Was the MST-13 timer fragment planted in the wreckage of Pan Am 103?

[Rolfe]

With a barometric switch in series with the relay coil, the device will not trigger until after the preset time AND the device is at altitude. It can be injected into the system anywhere. The greatest risk is if one of the flights is late it could have gone off on the earlier hop but not on the ground.

A typical barometric switch would reset itself once it dropped below the set altitude. Otherwise there would be no way to test the calibration.


That's very helpful. It's similar to something Ambrosia suggested earlier, but what you said makes better sense.

Possible and actually quite easy. Although it looks like the barometric switch is in series with the relay coil and therefore passively connected to the timer, that configuration can actually provide an input to the timer micro-controller. In the world of micro-controllers, the distinction between input and output is often just a convention for a given usage. There are also programmable replacements for special function chips that are used by the engineers to prototype new designs. From there it is simply a little programming to count the ups and downs.

We don't have the actual chips from the timer so there is no way to say for certain what it was programmed to do. But the simple timer with a series pressure switch is sufficient for the task so it's not necessary to speculate about anything more complex.


Mmm, I understand what you mean now.

I've never been able to understand the assumption that there was no barometer involved in this attack.

On the evidence which we heard we are satisfied that the explosive device which destroyed PA103 was triggered by an MST-13 timer alone and that neither an ice-cube timer nor any barometric device played any part in it.


Obviously there was a timer, and the Court accepted that this was the MST-13. Nobody ever suggested that a barometer was also involved. However, given the non-negligible chance of the flight still being on the ground at 7pm, and the fact that it wasn't schedued to land for another seven hours or so after that, a terrorist wanting to cause an airliner to fall out of the sky would have been very ill-advised to set that timer for 7pm.

If on the other hand a barometer was involved, then the 38-minute explosion makes a lot more sense. There would have been no danger of the thing going off on the ground at all. There's still no obvious reason why the Libyans (as opposed to Jibril) would have wanted such an early explosion, scattering bits of evidence all over terra firma (Lockerbie was just blind bad luck) rather than safely in Davy Jones's locker, but at least you've explained it's possible.

So my assumption that if a barometric trigger were used, the device would have had to be introduced at Heathrow, is not actually true if something as sophisticated as the MST-13 was used as the timer. (As far as I understand, it is the case for Jibril's ice-cube timers though, which didn't have the versatile circuitry present on the NST-13.)

The question of the timing of the explosion was apparently never raised in court. I'm not quite sure why, because if you're going to lead a special defence of incrimination saying that Jibril's group did it, it seems to me to be one of the strongest inferences in that argument.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

If you want to get that literal and black and white- I agree

The alleged timer fragment was planted- I'm very comfortable with that now ( for many reasons)

That destroys the states case right there ( and it should)


Oh yes. If it could be proved the fragment was planted, the case would fall apart. There has never been any serious defence attempt to prove that, however.

I note that in the original trial, the defence tried to cast doubt on the provenance of the fragment. They drew attention to the altered label, and the apparently interpolated page in Hayes's notes, and the oddity of the polaroid pictures being taken in such apparent haste in September 1989. However, they didn't attempt to draw any of this together to allege straight out that the fragment was planted.

This isn't unusual defence behaviour. They don't think like detective stories. They don't really care what actually happened, so long as they can sow sufficient doubt on the assertion that their client did it. They don't have to prove who really did it. They don't even have to prove their client didn't do it. They just have to introduce enough doubt.

Even ignoring the suggestions (from Hans Kochler) that the defence team weren't exactly trying their hardest to get Megrahi acquitted, this would probably have been a very risky strategy, especially given that there was no jury. (I suspect juries might be a bit more open to the suggestion that the law enforcement authorities had fabricated evidence than a bunch of judges.) It's a very very serious allegation, they couldn't prove it, and it would probably just have alienated the judges even further. I note that the documents that have been released concerning the second appeal also appear to say the provenance of the fragment is not being challenged.

As a result, the narrative of the timer provenance has never really been examined, challenged or tested. It's an interesting exercise.

Could it have been planted?
Is it at all likely it was planted?
If it was planted, when did that actually happen?
Why was it done?
Who did it?
How did they do it?
Who else knew about it and helped cover it up?
Who made the decision to plant evidence in the case, and why?

I think all of these questions are just as interesting as whether a fragment was brown or green, and whether all the photographs show the same object.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

I'm back. Oooh, dramatic. Select points:

OK, discrepancies.
<snip>
I agree I'd definitely have taken one like that with all the elements visible, but I'd also try to get a close-up of the interesting fragment itself.

The presence of the circle, apparently drawing attention to which piece is the interesting bit (if it's original), kind of suggests that might not have been done. Also, the narrative always refers to "a" polaroid. It could be because the Polaroid camera didn't have a macro lens and couldn't go in any closer than this. Oh dear. Dammit, how long does it take to scare up a photographer to get this done properly, and then develop the shots? In a place like RAERDE? This is extremely peculiar. It had been lying there for four months, allegedly, since Hayes logged it in May. Would another couple of days make so much difference?

I agree the lack of careful documentation here is a little suspect, if far from conclusive. "Polaroid" is too vague to suggest actual camera make - it's like saying "here's a xerox copy." Agreed that the circle hints there were no close-ups taken of the fragment itself, so why the use of plural? Perhaps he sent a separate pic that was just a blow-up of the fragment, re-developed as a separate "photo." This could explain his apology for "quality," as it would look about like the best blow-up we've seen (based on higher resolutions than are freely available).

I'm theorising a conspiracy here, between Williams and Thurman, with the active co-operation of Hayes and Feraday, to seed the evidence trail retrospectively with indications that the fragment, actually introduced in June 1990, had been sitting there for a lot longer. You understand I'm not accusing anyone, just trying to see if this hypothesis might fly at all.

As I said, that sounds plausible. First ask how many people need be involved. 2-4 is actually nearer the smallest possible number (2) than to the high end, so on that ground at least it can stand as a possibility.

As you say, what's going on at the top of the shot? The fragment seems to have lost an appreciable bit of height by the second and third photos, and the shape of the "1" is also different. It looks more like the third than the second picture, so I suppose it could just be a feature of the angle of the light so far as that goes.
[the pic again (http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/MST-13_3_photos.jpg)]
I thinks views 2 and 3 are essentially the same, if not totally. Light angle, and top edge angle are probably responsible for the apparent slight difference. The top portion is definitely gone and the scoring added between views one and two. As for the significance of these changes, I felt there must be ome nefarious reason, but less sure with time to think and with Dan O's comments. (back to this later)...

And what are those extra lines at the bottom right?
Not sure, but if you mean the small vertical one between the two trace lines, it's clearer in Thurman's view, even a screen cap, than in the detailed exhibit photo. It's app. rel. to the scoring. Here's another shot I found, shown on 60 Minutes in 1999 (http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/60minut.html), app. of Thurman's photo, but closer up.
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/MST-13_photo_pen.jpg

[Caustic Logic]

I'm sorry I haven't made myself clear about the ice cube timer. Of course that device is not an ice cube timer. That is the actual point.
<snip>
I am saying the presence of an MST-13 is anomalous because the timing of the explosion (and other pieces of information) would lead one to expect any fragment of timer which miraculously survived to have been an ice-cube device, not an MST-13.

You were clear about that for sure, a while back anyway. But this post is excelent in explaining this issue. There is a logical consideration I think we need to remember, such as wether or not this was the kind of group that wanted to hide or brandish their responsibility. Would they really want it to blow over the ocean and remain hidden, or would they want to say "yes, the PFLP or JSO or whoever did this. Don't mess with us." The former pops to mind naturally, but there are group always claiming responsibility for things they did or didn't do. So, I dunno...

However, IF libya were trying to do this, AND trying to hide their guilt (did they ever confess proudly? ;) don't answer), AND were aware one of their agents had already been nabbed in an apparent MST-13 plane bombing attempt, with all the stuff confiscated, they would be damn stupid to use an MST-13 timer to purposefully and precisely set it to blow up right around the Scottish coastline, give or take a bit, when they could just as easily aimed for over the mid-Atlantic ridge.

I hope this point is accepted by all here as solid circumstantial grounds for doubt and deeper probing.

[Caustic Logic]

I note that Feraday is very clear that the item is GREEN, at the time of the polaroids. The Court judgement also implies that Hayes recorded it as being green on that infamous page 51, back in May.

However, that's the picture Caustic Logic thinks actually shows a brown board. Bollier and Lumpert both insist that the original planted version was brown. They also say the edges of the cut-out corners were rougher than in the green versions.

Well I did kind of say that, but really all I can say is the first photo doesn't look as blue as the others. The color thing is weird, and worth some more thinking with all the views available, in a later post. And the 'rougher edges' claim sounds specious to me.

I'm not too concerned by the detail in Bollier's accounts, which picture he thinks he saw first and so on. However, is there any mileage in the claim that the fragment was substituted at some stage? I'm honestly not sure.

Well all the photos look the same shape to me anyway, implying careful forgery down to small details, or the same chip throughout, though decapitated, sliced, and possibly photo-tinted for some reason.

I will address Dan O.'s valuable points in a little bit.

[Caustic Logic]

To explain the condition of the fragment, it may have been folded against the body of the relay by the initial blast wave. The relay body would then protect the face of the chip during the blast while the heat rises enough to melt the solder. When the chip releases from the relay leads, the subsequent sudden deceleration upon impact with other objects would dislocate any solder remaining on the pad.

Also the possibility this is the reverse side from what was facing the blast, closely shielded by the (9) layers of epoxy and solder, and that it was IIRC shielded inside a metal timer casing, and I'm still not able to buy that its very presence is impossible in the official scenario.

As for those scratches mysteriously appearing on the chip after the initial photo, these are much deeper than you have imagined.

Actually as I said they seem pretty deep, enough so that in one view (Thurman's) the board seems to bend slightly at the cut.

In order to examine the cross section of the piece for identification of the material, it must be cleanly cut through a good part of the board. They need to make two cuts at right angles to map the orientation of the fibers in the epoxy board. Obviously some of the documentation for this chip is not present or this would have been explained.

Ah! That would explain the cuts quite well within the "normal" framework. All I knew is I saw cuts I hadn't seen explained, and until I see something else I'm considering them explained. Do you think the same notion could explain the severed top portion? Would they cut clear through it, removing part, to see the full cross-section? And why omit the top portion in later photos, rather than displaying the whole piece of evidence?

BTW, Here's a book that might be usefull for the class: Forensic Investigation of Explosions By Alexander Beveridge (http://books.google.com/books?id=pZFrU_JFRZsC) (Especially chapter 13: "Evidence of Explosive Damage to Materials in Air Crash Investigations")

I looked and it seems chapter 13 is not included in the preview, as it comes up on my computer. Usually they'll skip pages you can't see but still scroll to the end. My view stops entirely at page 369, then "pages omitted" and back cover. Any quotes you can share, cool, nut otherwise I don't plan to get up to speed on accident investigation standards. Rather, I'll just refrain from leaping to unwarranted conclusions.

Oh, what does it say about testing for explosives residue? That's probably in 13 too. Are investigators supposed to swab for chemical traces? Are small fragment size (app 1cm sq) or budget restrictions listed as good reasons to skip this?


Originally Posted by Rolfe
There were quite a few of the green boards, and they were known to be traceable to Libya. That's what this is all supposed to be about. Thurman had (at least) one of the green boards, obtained from a Libyan agent. Even Bollier's theory suggests that he got hold of another green one later, to create the second fake. The idea that all he could get his hands on in June 1990 was a brown one that he'd obtained from Lumpert via Fluckiger seems quite far-fetched to me.
I thought he was able to get the brown prototypes and the artwork (need to check that to be sure). From that, any number of boards in any color you want could be produced at any time.

Indeed, a duplicate board or non-operational mock-up shouldn't be too hard to fabricate. The Court's final judgment found there was an allaegation by Bollier "that a rogue company in Florida was engaged in manufacturing fake MST-13 timers on the instructions of the CIA," a notion they found worthless since it "belongs in our view to the realm of fiction where it may best be placed in the genre of the spy thriller." Yeah, as compared to the bizarre story they bought and passed down a conviction on...

The MST-13 timer fragment is the perfect plantable evidence. You have a device that you can pinpoint when and where it was manufactured and who it was sold to. With such a limited run, There is no possibility of any other agency identifying the piece until you decide to play it. It could be planted any time as a hole card to be played when the need arises. It's discovery in the debris can be dismissed as just another unidentified foreign object until it is positively identified as a piece of a Libyan timer.

Presuming of course someone is willing to accept the chain of logic making this a "Libyan timer." That they had to mangle or pay for supporting evidence is a troubling sign that someone knew it wouldn't be found naturally, that it wasn't necessarily a Libyan-placed timer, even if it genuinely was in the crash.

[Ambrosia]

??

The photo overlay I did above is meant to show that the solder pad that looks like a "1" doesn't have anything mounted on it.

Ambrosia I understand what you are getting at but the component would be placed beside the pads, if it was ontop you would have no access to actually
make the solder joint.

The photo is not clear and the area is in shadow but it looks like there are
two tabs protruding from the relay on its right side the top one seems to line up with the right angled section of the 1

So, if the fragment came from a timer that has a similar design to the populated board pic, with a relay or some other component attached to it, and it was then blown to bits in an explosion, there should be some kind of visible damage to the part of the solder pad where the component was connected?

As there is no such damage visible in the photos of the fragment, we can say for sure (as sure as we can be without physically examining the actual fragment and not just pics of it) that the MST-13 fragment did not come from a working bomb timer.

[Ambrosia]

It's also worth noting what Lumperts 2007 affidavit actually states.

the MST-13 fragment shown on the police photograph No PT/35(b) came from the non-operational MST-13 prototype PC-board that I had stolen

He's flat out saying that the board he stole and gave to the authorities was green, and not brown.

[Rolfe]

But all the prototypes he made (three of them) were brown. Allegedly.

The f-ed up colour on all the photos is annoying. I can't see why it's like that, because that picture of the populated board (where did that come from by the way?) shows the green shade absolutely fine. However, I wonder if there's some innocent explanation for that (like fading prints - remember, none of these would have been digital photographs) but maybe it's part of the reason for the Swiss contingent getting their knickers in a twist.

I'm leaning towards the explanation that all the pictures show the same fragment, and the differences are attributable to manipulation during forensic analysis. Bollier comes over so off-the-wall that I'm not really inclined to take his word for it that they're different.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

So, if the fragment came from a timer that has a similar design to the populated board pic, with a relay or some other component attached to it, and it was then blown to bits in an explosion, there should be some kind of visible damage to the part of the solder pad where the component was connected?

As there is no such damage visible in the photos of the fragment, we can say for sure (as sure as we can be without physically examining the actual fragment and not just pics of it) that the MST-13 fragment did not come from a working bomb timer.


Are we quite sure there's no such damage visible in the photos? The solder pad is copper, isn't it? So it would be very reflective, and even slight variations in the surface would show up as odd reflective "shapes". I think such variation can be seen in the photographs. I'm just not clear what we would expect to be seeing if the board the fragment came from had definitely been populated. If the component was ripped off, possibly we'd expect the pad itself to be damaged, possibly part of the copper ripped off. However, if the solder was melted off, maybe the damage to the pad would be less appreciable?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I see Robert Black has a new blog article up today (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/09/angiolini-backs-away-from-semtex.html), still majoring on whether or not the timer fragment could have survived the explosion at all. Apparently the MSPs are going to get to see Lockerbie Revisited tomorrow. I imagine they'll get a subtitled (or voice-over translation) for the Dutch bits, so it should be easier for them to follow. I wish such a version was available on-line.

It appears that we have a bunch of people in the early 1990s who assumed it would be possible for such a fragment to survive. (Maybe some tests were done, but it's not at all clear that any of the tests were set up to check on survivability of the timer circuit board.) Now we have a number of people in 2009 who are declaring that the thing should have been vaporised. It should be possible to check that even at this late date, however that would need a bit of political will which appears to be lacking.

My problem with this line is that it seems to cast doubt not only on the nature of the timing device used, but on the entire "bomb suitcase" theory. We must remember that the Toshiba was also identified by a bit of its circuit board which had survived, and quite a number of other bits of the radio-cassette were found on the ground. The presence of bits of Toshiba was used as one of the ways to clarify whether a particular piece of fabric had been in the bomb suitcase or not.

It's very much more difficult to explain away the bits of Toshiba, or suggest they were fabricated. If one suggests that, the entire case starts to spin out of control. The Toshiba bomb, the clothes bought at Gauci's shop, the brown Samsonite suitcase - all these were based on very early findings before any rational suspicion of manipulation of the evidence can surely be suggested. And while they may be mistaken interpretations of genuine findings, again that's difficult to sustain.

Then again, the people who are postulating that the timer fragment wouldn't have survived are also postulating that the crash was due to a placed charge in the actual hull of the plane. I find this very difficult to sustain. The first piece of blast-damaged luggage container was found three days after the crash. The reconstruction of the area of the explosion provides very strong evidence that the explosion happened inside luggage container AVE 4041. That this could all have been fabricated seems highly implausible to me.

So if the timer fragment couldn't have survived, does that mean the fragments of circuit board from the Toshiba couldn't have survived either? If it does, then we're back on that other thread, which I find altogether wierder territory.

I'd love to know what the MSPs think of the Dutch film though. It doesn't prove the fragment was planted, but it does cast so much doubt on its provenance (especially as regards the disagreement concerning whether it was ever taken the the USA) that the whole thing gets very murky.

Rolfe.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I see Robert Black has a new blog article up today (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/09/angiolini-backs-away-from-semtex.html), still majoring on whether or not the timer fragment could have survived the explosion at all. ..snip..

It appears that we have a bunch of people in the early 1990s who assumed it would be possible for such a fragment to survive. (Maybe some tests were done, but it's not at all clear that any of the tests were set up to check on survivability of the timer circuit board.) Now we have a number of people in 2009 who are declaring that the thing should have been vaporised.

That blog article is woeful, it's getting to truther level, with the 'throwing down the gauntlet' rubbish.

The group of people claiming the circuit should have been vapourised in 2009 are an odd bunch as well.

The challenge to the evidence has been emboldened by confirmation from semtex manufacturer Miroslav Štancl of Explosia a.s, who says the temperature at the point of explosion of “plastic explosives Semtex” is between 3,800 and 3,870° C, depending upon the type and composition.

Aitken Brotherston, who tested circuit boards as an engineer at Ferranti says that such boards will combust at temperatures equivalent to that produced by a Swan Vesta match, and “nothing would survive” within a semtex blast bright spot.

So the manufacturer of Semtex claims it is hot when it explodes, I don't think this was ever disputed, and indeed is confirmed in the book Dan O referenced earlier. This seems to be unarguable.
The second part of the claim that circuit boards couldn't survive an explosion is not made by the explosive manufacturer, nor by an accident investigator, but by someone who 'tested circuit boards at Ferranti'
That would be Ferranti who used to have a factory on the M8 just outside Edinburgh, before they went bust in 1993.
I don't suppose Aitken Brotherton met Robert Black down the pub did he?

Given the amount of Semtex explosions investigated in the UK from ~1970 -1999 there should be dozens of investigators and scientists popping up to say nothing can survive close to the explosion, not just random blokes who used to be test technicians 15 + years ago.

[Rolfe]

That blog article is woeful, it's getting to truther level, with the 'throwing down the gauntlet' rubbish.


The problem with Black's blog is that he re-posts stuff from anywhere and everywhere that's relevant to the Lockerbie case, as it comes out, without much or any comment of his own. He posted a rant by Kelvin McKenzie earlier in the month. I have no idea if he personally takes this suggestion seriously.

So the manufacturer of Semtex claims it is hot when it explodes, I don't think this was ever disputed, and indeed is confirmed in the book Dan O referenced earlier. This seems to be unarguable.
The second part of the claim that circuit boards couldn't survive an explosion is not made by the explosive manufacturer, nor by an accident investigator, but by someone who 'tested circuit boards at Ferranti'

Given the amount of Semtex explosions investigated in the UK from ~1970 -1999 there should be dozens of investigators and scientists popping up to say nothing can survive close to the explosion, not just random blokes who used to be test technicians 15 + years ago.


That's close to what I was thinking. Nobody is in any doubt about the temperature experienced when Semtex detonates. The question, as raised in an earlier post here, is for how long would the timer circuitry be exposed to that temperature? If it was blasted away from the explosion very fast, could a fragment not conceivably survive?

In the same way as, presumably, fragments of circuitry and casing from the Toshiba survived?

I'd be awfully surprised (given the amount of experience with IRA devices, as you say) if the investigators in the 1990s made such a hideous boo-boo here. I also find the other evidence that the explosion took place in the baggage container to be very persuasive. I don't know why the "placed charge" brigade are ignoring that.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Another very recent article worth a look (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/peir01_.html) is by Gareth Pierce. This isn't her jurisdiction, but it's the sort of case she has become well-known for defending in England. She's passionate about what she does, but nobody has ever accused her of being an incompetent lawyer.

She seems to me to be a relatively recent player in this case, but to be catching up fast. She's summarising the whole it-was-the-PFLP-no-it-wasn't circumstance, and highlighting all the shenanigans with US involvement in the initial search operation.

She doesn't seem to be questioning the provenance of the timer, though she has yet a different take on that aspect, which I suspect might be partially misunderstanding.

[....] the activities of the PFLP-GC had since 1970 included planting bombs on planes – bombs built into transistor radios and detonated by a barometric pressure switch. It was in this context that the flood of warnings immediately preceding the disaster had obvious significance for the subsequent investigation. One of them read: ‘team of Palestinians not associated with PLO intends to attack US targets in Europe. Time frame is present. Targets specified are Pan Am Airlines and US military bases.’ Five weeks before this warning, a PFLP-GC cell had been arrested in Germany. The PFLP-GC was precisely a ‘team of Palestinians not associated with the PLO’. Jibril’s right-hand man, Haffez Dalkamoni, was arrested in Frankfurt with a known bomb-maker, Marwen Khreesat, as they visited electrical shops in the city. In the boot of Dalkamoni’s car was a Toshiba cassette recorder with Semtex moulded inside it, a simple time delay switch and a barometric switch. Later US intelligence officials confirmed that members of the group had been monitoring Pan Am’s facilities at Frankfurt airport. Dalkamoni admitted he had supervised Khreesat when he built bombs into a Toshiba radio cassette player, two radio tuners and a TV monitor. He said that a second Toshiba containing similar pressure switches had been built. Although Dalkamoni was prosecuted in Germany, Khreesat was inexplicably released; it only later became clear that he had been acting throughout as an undercover agent for Jordanian intelligence, which is extraordinarily close to the CIA (the CIA played a central role in its creation). On Dalkamoni’s account, other bombs made by Khreesat were at large somewhere, including the one built into a second Toshiba player. [....]

All the Toshiba cassette bombs that had been seized were found, when tested, to run for 30 minutes after they were set. The advantage of barometric timers is that they aren’t activated until the plane is airborne – the bomb won’t go off on the ground if the plane is delayed. Some seven or eight minutes would elapse before the air pressure dropped enough as the plane gained height to activate a barometric timer set to go off 30 minutes later, i.e. 37 or 38 minutes after the flight took off. It was precisely 38 minutes after Pan Am Flight 103 took off from Heathrow on 21 December 1988 that it exploded over Lockerbie; when the remnants of the destroyed plane and its contents were put together piece by piece by the Dumfries and Galloway police, fragments of a Toshiba cassette radio were found. [....]

The suggestion that the bomb was placed on a plane from Malta was made in an attempt to link the discovery of the Maltese clothes with the already existing evidence of the German group. As no passengers transferred from Air Malta to Pan Am 103A in Frankfurt, the feeder flight for Pan Am 103, it would have had to be an unaccompanied bag from Malta that carried the bomb. [....]

A fundamental objection to the last part of the new thesis was blindingly clear: if the intended target was an American aircraft, why risk a premature explosion triggered by the barometric switch by putting the suitcase on an Air Malta flight? The scientific underpinning necessary to support a counter-proposition was established during 1989 and 1990 and rested on two ‘discoveries’: a fragment of an entirely different type of timer in the remnant of a shirt collar and the matching of that fragment with the manufacturer’s prototype. This timer, it was argued, could, once set, keep a barometric switch from detonating for days. It was in the development of this proposition that every safeguard fundamental to a criminal investigation came to be jettisoned. [....]


This suggestion is possibly getting back to that BBC article I thought was essentially misunderstanding - the one which suggested the barometric device had been triggered on the PA103A leg from Frankfurt, and the detonation over land was not intended, but was due to PA103 being slightly delayed at Heathrow. To which the question was asked, if you can get a barometric device to count, then surely it can count up to three?

However, it's not saying exactly that, it's suggesting that the MST-13, if used by Jibril's group instead of the ice-cube, would make their devices far more versatile in that they wouldn't have to be loaded at the last airport before the detonation, but could be introduced earlier in the chain. This is pretty much what Dan O was saying too.

It's still not fool-proof, because it still needs the bag to escape x-ray detection more than once, and if the bag was still airborne on the previous leg by the time it ought to be taking off at Heathrow, it would detonate prematurely. However, it's a lot better than simply trusting that the plane won't be delayed by an hour.

If the timer fragment wasn't planted, that seems to me to be the most likely explanation of what it was doing there. One of Jibril's group was reported as saying "they'll never find out how I did it." Could be that the mysterious "how" was that they'd got hold of a timer which would allow the bomb bag to be loaded via a feeder flight.

Which means that we have no idea what was going on with the brown Samsonite suitcase seen at Heathrow before the feeder flight landed. But this was never going to be simple.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

Also the possibility this is the reverse side from what was facing the blast, closely shielded by the (9) layers of epoxy and solder, and that it was IIRC shielded inside a metal timer casing, and I'm still not able to buy that its very presence is impossible in the official scenario.

That's what I was presuming. Since the display and controls are protruding through the board, the timer would then need to be programed and activated before it is placed in the radio with the explosives. This is probably the safest way since a noisy sliding power switch could lead to a logic glitch and one less wannabe terrorist.

If there was a casing for the timer, I would expect it to be molded plastic and not metal. For a metal casing you want mounting points for the standoff supports such as the 4 holes in the corners that had been removed on the board that the fragment was from. Also, metal would show up as out of place in the radio whereas circuits, batteries and wires look like they belong.


Ah! That would explain the cuts quite well within the "normal" framework. All I knew is I saw cuts I hadn't seen explained, and until I see something else I'm considering them explained. Do you think the same notion could explain the severed top portion? Would they cut clear through it, removing part, to see the full cross-section? And why omit the top portion in later photos, rather than displaying the whole piece of evidence?


A forensic examiner should know that the shape of that pad is key to identifying the piece and not to destroy or alter that information. But it does look like that is what happened.


I looked and it seems chapter 13 is not included in the preview, as it comes up on my computer. Usually they'll skip pages you can't see but still scroll to the end. My view stops entirely at page 369, then "pages omitted" and back cover. Any quotes you can share, cool, nut otherwise I don't plan to get up to speed on accident investigation standards. Rather, I'll just refrain from leaping to unwarranted conclusions.

Google's goal is to show you what you are looking for but they are restricted by copyright to showing you only excerpts. It may not be reasonable for Google to keep a vast database of every book excerpt they showed to each user. But they could keep that information in a cookie so once you look at a book your view is fixed. if that's what they are doing, you need only find and remove that cookie to get a new view.


Oh, what does it say about testing for explosives residue? That's probably in 13 too. Are investigators supposed to swab for chemical traces? Are small fragment size (app 1cm sq) or budget restrictions listed as good reasons to skip this?

As I've heard, the circuit fragment was discovered wrapped in a piece of cloth that tested positive for explosives. The fragment is therefore going to test positive whether or not it was planted there because it would pick up traces from the cloth.


Presuming of course someone is willing to accept the chain of logic making this a "Libyan timer." That they had to mangle or pay for supporting evidence is a troubling sign that someone knew it wouldn't be found naturally, that it wasn't necessarily a Libyan-placed timer, even if it genuinely was in the crash.

I don't know what role Libya had in designing the timer. I suspect that mebo had a general product line with that dimension including the display and micro-controller that could be developed into many products including counters and timers. This would spread the major costs of producing the dies for cutting the board and molding the cases (you can find such product line similarities with many small manufacturers). Did Libya actually commission any part of the timer design or did they just purchase an existing product?

[Rolfe]

That's what I was presuming. Since the display and controls are protruding through the board, the timer would then need to be programed and activated before it is placed in the radio with the explosives. This is probably the safest way since a noisy sliding power switch could lead to a logic glitch and one less wannabe terrorist.

If there was a casing for the timer, I would expect it to be molded plastic and not metal. For a metal casing you want mounting points for the standoff supports such as the 4 holes in the corners that had been removed on the board that the fragment was from. Also, metal would show up as out of place in the radio whereas circuits, batteries and wires look like they belong.


I don't necessarily put much credence on what the MeBo people have said, but they did state that it would have been impossible to get the timer inside the Toshiba with its case, and it would have had to be taken out of the case to build the bomb.

A forensic examiner should know that the shape of that pad is key to identifying the piece and not to destroy or alter that information. But it does look like that is what happened.


Thanks for that piece of information, it makes perfect sense.

As I've heard, the circuit fragment was discovered wrapped in a piece of cloth that tested positive for explosives. The fragment is therefore going to test positive whether or not it was planted there because it would pick up traces from the cloth.


If it's that simple, then why didn't the investigators just say so? We've been told the fragment was too small (but we know they tested smaller objects, and we've been told (loudly, in Lockerbie Revisited) that it was due to budgetary constraints, but nobody said anything remotely sensible likw that.

I don't know what role Libya had in designing the timer. I suspect that mebo had a general product line with that dimension including the display and micro-controller that could be developed into many products including counters and timers. This would spread the major costs of producing the dies for cutting the board and molding the cases (you can find such product line similarities with many small manufacturers). Did Libya actually commission any part of the timer design or did they just purchase an existing product?


Back to MeBo, and is their evidence reliable (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/img-show/affidavit.html), but it does appear that these timers were commissioned by Libya.

3) During spring or during begin of summer (so far it has been impossible to get the exact date), the co-owner of the company MEBO AG, Edwin Bollier, gave me task to develop a timer device, later labelled type MST-13. Edwin Bollier added the specifications.

4) At this point of time, I did not knew for what and for whom this development was prepared for.

5) After I had drawn the blueprint, as well as built up the laboratory test device, I prepared a "blueprint-draft" for a future manufacturing PC-board production-film.

6) This first PC-board-film was fabricated by the Firm BUSAG in Zurich.

7) With this first PC-board-film, prepared by BUSAG, I handmade the first 3 pieces of prototypes MST-13 PC-boards. These 3 PC-boards were corrodet in an acid-solution in the laboratory of MEBO AG. In this way the copper tracks did not come out perfect, compared to the later machine manufactured pieces from the firm Thuring. The copper tracks were soldered by me with a soldering iron using tin solder. Also, the soldering of the lead tracks were far from perfect and were irregular, compared to the later machine manufactured PC-borads from the firm Thuring. These PC-boards contained no soldering sealing wax and the color was light brown.

[....]

13) When I had corrected the erroneous blueprint, a second production-film was prepared, used to order 20 pieces of MST-13 PC-borads from the firm Thuring on August 13, 1985, all without any soldering sealing wax. These PC-boards were manufactured by machine, containing green coating on the front, due to the green enamel. All ordered PC-boards from Thuring were 0.4 mm larger than the first 3 handmade MST-13 prototype PC-boards.


It seems fairly clear that these things were commissioned by someone, almost certainly Libya, and Lumpert designed them to order.

However, he had the pieces the were delivered to Libya manufactured out-of-house, by Thuring. I imagine the possibility that this is something else from Thuring's factory, which just happens to have a corner the same as the MST-13 has been checked out?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I thought he was able to get the brown prototypes and the artwork (need to check that to be sure). From that, any number of boards in any color you want could be produced at any time.

The MST-13 timer fragment is the perfect plantable evidence. You have a device that you can pinpoint when and where it was manufactured and who it was sold to. With such a limited run, There is no possibility of any other agency identifying the piece until you decide to play it. It could be planted any time as a hole card to be played when the need arises. It's discovery in the debris can be dismissed as just another unidentified foreign object until it is positively identified as a piece of a Libyan timer.


I'm not impressed by Bollier - he comes across pretty wild-eyed, and his web site is ridiculous. I don't give much credence to this green board/brown board thing, or his comments about the solder. I can't see why it shouldn't have been the same fragment every time it was shown, now you've explained the cuts/scratches satisfactorily.

I was wondering when any fabricated chip might have been introduced into the system. Longtabber also suggested that it might have just been introduced at one point then left for investigators to find and draw conclusions from. However, I find this less easy to make sense of when considering the who, the how, the when and the why of it all.

The timeline goes like this.

21st December 1988: PA103 crashes.
13th January 1989: Date given for the recovery of the piece of collar from the landscape.
17th January 1989: Piece of collar logged into the property store.
12th May 1989: Date of the extra "page 51" in which Hayes records his examination of this item, apparently noting the presence of the fragment but not apparently believing it to be of significance.
15th September 1989: Feraday sends the rushed polaroids of the fragment to Williamson.
June 1990: Thurman contacts Williamson to say he thinks he can identify the fragment. Williamson and Feraday go Washington to look at Thurman's intact timer, which had been recovered from an arms cache.
November 1990: Williamson visits MeBo in Switzerland.



Could it have been planted?
Is it at all likely it was planted?
If it was planted, when did that actually happen?
Why was it done?
Who did it?
How did they do it?
Who else knew about it and helped cover it up?
Who made the decision to plant evidence in the case, and why?




As far as the first point goes, I've been wondering where any planted fragment might have been obtained.

I can't quite remember where I read this, but the MST-13 Thurman matched the fragment to had apparently been in the possession of the US authorities since 1986, not long after Libya acquired them. Two were found in an arms cache, I think in Sudan or somewhere, and the finders called in the USA because they looked modern and new compared to the rest of the material in the cache. The US authorities asked if they could keep one. They were not given them both according to the source I read, and the fate of the other was not recorded.

Assuming this is true, where might the material have come from to manufacture a planted fragment? If they weren't given the second piece, did they get another from another source? Or would it have been easy to make a fake fragment using other materials? So that it would stand forensic examination by people not necessarily in the plot?

Dan O, do you think it would have been a practical proposition to manufacture the fragment from the resources to hand?

Rolfe.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Dan O, do you think it would have been a practical proposition to manufacture the fragment from the resources to hand?
Rolfe.

I know I'm not Dan O. , but I'll chuck my opinion in anyway. I think this would be an extremely risky thing to do. Unless you could get pcb board from the same source, and preferably the same batch as the MeBo timers, you are risking that a forensic examination would throw up an irreconcilable difference, which would expose the plant. This would be on top of the difficulties of producing an exact match for the shape, without having a sample to work from, with suitable explosion damage.

On top of this, the biggest risk of the evidence plant is that during the inspection of the 4 million bits of wreckage, someone turns up a piece of the real timer, which for the sake of argument is identifiable as something traceable to Iran, what do you do with the Libyan timer then?

[Caustic Logic]

That's what I was presuming. Since the display and controls are protruding through the board, the timer would then need to be programed and activated before it is placed in the radio with the explosives. This is probably the safest way since a noisy sliding power switch could lead to a logic glitch and one less wannabe terrorist.

If there was a casing for the timer, I would expect it to be molded plastic and not metal. For a metal casing you want mounting points for the standoff supports such as the 4 holes in the corners that had been removed on the board that the fragment was from. Also, metal would show up as out of place in the radio whereas circuits, batteries and wires look like they belong.

It was in a video, Bollier holding a silver/gray case that was, as you say, probably plastic. Okay. It would add to the protection some, it's not as if the board was pressecd right into the pat of semtex.

As I've heard, the circuit fragment was discovered wrapped in a piece of cloth that tested positive for explosives. The fragment is therefore going to test positive whether or not it was planted there because it would pick up traces from the cloth.

Huh. I'm not sure of the details, if the collar was tested positive, or if there's a matter of "how positive" - residual vs. direct explosive contact. I'm also not totally sure it wasn't tested, I've just heard it said. And also, it's quite possible the fragment was not planted IN the shirt except in fable. We have seen them photographed side-by-side, and otherwise we have trust


I don't know what role Libya had in designing the timer. I suspect that mebo had a general product line with that dimension including the display and micro-controller that could be developed into many products including counters and timers. This would spread the major costs of producing the dies for cutting the board and molding the cases (you can find such product line similarities with many small manufacturers). Did Libya actually commission any part of the timer design or did they just purchase an existing product?

I did see a discussion where the Libyans were haggling over the price of a certain model, Olympus or something, so I think they were buying pre-made MEBO set-ups, at one point. In short, I dunno.

I'm a little slow catching up over here, still kind of busy with other stuff but I'm on it.

[Caustic Logic]

I see Robert Black has a new blog article up today (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/09/angiolini-backs-away-from-semtex.html), still majoring on whether or not the timer fragment could have survived the explosion at all.

Wow. According to the comments section, Richard Marquise himself is posting comments on it.
Again- we have a twisted version of the "facts." Looking at the DeBraeckeleer "paper" it does not appear that any test was conducted with DeBraeckeleer and individuals in New Mexico as claimed by Prof Black's post. ...

Apparently the MSPs are going to get to see Lockerbie Revisited tomorrow. I imagine they'll get a subtitled (or voice-over translation) for the Dutch bits, so it should be easier for them to follow. I wish such a version was available on-line.

This is good. It will have to raise questions and likely bring some more viewers to this thread too.

[Rolfe]

I know I'm not Dan O. , but I'll chuck my opinion in anyway. I think this would be an extremely risky thing to do. Unless you could get pcb board from the same source, and preferably the same batch as the MeBo timers, you are risking that a forensic examination would throw up an irreconcilable difference, which would expose the plant. This would be on top of the difficulties of producing an exact match for the shape, without having a sample to work from, with suitable explosion damage.

On top of this, the biggest risk of the evidence plant is that during the inspection of the 4 million bits of wreckage, someone turns up a piece of the real timer, which for the sake of argument is identifiable as something traceable to Iran, what do you do with the Libyan timer then?


I'm not that sure it would be so risky as such. What is giving me pause is that the narrative doesn't work.

Is it likely the fragment was planted, and if so, when did it happen? That's the difficulty.

Although the US authorities had the intact timer from about 1986, and I think knew it was of Libyan origin, they didn't know where it came from, who manufactured it and how many there were. Allegedly. That had to be figured out in the latter half of 1990. So at what point was it decided this was an appropriate thing to plant in the evidence?

First, it's hard to believe a plant of that nature was dreamed up at the British end. Bush was always the leading player, with Thatcher going along. If anybody in either of the security forces decided to plant it, I can't see it being other than the US side. So when did they do it?

The temptation is to suspect June 1990, when Wiliamson and Feraday went to Washington to look at the intact timer Thurman had discovered. The implication is that a photograph had been sent to Thurman, to see if he could identify it, and that he matched the photograph with the extant timer. If we were looking at a plant, that would be the point.

It would explain the disagreement about whether the fragment was taken to the US or not. Did it in fact originate there? Was it introduced at that point?

A conspiracy isn't all that far-fetched, because these people had been working together, and the US agencies had been pressurising the Scottish police from day 1 anyway. A CIA decision that something had to be faked could have been implemented. And even if a fake fragment turned out not to be a perfect match later, the worst that would happen, realistically would be, damn, it's not one of these after all.

It would explain the alteration of the original evidence label, possibly, and the extra page 51 - it was just added at that point. It could even explain the polaroid. I mean, why wait four months then suddenly say you don't have time to take a proper photograph? Why not just wait another couple of days to get one done? Well, if none of that actually happened at that time, then it would be a reason to introduce a poor-quality photograph which was actually faked up at a later date, but was sufficiently fuzzy that this wouldn't be remarked on.

All this dreamed up in June 1990, and evidence carefully seeded to account for the fragment's presence right back to within three weeks of the crash.

The problem is, it doesn't fly. Even if the polaroids were faked up as I just suggested, they're not the only evidence of the presence of the fragment before June 1990. Between September 1989 and June 1990, Williamson is said to have cast a wide net around circuit board manufacturers trying to find out where it came from. Is it really likely he did no such thing and that's a fabrication too? It gets more and more unlikely the more detail you try to reconcile.

I can't see any planting happening in September 1989. At that time the narrative has the thing in England, and I don't think a plan like this originated in England. Even if the US authorities had decided to do that, somehow got the thing insinuated at RAERDE with the help of a co-operative investigator like Feraday, and set Williamson off to see what he could find, the timing at that point is too early. It's not easy to see why anyone should want, in the autumn of 1989, to embark on a complicated deception to involve Libya. It's possible, I suppose, and then when Williamson wasn't getting anywhere by June, the trigger was pulled from the US end and they "found" the matching fragment, but it's all implausible and lacking in verisimilitude.

In contrast the Official Version does have a relative ring of truth. If we ignore the oddities like the altered label, the extra page in the notes and the fuzzy polaroid, it reads plausibly. Piece of shirt found, but not immediately examined. Then it is examined, but the significance of the find isn't appreciated to the point that it isn't even photographed. Four months later, another researcher spots that it might be important, and in haste to advance the investigation, sends poor-quality pictures to Scotland.

Scottish police spend nine months trying fruitlessly to identify it in Europe, and finally send a picture to the FBI just in case the US operation might recognise it. US researcher does indeed recognise it, but doesn't know where it came from. Another five months go by before the manufacturer is definitely identified, and interviewed.

It definitely reads better!

I always felt ther was little point in declaring the fragment had to have been planted, unless it was possible to construct a convincing narrative to allow the planting to happen. I have to say I'm struggling to make it sound likely, in contrast to the official version, which sounds relatively natural. So I don't know, but I'm not convincing myself at the moment.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

It seems fairly clear that these things were commissioned by someone, almost certainly Libya, and Lumpert designed them to order.

However, he had the pieces the were delivered to Libya manufactured out-of-house, by Thuring. I imagine the possibility that this is something else from Thuring's factory, which just happens to have a corner the same as the MST-13 has been checked out?

It would be standard practice for the PC board production to be outsourced. Very few manufacturers make their own boards in house.

Unless Thuring had some standard templates for board shapes and cutouts, these boards would be individually milled to the specifications produced at MEBO. Thuring would however provide the stock copper plated epoxy board (probably also made elsewhere) that would be a standard size to fit their processing equipment (about 16" x 22" is one standard). The pattern would all be MEBO's design but there could be indicators of the design tool they were using (like how the type faces and kerning can help identify the word processor used to create a document).

We are told that Thuring produced the boards but it is not clear if they did the cutting and milling of the boards or who added and soldered the chips.

Also, if a 16"x22" board is cut into 6x6cm squares you get over 50 timer boards. If 20 went to Libya, and some went to Germany, there could be several more out there waiting to show up on e-Bay.

[Caustic Logic]

I've never been able to understand the assumption that there was no barometer involved in this attack.
On the evidence which we heard we are satisfied that the explosive device which destroyed PA103 was triggered by an MST-13 timer alone and that neither an ice-cube timer nor any barometric device played any part in it.


<snip>
The question of the timing of the explosion was apparently never raised in court. I'm not quite sure why, because if you're going to lead a special defence of incrimination saying that Jibril's group did it, it seems to me to be one of the strongest inferences in that argument.

Did the defense try for this argument? If so, it's indeed foolish to ignore this excellent circumstantial evidence. Serves better to make the whole coverup run smoother than to get their client off. Who were the defense team anyway and who selected them? Because they seem to have done a very poor job.

I note that in the original trial, the defence tried to cast doubt on the provenance of the fragment. They drew attention to the altered label, and the apparently interpolated page in Hayes's notes, and the oddity of the polaroid pictures being taken in such apparent haste in September 1989. However, they didn't attempt to draw any of this together to allege straight out that the fragment was planted.

Ah, that partly answers my question. I hope after this they learned judges don't operate, like internet audiences, by piling up coincidences and implying some vague doubt without a specific charge. Unless of course the string of too many coincidence leans towards the outcome they want (a conviction in this case).

it would probably just have alienated the judges even further.
Somehow I agree, even though judges aren't supposed to become alienated from justice and closer to a desire to lock these lying bastards up.

As a result, the narrative of the timer provenance has never really been examined, challenged or tested. It's an interesting exercise.

Could it have been planted?
Is it at all likely it was planted?
If it was planted, when did that actually happen?
Why was it done?
Who did it?
How did they do it?
Who else knew about it and helped cover it up?
Who made the decision to plant evidence in the case, and why?

