The Truth about Lockerbie - MartinFrost.ws

Abstract 

A tale of three atrocities 

ABSTRACT 

This report, released on the anniversary of the Lockerbie disaster, offers a new perspective on what 

happened on Pan Am Flight 103 when it exploded over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie 21 years 

ago. 

The work of Lockerbie researcher Charles Norrie, it jointly accuses Iran and the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) of the 1988 bombing, which killed 270 people, including passengers, crew and those on 

the ground. The report accuses Iran of planting a bomb onto Flight 103, and accuses the CIA of 

authorising, facilitating, and assisting with the plot, including the planting of a second 'insurance' bomb. 

The author has been researching the Lockerbie disaster since his brother was killed in a similar attack 

over Africa, the bombing of UTA Flight 772 in 1989, which has also been attributed to Libya. This report 

is a result of almost twenty years of research, during which time Norrie has painstakingly analysed 

official reports into the bombing and has also had personal contact with some of those involved with 

both tragedies. 

Key arguments of the report: 

• Lockerbie was carried out jointly by Iran and the CIA, as agreed revenge for the downing of an 

Iranian plane by the US Navy 

• All evidence against Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi can be disproved and discounted 

• There was not one but two explosions on the plane, one carried out by Iran and one by the CIA 

• The CIA interfered with the scene of the crime directly after the attack, to the horror of Scottish 

investigators 

• The CIA were allowed to doctor and manipulate forensic evidence and interfere with the 

evidence stream in order to obtain their politically-desired outcome: a Libyan attribution. 

The report will have legal ramifications for those that the author accuses of being involved. It also calls 

for Mr Megrahi's attempts to prove his innocence to be allowed to continue. Mr Norrie comments: 

"Unlike the atrocity which killed my brother, Lockerbie has been wrongly attributed to Libya. Libya killed 

my brother - but they absolutely did not do Lockerbie. The extent to which the CIA have covered up 

their involvement in Lockerbie is extraordinary and complex, and I am excited, and indeed relieved, to 

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e able to release my findings, now." 


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A personal message 


On 19 th September 1989, my brother was murdered in a Libyan terrorist attack. He was travelling on 

UTA Flight 772 between N'Djamena in Chad, where he worked in oil field development, and Paris. 

When he died, he was returning to the UK via Paris to participate in a gliding competition in Scotland. 

He lived for gliding and loved the air. He had even represented Guernsey at the 1982 World Gliding 

Championships. The latter seems an odd achievement because I didn't know he had a connection to 

the place. So it was a tragic irony that he should meet his death in the beastly destruction of an aircraft. 

I like to think he was sitting back with a gin and tonic in his hand just before he died. Perhaps he was 

thinking of pleasant air adventures ahead. 

My brother was a long-standing member of Lasham Gliding Club, near Alton in Hampshire. His life was 

centred on the airfield and close friends living in and near the town who were devoted to the sport. He 

repaid that friendship in his will, leaving them sufficient money to build a workshop at the airfield. The 

Club has named the workshop in his memory. They also established a “Tony Norrie” award for the best 

two-seater flight of the year. 

These people, to my mind, constituted his “gliding family”. To them, I had to bring the sad news of his 

tragic death. My brother and I were never close. However, when he died, I found he had made me his 

executor. I asked my mother “Why?”. “Because you always have the last word in any argument”, she 

said, enigmatically. 

I metaphorically extended the remit of executor to inquire about the circumstances of any tragedy that 

could have a bearing on his death. So, I settled down to read myself into Lockerbie. Like UTA, 

Lockerbie was to be attributed to Libya. 

With that thought in mind, I offer these thoughts on Lockerbie twenty years later. The conclusions of my 

research are shocking. They are also wildly different from anything previously published. Given what 

Libya did to my brother, my stance may surprise you. 

Charles Norrie 

norriecb@gmail.com 

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What's in this report? 


Abstract..................................................................................................................................1 

A personal message..............................................................................................................3 

Megrahi: An innocent incarcerated........................................................................................5 

Introduction........................................................................................................................5 

Limited evidence................................................................................................................8 

The timer chip................................................................................................................8 

The Giaka story.............................................................................................................9 

Loading the plane..............................................................................................................9 

Who did Lockerbie?.............................................................................................................10 

Introduction......................................................................................................................10 

Why Iran wanted to down a plane...................................................................................10 

Why the US had to help...................................................................................................11 

How the plot was formed.................................................................................................11 

The Swiss agreement..................................................................................................12 

Where and when.........................................................................................................12 

How Iran and the CIA caused Lockerbie.............................................................................13 

The Helsinki Warning.......................................................................................................13 

The blame........................................................................................................................14 

Deadly cargo to London..................................................................................................14 

The Heathrow break-in....................................................................................................14 

The first explosion ...........................................................................................................19 

The second explosion .....................................................................................................20 

The investigation and framing Megrahi...........................................................................22 

The Toshiba manual....................................................................................................23 

Suitcase? -suitcases!..................................................................................................23 

Planting the circuit board.............................................................................................24 

Media manipulation.....................................................................................................25 

Arranging some trial witnesses...................................................................................26 

What next?.......................................................................................................................27 

Cast of characters................................................................................................................27 

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Megrahi: An innocent incarcerated 

Introduction 

On Wednesday 21 st December 1988, nine months before my brother's death, Pan Am Flight 103 was 

destroyed in a bomb attack and the downed plane fell on Lockerbie, a town of around 4,000 people in 

the Dumfries and Galloway Region, south-west Scotland. The plane's 243 passengers and 16 

members of the crew died in the explosion, along with 11 people from Lockerbie who perished when 

large sections of the plane fell on the town. 

It was some time after my brother's death that I started thinking about Lockerbie. I had been absorbed 

in putting his affairs in order following his spectacularly horrible death. There were so many small 

things to do. When someone dies suddenly - it's like shutting many drawers left open. 

I joined the Lockerbie families group within 24 hours of UTA because Jim Swire – a leading light in the 

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group whose daughter had died at Lockerbie – had come on television to invite UTA relatives to contact 

him. At that time, the Lockerbie families were trying to understand what had happened to their loved 

ones, from a position of little knowledge. But they had started thinking about culpability. 

We UTA families were able to stop looking for explanations much quicker than the Lockerbie families. 

Within two years, we had a positive outcome that has stood the test of time. They have had no such 

satisfaction. 

Two years after the downing of UTA Flight 772, I remember calling Jim Swire from a public phone box 

outside the Palais de Justice, Paris, after the UTA examining magistrate, Juge Jean-Louis Bruguière, 

named four Libyans as the culprits (two more were accused in 1996). Jim said the UTA suspects, or 

indeed any other Libyan suspects, were "not on my radar" – not considered as the culprits for 

Lockerbie. So I was astonished when, on 13 th November 1991, the US Department of Justice and 

Scottish prosecuting authorities issued murder charges for Lockerbie against two Libyans - Abdelbaset 

Ali al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah. 

Even then, I wasn't in a mind to accept something simply because I was told it by someone in authority. 

I questioned the Libyan connection to Lockerbie. And I was right. As we know, Abdelbaset Ali al- 

Megrahi has always claimed he did not carry out the Lockerbie bombing. He has appealed twice 

against his conviction. On 28 th June 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission announced 

it would refer the second appeal to Edinburgh's Court of Criminal Appeal because Megrahi “may have 

suffered a miscarriage of justice”. 

On 20 th August 2009, Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds following reports that he had 

terminal prostate cancer and less than three months to live. But, to be released, he had to drop his 

appeal and thereby implicitly accept his conviction. 

There was a period, which lasted from 1991 to 1999, where I couldn't make sense of Lockerbie. But 

slowly it occurred to me. After twenty years of investigation, I am confident I have now found some of 

the truth about Lockerbie. 

Why Megrahi didn't do it 

It is the strangest thing. If four Libyans carried out UTA and two carried out Lockerbie, then surely they 

must have been working for the same organisation. But only tentative links were ever drawn between 

the Libyan personnel involved in UTA and those allegedly involved in Lockerbie. Abdullah Senussi, 

Gaddafi's brother-in-law, was the only Libyan referred to during the Lockerbie trial who was convicted 

of the UTA bombing. He was repeatedly mentioned by a witness in Megrahi's trial, Abdul Giaka, but 

Giaka's evidence was rejected by the court. Indeed, the only official connection between the two 

tragedies was the imposition of sanctions against Libya in 1992 by the UN, a situation which was 

explained in a private letter to me from the FCO. 

Furthermore, it is quite clear that the modi operandi of the two bombings is entirely different. In 

particular, the bombs are quite different. 

The Libyans didn't lack the ability to create two identical bombs. They had materials for a UTA-style 

bomb in 1988, according to case notes submitted in Pugh vs Libya – the US UTA victims' claim for 

compensation 1 . These say that Juge Bruguière, the examining magistrate in the UTA case, received a 

replica of the suitcase used in the UTA bombing from Libyan officials on a visit in July 1996: 

“The Libyans told Juge Bruguière that the suitcase had been recovered from a thwarted attack by 

Libyan oppositionists. For the French, it was proof that the Libyan security services had suitcase 

bombs exactly like the one that exploded on UTA Flight 772.” 

If they had the materials available, why didn't they use the same technique for Lockerbie as for UTA? 

1 Pugh vs Libya news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/pughlibya101602cmp.pdf 

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Spot the difference – the UTA and alleged Lockerbie bombs 

• Bomb size: The alleged Lockerbie bomb was small (around 0.3 – 0.4kg), but the UTA bomb 

was large (1.0kg) 

• Explosive and casing: The alleged Lockerbie bomb used Semtex explosive, allegedly hidden 

in a Toshiba cassette recorder, but the UTA bomb used a suitcase lined with Pentrite explosive 

• Timer: The official Lockerbie investigation claimed the Lockerbie bomb used a Swiss-made 

timer and a circuit board made in Holland, whereas the UTA bomb's timer was made in Taiwan 

and sourced via a West German company 

• Carry-on vs unaccompanied: The Lockerbie bomb was allegedly loaded onto a plane at 

Malta without an accompanying passenger, whereas a Congolese national inadvertently carried 

the UTA bomb as his luggage 

• Detonator: An ordinary commercial detonator was found after the UTA bombing. A detonator 

for Lockerbie has not come to light 

Limited evidence 

There are other reasons why Megrahi didn't carry out the Lockerbie bombing. Only three pieces of 

evidence link Megrahi to Lockerbie, and all are contested. This compares with at least 23 pieces of 

uncontroversial evidence linking the Libyans convicted of the UTA bombing with their crime. The three 

pieces of evidence in Lockerbie are: 

• The timer chip; 

• The Giaka story; 

• The purchase of clothes from Gauci's shop. 

