Below is a summation I requested from Mr. Patrick Haseldine of his persistent theory that elements of South Africa's Apartheid government carried out the 103 bombing. Beneath that are some counter-points by Robert Forrester and myself, not to this specific article, but from existing comments re: the South Africans theory (which no one but Haseldine supports, AFAIK). I still have no idea what "Wi" and "Wii" have to do with anything. (C.L.)
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Why Pan Am Flight 103? That’s the Wii
Officially
Why did the Libyans do it is the Wi question.
Libya’s motive in sabotaging Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988, according to one school of thought, was to avenge the death of Colonel Gaddafi’s daughter in the 1986 US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi. In which case, PA 103 was Gaddafi’s second bite of the revenge cherry since he was alleged to have sponsored the September 1986 hijacking of Pan Am Flight 73 in Karachi, Pakistan, when 20 passengers were killed.
Former CIA head of counter-terrorism, Vincent Cannistraro, who had worked on the PA 103 investigation, was interviewed in the 1994 documentary film Maltese Double Cross, and offered another scenario. Cannistraro said he believed the Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC planned the attack at the behest of the Iranian government (in revenge for the July 1988 shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the US Navy). The Palestinians then sub-contracted it to Libyan intelligence after October 1988, because the PFLP-GC’s bomb-making cell in Neuss had been disrupted by the German police and could not complete the operation.
Officially, then, the Wi question remains open.
Why that particular flight and date is the Wii question.
The Wii question was never actually addressed during the trial in 2000 of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahiand Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah at the Scottish Court in the Netherlands. An explanation can however be divined from the Court Judgment, which states: “From the evidence which we have discussed so far, we are satisfied that it has been proved that the primary suitcase containing the explosive device was dispatched from Malta, passed through Frankfurt and was loaded onto PA 103 at Heathrow.”
So, it appears the official answer to the Wii question is that Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988 was sabotaged for a simple, mechanical reason: the bomb suitcase had been ingested as unaccompanied baggage atLuqa Airport in Malta, conveyed by Air Malta flight KM180 to Frankfurt International Airport, and transferred there to a connecting feeder flight PA 103A to Heathrow Airport, where it was put into the interline baggage container AVE 4041PA and loaded onto PA 103 in the forward cargo hold.
Alternatively
Why did the apartheid South African regime do it? (Wi)
The alternative answer is that the apartheid regime was motivated entirely by self-interest: economic and political.In December 1988, the United Nations was planning to take legal action against De Beers/Anglo American to enforce UN Council for Namibia (UNCN) Decree No 1, which prohibited the exploitation of Namibia 's natural resources - particularly diamonds and uranium. The UNCN Decree provided for the payment of damages to the future government of an independent Namibia . A former senior De Beers employee, Gordon Brown, has estimated that from 1967, when South West Africa (Namibia) became the responsibility of the United Nations, until the territory gained its independence in 1990, De Beers illegally removed diamonds valued at £11.0 billion ($18.7bn).
On 22 December 1988, the day after the Lockerbie disaster, apartheid South Africa was set to surrender control of Namibia to the United Nations upon signature of the New York Accords at UN headquarters, thus ending its illegal occupation of the territory in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 435. Once Namibia was under UN control, De Beers and the apartheid State faced prosecution under UNCN Decree No 1.
Why that particular flight and date? (Wii)
The alternative answer to the Wii question starts with what former MP Tam Dalyell called a “Faustian agreement” whereby Washington agreed with Tehran to sacrifice one American aircraft in revenge for the Iranian airbus - rather than the ten demanded by Iran’s minister of the interior at the time, Ali Akbar Mostashemi (see Mail on Sunday, 16 August 2009, The truth about Lockerbie? That's the last thing the Americans want the world to know).