Coould, of course. Likely, I think so considering the other evidence points away from Libyans with bad timing. It was probably either planted in the bomb to implicate Libya, or in the evidence collection for the same end. In the former case it would be the placers of the bomb, either some PFLPGC types, or someone framing them, as framing Libya :confused: In the latter case, well I don't feel like naming names until I've learned more. Someone who speaks English most likely.

I think all of these questions are just as interesting as whether a fragment was brown or green, and whether all the photographs show the same object.

I think they're more interesting, but I love working with pictures, and can come to some concrete conclusions, at least about the photos as available to us, FWIW, with not too much investigation. So I will come back to the color issue, while I think we've covered the shape aspect enough.

[Ambrosia]

I confirm today on 18th July 2007 that I stole the third handmanufactured MST-13 Timer PC-Board consisting
of 8 layers of fiberglass from MEBO Ltd. and gave it without permission on *22nd June 1989 to a person
officially-investigated in the "Lockerbie case".

... In addition I have handed over without permission a summary of the production films, hand-stuck templates
and the blueprints of the MST-13 Timer production in a yellow evelope to Det. Superintendent James
Gilchrist, Scottish Police during a *visit to Zurich in June 1991.




I got a shock and was in a significant state of anxiety when I was shown the photograph with the apparent
MST-13 Timer fragment ... for the first time in *mid January 1991 , which was apparently found in
Lockerbie and they confronted me with the fact that this MST-13 Timer fragment was found in Lockebie and
was a part of the ignition device ...

Although the portrayed MST-13 fragment at this time itself, had been sawed into two pieces apparently
for forensic reasons, it did not escape me that the MST-13 fragment on the police photograph
(No. PT/35(b) came from the non-operational MST-13 prototype PC-board that I had stolen; this
because there are clear characteristics e.g. on a specific soldering terminal, a relay had never been
soldered.

The soldering terminal was flat and clean at this place.Take note I saw the photograph with the illustration of the non-processed originals, apparently the MST-13 Timer fragment under "Evidence No. PT-35, image 9 from Crownoffice, gov. UK", ...

I clearly recognize the scratched remnants of the soldering tracts on this enlarged digital police photograph.


There is evidence that the fragment that the police claim was found at Lockerbie was planted. Lumperts affidavit. If he gave it to police in June 89 then it is impossible for it to have been found in the shirt in May 1989. Lumpert designed the board and manufactured it. If there is anyone who ought to know the intimate details of what this board loks like it's Lumpert. If MST-13 was a genuine find Lumpert is lying. What possible reason does he have to lie about this in 2007? To me this is just as hard a thing for the official story to explain as to how the fragment might havebeen planted and by whom.

Lets see if we can speculate as to a convincing narrative that explains the fragment being planted.

early 89 and the information leaking out of the investigation is "We know who did it, we are pretty sure how they did it, we just need to find the evidence that proves it, and it's pointing towards the PFLP-GC"

Because of the sensitive nature of politics in Beruit Lebanon, with the IranAir Vincennes shooting down recent painful history and other complications like The Satanic Verses, Thatcher "low keys" the Lockerbie investigation and blocks independant enquiries into the disaster. They don't have any proof yet of anything, and jumping the gun could have bad consequences in the middle East later down the road. On top of that the authorities know that Khreesat is a Jordanian intelligence asset with links to the CIA and they let him go. If it turns out that it was Jibril/Khreesat thats a major faux pas.

Giaka is known to the CIA, and is feeding them snippets ofhalf truths and lies about this and that in order to get plastic surgery to chicken out of National Service and also to make himself some easy money. He tells agents that he has no information on Megrahi and that there is no way the suitcase could have made it on at Luqa.

June 89 Lumpert gives the police a complete MST-13 board.

US authorities have an MST-13 board of the same manufacture that they know will tie Libya to Lockerbie, lets assume that it was a US person that Lumpert gave this board to in 89.

Someone engineers the fragment, leaving enough of it to enable later identification, and plants it within the evidence. Scottish police try to identify it for several months but draw a blank.

During this time it becomes clear to investigators that there is no more evidence that would contradict the fragment, such as a n other timer device being found. The fragment is finally "identified" in June 1990 by an honest but duped Thurman.

June 91 Lumpert hands more stuff re MST-13 to police. July 91 CIA threaten Giaka into telling them what they want to hear. He tells them what they want to hear, indictments are issued not long after, and the police are pretty sure that Libya is never going to give up the men, it'll never go to trial.

If the fragment was not found and was planted whoeever examined the shirt to find the circuit inside is lying. That would be Feraday. But only about the dates. It's likely given the "not enough time to take photos" line that the shirt wasn't examined until September 89. For all he knows the fragment is genuine. Sometime between June 89 and September 89 someone plants the fragment. All it takes is several people, a high up person to order the planting and to lean on Feraday to cook his notes. Feraday himself and whoever did the actual planting. There's also the "Golfer" Scottish police whistleblower who claims to have participated in fabricating this evidence.

Lumpert is lying along with the "Golfer", or Feraday is lying.

My monies on Feraday.

But why go after Libya at all?

I think either:

i) investigators have some other intelligence that links Libya that they can't present in court, and they are "sexing up" the evidence to secure a conviction

ii) They think it's a "safe" place to pin blame as Libya will never ever in a million years allow their people to stand trial.

They are CYAing cos they let the real bomb maker go free and are partially responsible. Or there is some other political reason circa late 89 that we don't know about that behooves them to blame anyone but Iran.

ETA: possible political reasoning being the shutting down of the Straight of Hormuz by Iranian military that would cause a huge increase in the worlds price of oil and tanking world economies like the USA that depend on oil imports.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Interesting post Ambrosia, and you make a good argument but I'm still struggling to convince myself that the timer was a plant. There are two main obstacles in my mind.

1. Why bother? If the powers that be don't want to blame Iran/ the PFLP-GC or whoever, then the easiest, most risk free way is not to find any evidence pointing to them, and leave the case unsolved. There would have been grumblings from the families and perhaps some stories in the newspapers, but if you remove the timer, and don't pressure Giaka to name Megrahi, then there is really no evidence pointing to anyone. Case closed with no risk of it blowing up in the governments face.

2. It's a very poor piece of evidence. It could be blown apart in so many ways. E.g. Records emerge from MeBo showing they sold two timers to an Iranian group. Unless the planters have a very high level of certainty that they know the full history of these timers, which even MeBo don't seem to know, then many other countries apart from Libya could have had access.

If you are going to plant evidence, it should be convincing evidence, which you know cannot be contradicted. In mid 1989 the MST-13 timer was neither of these things.

[Rolfe]

Did the defense try for this argument? If so, it's indeed foolish to ignore this excellent circumstantial evidence. Serves better to make the whole coverup run smoother than to get their client off. Who were the defense team anyway and who selected them? Because they seem to have done a very poor job.


I only know that I see no reference to the coincidence of the timing in the court judgement.

As to the selection of the defence team, that's a can of worms I don't have all the details of. Certainly, Kochler's report on the first appeal (http://i-p-o.org/koechler-lockerbie-appeal_report.htm) is severely critical of the defence strategy, and goes back to criticise in retrospect the defence at the actual trial. I know Megrahi didn't get to choose his lawyers, and at one point one of the original defence team left the case, at which stage some key elements of the defence were apparently abandoned.

Kochler praises the defence for having destroyed Giaka's credibility, but then slates them for blatant failure to make a number of arguments that would have assisted their client. I don't honestly know what the full story is, but it isn't necessarily pretty.

9. One of the most serious shortcomings of the appeal proceedings (as of the trial proceedings) was that the appellant did not have adequate defense – a circumstance that weighs heavily in an adversarial judicial system where the fairness of the trial depends mainly on the equality of arms between prosecution and defense. Because of this situation, the requirements of Art. 6 (“Right to a fair trial”) of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms were not met.

[snip stacks of stuff the defence did wrong....]

24. In addition to that, the appellant was deprived of his right to adequate legal representation (in the many respects described above in regard to the conduct of the appeal proceedings on the part of the defense team). Furthermore, he did not have the possibility of choosing the defense team on his own. The team was chosen for him by the former Libyan defense lawyer, Mr. Maghour, who at the same time was acting as Libya’s representative in the cases Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United Kingdom and Libyan Arab Jamahiriya v. United States respectively at the International Court of Justice. The official role of the Libyan defense lawyer as agent of the Libyan state was incompatible with his duty to give adequate legal assistance to his client in a case of personal criminal responsibility such as the one before the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. In view of the Defense’s decision not to make use of many of the means available to it for the adequate defense of the appellant, the original choice of the defense team (made without the participation of the appellant) may have negatively impacted on the rights of the appellant. That the defense team was “out of tune” with the appellant – whom it was supposed to represent – became clear in the rather strange fact that the Defense refused to meet with the undersigned or to answer any of his questions, while the appellant, through the prison administration and the Scottish Court Service, asked for a meeting with the undersigned.

25. In the meeting of 12 February 2002, requested by the appellant, he disclosed to the undersigned that he was made aware of only 3 out of 16 joint minutes agreed upon by the Prosecution and the Defense in the course of the trial. He also stated that his instructions were not always followed by the Defense (as for instance in the case of the x-ray machine which the appellant had asked to have brought into the courtroom for inspection) and that he did not give instructions to the Defense to drop the “special defense” during the trial (see Par. 9 of the undersigned’s report of 3 February 2001); he further said that he did not understand why no submission of “no case to answer” was made in his case by the Defense (while they made such a step in regard to the co-accused), etc. All of these details underline the basic fact that the appellant did not get adequate legal representation and suggest that the defense strategy may not have been genuine and authentic (as required under European standards). The suspicions raised by the undersigned in his trial report were confirmed by the information obtained during the aforementioned meeting with the appellant.


There's more where that came from, but I don't want to quote too much of the document.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

There is evidence that the fragment that the police claim was found at Lockerbie was planted. Lumperts affidavit. If he gave it to police in June 89 then it is impossible for it to have been found in the shirt in May 1989.
Technically, at least, it's evidence. But being given years later, once it could be known that a June handover would moot a May "discovery," from an employee of a company known for rather wiggly nehavior AND openly trying to cash in on destorying the state's case, and it's evidence I wouldn't rest much on. IMO.

Lumpert designed the board and manufactured it. If there is anyone who ought to know the intimate details of what this board loks like it's Lumpert. If MST-13 was a genuine find Lumpert is lying. What possible reason does he have to lie about this in 2007? To me this is just as hard a thing for the official story to explain as to how the fragment might havebeen planted and by whom.
Where did I just see it seems Mebo is/was trying to open perjury hearings against Lumpert, meaning challenging the Swiss gov. to prove Lumpert's 2007 affidavit is true and he's therefore guilty of perjury in the trial.
Ah, here (http://cache.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=2070710234&page_url=%2f%2fwww.theherald.co.uk%2fnews%2fnews%2 fdisplay.var.1664337.0.0.php&page_last_updated=9%2f5%2f2007+5%3a33%3a57+AM&firstName=Edwin&lastName=Bollier).
Mr Bollier has already spoken to prosecutors in Switzerland who will begin their investigation into charges of perjury next week.
Clever move, but I didn't hear anything about them finding Lumpert guilty of this serious crime. I do think this is still grounds for added suspicion, even if notihing from Mebo is a real, direct clue. So much weird behavior to me just indicates something amiss.

Your narrative is thoughtful and partly in line with my own thoughts:

June 89 Lumpert gives the police a complete MST-13 board.

US authorities have an MST-13 board of the same manufacture that they know will tie Libya to Lockerbie, lets assume that it was a US person that Lumpert gave this board to in 89.

Someone engineers the fragment, leaving enough of it to enable later identification, and plants it within the evidence. Scottish police try to identify it for several months but draw a blank.

During this time it becomes clear to investigators that there is no more evidence that would contradict the fragment, such as a n other timer device being found. The fragment is finally "identified" in June 1990 by an honest but duped Thurman.

That's a plus for this kind of thinking is at least one person is just following evidence presented to him - most will have to, unless someone can keep tight enough control that the wrong person doesn't mess it all up. it is still odd that an honest non-expert was selected by whatever fates to be the guy. So many variables involved in determining why it came out that way, but mostly I'd guess down the "who he knows' line. It could just be how things work sometimes. ?? For all I know they had a stock of 50 fabricated MST-13s at hand to hack up and practice with, with all the colors available and rudimentary photo-tinting abilities too.

June 91 Lumpert hands more stuff re MST-13 to police. July 91 CIA threaten Giaka into telling them what they want to hear. He tells them what they want to hear, indictments are issued not long after, and the police are pretty sure that Libya is never going to give up the men, it'll never go to trial.

Something tells me a bribe modification would do better with this one, but maybe some stick with the carrot. That's an interesting thought, that they didn't think it would actually get to court. The sanctions and all, and gathering evidence, usually points there, but this was an "unsafe" case, good enough for an indictment, some political drama, but not conviction against an adequate defense and such. Maybe Gaddafi meant to call the bluff and knock the whole thing over more than anything handing them over! But as awkward as it was the ballet commenced and knocked back with brute force. And now the later critiques are coming in and its set to tilt right back to PFLPGC/Iran with some help some Spielberg et al.

If the fragment was not found and was planted whoeever examined the shirt to find the circuit inside is lying. That would be Feraday. <snip> lean on Feraday to cook his notes.
It's Hayes that found the fragment, perhaps took the later picture, and had the badly kept notes. Did Faraday also do all these, or is this a mix-up?

There's also the "Golfer" Scottish police whistleblower who claims to have participated in fabricating this evidence.

Lumpert is lying along with the "Golfer", or Feraday is lying.

Did this "golfer" guy ever specify how he knows or believes that clothes and timer fragment were planted? From what I recall skimming over, he's too vague to put side-by-side with the specific claims of others. He also does seem to know a lot, including about missing interviews and who is or isn't an undercover CIA drug-runner. I'd like to hear more from this gent when he's ready.

AND HEY! A cool new find for me that turned up way down the Google image search road, apparently some technical report (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2007/mst-13e.html) (=partially typed on graph paper??) from Mebo around 2005. Has some interesting stuff in it, the best blow-up (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/jpg/img9.jpg) view yet of the 9/12(?) Hayes/Faraday(?) photo, and what I think is a view of the other side! (black/dark, no features) along with notes by Faraday I think. View. (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2005/pyrotech/pyrotech-8.jpg)
It's silly of course, again asserting the first photo was brown. and all that...
It is good that the “forger” forgot to carve in the letter “M”…

[Ambrosia]

1. Why bother? If the powers that be don't want to blame Iran/ the PFLP-GC or whoever, then the easiest, most risk free way is not to find any evidence pointing to them, and leave the case unsolved.

Good question.

2. It's a very poor piece of evidence.

If you are going to plant evidence, it should be convincing evidence, which you know cannot be contradicted. In mid 1989 the MST-13 timer was neither of these things.

It is a piece of evidence though. Physical Evidence is *very* thin on the ground. Perhaps the planter considered it to be strong enough, it remains the only piece of bomb recovered. It wasn't identified formally until June 1990. In January 1989 Bollier delivers to the US Embassy in Vienna a letter offering information that links Libya MEBO and Lockerbie. Apparently this was never followed up until after the fragment was identified.

E.g. Records emerge from MeBo showing they sold two timers to an Iranian group.

That happened. Records emerged from MeBo showing they sold two timers to the STASI. The verdict notes that "The initial order placed with Thuring was for twenty circuit boards, solder masked on one side only, i.e. single sided. In fact Thuring supplied twenty-four such boards. In October 1985 MEBO placed a further order with Thuring for circuit boards but it was specified that they should be solder masked on both sides, i.e. double sided. Thirty-five such boards were ordered, but Thuring supplied only thirtyfour." Thats 58 MST-13 type boards manufactured plus 3 prototypes hand made by Lumpert. 61 total. 20 are supplied to Libya. About 12 are picked up by police, 2 more are recovered in Togo, another is recovered in Dakar.

That leaves more than 20 MST-13 circuit boards out there somewhere.

I agree that it's a poor piece of evidence. Was enough to convict Megrahi with though.



It's Hayes that found the fragment, perhaps took the later picture, and had the badly kept notes. Did Faraday also do all these, or is this a mix-up?


Yes, mixup, my mistake. My post should read "Hayes" instead of "Feraday"

[Rolfe]

Interesting post Ambrosia, and you make a good argument but I'm still struggling to convince myself thet the timer was a plant. There are two main obstacles in my mind.

1. Why bother? If the powers that be don't want to blame Iran/ the PFLP-GC or whoever, then the easiest, most risk free way is not to find any evidence pointing to them, and leave the case unsolved. There would have been grumblings from the families and perhaps some stories in the newspapers, but if you remove the timer, and don't pressure Giaka to name Megrahi, then there is really no evidence pointing to anyone. Case closed with no risk of it blowing up in the governments face.

2. It's a very poor piece of evidence. It could be blown apart in so many ways. E.g. Records emerge from MeBo showing they sold two timers to an Iranian group. Unless the planters have a very high level of certainty that they know the full history of these timers, which even MeBo don't seem to know, then many other countries apart from Libya could have had access.

If you are going to plant evidence, it should be convincing evidence, which you know cannot be contradicted. In mid 1989 the MST-13 timer was neither of these things.


This is pretty much the difficulty I'm having with the scenario.

I can't get over the huge feeling that the timer fragment shouldn't be there, and in fact I formed that opinion before I'd read more than the vaguest hints that the provenance might not be completely free of doubt.

Then I look at the anomalies in the evidence trail.

The altered label on the original exhibit.
The extra page 51 in Hayes's notes.
The rushed and low-detail polaroid pictures.
The serious question marks over the professional competence and even integrity of Hayes, Feraday and Thurman.
Then I look at the significant number of people who are maintaining that the fragment was planted. And I wonders. Yesssss, I wondersssss.

However, it's difficult to make a coherent story of it. I have grave doubts about the reliability of anyone from MeBo, and I wouldn't care to base any conclusions on anything Bollier says. Just as much of the original evidence was tainted by the offer of millions of dollars reward for evidence to convict Megrahi and Fhimah, the later stuff is tainted by offers (from Gadaffi) of millions of dollars to get Megrahi out of jail. (Hmmm, maybe Kenny should apply for that - I imagine we've got a school or a hospital construction programme that could use that sort of money....)

It's the deciding to do it (which must have been at a high level, if it was a strategic decision), planning to do it, creating the manufactured fragment, and implementing the plan I baulk at a bit.

If it was done, the decision must have been a US one. I can't believe UK intelligence or law enforcement would have taken that sort of initiative unilaterally, given the subservient role being played to the US in this affair. Also, there's no evidence anyone in Britain had the first idea what an MST-13 was and which country possessed them - that information was on the US side. Given that, I can't believe they would then have simply instructed a couple of British forensics people (Hayes and Feraday) to do it. They would use their own people - if a fragment was constructed, it would have happened in the USA.

I could imagine US operatives showing up with the fragment and instructing Hayes and Feraday to introduce it into the evidence trail, but they'd have had to be very sure that these guys would go along with it, rather than go screaming to the papers that US agents had asked them to plant evidence in the Lockerbie enquiry.

Where would they have got the material to make a fake fragment from? I don't trust Lumpert, but that's one possibility. Another is that they had another board recovered from the field. A third is Thuring.

Was the MST-13 a rational choice? I'd have said yes, on that one. They had one recovered from the field in 1986. It's perfectly possible they knew these were unusual devices specifically traceable to Libya, even if they didn't know exactly where Libya had got them. If they wanted to implicate Libya, it would have been a smart move.

When might this have been done? I think a lot of commentary has majored on the fact that the direction of the enquiry shifted in the early autumn of 1990, after Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait and while Desert Storm was cooking up. This seems extraordinarily convenient. Too convenient, even.

However, it's difficult to pinpoint the actual introduction of the fragment to that date. While it's possible it was planted in June 1990, the point when Thurman contacted Williamson to say he thought he knew what the fragment was, that would require the story that Williamson had been trying for months to identify the manufacturer, contacting many circuit board manufacturers in Europe in that time, to be fabricated.

Going further back, the next possibility is September 1989. There are a couple of difficulties with that. It seems a bit early to be planting evidence to be used against Libya, if the invasion of Kuwait was the main driving force for that. (Though I appreciate there may be other reasons, which Ambrosia has outlined, and I'm reading The Trail of the Octopus to try to clarify all that.) It would require the US spooks to have contacted the people at RAERDE and persuaded them to do the dirty work. It also doesn't explain the polaroid business - if you have an actual fragment, why not just get it photographed in the usual way? (OK, I suppose it might be somethnig to do with not wanting the photographer to see it, maybe he already photographed that piece of evidence without the timer fragment or something, I don't know. With a polaroid, you don't have a negative, and you only have one copy, perhaps it was that.)

So it's not impossible, I'm just having trouble seeing it as likely. It's not in quite the same league as believing the Twin Towers were quietly wired one Sunday morning with demolition charges nobody could see, but it's not as simple as just saying "OMG it's a plant!"

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

I don't think you can deduce from those photos that these are not the same chip. It is a shame that the original wasn't better documented before they proceeded to destroy it in the name of forensic science.

The claim of the scratched letter M may not in fact be a scratch cutting into the surface but simply a fiber laying on top. Under the "M" is an area that appears to have been cleaned revealing a much lighter color below the surface contamination.

If this fragment was from the prototype board, I would not expect to see the traces silvered (unless I missed the part where Lumpert plated the prototype boards after the acid etching). I also don't see remains of solder flux that would be left behind after hand soldering though I admit never having tried using semtex to clean a PC board.

[Rolfe]

If there is anyone who ought to know the intimate details of what this board loks like it's Lumpert. If MST-13 was a genuine find Lumpert is lying. What possible reason does he have to lie about this in 2007?


Gadaffi offering $200 million reward to anyone who can get Megrahi out of jail? Bollier has gone on record as saying he wouldn't half mind getting his hands on that. However, as Megrahi is now out of jail, I can't see any percentage in continuing to run with it.

On top of that the authorities know that Khreesat is a Jordanian intelligence asset with links to the CIA and they let him go. If it turns out that it was Jibril/Khreesat thats a major faux pas.


Um yes, I think that's a very very major point, possibly close to the heart of all this.

US authorities have an MST-13 board of the same manufacture that they know will tie Libya to Lockerbie, lets assume that it was a US person that Lumpert gave this board to in 89.

Someone engineers the fragment, leaving enough of it to enable later identification, and plants it within the evidence. Scottish police try to identify it for several months but draw a blank.


You're talking September 1989? Seems the most likely timing, unless Williamson is completely making up that story about trawling the circuit board manufacturers of Europe to identify the fragment. That's the part I'm having a credibility gap with.

Who planted it, how did they get access to the evidence at this stage to do that, and how were the people at RAERDE kept quiet about this?

If the fragment was not found and was planted whoeever examined the shirt to find the circuit inside is lying. That would be Feraday. But only about the dates. It's likely given the "not enough time to take photos" line that the shirt wasn't examined until September 89. For all he knows the fragment is genuine. Sometime between June 89 and September 89 someone plants the fragment. All it takes is several people, a high up person to order the planting and to lean on Feraday Hayes to cook his notes. Feraday himself and whoever did the actual planting.


Might have just been Hayes and Feraday, who were senior enough within the investigation. Feraday was unqualified and working way beyond his competence, and Hayes was into sexing-up of evidence in bombing cases in order to secure convictions. Ask the Maguire family.

If Hayes did cook the notes (rather than simply making a mistake when numbering pages, which just happened to relate to that precise page), then he's in on it up to his neck. It's also difficult to see how Feraday could have been entirely innocent, given the polaroid issue. They'd had the shirt collar for at least four months. There was no especial hurry in September 1989. Why not just wait a day or two to get proper pictures taken?

My theory on that one would be that they didn't want to involve any of the lower orders in the deception. Normally, I think a departmental photographer would be responsible for taking evidential photographs, developing them and securing the negatives. If it was possible that person had already photographed the contents of this evidence bag, without the MST-13 fragment, it would be unwise to ask him to do it again. Polaroids keep it all within the little "need to know" group. (Any existing photographs and negatives can always be disappeared.)

There's also the "Golfer" Scottish police whistleblower who claims to have participated in fabricating this evidence.

Lumpert is lying along with the "Golfer", or Feraday is lying.

My monies on Feraday.


I'd forgotten about the Golfer. I've an idea his identity isn't all that secret, but I don't know who he is. I heard something on the radio about him just a week or two ago. It was put to him that it was very weird he hadn't said anything sooner. His reponse was that during the 1990s he didn't think it would come to trial, and nobody was being harmed. In 2000-01, he believed nobody would be convicted because the evidence taken as a whole was pathetic. Then the first notice of appeal was served, and he believed that Megrahi would be acquitted on appeal. He started trying to blow the whistle in 2002, after the appeal was dismissed.

I don't put a lot of credence on Lumpert, and I still think his brown-board story might be a complete red herring. However, the Golfer is another matter. He hasn't given much detail so far as I know. Do we even know he's talking about the MST-13 fragment?

The above speculation assumed any planting was done at RAERDE, because the relevant evidence bag seems to have gone there from Scotland fairly soon after collection. If the fragment was planted in Scotland, there would be no need for Hayes to re-number his pages and no explanation for the polaroid photos.

Are we sure the Golfer isn't possibly talking about something else, relating to the cover-up surrounding the CIA operatives' luggage? That certainly did involve shenanigans in Scotland, but it would not necessarily be relevant to the nature of the device that caused the explosion.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

The best description I can find of the Golfer's contribution is here (http://usa.mediamonitors.net/Headlines/Convicted-Bomber-of-Pan-Am-Flight-103-May-Have-Been-Wrongly-Sentenced).

A sensational article in the June 24, 2007 edition of The Scotsman includes allegations by the unnamed “Golfer”--a Scottish police officer who worked at a senior level on the Lockerbie case--in which “Golfer” claims there was a plot to blame Libya for the crash of Pan Am 103. In a damning indictment of Scottish justice, he claims that senior members of the Scottish investigating team agreed to manufacture and manipulate evidence to help secure a suspect and conviction. “Golfer” claims that when the Maltese shopkeeper Gauci was shown photographes of both the accused, Megrahi and Fahima, he had failed to identify either of them.

“Golfer” further alleges that a detective changed the labeling on a bag from “cloth charred” to “cloth with debris.” The bag with the changed label contained a piece of a shirt collar and fragments of material said to have been extracted from it, including tiny pieces of circuit board identified as coming from a timer made by a Swiss firm, MEBO. “Golfer” says the detective who knew he would be questioned about the label change was so nervous about it that he had trouble sleeping the night before he testified. “Golfer” claimed that the detective told him he had not been responsible for changing the label on the bag.

The identity of “Golfer” is a closely guarded secret. He will be seen as having betrayed his former colleagues. But his testimony, if it proves true, could be crucial in providing the relatives of the victims with the truth they have been craving for almost 19 years.


The Scotsman has re-vamped its web site quite recently, and none of the links to that bloody article work any more. I can't find it now, even from the archive, because 24th June 2007 was actually a Sunday and the paper doesn't publish on Sundays, so there must be a mistake in the date. I did find this (http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/Lockerbie-Scottish-justice-in-the.3299757.jp) from only a few days later, however.

The commission rejected 48 grounds for review, including apparently "sensitive" information provided by a senior police officer, codenamed "The Golfer", who claimed evidence had been fabricated to lay a trail to the Libyan.

The former detective sergeant was interviewed, but the commission found his statements to contain a "vast array of inconsistencies and contradiction".


So this was part of what the SCCRC rejected. Which doesn't mean there's nothing in it of course.

Rolfe.

ETA: Found the original article (http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/lockerbie/Golfer-tells-of-plot-to.3298354.jp), it was in the sister Sunday paper which is called Scotland on Sunday, not the daily Scotsman paper at all.

Golfer alleges pieces of supposedly bomb-damaged clothing, parts of a timer circuit board and an instruction manual for a Toshiba radio-cassette recorder were added to the evidence to lay a trail that would lead to the 'bomber'.

In a damning indictment of Scottish justice, he claims senior members of the Lockerbie investigating team agreed to manufacture and manipulate evidence to help secure a suspect and conviction.

He has also claimed that police statements from the key prosecution witness, Maltese shopkeeper Tony Gauci - the only man to [partially] identify Megrahi in the chain of events outlined by the Crown - either went missing or were altered before the Libyan's trial.

In particular, he says that Gauci's first statement was altered, as he was shown the original version by a colleague, and that when Gauci was first shown photographs of both accused, he had failed to identify either of them.

[....]

During the trial, a detective attracted criticism from the judges for failing to explain why he had altered the label on the bag holding the single most vital piece of evidence.

The officer had initially labelled the bag 'cloth (charred)' but had later overwritten the word 'cloth' with 'debris'.

The bag contained pieces of a shirt collar and fragments of materials said to have been extracted from it, including the tiny piece of circuit board identified as coming from an MST timer made by the Swiss firm MeBo.

The judges said in their judgement that his evidence had been "at worst evasive and at best confusing".

Golfer has now told Megrahi's legal team that the detective had told him he had not been responsible for changing the label. If this were true, questions would have to be asked about why the officer did not explain this to the court.

Golfer also claimed that the detective knew he would be questioned about the label change, the only one in the entire case of thousands of productions, and was so nervous about it that he had trouble sleeping the night before he gave evidence.

[....]

Golfer makes it clear that most of his colleagues were entirely committed to pursuing a case against the first suspects, the PFLP-GC, and could see no reason to deviate from that path when they were instructed to look to Libyan involvement.

The report to the commission says: "When this happened, many senior officers were unhappy."

[Ambrosia]

The claim of the scratched letter M may not in fact be a scratch cutting into the surface but simply a fiber laying on top. Under the "M" is an area that appears to have been cleaned revealing a much lighter color below the surface contamination.

I just played with the "M" photo a little.

the original photo I used is linked here.

http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/jpg/img9.jpg

http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9072/fragmentfibre.jpg

For the above pic I cropped the original down and then painted over the red circle to remove it entirely. I doubled the size of the original image.

I circled the area of the fragment where the "M" is located, then desaturated the rest of the pic to make it black and white. Finally I adjusted the gamma level of the area still in colour to make it easier to see shadow.

We can see from the shadows around the edge of the fragment where it rests on the surface, that the light is coming from above approximately the 12 o'clock position. You can also see that there is a shadow cast beneath the "M" that more or less corresponds to the same lighting position.

It very probably is a fibre. Especially considering that this extract comes from the http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2009/pi995.html larger photo here. Which is apparently polaroid photo PP8932 taken by Hayes 12 Sept 1989 showing the charred shirt and assorted stuff extracted from it.

[Ambrosia]

ETA: Found the original article (http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/lockerbie/Golfer-tells-of-plot-to.3298354.jp), it was in the sister Sunday paper which is called Scotland on Sunday, not the daily Scotsman paper at all.

Same paper, same author, 2 years earlier August 2005 [ linky (http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/latestnews/Police-chief-Lockerbie-evidence-was.2656485.jp) ]


Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked

Published Date: 28 August 2005
By MARCELLO MEGA

A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.
The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people.

The police chief, whose identity has
not yet been revealed, gave the statement to lawyers representing Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, ...

The officer, who was a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland, is supporting earlier claims by a former CIA agent that his bosses "wrote the script" to incriminate Libya. ...

Other important questions remain unanswered, such as how the officer learned of the alleged conspiracy and whether he was directly involved in the inquiry. But sources close to Megrahi's legal team ... said: "He said he believed he had crucial information. A meeting was set up and he gave a statement that supported the long-standing rumours that the key piece of evidence, a fragment of circuit board from a timing device that implicated Libya, had been planted by US agents. ...

"He also said that at the time he became aware of the matter, no one really believed there would ever be a trial. When it did come about, he believed both accused would be acquitted. When Megrahi was convicted, he told himself he'd be cleared at appeal."

The source added: "When that also failed, he explained he felt he had to come forward.

"He has confirmed that parts of the case were fabricated and that evidence was planted. At first he requested anonymity, but has backed down and will be identified if and when the case returns to the appeal court." ...

Then, in 2003, a retired CIA officer gave a statement to Megrahi's lawyers in which he alleged evidence had been planted.

The decision of a former Scottish police chief to back this claim could add enormous weight to what has previously been dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory. ...

A source close to Megrahi's defence said: "Britain and the US were telling the world it was Libya, but in their private communications they acknowledged that they knew it was the PFLP-GC.

"The case is starting to unravel largely because when they wrote the script, they never expected to have to act it out. Nobody expected agreement for a trial to be reached, but it was, and in preparing a manufactured case, mistakes were made."

[Ambrosia]

Gadaffi offering $200 million reward to anyone who can get Megrahi out of jail? Bollier has gone on record as saying he wouldn't half mind getting his hands on that. However, as Megrahi is now out of jail, I can't see any percentage in continuing to run with it.

He was careful to make sure he couldn't get prosecuted before making his signed statement. Though all we have on the $200million reward is Bolliers say so.


You're talking September 1989? Seems the most likely timing, unless Williamson is completely making up that story about trawling the circuit board manufacturers of Europe to identify the fragment. That's the part I'm having a credibility gap with.

Yes 12th Sept 1989 Feraday sends Williamson a memo [trial ref: 333] asking for help to ID the fragment.


Who planted it, how did they get access to the evidence at this stage to do that, and how were the people at RAERDE kept quiet about this?


Well if the evidence is stored at a place where US and Scots police can come and go surely they can simply go in, pick up the bag, stuff it into a pocket, walk out no questions asked, then insert the fragment, rewrite the label, and sneak it back into storage before Hayes examines it. Thenthey make sure that Hayes dates his examination notes appropriately.

One wonders what date Hayes' notes are on page 57.


Might have just been Hayes and Feraday, who were senior enough within the investigation. Feraday was unqualified and working way beyond his competence, and Hayes was into sexing-up of evidence in bombing cases in order to secure convictions. Ask the Maguire family.

If Hayes did cook the notes (rather than simply making a mistake when numbering pages, which just happened to relate to that precise page), then he's in on it up to his neck.

While giving evidence at Zeist Hayes was asked about the Maguire family

“KEEN. Dr Hayes, you told us in your earlier evidence that you were head of the Forensics explosives laboratory at RARDE until 1989? And your change of career from forensic scientist to chiropodist would appear to coincide in point of time with the decision of the Home Secretary to appoint Sir John May to inquire into the trial of those known as the Maguire Seven. Is that true?

HAYES. I believe so. I don’t recall clearly.”

Sir John May was appointed to investigate the Maguire Seven in October 1989. In October 1989 Hayes quits his job and becomes a Chiropodist.

[Rolfe]

Well if the evidence is stored at a place where US and Scots police can come and go surely they can simply go in, pick up the bag, stuff it into a pocket, walk out no questions asked, then insert the fragment, rewrite the label, and sneak it back into storage before Hayes examines it. Then they make sure that Hayes dates his examination notes appropriately.


Yes, but when? If this was done early enough, it's hard to see how the idea of blaming Libya could have been formulated. Also, if it was done early enough, there would have been no need to get Hayes or Feraday to depart from normal procedure in any way - they wouldn't even have needed to know about it. However, if it was done September 1989, the stuff was at RAERDE then, so it's hard to see how the Scottish police would have been involved, or indeed even how US personnel would have had easy access.

One wonders what date Hayes' notes are on page 57.


The theory is that an original, insignificant page 56 was removed and destroyed, allowing the new page 51 to be inserted and the original pages 51 to 55 to be renumbered. However, it's also asserted that the fragment has a number assigned which is higher than numbers Hayes was using months later.

My CT here is that Hayes did examine the exhibit in May, but the fragment wasn't part of it. He may have had routine pictures taken at the time, showing the shirt and the bits of plastic but not the circuit board. (It's very very difficult to see why he would have done nothing at the time if he'd seen that fragment in May, as bits of circuit board were obviously high on the alert list.)

Then in September word came through that the circuit board was to be "discovered" in such a way as to make it look as if it had been among the debris from the beginning. This bit of shirt with the plastic fragments was identified as a suitable vehicle, and the original notes doctored to include a description of the thing, which necessitated adding an extra page - this was accommodated by removing an insignificant page five sheets later. (Incidentally, it should have been SOP to use hardbacked, bound laboratory notebooks for this work, precisely so that pages can't be added or removed without leaving some trace. Why was that not done?)

The fragment was assigned its own number at this stage, different from the number assigned to the cloth/plastic fragments, and this was regarded as OK because this was the first time it had been realised that the fragment should be treated as a piece of evidence in its own right. (Again, are we supposed to believe Hayes was asleep at the wheel in May, or what?)

A photograph was obviously needed, but the original couldn't be used as it didn't show the fragment. The photographer wasn't asked to do it, because he might have recognised that this was something he'd seen before with an addition. Instead Feraday used his Polaroid camera to circumvent the official photographer and any requests for negatives. Any official photographs and negatives could always be disappeared from the files.

I'd like to see facsimiles of Hayes' pages 50 and 51, to see whether this theory has any mileage in it.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I admit never having tried using semtex to clean a PC board.


I've just realised this is about the sixteenth different thing "PC" stands for.

Personal Computer
Police Constable
Politically Correct
Plaid Cymru
Protein Creatinine [ratio]
and now Printed Circuit.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Then in September word came through that the circuit board was to be "discovered" in such a way as to make it look as if it had been among the debris from the beginning. This bit of shirt with the plastic fragments was identified as a suitable vehicle, and the original notes doctored to include a description of the thing, which necessitated adding an extra page - this was accommodated by removing an insignificant page five sheets later. (Incidentally, it should have been SOP to use hardbacked, bound laboratory notebooks for this work, precisely so that pages can't be added or removed without leaving some trace. Why was that not done?)

The fragment was assigned its own number at this stage, different from the number assigned to the cloth/plastic fragments, and this was regarded as OK because this was the first time it had been realised that the fragment should be treated as a piece of evidence in its own right. (Again, are we supposed to believe Hayes was asleep at the wheel in May, or what?)

A photograph was obviously needed, but the original couldn't be used as it didn't show the fragment. The photographer wasn't asked to do it, because he might have recognised that this was something he'd seen before with an addition. Instead Feraday used his Polaroid camera to circumvent the official photographer and any requests for negatives. Any official photographs and negatives could always be disappeared from the files.


That can't be right.

I'd like to see facsimiles of Hayes' pages 50 and 51, to see whether this theory has any mileage in it.


Bollier has such a facsimile (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2009/pp8932.html).


http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2009/examination.jpg


This could easily have been re-written to include the "b) a fragment of a green coloured circuit board" line. However, that doesn't take it on to a second sheet, so if it was just a modification of an earlier version that didn't include that item, there would have been no need to renumber the pages.

Bollier also includes more information about the taking of the polaroid photograph (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2009/657.html). His entire thesis is completely barking in my opinion, however there's no reason to think he invented this part.

15th of September 1989: Between the 18th of July and the 15th of September 1989 the MST-13 timer fragment was fabricated from Lumpert's brown prototype MST-13 circuit board with the letter "M" scratched on it and polaroid pictures from this manipulated timer fragment were taken by RARDE photographer Heines.


Which suggests my theory that they wanted to keep the official photographer out of it is wrong.

Well, back to the drawing board.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

To pop in out of line with some clarification:
I'd heard Lumpert saying the board he handed over was "cut into two pieces ... presented in court," which I originally took to mean one piece (the fragment) was presented. Mebo's "it was a fraud!" page (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2007/mst-13e.html) mentions:
the MST-13 timer fragment, which was sawed into two parts in Scotland for forensic reasons. The large piece was given the police no. PT/35(b) and the smaller one was given the no. DP/31(a).
This I thought meant the top portion then sawed off, given a separate number. I don't know what PT and DP stand for. Anyway, looking back at the exhibit photo (http://image.ohmynews.com/down/images/1/todd_385213_1[674788].jpg), it's got the label DP31 off to the side, either meaning the top is shown cropped off with the (a), or, as Mebo seems to have decided, it refers to the totally cut free corner section (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2005/pyrotech/pyrotech-11.jpg), which is actually from the brown board (??), leaving the missing top unaccounted for in the trial photo and not even mentioned on Mebo's page, at least graphically or in English.

On the color I withdraw any claim of brownness. The circled polaroid appears to have no particular color (dull brown-ish/gray/black), but in all resolutions and tints shows a subtle blue tint with hints of green (pops out on super-saturation). It does appear more blue later, but brown never.

[Rolfe]

Yes, it looks as if the "scratches" are actually cuts right through the board, but it's been put back together again for the photograph. I think they must have cut off a bit of the top as well, though as that's not presented I suspect it was competely consumed by testing, perhaps it was ground off.

I'm not convinced one way or another about the "M", but I'm happy enough that it's the same fragment each time. It was the bit where Bollier started off about the photo being a composite, larger bit from a green board and smaller bit from a brown board, where I decided he was officially looney tunes. I mean, for goodness sake, you're suggesting the whole thing was fabricated, why would they picture a brown board when they've just written in two places that it's green?

He also declared that the polaroid was a photomontage to add the fragment, which I considered (maybe the red circle was to disguise the join), but I can see no real sign of it in the images for what it's worth. But then he decided that what was originally there was the famous fragment of the Toshiba circuit board, which history records was picked up off thefloor of a luggage pallet by a policeman.

He's at Dagenham East and travelling.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I only know that I see no reference to the coincidence of the timing in the court judgement.


Actually, wrong again pussycat.

The court judgement does declare that the judges see no evidence that an ice-cube timer was used. Which indicates that the possibility of an ice-cube timer was put to them. I can't see how anyone would do that without pointing out the remarkable coincidence of the timing of the explosion over Lockerbie. They just ignored it - like they ignored the Bedford suitcase and the release of Khreesat and a whole lot more.

Longtabber, if you're still reading this thread, could you satisfy my curiosity about ice-cube timers? How is the time that they are set for determined, and how variable is it?

It's stated by all sources that the ice-cube timers seized from the PFLP-GC were set for approximately 30 minutes, and that the time could not be altered by the person using them. Nobody has ever explained why Jibril's group were organsing their explosions for so soon after take-off, whether this was a strategic decision or an inherent limitation of the timing devices.

I'd just like to know how the time set in an ice-cube timer is determined, and how variable it's possible to get them - I mean, could Jibril have had an ice-cube timer set to a six-hour delay if he'd wanted one?

I'm still struggling to find one good reason why any terrorist with access to an MST-13 timer would conceivably set it for such an early detonation. And that goes double if the point of the sophisticated timer was to allow the bomb suitcase to be loaded from a connecting flight. The minute you factor in the potential delays, it becomes absolutely compelling to leave it as late as possible. And the same still holds if a barometer is connected to the device, because enough of a delay could trigger the mechanism on the penultimate leg, and then you'd really want your six-hour delay or whatever to maximise the chance it would still happen after the Heathrow take-off.

But it would help to know whether the time of detonation incorporated in Jibril's modus operandi was a restriction of the type of timer, or whether he chose to have the ice-cube things set to 30 minutes.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

Any official photographs and negatives could always be disappeared from the files.

Are you aware that film has pre-printed sequence numbers in the sprocket area?
[ETA: visible in Contact print]

There would be a log book recording each shot and a title shot at the beginning and end of each roll so each picture can be identified when the film comes back from processing. The only way to disappear a negative would be to duplicate the whole roll using film stock from the same manufacturer and batch. Then you would have to correct any scratches that showed up on the negatives since the original prints were made or destroy all the prints and any copies and reproduce them from the new negatives.

[Rolfe]

Yes, I was just brainstorming. My thinking was, other evidence has vanished in this case that was known to exist. Whole statements no less. If a roll or a section of negatives was found not to be there, it might just have been par for the course.

That is, supposing anyone looked for a picture that was never recorded as having been taken anyway.

But the scenario doesn't really fly anyway, if Bollier is right that it was the RAERDE photographer and not Feraday who took the polaroids.

Rolfe.

[realdon]

Actually, wrong again pussycat.

The court judgement does declare that the judges see no evidence that an ice-cube timer was used. Which indicates that the possibility of an ice-cube timer was put to them. I can't see how anyone would do that without pointing out the remarkable coincidence of the timing of the explosion over Lockerbie. They just ignored it - like they ignored the Bedford suitcase and the release of Khreesat and a whole lot more.

Longtabber, if you're still reading this thread, could you satisfy my curiosity about ice-cube timers? How is the time that they are set for determined, and how variable is it?

It's stated by all sources that the ice-cube timers seized from the PFLP-GC were set for approximately 30 minutes, and that the time could not be altered by the person using them. Nobody has ever explained why Jibril's group were organsing their explosions for so soon after take-off, whether this was a strategic decision or an inherent limitation of the timing devices.

I'd just like to know how the time set in an ice-cube timer is determined, and how variable it's possible to get them - I mean, could Jibril have had an ice-cube timer set to a six-hour delay if he'd wanted one?