The timer chip 

According to the evidence given at Megrahi's trial, fragments of a circuit board were found by police 

near Newcastleton, a Scottish village on the border with England. It was identified with difficulty as a 

fragment coming from a bomb timer circuit board similar to that carried by a Libyan intelligence agent 

arrested in Senegal ten months before Flight 103 was destroyed. This electronic timer – a so-called 

MST-13 timer – had MEBO printed on it, which stands for Meister & Bollier, a Swiss electronics firm. 

Edwin Bollier, one of the firm's owners, testified at Megrahi's trial that he had sold 20 MST-13 timers to 

Libya in 1985. He claimed he met Megrahi when he travelled to Libya at that time. 

There are several problems with this evidence. First, Bollier testified at the trial that the Scottish police 

had shown him a fragment of a brown circuit board from a prototype timer never supplied to Libya. 

However, at the trial, he was asked to identify a sample of a green circuit board that MEBO had 

supplied to Libya. 

Second, on 18 th July, 2007 2 , MEBO's electronics expert, Ulrich Lumpert, swore an affidavit that he had 

given false evidence about the timer at Megrahi's trial. He claims he stole a prototype MST-13 timer 

circuit board from MEBO and gave it, without permission, to “an official person investigating the 

'Lockerbie case'” 34 . 

2 //plane-truth.com/mebo_breakthru.htm 

3 lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2007/08/lumpert-affidavit.html 

4 The Observer, 2/9/07, p. 37 

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Third, the testimonies of the forensic experts who identified the circuit board have been questioned. A 

1997 report on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)'s laboratory, unrelated to Lockerbie, 

accused FBI explosives expert Thomas Thurman of altering laboratory reports to make them 

favourable to the prosecution. Thurman's UK counterpart, Alan Feraday from the former UK Royal 

Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE), was an expert witness on three 

separate cases where the verdict was subsequently overturned on appeal. 

lThe Giaka story 

A former colleague of Fhimah, Abdul Majid Giaka, testified that he had seen Megrahi construct the 

bomb. He claimed he saw Megrahi load it in a Samsonite suitcase onto Air Malta Flight 180 from Malta 

to Frankfurt. Giaka's evidence was rejected by Lord Sutherland at the Zeist court who described him as 

a fantasist, saying: 

“We are unable to accept Abdul Majid as a credible and reliable witness on any matter except his 

description of the organisation of the JSO [Libyan intelligence agency] and the personnel involved 

there.” 

The purchase of clothes from Gauci's shop 

According to evidence given at Megrahi's trial, fragments of a maroon Samsonite suitcase with 

extensive, close-range blast damage were found among the debris of the plane. Items of clothing were 

also discovered that forensics claimed to have been close to or inside the suitcase when it exploded. 

The clothing included a blue Babygro, a black nylon umbrella, and a pair of Yorkie brand tartan 

trousers. Trapped within the Babygro material was a label reading “Made in Malta”. Yorkie trousers 

were manufactured in Malta with most sold at a shop called "Mary's House" in Sliema run by Tony 

Gauci. 

Gauci testified that, about two weeks before the bombing, he had sold some Yorkie trousers to a man 

with a Libyan accent. He said that the man also bought a blue Babygro and, because it was raining, a 

black umbrella. 

Doubts have been cast on Gauci's reliability as a witness. He failed positively to identify Megrahi in 

almost 20 separate pre-trial police reports, according to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review 

Commission. In police statements, he identified the customer as more than 6' tall and more than 50 

years old. Megrahi was 5'8" and 36 years old in 1988. In BBC Two's “The Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie”, 

it was claimed that Megrahi was appealing his conviction on the grounds that Gauci had seen a 

magazine photograph of him four days before picking Megrahi out of a line-up. Furthermore, former 

Lord Advocate Lord Fraser described Gauci publicly as “an apple short of a picnic”. 5 

The defence argued during his trial that Megrahi was only in Malta on 7 th December 1988 and it was not 

raining on that day according to meteorological records. Therefore, Megrahi would not have needed to 

buy an umbrella. 

lLoading the plane 

When the Samsonite suitcase Megrahi supposedly loaded at Malta reached Frankfurt, it would have 

been automatically loaded onto a feeder flight - Pan Am Flight 103A. When this flight reached London, 

the suitcase would have been put onto Pan Am Flight 103. 

The prosecution at Megrahi's trial claimed Fhimah, as Megrahi's accomplice, arranged for the suitcase 

to get onto the Air Malta flight. However, Fhimah was acquitted because there was no firm evidence 

that he was at the airport. Subsequently, the charge of conspiracy to murder levelled against Megrahi 

was dropped. According to the verdict from Megrahi's original trial: 

5 The Sunday Times, 23 rd October 2005 'Lord Fraser was the Lord Advocate who initiated the case against 

the Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, but he was quoted in a Sunday newspaper last week 

describing the vital witness as “an apple short of a picnic.”' 

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“The Crown suggestion that the brief telephone call to the second accused's [Megrahi's] flat on the 

morning of 21 December can, by a series of inferences, lead to the conclusion that he was at the 

airport is, in our opinion, wholly speculative... In these circumstances, the second accused falls to be 

acquitted.” 6 

Without Fhimah's help, how would Megrahi have got the suitcase onto the Air Malta Flight 180? It's not 

clear an unaccompanied Samsonite suitcase ever travelled on the Air Malta flight. In 1989, Air Malta 

released a statement claiming all luggage on the flight was accounted for. 

Air Malta also won a libel action against Granada TV, when the television company repeated the 

allegations of a Pan Am loader that a bag had come from an Air Malta flight. 

For a time, all these inconsistencies perplexed me. But then it occurred to me. It was odd that two 

completely different disasters were being blamed on Libya. Why shouldn't one of these disasters be 

Libya's fault while the other was not? 

It seemed UTA was credibly the fault of Libya without any doubt whatsoever. Yet I was seeing all the 

evidence for Megrahi carrying out the Lockerbie bombing slowly slipping and draining away. I became 

afraid that a conviction could not be upheld in the long term and the courts would have to retreat from 

blaming Libya. When that happened, I didn't want Gaddafi denying blame for UTA too. 

I contacted Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who was making a fuss about Lockerbie, with my concerns about 

Megrahi's guilt. I received a strange phone call where he said “Charles, you are opening Pandora's 

Box". During the next eight years, I would learn what he meant as I discovered who was to blame for 

the bombing. 

Who did Lockerbie? 

Introduction 

I now know that Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by an Iranian using a plot conceived, designed and 

implemented by senior staff at the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The decision to destroy the 

plane was made by the White House, following a secret agreement between senior US government 

officials and five Iranian emissaries. 

How do I know this? For an investigator, I've been very passive – I haven't woken up ancient 

investigators in their dotage to ask what they really got up to. It's been a paper exercise. All the 

information with the exception of odd questions to Mr Bollier and Mr Marquise, the FBI lead 

investigator, is in the public domain. In the early days, it was painful work, often using French 

dictionaries. I used newspapers and got official paperwork translated. 

I began my investigations almost immediately after my brother's death, initially as a conduit for the 

other families, sourcing information on UTA with the aid of my brother's unusual friends. One was a 

lovely man who turned up unexpectedly on my doorstep the morning after his death and asked if I 

wanted some 'real news'. He pulled out a suitcase, unplugged the telephone, attached an audio 

coupler and hacked into the news feed of one of the BBC's foreign correspondents to find news about 

UTA. Then he tracked down all the other UTA families from the UK and, that evening, I called them all 

and offered them a news service. It was leading edge stuff for 1989, but obtaining information was 

slow. Over time, I've uncovered more and more using the power of the web. 

lWhy Iran wanted to down a plane 

When you blame someone for a bombing – you need a proper hypothesis to explain why they did it. 

6 Lord Sutherland Lord Coulsfield Lord MacLean Case No: 1475/99 OPINION OF THE COURT delivered by 

LORD SUTHERLAND in causa HER MAJESTY'S ADVOCATE 

http://www.scotcourts.gov.uk/library/lockerbie/index.asp 

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And one theory just stared and stared at me. The Iranians were very angry at the time of Lockerbie. 

On 3 rd July 1988, the United States' Navy shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Strait of Hormuz in 

Iranian airspace. All 290 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus A300B2, a civilian airliner, included 66 

children, were killed in the attack. This death toll places it among one of the world's most deadly airline 

disasters. 

According to the US government, it was an accident. US Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes, 

which was in Iranian territorial waters when the atrocity occurred, had mistaken Flight 655 for an 

attacking F-14 Tomcat fighter. The Iranian government didn't think it was an accident. It claimed the 

Vincennes deliberately shot down Flight 655. In mid-July, the Iranian Foreign Minister asked the United 

Nations Security Council to condemn the United States, saying the attack “could not have been a 

mistake” and was a “criminal act”, “an atrocity” and a “massacre”. 7 

lWhy the US had to help 

My thoughts then turned to how the Iranians would take the downing of their plane. I realised they 

would have been incensed by the attack and baying for revenge. The Guardian reported on 9 th July 

1988: 

"In Abu Dhabi, hundreds of angry Iranians held a memorial service for the dead on Thursday night. The 

Iranian Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Mr Mustafa Foumeni Haeri, told angry and weeping 

mourners: 'We will take our revenge in the proper time.'" 

I spent a lot of time in Islington public library studying the culture and customs of Middle Eastern 

countries while researching UTA. I realised the family of the Flight 655 victims and the Iranian 

government had a right to seek equal retaliation – better known as “an eye for an eye” - for the plane 

under a traditional law called Qesas 8 , a part of Iranian law which pre-dates the Islamification of the 

country by nearly 1200 years. 

