Thirty-Eight Minutes

The Bomb-Timing Clue for London Intro
First posted March 28 2010
Completely re-written Jan. 18 2011

Five Altimeter Bombs
It was a well-placed bomb detonation in the forward hold of PA103 that sealed the fate of 270 people on the evening of December 21, 1988. To be precise, the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) decided it had detonated at 19.02:50 (7:03pm) – almost exactly thirty-eight minutes after it left the ground from London’s Heathrow Airport at 6:25.

This time span, officially decided on by Libyan plotters for unclear reasons, is an uncanny fit with another technology, controlled by another group entirely – Ahmed Jiibril’s PFLP-GC. To recap, Marwan Khreesat is a Jordanian intelligence operative and long-practicing maker of airliner-killing bombs for Jibril (with exact allegiance unclear in a chicken-and-egg sort of way). Khreesat’s bombs were triggered by altitude (air pressure) and hidden inside consumer electronics – usually radio-cassette players. In the fall of 1988 he was called in again by the PFLP-GC on a mission for Iran – avenge the US destruction of Iran Air flight 655 by destroying an American airliner themselves.

Khreesat was hired to make or modify five bombs, and contrary to GID orders (as we've heard them), compelled to make them fully armed. Only one radio-IEDs of the five was intercepted on the arrest of Khreesat and the whole cell on October 26 1988. Three more of these were found later by German authorities and studied, given the numbers below. All seized Khreesat devices, in order of discovery:

1) Toshiba BomBeat 453 radio-cassette
2) Sanyo computer monitor
3) Ultrasound radio
4) Ultrasound radio

The fifth device, which Khreesat says he only soldered two wires on after someone else constructed it, was a different Toshiba radio (not the BomBeat seized nor the Libyan BomBeat SF-16 officially accepted). The someone else who made it was likely "Abu Elias," a relative of Jibril’s and a senior PFLP-GC operative. Khreesat thinks Abu Elias worked by copying his own work, perhaps recycling some parts from the fifth test model he made for Jibril back in 1985.

This one hasn’t been studied, as it officially never turned up. Many, however, still suspect it did surface – on Pan Am flight 103. So we’ll return to it at the end, after grasping the four that were definitely never used.

Gobel and Khreesat explain the time aspect
[Note: a separate post details the hardware end of these bombs in a little more detail.]
David Leppard’s curious 1991 book On the Trail of Terror describes the work done by German investigators on the four bombs found in Germany, and summarized the findings of BKA scientist “W. A. Gobel." This looked at how the altimeter and time delay modifications worked. Here he refers only to unit 1, the seized BomBeat 453:

“Gobel had tested the performance of the pressure pick-up gauge 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. The contact point was connected by a wire to a condenser which acted as a time delay switch. The condenser was an insulator, absorbing the electrical charge until it fired. At this point the circuit closed, detonating the bomb.”

The condenser here is what’s elsewhere called an ice-cube timer – a simple metal circuit, coiled-up, I believe, and encased in a cube of translucent resin (looks like an ice-cube made with dingy water).

"When the necessary operating height has been reached the fall in pressure connected with it will start the timing mechanism, and when the delay period has elapsed the detonator will be activated. […] 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 35-45 minute range is often cited, wrongly I think, as the range of times to be expected in field usage. But a passage from Khreesat's interview with the FBI in November 1989 explained that the variability comes from repeated tests on the circuit in a lab setting:

"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." [Marshman report, page 32, PDF p 19]

The variability then, with repeated testing, is downward from a long baseline time. Absent repeated tests, which might be unwise in an assembled explosive device, the timers would all have, as the designer described them as having, one set time each, and it would be the long time. So in use, the device Gobel analyzed would detonate about 45 minutes after triggering. This would be more than 50 minutes, not 38, from takeoff.

That certainly doesn’t mean it’s not a fit. Khreesat also told the FBI that the timers were not the same from one unit to the next:

"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."  [Marshman report, p 32]

These seem to go in nice 15-minute increments - 30, 45, 60. His early bombs in 1970 and 1972 blew up too early - about 15 minutes after triggering - leaving two of three planes able to safely re-land. Thus for "stronger medicine" in the 1980s, he went for increments at or higher than 30 minutes. By deduction, the fourth unit was a repeat of one of the other three.

Three more to consider
Herr Gobel at the BKA, as we’ve seen above, made a close study of Khreesat device number 1, apparently housing the (or a) 45-minute ice-cube timer. He also looked at number two, the IED hidden inside a Sanyo computer monitor. This was armed with Semtex-H like the others, and rigged with the same basic altimeter-timer arrangement. “Calculated on the basis of the values of the built-in components,” Gobel wrote, “the delay time is put at between 30 and 35 minutes.” [Zeist transcripts p 8769] It's unclear if he means test variability or range of estimates for its one field-use time.

Leppard bemoans the German’s presumptions based on only one bomb sample to study, but they had units 1 and 2 and also, at one point, two other such devices. Numbered 3 and 4, these were both housed in Ultrasound radios, both found after the Sanyo monitor in a third raid, and were both destroyed under grim circumstances.

In April 1989, one of the Ultrasound IEDs inexplicably detonated while in the hands of a highly experienced BKA bomb technician, killing him and maiming an assistant. The other of the two (it’s not clear which is 3 and which is 4) was then destroyed rather than be studied, for obvious safety and psychological reasons.

But despite the British alarm over this German “sloppiness,” it wasn’t a complete scientific loss. Aside from what was missing in the rubble, which was safe enough to examine, the BKA’s forensics section ST33 noted on what remained from one the two:

“[T]he accompanying capacitor is of is of the same value as in 1 and 2, 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." [p 144]

From four intercepted IEDs, we have three capacitors, all apparently of the vague 30-45 minutes “region.” This comports reasonably with Khreesat’s list of 30, 45, 60, and one repeat. It seems to be lacking anything with a longer time like one hour, but one device, likely the one that killed a bomb tech, was not studied like this. Perhaps that was the one-hour unit.

The results are not 100% conclusive with the information I have, but it remains consistent enough between Khreesat and the Germans to say we have a double-corroborated explanation, more-or-less, of what to expect with each of the four seized devices.

And the Fifth?
Khreesat felt that all four bombs he was tasked with re-used the timers and altimeters from his 1985 test run. But that involved five radios, one of which he says was kept intact by Jibril to study. It’s worth wondering if these same parts, fitting the same patterns, were later used to build Abu Elias’ fifth device. But wondering aside, we can’t be certain.

We can examine the facts of December 21 to see whether or not it’s compatible. Below is a graphic from the AAIB's report on the bombing, based on Flight 103’s data recorder. The key line here is altitude, of course labeled “ALT.” The other is some measure of airspeed. The left bar gives feet above sea level (add three zeroes) and the bottom gives time in minutes from data start.

In the marked-up detail at left, note that the altitude doesn’t change for the first minute – takeoff is at minute one, not zero. We can see here that 2,400 feet, the outside pressure that would trigger the timer, is really not very high, and was reached about two or three minutes in. If this pressure decided things for the 38-minute detonation, we’d be looking at a 35 or 36-minute timer, something not within the Khreesat arsenal.

But inside the plane, where the suitcases were, the pressure is controlled and drops more slowly. The work of Rainer Gobel, as related by Leppard, is also confirmed by Paul Foot, writing in 2001 in Lockerbie: The Flight from Justice, as addressing the expected rate where it matters:

"A clearer description of this ice-cube timer was given the same day by Rainer Gobel, physicist for the German police, the BKA. He had a remarkable insight into how long such a timer would take to set off an explosion. “Pressure change in the cabin,” he said, “is regulated automatically. It happens more slowly than the drop of pressure in the air through which the plane is flying, which means, according to the documents which were provided to me, in a plane of the aforementioned class, about seven minutes after take-off the pressure within the cabin will have dropped to such an extent that 950 millibars or hectopascals will have been reached at which the barometric gauge would be involved and a circuit, a current, would be activated.” [p 19]

Some would protest, and fairly I think, that we can't be certain that even if the PFLP-GC's bombs were involved, that this one used the same altimeter setting, or altimeter, or even timer style, as the units examined. But considering the group's reliance on Khreesat’s formula and available materials (the fifth device from 1985), it seems possible enough that it would. And Gobel's "about seven minutes" is quite a nice fit with the roughly eight required to make this fit into Khreesat’s 30, 45, 60 framework. Thus the strong possibility that cannot be reasonably discounted here is that Flight 103’s ascent triggered another ice-cube timer, of the 30-minute size, about eight minutes after wheels-up.
---

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.]
---

After the Break-In

Connecting Manly's and Bedford's evidence with a two-phase operation
January 17 2011
last update Feb. 10

Note 2/6: See the comments below, which address half of "the middle part" below. Rolfe has soundly debunked the build-up introduction theory and its implied conspiracy. There is, however, the option of re-positioning of the cases at that location, by the same intruder, after their introduction at Interline. I've left the text alone however, so the article and comments become a continuous learning experience.

