PAN AM 103: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

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PAN AM 103: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

 

 

By Stewart Nicol
November 28, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

Even after over twenty years the enigma of the Lockerbie Disaster haunts the planet. The disaster has claimed many victims after the event too.

The families of the 270 killed still have not got closure as the truth of what happened to the plane is still hidden. Governments of all political colors both sides of the Atlantic seem to be unwilling to let the public in on what they know and have known for decades. Many ask why this silence? Others seek closure in accepting the script as per Kamp Zeist and the compensation paid by Libya, not because it accepted any guilt, but rather to get back into the money club.(Have sanctions removed).

The desperation for that vital resource Oil has made Libya very popular in the latest decade. Col Gadaffi is as popular in the corridors of power in D.C. as Hugo Chavez was unpopular with the Bush administration. However, we need to explain this enigma by taking apart some vital clues which are and have been in the public domain, but much of the media have been too lazy or too disinterested to find. Pan Am 103 was among the first 747s to roll off the Boeing manufacturing line in Washington State. It was sold to Pan Am and spent its whole career with that airline.

The first name of this aircraft was Morning Light and it had over a decade flying around the world as this before in the early eighties being renamed as Clipper – “Maid of the Seas.”

The end was abrupt - as we all too tragically know - over the south west Scotland market town of Lockerbie, whose name got appropriated by the media, and thus into history as the Lockerbie disaster.

However, before beginning allocating blame we should have looked closely at the signs of what caused this to happen. Air accident reports are done so that the same does not happen again. Before PA103 fell from the skies as we are told it had the year before undergone a thorough re working to make it ready as a CRAF aircraft (i.e. Civil Reserve Air Force combat ready aircraft) which cost well over $20 million to refit the plane adding a considerable amount of weight to the protective hull and thousands of pounds of weight to the flooring above the cargo deck. This meant that the outer hull was strengthened and the rear of the plane practically a solid cocoon. The idea that 340 gramms of Semtex would even dent this, let alone break the total integrity of the plane is according to one of the explosive experts I talked to, highly improbable.

The extra weight would translate to extra fuel costs and that is why Government subsidize such aircraft so that they are kept flying. Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that in the first “Gulf War, PA103 - Maid of the Seas -would have been the first into service, had it survived.

The first time you read the official reports you tend to accept them without question after all they are prepared for government. If anyone was to alter or omit something vital in such a report it would be next thing to treason. We are on the whole very trusting of such documents. Secondly few of us are trained enough in the science or even grounded enough in physics to question what on the surface appears ok.

I am no scientist, but it was a spelling error which put me on the more questioning phase. When I experimented in looking at a map and tracking the described demise of the aircraft it was the report which began to fall apart. A lexicographer later highlighted the spelling error was no error but the way a foreign national might spell that word. A national from Iraq, or the middle east - surprisingly. The word by the way was Taxi spelled Taxy!

There was another absolutely glaring error which related to ordinance survey material. A six figure references takes you very close to an object and in two cases references were given and the suggestion of 500 meters and 300 meters was given as the closeness to this object. In reality it would be a tenth of that.

Now such a qualified scientist as an air accident investigator would not make that mistake and it was no typo as by the time such a report is printed and published it is scrutinized and corrected many times over. After all the lives of people are at stake, in the future at least, in such reports and it is very qualified people who need to study them.

There are other strange anomalies such as where the plane was when it came down we are told 31000 feet, yet the debris trail belies both the direction of the flight and the speed. How did the cockpit land at Tundergarth if it was crossing the Solway Firth when it broke up?

I have tracked down two people who saw it crash to the ground like a spinning top. Indeed the Cockpit is full of strange questions. Why were there four bodies (one armed with a handgun) in the cockpit? (there are only three crew.)

Why does the Fire master report point out that it was nearly two hours after the first call at 7.04pm to the fire brigade, that he dispatched someone to Tundergarth to see if fire tenders were required. Yet one journalist at Tundergarth very early saw a fire tender there (more than likely from Longtown military base). The journalist had to be driven to Lockerbie by a local Doctor, as the area had been cordoned off. The doctor was on scene early, prior to the police deployment. The description of what landed at Tundergarth by the firemaster’s senior man is worth looking at in relation to the accident report photos. His description is in the Firemasters official report.

It suggests that that it landed “…landed nearly intact from the cockpit to the spiral staircase section leading to the upper clipper class section. That suggests that at least two or three of the upper windows section would be there yet on Dec 22 1988 a photo from another angle shows a truncated cockpit with the first class section but little of the upper section.

Why arc lights were sent up there why were CIA and Mossad (Israeli Secret service) there nosing for material to take away. Did they work all night? Was a survivor or two removed? Even a well oiled (with a good malt whisky) FBI man has confirmed to a police man as much many decades later.

