British Forensic personnel under a cloud

Dr Hayes, who had supposedly discovered the fragment in the collar and was responsible for laboratory work on it, left RARDE under a cloud in the autumn of 1989 when it was revealed that he had given what was later judicially described as wholly misleading evidence relating to the alleged detection of explosive traces on the hands of the “Maguire Seven” defendants. The work of Allen Fereday in a number of high profile cases has been criticised judicially. (For an informative summary of the criticisms of Hayes and Fereday in other cases see Ashton and Ferguson, pp.196-203.)

To summarise the points we have established so far–

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  To detonate the Lockerbie bomb the terrorists would have been most unlikely to employ a stand-alone timer such as the Mebo MST-13, as against a barometric pressure trigger with time delay.
  
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  The evidence surrounding the discovery and handling of PT/35b featured an extraordinary accumulation of questionable anomalies and inconsistencies.
  
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  Some elements in American intelligence clearly sought to play down, if not actively conceal, the fact that, well before Lockerbie, they possessed detailed intelligence about Mebo and the company’s links with Libya and essentially procured a charade in which it was made to seem as if the identification of PT/35b was a brilliant feat of inspired and pains-taking detective work when all the time the match between the fragment and one or more timers already in their possession was quite simply waiting to be made. The obvious suggestion flowing from this is that there was an “expectation” that the fragment would be forthcoming from among the debris. That suggestion leads naturally on to a suspicion, at the very least, that the fragment was placed in the debris after the bombing so that it could be “found” as evidence. Otherwise the odds on coincidence as explaining the instantaneous discovery of a needle in a haystack, where guile was used to cloak the true nature of the “discovery,” would simply be too long for serious consideration.
  
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  Comparative analysis of the “tinning” of PT/35b and of the Mebo timers supplied to Libya demonstrates beyond any doubt that PT/35b could not have originated with the “Libyan” timers or any of the mother boards manufactured for Mebo by Thüring.
  

Could PT/35b have been planted? No less august a figure than Richard Marquise, head of the FBI’s Lockerbie investigation, revealed in his memoire of the investigation that when in January 1990 he first learned about PT/35b from the senior Lockerbie investigator Det Supt Henderson they speculated together that the fragment could have been a CIA plant, although of course Marquise was at pains to stress that neither of them could actually believe that the CIA or any government official would ever do such a thing (Marquise, R., Scotbom: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation, New York: Algora, 2006).

Throughout the trial at Camp Van Zeist the defence drew back from making the explicit suggestion that PT/35b must have been planted, preferring rather to stress the accumulated anomalies surrounding its alleged discovery and production. This is perhaps understandable because in postulating that it could have been planted it is necessary to offer a cogent explanation as to how this might have been accomplished. (Their diffidence might be contrasted with the blithe lack of restraint on the part of the Crown in contending, and on the part of the Zeist judges in endorsing the submission, that the primary suitcase must “somehow” have been smuggled on to KM-180 at Luqa, a contention submitted without advancing – in the face of clear evidential obstacles – any coherent explanation as to how this might have been achieved.)

It is probably futile to conjecture the identity of individuals who might have been tempted to plant the fragment in the shirt neck and might have had the opportunity of doing so. We have already examined in detail several question marks which hang over the conduct of James Thurman as to the supposed identification of PT/35b. Contrastingly, Steven Emerson and Brian Duffy were effusive almost in praising his professionalism and expertise (The Fall of Pan Am 103, p.28). In so characterising him they reveal incidentally that he flew to Lockerbie and was on the ground there with other FBI investigators and officials within hours of the atrocity.

In posing the suggestion of plant two particular problems arise.

It has been conjectured that PT/35b may have been planted by the true culprits in order to implicate Libya. There is no evidence for such a conjecture but lest it be pointed out that there is no evidence of plant by the CIA either, it can certainly be urged that there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence pointing to such action by the CIA.

If PT/35b was not included in the bomb by the true terrorist perpetrators in order to implicate Libya, or planted by some party wishing to manipulate the evidence, might it simply have originated from some other wholly innocuous device contained in a bag in the vicinity of the primary suitcase?

At trial Allen Feraday had asserted that the fragment’s circuit pattern “will not occur on any other electronic product, only the Mebo brand MST-13 timer.” For the purposes of al-Megrahi’s second, aborted, appeal, Dr Chris McArdle was asked to venture an opinion on the validity of Feraday’s statement. Having reviewed all the evidence and analysed PT/35b and the control sample board DP/347a, Dr McArdle pointed out that the fragment had only a few distinctive features and that while these were undoubtedly similar to the MST-13 boards, those boards were merely one version of billions of circuit boards made worldwide for all manner of applications. Although the possibility could not therefore be excluded of the same configuration occurring in some other product (Ashton, p.361) it is moot whether, as a matter of practicality it would be feasible to find such a corresponding chip.

11. Possible physical evidence in the debris of a PFLP-GC type of barometric bomb

Even if PT/35b was the remnant of a component of some device which had been aboard Pan Am 103 and in close proximity to the primary suitcase once can hardly ignore the assertion of Dr McArdle that the device could have been any one of an endless number of different specifications having nothing whatsoever to do with the MST-13, Mebo or Thüring. By contrast, there is some suggestion that among the wreckage artefacts were found which could well have come from a bomb of the kind used by the PFLP-GC, and in particular from a barometric trigger.