One man, I realised, was particularly keen to avoid an Iranian terrorist attack. In July 1988, US vicepresident 

George H.W. Bush was seeking to become the Republican's candidate in the US presidential 

election. He annoyed Iran by refusing to apologise for Flight 655, saying “I will never apologize for the 

United States of America, I don't care what the facts are.” 9 

Bush doubtless feared an Iranian terror campaign would halt his accession to the presidency in the 

same way that President Carter's 1980 re-election was doomed by the Iranian Hostage Crisis 10 . He 

probably feared UN Security Council resolution UN616 of 21 st July 1988, which condemned the 

downing of Flight 655, was not enough to prevent Iranian revenge attacks. 

I believe that George H.W. Bush secured his election as the 41 st president of the United States by 

giving the Iranians their measured revenge in blood for the Vincennes attack. 

lHow the plot was formed 

George H.W. Bush had been the de facto Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DCI of the CIA) 

under President Gerald Ford in 1976. So it would have been easy for George Bush to secure 

assistance from senior CIA officials by secretly cutting a deal with the Iranians. Furthermore, helping 

Bush secure the Republican nomination and presidency arguably benefited these officials. Reagan had 

7 New York Times (1988) http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/15/world/iran-falls-short-in-drive-at-un-tocondemn-us-in-airbus-case.html 

8 GlobLex – A Guide to the Legal System of the Islamic Republic of Iran 

http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Iran.htm. Accessed October 2009 

9 Time (1988) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,968407-2,00.html 

10 Reagan's Lucky Day: Iranian Hostage Crisis Helped The Great Communicator To Victory, CBS News, 

January 21, 2001 

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served his maximum number of terms in office by 1988 and could not be re-elected. As US VP, Bush 

was the CIA's obvious preferred successor. 

Senior US officials led a secret delegation to meet five Iranian government officials. The venue for their 

rendezvous was Glion - a small village outside Montreux, Switzerland. 11 There, they agreed a plan to 

satiate the Iranians' burning desire for revenge on terms acceptable to the US. 

lThe Swiss agreement 

This plan was to blow up a full commercial plane from a leading US carrier to avenge the loss of Flight 

655. This satisfied the Hammurabi code where it says “If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye 

shall be put out. [An eye for an eye ]” 12 A Pan American World Airways passenger flight was, therefore, 

targeted because Pan Am was the US' “flagship” international carrier. 

Only an Iranian government representative or family member of a Flight 655 victim was eligible to 

avenge a Qesas crime. Therefore, an Iranian had to plant the bomb. However, the CIA could develop 

and execute the plan, and manage the aftermath of the bombing. 

The Iranians couldn't take credit for the bombing because, if their involvement became public 

knowledge, Bush would be pressured to retaliate by his fellow Americans, especially those on the 

nationalist and Republican right. So a scapegoat had to take the blame. Perhaps the Iranians agreed to 

negotiate the release of hostages held in Lebanon, most famously Terry Waite 13 , when they were 

satisfied the CIA had lined up a fall guy. Most of the hostages were released in November 1991 14 , the 

same month that charges were made against Megrahi 15 . When the US blamed the Libyans, the 

Iranians were off the hook. 

It's likely the Iranians agreed to accept a reduced payout to the Flight 655 victims' families in exchange 

for downing a US plane. Compared to payouts to relatives following Lockerbie and UTA, the Flight 655 

payout was low. The average sum paid out per person on Flight 655 was just $160,000 - $300,000. In 

contrast, the amount paid per life lost was $1 million for UTA and $10 million for Lockerbie. 

The US may have also agreed to free Iranian assets that they had frozen in 1979. Some assets were 

released in 1990, according to a press conference with the US Regional Reporters' Association 16 . 

lWhere and when 

Before leaving Switzerland, it's possible the delegations set up a time and place for the Iranians' 

11http://gaiapost.blogspot.com/2008/09/us-iran-in-secret-talks-over-hostages.html 

12 Code of Hammurabi – translation 

http://www.holyebooks.org/babylonia/the_code_of_hammurabi/ham06.html 

13 New York Times (1994) http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/08/world/iran-accuses-us-of-reneging-onhostage-deal.html 

14 Guardian Century (1991) http://century.guardian.co.uk/1990-1999/Story/0,,112632,00.html 

15 Independent (2009) http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/christine-grahame-almegrahi-ishome-and-he-is-innocent-1776188.html 

16 The President's News Conference With the Regional Reporters Association(1990) Quelle: Public Papers 

of the Presidents of the United States of America. Bush; Bush Library 

http://www.2plus4.de/USA/chronik.php3?date_value=13.06.90&sort=000-000 

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revenge attack. The Lockerbie bombing happened during a dead period in US politics – timed perfectly 

to do the least damage to Bush's presidency. The Lockerbie tragedy on 21 st December fell almost 

halfway between the presidential election (8 th November 1988) and George H.W. Bush's inauguration 

(20 th January 1989). 

Choosing a location was the next step. The CIA's Iran office was in Frankfurt 17 , but mounting the 

operation there would have meant the aircraft crashed near Heerenveen in the Netherlands. The 

special relationship between the UK and the US meant London was a better place for the CIA and 

Iranians to mount an operation. 

By exploding the bomb over Scotland, the CIA could be confident of concealing their crime. The 

Scottish police would be responsible for investigating the case with the assistance of an anti-terrorist 

team provided by the Metropolitan police. They had the fractious relationship with the Met typical of a 

provincial police force, which gave the CIA free rein to concoct evidence or interfere undetected with 

the case. According to a Scottish police investigator: 

“...ask a cop in any force up and down the country who they consider the most arrogant, the most 

useless and least likely to do anything for anyone beyond their 'patch' and they will undoubtedly tell 

you – the Met...But the reputation of the Met precedes it and it does not enjoy the high standing it 

thinks it does in what it disparagingly calls the 'provincial' forces.” 18 

The Lockerbie disaster was a radically different type of terrorism than 9/11 and other, similar modern 

attacks. It was cold and sophisticated, organised by experienced terrorists to make a point. In contrast, 

the 9/11 and 7/7 bombings were designed to cause chaos and mayhem, and involved terrorists 

prepared to lose their lives. Since the Lockerbie bombing was so carefully planned, I believe Flight 103 

was deliberately destroyed over land to create an evidence trail that left no doubt the disaster was a 

terrorist attack. The CIA had to be sure the Iranians felt they had revenge, even though neither group 

could admit to the bombing. 

How Iran and the CIA caused Lockerbie 

The Helsinki Warning 

Having agreed the Iranians could blow up a US plane, CIA officials faced a conundrum. How could they 

get US government personnel off a doomed flight without alarming the wider public? Once I thought 

about the outcome of the Helsinki warning, it was obvious that this was their solution. 

On 5 th December 1988, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a security bulletin. It said 

a man with an Arabic accent had telephoned the US Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, to threaten that a 

Pan Am flight from Frankfurt, West Germany, to the US would be blown up within the next fortnight by 

someone associated with Abu Nidal, a militant Palestinian group. He said a Finnish woman would 

unknowingly carry the bomb on board. 

On 13 th December, this 'Helsinki Warning' was distributed among US State Department staff. Some 

people are thought to have booked onto other airlines, leaving empty seats on the Pan Am flight that 

were sold cheaply to students and others. They became cheap and disposable bodies – I find it utterly 

17 Perry, M. (1992) Eclipse: The last days of the CIA. Morrow & Co. New York. 

18 Crawford, J, The Lockerbie Incident, 2002,Trafford Publishing, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, ISBN 

1-55369-806-1, p70-71 

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disgraceful that the CIA treated these people this way. 

The CIA chose Helsinki to minimise the public visibility of the warning, because Finland is neutral 

territory and not usually the target of terrorist attacks. The Helsinki warning was never properly 

publicised beyond US government personnel, as demonstrated by the 48 students who obliviously 

bought cheap tickets on Pan Am flights. 

lThe blame 

If the Iranians were to be blameless of the attack, the CIA had to put another organisation in the frame. 

At the time, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP GC) were an 

obvious scapegoat. On 26 th October 1988, the German police had arrested 16 PFLP GC members on 

suspicion of terrorist activities. They found a bomb concealed in a Toshiba cassette recorder in the car 

of Hafiz Dalkamoni, one of the leader of PFLP GC's cells. The story of the PFLP GC arrests is too 

complicated to discuss here. But the important point is that PFLP GC members were found in 

possession of bombs near Frankfurt. 

Between 2 nd November and 19 th December, three official warnings were issued about bombs hidden in 

Toshiba cassette recorders. I believe the Toshiba warnings were, like the Helsinki warning, a CIA plant. 

They were designed to associate the forthcoming terrorist attack with a PFLP GC style of operation, 

because the PFLP GC members arrested in Germany had converted a Toshiba Bombeat cassette 

recorder to hold a bomb. 

lDeadly cargo to London 

The bomb had to travel to London without being detected. It struck me that the two easiest ways were 

carrying the bomb in an official diplomatic bag, which would not be searched upon entering another 

country, or transporting it in parts, which could be assembled in the Iranian Embassy or elsewhere. In 

1988, the technology for scanning baggage was not as advanced as today. Bomb components could 

be brought in on separate flights or concealed in electronic equipment. 

The bomb may have been built in Iran and shipped to Britain. But given the CIA's Iranian office was 

located in Frankfurt, it is possible that the bomb began its short life there. Qesas makes no demand 

that a revenging party should use their own weapon. 

lThe Heathrow break-in 

During Megrahi's first appeal in 2001, a new fact emerged. There had been a break-in at Heathrow on 

20 th December 1988, which was discovered by a BAA security guard, Mr Manly. He recorded it in an 

incident book, which was produced at the appeal. He said it was the worst security breach he had 

encountered in his 17-year career with BAA 19 . 

A padlock had been broken on a door in the security barrier between the airside and landside areas in 

terminal 3, Heathrow. This door was 20 minutes walk from the Interline shed containing the baggage 

containers that would be loaded onto Pan Am Flight 103 later that day. Although the appeal found that 

Heathrow staff often took short cuts by breaking out through the security door, this time the lock had 

19 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lockerbie-heathrow-breakin-revealed-668981.html 11 

September 2001. 

14

een cut "like butter" by someone breaking in. 20 


Shortly after 23:05 on 20 th December 1988, I believe an Iranian broke through a door in Heathrow 

Terminal 3 that separated the landside and airside parts of the terminal. Thinking logically about it, he 

must have been disguised as a minor airport functionary, maintenance man or airline worker so he 

would not be stopped as he walked through the airport complex to the Interline building. 

