Lockerbie appeal. Lack of media interest.

[Peter Lemkin]

In light of developments it is instructive to read back over this thread.

The State has indeed ensured that there will be no raking over the existing evidence, nor presentation and scrutiny of substantial and damning new evidence by Megrahi's defence team.

The press is full of sanctimonious outrage at his welcome back in Tripoli; there are copious reports of the 'outrage' of the US families of the victims (if there's one thing our MSM excels at, it is sanctimonious outrage); also of Hilary Clinton being snubbed by Alex Salmond (SNP First Minister) whom she had urged (for public consumption) to refuse Megrahi's release/transfer.

Meanwhile the substantive issue of Megrahi's actual guilt beyond reasonable doubt which any fair minded review of the detail is forced to conclude as unsustainable, is buried.

The Spooks must be breathing a sigh of relief, whilst celebrating their cleverness and the gullibility of the general public once again

Oh, there are all kinds of ways to make sure a real investigation never takes place. You can kill the man in prison, force him to withdraw his appeal, loose the evidence or a witness....there must be a list somewhere they all share. No, we'll probably never get a real official investigation on Dallas, RFK, MLK, Waco, Oklahoma City, 9-11, 7-7, Pan Am, Gander, Nugan-Hand, Iran-Contra, Watergate and a thousand other Deep Political operations. Them's the 'Rules' of the Rulers.....what you don't know will hurt you!

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.”
Joseph M. Goebbels

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship…Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials

[Peter Presland]

This is a good overview of the Lockerbie situation by Michael Carmichael at Global Research:

In December 1988, I was living in the United Kingdom when the searing news of the Lockerbie bombing exploded into the global consciousness.
With 270 victims, Lockerbie was at once the worst act of terrorism on British soil and the most heinous act of terrorism yet perpetrated against Americans. Twelve years later, Lockerbie would produce one of the most expensive trials in world history (75 million pounds sterling, circa $120 million) and what has become a highly contentious verdict.
At the time of the tragedy, an extremist group of Palestinians backed by Iran was selected as the primary suspect, but two years later when Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait the spotlight of suspicion shifted to Libya. Bush, Sr. needed Iranian support for the invasion of Kuwait – a nation courted assiduously by the Reagan-Bush administration through the notorious Iran-Contra Scandal and beyond.
Under the crushing weight of draconian sanctions, Libya eventually realized the wisdom of producing members of its own intelligence apparatus who could help them engineer the lifting of crippling trade restrictions. In the course of time, two hapless Libyans: Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah would be extradited and sent to an obscure US military base called, Camp Zeist, where they would be placed on trial. On the 31st of January 2001 over twelve years after the tragedy shook the civilized world, a panel consisting of three Scottish judges convicted Megrahi and acquited Fhimah. Megrahi received a life sentence intended to compel him to serve at least 27 years in prison.
Over the course of the intervening eight years, lawyers representing Megrahi have argued for a new trial. In 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) referred the Megrahi case to the Justiciary, the Scottish Appellate Court, a development that could have led to his acquittal. The grounds for the Commission’s ruling were stark: exculpatory evidence had been repressed at the original trial. The official announcement from the Commission stated: “The applicant (Megrahi) may have suffered a miscarriage of justice.”
These developments were adequately reported in the Scottish, UK and European Media, but sadly and mysteriously – these crucial decisions were sparsely reported in the US media where the Murtagh Building and 9/11 have obscured the finite analysis of all previous terrorist tragedies.
In 2007, Hugh Miles published a masterful analysis of the case in the London Review of Books, but the in-depth coverage has been slight or virtually invisible in Bush Era / Post-9/11 America. The result is a sadly uninformed nation and government.
In recent months, Megrahi’s attorneys have come to an arrangement whereby their client -- who is now suffering terminal cancer and estimated to be within only a few months of his death -- should be released on compassionate humanitarian grounds. This decision will almost surely alleviate any potential lawsuit by Libya over the $2.7 billion she continues to pay to the families of the 270 victims – a settlement of $10 million per family.
This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a public statement opposing Megrahi’s release, while the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry; Senator Edward Kennedy; Senator Patrick Leahy and others signed a letter objecting to the release of Megrahi. These epistles may embarrass their writers in the future.
From the accounts of the Senators’ letter that have been published , it now appears that none of the US officials were adequately briefed on the judicial developments in the case. None of the American officials have mentioned the SCCRC’s judicial review, and none of them recognized the growing public sentiment in Scotland, Britain, Europe and the Middle East that a massive miscarriage of justice was committed in Megrahi’s case.
The original case was tried in a Kafkaesque atmosphere. With proceedings convened at the US military installation, Camp Zeist, the two defendants were tried under Scottish law by a three-judge panel. The prosecution alleged a conspiracy that involved planting the bomb on the Pan Am plane at a stop in Malta. The forensic evidence has been described as tenuous. Three days after he had seen a photograph of Megrahi in a newspaper, a Maltese shop owner identified him as the man who had purchased some clothes that had been identified by technicians and traced to his shop in Malta that were detected amidst bomb debris in a painstaking forensic investigation.
To make matters worse, over the years intelligence and police officials have disclosed that they were in control of evidence that proved Megrahi to be innocent and that other perpetrators known to the international intelligence community were guilty of the atrocity. To recount only one bizarre incident, Susan Lindauer, a US Congressional aide, testified that Dr. Richard Fuisz who was employed by the CIA had informed her that he knew for a fact that Megrahi was not involved in the Lockerbie bombing – and that he could identify the actual perpetrators, “If the government would let me.” After making her evidence known, Lindauer was charged with being an Iraqi agent and a federal court promptly gagged the loquacious Dr. Fuisz.
A Scottish jurist and a UN official have criticized the Kafkaesque atmosphere that surrounded Megrahi’s ‘trial’ at Camp Zeist. Apparently, officials from the US Department of Justice swirled around the improvised courtroom imbuing the proceedings with the unmistakable stench of oppressive political influence.
Lockerbie remains a compelling and inscrutable tragedy. The victims deserve an unbiased investigation – but at this late date the probability that the perpetrators of Lockerbie will ever be known is diminishing. The current legal posture of the case is untenable.
The Director of Central Intelligence should order his staff to remove the gag from Dr. Fuisz and any other informant with knowledge of the facts in this labyrinthine and Kafkaesque case – and report the findings to the President and the people as a matter of course.

