Culprits of Lockerbie a treatise Concerning the Destruction
Bedford’s indication of the position of the brown or maroon Samsonite hardshell in AVE4047
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- The two McKee dark grey hardshell suitcases
- McKee’s cases probably loaded by Bedford before his tea break
- Could the McKee cases have been the bags placed on the floor of container AVE4041 in Bedford’s absence
- Possible reasons why Bedford may have focused less on the right hand side item on the floor than on brown Samsonite-type hardshell suitcase adjacent to the overhang
- Momentary suspicion of a bomb inspires more interest in a suitcase closer to the hull
- Investigators conceivably focused on Bedford’s description of the left-hand side suitcase
- The terrorist’s possible aim in placing a second bag on the container floor next to the primary suitcase
- Speculation that one had been switched at Frankfurt with the primary suitcase
- Main objection to the Hubbard bag theory
- Hubbard’s sole bag at Lockerbie explained
- The Fatal Accident Inquiry report and Bedford’s extra bag
- Suggestion that the decision to “exonerate” Heathrow and “implicate” Frankfurt was made very early on in the investigation
Bedford’s indication of the position of the brown or maroon Samsonite hardshell in AVE4047 Very signify-cantly, the position in AVE4047 which Bedford indicated the brown or maroon Samsonite-type suitcase had occupied was very close to the position which, on the basis of one of the several competing expert calculations at least, the primary suitcase could have been in when the bomb inside it exploded. We shall return to the issue of the position of the primary suitcase later. Interline tags As the two cases on the container floor were placed handles inwards it was not surprising that Bedford did not or was unable to say whether or not they had interline tags attached. (d) Assessing the descriptions of the two mystery suitcases noticed by John Bedford Potential problem with Bedford’s description of the two extra items Before addressing the issue of whether the Samsonite-type bag seen by Bedford could have been the primary suitcase it is necessary to examine the reliability of his description of the two bags he said had been placed in AV4047 when he was absent having his tea break. He was described by the Zeist trial judges as a “clear and impressive witness,” but even impressive witnesses can be mistaken. Of the two additional bags lying flat with their handles inwards the one on the left, adjacent to the overhang, was, he said, a hard suitcase, “the type Samsonite make” and brown in colour (later amending this to maroon); the item on the right was “similar, if not the same.” The problem is that only one brown Samsonite-type hard sided suitcase was ever recovered at the crash site, that is, in dismembered condition, the “Antique Bronze” – in effect, brown – Samsonite Silhouette 4000 hardshell which had contained the bomb. Could he have been mistaken about the colour or type of the second bag and if he was mistaken about the colour of that bag, could he have been mistaken about the colour of the Samsonite-type bag, upon which so much has depended in the Lockerbie saga? If he was mistaken about colour of the Samsonite-type bag – that on the left adjacent to the overhang – that would allow for the possibility that the primary suitcase may after all have come in from Frankfurt. One can see therefore how the reliability of Bedford’s description is a crucial factor in the puzzle. The two McKee dark grey hardshell suitcases Were any two of the legitimate Heathrow interline bags which are likely to have been in AVE4041 similar to each other? The interline baggage in the container when it was taken out on to the tarmac almost certainly included items belonging to two of three US Government officials on their way home for the holidays from postings in Lebanon. The possible involvement of those officials in undercover CIA Middle East operations, the presence of nameless United States government agents around Lockerbie in the aftermath of the destruction of Pan Am 103 and the possible “interdiction” by those agents of certain items of luggage has spawned an extensive literature of speculative inquiry which is beyond the scope of this monograph. Tellingly, however, for present purposes, is the fact that two bags belonging to one of the three officials in question, Major Charles McKee, were almost certainly in AVE4041, and were both dark grey hardshells, one in fact being a Samsonite. (Two other bags belonging to a fourth doomed American, a State Department official based in Nicosia by the name of Daniel O’Connor, may have been found in a Heathrow baggage room.) McKee’s cases probably loaded by Bedford before his tea break McKee’s cases were almost certainly among the upright items Bedford placed at the back of the container before he went off for tea. McKee had flown in to Heathrow (with his