There could have been survivors a scientific article written by a former president of the North American Medical Examiners Dr. William Eckhart of Wichita University, said as much on his reconnaissance of the scene a few months after the event in 1989. Scottish police unsuccessfully tried to have his article stopped from being published in an American Scientific Journal. What were they afraid of in this article revealing?

A much later investigation found one source who stated that although an unproven piece of information suggested a CIA person on the plane linked to the BCCI investigation had been spirited away (alive!). Who knows someone carries this secret maybe even to the grave.If it were an accident, then cargo doors may have played a role, but only partially. Indeed from reading other air accident reports both sides of the ‘pond’ it could have played a role, but only a partial one. Secondly these reports tend to suggest that ‘Debris trails’ give a clue to what the cause of the plane's demise. Large trails tend to suggest explosives and very large ones Lockerbie has been suggested to be at least 800 square miles at most but well over 15 miles possibly military standard explosives, while narrow and short trails can be mechanical failure in origin.

So as you see there are more questions raised by the report than are answered. Also the photographs betray things too. One so glaringly bad even a child could detect the material shown is from a different aircraft. I personally tested a 7 year old and she spotted it saying that's different from that pointing to the area which was supposedly highlighted in the enlarged section. Later in the report in the diagrams, why use an example from Air India crash which happened over three years earlier?

The suggested line of descent too is off when you discover, by questioning people who worked on the scene, other interesting information to the contrary.

Although officially never confirmed, one soldier who worked in the crater area was puzzled that the fields before the crater were a couple of inches thick in Kerosene fuel and why it was sucked up by an unmarked military truck and when he noticed it happening he was approached and told by a senior man never to talk of this! Why not! Would it destroy the myth that Sherwood crescent was destroyed by the air fuel? If not air fuel what?

Another explosives engineer who was among the volunteers on the first couple of days was in the crater and was puzzled that there was no real smell of burnt fuel!

There were also in the crater few pieces of metal larger than 6-8 feet long. There were gruesome finds of body parts sadly but little else. Bombs and fuel explosions don't make craters but missiles do! Could there have been smuggled on board munitions set is such a way as to destroy the plane?

Some are convinced of this. However, as we are dealing with this plane, we should point out that a logical reason for the seats being freed up at the last minute had nothing to do with a massive conspiracy. Rather I was told from a reliable source in Pan Am that the flight would have been piloted by a different person had he not been ill. He was due to retire soon and as was the custom he had been gifted a third of the seats for his family and friends. Because the crew was changed those seats became free. This matches with the fact that the Syracuse Students were able to get several seats and that Flora Swire (Jim Swire’s Daughter) was able to get a last minute booking to meet her boyfriend in New York. Earlier she had tried to book that flight and was told it was full.

Perhaps the only diplomat who got a warning something was up, was Pik Botha whose BOSS (secret service with close ties to Mossad) entourage changed his booking from Frankfurt via PA 103 to a direct Lufthansa plane, if I remember the conversation right.

There are still those who feel that the integrity of PA103 may have been compromised. They may feel that caused the crash, but even if it played a role the debris trail tells another story, too long for this article. The ground zero (i.e. where the crash happened) evidence was tampered with by many some things were taken away and replaced. Some police even approached their MP’s about this crime. Others merely kept quiet out of fear for their pensions! Off the record I have so much more I can never say, but Libya or Abdel Baset al Megrahi, was never remotely in the frame for this one unless you call Margaret Thatcher a Liar! In her autobiography she underlined allowing the use of U.K. bases for the attacks on Tripoli and Benghazi stopped Libya being a source of terrorism. That took place in 1986 so why did she go with Bush in blaming Libya in 1991 for the PA103 attack? Why in her autobiography years after this is Lockerbie nearly omitted? It was given only a very small mention.

The largest terrorist attack in the history of U.K. terrorism following no less than 30 years against the IRA and under her watch should have warranted at least a chapter.

Why did Margaret Thatcher then Prime Minister stop Coleman Churchill, head of counter terrorism in the U.K. from being lead investigator? Instead, she insisted that the Scottish Police carry out the investigation and this at a time well before any devolution. Jurisdiction could not have been a problem. Indeed 32 countries could have taken up an investigation and Germany did their BKA had busted the PFLP-GC cell in Neuss near Frankfurt a couple of months before. However, they did not proceed with a case against Megrahi and cohort as they said to me in a telephone interview there was insufficient evidence.

So from just looking at the Crash site of the Plane we gather much that has not seen the light of day in the Court at Kamp Van Zeist.

In the next feature I will look at the people around this enigma which has brought shame on the Scottish Justice system which only recently showed proper compassion to a terminally ill man they wrongly convicted.

The day of the judgment I wrote a story from Zurich about tainted evidence. The so called fragment of timer. Only the Edinburgh Evening Times published that story. Despite its devastating claim – that the fragment of timer was a prototype and therefore could not have set off a bomb! In other words it was fake! None of the media followed up this at all. For part two click below.