I'm still struggling to find one good reason why any terrorist with access to an MST-13 timer would conceivably set it for such an early detonation. And that goes double if the point of the sophisticated timer was to allow the bomb suitcase to be loaded from a connecting flight. The minute you factor in the potential delays, it becomes absolutely compelling to leave it as late as possible. And the same still holds if a barometer is connected to the device, because enough of a delay could trigger the mechanism on the penultimate leg, and then you'd really want your six-hour delay or whatever to maximise the chance it would still happen after the Heathrow take-off.

But it would help to know whether the time of detonation incorporated in Jibril's modus operandi was a restriction of the type of timer, or whether he chose to have the ice-cube things set to 30 minutes.

Rolfe.
Rolfe This may help
First a discription of the PFLP toshiba found in GE
"The Toshibas major components are 300 grams of semtex plastic explosive and an electric detonator in a white cardboard box measuring 180 x 66 x 22 millimeters. An altimeter hidden beneath the cassette players motor. A resin encased electronic timer ("Ice cube" type capacitor discharge) which is labeled "power supply" and an extra set of four 1.5v batteries complete the device. An antenna jack is modified to arm the bomb upon insertion of the antenna plug
The antenna plug activates the bomb by connecting two aluminium foil contacts. After the targeted aircraft reaches a preset altitude a pointer on the altimeter makes contact with a screw on the altimeter housing. That connection sends current to the timer which begins its preset countdown. at the end of the countdown the timer completes the circuit

My Guess is that the timer its self is based around a chip which has been around since 1972 of the 555/556 type. These chips can be used to construct a simple timer that is only really good for up to a 30 minute delay.

the term "ice cube" is a bit msleading as any timing device that has to trigger some thing will have a relay in it. And relays are built into small clear plastic boxes that resemble ice cubes. The MST 13 timer has an "ice cube" relay in it and has a much more advanced circuit using more recently developed chips to give up to 9999 hours delay
David

[LONGTABBER PE]

Actually, wrong again pussycat.

The court judgement does declare that the judges see no evidence that an ice-cube timer was used. Which indicates that the possibility of an ice-cube timer was put to them. I can't see how anyone would do that without pointing out the remarkable coincidence of the timing of the explosion over Lockerbie. They just ignored it - like they ignored the Bedford suitcase and the release of Khreesat and a whole lot more.

Longtabber, if you're still reading this thread, could you satisfy my curiosity about ice-cube timers? How is the time that they are set for determined, and how variable is it?

It's stated by all sources that the ice-cube timers seized from the PFLP-GC were set for approximately 30 minutes, and that the time could not be altered by the person using them. Nobody has ever explained why Jibril's group were organsing their explosions for so soon after take-off, whether this was a strategic decision or an inherent limitation of the timing devices.

I'd just like to know how the time set in an ice-cube timer is determined, and how variable it's possible to get them - I mean, could Jibril have had an ice-cube timer set to a six-hour delay if he'd wanted one?

I'm still struggling to find one good reason why any terrorist with access to an MST-13 timer would conceivably set it for such an early detonation. And that goes double if the point of the sophisticated timer was to allow the bomb suitcase to be loaded from a connecting flight. The minute you factor in the potential delays, it becomes absolutely compelling to leave it as late as possible. And the same still holds if a barometer is connected to the device, because enough of a delay could trigger the mechanism on the penultimate leg, and then you'd really want your six-hour delay or whatever to maximise the chance it would still happen after the Heathrow take-off.

But it would help to know whether the time of detonation incorporated in Jibril's modus operandi was a restriction of the type of timer, or whether he chose to have the ice-cube things set to 30 minutes.

Rolfe.

Longtabber, if you're still reading this thread, could you satisfy my curiosity about ice-cube timers? How is the time that they are set for determined, and how variable is it?

David above pretty much nailed it and went into more detail than I did when I referenced the standard 555 chip and relay earlier. The "icecube" isnt a timer but the trigger relay. That said, you can buy chips in many preset configurations or burn your own with an EPROM Burner.simple program.

It's stated by all sources that the ice-cube timers seized from the PFLP-GC were set for approximately 30 minutes, and that the time could not be altered by the person using them. Nobody has ever explained why Jibril's group were organsing their explosions for so soon after take-off, whether this was a strategic decision or an inherent limitation of the timing devices.

Thats because of the chip set up. They could have varied it or even put a controller on it- but thats overcomplicating it for a simple device

I'd just like to know how the time set in an ice-cube timer is determined, and how variable it's possible to get them - I mean, could Jibril have had an ice-cube timer set to a six-hour delay if he'd wanted one?

Their ability to be set is infinite. It all depends on the creativity of the builder and the desired operating parameters.

Seriously, what you need to do to really understand the simplicity of what it takes to do this is visit your local radio shack and get the project book ( used to be written by Forrest J Mims in my day) and see how little it takes to build a circuit from scratch. You could also buy the cheap project kit ( I made one for custom curcuits to test them) and make one yourself with LED's for the detonator.

Thats why I cant accept the entire "specialty board" in the first place- theres no need. I think the whole thing is a plant to throw a false scent.

[Ambrosia]

Yes, but when? If this was done early enough, it's hard to see how the idea of blaming Libya could have been formulated. Also, if it was done early enough, there would have been no need to get Hayes or Feraday to depart from normal procedure in any way - they wouldn't even have needed to know about it. However, if it was done September 1989, the stuff was at RAERDE then, so it's hard to see how the Scottish police would have been involved, or indeed even how US personnel would have had easy access.
I didn't realise the charred debris was shipped to Kent for analysis, I had thought it was examined at Lockerbie by RARDE people.

It seems it was shipped to Fort Halstead. Nevertheless we don't know when that happened. (Do we?)

According to the official version as presented at trial the shirt was discovered January 89 was kept in storage at Dexstar along with all the rest of the wreckage/debris. Sometime prior to it's examination by Hayes in apparently May 89 it was shipped to Kent, and then remained in storage at RARDE after that time.

My plant theory is that it was kept at Dexstar and was completely overlooked until August/September 89 at which point it gets rushed to RARDE. Hayes examines it then finds the fragment and shortly afterwards cooks his notes to make it look llike they hadn't dropped the ball earlier. Feraday then sends his memo Sep 12th prompting the Scots police fruitless search for a match until finally enlisting the help of the FBI.

I am taking Lumperts claim here at face value that the fragment we see at PT/35 comes from the board he gave to an unnamed official person in June 89. Then speculating that sometime between June 89 and August 89 the fragment was fabricated by ??US intelligence?? and planted in Dexstar storage.

Either the planter(s) have intelligence at that point to link Libya that won't stand up in court, or they want another out. Some evil **** has just killed 270 people and they want to bring someone to account for it, anyone will do. Libya will make a convenient target and they could conceivably plant further fake evidence to lead the trail away from Libya in the event that other stuff comes to light in the future pointing more firmly at PFLP-GC or whoever. After all Libya, Syria, Iran, Lebanon are all murkily mixed up and involved with international terror. They wouldn't mind nailing Bollier either as he is selling who knows what to who knows who and doesn't seem to care about much outside of money.

[Rolfe]

My plant theory is that it was kept at Dexstar and was completely overlooked until August/September 89 at which point it gets rushed to RARDE. Hayes examines it then finds the fragment and shortly afterwards cooks his notes to make it look llike they hadn't dropped the ball earlier. Feraday then sends his memo Sep 12th prompting the Scots police fruitless search for a match until finally enlisting the help of the FBI.


Looking at this in a bit more detail, as regards the plant theory, my initial suggestion was that the fragment was added to something that had already been examined, and the paper-trail altered to make it look as if it had been there all along. However, that isn't flying terribly well when you get down to the detail.

So we examine the other one, which is that the fragment was added to something that had not yet been examined, and then a paper-trail created to make it appear that it had been examined and the presence of the fragment noted much earlier.

This could explain the hitherto inexplicable alteration of the original label, from "Cloth (charred)" to "Debris (charred)". Possibly. It depends on the sequence of examination adopted for different categories of material. Charred debris would probably have been examined sooner than charred cloth. If we make a huge leap of assumption and say that only charred debris would have been examined as early as May and cloth would have waited till later, then the change could be in order to make it plausible that it was examined in May.

I'm struggling a bit with this though, because surely it would have been simpler just to leave everything as it was and "discover" the debris in an exhibit which hadn't been spotted as containing debris in the first instance. Unless of course it matters hugely that the fragment should have been logged significantly earlier than September.

Secondly, we know the searchers were specifically asked to look for anything showing signs of charring, which was taken as evidence that it had been close to the explosion, and I would have thought that even charred cloth would have been looked at a lot earlier than September.

It does however explain the additional page 51, in that a completely new page would have to be inserted rather than an existing page re-written to include reference to a piece of green circuit board. (I note Bollier thinks Hayes was also playing silly buggers with the numbering on the label, but the number of things Bollier thinks that are patently not so is quite disturbing.)

It doesn't really explain the hurried Polariods though, does it? What difference would a day or two make at this stage in the enquiry? Why not just have proper photos taken? Especially if you've asked the actual photographer to take them? If that's correct and this "RAERDE photographer Heines" really took the polaroids, then why? He was there, how long does it take to develop 35mm film anyway?

I am taking Lumperts claim here at face value that the fragment we see at PT/35 comes from the board he gave to an unnamed official person in June 89. Then speculating that sometime between June 89 and August 89 the fragment was fabricated by ??US intelligence?? and planted in Dexstar storage.


I'm agnostic about Lumpert. The fact that Bollier is the one promoting Lumpert's "confession" makes it pretty suspect in my opinion. However, the logic seems to work here. The fragment was planted, for whatever reason, in August or September. However, for some reason the people planting it didn't want it to jump out as a sudden discovery in September of something that had been totally overlooked until then. We know of nothing that compels discovery in May rather than September, except the developing political situation in the Middle East, and for that purpose September 1989 is still strikingly early.

On the other hand, perhaps it was desired to make it appear that the fragment was in existence before any contact was made with MeBo or its employees, even if it did come out that such contact had been made in June 1989.

But being Devil's Advocate yet again, any awareness of the investigation team of the existence of MeBo as early as 1989 would knock the entire thing completely sideways, as the Official Version doesn't have them getting near MeBo until the autumn of 1990 after a lot of fruitless running around trying to figure out where the board came from. Even after Thurman matched it up with his intact board, the provenance of that still wasn't known and had to be tracked down.

Either the planter(s) have intelligence at that point to link Libya that won't stand up in court, or they want another out. Some evil **** has just killed 270 people and they want to bring someone to account for it, anyone will do. Libya will make a convenient target and they could conceivably plant further fake evidence to lead the trail away from Libya in the event that other stuff comes to light in the future pointing more firmly at PFLP-GC or whoever. After all Libya, Syria, Iran, Lebanon are all murkily mixed up and involved with international terror. They wouldn't mind nailing Bollier either as he is selling who knows what to who knows who and doesn't seem to care about much outside of money.


Hmmm, possible, but I'm not really convincing myself very well at the moment.

Rolfe.

[Ambrosia]

This could explain the hitherto inexplicable alteration of the original label, from "Cloth (charred)" to "Debris (charred)". Possibly. It depends on the sequence of examination adopted for different categories of material. Charred debris would probably have been examined sooner than charred cloth. If we make a huge leap of assumption and say that only charred debris would have been examined as early as May and cloth would have waited till later, then the change could be in order to make it plausible that it was examined in May.

That's my thinking. also that they know that potentially Lumpert will come out and say "I gave you this in June 89" So they say "nope we found this amongst debris in May, see"



Secondly, we know the searchers were specifically asked to look for anything showing signs of charring, which was taken as evidence that it had been close to the explosion, and I would have thought that even charred cloth would have been looked at a lot earlier than September.


Yup hence Hayes and co covering for the fact that hey should have catalogued this much earlier than September.


It doesn't really explain the hurried Polariods though, does it? What difference would a day or two make at this stage in the enquiry?

No it doesn't. I am at a loss as to explain the Polaroids. Though to be fair the official version just glosses over those as well.


But being Devil's Advocate yet again, any awareness of the investigation team of the existence of MeBo as early as 1989 would knock the entire thing completely sideways, as the Official Version doesn't have them getting near MeBo until the autumn of 1990

What do you mean by knocking the whole thing sideways. The trial verdict notes that Bollier tipped off investigators re: Libya January 1989.

[47] Similarly, we reject the evidence of Mr Bollier that outside his Zurich office
on 30 December 1988 he met a mysterious stranger who Mr Bollier thought was a
member of the security services (although of which country he did not specify), who
seemed to know a considerable amount about his recent visit to Tripoli, and who
encouraged him to purchase a typewriter with Spanish keys on which to type a letter
to be sent to the CIA implicating two well known Libyan figures in the bombing of
PA103. (Mr Bollier did in fact type such a false letter on a Spanish typewriter which
he delivered to the US Embassy in Vienna early in January 1989 on his way to East
Germany).

The judges dismiss Bolliers account of an unnamed random person on his doorstep advising him to write the letter. It also states the letter does exist. I can't find any transcripts of daily court proceedings online. I did come across the University of Glasgows "Lockerbie Trial Briefing Unit (http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/schooloflaw/news/lockerbietrialbriefingunit/)" which has a daily summary of trial evidence for some days. Bolliers evidence re: this letter was given in court June 22nd 2000.

January 1989 investigators have a lead pointing to Libya. Was this dismissed for being no good? Was it followed up at all?

[Rolfe]

My Guess is that the timer its self is based around a chip which has been around since 1972 of the 555/556 type. These chips can be used to construct a simple timer that is only really good for up to a 30 minute delay.


I think that was the information I was looking for, and I think you're right. "These chips can be used to construct a simple timer that is only really good for up to a 30 minute delay." That describes what Jibril's group was playing with pretty much exactly. Jim Swire has said that he's made a few of them himself to get a handle on how they work.

The point is that it "is only really good for up to a 30 minute delay". This was what I was assuming from the other descriptions of Jibril's activities. The technology he was using was only good for up to 30 minutes delay, but that was OK because he had the barometer/altimeter in the circuit so the 30-minute countdown wouldn't start until the plane was in the air.

The other point about this technology was that the device couldn't be loaded unaccompanied on a feeder flight. It had to be set by hand before the leg it was intended to explode on. (The source that explained that, said the device could be carried by air to its intended introduction airport but only if it was disassembled.)

One of the theories being expounded is that the timer fragment is genuine, but it was Jibril's group who carried out the bombing, having managed to get their hands on a better timer - specifically, an MST-13.

the term "ice cube" is a bit msleading as any timing device that has to trigger some thing will have a relay in it. And relays are built into small clear plastic boxes that resemble ice cubes. The MST 13 timer has an "ice cube" relay in it and has a much more advanced circuit using more recently developed chips to give up to 9999 hours delay


So, they've previously been limited to smuggling their devices on at the airport where the final take-off of the target flight will happen, and to an explosion about 40 minutes after that take-off. But then they get hold of this much more sophisticated timer that gives them a much much longer time window, and other more sophisticated circuitry.

What can they do with this? It seems to me they have two options.

First, they can forget about the barometer and simply set the timer to trigger the bomb at a time of day they expect the plane to be where they want it to be - which allows them to use feeder flights to circumvent security at the target airport. This is where we came in - this is the Official Version (except in that version the Libyans did it and not the PFLP-GC), and it's the original reason for incredulity. Given the potential for delays and the non-negligible possibility that the bag might still be on the ground at 7.03pm GMT, it seems ridiculous to imagine they'd have set it for that time rather than for, say, midnight. (And one helluva coincidence that 7.03pm GMT just happened to be 38 minutes into the delayed flight, exactly when one of their old-style devices would have exploded.)

Or second, they can keep the barometer, but use the new chip to delay the triggering of the bomb until after the plane will have taken off on the final leg of the journey. In this scenario, if I've understood what Dan O was saying, the device would have to detect both that the plane was at cruising altitude and that the time was late enough for the bag to be on the final leg. I'm sure someone will put me right as to the practicalities of this, but it seems that the same objection to an early detonation still applies. Although this would eliminate (minimise?) the possibility of an explosion at ground level, it's still possible the bomb might explode on an earlier leg of the journey if winter schedule delays are bad enough, and again this is a non-negligible possibilty. Again, there is compelling logic to set this new sophisticated timer to trigger as late as possible into the on-time flight schedule, to maximise the possibility that it will at least have taken off on the final leg before the explosion occurs.

And yet the explosion actually happened exactly 38 minutes after PA103 took off, even though it was only about 15 minutes late. Inexplicable behaviour for anyone with an MST-13 to play with, and exactly bang on schedule for a "timer [....] based around a chip which has been around since 1972 of the 555/556 type [which] can be used to construct a simple timer that is only really good for up to a 30 minute delay".

We either have to accept that the 7.03pm explosion was a staggering coincidence caused by jaw-dropping incompetence of the bombers (which still paid off because the flight was only delayed by about 15 minutes), or that it wasn't triggered by an MST-13.

So why is it so difficult to see how that MST-13 fragment got in there?

Rolfe.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

We either have to accept that the 7.03pm explosion was a staggering coincidence caused by jaw-dropping incompetence of the bombers (which still paid off because the flight was only delayed by about 15 minutes), or that it wasn't triggered by an MST-13.

So why is it so difficult to see how that MST-13 fragment got in there?

Rolfe.

I think the argument about timers is a bit of a red herring. Remember the Brighton bomb was set off with something like a six week delay using a timer robbed from a video recorder 5 years before Lockerbie. Even in the 1980's it would be trivially easy for anyone with some knowledge of hobby electronics to knock up a timer with whatever delay you wanted. Just because Jibril had a bunch of fixed delay timers, doesn't mean that's all he could have had.

I mentioned this before in one of these threads but it seems to have been overlooked. Why do you assume that the explosion over Lockerbie was an accident? The bombers may have thought they had covered their tracks (very likely a correct assumption) so didn't care about the wreckage falling on land, and the plane falling onto a Scottish town and killing people on the ground as well is an even more successful attack.

If it hadn't been delayed it may have hit the central belt or Glasgow, and caused even more destruction.

[Dan O.]

Do we accept it as fact that the MST-13 timers were commissioned and manufactured?

A selection of similar devices that were commercially available at the time can still be seen by searching for [electronic timer kit]. What are the defining characteristics of the MST-13 that were deficient in the other available devices?


traceability - this is a double edge where once MEBO is discovered, the timers owner can be traced but this can't happen until after the timer is used. Whereas a paranoid terrorist could expect security agencies to be watching sales of suitable timers
accuracy - The MST-13 uses a crystal oscillator that will be much more accurate than the R-C time base of most kits.
range - 9999 minutes is about 7 days. This is time to fully prep the device and deliver it though intermediaries to the courier. 9999 hours is over a year.
reliability - safety features such as the delayed reset after power on may not be incorporated in other devices that were not designed for critical applications.
power - If the MST-13 was designed for low power consumption, it could run for a year on a couple of watch batteries.

[Rolfe]

I think the argument about timers is a bit of a red herring. Remember the Brighton bomb was set off with something like a six week delay using a timer robbed from a video recorder 5 years before Lockerbie. Even in the 1980's it would be trivially easy for anyone with some knowledge of hobby electronics to knock up a timer with whatever delay you wanted. Just because Jibril had a bunch of fixed delay timers, doesn't mean that's all he could have had.

I mentioned this before in one of these threads but it seems to have been overlooked. Why do you assume that the explosion over Lockerbie was an accident? The bombers may have thought they had covered their tracks (very likely a correct assumption) so didn't care about the wreckage falling on land, and the plane falling onto a Scottish town and killing people on the ground as well is an even more successful attack.

If it hadn't been delayed it may have hit the central belt or Glasgow, and caused even more destruction.


I read that at the time, but I was concentrating on other stuff right then.

It's a question of planning for eventualities. With the primitive timers we know Jibril had, you were very restricted, but if you could get a bomb onto an airliner, it would blow up about 38 minutes (35 to 45, apparently) after takeoff, so it was pretty effective. It wouldn't guarantee the wreckage and the evidence would vanish into the briny, or that you would necessarily hit any particular bit of the ground, but otherwise it would work.

As soon as you get a more sophisticated timer, you can get more creative, but every single thing you might do pushes you inexorably to a later detonation time.

The usual course taken by PA103 was more to the south than the one it actually took. The plane would probably have been over the Irish Sea if it had taken its usual route, but it took a more northerly route to avoid turbulence. Actually trying to hit a populated part of Scotland doesn't seem to have been on the agenda. (Assuming the aim was to hit a populated area that hadn't yet been reached due to the delay, involves assuming there was no barometric trigger, and for the problems with that, see below.)

With the more sophisticated timer, you could go for a later detonation to maximise the chance of the plane vanishing over the ocean with all the evidence. Or you could try for a very late explosion in the hope that if the plane was on time you might get a crash on a US city, it is after all the USA you really hate. And if the plane is late, you still get the disappearance over the ocean. Trying to hit a populated area that is neither the take-off nor the landing airport is an outside chance unless you can actually hijack the plane, as you have variations in route to contend with as well as delays.

You could also decide to use the more sophisticated device to allow the bag to be introduced via a feeder flight. If you ditched the barometer, you'd be taking a very big risk that the thing would simply go off on the ground at Heathrow unless you set it for a delay of several hours past the scheduled departure time. Even if you retained the barometer, the same consideration applies, due to the danger of it being triggered on the penultimate leg if that was running a couple of hours late.

Nothing really makes sense of the 38-minute explosion apart from the primitive PFLP-GC devices restricted to a 30-minute countdown we know they had. Or nothing that I can think of.

Rolfe.

[LONGTABBER PE]

I read that at the time, but I was concentrating on other stuff right then.

It's a question of planning for eventualities. With the primitive timers we know Jibril had, you were very restricted, but if you could get a bomb onto an airliner, it would blow up about 38 minutes (35 to 45, apparently) after takeoff, so it was pretty effective. It wouldn't guarantee the wreckage and the evidence would vanish into the briny, or that you would necessarily hit any particular bit of the ground, but otherwise it would work.

As soon as you get a more sophisticated timer, you can get more creative, but every single thing you might do pushes you inexorably to a later detonation time.

The usual course taken by PA103 was more to the south than the one it actually took. The plane would probably have been over the Irish Sea if it had taken its usual route, but it took a more northerly route to avoid turbulence. Actually trying to hit a populated part of Scotland doesn't seem to have been on the agenda. (Assuming the aim was to hit a populated area that hadn't yet been reached due to the delay, involves assuming there was no barometric trigger, and for the problems with that, see below.)

With the more sophisticated timer, you could go for a later detonation to maximise the chance of the plane vanishing over the ocean with all the evidence. Or you could try for a very late explosion in the hope that if the plane was on time you might get a crash on a US city, it is after all the USA you really hate. And if the plane is late, you still get the disappearance over the ocean. Trying to hit a populated area that is neither the take-off nor the landing airport is an outside chance unless you can actually hijack the plane, as you have variations in route to contend with as well as delays.

You could also decide to use the more sophisticated device to allow the bag to be introduced via a feeder flight. If you ditched the barometer, you'd be taking a very big risk that the thing would simply go off on the ground at Heathrow unless you set it for a delay of several hours past the scheduled departure time. Even if you retained the barometer, the same consideration applies, due to the danger of it being triggered on the penultimate leg if that was running a couple of hours late.

Nothing really makes sense of the 38-minute explosion apart from the primitive PFLP-GC devices restricted to a 30-minute countdown we know they had. Or nothing that I can think of.

Rolfe.

Thats not quite right- its more blind speculation

Nothing really makes sense of the 38-minute explosion apart from the primitive PFLP-GC devices restricted to a 30-minute countdown we know they had. Or nothing that I can think of.

truth is, nobody knows much of anything for certain.

Lets assume for discussion this was a part of the true bomb ( its own issue)- we dont know what chipset or controller was there and we dont know the trigger and we dont know when the actual master arm was activated.

It could have been set for 5 min after a trigger closed.

Infinite ways to configure it

[Ambrosia]

The 38 minute detonation time would have just about destroyed the plane over sea had it been on time.

A 747-100 series cruises at 555mph (9.25 miles a minute) 103 had been cruising for 7 minutes at 31000ft when the bomb detonated.

Lockerbie is about 70 miles East of the coast, the flight path of 103 crossed the coast in about 140 miles, the pilots had just talked to ATC to get transatlantic clearance.

Flights vary their flight paths daily based on weather/turbulence and are assigned flight corridors, in this case one of the North Atlantic Tracks.

The only reasons I can see for the bomb on 103 detonating at 38 minutes are:
Using a barometric timer of Jibril/Khreesats MO
Using a n other timer with the bomb timing meant to look like a Jibril/Khreesat bomb
Incompetent setting of a longer range timer that coincides with the 35-45 minutes window

If I was setting a long range timer I'd go for detonation 30 minutes before published landing time expecting delay somewhere.

You'd think that the last thing you'd want to do is increase the chance you get caught. Take out the plane over water and most of the evidence is gone.

[Rolfe]

Thats not quite right- its more blind speculation


It's speculation, for sure, but I'm trying to make it as informed as possible.

Lets assume for discussion this was a part of the true bomb ( its own issue)- we dont know what chipset or controller was there and we dont know the trigger and we dont know when the actual master arm was activated.

It could have been set for 5 min after a trigger closed.

Infinite ways to configure it


Yes, it was a very much more sophisticated device than Jibril's usual kit, that's for sure. And it could have been configured in an infinite number of ways.

However, there are not an infinite number of ways that it would have made sense to construct it. Given that the physical position of the bomb on land or in the air at any given time would be affected by both delays to the flight(s) and changes to the predicted course, you can't just say, OK it will be in the air by 7 o'clock, let's just blow it then. Or even, it will be over Glasgow by 7 o'clock, sounds good. You can't rely on that to any degree of certainty.

Incorporating a barometic trigger improves the flexibility and allows (within reason) for flight delays to be accounted for while still ensuring it's on the final leg before anything happens. Nevertheless, the same considerations apply to some extent. The earlier in the flight you time the detonation, the higher the chance that it will blow before PA103 has taken off - possibly during the flight of PA013A.

If we could see a compelling reason to try for a detonation over Scotland or Ireland (or the Irish Sea or whatever), then we might argue that the bombers were prepared to risk delays or schedule changes buggering up their plans. However, it appears that Jibril's 30-minute devices were made like that because of the limitations of the technology he had available - not because of any especial fixation with exploding a plane at that particular time. We see no compelling reason (indeed no real reason at all) to want the bomb to explode so early, and many to favour an explosion timed for either around midnight, or six to seven hours after takeoff.

This isn't some evil genius acting capriciously or irrationally. Either way you slice it, this is a terrorist group who wants to knock down a US airliner en route to the USA. Just saying, well, of course they could have chosen to do anything they liked, however inexplicable, isn't really an answer.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

The only reasons I can see for the bomb on 103 detonating at 38 minutes are:

Using a barometric timer of Jibril/Khreesats MO
Using a n other timer with the bomb timing meant to look like a Jibril/Khreesat bomb
Incompetent setting of a longer range timer that coincides with the 35-45 minutes window
If I was setting a long range timer I'd go for detonation 30 minutes before published landing time expecting delay somewhere.

You'd think that the last thing you'd want to do is increase the chance you get caught. Take out the plane over water and most of the evidence is gone.


That's pretty much where I'd got to. I'd maybe go for an hour before landing, to guard against an on-time flight picking up time with a following wind, unless I was really intent on crashing it on a US city. But otherwise, check.

Jibril/Khreesat couldn't do that with the simple timers they usually used, but the barometric trigger ensured the plane would at least be airborne, and if it didn't go down over water, then at least they'd got a result even if evidence was available. A Jibril/Khreesat standard-issue timer fits the pattern exactly.

Or someone else could be trying to make it look like a PFLP-GC job, but using a more sophisticated timer. There are two difficulies with this. First, who else knew about the timers Khreesat was playing with in September 1988? The German law enforcement authorities had found one, but we don't know who else knew about that. It's possible the US authorities knew about it too. However, the cache of multiple similar devices wasn't found till after Lockerbie. Second, given that the plane was late but the 38-minute detonation was bang on schedule for a barometric device set to 30 minutes, this would indicate that any copy-cat device also incorporated a barometric switch (quite feasible, so maybe that's not a real difficulty).

Did the Libyans (for example) know about what Khreesat had, and know that the law enforcement authorities also knew (or would find out), and so engineered a copy-cat attack? Sounds tricky.

Third, it wasn't meant to blow up then, but it did. The best explanation of this type has focussed on the fact that the pilot was engaged in a radio conversation with ground control when the plane blew up, and has suggested that the radio transmissions triggered something they weren't meant to trigger - either a bomb that had been set to go off way out over the Atlantic, or some sort of ordnance that was being illegally transported on PA103 and wasn't meant to detonate at all. I honestly don't know the probability that a Toshiba Semtex bomb constructed using an MST-13 might be prematurely detonated by the wrong radio frequency.

The first one is the one good old Occam would favour, there's no doubt about it.

Rolfe.

[Ambrosia]

The first one is the one good old Occam would favour, there's no doubt about it.

Which brings us back to the question.

WTF is a fragment of an MST-13 timer doing in the Lockerbie wreckage?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Third, it wasn't meant to blow up then, but it did. The best explanation of this type has focussed on the fact that the pilot was engaged in a radio conversation with ground control when the plane blew up, and has suggested that the radio transmissions triggered something they weren't meant to trigger - either a bomb that had been set to go off way out over the Atlantic, or some sort of ordnance that was being illegally transported on PA103 and wasn't meant to detonate at all. I honestly don't know the probability that a Toshiba Semtex bomb constructed using an MST-13 might be prematurely detonated by the wrong radio frequency.

The first one is the one good old Occam would favour, there's no doubt about it.

Rolfe.

Which brings us back to the question.

WTF is a fragment of an MST-13 timer doing in the Lockerbie wreckage?

I'm not convinced William would have gone for the first option, because far from reducing entities you then have to create the whole conspiracy to plant the MST-13 to answer Ambrosia's point.

Rolfe's earlier post certainly weakens my theory about a deliberate crash over land, but I'm still not convinced that the terrorists would have cared much one way or the other. To me the simpler options are cock up setting the timer, or an error which set the MST-13 off early.

I realise that I'm sounding like an establishment mole here, desperately trying to reinforce the status quo. Rolfe and Ambrosia are doing a great job pointing out the flaws in the prosecution case, but it's still too CT for me.

[Caustic Logic]

all we have on the $200million reward is Bolliers say so.

The money prize that casts doubt on Bollier's word unfortunately is on Bollier's word... A good starting line to point out that Mebo is disinfo, effectively speaking. The weird desperate grasping at every conceivable anomaly, regardless of how it contradicts previous or future claims... It's info, there are probably some worthwhile points in there, but our main backdoor link to the timer, the co. that made it, has way too much noise to signal for my patience to try and sort it out. Case-by-case as need arises only will I care much what any of their people say.

A lot of good questions and points above that I haven't fully absorbed, Just sticking to the simple visual aspects: Ambrosia, good photo analysis on the "M" - I couldn't even remember how to do gamma adjustments... I'm not sure about the shadow thing but I can see it. I would wonder if it were an ash line from rubbing up against something charred, OR a fiber, or even a photo artifact. That Lumpert would happen to scratch the letter M on that part of the (green/blue) brown board he handed over, along with random scratches beneath that, screams of fitting the claims to the available evidence.


I realise that I'm sounding like an establishment mole here, desperately trying to reinforce the status quo. Rolfe and Ambrosia are doing a great job pointing out the flaws in the prosecution case, but it's still too CT for me.

We need to moley people, as well as those theorizing conspiracies. I'm disappointed in my own behavior here - I just don't have the spark to assert a specific theory here. It's all looking like a circumstantial case, beyween oddities in how the fragment was handled and by whom, and the lack of logic I can get in the official story of how it got there.

And for what it's worth tying the people and the visual, we have what looks to me like notes made by Feraday (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2005/pyrotech/pyrotech-8.jpg) (by the sig) showing the pre-sawing fragment, front AND back, with notes. The photos aren't of good resolution, but being the only backside view I know of, it's worth a look.
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/MST_13_front_and_back.jpg
I used a separate layer with maxxed out contrast to pop out all details, with partial transparency on the original. There is definitely a round knobby shape corresponding to the middle of the touch pad, and some roughness (bubbling?) around the edges, quite a ways in at bottom and right. What does anyone make of these scant clues? Feraday didn't note much, expert he is - these are my best readings of the notes:
"straight edge" pointing to a straight edge.
"curved edge" pointing to curved edge
"trimmed copper" pointing to solder lines. ("track pattern on underside")
"Green top surface" pointing to back view.
Incoherent scribbles, some other featured shapes I don't understand.

[Caustic Logic]

Sorry I'm not talking about so many other aspects of this, but I've put my stuff on the cutting of the board together at my blog:

http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/09/mst-13-comparative-graphics.html

I hear it's not displaying properly on some screens - any feedback on that is appreciated. The content is mostly already covered here I guess.

[Rolfe]

I'm not convinced William would have gone for the first option, because far from reducing entities you then have to create the whole conspiracy to plant the MST-13 to answer Ambrosia's point.


Well, that's what the thread's about. How unlikely is that conspiracy theory? You've got the weird timing of the explosion. You've got the alteration of the label on the evidence bag. You've got the anomaly of the apparently interpolated page 51. You've got the peculiarity of the rushed polariod pictures.

You can find an innocent explanation for each of the last three anomalies, though it's odd that in only one of the three was a plausible innocent explanation given to the Court. However, when you realise that these three anomalies all relate to the same item of evidence, and that is exactly the single piece of evidence that sticks out as incongruous in the context of the 38-minute explosion, you start wondering just how far you're prepared to ride the "coincidence" theory.

The other thing to bear in mind is that the main obstacles to the "plant" theory are in the "how" category, not the "why". It's blatantly obvious that there was marked political disinclination in 1989 to pursue the PFLP-GC, for whatever reason. That it might have been perceived that an alternative focus for the enquiry was needed, or at least a sufficiently intriguing red herring, is not on the face of it perverse.

Rolfe's earlier post certainly weakens my theory about a deliberate crash over land, but I'm still not convinced that the terrorists would have cared much one way or the other. To me the simpler options are cock up setting the timer, or an error which set the MST-13 off early.


And indeed, the entire case doesn't revert to "solved" if we decide the fragment is genuine. There's still no evidence that Megrahi did it. We still don't even know where the bomb suitcase was loaded. We haven't even looked at the anomalies surrounding the flight - the VIPs who cancelled their trips at the last minute, apparently in response to warnings, the CIA operatives on the plane, the evidence the flight was being used to smuggle heroin into the USA. Or the anomalies on the ground after the crash - the arrival of what appeared to be CIA personnel (along with the US ambassador) within hours of the crash, the interference with the evidence on the ground, the suitcase of heroin which was labelled with a name not belonging to any of the passengers, the recertification of Dr. Fieldhouse's cases and the missing body, the red tarpaulin and the white helicopter, and so on.

As I said near the beginning, whether we have to include the genuine presence of the MST-13 in any theory of what happened, or whether what we have to contend with is the likelihood that the fragment was fabricated, we still have many unanswered questions.

Personally, if the timer fragment is genuine, I still favour Jibril as the likely answer. Somehow his group got hold of an MST-13, and used that to refine its modus operandi. For some reason they decided still to aim for the same time of detonation as had been imposed by the limitations of the old kit. That reason is pretty obscure, but it's the best fit for the facts.

I just want to know whether there is reasonable basis for believing that the investigating authorities did actually fabricate evidence. I'm still not sure what I think on that one.

I realise that I'm sounding like an establishment mole here, desperately trying to reinforce the status quo. Rolfe and Ambrosia are doing a great job pointing out the flaws in the prosecution case, but it's still too CT for me.


I think one of the great things about this thread is that nobody's positions are set in stone. Nobody is blindly arguing either side, everybody is turning Devil's Advocate when they see a contradictory point, and everybody is prepared to abandon a point that turns out to be poorly supported. If nobody was prepared to argue the Official Posiiton, then the thread would be much less useful.

However, we have to bear in mind that just because the whole 9/11 CT stuff is a pile of paranoid rubbish, that doesn't mean there has never been a conspiracy of this nature.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Do we accept it as fact that the MST-13 timers were commissioned and manufactured?

A selection of similar devices that were commercially available at the time can still be seen by searching for [electronic timer kit]. What are the defining characteristics of the MST-13 that were deficient in the other available devices?


traceability - this is a double edge where once MEBO is discovered, the timers owner can be traced but this can't happen until after the timer is used. Whereas a paranoid terrorist could expect security agencies to be watching sales of suitable timers
accuracy - The MST-13 uses a crystal oscillator that will be much more accurate than the R-C time base of most kits.
range - 9999 minutes is about 7 days. This is time to fully prep the device and deliver it though intermediaries to the courier. 9999 hours is over a year.
reliability - safety features such as the delayed reset after power on may not be incorporated in other devices that were not designed for critical applications.
power - If the MST-13 was designed for low power consumption, it could run for a year on a couple of watch batteries.




I think we're certain enough that Libya commissioned MeBo to design and make some bespoke MST-13 units, and took delivery of about 20 of them in 1985-86. How necessary or wise this course of action was I don't know.

The fragment in the Lockerbie debris was identified (allegedly) because Thurman spotted that a photo of the mystery fragment matched up very well with an intact timer he had in his possession, recovered from an ammunition dump in the field. However, even then, although a connection to Libya was known, the exact provenance wasn't. The previous owner had tried to scratch off the maker's name from the intact timer, however enough was still visible to allow MeBo to be identified. And the rest followed from there.

I have wondered how definite anyone was that the fragment was really one of the 20 MeBo-manufactured boards (remember, the provenance was obtained from the intact board), or whether it was just a similar unit of different provenance. Something was said somewhere about "a company in Florida making fake MST-13 timers". I don't have enough background in electronics to be able to follow this very well. Is "MST-13" just a generic name for a particular type of design? I'm assuming it is. So how are they so sure this was a MeBo one? Was the Thuring board that distinctive?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Sorry I'm not talking about so many other aspects of this, but I've put my stuff on the cutting of the board together at my blog:

http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/09/mst-13-comparative-graphics.html

I hear it's not displaying properly on some screens - any feedback on that is appreciated. The content is mostly already covered here I guess.


It displays fine for me now, using Firefox. It's all a bit small, but it's still readable.

You might consider, at some stage, condensing the info to what you have established, with less about how you got there, but it's bloody good.

I now remember reading the bit about the fragment being sawn into two parts for forensic analysis at some point previously, but I'd completely forgotten about that when we started discussing this in detail. There's so much detail in this, it's difficult to hold every little point in mind.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I feel a bit guilty treating this like a game of "Cluedo", but that's close to what it is.

If you ignore 270 dead people (and probably a couple more if you factor in what happened to the Flannigan family (http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/Register.aspx?ReturnURL=http%3A%2F%2Fscotlandonsun day.scotsman.com%2Flockerbie%2FFamilys-destruction-only-started-with.3298350.jp)), one bankrupt airline, one country suffering sanctions for 10 years, one possibly-innocent man jailed for eight years, and a helluva lot of trouble caused by enormous amounts of money, that is.

But still. The blessed Agatha Christie herself would have baulked at making this lot up. I'd dearly love to understand it well enough to have some idea what I ought to think.

Rolfe.

[Ambrosia]

We haven't even looked at the anomalies surrounding the flight - the VIPs who cancelled their trips at the last minute, apparently in response to warnings, the CIA operatives on the plane, the evidence the flight was being used to smuggle heroin into the USA. Or the anomalies on the ground after the crash - the arrival of what appeared to be CIA personnel (along with the US ambassador) within hours of the crash, the interference with the evidence on the ground, the suitcase of heroin which was labelled with a name not belonging to any of the passengers, the recertification of Dr. Fieldhouse's cases and the missing body, the red tarpaulin and the white helicopter, and

.. Dr Fieldhouses sacking days after being interviewed for the Maltese Double Cross film, the unexplained release of Khreesat after his arrest in Germany 2 months prior and the US interview of Khreesat the Scots police were barred from, the statement(s) of volunteer searchers being asked to lie about what they found, the up to 13 unaccompanied bags on 103 according to Pan Am, prior connections between Cannistrano Libya and Oliver North, the incompetence of Megrahis defense team, the fact that Ghadaffi is a CIA asset, McKee's very out of character phonecall prior to his flying home and probably a bunch of other stuff on top of that as well...

[Rolfe]

Another resource, guys. Robert Black's blog from 24th April this year (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/04/dutch-tv-documentary-and-reactions.html). This was the day Lockerbie Revisited was actually shown at the parliament - I must have been looking at an old article when I thought earlier it was to be shown this week.

There is a rough summary of the film, confirmation that the "finger-fragment" picture is wrongly attributed, and a dynamite mine of comments from an A-list cast up to and including Marquise.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

McKee's very out of character phonecall prior to his flying home ...


What? (Among other things....)

This isn't going to be another voice-morphing discussion, I hope! :D

Rolfe.

[Ambrosia]

What?
This isn't going to be another voice-morphing discussion, I hope! :D


No.

McKee phones his mother before leaving Beruit. According to her this was very out of character.

"For three years, I've had a feeling that if Chuck hadn't been on that plane, it wouldn't have been bombed," says Beulah McKee, 75. ... "I know that's not what our President wants me to say," she admits.

...

McKee's mother says she is sure her son's sudden decision to fly home was not known to his superiors in Virginia. "This was the first time Chuck ever telephoned me from Beirut," she says. "I was flabbergasted. 'Meet me at the Pittsburgh airport tomorrow night,' he said. 'It's a surprise.' Always before he would wait until he was back in Virginia to call and say he was coming home." [ link (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159523,00.html) ]

Could be 100 reasons for that, most of them not sinister in the slightest, but it is odd.

[Caustic Logic]

Thats not quite right- its more blind speculation
It's not totally blind speculation, at the very least.

truth is, nobody knows much of anything for certain.
Taa-daa! honest responses could include silence or speculation, and this is a discussion forum. Electroncics are open-ended and can be re-cionfigured in many ways and it's hard to say what the mechanism was. I do get that. But if we speculate, as we have been and will continue to do, we have as Ambrosia ran it down
The only reasons I can see for the bomb on 103 detonating at 38 minutes are:
Using a barometric timer of Jibril/Khreesats MO
Using an other timer with the bomb timing meant to look like a Jibril/Khreesat bomb
Incompetent setting of a longer range timer that coincides with the 35-45 minutes window
The last obviously sounds silly in this context, but was the accepted one in a sham fabricated context. IF the Libyans did this, they're either very stupid and our nabbing them is embarrassingly easy, or they were trying to implicate themselves for some sinister master plan we fell right into. Troubling possibilities, but nothing compared to an innocent man languishing in gaol while the real killers run around at liberty.

Aaand, I think we can be agreed on these points here. We could use more moles in the discussion, in other news.

It displays fine for me now, using Firefox. It's all a bit small, but it's still readable.

You might consider, at some stage, condensing the info to what you have established, with less about how you got there, but it's bloody good.

Thanks. That was still too sloppy to show, but it's better now. Trimmed some info, still a bit tedious but that's how i roll, and the font's bigger and not arial. It is way better this way. Glad it displays better, under those conditions. Still need to research that issue... I think I'm done discussing the cuts, anyway.

[Dan O.]

I have wondered how definite anyone was that the fragment was really one of the 20 MeBo-manufactured boards (remember, the provenance was obtained from the intact board), or whether it was just a similar unit of different provenance. Something was said somewhere about "a company in Florida making fake MST-13 timers". I don't have enough background in electronics to be able to follow this very well. Is "MST-13" just a generic name for a particular type of design? I'm assuming it is. So how are they so sure this was a MeBo one? Was the Thuring board that distinctive?

Unless Libya voluntarily turned over one of their boards, there isn't anything to make an absolute comparison to. All of the boards that have been seen so far could be fakes. Then there is the "what if" Libya brought in all 20 of their original timers during the trial?!

I assumed that MST-13 is the name that MEBO assigned to this product. It could also be the designation of the display/counter module that the timer incorporates. Basically (and literally in this case), the timer is build around a pre-manufactured LCD counter/display module. The rest of the circuit is just a micro-controller/state machine designed to provide the inputs to the counter and decode the outputs.

The Thuring PC board could have some unique aspects from the manufacturing process. Production typically starts with a stock fiberglass and epoxy resin board with a thin layer of copper plating. This board is etched to remove the copper from everywhere except the desired traces and goes through several steps of replating to make the copper thicker and add a surface that is easier to solder and resists tarnishing (typically a nickel alloy though some high end manufacturers top it off with gold). A solder mask layer is then added to protect the traces and keep the solder from flowing between the pads. The construction of the fiberglass and the base copper layer can help identify the stock producer. The composition and thickness of the subsequent layers will help pinpoint a specific fabricator.