bags) on a flight from Cyprus which landed at 2.34 pm. This was at least an hour and a half before Bedford went for his tea break (assuming that was at about 4.10 pm) and this should have provided more than ample time for the two bags to be transferred to the interline shed for Bedford to have placed them in the container as two of the upright bags before he took his break. Could the McKee cases have been the bags placed on the floor of container AVE4041 in Bedford’s absence? Could Bedford have been mistaken about the colour of at least one of the two bags he found lying flat in the container when he returned from his break (both of which he assumed were additions)? Might he have been mistaken about the colour of both bags. Might they in fact have been the McKee bags and Bedford simply got the colours of both wrong? That possibility was given some support by the fact that the loader Sidhu had originally stated that both the two cases lying flat in the container were black (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.336). On the other hand, if as seems likely, the McKee bags were placed in the container by Bedford before he went for his break, why would anyone else have moved both of them on to the floor for an innocent purpose during Bedford’s break? If two extra bags had been added innocently in his absence why would the handler in question have removed the McKee bags from the row of upright cases at the back and inserted the new bags in their place? According to DC Derek Henderson’s baggage schedule only McKee’s Samsonite showed evidence of blast damage. Was the extent and nature of the damage it sustained consistent with its being on the floor of the container adjacent to the overhang with the bomb bag being in the second layer above it or was the damage consistent with it being in the upright position adjacent to the bomb bag on the floor? In earlier editions of this treatise it was suggested that further research might reveal an answer to these questions. That prediction anticipated the publication on the Lockerbie bombing’s 25th anniversary of Adequately explained by stupidity? Lockerbie Luggage and Lies (Leicester: Troubadour 2013), the widely acclaimed study of the luggage evidence by Dr Morag Kerr, Secretary-Depute of the Justice for Megrahi Committee. (A useful summary of the key points in the book was set out by Dr Kerr herself in a brief article entitled “The real case of the Heathrow introduction” reproduced in Professor Robert Black QC’s blog http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.co.uk/.) However, even before her book came out it could be asserted with some confidence that if it was in fact the McKee Samsonite which Bedford had seen on the base of the container and the primary suitcase had come in from Frankfurt and had been placed on top of it in the second layer the McKee bag would not merely have been blast-damaged but would surely have been “pulverised,” to adopt the verb coined by Dr Kerr in an article foreshadowing her book and given a similar title (“Adequately explained by stupidity?” published in the political media monitor Wings Over Scotland, 3 January, 2013, recycled in Dr Kerr’s “WikiSpooks” blog). We shall return to the subject of Dr Kerr’s exposition on the luggage blast-damage and her demonstration of why it proves the bomb suitcase was resting on the base of the container (see VI, 3, (h) below). Possible error by Bedford as to the type and/or colour of the second extra bag For the reasons given so far it seems certain that neither McKee bags were those Bedford found resting on the floor of the container but were among the upright items he placed at the back before going for his break. Further, we know that there were no legitimate brown or near-brown hard sided suitcases listed in the Henderson schedule. How, then, might we explain the fact that Bedford described the two extra bags he found lying flat on the floor when he returned from his break as “similar if not the same”? What of the possibility that Bedford might to a greater or lesser extent have been mistaken in asserting that the two extra bags were similar, if not the same. First of all, it may be that what he assumed were two additions in reality consisted of one addition – the brown or maroon Samsonite-type hard sided suitcase adjacent to the overhang – and one of the original bags which had been removed from its original upright position at the back of the container and laid flat next to the Samsonite-type hardshell, or a legitimate bag which arrived after he had gone for his break. That would certainly tally with the total of six legitimate Heathrow interline bags which can be inferred from the Henderson schedule to have been loaded in AVE4041. We shall consider shortly the terrorist’s possible motive or purpose in adopting such an approach. What if the terrorist had pulled down one of the items of a colour or type or both distinct from the brown/maroon