To prevent the awful truth about this agreement from emerging, Washington secretly delegated the 'eye for an eye' task to Pretoria which accepted, but on condition that it had a say on choosing the sacrificial aircraft. Thus, the apartheid regime’s newly-fledged Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), having been assigned the task by the CIA, then selected Pan Am Flight 103 and 21 December 1988. That just happened to be the flight on which Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was booked to attend the signing ceremony in New York and to take charge of Namibia. The CCB had ample time to plan and execute the crime since Bernt Carlsson’s movements and travel arrangements, dictated in part by De Beers in London, were known well in advance. At one stroke, PA 103’s destruction met the requirement of the “Faustian agreement” and, by targeting the UN Commissioner for Namibia, achieved the objective of apartheid South Africa: to stop him prosecuting De Beers for the illegal exploitation of Namibia's natural resources (see South Africa Inc: The Oppenheimer Empire, pages 117-121, and 'World in Action' documentary The Strange Case of the Disappearing Diamonds, which featured strong criticism of De Beers by Bernt Carlsson ).
Upshot
As at February 2010, there has been no criminal investigation into Bernt Carlsson’s murder. The decision not to investigate was taken by Scottish policeman, Detective Constable John Crawford, on the basis of information supplied to him by “a very helpful lady librarian in Newcastle ” (see "The Lockerbie Incident : A Detective's Tale", by John Crawford, pages 88/89).
- Patrick Haseldine
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Commentary by Robert Forrester (Quincey Riddle), Jan 30 2010
ONE STEP AT A TIME
I must confess that, academically speaking, I lack what some seemingly do not: a doctorate in Double Think. With regard to the Carlson angle specifically:
A: Without doubt the RSA government of the day would have been more than happy to have him 'removed'.
B: However, by blowing up a jumbo with 258 innocent bystanders on board in the process! To what end? To provide a cover and cast the blame on to a group of disaffected Arabs or Iranians?
C: Surely Pretoria had plenty of alternatives that could have achieved the same goal without all the 'collateral' (I believe is the appropriately sanitised term to express mass murder these days).
D: Let's not forget how much they had learnt from the results yielded via their investment in Project Coast.
E: In other words: why not simply do a Georgi Markov number on him?
F: After all, the progress made in the realms of DNA sequencing and biotoxins through Coast would have been sufficiently well advanced at the time to make discovery almost impossible unless the pathologists knew exactly what they were looking for.
Now then. I have an immense degree of respect for Tam Dalyell, however, when he refers to a Faustian pact whereby Washington subcontract the job to Pretoria, I am afraid I do not know in what context this statement was set. Was it, for example, one of: 'it is not beyond the bounds of credibility to imagine.......etc'? Or, was it an assertion? Mr Dalyell has also said, and here I paraphrase, that the only hope of discovering who committed the act probably lies in one of the perpetrators believing sufficiently strongly in God that there is a deathbed confession. I, therefore, cannot believe that any reference to a Faustian pact on Tam Dalyell's part was anything other than a nodding acknowledgement of the theory.
Nevertheless, on the grounds that it is not unknown for governments and their servants to indulge in apparently insane and overly complex subterfuge, where is the proof? The layman casting an eye over this can arrive at one of two equally valid conclusions:
1: The whole thing is so spectacularly convoluted as to render it credible on the grounds that it is precisely the type of machination that people dream up when they have something to hide.
2: The whole thing is so spectacularly convoluted as to render it incredible, particularly when we place its apparent sophistication beside the fact that Pik Botha was booked on to the same flight only for himself and his entourage to unbook themselves. But there again, some might argue that that slip up was a blind to make it look like RSA had no blood on its hands because they wouldn't have made such a stupid mistake, would they?
How far then does this take Saul along his journey to Damascus? Precisely nowhere in my view. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of crime fiction, and theories of this nature are most stimulating, but for me, until some tangible proof emerges, I am afraid they only serve as a form of intellectual exercise.
Furthermore, my principle motivation in the Lockerbie issue is the travesty of justice that was Zeist. Whatever I may think about who dunnit (and I do have my thoughts, prosaic though they may be), I am not interested in apportioning blame at this stage. What I am very much interested in doing though is righting a wrong. One step at a time, my friends.
Anyhow, just a couple of passing thoughts.
Toodle pip for the moment,
Robert Forrester (Justice for Megrahi Campaign committee member).
