Monday, October 24, 2005

Crack in the Matrix: Hard times in New York

HARD TIMES IN NEW YORK

The paper that regards itself as America's supreme journal of record is washing its dirty laundry in public. And a large cast of characters is getting splashed with water.

By Rupert Cornwell
 
The Independent - UK - 24 October 2005 - Nothing quite resembles the atmosphere just before a hurricane. A sense of foreboding hangs in the unnaturally warm and leaden air. Though the wind has not yet really picked up, ominous sea swells begin to batter the beaches. Those who cannot escape board up their houses and hope somehow that the inevitable storm will shift course at the 11th hour, sparing them the worst.

That, precisely, is the mood at the White House as the special prosecutor into the CIA leak affair prepares to deliver his conclusions. Outwardly it is business as usual: "a little background noise", and " people opining" was how George Bush tried to brush the matter aside last week. In truth, all Washington is holding its breath, and there is no mistaking the anxiety beneath the presidential bravado.

Nature's hurricanes, it has been said, begin with the flutter of a butterfly's wings somewhere over tropical Africa. The political storm poised to break here began scarcely more consequentially back on 14 July 2003, in a newspaper column that revealed the identity of a covert CIA operative called Valerie Plame.

She was, it transpired, the wife of a former US ambassador named Joseph Wilson, who had just emerged as a virulent critic of the war in Iraq and, in particular, of the White House's claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons. The deliberate leak of a CIA agent's name is a crime under US law, and Patrick Fitzgerald, a federal prosecutor from Chicago, was assigned to investigate the case, and a grand jury installed.

Mr Fitzgerald has now concluded his inquiry, and the little squall of two years ago threatens to strike Washington as a category 5 hurricane. The theory is that Ms Plame was "outed" by the Bush crowd, as an act of vengeance against her husband. It is widely predicted that Mr Fitzgerald will issue indictments against one or more very senior Bush administration officials, perhaps Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr Bush's most influential adviser, or Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who performs the same role for Vice-President Dick Cheney.

But not only is the summit of America's political establishment threatened. In his search for the truth, Mr Fitzgerald also sent Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times to jail for 85 days after she refused to reveal her sources for an article she was preparing on the Plame affair.

Among those sources, it emerged, was Mr Libby, a prime architect of the WMD case for war. As a result, America's most famous newspaper has been engulfed in a hurricane of its own. At one level, the tale is fiendishly complicated. But at heart it is very simple. The travails of the Bush White House and The New York Times stem from an issue that will not go away: why America went to war on a falsehood, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. As a profitless and ever-more unpopular conflict has dragged on, the controversy is corroding the entire presidency of George Bush.

To be sure, second terms have a habit of going awry - look no further than the Monica Lewinsky scandal for which Bill Clinton was impeached, and the Iran-Contra affair that came close to undoing Ronald Reagan. But this time the stakes are far higher. On those two occasions, America was not at war. This time it is - and Mr Fitzgerald's legal inquiries are now part and parcel of the debate over the great unanswered question of the day: why did the US invade Iraq?

Washington's national security establishment right how is a pressure cooker about to blow. Last week, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to former secretary of state Colin Powell, publicly denounced the "cabal" between Vice-President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, that effectively shut his former boss out of the decision-making process.

Today, in the New Yorker magazine, Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser, laments this administration's rush to war against Iraq, and the "anomaly" of Mr Cheney, with whom he worked so smoothly under the first President Bush when the US drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. "I consider Dick Cheney a good friend," Mr Scowcroft ruminates. " I've known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."

The words of the 80-year-old Bush family friend illuminate both the father-and-son strains between the 41st and 43rd presidents and the eternal argument over American foreign policy between the realists and the idealists, that has found new expression over the invasion of Iraq. Mr Scowcroft is an unabashed realist. For today's idealists, read neo-conservatives.

But if the White House trembles at what may soon to be, the Times is already consumed by civil war. "This is a very traumatic time for the paper, it is very troubling, very upsetting," the Times columnist Frank Rich acknowledged yesterday. Mr Rich, to be sure, has been one of the paper's most consistently outspoken opponents of the war. But his anguish is only in part over Ms Miller's flawed reporting on Saddam's non-existent WMD; it is also for an institution that is tearing itself apart on its own printed pages.

Famously, newspapers do not wash their dirty linen in public. But in the past couple of days, the tensions at the once demure "Grey Lady" have blown that convention to smithereens. Bill Keller, the Times's executive editor, has suggested Ms Miller "misled" the newspaper, and has criticised her "entanglement" with Mr Libby. Ms Miller tartly responded by branding Mr Keller's account of events "seriously misleading".