Footnote:

1- The Firemaster’s Report on the Lockerbie Disaster. The intelligence report JPRS-NEA-89-04. SECTION “Iranian describes PFLP-GC role in Pan Am Bombing. London Al Dustur 22/5/1989 [pp15- 17.]

 Victims – 270 dead (11 from Lockerbie) 16 crew and 243 passengers (1 ) missed the plane. The families friends and seekers of justice, some police lost their careers at least one judge had a nervous breakdown for sending an innocent man to jail (or so I have been told by reliable sources I can never reveal) a Scottish Inspector of Police hounded and accused of perjury wrongly. Eventually being given a public apology and 750,000 GBP all victims of this pa 103 cover up of colossal scale. Like topsy it grew! Read the book by the inspectors father, himself and policeman, entitled "The Age of Innocence."

It all started several months before December in July of 1988. An American state of the art naval vessel the U.S.S. Vincennes was under ‘clandestine’ orders to attack what was a commercial airliner Iran air 655. The quest to murder one person, thought to be onboard, resulted in 300 dead. The USA tried to state it was a mistake! They mistook the aircraft for a fighter or attack aircraft. If this was not so serious a matter it would be laughable. The most advanced technological radar, the best trained crew and they could not tell the difference between a commercial airliner and a fighter plane? Even “cock up theory” would not dare to suggest such a scenario!

Admiral Crow lied to the American people as well as to the world. An American documentary entitled “The other Lockerbie”, outlined this unofficial war attack on Iran. The commander of that ship was decorated by President Reagan in his last few months of office but after all, in their eyes, he did no wrong! They suggested later the man was targeted by a pipe bomb from Iranian terrorists, However, I learned from another reliable source that the attack was an angry husband's attack!

The Ayatollah Khomeini was in power in Iran at this time and he was outraged at the deaths of so many heading for a religious ceremony just four days before the Hajj. He vowed the skies would rain American blood. In the latter part of July I have documentary evidence that Ahmad Jibril and Hayro Karabitain and a number of others of the PFLP-GC group met with the Ayatollah in Tehran. Jibril took on the “difficult task” of bringing down the great Satans of America but it had to be an Intekam operation. This means ‘an eye for an eye’ type response.

Pan Am 103 was a plane full of people returning – four days before Christmas - for a religious festival. (Christmas)

It held nearly 300 or so passengers and to target such a plane would fit the bill in the thinking of a measured response in Islam. As soon as the USS Vincennes shot down the plane the U.S. were in a state in the echelons of power as they realized what the retaliation might be as was hinted 10 for 1. In the Arab street that would be likely accepted. Indeed is it ironic that they said it was an act of revenge they got that right, but instead of blaming Iran they turned on Libya.

Their revenge was supposed to be for the bombing of Libya in 1986, but why would Gadaffi wait two years? No one has answered that question satisfactorily.

Even academics who study international terrorism are surprised at Libya being blamed in the winter of 1991.

It was well known that their forte:- was giving a hiding place, training camps, even arranging weapons deliveries and of course money laundering, but rarely did they act as the direct bombers. One UN source I spoke to in New York joked they tended to mess it up!

There are several witnesses who never appeared at the court. Another policeman I spoke to would not give evidence as he would not tell lies! Yet another, a friend of his told me, was really badly done by and pushed out of the force as what he saw at Tundergarth that night he found abhorrent and wanted to say so. He was left for at least 17 ½ hours on duty without a break! He was, like many, shocked at what has been described as hell on earth around him. To compound that the whole area was being violated by Americans who although they wore hats with FBI or said they were air accident investigators he suspected they were CIA. Things were removed and as this was a crime scene nothing not even a body should have been moved. All this was at Tundergarth which the Fire brigade did not know about until a couple of hours after Sherwood crescent went up in flames.

Why did the American Ambassador fly up so quickly? With his entourage how did he get them together so quickly? Indeed it took a couple of hours before the military, who had volunteered immediately on hearing the disaster, were deployed.

They reached Lockerbie after midnight. The emergency teams from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary were dispatched immediately by helicopter and a back up team by road by Landrover. Due to an aerial blackout zone being immediately enforced - not for C.I.A. or certain military Chinooks - the Emergency team were unable to land until the team by road had already reached Lockerbie.

There were thousands of volunteers over the next few days that helped bring in the dead and the debris. Apart from a youngsters body none were moved the first night as it was being treated almost immediately, according to the top pathologist Professor Anthony Busuttil, as a murder scene. Just six months in post Prof. Busuttil was called to the scene along with a number of other pathologists from the RAF.