The Defense's "Missing" Link
I’ve previously explained the security breach at Heathrow airport’s terminal three, found and reported by guard Ray Manly in the first minutes of December 21. A lock to the secured airside area was broken, leaving the way open, perhaps, for a terrorist to place an explosive device amongst the luggage out there. There was no police intervention before the bombing of Flight 103 several hours later, and Manly’s police statement about it “disappeared” afterwards.

As noted in that article, the break-in is not some lone clue floating without any context. It is in fact central to the increasingly clear London origin theory. The explosion time – 38 minutes after leaving the airport – matches with the known altimeter-based weaponry of the most logical villains aside from Libya, if it were loaded at Heathrow. Before that, but following the break-in, a pair of suitcases eerily like the one that blew up were seen around 4:40 PM. Well before the investigation’s bomb in the same case could have arrived from Malta, these appeared mysteriously within the doomed luggage container AVE 4041.

And of special interest here is the fact that Heathrow is the most logical place to load a bomb onto a London-to-NY flight. A remote loading gives numerous chances for interception, and no control over final bomb placement within the container. The bomb did wind up in the only spot of AVE 4041 from which it could do its job (lower outboard corner – see graphics below), by sheer bad luck we’re told. But in fact we have good reason to suspect intelligent terrorist hands undercover at Heathrow airside, perhaps contravening normal rules of loading.

But these are more circumstantial points. It’s in connecting Ray Manly’s report of a break-in at terminal 3 and John Bedford’s report of what could well be the primary suitcase, that the defense case, and the London theory as argued on appeal in 2002, was based. As the appeal court judges considering this at one point put it, “the appellant [Megrahi] sought to link the damage to the padlock with the Bedford suitcases” [242]

[To clarify a side-point, I proceed here on a different assumption from most. A careful reading of Bedford suggests both mystery cases he saw were the same color and style. As he said: “They were hard cases, the type Samsonite make. One was brown in color and the other one, if it wasn’t the same color, it was similar.” This plus their appearance at the same time suggests – though it doesn’t prove - a matching set from one owner, and thus both suspicious. Somehow no one else seems to read him the same way, and focuses on one of the two (which one?) that matches the official style. But I go with what I see, causing the occasional disconnect between singular and plural forms below. [also: If the case(s) were bombing-related as many suspect, it’s possible that both contained bombs (one of which didn’t fully detonate?), or more likely one was a filler, added for realism, etc. I have good reason to suspect the “one case recovered” (actually less than half a case worth of fragments) was not the bomb bag, but on the floor, beneath it - Dr. Hayes once said so.]

In connecting the ‘round midnight report of the broken lock and the late afternoon suitcase sighting by Bedford, There is the problem of elapsed hours, as brought up by the prosecution and favored by the appeal judges. Why break in, plant a bomb bag among the luggage, and then leave, only to have it loaded to the last flight of the day about 17 hours later?

It’s a fair question but not a slam-dunk. If some would-be Lockerbie bomber were on the ground cutting locks at midnight, might he not be willing to come back for a second penetration? Below is a two-phase operation scenario that I think accounts for everything as well as everything can be accounted for. It’s about what I might try for if I knew as much as I imagine this guy knew, and was evil enough to carry out such a thing. I feel that it answers all the major problems pointed out during the appeal, which I will go over for comparison following the plot outline.

Phase one: Getting the bomb to the luggage place
We start around 11:45 PM on December 20, with the terrorist mastermind - Arabic in appearance, or Persian, or blond-haired and blue-eyed, depending. He's at terminal three, standing in front of door T32a, with no one else nearby. To force open a padlock, in general your options would be:
- Sledhehammer (Loud, ineffective against rubber doors like these.)
- Hacksaw (loud and slow)
- Crowbar (loud, crude, unsure)
- Powerful (long-handled) bolt cutters.
- Other (I’m not a tool guy really)

Bolt cutters seem the quickest and quietest – a polite cough might conceal the snip from anyone down the way. Heathrow was under serious maintenance in those days, with workers coming and going all over, according to airport employees speaking at trial. So a maintenance worker could be a good costume to explain the bulky tool, the work gloves (leaves no fingerprints), and the oversize toolbox that he wouldn’t want searched. So long as he isn’t caught in mid-snip, he’d be airside in the December dark within seconds.

He could then empty his toolbox at any number of spots – one he either planned out or picks at the time. Maybe some out-of-the-way spot around a corner from a corner, the kind of place you could sneak a pee with little chance of being seen, even in the day. And behind something else within that spot - an air vent cover, or a large machine with an accessible cavity. Or anywhere that two good-sized suitcases could hide unseen for half a day in a place only he knows.

They would be fully loaded, tagged for PA103, and ready to be smuggled among the outgoing luggage. But they weren’t to be placed yet. That’s too important to be left to chance.

In court, Ray Manly said of the break-in "if somebody had done their job then maybe, maybe [the bombing] may not have happened." But in this scenario, the police would not likely find anything even if they did show up and search the airside area. The whole place would have to be almost disassembled, and all the luggage out there double-checked for purity to be sure nothing untoward was there. At the point these activities were undertaken, the bombing may, sadly, have been unstoppable under normal circumstances.

At  least, until the cases re-surfaced and ran a chance of looking odd to eyes put on the alert....  

Phase Two: Turning the bomb into luggage
Phase one accomplished and no tracks left, the bomber would calmly depart the scene, ditching the empty toolbox and bolt-cutters, but not the gloves. In case this lock-cutting was reported and then caused an alarm (it didn’t), he might give them all day to relax again when nothing happens. He’d get some sleep and allow for at least one shift change at terminal three. He’d even have time to sleep in and have a nourishing brunch of brain food in the hotel lobby, with only one other thing planned for the day.

And that would be at the airport again, coming back in the early afternoon. He’d dress in a black-market Pan Am jumpsuit for a luggage-handling disguise. And he’s carrying nothing but his black-market airside pass (hundreds were missing), appropriate fake ID in a wallet with some cash, and perhaps a pocket-knife if that’s allowed and recovery will require un-screwing. He’s carrying no bags to search. No bombs. He's waved into the secured area where he's got his bomb hidden and ready to make-believe it's someone's matching suitcases.

Upon re-entry, he’d slide over to his hiding nook to retrieve them, maintaining supreme alertness to manage it unseen. Now in a new costume, Pan Am worker bee carrying two (misrouted, if anyone asks) copper Samsonites, he’d emerge on the tarmac and just blend in.

If possible, and in general, the next thing he’d do is manually place them in the lower outboard corner (see below) of a Pan Am container, hoping for the best from there (he may have gotten it).

The middle part: Interline or Build-Up?
The middle part, just where the container would ideally be when he made his move, is more “choose-your-own-adventure,” based on some uncertainty on my on part. It’s a little complicated, and most readers can just be skip to the last paragraph here.

My previous, almost gospel, interpretation, takes John Bedford’s amazing account as literally true. This has the suitcases introduced at the interline shed, the place for processing luggage from non-Pan Am connecting flights. He says his co-worker with Alert security, the ones who x-ray the bags, had placed the matching brown Samsonites in his brief absence, although the co-worker, Sulkash Kamboj, denies this.

In this version, the Lockerbie bomber at Heathrow would have Mr. Kamboj and his x-ray to deal with, which could be dealt with in at least two ways. He could just stand outside, put the Samsonites on the belt running into the shed like any luggage, let Kamboj scan them unseen by him, and just hope they pass and are placed by luck in the right corner. He could also Step into the shed, pay the x-ray man a wad of cash to ignore his job, suggest it’s drugs in there, not bombs, and try to place them himself in the right corner. The latter would offer a better chance of success, but still has its obvious dangers – like the guy taking the cash and then removing the bags for scrutiny anyway once the intruder was gone.