Once there, he would have to identify the baggage containers due to be loaded onto Flight 103. This 

would be relatively easy because, according to a former baggage handler, baggage containers are 

arranged in the order they will be loaded onto outgoing flights. The baggage container the CIA must 

have told the Iranian to look for was AVE4041 PA, which would be loaded at position 14L 21 and 

contained first class and Frankfurt transfer luggage. 

Once he reached the baggage container, he might have needed to fine tune the bomb timer. Pan Am 

flights to New York had several possible flight paths, depending on weather conditions, so the Iranian 

would have checked the weather forecast and adjusted the time of the explosion accordingly. 

The bomb must have been disguised as though it was a repair patch for a baggage container (see 

figure of Air France patches). The bomb was stuck to the wall near the bottom of AVE4041 PA at 

around 11:30pm on 20 th December 1988. 

Let us imagine that Mr Manly the security guard patrolled the security barrier every hour and took an 

hour to finish his patrol. He discovered the break-in at approximately 00:05 on 21 st December 1988, 

meaning there was more than enough time for someone to break-in, place a device in the Interline 

shed, and leave again, between 23:05 and the break-in being discovered. 

It seems an amazing coincidence that such a serious break-in would occur at Heathrow the day before 

a terrorist bomb destroyed a plane flying from the airport. After two or three years of thinking it through, 

I believe this is how the Lockerbie bomb was loaded onto Flight 103. 

The Zeist appeal decided the break-in and the destruction of the aircraft were too remote (I think they 

meant in time). But the first trial accepted the timer had run for at least 12 hours, so why the 18 hours 

implied by the Heathrow break-in was impossible, I can't understand. 

The official Lockerbie investigation claimed the bomb was concealed in a suitcase. Our Iranian, 

however, couldn't have brought a suitcase into Heathrow. It would have been too conspicuous. So the 

bomb must have been around 20 x 20 cm in size and concealed under a heavy, winter coat. 

Furthermore, according to a former baggage handler I spoke to, if the bomb was in a suitcase it would 

have been spotted on the morning of 21 st December by Heathrow baggage handlers. If it wasn't 

revealed to be a bomb and was correctly labelled, it would have been put onto the first flight leaving 

Heathrow. But Flight 103 was the third Pan Am scheduled flight from Heathrow to New York's John F. 

Kennedy International Airport on 21 st December. 

Once I saw the link between the break-in and the Lockerbie bomb, I was suddenly able to place a 

speech by Transport Minister Paul Channon in context. He told Lockerbie families the device “may 

have been among the baggage from the Frankfurt flight”. This gives the impression that the bomb was 

20http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1817752.stm 11 February 2002 

21 AAIB report on Lockerbie 

15


concealed in a bag but, oddly, he didn't make this explicit. 22 To me, this was a very carefully drafted 

statement by someone who knows how to use words because there are ways of hiding a device 

“among baggage” that don't require a suitcase. A bomb attached to a baggage container is one of 

these. 

**** 

Box out: The Iranian – a hypothesis 

I have speculated a great deal about the identity of the Iranian who broke into Heathrow and planted 

the Lockerbie bomb. At the time of writing, I have no firm answers, but would like to share an 

interesting hypothesis. 

I think the Iranian who planted the bomb may have been a Ahmad Beladi Behbehani, a relative of Ali 

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's president at the time of the Lockerbie disaster. 

On 24 th May 2000, when the Lockerbie trial was in its early stages, I found a strange little story about a 

man called *Sattar who went into exile and ended up in a Turkish internment camp 23 . His case was 

taken up by a CBS reporter called Leslie Stahl and a Jewish-Iranian-American journalist called Roya 

Hakakian. They visited him accompanied by a former CIA officer, Robert Baer. Hakakian managed to 

surreptitiously interview Ahmad Beladi Behbehani after the Turks refused to let the party speak to him. 

When I came upon this CBS story, I realised Ahmad Beladi Behbehani was one of the first people to 

link Lockerbie to Iran with any certainty. According to Robert Baer - "He's the only person that has tied 

Libya and Iran into Pan Am 103, into the Lockerbie bombing. This is the first authoritative source that 

I've ever heard that connected the two countries together. 24 

So serious was the CBS' report that the Iranian Government denied ever employing Behbehani. Later, 

Iran suggested he had fabricated his allegations to gain asylum. 25 

"Those Iranians, who wish to be granted asylum in Western countries, are usually trying to achieve 

their aims through libellous statements against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Intelligence Minister Ali 

Yunesi said. 26 

The next reference I found to a man called Behbehani was in a book by leading FBI agent Richard 

Marquise 27 . In it, he says on the day the CBS report was aired in June 2000, he was dispatched to 

interview a man called Behbehani in a prison in Turkey. He was briefed by Richard Clarke at the 

National Security Council – the US president's foreign security agency. According to Marquise: “This 

22 New York Times (1988) British conclude cassette player held Pan Am bomb 

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/17/world/british-conclude-cassette-player-held-pan-am-bomb.html? 

pagewanted=all 

23 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/06/05/60minutes/main202714.shtml 

24http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/06/05/60minutes/main202714.shtml 

25 http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Behbahani_Ahmad_579605951.aspx 

26 http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:V2HEqvth_tIJ:plane-truth.com/emails%25202008/Confession 

%2520of%2520Iranian%2520Terror%2520Czar%2520posted 

%2520Jan17%25202008.doc+Ali+Yunesi+libellous&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk 

27 Marquise, R. A. (2006) Scotbom: Evidence and the Lockerbie investigation. Algora Publishing, New York 

16


was the only time I knew of anyone from the NSC or the White House taking an active interest and an 

operational role in the case.” The US Government must have been very alarmed by the CBS story and 

the effect it could have on the Lockerbie trial for the President to take a personal interest. 

After interviewing a man who called himself Behbehani, Marquise concluded that the man was “a 

fabricator” who claimed he was born in 1968 and was therefore “far too young to have been the person 

responsible for ordering the Pan Am bombing. If he had any information, he was unable to provide it. 

He said there was a CD which documented his claims, but said he had no way of getting it, further 

hurting his credibility.” 

Yet I found something very odd about Marquise's interview. He was thwarted at every turn by the 

Turkish authorities, which made it hard to fulfil his brief to “not leave out any detail.” He was allowed 

just one interview with Behbehani. The morning after the CBS report was aired, he learned that the 

“Turkish authorities would allow the FBI access... but no later than Thursday of that week”. 

Unfortunately for Marquise, he had "taken the day off but was thousands of miles away, with only a 

couple of days to get there and no visa.” Upon arriving in Turkey, he was told by the Legat 28 (the FBI 

legal official) there that “the Turks had told him that, if this story appeared in the news media once 

more, the interview would never take place.” The Turkish authorities also denied the Scots permission 

to participate in the interview. 

Marquise and the CIA didn't have the best relationship. According to Marquise, during the Lockerbie 

investigation, they were concerned about "CIA attempts to slow down the investigation” and "the CIA's 

incursion into avenues better explored by law enforcement”. 

So it's my view that Marquise and Hakakian didn't see the same Behbehani – Marquise was set up by 

the CIA and swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker. I have managed to find a picture of the 

Behbehani that Hakakian interviewed, and he was a fairly well-built man who looked almost a decade 

older than Marquise's man claimed to be. So the younger man seems like a put up job by the CIA, 

possibly with the assistance of the Iranians. 

As I looked into it further, I found there was a Behbehani with family connections to Rafsanjani who 

seemed the right age to be the man in Hakakian's pictures. So it's unsurprising that the Turks 29 were so 

reticent about letting the FBI see their man more than once. 

The real Behbehani's links to Lockerbie are perhaps greater than the claims he made while in Turkey. 

Shortly after Lockerbie, he was promoted to Head of the Intelligence Section of the Revolutionary 

Guard in the President's Office. This timing seems more than a coincidence – perhaps it was a reward 

for "services rendered". Certainly, the man was a favourite of the Rafsanjani regime - he rose to the 

senior rank of brigadier-general before he fled into exile. Marquise said a man called Behbehani could 

have been involved in Iranian terror. In his book, he says that, although he believed the man he met 

was a fake: “It was possible a man by the same name was formerly in charge of terrorist operations.” 

I therefore think, although this is no more than a hypothesis at the moment, that Behbehani was the 

Iranian at Heathrow. As a man with family links to the Iranian regime, he was perfectly placed to 

avenge a Qesas crime. No one knows what happened to Hakakian's Behbehani after those fateful 

interviews. 

28 http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0418/exec.htm This contains a useful description of the work of 

the Legat and their worldwide distribution 

29 http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/inside/turkey/2009/090605B.html 

17

*** 

lThe Lockerbie bomb 


Once I realised the Lockerbie bomb couldn't have been in a suitcase, I started wondering what shape it 

could be. I was also struck by something Jim Swire noticed quite early on – the precise time between 

Flight 103 taking off and the Lockerbie device exploding, which matched that of a known PFLP GC 

device. I soon realised it was a very different device indeed to the one described at Megrahi's trial. 

The bomb that the Iranian planted in AVE4041 PA was in fact an imitation of a PFLP GC device, which 

used a so-called ice-cube timer. PFLP GC bombs using ice-cube timers are triggered by changes in air 

pressure, as the aircraft climbs from the ground. Once the trigger is set, a charging circuit completes 

and detonates the bomb around 30 minutes later. In mid-1988, the obvious scapegoat for the Iranian 

and CIA plot was the PFLP GC so it made sense to mimic one of their bombs. 

*** 

Box out: The bomb in luggage container AVE4041 

As the plane gained height, the drop in air pressure would cause the pressure transducer to complete 

an electronic timer circuit within the bomb. This caused a battery to begin to slowly leak charge into a 

capacitor. After around 30 minutes, the power stored in the capacitor reached a threshold and flash 

discharged into the bomb detonator, which then went off went off. This triggered the bomb. 

Notice that important aspect of this device is not when the 'timer' is set, but the fact that the timer is 

activated when the pressure is reduced during the aircraft's climb to cruising level, and aircraft on 

normal flights, which that of Pan Am 103 was until the fatal explosion, have predictable climb rates. So 

the bomb can stand inactive on the ground for as long as the bomber wants - the set timer starts from 

the moment when the plane reaches a certain height. 