[realdon]

The last obviously sounds silly in this context, but was the accepted one in a sham fabricated context. IF the Libyans did this, they're either very stupid and our nabbing them is embarrassingly easy, or they were trying to implicate themselves for some sinister master plan we fell right into. Troubling possibilities, but nothing compared to an innocent man languishing in gaol while the real killers run around at liberty.

.

Well my slant on this whole sorry tail

Iran (or elements within) The sponsor in revenge for the airbus
PFLP (Jabril) The organisers and expertise in bomb making and collector of much needed cash from Iran
Libya with Jabril as consultant The quartermaster. Supply of explosives/timers from their hoard collected over the years from many sources Mebo,Terpil/Wilson
Gaddafi then had to seriously back pedal on this to prevent attack, sanctions etc

I am going to post a link on the Megrahi thread to a bunch of documents that are worth looking at

David

[Klimax]

Sorry I'm not talking about so many other aspects of this, but I've put my stuff on the cutting of the board together at my blog:

http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/09/mst-13-comparative-graphics.html

I hear it's not displaying properly on some screens - any feedback on that is appreciated. The content is mostly already covered here I guess.

Looks good - IE8 (Win7).

[Klimax]

Well my slant on this whole sorry tail

Iran (or elements within) The sponsor in revenge for the airbus
PFLP (Jabril) The organisers and expertise in bomb making and collector of much needed cash from Iran
Libya with Jabril as consultant The quartermaster. Supply of explosives/timers from their hoard collected over the years from many sources Mebo,Terpil/Wilson
Gaddafi then had to seriously back pedal on this to prevent attack, sanctions etc

I am going to post a link on the Megrahi thread to a bunch of documents that are worth looking at

David

This is my guesxs as well. That way we have mixed OT and CT.

[Rolfe]

Well my slant on this whole sorry tail

Iran (or elements within) The sponsor in revenge for the airbus
PFLP (Jabril) The organisers and expertise in bomb making and collector of much needed cash from Iran
Libya with Jabril as consultant The quartermaster. Supply of explosives/timers from their hoard collected over the years from many sources Mebo,Terpil/Wilson
Gaddafi then had to seriously back pedal on this to prevent attack, sanctions etc

I am going to post a link on the Megrahi thread to a bunch of documents that are worth looking at


That one makes a great deal of sense. It still doesn't address the incongruity of anyone with access to an MST-13 timer setting it to go off so soon into the flight though.

We know the 40-minute explosion was characteristic of Jibril's MO, but that's only because of the restrictions of the primitive timers he had access to. Once he's got a better timer, it makes no sense for him to continue with that pattern.

Looking forward to the links.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

OK, going to bed now. However, I re-read this newspaper article (http://www.heraldscotland.com/lockerbie-the-truth-at-last-1.827699) dealing with the evidence presented to the SCCRC, and noticed it gives a timeline we hadn't considered for the possible planting of the fragment.

Al-Megrahi's team claim to have proof from German police files that fragments of the bomb timer were found on the shirt in January 1990. The documents are said to contain photographs showing a piece of the shirt with most of the breast pocket undamaged. However, images of the shirt were presented to the trial in a different state, showing a deep triangle-shaped which continued into the pocket.

The shirt's manufacturers were enlisted by the defence and pointed out the shirt was a boy's size, rather than an adult s by virtue of the fact the breast pocket was 2cm narrower than on the adult-sized shirt. The report to the SCCRB is scathing about this evidence stating it is the culmination of a co-ordinated effort to mislead the court.

The report said: There has been a co-ordinated effort to mislead the court in relation to this item, amounting to a perversion of the course of justice. It will be asserted that the item (the shirt collar) could not have been examined...on 12 May 1989 and that these items of evidence were not extracted from it at the time as claimed by him in his evidence.

The defence is convinced that it was politically important for the prosecution to alter evidence in 1990. With the first gulf war, it was necessary to avoid antagonising Iran, and Libya was the perfect scapegoat.


We must bear in mind that the SCCRC didn't accept that the timer fragment had been planted, however I don't think we can rely on them as the oracle where sensitive information is concerned. The suggestion that the decision to plant the fragment came in January 1990 puts it late enough to be politically feasible for the reasons that have already been expressed often enough. It allows for both the May and the September 1989 record to be fabricated, while still allowing Williamson's trawl through the circuit board manufacturers of Europe to be genuine enough - just starting a few months later than claimed.

I'm still not sure how well this one flies, but as it's the one the defence seem to be favouring (assuming that Megrahi by then had a defence team actually working for him and not for Libya and Gadaffi), it's worth considering.

I think it's also telling that after all this time, the defence are still majoring on Jibril and the PFLP-GC. They must have been aware of the other suggestions, none of them is especially new, but they haven't chosen to go for any of them. (Though maybe the Wrong Plane one wouldn't help from their point of view if in the end the trail linking Megrahi to the bombing wasn't addressed.)

The trouble with defence documents though is that all they're trying to do is cast sufficient doubt on their client's guilt. They tend to run a defence if they think it achieves that, never mind if it's really a plausible alternative explanation.

I'd like to see these 1990 Frankfurt police photos though.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

OK, going to bed now. However, I re-read this newspaper article (http://www.heraldscotland.com/lockerbie-the-truth-at-last-1.827699) dealing with the evidence presented to the SCCRC, and noticed it gives a timeline we hadn't considered for the possible planting of the fragment.

I've seen this one before. This line bothers me, for obvious reasons:
However, images of the shirt were presented to the trial in a different state, showing a deep triangle-shaped which continued into the pocket.
shaped what? Obviously tear, or something, but.. okay so a shirt has been shown as evidence in two different states, one in early 90, so this has what to do with the fragment? That shirt collar had no pockets. ??

There are still some very interesting questions and some answers still reachable. In particular the details of the fragment's handling could stand to be sorted out some more. Perhaps this pocket photo issue will help. But I for one fell outta the swing on the timer issue, and having a hard time getting back in. All I feel like sharing is a 'long story short' moment of my own.

That any fragment like this survived is acceptable to me, but the logic of its use as alleged is troubling and raises more questions than it answers. That it's of the MST-13 style does point to Libya as the clearest possibility, but not the only, IF supported by other evidence. Some dubious baggage records, some fraudulently interpreted witness statements, partially-accepted liar statements from Giaka and Bollier, this is not the best support.

So beyond how many problems there are with ALL the evidencce, there is PLENTY of unusual circumstantial clues supporting the possibility this key cypher was planted for a plan. It's impossible to prove this notion or to prove that it was genuinely put there by the explosion, and there's a limit to what can be established one way or the other.

And ultimately, we've done a great job here of pulling out and exploring these questions in full sight of the forum community. If anyone here has a reason that these suspicions and this political dynamite case should not be merged in holy matrimony, speak now or later I guess. I now pronounce these two "Myth" and "Challenged."

[Rolfe]

I happened to be reading the chapter of Trail of the Octopus which deals with the investigation at the end of 1989 (it's Chapter 9, if you want to look at it (http://11syyskuu.net/octopus/trail.ch.9.htm)), and actually this fits in quite well.

Trail of the Octopus doesn't make anything much of the timer fragment - maybe the book was published before its importance became apparent. (But The Maltese Double Cross does have quite a lot about the fragment, and it's about the same date.) However, the book does have a lot of detail that seems to be accurate both about the progress of the investigation, and the Middle East situation at the time.

There seems to be a bit of a disconnect in what the book is saying about this period though. Early in the chapter we hear that the police know who did it (Jibril), but don't have evidence they can bring to court. There seems to be a mood of pessimism in the investigation.

However by late December David Leppard was reporting that police did have the evidence they needed to bring it to court. David Leppard is also featured in Paul Foot's account, and he takes the line that Leppard was printing what he was being fed by the establishment.

Police now have the necessary evidence to charge suspects with the murder of 270 Lockerbie air disaster victims. After a series of exclusive disclosures over the past seven weeks, The Sunday Times understands that officers heading the investigation -- despite a cautious attitude in public -- have told their counterparts abroad that under Scottish law 'charges are now possible against certain persons ...

The revelation ... was made at a secret summit in Meckenheim, West Germany, of the heads of security services involved in the inquiry from Britain, West Germany, America, Sweden and Malta.


This all happened while (according to the Official Version) Williamson was still running round Europe trying to trace the manufacturer of the mystery fragment.

So. January to March 1989, all systems go, they're getting on very well, lots of evidence. Then in mid-March, we have the high-up instruction to soft-pedal the whole thing. Somehow, the investigation that was going so well, "just doesn't have the evidence". And according to some people (well, Peter Fraser), may not ever get enough evidence to bring charges. However, by late December, desipte the soft-pedalling, it seems there may be enough evidence after all. Insiders are telling David Leppard that charges will soon be brought. (All before anyone has even said the word MST-13.)

However, again it went quiet. Nothing was done about the evidence against the PFLP-GC. The next big development was the switch-round to blaming Libya that occurred in the autumn of 1990.

[mode=twoofer]

So how does this fly? The initial investigations were fingering Jibril, however there were serious establishment reasons for not wanting to bring Jibril's group to court. (Release of Khreesat, the CIA knowing exactly what Khreesat was doing, and not wanting to reveal this serious screw-up or even, possibly, LIHOP.) In March the US/UK agreement is to soft-pedal that, play down the evidence, and hope that the enquiry can be steered to run itself into the sand.

However, those pesky cops were too damn good at their jobs, and started to get too close again. This is worse, because fingering Jibril and the Tehran connection would seriously jeopardise hostage release negotiations, and the way things are shaping in the Middle East, it doesn't look as if we want to be ranged against Iran anyway. Somehow it's damped down again, but this can't go on. It's going to be difficult to prevent the cops from proceeding with what they've got. Maybe what's needed is a bit of misdirection - something found that actively points away from the Palestinians.

We've already got the suitcase, the clothes and the Toshiba, and all of these point neatly to Jibril as it happens. What we haven't got (not surprisingly) is any of the actual bomb, which practically speaking means the timer. We know what sort of timers Jibril was using, these primitive 30-minute ice-cube things. So what if we "find" a bit of something altogether different? Hmmm, what have we got?

Well, let's be careful here. We'd better make sure whatever we "find" doesn't itself point anywhere inconvenient. OK, look, we've got this rather mysterious timer which seems to come from a special order, which was recovered in circumstances pointing to Libyan origin. What if we "found" a bit of one of these? It would throw the hounds off the Jibril scent good and proper, and if it points anywhere, it points to a country which (in January 1990) it would be pretty expedient to blame.

So the cover-up gets into gear. The fragment is created, and associated with a piece of existing debris collected much earlier. Evidence is manipulated to show it being present (but unremarked) in May, and then to have been remarked on as interesting in September. It's given to Williamson to try to find out what it is, and he dutifully does that.

This has no effect on the situation at first, but it's there to be triggered as need be. By June, the political situation has moved on to the point where hostilities with Iran would be insane, but isolating Libya would be highly convenient. Thurman is therefore instructed to "discover" the match with the existing timer in US possession.

[/twoofer]

Reads like a spy novel. The problem is that this is a spy novel, and however unrealistic spy novels appear to us plebs, they are actually based on a reality we have no contact with and don't really relate to.

Are we getting warm?

Rolfe.

[LONGTABBER PE]

Reads like a spy novel. The problem is that this is a spy novel, and however unrealistic spy novels appear to us plebs, they are actually based on a reality we have no contact with and don't really relate to.

Are we getting warm?
Rolfe.

Sure you are ( or not)

[Guybrush Threepwood]

[mode=twoofer]
So how does this fly?
......snip Rolfe's first atttempt at thriller writing...
Thurman is therefore instructed to "discover" the match with the existing timer in US possession.

[/twoofer]

Reads like a spy novel. The problem is that this is a spy novel, and however unrealistic spy novels appear to us plebs, they are actually based on a reality we have no contact with and don't really relate to.

Are we getting warm?

Rolfe.

You do have some evidence for the bolded bit don't you? :D

Seriously, as a proposed CT I think it's pretty good, it fits in with the known evidence, has a nice clear motive and you can imagine ways of it being done.

I still don't believe it, because its weakness is the same weakness as most CTs, in order to believe it would work, whoever was doing this would need to have close control over all aspects of the investigation, and I don't think anysingle organisation did.
They would also have had to be very sure that Mebo only supplied Libya with MST-13s, which they weren't in 1990, and which turned out not to be true, so they were planting evidence which wouldn't necessarily go the way they wanted.

In my mind after reading all these threads, and a fair chunk of the linked material and discounting all the whackos (Lumpert, deBraekeleer, Bollier et al) and Internet Tough Guy Wannabees etc I still find the official evidence fairly convincing except in a couple of areas.

1) ID evidence of Megrahi by Tony Gauci. ID evidence is notoriously poor, even when the witness is absolutely 100% certain from day 1, and Gauci wasn't.
2) Suitcase was loaded in Malta. There seems to be no evidence of this, except Megrahi was in Malta on the 21st of December so the bomb must have gone on there, and the defence can't prove it didn't.

The rest of the holes are there; the odd timing of the explosion, the strange choice of buying clothes to pack round the bomb in a small shop in Malta, the dodgy stuff round the examination of the MST-13 etc, etc, but I can see these as just being mistakes that look funny when you stare at them too hard.

The 'wrong plane' theory also seems quite plausible, but doesn't shoot down any of the other evidence except giving a pointer to Frankfurt as the point of loading of the bomb.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more it seems like a standard miscarriage of justice, build up the weak evidence (we have an eyewitness who can identify the bomber!!) overstate the importance of the real evidence you have (Libya bought some of these timers, therefore the bomber was a Libyan, and a government agent!!) Have a Jury, or Judges under huge pressure of public expectation to produce a result et voila Megrahi or Barry George or whoever goes down the river. No need for men in black at all.

Now if you would all just look at this pen I'm holding for a moment, you may see a brief flash. My work is done.

[Ambrosia]

its weakness is the same weakness as most CTs, in order to believe it would work, whoever was doing this would need to have close control over all aspects of the investigation, and I don't think anysingle organisation did.

I don't follow that in order for there to be a plausible CT then whoever is involved in running the conspiracy must have close control over everything.

As I see it, any plausible CT must involve a small number of conspiracists, who feel that the reward for success outweighs their perceived risk of failure.


They would also have had to be very sure that Mebo only supplied Libya with MST-13s, which they weren't in 1990, and which turned out not to be true, so they were planting evidence which wouldn't necessarily go the way they wanted.


Whats to stop them from planting further evidence down the line to reinforce the direction they want to go in? I think htat there was more circumstantial evidence that could have ben brought into the picture to reinforce the Libya MST connection. e.g. the MST timer recovered in Senegal in Feb 1988 was in the posession of 2 Libyan secret service agents found on a plane amongst bomb making materials.

I still find the official evidence fairly convincing except in a couple of areas.

1) ID evidence of Megrahi by Tony Gauci. ID evidence is notoriously poor, even when the witness is absolutely 100% certain from day 1, and Gauci wasn't.
2) Suitcase was loaded in Malta. There seems to be no evidence of this, except Megrahi was in Malta on the 21st of December so the bomb must have gone on there, and the defence can't prove it didn't.

The defence *didn't* prove it didn't. that's not quite the same thing. Air Malta successfully sued a TV station for broadcasting a documentary that showed the bag being loaded at Malta.

If you discredit Gaucis ID evidence, and you say there is no evidence of the bag being loaded at Malta. Then there is no case against Megrahi.

Which asks the questions:

i) Who IS responsible?
ii) Why are the authorities pushing so hard with evidence they must know to be 'shaky' at best to convict Megrahi and Fhima? and by extension Libya. If you know he is involved then tell the court how you know.
iii) Why is so much evidence still being suppressed for "National Security" 20 years later?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I don't follow that in order for there to be a plausible CT then whoever is involved in running the conspiracy must have close control over everything.

As I see it, any plausible CT must involve a small number of conspiracists, who feel that the reward for success outweighs their perceived risk of failure.

Because (and I can't support this with evidence) I don't really believe in the Sherlock Holmes theory of investigation, where one tiny piece of evidence inexorably leads to one fixed conclusion. Planting the piece of timer isn't very helpful unless it leads the investigation down the right path, to be sure of this you need to control the inferences drawn from the timer.




The defence *didn't* prove it didn't. that's not quite the same thing. Air Malta successfully sued a TV station for broadcasting a documentary that showed the bag being loaded at Malta.

If you discredit Gaucis ID evidence, and you say there is no evidence of the bag being loaded at Malta. Then there is no case against Megrahi.

Which asks the questions:

i) Who IS responsible?
ii) Why are the authorities pushing so hard with evidence they must know to be 'shaky' at best to convict Megrahi and Fhima? and by extension Libya. If you know he is involved then tell the court how you know.
iii) Why is so much evidence still being suppressed for "National Security" 20 years later?

Umm.. I'm agreeing with you on this bit. There is no solid case against Megrahi, and I don't think he did it.

But answers to your questions are.

i) Someone else - same as if the timer was planted
ii) Public and internal pressure to get someone (thats why I mentioned Barry George above) and they have no evidence against anyone else.
ii) 'Cos it makes the British Authorities look like tits for pressing ahead with such a crap case, the usual reason for suppressing evidence.

[Caustic Logic]

You do have some evidence for the bolded bit don't you? :D

True, and I for one appreciate your input, as a different perspective from the pro-CT flavor oddly dominating here unchallenged. But for the record, the parts you can't know, bolded.

Seriously, as a proposed CT I think it's pretty good, it fits in with the known evidence, has a nice clear motive and you can imagine ways of it being done.

I still don't believe it, because its weakness is the same weakness as most CTs, in order to believe it would work, whoever was doing this would need to have close control over all aspects of the investigation, and I don't think anysingle organisation did.
What if the access point were key individuals in the investigation, in different areas and agencies, rather than whole agencies? Any combo Hayes, Ferraday, Williamson, Thurman, Marquise, willing to participate in something were maybe they had Longtabber's mindset and could rationalize a frame-up... But okay, it is a challenge to sneak lying evidence into a usually honest system with checks to bypass.

They would also have had to be very sure that Mebo only supplied Libya with MST-13s, which they weren't in 1990, and which turned out not to be true, so they were planting evidence which wouldn't necessarily go the way they wanted.

If it was a fact at the time, there were people who knew it and anyone trying to frame a crime like this would get that info, IMO.

In my mind after reading all these threads, and a fair chunk of the linked material and discounting all the whackos (Lumpert, deBraekeleer, Bollier et al) and Internet Tough Guy Wannabees etc I still find the official evidence fairly convincing except in a couple of areas.

I still get moments of doubt on occasion. It does seem to me remarkably clear that this was a frame-up, BUT I remember getting the same feeling about 9/11 being a MIHOP job, once a long time back before digging into the evidence closer. Mebo's smoking guns, for the worse, turn out just smoking crack. That IS a bad sign.

On the rest, same, intelligent thoughts from a different perspective that I'm half-tempted to laugh at in spots, but then I remember, hey, why am I so cocky here? Steady now... I'll be back and plan to start a new thread on a different aspect of the evidence in a couple days. Hint, it's one mentioned in Guybrush's post here.

Alright, ciao

[Caustic Logic]

Because (and I can't support this with evidence) I don't really believe in the Sherlock Holmes theory of investigation, where one tiny piece of evidence inexorably leads to one fixed conclusion. Planting the piece of timer isn't very helpful unless it leads the investigation down the right path, to be sure of this you need to control the inferences drawn from the timer.

Seems you went to a different school than Marquise. The FBI then seemed enamored of the Holmes model. Popular fiction anyone?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I still get moments of doubt on occasion. It does seem to me remarkably clear that this was a frame-up,

Just to be clear here, and I may answer other points in your post tomorrow if I get time, I think it was a frame up too, just not some Machiavelean evidence planting one.
Megrahi was blamed, by people who were so focussed on getting a result they didn't look too hard at the evidence, or who realised their own careers would be better served by getting a conviction than not and who weren't too worried about some towel head going to jail.

I have not so far been convinced that the whole bomb in a suitcase was invented, or that the timer fragment was planted.

[Rolfe]

I totally see where GT is coming from; sometimes I just look at this and say, "this is silly". But then there are so many incongruities.

I don't really believe in the Sherlock Holmes theory of investigation, where one tiny piece of evidence inexorably leads to one fixed conclusion. Planting the piece of timer isn't very helpful unless it leads the investigation down the right path, to be sure of this you need to control the inferences drawn from the timer.


I think they actually could, in this case. Although the fragment apparently originated in the British side of the investigation, and (if it wasn't planted) was examined by (at least) Hayes, Feraday and Williamson before the US got anywhere near it, all the inferences were actually drawn by the US.

The clearest accounts of events seem to have Thurman initiate the identification of the fragment, apparently at a time of his choosing. I haven't seen any account of how Thurman knew what he was supposed to be matching up, but it would appear he was sent a photograph of the mystery fragment at some stage in the proceedings. Then, in June 1990, he matched it with the circuit board already in US possession and everything started to move.

Looking at the Official Version, it's striking how little attention was paid to this fragment initially. Remember, the Toshiba was identified by fragments of one of its circuit boards. They don't seem to have been green. And even if they were, surely it would have been the work of half an hour to establish that the mystery fragment wasn't a part of any Toshiba.

Great attention was being paid to all items showing signs of charring, because these were the ones that were yielding information about what was in the primary suitcase. This one should obviously have been a doozy from the get-go, because it had bits of the Toshiba's plastic case in it, and five little scraps of its manual. And it also had this mystery fragment.

So what the hell are we supposed to believe Hayes was thinking about in May 1989? A piece of circuit board, which isn't part of the Toshiba, but which would appear to have been in the primary suitcase. No other electonic items had been identified in that suitcase - apart from the bomb itself. So why isn't he screaming bloody blue murder at that stage? That's what he's paid for. That's why they employ people with PhDs to do that work, so that they might actually apply some brainpower to what they're finding.

So he just makes a note of the fact that the fragment was there, doesn't draw it or have it photographed, doesn't tell anyone else about it, just spends a while doing detailed drawings of the scraps of paper, then turns to the next item.

Really?

Feraday (according to the Official Version) at least notices that this thing might be important. But apart from the odd (and unnecessary) haste evidenced by not waiting to have proper 35mm pictures taken of it, there's still a certain lack of urgency. We're told that Williamson tried quite hard to find the manufacturer, but how hard did anyone really try?

Anyone with half a brain should have been able to tell this fragment was potentially absolutely key, because it could well be a part of the bomb itself, and if so, the only piece recovered. If it wasn't possible to identify it immediately, how hard do you try? I'd say very hard indeed. Hard enough, probably, that you probably wouldn't wait nine months before enlisting the help of your colleages the other side of the Atlantic, who might be able to turn up something you haven't.

The lack of frantic action between May and September is peculiar. The very leisurely progress between September and June is just ridiculous. The USA had the matching fragment in its possession all along, but it took nine months before Thurman spotted it?

This actually doesn't read a great deal more plausible than my spy-thriller version, actually.

Rolfe.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I think they could, in this case. ..snip...
This actually doesn't read a great deal more plausible than my spy-thriller version,
Rolfe.

A lot of real world things don't sound plausible, and hindsight is always 20/20. I do agree this all looks fishy but look at it from the other end of the telescope.
You are working for the FBI or MI5/6, you get the nod to fit up Libya for the Lockerbie bombing, can you seriously say that the best plan your Harvard or Cambridge educated mind could come up with would be to sneak a fingernail sized piece of circuit board into the evidence months after it should have been found, then a while later get someone on the other side of the Atantic go 'Ooh I've found the matchig piece'.

[LONGTABBER PE]

What if the access point were key individuals in the investigation, in different areas and agencies, rather than whole agencies? Any combo Hayes, Ferraday, Williamson, Thurman, Marquise, willing to participate in something were maybe they had Longtabber's mindset and could rationalize a frame-up... But okay, it is a challenge to sneak lying evidence into a usually honest system with checks to bypass.

If it was a fact at the time, there were people who knew it and anyone trying to frame a crime like this would get that info, IMO.



Theres another possibility depending on how many of those boards were produced for other projects.

The timer could have been there but not a part of the bomb ( thus the pieces were legitimately found) and then linked based on other factors.

It all depends on whether this was a true out and out frame or a case of manipulating the evidence to fit a desired scenario

[Caustic Logic]

So what the hell are we supposed to believe Hayes was thinking about in May 1989? A piece of circuit board, which isn't part of the Toshiba, but which would appear to have been in the primary suitcase. No other electonic items had been identified in that suitcase - apart from the bomb itself. So why isn't he screaming bloody blue murder at that stage? That's what he's paid for. That's why they employ people with PhDs to do that work, so that they might actually apply some brainpower to what they're finding.

So he just makes a note of the fact that the fragment was there, doesn't draw it or have it photographed, doesn't tell anyone else about it, just spends a while doing, then turns to the next item.


Bam! That is good. It's almost as if the fragment didn't exist when he was doing the doodles.

But then, as GT says, the other end of the telescope - there are possible reasons he'd think the lettering on the paper would give a quicker ID, and/or being fragile evidence he wanted info off it first and come back to the circuit board once he was able to scare up someone who could tell him what it was... 13 months later.
ETA: And he might not know it wasn't from the radio, or presumed the bomb parts would be vaped so just thought this secondary, etc...


You are working for the FBI or MI5/6, you get the nod to fit up Libya for the Lockerbie bombing, can you seriously say that the best plan your Harvard or Cambridge educated mind could come up with would be to sneak a fingernail sized piece of circuit board into the evidence months after it should have been found, then a while later get someone on the other side of the Atantic go 'Ooh I've found the matchig piece'.

If so, it worked fine, so far. FWIW the trans-Atlantic aspect would be very important in a jointyly-run frameup. Both side have to make an investment and show confidence in each other. It's an Anglo-American thing, not too different from how they don't let you in a gang until you've killed someone.

AND - there are enough sloppy points and WTF spots like this, and like picking such notoriously disreputable experts (Hayes, Ferraday, Thurman, all) to be the executors of this part, it looks fabricated still, but with intent to ultimately fall apart, once the spell wears off, and allow the less stupid version to re-emerge and allow a double collection on this crime.

And this would make us water-carriers, but we just got the paper cups.

Theres another possibility depending on how many of those boards were produced for other projects.

The timer could have been there but not a part of the bomb ( thus the pieces were legitimately found) and then linked based on other factors.

It all depends on whether this was a true out and out frame or a case of manipulating the evidence to fit a desired scenario

Considered that too. It's possible this was the trigger, either poorly used by Libya or someone else or well-used to implicate Libya, even maybe by Libya because Gadaffi had sniffed some glue one day. 's possible. Or that it was just there for effect, involved in the crash, partly burnt but not close enough to vaporize, a plant that far back. That's just simply a thought to me tho. I didn't even feel like typing it out when the alternative of a few politically motivated liars explains the fragment more naturally to me.

[Caustic Logic]

I did have at least one more thought, or a few, spurred by a video. I'm not sure if this one was covered yet, BBC Dispatches, from 98 or 99. They actually do a really good job in general, but on the timer fragment they seem to have been bowled over by Mebo's early and vigorous phase of bowling people over, before it got as obvious and tangled as now.

http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/mp4/dispatches.html

Check the expert just past the halfway point, analyzing the curve and the unaffected top edge. Does his brain normally work like that, or are those dollar signs causing some short circuits?

Anyway, my main thought is on Thurman and the chip in England/in Virginia controversy. That of course surfaced in Levy's film, in a way that seems a little convenient. It looks like a groundbreaking inconsistency. It could be a false lead. In this video, just before the 2/3 point, Thurman emphatically states he only examined the photo, which was better than the actual evidence since it was bigger. He talks about the missing edge (doesn't know, probably hacked off in England), and makes more sense than their expert.

But in 1991 he was making it SOUND as if he'd seen the actual chip under the microscope, and in Levy's video he says he had it. And what exactly did Ferraday or Williamson say about it? This could be interesting.

[LONGTABBER PE]

Considered that too. It's possible this was the trigger, either poorly used by Libya or someone else or well-used to implicate Libya, even maybe by Libya because Gadaffi had sniffed some glue one day. 's possible. Or that it was just there for effect, involved in the crash, partly burnt but not close enough to vaporize, a plant that far back. That's just simply a thought to me tho. I didn't even feel like typing it out when the alternative of a few politically motivated liars explains the fragment more naturally to me.

OK deductive theory # 87,963

2 key points ( 3 if you include Meg but for this theory just call him the winner of the "pin the tail on the patsy" game and leave him out)

1) the implication of Libya

2) the fragment and its role

The fragment ( as i understand what I've read so far) is the single and only link to Libya- if it wasnt there, there wouldnt be a link much less a case.

If you believe it planted ( which I do because I refuse to accept it survived in the bomb as alleged configured) then you must conclude that prior to that- there was no physical evidence pointing toward anyone, group or nation. ( this would exclude any intelligence from other areas)

So, if planted- its a no brainer it would be expected to implicate Libya and no one else.

Following that logic then the question regarding Libya's implication ( and subsequently megrai) becomes

1) did Intel or other information ( prehaps secret) implicate Libya

2) was Libya the scapegoat to steer attention away from someone else

3) was there truly nothing and it was a "Hail Mary' simply to say they caught the bomber to satisfy the public need to see it.

I discount 3 simply because it would send the message to the "real" perps that these people were stupid and I dont see any agency doing that. It would be better for them to let it remain unsolved.

That leaves 1&2- I'm kinda on the fence on that one.

I tend to steer away from 2 partly for the reasons of 3 and it would send a message of fear ( the way they would interpret it) or send the signal they had an upper hand. ( neither one of them helps )

I'm still leaning toward Libya being involved at some level for those reasons.

[Dan O.]

So what the hell are we supposed to believe Hayes was thinking about in May 1989? A piece of circuit board, which isn't part of the Toshiba, but which would appear to have been in the primary suitcase.

Unless you've actually disassembled a large number of consumer products, you would probably believe that all the innards would be homogeneous. If I were examining these fragments though, my first thought would be that the green board with a large tab was part of the power supply which is often built of different material because it handles higher voltages and current and may even be a commodity part. Until the Toshiba is actually identified and the part is definitely excluded as being from the radio, it's not very important.

Is there any documentation that supports when was the identification of the radio that the fragments were part of was made?

[realdon]

Is there any documentation that supports when was the identification of the radio that the fragments were part of was made

The fragment of circuit board (Finger tip photo) was apparently discovered by RARDE on Feb 2nd 1989 inbedded in the frame on container AVE 4041 PA.

Because of the earlier raids on the PFLP in GE. Feraday travelled to GE to examine the Toshiba radio seized to see if the fragment could be identified. He concluded it was not from this type of Toshiba radio but contacted Toshiba who helped to identify it as being used in 7 different models

I cant find any thing that states when Feraday made this discovery

[Rolfe]

Unless you've actually disassembled a large number of consumer products, you would probably believe that all the innards would be homogeneous. If I were examining these fragments though, my first thought would be that the green board with a large tab was part of the power supply which is often built of different material because it handles higher voltages and current and may even be a commodity part. Until the Toshiba is actually identified and the part is definitely excluded as being from the radio, it's not very important.

Is there any documentation that supports when was the identification of the radio that the fragments were part of was made?


I haven't seen anything definite about the timeline of when stuff was discovered. However, a piece of circuit board was found that was identified as being part of a Toshiba, while the exact model was deduced from the owner's manual. I believe this was relatively early, but I'm not entirely certain.

They had very little from the radio - just some plastic case, that fragment of circuit board, a few pieces of speaker mesh and the manual. I can't understand why the piece of green circuit board wouldn't have merited close attention in May whether or not it was initially thought to be part of the radio. If it had been part of the radio, it could have given them a more definite identification of the model.

Rolfe.

[realdon]

I see Mr Bollier is following these threads !!!
Maybe you would like to make some comments Sir



MISSION LOCKERBIE:

Most informationen of James Randi forum are professional, to be recommended, congratulations !

by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland

[Rolfe]

Yeah, which zealot blew the whistle? :D

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

I see Mr Bollier is following these threads !!!
Maybe you would like to make some comments Sir



MISSION LOCKERBIE:

Most informationen of James Randi forum are professional, to be recommended, congratulations !

by Edwin and Mahnaz Bollier, MEBO Ltd., Switzerland

Interesting. Where did you get that from? I don't suppose I'm in the "most" category, if "informationen" are people, after calling him disinfo (effectively at least).

[realdon]

Interesting. Where did you get that from? I don't suppose I'm in the "most" category, if "informationen" are people, after calling him disinfo (effectively at least).

Robert Blacks web blog. Mr Bollier has posted comments to some of the Blog entries.
Some "zealot" :D has mailed Robert Black informing him of the discussions on JREF

[Rolfe]

Interesting. Where did you get that from? I don't suppose I'm in the "most" category, if "informationen" are people, after calling him disinfo (effectively at least).


http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/10/lockerbie-discussion.html

I had thought it might be you who had emailed Prof. Black. Obviously not!

I don't see Bollier as a credible witness at all. He does often mention bits of evidence I wasn't aware of, but when he starts theorising about fraudulent evidence, it seems to be pure speculation and guesswork. I can't see anything to support what he's saying about brown and green timer fragments.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/10/lockerbie-discussion.html

I had thought it might be you who had emailed Prof. Black. Obviously not!

I don't see Bollier as a credible witness at all. He does often mention bits of evidence I wasn't aware of, but when he starts theorising about fraudulent evidence, it seems to be pure speculation and guesswork. I can't see anything to support what he's saying about brown and green timer fragments.

Rolfe.

Wow, that's cool! I'd thought about at least starting to comment there, next to Herrs Bollier and Marquise, et al. Methinks Ambrosia did this cool thing. It is noteworthy how little debunking is happening on this, here at the JREF forum. Also, your poll should be noted there - interesting results there too.

ETA: missed realdon's post, got mixed up. duh. Good work, mate!

[Rolfe]

Well, I think a lot of that poll was Yanks just voting to say they thought they knew all about it and they hated Scotland. :D

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Well, I think a lot of that poll was Yanks just voting to say they thought they knew all about it and they hated Scotland. :D

Rolfe.

well the top response, at 38%, was "I'm familiar with the evidence presented, and I don't believe he did it" was my point. http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=153959
But indeed those people came and talked.

[Rolfe]

Just taking the opportunity to sum up for now.

At the moment I haven't convinced myself the fragment was planted, but I'm not comfortable that suspicions have been laid to rest either.

The 38-minute explosion simply doesn't fit with the presence of an MST-13 timer on any scenario we've discussed so far apart from the "wrong plane" suggestion - and even there, it's still a coincidence. Even leaving aside the huge risks involved in sending unaccompanied luggage with a bomb in it through three airports and three security systems, the risk that PA103 itself would be delayed by an hour was significant and easily circumvented by setting the thing for a later time. There's another point I didn't mention before, as well. Suppose the explosion hadn't caused the plane to break up in mid-air, but left the pilot with some control over a damaged aircraft? Would you, as a terrorist, prefer the plane to be within easy reach of three major airports (Prestwick, Abbotsinch and Turnhouse), or in the middle of the Atlantic?

The fragment seems to support pretty much the entire bloody case, the way it has been interpreted. Suddenly we have "well the PFLP-GC didn't have any MST-13 timers, so that's them out of the frame, let's go after Libya." Highly convenient.

The provenance of that particular piece of evidence is surrounded by so many anomalies


The alteration on the original label (cloth to debris)
The apparently interpolated page 51 in Hayes's notes, which is particularly weird as it appears to describe what anyone would think was a potentially crucial discovery, but then doesn't draw it, photograph it, or follow it up at all
The mystery polaroid photo, implying great haste when the entire proceedings were marked by their leisurely nature

However, that's when it gets difficult. There's no clear motive for the alteration of the original label; no idea what that might have achieved that was worth the risk of altering it.

The extra page 51 suggests a completely new piece of evidence being inserted into old notes, however wouldn't it have been easier just to substitute a single page? Maybe add the record of the timer fragment to a piece of evidence that hadn't been photographed originally, and just re-write the entire page? Or, instead of removing the original page 56 and re-numbering the previous five pages, just make the new page no. 56?

And yet, what's the chances Hayes just cocked up his page numbering on the very page the crucial item is described? The same item that already has the coincidence of the altered label attached to it. The item with the highly significant fragment he unaccountably does nothing at all about?

Also, it would appear that if the fragment were planted, three different organisations must have been involved. The FBI, via Thurman; RAERDE, via Hayes and Feraday; and Dumfries and Galloway police, via Williamson. How do you organise that without risking someone going to the papers? (On the other hand, we don't know Williamson isn't the Golfer, I suppose.)

And I have no idea how some faceless senior spook gets the idea of doing this, and actually puts it into practice.

So yes, it's possible that in about January 1990 some faceless spook decides that a bit of misdirection is in order here. And, knowing about the MST-13 timer in the possession of the US security services, thinks that's the thing to use. Material existed to allow a plausible fragment to be manufactured, it was infiltrated into RAERDE where Feraday and Hayes conspired to make it appear that it had been found a year previously, recorded 8 months previously, and recognised as important 4 months previously. Feraday sets Williamson off to do what cops would naturally do with that sort of evidence, and Williamson knows there's something unreal about it at some stage, because he doesn't call fake on the memo that says he first saw it in September 1989.

However, the initial motive isn't primarily to frame Libya. It's to provide misdirection away from the PFLP-GC. This is successful as far as it goes - everything goes quiet and journalists mostly stop writing about Jibril and Abu Talb. However, in June 1990 wider events make it very much more insistent that Syria and Iran should not be blamed for this, and at the same time favour pinning it on Libya to consign them to the Outer Darkness. Thurman thus chooses that moment to match up a picture of the fragment with the timer already in the FBI's possession.

It sort of works, but it doesn't have a real ring of truth about it. I wouldn't care to nail my twofer colours to the mast on that story.

Any comments on that summary?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

So yes, I was leading up to something.

Suppose that fragment was genuine. But we could still explain the 38-minute explosion, with no "wrong plane" and no coincidences. I've got a sort of an idea. The one thing that's wrong with it is that it doesn't involve loading at Heathrow, or probably not anyway, so it leaves Messers Bedford and Manly still looking awfully lost.

Ahmed Jibril has been reported as saying "They'll never find out how I did it." (This is a bit of a contradiction to the US official's reported comment to Martin Cadman that "Your government and my government know exactly what happened but they're never going to tell," but never mind.)

The primitive timers Jibril had, had two flaws. One was that the maximum delay was about 30 minutes, which wouldn't reliably get the plane over the ocean. However, the barometer would ensure it was at least airborne, so it wasn't all bad. The other problem was thought that they had to be introduced at the final stopover before the explosion - they couldn't go on a feeder flight because they would just explode on that.

So, Jibril's little game is to rig the device so that it can be sent in on a feeder flight.

Obviously, he needs a better timer. So, who's selling them the Semtex in the first place? Who sells everyone Semtex? Libya. Who has some smart digital timers that might come in very handy? Libya. (I note that Libya as quartermaster to the world's terrorists is taken as read in The Trail of the Octopus.)

So he gets an MST-13 timer, maybe from Libya, maybe from a middle-man. How does he use it? I'll defer to the electronics experts, who might well shred this idea, but here goes.

Yes, he could simply set the thing for midnight, as I suggested, and hope it's airborne over the Atlantic at that time. Might well work. But still. Suppose the bag doesn't make the connection? It could well still be on the ground in that case. (The bag belonging to one of the CIA officers on the plane did exactly that and was later found in a luggage store at Heathrow.)

The other possibility we discussed was a combination device, with a timer set so as to nullify any low-pressure events that happen before the departure time of the target flight.

When I tried to figure out how this would work, I kept coming up against the need for two timers. And so far as I know, the MST-13 could only have one countdown period set. What you want is for the device to start counting down when low pressure is detected, after 6pm GMT on 21st December. Thus, if you get it on the feeder flight with reasonable certainty, it will explode once the transatlantic leg is underway, no matter how long the delay.

I don't think the MST-13 would do all that by itself. It would count down to 6pm, but it woudn't then count another time period before going off.

Maybe the device used was exactly as per Jibril's usual modus operandi, using the primitive timer for the last phase, but with the MST-13 incorporated to delay the start of the countdown and so allow introduction via a feeder flight.

I can see a few things wrong with this one too. It would still have been possible to get the explosion later with this arrangement, I think (just set the start for 11pm, not 6pm on the 21st). If the idea was to distance Jibril's group from the introduction of the device, sending it in from Frankfurt (the cell's base) wouln't be too bright, if that was what was done. And if the idea was to draw suspicion, it didn't really work, as all the initial suspicions focussed on Jibril.

However, I did find one surprising ally in this suggestion. The Trail of the Octopus (http://11syyskuu.net/octopus/trail.ch.13.htm) again.

There was a question also about the device itself. In the official view, the use of the Swiss timer pointed clearly to Libya, not only because it had been supplied to its security agency in the first place, but because the PFLP-GC favoured a barometric-pressure triggering system for its Toshiba bombs.

Thomas Hayes, however, the forensic expert responsible for identifying the tiny piece of Swiss circuit board, was not prepared to commit himself on this point. In his book, On the Trail of Terror, David Leppard wrote later that, privately, Hayes believed the Lockerbie bomb had been a dual device, triggered by a barometric switch and then running on a timer, but that not enough of it had been recovered to be sure.

The possibility that Khreesat or Abu Elias or some other PFLP-GC bombmaker had incorporated a Libyan timer as well as Libyan Semtex into the Lockerbie bomb remained open, therefore - with the balance of probability tilted towards Jibril's group rather than the Libyans in view of its previous use of Toshiba radios as bomb housings.


I'm not sure I'm convincing myself here either, but it's another reasonable possibility.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Is there any documentation that supports when was the identification of the radio that the fragments were part of was made

The fragment of circuit board (Finger tip photo) was apparently discovered by RARDE on Feb 2nd 1989 inbedded in the frame on container AVE 4041 PA.

Because of the earlier raids on the PFLP in GE. Feraday travelled to GE to examine the Toshiba radio seized to see if the fragment could be identified. He concluded it was not from this type of Toshiba radio but contacted Toshiba who helped to identify it as being used in 7 different models

I cant find any thing that states when Feraday made this discovery

I see no one answered you there. I don't know that yet, but finding bits all the time and will keep it in mind. So far I find questions like this are hard to answer precisely. I'm usually left inferring things from other things to get an approximate time span. Like here: http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/10/mst-13-comparative-graphics-no-1.html
And then I get get tired and wonder why I'm trying to figure out things like this, do something else, and then come right back. I'll be back.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

...snip....
Also, it would appear that if the fragment were planted, three different organisations must have been involved. The FBI, via Thurman; RAERDE, via Hayes and Feraday; and Dumfries and Galloway police, via Williamson. How do you organise that without risking someone going to the papers? (On the other hand, we don't know Williamson isn't the Golfer, I suppose.)

And I have no idea how some faceless senior spook gets the idea of doing this, and actually puts it into practice.

...snip...

Any comments on that summary?

Rolfe.

I think I'm pretty much in agreement with Rolfe on the timer fragment, with the slight difference in emphasis that, since I haven't seen the smoking gun that proves it was planted, I'm inclined to think it wasn't.

If someone produces incontrovertible evidence tomorrow that it was a plant, it's not going to destroy my world view, I'll get over it and struggle on, but until then I'll assume it's real.

The extract from Rolfe's post above really summarises why I think that. I know there are lots of slightly dodgy aspects to the history of the timer evidence, but when you get down to it, planting it would have been difficult and risky, and it wasn't a strong enough piece of evidence to do anything more than point the finger at Libya a bit, which could surely have been done more easily by 'intercepting' some 'communications' or something.

In addition, and this is a weaker and more speculative argument, it doesn't fit the modus operandi of the British Establishment. Throughout the 70s and 80s their way of getting a conviction was to find a suitable suspect, batter a confession from them then hide any exonerating evidence from the defence. ;)
Even the Maguire case which RAERDE was involved in, didn't involve faking forensic evidence, the Crown just overstated the reliability and specificity of the Nitroglycerine swab test used.

[realdon]

The primitive timers Jibril had, had two flaws. One was that the maximum delay was about 30 minutes, which wouldn't reliably get the plane over the ocean. However, the barometer would ensure it was at least airborne, so it wasn't all bad. The other problem was thought that they had to be introduced at the final stopover before the explosion - they couldn't go on a feeder flight because they would just explode on that.

