Culprits of Lockerbie a treatise Concerning the Destruction
Two types of MST-13 housing: grey plastic casing and die-cast frame
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- Operating components
- Special corner cut-outs of the mother board in MST-13 timers fitted in grey plastic casings, matching PT/35b
- Composition of the PCB board material
- Tin-coating, or “tinning”
- The brand name “MEBO” on the daughter board
- hours ). Two categories of “prototype”
- Bollier’s story that an MST-13 motherboard fragment in a photograph he was originally shown by the police was greyish-brown
- Lumpert testifies that the mother boards of the Stasi timers were green
- Western intelligence interest in Edwin Bollier and the Mebo company
- Chad radio-controlled device and CIA interest in Mebo
- Mysteries of the Togo timer
- Solid evidence that prior to Lockerbie the CIA knew that the Senegal timer was made by Mebo
- FBI forensic investigator Thurman’s pre-Lockerbie knowledge that MST-13 timers were manufactured by Mebo
- The initial tip-off about Libya and Lockerbie from Edwin Bollier
- A decision to implicate Libya by nefarious means
- Visible features of the PT/35b fragment
- Initial DG police inquiries
- Resulting profile
- Solder masked on rear only
- FBI’s assistance enlisted
Two types of MST-13 housing: grey plastic casing and die-cast frame Some of the twenty MST-13 timers were housed in a grey moulded plastic casing measuring 87 x 75 x 52 mm. (For a picture of an example, Zeist exhibit DP/111, see Ashton, Megrahi, centre plates). Those not housed in a plastic case were fixed in a die-cast open-sided frame measuring 71 x 66 x 21 mm, with the wiring and components visible. Operating components The main operating compon-ents of the MST-13 were the two PCBs and the timer switch mechanism:
Two categories of “prototype” Of the twenty MST-13 timers supplied to Libya Bollier stated that five were prototypes (see Ashton and Ferguson, p.231). It appears by the use of this term he meant that they contained mother boards from the first batch of 24 supplied by Thüring, that is with solder-masking on the rear only to allow for further modification in the design. As already mentioned, the first batch of timers supplied to Libya came to five in number and these presumably used the non-solder-masked Thüring boards from the first consignment of 24 because of the urgency of meeting the order. In that sense the five Libyan bound timers fitted with unmasked machine-cut boards could be said to be prototypes but Bollier’s use of the term “prototype” was apt to cause confusion because he also used the term to describe the timers supplied to the Stasi. It is important to distinguish between the usages. Those supplied to the Stasi – initially said to be two, later claimed to be seven – were, Bollier said, fitted with motherboards cut to shape manually by Lumpert using a hacksaw. The Thüring boards were wholly machine-cut (except for the corner cut-outs, in the case of those going into boxed timers). Presumably the original hand-cut prototype mother boards would have been made by Lumpert during the course of working out the original design and before the Thüring orders were placed. Bollier stated that these initial, entirely hand-cut prototype mother boards were greyish-brown. Bollier’s story that an MST-13 motherboard fragment in a photograph he was originally shown by the police was greyish-brown At Zeist Bollier claimed that a photograph of the MST-13 motherboard fragment he had originally been shown by police depicted a greyish-brown fragment. The fact that all the photographs of PT/35b subsequently disclosed by the police showed it to be green demonstrated, he claimed, that the original fragment must have been substituted. This was significant, he implied, because the timers supplied to the Stasi had been fitted with the greyish-brown prototype mother boards hand-cut by Lumpert, not the green ones machine made by Thüring (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.80). The obvious suggestion he was making was that the investigators had suppressed evidence tending to exonerate Libya. Bollier has never denied his close business ties with Libya and it may be supposed that he could have had some motive to serve in attempting in this way to exonerate Libya from involvement in Lockerbie. However, without expressing any views as to credibility of his substitution story it may certainly be asked why the Stasi timers would have been fitted with the greyish-brown hand-cut experimental boards when Mebo had a large surplus of properly machine-made green Thüring boards available. Lumpert testifies that the