The first HQ was the Town Hall, but then the Lockerbie Academy soon became the hub of a massive investigation under Strathclyde police. The temporary mortuary moved also from the Town Hall to the nearby Ice Rink. The man heading up the Police detail was John Orr, Strathclyde Police. He would be taking on his largest task and he would go on to be knighted and promoted to Chief Constable. His right hand man was Detective Harry Bell, (who later became head of the S.C.R.O. hence the McKie affair – to bolster his credence), just before the trial, who became mired in trouble over illegal wire tapping in Malta and also later was involved over the mis identification from Tony Gauci. Bell met with the witness Tony Gaucci at least 50 times and discussed rewards of millions of dollars for the identification of Megrahi. Money for identifying someone in such an important case must be wrong morally and certainly illegal under Scots Law.

The conflict of interest it arouses would suggest a jury would have to discard totally that identification. Bell’s Diary was at the heart of disclosure arguments with the defense, in the most recently SCCRC ordered appeal, who sought in be put into the domain of the court in total. The Crown delayed for months over this at first not mentioning its existence and then seeking to suggest it was a private diary. They suggested to the judges it would not be fair to put it in totality into the court as many candid remarks about colleagues and people Bell came across in the case were included. Redacted extracts were all they sought to allow. The first forty eight hours saw thousands of people involved in this major disaster which in the first 24 hours was not designated a terrorist act or an accident.

The smallest police force in Scotland in Lockerbie were about to be joined from every part of Scotland as well as by the Military to deal with the the tragic and horrific aftermath. The 259 on board the Jumbo Jet were strewn over the hillsides, golf course, the streets and roofs of Lockerbie and at nearby Tundergarth less than 200 yards from a small rural Church of Scotland lay the Cockpit itself surrounded by bodies of the victims of this disaster.

In the first 24 hours it was to be treated as a crime scene and so no bodies were supposed to be moved all needed to be photographed in the location they fell to earth. The distribution of bodies suggested breakup of the aircraft as did the cockpit landing at Tundergarth. The local farmers were all affected by this disaster hitting their land. They were very much involved whether they liked it or not and at least one was paid to keep silent about a suitcase full of drugs which he phoned the police about several times according to one of his friends. He was concerned for his sheep. This case was removed by the CIA. In another incident I was told about the removal of another case and an empty case returned to the same spot to be ‘found’ later.

The local doctors were quick to be on the scene and one even reached Tundergarth early before the blockade of the area. The American Ambassador Charles Price along with his wife and an entourage of people including the FBI legate arrived via Carlisle and then by car, while the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher arrived the next day. The military helpers under Col. David Hills were there shortly after midnight and were deployed to help find the location of the victims bodies around the area and indeed help the police in the carrying out of their duties in this ‘multiple murder case’.

The victims who would fall foul of the Lockerbie Disaster after the event would include: bereaved families of those killed in this incident, journalists, a police doctor, Dr. David Fieldhouse, and many others who sought to tell the truth of that horrific night. They would have to wait nearly a decade before a trial took place.

Those who sought to find the truth too became victims to the powers seeking to cover this up. One such victim in America was Juval Aviv, an ex Mossad intelligence officer, he was hired by Pan Am to find out what really happened. His six month investigation was unwelcome as it pointed the finger towards the black ops CIA and Palestinian terrorists. He was accused of being a spy. He successfully defeated that but it cost him much time and effort not least dollars to exonerate his name and company Interfor.

A few years later a rich Washington DC Lobbyist William Chasey got involved in the case. He traveled to Libya, met with the two accused while they were under house arrest and with Col. Qadaffi and saw that the case was incorrect. He returned to the U.S. and met with President Clinton who had promised to do more to clear up the Lockerbie issue, but found he did nothing. When this happened Chasey Published a book called Foreign Agent 4221 and later under the title “Pan AM 103 The Lockerbie Cover Up” Shortly after that he was arrested accused of fraud and ended up with a three year jail sentence on trumped up charges. Nothing new in this cover upon as witness Les Coleman ended up in Jail and had his book pulped although I managed to find a copy in a church sale that missed the net! When he gave away information about the case and Khalid Nasir Jaafar as a double agent working for DEA so he would hardly have had a bomb in his suitcase!

The police who did not agree with the case and the Crown office core group determined to move the blame to Libya were to base their careers on it and as is so often the story corrupt people beget corrupt helpers and sometimes sadly scum rises to the top! The result in this case was that those, who were involved in the crown office early on, were trusted by those who sought to hide the truth. According to one source one man even ended up as Lord Advocate, despite there being according to one law source in Edinburgh, many more qualified for the post.

But Boyd was a safe pair of hands for the Script as some describe the official story. A source very knowledgeable of the Legal world of Edinburgh, a professor of Law confirmed to me that when Colin Boyd became Lord Advocate, it was something of a surprise to that person as he was not the most likely candidate for the post. He was not as able as many others, but he was on the “in group,” who would prosecute two innocent men, so he got the post. He hated if anyone challenged his story and so two innocent men were imprisoned no one ever identified Fimah at all! He and Megrahi were named by a co worker who claimed to be Libyan intelligence, but was not!, and worked with CIA who took Majid illegally out of Malta and then MI5 put him up in London till his girlfriend arrived then they went into a witness protection programme. Majid only gave the two names when he was threatened with being returned to Libya! Claiming he knew who was involved with the Lockerbie attack on Pan Am 103.