He refers to a 2007 article by Hugh Miles in the London Review of books. I concur that it is an impressive analysis and post it below for completeness:

Inconvenient Truths

Hugh Miles

On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was 38 minutes into its journey when it was blown up at 31,000 feet. The explosion was so powerful that the nose of the aircraft was torn clean off. Within three seconds of the bomb detonating, the cockpit, fuselage and No. 3 engine were falling separately out of the sky. It happened so quickly that no distress call was sent out and no oxygen masks deployed. With the cockpit gone, the fuselage depressurised instantly and the passengers in the rear section of the aircraft found themselves staring out into the Scottish night air. Anyone or anything not strapped down was whipped out of the plane; the change in air pressure made the passengers’ lungs expand to four times their normal volume and everyone lost consciousness. As the fuselage plummeted and the air pressure began to return to normal, some passengers came round, including the captain. A few survived all the way down, until they hit the ground. Rescuers found them clutching crucifixes, or holding hands, still strapped into their seats.
The fuselage of the plane landed on a row of family houses in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. The impact was so powerful that the British Geological Survey registered a seismic event measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale. The wing section of the Boeing 747, loaded with enough fuel for a transatlantic flight, hit the ground at more than 500 miles an hour and exploded in a fireball that lit the sky. The cockpit, with the first-class section still attached, landed beside a church in the village of Tundergarth.
Over the next few days rescuers made a fingertip search of the crash site: 243 passengers, 16 crew members and 11 people on the ground had been killed. Bodies and debris were strewn along an 81-mile corridor of Scottish countryside. Ten thousand pieces of debris were retrieved; each was meticulously logged. Among the items recovered were the remains of a Samsonite suitcase, which investigators later established had been used to transport the bomb. The suitcase had contained clothes, clothes that were subsequently traced to the shop of a Maltese man called Tony Gauci. Gauci later became a key prosecution witness. Fragments of a circuit board and a Toshiba radio were also recovered and identified as parts of the bomb.
Twelve years later, on 31 January 2001, a panel of three Scottish judges convicted a former Libyan intelligence officer for mass murder at Lockerbie. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was tried at a specially convened court on a former US air force base near the Dutch town of Zeist. Under a special international arrangement, the court, which sat without a jury, was temporarily declared sovereign territory of the United Kingdom, under the jurisdiction of Scottish law.
Al-Megrahi is still the only person to have been found guilty in connection with the attack. He was sentenced to 27 years in jail. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, a fellow Libyan intelligence officer, was acquitted. Al-Megrahi was initially told that he would spend at least twenty years in prison, but the Crown, which was prosecuting, protested that this sentence was unduly lenient and petitioned the judges for a longer one. In 2003 the judges reconvened to rule that he must serve no less than 27 years before the parole board would consider his eligibility for release. Al-Megrahi’s defence team had already lodged an appeal against the conviction, but in March 2002 the guilty verdict was upheld.
From the outset the Lockerbie disaster has been marked by superlatives. The bombing was the deadliest terror attack on American civilians until 11 September 2001. It sparked Britain’s biggest ever criminal inquiry, led by its smallest police force, Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary. It spelled the end of Pan Am, which never recovered from the damage to its reputation. The trial at Camp Zeist was the longest and – at a cost of £75 million – the most expensive in Scottish legal history. The appeal hearing was the first Scottish trial to be broadcast live on both television and the internet.
Lawyers, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent. Robert Black QC, an emeritus professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University, was one of the architects of the original trial in Holland. He has closely followed developments since the disaster happened and in 2000 devised the non-jury trial system for the al-Megrahi case.
Even before the trial he was so sure the evidence against al-Megrahi would not stand up in court that he is on record as saying that a conviction would be impossible. When I asked how he feels about this remark now, Black replied: ‘I am still absolutely convinced that I am right. No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.’
Al-Megrahi lost his appeal in 2002, but under Scottish law he is entitled to a further legal review, to be conducted by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), an independent public body made up of senior police officers and lawyers. Its job is to re-examine cases where a miscarriage of justice may have occurred: it handles cases after the appeal process has been exhausted, and if it finds evidence that a miscarriage of justice may have taken place it refers the case to the High Court to be heard again. Al-Megrahi applied to the SCCRC for a review of his case in 2003 and the commission has been reinspecting evidence from the trial for the last four years. It will submit its findings at the end of June. It looks likely that the SCCRC will find that there is enough evidence to refer al-Megrahi’s case back to the appeal court. The Crown Office has already begun reinforcing its Lockerbie legal team in anticipation of a referral.
If al-Megrahi is granted a second appeal, it will, like the original trial, be held before a panel of Scottish judges, without a jury. This time the trial will take place in Scotland, and if the glacial pace of proceedings in the past is anything to go by, it will probably not be heard before the summer of 2008. Al-Megrahi’s defence team would be ready to launch an appeal in a matter of weeks, but the prosecution would be likely to delay the hearing for as long as possible. If an appeal takes place, al-Megrahi’s defence team will produce important evidence that was not available at the time of the first appeal, evidence that seems likely not only to exonerate al-Megrahi but to do so by pointing the finger of blame at the real perpetrators of the Lockerbie bombing and revealing some inconvenient truths.
Even the judge who presided over the Lockerbie investigation and issued the 1991 arrest warrants for the two Libyans has cast doubt on the prosecution’s case. In an interview with the Sunday Times in October 2005, Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, Scotland’s larger-than-life lord advocate from 1989 to 1992, questioned the reliability of the shopkeeper Tony Gauci, the prosecution’s star witness. ‘Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say [that he] was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy, I don’t think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer.’ Lord Fraser made it clear that this did not mean he thought al-Megrahi was innocent. But he had presented Gauci as a reliable witness; he went on to become the heart of the prosecution’s case. Now he was casting doubt on the man who identified al-Megrahi.
Since al-Megrahi’s last appeal, many thousands of pages of reports, detailing freight and baggage movements in and out of Frankfurt airport, have been handed over to the defence. Largely in German and many handwritten, the papers were translated by the Crown at the taxpayer’s expense, but the Crown refused to share the translations with the defence and left it no time to commission its own. The Privy Council’s judicial committee, made up of law lords and senior judges, has declared that the Crown’s refusal to disclose this evidence is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. More damaging still, an unnamed senior British police officer – known to be a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS), which implies that his rank is assistant chief constable or higher – has testfied to al-Megrahi’s defence team that crucial evidence at the trial was fabricated. If the SCCRC finds that the prosecution played foul, the Crown may decide it would be better not to continue with its case, allowing al-Megrahi to be freed immediately.
This anonymous senior officer’s testimony chimes with the well-trodden theory that the American government had a hand in fixing the trial. Hans Köchler, the UN observer at Camp Zeist, reported at the time that the trial was politically charged and the verdict ‘totally incomprehensible’.
In his report Köchler wrote that he found the presence of US Justice Department representatives in the court ‘highly problematic’, because it gave the impression that they were ‘“supervisors” handling vital matters of the prosecution strategy and deciding . . . which documents . . . were to be released in open court and what parts of information contained in a certain document were to be withheld.’ ‘The alternative theory of the defence,’ he went on, ‘was never seriously investigated. Amid shrouds of secrecy and national security considerations, that avenue was never seriously pursued – although it was officially declared as being of major importance for the defence case. This is totally incomprehensible to any rational observer.’ The prosecution, Köchler noted, dismissed evidence on the grounds that it was not relevant; but now that that evidence has finally – partially – been released, it turns out to be very relevant indeed: to the defence.
Whatever happens, al-Megrahi may not have to wait long. As soon as a further appeal is scheduled, he can make an application to be released from custody: the convicted Lockerbie bomber, who was supposed to serve no fewer than 27 years in a Scottish jail, might well be free this summer. Whether al-Megrahi is freed pending his appeal – and what conditions would be applied if he were – depends largely on whether his defence team can convince the judge that he is not a flight risk. This may be hard to do. The judge might decide that if he left the country, he might choose to stay in Libya rather than come back next year for another round in court. If al-Megrahi is exonerated, many tricky questions will resurface, not least what to do about the $2.7 billion compensation paid by Libya to the relatives of the victims of the bombing. And then, of course, there is the question of who really bombed Flight 103.
