Iran Air 655 - Casus Belli Behind Lockerbie?

Caustic Logic
15 March 2010
Last update July 3, 2011

Note, July 3, 2011: I'm simply bumping this post to the top to mark the 23rd anniversary today of this horrific and dubious incident that seems to have sealed the fate of Pan Am 103.

The USS Vincennes and the Downing of IA655:
Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled 28-minute flight from Bandar Abbas airport to Bahrain, on July 3 1988. An Airbus A300B2 flown by Capt. Mohsen Rezaian, IA655 left the ground at 10:17 am local time to cross the Straits of Sidra. It seems the plane was talking normally with ground control on open frequencies, was listed in flight registries, flying well within an established civilian air corridor, and transmitting the right civilian transponder code that clearly means something like the car window sign "Baby on Board." [1]

As IA655 steadily climbed to cruising altitude (14,000 feet for this short journey), it was suddenly struck with two powerful SM2 missiles fired from an American ship in Iranian waters below. The 290 passengers and crew (including 66 children) were all killed, either in the explosion and breakup, or after a three mile fall to the Persian Gulf below.

Officially, the crew of the USS Vincennes, which had opted to fire the missiles at that plane, had simply gotten confused in the thick of a separate naval battle they'd gotten into. After missing IA655's listing in the 'do not shoot' registry, misreading its transponder code as of military origin, and erring on its speed, heading/location, and altitude profile, the crew had decided the airbus was a fighter jet swooping down towards them for the attack, as all their misreadings jointly suggested. [2]

The troubling details and explanations of this bizarre accident are worth covering elsewhere, but ascribing the best intentions, the Vincennes fired in what seemed clear-cut self-defense, while they happened to be within Iranian waters. As such they fully earned their later commendations, like the responsible air-warfare coordinator, who won a navy medal for "heroic achievement [...] under fire." [3]

End of the War
At the Iraq-Iran war's commencement in 1980, the United States had sanctioned the bloodshed, so long as Iraq was on top. By the latter 1980s, the situation had shifted. Increased U.S. assistance and even direct shooting reflected fears that Iraq might lose forever the territory Iran was gaining. By the end of 1987, “we became,” a senior U.S. officer told ABC News, “forward air controllers for the Iraqi air force.” [4]

Operation Praying Mantis responded to Iranian mining of the Gulf with escalated U.S. attacks on Iranian gunboats, oil platforms, and tankers in April. [5] Immediately, protection of "neutral shipping" was also expanded; it was to enforce this protection that the Vincennes had been called to the Gulf. 

At the same time, Washington and thence the UN Security Council was calling, with Resolution 598, for the war to simply end with past borders restored. Both sides had to see the benefit of an end to the grueling war, but after their own heavy sacrifices had improved their odds, Iran was reluctant to concede on the West's terms and timetable.

Along with a renewed Iraqi air and chemical offensives into Iran's cities in the spring and summer of 1988, the bizarre accident of IA655 had to have hastened  Iran’s effective surrender a few weeks later. The precise role it played – minor, major, or peripheral - cannot be known for sure. However, an Iranian scholar stated at a conference hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center [paraphrased]

"A turning point in Iran's thinking came with the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in July 1988 by the American cruiser USS Vincennes. That incident apparently led Ayatollah Khomeini to conclude that Iran could not risk the possibility of U.S. open combat operations against Iran and he decided it was time to end the conflict." [6]

There is every reason to believe that’s just what the Americans wanted to get across, after the tragedy if not shortly before as well. Aside from unapologetic "regret” over the loss of innocent life, and blaming Iran for the warship's mistakes, the American message was best put by White House media handler Marlin Fitzwater in putting the accident in context:

Only an end to the war, an objective we desire, can halt the immense suffering in the region and put an end to innocent loss of life. Our goal is peace in the Gulf and on land. We urge Iran and Iraq to work with the Security Council for an urgent comprehensive settlement of the war pursuant to Resolution 598. Meanwhile, United States forces will continue their mission in the area, keenly aware of the risks involved and ready to face them. [7] 

That is, as the Iranians likely read it, "we’ll keep on shooting at anything that might possibly be a threat as long as we “have to” hang around there, which is until Iran surrenders." About seven weeks after IA655 was torn down, an agreement was reached and hostilities between Iraq and Iran were officially and physically ended on August 20 1988. No territory was lost, but nearly a million people were. 

But even after the cease-fire, one more battle loomed. It would be just as one-sided as the battle of IA-655, just about as deadly, and just as unacknowledged. Again, the perpetrators would go unpunished as innocents paid the price for others' crimes.  

Revenge Pronouncements / Connective Tissue
Only in 1996 was a comprehensive legal agreement over the incident settled between Iran and America. Officially Iran accepted the accident story and took a small settlement $132 million and no acceptance of any guilt, exactly as offered by the US eight years earlier. [8] "Official" acceptance doesn't always mean that much; especially when the blood was fresh and tempers hot, Tehran never bought the bland American statements that the shoot-down was purely accidental. It's not even an unreasonable suspicion on their part - it's their apparent response I can't agree with.

Researcher Ludwig De Braeckeleer has assembled a useful compendium of Iranian death threats following the supposed accident. By this, various officials and ambassadors accused the United States of ''a barbaric massacre'' and an "act of terrorism." They pledged to launch "an appropriate response," to the "American crime," to "avenge the blood of their martyrs," and mete out "punishment to prevent further occurrence or recurrence of such unfortunate incidents." Most pointedly, hardliner Ali Akbar Mohtashemi (alt Mohtashemi-Pur), widely believed to have headed up the "appropriate response" planning, publicly "swore that there should be a "rain of blood" in revenge." [9]


This wasn't just hardcore posturing for the Iranian street, but something representing a real danger; everyone in the know expected retaliation, and likely in-kind - the Iranians would seek to now kill American civilians on an airplane and see how we liked it.  While uncertainty persists with no adequate investigation, the supposed payment was $10 million to the Ahmed Jibril's PFLP-GC. An early 1991 report, prepared by the National Security Agency for Gulf War intelligence use, stated:

"Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid $10 million in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus." [10]

The revenge moved swiftly, it seems, perhaps starting before the cease-fire even. It was in early October that the GC cell in Neuss, West Germany was set up, October 13 that bomb maker Khreesat arrived and set to work, and October 26 when the cell was busted up in Operation: Autumn Leaves. Most have always suspected their goal had been to destroy an American airliner on Iran's instruction and with support from Syria, using the type of radio-disguised altimeter bomb found in the car with Khreesat.

Three other such bombs were missed in the first raid and only found later, and one bomb at least was never intercepted. Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the CIA's Lockerbie probe, was interviewed for a program Shadow Over Lockerbie:

"[Cannistraro] says authorities focused on the likelihood that Marwan Khreesat's fifth bomb had blown up the Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie. "The immediate feeling was: we've missed someone. That someone in that cell had escaped with one of the explosive devices and succeeded in planting it on Pan Am 103." [11]  

In other words, the terror tree was shaken and the "Autumn Leaves" had fallen and scattered, but they weren't all raked up neat. One may have drifted into the belly of PA103.

Obvious, Then Nothing
When the other shoe fell, the horror and carnage clearly mirrored IA655 with a mid-air explosion leaving 259 to deal with five miles of pure gravity however they did before dying against the cold winter soil of Scotland. To clarify the issue, just hours after the attack, two phone calls were placed from London to the Associated Press and UPI declaring in broken English:

"We, the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, are undertaking this heroic execution in revenge of blowing the Iran Air plane by America a few months ago." [12]

A CIA memo of the following day listed this first among a short list of responsibility claims. Among Islamic Jihad, the Ulster Defense League, and Mossad, the report said "we consider the claim from the Guadians of the Islamic Revolution as the most credible; previous attacks claimed by this group suggest it is pro-Iranian." It then listed several, with responsibility usually called in by an anonymous man: two assassination attempts on exiled Shah era leaders in exile, a plane hijacking a plane to secure the release of said assassins, and killing by car bomb a German businessman accused of selling missiles to Iraq while the war was on. [source]

Avenging the killing of 290 innocent Iranians by a US gunship seems in-line with the Guardians' philosophy, or perhaps some other Iranian agency, and most likely with technical help of the altimeter-triggered kind. Investigators, media reports, and the whole public mind went that way at first for at least a year, from no later than this ABC News broadcast of Feb 16 1989. Behind the suspicions of the PFLP-GC cell and its Khreesat bomb "a senior source overseeing the investigation" revealed that  "some hard-line members of the Iranian revolutionary guard" may have arranged for the attack through these suspects. "Revenge for the shooting down of the Iranian Airliner by the USS Vincennes in the Persian Gulf last summer was their motive," said reporter Brian Dunsmore in Lockerbie.  [13]

And still in early 1990 Steve Emerson and Brian Duffy wrote in The Fall of Pan Am 103 how sponsorship ran with Syrian supports up to Tehran, driven by revenge for IA655, "shot down for the Fourth of July holiday, the Mullahs believed, to celebrate America's independence." [14] To repay these expensive 4th of July fireworks with an early Black Christmas present, followed by a Body Boxing Day and a few more, might be a potent signal.

