“Some
speculated the charges against the pair were not credible and the only reason
the Libyans had been blamed for the Lockerbie bombing was because it was
politically expedient to do so.
Henderson and I had talked many times about what public speculation
would be when once again, the eyes of the world focused upon Gaddafi and
Libya. We knew we had to get it right
because even if the defendants were never surrendered for trial, some would
believe the charges were trumped up just to point the finger at Gaddafi and
away from others. - our focus had shifted to Libya driven entirely by the
physical evidence found in the fields around Lockerbie.”
Richard Marquise "Scotbom"
Introduction:
3. "Scotbom”
contained many interesting revelations particularly in relation to the
chronology of the very late emergence of the “evidence” of Majid Giaka and in Marquise’s repeated
statements that from the early summer of 1991 there was a deadline of
mid-November 1991 imposed for indictments to be brought irrespective of the
state of the investigation.
4. This and
other material in the book tended to confirm my view that the object of the
indictment was not a trial at all but was part of a sophisticated plan to
convert unilateral US sanctions against Libya into UN sanctions. I suspect this November (1991) deadline was determined in
relation to a chronology focused on changes to the UN Security Council that were to take effect from the 1st
January 1992 when the UK would become Chairman of the SC and the radical states of Cuba and
Yemen, friends of Libya and opponents of the West, lost their seats on the
Security Council.
5. What was most intriguing in "Scotbom" was the author's revelations of the actuality of a relationship between the investigators (FBI and the Scottish Police) and the British Secret Service (MI5).
"Sally Vincent"
6. As a
prelude one early anecdote in the book concerned a Pan Am stewardess “Sally Vincent” some of whose
personal effects were apparently found in the wreckage at Tundergarth. (Why this was Marquise did not explain). At the time of the Lockerbie disaster “Sally Vincent” was in Moscow
visiting her boyfriend the son of a diplomat at the Syrian Embassy. The FBI received assistance from the Soviet
authorities in placing her under surveillance.
Marquise noted that the FBI had received co-operation from the KGB in a country which had always been regarded by the FBI as “the enemy” in its central (and original role) of overseeing national security. “Sally
Vincent” was eliminated from any involvement in the bombing. (As the investigation was fundamentally flawed in other respects the "elimination" of any suspect may in itself be suspect.)
8. (Central to what actually transpired, prior to the
arrival of flight 103A from Frankfurt, baggage handler Peter Bedford had found
that someone had placed two further suitcases, one a brown Samsonite, within
luggage container AVE4041. According to
Bedford Alert Security Officer Sulaksh Kamboj told him he had placed the bags
in the container. Kamboj denied to the
Police that he had said such a thing. (This crucial incident was essentially ignored and dismissed as irrelevant by SIO John Orr and ignored by Marquise.)
9. At about 1720hrs on the 21/12/88 Kamboj actually went on board “The Maid of the Seas” while it was being prepared for take-off
to give a Christmas present to a Pan Am stewardess he knew as Sally Strong. Ms Strong however was not on the
flight. Kamboj did take the
opportunity to wish the cabin crew a Merry Christmas. (The crew of course were all dead within two
hours.) Was “Sally Vincent” Sally Stone?
Marquise
and the Evidence of a Heathrow Origin:
10. While the official version of events is that the
primary suitcase was introduced (by unknown means) at Luqa Airport on the
morning of the 21/12/88 Mr Marquise has very little to say about Heathrow
although his comments are telling in view of his claim to have conducted a "thorough, complete and impartial investigation."
11. Mr Marquise’s book makes no mention at all of Bedford
and Kamboj or the mysterious appearance of a brown Samsonite within container
AVE4041. He merely wrote (page 209) “The
Heathrow employees were responsible for the loading of Pan Am flight 103 to the United States. They spoke of the build-up where several
bags had come in earlier in the day for the flight and they had placed
approximately eight to ten bags on the first layer of bags in the container,
AVE4041. These bags had come from other
flights into London. The bag (sic) was then filled with
luggage from the Frankfurt flight but the container did not hold them all.”
15. There was real, compelling indeed irrefutable evidence the "bomb" suitcase had been
introduced at Heathrow and what Marquise’s described as a “thorough, complete and impartial
investigation” (page 152) was nothing of the kind.