[SEE APPENDIX] 

On the fateful day of the bombing, Flight 103 finally lifted off the runway at 18:25 GMT after being 

delayed from its scheduled departure time of 18:00 GMT. Once it was clear of Heathrow, the plane 

turned towards Scotland and began to rise through the cold winter air. Two minutes after take-off, when 

the plane rose to 6,000ft, the ice-cube timer trigger set. Flight 103's life expectancy was now measured 

in minutes. 

At 18:56 GMT, the aircraft reached its cruising altitude of 31,000 feet (9,450 m) as it approached the 

Scottish border. Two minutes later, at 18:58 GMT, Flight 103 contacted Shanwick Oceanic Control, the 

air traffic control responsible for international airspace over the north-east Atlantic. “Good Evening 

Scottish,” said Ray Wagner, Flight 103's co-pilot. 

Alan Topp, an officer at Oceanic Control, saw the flight approach and cross the corner of the Solway 

Firth on his secondary radar. Two minutes later he replied “Uh, this is Scottish. Ident, please”. Flight 

103's Captain replied: “This is Clipper 103, requesting oceanic clearance.” Topp asked the pilot to send 

an identifying radio transmission.“Clipper 103, good evening. Uh, for identification, squawk 0357 with 

ident please.” 

Topp received the squawk and the Flight 103 changed its course, ready for its flight over the Atlantic. 

“Clipper 103, route direct, 59 North 10 West to Kennedy. Maintain flight level 310,” he said. Suddenly, 

the first radar return after 19:02:50 showed no return from the aircraft. Precisely like all successful 

PFLP GC style aircraft bombs, such as the bombing of the TW841 flight between Italy and Greece, the 

ice-cube bomb's detonator caused it to explode in the baggage container 32 minutes after it had been 

18


set 30 . It may just as well have been a real PFLP GC device in a cassette radio in a suitcase transferred 

to Pan Am 103 at Heathrow! But it wasn't. 

For the next few seconds, Topp remained unaware of the disaster that had befallen the doomed flight. 

Then he tried desperately to contact Flight 103's pilot, and asked a nearby KLM Royal Dutch Airlines 

flight to do the same, but there was no reply. Then he called up his primary radar and saw the single 

radar return he expected replaced by four, which began to fan out. Topp became frantic: “I've got 

multiple returns. It's showing five returns! They're fanning out downwind. Clipper 103, this is Scottish? 

Come in! Clipper 103! I've lost the Clipper!” Around 30 seconds later, Topp would receive the first 

reports of an explosion on the ground. He now knew the flight's life had ended. 

lThe first explosion 

After the disaster, more than 1,000 police officers and soldiers spent months carrying out fingertip 

searches of the ground around Lockerbie – the crash site and trails of debris from the explosion - 

collecting more than 10,000 items. The UK's Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) analysed the 

debris and compiled a report about the disaster. 

In my opinion, the pattern of explosion outlined in the AAIB report and described by air accident experts 

at Megrahi's trial provides compelling evidence for my theory. During the trial, AAIB investigator Peter 

Claydon reported that an improvised explosive device (IED) – a bomb not designed for conventional 

military use - 'punched' through the baggage container and side of the plane leaving a square hole 31 . 

The official explanation for Lockerbie is that a bomb was concealed in a suitcase. Yet a bomb in a 

suitcase would explode in all directions. In contrast, the hole in the side of the plane seemed to indicate 

a unidirectional explosion. This makes sense if a bomb was attached to the side of a luggage 

container, slightly above the bottom (see figure). 

Peter Claydon told the court the bomb created an 8-inch square hole in AVE4041 PA and a 20-inch 

square hole in the skin of the aircraft. This was, however, small compared to the size of the plane and 

experts were puzzled about how such a small explosion could have caused so much damage. 32 The 

ice-cube bomb, however, wasn't expected to cause much damage because it had to be reasonably 

small for the Iranian to sneak it into Heathrow under an overcoat and conceal it in a baggage container. 

Subsequently, it had to be small enough to be ignored during baggage loading. 

The official Lockerbie investigation claimed the IED weighed less than 0.5kg 33 , which led Peter 

Claydon to say during Megrahi's trial that it produced a 'relatively mild' explosion 3435 . 

This befuddled me for years – how could such a small device completely obliterate Flight 103? The 

plane's fuel tanks couldn't have contributed to the blast because they exploded on the ground at 

Lockerbie. I was not alone in my confusion. A team of academics from the Centre of Explosives 

30 Air Accident Report, Trans World Airlines, Inc., Boeing 707-331B, N8724 in the Ionian Sea, September 8 

1974, National Transportation Safety Board, Washington D.C., 20594, report number NTSB-AAR-75-7 

31 See http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/evidence-to-be-rebuilt-in-court-1.234185 

32 idem, ibid 

33 As to size Thursday, 1 June, 2000, 16:31 GMT 17:31 UK , http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/772784.stm 

34 http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache%3AZe3BOxOCC64J%3Awww.scotcourts.gov.uk%2Flibrary 

%2Flockerbie%2Fdocs%2Flockerbiejudgement.pdf+%22relatively+mild 

%22+explosion+lockerbie&hl=en&gl=uk In the High Court of Justice, case 1475/99 Opinion of the Court 

delivered by Lord Sutherland, page 5 

35 http://gl-w.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html 

19


Technology Research in Socorro, New Mexico calculated that thirty pounds of explosives was needed 

to destroy a plane the size of a Boeing 747 if the bomb was in the hold 36 

lThe second explosion 

Many years after Lockerbie, I decided to settle down and read the AAIB's report of the Lockerbie 

bombing again. Within it, I found some extraordinary claims. For example, it goes out of its way to deny 

the possibility of a second explosion. According to the last line of Appendix F-4, “No evidence was 

seen to suggest that more than one IED had detonated on Flight PA103”. Why deny the possibility of a 

second IED? It also, tellingly, never mentions the words 'suitcase' nor 'radio-cassette'! 

After all, the AAIB didn't bother to discount alien involvement! There's a little anecdote here. A stranger 

once invited himself – we had no security - to a joint UTA and Lockerbie families meeting at the Russell 

Hotel, London and followed me when I popped out to the toilet. He said: “But what about the UFOs?” I 

said: “If you believe that, you'll believe anything.” Unfortunately, he ran out into the night before I could 

ask whether the UFO incident was a presage to the invasion of Earth – starting in Lockerbie – or was 

simply an unfortunate traffic accident between a UFO and a Boeing 747. 

Only one person to date has challenged the AAIB about why they actively denied the existence of a 

second IED. Mr John Parks, an explosives expert, who volunteered to help after the Lockerbie 

bombing, is sceptical about the official account of the blast. In correspondence I have seen, he says 

"There is overwhelming evidence to indicate that a minimum of two high explosive events took place 

inboard Pan Am 103." 

Such a conclusion, if it can be maintained, would destroy any case against Mr Megrahi. 

The AAIB report is a wonderful confection – it disguises more than it discusses. So it never says there 

wasn't a second bomb on the plane. Instead, it merely states that, if there was more than one bomb, 

this bomb was not an IED. So I realised I agreed with Parks in part - there must be a second, different 

type of explosion from another source. This is an entirely original reinterpretation of the official reports – 

my style of working means I often snap up unconsidered trifles – but initially the idea seemed quite 

improbable. So I began to look for the damage the second bomb must have caused. 

When the Lockerbie debris was gathered up after the disaster, parts of the recovered aircraft were 

taken to the AAIB headquarters at Farnborough Airfield in Hampshire. There a carefully selected 

section of the fuselage from the Boeing 747 was pieced back together. Also, within the AAIB's report of 

the Lockerbie disaster, there is a diagram illustrating how the whole of the fuselage of Flight 103 was 

painstakingly reconstructed. 

This diagram shows huge pieces of the Boeing 747's body missing from two locations (see figure 

showing white hole in rear and front of plane). The first is above the location of the IED next to baggage 

container AVE4041 PA near the front of the plane. 

This fuselage skin isn't missing because the search team failed to recover the wreckage from the 

ground. Rather, it is characteristic of a brisant explosion where the skin was melted. Parks goes into 

this at length. Brisant explosions are created by some modern high explosives which, when they 

explode, quickly create a hot fireball, at a temperature of 2000 o C. This consumes everything in the 

36 Lockerbie Suitcase Bomb: Scientific Implausibility http://www.docstoc.com/docs/4606643/Lockerbie- 

Suitcase-Bomb-Study-by-Ludwig-De-Braeckeleer 

20


immediate vicinity, including detonator circuits, detonators, and anything as flimsy as fuselage skin. 37 . 

If the fuselage skin was melted by a fireball, of course, neither the alleged fragment of recovered 

Toshiba circuit board, nor the clothing or Toshiba manual presented in evidence at Megrahi's trial could 

have survived the explosion. This explains why the Lockerbie detonator was never found and means all 

this evidence must have been planted. 

There is a second area where fuselage skin is missing too. This is near the rear of the plane next to a 

luggage storage area under the passenger compartment. This luggage compartment was accessed 

through a special hatch created as part of the US Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) programme. Under 

CRAF, older Boeing 747 planes were modified to carry military freight containers in case of national 

emergency. 

When I saw this second missing section of fuselage skin, I could draw no conclusion other than that 

there was a second explosion at this location. One possible logical cause would be military material, 

but I believe the device was actually a 'insurance' bomb, designed to ensure the aircraft was 

destroyed, being carried in the CRAF compartment at the time of the bombing. And, if there was a 

second independent explosion, Megrahi cannot be guilty. 

There is even more good evidence of two separate explosions in the AAIB report. According to that 

document, Flight 103 disintegrated into two debris trails. The southern debris trail was produced when 

the IED went off and the plane began to disintegrate. The northern trail over Lockerbie was produced 

19.5 seconds later when the aircraft suddenly plunged from 19,000 to 9,000 ft. The AAIB report does 

not explain why the plane stopped gliding several seconds after the initial explosion and began to 

rapidly lose height. Nor was this dive mentioned in the official Lockerbie report. This plunge must have 

occurred when the second blast went off. 

That 19.5 seconds was immensely suspicious, because if munitions had accidentally been exploded by 

the force of the IED blast, the second explosion would have occurred almost immediately after the first. 