Officially, Iran denies involvement in the bombing, but some, like suspected mastermind Mohtashemi, have claimed a leading role on candid occasions. In 1995, an Iranian magazine ran an interview where "Mohtashami-Pur said that he would soon reveal the "Lockerbie files" to the readers." The report was quashed from above and the magazine closed down. [15] Former Iranian president Abdulhassan Bani Sadr also has admitted proudly, in the 1990s, that “Iran ordered the attack and Ahmed Jibril carried it out,” [16] a claim he repeated to deBraeckeleer in 2008. [17]

As these statements were made and as of late 1991 the U.S. was officially and exclusively pursuing Libya for the crime, freeing some Persian tongues to confess with impunity, it seems. And yet, the U.S. says, there was no Iranian revenge. The faint possibility of Tehran's involvement in Libya's atrocity has been whispered, but never clarified or pursued in the slightest. [see: Iranian vs. Libyan Role in the Lockerbie Bombing]

Iranian leaders had planned to take down an American plane (at least one), had paid for it and had bombs built and ready to go. With hard cash, glory, and blood vendetta driving them, Mohtashemi and and his contractors must have given up after the Germany bust. This is just what the FBI, CIA, USG, Scottish Police, Camp Zeist judges, and others claim to find most likely. And then just as precisely as item 8849 from Malta replaced the Bedford suitcases in the luggage container's deadliest corner, the Libyans took their own incidentally identical revenge at just that time. 

It's never been decided which motive drove the Libyans, but it's widely presumed to be the nearly three-year-old Operation: Eldorado Canyon bombings by U.S. forces. For the death of his adopted toddler daughter and a few dozen other Libyans, he ordered the Lockerbie bombing, while the level-headed Iranians waited for the court settlement and reparations after IA-655.  


At least, that's what the FBI's SCOTBOM evidence strongly illustrates. A desperate defector, an amazingly resilient timer fragment, a bizarre unverifiable printout, and a pliable soon-to-be-millionaire witness, all prove the Libyans did it through Malta, however much sense that makes. And nothing solid implicating Iran or Syria or the PFLP-GC was found anywhere in there. Move along, nothing to see here - the real Lockerbie bomber was behind bars for a while.  
---Sources: 
[1] Ghasemi, Shapour. “Shooting Down Iran Air 655 [IA655]” Iran Chamber Society: History of Iran. 2004. http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/shootingdown_iranair_flight655.php
[2], [3] Charles, Roger. "Sea Of Lies: The Inside Story Of How An American Naval Vessel Blundered Into An Attack On Iran Air Flight 655 At The Height Of Tensions During The Iran-Iraq War-And How The Pentagon Tried To Cover Its Tracks After 290 Innocent Civilians Died." Newsweek. July 13 1992. http://www.newsweek.com/id/126358
[4]  "The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War" ABC Nightline, Aired July 1 1992. Full Transcript, with extensive notes. ...
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jksonc/docs/ir655-nightline-19920701.html
[5] Operation Praying Mantis. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
[6] Steinberg, Dana. "The 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War: A CWIHP Critical Oral History Conference." http://wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.print&news_id=90411&stoplayout=true 
[7] See [1]
[8] Wikipedia. Iran Air Flight 655. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
[9] DeBraeckeleer, Ludwig. "Tehran: 'The Blood of Our Martyrs Will Be Avenged' [Diary of a Vengeance Foretold] Part 2." Oh My News International. July 4 2008.
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=383015&rel_no=1
[10], [15], [17] DeBraeckeleer, Ludwig. "Former Iranian President Blames Tehran for Lockerbie." http://www.thetorah.tv/misc/Former%20Iranian%20President%20Blames%20Tehran%20for%20Lockerbie.htm
[11] Biewen, John and Ian Ferguson. Shadow Over Lockerbie. 2000, American Radio Works. http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/lockerbie/story/printable_story.html 
[12]  Emerson and Duffy p 56
[13] ABC News. Feb. 16, 1989: Pan Am 103 Flight Investigation. "A bomb hidden in a cassette player brought down Pan Am 103 in December 1988." Anchor, Ted Koppel. Reporter, Barry Dunsmore, Lockerbie. Video currently viewable at:
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=9443717 
[14] Emerson and Duffy, p 59.
[16] The Maltese Double Cross. Produced, written, and directed by Allan Francovich, Hemar Enterprises, released November 1994. 2 hours, 36 minutes. Quote at 34:00 mark. Google Video 

An Iranian in London: The Strange Case of Parviz Taheri

Helsinki Warning Re-Considered, pt 5
April 14 2011

The last installment in this series, many months ago, questioned whether Finnish Palestinian sad sack Samra Mahayoun actually placed the “Helsinki warning” phone call in December 1988. His record of prank calls from Finland about fake terror attacks might well have become known around, and so I speculated an Iranian caller, linked somehow to the plot against american air traffic, using Mahayoun’s phone line to launder their message about an upcoming airliner bombing.

Exactly why they would do this isn’t entirely obvious, but it’s worth thinking about. With the evidence now available and despite legal conventions, it’s fairly clear the plot that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 was Iranian in grievance, and executed with a certain known style of bomb. We can bet that this device was first loaded in London, rather than via the feeder flight 103A in Frankfurt as first decided, or Malta as set by 1990. If the call was a real warning of the real Flight 103 plot, it might specify London, but instead pointed to Frankfurt, from which the bomb they had readied would not have worked.

Aside from a non-informed hoax, simple misdirection from insiders is one possible explanation. It's the one I'll proceed on for now.

Named by the Defense
Another potential point of Frankfurt implication is an Iranian exile named Parviz Taheri, who already stands out for his own reasons, and may also have a link to that prophetic call (explained below). The resident of Sweden had an odd enough story to be named in 2000 by Megrahi’s defense team in their “special defense of incrimination.” He was one of a few alternate suspects in the narrative where Iranians – not Libyans - were behind planting the bomb. And it was inserted in London, not Malta.

Taheri was however called as a prosecution witness (number 996), which gave him immunity from any related charges. By the time of closing statements in January 2001, even the defense seemed to have abandoned trying to witness 996 to anything directly. Which isn’t to say there’s not a possible link, just that there wasn’t one the defense chose to put any weight on.

(fuller testimony excerpts, fascinating reading - source throughout for Taheri quotes)

Mitigating against Taheri’s involvement with the Iranian plot is his history, leaving little obvious room for sympathy with the Mullahs. He testified at the Lockerbie trial in Kurdish, having been born in Mashabad, Iranian Kurdistan. He “served in the Iranian army for two years,” he said (translated of course), “with six months training in arms and ammunition.” After this he became a teacher in the villages, and in 1983 came under suspicion of disloyalty and fled to Turkey. He arrived in Germany at the end of 1983, and moved to Frankfurt a year later.

On the other hand, this same fact would make Parviz an excellent “clean-skin” operative for a Tehran plot, hypothetically. He might be tacitly co-opted in any number or combination of ways, carrot or stick, or even maneuvered into helping unconsciously. The destruction of Iran Air 655 (IR655), the known motive for Iranin's known plot, was an unusual circumstance. Here, we cannot rule out even a long-estranged Kurd like Taheri being just as infuriated as anyone at the Yankee war crime. Nor can we rule out pressure against this diaspora Iranian in Frankfurt, Europe’s busiest air hub and the place their contractors would work on the weaponry for that revenge job (see below).

There’s certainly no obvious link so far, just a possible one I ask the reader to hold lightly in mind as we proceed.

A PFLP-GC Link?
In 1980s Frankfurt, Taheri worked at a “publishing house,” he testified, and “in the council of Frankfurt” (city council?). But he also sought out, in 1987 and ’88, store locations for more blue-collar work, with vague ambitions of selling newspapers, or running a catering or take-away business. One of the few dozen addresses he wrote down in a notebook was Sandweg 28. When asked about this at trial, he only said “I can't remember precisely where that is, but we looked for several places in Frankfurt, but I can't remember all the places.”

This exact piece of real estate was the same one chosen by the PFLP-GC, in September 1988, to house a terrorist cell, fronted with a catering business. This wasn’t any old group, but the very one, led by Hafez Dalkamouni, tasked with building the altimeter bombs to get revenge for IR655. The Sandweg address was for Dalkamouni's HQ, where a massive cache of weapons was held and many stayed.  Marwan Khreesat built the actual airplane bombs at a separate flat in nearby Neuss. With Khreesat’s handiwork, the cell produced five altitude-senstive bombs before four of them were seized and the cell busted in late October. Many informed observers still believe the missing fifth device was used on Flight 103 two months later.

Taheri had popped out of country briefly at the time of the bombing (see below), but was intercepted on his return, Christmas day, by inspector Jurgen Fuhl of the federal Bundes Kriminal Amt (BKA). They met at the airport, and Fuhl found the notebook with the PFLP-GC address he recognized on the spot. At the 2000 trial he explained “I was aware that the same address was a place where weapons and explosives had previously been found.”

So, Mr. Taheri had the address of the PFLP-GC’s base HQ in West Germany, among others, written down in his personal papers. In itself, that doesn't prove anything, but ...

A Flight 103 Link to London
Where it gets strange is Mr. Taheri then carrying that notebook, with that address, on feeder flight Pan Am 103A on December 21, Frankfurt to London. This is the same plane that, officially, the bomb arrived in London inside of. He was sitting up top along with about 25% of the passengers who would carry on to the United States but die first. There are two somewhat different accounts of Taheri's boarding in Germany, the first emerging in this defense questioning of him:

Q ... When you checked in on the 21st of December of 1988 through Pan Am employee Irene Reijheus, did you tell her that you had visited London often and did not require a visa? It's a simple question, Mr. Taheri. Did you tell her?
A I can't remember if I had told anything to her, because I travel in a normal way. You just check in, and you show your documents if required.
...
Q Well, if Ms. Reijheus felt so alarmed by what she saw that she called up her colleague, Jasmine Sadiq, to help her with you ... If Ms. Sadiq, Jasmine Sadiq, who was also an employee of Pan Am, remembered seeing you at the check-in, and indicated that you looked very nervous, can you explain why she would have that view, if this was a perfectly normal check-in by you, Mr. Taheri?
A Yes. People usually get upset if they have a fight, but I was very happy and pleased. I was not upset at all, and I was looking forward to arrive to London to meet my friends and my future wife. There was no disturbance at all.