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Commentary by Adam Larson (Caustic Logic)
actually an exchange with Mr. H. Dec 22 2009
CL: So... (aplogies for any imprecisions on my part) Were the South Africans responsible for the $10 million transfer from Iran to the PFLPGC to blow up a plane with Americans as revenger for IA655? Did Botha have a hand in getting Khreesat's bombs made in Frankfurt? Or in smuggling one of them onto PA103 in London? Or is it just a coincidence that the South African method happened to so resemble a Khreesat bomb in blowing up 38 minutes after takeoff? And a coincidence the SA job so reflected the shoot-down of IA655? Why do you suppose the Iranians never got their revenge they paid for? Do you have a supposition at all on how they did it, or do you even care?
Also, why - when he was a supporter of Megrahi - was Nelson Mandella unable to expose his predecessors' true involvement?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P2-9989557.html
Just asking questions. I'm sure you've got the answers somewhere or you wouldn't be so sure the SA folks did it. (If you can't provide answers, I will just flat ignore you for good)
And otherwise, I agree with your analysis.
PH: I don't pretend to know the full answers to the questions posed by Caustic Logic, but here are my preliminary suggestions:
a. South Africa's National Intelligence Service (NIS) was an integral part of Western intelligence;
b. Marwan Khreesat was a double/triple agent, and a CIA asset;
c. one of Khreesat's bombs might have been smuggled onto Pan Am Flight 103 at Heathrow (or it could have been a replica device made by a dedicated bomb-making section of the SADF's Directorate of Military Intelligence);
d. the Heathrow break-in on 20/21 December 1988 was a classic decoy operation, probably carried out by South Africa's Civil Cooperation Bureau;
e. thanks to South Africa, and with CIA support, Iran got their "revenge". (Whether the Iranians had to pay for it is another matter: there's no audit trail for the $10 million "transfer");
f. Gaddafi funded the ANC, and when Nelson Mandela was released from jail in 1990 (18 months before Megrahi and Fhimah were indicted), Libya was the first country he visited;
g. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission established in 1996 was, I believe, precluded from investigating the regime's involvement in crimes committed overseas, unless amnesty had been applied for them. Since no-one applied to the TRC for amnesty over the Lockerbie bombing, it was not investigated. Lockerbie was however mentioned in the context of an amnesty granted to South African spy Craig Williamson for the 1982 bombing of the ANC offices in London (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Alberts_(lawyer)#Claim_to_fame ).
I could say a lot more, but that's probably enough for now.
CL:
Mr. Haseldine, thanks. That definitely forestalls "putting you on ignore." For what that's worth. (?) For the record a few notes on your thoughts here:
a- almost seems a counter-point, but okay...
b - I suspect tangential relationship - could a good chunk of a $10 million prize (plus genuine disgust with the IA655 incident) turn a single agent into a temporary double one?
c - may and may. Okay, but no specific supports. Duly noted.
d - Decoy? They specialize in cut-lock decoy ops more so than other groups?
e - Something tells me for revenge to work, one has to deliver the pain oneself, or on one's own orders. Your take seems that SA did this to kill Carlsson and, perhaps to claim Iran's prize at the same time? Otherwiise they didn't get their revenge if someone else did. They could as well predict 10,000 US flu deaths in the winter of 86 and call that more than enough revenge for their piddling 290.
f - yes, thanks. And he, as President, found no evidence of Botha et al's involvement to help get Libya off the hook? That definitely did not answer that important question.
g - Okay, that starts to answer it. Did anyone have reason to ask for that investigation? None that I've seen. The US drive against Libya as the villains of Lockerbie AND Mandella's presidency were both years old by 1996, and this question not entering the picture supports there being no such evidence.
The link just says ""If you look at the Lockerbie disaster - this is very similar. I think Britain would like to see these guys are prosecuted in England even though they get amnesty here." That reads to me as a comparison of jurisdiction and amnesty issues using a then-current high-profile case involving those sort of issues. It does nothing to support South African involvement in Lockerbie, whatever other heinous crimes they were guilty for.
Perhaps they're just really good at covering their tracks too. But some are perceptive enough to see the tracks anyway in the random jumble of the forest floor. Being able to make others see them is the tricky part though. No one else is seeing it, so maybe... it's not really a covered track? Just in case you hadn't considered that yet...
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