The CIA,
“Intelligence” and Vincent Cannistraro
16. One of Marquise’s central themes is his attempt, in
which he both succeeded and failed, to turn “intelligence” into "evidence”.
(His evidence convinced a US Grand Jury but was thrown out at Camp Zeist. Perhaps it was only convincing the Grand Jury that mattered.) “We hoped that, where the evidence and intelligence converged,
we would find our solution.” (page 87).
17. Curiously Marquise repeatedly complains that the CIA’s intelligence pointed to Iran/PFLP-GC
as the perpetrators (contrary to the “evidence”.) As late as the 18th
May 1991 “The CIA held to the theory that the attack was revenge for the
American shoot-down of the Iran airbus over the Persian Gulf.” (page 114).
19. At page 60 Marquise
writes of how in Nov 1990 (weeks before Operation Desert Storm) “I
met with representatives of the British Secret Service (MI5) with whom we had
had so many problems during the previous two years”.
20. Marquise is particularly scathing of Vincent
Cannistraro “a retired CIA
agent had told the media (in November 1990 on the eve of Operation
Desert Storm) the focus of the Lockerbie investigation was no longer on Palestinians, Syrians or Iranians but was on Libya because of evidence which had been
recovered at Lockerbie”. And where did Cannistraro get his information from? Well according to Marquise he sat in on a couple of meetings with the FBI!
Marwan
Khreesat
23. With the forensic evidence, notably the MST-13
timer and the evidence the bomb was contained within a Toshiba SF-16 twin
speaker radio evidence-cassette Khreesat
was "eliminated" as a suspect in the case.
Of interest Khreesat explained ("Scotbom" page 56)
“that he could not use this
type of radio (the twin-speaker) because it would only hold about 100 grams of explosives after he
inserted all the components he needed for an altimeter bomb.” (Alan Feraday demonstrated it was feasible or possible to build a bomb incorporating a MEBO timer inside a twin speaker model but bomb-making expert Khreesat favoured the roomier single speaker.)
25. The Police's first photograph of the “Horton Manual” (dated 12th May
1989) was omitted from the RARDE photographic report and the photgraphs depicting “The
Horton Manual” as two almost intact pages of an instruction manual
for a twin-speaker SF-16 radio cassette player were taken three days later and
are of dubious authenticity, although they duped the SCCRC.
 |
Photograph 117 (which proves the crucial page 51 of Dr Hayes notes is a fabrication) |
29. Is Mr Marquise referring to some earlier claim of Mr Feraday and Dr Hayes or is he saying that Hayes and Feraday actually
attended this meeting at the headquarters of the British Secret Service?
MI5 Stella Rimington & Elizabeth Manningham-Buller:
30. In the 1994 Dimbleby Lecture -"Security and Democracy - is
there a Conflict?" -
MI5 Director-General Stellla
Rimington claimed “The
service played a major part in the investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103
over Lockerbie in December 1988, to the point where the atrocity was laid
firmly at the door
of Libya. As a result Libya came under
further significant international pressure to cut its support for terrorists
including the Provisional IRA and of course to surrender the accused for
trial.”
31. While supporters of Mr Megrahi have
frequently alleged the non-disclosure of key evidence MI5’s “major
role in the investigation” is completely outside the public domain.
Save for Mrs Rimington's boast (and Mr Marquise's book!) there is little or no evidence MI5 played any
role at all. Because it was kept largely under wraps doesn't mean it didn't happen. If she wasn’t inventing this “major
role” what part did MI5 actually play?
MI5 are not detectives or dispassionate seekers after the truth but are quite often in the business of politically motivated deceit. Are MI5 subject to the Police & Criminal Evidence Act or indeed
the normal rules of disclosure?
32. What
indeed could MI5, the British Domestic Security Service bring to
the party? While the bomb exploded over
UK sovereign territory the bombing was supposedly planned overseas, the bomb
itself supposedly arriving at Heathrow from Frankfurt having begun its journey
in Malta.
33. As outlined in
my article “Lockerbie – Criminal Justice or War By Other Means?” the British effort to contain and defeat the
IRA suffered an enormous blow when in October 1987 French custom officers
intercepted the trawler Eksund carrying 150 tons of weapons which were being
transported from Libya and destined for
the Irish Republic. It transpired that
this was the fifth (and by far the largest) such shipment. (The seizure of the Eksund was followed days later by one of the IRA's most notorious atrocities the Iniskillin massacre.)