He apparently had his papers anyway, was allowed to fly, and at Heathrow parted ways with many co-passengers who would transfer to the trans-Atlantic 103. We can be sure that his luggage did not contain the explosive device, as he had no checked bags at all to carry on after him and rupture the luggage hold. That must be remembered as the red flags pile up. Nonetheless, at about the same time Taheri and his notebook were hailing a cab into London, a 30-minute Khreesat bomb made by that cell based on Sandweg was loaded beneath 259 people out on the tarmac.

Taheri returned to Frankfurt only on Christmas day, after a few days with his fiancee, there with her parents. He’d become engaged to her that year, and they all usually lived in Sweden. But for unclear reasons they were visiting the UK and Parviz was going to visit them there. And for this half-week family gathering he took no checked luggage, and only one small carry-on bag. That’s unusual, but it does help clarify, again, no matter how strange this gets, he did not check in the bomb suitcase.

And that becomes important when we see the different story emerging from Ms. Siddique’s own testimony.

An American Link?
Yasmin (Arabic and/or Persian for Jasmine) Siddique testified in November 2000, a month after Taheri. In December 1988 she was not, in fact,  a Pan Am employee at all. She managed a McDonald’s restaurant, but was a Frankfurt-to-London passenger on 103A (she was going to visit her Mother). And she was standing just behind Taheri in the passport cue. Siddique still recalled noticing his behavior first – unsettled, apprehensive, turning his head frequently, eyes darting about as if watching for someone.

When he got up to “the passport man,” the suspicious young man was slow to produce the passport and the inspector was slower yet to examine it carefully. Taheri “did not look at the policeman or passport control officer;” she recalled, but rather, mostly, “at his feet.”

She was close enough to see his passport and “It was a small blue American passport.” She clarified this means issued by the United States, like the ones held by some of her family who already lived there at the time. Mr. Taylor then described the man this way:
Q Now, we know that the man that you have described was, in fact, a through passenger carrying on to the United States?
A Yes.
Q On a journey of seven hours and 40 minutes after [the 1.5-hour first leg]?
A Uh-huh.

But he got off in London, to meet his fiancée, he later said. This “fact” of full booking on the doomed half of the flight as well could be an inference from his US passport and the general impression that people return home at that time of year, as she was. There was nothing else read out (that I can find) showing this booking, but Taylor and Siddique somehow agreed it was the case. She thought he carried no luggage at all as he stood in line, and found it odd considering the long flight ahead.

Either way, the American passport is unexpected and not explained by anything else I know of. He lived in Germany and, sometime in 1989, move to Sweden, where inspector Fuhl had to hunt him down for further questioning. (Oddly, alternate suspects Mohammed Abu Talb and Abu Elias both have links in Sweden as well). Taheri was still a resident of Sweden when he testified.

A Helsinki Link, Phone Work?
The Guardians of the Islamic Revolution placed a call from London later the evening of the 21st claiming responsibility for the bombing. "We, the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, are undertaking this heroic execution in revenge of blowing the Iran Air plane by America a few months ago." It was considered the most credible claim to the CIA in those first days [see here], and absent any Libyan admission ever, remains the most credible to this day.

There’s no particular reason to suspect Taheri of links to the Guardians, or of placing that call, other than the previous clues, the musing below, and that he was a Iranian in London at the right time.

But what if Taheri had a history of phone calls related to the 103 bombing? Like the Helsinki warning? It can be inferred from the following defense questioning that he said a very peculiar thing to Inspector Fuhl somewhat to that effect and worse. He knew nothing of the bombing, he had said, but one might find answers by calling Iranians, at an embassy, in Helsinki.

Q Now, I think the West German police said to you that if you were not involved in the tragedy that happened to Pan Am 103, did you, with your connections, have any idea who might be involved; is that right? They asked you that question?
A Yes, it is correct.
Q And you told them to look somewhere in particular, didn't you?
A I don't know what you are referring to.
Q Well, let's see if I can jog your memory. Did you direct their attention to the Iranian embassy in Helsinki?
A No, I haven't contacted Iranian embassy at all. I had been to Helsinki just as a tourist. [...] I was not asked about the Iranian embassy in Helsinki by the German police, but they only asked my point of view regarding that incident. And I said I don't know.
Q My Lord, that's all I ask.

He later denied saying that, but it seems at one point he made this ominous reference and still admits being there (in case there was supporting evidence?). But this was only as a tourist, not as the guy who broke into Samra Mahayoun’s flat and seeded that strangely prophetic warning about the bombing of an American flight from Frankfurt two weeks later. Because two weeks later, by chance, Taheri himself flew on an American flight from Frankfurt which then blew up.

Inspector Fuhl, questioned by Davidson, on what Taheri said about the bombing:

Q Do you recall him telling you where you might look for further information on that matter?
A I can't remember him giving me information about where I could look further. [...] If I can jog your memory, could he have mentioned to you an embassy in Helsinki in Finland?
A It's possible.
Q In particular, the Iranian embassy in Helsinki?
A I can't remember the details any more. The whole thing is, after all, 12 years ago. [...] It must all be in the paperwork.

So we have here no physical connection to the bomb, but an amazing shadowing of it that can only possibly be sheer coincidence. In fact, it reeks of coordination, lack of pay stubs notwithstanding.

To be sure, carrying such a clue as the Sandweg address, if it were operational information and he was knowingly on a related flight, would be a major blunder. But it’s also possible that was the point: Taheri's Iranian origins and the flight he was on, his needless odd behavior, the address, and this Helsinki hinting, collectively suggest an attempt to appear involved rather than actually being (physically) involved. The strange case of Parviz Taheri looks a hell of a lot like a sort of a lightning rod or decoy operation.

My next notion that he might have been involved with the "hoax" call follows on the above points, and on their shared effect. Both aimed to keep attention on weird things out of Frankfurt, as opposed to the concise operation set for Heathrow airside. And both carry clues so parallel to the reality as to be chilling, yet are in actuality inaccurate, misleading, and potentially (officially, of course) pure coincidence. Again. 

Germans link Heathrow with Lockerbie bomb

... back in '89
The Scots-German War over Airport Security, part 3 of 2 (addendum)
April 5 2011

Below is an article I would have found important in the two-parts of the Scots-German War over Airport Security (part one), but only heard of it later. Props to Patrick Haseldine mentioning it, and to "Buncrana" for finding me the article.  It's not factually acurate in the numbers-based finer points, which I've flagged in red, with corrections in [brackets]. But the general idea is still spot on, and his background facts are as accurate as any account I've read. Barring the Bedford suitcase story (apparently unknown to the world until David Leppard's 1991 book) and the Heathrow break-in (unknown 'til Ray Manly's revelation in 2001), the 38 minute "coincidence" referred to here, with a different number of minutes, is the best evidence to call on for a London origin for the bomb. Hat's off to Mr. Pallister for an excellent article from the archives
---
Germans link Heathrow with Lockerbie bomb
By DAVID PALLISTER

The Guardian (London)

November 9, 1989

WEST German forensic experts have discovered evidence which suggests that the bomb which brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie last December could have been loaded at Heathrow.
The evidence comes from an examination of three other bombs made by the Palestinian group believed to be responsible for the attack. It casts serious doubt on the theory that the bomb was placed on an earlier connecting flight.

All three devices were identically constructed, with electronic timers set to detonate the Semtex explosive within 43 to 46 minutes of being activated by a barometric pressure trigger at about 3,000 feet. [see more correct version here - each one was different] The West German police believe they were destined for El Al planes or flights to Tel Aviv.

If the Lockerbie bomb was the same, it would have had to have been placed on board the jumbo at Heathrow, rather than at Frankfurt, Malta or Cyprus - the three possibilities so far publicly canvassed.

The bombs have been connected with the terrorist cell run in West Germany by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. The first was found in October 1988 in a radio cassette player in a car driven by Hafez Dalkamoni, who has been identified as a senior member of the PFLP-GC. He is awaiting trial in Frankfurt for a bomb attack on a railway in Lower Saxony in August 1987.

The discovery of the cassette bomb led to warnings from the West Germans to airlines and other western governments in November.

In April this year West German police found three more devices in the basement of a house owned by one of Dalkamoni's relatives in the town of Neuss. One exploded at the Wiesbaden headquarters of the BKA, the federal criminal investigation agency, killing a bomb disposal expert.

The three unexploded devices were all made by the same man. The BKA thinks he was the man arrested with Dalkamoni, Marwan Khreesat, who was mysteriously released without charge two weeks later, along with 12 other Palestinians arrested in October. Khreesat, it has been alleged, was probably an agent working for either Jordanian or West German intelligence, or both.
[all correct, but the fifth device is unmentioned]

The forensic experts, working for the BKA, believe the devices were designed to withstand examination by El Al's pressure chambers which are used to screen baggage.

Dr Jim Swire, the spokesman for the UK Families-Flight 103 group, believes the findings could point to the Lockerbie bomb, which was also in a cassette player, being loaded at Heathrow.