In the first three years following the bombing, before a shred of evidence had been produced to incriminate Libya, the Dumfries and Galloway police, the FBI and several other intelligence services around the world all shared the belief that the Lockerbie bombers belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC), a Palestinian rejectionist organisation backed by Iran. The PFLP-GC is headed by Ahmed Jibril, a former Syrian army captain; its headquarters are in Damascus and it is closely allied with the Syrian president and other senior Syrian officials. In the 1970s and 1980s the PFLP-GC carried out a number of raids against Israel, including a novel hang-glider assault launched from inside Lebanon. Lawyers, intelligence services and diplomats around the world continue to suspect that Jibril – who has even boasted that he is responsible – was behind Lockerbie.
The case against Jibril and his gang is well established. It runs like this: in July 1988, five months before the Lockerbie bombing, a US naval commander aboard USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airbus, apparently mistaking it for an attacker. On board Iran Air Flight 655 were 270 pilgrims en route to Mecca. Ayatollah Khomeini vowed the skies would ‘rain blood’ in revenge and offered a $10 million reward to anyone who ‘obtained justice’ for Iran. The suggestion is that the PFLP-GC was commissioned to undertake a retaliatory bombing.
We know at least that two months before Lockerbie, a PFLP-GC cell was active in the Frankfurt and Neuss areas of West Germany. On 26 October 1998, German police arrested 17 terrorist suspects who, surveillance showed, had cased Frankfurt airport and browsed Pan Am flight timetables. Four Semtex-based explosive devices were confiscated; a fifth is known to have gone missing. They were concealed inside Toshiba radios very similar to the one found at Lockerbie a few weeks later. One of the gang, a Palestinian known as Abu Talb, was later found to have a calendar in his flat in Sweden with the date of 21 December circled. New evidence, now in the hands of al-Megrahi’s defence, proves for the first time that Abu Talb was in Malta when the Lockerbie bombing took place. The Maltese man whose testimony convicted al-Megrahi has also identified Abu Talb. During al-Megrahi’s trial Abu Talb had a strange role. As part of a defence available in Scottish law, known as ‘incrimination’, Abu Talb was named as someone who – rather than the accused – might have carried out the bombing. At the time he was serving a life sentence in Sweden for the bombing of a synagogue, but he was summoned to Camp Zeist to give evidence. He ended up testifying as a prosecution witness, denying that he had anything to do with Lockerbie. In exchange for his testimony, he received lifelong immunity from prosecution.
Other evidence has emerged showing that the bomb could have been placed on the plane at Frankfurt airport, a possibility that the prosecution in al-Megrahi’s trial consistently ruled out (their case depended on the suitcase containing the bomb having been transferred from a connecting flight from Malta). Most significantly, German federal police have provided financial records showing that on 23 December 1988, two days after the bombing, the Iranian government deposited £5.9 million into a Swiss bank account that belonged to the arrested members of the PFLP-GC.
The decision to steer the investigation away from the PFLP-GC and in the direction of Libya came in the run-up to the first Gulf War, as America was looking to rally a coalition to liberate Kuwait and was calling for support from Iran and Syria. Syria subsequently joined the UN forces. Quietly, the evidence incriminating Jibril, so painstakingly sifted from the debris, was binned.
Those who continued to press the case against the PFLP-GC seemed to fall foul of American law. When a New York corporate investigative company asked to look into the bombing on behalf of Pan Am found the PFLP-GC responsible, the federal government promptly indicted the company’s president, Juval Aviv, for mail fraud. Lester Coleman, a former Defense Intelligence Agency operative who was researching a book about the PFLP-GC and Lockerbie, was charged by the FBI with ‘falsely procuring a passport’. William Casey, a lobbyist who made similar allegations in 1995, found his bank accounts frozen and federal agents searching through his trash. Even so, documents leaked from the US Defense Intelligence Agency in 1995, two years after the Libyans were first identified as the prime suspects, still blamed the PFLP-GC.
Suspicions and conspiracy theories have swirled around Lockerbie from the beginning. Some of them are fairly outlandish. In Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse (2005), Brigid Keenan, the wife of the British diplomat Alan Waddams, reported that over dinner in Gambia, a former Interpol agent told her and her husband that the bombing had been a revenge attack by Iran, in retaliation for the downed airliner (though she didn’t say how he knew this). The Interpol agent claimed the cargo had not been checked because the plane was carrying drugs as part of a deal over American hostages held by Hizbullah in Beirut. Militant groups were being allowed to smuggle heroin into the US in exchange for information; the bomb had gone on board when the PFLP-GC found a loophole in this drug-running operation.
At least four US intelligence officers, including the CIA’s deputy station chief in Beirut, were on the Flight 103 passenger list. In the days following the bombing, CIA agents scoured the Scottish countryside, some reportedly dressed in Pan Am overalls. Mary Boylan, then a constable with Lothian and Borders police, has said that senior police officers told her not to make an official record of the CIA badge she recovered from the wreckage, asking her instead to hand it over to a senior colleague. Her testimony, too, is now in the hands of the SCCRC. Jim Wilson, a farmer from the village of Tundergarth, reported shortly after the bombing that he had found in his field a suitcase packed with a powdery substance that looked ‘like drugs’. He last saw the suitcase when he handed it over to the police, he said; he was never asked about it again.
In December 1998, Susan Lindauer, a US congressional aide, submitted a sworn deposition to the court in which she claimed that Richard Fuisz, a CIA agent, had given her a guarantee that he knew who was behind the Lockerbie bombing. Lindauer’s affidavit describes a conversation in Fuisz’s ‘business office’ in Chantilly, Virginia, in which he said he knew for sure the perpetrators were based in Syria. ‘Dr Fuisz has told me that he can identify who orchestrated and executed the bombing. Dr Fuisz has said that he can confirm absolutely that no Libyan national was involved in planning or executing the bombing of Pan Am 103, either in any technical or advisory capacity whatsoever.’ ‘If the government would let me, I could identify the men behind this attack,’ Lindauer says Fuisz told her. Lindauer has since been accused by the US government of being an Iraqi agent; her case is pending. But her earlier deposition has been submitted to the SCCRC. It can’t count for much, however, since Fuisz himself is not able to comment. In October 1994, a month after Lindauer spoke to him, Fuisz was gagged by a Washington court. The US government ruled that under state secrecy laws he faced ten years in prison if he spoke about the Lockerbie bombing. UN observers have since criticised this apparent restraint of a key witness.
When Libya handed al-Megrahi over for trial, sanctions on Libya authorised by the Security Council were suspended and diplomatic relations with Britain restored. Tony Blair claims the Libyan detente was one of his most important foreign policy victories, and last month, as the long shadow began to fall across his premiership, Blair swung by Tripoli to meet again with Libya’s leader. Gaddafi has always contested that al-Megrahi is not the Lockerbie bomber and that he should be allowed to return home. Maybe the two leaders touched on the prickly topic of what should be done about the compensation paid by Libya, in the event al-Megrahi is exonerated. When al-Megrahi was handed over for trial, Libya declared that it would accept responsibility for his actions. But it never accepted guilt. This distinction was spelled out clearly in Libyan letters to the UN Security Council. In a BBC radio interview in 2004, the Libyan prime minister, Shukri Ghanem, underlined once again that compensation had been paid because this was the ‘price for peace’ and to secure the lifting of sanctions. When asked if Libya did not accept guilt, he said: ‘I agree with that.’
If the court that convicted al-Megrahi now reverses its decision, then Libya would clearly have a case for demanding its money back. Since recovering the compensation from the relatives would be unthinkable, it is more likely Libya would pursue those responsible for the miscarriage of justice. ‘What they might try to do,’ Black suggests, ‘is to recoup the money from the British and American governments, who after all are responsible for the initial farce and the wrongful conviction in the first place. They paid that money on the basis of a miscarriage of justice perpetrated by the British courts.’ Al-Megrahi’s acquittal on appeal would not ipso facto make a compelling case for Libya to have its money back: even if guilt can’t be proved beyond reasonable doubt – the test of the criminal burden of proof – it could still be shown that it was more likely than not (which is the burden applied to civil cases such as compensation cases). If Libya paid the money for purely political reasons then, one could argue, it might have to live with that decision. When I asked the Foreign Office whether Britain would consider reimbursing Libya in the event of al-Megrahi’s exoneration, a spokesman declined to comment.
If al-Megrahi is acquitted, he will also have the right to sue for wrongful conviction. He could claim compensation to the tune of several tens of thousands of pounds. The Crown Office, which is headed by the Scottish lord advocate, is responsible for what happened, which means that al-Megrahi would sue the Scottish Executive. The lord advocate is now one of the ‘Scottish ministers’, whereas previously he – now she – was one of the law officers of the UK Government. The Scottish Executive might refuse to pay, blaming Westminster. Westminster, meanwhile, would argue that Lockerbie is and always has been a Crown Office matter and that the UK government has no say. A political storm is on its way, especially now that the SNP is in charge in Scotland.
Since the case against al-Megrahi was so weak, it is hard to understand how the judges who presided over the trial could have got it so wrong. Black has a view:

It has been suggested to me, very often by Libyans, that political pressure was placed upon the judges. I don’t think for a minute that political pressure of that nature was placed on the judges. What happened, I think, was that it was internal politics in Scotland. Prosecutions in Scotland are brought by the lord advocate. Until just a few years ago, one of the other functions of the lord advocate in Scotland was that he appointed all Scottish judges. I think what influenced these judges was that they thought that if both of the Libyans accused are found not guilty, this will be the most fiendish embarrassment to the lord advocate.

The appointment system for judges has changed since the trial, but another controversial aspect of the al-Megrahi case may also be re-examined: the policies on disclosure. Compared to almost any other similar criminal justice system, Scotland does not have a proper system of disclosure of information. In England and Wales, the Crown has to disclose all material to the defence, according to rules set out in statute. In Scotland the Crown is allowed to modify or withhold evidence if it considers that withholding is in the ‘public interest’. At least the Scottish criminal justice system doesn’t have the death penalty.

[Peter Lemkin]

In light of developments it is instructive to read back over this thread.

The State has indeed ensured that there will be no raking over the existing evidence, nor presentation and scrutiny of substantial and damning new evidence by Megrahi's defence team.

The press is full of sanctimonious outrage at his welcome back in Tripoli; there are copious reports of the 'outrage' of the US families of the victims (if there's one thing our MSM excels at, it is sanctimonious outrage); also of Hilary Clinton being snubbed by Alex Salmond (SNP First Minister) whom she had urged (for public consumption) to refuse Megrahi's release/transfer.

Meanwhile the substantive issue of Megrahi's actual guilt beyond reasonable doubt which any fair minded review of the detail is forced to conclude as unsustainable, is buried.

The Spooks must be breathing a sigh of relief, whilst celebrating their cleverness and the gullibility of the general public once again

He was tossed-up as Patsy-In-Chief to hide the real deals/players behind the bombing - and likely inter-connected ones. And you're right, somehow they made sure there would be no appeal or post-mortem investigation. Deep Black Secrets are to be kept.....Secret!....:eviltongue:

The only small glimmer of hope for a peek into this is al Megrahi's claim that he will shortly provide evidence of his innocence. If his evidence also sheds light on the real players, I think it won't be the cancer that kills him....

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lockerbie Trade Deal Claim 'Offensive'

Lord Mandelson has dismissed a suggestion the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi is linked to a trade deal, describing it as "offensive".