Another problem is the suitcase positions Bedford reported – position “A” in the image below, flat across the floor. The bomb was in a case of just this type, but by the evidence (and officially) in the upper of the two as shown in “B.” Both cases in B are ideally placed, against the sloped floor panel, which winds up nearest the curve of the airliner’s hull. This would only require a stacking of the two cases in “A”, nothing too extreme, really. However, that would make the one on the right in “A” the most likely to be holding the bomb (if there was only one). This is clearly not an ideal placement, suggesting the terrorist was unable to arrange them himself at interline.

An alternate narrative involves the same two cases actually being inserted at the baggage build-up area. Here baggage from Heathrow-originating passengers was consolidated into containers, and occasionally a container started at interline would be topped off or await an incoming flight here. AVE4041 was one of those. If the cases were first spotted here, that might leave Bedford’s story both literally untrue and still relevant, in a cynical but plausible situation like this:

Peter Walker, who was in charge of the build-up area, goes to take AVE 4041 out to meet the German feeder flight to be filled. But as he steps to it, he sees and makes note of the two “Bedford suitcases,” which weren’t there when Bedford dropped it off. And they’re stacked against the outboard panel as shown in “B” above.

He sees this after sitting inside for around 40 minutes, never watching the container for a moment. No one else was guarding it, and it sat unattended and wide open for most of an hour. Perhaps for fear of causing trouble he ignores the anomaly and lets it slide. (There’s probably a good reason. It’s not like we’re on high alert following a break-in or anything.) It’s taken out to K16, and filled up with items from Frankfurt, none of them holding any explosives, and then is loaded onto 103.

But after the news of what happened less than an hour later, he’d put it together. Even the placement was a clue - the bomb was in one of those cases, ideally placed nearest the hull. So he compels someone else (Bedford) to say he saw them, way over there at interline, and that Indian guy “Camjob” (as Bedford calls him) is the one who placed them. They’d be x-rayed, one would presume. (But if not, hey… it was him, not either of us.) And further, they were reported by Bedford as flat on the floor, not stacked in that optimal way.

This is a rather convoluted thing to suspect, and requires some conspiracy, but it does explain a number of things. It should be noted that Walker provided Bedford’s alibi (a tea break together) for being absent when Kamboj placed the bags. And besides the Bedford/Kamboj disagreements, there are serious inconsistencies in Walker’s statements. To police in 1989 he swore he never saw or was aware of the container at all, contradicting Bedford. In 1990, he fixed this and confirmed that Bedford had brought it over, as they had agreed to over tea. At trial in 2000 he admitted the change in stories is strange, but he said for whatever reason, "I can’t explain it."

In this scenario, the suitcases memory in Bedford’s story is accurate enough to be a clue, even if it’s not his own memory, but transferred from one mind to another. It also allows for the flat position to be an additional fudging, so that not even Kamboj facilitated their potent stacking. (That was apparently someone later down the line, if it's decided that happened at all.)

Both options involve the danger of Kamboj, Walker, Bedford, or someone else reporting or removing the bags. Every London option has that danger, and that risk is tripled in the official story through three airports, making this still preferable. Logic says they’d choose Heathrow, and less clearly it suggests the bomber would choose build-up. But Bedford suggests he chose interline. Either way, the reference to brown, hard-shell Samsonites in the deadly corner of AVE4041 shouldn’t just be presumed to be a coincidence.

Appeal judgment addressed:
Following are some excerpts from the second “Opinion of the Court” from Camp Zeist, following the appeal of Feb. 2002.

"[244] ...Moreover, although readily discoverable evidence of the break-in had been left behind in the form of the damaged padlock, the hypothesis involved that the case was not introduced into the interline shed until some fifteen hours later..."
True, but it’s no problem for the two-phase explanation - it’s the basis of it. In fact, the build-up version involves an even longer span, by as much as an hour, than the one the judges half-considered.

"...Unless the risk of opening the case airside to set the timer was to be undertaken, the timer would have had to be set before the break-in..."
Ice-cube timers that blow around 38 minutes after takeoff don’t need to be set, of course. So this point doesn’t apply to my version, nor, I think, to the case made by the defense.

"... No method of arranging for the bag to pass through the system to the interline shed had been identified..."
Perhaps not by the defense, but I propose the method was manual placement supported by psychological deception.

"... The intruder would have required either to wait for fifteen hours himself, or to have the assistance of an accomplice..."
Either works. I’m betting on one well-trained operative with the requisite patience.

"... No place of concealment for the intruder or the suitcase had been identified..."
No place identified? I suspect the intruder was an out-of-towner, and concealed himself at a hotel for that time. As for the bomb suitcases, no one has shown any reason to rule out all potential hiding spots, like those mentioned above or a dozen others. Do they imagine there would be no suitable spots? Aren't they presuming they were "hidden" right inside the interline shed?

"... There was nothing in the evidence to explain why a suitcase, brought through T3-2A between 2205 and 0030 hours, would not be placed in the interline shed in time for either of the two earlier PanAm flights. On the hypothesis under examination, the suitcase had been tagged for flight PA103, although there were two earlier flights that would have involved a shorter period of concealment of a suitcase containing an armed explosive device... "
Again with "armed" and time spans. Unless the airport suddenly levitates a few thousand feet, the bomb is stable. Remember, it's altimeter-triggered, in this non-Libyan plot. If the bomb is concealed and ready for a phase two, no one but him will put it in the shed, on no timeline other than his own. There’s no need to rush things; even doing it the same day is unnecessary. And besides, they may have been targetting Flight 103 itself for some specific reason.

"... Yet there was no evidence that there was anything about flight PA103 or its passengers that singled it out as the target."
This is widely disputed, but for my part I take no stock in certain individuals (Charles McKee, etc.) being targeted. But here are other reasons I could see why they might choose to wait for this one, depending what they knew from advanced research:
- the plane’s age (it was one of the oldest around) and its brittle skin. (see this frightening video)
- its inhabitant’s average youth, to maximize the sense of loss.
- its lateness, last flight of the day. As explained above, giving time for security to relax, for sleep, and for a costume change.

"...Moreover, if an accomplice with airport identification, genuine or false, was involved, there was no need to break in to airside..."
Except to have no friggin' bomb on him when he showed his pass and perhaps was subjected to search prior to entering a secured area… which of course was not secure at this point, and he may have had a bomb waiting for him inside.

"...All that was required was to smuggle the components of the explosive device through an access point, such as T3-2A, where persons with appropriate identification were not searched..."
Even the  stray suitcases they're bringing in aren't searched? I don't know - I imagine a ready-made bombs aren't smart to bring through, and the judges agree, speculating "component parts" being smuggled and then assembled out on the tarmac somewhere. (???) For the bomb’s entry behind the perimeter, where worker-looking people are generally trusted, I think an unacknowledged sneak-job of the ready package would be wisest. A break-in at midnight would be genius.

"... The effect of all these points, the Advocate depute submitted, was to show that the hypothesis that the break-in at T3-2A was the means of infiltrating one of the Bedford suitcases was so weak and flawed that the additional evidence could not pass the Cameron test..."
My theory has it introducing both of them. I didn't read just what "the Cameron test is," but it's from a case involving someone named Cameron, and probably means a point doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, compared to something else already "established." At least, not when the scrutiny is as skewed as their Lordships' is. When they say “the Advocate depute submitted” they also seem to be saying “we think.” But the A.D.’s job is to argue his case, however unsupported, and their job is to judge fairly, not just agree with the one line of argument as if it were a self-evident truth.

"[251] In our view the Advocate depute was right in submitting that the additional evidence did not demonstrate any link between the break-in at T3-2A and the Bedford suitcases..."
Perhaps not, but now I have. A potential one at least.

"... It might be said that there was a temporal link, in the sense that the break-in occurred some fifteen hours before the Bedford suitcases appeared in the interline shed..."
Yes. In a 17-year career, the worst security breach Manly ever saw, and the worst terrorist bombing in UK history, happening within the same 17-hour span, is definitely a temporal connection.