The plane took off at 6.25pm and disappeared off the radar screens between 53 and 54 minutes later [38 minutes later, of course, at 7:03]. It takes between seven and 10 minutes to climb to 3,000 feet [I have about 7 minutes and 2,400 feet - see again this link], which fits in precisely with the timing system on the other bombs. [it would fit perfectly if it were a 30-minute timer, which was among those used - 30, 45, and 60 minutes. see again this link.]
---

David Leppard on Abu Elias

February 13 2011
slight edits 2/15

I’m delighted to add a very strange new point to the body of knowledge and/or lore surrounding “Abu Elias,” the apparent builder and controller of the Lockerbie bomb. (see: all threads about Abu Elias) This latest is from David Leppard’s highly interesting riddle of a book On the Trail of Terror (April 1991). It was among the first privileged works allowed to announced the turn to Libya in detail, months ahead of the sanctions. It drew on insider sources and related - in great detail - all the relevant clues that didn’t specify al-Megrahi or Fhimah - the Frankfurt printout, the Maltese clothes, the timer fragment, etc.

In fact, the original lead from 1988-1990, the Iranian-backed plotting of the Syririan-based PFLP-GC (Jibril network), is still tied in here. That's good for Leppard because he earned his spots reporting on just that lead in 1989 and '90. After he “changed his spots,” as Paul Foot put it, Leppard’s take became the same as that proposed by CIA Lockerbie chief Vincent Cannistraro in the early 1990s. It was the same Iranian-backed PFLP-GC plot everyone had, with good reason, suspected, just taken over by Libyan intelligence following the October 1998 "Autumn Leaves" bust.

In this series of raids, the bomb-making PFLP-GC cell near Frankfurt, their massive weapons cache, and tangle of targets, was disrupted by German feds who then set almost everyone free. Only the cell's weapons master Ghadanfar and its ring-leader Dalkamouni were kept in lock-up. The bomb-maker, Marwan Khreesat, was a double agent and flew back to his bosses in Amman, Jordan.

This version, where the Libyans picked up the slack, modified the rogue bomb with one of their timers, and arranged for the Malta plot to send it on to PA103, was the insider’s favorite for a while. But after some time, the original portion withered and fell off for lack of official recognition or further repetition (this part, if not the whole shift, can be chalked up to Gulf War-era re-orientation). Lockerbie gradually became a Libyan plot alone, presumably motivated by the nearly three-year-old U.S. air raids on Libya. As President Bush put it in 1992 or so (from memory), the original suspects “took a bum rap” in ever being suspected.

And all this despite the Autumn Leaves bust being quite possibly irrelevant to the original plot. One of the five bombs and one of the plotters escaped the raids entirely, together it seems and moving towards something. No one has ever explained what stopped them, or what they needed any Libyan help for. All that really needed done from there was likely carried out, by whom exactly we don't know, at terminal three Heathrow between 0:00 and 17:00 on December 21.

I thought I’d already checked Leppard’s book for reference to airport security expert Abu Elias, but missed this sole entry until just the other day. In its last three pages, the book concludes with its only mention of this highly relevant fugitive, as a part of the “Libyan connection.”

One final question mark for the Lockerbie team is the identity of the man Jibril asked to liaise with the Libyans in the eight weeks between Operation Autumn Leaves and the night of the bombing. The Scots, the Germans, and the Americans now believe that after 26 October 1988, with Dalkamouni in prison, another leading Jibril operative, called Abu Elias, may have played an important role in arranging the tie-up with Libyan agents and directing at least part of the Maltese end of the conspiracy.

There’s been no other mention of, nor evidence for, this notion of Abu Elias meeting with Libyans. At least, not that I’ve run across yet. It’s a very strange way to end a book to fuse the new direction with perhaps the best lead of the old, this young relative of Ahmed Jibril’s who apparently didn't trust Khreesat. Leppard adds some details consistent with other reports that would emerge:

The FBI have a photofit picture of Elias which shows the handsome features of a blond 25-year old Palestinian who heads the PFLP-GC’s military section in Damascus.

25 years old is new to me - nothing I'd seen before gave an age. This almost certainly refers to the Jordanian GID's sketch, apparently made after Khreesat's first (and, I think, only) meeting with the mysterious operative in 1985. As the 1989 report by FBI agent Marshman says:

The GID officers produced a composite sketch of Abu Elias that was done by Khreesat some time ago. Khreesat examined the composite and affirmed that the likeness was that of Abu Elias who he met in Damascus, Syria. This composite is attached to this FD302. [source: trial transcripts]

If he were a bare 25 years of age in 1985, to head the military section in Damascus (as others report) even by 1988 is clearly young. It's a bit too young to be Basel Bushnaq of Virginia, read literally. He's allegedly the same person as Abu Elias, but his records show he was born in late 1955, making him 29 or 30 at the time of any 1985 meeting. But if that’s not his original name, as Christine Grahame MSP alleges, it’s probably not his real birth date or even year.

And perhaps the 25-year-old estimate, whoever's it was, was erred on that end. This age addition is close enough to be consistent with the other disturbing clues that Ms. Grahame might be right, but is not apparently much of a clue in itself.

Leppard continues:

Dalkamouni admitted in his prison interviews that he had met Elias at the Front’s offices in Damascus. But he has denied seeing him in Germany.

Ah! Khreesat says he never saw Abu Elias in Germany, but that Dalkamouni did, something he was told of repeatedly. Abu Elias had studied Khreesat’s work in 1987, and could perhaps spot a fake, like he was instructed by Amman to build. He might inspect the work being done for the big Iranian job.

And Khreesat says that of the five armed “Khreesat bombs” made under this threat, one was not his at all, and only appeared at the same time Dalkamouni said Abu Elias had arrived. Khreesat was asked to finish it by soldering two wires, and then it disappeared again, presumably back to whoever had brought it.

Nevertheless, the BKA surveillance report on Dalkamouni’s prison meeting with his sister-in-law in July 1989 contains a dascinating reference to Elias. After denouncing Kkhreesat as an informer for the West, Dalkamouni was overheard telling Somaia about Abu Elias. ‘He [Dalkamouni] only gave Khreesat the name Abu Elias once. When referring to this name it concerns a “Phantom” name, and only Khreesat could therefore reveal this name.’ Dalkamouni’s comments suggest that Elias played an important, although unspecified role, which Dalkamouni regretted revealing to Khreesaat., the suspected double agent. ‘It is not a bad guess to say that Abu Elias has played a role,’ said one senior Western intelligence official. But that role is remains a mystery.

That part is interesting, and may refer to a real conversation that Dalkamouni probably knew was being recorded. I’m not sure what to make of it. But investigators still felt Abu Elias was involved, or told Leppard they did, right up to the eve of the indictments, after which he vanished again. They were puzzling over his role, it’s said, but if he had one at all, it didn’t involve Libyans or Malta. That’s all 1990’s cartoon nonsense.

Whatever happened between October 26 and December 21, the bomb clearly left the ground at London. We have real evidence for that, not “intelligence sources now believe” crap. All along, they "now believed" whatever helped shift us gradually from one evidence-led track to another, led by new and more politically convenient evidence, generally oozing from Vincent Cannistraro's end of things and into media reports. And all along the real evidence, partly known to us and partly covered-up, has remained just the same. That is because the murder of those 270 people still happened the same way it actually happened. That can only be re-written on paper.
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1980s Boom Boxes and Ice Cubes

The Evolution of the Khreesat Bomb, part two: 1985-88
May 31 2010

Audition, Performance, Recycling
Part one covered the early years of Marwan Khreesat’s bomb-making career in the early 1970s. After reportedly leaving Jibril’s PFLP-GC group in 1973, Khreesat remained quiet for twelve years. Then in 1985 he was reactivated by Jibril, and summoned to Syria to show his old altimeter-based skills with current technology.

Khreesat bought five Toshiba BomBeat 453 units, which have their own little story, but for our purposes they were housing only, and good sized. It’s the timers and altimeters – only four of each - that mattered to Khreesat, and he selected these himself. The pricey detonators, tens of thousands of dollars apiece, were presumably provided. It was enough to re-create his fear-inducing 1970s innovation; he described the end results to FBI special agent Edward Marshman in November 1989:

“Of the five, two were almost ready to go; they only needed to have the pins pulled to arm them. One had only explosives inside with no altimeter or timer. The other two needed two wires to be connected. After Khreesat built these devices, they were shown to Ahmed Jibril, who approved them. Khreesat then disassembled the devices, and the components were taken back to the PFLP-GC office.”

Just when Khreesat started working for Jordanian intelligence is not clear, but when he was summoned again to Neuss in mid 1988, Khreesat came with instructions from his GID bosses in Amman. The people who in turn met with friends at the CIA, MI6, etc. told him to only build fake bombs while working undercover within the PFLP-GC. But things didn’t work out so smoothly – by Khreesat’s story, the terrorists gave him something more concrete than these instructions.

By Abu Elias he was given a sense that he’d be caught making fake bombs, and from cell leader Hafez Dalkamouni he was given his old materials from 1985. The timers and altimeters were the same, and the five detonators were probably also the same. He was also given one of his five BomBeat453s to re-wire, so one IED was of completely recycled materials.

Working between October 22 and 25, Khreesat thus made four Ialtimeter bombs total in Neuss: this 453 unit, two hidden in Ultrasound radios, and one inside a Sanyo computer monitor. All three of these housings were bought in two second-hand shops in Dusseldorf on October 18, says Khreesat. [p16] The rigged 453 was seized on October 26 in the Autumn Leaves raid, when Khreesat and Dalkamouni were arrested. The other three IEDs were only found months later in 1989. Only the “fifth device,” which Khreesat barely touched (he says) is unaccounted for. First we’ll look at the specs of Khrresat’s four bombs, element-by-element, and then briefly at what can be gleaned about the other one.