The claim was made by Seif al Islam, the son of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi, in a television interview filmed as Megrahi was flown home.

"In all commercial contracts, for oil and gas with Britain, (Megrahi) was always on the negotiating table," he said.

"All British interests were linked to the release of Abdelbaset al Megrahi."

The claim was immediately rejected by the Foreign Office, and was followed by an angry response from the Business Secretary.

"It's not only completely wrong to make such a suggestion it's also quite offensive," Lord Mandelson said.

He said he had met Colonel Gaddafi twice in the past year, and on both occasions he had raised the issue of Megrahi.

"They had the same response from me as they would have had from any other member of the Government. The issue of the prisoner's release was entirely a matter for the Scottish Justice Minister," Lord Mandelson said.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-N...Al_Megrahi

[Peter Presland]

I had the misfortune to listen to MacAskills announcement - or more accurately his marathon, pompous, worse-than-mediocre performance - live on BBC radio. It was excruciatingly, embarrassingly bad. Claims of doughty SNP independence in the matter are frankly risible. The impression I am left with is of earnest but wide-eyed, self-important Innocents caught in an issue dominated by vastly more powerful and unscrupulous interests, namely those of the US and UK whose arm-twisting power had been made very clear to the little SNP boys playing big-boys games. There were two common US/UK interests to be secured:

1. Prevention of further scrutiny of either the original or substantial new evidence in open court.
2. The existing guilty verdict to stand.

In addition there was a relatively minor US/UK conflict: The US insisted that Megrahi should remain in prison whereas the UK required his freedom to clinch that raft of trade deals.

The UK got all three; the US got the first two - So, a bit of huffing and puffing to be gone through but hey! they can probably live with it and anyway Libya does remain saddled with the $2.1 billion compensation bill (The 290 death Iran Air/USS Vincennes shoot down merited just $132 million but then a Western life is naturally worth 20 times more than an Iranian one so I guess that's OK :puke

As for Mandelson's 'the suggestion is offensive' remark, to paraphrase Mike Smithson of Political Betting.com, in light of his form, that's as good as an admission that it was indeed understood the deals were dependent upon al Megrahi's release.

[Peter Lemkin]

I had the misfortune to listen to MacAskills announcement - or more accurately his marathon, pompous, worse-than-mediocre performance - live on BBC radio. It was excruciatingly, embarrassingly bad. Claims of doughty SNP independence in the matter are frankly risible. The impression I am left with is of earnest but wide-eyed, self-important Innocents caught in an issue dominated by vastly more powerful and unscrupulous interests, namely those of the US and UK whose arm-twisting power had been made very clear to the little SNP boys playing big-boys games. There were two common US/UK interests to be secured:

1. Prevention of further scrutiny of either the original or substantial new evidence in open court.
2. The existing guilty verdict to stand.

In addition there was a relatively minor US/UK conflict: The US insisted that Megrahi should remain in prison whereas the UK required his freedom to clinch that raft of trade deals.

The UK got all three; the US got the first two - So, a bit of huffing and puffing to be gone through but hey! they can probably live with it and anyway Libya does remain saddled with the $2.1 billion compensation bill (The 290 death Iran Air/USS Vincennes shoot down merited just $132 million but then a Western life is naturally worth 20 times more than an Iranian one so I guess that's OK :puke

As for Mandelson's 'the suggestion is offensive' remark, to paraphrase Mike Smithson of Political Betting.com, in light of his form, that's as good as an admission that it was indeed understood the deals were dependent upon al Megrahi's release.

Very good analysis, Peter! You got it 'right', IMO.:bandit: All the politicians we see are only puppets [even if they once thought they could act as they themselves wanted] of the BIG powers......such are 'politics....which have NO similarity to the Will of the People, expressed (nor their elected represntatives) - rather, sadly, the will of the 0.5% (or less) Elite.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Peter P - yes, excellent analysis.

The alleged grubby trade deals of Lord Mandy & co are a deliberate diversion away from your points 1 & 2:

1. Prevention of further scrutiny of either the original or substantial new evidence in open court.
2. The existing guilty verdict to stand.

However, there is a wildcard here which some elements may attempt to exploit.

The alternate theories to Libyan guilt mainly involve:

a) the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC);

b) a deep black CIA drugs route which was, allegedly, about to be exposed by US intelligence officers (CIA Beirut station chief) Matthew Gannon and (hostage-rescue expert) Major Charles McKee, who may or may not have died on the plane.

Libya may now make public the evidence which the UK & US governments have refused to allow to be put before the Scottish court, and which - at face value - appears to put Megrahi's guilt in substantial doubt. The following is a decent enough summary of some of the problems, legal shenanigans, and high profile criticism of the process:

New information casting fresh doubts about Megrahi's conviction was examined at a procedural hearing at the Judicial Appeal Court (Court of Session building) in Edinburgh on 11 October 2007:

His lawyers claim that vital documents, which emanate from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and relate to the Mebo timer that allegedly detonated the Lockerbie bomb, were withheld from the trial defence team.[16]

Tony Gauci, chief prosecution witness at the trial, is alleged to have been paid $2 million for testifying against Megrahi.[17]
Mebo's owner, Edwin Bollier, has claimed that in 1991 the FBI offered him $4 million to testify that the timer fragment found near the scene of the crash was part of a Mebo MST-13 timer supplied to Libya.[18]
Former employee of Mebo, Ulrich Lumpert, swore an affidavit in July 2007 that he had stolen a prototype MST-13 timer in 1989, and had handed it over to "a person officially investigating the Lockerbie case".[19]

On 1 November 2007 Megrahi invited Robert Black QC to visit him at Her Majesty's Prison, Greenock. After a 2-hour meeting, Black stated "that not only was there a wrongful conviction, but the victim of it was an innocent man. Lawyers, and I hope others, will appreciate this distinction."[20]

Prior to Megrahi's second appeal, another four procedural hearings took place at the High Court of Appeal in Edinburgh between December 2007 and June 2008.[21][22]

In the June 2008 edition of the Scottish lawyers' magazine The Firm, the UN Observer at the Lockerbie trial, Professor Hans Köchler, referred to the 'totalitarian' nature of Megrahi's second appeal process saying it "bears the hallmarks of an 'intelligence operation'."[23][24]

Pointing out an error on the FCO's website and accusing the British government of "delaying tactics" in relation to Megrahi's second Lockerbie appeal, UN Observer at the Lockerbie trial Dr Hans Köchler wrote to Foreign Secretary David Miliband on 21 July 2008 saying:[25]

As international observer, appointed by the United Nations, at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands I am also concerned about the Public Interest Immunity (PII) certificate which has been issued by you in connection with the new Appeal of the convicted Libyan national. Withholding of evidence from the Defence was one of the reasons why the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has referred Mr. Al-Megrahi’s case back to the High Court of Justiciary. The Appeal cannot go ahead if the Government of the United Kingdom, through the PII certificate issued by you, denies the Defence the right (also guaranteed under the European Convention on Human Rights) to have access to a document which is in the possession of the Prosecution. How can there be equality of arms in such a situation? How can the independence of the judiciary be upheld if the executive power interferes into the appeal process in such a way?