So it was no accident – the second blast was deliberately triggered. I now believe the cause of the 

additional blast was a CIA 'insurance bomb'. Its purpose was to guarantee no one survived the 

bombing, ensuring the Iranians would be completely satisfied with the operation, and the Qesas 

condition fulfilled. It would be easy for CIA operatives to attach a detonator to explosive material on the 

flight, or introduced a package bomb. 

In fact the insurance bomb was not necessary. The effect of the IED alone would have been enough to 

destroy the aircraft, as the whole of the forward nose cone was torn off and landed at Tundergarth. But 

I think the damage model the CIA used was that of TWA840 of 2nd April 1986, where a device had 

punctured a hole in the side of that aircraft, but it remained flyable. Only five lives were lost. The CIA 

did not want a miraculous survival of most of the passengers, as the agreement with the Iranians called 

for deaths, so they had to introduce a second package bomb. 168 people died in the front – they were 

killed by the Iranian's IED. 91 died in the rear of the plane. They were jointly killed by the CIA package 

bomb and the Iranian IED. 11 died on the ground. They were killed by the CIA's package bomb, 

because if that had not gone off the aircraft would have continued its steep glide into the hills north of 

Lockerbie, rural countryside. 

To conceal the existence of the CIA device, the bombs needed to trigger around the same time. 

However, they were in different locations on the plane. So the insurance bomb had to be triggered 

manually. There would have been a CIA agent on the ground where he could receive a clear radar 

37 Notes of a video made by me from a video interview with John Parks. Notes made 6/10/09 

21


signal from Flight 103 – probably halfway between Lockerbie and Shanwick. 

The insurance bomb was probably triggered using a pager, which is an effective and simple way to set 

off an explosion at a distance 38 . In 1988, there were probably more than 100,000 pagers in use in 

Britain 39 , and a national pager network had been in place for 10 years by 1989 4041 . Although remote 

from centres of population, Lockerbie is situated along the A74 - a main transport artery between 

London and Scotland. 

There is a long history of remotely triggered bombings, recently using mobile phones rather than 

increasingly outdated pagers. Among these were the 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 2002 Bali 

bombings, and the July 2002 bombing at a cafeteria at Jerusalem's Hebrew University. 

There is also no doubt that the CIA would have been capable of providing such a device. One senior 

CIA operative at the time, Robert Baer, when interviewed recently for a documentary on Lockerbie on 

Dutch TV, even volunteered the information that he had "spent years making bombs for the CIA." 42 I 

also know that he repeated this claim to an investigative journalist making a documentary for an 

international satellite TV channel, but it was strangely cut from the final transmission. 

**** 

Box out: Countdown to disaster 

[NOTE: second gap diagram. Accompanied by debris diagram] 

*** 

lThe investigation and framing Megrahi 

Within hours of the Lockerbie bombing, many CIA agents were spotted in the area 43 . Their job was to 

detract attention from the real culprits – Iran and themselves - by concocting and concealing evidence. 

The CIA intended to blame the PFLP GC for the Lockerbie bombing when the investigation began in 

December 1988. Their preferred culprit could have been Mohammed Abu Talb, an Egyptian-born 

Palestinian Popular Struggle Front (PPSF) member who visited Malta in October 1988 or Abu Nidal. 

Indeed, Tony Gauci's description of the person who visited his shop in Malta and bought the clothes 

allegedly found in the suitcase didn't remotely resemble Megrahi, so it was likely that initially the CIA 

planned to blame someone else, or, at least, sent a very bad look-a-like to the shop to impersonate 

him. 

In the run-up to the Gulf War, however, it became clear to Bush and the CIA that it was no longer 

politically expedient to blame the Palestinians. Syria and Iran were US silent allies against Iraq, and the 

38 Time (2004) A strike at Europe's heart http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/040322/story.html 

39http://www.gare.co.uk/technology_watch/mobile.htm 

40 http://www.explainthatstuff.com/howpagerswork.html 

41 http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:I5l7my6Aqs0J:www.pageonepager.com/wpcontent/uploads/2009/02/paging-the-white-elephant.pdf+%22History+of+paging 

%22+uk&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjfCzsL7jOqeIOVX52rFQGjr6Qm4_uE6t7Z1ylkXvKWu7sZ9 

HPgoezoFzlzYPQrQQI1ssNKA7x4jSV_Fj6oeFxO0Cn90E1I3TLNzWZpRZRSid0hU0XKHjcVq8L6EaiVPv5_9E9&sig=AFQjCNEww 

cs0KuYiU-08xtcb43Fp5nJyXw 

42 Lockerbie Revisted, 2009 

http://www.vpro.nl/programma/tegenlicht/afleveringen/41867169/media/41892895/ 

43 Johnston, D. (1989) Lockerbie: The Tragedy of Flight 103, p.68 

22


PFLP GC were under Syrian protection 44 . The CIA had to find another culprit – they switched their 

attention to Libya and manufactured evidence against Megrahi. Libya was the favourite target of one 

CIA operative, I call *Tomas Cattermole, who had been involved in many operations against the 

country, including the 1986 bombing raid. 

lThe Toshiba manual 

The morning after the Lockerbie atrocity, a Northumbrian housewife discovered an instruction manual 

for a piece of electronic equipment in her garden. Decky Horton tried twice to hand the manual into the 

her local police, but they had little time to register her find. She lived in Longhorsely, Northumberland 

89km east of Lockerbie, but, even there, the police were doubtless struggling to deal with the 

horrendous scenes at the site of the disaster. 

By Megrahi's trial in 2001, Mrs Horton's manual had conveniently metamorphosed into Arabic 

instructions for a Toshiba cassette recorder. Unfortunately, years after the event, it was unlikely she 

could be certain the Toshiba instructions she was shown in court were the same item she found in her 

garden. Furthermore, there are some suggestions the manual had been tampered with between her 

discovery and Megrahi's trial, for she could not recall that the manual had been so damaged 45 . 

I challenge anyone not to suspect CIA interference. According to a policeman PC Walton, who handled 

Mrs Horton's find, the manual was singed at the sides. How could a manual be in recognisable 

condition when it was allegedly in the same suitcase as a brisant explosion? It should have been totally 

destroyed. Furthermore, why did it travel so far? On the AAIB's debris map, Newcastleton is a long way 

from Lockerbie, and Longhorsely much further, nearly 90km in all. I have no doubt that Mrs Horton was 

genuine, but her innocent find was a gift to CIA agents seeking evidence to 'reinterpret'. 

lSuitcase? -suitcases! 

Five US intelligence officers died on board Flight 103, despite the CIA releasing the Helsinki warning to 

get US personnel off Pan Am flights. One of the CIA agents killed was Major Chuck McKee, a US army 

major working in Beirut, Lebanon; and another was Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in 

Beirut 46 47 48 49 . 

After the bombing, according to Marquise's book, CIA agents allegedly “acted strangely while securing 

the baggage of CIA employees.” 50 . According to one Lockerbie story, the CIA removed McKee's 

suitcase from the area of the crash and returned it to the Lockerbie investigation damaged – it had a 

hole cut in the side. The Scottish police, as you might imagine, were not happy to find the CIA 

tampering with Lockerbie evidence. 51 

44 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFLP-GC 

45 Sunday Sun (2008) Lockerbie evidence called into question http://www.sundaysun.co.uk/news/north-eastnews/2008/08/31/lockerbie-evidence-called-into-question-79310-21640187/ 

46. McKee was a Major in the US Army working in Beirut; Crawford, John, Trafford, Victoria BC, Canada, 2002, The Lockerbie 

Incident: A Detective's Tale, p82 

47 Or McKee was sent by Pentagon to the Lebanon to help rebuild that country's warn-torn military, Perry, 

Mark, Eclipse, William Morrow & Company Inc., 1992,New York, ISBN 0-688-09386-8, p161; worked for 

DIA 

48 Or McKee was engaged on an operation to release Lebanese hostages (senior DIA source, said McKee 

was senior co-ordinator of a Special Forces group who were poised to make a rescue attempt on the 

American hostages in Beirut) Ashton, John and Ferguson, Ian, Cover-up of Convenience, Mainstream 

Publishing, Edinburgh and London, 2001, edn 2002, ISBN 1 84018 389 6, p25 

49 Or McKee and his team were returning to Washington under a cloud and intended to confront the CIA 

when they arrived in Washington http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2008/07/iran-to-be-framed-for-lockerbiedid-cia.html 

50 Marquise, R.A. (2006) Scotbom: Evidence and the Lockerbie investigation. Algora Publishing 

51 Johnston, D, Lockerbie, The tragedy of Flight 103, St Martin's Press, New York, 1989 

23


About four or five years ago, I started wondering how the CIA managed to find that suitcase on the 

hillside, why they cut a hole into the side and why the CIA personnel died. Around the same time, I 

became sceptical about the existence of the Samsonite suitcase Megrahi supposedly put onto Flight 

103. 

The explanation came to me very quickly indeed. Poor McKee was killed by his colleagues 52 . Unknown 

to him, his last duty was to help them locate baggage container AVE4041 PA among the debris, by 

using the transpondered suitcase he was carrying. He must have suspected his life was in danger 

because he called his mother before joining the flight, and asked her to meet him at Pittsburgh airport. 

“This was the first time Chuck ever telephoned me from Beirut,” she said. “I was flabbergasted. It's a 

surprise. Always before he would wait until he was back in Virginia to call and say he was coming 

home.” 53 

McKee was travelling in first class and, before joining the flight, I believe he must have checked a 

suitcase containing a radio transponder onto Flight 103. Transpondered suitcases must have a basis in 

fact since they appear frequently in fiction, for example in recent film No Country for Old Men 54 . 

The transpondered suitcase must have ended up in baggage container AVE4041 PA, which contained 

all the Interline baggage from feeder flight 103A. AVE4041 PA also contained all the first-class baggage 

and, therefore, was arranged in the aircraft hold so it was first off the flight in New York. It was also, of 

course, the location of the bomb planted by the Iranian with the CIA's blessing. 

Once the CIA had used McKee's suitcase transponder to locate it, it must have been easy to determine 

which baggage container was AVE4041 PA. They must have stolen McKee's suitcase, cut a hole in it 

and removed the transponder so it didn't attract undesirable attention from the Scottish investigation 

team. After a strange journey, which Mr Johnston recounts, the item of baggage was taken to the 

temporary headquarters of the Lockerbie inquiry, and then back to Carruthers Farm, where it had been 

found. As it had been interfered with, the local police refused to have anything to do with it, so it was 

"discovered" by a team of British Transport Police. The extraordinary story is told in Johnston's book on 

pages 72-73 55 . 