Detonators
In addition to the BomBeat radio, monitor, Ultrasound tuners, timers, and altimeters brought to Khreesat on October 22, my portion of Marshman’s report makes no mention of “detonators.” It does however say “Dalkamoni also brought in four blasting caps that were electrical. [p17] I’m not explosives expert enough to know if that means detonators. All I know is they’re the expensive part of the bomb, and the part Khreesat seems less interested in.

Altimeters
These were provided to Khreesat in neuss. He mentions in his report
Four altimeters which were made in Japan. [p 17]
Marshman’s report specified “the altimeters are the same ones he had in 1985,” and Khreesat “does not know how, when, or by whom these altimeters were smuggled into Germany.” [p 32] He does however note that Dalkamouni was the last stop, handling all Khreesat’s supply needs.

I’ve seen nothing to differentiate the altimeters one from another, and at the risk of error will consider them to all work the same. All I have at the moment to show how they were set is from David Leppard’s On the Trail of Terror. The altimeter from the 453 was tested by the BKA’s Dr. Rainer Gobel in a vacuum chamber. “The circuit would close at a pressure between 940 and 950 milibars - equivalent to an altitude of about 2,400 feet.” [p 11-12] It’s tentative, and Leppard is sometimes wrong, but I can work with this for now.

Ice-Cube Timers
The timers are of interest here, and somewhat more complex. The units themselves were basic – a simple electrical capacitor encased in clear plastic resin, its appearance led to the nickname “ice cube timer”. The timer’s built size determines its resistance to electrical charge and thus the time until it “discharges.” Precise details of that process aside, the time delay is unchangeable but reliable.

These Khreesat picked up himself, as he told agent Marshman. “The timers were made by the Fatah group in Damascus. He first saw these timers at the PFLP-GC camp in Syria and four of them were good, so he took them to use.” [p32] Like the altimeters, they came back to him iin Germany but he doesn’t know how. Where it gets complex is when Khreesat explains how the times vary one unit to the next as far as time delay:

One of the timers was a half-hour timer, one was for three-quarters of an hour, and one was for one hour. Khreesat does not recall what time the fourth timer was set for. None of the timers were for more than one hour. […] Of the four timers he used in the IEDs in Germany, he is not sure of the exact times each one was set for, or which device which timer was put into.

It’s possible to tackle the question of “which device which timer was put into,” but first we must address another issue. Just from the seized BomBeat 453’s timer we have a range, not a set time. Again, David Leppard cites Dr. Gobel’s findings: "The time delay of the electronic component fluctuates over a wide margin since the structure of the circuit is relatively simple. Time delays between 35 and 45 minutes were measured." [p 11-12]

This variation of a supposedly set-in-stone delay might be explained by Khreesat, again via Marshman:

"Khreesat advised that the times are not exact and the time changes depending upon how long the timers have been tested after last being used. They usually reset to zero after a day. He used to test the timers three times in a row before installing the timer in a device. He found that in each test the time decreased. When this happened, he put the timers aside, and the next day when he tested them, they would run for the same time as when he had first started them."

Time delay then varies, with a starting baseline (long time) and shortening with repeated tests carried out too soon. Unless someone was testing it in the field just before use, the long time is what would elapse before detonation.

Timer/Housing Reconciliation
Therefore if Göbel found a range35-45 min for one timer, and Khreesat’s roster can be trusted, that’s the 45 minute unit. That was in the seized BomBeat, leaving for the other three a 30 minute one, a 60 minute, and another he can’t remember, but one hour at most.

The Sanyo monitor was seized intact and just as available for study, but its results are less clear. Dr. Gobel’s notes were read back in part at the Camp Zeist trial, and he include this on the Sanyo's ice cube: “Calculated on the basis of the values of the built-in components, the delay time is put at between 30 and 35 minutes.” [Zeist transcripts p 8769] That’s not a range of test results, but a range of estimates based on, it seems, looking at the circuit. If Khreesat is right, this would most likely be the 30 minute unit.

The two Ultrasound radios were not read as clearly – one defied a top BK explosives expert (Sonntag) and blew him to bits, while nearly killing an assistant. Perhaps some clues from that chain of events could tell us if this is the 60 minute timer or the mystery one. The other Ultrasound was purposefully destroyed, for safety and psychological reasons. But one of the two Ultrasounds (it’s unclear which) did yield enough of its timer for Gobel to note:

“[T]he accompanying capacitor is of the same value as in 1 [BomBeat] and 2 [monitor], but has however, jumped out of circuit. […] it can be assumed from the remains of the circuit that the time delay was in the same region as 1 and 2." [Leppard p 144]

To fit with the above, that’s a possible 30 or 45 minute timer, which are both represented by Gobel’s units 1 and 2. This out-of-circuit timer would be the one Khreesat didn’t remember, likely a duplicate of either the 30 or 45. The other Ultrasound then contained the 60 minute timer, if this should all tie up so neatly (don’t count on it).

The Fifth Device
All of the ahe above is fairly academic for understanding the Lockerbie bombing. As noted, all four of these units were intercepted by police, three of them without fatalities. The fifth mystery bomb is the only suspect here for that atrocity, and this bomb was apparently built by Abu Elias rather than by Khrresat. But his work is said to have informed Abu Elias.

Khreesat does give some details of this unit, which help very little in understanding it. He mentions an altimeter, partly visible under the cassette bay, no mention of timer, but parts of the circuit board and transformer were removed, and some modifications concealed under little cardboard boxes. Khreesat was unable to study it closer, as Dalkamouni stood over him the whole time he soldered two simple wires. This bomb has never been tested in a laboratory setting to determine its settings.

If used on Flight 103, however, the results can be observed from what happened on that December night. If we presume the same altimeter setting, which I did earlier but now seems unjustified, it would start the ice cube charging at about 2400 feet altitude. This low level was reached about two minutes after leaving the ground, according to the AAIB report’s altitude profile (see Thirty-Eight Minutes).

The bomb detonated 36 minutes after that point, so if we also presume a Khreesat-style ice cube timer, and presuming this hadn’t been tested before deployment, 36 or perhaps 35 minutes would be its baseline time. It doesn’t even have to fit Khreesat’s four from the Fatah factory, in their neat quarter-hour time units. Perhaps there was no timer, just an altimeter set to 31,000 feet. But whatever exactly was going on inside it, it is apparently modeled after Khreesat’s 1980s work, and might then be expected to behave about like one of his bombs. And of course whatever blew up PA103 behaved in just that way.
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Bosnian in What Way?

Abu Elias, Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian
10 October 2010

In my informal investigation into alleged Lockerbie bomber Basel Bushnaq, the first thing that pops out is his unusual family name. It of course means Bosniac (from Bosnia) rendered in Arabic, and here converted back to English in one of several possible ways.

And it's the only Arabic name with Bush in it, and it doesn't appear anywhere I can find prior to June 2001. Basel mentions at Facebook his favorite politicians - top-tier Republicans including Reagan, Palin, and McCain, but excluding any Bushes. Conversely, his bio section lists only one thing - the reason his name makes no such exclusion. For additional detail or realism, he added there:

"Rooted to Lakisic family (prounced Lakjitch) from Mostar, Bosnia. Never been there. My grandfather’s Mosque is well known Landmark in Mostar."

That's it. Nothing about him except that odd name explained. So I look up the family name Lakisic in relation to Mostar. There's a town, Lakišić Kula, 16.5 km from Mostar. [source] There seem to be people of that family name around, at least one living in Mostar. And there's a link centered around a mosque (Basel's grandpa's?) One site I  found quickly, listing Yugoslavian war crimes in Bosnia, mentions over a dozen mosques in Mostar alone either damaged or destroyed. Interestingly one entry said:

"Hadji-Ahmed aga Lakisic Mosque in Mostar, [built] 1650, was heavily damaged in May, 1992." [source]

The conflict that spawned such destruction was of course between Muslim separatists and Serb forces, one of several conflicts that marked the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. One interesting report on this era mentions that "the PFLP-GC had networks and offices in Yugoslavia that also housed HizbAllah operatives," among the facts that made Bosnia, to the authors, "Iran's European springboard." That might have been of relevance as Iran sought to avenge its downed airbus in Europe, 1988. The same report, by Bodiansky and Forrest, also states some of the foreign terrorists engaged in false-flag attacks on Muslim civilians, and heinous ones, designed "to win world sympathy and military intervention." It cites these as beginning in May 1992.

So while that last report is something I can't vouch for, and while Basel says he's never been to Bosnia, it seems entirely possible Abu Elias was. At any rate, we know he was in Yugoslavia. FBI Agent Marshman's report (partial, re-created from transcripts) relates Khreesat's experience with this PFLP-GC bigwig. No exact explanation is read out,  but it seems the double agent's first trip to Yugoslavia, right before his big job in Germany, was to meet with Abu Elias.

"Khreesat did not know the function of Abu Elias in Yugoslavia, nor did he know the purpose of the meeting that was to be held in Yugoslavia."