The identification of Megrahi was done by Tony Gaucci, a Maltese shop owner who had a shop Mary’s House in Tower road, Malta. However, if you look at the description of Megrahi that he gave the nearest he came to an identification was that Megrahi resembled the man who bought the clothes the charred remnants which were found at Lockerbie. He also said it was raining on December 7th and that the man bought an umbrella. The man was supposed to be 6 foot tall and about 50. At that juncture Megrahi was too young 36 and was 5’ 8”. Later Gauci recognized a mug shot of Abu Talb. The identification would ironically have been inadmissible south of the border according to one legal expert, from Matrix chambers who had been hired between the end of the trial and the first appeal to assess Megrahi’s defence teams work. Mr. Julian Knowles.

Knowles and Manson’s audit the work of the two defence teams found the work of Magrahi’s team woefully inadequate. They were puzzled why they were not replaced prior to the first Appeal. The cross examination of Megrahi’s team was inadequate on several occasions and in at least one incident Mr. Keen QC for Fimah, got to his feet to finish what should have been asked of a particular witness.

They also were puzzled why Murtaghand another U.S.A. lawyer from the Defence department Dana Biehl was practically leading the Scottish prosecution.

In a Scottish court in Edinburgh they would not have been allowed to even be there. The star witness for the prosecution Majid was often reprimanded even by the judges when he sought to check with the us attorneys if he should answer certain questions. Nowhere in the court proceedings was there any mention of these two U. S. Lawyers and in Scottish courts all taking part must be named in the documentation. It took me a couple of years to track down their names with the help of U.N. Observers to the Trial. Muragh even arrived at the most recent appeal hearings “to see that everything was progressing correctly.” He said.

This plus the fact that a 100 page document (written by a former army engineer with much explosives experience John Parkes of Edinburgh), which took apart at the seams the air accident report was lost by them and never used in the first trial and then they did not use it at the appeal. This document is a fairly important one. Written by an explosives demolition man and a former military man with many connections he outlined that the bomb described could not do the damage to the Jumbo jet that occurred. He also was at the autopsy of a young girl aged about nine where he pointed out clear evidence of fragmentation to the body in her back and calves, but not on her thighs or buttocks Her socks, which were pitted with burn marks round burn marks, he felt should give valuable information on what caused the blasts. He should have known as his military experience included blowing up a couple of planes to clear a runway! Back in the sixties in Aden.

A later victim you might say was some the of Victims families whose phones were tapped by MI6 or MI5 - not for their safety, but rather to keep an eye on the awkward questions and information they were finding out.

Jim Swire confirmed as much to me once in conversation as I had found my phone tapped at one time too and my mail opened!

The man who has suffered most since the disaster is Abdel Baset Al Megrahi who has spent over a decade in jail as well as having his name and character assassinated and worse as an innocent man handed over in the belief a fair system would exhonerate him he was let down badly. The SCCRC (the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission) highlighted several disturbing facts and pointed out that his human rights had been badly breached. They said that there was a clear case of injustice and that there must be an appeal.

It was this which began in 2009 and again the Crown Office used delaying tactics to slow the system down.

The appeal began in April/ May 2009 and the second and third sections which would have revealed much of the underhand framing of Magrahi was set for 2010!
The crown knowing his health and life expectancy was December 2009 at best!

The most fascinating aspect to me of a victim in a way was Dr. Richard Fuisz of Chantilly Virginia. He was a CIA asset in Syria in the late 80’s and according to a deposition in a Court in New York, New York, America, he was deposed by the Fimah Team's lawyers during the kamp Zeist trial. This deposition was sealed under national security in the USA immediately following the deposition, but was given to the Scottish Lawyer of Fimah . Inside this deposition is supposed to be a list of who really done it. According to one of my sources, I know the deposition took place as Eddie MacKechnie the lawyer for Fimah at the time and who later worked for a time for Megrahi confirmed such a deposition took place.

Perhaps it was this coming out at a new appeal which forced the U.S. to pressurize Gaddaffi to force Megrahi who was terminally ill at the time to give up his appeal. The compassionate release did not require him to give up the appeal at all. So Megrahi again is a victim. Yet he seeks to clear his name and a look at his web site is very educational when you read about the new witnesses they have found in Malta and of the poor quality of the identification and that Gauci got millions from the CIA and a 12000 GBP holiday in Scotland escourted by Harry Bell.

You have to wonder what is happening to Scottish Judicial system once the world leaders in justice and who had even a “not proven” verdict for those tricky cases which relied on much circumstantial evidence like this one. However, Justice was the key victim in this according to Prof. Hans Koechler of Vienna. He supports an inquiry. For part three click below.