The FCO corrected the error on its website and wrote to Köchler on 27 August 2008:[26]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megrahi

If the case agasint Libya and Megrahi falls into public disrepute, then there is a second bogey man upon whom Lockerbie can be blamed: the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command, who were allegedly funded by Iran.

Turning the blame back on Iran may be highly useful for Them, in geopolitical terms, as well as turning attention away from the allegations of CIA drug running.

[Magda Hassan]

AN AMERICAN citizen is to be named by the Lockerbie bomber as the man who really carried out the terrorist attack on Pan Am Flight 103.

Megrahi’s early release from prison on compassionate grounds.

Lawyers for the bomber were to argue that an “elusive” terrorist codenamed Abu Elias planted the bomb in December 1988, causing the deaths of 270 innocent people.
Megrahi is now expected to identify the man behind this alias.
The  Scottish Sunday Express tracked this man down to his home in the US, and he strongly denied having anything to do with the atrocity.
However, we can reveal that he has connections to at least two international terrorists and a Palestinian terror group, as well as links to the US intelligence services.
The man, who works as a schools engineer for the US government, was to become the central figure in Megrahi’s aborted appeal.
‘Elias’, a commander in a Palestinian terror organisation, was identified as the CIA’s primary Lockerbie suspect but was never caught.



Sources close to Megrahi believe he may actually have been a double agent working for the FBI or the CIA.
Last night the man, who we have chosen not to name, said: “Sorry, I don’t think that I can help in this case. It is a clear case of either mistaken identity and/or fabrication.
“I don’t wish my name to be mentioned in any capacity in the press. I am sure you understand the sensitivity of this matter since I have a family and children.”
However, Christine Grahame MSP, who visited Megrahi in Greenock prison and campaigned for his release, is believed to be considering naming the man in the Scottish Parliament chamber.



She said: “It is apparent that US intelligence has known or must have known the primary suspect of the Lockerbie bombing was alive and living safely in Washington.
“There has been a suggestion made that he is in some way an ‘intelligence asset’ for the US and that is why he has been allowed to live in peace.
“He must be deeply relieved that Megrahi was forced to drop his appeal and that he will never face justice for this atrocity.”
Yesterday, Megrahi promised that before he dies he will present new evidence gathered for the appeal which will exonerate him. He said he will call on the British and Scottish people “to be the jury”.
The man Megrahi believes was Abu Elias now lives in a suburban neighbourhood near Washington’s Dulles airport, just a few miles from the White House and the Lockerbie memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. He even has his own Facebook social network page.
He is the nephew of Syrian terror warlord Ahmed Jibril, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC).
Jibril was allegedly paid $10million by Iran to bomb an American passenger jet in retaliation for the US Navy accidentally shooting down an Iranian plane earlier in 1988, killing all 298 pilgrims on board.
The man is also related to Nezar Hindawi, a Syrian currently serving a 45-year sentence in Whitemoor high-security prison in Cambridgeshire for plotting to blow up an Israeli jet flying from Heathrow to Tel Aviv in 1986.
A document submitted to the appeal court by Megrahi’s lawyers states: “The FBI had apparently investigated ‘X’ and knew he was the nephew of Ahmed Jibril.
“‘X’ had met with FBI special agents [an appointment was in his diary for August 1988] but neither ‘X’ nor the Department of Justice would disclose who the agents were or the precise purpose of the recorded meeting. ‘X’ admitted the meeting had taken place. It is inconceivable that he did not produce his Syrian passport for examination. Only extracts from his US passport were revealed.
“Once again, the hand of the US government appeared to be guiding matters behind the scenes.”
‘Elias’ was also connected to Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian named by Dumfries and Galloway Police as their chief suspect less than a year after the bombing. The true identity of ‘Elias’ first came to light during a closed hearing at the Lockerbie trial in Holland in 2001, which led to Megrahi’s conviction.
However, the defence claim that attempts to investigate further were dismissed as a “fishing” exercise by the then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd.
There is further evidence to link the PFLP-GC to the disaster, as first reported by the Scottish Sunday Express in 2004.
In October 1988, following a tip-off from the CIA, German police raided a PFLP-GC safe house in Neuss and discovered a bomb in a Toshiba cassette player, identical to the one which exploded on board Flight 103, as well as a Pan Am timetable.
Codenamed Autumn Leaves, the raid resulted in 16 arrests including that of cell leader Hafez Dalkamoni, later convicted for a bombing campaign on German railways, and *Marwan Khreesat, a double agent for the Jordanian intelligence service.
Khreesat said in an interview with an FBI agent that he had been introduced to a man called Abu Elias, an explosives and airline security expert who had been “giving orders”.
Another member of the terror cell, Mobdi Goben, later disclosed Elias’s true identity in a deathbed confession which became known as the Goben Memorandum during the Camp Zeist trial. Goben claimed ‘Elias’ placed a bomb in the luggage of Khaled Jafar, a Lebanese/American from Detroit who died on board Pan Am Flight 103.
A source close to Megrahi said yesterday that ‘Elias’ could have been spying for the Americans.
The source said: “Not only was Abu Elias known to the Americans, but what if he was working for them? The guy comes into the US from the former Soviet Union, he’s the nephew of Ahmed Jibril – the Bin Laden of his day – and he just strolls into the US?
“I think they turned him, and I think he operated as a double agent.
“Khreeshat said if they had waited one more day they would have got Elias in the Autumn Leaves raid.Goben says Elias put the bomb into Jafar’s case without his knowledge.
“Abu Elias was a prime suspect. An American double agent was responsible for bringing down an American plane. How good a reason for a cover-up would that be?”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/1222...of-bomber-

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lisa Pease's article from Consortium News:

Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995


Lockerbie Doubts

By Lisa Pease
August 21, 2009

In any kind of major transnational event, there is the historical truth, what actually happened, and the political truth, what must have happened for the nations involved to continue on as before.
Share this article

Sometimes, these accounts match; other times, these “truths” are wildly divergent, which appears to be the case with the Lockerbie bombing.