FBI chief investigator Richard Marquise has presumably read the whole report, and his informative 2006 book SCOTBOM agreed:

In September 1988, Dalkamouni summoned Khreesat to Yugoslavia. ... Khreesat ... recalled they were supposed to meet with Abu Elias, but they never met. ... Elias was supposed to have been in Yugoslavia the previous month, but failed to appear." [SCOTBOM, p 54]

And another verification comes from Pierre Salinger - admittedly not the best source - investigating sometime after the 1991 indictments against the Libyans. It started with an interview he'd done with Khreesat in 1989, where he had been told about Abu Elias. Under questioning at trial in 2000, he said the following:

Q Were you given any information as to where Abu Elias was going to be coming from?
A I don't know where he was from, but at one point, when Marwan Khreesat was in Germany, he was told by -- that Abu Elias was coming to Germany to see him. That's -- Dalkamoni did that. But that didn't work. And so when all these people got arrested -- you remember that?
Q Well, before you go any further, I don't want to explore hearsay.
...
Q Did you subsequently make inquiries in Yugoslavia in connection with Abu Elias.
...
A I made questions in Yugoslavia. I've got papers that were given to the National Security Council and -- by Sandy Berger. That's the most important thing that I gave him. And when these lawyers came to Washington and asked me to get those papers back, they refused to give them.
Q I see. So you say that you recovered certain papers from Yugoslavia which you handed over to the National Security Council?
A Correct.
Q And they still have those papers?
A They still have those papers.

And they were about Abu Elias. These documents have never been found or publicized, but I tend to think they do exist and show, at the very least, that our mysterious fugitive was in Yugoslavia before, and perhaps after Lockerbie. They might even show he was in Bosnia in 1992, around the time the Lakisic mosque in Mostar was bombed, but that clearly is just speculation.

Certainly anywhere along his work in the Yugoslav disintegration, our man could have learned that Bushnaq means Bosnian, which is funny given the former US president's name. He could learn of the town Mostar and a family Likisic, and later somehow relocate to be right by the CIA. A new identity needing a name, another Bush in power, a need to explain his Arabic accent and Syrian background along with his fair looks ... so he says his people were Bosnian. It might just have been too clever to pass up, and it's too late to undo it now. Bad decisions do happen.

Basel to Basil: a Kubaissi Link?

7 October 2010

Now this has just got to be a coincidence, or so I hope, as I'm putting it right out there on the Internet. But it's just so weird and sends a chill down my imaginative spine, that I felt I should share it with others.

Basel Bushnaq is hopefully just amused by now at the false mythology building up around his quiet suburban life. Since being named as former PFLP-GC terrorist fugitive "Abu Elias," aka Khaisar (Kaiser) Haddad, I've re-posted that charge, done a name analysis between the three, and some online commentary analysis. So far it seems possibly consistent to me, but still within the range of likely coincidence. I've certainly seen weirder.

Unfortunately, some of that is attached to this same case. For what I think will be a final bizarre installment in the Bushnaq line, I need to bring his wife into it, or her name anyway. The source I'll cite to start with is openly available at DC blockshopper.com. It's also the earliest reference I've found to Bushnaq himself. On 12 June, 2001, a Washington DC apartment (on M Street SW), owned by the couple Basel A Bushnaq and Raghad Kubaissi, was sold for $89,000. [source]

Basel's cohabitant in all later homes is listed is Raghad K. Bushnaq, suggesting they were married shortly after this sale. It's her maiden name that is the source of the coincidence in question. One site lists 31 people named Kubaisi (single s) living in the United States at some point, but only one Kubaissi – Raghad. [source] This would presumably be zero after the marriage, but for what it's worth, at least one other was here later - Sanad Kubaissi, a young Saudi-American guy, who starred in a US reality TV show about immigrants in 2007-2008. [source]

So her name as rendered is rare in the United States, but the small pool yields one prominent name from the past with a yankee link: Dr. Basil al-Kubaissi, a Palestinian terrorist organizer assassinated by Israeli spies in 1973. He was a US-educated Law professor, and was teaching at the American University in Beirut at the time. A 2005 book by two Israelis described him as “one of Black September’s most secret and ambitious leaders,” but appearing respectable and above suspicion. He specialized in failure, trying to kill Golda Meir twice in the 1960s. Earlier he failed to kill Iraq’s king Hussein in 1956. Afterward, Kubaissi would usually flee to New York. [Bar-Zohar, Michael and Eitan Haber. Masacre in Munich. 2005. pp 156-58. Google books]

Later, Al-Kubaissi joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and became “a trusted lieutenant of Gerorge Habash,” placed “in charge of the arsenal of the [Black September] organization in Europe” The "Mossad" assassins prowling Europe for plotters of the Munich Massacre stumbled upon Kubaissi by a fluke as he dropped into Paris. On the night of April 6 1973, after doing a deal with a local prostitute it's said, the professor was felled in the street by two men, with nine silenced shots. [source - see above]

It's nothing at the moment but curious that Mr. Bushnaq wound up with the approximate first name, and Raghad the last name, of this same prominent terrorist leader - until they married in America. Just by names it’s possible she is actually his daughter, and it can't be ruled out by age - Mrs. Bushnaq is just old enough to have been a baby daughter to Basil, somewhere between one and two years of age, at the time of his death.

As for the PFLP-GC mover Abu Elias in this possibility, this could be consistent if he wound up falling for an American girl named Kubaissi. The professor's daughter or not, he might well take the reminder of an earlier hero of the PFLP clan, and pick a variant of Basil for his new name.

Logical constructions aside, this would be too obvious a thing to do, like Keyser (Kaiser) Söze in The Usual Suspects stringing together "Quartet" and "Skokie, Illinois" in the same non-seqitur. In a movie, it works. In real life? Probably not. This apparent verbal hint must just be another slightly odd thing about Mr. Bushnaq, who probably is clean and a Bosnian from the Mostar Lakisic clan as he says.

Perhaps he was just singled out to be picked on for these random coincidences that could make him seem all sinister. Some things about "Lockerbie bomber" al Megrahi stood out as well, and that doesn't mean it was right to fake evidence and blame him. It wouldn't be right for that innocent man and his defense team to take it out like this on another unusual but innocent bystander, releasing his name to that jabberjaw Christine Grahame. But that must be what's going on here. I hope.

On the other hand, if their darker inklings and mine are even partly true, all I can say to those who are scrambling on the damage control is - please don't kill me. It's a little too open for that by now, isn't it? Just call this one a pan and give him another new life somewhere else. And like that - poof. He's gone.

But really, name games don't usually add up to much, do they?

Evidence Reconsidered: Abu Talb

Abu Talb: Unindicted Co-conspirator, or Practice Megrahi?
23 August 2010

Note 23 August: This post was originally put up months ago but left undated and incomplete. Previously it had a bunch of incomplete, semi-organized text, which I've copied into a word doc to sort out better and update. I will split this into a few sub-posts that I'll link to here when they're up.

Breifly, Mohammed Abu Talb is an Egyptian-born struggler/terrorist with a long rap sheet of fighting and bombings. He claims he foreswore violence and fled from the fray to Sweden with his wife in the early 1980s, and opened a store. But he was jailed there in May 1989, on suspicion of a mini-string of pointless terror bombings in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1985 that killed, I believe, one. By the time he was convicted for his part in these - on December 21 1989 - he was also widely suspected of involvement in the the Pan Am 103 bombing exactly one year earlier, and he was soon named as the primary suspect.

Abu Talb wound up being exonerated for the Lockerbie incident, but found guilty of the other bombings, and like Megrahi protests his innocence of all charges. He was later called as a prosecution witness, apparently to clear him of suspicion. To read the Zeist judges' summation, he deserved it. However, and again like Megrahi, Mr. Abu Talb does have a body of circumstantial clues, assembled back when he was the prime suspect.

Most recently, on Saturday (20 August 2010), Swedish authorities for the first time acknowledged that Abu Talb had been freed from custody and had slipped from view and the reach of investigators. The allegation of just that was first aired by the obviously well-connected Scottish Law magazine/site The Firm almost a year ago.

The Firm understands Talb was quietly released in early September, only weeks after Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi was released from jail in Scotland and returned to Libya.

As noted by Lucy Adams (first link above) in the Herald (Scotland):

The Herald has previously revealed that Talb could be tried if Megrahi were to be formally cleared. An appeal against Megrahi’s conviction could still be mounted even after the death of the Libyan, who is terminally ill with prostate cancer.

This apparent, possible, contingency planning is highly interesting, and sure to attract more scrutiny in the coming days. Therefore I'll seek to quickly bring what I can into a more organized discussion.

The posts:
Abu Talb and Tony Gauci

Abu Talb: Practice Megrahi?

The Drug Swap Theory

Just Like the Official Story Where it Matters Most
May 5 2010
last update May 9 11pm

Here I would like to address head-on, at least once, a meme that has underpinned (and undermined) Lockerbie/PA103 revisionism for most of its entire lifespan. Rather than Libyan al Megrahi committing the bombing via Malta, this theory contends it was done by Iranian-paid, Syrian-based Palestinians, introducing the bomb in Frankfurt, West Germany. They did so, the theory runs, by co-opting a CIA-protected heroin smuggling operation. This unusual and compelling concept, with some variations, has gone by many names, but I’ve settled on “the drug swap theory.”

One strength of the theory is that it generally focuses on the German PFLP-GC cell that had been making altimeter-triggered airliner bombs inside radios. By circumventing normal x-ray procedures, it could explain such a bomb getting on the feeder for Flight 103. And the PFLP-GC network is a far more logical culprit than Libya, and suspecting them is the bread and butter of nearly all revisionism (including my own). The drug swap theory can also accept the best evidence against Megrahi’s guilt – which like the alternate culprits, can be sensed by smarter folks everywhere.

By appealing to natural suspicions with a detailed alternative like this, the notion became a missing link for many throughout the 1990s and beyond. However in the end it seems to be a false link, the main effect of which has been to keep revisionism from making as much sense as it could have.

Aviv and Operation Corea
The Drugs Theory meme was first fed by Pan Am people and their hired “spook” Juval Aviv. A dual American/Israeli citizen, Aviv claims to have headed Mossad’s operation Wrath of God and inspired a book about it (Vengeance, adapted by Spielberg as the film Munich), and later, after 9/11, was widely credited as a TV-friendly terrorism expert.