So, Jibril's little game is to rig the device so that it can be sent in on a feeder flight.

Obviously, he needs a better timer. So, who's selling them the Semtex in the first place? Who sells everyone Semtex? Libya. Who has some smart digital timers that might come in very handy? Libya. (I note that Libya as quartermaster to the world's terrorists is taken as read in The Trail of the Octopus.)

So he gets an MST-13 timer, maybe from Libya, maybe from a middle-man. How does he use it? I'll defer to the electronics experts, who might well shred this idea, but here goes.

Yes, he could simply set the thing for midnight, as I suggested, and hope it's airborne over the Atlantic at that time. Might well work. But still. Suppose the bag doesn't make the connection? It could well still be on the ground in that case. (The bag belonging to one of the CIA officers on the plane did exactly that and was later found in a luggage store at Heathrow.)

The other possibility we discussed was a combination device, with a timer set so as to nullify any low-pressure events that happen before the departure time of the target flight.

When I tried to figure out how this would work, I kept coming up against the need for two timers. And so far as I know, the MST-13 could only have one countdown period set. What you want is for the device to start counting down when low pressure is detected, after 6pm GMT on 21st December. Thus, if you get it on the feeder flight with reasonable certainty, it will explode once the transatlantic leg is underway, no matter how long the delay.

I don't think the MST-13 would do all that by itself. It would count down to 6pm, but it woudn't then count another time period before going off.

Maybe the device used was exactly as per Jibril's usual modus operandi, using the primitive timer for the last phase, but with the MST-13 incorporated to delay the start of the countdown and so allow introduction via a feeder flight.


Rolfe.

Rolfe you are correct here. Introducing the MST 13 timer into the circuit would do as you suggest. The Altimeter would not trigger the second "ice cube timer" until after a pre determined time.

But why use the altimeter at all if you have the MST timer? The MST alone means you have the ability to set a very long countdown. so why incorporate the Altimeter/ice cube?

I think the Altimeter acts as a surefire safety feature to prevent detonation on the ground. The circuit will not be armed until airbourne even if the first timer (MST) malfunctions or runs to the end of its countdown before its on the aircraft

Apparently the altimeters used by the PFLP were just standard mechanical aircraft types and my hunch is that they would only be able to get them to trigger at no more than 1000ft. Add the 30/40 mins delay and this will have the aircraft around about cruise height


David

[Rolfe]

Rolfe you are correct here. Introducing the MST 13 timer into the circuit would do as you suggest. The Altimeter would not trigger the second "ice cube timer" until after a pre determined time.

But why use the altimeter at all if you have the MST timer? The MST alone means you have the ability to set a very long countdown. so why incorporate the Altimeter/ice cube?

I think the Altimeter acts as a surefire safety feature to prevent detonation on the ground. The circuit will not be armed until airbourne even if the first timer (MST) malfunctions or runs to the end of its countdown before its on the aircraft

Apparently the altimeters used by the PFLP were just standard mechanical aircraft types and my hunch is that they would only be able to get them to trigger at no more than 1000ft. Add the 30/40 mins delay and this will have the aircraft around about cruise height.


That's sort of what I was thinking. The MST-13 alone, one would think, would have been sufficient - but only because it could be set to detonate late in the flight. It wasn't. That flight could quite easily still have been on the ground at Heathrow at 7 o'clock. Anybody who's ever flown knows that. So what the hell was going on?

A standard-issue Jibril device introduced at Heathrow would have produced exactly the results observed. And we can get very very interested in Mr. Manly's sawn-through padlock and Mr. Bedford's extra suitcase. However, that doesn't explain that damn fragment.

My original hunch was that the fragment was planted. And I'm still not convinced it wasn't. However, I'm not getting a convincing narrative on how that was done, just a lot if disconnected anomalies. Bollier, in particular, comes over as a complete wingnut. My hunch, now, is more inclined to back the possibility that the fragment is genuine.

But the explosion happened at 7 o'clock. What was the MST-13 doing, in that case. Pace Geni, I can't imagine any terrorist just accidentally setting the timer hours earlier than he should.

In the earlier thread, we did talk about a barometric timer that could count - essentially, one that would only trigger on the second or third take-off. Ambrosia made a suggestion, but we weren't quite sure how it would work (for example, I didn't know whether the altimeter would simply re-set on returning to surface pressure). As I thought about it, this idea seemed to need two timers - one to keep the device inert on the earlier legs of the flight, and a second to do the final count-down to the detonation.

My electronics knowledge isn't good enough to work this through in detail, but I speculate that this was Jibril's big idea, "they'll never figure out how we did it". A way of getting the device to Heathrow unaccompanied (or at least without anyone having to touch the device), without exploding on an earlier leg.

I would really like some input from an electronics geek about how this might have been done, and specifically whether it was essential or at least sensible to retain the feature where it was the actual take-off at Heathrow that triggered the final countdown, rather than take the opportunity of delaying it further until the plane was more reliably over the ocean. Would you just use the MST to make sure the system was inert until 6pm (the scheduled departure time of Pan Am 103)? If so, why not just hold it till 9 or 10 o'clock? (Uncertainty about how the device would perform in those circumstances?) Or could you actually get it to count take-off and landing cycles so that it would go off on the second or the third take-off, no matter how long the delay?

Then all we have to worry about is relegating poor Mr. Bedford back to the status of absolutely incredible coincidence, and decide which feeder flight was actually used.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Apparently the altimeters used by the PFLP were just standard mechanical aircraft types and my hunch is that they would only be able to get them to trigger at no more than 1000ft. Add the 30/40 mins delay and this will have the aircraft around about cruise height


As far as I know, they would have triggered about 7 minutes after take-off under normal circumstances. That seems to be how they got the estimate of detonation time - 30 minutes on top of that.

Several sources talk about a pressure equivalent to 8,000 feet, but I think that's a reference to the pressure in the cabin when the aircraft is at cruising altitude. Obviously, the thing was triggering at a higher pressure than that, if it was going 7 minutes after take-off - that's nowhere near cruising altitude, surely?

I'm also a bit hazy about whether the baggage hold is at the same pressure as the cabin. The sources I've been reading say yes, but my own personal experience says no, the baggage hold is not as pressurised as the cabin. Do you know the answer to this?

I'd welcome a more detailed explanation of all this.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Also I hate to contradict actual brits here, but I was using RAERDE until I found no hits for it on GOOGLE and have since used RARDE, Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment. FYI, or FME (for my embarrassment).

All things considered I do feel this was probably a plant, but that's sort of a left-brain hunch thing I'm not going to try and explain. It's a shady case all around, and it's entirely possible to fake and sneak in a scrap, are my main considerations.

As far as not battering a confession out of the suspect, this was too sensitive for sticks on Abdelbaset's head. But look at the real suspect - Libya. Sanction = admission of responsibility + wishful thinking = admission of guilt but not quite, the bloody dodgers. So there you go.

[Rolfe]

In addition, and this is a weaker and more speculative argument, it doesn't fit the modus operandi of the British Establishment. Throughout the 70s and 80s their way of getting a conviction was to find a suitable suspect, batter a confession from them then hide any exonerating evidence from the defence. ;)
Even the Maguire case which RAERDE was involved in, didn't involve faking forensic evidence, the Crown just overstated the reliability and specificity of the Nitroglycerine swab test used.


I think the "RAERDE" thing was just my mistake. I did google it earlier, but the mistake crept in.


I don't think this was a Brit-type exercise. The USA was in control of this all the way through. Bush said jump and Maggie said "how high?" And if you have no suspects in custody at the relevant time, you can hardly batter a confession from them.

Also, I think we need to stop going on about how the planting of the timer fragment was all about implicating Libya. I don't think it was really about that at the time. I think it was all about not getting any closer to Jibril. I think there was stuff attached to Jibril's gang that the US authorities really, really didn't want exposed. Possibly connected to the speedy release of Khreesat, who was supposed to be a double-agent making dummy bombs, connected to the CIA through the Jordanian secret service. Except, oh dear, his bombs weren't dummies at all. Possibly connected to a CIA-sanctioned drug-running exercise having been used to get the bomb suitcase through security (Coleman). Possibly both were tied into this - this has all been suggested by other sources.

Reading the history of what went on, it seemed as if the police kept getting very close to Jibril, and then being shut down. Maybe a little bit of evidence that wasn't immediately traceable to Jibril was just what was wanted at that point. Only later, in the autumn of 1990, did the plan of actively pinning it on Libya become the dominant feature.

See, I'm running with the hare and hunting with the hounds on this one!

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

Rolfe, The thin aluminum skin of a modern plane acts like a balloon. If it isn't uniformly pressurized, the aircraft as a whole won't have as much strength. From this alone I would presume that the entire fuselage is pressurized except for the wheel bays.

[Rolfe]

OK, that corresponds with what the Lockerbie sources say. My imploding Irn Bru cans must have some other explanation.

Makes this discussion easier, even though my soaked pyjamas must remain a mystery.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I've just watched the Dispatches documentary - one more take, that I hadn't seen before. Bollier sounds a lot more rational than in his later postings. He's simply saying the fragment is from a prototype, however it's not clear that he's right about this. He never mentions colour, and seems to be basing the evaluation on the roughness of thecurved edge. I'm not sure any of the photos is detailed enough to confirm that.

The expert Owen Lewis is just plain wrong. He fails to appreciate that the "top" of the fragment was sawn off by the forensic examiners. Nobody showed the "polaroid" of the un-tampered-with fragment, with the top still on. So he obviously thinks the thing is different. We have also seen that the theory that the curve of the edge is different is also based on the misapprehension that the top edges match, and it could well be that this is also the source of Bollier's claim too.

Thurman, as someone else noted, is quite up front that he never saw the fragment. I think the Dutch film must have tapped into some misunderstandings and faulty memories, after 18 years. He seems quite clear that the top was sawn off by Engish forensics, but he doesn't mention having seen any photo of it before it was tampered with. Odd, really. (I suspect the top was ground off, which would explain why we never see the cut-off piece.)

Dang, the pics we have in this thread show all this far better than the bloody experts!

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

OK, that corresponds with what the Lockerbie sources say. My imploding Irn Bru cans must have some other explanation.

Makes this discussion easier, even though my soaked pyjamas must remain a mystery.

Rolfe.

Have a peek at the wikipedia article on Cabin pressurization? There is a significant pressure drop at cruising altitude equivalent to climbing to about 2500 m. This is because there is a maximum pressure differential that can be sustained by the cabin or it could burst like an overinflated balloon.

[realdon]

Rolfe

This is from the AAIB report on 103

"The fuselage of the aircraft type was of approximately circularsection over most of its length, with the forward fuselage havinga diameter of 21› feet where the cross-section was constant.The pressurised section of the fuselage (which included the forwardand aft cargo holds) had an overall
length of 190 feet, extending from the nose to a point just forward of the tailplane. In normal cruising flight the service pressure differential was at the maximum value of 8.9 pounds per square inch."

The holds and cabin will be pressurised to about the equiv of 8000ft at a cruising altitude of 39,000ft

David

[Rolfe]

Have a peek at the wikipedia article on Cabin pressurization? There is a significant pressure drop at cruising altitude equivalent to climbing to about 2500 m. This is because there is a maximum pressure differential that can be sustained by the cabin or it could burst like an overinflated balloon.


Thanks, I was more of less aware of that part, but that's a good link. What I wasn't aware of was whether the baggage holds were at the same pressure as the cabin. On the only two occasions when I've been unwise enough to leave cans of fizzy drink in my checked luggage, they have showed up at the other end punctured as if someone had run a spike into them. The first time, I wondered of that might have been exactly what had happened, but the second time, with exactly the same outcome, I began to think it was some depressurisation effect. And of course these cans can be carried in the cabin quite safely. If it wasn't depressurisation, I wonder what it was?

Anyway, cabin or hold, everyone seems to agree the pressure at cruising altitude is equivalent to atmospheric pressure at about 8,000 feet. The links discussing the altimeter-controlled devices Jibril's group were messing with say it would normally take about 7 minutes from leaving the ground, for an airliner to reach a height where the device would be triggered (and then the countdown would be about 30 minutes, both figures give or take several minutes).

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

On the only two occasions when I've been unwise enough to leave cans of fizzy drink in my checked luggage, they have showed up at the other end punctured as if someone had run a spike into them. The first time, I wondered of that might have been exactly what had happened, but the second time, with exactly the same outcome, I began to think it was some depressurisation effect.

I think someone poked a spike into your cans. Before the can reaches burst pressure, it will leave a visible deformation by pushing the top out. By design, the weak point of the can is the modern pop tab. If the pop tab doesn't open and release the pressure, the can is going to rupture like a popping balloon resulting in potentially dangerous shrapnel.

[Rolfe]

I think someone poked a spike into your cans. Before the can reaches burst pressure, it will leave a visible deformation by pushing the top out. By design, the weak point of the can is the modern pop tab. If the pop tab doesn't open and release the pressure, the can is going to rupture like a popping balloon resulting in potentially dangerous shrapnel.


How odd, that it should have happened on two occasions, with identical results, on two different flights and with different sized cans.

The first time was a standard can that I had in my bag on a transatlantic flight, Gatwick to Nashville via Dallas. I had wanted to let my American host taste Irn Bru, but when I opened the bag the can was punctured and buckled inwards. My pyjamas and underwear had to go in the washing machine.

The second time was on a Glasgow to Gatwick flight. On the Gatwick to Glasgow leg, the stewardess had given me a second miniature can (of Irn Bru again) from her trolley. I didn't want it right then and put it in my handbag. It later got transferred to my check-in bag, and forgotten about, and so was checked in for the return flight. I remembered about it while waiting in the departure lounge, and tried to convince myself the previous incident had been traumatic baggage handling not pressure, so this one would probably be OK. But when I opened the bag, exactly the same damage, right in the middle of the can again, and another trip to the washing machine.

Very weird.

But off topic, as I fully understand the aircraft pressurisation situation now.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Sorry I'm not talking about so many other aspects of this, but I've put my stuff on the cutting of the board together at my blog:

http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/09/mst-13-comparative-graphics.html

I hear it's not displaying properly on some screens - any feedback on that is appreciated. The content is mostly already covered here I guess.


Now that I've seen the Dispatches programme, I think that web page takes on greater significance. I would propose that it be developed into a concise examination of the various MST-13 photos available, and (inevitably, I think) a debunking of the claim that the fragment was either part of a prototype board, or was substituted at some point after the first photograph was taken.

The Dispatches take is very interesting because I didn't see any overt suggestion that the fragment had been planted. The point being made, mainly by Bollier, was simply that the fragment was one of the prototypes he gave to the Stasi outfit, not one of the machined boards sold to Libya. Interestingly, he didn't mention colour at all here. His main reason was that "you can see the saw-marks where the curved corner section was sawn out by hand to get it to fit in the casing." I'm not at all convinced the photographs are clear enough to support that observation.

Note that this programme was made before the trial, however it was suggested by the programme that it was in MeBo's commercial interests that this affair not be laid at the door of Libya, because a lot of their business was with Libya.

Then the programme brought in the "expert" Owen Lewis, who seems to have been a lot less expert than our own dear Caustic Logic (with kudos to Ambrosia et al. also of course). He annnounced that the fragment was not from one of the Libya boards, because the printing was different and the angle of the curve of the cut-out was different.

He's flat wrong. And Thurman is right, though he doesn't really demonstrate it very well.

Lewis announces that the "top" edge of the fragment is the real edge of the timer, which wasn't damaged by the explosion. He then concludes that the printing of the "fingerboard" (the 1) is different because it goes up to the top edge in the fragment, while there is a clear gap between the top of the 1 and the edge of the timer in the comparison board. He also concludes that the curvature of the right-hand-side is different.

Of course, as Caustic Logic and Ambrosia demonstrated, this is not the case. The first photograph of the fragment shows it with the top exactly as in the comparison board, and it has obviously been cut or ground down during the forensic analysis. (I suspect the missing material may have found its way into a mass spectrometer or something like that.) Once you realise that, you can fit the post-forensics fragment into the outline of the comparison board and get a perfect match.

It's odd that Thurman never refers to any photograph of the pre-forensics fragment. Surely he was sent one? We certainly have the one which was part of the original polaroid, and didn't Ambrosia have another? Surely to God RARDE took a set of decent high-quality pictures with proper negatives before they let their scientists start cutting it up? And surely Thurman was sent these?

Nevertheless, Thurman is clearly right when he declares that the top was removed during the analysis. And we know now that the two straight right-angle cuts are also part of the analysis, and subsequent pictures mostly show the fragment reconstructed by putting the two resulting fragments back together.

Once all that is clear, I don't think we need the colour to declare with a reasonable degree of certainty that all the pictures we have show the same fragment. The details match up too well for it to be otherwise. That being so, I don't see how the suggestion that the fragment is from a brown prototype, or was oroginally from a brown prototype with this being later substituted by a green one, can possibly be sustained.

This doesn't prove that the fragment wasn't planted - only that if it was, it was made originally from a green manufactured board, not a brown prototype, and it always has been green.

It also doesn't prove that the fragment, if genuine, necessarily points to Libya. That was always a bit of a stretch, considering Libya's track record in supplying armaments to terrorist groups.

However, it does put Bollier and Lumpert and the whole "brown prototype board" story to bed, thus removing a layer of total obfuscation from the enquiry.

I would suggest, Caustic Logic, that you re-cast your page along those lines. It would be a genuine resource if you did that. I'd be very happy to write the text for you, if you like.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

but when I opened the bag the can was punctured and buckled inwards.
Inwards? Over-pressurizatin?

Now that I've seen the Dispatches programme, I think that web page takes on greater significance. I would propose that it be developed into a concise examination of the various MST-13 photos available, and (inevitably, I think) a debunking of the claim that the fragment was either part of a prototype board, or was substituted at some point after the first photograph was taken.

If it was just me I'd find it too silly to bother with. But, if you think it's worthwhile and willing to collaborate, I'm down wid it.

The Dispatches take is very interesting because I didn't see any overt suggestion that the fragment had been planted. The point being made, mainly by Bollier, was simply that the fragment was one of the prototypes he gave to the Stasi outfit, not one of the machined boards sold to Libya. Interestingly, he didn't mention colour at all here.
And yet the prototypes were brown, weren't they? And here's Thurman's blu chip photo.
His main reason was that "you can see the saw-marks where the curved corner section was sawn out by hand to get it to fit in the casing." I'm not at all convinced the photographs are clear enough to support that observation.
I was going to chalk that up to photo pixelation, but somewhere I read they saw this on examining it in person in 99 or so. Anyway, he's always got some reason or ten...

Then the programme brought in the "expert" Owen Lewis, who seems to have been a lot less expert than our own dear Caustic Logic (with kudos to Ambrosia et al. also of course). ...
He's flat wrong. And Thurman is right, though he doesn't really demonstrate it very well. ...
Lewis announces that the "top" edge of the fragment is the real edge of the timer ... that the curvature of the right-hand-side is different.

Well it's nothing too amazing really. Lewis is a goon, behaving strangely Mebo-ish, so I wonder. As for the degree of curve, I thought they did that right but got confused on shadows, but looking again it seems like they are making DeBrackeleer's error. You need to match the right parts that should match before you can make a deal about how they don't. Duh.

Once all that is clear, I don't think we need the colour to declare with a reasonable degree of certainty that all the pictures we have show the same fragment. The details match up too well for it to be otherwise. ...

it does put Bollier and Lumpert and the whole "brown prototype board" story to bed, thus removing a layer of total obfuscation from the enquiry.

I would suggest, Caustic Logic, that you re-cast your page along those lines. It would be a genuine resource if you did that. I'd be very happy to write the text for you, if you like.

As I said at top, sure. I can just post something you put together, or a collaboration, since I have the established platform that could get better with better stuff. My recent posts have been sloppy, due to just wanting to see it up, and fixed a bit over a few days after. I think a new post though is in order, as this one is a rambling catalog with confusion intact and another post could zero in and tackle just whatever Mebo-inspired confusion you think is worth working through. The convolutions of the corner swap are classic stundie material, IMO. They didn't even bother picking the green-painted (??) brown corner that had the irreplacable "M" on it! Lol!

cheers

[Rolfe]

CL, could you confirm just how many pictures of the fragment actually exist on the internet? And where the best resolution or the most reliable provenance copies are to be found?

I have the picture before chopping up, with the bits of shirt and Toshiba. This is apparently "the" polaroid. I find it hard to believe that it was never photographed again before they chopped it up. but I haven't seen such a picture.

Bollier has the best blow-up of the fragment from the polaroid, at http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/jpg/img9.jpg

I haven't been able to find a high-resolution copy of the polaroid to confirm this enlargement accurate, but from what I've got, it seems to be right.

Then there is the back-and-front picture, which right now I simply cannot find. Can someone give me a link?

Then there is the one taken from the TV programme featuring Thurman, which seems not to be the same shot as the trial exhibit. Where did you get that from exactly, CL? The fragment is certainly chopped up by then.

And finally there is the trial exhibit, which includes a picture of the intact board Thurman compared it to. Again, it is chopped up, obviously.

Can any nice kind person tell me where the best copies (with good provenance) of these pictures can be found? Also, have I missed any? Anything else to look at?

I have to say, comparing the good enlargement of the polaroid shown by Bollier to the trial exhibit, my opinion is they are the same. The trial exhibit has been cut up, both the right-angled cuts and the missing top, and it's been a little more damaged as well in a couple of other places. However, so far as the less good lighting allows, all the flaws in the touch-pad that I can see on the polaroid enlargement are also there on the trial exhibit. And I think it would be a superhuman job to copy these.

It's a shame the colour is completely f-ed up, you can't tell if any of them are green or brown, but as far as the shapes go, they match.

With your assistance, CL, I'd love to do a little presentation to demonstrate that. The web is crawling with claims by Bollier and Lumpert, assisted by de Braeckeleer, that the fragment has been substituted. In the interests of clarity, I think the evidence to the contrary should be presented.

I still think it could have been planted (maybe 40%, to 60% not), and if it wasn't I see no reason to believe the timer was in Libyan hands when it was fashioned into the bomb. But we need to clear away the unconvincing claims to see what's left.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

CL, could you confirm just how many pictures of the fragment actually exist on the internet? And where the best resolution or the most reliable provenance copies are to be found?

Reliable? All my pics are from Mebocom and/or OhMyNews. The highest res isn't very high - Mebo was posting them back in '99 when all pics were small and pixelly. I'm torn between calling it good enough or approaching Prof. Black or someone to see who can get original photos from private files, etc. Since it's way less work I'm leaning towards good enough. The best links I've seen are at that post unless I forgot one.

I have the picture before chopping up, with the bits of shirt and Toshiba. This is apparently "the" polaroid. I find it hard to believe that it was never photographed again before they chopped it up. but I haven't seen such a picture.
There are the separate images (polaroids?) on Feraday's notes page (http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/Feraday_fragment_notes.jpg). On letter-size paper apparently, this may be what came with the 9/15 letter, and is pre-cutting, and actually comparable quality to the circled pic.

Bollier has the best blow-up of the fragment from the polaroid, at http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/jpg/img9.jpg

I haven't been able to find a high-resolution copy of the polaroid to confirm this enlargement accurate, but from what I've got, it seems to be right.

Same boat here. Looks fine tho. it's proportions do match 100%. As much as I mistrust Mebo when they say brown, so far they've shown blue and with no manipulation I've caught. he pics are fine.

Then there is the back-and-front picture, which right now I simply cannot find. Can someone give me a link?
Huh, my posted link is broken. Lemme dig that up...
Oh, it had an extra l. Fixed now.
http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2005/pyrotech/pyrotech-8.jpg
The blowup I have is just from that.

Then there is the one taken from the TV programme featuring Thurman, which seems not to be the same shot as the trial exhibit. Where did you get that from exactly, CL? The fragment is certainly chopped up by then.
Screen cap's from levy's, and then from this (http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2008/PT35/PT35aa.jpg), from Mebo, prob a cap too. It is different than the final - if it were that, all he'd have to do is look and go "that one does match that one. You got it right." Same state, similar tinting even, but labels absent and differently cropped.

And finally there is the trial exhibit, which includes a picture of the intact board Thurman compared it to. Again, it is chopped up, obviously.

Can any nice kind person tell me where the best copies (with good provenance) of these pictures can be found? Also, have I missed any? Anything else to look at?
I'm sure the'rearound or available in a book, or since they're exhibits in a crown trial, are they open to like FOIA-type requests? I'd be curious how they look color-wise. So we have two pre-cut and two post-cut, thanks to the gathering efforts of our Swiss friends, and that's not too bad really.

I have to say, comparing the good enlargement of the polaroid shown by Bollier to the trial exhibit, my opinion is they are the same. The trial exhibit has been cut up, both the right-angled cuts and the missing top, and it's been a little more damaged as well in a couple of other places. However, so far as the less good lighting allows, all the flaws in the touch-pad that I can see on the polaroid enlargement are also there on the trial exhibit. And I think it would be a superhuman job to copy these.

Glad you spotted also the small differences between states. I was alarmeed when seeing this alongside the chopping, but since that has valid reasons and the whole thing is tiny, and its parts fragile. Nothing weird probably in that except too much curiosity maybe, too many hands turning it over.

On the blog post ideas, I'll PM you and we'll work it out. Sounds like a cool project.

[Caustic Logic]

crud, posted that in the wrong thread.

For this one, Ummm... Clear out your PM box, Rolfe!

[Rolfe]

Actually, the bit I forgot to mention was the "scratches" that Bollier claims were made by Lumpert - including but not necessarily limited to the "M". These are present in the "polaroid" but absent in the later, better pictures.

The other similarities in the pictures lead me very much to the conclusion that the polaroid and the court exhibit photos are of the same thing, but these scratches or whatever they are are an anomaly. I accept that Ambrosia showed evidence to suggest that the "M" was actually a fibre overlaying the fragment, but I'm not sure that explains the rest of the apparent scratches.

Any ideas?

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

It was questioned earlier why page 51 contained detailed drawings of the paper fragments and only a mention of the green circuit board fragment.

I don't recall anyone answering this but it would have been necessary at the time of the examination to record the relative orientation or the paper stack as it was pealed apart otherwise that information could have been lost if a small breeze disturbed the fragments before they could be photographed. It was only necessary to document that the circuit board fragment was removed from the collar since all other details would be better recorded on a photograph.

[Rolfe]

That's a point, as the drawings do seem to preserve that information to some extent. (I wonder how he got the page numberings as recorded?)

I did read somewhere that it would have been normal practice to have drawn the circuit board fragment as well, but I'm perfectly prepared to believe that's someone jumping to conclusions. We haven't seen any other pages of notes to see how he usually did it.

I think the surprise is rather to do with the lack of any photo or indeed any attention at all being paid to the circuit board at this stage. Circuit board from items closely associated with the explosion was obviously highly prized as evidence. It was a piece of the Toshiba's circuit board that led to the identification of that item, but even so the precise model was never ascertained other than by assuming it from the manual.

So even if it was assumed that the greed fragment was another bit of Toshiba, I'm very surprised indeed that it wasn't examined in more detail at the time. At the very least it might have yielded a better identification of that. And given that there must have been some awareness that electronics close to the explosion might possibly come from the IED itself, the omission is even more strange. The paper fragments were indeed photographed at the time. But the circuit board was esentially ignored.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

That's a point, as the drawings do seem to preserve that information to some extent. (I wonder how he got the page numberings as recorded?)

Those are just consecutive numbers from the top of the stacks as found and would only coincidentally match the actual page number if in fact they do.


So even if it was assumed that the greed fragment was another bit of Toshiba, I'm very surprised indeed that it wasn't examined in more detail at the time. At the very least it might have yielded a better identification of that. And given that there must have been some awareness that electronics close to the explosion might possibly come from the IED itself, the omission is even more strange. The paper fragments were indeed photographed at the time. But the circuit board was esentially ignored.

Unless someone does an audit of the lab records, we won't know for sure what was or was not photographed during the investigation. All we have at this point are fragments of the process that either the prosecution or defense thought were important to present at the trial.

At this point in the investigation, pieces of paper with words would be much more important clues for first identifying the object. The circuit board can be matched like a fingerprint to positively identify the device it came from. But unless you have a searchable database of all such boards, it will be effectively useless until a suspected device is found.

There are two ways to get an identification from the fragment. One would be to distribute photo's to all the departments that might have run into something like it. This is what we are led to believe through the evidence presented to the court was done although they appear to skip all the dead ends and just hit a home run on the first try.

The second method is to start with common factors that are easier to trace and then look for more specific factors as the field is narrowed. With a circuit board, the most common factor is the layering of the fiberglass within the epoxy board. This can be compared to samples from the few manufacturers of such boards. The number of layers and initial copper plating would indicate a specific base product and the set of PC board manufacturers that use that product. The composition of the built up traces on the board will narrow the field to a small number of manufacturers and from there you just need to go through the masks they keep for the manufacturing to find the specific product and the record of who it was manufactured for.

Both of these methods would be costly to carry out and they would have been deferred until after the results of tracing the paper fragments was concluded. The paper immediately indicates that there is a manufactured commercial product and this board would very likely be a part of that product and therefore not important. Only after the Toshiba is identified, does the PC fragment becomes perhaps the most important piece of evidence and justify the expense in tracking it down.

[Rolfe]

[Sorry, seems like a non sequitur, I hadn't read Dan O's post when I posted this.]

I mentioned The Maltese Double Cross. It's long ( 2 hours 35 minutes), and it has some presentational flaws (despite winning best documentary at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I think it was). But it goes into some things others don't, and it's free of a lot of baggage that has accumulated in the intervening 15 years. It's the only film, so far as I know, that the US authorities actually banned.

I haven't managed to watch all of it in detail, but some things have rather jumped out at me. First, in relation to the provenance of the timer - looked at from the perspective of that narrative. If it was planted, who decided to do that, what gave him the power and authority to do it, and when was this actually done?

This transcript begins at 51 minutes 25 seconds, but it's not continuous - I've just selected the relevant bits.

Oswald le Winter (CIA 1968-85)

What is that famous saying, about putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop? You know, for Vincent Cannistraro to be put in charge of investigating Lockerbie would be funny if it weren't an obscenity. Cannistraro is not interested in investigating Lockerbie. I believe Cannistraro was put in charge to make sure that the Lockerbie case goes in a certain direction, because he wasn't put in charge immediately, because at the beginning, as long as they were prepared to blame Syria and Iran, Cannistraro had nothing to do with Lockerbie. As soon as it shifted to Libya, they brought in of course the Libyan dirty tricks expert to oversee the investigation.

Vincent Cannistraro

All of the major developments in the case were provided by the criminal investigators. The principal evidence that led to the identification of a foreign role and an act of terrorism was forensic evidence recovered at Lockerbie by the Scots police themselves; investigators and townspeople on their hands and knees crawling along the countryside picking up minute bits of debris, and one of these bits of debris turned out to be a microchip that was analysed forensically, that led to the Libyan connection.


Cannistraro was appointed as CIA head of the Lockerbie investigation. I don't know exactly when. However, that's the sort of development I was looking for as a possible marker for a decision to start directing the enquiry in a desired direction. I'm not suggesting his was the over-arching initiative, but that a high-up political or strategic decision that it would kill a lot of birds with one stone if this could be pinned on Libya was acted on by appointing Cannistraro.

As the top US Libya expert, he would be in a position to know just what sort of strategically-chosen and placed evidence would do the trick. And, knowing he had political and strategic backing, in a position to get it done. Of course he's going to declare blandly that it was the Scots who found the magic microchip.

And then just a little bit further on.

Narrator

In the Stazi files, the name of Edwin Bollier, codename "Reuben", Stazi agent. His control Jochen Henschel, codename "Wenzel". Meetings in Berlin safe houses, German girls in the Inter hotels. The Stazi had discovered Bollier was selling everything to everyone. The timers only the Libyans were supposed to have to the Stazi, and American C4 explosives, and Italian remote controlled radio controlled detonators, two million Deutschmarks one Stazi payment (per year?), and selling directly to terrorists - the Red Army Faction, Palestinians, other Arabs, in both Germanies. The Stazi even conclude Bollier must have been working for the CIA, because he seemed to be able to get very special American equipment so easily for the Stazi. Double, triple - quadruple agent. A truly neutral Swiss businessman.

Then another twist in turncoat Zuricher Bollier's story. After a visit by Americans on December 28th 1988, he signed a document, one week after Pan Am 103 was destroyed; a document in which Mr. Bollier swears his timers were of a model only sold to Libya - signed even before the use of a bomb had been made public. Before the miraculous grovelling search, a thousand Scots on hands and knees find the smoking fragment. Mr. Bollier had sold so much to so many, he could be blackmailed, so in that situation, he signed. Now he says the document can belong to whoever pays him 2 million doallars cash.


The first paragraph seems to be objectively documented - there are documents on the screen, though the pixillation prevents them being read. I've seen reference to Bollier's being a Stazi agent elsewhere. How much of the speculation is on the mark? Bollier having CIA connections his Stazi handlers only guessed at? I have no idea.

The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and Germany was unified in 1990. This is all old history. Bollier must have moved on. But back in 1988, when nobody imagined the Wall would come down, what was going on? How did the events in Germany in late 1989 affect what Bollier was saying to the Lockerbie investigators at the same time? Is this too convoluted to tease out after all this time?

This is a bizarre tale in the second paragraph. It seems to have come from Bollier himself, and we have some idea how reliable he is. But this is an early statement - 1993 vintage, well before he started dementing on about brown and green boards, and perjuring engineers. They hadn't even picked up the timer fragment on 28th December, according to the official story. File that, for possible future reference, I think.

But there's another hint that the US side was more clued-up as to what these green circuit boards than other sources give them credit for.

Thomas Thurman
FBI forensic expert

Eventually on June 15th of, er, 1989 - 1990, yeah, 1990, was the day that I made the identification. And I knew at that point what it meant. And because, if you will, I'm an investigator as well as a forensic examiner, I knew where that would go. That at that point we had no conclusive proof of the type of timing mechanism that was used in the bombing of 103. When that identification was made, of the timer, I knew we had it.

A magnification of that circuit board - which is here, you can see it's a very large magnification - has a partially obliterated marking. And through investigation we determined that this actually is M-E-B-O. Initially we thought that it might be another number like M580, and a number of these were sent out to electronic manufacturers to see if they had made this board. And they said no, that that was not their identification, so the last thing that we determined, which was the right thing, actually that it's M-E-B-O. We had some inkling that's what it was from the beginning, but we didn't want to say, OK that it's MEBO, to the exclusion of anything else, until we were absolutely certain.


Pure speculation, I know, but while this could be entirely on the level, it could also fit my musings about a plant of the fragment rather well.

Does anyone know when Cannistraro was appointed to head the CIA side of the Lockerbie investigation?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

And I just raise my head to the TV, switched on to the BBC late evening news, and I see film of Megrahi, looking about 50 years older than he does in The Maltese Double Cross, and the nose of Maid of the Seas lying on the grass at Tundergarth.

Why are so few people following this thread?

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Actually, the bit I forgot to mention was the "scratches" that Bollier claims were made by Lumpert - including but not necessarily limited to the "M". These are present in the "polaroid" but absent in the later, better pictures.

The other similarities in the pictures lead me very much to the conclusion that the polaroid and the court exhibit photos are of the same thing, but these scratches or whatever they are are an anomaly. I accept that Ambrosia showed evidence to suggest that the "M" was actually a fibre overlaying the fragment, but I'm not sure that explains the rest of the apparent scratches.

Any ideas?

Rolfe.

Ambrosia's is the best. The shadow is consistent with the fiber and the overall angle of light - here appearing as from above (shadow below), app. cross-lit with a little shadow on each side, so almost straight "down." So I agree there. http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9072/fragmentfibre.jpg
There's a lump of lint on the left, gone later. and a tan speck, gone later. 2010 affidavit - Ulrich lied before by not saying that's the color of his trousers that day? and then these other things beneath that. Since they're gone later too, I'm thinking of them as smaller tighter fibers. or ash. Or something. Spent way too long on this:
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/MST-13_comp_scratches_and_all.jpg
And in context: true size board, I think, if it comes thru right. I re-painted the "M" twice to make sure it's even visible, in bright red. It's really smaller. Now who's supposed to have marked this, and when, and how and why? When it's the only artifact we can clearly ID as a ziggy filler fiber? Or is it? almost this big...
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/Lumpert_M_Scale.jpg

And I just raise my head to the TV, switched on to the BBC late evening news, and I see film of Megrahi, looking about 50 years older than he does in The Maltese Double Cross, and the nose of Maid of the Seas lying on the grass at Tundergarth.

Why are so few people following this thread?

Rolfe.

I think they're following, just not speaking up much. Also, maybe they think it's pretty well covered, or ... it's here to stay for a while - have you heard if Spielberg's gone ahead with the movie yet, and where it's supposed to go?

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I think they're following, just not speaking up much. Also, maybe they think it's pretty well covered, or ... it's here to stay for a while - have you heard if Spielberg's gone ahead with the movie yet, and where it's supposed to go?

I'm still following, and I keep trying to make time to summarise my thoughts and post a reasonably long reply, but stuff keeps getting in the way.

Brief summary of my view on this and the other threads is that nothing new has come up over the past few days, Rolfe, Caustic Logic and Dan O. have done great work and present the anomalies in the evidence well, but you seem to be thrashing around for a conspiracy.

In this thread the timer fragment was planted, in another thread the Frankfurt baggage records were faked, or Bollier was leant on to lie about where the timers went. Any one of these could be true, but if they are all true then you have the octopus like NWO beloved of CTers able to manipulate anything. If some of them are just coincidence, or crappy investigating then maybe they all are.

I still think Megrahi was unjustly convicted, but I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me that evidence was planted or faked, beyond people who were at least half convinced Megrahi did it pushing Tony Gauci too hard to positively ID him and similar unprofessional but all too common lapses.

I'll keep reading and let you know if the curtain lifts and I see the truth.

[Rolfe]

Both of these methods would be costly to carry out and they would have been deferred until after the results of tracing the paper fragments was concluded. The paper immediately indicates that there is a manufactured commercial product and this board would very likely be a part of that product and therefore not important. Only after the Toshiba is identified, does the PC fragment becomes perhaps the most important piece of evidence and justify the expense in tracking it down.


I'm not sure this entirely fits. By May 1989, the date of Hayes's (alleged) discovery of the fragment, the Toshiba had already been identified from a fragment of circuit board and a sizeable legible portion of its manual. That is to say, the circuit board was known to match several different Toshiba models, including the one covered by the manual.

So while I can still see why they would be interested in the scraps of paper, after all, they might be from something other than the Toshiba manual, I'm struggling to understand why the "fragment of green circuit board" was packed away and ignored for another four months.

They would still have liked more evidence about the model of the Toshiba, so I'm surprised it wasn't flagged up to be checked from that angle. I'm also surprised that the possibility the fragment might be from the bomb mechanism itself wasn't even considered at the time.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

[....] but you seem to be thrashing around for a conspiracy.

In this thread the timer fragment was planted, in another thread the Frankfurt baggage records were faked, or Bollier was leant on to lie about where the timers went. Any one of these could be true, but if they are all true then you have the octopus like NWO beloved of CTers able to manipulate anything. If some of them are just coincidence, or crappy investigating then maybe they all are.


I don't disagree with that at all. If all the anomalies are explicable, then I'd be quite happy to see them explained. However, only by treating them seriously and trying to see how well they stand up to scrutiny can this be determined.

I'm mostly interested in the timer fragment, and don't find the suggestion that the baggage printout was faked to be terribly convincing. But I'm prepared to look at it, just so I'm sure what I think rather than jumping to conclusions.

I think Bollier is a wingnut acting on his own initiative, mainly motivated by a desire to retain/regain business from Libya. (Though I suppose the possibility that he's deliberate disinfo to discredit the whole idea that the timer fragment is dodgy is quite entertaining.)

I don't really buy the "Octopus" theory (the switch with the drug suitcase), but again, I'd like to look at it in detail (another thread, later....) to see just how it stacks up with actual evidence (as opposed to "Lester Coleman says").

I still think Megrahi was unjustly convicted, but I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me that evidence was planted or faked, beyond people who were at least half convinced Megrahi did it pushing Tony Gauci too hard to positively ID him and similar unprofessional but all too common lapses.

I'll keep reading and let you know if the curtain lifts and I see the truth.


You could be right, that that's the size of it. I always said that this could be as simple as so many other wrongful convictions - the investigating authorities convince themselves this guy did it, and then every piece of evidence is looked at in that light. Add fierce political pressure to bring in a guilty verdict, and there you go.

I just want to see if there's anything more, and the only way to do that is to take each strand of CT that's presented and see how plausible it looks.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Ambrosia's is the best. The shadow is consistent with the fiber and the overall angle of light - here appearing as from above (shadow below), app. cross-lit with a little shadow on each side, so almost straight "down." So I agree there. http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9072/fragmentfibre.jpg
There's a lump of lint on the left, gone later. and a tan speck, gone later. 2010 affidavit - Ulrich lied before by not saying that's the color of his trousers that day? and then these other things beneath that. Since they're gone later too, I'm thinking of them as smaller tighter fibers. or ash. Or something. Spent way too long on this:
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/MST-13_comp_scratches_and_all.jpg
And in context: true size board, I think, if it comes thru right. I re-painted the "M" twice to make sure it's even visible, in bright red. It's really smaller. Now who's supposed to have marked this, and when, and how and why? When it's the only artifact we can clearly ID as a ziggy filler fiber? Or is it? almost this big...
http://i133.photobucket.com/albums/q62/chainsawmoth/127-911/Lumpert_M_Scale.jpg


That's very good, you know. It's an excellent counter to all those documentary and web claims of difference. The angle thing is entirely due to a mis-matching, assuming the top is the same in both cases when of course it isn't.

I thought the speck to the left in the original photo might be another speck of Toshiba case plastic - there are several larger ones near there in the full shot.

The arrow you have labelled "micro-lint" points to a part of the original that I think has been slightly damaged before the later photo was taken, with a flake of material including the end of one of the printed circuit lines having come off. This is not really surprising given the size and fragility of the thing, and the manipulation that has been done. Could you look at that and consider labelling it "flaked-off fragment"?

As well as the missing top, I think the left side of the smaller piece (after sectioning) is also missing some material. This time, given that the edge is fairly straight, I think it's been deliberately taken off for analytical purposes rather than being accidental. All this is perfectly natural, given what they were doing with it, and it's not surprising that some material would be missing as they would have had to consume some in analysis.

I'm still a bit hazy about the "M" and the "scratches" though. I see what Ambrosia has said about the M, and would accept it, but I'm not sure it entirely explains the lower marks, those labelled "scratches by Lumpert". They seem densely concentrated in the areas of board between the printed circuit lines, but to avoid the lines themselves. They do look like tiny scratches.

I'm entirely convinced these two pictures are of the same item. The similarities are too close to be fabricated - in particular the exact pattern of shearing of the edges (where it can still be seen) and the pattern of marks on the "1" of the fingerpad. The latter is particularly convincing at the top.

I'm sure there is an explanation for the "scratches", but I'm not sure we've got it yet.

GT - this may look like "thrashing around for a conspiracy", but what I'm actually trying to do is examine each claim to see if it stands up, in the hope of seeing if there's anything of substance left once we've discounted the disprovable and the highly implausible. I think CL (and Ambrosia) have done a fantastic job of showing up Bollier's claims of a substituted fragment to be completely spurious.

It doesn't prove the fragment wasn't planted in the first place though.

Of course we'll never prove that it was planted. What I'm interested in is, is there a plausible scenario in which it could have been planted? Just highlighting all the anomalies doesn't cut it. We need a plausible account of who, why, when and how, or it doesn't fly. It seems to me nobody has actually come up with such a suggestion - all we have are people pointing to the anomalies and saying "plant!". If we can't come up with one that fits all the know facts, I'm going to go with the fragment being genuine. (Actually, it's a much more interesting puzzle if it's genuine!) However, I haven't yet convinced myself that a plausible scenario can't be constructed.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

They would still have liked more evidence about the model of the Toshiba, so I'm surprised it wasn't flagged up to be checked from that angle. I'm also surprised that the possibility the fragment might be from the bomb mechanism itself wasn't even considered at the time.

There is a lot of the investigation that we still don't have records of. For instance, when was the fragment cut up? There could have been a team working on that fragment from the day it was discovered but we don't know because that line wasn't presented in court. All we see is the simple line that is easier to play.


ps: I looked back at the page 51 image and saw where they correlated the paper fragment sheets with actual page numbers. These look like they were fit in afterwards with slightly smaller print and inconsistent placement. With that though, I am surprised that there isn't also a notation of which manual they came from.