Footnote:

1- The Firemaster’s Report on the Lockerbie Disaster. The intelligence report JPRS-NEA-89-04. SECTION “Iranian describes PFLP-GC role in Pan Am Bombing. London Al Dustur 22/5/1989 [pp15- 17.]

21 Years on the investigation needs to get underway

A cold case is one which has not been investigated for several years and in the case of 270 murders there is no time limit. Although the powers that be have managed to stop the appeal the truth on this case must come out if we want to put an end to further terrorist attacks. Pan Am 103 was destroyed in the skies above Lockerbie, in the south west of Scotland. What happened that night? Who did the dark deed? Why were two governments more interested in covering up the truth than finding it? These are all questions so far unanswered.

One of the ways to understand what is happening around the time that the Pan Am flight went out of the skies is to understand the politics which are taking place at the time in the world. In the late eighties the U.S.A. C.I.A. were doing their best to remove Colonel Muammer Qaddaffi from leadership in Libya. They had an unholy alliance with Al Burkan through their alliance to the National Struggle front for the Liberation of Libya. There had already been attempts on Qaddafdfi’s life including the bombing raid, from British Bases, by the U.S.A., which took the life of his fifteen month old daughter

Two years earlier the killing of Yvonne Fletcher, the young policewoman, in 1984 was thought to be a hit by the Terrorist group Al Burkan (the volcano) although it suited the U.S.A. and U.K. to blame Qaddaffi followers in the embassy. They were a secretive assassin group who attacked several loyal to Libyan leader Qaddaffi.

They were often funded by greedy Businessmen eager for billions once their people ruled Libya! The National Struggle Front of Libya was full of dissidents who did not like the Qaddaffi regime. They were even backed by the C.I.A. and trained by them in some cases. The German underworld provided guns and one documentary by Dispatches even spoke to the man who smuggled the “Walter PPK” into the U.K. that probably killed Yvonne Fletcher.

The shenanigans going on a la Iran Contra with Oliver North and his band of cohorts was also still active on various black ops. It is well known that Vincent Cannistraro was head of the anti Gaddaffi cohort and yet he is the one investigating PA103 so is it any surprise he wants to lay the blame there at Qaddaffi’s feet!

Another false theory I it was behind time. When PA103 left Heathrow it did not push off from the gate late at all. So it was never likely to blow up over the sea as had it survived it would have flown farther north, not immediately west from Lockerbie. Its flight path was as far as Stornoway in the western isles before heading west!

The idea a bomb would be planted outside U.K. defies terrorist logic never mind any other logic. However, Maggie Thatcher was so determined to say it could not happen in U.K. she wanted the blame to be put on Germany or as conveniently later appeared Malta! Whatever blew apart that aircraft it went on at Heathrow, never in a month of Sundays would it have been introduced at Malta.

Terrorists targeting planes in that era sadly knew their trade and would place it on with the least number of stops. The Iranian interior minister at that time was Ali Akbar Mhotashemi who was a friend of Abu Nidal and indeed knew Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC. An account of the meeting in Iran of Jibril and his gang is described in a document which appeared in the Jordanian Newspaper printed in London. It gave a detailed account of what happened. When you think that this appeared in 1989 and Tam Dalyell read it out to Parliament it is staggering, in the least, that any suspicion about the downing of the plane would be to do with Libya.

The whole newspaper account ended up in intelligence documents in the U.S.A. and that is the source of my copy a number of years later just before the trial.

A quote from this source is, July 8 1988, “It is almost 8 a.m.. The Mehrabad International Airport is crowded with passengers who arrived in Tehran about ten minutes ago. Aboard an Iranian plane originating in London. In one corner of the airport where influential guests visiting Iran are usually received unofficially, one can observe three interior ministry officials, as well as, Hamid Reza Naqqashan, the intelligence chief of the Revolutionary Guard and Mahmud Hashemi Rafsanjani the head of Syrian –Lebanon-Palestinian desk. At 8 a guard informs the Iranian officials of the the arrival of the special flight for which they have been waiting. ”

Later on it says, “..After about half an hour, Naqqashan is seen sitting in a private Mercedes. Next to him is the important guest, Ahmad Jibril.”

The account is detailed and covers three pages two columns on each page. Each section is also dated and goes from July 1988 to 21 December 1988

That paragraph reads, “21 December - The American passenger plane crashed over Lockerbie. While and unknown group in Beirut called the Islamic revolutionary Guard claimed responsibility for the incident, the Iranian foreign ministry issued an communiqué in which it strongly denied reports alleging Iran was behind the incident. In Beirut, Ahmad Jibril received the final portion of his fee which totaled $10 million. In Larnaca, the Iranian charge d’affaires received Rashid Mehmet, who arrived in Larnaca on a German passport after carrying out his mission.”