34. The first
shipment of ten tons of weapons had landed in August 1985 eight months before
the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi.
The later shipments contradicted Mrs Thatcher’s claim in her memoirs The
Downing Street Years that the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi “led to a marked reduction in Libyan
sponsored terrorism for years to come”. The Libyan response to the bombing might have been seen as entirely predictable. Mrs Thatcher had to claim that the ineffectual bombing (planned by the NSC's "crazy gang" ) had been an unqualified success. Had she claimed Lockerbie was the consequence of Britain's support for the US adventure people may then have posed the obvious question.
35. One consequence of
enormous significance for the Lockerbie case was that MI5 took over
responsibility for Malta from MI6. MI5 had no particular interest in Malta save for its proximity and relationship with
Libya and this fact may be central for understanding the creation of the "Libyan Solution" to Lockerbie.
36. Marquise recounts that in June 1991 he “had
lunch with the MI5 representative at the British Embassy in Washington Eliza
Manningham-Buller. We often discussed
Lockerbie and I had found her to be open and forthright. (Essential qualities to get to the top of MI5!) I voiced my concerns about the Lord Advocate
and his “deadline”. She
did not believe Whitehall would allow (!) the Scottish prosecutor to set an
artificial deadline. She assured the
criminal investigation would be able to run its course. While this was only one opinion, it was good
to hear, at least informally, that others in the United Kingdom would not let
“deadlines” get in the way of completing our work.” Was Mrs Manningham-Buller actually being "open and forthright" or just using her charm on Marquise to achieve her objectives. (There is an alternative to waterboarding!)
37. While Mr Marquise describes Mrs Manningham-Buller as
the MI5 representative at the British Embassy, according to MI5’s own website
she “led
the section responsible for International Counter-terrorism at the time when
its work was dominated by the Lockerbie investigation. She was later posted to Washington as a
senior liaison with the US intelligence community. Her posting coincided with
the first Gulf War. On her return to the UK in 1992 she led a newly formed Irish
Counter-Terrorism section. This was
formed in response to the Government’s decision to make the Security Service in
charge of intelligence work against Irish terrorism on the British mainland.” The Lockerbie investigation was not a hiatus for Mrs Manningham-Buller from her career in combatting the IRA. It was central to it and the indictments were her achievement.
39. One of the four demands made of Libya subsequent to
the imposition of UN sections was that Libya "cease all support and aid the Irish Republican Army and provide the British Government with all information in regard to that relation" . These demands went far beyond handing over the Lockerbie suspects for trial.
Tony Gauci and Megrahi's alias "Abdusamad".
40. On February 15th 1990 Marquise had phoned SIO Henderson who told him the Scots were having a celebratory drink in his office because ”Gauci picked Megrahi out of the lineup and identified him as the person who purchased the clothing.” (This wasn't a line-up but a photo ID).
41. In fact as Marquise frankly explains Gauci had done no such thing quoting Gauci that it was “over two years since the clothing was purchased and I have been shown many photographs. Of all the pictures I have been shown the one of (Megrahi) most resembled the person who had bought the clothing in my shop. However the man would have to have been a few years older.”
42. Indeed at page 61 Marquise notes a remarkable similarity between the artist’s impression and another Libyan “Al-Nayli” one of the two Libyans arrested in Senegal allegedly in possession of explosives and MST-13 timers (A man David Leppard claims Cannistraro identified as the initial suspect in ths case.) Yet according to Marquise “The identification was a turning point in the investigation”. It may well have been but having wrongly “eliminated” Heathrow the Police were now moulding the evidence to fit a theory that was absolutely untrue.
43. Marquise knew this wasn’t a real identification and could see for himself the chasm between Megrahi’s photograph and the earlier FBI artist’s sketch of the person described by Gauci. He also had no doubt of the date of purchase was the 7th December although other evidence indicated the purchase was made on the 23rd November (when Megrahi was not on Malta) or the 7 December being the two days on which Paul Gauci (allegedly) left work to watch a football match on TV. There was no till roll, receipt or ROC (record of charge) to accurately date the purchase and Paul Gauci was well paid for his evidence. Was the clothing actually purchased before the bombing at all or were they part of a trail of sweeties leading the investigators by the nose to Malta?