Photographs taken by the BKA of the Toshiba RT-F453D BomBeat radio-cassette player bomb found concealed in Hafez Dalkamoni’s Ford Taunus in Neuss on 26 October, 1988, showed clearly that the detonator was powered by four 1.5 volt AA batteries, the terminals of which were connected by pieces of wire attached with solder (DW/189, Crown Production 1668). On 25 December, 1988, Det Constables James Barclay and William Grant were searching a field near to Carruthers Farm, several miles to the east of Lockerbie when they found what was described in Grant’s notebook as a “[p]iece of yellow wire soldered to +ve of a Duracell 1.5V battery” (police reference DW/189, Crown Production 124). In his statement DC Barclay said that “it appeared to be an American battery” (statement S453B) and, although his statement did not specify the size, in evidence the officer recalled that it was AA (8 May 2000; transcript, p.690). Clearly it was part of an improvised device. Since being moved to the Longtown warehouse on 8 February 1989 its whereabouts remain unknown.

In his precognition statement (2 December 1999) Allen Feraday stated that he had been unable to rule out debris item exhibit PI/1588 as part of a barometric trigger. Given that the PFLP-GC bombs characteristically used such a form of trigger this was potentially of the highest importance. Although he stated that it did not match any of the barometric devices he had examined in Germany it is at the very least disquieting that the joint forensic report made no reference to those comparative examinations (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.323). It may be relevant to note here that when on 18 May, 1989, the Swedish Security Police, the Säkerhetspolisen (SAPO) arrested Mohamed Abu Talb and other suspected associates of the German cell of the PFLP-GC they found a calendar belonging to Talb’s wife with a small mark next to the “21” of 21 December 1988 and stored under a bed in his home a number of items including a barometer, which was missing its barometric mechanism (see Ashton, p.49).

Although the bomb seized by the BKA on 26 October was concealed in a Toshiba RT-F453D single speaker model the authorities had decided by the end of April 1989 that the radio-cassette player used for the Lockerbie bomb was a Toshiba RT-SF16 stereo model, also called a BomBeat. The significance of the difference will be discussed later. What precise intelligence the BKA had obtained may be an interesting question but what is important for present purposes is that the Germans shared their discovery with the British authorities. On 21 March, 1989, Secretary of State for Transport Paul Channon told the House of Commons about the BKA discovery and that information about it had been passed to his department which “issued a warning by telex on 22 November 1988 to UK airports and airlines pointing to the possible existence of other such devices.” On 19 December, 1988, Mr Channon told Parliament, the Department of Transport drafted a warning circular but sadly it was “not sent out because of the need to obtain reproduction photographs in colour.” Channon also made reference to a telephone call received by the US Embassy in Helsinki on 5 December, 1988 warning that a Finnish woman would attempt to smuggle a bomb on to a Pan American airliner from Frankfurt bound for America. However, Mr Channon explained, he and the American ambassador to Finland had together discounted the call as a hoax. Nonetheless, the authorities appear to have been in possession of sufficient specific information to have initiated an immediate upgrade in levels of security which, given the endemic laxity at Heathrow, was clearly warranted.

It has already been mentioned that the Zeist judges acknowledged that because of the tight security measures in force at Malta’s Luqa airport the Crown were unable to offer any explanation as to how the suitcase bomb might have been smuggled aboard KM180 and that this amounted to a “major difficulty” for the Crown. Nonetheless the court made the assumption that those measures had in some unspecified way been subverted. However, as John Ashton observes, Luqa “presented potential terrorists with an unusually stiff challenge” (Megrahi, p.115). What then were the security measures in force there?

(a) he gave differing accounts of the number of times he had carried out a physical reconciliation when the load plan and the ramp progress sheet had not tallied, and

(b) he acknowledged other staff had occasionally forged his signature on a ramp progress sheet.

Camilleri in his statement had acknowledged that Luqa security was not perfect.

In spite of the theoretical possibility of collusion, meticulous investigation for the purposes of a libel suit brought by Air Malta against Granada Television and again for the purposes of the 1992 civil trial in New York disclosed no reason whatsoever to suspect the existence of any conspiracy involving ground staff at Luqa.

In the case of KM180 the two record sheets each showed 55 bags checked in and verified and police inquiries with passengers subsequently accounted for each and every item within that total. There had been no recorded unaccompanied luggage.

The tight security controls in force at Malta’s Luqa airport precluded the Crown from offering any explanation as to how the Samsonite suitcase bomb might have been smuggled aboard KM180 to Frankfurt. Nonetheless so, the court found that the bag had come from Luqa, mainly because of the circular reasoning they employed, but also because such records as were available from Frankfurt were on the face of it consistent with KM180 being the source of a possibly unaccompanied item of interline baggage transferred to Pan Am feeder flight PA103A. But the ambiguous nature of those records was also compatible with the very real possibility that the item could have come off a flight from somewhere else. Some explanation of the Frankfurt evidence and its curious provenance is required.