On Thursday, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of planting a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 which exploded over the hills over Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988, was released. The Scottish authorities said they were letting al-Megrahi go free on “compassionate grounds” because he was terminally ill from cancer.

This decision caused an uproar in the United States. Obama administration officials lodged angry protests; family members of the victims decried the move, and TV pundits joined in the lamentations. But what do they really know about the Lockerbie bombing, beyond what they’ve read in the last few days?

The truth about what happened at Lockerbie appears quite a bit more complex than the cookie-cutter version presented by the mainstream media. Several longtime observers of the al-Megrahi case have concluded that it has always been weak, at best.

According to British journalist Hugh Miles in a 2007 article for London Review of Books, many “lawyers, politicians, diplomats and relatives of Lockerbie victims now believe that the former Libyan intelligence officer is innocent.”

Miles quoted Robert Black QC, an Edinburgh University professor emeritus of Scottish law, as saying, “No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.”

Al-Megrahi was tried along with fellow Libyan intelligence officer Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah. With distraught relatives of victims filling the courtroom, the Scottish judges understandably feared the reaction to two not guilty verdicts. Instead, the judges acquitted Fhimah and found al-Megrahi guilty.

A U.N. observer to the trial, Austrian philosophy Professor Hans Koschler, noted, "You cannot come out with a verdict of guilty for one and innocent for the other when they were both being tried with the same evidence.”

The only important piece of evidence that differentiated al-Megrahi from Fhimah was the dubious identification of al-Megrahi by a storekeeper in Malta who fingered the Libyan as the buyer of clothing found in the bomb suitcase.

But this storekeeper had earlier identified several other people, including one who was a CIA agent. When he finally identified al-Megrahi from a photo, it was after al-Megrahi's photo had been in the world news for years.

There also were major discrepancies between the shopkeeper's original description of the clothes-buyer and al-Megrahi's actual appearance. The shopkeeper told police that the customer was "six feet or more in height" and "was about 50 years of age." Al-Megrahi was 5'8" tall and was 36 in 1988.

The Scottish judges acknowledged that the initial description "would not in a number of respects fit the first accused [al-Megrahi]" and that "it has to be accepted that there was a substantial discrepancy." Nevertheless, the judges accepted the identification as accurate.

Other Scenarios

As the Scottish judges pieced together their curious rationale for a guilty verdict, they also were rejecting earlier scenarios for the bombing.

For instance, Scottish radio reporter David Johnston devoted a chapter of his book Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103 to the prevalent theory in the months following the attack, that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) was responsible.

Scottish journalist Magnus Linklater, in an article for the London Timesonline on Aug. 13, noted that this was hardly a wild conspiracy theory at the time:

“It is sometimes forgotten just how powerful the evidence was, in the first few months after Lockerbie, that pointed towards the involvement of the Palestinian-Syrian terror group the PFLP-GC, backed by Iran and linked closely to terror groups in Europe. At The Scotsman newspaper, which I edited then, we were strongly briefed by police and ministers to concentrate on this link, with revenge for an American rocket attack on an Iranian airliner as the motive.”

Indeed, the Sunday Times of London reported in its front-page headline of March 26, 1989, “Pan Am Bombers Identified.” The article stated that anonymous intelligence sources knew who was behind the bombing: “the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine—General Command, led by Ahmed Jibril, a Damascus-based PLO renegade who opposes Yasser Arafat’s current peace drive.”

The paper claimed that PLO sources had told it the group had received $10 million to bring down the plane in retaliation for the downing of an Iranian civilian airline by the American cruiser Vincennes the summer before.

(The U.S. claimed the Vincennes thought it was being attacked, and fired in self-defense, a claim which had no basis in reality, despite having been voiced by President Ronald Reagan and Vice President and former CIA director George H.W. Bush. President Reagan refused to apologize to Iran for this tragic mistake.)

The Observer reported that, after the shootdown of the Iranian plane, the Iranian chargé d’affaires in Beirut invited Ahmed Jibril and other terrorists to a meeting attended by representatives of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, where plans were made to bring down a plane with a bomb.

The final meeting purportedly took place at the Carlton Hotel in Beirut just days before the Lockerbie incident.

On Dec. 24, 1989, the Sunday Times reported that white plastic residue found at the Lockerbie crash site matched material in alarm clocks purchased from a couple of Jibril’s PFLP-GC associates just before their arrest in West Germany in October 1988, just two months before the Lockerbie bombing.

As Bill Blum’s report, recently republished at Consortiumnews.com, noted, the Iranian-PFLP-GC conspiracy “was the Original Official Version, delivered with Olympian rectitude by the U.S. government — guaranteed, sworn to, scout’s honor, case closed — until the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria were needed.”

Political Truth

Enter the political truth. With Iran and Syria no longer available as sponsors, given the new political reality, Libya became the new enemy. Never mind that the evidence was nearly nonexistent.

In a BBC report from 2002, U.N. trial observer Koschler stated it appeared to him the U.S. and UK authorities exerted undue influence over al-Megrahi’s trial. Why would U.S. and UK authorities try to influence the court? Beyond their roles as advocates for the victims, what did theyhave to gain or to hide?

Authors John Ashton and Ian Ferguson, who together wrote Cover-up of Convenience: The Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, point out that more than just bodies were found in the wreckage of Flight 103.

Along with the 270 dead were approximately $500,000 in American bills and an envelope marked with $547,000, carrying travelers checks. But according to a few key witnesses, something else was found. Drugs. Heroin, to be exact.
Additionally, locals were perturbed by the immediate presence of large numbers of Americans who showed up in Lockerbie within a couple of hours of the downing of the plane.

When the CIA agents arrived on the scene, they were looking for highly confidential papers that should have been found on the body of the pilot, Captain James McQuarrie, No such papers were found. They also sought something of great importance, but would not specify what it was. They told the Scottish officials they’d know it when they found it.

Among the victims was a man alleged to have been planning a rescue operation for the American hostages then being held in Beirut, U.S. Army Major Charles McKee, a Defense Intelligence Agency employee who had been assigned temporarily to the CIA.

McKee had been accompanied by four others that were later identified as CIA men: Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s Beirut Deputy Station Chief; Ronald Larivier, Daniel O’Connor, and Bill Leyrer. Was the presence of these men on the flight significant in any way? Were they targets? One investigator believed that was a possibility.