"... It seems to us, however, that that interval of time, so far from pointing to a connection between the two events, casts considerable doubt on whether they can have been connected..."
"Can have been connected?" Wow. No imagination at all.

"...The lapse of time after a readily detectable break-in, creating a period during which the infiltrator and the case (or, if there was an accomplice, the unaccompanied case) would require to be concealed in the airside area, points away from a connection..."
Again, the lapse of time after the detectable event is explained by me as a cool down period in case the detection raised an alarm. Sixteen or so hours is, if anything, a bit short for this purpose, but it apparently worked.

"...Moreover, any attempt to link the Bedford suitcases with the break-in raises unanswered questions as to why the infiltrator ignored the baggage build-up area, and introduced the cases into the considerably more remote interline shed..."
Any attempt? Not my variation where the bomb is introduced at build-up. They're the same suitcases then, just the "Walker suitcases" instead of the Bedford ones.

In addition, given the evidence as to the ability of a person with airport identification to pass through T3-2A during the day without being subjected to search, and given the evidence led at the trial and mentioned by the trial court in para [24] about the substantial number of such passes unaccounted for, it is not clear why a break-in would have been seen as necessary, since the components of the explosive device could have been smuggled through an access point.
Repeated just to emphasize the bolded, to remind the reader how easy it would be for a terrorist to sneak back into the airside area where he'd earlier hidden the bomb he meant to get onto Flight 103.

Addendum: Completely unaware of the break-in that changes the whole scene for the imagine Heathrow intruder, the Zeist judges put the situtation pretty well in their paragraph 24 (in its entirety)

[24] It emerges from the evidence therefore that a suitcase which could fit the
forensic description of the primary suitcase was in the container when it left the interline shed. There is also a possibility that an extraneous suitcase could have been introduced by being put onto the conveyor belt outside the interline shed, or introduced into the shed itself or into the container when it was at the build-up area. To achieve that, the person placing the suitcase would have had to avoid being detected, but the evidence indicates that a person in possession of a pass for the airside area would not be likely to be challenged, and there were a very large number of passes issued for Heathrow, a substantial number of which were not accounted for. The person placing the suitcase would also have required to know where to put it to achieve the objective.

---

"But Flight 103 was Behind Schedule..."

December 31 2010
lat edits Jan 3 2011

Note throughout: This post, text and graphics, are imprecise and not fleshed out with detailed research. The concepts are general enough, however, that this is acceptable. Do see beneath comments from Rolfe, who has looked at this better and offers more in a few long submissions.
---

"But Flight 103 was Behind Schedule" is one of the most persistent myths of the Lockerbie bombing. It's the standard answer when anyone asks why the Libyans set their timer so early. For example, the BBC Conspiracy Files episode on the bombing (2008) starts out:

In the end, it came down, as most things do, to a simple twist of fate. 600 seconds. That's all that was in it. Had the bomb which destroyed the Pan Am exploded just ten minutes later, the plane would have been over open water, and all the evidence most likely lost at the bottom of the sea. But as it was, the bomb blew up over land, and the small town of Lockerbie became a by-word for the worst act of terrorism ever to take place in Britain.

A montage of the effects is shown, and the next words, curiously, are: "the investigation turned on one tiny piece of evidence ... this fragment [shown, of an MST-13 timer] was the breakthrough that cracked the case." The time of explosion over land - 7:03 pm, just 38 minutes after takeoff - wasn't caused by "a simple twist of fate." It was a time set intentionally on a timer to achieve the goal of destroying the plane and, we've always been told, ditching the evidence at sea.

Of course the twist of fate in mind is the fabled delay in take-off that supposedly made the jet miss its date with anonymity. The  show specified ten minutes from the coast, suggesting a delay of at least that, if this interpretation is of any value.

First, if it is of any value, it isn't much. Consider the large span the plane was to take - crossing the entire Atlantic, on a northern great circle path from London to New York, something a bit like the image below. It was first to be vectored out over the northern length of Great Britain, a standard route for this flight (see below). After this long pass over Airstrip One,  there followed thousands of miles, several hours, of nothing but deep, icey ocean passing beneath. A host of minutes, aside from 7:03, were there to pick from between Novia Scotia and the original Scotland, ideally somewhere way out there between them.

Instead we learn the plane was ten minutes from the coast and the plotters had aimed for the coast. By the official story, they had an immense picture window of opportunity available, but they aimed only for just over the lower sill, and missed. It's a simple enough concept no picture is needed, but in case anyone wants to double-check the scale and how easy it is to hit that window, there it is. Put simply, green is smart, orange is stupid. Official story supporters clearly think nothing of the intelligence of the Libyans who they believe planned out the murder of so many Americans.

But was the plane behind schedule at all? Excerpt from the trial transcripts, speaking with air traffic controller Ronald Brown, Day 1, May 3 2000. [pp 154-158]

A [...] "1800" is the planned departure time of this flight.
Q What exactly does a planned departure time mean?
A The time at which an aircraft is expected to shut its doors and be ready for -- to make its
departure.
Q Now, I take it it's not the same time as the time that it actually takes off from the ground?
A It's not the same time as it would take off from the ground. It is the time that the aircraft is expected to shut its doors. It will then have to request start-up clearance. It will then have to start its engines. It will have to get taxi clearance and -- before it can possibly take off.

The plane then "departed" - pushed away from the gate - at 6:04, four minutes behind schedule. The feeder flight PanAm 103A was fairly late in arriving, and threatened to delay the whole operation. This flight was carrying about 1/4 of 103's passengers and luggage - including the bomb, we were told - but this was managed swiftly and flight 103 was only the slightest bit behind schedule at this point.

It did take 21 minutes then, including a second last-minute loading at a separate gate, before wheels up at 6:25. That may have been slightly longer than average, but not by much from my limited airport experience. It should easily have been foreseen by any sane plotter. But the Libyans aren't sane, we've been told, and must have simply confused departure with takeoff time, aside from presuming no delays. This must be what caused them to hit so far below the windowsil - a full 25 minutes in this case.

Otherwise, it's worth wondering if the blast timed to be over land really was a fluke. Did the plottes set it up that way? Maybe they wanted to be found? Nah, that sounds stupid. No wonder no one has argued that yet.

To establish the flight Path across the UK, I return to the conversation with ATC Brown:

Q And then A20 route?
A It was a low level airway from London Heathrow going through a reporting point called
Trent, which is TNT.
Q And then, "upper alfa 2 Pole Hill UB for [156] Margo direct Glasgow."
A That's the route that the aircraft would continue to take. After Trent, it would proceed via Upper Humber 2, via Pole Hill, upper Bravo 4 to Margo, flight direct from Margo to Glasgow, and then follows the upper air route 590 to 59 north and 10 west.
Q And then we see, "/ mach No. 0.84." What does that refer to?
A As it crosses the oceanic boundary and comes under oceanic control, the separation on
the ocean is made by reference to a mach number rather than a physical speed and knot.
And therefore the aircraft had planned to fly at mach decimal 84.
Q Mach being the speed of sound?
A Mach being the speed of sound.
Q And then "estimated elapsed times," what does that refer to?
A The estimated elapsed time in number 5 are -- it takes him one hour 24 minutes to get to
10 degrees west. To 20 west is two hour nine minutes. To 30 west is two hour 47 minutes.
So it's cumulative times as it proceeds across the north Atlantic.
Q Thank you very much.

Some posters at the JREF forum helped me sort this out [link]. Something like a great circle-based fight path, still standard today, but from local weather problems arcing around Ireland, northeast across Great Britain to its rocky far corner. The flight plan passes roughly over Glasgow and, as "Rolfe" noted, nearly over the fabled Isle of Skye. This is my own rough graphic, tracing what others had found and noted. ATC Brown mentions the coordinates 59N and 10W. I fudged the path a bit north of the paths traced from, but it's still a bit south of the 59 line. So this is only approximately the spot to mark as a planned 84 minutes out.

But in general terms, we can see that Flight 103 would not be over even the loosest sense of ocean until approximately one hour after leaving ground - over 20 minutes later than it did, as opposed to the "600 seconds" cited by the Conspiracy Files.

Ocean would come sooner on a more southerly path, also standard. But 38 minutes out from expected take-off, marked here with a faint arc, is only over southern Scotland or Northern Ireland, depending. The orange smudge would be at least partly over land no matter the exact route, set for 7:03 like that.