That same day Maureen Dowd, another Times columnist, most noted for her witty skewering of the Bush family, used her allotted space on the op-ed page to berate Ms Miller under the headline "Woman of Mass Destruction" . Ms Dowd ripped into her own editor and into the Times's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, saying that before turning the Miller affair into a First Amendment freedom of speech struggle, they should have "nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade".

COUP DE GRÂCE

Then she delivers a coup de grâce to her long-time colleague: "Judy told the Times she ... intends to return to the newsroom 'hoping to cover the same thing I've always covered, the threat to country'."

But if that were to happen, Ms Dowd tells her readers, "the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands".

In fact, Ms Miller has surely already written her last story for the newspaper. But how secure is Mr Keller in the editor's chair? To be fair, the original mess did not occur on his watch. Mr Keller only took the helm in July 2003, two months after the war ended, and at a time when his first priority was to heal the wounds inflicted by the Jayson Blair affair.

But not only does yesterday's broadside from the Times's ombudsman, like Ms Dowd's, take Mr Keller and Mr Sulzberger to task for leaping to Ms Miller's defence without first demanding from her the facts. The ombudsman also berates the editor for waiting so long before publishing a mea culpa for the erroneous WMD reporting.

Mr Keller concedes that by waiting until May 2004 (15 months after the invasion), he fostered the impression that the Times - despite its reputation as America's supreme newspaper of record - was more concerned to shield its reporters from embarrassment than telling the truth. "Had I lanced the WMD boil earlier," he tells the ombudsman, "our critics might have been less inclined to suspect that this time [in the Miller affair], the paper was putting the defence of the reporter above the duty to its readers."

Objective souls at the White House - assuming such a breed exists - must today have thoughts along similar lines. For the underlying link between the turmoil at the Times and the outing of Valerie Plame, between the possibility that Messrs Rove, Libby and others may end up in court and history's judgement of this Bush presidency, is none other than "the WMD boil".

Had events in Iraq conformed to the neo-cons' dreams, the stakes would not have been so high. Joe Wilson would have long been a footnote of a footnote, Mr Bush's approval ratings would be buoyant, and the Times's current contortions would be no more than a storm in a media teacup.

But Iraq has not worked out as Mr Libby, Mr Rove, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the war-mongers naively imagined. Two-and-a-half years on, America is bogged down in a conflict that has cost the lives of almost 2,000 of its soldiers, and the country its reputation across the entire Islamic world and beyond, and of which no end is in sight.

Belatedly, a moment of accounting has arrived. Not in the mind of a President who cannot admit mistakes, but in the agony of a great newspaper, in the re-opening of old battles within the administration - and in the conclusions of a special prosecutor from Illinois who right now has the most powerful men in the world waiting helpless.

AND, WHO KNOWS, AS A RESULT OF IT ALL WE MAY EVEN LEARN WHY AMERICA WENT TO WAR IN MARCH 2003.

Nothing quite resembles the atmosphere just before a hurricane. A sense of foreboding hangs in the unnaturally warm and leaden air. Though the wind has not yet really picked up, ominous sea swells begin to batter the beaches. Those who cannot escape board up their houses and hope somehow that the inevitable storm will shift course at the 11th hour, sparing them the worst.

That, precisely, is the mood at the White House as the special prosecutor into the CIA leak affair prepares to deliver his conclusions. Outwardly it is business as usual: "a little background noise", and " people opining" was how George Bush tried to brush the matter aside last week. In truth, all Washington is holding its breath, and there is no mistaking the anxiety beneath the presidential bravado.

Nature's hurricanes, it has been said, begin with the flutter of a butterfly's wings somewhere over tropical Africa. The political storm poised to break here began scarcely more consequentially back on 14 July 2003, in a newspaper column that revealed the identity of a covert CIA operative called Valerie Plame.

She was, it transpired, the wife of a former US ambassador named Joseph Wilson, who had just emerged as a virulent critic of the war in Iraq and, in particular, of the White House's claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons. The deliberate leak of a CIA agent's name is a crime under US law, and Patrick Fitzgerald, a federal prosecutor from Chicago, was assigned to investigate the case, and a grand jury installed.

Mr Fitzgerald has now concluded his inquiry, and the little squall of two years ago threatens to strike Washington as a category 5 hurricane. The theory is that Ms Plame was "outed" by the Bush crowd, as an act of vengeance against her husband. It is widely predicted that Mr Fitzgerald will issue indictments against one or more very senior Bush administration officials, perhaps Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr Bush's most influential adviser, or Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who performs the same role for Vice-President Dick Cheney.