Drug Scandal

Pan Am’s attorney James Shaughnessy hired Juval Aviv, president of a private intelligence firm named Interfor and a former Mossad member, to conduct an investigation into the bombing. Pan Am was facing a civil suit from families of victims regarding lax security policies. The more they knew about the bombing, the better Pan Am could determine whether to contest the suit or settle.

Aviv’s report, commonly called the Intefor Report, contains several claims, which, if true, are remarkable. It’s hard to know how much credibility to give the report, although Aviv’s firm had done business with the IRS and other government agencies, and had even been hired by the Secret Service to investigate potential threats against President Reagan.

The Interfor Report claims that one or more baggage handlers at Pan Am’s facilities in Frankfurt serviced the drug trade, swapping out innocent baggage for drug-laden baggage. The Report also claims that a CIA team (referred to as CIA-1 in the Report) had learned about this drug operation and was using their knowledge of it to extract concessions from those holding the hostages in Beirut.

The report claims that the McKee-led team of CIA people – in Beirut to plan a hostage rescue operation – learned of this drug smuggling operation and the role of some CIA people in it. According to the report, “The [McKee] team was outraged, believing that its rescue and their lives would be endangered by the double dealing.”

The report said, “By mid-December the team became frustrated and angry and made plans to return to the U.S. with their photos and evidence to inform the government, and to publicize their findings if the government covered it up. They did not seek permission to return, which is against the rules. The return was unannounced. … Sources report eight CIA team members on that flight, but we only have identified the five names reported herein.”

According to the report, an undercover Mossad agent tipped off the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) 24 hours in advance that a bomb was to be placed on Pan Am Flight 103. BKA, said the report, passed that information to CIA-1, which reported that information to its control, but received no guidance one way or another back.

The Interfor Report alleges that a Turkish baggage handler stashed a suitcase in the employee locker area, as was his usual practice with drug shipments.
During the loading of bags, a BKA agent noticed a bag that looked different than the usual drug bags. Since he was on alert for a potential bomb, he notified CIA-1, which again passed that information to its control.

The report said, “Control replied: don’t worry about it, don’t stop it, let it go.” The report said CIA-1 gave no instructions to BKA, and BKA did nothing to stop the bag.

In one of its most startling allegations, the report said, “The BKA was then covertly videotaping that area on that day. A videotape was made. It shows the perpetrator in the act. It was held by BKA. A copy was made and given to CIA-1. The BKA tape has been ‘lost.’ However, the copy exists at CIA-1 control in the U.S.”

Aviv encouraged Pan Am to obtain a copy of that tape, warning that the CIA would deny its existence, and that Pan Am would need to be persistent.

Press Attention

This story took on new dimensions in 1990, when both ABC and NBC did their own report on a drug ring link to the bombing. Both chose, however, to focus on a DEA operation, and the CIA was never mentioned by either network.

NBC named Khalid Jaafar, the only Arab on Flight 103, as the unwitting courier whose bag got swapped for the bomb. The Interfor Report had named the same person.

According to Cover-up of Convenience authors Ashton and Ferguson, on Oct. 30, 1990, NBC reported:

“NBC news has learned that Pan Am flights from Frankfurt, including [Flight] 103, had been used a number of times by the DEA as part of its undercover operations to fly information and suitcases of heroin into Detroit as part of a sting operation to catch dealers in Detroit. The undercover operation, code-named Operation Courier, was set up three years ago by the DEA in Cyprus to infiltrate Lebanese heroin groups in the Middle East and their connections in Detroit …

“nformants would put suitcases on the Pan Am flights, apparently without the usual security checks, according to one airline source, through an arrangement between the DEA and German authorities. Law enforcement officials say the fear now is that the terrorists that blew up Pan Am 103 somehow learned about what the DEA was doing, infiltrated the undercover operation and substituted the bomb for the heroin in one of the DEA shipments” so the bomb would sail through the security loophole, undetected.

ABC produced a similar report the next day, and also claimed that Khalid Jaafar was one of the drug couriers.

The DEA investigated itself in the wake of these stories, and declared itself clean to a House subcommittee. The DEA claimed only three drug operations had been run through Frankfurt, and none in December of 1988 when the bombing took place.

In 1992, long after the DEA’s denials, a new report supporting the Interfor Report surfaced, in Time magazine of all places, supporting some of the reports core allegations.

The article, by Roy Rowan, stated that Ahmed Jibril used a Middle Eastern heroin traffic operation to get the bomb on the plane, and that McKee was heading back to Washington to expose the CIA unit’s operations with the drug dealers.

So is this the true history of what happened at Lockerbie? I don’t know.

The direction of the case shifted dramatically in the fall of 1990 as President George H.W. Bush was scrambling to assemble a coalition to drive Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. The Bush administration was in need of Iranian and Syrian help, too, in freeing U.S. hostages then held by Islamic militant groups in Lebanon.

Also in 1990, spin-off investigations from the Iran-Contra scandal were underway with Iranian officials possessing possible information that could have incriminated President Bush as he was looking toward a tough reelection battle in 1992. In short, the Iranians held a number of cards that would have made them inconvenient targets of the Pan Am investigation.

However, the Libyans were opposing Bush’s Persian Gulf intervention and had long ranked near the top of the list of America’s favorite enemies. Laying the blame on the Libyans let a lot of influential people off the hook.

While I don’t know if the alternative theories of the Pan Am 103 bombing are true, what I do know is that there is a lot more support for some of them than there ever was for the conviction of the unfortunate and now cancer-ridden al-Megrahi, whose release on Thursday was widely condemned by U.S. officials and media figures with almost no reference to the lingering doubts about his conviction beyond brief mentions that he continues to assert his innocence.

How did we get so far off track on this story? In part, by not having a truly independent media to investigate and report on the truth behind this case.

Lisa Pease is a historian and writer who specializes in the mysteries of the John F. Kennedy era.

Consortiumnews.com is a product of The Consortium for Independent Journalism, Inc., a non-profit organization that relies on donations from its readers to produce these stories and keep alive this Web publication.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/082109a.html

[Peter Lemkin]

Great summary and brings back many details I'd known in the past, but forgotten over time. But, you won't see this or any investigation/mention of any of this in the NYT or any other MSM with all the talking/squawking heads about their outrage at the convicted bomber being let go.....hmmm....seems to me I remember Nixon communting Lt. Calley's killing of over 500 Vietnamese in My Lie from life in prison to three years house-arrest [if I remember correctly within a week of his conviction!]....would the same people have screamed or applauded?.....double standards are part and parcel of Empire.