46. In an article for The Times of the 20/12/14 "Lockerbie Conspiracy Theory is Dismissed" the former Editor of the Sunday Times' risible "Hitler Diaries" Magnus Linklater, reported on a purported, and indeed perhaps fictional " review" of the Lockerbie conviction by the Lord Advocate. This article claimed that if the MST-13 timer was a fake it would have had to have been planted (presumably at Tundergarth) within 23 days of the bombing and that Megrahi was "unknown" at that time. Above is a cable of the 22/12/88 identifying him as an ESO officer. The "intelligence services" obviously knew of him. Indeed he may have been involved in the Libyan operation to arm the IRA. As he was under surveillance at the airport it would seem likely he was under surveillance throughout his trip during which he supposedly bought the Malta clothing! Perhaps the ostentatious purchase of the clothing was really made on the 7/12/88 - but not by Megrahi. (When and by whom the fragment of MST-13 timer was created is not known).
47. As Marquise conceded (page 228) “the case had been built on a string of circumstances.” Marquise himself sometimes questioned if the evidence was real. Page 113 - “I often questioned the evidence and had numerous discussions with Henderson on the issue. We wondered if an intelligence agency could have planted evidence to lead us to where we had come in the investigation. However after knowing what we had been through to have gotten this far, it did not seem possible the evidence could have been planted. However, we concluded that if an intelligence agent or agency wanted to “frame” someone for the bombing they would have made the path to the evidence easier to navigate.” (Not necessarily if the "deadline" for bringing indictments was actually a target date.)
48. However as Marquise relates in relation to the MST-13 timer the Scottish Police made extensive world-wide enquiries over many months to establish its provenance. (Although this may have simply obscured the real date when it was introduced into the chain of evidence.) After the FBI’s Tom Thurman was supplied with an photograph of the exhibit he identified it within two days by showing it to the CIA yet Marquise writes “It was inconceivable they would have allowed so much time to pass before the chip was identified”. But as Marquise admits there was a timetable to which he was not privy.
49. The second and key area of the FBI's involvement in
the Lockerbie case concerns the recruitment of the defector Majid
Giaka as a key “witness” in ths case.
50. I was
surprised by how late in the day Majid Giaka emerged as a witness. On May 18th 1991 Marquise's boss
Robert Mueller told him he needed at least one “insider” witness. In early July (1991) the CIA located their
former informant Giaka in Libya. Giaka
travelled to Tunisia then Malta. (It is not clear where his pregnant wife, a Maltese resided.) Giaka was initially interviewed
upon a US military vessel and then transported to the US by covert means where
he was interviewed by the FBI between Sunday 21st July 1991 and Thursday August
1st 1991.
51. Giaka,
besides outlining the structure of the JSO (in which he may have exaggerated
his own status) and identifying Megrahi
as a JSO officer (which he almost certainly was) made three key
allegations. Firstly he claimed that in
June 1986 weeks after the US bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi, a senior JSO
officer had asked Giaka “a low level member of the JSO” about
the feasibility of sending (presumably smuggling) a suitcase to Great Britain on board a British
plane. At page 192 this project is
amended to inquire if it was possible to get a bag on a plane bound for the UK
or the USA (there being no direct route to the USA). Giaka learned that this was possible, although supposedly he did not grasp this was a plan to smuggle a bomb, and
sent a report through Megrahi to this senior official. Giaka did not mention this project to his
CIA handlers.
52. Of interest Marquise had
written (page 49) “The airline guide for December 1988
recommended that if someone wanted to go to New York from there (Malta) the
routing would be Air Malta (KM) Flight 180 from Valetta to Frankfurt, transfer
to Pan Am flight 103A to London and then Pan Am Flight 103 to New York.” Did this guide actually
exist? Obviously rather than change at Frankfurt
there were numerous Air Malta and British Airways direct flights to Heathrow. (Further you could of course fly from Malta
to Rome or Paris or Schipol for a connection to the US.) No legitimate luggage was transferred from
KM180 to PA103A on the 21/12/88 for the simple reason that this wasn’t the way
to get to London from Malta!