Samsonite-type hardshell? Suppose the item selected had been, for example, one of the dark grey McKee hard-sided bags? This would have been the correct type but the wrong colour. The Henderson schedule reveals that Heathrow interline luggage which could have arrived at the interline shed before Bedford went for his break included two items belonging to Michael Bernstein. They were a brown saddlebag and a maroon Samsonite suit carrier. Bernstein landed at Heathrow at 3.15 pm, so his bags could well have made it to the interline shed before Bedford’s break and have been placed by Bedford on the back row. Could the terrorist have removed Bernstein’s maroon suit carrier from there and placed it to the right of the primary suitcase. Folded and bulked out with clothing it might well have had broadly the same profile and dimensions as the primary suitcase and, importantly, matched it for colour. Bedford’s perfunctory description of the second bag – “similar if not the same” – suggests that for some unexplained reason or perhaps for no particular reason at all it was the suitcase on the left, ie adjacent to the overhang, to which he gave more attention. Before examining the possible reasons why this might have been so we ought to be aware of a perennial problem with written witness statements to the police, one encountered with the witness Anthony Gauci. Assuming the statement was taken down by an officer in the normal way one would have to be sure that it was recorded verbatim and accurately. How carefully was it checked and authenticated by Bedford? We know that the accuracy of statements ostensibly made by witnesses is frequently vitiated by miscommunication between investigator/statement takers and witnesses, a factor which it is almost next to impossible to eradicate in the absence of audio-recording. Possible reasons why Bedford may have focused less on the right hand side item on the floor than on brown Samsonite-type hardshell suitcase adjacent to the overhang Assuming, however, that the statement Bedford made was accurately recorded and that he might have been mistaken in stating that the item on the right hand side of AVE4041 was similar to, if not the same as, the brown/maroon Samsonite-type hard shell case on the left hand side adjacent to the overhang, it is useful to ask what possible reasons there might be for his comparative lack of attention to the item on the right. There are at least two good reasons which suggest themselves:–
The terrorist’s possible aim in placing a second bag on the container floor next to the primary suitcase Why might the terrorist have considered it necessary to remove a bag from the row of upright items across the back of the container and place it next to the primary suitcase? He would have been likely to anticipate that more items might be loaded in the container and would have wanted to ensure that the primary suitcase remained in its optimum position and not be moved in any rearrangement during the process of loading those further items. Moreover, he would have wanted to ensure that it was not shifted by any movement of the aircraft, for example during take-off, sharp banking or turbulence. The obvious solution was to use another available bag to wedge the primary suitcase in position. Although John Bedford said the additional bags were lying flat on the floor it may be that the one on the left was in fact lying at a slight angle with its left flank resting on the two-inch step into the overhang and slightly protruding into the overhang space. This would be consistent with the position of the primary suitcase ventured by the defence at Zeist and accepted by Peter Claiden as feasible (see p.9 above). It is true that in Fig. 5 on page 9, the photograph depicting the loading in accordance with the contention advanced by the defence, the right hand suitcase is solid and comparatively large but a softer, more pliable, item such as Michael Bernstein’s maroon suit carrier might have served well enough. (e) The two brown hardsided Samsonite cases belonging to Pan Am Captain John Hubbard The vexed riddle concerning the bag which John Bedford noticed on the floor of the container when he returned from his tea break is complicated further by the matter of two suitcases belonging to Pan Am Captain John Hubbard. On 21 December he made arrangements for two cases to be sent home from Berlin to Seattle while he piloted a flight to Pakistan. One found at Lockerbie One of the bags was found at Lockerbie and it was assumed that they had been intended to be routed via Frankfurt to Heathrow on PA107 and that because flight PA 637 operating the Berlin to Frankfurt leg was delayed they must have been sent instead on PA103A. Speculation that one had been switched at Frankfurt with the primary suitcase The fact that both bags were brown hard-sided Samsonites and that only one was recovered inevitably gave rise to speculation that the other had been switched for the