The desperate airline’s lawyers brought Aviv in to sniff out intel that might help their case, and his oddball company Interfor issued a secret report in October 1989 based on a spurious investigation. The report brims with amazing claims to have all the major events, from planning meetings to the bomb placement (a Turk in a black Mercedes brought it to the airport) captured with direct photo, audio, and video surveillance he of course couldn’t show the public or anyone.

According to Aviv’s report, the operation at Frankfurt Airport was called Corea from the CIA end (a rogue unit, wouldn’t you know). In general, as I understand it, the system was operated by Syrian smuggler Manzar al-Kassar, running a heroin conduit out of Lebanon, protected by the CIA in trade for al-Kassar’s help in freeing American hostages in Beirut. Lebanese-American Khalid Jaafar, who transferred to PA103 via Frankfurt, unwittingly brought the bomb onboard. There has been much speculation on Jaafar’s luggage, movements and connections; allegedly a courier in the protected drug route, Aviv has him meeting with a Libyan bomb maker (?) and the PFLP-GC’s leader Ahmed Jibril (??) in Germany a few weeks before the bombing (it’s videotaped). Jibril then effected the switch of Jaafar’s courier drug bag with the one containing a bomb. One can only wonder what he did with the heroin.

A common but not universal addition to the theory is the targeting VIPs on board Flight 103, especially Major Charles McKee, Army intelligence, apparently leading a hostage rescue team in Beirut. As the unsubstantiated story goes, McKee had learned of the drugs system and was en route to report it when his plane blew up. This is all in Aviv’s report, hinting at an agreement among the CIA, Jibril and/or al-Kassar to bomb that plane in particular.

This preliminary report, with a few errors I can identify myself on a quick scan, was somehow leaked to the public before the airline's fate was yet sealed. With some media help and from Mr. Trafficant on Capitol Hill, it raised doubts whether it was Pan Am's insurers or the CIA that should be held responsible for the lapses around PA103. Legally, it didn’t go far; Pan Am sank over its perceived record at Frankfurt, and Aviv’s report has been widely dismissed as a hoax.

But to a jaded public view tinted by Iran-Contra conspiracies, and confronted with a shifting official story, the "smeared" Aviv’s claims survived in a near-legendary form, repeating through the years in different combinations and various media.

The Echo Chamber: 1989-2010
Time magazine’s April 1992 cover story "Why did they die?" stands out among countless articles before and since that have drawn on the core of Aviv’s allegations, supported by facts and speculation from other sources. Among the many critical books along such lines, the most famous is Lester Coleman’s Trail of the Octopus (1993). The former DEA agent had woven an elaborate tale of insider knowledge of about what Aviv described, and is currently a “political prisoner” on fraud and making things up charges.

Both Coleman and Aviv plus many others pushing the Jibril-Jaafar line were interviewed for Alan Frankovich’s sprawling, brilliant, and hoax-tainted 1994 film The Maltese Double Cross. Frankovich’s lead researcher on the film, John Ashton, has gone on to other works, like the book Coverup of Convenience (2000) with Ian Ferguson, that promote variations of the drug swap theory.

Interestingly, a member of the PFLP-GC with an indirect role in the bombing network, one Mobdi Goben, “admitted” on his deathbed around 2000 that the elusive Abu Elias had used the Frankfurt drugs channel to sneak the bomb into Khalid Jaafar’s luggage, reviving the issue amidst the trial of al Megrahi and Fhimah. The defense never was able to get a copy, which may have played into their "special defense of incrimination" that drew on at least some aspects of the drug swap theory. This blogger sees no grat reason to trust the word of an involved terrorist. It could be genuine or, just as just easily, a rearguard distraction crafted from the West's own delusions mirrored back.

Later yet in 2008 it was reported Steven Spielberg was working on another new film, about PA103 and centered on a plot involving the PFLP-GC rather than Libyans. Frighteningly, it was to draw again on Aviv and his strangely compelling yarns. This time it was the just-released “fact-based fiction” novel Flight 103, under pen name Sam Green. Thankfully that film never materialized, and the book seems to have flopped without the support, but it showed how the threat has persisted with professional diligence.

All of these works contain at least some useful information aside from promoting the drug swap theory; it can hardly be avoided as the atrocious official story gave theorists so much legitimate information to work with. My point here is not so much to dismiss the possibility of such a scandalous smuggling arrangements, and I won’t bother trying to fully rule it out. Rather, all I want to say is that it’s irrelevant to what happened on PA103. The best evidence says the bomb entered the air system at Heathrow Airport, London, rather than at Frankfurt.

What The Drug Swap Theory Obscures
I came to the discussion late, only on Megrahi’s compassionate release last year. Before that, I had only a passing acquaintance with the issue at all and was faintly aware of but not impressed by the prevailing conspiracy theory. I was fortunate to start digging into the facts with JREF forum member Rolfe, and with so much revealed by then, 21 years after the fact, it seemed natural to go straight for the competing London origin theory.

The official story started with the weak forensic decision, which drug swap theorists could accept, that the bomb must have come in on the feeder from Frankfurt. Based on an unstated presumption that certain suitcases cannot be stacked up, the decisive elimination of London origin banished truth within a month of the crash.

The PFLP-GC’s Khreesat bombs, as understood by their maker and German investigators, only take-off once before detonating. So to land safely in London and only then blow up after leaving the ground again, one must imagine modifications. Officials did so at first, and later identified the timer. Drug swap theorists do about the same, just a little different.

The implausible Circuit board fragment PT/35(b) was found in mid-1990 to be from a MST-13 unit thought to be held only by Libyan agents. With this flexible device, a PFLP-GC altimeter wasn’t even needed. Many but not all drug swap theorists accept the timer evidence, and just throw in some doubts about exclusive Libyan control; the PFLP-GC might have gotten hold of a MST-13, perhaps from the East German Stasi. Maybe so, but it’s poor use of a timer to set it so it even might blow over land. It would be dumb for Libya to use a timer they knew the CIA had linked to them. The CIA held seized copies. Copies could be forged. Copies could be handed over by Mebo personnel. This one doesn’t seem to have been involved in the PA103 explosion. Accepting crap like PT/35(b) as evidence leads to confusion.

Confusion of the same type is required to dismiss other evidence, like the Bedford story; the only brown hardshell Samsonite seen, and it was twice in a matching set, was in container AVE4041 at about the blast site by John Bedford. This was well before any CIA Jaafar luggage could have been in London. Drug swap theorists will dismiss this as coincidence, or sometimes mention it without explanation as, apparently, some kind of backup in case their main point is wrong.

Furthermore, the spot these bags were in, just inches from the later blast, happens to be the point closest to the plane’s skin and the only (approximate) spot such a bomb would have worked. There’s no proof terrorists chose that placement, but the ONLY place it would be possible to manage this crucial aspect is at Heathrow. It hasn't been ruled out or even seriously considered. Nearly everyone presumes the terrorists trusted to fate for placement and fate delivered. There's something wrong just with that alone.

Then there’s the hushed-up break-in at Heathrow’s terminal 3 hours before the bombing. Security was breached for some probably illegal reason some time before Bedford saw those bags. This evidence was silenced until a security guard, Ray Manly, came forward after the trial to ask why it still hadn’t been brought up. The records he alluded to were then found and reported, and officially his story is now accepted as happening, just too late to help Megrahi’s case at trial. But it was clearly coincidence, say the big heads, since the bomb came in from Frankfurt.

And finally, the best PFLP-GC fit comes from the bombs made in Frankfurt, as we know them, loaded at London. Khreesat’s bombs had a noted time delays of 30-45 minutes after takeoff (it is a bit more complex than that, partly explained here). PA103 blew up 38 minutes after leaving Heathrow, a major clue if one is open to follow it up. No one in the UK was. Confusion ensued.

That’s an intriguing body of clues, and for all we know there might have been a CIA-protected drugs conduit at Heathrow that led to the disaster. It’s been over twenty years now and hardly anyone has even looked close enough to say, dazzled with Corean intrigues. Khalid, not Kamboj, has been the mystery man. How did that happen? Are we just leading ourselves astray with random Human stupidity, or is there some design to this confusion?

Where it Matters Most
So to summarize the official story's take on the above evidence pointing to London: Bedford’s story is acknowledged but dismissed as coincidence. The notable timing is mooted by the miracle timer fragment and proved coincidence. The optimal bomb placement is ruled coincidence. The break-in is covered-up and then later called coincidence. That’s official story coincidence theorists for you.

Problem is, they share many assumptions with their hordes of misguided opponents hypnotized by the drug swap theory. The continued focus away from London wouldn’t work without their pushing from the other side with the “truth about Lockerbie” as told by Aviv/Coleman/Ashton et al. How it came to be this way is not my concern, but both they and the Anglo-American gatekeepers share in common rejecting the best evidence and keeping the issue clouded.

It could well be argued back that while different people will have different theories, we can all agree the case against Megrahi was unsound (still waiting for my paycheck from Tripoli), and should not get hung up on differences. Certainly, some of the sharpest arguments for conspiracy and cover-up and smartest exculpations of Libya have come from those who explain whodunnit with the drug swap theory. After all, that's the majority of everyone who's spoken up in protest over the years.

But intelligent minds do know someone did this deed - it wasn't some nebulous "not Megrahi." And those are the minds who will and should stumble over the Loony Tunes constructs of Aviv, bolstered by the endless repetitions of the core points, often simply laundered as new by having people like Oswald LeWinter say it's so. The whodunnit is tied to the howitdun, and those who care about justice in this monstrous event should think a little more, and more clearly, about the howitdun. On what grounds other than habit do you dismiss the London evidence?
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Where in the World is "Abu Elias"?