53. The method by which
Giaka thought a bag could be smuggled onto a plane is a matter of some interest
as how the “rogue suitcase” was smuggled onto KM180 was never established and
proved to be a central shortcoming in the prosecution case. Giaka claimed to have sent his report through
Magrahi. What was Giaka's suppposed plan?
54. The second central allegation (page 138) was that at
the LAA office at Luqa Fhimah showed Giaka two boxes of brown lumpy things which Fhimah told him was
8 kilos of TNT. Fhimah told Giaka he had got it from Megrahi. According to Marquise Giaka later identified
a photograph of Semtex!
55. The third allegation was more complex. For reasons unstated Giaka had gone to Luqa
Airport sometime in October, November or December 1988 where he saw Megrahi
arrive with Fhimah. According to Giaka
Fhimah took a large brown hard-sided suitcase off the luggage carousel and took
it through customs. (How Giaka was able
to observe this was a question neither the FBI nor the defence teams at Zeist
asked him.) Giaka then observed the two
men getting into Fhimah’s car. As Fhimah
had only bought the car on the 14th December 1988 Giaka must have
observed the two men arriving on the 20th December 1988.
56. At page 152 Marquise discusses a meeting he had been
at at MI5 HQ attended by the CIA. (9th September 1991?) “We
discussed what Giaka furnished during his lengthy interview. The CIA and BSS (MI5) agreed that Giaka could
answer most of the intelligence questions and
the evidentiary things he had provided could be corroborated by others.” How?
58. Marquise
reveals that following his own lengthy interview the principal of MEBO Edwin
Bollier was subjected to a polygraph test which he passed. Did the FBI think Giaka’s unlikely story of
being asked to submit a report on smuggling a suitcase onto a plane, seeing
explosives at the LAA office or observing Fhimah and Megrahi with a large brown
Samsonite suitcase ought to be tested with a polygraph test? Of course not. As will be seen Marquise was working to a
deadline and he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
62. At page 146 Marquise had noted the comment of a DoJ
official that “without Giaka the case
was weak at best.” The quite
astonishing thing is that even without Giaka’s “evidence” (and the absence of
any evidence as to how the primary suitcase was introduced at Malta) their
Lordships still managed to convict Megrahi, apparently on the dubious
identification of Gauci (and the acceptance of the assertion, again unsupported by evidence, that Gauci had sold his "Libyan" customer a grey man's Slalom shirt), together with an acceptance, (unsupported by the evidence), that the clothing was purchased on the 7th December 1988 together with the forensic evidence of RARDE (apparently fabricated) that claimed that key exhibits were found within this shirt.
Rendition
and the “Deadline” :
65. Was the object of the indictment of the
two Libyan suspects (in loco parentis Mo’ammar
Gaddafi and the Libyan State) to bring the two defendants to trial but
to transform unilateral US sanctions against Libya into UN sanctions with the objective
of regime change?. Presumably Mr
Marquise thought he was involved in a straight-forward Criminal investigation,
with the object of finding out who actually planned and carried out the bombing and proving it in court. However his book provides a great deal of
evidence to support the view that sanctions were not just a means of compelling Libya to surrender the two suspects but the objective of the indictments. It was win-win. Indeed in
announcing the Indictment on the 14th November 1991 US Attorney
General William Barr stated “this
investigation is continuing and will be pursued unrelentingly until all
responsible are brought to justice”. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller and the Lord Advocate were still making the same claims 22 years later!
66. From early summer 1991 Marquise was concerned at the prospect of an arbitrary deadline for the completion of the investigation being imposed. At first he heard it from the Scots. His own superiors (and others) assure him
that there is no deadline yet it slowly dawns on him that there is a deadline
and he doesn’t understand why. The prospect of a deadline arose long before Giaka is recruited as a “witness” and without Giaka the FBI investigation has achieved nothing.
68. On August 19th 1991 the Lord Advocate met with the Prime Minister (John Major) "and they had discussed deadlines in the investigation." In June 1996 PM Major claimed to the House of Commons that the investigation was "open" and called for persons with relevant information to "come forward." It transpired the investigation was "open" only if you agreed with the official version of events notably the conclusion of the Fatal Accident Inquiry that the primary suitcase arrived at Heathrow unaccompanied on flight PA103A, a conclusion based on no evidence whatsoever simply the submission of the then Lord Advocate's Deputy, one Andrew Hardie QC.