primary suitcase by terrorist accomplices at Frankfurt. To this it might be, and has been, objected that the terrorists could hardly have known in advance that the bags would be diverted on the hoof to PA103A (see Ashton, Megrahi, p.417). Yet brown hardshell suitcases were surely not so uncommon that it would be unrealistic to anticipate that at least one example might conveniently come through and afford an accomplice handler the opportunity to intercept and exchange it with a similar bag containing the bomb. An amazing coincidence If the primary suitcase had in fact been one swapped with one of Captain Hubbard’s two Samsonites and that both were taken on PA103A and put into AVE4041 at Heathrow it would have been a truly amazing coincidence that John Bedford had seen two hard-sided Samsonite-type bags on the floor of the container well before the arrival of PA103A, that he had been mistaken about their colour, and that the bag switched with Hubbard’s was then placed in more or less the exact position one of the two bags noticed by Bedford had been in when he returned from his tea break. We shall return to the question of coincidences later. Main objection to the Hubbard bag theory The real objection to the suggestion that the primary suitcase had been switched with one of Hubbard’s is the fundamental one: without intervention at Heathrow there was little prospect that a bag with a bomb coming on PA103A would be placed by chance in the optimum position to cause catastrophic destruction. Hubbard’s sole bag at Lockerbie explained While the disappearance of the second Hubbard Samsonite is certainly curious, it is not so difficult to canvass an “innocent” explanation. Could it not simply have become separated from its companion, ended up on another flight as bags do, and then become lost for good in the system, for years gathering dust in some distant storage facility? Again, it might have come adrift from its companion, at Heathrow, Frankfurt, or Tegel (Berlin), and then been stolen by some handler. Suitcases sometimes are stolen, even today with enhanced security. In the 1980s baggage theft still presented a worldwide headache for the airlines. Such a reasonable conjecture is perhaps more easily assimilated than the coincidence required for Hubbard’s bag to have been switched with that carrying the bomb. (f) The sidelining of Bedford’s account The breakthrough that never was In early January 1989, then, John Bedford gave a statement describing how he had noticed the unexplained presence of a brown hardshell suitcase, “the type Samsonite make,” in a position in the container which was very close to that in which the bomb must have been located. By mid-February, the scientists had identified the suitcase containing the bomb as a brown hardshell type; by March it had been identified as a Samsonite (see II, (2), (b), above, p.4). It might be supposed that this ought to have been seen as a key breakthrough in the investigation but it took instead a different turn. In the compelling words of Dr Morag Kerr: “The absence of any rejoicing at this point is positively spooky. Rather than pursuing the lead vigorously, the police more or less ignored it. Everyone seemed to be waiting for the forensic results to declare that the explosion had been in a suitcase on the second layer of luggage, and sure enough, the boffins concluded that is probably how it was” (“Adequately Explained by Stupidity,” article above, p.61). Before the arrival of PanAm 103A at Heathrow there was no second layer of bags in AVE4041 on top of mystery suitcase resting on the base. Crucially, the baggage handler who had loaded suitcases coming off the feeder flight into AVE4041 on the tarmac, Amarjit Singh Sidhu, was absolutely adamant in three separate statements to the police that he had not moved any of the bags which were already in the container before he started loading. In his sworn evidence to the Fatal Accident Inquiry at Dumfries he emphatically and specifically denied having lifted out one of the original items and replacing it on a different layer. (Dr Kerr observes that there was no reason why he should have done as the feeder flight was late and he only had 15 minutes to load the container in the dark and the rain with an icy gale blowing and with the original items already well positioned.) The “happy” alternative Armed with Sidhu’s insistence and the helpful opinion of the scientists that the primary suitcase must have been in the second layer the British investigators had a perfect basis for playing “pass the parcel” – shifting blame from Heathrow to Frankfurt. However, the mystery appearance of the brown hardshell “Samsonite-type” suitcase in the container before the arrival of PanAm 103A was not going to let Heathrow off the hook that easily. It undoubtedly must still have posed a problem for the investigators and exercised a magnetic pull back to Heathrow. Thus, as Dr Kerr so aptly puts it, the