But not only is the summit of America's political establishment threatened. In his search for the truth, Mr Fitzgerald also sent Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times to jail for 85 days after she refused to reveal her sources for an article she was preparing on the Plame affair.

Among those sources, it emerged, was Mr Libby, a prime architect of the WMD case for war. As a result, America's most famous newspaper has been engulfed in a hurricane of its own. At one level, the tale is fiendishly complicated. But at heart it is very simple. The travails of the Bush White House and The New York Times stem from an issue that will not go away: why America went to war on a falsehood, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. As a profitless and ever-more unpopular conflict has dragged on, the controversy is corroding the entire presidency of George Bush.
To be sure, second terms have a habit of going awry - look no further than the Monica Lewinsky scandal for which Bill Clinton was impeached, and the Iran-Contra affair that came close to undoing Ronald Reagan.

But this time the stakes are far higher. On those two occasions, America was not at war. This time it is - and Mr Fitzgerald's legal inquiries are now part and parcel of the debate over the great unanswered question of the day: why did the US invade Iraq?

Washington's national security establishment right how is a pressure cooker about to blow. Last week, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to former secretary of state Colin Powell, publicly denounced the "cabal" between Vice-President Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, that effectively shut his former boss out of the decision-making process.

Today, in the New Yorker magazine, Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser, laments this administration's rush to war against Iraq, and the "anomaly" of Mr Cheney, with whom he worked so smoothly under the first President Bush when the US drove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. "I consider Dick Cheney a good friend," Mr Scowcroft ruminates. " I've known him for 30 years. But Dick Cheney I don't know anymore."

The words of the 80-year-old Bush family friend illuminate both the father-and-son strains between the 41st and 43rd presidents and the eternal argument over American foreign policy between the realists and the idealists, that has found new expression over the invasion of Iraq. Mr Scowcroft is an unabashed realist. For today's idealists, read neo-conservatives.

But if the White House trembles at what may soon to be, the Times is already consumed by civil war. "This is a very traumatic time for the paper, it is very troubling, very upsetting," the Times columnist Frank Rich acknowledged yesterday. Mr Rich, to be sure, has been one of the paper's most consistently outspoken opponents of the war. But his anguish is only in part over Ms Miller's flawed reporting on Saddam's non-existent WMD; it is also for an institution that is tearing itself apart on its own printed pages.

Famously, newspapers do not wash their dirty linen in public. But in the past couple of days, the tensions at the once demure "Grey Lady" have blown that convention to smithereens. Bill Keller, the Times's executive editor, has suggested Ms Miller "misled" the newspaper, and has criticised her "entanglement" with Mr Libby. Ms Miller tartly responded by branding Mr Keller's account of events "seriously misleading".

That same day Maureen Dowd, another Times columnist, most noted for her witty skewering of the Bush family, used her allotted space on the op-ed page to berate Ms Miller under the headline "Woman of Mass Destruction" . Ms Dowd ripped into her own editor and into the Times's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, saying that before turning the Miller affair into a First Amendment freedom of speech struggle, they should have "nailed her to a chair and extracted the entire story of her escapade". Then she delivers a coup de grace to her long-time colleague: "Judy told the Times she ... intends to return to the newsroom 'hoping to cover the same thing I've always covered, the threat to country'."

But if that were to happen, Ms Dowd tells her readers, "the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands".

In fact, Ms Miller has surely already written her last story for the newspaper. But how secure is Mr Keller in the editor's chair? To be fair, the original mess did not occur on his watch. Mr Keller only took the helm in July 2003, two months after the war ended, and at a time when his first priority was to heal the wounds inflicted by the Jayson Blair affair. But not only does yesterday's broadside from the Times's ombudsman, like Ms Dowd's, take Mr Keller and Mr Sulzberger to task for leaping to Ms Miller's defence without first demanding from her the facts. The ombudsman also berates the editor for waiting so long before publishing a mea culpa for the erroneous WMD reporting.

Mr Keller concedes that by waiting until May 2004 (15 months after the invasion), he fostered the impression that the Times - despite its reputation as America's supreme newspaper of record - was more concerned to shield its reporters from embarrassment than telling the truth. "Had I lanced the WMD boil earlier," he tells the ombudsman, "our critics might have been less inclined to suspect that this time [in the Miller affair], the paper was putting the defence of the reporter above the duty to its readers."

Objective souls at the White House - assuming such a breed exists - must today have thoughts along similar lines. For the underlying link between the turmoil at the Times and the outing of Valerie Plame, between the possibility that Messrs Rove, Libby and others may end up in court and history's judgement of this Bush presidency, is none other than "the WMD boil".