69. Referring to a meeting with MI5 in London on Monday 9th
September 1991 "Henderson believed the
indictments would be announced on a date from November 12-19 1991. He admitted the final police report would not
be done by then nor would the RARDE report.” -
“The deadline which we thought to have been set by the Lord Advocate was
allegedly being advocated by Mueller and, ostensibly, the US Government.” “I also learned FBI Director Sessions had met
with the Director General of the BSS in
Canada just two months before. It was another example of information not being passed down the line.”
The
Federal Grand Jury
71. While
Giaka’s dubious claims were dismissed by the panel of Judges at Camp Zeist they
were central to the evidence presented to a US Federal Grand Jury. This met between the 25th
September and the 13th November 1991 handing down the Indictment the day before
it was announced to the world.
72. Here the
Grand Jury heard unchallenged Giaka’s account of being commissioned to write a
report on smuggling a suitcase onto an aircraft, the storing of Semtex at the
LAA office and of seeing Fhimah and Megrahi on the eve of the bombing with a
Brown Samsonite suitcase. There were no
other eyewitnesses although. “The
witnesses would include FBI agents who would summarize what we had uncovered,
to include potential testimony by both Bollier and Gauci.” (Presumably Gauci’s identification would have
been emphatic, the date of purchase undoubtedly the 7th December and
there would be no doubt that a “rogue
suitcase” was smuggled onto KM180 and transferred at Frankfurt to PA103A.) It was Marquise who presented a lot of this evidence. Did he present the evidence of RARDE in advance of their actual report?
73. The patriotic Grand Jury members did their duty and returned an Indictment. There was no real plan to bring the suspects to trial and the Montreal Treaty was ignored but the indictments were all that were required in order to purport that a trial was the objective and start the process of imposing UN sanctions. Was there any other point to announcing these twin indictments on both sides on the Atlantic? Marquise notes that the Lord Advocate Lord Peter Fraser proposed to personally lead the prosecution in Edinburgh. How he thought to get the defendants to Edinburgh (if he thought of it at all) is not mentioned. Demands made by the West seemed to be intended to prevent a trial.
74. This seems to have been the end of Marquise's active involvement in the Lockerbie case save for occasionally reassuring Giaka that he was a wanted and valued resource. Ironically Marquise was then appointed to be the Agent in charge of the FBI's Oklahoma City office which in April 1995 had suffered from another terrorist attack arising from and intimately related to the Amercian political scandals known (inaccurately) as "Iran-Contra".
Payment of Witnesses
75. Marquise has little to say about the payment of witnesses or indeed who was paid save that the reward, which offered up to four million dollars (page 114) for information leading to the Lockerbie bombing.(sic) “However one thing was abundantly clear,
money was and is not a motivating factor.”
How was this “abundantly clear" and to who? He continued that "We believed thousands
of useless pieces of information would be sent to the task force, overwhelming
us. In reality, little credible
information was ever received." Of course the task force had a particular definition of "credible". - "After the indictment
was announced FBI field offices and the police in Scotland were deluged by individuals
who had information about the bombing or the two suspects who had been
indicted. None of the tips ever turned
out to be of value.” (Doesn’t that tell you something?).
FBI Told of Heathrow Origin:
76. On the 1st June 1996 the author wrote to the US Ambassador to the Court of St James pointing out the blindingly obvious that the Police had made a "colossal blunder" in eliminating Heathrow as the airport at which the primary suitcase was introduced.
77. This was not the FBI's blunder and as most of the victims were US citizens I thought it possible (but unlikely) the FBI might actuallyconduct an objective investigation. I thought it may be useful to document they had been told that the Scottish Police had got it wrong from the start.
78. I was surprised to receive a very courteous response from Assistant Legal attaché Robert A. Patton (an FBI officer) indicating the FBI would "respond to you directly concerning your information". Of course I heard nothing further not because it was untrue but because it was absolutely true. "Scotbom" explains perfectly why they did not respond. They had their indictment and the US Government had their sanctions. There was no prospect of a trial so there was no upside to an objective investigation.
79. I did incidentally claim the advertised reward and why not? (And continue to claim it). I was merely pointing out where an objective investigation had been abandoned.
No comments:
Post a Comment