An independently minded Independent Radio News journalist, he was called on by the police to reveal 

his sources and when he refused to do so, he was made a strange offer. He would be allowed to meet 

anyone he wished, including Mrs Thatcher. He agreed to check back with his sources and when he did 

and refused further co-operation, he was threatened with being judicially 'precognosed', or preliminarily 

examined as a witness. Even after this, Johnston reported that at a briefing of officers by two of the 

Lockerbie Investigation team and two from the CIA, one of the CIA officers had interrupted the briefing 

to say the plan for the day's work included "replacing Mr McKee's suitcase where it had been found" 56 . 

In the remains of AVE4041 PA, the CIA placed a pre-blown suitcase, the remains of a Toshiba cassette 

recorder and various miscellaneous items. They hoped that, when the Lockerbie investigation team 

found the suitcase, they would follow the concocted evidence to a suitable CIA selected target, which 

would become Libya. 

lPlanting the circuit board 

A fragment of MST-13 timer chip, similar to that carried by a Libyan intelligence officer, was vital 

evidence in Megrahi's trial. The police supposedly found it embedded in a piece of cloth in 

Newcastleton forest on 13 th January 1989. 

52 http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2008/07/iran-to-be-framed-for-lockerbie-did-cia.html 

53 http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/1715 

54 http://blogcritics.org/video/article/dvd-review-no-country-for-old/ 

55 Johnston D, idem, ibid, p72-73 

56 Johnston, D, idem, ibid, p74 

24


I believe that the chip fragment was planted in the cloth by the CIA to frame Megrahi for the Lockerbie 

bombing. Once the CIA realised they could no longer frame the PFLP GC, they needed to find another 

culprit. Edwin Bollier provided them with the perfect alternative. He had visited the US embassy in 

Vienna, perhaps to accuse Megrahi of the Lockerbie bombing, in 1989. (There's even a little story in 

the exact date of the visit). 57 

When I emailed him, he confirmed this visit was in mid-January 1989 – on 19 th . So it's interesting that 

the CIA – who are so usually so precise – claim Bollier's visit was in 'early January 1989'. This made 

me think they were covering something up. 

Once the CIA had decided that Megrahi would be the perfect person to fit up for the bombing, I think 

they visited Ulrich Lumpert of MEBO, Bollier's company, and obtained a circuit board from him, on 22 nd 

June 1989. The visitor said he was from the “Lockerbie investigation.” This must have been a CIA 

operative, for the event is not mentioned in the FBI's evidence. 

None of this is very original – the limitations of the chip as evidence are now well known. However, I 

may have determined when the evidence was tampered with. Sometime between June and 

September 1989, the CIA met employees at Royal Armament Research and Development 

Establishment (RARDE) at Fort Halstead in Kent. RARDE did the forensic work for the Lockerbie 

investigation. 

RARDE employees and the CIA went through the Lockerbie debris to find somewhere to plant the chip. 

They picked a bag Label 168, marked cloth, collected 13 th January, accessed to RARDE on 17 th 

January, and examined by them on 12 th May, who marked it cloth. They replaced that cloth with a shirt 

collar they had bought. A small piece of MEBO micro-chip was inserted into the remains. The 

confection was overwritten “debris” and returned to the store 58 . Embarrassingly for the CIA, however, 

the collar size of the shirt they bought and inserted into the evidence stream with the chip was a 

different size from the shirt in the suitcase they had planted at the crash site. 59 This is of paramount 

importance because, at Megrahi's trial, the prosecution claimed the chip was the fragment of the 

Lockerbie bomb timer, and the shirt was critical to linking Megrahi and Libya to the bombing. 

lMedia manipulation 

In 1990, the Lockerbie investigators had given no indication that Libya was to blame for Lockerbie. So 

it's odd that on 28th September 1990, a week after Juge Bruguiere had announced his initial claim that 

Libyans and Congolese agents were behind the UTA bombing, L'Express, a French news magazine, 

should carry an article saying Libya was being looked at as the source of the perpetrator of the 

Lockerbie bombing. On 10 th October 1990, the New York Times carried an article blaming Libya for the 

bombing. This was followed by articles blaming Libya in The Independent, the first time it had appeared 

in the British press, on 14 th December 1990. 

So through the Autumn there were a series of articles in the French 60 , American 61 and finally British 62 

press suggesting that Libya was guilty of Lockerbie. None of these articles name the source of the 

information or attribute the quotes to named individuals. For example, the Independent articles from 

14 th December claim “high-level sources” “close to the [Lockerbie] inquiry” revealed there was 

“conclusive” proof for Libya's involvement. The Scottish police investigation, however, refused to 

comment on the claims. 

57 http://lockerbiecase.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html see reference to Bollier 

58 http://i-p-o.org/Private_Eye-Lockerbie-Oct2007.jpg 

59 Braeckeleer, L. de (2009) Lockerbie: J'accuse, The Firm magazine 

http://www.firmmagazine.com/features/546/Lockerbie:_J'accuse__-_by_Dr_Ludwig_de_Braeckeleer_.html 

60 L'Éxpress, Paris, 28 September 1990, 1 November 1990 and 22 November 1990. 

61 New York Times, 10 November 1990 

62 The Independent, 14 December 1990 

25


The CIA are not like a choir of schoolboys – everyone knows they have some form in influencing public 

opinion. Just one example – Encounter was a 1950s magazine about international relations and poetry. 

All its money came from the CIA and it was used to disseminate CIA propaganda. 

I believe these articles were planted by the CIA conspirators to prepare the public for their accusations 

against Megrahi. However principled the journalist, it would be hard for them to resist being fed an 

interesting, helpful story. All the Independent articles were written by the same two journalists – David 

Black and Harvey Morris. Harvey Morris had not published anything for a month before the flurry of 

Independent articles about Lockerbie, but subsequently returned to his reporting duties, publishing 

nearly every day. Perhaps there was an innocent explanation or perhaps he had been on sabbatical 

gathering information for his big story. 

lArranging some trial witnesses 

Once the CIA had Megrahi in the frame, it was easy to find witnesses to testify against him. Gauci 

became one and Giaka, a key witness in the Megrahi case, had a pre-existing relationship with the 

CIA. According to Megrahi's lawyers, Tony Gauci and his brother Paul were later paid $2 million and $1 

million respectively by the US Department of Justice 63, but had no interest in entering the FBI's witness 

protection program. Giaka, meanwhile, was a Libyan double agent who had offered his services to the 

CIA in August 1988 and subsequently did so 64 . 

Box out: Who were the CIA men 

I believe I have identified the three senior CIA operatives at the heart of the Lockerbie plot. I shall term 

them *Hantzauman, *Cattermole and *Toplady to avoid legal problems. However, I'm sure anyone who 

decides to investigate my theory further can find the evidence to identify and indict them for 

themselves. 

I found *Hantzauman first. He has contributed widely to media debate around Lockerbie ever since 

leaving the CIA, and has, on more than one occasion, given rather too much away. It is clear that he 

wants to draw attention away from his own guilt by 'controversially' challenging the Libyan attribution 

himself and instead looking to place the blame elsewhere - something I find extraordinary for a man 

who more than one witness has observed as being on the ground at Lockerbie. So I began to 

research this man and I found that, four months before Lockerbie and after the downing of the 

Vincennes, he met with McKee. I started wondering – is *Hantzauman somehow involved in Lockerbie? 

Later I found him, once again, popping up throughout the Lockerbie story at some surprising junctures. 

*Cattermole had a huge role in developing the theory that Lockerbie was due to the Libyans, even after 

he left the CIA. In fact, it was his parting gift. When I investigated his background, I discovered a lot of 

the operations against Libya by the US were orchestrated by him. If someone framed Libya, it was this 

man. 

To find the third CIA man – *Toplady – I did a bit of data mining on the internet. Once I knew the CIA 

63 Guardian (2009) US paid reward to Lockerbie witnesses 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/02/lockerbie-documents-witness-megrahi 

64 Independent (2000) Lockerbie court asks CIA to declassify cables from Libyan double-agent 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/lockerbie-court-asks-cia-to-declassify-cables-from-libyandouble-agent-710499.html 

26


had tampered with the RARDE evidence, I realised the most likely culprit was **Orkin. **Orkin is a 

mysterious CIA man who FBI investigator Marquise refers to in his book, by that pseudonym 65 . 

According to Marquise, **Orkin was present when Thurman identified the MEBO circuit board. So I 

wondered if I could find his real name. A quick Google search and a simple logical elimination of a 

couple of other characters left me with *Toplady's real name in less than half an hour. 

What next? 

I've wanted the story of Lockerbie to end for many years. Four years ago, I finally thought the mystery 

was solved, but I've come on so much further since. Perhaps no one will ever know the full truth 30 

years after the event. 

But now I've finally reached a conclusion in my journey, I feel a certain sense of relief and intellectual 

satisfaction over the evidence I've managed to collect. So what do I hope to achieve from my efforts? 

First, I would like Mr Megrahi to be vindicated and the Crown to abandon any possibility that he, 

Fhimah or Libya had anything to do with Lockerbie. I want the British Government to apologise to him 

and compensate him as much as possible. Unfortunately, by the time the full story is out, he will 

probably be dead. 

Second, I want an open, independent, fair public enquiry to look at all those things that Jim Swire and 

the Lockerbie families have called for over the years, and have never been given, nor I fear will ever be 

given. Eventually, I believe charges can be brought against three CIA men, and possibly one Iranian, 

though I believe him to be dead. There will also be huge consequences for the Scottish judicial system, 

which they managed to stitch up. Certain British Government agencies are not above criticism, and if 

not criminally culpable, though some are, I think their officers should have behaved better. We need to 

be able to believe that our institutions and agencies can be trusted, and I fear we have been badly let 

down. Finally, I want people to come out and say “I've known that for years” or to simply see the CIA 

fabrication for what it was. 

Finally, there are questions for the US Government. Can an agency as out of control as the CIA be 

allowed to continue to exist? Will the US now properly compensate the Iranians for their losses? Will 

the Iranians give up their traditional, though murderous, Qesas retribution demands? Qesas fits ill when 

whole lives are demanded in revenge, for only an individual has the right to determine what s/he can do 

with his or her life. 