And further, one would be a fool to just pinpoint the coastline. Clearly deep water is preferable to shallow coastal waters for hiding evidence, but more importantly, one should think in three dimensions and consider what six miles of elevation and air movement within it can do. Prevailing inland winds and early scatter of some bomb debris, giving the farthest spread to some of the best clues, could be foreseen. What happened over a small patch near Lockerbie left a trail of evidence extending tens of miles east clear across Scotland into northern England and to the North Sea (orange in image). Ironically, the only evidence delivered to Neptune would have been on the other side of the land. One would want to clear the last shore by at least that width to keep everything over the ocean.

As we started out, there is no reason not to aim for somewhere closer to above the mid-Atlantic ridge. But if one is impatient and needs the bomb to blow right after passing through three airports undetected, around the edge of the map is about the earliest point one should have aimed for. Even that is hoping for only slight delays, but considering effectively none, they undershot by a good 30 minutes at least. Stupid Libyans.

Stupider than you can know, we've been told in different words and even in "forensic science." They were using one of the most exclusive timers ever to fail with, a unit that pointed right to them and had blabbermouth Bollier fused into the story.  A 1/2" miracle  fragment of the MST-13 survived and fell on land, just as programmed. And they used a radio for their anonymous hidden bomb that, among all models on earth, was perhaps the only one to be associated mostly with the Libyan market. Several fragments of casing, circuit board, and the paper manual cover survived and fell on land. And the brown suitcase that witness Giaka saw the accused with the day before the bombing held all this together along with the clothes that Megrahi bought on December 7, brand new at a small shop that doesn't usually cater to Arabs. He did this at and past closing time, to maximize the memorability of his 6-foot-seeming frame looming over the Maltese man, together hallucinating rainfall in the shadow of confusing Christmas lights.

And they put this all, with the umbrella, into one spotted package, and opted to just drop it all on Scotland at 7:03. Or so we were told.

Or, for those who aren't aware of what this early 38-minute detonation means, vis-a-vis a more rational explanation, see the post Thirty-Eight Minutes. The time was selected by a combination of crude devices, designed of necessity, and relying on the friggin' Semtex-H blast to destroy all clues. This most likely did happen, prior to other clues (see above) replacing them well after the fact.

A Smoking Gun Left in Plain Sight

Bedford's Bags: What They Were and Weren't
February 17 2011
last edits Feb 20

The bag that blew up
It’s been accepted for over 22 years that the explosive device responsible for destroying Pan Am 103 was within a brown (antique copper), hard-shell Samsonite suitcase, Silhouette 4000 series by its partial remains. This was eventually connected, in an extended fit of fevered imagination, to Libyan agent al-Megrahi, based at the time on the island of Malta.

The suitcase was “found” on flimsy evidence to have traveled unaccompanied from Malta, tagged for PA103, and transferred in Germany to a Pan Am feeder flight, 103A. When the feeder arrived in London at around 5:35 pm, it was decided, the death package was re-loaded into the luggage container AVE 4041, which was then loaded onto the 747 Flight 103, which took off into the sky at 6:25.

The explosion inside the Silhouette 4000 shortly thereafter caused damage to the container suggesting the case was in the lower outboard corner, apparently in the second layer of luggage. Investigators were quite certain this put it among the majority of items loaded from the feeder, but at the very bottom of that batch – just above the few suitcases loaded before the feeder landed, at terminal three’s “interline shed.”

And it’s there we find our smoking gun.

The bags Bedford saw
The plot from Malta is complicated by on-the-ground evidence at Heathrow: the report of baggage loader John Bedford. He was in charge of Pan Am’s operations at the interline shed of terminal three, where luggage from other airlines connecting onto PA flights was re-screened and loaded into containers. Employees of Alert security ran the x-ray part, while Bedford, in this case, placed the items into the “tin” in question.

Of all the cases passing into AVE4041 through the shed that afternoon, none stood out to Bedford except for a pair he reported to the police when they interviewed him in early January 1989. (see: the Bedford suitcase(s)) He described them as brown or maroony-brown, hard-sided Samsonite-style cases. That’s a remarkable fit with the primary suitcase, although apparently in duplicate.

[To clarify a side-point, I proceed here on a different assumption from most. A careful reading of Bedford suggests both mystery cases he saw were the same color and style. As he said: “They were [both] hard cases, the type Samsonite make. One was brown in color and the other one, if it wasn’t the same color, it was similar.” This plus their appearance at the same time suggests – though it doesn’t prove - a matching set from one owner, and thus both suspicious. Somehow no one else seems to read him the same way, and focuses on one of the two (the left one is specified somewhere) that matches the official style. But I go with what I see, causing the occasional disconnect between singular and plural forms below, as well as apparent complications addressed partly in this post.]

The cases appeared in his absence, Bedford said, but were vouched for by the Alert security x-ray man Sulkash Kamboj. But Kamboj himself denied this to police, and so no one can attest to seeing either one of these bags cleared for safety or placed in the container. This is in itself a minor mystery that raises some questions about what that luggage really was and how it got there.

What they weren’t: Megrahi’s luggage
A crucial aspect of Bedford’s story is its timeline. They mysterious hard-shells appeared around 4:40 pm, about an hour before the feeder 103A, carrying the fabled Libyan Samsonite, had landed in London. There’s no ambiguity possible here; Bedford clocked out right after the incident, and took his eyeballs home at 5:02, over a half hour before the feeder touched down. So clearly, neither one of the bags could be a stray sighting of that Maltese-origin packet-o-clues, which would be the third, or at least the second, brown hard-shell case accepted as going into the lower levels of AVE 4041.

What they weren’t: recovered later
The position Bedford saw the cases in was side-by-side, flat across the front half of the container floor. (see "Visualizing the Bedford story"). Unless they were moved, these would have become damaged by the explosion, accepted as centered about one inch above the left-hand twin. The bomb was powerful enough that nearly half the cases in the container, 25 out of 55 or so, showed signs of explosives damage, so clearly as they were reported, neither of the mystery cases was far enough away to escape harm.

But as the Zeist judges summed it up in 2001, “the evidence did not disclose that any fragments of a hard-shell Samsonite-type suitcase had been recovered, apart from those of the primary suitcase itself.” In fact, neither brown fragments of nor any intact cases of that style with the slightest bomb damage were found, except the one.

To explain this lack of damaged Bedford bags in the evidence, the UK Fatal Accident Inquiry in 1990, bafflingly, did nothing. The judge (Sheriff Principal), John Mowat QC, had in his evidence two brown hard-shells flat on each other, with the upper one from Malta blowing up to be recovered in bits, and the other, still on the floor … vanishing entirely, it seems.

"I am therefore satisfied that the suitcase in which the explosive device was contained was among those transferred from Flight 103A to Flight 103 […] On all the evidence I consider it is probable that bags from flight 103A were placed on top of the two interline bags lying flat at the front of the container.” [FAI 1.rtf]

This last is a clear reference to the ones Bedford spotted, although the determination gives no description of the cases that just fell through the gaps in Mowat’s logic. He did hear in the proceedings (re-read at the Zeist trial) a badgered “admission” from Bedford that the twice-affirmed “maroony brown” bag “could have been” a completely different color, blue even. It’s not clear what effect, if any, this forced appearance of vagueness had on Mowat’s decision. (the lead-up to this memory lapse, which I read as "badgering," is fascinating reading, but the voice inflection and cadence we don't now have might reveal so much more).

The Camp Zeist judges, in their 2001 Opinion of the Court [PDF] fared a little better with explaining its absence from the pool of damaged luggage. They accepted Bedford’s original report on the color of the mystery case, but speculated that it “might have been placed at some more remote corner of the container” just before the re-loading from 103A. It’s a neat thought, but only the upper corners are remote enough to work when half the luggage in there wound up damaged. And those spots obviously were not available until the end of loading from 103A.

Further, there’s no reason to rule out a move to the near corner, just a few inches away, where a case just like that blew up.

Further, the judges’ speculation founders on the fact that apparently no non-damaged case that could fit the description turned up either. The best they could do was say this:

“[W]hile the forensic evidence dealt with all the items recovered which showed direct explosive damage, twenty-five in total, there were many other items of baggage found which were not dealt with in detail in the evidence in the case.”