mother boards of the Stasi timers were green The palpably strained nature of Bollier’s story about the use of the handmade greyish-brown boards in the Stasi times was undermined by the contradictory evidence given by his technician Lumpert, who testified that the Stasi timers had green Thüring boards. In desperation Bollier had gone for broke in trying artificially to rule out Libya as the source of the fragment the photograph of which he claimed he had originally been shown. While Lumpert’s evidence could not of itself exclude the possibility of a Libyan origin for PT/35b it at least had the merit of providing an alternative source, the Stasi. His evidence was obviously more helpful to the defence than Bollier’s story, but long afterwards Lumpert swore an affidavit resiling from his more sensible evidence and fell in with Bollier. (See Ashton, p. 357.) (c) CIA and FBI intelligence about, and acquisition of, Mebo MST-13 timers prior to Lockerbie Prior to Lockerbie the US authorities were already aware of the acquisition by Libya of the MST-13 timer and, contrary to the impression that the FBI were wont to give, were not exactly looking for a needle in a haystack when PT/35b was ostensibly identified as part of the PCB from a Mebo MST-13. Western intelligence interest in Edwin Bollier and the Mebo company The British external intelligence service, MI6, had been aware of the activities of Edwin Bollier and Erwin Meister, co-founders of the timer’s manufacturer, the Swiss Mebo company, since 1970, when they launched a pirate radio station, Radio Nordsee International, using a ship named the Mebo II. Inquiries by the journalist Paul Harris revealed that in contravention of American Federal law RNI was shipping US-made radio transmitter components to the Scientific and Technical Institute of the Stasi, the East German intelligence service. The Dutch government closed down RNI in 1974 and the Mebo II was sold to Libya in 1977. Chad radio-controlled device and CIA interest in Mebo The French maintained close relations with most of their former African possessions and in the 1980s were conducting hostilities against Libya for control over their former Saharan possession of Chad. In his Zeist trial precognition statement to the Crown dated 10 January 2000 a CIA technician with the cover name “John Orkin” revealed that in 1985 he had examined a radio-controlled device which had been seized from opponents of the Chad government. The device incorporated Motorola radio receivers which that company’s records showed had been purchased by Mebo. At Orkin’s behest the Swiss authorities established that Mebo had sold 16 of the items to the Libyan military. John Ashton persuasively argues that if a mere technical expert was able to find out so much about Mebo simply be relaying a request to the Swiss authorities it would have been that much easier for senior officials of the CIA to discover what Mebo was supplying to Libya. Since MI6 (through the journalist Paul Harris) already knew that Mebo was supplying restricted American equipment to the Stasi it can be presumed, argues Ashton persuasively, that the CIA must surely have learnt of the sale by Mebo of its MST-13 timers to Libya. Indeed, he would never have been allowed to have engaged in the trade unless it was thought he might be of use to Western intelligence. It follows that the agency might well have obtained one or more timers from Mebo within a short time of the supply of the timers to Libya. (See generally Ashton, Megrahi, chapter 4, “The Double Agent,” p.72.) This would be important for two reasons: (i) it would have equipped the CIA with the means to carry out certain operations in Togo and Senegal, considered next, and (ii) it would have furnished the FBI with at least one relevant example with which to make a comparison with PT/35b (as to which see further below). Mysteries of the Togo timer In 1986 the pro-Western government of Togo successfully thwarted an attempted coup d’etat staged by a left-wing faction based in Ghana and seized an arms cache from the rebels. It had been rumoured that the coup was backed by Libya but this was never substantiated. It was only to be expected that with their shared opposition to the Libyan regime French and American intelligence should be cultivating close ties of co-operation. Two agents of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were therefore given access to the cache, which supposedly included two MST-13 timers, and were allowed to take one of the timers to America, together with some samples of explosive. (The other timer was said to have ended up with French intelligence.) The MST-13 was