These quotes are from document titled JPRS-NEA-89-043m [1] which includes other intelligence information on Egypt, Bahrain, Iraq and other Mideast area countries.

Why pay $10 million to Jibril if he is not involved in some way?

The USS Vincennes had brought down the Iran Air 655 killing 300 in the July OF 1988. It was likely that there would be a retaliation. The Ayatollah had seen the U.S. as the great Satan and this incident only went on to confirm their view.

Iran was well known for using proxy groups of terrorists for their own ends and it is worth remembering that once PA 103 went down an Iranian group the Islamic Revolutionary Guard claimed they had carried this out. Indeed the first CIA analysis suggests as much.

The massive destruction of the plane suggests, according to one expert I contacted, that at least 5 kilos (over 10lbs) must have been used to destroy the jet and that that material was close to the skin of the aircraft. Or possibly military quality munitions.

The 800 square miles tells you that the plane was ripped to pieces and indeed the severe damage to a number of the bodies underlines the fact of a massive series of explosions. The fact some bodies were ripped apart and others with horrific injuries is witness to the power and energy of the explosions. One Japanese passenger was identified from his hand – sadly all that was all that was left of him.

One pathologist told me a fingerprint from his kettle was the confirmation of his identity.

The idea that the plane dropped out of the sky at 31000 feet and fell in six minutes is what the report on the accident suggests and what the official story is said to be.

However, a perusal of the early accounts of what happened and a look at what eyewitnesses say to newspapers this is a falsehood. The first blast may well have been at 31000 feet, but the catastrophic explosions and break up happened at a much lower level than is said. One American newspaper quotes one person driving towards Lockerbie as seeing the shape of the fuselage heading for Lockerbie with out its cockpit. Other accounts tell of the cockpit landing spinning like a top! Farmers who lived locally felt the thunderous bang of the plane or rather part of the plane as it hit the ground. The fact that the Fire brigade in their report say that there was a kerosene mist in the air and a concern about fire around the town that tells you fuel may have been dumped a frantic fight to save the flight must have happened, just prior to the catastrophic final explosions, and demise of the “Maid of the Seas.”

The injuries that some people got were in some cases not fatal in themselves and it is even more shocking that a very few may even have survived the explosions and break up of the plane. Police said to me that some of the bodies looked as if they were just sleeping. Others were clearly very badly injured and some obviously fatalities. Another officer said what got to him was seeing an unbroken bottle of spirits next to the body of one victim. Some were still strapped into their seats which had been blown apart from the flooring of the aircraft.

A clear sign of high explosives were involved. To try to explain away the devastation throughout the plane a theory called the Mack Stem wave caused by the explosion is written into the Air Accident Report. Several mathematicians and a number of engineers have said to me off the record that the mach stem idea is rubbish and that is the polite word I have heard used!
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William Eckardt’s lengthy article on Lockerbie in the Scientific American highlights a wide range of evidence never seeing the light of day in the court. Considering his wide experience and expertise and that at the time he had been the President of the North American Medical Examiners association, his eye witness accounts hint at a much lower level of fall to the ground. One air hostess probably survived the crash, but what happened to her. She was covered in a blanket by a local lady and help was sent for so why did she not receive it?

I know the lady in question was shocked to hear that there were no survivors. This victim according to the witness was still very shallow breathing, but had a little sign of life. The crack medical teams 'helicoptered' to the scene should have been there! Why was there a no fly zone immediately put up except for certain military planes?

When film scripts of terror appear there is always a baddie or large organized crime group involved. In PA 103 it is not so much a conspiracy as a conspiracy of silence. Everywhere there is disinformation a sure sign of cover up.

Otherwise why would two shades of political governments both sides of the pond seek to hide the truth or at least not want the truth found. Any crime needs a motive this one may have at least two. Firstly there is the revenge for the murder of 300 innocent Iranian victims en route to a holy celebration. Secondly and perhaps decidedly there is the CIA team returning with a scandal which would make Watergate look like a Sunday school picnic!

The choice of the revenge aircraft therefore may be more for convenience and that makes the truth an inconvenient truth. The second thing any crime requires is the means to carry out the crime. In the case of terrorists they are more than willing to kill innocents and they have the expertise of attacking planes or hi jacking them. The PFLP-GC led by Ahmed Jibril certainly took on what was called the “difficult task” by Jibril himself. To down a number of U.S. Planes. Abu Nidal, however, also was able to deal out terror attacks and was playing both sides as he was clearly connected to CIA black ops. In the end of the eighties early nineties period Abu Nidal was escorted around London by Metropolitan police to visit his BCCI bank in Sloan area. Yet according to one source in Germany an Iranian well placed to know he claimed that Nidal had alleged that he did PA 103.