If the prosecution could find and explain the non-damaged, non-explosive Bedford bag(s), anywhere in the police records, the judges would have heard about it. Yet they’re left having us presume such a case must have been buried by oversight in that quiet bone yard.

Simply put, the investigation and the trial judges accept with bland resignation that the maroony-brown suitcase(s) never turned up. In real life, things don’t just disappear when it’s convenient for them to. In the mind of SCOTBOM, or Camp Zeist, however, it appears everything is permitted in deciding what is and isn’t true.

What they were called: interline luggage
The Scottish police ruled early on that the Bedford suitcases, like all of the luggage in AVE4041 before the feeder landed, was from interline passengers on flight 103. On March 28 1989 Senior Investigating Officer John Orr told investigators gathered at the Lockerbie Incident Control Center (LICC) that:

“Evidence from witnesses is to the effect that the first seven pieces of luggage in the container belonged to Interline passengers and the remainder was Frankfurt luggage.”

“Seven pieces” included five suitcases Bedford first lined up along the container’s back (quite likely it was a few more than this), plus the two mystery cases. The "effect" that this was all interline baggage was not from "evidence from witnesses" - who all swear they don’t know where the cases came from - but from the name of the shed (interline) where the suspect bags were inserted.

The FAI and the Zeist judges, by their wording, agree in calling all pre-103A bags interline, and it’s been the blanket classification ever since. This inherently rules out a Khreesat bomb, the early suspect device built with only one take-off before it blows. If the missing one of those had interlined to London, it wouldn’t get there - it would be scattered along with a plane and its passengers on some field not far from the first airport.

But my article “After the Break-in” outlines how a Heathrow intruder in the airside area of terminal three – which had its security breached in the early minutes of December 21, by the way - could make an introduced bomb appear wherever he managed to sneak it into the flow. If he weren’t caught in the act and the items were tagged right (perhaps even with an sticker saying it was X-rayed), it would wind up looking like, for example, interline luggage. It would run the danger of appearing mysteriously and catching someone’s attention, and of course, something was noticed on December 21 that matches the bomb bag style. So that leaves us … still spooky.

What they weren’t: interline luggage
The presumption that luggage appearing at the interline shed would be interline is only natural. But other possibilities exist, so it should be double-checked before being presumed. If they really belonged there, just whom did this case or these cases, so similar to the Libyan Samsonite, belong to?

Investigators did in fact try to figure it out. Scots detective John Crawford wrote in his 2006 book about analyzing the “first fifteen of the interline passengers” to locate any possible link to the bombing. [JREF link] He said these were high-profile or secret-mission people who might be targeted, have their luggage swapped, etc. Researcher Rolfe has decided instead this was likely all of the interline passengers he looked at, only some being special targets. But these fifteen at least would have any luggage switch from “Air whatever” to the interline shed to be x-rayed and then placed by Bedford. Some of them must have gone elsewhere than AVE 4041, however, as there were no more than eight cases in there before the mystery set appeared. Apparently Crawford found no sign that any of the fifteen possessed such luggage, or it would have clearly explained away Bedford’s story.

The four “Larnaca interline: passengers,” the most targetable subset of Crawford’s list, are of special interest. Major Charles McKee, Dan O’Connor, Mathew Gannon, and Ronald LaRiviere all came in on an Air Cyprus flight, all on sensitive missions related to embassy security and hostages in Lebanon. The four were shown to have held four cases between them, with one (O’Connor’s) left off the flight and sent later to New York. [JREF link] Thus they account for three of the 5-8 bags Bedford placed along the back of 4041: A blue softshell Samsonite and two gray hard-shell cases. All three were recovered and showed signs of explosive damage, especially one of McKee’s case, which also has its own mysteries attached.

Again by the silence we can presume that among the other half of the genuine interline passengers whose cases were in 4041, none had such a case to explain the still-unexplained sighting.

What they weren’t: passenger luggage at all
We can further infer that no such luggage should have been interlined to that container from the fact that no passenger on flight 103 was found to own such a case. Sherriff Mowat issued a finding in his FAI determination that meant one thing there but becomes very interesting in the current context:

I am therefore satisfied that the suitcase in which the explosive device was contained was among those transferred from Flight 103A to Flight 103. I am also satisfied on a balance of probabilities that it was not associated with any of the passengers who boarded Flight 103 at Heathrow. This decision is based upon the evidence of Detective Constable Henderson who analysed the baggage which was recovered and those pieces which were not recovered and where possible linked each piece with the person accompanying it. He gave evidence to the effect that none of the descriptions given by relatives of the baggage which they expected the victims to have been carrying fitted this suitcase.

As Rolfe sums up: “This makes Bedford's left-hand bag very mysterious indeed. […] So if there was no legitimate suitcase answering the description of the bomb bag, what the hell was it that Bedford saw if it wasn't the bomb bag? Of course this evidence was not led at Zeist.” [JREF link] Indeed, as we've seen, the judges there did not rule them out like this, but left the impression they were innocent interline luggage. Unlike at the FAI, the Malta bag and its Megrahi genesis was well-defined by then and separated itself well enough for the judges to forgo such games.

Therefore, besides the color and style description and location, we must add another disturbing shared trait between these mystery cases and the primary one – all of them were something other than passenger luggage. That’s an important point to consider as the odds steepen into sheer cliffs.

And to state it again in shorter form, FBI lead investigator Richard Marquise, in his own 2006 book, affirms no one on the plane at all owned such a case.
Quote:

"Interviews of the American relatives as well as those who had last seen the passengers who boarded the aircraft revealed little additional information. None of them owned or had a brown hard-sided Samsonite suitcase." [p 41]

Marquise was trying, as Mowat was, to isolate the Libyan suitcase from Malta, but he’s unwittingly chased it into a closet already stuffed with one or both of the cases Bedford reported. None of these two or perhaps three brown hard-shell Samsonites was passenger luggage.

What they remain: sidelined yet relevant
The Bedford suitcases remain to this day unexplained, and equally sidelined and declared irrelevant in every conceivable way. That what he described was the bomb suitcase is the first thing one should have suspected comparing it to the physical evidence and known terrorist weaponry and motivations. All this was available to investigators before the Spring thaw of 1989, yet it was the first option British investigators denied and found against at every available chance, using whatever was at hand.

First, SIO John Orr and his people found that the larger number of Frankfurt origin items in the container (aside from the bottom) led to “balance of probabilities” conclusion it came from Frankfurt. Soon it was established that the blast was slightly too high in the container (not right on the floor) to be one of the bottom interline bags. These were incapable of being stacked or otherwise re-arranged into a slightly higher position (this has never been stated, but always implied).

Then the primary case was found by the esteemed "political scientists" at RARDE to have been on top of a blue soft-shell case from Frankfurt, which had replaced the left-hand Bedford case on the floor. This forensic “fact” was absent on Dr, Hayes' first examination in 1989, and indeed unknown to the 1990 FAI, seeming to appear only later, and supported by contradictory and suspect clues. (see “the Monster of Newcastleton Forest”)

And finally, the Malta link to Libya was established. In August 1989, an unaccompanied bag from Malta was noticed, and later it was decided Megrahi bought the clothes inside of it. Megrahi was at Malta airport as that item appeared to have left, under an alias no less, and was "seen" by witness Giaka in possession of the case. Bingo, the Bedford evidence was finally history. Too bad that construct, elaborate as it was, is now in tatters, held together only by legal convention and increasingly willful denial of reality.

And the clues that rag pile obscures suggest one coherent narrative – a Khreesat bomb loaded in London to help the Iranians get their vengeance for Iran Air 655. One of the key London clues, Security guard Ray Manly’s report of a break-in at terminal three, was completely erased by police (on accident, they say) and never considered as the debate raged over whose airport screwed up (the Brits won).

On reviewing this awkward tribal dance around Bedford’s story, it’s evident that, like Manly’s report, it would have been much easier to dance over its unmarked grave. But for one reason or another this likely smoking gun of the Lockerbie bombing was kept in the public record, in plain sight but overlooked by the eyes with power. Even as it’s been divorced from relevance to legal truth, the unusual insertion spotted at 4:40 pm may still be more than an amazing compound coincidence. It might in fact be central to the physical reality that took 270 lives two and a half hours later.
---

Video: Two Hard Cases Solve Another

January 31 2011

Here is my latest Youtube video, relating the account of John Bedford and its potential relevance to the bombing.