handed over to the CIA and was later passed on to the FBI (Ashton and Ferguson, p.305; Ashton, p.65). One of the BATF agents suspected they had been planted, a suspicion which was enhanced by what happened when two Scottish police officers and FBI agent Craig Bates visited Togo in September 1990. The President of Togo and his chief of police showed the visitors two timers which they said had been seized from the rebels. This was curious in the first place because both the seized timers were supposed to have been taken away from Togo, one by the BATF to the US and the other by French intelligence. In the second place the timers the visitors were shown both bore the legend “Flash” and when the President, his police chief and another official were shown a photograph of the MST-13 which had been taken to America by the BATF they claimed never to have seen it before. The delegation asked the Togolese to make further inquiries but statements taken from various officials have never been disclosed. The suspicion of course was that an unidentified party had made the MST-13 timers available so that they could be falsely represented to the BATF and the French as having been seized and that this was done in order to lend substance to the rumour about Libyan involvement in the coup attempt. Given that the US was working towards the toppling of the Gaddafi regime and that the CIA were almost beyond a peradventure aware that the MST-13 timers had been supplied exclusively to Libya they were the perfect Libyan “signature” to plant. FBI agent Bates later told al-Megrahi’s lawyers that the original timers had been given to an “unfriendly” government, not the US or the UK. If he meant France, the epithet was hardly apt. (See generally Ashton, Megrahi, pp.70-72.) Could it have been planted by the CIA? Would the agency have had access to any? Ashton’s suggestion that the CIA may well already have obtained MST-13 timers directly from Mebo at the time of the attempted Togo coup was cited in the preceding paragraph. The Senegal timers In February 1988 Senegalese police arrested two Libyan agents who, with an alleged Senagalese accomplice, had flown into Dakar from Benin via a stop-over at Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast. Seized from them were various weapons and explosives and one MST-13 timer. The three men were charged with conspiring to attack French military bases in Senegal in retaliation for France’s support for Chad in its war against Libya, but were released in June supposedly for lack of evidence. A CIA operative based in Dakar (assumed name “Kenneth Steiner”) gave evidence at Zeist that he had been made fully aware of the incident, having been summoned to the airport in advance of the men’s arrival. His information was that the third man, the Senagelese, was in fact a Senegal government double agent acting under the orders of Jean Collin, Secretary-General to the President. The official CIA story was that Steiner and a colleague (“Clemens”) were allowed to photograph the timer, on which could be seen the legend “MST-13”, but were unable to examine the interior components because the Senegalese would not permit them to dismantle it (Clemens Crown precognition statement, 10 January 2000, Steiner, same, 6 June 2000; see Ashton p.20; this has significance for the way in which PT/35b was matched to the MST-13). By contrast with the timer from Togo it was one of the batch housed in a grey plastic case. Documents obtained by Scottish police officers visiting Senegal in July 1990 included a directive dated 17 January 1989, signed by Secretary-General Collin, ordering the destruction of all the items seized, with the exception of a firearm and ammunition. In a report dated 8 September 1989 confirming execution of the order the timer was not listed among the items destroyed. Collin was evasive when the Scottish officers asked for an explanation on their return to Senegal in January 1991. (See generally Ashton, Megrahi, pp.66 and 73-74.) Solid evidence that prior to Lockerbie the CIA knew that the Senegal timer was made by Mebo In March 1988, a month after the MST-13 timer was seized in Senegal, the photographs of it sent to Washington were received by “John Orkin,” the CIA technical analyst. On looking closely at the pictures he noticed that the wire terminals and LED light were identical to those on the Chad device he had examined in 1985 (precognition statement, 10 January 2000). It is inconceivable that he did not go on to establish that the timer was made by Mebo. FBI forensic investigator Thurman’s pre-Lockerbie knowledge that MST-13 timers were manufactured by Mebo Thurman was