Had events in Iraq conformed to the neo-cons' dreams, the stakes would not have been so high. Joe Wilson would have long been a footnote of a footnote, Mr Bush's approval ratings would be buoyant, and the Times's current contortions would be no more than a storm in a media teacup.

BUT IRAQ HAS NOT WORKED OUT AS MR LIBBY, MR ROVE, PAUL WOLFOWITZ AND THE REST OF THE WAR-MONGERS NAIVELY IMAGINED.

Two-and-a-half years on, America is bogged down in a conflict that has cost the lives of almost 2,000 of its soldiers, and the country its reputation across the entire Islamic world and beyond, and of which no end is in sight.

Belatedly, a moment of accounting has arrived. Not in the mind of a President who cannot admit mistakes, but in the agony of a great newspaper, in the re-opening of old battles within the administration - and in the conclusions of a special prosecutor from Illinois who right now has the most powerful men in the world waiting helpless.

AND, WHO KNOWS, AS A RESULT OF IT ALL WE MAY EVEN LEARN WHY AMERICA WENT TO WAR IN MARCH 2003.

[ENDITEM] - THE INDEPENDENT - URL.: HTTP://TINYURL.COM/CDBM7

This should change your point of view, if you're not totally victimized by the matrix many live in.

With the main questions: Who profits? Who's guilty?*

The Matrix story can be found at - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cvzeb

YOU'LL UNDERSTAND REALITY - AND THE ROLE YOU PLAY IN LIFE - MUCH BETTER WHEN READING THIS BOOK: "AMERICA'S 'WAR ON TERRORISM' - by Michel Chossudovsky [ISBN 0-9737147-1-9] - Url.: http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html

AND CAREFULLY READING AND TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE INHUMANITY BEHIND THE MATRIX, AND THE STORIES BEHIND THE LINKS BELOW.

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

* FPF-HR - The Dutch author this far has worked abroad for international media for more than 4 decades, as a fully independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism.

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.:http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi(It.) Balkenende(NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.:http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/

* MSNBC - Poll: Ninety-four (94) percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/

* ''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report: ''Over 100.000 killed in the illegal Iraq war''-Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5gys7

* Bush interview. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6bal9

* Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2vmc8

* The must-see three-part BBC Documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," puts it bluntly: "Al-Qaeda is a (neocon) myth." - See Url.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html

* In Indonesia they steal millions, making and 'fighting' their own terror - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cq36f

* Wayne Madsen: ''What has Israel to do with 9/11?'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bj754 - 'American neocons' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/b5vsb - The US Federal Reserve and the private banks owning it - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/d3ntq


* Are their Corporate News Media Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

* Brainwashed? - Take the free 'Gullibility Factor' test to find out if you're really a mind slave, or not - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cbgnc

* Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel' - Url.:http://tinyurl.com/22p6c

* Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5k7vx

* American car magnate Henry Ford investigated 85 years ago the global problem - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2xz35

* Help all the troops of whatever nationality to come back from abroad! We need them badly at home in many countries - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE PAID FOR BY TAXES - to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

* The World Can't Wait! - Drive out the neocons and their 'Bush Regime' - Mobilize for November 2, 2005! - Url.: http://www.worldcantwait.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
-0-

The Lockerbie disaster was one big matrix media fake

The Sunday Times October 23, 2005

Focus: Was justice done?

A HUSH fell over the room as Lord Fraser of Carmyllie steeled himself for the most dramatic announcement of his life. In the august, dark wood-panelled rooms of the Crown Office in Edinburgh, the then Lord Advocate revealed the names of those accused of one of the world’s worst terrorist atrocities.

Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, agents of the Libyan intelligence service, were wanted on charges of murder and conspiracy to murder for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over the Dumfriesshire town of Lockerbie on December 21, 1988, with the loss of 270 lives.

“Warrants have been issued,” Fraser revealed to the world’s media packed into the cramped room. “The two accused should surrender themselves for trial.” Fifteen years on, Fraser should be reflecting on the successful administration of justice. Following an unprecedented trial heard by three Scottish judges sitting in the Netherlands, one of the two Libyans, Megrahi, is now languishing in a Scottish jail, serving a life sentence for the crime. His co-accused was cleared of involvement.

As Scotland’s most senior legal officer when Megrahi was indicted, Fraser played a crucial role in bringing the Libyan to book. Yet he has now joined a growing number of people to voice disquiet about the legal proceedings which resulted in the subsequent conviction.

