Former police chief says Lockerbie evidence faked

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CRUCIAL new claims that could free the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing have emerged via a retired Scottish police officer of high rank who has told lawyers that vital evidence was fabricated.

The revelation could represent the most dramatic breakthrough for the legal team acting for Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi since his conviction for mass murder in 2001.

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:
I seem to recall reading that it was generally surmised in the intelligence community that it was the Iranians, as a direct retaliation for the then recent American shooting down of an Iranian airliner. But it would have been embarrassing to admit that, because they would have had to talk about the Iranian airliner it was retaliation for . . . but the Libyans were doing terrorist stuff at the time and the US wanted to put pressure on them, so they were much more convenient to blame.

Unfortunately, I don't remember where this came from; I could be misremembering.

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I think I heard the same on Coast to Coast AM by someone who had written a book on the subject ( www.coasttocoastam.com ) about a 12-14 months ago, if anyone wishes to search the archives. Also heard the same from others sources who had investigated the matter.

Kochler's observations on the trial can be found here:

http://www.portia.org/chapter12/lockerb.html

Also, the late maverick British journalist Paul Foot did some excellent reportage on Lockerbie. His very important work in Private Eye magazine doesn't seem to be available on line, but some of his briefer comments on the Lockerbie case can be found here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,743987,00.html

and here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Lockerbie/Story/0,2763,1182524,00.html

Along with Ed Herman, these writers agree that there is a much stronger case to be made against Syrian-backed Palestinian terrorists of the PFLP-GC as being the perpetrators, with the act being spawned and financed by Iran in retaliation for the USS Vincennes' downing of an Iranian civilian airliner in July 1988. (Kochler doesn't comment on this - it being outside his mandate I suppose.)

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Originally posted by muggles:
A separate but parallel issue involves western intelligence agencies getting friendly with a smuggling ring with close ties to Lebanese militants who were believed to have the necessary pull to get some American hostages released (whew!).

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Wikipedia: passengers on the plane

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There were at least four U.S. intelligence officers on the passenger list, with rumors, never confirmed, of a fifth. The presence of these men on the flight later gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories, in which one or more of them were said to have been the bombers' targets. Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, was sitting in Clipper Class, seat 14J. Major Chuck "Tiny" McKee [1], a 6 ft 5 in, 270 lb senior army officer on secondment to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Beirut, sat behind Gannon in the center aisle in 15F. Two CIA officers, believed to be acting as bodyguards to Gannon and McKee, were sitting in economy: Ronald Lariviere, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, was in 20H, and Daniel O'Connor, a security officer from the U.S. Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus, sat five rows behind Lariviere in 25H, both men seated over the right wing.

The four men had flown together out of Cyprus that morning. Major McKee is believed to have been in Beirut trying to locate the American hostages held at that time by Hezbollah. After the bombing, sources close to the investigation told journalists that a map had been found in Lockerbie showing the suspected locations of the hostages, as marked by McKee, though this discovery was not confirmed in court.

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Wikipedia: McKee team theory

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One theory, for which no evidence has been produced, suggests that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had set up a protected drugs route from Europe to the United States — allegedly called Operation Corea — which allowed Syrian drug dealers, led by Monzer al-Kassar (who was involved with Oliver North in Iran-Contra) to ship heroin to the U.S. using Pan Am flights, in exchange for intelligence on Palestinian groups based in Syria. The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, the theory goes, terrorists exchanged the drugs for a bomb.

Another version of the same theory is that the CIA knew this exchange had taken place but let it happen anyway, because the protected drugs route was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on PA 103 — Matthew Gannon and Major Charles McKee — had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors.

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[ 30 August 2005: Message edited by: obscurantist ]