn't evidence either. As I recall it made claims about the travel movements of supposed Lockerbie victim Matthew Gannon that were wildly untrue.
I am afraid the late Warren Russell Howe's article on Lockerbie "What If They Are Innocent" was riddled with ludicrous errors of fact and the conclusion that this was an Israeli "false-flag" operation was based on zero evidence but then he was writing for an Arab language periodical so i suppose he had to please his audience. Lousy journalism though.
What has this Isaac Yeffert got to do with anything?
I disagree with another of your central claims -that the perpetrators intended the plane to come down at sea. You have not a shred of evidence to support this claim.
If you think Israel or Mossad carried out this atrocity why not just say so? I suspect Western Governments did collude in the bombing and while Lockerbie involves a number of Jewish conmen I am not aware of a shred of evidence of Israeli involvement but I suppose in your world that it conclusive evidence.
If you are interested in the true story see "The Masonic Verses" at http://e-zeecon.blogspot.com
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Y-m-d H:i:s |Registered| Patrick Haseldine - The FBI and the UN Commissioner for Namibia
The criminal investigation was thorough and complete says Mr Marquise.
Here is what Detective Constable John Crawford had to say on the subject in his above-referenced book (pages 79-84) (see "The Lockerbie Incident : A Detective's Tale", by John Crawford):
Just after being set up in this format we were told that a team of us would form the Priority Profiling team. Both Alex and I would be responsible for taking a close look at all of the so-called 'first fifteen' of the interline passengers: those most likely to have been targeted or of some status that would make them a possible target.
All fifteen had boarded 103 from another flight and therefore had their luggage checked through at an airport other than Frankfurt or Heathrow. Our task was to examine every aspect of the person, obtain as much background as possible, examine every detail we could find and eliminate them from further enquiry as a target or possible 'stooge' who had been tricked into carrying anything onboard. Another four groups were dealing with the other interline passengers.
The people we had to profile [included] Bernt Carlsson, a United Nations Commissioner. It was not an easy task establishing all we wanted to know about each. We confirmed very quickly that the businessmen identified were just that.
We asked the FBI to make certain enquiries in the US on our behalf to establish antecedents for all of our subjects. Some of the agents were slow on the uptake and seemed reluctant to carry out enquiries. They couldn't see the point of investigating someone who was patently innocent. That was our first wee sign that each investigating force has its own methods of investigation.
In Scotland we gather as much information as possible about a murder victim in an attempt to ensure that there are no skeletons lurking that might have an effect on the crime. We never leave any stone unturned - it might conceal an all-important clue. Each fact must be examined from all angles and then filed away for any future reference that may be required. We double and then triple check everything.
Questions for Mr Marquise:
1. Did the FBI 'establish antecedents' on Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson?
2. If so, will you publish the relevant FD402 report in full?
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Y-m-d H:i:s |41.6.54.xxx| Gordon Brown - Request to the Scottish Police and the FBI
The investigation of this aspect of the case is really important to all striving to establish the truth of the matter; the families of the victims especially, and all others having an interest in arriving at the real facts.
In the interest of finding proper justice will the Scottish Police kindly post a copy of their letter of request to the FBI asking the Bureau to establish antecedents for those 15 passengers most likely to have been targeted or having some ststus that would make them a possible target. And, will the FBI be so kind as to publish its response to this request from the Scottish Police.
You might want to investigate the Diamond Cartel as a possible suspect. It had the motives, means and opportunity including the secret service and high level political contacts that would have made it all possible.