But what about me? Have I achieved what I want – to be a true executor of my brother's will by 

resolving everything that I can pertaining to his death, including Lockerbie? Perhaps. I'm a strict 

agnostic so can't begin to guess at what he'd think about all of this from beyond the grave. He might 

say I got it right but, knowing him as I did, he'd also say “You took a bloody long time over it.” 

Cast of characters 

Name 

* = pseudonym chosen by this author 

Rôle in this story 

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi Innocent Libyan convicted of the 

Lockerbie bombing in a trial held 

65 Marquise, R.A (2006) Scotbom: Evidence and the Lockerbie investigation. Algora publishing 

27


at Camp Zeist, Netherlands 

Abdul Majid Giaka Libyan double agent and former 

colleague of Lockerbie coaccused, 

Fhimah. Evidence was 

dismissed my trial 

Abdullah Senussi Colonel Gaddafi's brother-in-law 

convicted of the bombing of UTA 

Flight 772 and mentioned in the 

Lockerbie bombing trial 

Abu Nidal Founder of Fatah – The 

Revolutionary Council, a militant 

Palestinian group more commonly 

known as the Abu Nidal 

Organisation. Most active during 

the 1970s and 1980s 

Iranian who I believe may have 

planted the Lockerbie bomb. 

Relative of Akbar Hashemi 

Rafsanjani, Iran's president in 

1988 

Alan Topp Retired officer at Shanwick 

Oceanic Control, the air traffic 

control responsible for 

international airspace over the 

north-east Atlantic 

My alias for the senior CIA 

operative who executed the 

Lockerbie bomb plot 

Chuck McKee US army major working in Beirut, 

Lebanon. Killed in the Lockerbie 

bombing 

David Black Former journalist at The 

Independent who broke the story 

that Libya was to blame for the 

Lockerbie bombing 

Decky Horton Northumberland housewife who 

discovered an instruction manual, 

alleged to be from a Toshiba 

cassette recorder, in her garden 

after the Lockerbie bombing 

Edwin Bollier Co-owner of a Swiss electronics 

firm – Meister & Bollier – which 

allegedly supplied a bomb timer 

chip used in the Lockerbie 

28


bombing 

Harvey Morris Former journalist at The 

Independent who broke the story 

that Libya was to blame for 

Lockerbie 

Jean-Louis Bruguière Leading French examining 

magistrate who investigated the 

bombing of UTA Flight 772 and 

other counter-terrorism cases 

Jim Swire Spokesperson for the Lockerbie 

families group. His daughter Flora 

died in the Lockerbie bombing 

John Parks An explosives expert who 

assisted on the ground during the 

aftermath of the Lockerbie 

bombings 

Lamin Khalifah Fhimah Former station manager for 

Libyan Arab Airlines at Luqa 

Airport, Malta, co-accused with 

Megrahi for the Lockerbie 

bombing but acquitted 

My alias for the senior CIA agent 

who tampered with the Lockerbie 

forensic evidence at the former 

UK Royal Armament Research 

and Development Establishment. 

His official alias is Orkin 

Leslie Stahl CBS journalist who visited and 

reported on Iranian exile Ahmad 

Beladi Behbehani 

Matthew Gannon The US CIA's deputy station chief 

in Beirut. Killed in the Lockerbie 

bombing 

Mohammed Abu Talb Egyptian-born Palestinian Popular 

Struggle Front (PPSF) member 

who gave evidence at the 

Lockerbie bombing trial 

Paul Channon UK Transport Minister in 1988 

Peter Claydon Former investigator at the UK's Air 

Accidents Investigation Branch 

(AAIB) 

Ray Manly Security guard who discovered 

break-in at Heathrow Terminal 3 

29


on the night before the Lockerbie 

bombing 

Ray Wagner Co-pilot on Pan Am Flight 103. 

Killed in the Lockerbie bombing 

Richard Clarke Former head of counter-terrorism 

at the US National Security 

Council, the US presidential 

foreign and national security 

agency 

Richard Marquise Former agent from the US and 

leader of the Scotbom team 

Federal Bureau of Investigation, 

interviewed another Iranian called 

 

*Rupert Hantzauman Former CIA officer 

Roya Hakakian Jewish-Iranian-American 

journalist who interviewed Iranian 

exile, 

Tony Gauci Witness at the Lockerbie bombing 

trial who allegedly sold clothes to 

the accused, Megrahi. Allegedly 

paid $2 million by US Department 

of Justice, his brother $1M 

Tony Norrie My brother. Killed in the bombing 

of UTA Flight 772 

Ulrich Lumpert Former electronics expert at 

Swiss electronics firm Meister & 

Bollier 

*Tomas Cattermole My alias for the senior CIA 

operative who developed the 

theory that Libya was to blame for 

Lockerbie 

TIMELINE 

3 rd July 1988 US Navy cruiser USS Vincennes shoots down civilian Iranian Air 

Flight 655 

9 th July 1988 The Guardian newspaper reports Iranian anger of the downing of 

Flight 655 

August – November 1988 Meeting between US officials and Iranians in Glion, Switzerland 

to agree Lockerbie bombing 

8 th November 1988 George H.W. Bush elected as US president 

5 th December 1988 Security bulletin issued to US State Department staff after the 

30


US embassy in Helsinki receives a threat against Pan Am flights 

20 th December 1988 23:06 Earliest time of break-in at Heathrow Terminal 3. 23:15- 

23:55 is probably the window for the operation. IED is placed of 

inner side AVE4041 PA about 2' above ground on side adjacent 

AVN7511 PA, by an Iranian, *Sattar the concealer. 

21 st December 1988 

(See more detailed time line below) 

The day Pan Am 103 was destroyed, the IED exploding at 

19:02:50, the package bomb 7 seconds later. 

13 th January 1989 Fragment of a shirt found at Newcastleton on the Scottish 

borders by the Lockerbie investigation 

19 th January 1989 Swiss electronics manufacturer, Edwin Bollier, visits the US 

embassy in Vienna 

20 th January 1989 George H.W. Bush inaugurated as US president 

12 th May 1989 A UK forensic scientist examines the shirt fragment 

22 nd June 1989 Ulrich Lumpert, steals a circuit board from his employer, Edwin 

Bollier's company 

June – September 1989? CIA officials plant a circuit board fragment in the shirt fragment 

19 th September 1989 UTA Flight 772 destroyed in a Libyan terrorist attack 

Autumn 1990 French and US newspaper reports blame Lockerbie on Libya. 

14 th December 1990 The Independent blames Libya for the Lockerbie bombing 

30 th October 1991 Arrest warrants issued against four Libyans in connection with 

the UTA bombing 

13 th November 1991 Murder charges for the Lockerbie bombing issued against two 

Libyans – Megrahi and Fhimah 

18 th November 1991 Lebanon hostages released, including envoy Terry Waite 

31 st January 2001 Lockerbie bombing verdict – Megrahi convicted and Fhimah 

acquitted 

14 th March 2002 Megrahi's first appeal rejected 

28 th June 2007 Megrahi's case referred to Edinburgh's Court of Criminal Appeal 

18 th July 2008 An electronics expert who testified at Megrahi's trial swears an 

affidavit that he gave false evidence 

20 th August 2009 Megrahi released from prison on compassionate grounds 

Time on 21 December 1988 Event 

Just after 23:00, say 23:10, on 20 December 1988 Sattar cuts padlock on security door between T3 

landside and airside from landside. 

He walks to Interline shed (20 minutes) 

23:30±10 He places IED on inner surface of baggage 

container AVE4041 PA, the side facing AVN7511 

PA, as yet unlabelled as for 1st class and 

Frankfurt transfer 

31


23:50 Sattar returns by route of break-in and leaves the 

terminal 

00:05 Mr Manly discovers break-in and the incident is 

properly reported at recorded in the BAA log book. 

Mr Manly stays on duty until the door is resecured, 

but of course, the damage has been 

done. 

Early morning (say about 7:00 am) Early in the morning AVE4041 PA is labelled as 

the first off (first-class and interline traffic to New 

York) container at around 07:00 

During day Baggage is loaded loaded throughout the day, 

with items from the Frankfurt flight PA103A being 

added shortly before 18:00 

About 17:45 AVE4041 PA is last container loaded 

18:00 Pan Am 103 pushes back (or off blocks as the 

Zeist Court quaintly put it) 

18:25 Pan Am 103 takes off, delayed by congestion 

18:27 Clmbing at a rate of 3000'-4000' per minute the 

aircraft rises through about 8000' and the ice-cube 

timer is set running by the pressure transducer 

18:58 Aircraft commences communication with 

Shanwick Oceanic to gain appropriate clearance. 

19:02:47±1 Last secondary radar paste of the aircraft 

19:02:50±1 As oceanic clearance is read communication 

ceases with the aircraft. The IED explodes. IFF 

marker blips off. 

19:02:58±1 First radar paste, after the bombing shows aircraft 

as 4 separate returns on the primary, none on the 

secondary. 

19:02:59±1 

7 seconds delay for the pager call to be set up 

19:03:06±1 

17 seconds have elapsed since IED exploded 

*Hantzauman sets off a pager, to detonate a 

“package” or “insurance” bomb. The CIA feared 

that a small explosion would simply puncture the 

aircraft and it could be flown with little loss of life, 

like TWA 840 of 2 April 1986. A typical pager call 

takes seven seconds to set up so at: 

A “package” or “insurance” bomb explodes in the 

aircraft's rear hold. It may have contained 

deactivated military material 

19:03:36 A seismic event occurs at ground level in 

Lockerbie, recorded by BGS and corrected for 

32


travel time of S- and P- waves from impact point. 

Eskdalemuir is the nearest BGS station to 

Lockerbie, but four stations are required to make 

the analysis, so reports from Keswick, Edinburgh, 

Galloway and possibly Glennifer Braes would 

have been needed. 

Subsequently A fireball erupts over Sherwood Crescent, 

Lockerbie caused by the inflammation of the 

aircraft's fuel. 11 people die and 21 homes are 

destroyed. 270 die in all die, Britain's worst 

peacetime disaster of recent times. 

Pan Am Flight 103 has been blown up and has 

landed on Lockerbie, SW Scotland 

33

The Truth about Lockerbie - MartinFrost.ws

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