March 24 2010
major update April 4
(props to Baz, see comments)
last edits 22 September

The Bomb Man Who Got Away
It's time to consider an amazing allegation I'd glossed over before as too complex. "Abu Elias" was a central and elusive figure in the PFLP-GC cell in Neuss tasked with downing an American airliner. The Neuss bomb-maker, Jordanian double-agent Marwan Khreesat, mentioned "Elias" in interviews with the FBI as essentially the fly in the ointment. Khreesat was supposed to keep live bombs out of terrorist hands, but this PFLP-GC higher-up was sent to inspect his work and then take possession of it and sneak it onto a plane (this is explained in detail elsewhere). One live bomb and "Abu Elias," at least, evaded the German police net just six weeks before the PA103 bombing.

For a while, he was a very wanted man. But then the Libyan villains were indicated instead, and by now, reportedly, "Abu Elias" is living safely in Washington DC with a government job and a desire to keep quiet. Below is a partial compendium of claims I haven't yet (or can't) rigorously verify. Much of this could be wrong but the picture that emerges is too amazing to miss seeing in its entirety.

Version One, 1992 - Khaisar Haddad 
No big surprise, "Abu Elias” was an alias, and and the first alleged true name attached to it was Khaisar Haddad. Most Internet postings of this simply repeat the conclusion of the Aangirfan blog (“Reportedly, Khaisar Haddad, known as Abu Elias, was an agent of the US government…”) [1] Otherwise the sources giving this name are old and of the questionable early 1990s revisionism of Juval Aviv, Lester Coleman, et al.

But these cite a clear external source, a report from Yassar Arafat’s PLO shortly after the indictments of Megrahi and Fhimah. An early mention was  Time magazine’s controversial “Why Did They Die?” cover story, in April 1992. “Last month the Palestine Liberation Organization reported that [the bomb] was built by Khaisar Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Elias).” [2] By this telling, our subject built the bomb that wound up back in his hands, perhaps after being modified by Khreesat, who apparently made the other four himself (as linked above, see this post). Coleman and Goddard discussed this report in Trail of the Octopus:

In an 80-page report leaked to the press on both sides of the Atlantic, the PLO described a number of meetings between Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian minister of the interior, Ahmed Jibril of the PFLP-GC and other officials in the late summer of 1988 to plan a revenge attack on an American airliner. According to the PLO's sources, the Toshiba radio-cassette bomb used to destroy Flight 103 had been built by Khaisar Haddad, also known as Abu Elias, a blond, blue-eyed Lebanese Christian member of the PFLP-GC, who passed the completed device on to an Iranian contact in Beirut. [3]

One must wonder if his fair appearance was part of his tool kit for getting past European security. But here Haddad just handed it off in Lebanon, counter to what Khreesat's story suggested. By the book's implausible narrative, the bomb was then slipped into Lebanese-American Khalid Jaafar's luggage using the CIA-protected heroin smuggling system at Frankfurt Airport.

Version Two: Goben to Megrahi
The identity of "Abu Elias" again surfaced at the Zeist trial in 2000 with vague news of the supposed deathbed confessions of PFLP-GC member Mobdi Goben ("Goben Memorandum") This reportedly explains how the enigma sneaked the bomb (directly it seems) into Khalid Jaafar's luggage, using just the system alleged in Trail of the Octopus.  Beyond what the PLO's report said, Goben adds that "Elias" was a close relative of PFLP-GC founder Ahmed Jibril. [4] The defense wanted to explore it further, but Lord Advocate Colin Boyd, who was able to read the memo, blocked this as a "fishing expedition." [5]

The alleged true bomber formed part of Megrahi's 2002 appeal and the second appeal granted in 2007. The second time triggered a report from UK Sunday Express, announcing "Finger of Blame for Lockerbie Pointed at American Citizen." This "Abu Elias" sounds like the Goben version, described as a nephew of Jibril but as of summer 2007 anyway living in America and enjoying "a new identity the Sunday Express cannot divulge." [6]

The charge was repeated again by Megrahi and his legal team on the convict's compassionate release in August 2009. Again it was heralded by a story in the Express headlined "I'll Reveal True Identity of Bomber."

"The man Megrahi believes was Abu Elias now lives in a suburban neighbourhood near Washington’s Dulles airport, just a few miles from the White House and the Lockerbie memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. He even has his own Facebook social network page. ... He is the nephew of Syrian terror warlord Ahmed Jibril ... works as a schools engineer for the US government ..." [7]

The paper's team followed the name given (and hopefully more precise clues) and found him at home in suburban Washington. The man denied any involvement and asked to remain unnamed due to "the sensitivity of this matter," as he put it. But the paper reported "he has connections to at least two international terrorists,” one of which, interestingly, is Mohammed Abu Talb. Both Abus had lived in Sweden and had PFLP-GC links, and Abu Talb was the owner of some Maltese clothes similar to those inside the bomb suitcase, and onetime lead suspect for the Lockerbie bombing.

Besides these and his links to the PFLP-GC, the paper also said the Virginian had unspecified "links to the US intelligence services." He was known to the FBI and interviewed by them in August 1988, the report also says, and gives excerpts of a Megrahi appeal document that states: “The FBI had apparently investigated ‘X’ and knew he was the nephew of Ahmed Jibril ..." [8]

Poof, He's in Bush Land
Like the fictional Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects it almost seems our Khaisar Haddad (?) walked right out of the 'police station' of suspicion as Keaton (Libya) burned for the crime. "And like that, poof. He's gone," down to the Olive Garden with the missus. On Megrahi’s release Member of Scottish Parliament Christine Grahame, who had met and campaigned for the prisoner, described the suspect as “living safely in Washington," possibly as an "intelligence asset." The man, whose new name she too knows, "must be deeply relieved that Megrahi was forced to drop his appeal and that he will never face justice for this atrocity.” [9]

However, according to the Express, Grahame was “believed to be considering naming the man in the Scottish Parliament chamber.” And two weeks later, she delivered, as this video from Channel 4 News and the official record of Scottish parliament for September 2 shows:

“Why have the US authorities not queried the true identity of Basel Bushnaq alias Abu Elias, a senior figure in the PFLP-GC at the time of the bombing and nephew of Ahmed Jibril, former head of that terrorist organisation? Basel Bushnaq currently resides in Washington DC and is in the employ of the schools division.” [10]

(See the video of her speech within this channel 4 production)

“Bushnaq” is an interesting choice of names, likely made while George W. Bush was president. It’s not the most anonymous choice. (see What's in a Name? for a closer look) More4 News in the UK contacted Mr Bushnaq about the allegations, and he replied, calling Grahame’s charges “reckless slander” and suggested "she stops this unless she has solid legal ground." [11] Speaking to the program, Ms Grahame explained “the name was presented in papers from the Scottish Criminal Case Review Commission, again as I said, evidence never seen in a Scottish court,” and will now apparently never be released. Having seen them herself, however, she was confident “the name I have given is a relevant name.” [12]

A different American Basel Bushnaq seems unlikely, as all listings of this unusual name I see give similar details – Basel or Basel A Bushnaq, of Washington DC, Herndon VA, and Franklin TN, age 53 or 54. [13] That’s the kind of variability one should expect within a slapdash record of one person rather than two getting mixed up. There is much left unknown here on how “Abu Elias” really translates to Khaisar Haddad and/or Basel Bushnaq, and Abu Elias' own true role in the bombing remains uncertain. I don’t want to be suckered into a false lead, but presuming he ever existed, Abu Elias got to somewhere, and D.C. makes a certain kind of sense. This could all be a mammoth mix-up as the suspect has said, either by goof or design of the “disinfo/distraction” type. Or it could be a genuine, festering clue of US acquisition and re-branding of the Lockerbie plot. It deserves being sorted out.

If this confusion is easily explained, Mr. Bushnaq, feel free to pop in and help us out – I’d be honored to host the death of a false lead and clear up the suspicion hovering over you if that’s easily enough done. If it is somehow more complex and sensitive than all that, I’ll take that as a sign of something but hold judgment about just what.

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Sources:
[1] Anonymous. "Reportedly, Khaisar Haddad, known as Abu Elias, was an agent of the US government and carried out the Lockerbie Bombing." Aangirfan. August 23 2009. http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2009/08/reportedly-khaisar-haddad-known-as-abu.html
[2] "Why Did They Dies?" Time. April __ 1992. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,159523,00.html
[3] Trail of the Octopus. Online Posting, Chapter 13
[4]De Braeckeleer, Ludwig. "Dialog of a Vengeance Foretold part 107: The Goben Memorandum." Canada Free Press. October 17 2008. http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/5902
[5,6] Lambie, Derek. “Finger of Blame for Lockerbie Pointed at American Citizen.” Sunday Express. July 8 2007. http://janus.netro42.net/posts/view/12732
[7,8, 9] Borland, Ben. "I'll Reveal True Identity of Bomber." Sunday Express. August 23,2009 http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/122299/-I-ll-reveal-true-identity-of-bomber%20UK%20NEWS
[10] Grahame, Christine (South of Scotland) (SNP). Remarks in Scottish Parliament, Official Report 2 September 2009. Col 19053 http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/officialreports/meetingsparliament/or-09/sor0902-02.htm
[11, 12] More 4 News. “Was Megrahi really the Lockerbie bomber?” 2 September 2009. http://www.channel4.com/news/article.jsp?id=3329697&time=181158
[13] http://www.123people.com/s/basel+bushnaq