It's not the most visually interesting, and the music's a little weird. But I think the soundtrack adds some drama to a pretty detailed narrative. I hope it all comes together well enough to raise a few new question marks - or even exclamation marks - out there.

See also the actual Youtube page for the video to help get the views up. Comments open to all here and there, welcoming constructive criticism and all. I plan to remake all my videos some day, or something to that effect, so feedback is always valued.

What Did The Germans Know?

The Scots-German War Over Airport Security, part 2 of 2
June 23 2010
last edits 21 November

The following is part-essay, part compilation of long quotes. Two early books are drawn from throughout:
[E+D] Emerson, Steven and Brian Duffy “The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation” New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons. April 1990. 283 pages.
[L] Leppard, David.On the Trail of Terror: The Inside Story of the Lockerbie Investigation. London, Jonathan Cape. May 1991. 221 pages.
The views expressed by those writers are not necessarily shared by this blogger – the exercise is to gather facts and attitudes, the zeitgeist, of this minor 1989 struggle of wills between two erstwhile allies in a major investigation.
---
Vehement Vengeance
Part one explained the unfounded British decisions to rule out London origin for the bomb while repeatedly insisting it must have come in from Frankfurt. “Smarting from the accusation that sloppy West German security had allowed this terrible act of terrorism,” Emerson and Duffy explain, “Germany would begin to strike at the British with a vengeance.” [E+D161] It was the first of January 1989, the day after the inflammatory Times story (Disaster Bomb placed on Jumbo in Frankfurt), that the first response was heard. As the book explains:

“West German Interior Ministry spokesman Michael Andreas Butz was convening a news conferencet to respond to the Times account of the day before. “There is no indication,” Butz declared stiffly, “that the explosives could have been put on board at Frankfurt airport.” In fact, he added ominously, “there is evidence which is contradictory.”

What did the Germans know that the Americans and the Scots didn’t?”

Butz went on to assert, with some vehemence, that German agents had determined that the “Disaster Bomb” had been smuggled aboard the 103 in London. The German agents had proof of it, Butz said." [E+D161]

Five days later, it seems the Germans were ready to show what they knew or didn't know. Reuters in London, citing “West German security sources,” reported on January 6 that “an airport worker at Heathrow had planted the bomb in the forward luggage hold of the 103.” A bizarre explanation followed:

"According to the sources quoted by Reuters, investigators had arrived at the Heathrow link because of the “fact” that the bomb that had blow up the 103 weighed “at least sixty-six pounds.” Luggage restrictions limited carry-on bags to seventy pounds, but the sources cited in the Reuters account said that the bomb was loaded aboard by an airport worker. What the sources evidently didn’t say is why the airport worker couldn’t have been in Frankfurt instead of London." [E+D165-66]

That explanation fails to make sense in numerous ways (the bomb likely weighed less that 66 ounces, for one), and doesn’t sound like what any thinking German would really say. But this wasn’t their only counter-charge passed on in The Fall of Pan Am 103:

“In a matter of days, news stories began to leak from Bonn and Frankfurt that security at Heathrow was far worse than at Frankfurt. British authorities were outraged. For days and weeks, as the families of those killed on the 103 watched this ugly game of diplomatic Ping-Pong, Britain and Germany fought a nasty proxy war through their TV networks and newspapers. Clearly, the feud was based on more than a technical dispute among forensic specialists. Some went so far as to assert that the bitterness of the dispute showed the extent to which the age-old cultural animosities between the two nations had still not abated after two world wars.” [E+D 161]

The authors Emerson, Duffy, and Leppard have the Germans trying to deny both a Khreesat bomb (their botched police work) and the German bomb infiltration (their airport security failure), often confusing and conflating the two drives. On the other side, it’s clear that the Scots and Americans tried at every juncture to put all failures in Germany. David Leppard writes “the bitter argument […] persisted throughout the long hot summer of 1989” [135] and “the German BKA were to spend more than a year publicly claiming that the bomb must have been put aboard at London.” [60]

So Just What Did They know?
Such persistent denial could be motivated, as the Brits and Americans charged, by German fear of accepting the horrible truth about their epic shortcomings. But to be fair, the Germans in fact knew some actual evidence supporting their claims, and should have been given more credit.

Emerson and Duffy’s telling shows hardly a hint of this, with its cited argument that a 66-pound bomb somehow implies Heathrow origin. But the West Germans had to have noticed the lucky bag placement within the container, that could only have been more than luck if it was placed in London. They probably did not know of John Bedford’s story of suitcases matching the IED style seen at about that spot of that container - well before the 727 arrived from Frankfurt. Had they known, they likely would have said so.

The break-in at Heathrow’s Terminal Three the morning before the bombing was surely concealed from German ears as it was from the whole world up to and including the Zeist trial in 2000. On top of the generally lax security at Heathrow, this additional bit of information could only have added to the German resistance against the first script changes.

It was enough at first to know that both alleged German failures - a Khreesat bomb and Frankfurt ingestion - could not be true at the same time as the Yanks and Brits insisted. At least, not without a fair amount of speculation.

The German BKA actually did some work along these lines to help their colleagues understand, as David Leppard shares in some detail. They knew the Khreesat altimeter bomb better than anyone, having overseen the raid that caught only one of five, having had another one later kill one of their bomb technicians, just before they destroyed yet another in revenge. Leppard rails along with the Scots at these scientific losses and such fatal sloppiness. But he also misrepresents the number of samples they once held (it was four, not three), and the readable remains they had at the end of the explosions (three partial and two complete samples, not one). These were, however, studied as far as possible.

“In May the Germans decided to prepare a detailed scientific rebuttal of RARDE’s theory that the bomb had been made by Khreesat […] and put aboard at Frankfurt. The BKA asked its forensic section, ST33, to prepare a report on the three Khreesat bombs so far recovered.” [L142]

They shortly issued a final report called "Comment on the ignition Devices,” which said their remit was “to test and report if [Khreesat bombs] were suitable for surviving the flight from Frankfurt to London […] and exploding 38 minutes after take-off in London.” [L142] The answer, delivered with “bland Teutonic logic,” was No. Rather, they realized and explained one of the best London-origin clues. 

“The rundown of the functioning on the ignition devices … can be brought into line very well with the circumstances during take-off and pahse 1 of flight PA103 London to New York.
[…]
Presupposing that an explosive device of the same construction was used in the attack, then it must have been taken board for the first time in London, or at least made acute [armed -ed] by insertion of the master switch.” [L145]

Leppard dismisses the report as "a compendium of fudge and obfuscation." They had “only one [sic] fully functioning example of Khreesat's bombs,” Leppard complained, “but this did not prevent them concluding all three bombs had a time delay of between 30 and 45 minutes." The reality is in fact a little more complex it seems than the BKA’s report lets on, but the noted similarity of the timing style is still completely valid. The 38-minute detonation after leaving there really does look a lot like a Khreesat device loaded there.

War’s End
Upon seeing that insolent ST33 report, SIO John Orr “was furious,” writes Leppard.

“As the Kamboj episode showed, there had always been the outside chance that a bag had been smuggled into the container at Heathrow. That possibility aside, Orr had effectively ruled out Heathrow within three weeks of the bombing. Much to the relief of British security chiefs, the Met’s Special Branch had long since stopped investigating the Heathrow theory. Now the Germans were suggesting they were all wrong.” [L145]

They launched back in June with a rebuttal. “Harry Bell was tasked with getting RARDE to research a reply” to this ST33 report, writes Leppard. “It took five weeks to come up with a convincing response.” Finished before June was out, it mostly poked holes the uncertainties of the report, like using “only one working device” to decide the time delay. It offered no solid alternative, quibbled over climb rates, postulated a simple electrical error, and closed condescendingly:

“In conclusion the ST33 report deals with presumptions and presuppositions and it is respectfully pointed out that only factual evidence will be acceptable in the furtherance of the inquiry to bring to justice the bombers of Flight PA103.” [L146-48]

The Scots and Americans, on the other hand, were never able to shake the fact that London was always the far better fit for just the bomb style that everyone first suspected. And they could show no support for what they insisted on: a Khreesat bomb loaded and triggered in Germany but with a speculated two-hour timer to carry it just past London.