a member of the interagency Technical Threat Countermeasures Committee. As such, according to “Orkin,” (Zeist precognition statement of 11 January 2000) he should have been in possession of Orkin’s reports on the Chad device and the MST-13 timer well before Lockerbie and certainly before the FBI were officially approached for help in 1990. That being the case, as Ashton observes (Megrahi, p.166), Thurman would have had enough information to put him on the trail of MST-13 timers and Mebo without Orkin’s help. Indeed, it is no surprise that in his precognition statement of 11 January 2000, Thurman revealed that he knew well before Lockerbie that the MST-13 timers were manufactured by Mebo. The initial tip-off about Libya and Lockerbie from Edwin Bollier Although suspicion of responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing initially fell on Iran and the PFLP-GC seeds of the shift to Libyan culpability were being laid within the first few days after the atrocity. Ronald Reagan had ordered the renewal of sanctions before the end of the year and on January 8, 1988 the Sunday Telegraph reported the assertion of a US intelligence source that Libyans had assisted in the provision of explosives and intelligence. Then, on 24 January Edwin Bollier sent an anonymous letter to the CIA alleging that in December 1988 Colonel Gaddafi had instigated the bombing of an aircraft apparently in collaboration with the Abu Nidal terrorist group and Ahmed Jibril, founder of the PFLP-GC. The letter suggested Gaddafi aimed to undermine the authority of Yasser Arafat, who the month before had ended the PLO’s military campaign against Israel. This led to radio contact between Bollier and the CIA but the nature of the exchanges have never been revealed. (See generally Ashton, pp.60-62.) A decision to implicate Libya by nefarious means? There are therefore at least two factors which suggest that very soon after Lockerbie certain elements in the American administration may already have been contemplating a “scenario” involving Libyan culpability and the use by Libyan state sponsored terrorists of a device bearing, as they believed, a clear Libyan fingerprint or “signature – the MST-13. One is Bollier’s anonymous letter. The other is the strong suspicion that in the case of both Togo and Senegal resort was had to the planting of such devices in order to point the finger of suspicion at Libya for supporting coups d’etat in Africa. Is it really so impossible to believe that a similar ploy might not have been used to the same end over Lockerbie? (d) PT/35b is matched to the MST-13 We shall now review the steps in the investigation leading up to the stage at which PT/35b was ostensibly identified as a fragment of the motherboard from an MST-13 timer. Visible features of the PT/35b fragment As depicted in the four Polaroid photographs sent by Allen Feraday to DI Williamson on 15 September 1989, PT/35b had the following visible characteristics:
Initial D&G police inquiries In January 1990 Feraday and DI Williamson visited West Germany to compare the fragment with the PFLP-GC bombs held by the BKA but found nothing to match. Williamson then took the fragment to various specialist firms in the UK and to Siemens in Germany. It was examined using standard analytical methods, including electron microscopy scanning and infrared spectrometry, during which processes the removal of tiny slivers (in particular DP/11, as to which see more later) altered its appearance but left it clearly recognisable. Resulting profile Tests carried out on the fragment established:
FBI’s assistance enlisted With inquiries among the industry having drawn a blank the Dumfries and Galloway police decided to seek help from the FBI and Det Supt Henderson, the Lockerbie bombing SIO, ordered a photograph of PT/35b to be sent to the Bureau’s “lead forensic investigator,” James “Tom” Thurman in Washington DC. Directory: docs docs -> Application for acem docs -> Observational Assessment of Teaching Practices Teaching Assessment Initiative Proposal Submitted to The Teachers for a New Era project docs -> Traditional British values docs -> From Warfighters to Crimefighters: The Origins of Domestic Police Militarization docs -> Borzoi Club of America Register of Merit Program I. What is a Register Of Merit docs -> Protecting the rights of the child in the context of migration docs -> United Nations E/C. 12/Esp/5 docs -> 9th May 1950 the schuman declaration docs -> Getting To Outcomes® in Services for Homeless Veterans 10 Steps for Achieving Accountability Download 0.96 Mb. Share with your friends:
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