[Rolfe]

There is a lot of the investigation that we still don't have records of. For instance, when was the fragment cut up? There could have been a team working on that fragment from the day it was discovered but we don't know because that line wasn't presented in court. All we see is the simple line that is easier to play.


As far as I can see, according to the evidence, nothing at all was done with the fragment between May 1989 (the date on Hayes's "page 51") and September, when all of a sudden Feraday seemed to decide it might be important and sent the polaroids to Williamson asking him if he had any idea what it was. It appears not to have been photographed before then, hence the very odd production of the polaroid picture as "the best I can do in such a short time". That picture is the "complete" fragment as we know it - there is no record of any larger version, and the cuts weren't made at that time.

This also seems to be the only picture available of the complete fragment, which is again odd. Even if there was some compelling reason why Feraday had to snap a quick polaroid (not even a straight-on view of the fragment) to send it post-haste to Williamson (after RARDE having sat on it for four months, and with no obvious reason for particular haste), surely to goodness someone would have taken a decent 35mm shot or six with a quality macro lens before starting to mutilate the thing? Maybe they did, but it's simply not in the public domain.

Thurman was sent a photograph of the fragment in the following June - or perhaps earlier, it was in June that he made the identification. His experience of the fragment seems all to be referring to the cut-up version, which again is odd because surely they would have sent him the pictures of the unmutilated exhibit? (Or both of course, but certainly the unmutilated one.) The match with the intact timer is a lot easier to make with the unmutilated fragment, because the top edges match up. It's possible of course that Thurman did have both pictures, but he's just not been clear about that in interview.

In the interview where he challenges the claim that the curvature of the fragment doesn't match, Thurman is very clear why, and that the top edge of the fragment is missing. He appears to have had no difficulty realising this, but he makes no reference to any picture of the unmutilated fragment, and appears not to know what happened to it.

There is some mention (in a rather hysterical post) on Bollier's web site of the fragment having been taken to Vienna and cut up there. I can't remember the date, although I think it was included. This may be correct - Bollier is often correct about the actual evidence, it's mainly his interpretations that are off beam.

ps: I looked back at the page 51 image and saw where they correlated the paper fragment sheets with actual page numbers. These look like they were fit in afterwards with slightly smaller print and inconsistent placement. With that though, I am surprised that there isn't also a notation of which manual they came from.


I did think these were actual page numbers. They may have been entered later after comparison with an intact manual, though I'm a little surprised the contemporaneous notes would have been altered like that.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

As far as I can see, according to the evidence, nothing at all was done with the fragment between May 1989 (the date on Hayes's "page 51") and September, when all of a sudden Feraday seemed to decide it might be important and sent the polaroids to Williamson asking him if he had any idea what it was. It appears not to have been photographed before then, hence the very odd production of the polaroid picture as "the best I can do in such a short time". That picture is the "complete" fragment as we know it - there is no record of any larger version, and the cuts weren't made at that time.

We have the date that the Polaroid was sent to Williamson but do we actually know that the picture was taken at that time?

[Rolfe]

We have the date that the Polaroid was sent to Williamson but do we actually know that the picture was taken at that time?


I don't think we do, but the assumption has never been questioned. If there was a file photo of the fragment available for Feraday to send, it would have been 35mm. The implication seems to be that he wanted to send a photo without delay, there wasn't one available, so he took polaroid shots (or rather, had the staff photographer take them) rather than have to wait for film to be developed.

The stated reason for using a polaroid camera seems weak. The fragment had been lying at RARDE for four months. There was no clear reason why Williamson had to have a picture like tomorrow. In fact, as the intention was to try to find out what the fragment was a fragment of, there was every reason to get as clear and detailed a picture as possible, even at the cost of a couple of days delay.

What special features does a polaroid camera have?

No developing is required
There is no negative to file
No need to involve a photographer in the process
Only one print is produced
Time/date information is absent
The one-print thing seems to be a particular disadvantage in this situation. Policemen like to have a sheaf of prints so that they can send the troops out in various directions in pursuit of an identification. But you only get one shot from a polaroid. If you're then going to start copying and enlarging a polaroid, well, you might as well have taken a decent 35mm shot in the first place.

Thinking about possible advantages of using a polaroid shot at this stage, if there really is some fabrication of evidence going on, I wonder if the last point is the important one? It would be much easier to put together evidence that the fragment had been looked at and photographed in September 1989 at a later date if the photograph were a timeless polaroid rather than part of a 35mm film with other contemporaneous pictures and maybe even a time/date stamp.

And again, why don't we have a good detailed 35mm picture taken shortly after the polaroid? Given the size of the thing, surely anyone in their right mind would want a professional enlargement with a macro lens as soon as possible? And I would have expected that this picture would have been the "standard" one shown in discussion - not a poor-resolution polaroid, or a shot taken after the thing had been forensically mutilated. And yet, these latter shots are all we ever see.

Just exercising my suspicious mind here.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I'm porting most of this post over from the Malta luggage thread, because to my mind it's more relevant to the possible fabrication of the timer fragment.

This film (The Maltese Double Cross) is pretty amazing in what information he had at the time. It was made in Nov. 1994, wasn't it? So why does i have the $4 million reward poster for the FBI program ushered in in mid-95? Can't re-locate it now, but It's different - no Megrahi or Fhimah pics, but the same case and the headline "we'll give you $4 million reasons to fight terrorism" with app. small print beneath it.


You're right, there is a different reward poster shown. Of course the film was made after the Megrahi/Fhimah charges were laid, so it could just be an earlier version of the 1995 effort. It's not unheard-of for things like this to be re-launched with a slightly different spin to get more publicity and raise the profile. We'd need to track down the context before we could see if there's any more to it, like a reward for information offered before Libya was implicated.

I dunno about LeWinter; from here I though 'old ex-CIA guy that's spent years repeating disposable CIA CT claims as if he knows all about them, gettin' a little slow at it now.' Others then said long-time hoaxster, so I'm like - meh. On Cannistrano his gist does make sense - it seems he was Reagan's 'make sh*t up about Gaddafi' guy, and here he's in charge of the investigation that wound up, parallel to the criminal one, doing just that. His Giaka teasers are classic. The set-up between that and the total teardown in court is jaw-dropping.


I know nothing at all about le Winter. However, if there is indeed dirty work at the crossroads here, it's clear that destroyng the credibility of those who speak out in inconvenient ways is the modus operandi of the security forces. It's therefore very difficult to know if people like le Winter and Lester Coleman are genuine, victims of smears and set-ups, or if they're simply wingnuts making stuff up. The thing that inclines me to the former opinion is the sheer number of people who simply can't be dismissed as wingnuts who are arguing on the same side as these people.

I note that the two productions that have been the most obvious victims of the discrediting campaign are The Maltese Double Cross and The Trail of the Octopus. If they're just way off beam, why not simply ignore them? Nobody's gagging Bollier as he spouts his rubbish about substituted green and brown fragments and perjuring engineers - it's obvious that can be disposed of as and when necessary, so why bother.

The one obvious thing The Maltese Double Cross and The Trail of the Octopus have in common is the Jafaar drug suitcase substitution theory. Which makes me feel that deserves more serious examination (later!).

Frankovitch (who made the film) pulled together an enormous amount of material from a wide variety of sources. It's an amazing job for its time, and actually even more so if it's making it all up as opposed to simply following a trail. It's a pity he died (in 1997) before the court case got underway. I wonder what he'd have made of that, and what would have happened if he'd ever got together with people like Robert Black and Hans Kochler.

On when he (Cannistraro) was put in charge, there's little around. Dr. Swire's site HAD a dedicated page on him with details, sourced at Wikipedia, no longer there (http://www.lockerbietruth.com/VincentCannistraro.html). It almost feels like a dead spot around these Qs, like Feraday's getting wikipedia to pull his profile (http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/06/alan-feraday-and-wikipedia.html). Or maybe not. But he was reportedly the CTC "Chief of Operations and Analysis" from 88-91, so would it make more sense for him to head the investigation up-front, or only after the normal guy was swapped out? We only have LeWinter's statements that he wasn't in charge at first. We can agree on guessing it was in no later than the end of 89 anyway, right?


Maybe the Wayback Machine has some of that stuff. Worth a look-see anyway. I didn't know Feraday had had his profile pulled from Wiki. I suppose if it's not flattering (low-grade technician with nothing more than an out-of-date HNC pontificating in court cases, finally called off and sent back to the back room where he belongs?), he might just not have wanted it there. (I thought it was quite difficult to shut Wiki up like that though?)

I'm not at all sure when Cannistraro entered the picture. The thing is, late 1989 is still a bit early for "hey let's frame Libya". Not impossible, because these spooks see the way events are developing before they actually play out, but 1990 is more plausible. Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, isn't that right, and Desert Storm began the following January (1991). It's the necessity to have Iran on-side for that, combined with neutralising Libya, that's generally regarded as the reason for the volte-face. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the first media surfacing of the "it was Libya!" version in September 1990, and it didn't become widespread until December 1990?

There's so much more to work on here than there is with 9/11. I don't know whether I'm glad we don't have a gaggle of rabid twoofers all over it like a rash, or whether we could actually do with their help in ferreting out stuff that needs sifting through!

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Honestly on all the circumstantial clues I've wearied of being sure they must mean something. Why write debris over cloth? Why not? Polaroids could just mean photos. In the time available might just indicate bad planning and it being Friday so just send the existing pictures rather than postpone AGAIN until next week. The quality is fine anyway. I've always been troubled by the page re-numbering. Why? Did he have to fit it to some record where it was set in stone his journal had 56 pages, but not what was on them? Why not re-do them all with non-messed up numbers? Just no time?

There are still things that make me wonder of course. Like how page 51 does seem to do just what backdating would need - mention but make absolutely no big deal about the fragment. Reality also MIGHT produce that, for reasons well-explored here, but backdating definitely WOULD. If done right.

Another is how such a simple process broken up into distinct spurts of activity about 4 months apart. January, charred cloth found. May, fragment noted, barely. September, specific attention. Early 1990, February I hear, forensic tests done and more photos taken. June, Thurman invites Williamson and Feraday to his ID session. 16 months it took to figure this out in these little spurts with apparently nothing happening in between. As Dan O. says we're missing some of the picture, but I'm also having a hard time figuring out what else they WOULD be doing about this increasingly interesting clue in the downtimes.

[Rolfe]

Is this the page on Cannistraro you were meaning (http://web.archive.org/web/20080123075305/www.lockerbietruth.com/VincentCannistraro.html)? I got it from the Wayback machine. I haven't explored every avenue there though, so if you think there's more I'll have another look. It doesn't say when he joined the enquiry, or even that he wasn't there from the start.

Vincent Cannistraro, CIA

Former CIA agent and administrator in the Nicaraguan campaign that formed the basis of the mid-1980s Oliver North Iran-Contra scandal. Was put in charge of the CIA team investigating the Lockerbie bombing.

Was the bomb timer fragment pointing to Libya planted by American intelligence? A former CIA Middle East specialist Robert Baer claims claims that Iran funded the operation and that a Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorist group placed the bomb on board Pan Am 103. If Baer is correct, then one major conclusion must be that the single piece of hard evidence which the prosecution would later claim pointed solely to Libya, was faked and planted.

Early in 1991 Cannistraro said "We believe - and I think this has been accepted by the President's Commission on Aviation Security - that [Palestinian terrorist leader Ahmed] Jibril ultimately orchestrated the operation which led to the destruction of Pan Am 103." Yet within six months of that statement, Cannistraro was publicly supporting the indictments issued against the Libyans Fhimah and Al-Megrahi.

Why was Cannistraro not called to the Lockerbie trial to give evidence? The court knew that CIA or FBI agents had illegally removed evidence from the scene of the crash, and re-inserted at least one piece of evidence after it had been tampered with, thus casting doubt on the validity of whatever evidence was finally recovered. It was known that Cannistraro's name was on the original list of witnesses. All that he could offer by way of explanation was that he believed "it was the Department of Justice who removed my name."


"Early in 1991" he was still saying it was Jibril??? That's very odd. The "Libya did it!" meme was out in the public domain from late 1990. I wonder how accurate this is.

Rolfe.

[Dan O.]

I don't think we do, but the assumption has never been questioned. If there was a file photo of the fragment available for Feraday to send, it would have been 35mm. The implication seems to be that he wanted to send a photo without delay, there wasn't one available, so he took polaroid shots (or rather, had the staff photographer take them) rather than have to wait for film to be developed.

The stated reason for using a polaroid camera seems weak. The fragment had been lying at RARDE for four months. There was no clear reason why Williamson had to have a picture like tomorrow. In fact, as the intention was to try to find out what the fragment was a fragment of, there was every reason to get as clear and detailed a picture as possible, even at the cost of a couple of days delay.

What special features does a polaroid camera have?

No developing is required
There is no negative to file
No need to involve a photographer in the process
Only one print is produced
Time/date information is absent
The one-print thing seems to be a particular disadvantage in this situation. Policemen like to have a sheaf of prints so that they can send the troops out in various directions in pursuit of an identification. But you only get one shot from a polaroid. If you're then going to start copying and enlarging a polaroid, well, you might as well have taken a decent 35mm shot in the first place.

Thinking about possible advantages of using a polaroid shot at this stage, if there really is some fabrication of evidence going on, I wonder if the last point is the important one? It would be much easier to put together evidence that the fragment had been looked at and photographed in September 1989 at a later date if the photograph were a timeless polaroid rather than part of a 35mm film with other contemporaneous pictures and maybe even a time/date stamp.

Does Feraday actually have his office at RARDE or is he working from somewhere else and only visits there. If he is just visiting then he would want to take a photo of the chip with him on the day he discovered it because as you say, it looks to be a very important piece of evidence. If he is just a low level tech that happens to have some outside contacts, he may not have the authority to call RARDE and tell them to send a good photo of that chip to Williamson. But he could send that Polaroid that he took for himself. Whether he thought about the future ramifications of this act or not, it puts him in the chain of events for the break in the case and he is soon flying off to Washington for a face to face with Williamson and the MST-13 timer.

And how did Feraday believe that Williamson would be able to identify the chip? It looks like a hail-marry pass unless someone in the background already had some solid information that we aren't seeing.


And again, why don't we have a good detailed 35mm picture taken shortly after the polaroid? Given the size of the thing, surely anyone in their right mind would want a professional enlargement with a macro lens as soon as possible? And I would have expected that this picture would have been the "standard" one shown in discussion - not a poor-resolution polaroid, or a shot taken after the thing had been forensically mutilated. And yet, these latter shots are all we ever see.

We only see what either the prosecution or the defense wanted to use in court. The prosecution has a simple chain that establishes the provenance of the chip without going into the confusing technical details of circuit board manufacturing. If they present the high resolution photo, it might bring up the derailing question of why that photo wasn't sent to Williamson instead.

The defense doesn't want to focus any attention on the chip that points to the timer that points to mebo that points to Libya that points to their client. So they aren't going to even ask if there is a better photo.


PS: Notice in the photo of PP8932 showing the collar, bits of plastic, circuit chip and paper manual fragment, the paper is still in one piece. This photo precedes the notes of page 51 showing the separated pieces of paper.

[Rolfe]

Does Feraday actually have his office at RARDE or is he working from somewhere else and only visits there. If he is just visiting then he would want to take a photo of the chip with him on the day he discovered it because as you say, it looks to be a very important piece of evidence. If he is just a low level tech that happens to have some outside contacts, he may not have the authority to call RARDE and tell them to send a good photo of that chip to Williamson. But he could send that Polaroid that he took for himself. Whether he thought about the future ramifications of this act or not, it puts him in the chain of events for the break in the case and he is soon flying off to Washington for a face to face with Williamson and the MST-13 timer.

And how did Feraday believe that Williamson would be able to identify the chip? It looks like a hail-marry pass unless someone in the background already had some solid information that we aren't seeing.


Feraday worked at RARDE, I believe. He was listed in Wikipedia at one point as being the director, which isn't bad going for someone with only an out-of-date HNC to his name. Gleaning the sequence of events from a number of sources, the suggestion is that the evidence looked at in May was being checked over again in September to see if anything interesting might still be lurking there.

He didn't go anywhere near Washington then. His Washington trip (with Williamson to see Thurber) was in the summer of 1990. In Sepember 1989 all he did was send the polaroid to Williamson in Scotland with a note that it might be something of interest.

I don't think Feraday had any notion that Williamson could identify the chip. But Williamson was the Scottish detective working on the case, so it was his job to get the leg-work organised. He apparently got nowhere, until 9 months later Thurman identified the chip from a photo that had been sent to him. Possibly by Williamson, this is not reported in detail that I know of.

We only see what either the prosecution or the defense wanted to use in court. The prosecution has a simple chain that establishes the provenance of the chip without going into the confusing technical details of circuit board manufacturing. If they present the high resolution photo, it might bring up the derailing question of why that photo wasn't sent to Williamson instead.

The defense doesn't want to focus any attention on the chip that points to the timer that points to mebo that points to Libya that points to their client. So they aren't going to even ask if there is a better photo.


Indeed. It's a question of the publicity. Of all the photos to trot out, the obvious one is the good 35mm macro lens enlargement of the intact fragment. If it existed. And if it didn't, what was Williamson touting round electronics firms in late 1989/early 1990?

PS: Notice in the photo of PP8932 showing the collar, bits of plastic, circuit chip and paper manual fragment, the paper is still in one piece. This photo precedes the notes of page 51 showing the separated pieces of paper.


Wut!!?? That's interesting. That implies that picture was taken in May 1989 at the earliest. I need to re-think some stuff.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Honestly on all the circumstantial clues I've wearied of being sure they must mean something.


I think it's impossible that they all mean something. Some of them, inevitably, are just in the "stuff happens" category. I'm more inclined to place the Erac printout in that category than the timer fragment, but either or both could indeed be entirely kosher.

Why write debris over cloth? Why not?


I don't know. You have to examine the label extremely carefully to see the change. I don't see what was or might have been achieved by making this change, however it is odd. Why was Gilchrist's evidence about it in court described by the judges as "at best unhelpful, at worst evasive"? It has been noted that no other similar alteration was seen on any other evidence label, and that legitimate alterations should have been done by crossing out and leaving the original text legible.

Hmmmm. One of the interviews in The Maltese Double Cross is with one of the English search team, in the Kielder Forest. (The film keeps coming back to the discovery of the fragment, and each time it gives a different version. Hmmm.) He says that very much later (1990?) he was visited by police bearing three evidence bags and asking him to sign for them as having been brought in by himself or his team. He said he'd never seen the stuff before. He said one was a bit of cloth (not sure if he said charred), one seemed to be bits of brown suitcase, and he doesn't know what was in the third.

Suppose the entire shirt collar and associated debris were put together at that time, and this was an attempt to get a civilian provenance for the find? (He didn't say if he signed or not, but I suspect not.) The label was changed because they used an old one. The mountain rescue guy didn't sign, and in the end they got a Scottish policeman to sign. This could explain why he was so worried about giving evidence (according to someone, possibly the Golfer), and evasive, rather than just saying openly that after he wrote the label he realised there was also debris in the bag and changed it, so sorry, should just have crossed it out, my bad.

Was it presented as being found in the Kielder Forest, as so many of the sources say? Not sure why a Scottish policeman would be searching Northumberland on his hands and knees. Didn't he have enough to do in his own country, where the crash happened, and weren't there enough English police to do what was needed over the border in England? These guys are usually very protective of their own turf.

Polaroids could just mean photos. In the time available might just indicate bad planning and it being Friday so just send the existing pictures rather than postpone AGAIN until next week. The quality is fine anyway.


No. "Photos" could be polaroids, or not, but I don't believe anyone would use the word "polaroid" for a 35mm photo. The quality is fair, but it's nowhere close to being a proper photographic record of a vital piece of evidence. The pace of this entire thing simply doesn't support the "polaroids 'cos this is urgent" explanation. And even if for some weird reason that was done, it doesn't explain the absence of a good 35mm shot of the fragment in its original condition, taken next week.

The more I think about it, the weirder that omission gets. Before anybody started to mutilate the evidence, it should have been absolutely axoimatic to get a good photographic record of its original appearance. And it should have been the best of those pictures that became the iconic shot of the fragment.

Unless the whole bloody boiling was being manufactured in 1990. Get that polaroid (with no traceable date) to represent what was seen in September 1989, then get the hell on with simulating the forensic testing.

I'm brainstorming here, but it seems to be flying at the moment.

I've always been troubled by the page re-numbering. Why? Did he have to fit it to some record where it was set in stone his journal had 56 pages, but not what was on them? Why not re-do them all with non-messed up numbers? Just no time?


The page renumbering may look the strongest link in the chain, but it's not.

Hayes actually gave a perfectly reasonable explanation to the court. He said he was numbering the pages by hand as he added them to the folder. He thinks he must have realised, when he got to page 56, that he had accidentally numbered two pages with the number 51. He therefore crossed out the second of these, and the original numbers 52 to 55, and re-numbered the sequence 52 to 56. This could well be true, but it still leaves the huge coincidence of it being the very page describing the hugely suspicious timer fragment which was affected by the mistake.

The other way of looking at it is, Hayes was looking for somewhere to interpolate this evidence. Between pages 50 and 51 seemed to be an excellent place for it to go to look natural. However, he couldn't just tear up the original page 51. But there was a page 56 that had nothing of importance on it and was expendable, so he tore that up and re-numbered the original pages 51 to 55.

Better not to fabricate anything more than necessary, so don't re-write these pages - maybe other reasons, e.g. time, and the nature of the material on these pages. He doesn't make the mistake of trying for an invisible alteration either, because that's more suspicious if spotted (vide supra). And in the unlikely event of anybody actually looking at this and noticing the re-numbering (remember, for years nobody seriously believed there would ever be a trial), well, Hayes isn't the accused, and he has his perfectly plausible story ready. (A couple of sources have him saying the renumbering is "an unfathomable mystery", but I don't know where they get that from, the explanation in the court judgement is perfectly reasonable.)

OK, still just brainstorming, but it's still more or less airborne.

There are still things that make me wonder of course. Like how page 51 does seem to do just what backdating would need - mention but make absolutely no big deal about the fragment. Reality also MIGHT produce that, for reasons well-explored here, but backdating definitely WOULD. If done right.


Mmmm, exactly.

Another is how such a simple process broken up into distinct spurts of activity about 4 months apart. January, charred cloth found. May, fragment noted, barely. September, specific attention. Early 1990, February I hear, forensic tests done and more photos taken. June, Thurman invites Williamson and Feraday to his ID session. 16 months it took to figure this out in these little spurts with apparently nothing happening in between. As Dan O. says we're missing some of the picture, but I'm also having a hard time figuring out what else they WOULD be doing about this increasingly interesting clue in the downtimes.


Apparently, from September 1989 to June 1990, Williamson was trawling the circuit board manufacturers of Europe trying to get a match, to no avail. And all the while there was Thurman sitting in America, who could have told him straight off what it was. Oops.

Again, I find it hard to see why Williamson would be doing all this without a decent high-magnification photo of the fragment, and yet if such a picture was taken (before forensics cut it up), why isn't that the "iconic image"? What on earth was he showing to these electronics guys between September 1989 and February 1990 (assuming better pictures of the mutilated fragment bcame available then)?

OK, I firmly state I'm indulging in pure speculation here, treating the thing as an abstract exercise in thriller-solving, with no more connection to reality than an Agatha Christie plot. No implications of wrongdoing against persons alive or dead are implied or should be inferred. Consider this as alternate-reality fiction.

My brainstorming is taking me to the suggestion that the entire bag of evidence was put together some time in early 1990, possibly using irrelevant, surplus material from the investigation to give provenance to the timer fragment. The fragment itself was derived from a second intact timer held by the US (the original find was of two timers, of which only one was said to have been given to the USA, but there is no record of what happened to the other one).

I note that on 30th January 1990 the police were asking Gauci about grey shirts, though whether they were showing him the piece the fragment was found in is not recorded.

After assembling the bag of evidence, it's opened and Hayes writes his page of notes, mentioning the fragment but not giving it any special emphasis. The page is really all about these flakes of Toshiba manual, after all. That's what he's concentrating on here! He's so keen on the flakes of manual, he barely noticed the circuit board at the time.

Then the polariod picture(s) are taken, using the polaroid camera because that doesn't leave any hard evidence of the date, and Feraday writes his little memo to Williamson.

The fragment is then fed into the forensic testing system for these guys to get on with it.

Now what? The difficulty with this is the suggestion of a conspiracy involving people from different arms of the investigation and even different countries. Political and/or high-level security instructions come from the PtB to Cannistraro, who is CIA. He has to get the fragment fabricated, possibly involving Thurman, who is FBI, and the CIA and the FBI hate each other's guts. (On the other hand, that's not essential. I see certain suggestions that Thurman was involved - his very easy identification of the fragment, appreciating immediately that the top has been removed forensically and so on, but he might have had nothing to do with it.)

Then he has to get the fragment inserted into the chain of evidence in England, which requires both Hayes and Feraday to be up for some shenanigans. Big risk, I'd have thought. But then, who knows how these things might be organised. Possibly the availability of forensics people prepared to get involved in shenanigans is what dictates the feasibility of the exercise.

Williamson may merely consent to shifting the date he received the photograph from Feraday back to September 1989, but otherwise get on with it. And then the fragment itself was passed to forensics to be dissected. (Possibly it was expected that forensics would take close-ups of the undamaged fragment, but forensics assumed that had already been documented.)

Longtabber did say something sensible. It makes better sense to feed your fake evidence into the legitimate investigation process, and let them deal with it in all good faith for while. Then after the British side of the investigation has had it for a while, and it has genuine established provenance in the system, get a picture of it to Thurman (we don't know who sent him the picture or exactly when), who knows what it is.

Well, who knows. As I said, it's fantasy. But it is possible to construct a narrative such that the fragment is faked, within known evidence and probability. Until someone comes and shoots it down of course.

As I said above, the puzzle is actually more interesting in some ways if the fragment is genuine, and everyone in the investigation telling the absolute truth about it. Which is perfectly possible.

I'm just interested to know whether it's possible to create a scenario in which the fragment is fabricated, or whether any speculation about the case must inevitably assume it's genuine. Because, if it's fabricated, the device pretty much has to have gone on at Heathrow. If it's not, then Frankfurt or even other airports become a distinct possibility. That's the real relevance.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Pray forgive the dose of tl;dr above.

And read it anyway so you cen tell me what's wrong with it.

But Dan O. has pointed out something that has to be factored in. The picture of the whole exhibit (including collar) was taken before the paper fragments were teased out. What I thought was a detached fragment of shirt collar is indeed the compacted paper fragment. Thus, attempts to reconstruct the Official Version have been incorrect.

Actually, this observation doesn't have much effect on the CT version I expounded apart from changing the order of a couple of steps. It does affect understanding of the Official Version.

The inescapable conclusion is that the fragment, in context, was indeed photographed at the time Hayes made his May notes - probably, or even earlier. That picture has never looked like a polaroid to me, but I can't really say. I just accepted it was, because "people" said so. "People" being mostly Bollier, my bad.

So what did Feraday send to Williamson in September? That picture? Surely not, if it was a polaroid and hence the only copy. Maybe he was reviewing the evidence from the files only, and so only saw the picture at that stage. So, did he have a polaroid taken of the file photo?

What's the red circle for? I thought Feraday had done that to show Williamson which item he was talking about. But this photo goes back to May, would Feraday deface a file photo in September? It would be easy to say Feraday had simply got another print made of the file photo, circled the fragment on it, and sent that. But that would quite specifically not be a polaroid.

Is it a polaroid photo of the file photo? The copy with the red circle looks too good to be that. And for goodness sake, there's no hurry so great that you'd send a policeman a photo of a photo to use for his identification search! (OK maybe there is, but this isn't it.) Anyway, Feraday actually says "Here are some polaroid photos of the green circuitboard. Sorry about the quality but it's the best I can do in such a short time."

This tends to imply to me that we do not have the polaroids Feraday was talking about. What we are looking at is a routine picture taken in May just before Hayes first examined the exhibit. What that red circle is doing there I have no idea. Could it have been added at the time of the court hearing? (Now, could that be dated to May, by examining the negative? No idea. But if this line of explanation is correct, you'd think it could have been.)

What's the game with the September polaroids then?

Surely Feraday wasn't just going by photographs when he decided the fragment looked important. Even if it started like that, he'd have had to have got the actual exhibit out of store to see it for himself and get those polaroids taken?

My head hurts. I should go to bed. But it does occur to me that the important exhibits were tracked as to where they were and when they were taken out of store. I saw something relating to this elsewhere. If these records are clear and tamperproof, it could knock my CT scenario on the head of course.

I suspect there's a sensible explanation for all this if I only knew what it was. Right now it's doing my head in.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Here's the bit of The Maltese Double Cross, with the interview with the mountain rescue guy who led part of the search in Northumberland.

Edwin Bollier

Afterwards when we heard that a fragment had been found in the tragic Lockerbie accident, I wanted to see this piece. In 1990 or 1991 I spent a whole week with the FBI because I wanted to see the actual fragment. They then told me they didn't have it, that the Scottish police had it. So I spent a whole week with the Scottish police, but they refused to show me the piece. They only showed me a photograph.

The FBI officer said this could be explained. Three of his people had sworn that they had found this piece in a piece of a coat, and had signed a paper to this effect. I later heard it said that it was the Scottish police who had found the piece in a shirt that had come from Malta.

Narrator

So the FBI were telling Mr. Bollier they had three men in Scotland in place constantly for two years, when every piece was found, because how could they have known beforehand what was important? Then the Scottish police tell him that none of that is true. They in fact found the smoking timer, themselves, in a shirt from Malta.

Two years after this mountain rescue team had searched the Kielder Forest for two brief but terrible Christmas weeks - that is how long the main search really went on - Bobby was asked by the police to sign a statement saying he had found things, including things he could not even identify.

Bobby Ingram, volunteer searcher

Approximately two years after the search had finished, I received a phone call from a policeman in Lockerbie itself, asking if he could come down to my home and bring with him certain bags containing some evidence that was of an important nature, and would I sign to say that I picked those up, or people in my party had picked those up and I'd handed them in. He brought with him three small bags about the size of an A5 piece of paper, one of which contained this item of cloth, one of which contained a brown piece which looked very much like a piece of suitcase, and the third item, I've just no idea what it was.


My default position is not to believe a word Bollier says. Bobby Ingram, on the other hand, is a different matter. Were they really trying to get him to establish provenance on the collar of the grey slalom shirt?

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Here's the bit of The Maltese Double Cross, with the interview with the mountain rescue guy who led part of the search in Northumberland.
...
My default position is not to believe a word Bollier says. Bobby Ingram, on the other hand, is a different matter. Were they really trying to get him to establish provenance on the collar of the grey slalom shirt?

Rolfe.

Wow. I hadn't absorbed what Ingram said, but It's got a ring of realism to it. It does seem a bit out there to simply ask people outright to forge evidence tags, specially if they're people like this that talk about it. How many others kept quiet? How much was planted? When? What positive evidence do we have? All the clothes pointed to Libya. I've never wanted to argue THOSE were planted. ... I'll have to come back to this. Did he say two years? That bettwer be important stuff. Or not, since he'd recognize his own handiwork cited as altering world event, wouldn't he? Grain o salt.

Edwin Bollier

Afterwards when we heard that a fragment had been found in the tragic Lockerbie accident, I wanted to see this piece. In 1990 or 1991 I spent a whole week with the FBI because I wanted to see the actual fragment. They then told me they didn't have it, that the Scottish police had it. So I spent a whole week with the Scottish police, but they refused to show me the piece. They only showed me a photograph.

I believe him here, more or less. Makes sense.

The FBI officer said this could be explained. Three of his people had sworn that they had found this piece in a piece of a coat, and had signed a paper to this effect. I later heard it said that it was the Scottish police who had found the piece in a shirt that had come from Malta.

He makes it sound like some discrepancy. The whole movie is a little confused on the subject, which is great cause it shows how confusing this all is. It was reportedly found in a collar part of a rather coatlike shirt, from Malta. THAT may have been planted, on top of speculation the timer fragment was planted within that. Then we've got Bollier bringing in the microscopic musical chairs with the swapping of chips and bits of chips. Really, I have no fundamental problem with any of this, as far as considering it until I see evidence otherwise.

Narrator

So the FBI were telling Mr. Bollier they had three men in Scotland in place constantly for two years, when every piece was found, because how could they have known beforehand what was important? Then the Scottish police tell him that none of that is true. They in fact found the smoking timer, themselves, in a shirt from Malta.

???
nevermind

Okay, so this circuit board fragment appeared to Frankovich at the time to have only been found after two winters, so in 1990 - we have some allegations of late-forged material in app. LATE 1990 - the most important materials point to Malta and have the timer bit - the impetus to target Libya rather than follow the real trail is clear to all by mid-1990. Gulf War foreshadowing in full bloom to high-level types. Thurman's yup happened then. Indictment followed soon, and the PR blitzes.

Atsa lotta backdating though if it was this time. I'm a backdating proponent, but ... wait, I'm already arguing that for these anyway. Y'know, I think the 9/15 Ferraday-Williamson memo is legit. I think BKA-FBI contact on the Frankfurt airport records came in around the same time. I don't see much reason to plant more clothes later when the ones you need are already logged and yielding the right leads...

And thanks for thoughts on my image thing. I'll prob revise a bit and get a blog post up soon. This investigative discussion thread ROCKS.

[Rolfe]

Wow. I hadn't absorbed what Ingram said, but It's got a ring of realism to it. It does seem a bit out there to simply ask people outright to forge evidence tags, specially if they're people like this that talk about it. How many others kept quiet? How much was planted? When? What positive evidence do we have? All the clothes pointed to Libya. I've never wanted to argue THOSE were planted. ... I'll have to come back to this. Did he say two years? That bettwer be important stuff. Or not, since he'd recognize his own handiwork cited as altering world event, wouldn't he? Grain o salt.


I wonder about the "two years" part - it seems unfeasibly long. A year miight be more like it. I'm not sure if we can postulate that Ingram was mistaken or just suffered a slip of the tongue there.

The rest isn't necessarily as momentous as all that. Just after the crash, enormous piles of stuff were being recovered. Bound to be some mistakes in documentation. Couple of bags not signed for, believed to have come from Ingram's team, hey junior constable, could you just go and get his signature on that?

If Ingram did sign (and note that he doesn't say he did), then these bags themselves are not that important, because nothing with Ingram's signature was presented in evidence as far as I know. The bag with the timer fragment was supposedly found by Gilchrist.

While it's not impossible that one of the bags Ingram describes is the bag in question, and we could postulate that after Ingram said he couldn't sign because he didn't recognise the material, Gilchrist was approached to sign instead, I don't think that's exactly Frankovich's point. His point was simply that some time after the crash (even up to two years, possibly), retrospective authentication of recovered evidence was being undertaken. Maybe it was all semi-legit, just tidying up sloppy documentation left over from a pretty stressful exercise, but how do we know an extra bag of evidence couldn't have been snuck in the same way?

He makes it sound like some discrepancy. The whole movie is a little confused on the subject, which is great cause it shows how confusing this all is. It was reportedly found in a collar part of a rather coatlike shirt, from Malta. THAT may have been planted, on top of speculation the timer fragment was planted within that. Then we've got Bollier bringing in the microscopic musical chairs with the swapping of chips and bits of chips. Really, I have no fundamental problem with any of this, as far as considering it until I see evidence otherwise.

Okay, so this circuit board fragment appeared to Frankovich at the time to have only been found after two winters, so in 1990 - we have some allegations of late-forged material in app. LATE 1990 - the most important materials point to Malta and have the timer bit - the impetus to target Libya rather than follow the real trail is clear to all by mid-1990. Gulf War foreshadowing in full bloom to high-level types. Thurman's yup happened then. Indictment followed soon, and the PR blitzes.


There seems to have been a lot of confusion about who found the shirt collar, and where, and when. The detail of that isn't easily accessible now, because the final story of Gilchrist and his buddy finding it in a fingertip search has become canon. Unfortunately Frankovich isn't clear about the details of the conflicting stories. I think the basic point is probably that the fragment may well have been planted as late as 1990 because it's all completely up in the air.

Of course Frankovich never saw what came out at the trial - the Hayes notes with page 51, and the 15th September memo from Feraday. So we'll never know what he would have made of these.

Atsa lotta backdating though if it was this time. I'm a backdating proponent, but ... wait, I'm already arguing that for these anyway. Y'know, I think the 9/15 Ferraday-Williamson memo is legit. I think BKA-FBI contact on the Frankfurt airport records came in around the same time. I don't see much reason to plant more clothes later when the ones you need are already logged and yielding the right leads...


Gimme a break, this was an English memo, quit with the 9/15 thing, you're confusing the hell out of me. If it was anything, it was 15-9-89, but just to save confusion, type the name of the month.

I can certainly argue that memo as legit. We now know we don't have the actual polaroids referred to. The wording makes it clear the memo is really a covering note. Feraday says "the" fragment, not "a" fragment. It implies that he's spoken to Williamson about it already, probably on the phone. It could be that Williamson has put some sort of time constraint on him, possibly something to do with the "lads and lassies" who are going to be asked to try to identify the thing.

Let's suppose Feraday has just noticed that Hayes seems to have dropped a stitch back in May, and not flagged up that hugely significant fragment when he first logged it. He phones Williamson to tell him he's found something that looks important but needs to be forensically examined. Williamson tells him he's going to meet the boffins at the Scottish Criminal Records Bureau the day after tomorrow, and if he can just have a picture of the fragment he'll take it with him. The only picture available is the composite shot of the entire exhibit taken before Hayes teased out the paper fragment, and it doesn't show the timer fragment straight on or in decent detail. There isn't time to get a set of 35mm pictures taken and developed, so Feraday gets a couple of polaroids taken to send immediately. The polaroids soon fade from view because better pictures are also taken (pity they're not part of the public record), but the mention of them remains in that note.

And thanks for thoughts on my image thing. I'll prob revise a bit and get a blog post up soon. This investigative discussion thread ROCKS.


I would suggest that a page dedicated to exploding Bollier's claims that the fragment has been substituted during the forensic process would be very justifiable. His claims (brown boards, mis-matching curves, Lumpert's affidavit and so on) have become very pervasive and they're muddying the waters quite badly.

I think he's just a nut, but a case could be made for him being actual disinfo. Think about it. Lots of people think the fragment was planted. Bollier comes up with what seems like solid evidence to back that up. This is latched on to by those investigating a plant, and made the central plank of their allegations. Then, hey presto, the authorities do what you've just done and show that the earliest photo of the fragment is the same item as the court exhibit, and it matches the Togo timer. Ergo, no substitution. Case dismissed.

But actually, the suspicion that the fragment was planted doesn't depend at all on the thing having been substituted. It's an awful lot easier to examine the possibility of a plant if you're clear about that, and that Bollier is talking mince.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I suppose my title of the thread was wrong. We can't possibly say the fragment was planted. Could it have been planted?

There's an awful lot of this that stinks to high heaven. It just reeks of cover-up. I don't think creating a little bit of evidence is an unthinkable suggestion.

Cannistraro seems very suspicious. Swire originally suggested he was responsible for doing exactly that. The idea that the strategy wonks-in-chief sent him in there to make sure the blame was fixed on Libya seems quite plausible.

So, if he did it, what did he do next?

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

You know, Caustic Logic, if you have a chance to get up a page summarising the evidence here, especially showing that the fragment is identical betwen the first picture and the trial exhibit, it could be very valuable. (I'm afraid I'm really busy this week.)

This morning my radio alarm came on as usual, and I was trying to wake up, and I heard the words ".... FBI officer Richard Marquise said the fragment was taken to Washington.... Suspicions that it had been tampered with were raised very early on in the enquiry...."

I honestly thought I was hallucinating, because I'd been reading too much about the case!

But no. The full article came on about ten minutes later. Christine Grahame, who is my own local MSP, is making waves about the provenance of the fragment. She repeatedly said that the documentation does not show any record of the fragment ever having been taken out of Scotland, but she'd received evidence through an FoI request that it had been taken to Germany for examination. In addition, she was quoting Marquise in the Dutch documentary as claiming that it was taken to the USA. Someone also mentioned that the forensic expert in that film agreed with Bollier and not with Thurman.

Here is the online article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8315748.stm), and readers in Britain may be able to listen to the radio broadcast.

I was very surprised by her insistence that the fragment was never officially taken out of Scotland. I thought it was a fact that it was examined at RARDE, in Kent. However, I notice that the web report quotes Peter Fraser as saying that it was never "taken out of Scottish jurisdiction or control". Would that still cover examination in England? I'm not sure about that. In the same way, if Scottish police took it to Munich, or to Washington, would it not still count as being "under Scottish jurisdiction and control" if the Scottish policemen always had it in their possession?

What Christine was saying was that the log of the fragment doesn't show it going out of Scotland at all. I have no idea how correct she is about this.

Christine can be a bit inclined to jump to conclusions. I know her very slightly, but I don't suppose she'd be likely to pay an attention to me. She hasn't mentioned Bollier or his claims of substitution, but I'm a bit concerned she's heading in that direction. And of course, basing one's argument on Bollier's claims is obviously a one-way road to losing all credibility, once it has been shown that the photos all show the same fragment.

Looking dispassionately at the Dutch film, I suspect that Marquise's claim that the fragment was in Washington might be a trick of the memory after 18 years. He does seem to accept correction from Henderson towards the end. Also, the film-makers show the wrong picture at one stage (the Toshiba fragment instead of the timer fragment), and confuse Thurman. Thurman has been quite clear in other interviews that his identification was made from a photograph. However, 18 years is a long time, and he probably did see the actual fragment at some later stage, so again I think both he and the Dutch film-makers were slightly confused there. Using that film to allege shenanigans is quite clearly unsafe - allegations have to be cross-checked and verified from other sources.

This seems more like a legal ploy than a real question about the fragment's reliability. Frankly, if it's the same fragment all the time and it matches up with the Togo board, it doesn't matter in real terms whether the thing was taken to Timbuctoo or Ulan Bator. It might be useful if you wanted to get the conviction quashed to be able to say, the provenance of the fragment is compromised, it can't be used in evidence. However, since the fragment exists, and doesn't seem to have been illegitimately tampered with in any way that would influence the identification, that seems very unsatisfactory to me.

Anyway, if there was a nice, succinct web page summarising what we've found in this thread and in particular showing that the original photo from the composite picture is the same item as the court exhibit and that both are consistent with the Togo board, it would at least be something to point Christine at, to try to prevent her from making unfounded points which can only result in loss of credibility.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

And just speculating here, but if you wanted to squash suggestions that a planted piece of evidence was questionable, then having a lot of false allegations made about it that could be disproved might be awfully useful, no?

Rolfe.

[Buncrana]

In a press release by Member of the Scottish Parliament Christine Grahame this morning, she has under the freedom of information act, obtained the following statement from the Scottish crown office :

PT 35 was taken to the Siemens company in Munich, Germany in April 1990 by Scottish police officers.

Ms Grahame has also stated that last week FBI Senior Investigating Officer Dick Marquise confirmed to her office that,
“PT-35, the actual fragment, came to the US one time, in June 1990 in the possession of a Scottish police officer and Feraday (Alan Feraday of the UK forensic explosives laboratory, RARDE).”


This is in direct contradiction to the statements made in the Dutch documentary, "Lockerbie: Revisited" by Chief Scottish prosecutor at the time of the Lockerbie disaster Lord Fraser, the FBI's Dick Marquise and senior Scottish investigator Stuart Henderson. In the documentary Lord Fraser stated that "As far as I’m aware it’s (the fragment) always been in the UK.”

What became apparent from "Lockerbie:Revisited" was that neither Lord Fraser or Mr Marquise can conclusively explain who exactly made this identification of the timer fragment, and where this identification was made. In the UK or in Washington? By Mr Thurman or Mr Feraday? The fragment itself, or as part of the larger circuit board from where the fragment came? By photograph or the actual fragment?

In perhaps the biggest and most important case of their careers, the stories of those leading the investigation completely contradict each other?

Detective Chief Supt Henderson, head of the UK police investigation, also states that the evidence relating to Pan Am 103, any evidence, but specifically the fragment of microchip, never left the UK mainland, but in actual fact the US investigators and the FBI had travelled to the UK to identify the fragment at RARDE with Mr Feraday.

DCS Henderson had stated in the Dutch documentary that,
“We couldn’t afford to let something like that go. It has never been in their [US] control at all. It couldn’t be, because it was such an important point of evidence it wasn’t possible to release it. It had to be contained to be produced at the court therefore you couldn’t afford to have it waved around for everyone to see it because it could have got interfered with.”