investigation “remained stalled for months, until in August [1989] a tenuous lead was identified at Frankfurt” which seemed to point towards Malta as the point of origin of the primary suitcase. It was against that background that the significance of Bedford’s crucial evidence came to be overlooked – or sidelined – by the investigators. Already before then, as early as 28 March, 1989, Chief Superintendent John Orr told the Lockerbie investigators co-ordinating committee that “the first seven pieces of luggage in . . . container [AVE4041] belonged to Interline passengers and the remainder was Frankfurt luggage . . . and enquiries to date suggest that on the balance of probabilities the explosive device is likely to be amongst the Frankfurt baggage items” (italics supplied; Lockerbie Incident Control Centre memo, cited in Leppard, D., On the Trail of Terror: the inside story of the Lockerbie investigation, London: Jonathan Cape, 1991, p.100). We shall return later to examine the implications of the second layer judgment and the exclusion of the bag noticed by John Beford as the primary suitcase (see below, (h)). Comparing and contrasting numbers of bags The total of seven bags mentioned by Orr contrasts with (a) the number of Heathrow interline items which would have reached the interline shed before AVE4041 was moved to the baggage build-up area and with (b) the total of ten which may be computed by reference to the photograph of a container identical to AVE4041that Bedford had been asked to load on January 9, 1989, in a reconstruction of the loading of AVE4041 as he remembered it. (The numbers in Bedford’s reconstruction would have been consistent with the six legitimate Heathrow interline items being in the container, plus his two presumed additions in the front and the two notional holdalls he said may have been in the overhang.) In evidence at Zeist Bedford counted nine items in the photograph. This would be consistent with all six legitimate Heathrow items which went in to AVE4041 (one being used as the wedge), plus one planted addition and the two notional holdalls in the overhang. Ironically, Orr’s incorrect statement about seven Heathrow interline bags is exactly the same number as the six actual such bags which would have gone into the container plus one rogue bag – the brown/maroon Samsonite-type hard sided case noted by Bedford on the floor adjacent to the overhang. In fact, the Orr statement curiously drew not on Bedford’s description but on a figure of four or five bags originally in the container casually estimated by Sulkash Kamboj, the interline shed x-ray operator, plus the two bags noticed by Bedford. At the very least carelessly Orr lumped in the two mysterious bags with his computation of the ordinary interline items. The Fatal Accident Inquiry report and Bedford’s extra bag Det Supt Orr’s failure of clarity subsequently came to form the basis of the 1991 Fatal Accident Inquiry report. While the arrangement of the luggage as described by Bedford was incorporated into the report, his assertion about the unexplained and mysterious appearance of the two additional items was wholly omitted. The Sheriff holding the Inquiry simply accepted the proposition urged on him by the investigators that the bomb carrying Samsonite had come from Frankfurt. Suggestion that the decision to “exonerate” Heathrow and “implicate” Frankfurt was made very early on in the investigation There is some suggestion that the decision to disregard John Bedford’s evidence about the mysterious brown Samsonite-type hardshell suitcase in the container was taken well before Det Supt Orr’s statement to the Lockerbie investigator’s co-ordinating committee on 28 March, 1988. According to the usually well-briefed David Leppard: “As the Kamboj episode showed [ie his denial of putting the two additional bags in the container; see (g), next], there had always been an outside chance that a bag had been smuggled into the container at Heathrow. That possibility aside Chief Superintendent John 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” (On the Trial of Terror, above, italics supplied). If Leppard’s report is accurate this suggests that well before the primary suitcase was identified and described the British authorities had demonstrated a firm determination to ensure that Heathrow must be cleared of all blame for letting the primary suitcase be smuggled into the system there, whereas nothing could have been done to stop it being flown in unaccompannied from Frankfurt. To be as charitable as one can they may have been influenced by the fact that “Autumn Leaves” had focused on addresses in the Frankfurt area. If it is true that Special Branch ceased investigating the Heathrow theory at an early stage this may have resulted in a very serious loss of evidence the nature of which is discussed later. 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. 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