He certainly had the means and a motive may have been given to him in the form of dollars! At that time the Hostages were in Beirut held by the Hezbollah headed by Imad Mugniya. Mugniya had close ties to Ali Akbar Mhotashemi as well as to Hizbullah in Lebanon. Indeed it was Mhotashemi who inaugurated the Hizbullah in the first place.

An arms for hostages deal was in the air at that time. Monzer Al Kassar who was the main gun runner for Ollie North after financier Adnan Kashoggi, had close ties to the CIA and also to Jibril’s PFLP-GC. Kassar was also lead drugs dealer in the Bekka Valley trade with Syria for drugs for Europe. Indeed he sometimes joked that his route was protected by the CIA. The route through Cyprus on to sometimes Frankfurt and London. Heroin was shipped by a mule to Detroit via New York on no less that the aircraft PA 103 route.

DIA man Les Coleman said as much in his book Trail of the Octopus and also to me in interviews by telephone. Coleman had met Khalid Nazir Jafaar who was actually a double agent working for the DEA. He was the mule aboard PA 103 and died in its demise. However, his drugs haul was aboard but not admitted to by the Crown Office. I know, the Farmer who found the drugs and called the police about them on a number of occasions, but they were spirited away by the CIA men on the ground. Indeed one local journalist was given a row for saying the CIA and Mossad were there. They wanted to know which sources had given this information. However, he never revealed them (quite properly protected them) even when they offered he could do so to the Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher face to face! He still declined.

So on that December night we can see on that plane some 243 people and 16 crew would meet their death in the surrounding area of the Scottish border town of Lockerbie. Among the passengers were at least 8 CIA personnel including Major Chuck McKee, Matthew Gannon, Daniel Emmett O’Connor, and Lariviere. There was a key figure in the controversial BCCI bank Mr. Robert Fortune. As well as Khalid Nazir Jafaar the official drugs mule (CIA / DEA approved). BKA in Frankfurt were monitoring this drugs move as were customs and excise in the UK and DEA in USA.

Pan Am airline was at that time in dispute over ownership. As the former Shah of Iran owned more than half the shares, the Ayatollah was seeking to take over the nations Flag carrier! So allegedly political expedience would rather see it go to the wall than hand it over. A motive perhaps for letting Iran get their revenge as doing so would result in the company's bankruptcy. Better than letting Iran get their hands on it. Another possible motive is that it would be possible that if terrorists got one target in revenge it would be safer than admitting mistakes in shooting down Iran Air 655 commercial aircraft, earlier that year.

The more you dig into this story the murkier it gets. Why was the search for survivors not as high a priority as it should have been? Secondly why were there so many Americans in control of the area? The crime scene was looted too by thieves. Local police were disgusted at this pilfering and did their utmost to prosecute any found stealing. You can find a number of these cases which ended up in court. Including one red top journalist who sought to pilfer a fur coat!

So those who may have been behind the largest loss of life attack in Europe were certainly not Abdel Baset Al Megrahi of Libya. He became a scapegoat years later and one of the biggest victims as he spent over a decade in jail, his name ever linked with the atrocity. He sought to clear his name but due to a terminal illness and the unreal delaying tactics of the Crown office under orders of the U.S.A. lawyers like Murtagh! And dana Biehl the court only got started on the appeal. However five judges still have to rule on that section of the appeal and the crown office still have to drop their appeal of a stiffer sentence? That first phase of the appeal could exonerate Megrahi on the identification alone.

The case needs to be re opened and the links and real forensics followed up. The fact that a body went missing, the first swabs which indicated the existence of explosives with chemical traces of PETN and RDX were lost! Conveniently? The fact that anyone who diverges from the ‘Script’ is vilified or destroyed character and called a conspiracy the orist – which surprisingly instead of interesting journalists even more in the puzzle – they see it as a label to be avoided!

Strange that MI5 or 6 have bugged the homes of journalists who sought to find the truth and of the homes of victims’ families who seek the truth rather than seek to find the real perpetrators.

In recent years is it a coincidence that Mugniyah was assassinated, Kassar arrested and Mesbahi has been sidelined perhaps the more we look at the real case clues of PA 103 the closer to home the birds come to roost! I have no definitive answer My job here was to ask questions the closer I looked at the case against Abdel Baset Al Megrahi the further from Libya I went the closer to an uncomfortable truth I seemed to find pointing far from the Mediterranean coast and closer to terrorists such as the IRA, the PFLP GC or as Juval Aviv’s first report in 1989 suggested an inter terror group with the “Black CIA” as he described them.

Whoever did it should be followed up. If Scottish justice was perverted knowingly then a better class of prisoner should be in Barlinnie in what was called “Qaddaffi’s cafe!” For part one or two click below.

Footnote:

1- The Firemaster’s Report on the Lockerbie Disaster. The intelligence report JPRS-NEA-89-04. SECTION “Iranian describes PFLP-GC role in Pan Am Bombing. London Al Dustur 22/5/1989 [pp15- 17.]