In short the authorities and investigators of the West German Federal Republic knew some of the same clues their counterparts across the channel did. They could see the general logic of London introduction, the detonation timing, and the expected British ass-covering. After all, as Leppard put it:

“Certainly, if Heathrow had been to blame, the ramifications would have been severe […] Fortunately for the British, no such evidence was ever uncovered. All the political embarrassment would fall on the Germans.” [p 60]

The embarrassment would then somehow shift off of them onto Malta and thence Libya, in a fascinating leapfrog action. But early on, we can see the Germans had circumstantial clues - if only half as many as the Brits held - that the bomb actually started in London. They could be called jumpy or defensive to leap to the conclusions they did so fervently based on such limited information. But now, with more information, we can see that they were probably right all along.

Appeal Court Dismissal of the Heathrow Theory

February 10, 2010
last update Jan 14 2011

The judges considering Abdelbaset al Megrahi's appeal of conviction in February 2002 [PDF] had to give the London introduction theory a listen - they had the Bedford bags, the 38-minute clue, and the recently revealed, long-suppressed break-in evidence to consider. They did some thinking about this it seems. I invite comments to criticize this ridiculous word salad.

[244] In assessing whether the additional evidence supported the hypothesis that the break-in at T3-2A provided the route by which one of the Bedford suitcases was infiltrated, the Advocate depute made a number of points. First, he submitted that an individual carrying a suitcase and, presumably, lock-breaking equipment would be rather conspicuous in Terminal 3 between 2200 and 0030 hours, since normally no members of the public would be around at that time. Secondly, setting aside speculation, for a suitcase brought airside through the forced door at T3-2A to be one of the Bedford suitcases, it required to be infiltrated into the baggage handling system at the interline shed. For that purpose it would require an interline tag. That was particularly so if it was accepted, as the Advocate depute [prosecution] submitted it should be, that the Bedford suitcases were probably placed in the container by Mr Kamboj. He would not have placed them in the container if they had not been bearing appropriate interline tags.

Okay, someone would have to have put Pan Am tags on them. That's not much of a de-bunk. They got some tags, however people do that.

... despite the fact that the trial court’s preference of Mr Bedford over Mr Kamboj (on the question of whether Mr Kamboj told Mr Bedford that he had placed the suitcases in the container) did not constitute evidence that Mr Kamboj had in fact so placed them, the natural inference was that the cases were put into the container by Mr Kamboj, whose job it was to x-ray PanAm interline baggage, rather than by some interloper. Why would an intruder through T3-2A choose to introduce a case containing an explosive device at the interline shed? He had, on the hypothesis under examination, broken in to airside at a point adjacent to the very area (the baggage build-up area) where most bags were handled. Yet he had spurned the opportunity of introducing the case into the baggage handling system there, andhad opted for the interline route which introduced the additional risk of detection when the interline baggage was x-rayed.

What if they had an inside helper, like one of the guys who ran the x-ray machines, and would vouch for it being okay? Or, as I've wondered, Bedford's story isn't directly true, but only reflects someone else's witnessing of these bags at, of all places, the wide-open and unsecured baggage build-up area?

Moreover, although readily discoverable evidence of the break-in had been left behind in the form of the damaged padlock, the hypothesis involved that the case was not introduced into the interline shed until some fifteen hours later. Unless the risk of opening the case airside to set the timer was to be undertaken, the timer would have had to be set before the break-in. No method of arranging for the bag to pass through the system to the interline shed had been identified. 

If I had  hidden two brown Samsonites, say, behind an air vent cover at midnight, I'd come back at the end of the day in Pan Am costume, retrieve the bags, and either
1) pay an Indian guy at Interline some money to let me place them on the floor and make him agree to vouch for them but not to move them, or
2) set them in myself at build-up, where the container sat completely unattended for almost 45 minutes.
I'd also have tags, since that would help thm not stand out otherwise.

The intruder would have required either to wait for fifteen hours himself, or to have the assistance of an accomplice. No place of concealment for the intruder or the suitcase had been identified. There was nothing in the evidence to explain why a suitcase, brought through T3-2A between 2205 and 0030 hours, would not be placed in the interline shed in time for either of the two earlier PanAm flights. On the hypothesis under examination, the suitcase had been tagged for flight PA103, although there were two earlier flights that would have involved a shorter period of concealment of a suitcase containing an armed explosive device. Yet there was no evidence that there was anything about flight PA103 or its passengers that singled it out as the target. Moreover, if an accomplice with airport identification, genuine or false, was involved, there was no need to break in to airside. All that was required was to smuggle the components of the explosive device through an access point, such as T3-2A, where persons with appropriate identification were not searched. The effect of all these points, the Advocate depute submitted, was to show that the hypothesis that the break-in at T3-2A was the means of infiltrating one of the Bedford suitcases was so weak and flawed that the additional evidence could not pass the Cameron test.

[245] The third stage at which the Advocate depute suggested the significance of the additional evidence might be tested was in the context of all the other evidence led at the trial, not merely the other evidence bearing on events at Heathrow airport. The critical issue at the trial was not a simple competition between infiltration at Heathrow and infiltration at Luqa. It was in any event wrong to say, as Mr Taylor did, that the evidence of Heathrow infiltration was no worse than the evidence of Luqa infiltration.

To better Mr. Taylor, it's physically demonstrated to a high degree (see next paragraph), while even the Luqa theorists' best hypotheses are barely verbalized. They just don't bother. They musta snuck it, since a piece of paper shows a thing kinda like maybe the thing Giaka saw, or whatever... As they explain in this ridiculous paragraph: :

There was evidence, which the trial court had accepted, that an unaccompanied and unaccounted for bag had travelled from Malta on flight KM180, had transferred at Frankfurt to flight PA103A, and had thence been loaded on flight PA103. There was evidence associating the bag containing the explosive device with Malta. On the other hand, in respect of Heathrow there was evidence that a door from landside to airside was forced, and evidence that a suitcase matching the description of the primary suitcase was placed in container AVE 4041. There was no evidence that the explosive device was in that suitcase.

Uh... How can one piece of paper, that went missing for a month and says only B8849, station 206, 1307, show all the stuff these judges say it shows? Because that AWOL printout is the only evidence for such a bag at three airports. As for London, we have a credible visual ID of a bag of the right type (two actually) placed in that precise corner of AVE4041 soon after blown up by a bomb (or bombs) in just that kind of case. As for evidence that case(s) had a bomb(s) inside, see the previous sentence, dummy.

[246] There were nine components in the evidence before the trial court, the Advocate depute submitted, which were unaffected by the additional evidence. They were:
(1) The clothing in the primary suitcase was purchased by a Libyan, and the timer was supplied to the Libyan secret service. The trial court concluded that the plot was promoted by the Libyan secret service.
(2) The clothes were purchased in Malta, showing that a Libyan had gone to Malta in furtherance of the plot.
(3) The records of Frankfurt airport were shown to be capable of allowing the origin of baggage transferred there to be tracked.
(4) Those records demonstrated the carriage of an unaccompanied bag from Malta on flight KM180. The evidence of Mr Borg did not rule out the possibility of that happening. It was to be remembered that the Crown case was that the security measures at Luqa had been deliberately circumvented by a criminal act.

And no proof save that lonely printout?

(5) The clothing in the primary suitcase suggested that it had been sent from Malta.
(6) The promoters of the plot, the Libyan secret service, had a presence at Luqa airport.
(7) The appellant, a member of the JSO and the purchaser of the clothing, flew into Malta the evening before the carriage of the unaccompanied bag on flight KM180. He did so using a false identity obtained for him by that organisation.
(8) The appellant was again present at Luqa airport the following morning, during some of the time when flight KM180 was loading. He then left on the first available flight for the safety of Tripoli, and never again used the false identity.
(9) Malta, because of its proximity, provided an airport to and from which Libyans could easily travel.
None of those nine features of the evidence was affected by the additional evidence. They all supported the Crown case. No feature of the additional evidence was consistent with the promotion of the plot by the Libyan secret service.

And that last about sums it up. "The new evidence challenges our preconceptions. It casts doubt on the accused's guilt. That's crazy. Whaddyou think this is, an appeal? Come back with something rational that blames Gadhafi or if possible Megrahi, and then we'll talk..."