Yet today in Ms Grahame's statement released it also states,
"In his precognition statement given to Scottish Crown prosecutors DCS Henderson confirms that on the 22nd of June 1990 Henderson, accompanied by Chief Inspector McLean, DI Williamson and Alan Feraday from RARDE took the fragment to the US and “Met in Washington with metropolitan field officers of the FBI and Thomas Thurman.”

Further details and the full statement are available of Prof. Robert Black's blog.

[Caustic Logic]

You know, Caustic Logic, if you have a chance to get up a page summarising the evidence here, especially showing that the fragment is identical betwen the first picture and the trial exhibit, it could be very valuable. (I'm afraid I'm really busy this week.)

Yeah, I've been meaning to come back around to "Ebol the clown" (my own phrase) but it's just so obviously bad and tedious to sort thru ... now this development, which gives me some hints on what might actually be useful:

<snip>Christine Grahame, who is my own local MSP, is making waves about the provenance of the fragment. She repeatedly said that the documentation does not show any record of the fragment ever having been taken out of Scotland, but she'd received evidence through an FoI request that it had been taken to Germany for examination. In addition, she was quoting Marquise in the Dutch documentary as claiming that it was taken to the USA. Someone also mentioned that the forensic expert in that film agreed with Bollier and not with Thurman.

Here is the online article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8315748.stm), and readers in Britain may be able to listen to the radio broadcast.

Awesome. Some points from there:
A timer fragment about the size of a thumb nail, known as PT 35, was taken to the Siemens company in Munich in April 1990 by Scottish police officers, according to Ms Grahame.
Actually a Mebo page somewhere did mention that but I didn't think about it.
After the BUPO meeting 23th of April 1990 Thomas Thurmann and Scottish RARDE expert Feraday and Dr. Hayes knew the results through the picture identification from MEBO that the allegedly founded timer fragment in Lockerbie, with the police no. PT/35 (and the letter "M" on it) was brown and did not originate from a timer delivered to Libya. As a consequence 4 days later Inspector Keith Harrower (Scottish Police) visited on the 27th of April 1990, this the MST-13 fragment the electronic company Siemens AG in Munich, Germany. Engineer Brosante sawed this first brown original MST-13 fragment into two parts and confirmed: "standard brown PC-platine with 8 layers of fiberglass." The green machine made MST-13 timers delivered to Libya consisted of PC-boards with 9 layers of fiberglass.
http://www.mebocom-defilee.ch/2008/biggestfraud.html
Not sure where he got that quote from, but it's the first reference I've seen for "brown." Sounds bogus in itself, but here we're seeing something like confirmation of the trip anyway.

In a separate development, a senior FBI investigator, Dick Marquise, also claimed the fragment was taken to the United States.

And then took it right back. After Thurman reaffirm it, after having already contradicted it years back. Bah blah blah, and nothing more in and of itself. I suppose it could be something but my gut says distraction, just walk around this one.

It was these, the prosecution claimed, that linked the man convicted of the atrocity, the Libyan Abdelbasset al-Megrahi, to the bombing.
If there was any suspicion that the fragment had been tampered with, it could have undermined the entire prosecution case.

For crying out loud, the fragment being 'tampered with' is not the issue! IMHO! It wasn't even swabbed for explosives residue, let alone altered or swapped or whatever. The problem is the fragment itself. Wherever it was taken, that may well be a planted fraud of evidence being carted about. Oooh, but there are allegations of tampering! By Mr. Bollier! That could gain steam given the row over these controversies... etc. You're right this deserves a deflation. What do you think?

I was very surprised by her insistence that the fragment was never officially taken out of Scotland. I thought it was a fact that it was examined at RARDE, in Kent. However, I notice that the web report quotes Peter Fraser as saying that it was never "taken out of Scottish jurisdiction or control". Would that still cover examination in England? I'm not sure about that. In the same way, if Scottish police took it to Munich, or to Washington, would it not still count as being "under Scottish jurisdiction and control" if the Scottish policemen always had it in their possession?

Terminology? Scotland is... wherever a decent Scot standeth with Scotland in their heart, or something? So it never left. Okay, to England... that wouldn't be too weird, would it? They were working with RARDE et al. To Germany? That seems unnecessary just to have it cut and looked at. Their knives and eyes only work in Germany? Thurman couldn't just do his yup with two photos? But somehow none of this seems an issue to me. Unless I'm missing something.

What Christine was saying was that the log of the fragment doesn't show it going out of Scotland at all. I have no idea how correct she is about this.

Christine can be a bit inclined to jump to conclusions. I know her very slightly, but I don't suppose she'd be likely to pay an attention to me. She hasn't mentioned Bollier or his claims of substitution, but I'm a bit concerned she's heading in that direction. And of course, basing one's argument on Bollier's claims is obviously a one-way road to losing all credibility, once it has been shown that the photos all show the same fragment.

Somehow public people don't seem to go into the woo very gracefully. You should drop her some tips, FYIs from a concerned citizen. Seriously. I'm on it myself, a little tonight anyway...

Looking dispassionately at the Dutch film, I suspect that Marquise's claim that the fragment was in Washington might be a trick of the memory after 18 years. He does seem to accept correction from Henderson towards the end. Also, the film-makers show the wrong picture at one stage (the Toshiba fragment instead of the timer fragment), and confuse Thurman. Thurman has been quite clear in other interviews that his identification was made from a photograph. However, 18 years is a long time, and he probably did see the actual fragment at some later stage, so again I think both he and the Dutch film-makers were slightly confused there. Using that film to allege shenanigans is quite clearly unsafe - allegations have to be cross-checked and verified from other sources.

Mmmm, honey... sticky, sticky honey... Not that it's on purpose or anything. ;)

This seems more like a legal ploy than a real question about the fragment's reliability. Frankly, if it's the same fragment all the time and it matches up with the Togo board, it doesn't matter in real terms whether the thing was taken to Timbuctoo or Ulan Bator. It might be useful if you wanted to get the conviction quashed to be able to say, the provenance of the fragment is compromised, it can't be used in evidence. However, since the fragment exists, and doesn't seem to have been illegitimately tampered with in any way that would influence the identification, that seems very unsatisfactory to me.

Okay, perfect. This must be the right page if we're both on it.

Anyway, if there was a nice, succinct web page summarising what we've found in this thread and in particular showing that the original photo from the composite picture is the same item as the court exhibit and that both are consistent with the Togo board, it would at least be something to point Christine at, to try to prevent her from making unfounded points which can only result in loss of credibility.

And hey, that was exactly the same paragraph as you just typed. What are the chances of that? Now it's getting creepy... :D

[Rolfe]

I can email Christine. I've met her a couple of times, though I doubt if she remembers. However, I am a member of her local branch of the SNP, which probably counts for something.

This has to be concise and relevant though.

Sorry, gotta go right now.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

I may as well think aloud right here. I suppose a brief overall run-down of the well-known bogus claims, coupled with a positive narrative of what apparently did happen, and re-contextualization of what remains for valid controversies, might do.

IMO overall, circumstantial clues are the best arguments for questioning this exhibit. It's a time found in Scotland that revealed the enemy's secrets. That right there is almost a self-debunking oxymoron-type-thing.

It looks like the most valuable thing now is the location issue, which itself would take some work to transcribe or collect what people have said and show how that's unreliable. We have Thurman video statements in 91, 99, and 2008 anyway, a statement Marquise doesn't stand by, other sources...

But let's see if I can recall all the important claims about the physical board:

1) the color - brown prototype swapped out with an exact green duplicate - beyond Mebocom's 2+2=5 conribution, there is the issue of photo tinting, which is a bad on someone's part.
2) scratches and the letter "M"
3) rough soldering, traces not filled in, or something...
4) wrong curve, rough sawed curve
5) no longer in one piece / the corner was swapped back out with part of the original (??)

What others?

Also other clues prodigiously dropped:
1) Thuring kept a green sample board,
2) Stasi given 3 brown prototypes...
3) Is he the one said a co. in Florida was making counterfeits?
4) Lumpert gave a prototype to Swiss police and thence to SCOTBOM
5) stolen blueprints mentioned somewhere too
6) Bollier compelled to lie early on,
7) Bollier offered money, protection et al. to deliver the right testimony
8) Later visits by Fluckiger, etc.
...
uh, okay, I'm not covering all this except sort of like above but full sentences. Or one sentence "they say a lot of stuff"

ETA: I know I'm not sounding very succinct here, but there's a good reason. I'll start tomorrow. What do you think, just clarify the physical differences claims, or tackle the more nebulous but immediate locations questions and explain why it's not the big seam it seems?

[Rolfe]

I think the main point, which you have made so admirably, is that the first picture (the one with the red circle) and the court exhibit are the same thing. The top is missing, probably consumed in analysis, and two right-angle cuts have been made with another little bit of the cut-off piece (right-hand edge) also apparently missing. However, these mutilations are entirely explicable as happening during forensic analysis. There is also a small flake missing from the bottom left, but again that's hardly surprising given the fragility of the thing. The similarities between the two pieces, especially as regards the shape of the remaining edges and the pattern of damage on the top part of the fingerpad, are simply too close to be fabricated.

The one inconsistency I can see is the "M" and the bits below that which Bollier calls scratches. While the M might be fluff, I don't think that explains the "scratches", and they all seem to be of a piece. It would be good if we could figure out what these marks are. But even with that inconsistency, the fact remains that the two items are the same. The M and the scratches are likely to be either extraneous material or artefacts of the light in the photography.

This makes arguments about colour fairly irrelevant. It's odd that the tint of the pictures doesn't allow us to see what colour we're dealing with, but given the fact that the pictures are all of the same thing, that in itself excludes a switch of a green board for a brown one.

We can't say the thing isn't brown all along of course, but I don't believe anyone has ever tried to claim that. Even Bollier admits it's green at some stage. In addition, I think you also showed that the fragment exactly matched the intact timer (the Togo one I think) shown as a trial exhibit, and that was green.

I think you need to explain exactly how the fragment has been forensically mutilated, how it is nevertheless the same thing in the trial exhibit as in the original (red-circle) photo, and how mistakes have been made because some people have failed to realise that the post-forensics board no longer has its top edge, and so will not match with the Togo timer if you try to align the top edges.

Any claims anyone else has made should, I think, merely be footnotes. You're showing what can be concluded from the photographs we have access to. That speaks for itself. It debunks Bollier almost as a side-effect. I have no idea what he's on about as regards sawn-off edges but I don't think it's necessary to deal with that. You can show that the angle of the curve is virtually an exact match.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

In a press release by Member of the Scottish Parliament Christine Grahame this morning, ...

How did you slip in there without me noticing? I guess it got hectic last night. I did manage to hear and even record the audio for my own reference.

In perhaps the biggest and most important case of their careers, the stories of those leading the investigation completely contradict each other?


I'm not sure it's either honest memory error or really relevant. Indirectly relevant, perhaps.

I think the main point, <snip>

Okay, got it. I'll be back.

[Buncrana]

Christine Grahame has appeared on the BBC's Newsnight Scotland tonight.

She reaffirmed her accusations of undisclosed movements of the fragment of the MST-13 timer. The Crown office, and indeed the somewhat sneering Paul McBride QC, claimed that the fact it had been examined by Siemens engineer Brosante was known to the court, and in the public domain for some time. However, Ms Grahame countered, correctly, that indeed it was known by the court at Zeist that the fragment had been examined by a Siemens engineer - however, it was not made clear to the court at Zeist (or Megrahi's defense team I presume) that this examination had actually taken place in Munich, and not RARDE, as was seemingly taken for granted.

She added that the fragment had also been transported to the FBI lab in Washington, which was not revealed at Zeist. Indeed, this fact has been an area of intense dispute since the airing and during the making of Gideon Levy's Dutch documentary on Lockerbie.

However, the most important point raised by Ms Grahame, as seems recurrent in many areas of this investigation, was the lack of paperwork accounting for the MST-13. At each stage, whether down to sheer incompetence or simply lacking in diligence, there is a distinct absence of an established and incontrovertible notetaking trail by those investigating.

Given Lord Fraser's, Mr Marquise's, Mr Thurman's and DCS Henderson's statements, I find their lack of clarity and/or certainty as to the exact movements and identification of this absolutely crucial fragment, completely incomprehensible.

[Rolfe]

I saw that. I was actually emailing Christine when she came on, trying to urge her to avoid making weak points that might only serve to damage credibility. I don't know if she'll pay any attention.

Paul McBride was disgusting. How to give advocates a bad name. But again, Christine missed a trick.

Megrahi applied for leave to mount a second appeal in 2003. This was not granted until 2007. Then the appeal didn't get started until 2009, after he had been diagnosed with cancer in 2008. Despite this diagnosis, when one of the appeal judges fell ill, the appeal was adjourned to November rather than appoint a substitute.

What encouragement was any of that to Megrahi to continue the appeal, when the doctors think he's likely to be dead by Christmas? Has nobody heard the saying "justice delayed is justice denied"?

The documentation surrounding that fragment is shocking. However, it hardly matters if it was taken to Timbuctoo or Ulan Bator if it wasn't illegitimately tampered with, and we can see that it wasn't. The red-circle picture taken before the paper fragment was teased out is of the same item as the trial photograph.

I wish people would look at the chain of evidence to see whether there is a place where it might have been introduced into the evidence, and the earlier references retrospectively inserted to give it an earlier provenance. And if so, who, why, how, on whose orders, and who did they have to suborn to do it and how did they manage that? Throwing random mud that can be washed off with a smug "I told you so" doesn't do any good at all.

And if that isn't possible, if in fact that red-circle photo really was taken in May 1989 of something that was genuinely picked up as part of the wreckage in Janaury, then the fact of the fragment has to be accounted for in any explanation of what went on. Alongside the fact that the bomb bag almost certainly didn't go into the system at Luqa, and that the person who bought Gauci's clothes almost certainly wasn't Megrahi. And the plane blew apart at 7.03pm GMT.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

OK, scenario 1.

The fragment is genuine. It was picked up from the crash site, as found. We simply don't know why its label was altered at that stage. Hayes was the first person to see it, and it's pure coincidence he described it on exactly the page that looks suspicious in relation to his innocent mistake with the page numbering. And he was simply asleep at the wheel when he didn't flag it up as hugely significant at the time.

Feraday was reviewing the evidence in September, and realised its significance. He phoned Williamson to tell him about it, and Williamson said he'd really like to show it to the "lads and lassies" at the SCRO (ooh, Shirley McKie, anyone?). It so happened he was going there the day after tomorrow, could he have something to show them? Hence the hurried polaroids.

(Oops, this all asumes the fragment is at RARDE, which hardly seems to count as being in the control and jurisdiction of the Scottish police. I think it was indeed at RARDE, legitimately, but I wish some people would get their stories straight.)

The SCRO draws a blank, and Williamson spends about nine months trying to identify it, not realising that Tom Thurman could ID it straight away. In the course of that he takes it to Munich for detailed examination at the Siemens factory (I think that may be where the cuts were made). And it's not tested for explosives because it doesn't matter - not because it's too small or there's no money. Finally, just at the precise exact moment when the politicians want to start cosying up to Syria and dumping on Libya, he thinks of sending a picture of it to Washington.

There, Thurman knows what it is almost immediately, even though for some inexplicable reason Williamson sent a picture of the post-forensics fragment rather than the original. He keeps banging on about the exact day he "made the identification" with the Togo fragment. He also knows pretty much immediately that MEBO is the manufacturer (he said so), but strangely he spends some time checking it out with other manufacturers first, before approaching MEBO. This confirms that the timer was one of a small batch made for and supplied exclusively to Libya, just in nice time to start feeding the "Libya did it" story to the press in late 1990.

How credible is that? 'Cos that's as good as it gets.

And now for scenario 2.

The Scottish police are going hell for leather after the PFLP-GC, even though Thatcher and Bush agreed in March 1989 to soft-pedal that line of enquiry. A couple of times there have been leaks that arrests are imminent, that have had to be choked off. Because we really, really don't want to go there (Khreesat made the bomb while he was supposed to be working for the CIA, just for a start).

By early 1990 it's getting obvious there's another reason for not going after Syria/Iran, and that's Saddam Hussein. Conversely, it would be ever so handy if only it turned out that it was Libya after all. Hey, Mr. Cannistraro, Libyan dirty tricks expert, how about you take charge of the Lockerbie enquiry and see if there's any evidence that Libya was involved, know what I mean?

So just before the fragment surfaces in Munich, it's manufactured, probably in Washington by Thurman. The USA had two intact boards (one from Somalia, one from Togo) and the Somalia one was sacrificed to produce the "evidence" while the Togo one was kept for later comparison. A bag of evidence is assembled from spare bits of debris, and the fragment included. An old label has to be used because nobody has any blank ones any more, and the original text erased.

Hayes and Feraday are both brought into the plan, and introduce the evidence into RARDE. The contents of the bag are photographed, then Hayes examines them and writes a one-page report. He manages to introduce this retrospectively into his notes by changing some page numbers.

Feraday then writes his memo to Williamson, who is at the very least persuaded to acquiesce in the notion that all this happened in September 1989 rather than February 1990. He dutifully trots off to try to identify the item, fetching up at Siemens in Munich shortly afterwards. After another few months establishing the fragment as a well-documented part of the evidence, and at just the right moment politically, he sends a photo to Thurman.

Thurman has no trouble identifiying it, even in its mutilated state - he can see immediately what's missing and how it matches the Togo board, because he made the thing in the first place! However, for extra verisimilitide, he explores a few other possible avenues before heading for MEBO.

And the rest is as above.

Is this any less credible? Does the log of the fragment, which we haven't seen, actually render this impossible by showing conclusively that it was in the system as described all along? (That log which doesn't even seem to mention that it was taken to Munich?) Is the suborning of Thurman, Hayes, Feraday and Williamson an entirely ridiculous suggestion?

Do we vote on it?

Rolfe.

[Buncrana]

I saw that. I was actually emailing Christine when she came on, trying to urge her to avoid making weak points that might only serve to damage credibility. I don't know if she'll pay any attention.

Well, given you're excellent examination and conclusions of what is available regarding many aspects of the case, I would very much hope she would give your email upmost attention. However, I'm sure the interview shown on Newsnight was recorded from earlier this evening, although I anticipate this will not be the last we hear of Ms Grahame.

Paul McBride was disgusting. How to give advocates a bad name. But again, Christine missed a trick.

Absolutely. His comment that Megrahi dropped the appeal while aware that it could continue after his demise, and he had not taken this option, was as odious as it was ridiculous! As for Christine missing an opportunity, perhaps, but as this interview was most certainly edited for narrow time requirements, she may well have commented on the length of time taken and the fabian tactics of the crown throughout.

Megrahi applied for leave to mount a second appeal in 2003. This was not granted until 2007. Then the appeal didn't get started until 2009, after he had been diagnosed with cancer in 2008. Despite this diagnosis, when one of the appeal judges fell ill, the appeal was adjourned to November rather than appoint a substitute.

What encouragement was any of that to Megrahi to continue the appeal, when the doctors think he's likely to be dead by Christmas? Has nobody heard the saying "justice delayed is justice denied"?

Isolated culturally, and from his familty, faced with impending death, and as you say, the never-ending delays of the appeal, it is of no surprise whatsoever that Megrahi dropped his appeal. As his counsel stated herself, "It's the appellant's belief that instructions to abandon his appeal will assist in the early determination of these applications."


The documentation surrounding that fragment is shocking. However, it hardly matters if it was taken to Timbuctoo or Ulan Bator if it wasn't illegitimately tampered with, and we can see that it wasn't. The red-circle picture taken before the paper fragment was teased out is of the same item as the trial photograph.

I wish people would look at the chain of evidence to see whether there is a place where it might have been introduced into the evidence, and the earlier references retrospectively inserted to give it an earlier provenance. And if so, who, why, how, on whose orders, and who did they have to suborn to do it and how did they manage that? Throwing random mud that can be washed off with a smug "I told you so" doesn't do any good at all.

And if that isn't possible, if in fact that red-circle photo really was taken in May 1989 of something that was genuinely picked up as part of the wreckage in Janaury, then the fact of the fragment has to be accounted for in any explanation of what went on. Alongside the fact that the bomb bag almost certainly didn't go into the system at Luqa, and that the person who bought Gauci's clothes almost certainly wasn't Megrahi. And the plane blew apart at 7.03pm GMT.

Rolfe.

I would agree to point with you as the the movements of the timer, however, Lord Fraser's statement indictaes another area in which deceptive strategies were employed. I fully accept and understand all your unease as to the lack of persuasive arguments and legitimate evidence with regards to the frabrication, tampering, or insertion of the timer and/or fragment, but given the complexities and the absence of so much crucial documentation, make this all the more formidable.

However, it is surely giving rise to the idea, and strength to the argument, that there appears some shenanigans in respect to the discovery, indentification and examination of the fragment, that so much documentation is not available? Was it simply not carried out as should have been, has it been destroyed, or more concerning, has it been produced at a later stage?

I will come back to this later. Have a good evening.

[Rolfe]

Look at that silly mock-up picture now attached to the BBC report! Give us a break, the pictures of the real thing are easily available, even though the colour tint is confusing. (Maybe there are copyright issues the BBC can't ignore, but as at least one of the pictures was official court evidence I can't see why they wouldn't be able to use it.)

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46578000/jpg/_46578020_lockerbie.jpg

That's bad!

Rolfe

[Caustic Logic]

Look at that silly mock-up picture now attached to the BBC report! Give us a break, the pictures of the real thing are easily available, even though the colour tint is confusing. (Maybe there are copyright issues the BBC can't ignore, but as at least one of the pictures was official court evidence I can't see why they wouldn't be able to use it.)

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46578000/jpg/_46578020_lockerbie.jpg

That's bad!

Rolfe

I caught that too, going back tonight. Of course it's a screen cap from Conspiracy Files, and shows green as green. Suspiciously, I wonder if this is to feed into confusion ... or to not have to chose whether to show the blue-tint version we've all seen or the non-tinted originals they could to help clear up confusion... Anyway, it's more relevant than ill Megrahi again at top.

So I think I have a post up
http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/10/mst-13-comparative-graphics-no-3.html

[Caustic Logic]

The Firm's on it ... Grahame's FOIA papers and a definite American trip and then right to Lumpert's story...
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/10/crown-statement-accepts-pan-am-103.html

[Guybrush Threepwood]

I'm still confused by this quote from The Firm article on Robert Black's page. I thought I'd read and understood most of the publicly available analysis, but I don't remember seeing this properly explained.
That leaves a very serious question mark over the central piece of evidence used to convict Mr Megrahi.I don't remember any evidence connecting Megrahi and the timer fragment (apart from the fact that Megrahi was an alleged member of the JSO, and the MST-13 timers were mostly sold to Libya), so while the timer fragment may have been highly important in the investigation as it was the first indicator of Libyan involvement it was irrelevant to the conviction of Megrahi.

The two things which convicted Megrahi were Tony Gauci's identification of him as the purchaser of the clothes wrapped round the bomb, and the fact that he was in Malta when the bomb suitcase was introduced into the system at Luqa airport (According to the court, even I admit those two pieces of evidence are bollocks)

Otherwise, the rest of that article looks like a slightly rehashed version of Tam Dalyell's parliamentary question.

[Buncrana]

I'm still confused by this quote from The Firm article on Robert Black's page. I thought I'd read and understood most of the publicly available analysis, but I don't remember seeing this properly explained.
I don't remember any evidence connecting Megrahi and the timer fragment (apart from the fact that Megrahi was an alleged member of the JSO, and the MST-13 timers were mostly sold to Libya), so while the timer fragment may have been highly important in the investigation as it was the first indicator of Libyan involvement it was irrelevant to the conviction of Megrahi.

The two things which convicted Megrahi were Tony Gauci's identification of him as the purchaser of the clothes wrapped round the bomb, and the fact that he was in Malta when the bomb suitcase was introduced into the system at Luqa airport (According to the court, even I admit those two pieces of evidence are bollocks)

Otherwise, the rest of that article looks like a slightly rehashed version of Tam Dalyell's parliamentary question.

It was stated in court that Megrahi in his capacity with the JSO had dealt directly with Mebo and Bollier in relation to MST timers. I'd need to check back through the articles, but I believe it was also alledged that Megrahi had rented offices through Mebo - although I could be confusing this point with something that was raised in the Maltese Double Cross documentary. So, there was, as you say, no direct correlation between Megrahi and the actual timer discovered, but there was, due to the timers only being provided to Libya, an indirect connection between Megrahi and access to these particular timers.

AFAIK, none of these areas in terms of Megrahi's associations with Mebo were denied by his defense team at Zeist.

[Rolfe]

I'm a bit irritated by the tendency of just about everyone involved to go crashing around shouting about anomalies without trying to explain exactly what they're alleging happened. If the aim is to get Megrahi's conviction quashed, then I suppose breaks in the chain of custody would do the job. If anyone was actually applying for such an outcome. However, this is a technicality.

Bollier is talking mince, Lumpert's "confession" is either rubbish or irrelevant I'm not sure which, and we can all see that the "May 1989" photograph shows the same item as the "trial exhibit" photograph. If the aim is to determine whether or not the fragment was or could have been planted, the way to do that is to show that the early references to its presence in the chain of evidence are or could be retrospective fabrications, and that it could have been introduced as late as the spring of 1990 with a false documentary history attached.

Frankly, if the "May 1989" photograph can be proved to have been taken on that date and not to have been tampered with, it becomes very much more difficult to sustain any suggestion that it was planted. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would suggest a remarkably early decision to falsely steer the investigation away from Iran and towards Libya, well before the Middle East situation seemed to demand this, and very early in the course of the investigation. It also makes it difficult to explain things like the pagination error.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

It was stated in court that Megrahi in his capacity with the JSO had dealt directly with Mebo and Bollier in relation to MST timers. I'd need to check back through the articles, but I believe it was also alledged that Megrahi had rented offices through Mebo - although I could be confusing this point with something that was raised in the Maltese Double Cross documentary. So, there was, as you say, no direct correlation between Megrahi and the actual timer discovered, but there was, due to the timers only being provided to Libya, an indirect connection between Megrahi and access to these particular timers.

AFAIK, none of these areas in terms of Megrahi's associations with Mebo were denied by his defense team at Zeist.


I generally concur with that. Megrahi was acquainted with Bollier, and either he or a colleague rented an office in the same building as the MEBO office. Libya was MEBO's main customer, or a main customer, so an association between Megrahi as a JSO officer and MEBO is hardly surprising.

However, it was never shown that Megrahi had ever been in possession of one of these timers himself. Or any explosives, or had ever engaged in bomb-making or terrorist-related activities.

Really, the MST-13 was a link to Libya, not to Megrahi personally. However, as a JSO officer, the chain of connection was short.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

So I think I have a post up
http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/10/mst-13-comparative-graphics-no-3.html (http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/10/mst-13-comparative-graphics-no-3.html)


Christine Grahame is not a Scottish MP. She is an MSP. This is an important distinction.

Rolfe.

ETA: Reading. So far, I like it!

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Frankly, if the "May 1989" photograph can be proved to have been taken on that date and not to have been tampered with, it becomes very much more difficult to sustain any suggestion that it was planted. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it would suggest a remarkably early decision to falsely steer the investigation away from Iran and towards Libya, well before the Middle East situation seemed to demand this, and very early in the course of the investigation. It also makes it difficult to explain things like the pagination error.
Rolfe.

I may be going off half cocked here, but hadn't we all agreed that the original May 1989 photo of the shirt collar and timer fragment etc was a 35mm film shot taken by the investigation photographer? If that's the case then as someone pointed out earlier then the negatives would have sequence numbers on them which would show whether they were contemporaneous with the other photographs taken at that time. The negatives may no longer exist, but it does mean it would have a very risky plant to put an identifiably false photo in the record in mid 1990.

[Rolfe]

I may be going off half cocked here, but hadn't we all agreed that the original May 1989 photo of the shirt collar and timer fragment etc was a 35mm film shot taken by the investigation photographer? If that's the case then as someone pointed out earlier then the negatives would have sequence numbers on them which would show whether they were contemporaneous with the other photographs taken at that time. The negatives may no longer exist, but it does mean it would have a very risky plant to put an identifiably false photo in the record in mid 1990.


Indeed. That is (part of) what I would like to see investigated.

Rolfe.

[Buncrana]

I've not had the chance to fully digest this article how it relates to the discussions on this thread on dates and if its contributes anything in arguing for or against the fabrication of the timer and/or fragment. However,I feel it may have some relevance.

The Miami Herald
Published: Saturday, November 30, 1991
Section: FRONT

Page: 6B

'NUTS AND BOLTS' WORK PAYS OFF IN LOCKERBIE PROBE
MARY ANN ROSER Herald Washington Bureau

For a sleuth like FBI Special Agent James "Tom" Thurman, a fragment half the size of a thumbnail was just too big to ignore.

In his investigation of the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103, Thurman worked from a photograph of the fragment that was part of a timer on the bomb that blew the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.

Thurman meticulously compared the picture of the fragment to hundreds of other devices. He didn't stop until he linked the bomb to the Libyan government.

"When you think of a (Boeing) 747 and how many pieces are in that plane it was like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Thurman, 44, who works in the FBI's explosives unit here. "The plane was chock full of cargo."

Thurman's discovery of the fragment match in June 1990 was a critical piece of evidence that led to the criminal indictments last week of two intelligence aides to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Thurman determined that the circuit board on the timer was a perfect match to one used in an explosion several years earlier in Togo, Africa.

Both timers had been made for the Libyan government by a Swiss company. However, the company has also claimed, the timers were made and sold to others at approximately the same time, among them the former East Germany.

"I know Tom realized right away we had something very important," said John Hicks, assistant director in charge of the FBI lab here and Thurman's boss. "That's what Tom had been looking for. That's what kept him going."

It was not the first time that Thurman had helped solve a bombing mystery.

While working with Scottish and English authorities on the Lockerbie case, Thurman became involved in the 1989 mail-bomb explosion that killed federal judge Robert Vance in Alabama. Thurman was able to match the bomb to another one used by Walter Leroy Moody Jr., who was later convicted of the judge's murder.

"We're the blacksmiths of the FBI. The nuts and bolts," Thurman said. "We get extremely dirty, actually, filthy dirty."

But Thurman wouldn't have it any other way.

Although much of his work is done behind a microscope, Thurman also goes into the field and gathers evidence. He went to Lockerbie two days after the explosion. After traveling all night, he showered and joined hundreds of other U.S., English and Scottish investigators combing the countryside for clues.

"Regardless of how tragic the situation is, your adrenalin is pumping," Thurman said. "You can't sleep."

He spent about two months at the scene collecting and sifting through evidence. Almost immediately, investigators knew a bombing had occurred, but finding out who did it would not be as easy.

Thurman became absorbed by the mystery. His curiosity, coupled with a sense of duty and empathy for the victims, drove him, he said.

He returned to Lockerbie several times, talked to countless investigators from several countries and pored over thousands of pieces of evidence before making his key find in June 1990.

"These were civilians," Thurman said. "All they wanted was to go home for Christmas," he said, noting that most of those on the plane, traveling from London to New York, were Americans. "You get emotional."

Thurman also missed Christmas that year, but the FBI allowed him to visit his folks in Richmond, Ky., several days later. His parents, Margaret and James "Spider" Thurman, recalled that their son seemed a bit strained and subdued.

"He ordinarily is a pretty easygoing fellow, but he seemed to be uptighter than usual," Margaret Thurman recalled. "I don't think he really wanted to go back there, but it was his job."

It wasn't until recently that Thurman's parents learned what a large role he had played in the Lockerbie case. Even now, however, Thurman declines to offer many details about his investigation, citing the pending court case against the Libyans.

Since the Libyan indictments were announced, Thurman has found himself in front of the camera more than behind the microscope. The credit for cracking the case belongs to many people, he said, citing his colleagues in the lab who took on some of his routine cases and the Scottish investigators who gathered the critical evidence.

[Rolfe]

Here's the link - not to the original, but a re-post on Plane Truth, which is apparently the only web version. Better to reduce your post to a sample paragraph or two, because posting full articles can be a copyright problem.

http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/miami7.html

OK, that's big. He was one of the FBI people flown in at the beginning (whose presence has often subsequently denied by the Scottish and English authorities)? He was there, in among the evidence, from day 3, and repeatedly?

Very, very interesting.

Rolfe.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Here's the link - not to the original, but a re-post on Plane Truth, which is apparently the only web version. Better to reduce your post to a sample paragraph or two, because posting full articles can be a copyright problem.

http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/miami7.html

OK, that's big. He was one of the FBI people flown in at the beginning (whose presence has often subsequently denied by the Scottish and English authorities)? He was there, in among the evidence, from day 3, and repeatedly?

Very, very interesting.

Rolfe.

That is interesting, and very badly written. I thought the UK authorities only denied the presence of unidentified CIA men on the ground the day after, not necessarily other investigators in the period after Christmas. It would be very odd if the UK were trying to hush it up while he's blathering away to the press three years later.

Had you (Rolfe) ever thought of taking a run up to Edinburgh and reading the contemporary accounts of the disaster in The (Glasgow as it was then) Herald and Scotsman archives? (I think the National Library would have them?), it would be interesting to know what was being reported at the time.

[Caustic Logic]

Christine Grahame is not a Scottish MP. She is an MSP. This is an important distinction.

Rolfe.

ETA: Reading. So far, I like it!

Didn't realize MP was such a proprietary abbreviation. I'll alert the local military police, they won't be happy! I could have been more to-the-point, but I figure I could explain why this is suddenly worth clarifying. The Firm's article and others make it clear that some delineation is needed.

I agree with the sentiment
I'm a bit irritated by the tendency of just about everyone involved to go crashing around shouting about anomalies without trying to explain exactly what they're alleging happened.
At the least explain why the anomaly is worth thinking about, aside from some technicality.

On Thurman, according the maltese Double Cross, he was involved early on and conducted interviews with Khreesat but failed to pass along the info to the investigation. Or something... And then later got all giddy that the Brits actually brought in an MST-13 fragment and he knew what it was. Shameless? Or something else?

And on Bruncana's points/questions about the Megrahi-Mebo link(s), these don't IMO make the timer central to the al Megrahi conviction, but they are interesting, as I found on some studying last night. I'll gather some bits and be back.

[Rolfe]

I may be going off half cocked here, but hadn't we all agreed that the original May 1989 photo of the shirt collar and timer fragment etc was a 35mm film shot taken by the investigation photographer? If that's the case then as someone pointed out earlier then the negatives would have sequence numbers on them which would show whether they were contemporaneous with the other photographs taken at that time. The negatives may no longer exist, but it does mean it would have a very risky plant to put an identifiably false photo in the record in mid 1990.


I totally see your point here, nevertheless I'm not certain that the risk would have been particularly great.

I think the picture is a 35mm, which would explain why detail comes up reasonably well in the enlargements. I just wonder whether there was ever any serious danger that someone would investigate negatives with a suspicious mind. It's not RARDE who are on trial. It would require a defence solicitor to suspect the thing was fishy, and ask for proof of provenance. How often does that happen for goodness sake?

More risky, perhaps, would be someone noticing something if and when additional prints were required. However, depending on the system in operation, this might not have been a major concern.

It's a serious point, and a major reason for thinking either that the fragment is legit, or that any planting was done much earlier than I have been speculating. I'm just not sure it's watertight.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

It was stated in court that Megrahi in his capacity with the JSO had dealt directly with Mebo and Bollier in relation to MST timers. I'd need to check back through the articles, but I believe it was also alledged that Megrahi had rented offices through Mebo - although I could be confusing this point with something that was raised in the Maltese Double Cross documentary. So, there was, as you say, no direct correlation between Megrahi and the actual timer discovered, but there was, due to the timers only being provided to Libya, an indirect connection between Megrahi and access to these particular timers.

AFAIK, none of these areas in terms of Megrahi's associations with Mebo were denied by his defense team at Zeist.

I saw some stuff on this, some again, in the Court's opinion, last night. Here's the PDF link again. First, consider these statements:
[44] The next important issue is that relating to MST-13 timers. The evidence
relating to this came essentially from Edwin Bollier, Erwin Meister, Ulrich Lumpert and those who supplied the circuit board components of the timers from Thuring AG, Zurich.
[45] We have assessed carefully the evidence of these three witnesses about the activities of MEBO, and in particular their evidence relating to the MST-13 timers which the company made. All three, and notably Mr Bollier, were shown to be unreliable witnesses. Earlier statements which they made to the police and judicial authorities were at times in conflict with each other, and with the evidence they gave in court. On some occasions, particularly in the case of Mr Bollier, their evidence was self-contradictory.
[47] … This account given by Mr Bollier belongs in our view to the realm of fiction where it may best be placed in the genre of the spy thriller.
[49] We do however accept certain parts of Mr Bollier’s evidence …

On the office at Mebo:
[54] We also accept Mr Bollier’s evidence, supported by documentation, that
MEBO rented an office in their Zurich premises some time in 1988 to the firm ABH in which the first accused [Megrahi] and one Badri Hassan were the principals. They explained to Mr Bollier that they might be interested in taking a share in MEBO or in having business dealings with MEBO.

On dealings with the MST-13 and Bollier, this is some amazing stuff:
[46] Mr Bollier gave evidence that one Badri Hassan came to MEBO’s offices in Zurich at the end of November or early in December 1988 and asked the firm to supply forty MST-13 timers for the Libyan Army. […having none available…] Mr Bollier bought timers on the open market. [on 5 and 15 December]. On 16 December 1988 he booked his flight from Zurich to Tripoli and back. He flew to Tripoli on 18 December 1988 … he was taken to Hinshiri’s office and left the timers there. On the following day … Hinshiri said that he wanted MST-13 timers and that the Olympus timers were too expensive. Nevertheless, he retained the timers and directed Mr Bollier to go to the first accused’s [Megrahi’s] office in the evening in order to get payment for them. From about 6.00pm Mr Bollier sat outside that office for two hours. While he did not see the first accused, he did see Nassr Ashur sitting at a meeting. On 20 December 1988 he again saw Ezzadin Hinshiri who repeated his view that the timers were too expensive, although he wished to keep them and to pay for them later. Mr Bollier however took the timers back and left Tripoli later on the same day, … It was submitted by the Crown that Mr Bollier’s visit to Tripoli and particularly his visit to the first accused’s office and the presence there of Nassr Ashur provided additional evidence in the case against the first accused. While we accept [... this story…] we are not prepared to draw the inference that the Crown sought from this evidence. On his return to Zurich Mr Bollier claimed to have discovered that one of the timers had been set for a time and a day of the week which were relevant to the time when there was an explosion on board PA103. He showed this to Mr Meister who agreed that he was able to see a time and even a date which were relevant. We do not accept the evidence of either of these two witnesses about this alleged discovery. It was established, and Mr Meister was forced to accept, that the Olympus timer was incapable of showing a date. Moreover, the evidence of both witnesses about what they claimed to have seen and the circumstances in which they claimed to have made the discovery was so inconsistent that we are wholly unable to accept any of it.

Well, praise allah the benificient and the magnificent col. Gaddafi and innocent al Megrahi. He must have been blackmailed into all this by sinister forces.

[88] ... We accept the evidence that he was a member of the JSO, occupying posts of fairly high rank. … He also appears to have been involved in military procurement. He was involved with Mr Bollier, albeit not specifically in connection with MST timers, and had along with Badri Hassan formed a company which leased premises from MEBO and intended to do business with MEBO. In his interview with Mr Salinger he denied any connection with MEBO, but we do not accept his denial.

[Caustic Logic]

I totally see your point here, nevertheless I'm not certain that the risk would have been particularly great.

I think the picture is a 35mm, which would explain why detail comes up reasonably well in the enlargements. I just wonder whether there was ever any serious danger that someone would investigate negatives with a suspicious mind. It's not RARDE who are on trial. It would require a defence solicitor to suspect the thing was fishy, and ask for proof of provenance. How often does that happen for goodness sake?

IF this happens, won't the reels just be inexplicably missing as well? Even IF they showed only that photos of the fake were indeed being done in May 89, documentation going missing is starting to seem more the norm here than the exception. Just a flippant li'l thought.

[Rolfe]

That is interesting, and very badly written. I thought the UK authorities only denied the presence of unidentified CIA men on the ground the day after, not necessarily other investigators in the period after Christmas. It would be very odd if the UK were trying to hush it up while he's blathering away to the press three years later.


I've noted some sly digging on some of the documentaries about "intrepid Tom Thurman", and I can now see why, if he was putting himself about in those terms in 1991. (I saw people putting the "Tom" in inverted commas, but I didn't realise his name was actually James!)

Cannistraro, in contrast, makes a very big point about it being the Scottish police who discovered the thing and did the major work on it. He almost seems to want to disown the fragment entirely and push its entire provenance on to the Scottish effort.

To read that article, you'd think Thurman had personally crawled the length of the Kielder Forest on his hands and knees, and brought the thing home himself against all odds, having realised the minute he saw it among the pine needles that it was The Key. In fact we have no idea what he accomplished in Scotland in the early weeks. His real contribution comes early in the article.

In his investigation of the 1988 explosion of Pan Am Flight 103, Thurman worked from a photograph of the fragment that was part of a timer on the bomb that blew the plane apart over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 on board and 11 on the ground.

Thurman meticulously compared the picture of the fragment to hundreds of other devices. He didn't stop until he linked the bomb to the Libyan government.


I'd like to know more about this. Who sent him the photograph, and when? Was it really a picture of the mutilated fragment, as seems usually to be implied? How long did it take him to get the match, from receiving the fragment? (Note no mention of seeing the real thing. However, I think it's looking as if Williamson and Feraday brought it to him once he intimated that he'd got the match.)

Once he'd matched it to the Togo board, he himself said he realised pretty much at once that this was a MEBO product. But he still checked out every other possible lead before heading to Switzerland. The whole production seems like such an act, on that account. It could just be self-aggrandisement of course, but it rings very false.

I think the FBI presence was undeniable - David Ben-Aryeah reports that they were walking around with FBI baseball caps on. However, the Scottish authorities always seemed to want to down-play this, and categorically deny the other tales of other Americans who weren't FBI. Thurman wants to talk up his role. I don't suppose they liaised.

It does make me wonder, though, if we're looking too late for the possible introduction of a planned fragment? I was working on the assumption that the pagination discrepancy indicated that the 12th May 1989 trail was a later interpolation. However, I can also imagine a scenario where misdirection began a lot earlier, and given the suspicions that the crash might not have been a complete surprise to everyone in the security forces, that idea might have mileage too.

Had you (Rolfe) ever thought of taking a run up to Edinburgh and reading the contemporary accounts of the disaster in The (Glasgow as it was then) Herald and Scotsman archives? (I think the National Library would have them?), it would be interesting to know what was being reported at the time.


The Herald online archives only go back to early 1989, and they're blue murder to search - they won't let you do it by date. I did find something interesting when I tried though.

Published on 8 Feb 1989
JERUSALEM, Tuesday

THE explosive device that blew up PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie in December was concealed in a radio-cassette recorder traced to Frankfurt airport, a newspaper said today.

The Jerusalem Post quoted unidentified crash investigators as saying the explosive device was similar, but not identical, to one found earlier in the possession of members of Ahmed Jibril's extremist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. That bomb had a barometric pressure trigger.

More than a dozen members of the group, a Syrian-sponsored faction outside the PLO, were arrested in West Germany in late October, two months before the jet explosion that killed 270 people.

The newspaper quoted investigators as saying that at Frankfurt's Rhein-Main Airport, the radio-cassette recorder was transferred from another plane to a Boeing 727 flying to London.

At London's Heathrow Airport, baggage from the 727, including the radio-cassette recorder, was transferred to PanAm's New York-bound Flight 103, the paper said in a report from London. Investigators have not identified the bag in which the radio-cassette recorder was hidden, the newspaper said.


I know they thought it had gone on at Frankfurt because that's where most of the bags in container AVE4041 came from, but wasn't this well before the Erac printout? Where did they get the idea it had come in from another flight as early as this?

Here's another.

Published on 1 Dec 1989

Swedish authorities are on the verge of indicting an Arab man in connection with the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, last December in a crash that killed 270 people, an American television network reported yesterday.

ABC News said the indictment against Mohammed Abu Talb, who was arrested in Upsala, Sweden, in October, may come as early as today. ABC said Talb bought the clothing that was found in the suitcase that contained the bomb that destroyed the plane.


How times change.

I'm only getting a selection of articles, and I can't order them by date. Some day, maybe I'll look at that archive. (To think I had all these nespapers and just binned them at the end of the week! Ah well, I could never store that much paper anyway.)

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Didn't realize MP was such a proprietary abbreviation.


An MP is a member of the UK parliament in Westminster. Some of whom are Scottish - there are about 59 Scottish seats.

An MSP is a member of the Scottish parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh.

Different animals. Christine Creech is one of the second category.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

IF this happens, won't the reels just be inexplicably missing as well? Even IF they showed only that photos of the fake were indeed being done in May 89, documentation going missing is starting to seem more the norm here than the exception. Just a flippant li'l thought.


Well, yes. I was more thinking that it could be embarrassing if someone asked for more prints, if the negative was noticed to have a peculiar provenance, or couldn't be found.

The photo has been quite widely published, including by Private Eye, which suggests copies were released to the press at some stage,

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

On that article about James "Tom" Thurman: how inane, how totally naiive, at least in retrospect. Good find Buncrana. Allow me to remix it:

Thurman meticulously ... went to Lockerbie two days after the explosion. … combing the countryside for ... two months ... sifting through evidence ... became absorbed ... "When you think of a (Boeing) 747 and how many pieces are in that plane it was like looking for a needle in a haystack,"
Which gets extra hard if there's no needle there. But the intrepid plod on, and it got so hard in fact
"We're ... nuts ..." Thurman said. "We get extremely dirty, actually, filthy dirty. … your adrenalin is pumping, You can't sleep."
He actually stole these lines from a Don Henley song, and the needle part too, IIRC.
Thurman meticulously compared the picture of the fragment to hundreds of other devices.
Source please.
finding out who did it would not be as easy.
But he tried in vain, in concert with "Scottish and English" (and U.S.) authorities:
Intrepid Tom Thurman of the FBI had, in 1989, interviewed Neuss bombmaker Khreesat, never sharing what he was told with the Scottish police.
The Maltese Double Cross (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7160854996287567609#), 58:40, as Thurman is shown examining an ice cube timer.
Did he stop there? Heck no, that's a barbell in a haystack, judging by what everyone else has said. He's looking for a needle, however hard he had to stare at photos, and nothing stops Spider's kid.
He didn't stop until he linked the bomb to the Libyan government.
Really? He's still going then? Shouldn't that be "won't stop" then?
… Thurman declines to offer many details about his investigation, citing the pending court case against the Libyans. … Since the Libyan indictments were announced, Thurman has found himself in front of the camera more than behind the microscope
To publicize the high-tech rigorous case against the Libyans, but not so stupid as to go making many detailed statements on the how... less words = less danger of saying the wrong thing, and contradicting someone, like yourself.

Ooops
In summum: a career custom-made to be the FBI poster boy, lure people into law enforcement, it's a rush, figuring out which government sanctions are going on.

[Caustic Logic]

Once he'd matched it to the Togo board, he himself said he realised pretty much at once that this was a MEBO product. But he still checked out every other possible lead before heading to Switzerland. The whole production seems like such an act, on that account. It could just be self-aggrandisement of course, but it rings very false.

I love the "it could be M580" and they wanted to be totally sure the word Mebo was really on there. I guess that was regarding the Togo fragment. Certainly even more care would go into working this key evidence from Lockerbie. Look at one photo, look back at the other. Ponder a little. Put them under a microscope and realize that didn't help much. Oh man, this is strenuous, meticulous work.

It does make me wonder, though, if we're looking too late for the possible introduction of a planned fragment? I was working on the assumption that the pagination discrepancy indicated that the 12th May 1989 trail was a later interpolation. However, I can also imagine a scenario where misdirection began a lot earlier, and given the suspicions that the crash might not have been a complete surprise to everyone in the security forces, that idea might have mileage too.

AFAIK, Hayes knew he was in some cover-up situation and re-numbered his own pages just as a false lead, a lightning rod for the eventual suspicions. If so, then it's still a good clue, just in a different way. Pure coincidence is only a minor possibility...

And speaking of early misdirection:
The newspaper quoted investigators as saying that at Frankfurt's Rhein-Main Airport, the radio-cassette recorder was transferred from another plane to a Boeing 727 flying to London.
I know they thought it had gone on at Frankfurt because that's where most of the bags in container AVE4041 came from, but wasn't this well before the Erac printout? Where did they get the idea it had come in from another flight as early as this?

Very good question. I wonder if someone knew about the record of that day's luggage movements being erased at some unknown time prior to investigators seeing them? Who knew that any number of second planes could be IDd, depending? Who might have reason to take that inevitable line pointing to Frankfurt (but away from London) and direct to point right on through to point X in the distance? Hmmm...

On the second article, it shows how some were still following the old line to Talb and the PFLPGC solidly in late 1989, even as the hard mechanics of the new line were churning beneath it all. Most people hearing the first time of a Mebo chip or a Malta bag, probably wondered how this great new clue tied in with the PFLPGC, only to slowly be surprised at where it all went.

[Caustic Logic]

Realizing my 2nd to last last post is even more obnoxious than I intended... However, an extended quote from the 91 interview supports my needle hypothesis, re: what happened once he found it:
Thurman's feelings about his discovery? "Absolute, positively euphoria. I was on cloud nine."
http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/lockerbie/story/printable_story.html



OK, that's big. He was one of the FBI people flown in at the beginning (whose presence has often subsequently denied by the Scottish and English authorities)? He was there, in among the evidence, from day 3, and repeatedly?

Very, very interesting.

Rolfe.

Where has his presence been denied? I missed that. I was also wondering about that alleged Khreesat interview. That's a pretty dynamite charge reagarding the (denied?) early involvement. Here are a couple related snippets:

Lord Fraser, the former Lord Advocate entrusted in leading the investigation into the bombing, claims that the Scottish authorities were never given the opportunity to question Khreesat at any point with regard to any connection or knowledge about the Lockerbie bombing. [...perhaps...] due to Khreesat's complex and unclear association with various intelligence and government agencies.
http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2009/06/truth-trust-inconsistencies-and.html

According to Emerson and Duffy, within hours of the crash, Oliver Revell, the head of FBI Counter-Terrorism, dispatched SAA Thomas Thurman to Lockerbie.
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4834

Another lucky guy was mr. Steve Green, Assistant, Office Intelligence DEA. Mr Steve Green has been seen, on the tarmac, watching the take-off of the doomed plane Pan-Am 103 at London Airport Heathrow. Together with him, Oliver Revell junior, survived Pan Am 103 by a lucky strike of incredible coincidences. Oliver Revell junior is the son of Mr. Oliver Buck Revell, member of the FBI ...and one of the American head investigators in the Lockerbie case!
http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/victim.html

[Caustic Logic]

When everyone else but me cheeses out at once for over 24 hours I sense more than coincidence at work. Yes, I'm also the one that farted. Sorry. I need to work on that too. And this, the self-referrentials...

Okay, then, on the here-or-there issues, I was starting a big blog post to deal with all of it but decided it deserved a fuller untangling in a few posts. Part one just runs through the big sticky thing in Lockerbie Revisited. Long transcription of the Marquise-Henderson scene, which becomes amazingly monotonous when typing it. Ouch, got the bones comin out my finger tips now, just in time for Halloween tho so it's cool.

http://12-7-9-11.blogspot.com/2009/10/pt35-move-claims-pt-one.html

[Caustic Logic]

An MP is a member of the UK parliament in Westminster. Some of whom are Scottish - there are about 59 Scottish seats.

An MSP is a member of the Scottish parliament in Holyrood, Edinburgh.

Different animals. Christine Creech is one of the second category.

Rolfe.

Of course, thanks for the tip. It's good to get such things in order.

ETA: Oh, and on the above, I presume you meant the whole early FBI presence was denied? I'm hazy on that part...

But man, did he really interview Khreesat or what? Where did Frankovich get that I wonder?

[realdon]

Of course, thanks for the tip. It's good to get such things in order.

ETA: Oh, and on the above, I presume you meant the whole early FBI presence was denied? I'm hazy on that part...

But man, did he really interview Khreesat or what? Where did Frankovich get that I wonder?

He interviewed him in Nov 1989. So states Marquise in Scotbom.

See Google books Scotbom pages 60/61.

Also on these pages Thurmans first sight and identification of the timer fragment with more than a little help from the CIA.

I do find it hard to fathom that the CIA who had a full Mebo timer in their possession since 1986 had not discovered who built it. They had after all been interested enough to bring it to the US in the diplomatic bag from Africa.
Did they just stick it in a cupboard and forget about it?

I feel the CIA new plenty about MEBO prior to Lockerbie and this may seem wild but if I had been asked in 1971 about MEBO I could have given you their address in Switzerland and also told you they were involved in the manufacture of hi tech electronics that they were selling to various regimes in Africa.

I have been following all these posts and as Rolfe says " my head hurts"
Ball of string, spaghetti. Not wrong there.

David

[Caustic Logic]

He interviewed him in Nov 1989. So states Marquise in Scotbom.

See Google books Scotbom pages 60/61.

Also on these pages Thurmans first sight and identification of the timer fragment with more than a little help from the CIA.

I do find it hard to fathom that the CIA who had a full Mebo timer in their possession since 1986 had not discovered who built it. They had after all been interested enough to bring it to the US in the diplomatic bag from Africa.
Did they just stick it in a cupboard and forget about it?

I feel the CIA new plenty about MEBO prior to Lockerbie and this may seem wild but if I had been asked in 1971 about MEBO I could have given you their address in Switzerland and also told you they were involved in the manufacture of hi tech electronics that they were selling to various regimes in Africa.

I have been following all these posts and as Rolfe says " my head hurts"
Ball of string, spaghetti. Not wrong there.

David

David, awesome! It is a limited preview, but until I find a cheap cheap used copy it's the best I can get, hadn't thought to check there.

Their having any number of copies from across Africa, on file and analyzable/replicatable for years, the early statement Bollier made about only supplying the MST-13 to Libya (in Dec 88, well before a MST-13 was found), etc. is all too convenient. ESPECIALLY considering it's a precise timer, not the kind of thing that should be FOUND at Lockerbie.

It's true you really have old pre-Lockerbie knowledge of Mebo? More details would surely be appreciated... And thanks for popping in. I always know a few regulars are following, but actual input is so much better.

[Rolfe]

Just saying, I've been really busy at work. Also, I'm practically at the Lagrange point between the "it was planted" and the "it was genuine" theories, and thus paralysed and immobile.

I could do you a great lecture on energy metabolism in the ruminant though, and why it proves the Atkins Diet was a spectacularly bad idea....

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Just saying, I've been really busy at work. Also, I'm practically at the Lagrange point between the "it was planted" and the "it was genuine" theories, and thus paralysed and immobile.

I could do you a great lecture on energy metabolism in the ruminant though, and why it proves the Atkins Diet was a spectacularly bad idea....

Rolfe.

Apologies for my pained screams of loneliness! Kidding. Actually my girlfriend thought that a lecture on that sounded awesome. I'd be interested, but she suffers from CFS and is into learning about anything that may be related. Not that I'm actually taking you up, that makes no sense, at least not in this thread. just saying, that is good stuff you're doing. I do hope you're not too stressed and your L-lysine and/or D-ribose levels are good. Or something. ??

Now, on Marquise and Thurman and Khreesat:
Google books, search for Khreesat (http://books.google.com/books?id=JKLT360G_zAC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=Marquise+SCOTBOM&source=bl&ots=WGsIyP-TDr&sig=6VQFiQ4rjSlIJ-RykpZpLwyvyRY&hl=en&ei=oKjiStSKO4zKsAOdnpjCAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Khreesat&f=false)
Page 60 ... team which had interviewed Khreesat the prior November, approached Henderson and asked if he could take photographs of PT-35 and attempt to identify it. ...
That's all I can see. Can anyone remind me what it is you do to get "refreshed" access? Or share a more extended quote? I'm using Safari.
I'm guessing this person is Thurman, so by this he interviewed Khreesat in November 89, and took a photo of the timer himself, or asked to.

Page 53 agrees the CIA arranged an FBI interview with him in Nov 89. P 81 mentions a Marshman involved in the interview, and later interviewing Bollier. Page 166's entry is interesting too. Someone was stonewalling. P 227 the interview caused much controversy into 1990. P 136 - it caused a rift between someone and someone. Wow, lazy cheap-ass investigoogling is so awesome.

And that's all for now.

[Caustic Logic]

Just saying, I've been really busy at work. Also, I'm practically at the Lagrange point between the "it was planted" and the "it was genuine" theories, and thus paralysed and immobile.

You never will be able to know for sure. Best to decide what relation the two will have as they stay flatmates in your head, and they better keep down the racket. There is certainly a sane case to be made forplanting, given all the circumstantial clues, the anomalies, and total lack of proof it wasn't planted. Just re-read Gareth Pierce's piece. First, he did say
After the trial, new evidence that would have been at the centre of al-Megrahi’s now abandoned appeal made this suggestion more credible: a Swiss electronics engineer called Ulrich Lumpert, formerly employed by Bollier’s firm, stated in an affidavit to Köchler...
I didn't know it was to Kochler. That makes me like that document even less. The "would have been" was obviously a wrong guess. The 231 points of appeal, when searched, mention Lumpert not once. 231 missed chances. Fancy that.

Anyway, main point is the way he spun together Hayes' notes brought me right back to the strong suspicions:
No forensic scientist knows when he conducts his examinations whether or when there will be a prosecution that will depend on them; this makes it all the more important that his notes are exact. Hayes confirmed that it was his practice to draw pieces of circuit board where he found them – for instance in the vicinity of blast-damaged material – but he made no such drawings of this item, nor had he given it an exhibit reference number as he had every other exhibit being designated at the time, nor did he carry out a standard test for traces of explosive. Almost a month after his inspection of the timer fragment, Hayes was identifying and drawing exhibits which were given reference numbers smaller than the number of the vital exhibit. He recorded his finding on page 51 of his notes, but the pages originally numbered 51-55 had been renumbered 52-56 at some point. Hayes stated that he had ‘no idea’ when the change in pagination was carried out. The inference put to Hayes was that the original page 51 and the following pages had been renumbered, an original page removed and space made to insert what was now page 51 of his notes.

My vote, at the moment anyway, goes with plant, probably H+F both involved. Be as reserved or circumspect as you like, but other than fear of going 'too far out there,' there's no good reason to believe this is legitimate evidence. It's merely a possibility one will rank how one does. I'm considering the re-pagination an indirect clue but too easy and not the thing to latch onto. PT/35, why such a high number? That's more substantial than page numbers.

Adam.

[Rolfe]

I've just been watching the Al-Jazeera film again, and I note that close to the beginning both Jim Swire and Tam Dalyell say straight out that they think the fragment was planted. Tam Dalyell says "by the American authorities".

These people have been studying this case for years, while my own opinion went no further than "so many normally responsible journalists say this stinks so I suspect they're right". Surely someone has tried to figure out where in the chain of evidence was the opportunity for the thing to have been planted, and by whom? And yet I can find nothing more than anomaly-spotting.

Guybrush Threepwood makes a good point, on top of what Dan O. spotted. That photo of the whole exhibit shows the fragment of Toshiba manual before Hayes teased it out and did his drawings. Probably. Apparently. Which rules it out being the "polaroid" Feraday referred to in September. Which fits with the likelihood that in September, Feraday would have gone for a full-frontal picture of the fragment itself. And the picture doesn't look like a polaroid. Bollier has a version which has enlarged quite well, too well for a scan of a polaroid I'd say.

The picture is almost certainly a 35mm shot. Which, if the Official Story is true, must have been taken on or before 12th May 1989. This picture is fairly iconic. It's reproduced in the Private Eye report, which suggests it was released to the press. (Again, it's extremely unlikely that a polaroid, of which only one print would have existed, would be what was released to the press.) Is it possible that the provenance of the negative of this thing could be questionable?

I can dream up scenarios where it's possible, for sure. But I'm having trouble with the "probable" part.

I wonder if other commentators have actually noticed the significance of that picture? That unless its provenance is a total fraud, it fixes the fragment as being present in the chain of evidence, verifiably, as early as 12th May 1989. And shenanigans involving 35mm film negatives is risky - perhaps not so much that someone might get suspicious and investigate the negative, but that it might just be noticed when copies were being made for other purposes.

The point about the negative being accessed also makes manipulation (for example, adding the fragment to an existing picture which didn't include it) very unlikely. This was 1989-1990. As far as I know, doctoring a negative in this way would have been impossible.

So, where does this get us? Either the negative problem was overcome somehow, or the planting was done prior to about May 1989, or it really was found in the wreckage, dodgy provenance, renumbered pages and all.

Rolfe.

[commandlinegamer]

I'm practically at the Lagrange point between the "it was planted" and the "it was genuine" theories, and thus paralysed and immobile.

I have been following The Lockerbie Case at blogspot, and while I feel there are certainly many questions to be answered, some of the theories put forward just feel woo (South Africa, drug runners, etc). Maybe it's just the way they're being put across. (Actually hang on, isn't that a CT itself - release true information in a format so outrageous or from a source so unreliable no-one will believe it.)

[Rolfe]

Now, on Marquise and Thurman and Khreesat:
Google books, search for Khreesat (http://books.google.com/books?id=JKLT360G_zAC&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=Marquise+SCOTBOM&source=bl&ots=WGsIyP-TDr&sig=6VQFiQ4rjSlIJ-RykpZpLwyvyRY&hl=en&ei=oKjiStSKO4zKsAOdnpjCAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Khreesat&f=false)

That's all I can see. Can anyone remind me what it is you do to get "refreshed" access? Or share a more extended quote?


I just clicked on the page number, and got the lot. I'm using Firefox. But I've had the same views with IE.

How much is Marquise's book slanted, I wonder? I haven't heard people refer to it much. There's a lot of detail in the part I just read though.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

You never will be able to know for sure. Best to decide what relation the two will have as they stay flatmates in your head, and they better keep down the racket. There is certainly a sane case to be made forplanting, given all the circumstantial clues, the anomalies, and total lack of proof it wasn't planted.


Well, the anomalies are weird. This fragment, when viewed in the context of the 38-minute explosion, is one huge anomaly. Then, it's the only one whose evidence bag label has been altered. And it just happens to be described on the one page which looks as if it has been slipped into the notes retrospectively. And it's totally weird that Hayes didn't flag it up when he first saw it, but instead set it aside, unremarked, until Feraday noticed it in September.

But unless it was planted in about May 1989 (which actually makes the pagination and other Hayes anomalies pointless), that photograph makes it very hard to see how it got in there.

If it was a plant, then the overwhelming likelihood is that somehow one of Jibril's group got the device to Heathrow and on to luggage container AVE4041 before PA103A landed. If it wasn't, then that opens the possible places it might have been introduced to just about anywhere - with the probable exception of Malta. And Heathrow.

To my mind, the most important question at this point isn't where did it go on, or who did it, but why did the plane explode at 7.03pm? These timers had been kicking around the Middle East and Africa for 3 or 4 years. Anybody in the terrorist game could have had one, including Jibril. Oh, there was no evidence he ever had one, but absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. But why would anyone set such a timer to detonate at that time?

That's where they're sitting in my head at the moment.

Just re-read Gareth Pierce's piece. First, he did say


Gareth Pierce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Peirce) is a "she", by the way, believe it or not. She's English. She's had bugger-all to do with the case. I've got a lot of time for her, and she's absolutely dedicated to her clients (she specialises in taking on probable miscarriags of justice), but this didn't happen in her jurisdiction. Her article reads as if she's getting her information from the same place the rest of us are getting it. I don't see any evidence she has any more insight than that, and there's no reason she should have.

I didn't know it was to Kochler. That makes me like that document even less. The "would have been" was obviously a wrong guess. The 231 points of appeal, when searched, mention Lumpert not once. 231 missed chances. Fancy that.


Lumpert is doing this for Bollier, for reasons we can only guess at. I've given up on believing a word Bollier says. Anyone can see that the May 1989 picture shows the same item as the court exhibit, if they look properly, which allows us to dicount Herr Lumpert.

Anyway, main point is the way he spun together Hayes' notes brought me right back to the strong suspicions:


I've read this somewhere else, and I think that's where Miss Pierce got it from. It's the reilability of her source that has to he estabilshed. She's wrong about the lack of explanation for the repagination though - Hayes explained that quite reasonably at the trial. It's just awful funny that the one page which appears to have been interpolated by his little slip-up was the most important page of his entire career.

My vote, at the moment anyway, goes with plant, probably H+F both involved. Be as reserved or circumspect as you like, but other than fear of going 'too far out there,' there's no good reason to believe this is legitimate evidence. It's merely a possibility one will rank how one does. I'm considering the re-pagination an indirect clue but too easy and not the thing to latch onto. PT/35, why such a high number? That's more substantial than page numbers.


Find out where Miss Pierce got that from. I've read it elsewhere. It could be as simple as the fragment not being spotted as interesting on 12th May (Hayes was concentrating on the manual pages and frankly asleep at the wheel), and so was not given its own unique number at the time. Later, when it was spotted as important, a number was assigned.

I'm suspecting Bollier might be the source for this, though I'm not sure. If Miss Pierce has been lending credence to Bollier, her article shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

I have been following The Lockerbie Case at blogspot, and while I feel there are certainly many questions to be answered, some of the theories put forward just feel woo (South Africa, drug runners, etc). Maybe it's just the way they're being put across.

Welcome to this discussion, then! I know for a fact there's at least two great pages on it there, Prof. Black's and mine, and at least one bad dumb one I won't name. On who DID do it, indeed there are many theories or sub-theories, most of which at least must be wrong. I'm pretty confident something other than our official story is indeed true, and focusing on that, the mechanics of the false case.

(Actually hang on, isn't that a CT itself - release true information in a format so outrageous or from a source so unreliable no-one will believe it.)

Indeed, disinfo and misdirection. It's to be expected around a large cover-up, a native species in such climates. Most people don't accept that, but fact is bogus over-the-top theorizing does appear, anyway, and usually gets more airplay than saner versions, and so does serve to cloud the waters.

Anyway, sounds like you've got a decent BS filter, though you might need to turn it up before really digging in to something like this.

[Caustic Logic]

I've just been watching the Al-Jazeera film again, and I note that close to the beginning both Jim Swire and Tam Dalyell say straight out that they think the fragment was planted. Tam Dalyell says "by the American authorities".

These people have been studying this case for years, while my own opinion went no further than "so many normally responsible journalists say this stinks so I suspect they're right". Surely someone has tried to figure out where in the chain of evidence was the opportunity for the thing to have been planted, and by whom? And yet I can find nothing more than anomaly-spotting.

Followed by a judgment call, based on this, whatever instincts and biases, etc. I'd be surprised if these guys did have any special behind-the-scenes insight on how this was done, it just "was."

I agree the good photo is probably 35mm, or whatever is pro quality.

Is it possible that the provenance of the negative of this thing could be questionable?

I can dream up scenarios where it's possible, for sure. But I'm having trouble with the "probable" part.

I don't know - I think they had this thing at this time and took a picture.

Is that too early? How much time do we need? Directing away from PFLPGC and all the places that might lead, Libya as a decent target in their stead, Maltese clothes at the scene (unless plants as well), a printout showing Malta origins, a letter from Bollier signed Dec 28 1988 offering to implicate two Libyans using an MST-13 timer he sold to them only. 2+2+2+2+2=keep waiting 'til the Gulf war and then backdate stuff?

So, where does this get us? Either the negative problem was overcome somehow, or the planting was done prior to about May 1989, or it really was found in the wreckage, dodgy provenance, renumbered pages and all.

If I had to pick, and I don't but will, I'd take the second option.

I just clicked on the page number, and got the lot. I'm using Firefox. But I've had the same views with IE.

How much is Marquise's book slanted, I wonder? I haven't heard people refer to it much. There's a lot of detail in the part I just read though.

I think I was doing something wrong, but only some pages had preview images, the others some text only. But my IE got the previews up, and I'm studying. Slanted? From the head of the FBI team? Don't be silly!

Next post

[Caustic Logic]

Gareth Pierce (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Peirce) is a "she", by the way, believe it or not. She's English. She's had bugger-all to do with the case. I've got a lot of time for her, and she's absolutely dedicated to her clients (she specialises in taking on probable miscarriags of justice), but this didn't happen in her jurisdiction. Her article reads as if she's getting her information from the same place the rest of us are getting it. I don't see any evidence she has any more insight than that, and there's no reason she should have.

Well I don't feel too dumb for thinking male based only on name. Sounds male to my dumb ears. Apologies, miss Pierce. I too get the impressions she's not bahind-the-scenes either, but her wording made me feel she had closely studied this stuff and put it together well. I'll return to these points tomorrow, late. Now I need to get to bed a little early (for me). But one more point:

Lumpert is doing this for Bollier, for reasons we can only guess at. I've given up on believing a word Bollier says. Anyone can see that the May 1989 picture shows the same item as the court exhibit, if they look properly, which allows us to dicount Herr Lumpert.

Quite true - the court had this to say in 2001:
There is a dispute in the evidence between Mr Bollier and Mr Meister on
the one hand and Mr Lumpert on the other about the colour of the circuit boards in these prototype timers. Mr Bollier said they were brown, Mr Meister thought they were grey or brown, whereas Mr Lumpert said that they were manufactured from the green coloured circuit boards supplied by Thuring.
In 2007, Lumpert was less purjurious and suddenly it was a 'light brown' prototype. (which does bring me back to minor Q regarding that tan speck of "micro-lint." That was 'light brown.' A small nag, worth noting) Anyway, with the Dec 88 implication letter, the story told even in 2000 of a Libyan setting PA103's crash time on a different timer, just to be found by Bollier (and Meister), alonggside his brave 'revalations' of color-coded forgery, assorted nuttiness... I just found out Gaddafi has recently called for the 'abolition' of Switzerland. Can't help but suspect a connection. :tinfoil:

[Rolfe]

FYI, Gareth Pierce's birth name was Jean, but she didn't like it and adopted the name Gareth in her youth, which you're quite right, is definitely a masculine name (it's Welsh).

She's interviewed on TV quite frequently here, so people in Britain have got used to the oddity of the name.

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

I just found out Gaddafi has recently called for the 'abolition' of Switzerland. Can't help but suspect a connection. :tinfoil:


:D :D :D

Rolfe.

[Rolfe]

Just found the first documentary I've seen giving the Official Version. A lot of it is staged reconstruction, but it has some interesting aspects I've not seem before. Ought to be watched. It seems to have been filmed about a year ago.

T5BwGAY4msg&NR=1

beVHUDEhQ3Q&NR=1

3i1m3osukHQ&NR=1

GtwEhei2zRc&NR=1

a1_TTnOQ6ok&NR=1

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

That video is quite shpedoikal. Well-made, watchable, and I'll prove it by watching the whole thing soon.

To clarify this passage from me above:
I don't know - I think they had this thing at this time and took a picture.

Is that too early? How much time do we need? ... keep waiting 'til the Gulf war and then backdate stuff?

That was sort of a hasty counterpoint stated as something more like complete opinion. I'm agnostic on backdating, leaning actually to acceptance, in that right brain way, until I give it a little closer look - also soon. I do feel the re-numbered pages are gratuitous, and Hayes' bizarre "explanation" in court reinforces any hunch of misdirection.
I agree it's a very good question. I'm sure there is a quite innocent explanation, which I have no idea of.
That they had it all together early on is a distinct possibility, but makes the totality of backdating clues stranger. I'll come back to it.

Big news - actual police case re-opened, including forensics and new leads allowed. It seems. Dang, I can't even look at this just yet, have some work to do, but anyone else: Is this big?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/6425205/Police-relaunch-Lockerbie-bombing-investigation.html?
Families have sent a letter to Gordon Brown demanding the Government holds an inquiry into the bombing, in which 270 people were murdered, following the death of Megrahi, the only man ever convicted of the atrocity.
Are things happening really fast, or is this an article from two months hence falling back in time?

[Rolfe]

That video is quite shpedoikal. Well-made, watchable, and I'll prove it by watching the whole thing soon.

To clarify this passage from me above:

That was sort of a hasty counterpoint stated as something more like complete opinion. I'm agnostic on backdating, leaning actually to acceptance, in that right brain way, until I give it a little closer look - also soon. I do feel the re-numbered pages are gratuitous, and Hayes' bizarre "explanation" in court reinforces any hunch of misdirection.


You really need to read what the court judgement (http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/docs/lockerbiejudgement.pdf) reports Hayes as saying.

In the first place, Dr Hayes’ note of his examination was numbered as page 51. The subsequent pages had originally been numbered 51 to 55, but these numbers had been overwritten to read 52 to 56. The suggestion was put to Dr Hayes that the original pages 51 to 55 had been renumbered, the original page 56 had been removed, and that thus space was made for the insertion of a new page 51. Dr Hayes’ explanation was that originally his notes had not been paginated at all. When he came to prepare his report based on his original notes, he put his notes into more or less chronological order and added page numbers at the top. He assumed that he had inadvertently numbered two consecutive pages as page 51, and after numbering a few more pages had noticed his error and had overwritten with the correct numbers.


This is actually a reasonable explanation. I have no idea where all these comments that have him saying "it's an unfathomable mystery" came from, but that explanation is plausible.

Why he was using a loose-leaf book for this sort of work I have no idea, because a hard-bound laboratory notebook with no possibility of adding or removing pages undetectably should have been SOP. And it's one helluva weird coincidence that the page that just happens to look as if it's been interpolated because of this strange slip-up is the very page which describes the timer fragment. But the explanation isn't in itself incredible.

That they had it all together early on is a distinct possibility, but makes the totality of backdating clues stranger. I'll come back to it.

Big news - actual police case re-opened, including forensics and new leads allowed. It seems. Dang, I can't even look at this just yet, have some work to do, but anyone else: Is this big?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/6425205/Police-relaunch-Lockerbie-bombing-investigation.html?

Are things happening really fast, or is this an article from two months hence falling back in time?


Reports of Megrahi's death appear to be somewhat exaggerated. I posted about the re-opening of the case on the other thread.

I also came across another couple of video documentaries last night, and I'll post the links this evening.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Reports of Megrahi's death appear to be somewhat exaggerated. I posted about the re-opening of the case on the other thread.

Indeed, I just misread the paragraph in haste, as "families have sent a letter ... following the death... Sorry I missed the news at other thread. It belongs there and I'll check out what you said more closely. This is all clearly big news, and the tipping point is perhaps nigh.

[Rolfe]

[....] and the tipping point is perhaps nigh.


Don't hold your breath.

Rolfe.

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Well, vague idea coming up (I've mentioned it before actually).

If you're simply relying on a timer alone to detonate a bomb on PA103, you set it for about midnight. However, there's still the possibility the device might not be airborne at that time - particularly, if it isn't loaded on the plane for some reason (hey, it happens!). It's winter in northern Europe, planes get delayed, connections get missed, anything can happen.

Jibril's group always favoured including an altimeter in their devices for exactly that reason. Whatever happened, the thing would be airborne when it exploded. However, as it would be triggered by any ascent to altitude, these devices had to be loaded on to the final leg where the explosion was desired.

Now, suppose he decided to circumvent security and detection by placing the device on a feeder flight rather than directly on the final leg, he might still have been keen to include a barometric sensor to make sure that whatever happened as regards delays, the device wouldn't trigger until after take-off.

We discussed in another thread the concept of a barometric sensor which could count, and would delay the triggering of the device until the second or the third ascent. Suppose that's what the MST-13 was being used for? I don't know enough electronics to know if this is plausible, but the thing was versatile.

Suppose the components the timer was populated with in some way ensured that the device would remain inert during the earlier leg(s) of the flight, only allowing the main mechanism, which was still the barometer/ice-cube arrangement, to kick in on the Heathrow/JFK leg?

I'm not sure exactly how this would work, I don't have the expertise, but it could certainly work for a Frankfurt loading. If you're 99.9% sure you'll get it on at Frankfurt and the Frankfurt flight isn't gonig to be delayed by more than a couple of hours, then you just set it (using the MST-13) to lie dormant until 6pm when the Heathrow take-off is scheduled. If that plane is delayed, or if the bag misses the connection, then the objective is still achieved.

My main question with this is, given that train of thought, why not set the time for 11pm GMT rather than 6pm? That way, if the plane is airborne at that time, the final 30-minute countdown will start immediately and you'll probably get a detonation over the ocean. But if there's a big delay, then so long as the bag has reached Heathrow by 11pm, it'll sit quiet until it eventually takes off.

I suppose, though, that this latter scenario would be a bad one anyway, with such a delayed bag being liable to be x-rayed and/or hand-searched.

As I said, I'm a bit hazy about this, and I also wonder if it's possible the MST-13 might have been rigged to count take-offs rather than to delay the triggering until a certain time. But I think there's the germ of a possibility here.

Rolfe.

Cross replying from the suitcase thread, because the above and my reply seem to fit better here. I think Rolfe has done a good job again creating a plausible scenario, however it still doesn't sound convincing to me.

I don't see any scenario that can reconcile everything. The simplest explanation for the plane exploding when it did is an ice cube timer, with altimeter loaded at Heathrow, nice and tidy, but doesn't explain the MST-13 fragment.

Any other scenario where the MST-13 or something else is used to allow more sophisticated stuff, like loading the bomb onto a feeder flight removes the restriction that it has to exploded 30 odd minutes after the timer is triggered. It is possible that the perpetrators used the MST-13 for the complex stuff, and an ice cube timer for the last bit, but it's hard to see why.

To add a bit to your ideas about how the timer could have been set up, I do have an electronics BSc from the early 80s and some experience of hobby electronics and I think it's plausible that a timer could have been built to count flights, but it isn't trivial.

From what I've read of the ice cube timers which used an altimeter, the system was fairly crude, just a screw stuck through the face, which closed a circuit when the needle touched it. This is fine if you just want to start a timer when the plane goes over 10,000 feet or something, but if you want to count flights you have to watch for the plane going over 10,000 feet, then dropping a bit 20s later (or going through a patch of higher air pressure which could have the same effect). That would count two flights in a few seconds and the bomb would go off early. It's not complex to build in circuitry which would eliminate this, but it would need to be done and tested to make sure it worked.
Even when that's done using a feeder flight increases the risk of baggage going astray (A staple of bad stand up comedians for years), and blowing up an entirely different plane.

I don't find it beyond the realms of possibility that the timer was set for the time it was because the operator didn't care much, or got confused and set it wrong, or it just malfunctioned and went off early.

[Rolfe]

I agree with you entirely, except for the last part.

Everybody who has described these ice-cube barometric devices has said the same thing, and that was confirmed by Dan O. Seven minutes from take-off to a high enough altitude to trigger the device, then 30 minutes for the timer to count down. Give or take, because planes climb at different speeds, and the timers weren't spot-on accurate. But 37 minutes was the projected time from take-off to detonation.

Maid of the Seas blew apart 38 minutes after take-off.

Iran swore revenge for the Airbus attack. The PFLP-GC were the logical mercenary choice to effect the revenge. Iran paid $11 million into a Hungarian bank account controlled by the PFLP-GC a few days after Lockerbie. The early weeks of the investigation were dominated by reports of solid evidential trails being pursued, leading to the PFLP-GC - and not just the 38-minute explosion. Gauci originally believed Abu Talb was the mystery shopper.

And Khreesat was making bombs in Toshiba radio-cassette players. Among other things, including hi-fi radio tuners and computer monitors. At least one such device was never recovered.

All the other stuff pointing to the PFLP-GC, and that spot-on-to-the-minute explosion was just some weird goof-up or accident?

My best scenario that "the operator didn't care much or got confused and set it off early" is that Jibril/Khreesat didn't want to complicate his regular modus operandi, but simply wanted to use the MST-13 to get the device to Heathrow without it blowing up over Paris. Then he just let the standard system take over for the trans-Atlantic leg, knowing that a delay at Heathrow wouldn't make any difference to what happened so long as the device got there by 6pm.

The main thing that gives me pause is that this theory makes the Bedford suitcase and the Heathrow break-in a coincidence. Which is just about as wild as the 38-minute explosion being a coincidence.

Rolfe.

[Caustic Logic]

Excellaent summation, Rolfe. And good thought, Guybrush. Nothing really to add to that line of thought.

According to marquise's book, which I've read the relevant pages of, a few new things to me anyway. It's vague on Thurman's early work - he shuttled back and forth a several times, gave a Jan 19 89 presentation just showing it was a bomb. Not the interview leader, but involved in the Nov 89 Khreesat interview.

On Jan 10 1990 new SIO Stuart Henderson (replaced John Orr) presented at a meeting in the UK – he did not mention the timer fragment to all, but off to the side told Marquise and FBI’s ASAC John Kelso about it. They showed interest in helping find a match, but Henderson insisted on going it alone – “this decision cost us six months,” Marquise writes. [58]

It was at an investigator’s conference in Virginia, June 11 1990, when the Scottish authorities finally made their puzzlement over the fragment known to all parties – 55 companies checked to no avail. Thurman “approached Henderson and asked if he could take photographs of PT-35 and attempt to identify it.” Henderson, who believed the Scots had done all they could do, agreed.” [p 60] From here he's clearly working from a photo, and ready to go find a match to it. On the bolded, does this mean take a picture of the fragment Henderson had with him? Or take one of the photo prints Henderson brought? Or fly to the UK to snap a shot? Not the last it seems.

Marquise said “what Thurman did yielded fruit within two days.” As soon as the conference ended and the British contingent set back towards home, he took the photo to a CIA explosives expert named Orkin, who found files on a few possible fits in the two timers confiscated in Togo and Senegal in 1986 and 88 respectively. Thurman looked at the board inside the Togo timer and declared “I have you now!” Hearing of the perfect match, the Brits turned right around and came back to see it themselves, back in the US within 24 hours. [p 60] ETA: This would be like June 13, where Thurman recalls clearly June 15 as his ID date, and other sources have Feraday et al visiting (not returning) a week later on June 22. Perhaps not contradictory, but I'm confused anyway.

Now on his model timers: The Togo one from 86 had unclear links back to Libya, with its confusing backstory, but Thurman had it to look at and got the name Mebo off of it. But the Senegal one was found with all kinds of bombing material and in the hands of two Libyan intelligence agents with connections at airports. Unfortunately, the two men were released and thus good suspects (among the eight?), and their timer had physically disappeared from the stores in Senegal.
When the FBI and the Scots were in Senegal in July 1990, they located a gun and silencer but all the other materials which had been seized, including the timer, had disappeared. [61]
They had gotten a photo of the MST-13 board inside (not identified yet), which Orkin and Thurman worked from. Was he really comparing two photos from the same confiscated board?

[Rolfe]

[ETA: we've been reading the same stuff and coming to rather similar conclusions.]

I've been re-evaluating the planting theory both from the perspective of the red-ringed photo probably being verifiable to May 1989, and Thurman yomping around Dumfriesshire at and before that time.

Thurman (and Cannistraro) always seemed to me to be the place to look for the perpetrators of a plant. I was assuming that the timescale would have been 1990, once the political imperative to blame Libya had been identified, but this isn't necessarily so at all. The political imperative not to blame Syria/Iran was evident from the middle of March 1989. I've also had another viewing of the Tegenlicht documentary, and I can see more clearly what Levy is saying.

Suppose Khreesat to have been an agent of Jordanian intelligence, operating as a double agent infiltrated into the PFLP-GC. Jordanian intelligence was closely associated with the CIA, and Khreesat as a CIA mole has been suggested by a number of people (including, surprisingly, Peter Fraser). He was supposed to be making sure that the bombs he made were dud, but they weren't. One of them killed a German policeman when the cache was discovered. Maybe he was really a terrorist playing the CIA for patsies? Or maybe he simply couldn't hack the job of making them dud without being spotted?

Khreesat is captured in October 1988, but while a couple of others captured with him end up in jail, he is released after making one phone call, and he goes back to Jordan. The CIA don't want the Germans holding their mole, after all. This leaves the live bombs still at large.

Now we probably need another thread about warnings, and how many there were, and how specific they were. But there is at least a suggestion that the US authorities had more than an inkling that something might be going to happen. Did they know that PA103 on 21st December was the target? Don't know. However, there are aspects of the Pik Botha story that suggest this might be the case.

Anyway, Khreesat was allowed to go free for "operational reasons", but there is a concern that the PFLP-GC bomb plot might not have been stymied. Something might be going to happen, and if it does, a trail leading back to the PFLP-GC is the last thing we want.

So the US presence on the ground immediately after the crash isn't just to help out, and it isn't even just about concealing whatever the CIA officers on the plane were carrying. It's about trying to divert the investigation away from the PFLP-GC. It starts almost at once, because the crash isn't a complete surprise (those warnings again). There's not a lot they can do at first. Evidence is showing up thick and fast, being brought in by volunteers and (mostly) being signed for by two policemen. Bits of luggage container and suitcase and Toshiba are identified and certain inferences drawn.

So what to do?

What about a little piece of evidence introduced into right there on the ground, pointing to a type of device that the PFLP-GC aren't known to have had? We've already found bits of Toshiba, so what about the bomb itself? The ice-cube timers and altimeters were well known, but unlikely to have survived such proximity to the Semtex. Hows about we slip in a bit of some other sort of device, to make it look like a different perpetrator?

Well, what?

Mmm, we've got a couple of these Swiss timers that seem to be uniquely traceable to Libya. Will that do? We don't mind if Libya are in the frame, do we? Well, no. OK, we'll smash and burn one of the timers and select a piece that looks identifiable, and take it from there.

Hence the confusion about exactly where and when and by whom the shirt collar was found. And the altered label. Maybe the entire thing was fabricated (with the possible exception of the shirt collar), bits of Toshiba plastic and manual added to the mix to give provenance. Somebody had to be prepared to sign for it, and a couple of cops obliged, then sweated a lot when they realised later they'd signed sight unseen for the most vital piece of debris in the whole affair.

And off it went. And Thurman (assuming he was involved in planting it) was getting more and more frustrated as the thing simply wasn't surfacing. Then it does surface, in January 1990, but the Scottish police want to identify it themselves and won't involve the FBI (Marquise). After visiting 55 companies and 6 months later, they've found nothing.

By June the political will to blame Libya is strong, more so than anyone had really anticipated more than a year previously. That timer fragment would come in real handy right now, not just to stop people leaking to the press that the PFLP-GC did it and arrests were imminent, but to advance US interests in the run-up to the Gulf War.

So Thurman approaches Henderson and asks if he can photograph (or have a photograph of) the fragment. Here's Marquise's version (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JKLT360G_zAC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=%22Tom+Thurman,+the+agent+from+the+explosives+u nit%22&source=bl&ots=WGsIBJTRBq&sig=gtP1BfIfJ6-vYlmczBZ2fy6UP-s&hl=en&ei=BDLmStXBMJarjAfY-NmhBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CA4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Tom%20Thurman%2C%20the%20agent%20from%20the%2 0explosives%20unit%22&f=false). Thurman, who "knew where to look", took the picture immediately to a CIA operative, who pretty much put his finger right on it.

(By the way, Marquise's account in his book seems to imply that Henderson and Feraday had taken the actual fragment with them to a conference at an FBI laboratory in Virginia on 11th June, and it was there that Thurman asked if he could photograph it. Henderson and Feraday were on their way home by the time the identification was made, but they turned round at Heathrow and came back to the FBI lab within 24 hours, fragment and all. If Peter Fraser read this, he'd have a fit. So if Marquise is correct, what was Henderson on about in the Tegenlicht film? Or is there some confusion between Henderson and Williamson here? Foot names Williamson as the copper who was travelling with Feraday.)

Anyway, this flies better than any of the other scenarios I suggested, I think.

This scenario, oddly, exonerates the pagination anomaly, and the "hey, here's a polaroid" oddity. The latter isn't all that strange, given that we now know the fragment was photographed in May, and it could be that Williamson had introduced some sort of time constraint. The former? God knows. One more ridiculous coincidence, we're going to have to allow some of these, inevitably.

Thurman's behaviour is indeed odd. He loves to dramatise his own role in the affair. He has this wonderful story about the "moment of truth" on 13th (15th?) June. He somehow lets the National Geographic documentary credit him with the months of fruitless running around trying to identify the timer actually done by the Scottish police. He even waxes lyrical about his time in Scotland early on. But for an FBI official, he's very pally with a shadowy CIA guy who seems (even more than he does) to know exactly where to look. (CIA and FBI rather hate each other's guts acording to the cast of "Lockerbie Revisited".) Not only does he know exactly where to look, he knows it's MEBO right away - but he still goes through a charade of "what if it actually says M580?" and looks other places before finally heading for Bollier.

Marquise's account also confirms my earlier impression that the CIA had two timers, one from Togo and one from Sengal. The Togo one was the one used for the eventual comparison. The Senegal one disappeared, leaving only a photo behind.

Well, well.

Levy suggests to Marquise that he himself has been duped by the CIA. That it hasn't been a question of telling him explicitly to pin the blame on Libya, it's been a question of not giving him evidence implicating the PFLP-GC which might embarrass the CIA and its agents (er, Khreesat?), and maybe a little more misdirection.

I wonder if this is actually true?

Thurman (so says