Fraser’s apparent concern over the reliability of Tony Gauci, the principal witness in the trial upon whose evidence the case against Megrahi hung, follows a recent steady drip of “revelations” which have stoked the fires of conspiracy.
That Megrahi’s appeal to the Scottish criminal cases review commission is imminent is perhaps no coincidence but some of the new evidence appears more compelling than that presented at his trial and subsequent appeal.

The Crown’s case rested on a theory that the Lockerbie bomb was hidden inside a Toshiba radio-cassette player packed inside a Samsonite suitcase and wrapped in clothing. Fingertip searches of the crash site found remains of these items covered in explosive residue. Investigators claimed both the suitcase and clothing were linked to Megrahi. However, earlier this year a senior Scottish police officer, now retired, was reported to have accused American intelligence agents of planting a circuit board fragment, identified as part of a sophisticated explosive timing device made by Swiss firm Mebo and only supplied to Libya and the East German Stasi. The officer has given a statement to Megrahi’s lawyers.

The commission will also be asked to consider the reliability of Allen Feraday, an expert forensic scientist who confirmed the circuit board fragment was part of a detonator. At least three other convictions in which Feraday gave evidence have been quashed.

The commission will also be asked to consider apparent anomalies suggesting that forensic evidence presented by the Crown came from tests conducted months after the terror attack. To prove that the bomb was inside the case, investigators set off a series of explosions using an identical suitcase and contents to check how they would be damaged. Megrahi’s lawyers believe material produced during the tests was presented to the court as if it were the original suitcase.

Earlier this month it was reported that the British, American and Libyan governments were negotiating the transfer of Megrahi to a prison in his home country on the condition that he drops his appeal. It was a proviso of his conviction that he serve his 27-year jail term in Scotland.

Such a deal would suggest the British and American governments would prefer the case was not reopened, especially given that a successful appeal could sour their new détente with Libya and would prove highly embarrassing for the Scottish judicial system.

Fraser’s intervention raises fresh questions about the reliability of evidence presented by Gauci, a Maltese shopkeeper who claimed he sold Megrahi the clothes that were wrapped around the bomb.

Megrahi was charged following an international investigation co-ordinated by detectives from Dumfries and Galloway police. During their three-year investigation, and with help from police and intelligence forces around the world, they interviewed 15,000 witnesses, checked 20,000 names and analysed 180,000 pieces of evidence.

They discovered Megrahi had travelled from Tripoli to Malta on December 20, the day the suitcase containing the bomb and clothing was believed to have taken the same route. It was subsequently packed onto a plane bound for Frankfurt and then Heathrow.

“The Crown had a situation because it was quite clear Megrahi had travelled from Tripoli to Malta on the 20th and back on the 21st but they couldn’t establish what he had done in Malta or that he had done anything untoward,” said a source who followed the case closely.

In interviews with detectives Gauci repeatedly described the man who bought the clothes from his shop, Mary’s House, in the Maltese capital, Sliema, as 6ft tall and around 50 years old, while Megrahi is 5ft 8in tall and was 36 in 1988.

Gauci also claimed that Megrahi stuck in his mind because he appeared to pay no attention to sizes. However Gauci also picked out Mohammed Abu Talb, a convicted terrorist, from a newspaper photograph, as the man who bought the clothes. Like Megrahi, Talb travelled to Malta late in 1988, close to the time when the clothing was purchased yet, despite the discrepancy, Gauci’s evidence was accepted by the trial judges.

Fraser was a prominent Conservative figure in the 1980s and 1990s, appointed solicitor-general by Margaret Thatcher in 1982 and later made minister of state in the Scottish Office, where he served as health minister. Last year he was appointed by Jack McConnell to head an independent inquiry into the Holyrood parliament building debacle.

As early as November 1991 Fraser publicly denied speculation that investigators into the Lockerbie bombing had been placed under political pressure not to implicate countries such as Syria and Iran.

“Speculative pieces have come dismayingly close to impugning the integrity of the investigation which led to the issue of warrants,” he said at the time, dismissing suggestions that the charges had been “restricted to meet what might be perceived as changing political expedience”. He added: “The judicial process has begun and I insist, simply and bluntly, that these two men be brought to face trial.”

Among the theories which have competed with the explanation that Megrahi carried out the atrocity singlehandedly is that the bombers were agents of the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command.
Some even claim the attack was sponsored by Iran in revenge for the shooting down of an Iranian civilian airliner by the American warship USS Vincennes in July 1988 killing all 290 passengers and crew on board.

William Taylor QC, Megrahi’s defence advocate, said Fraser’s latest comments are highly significant.

“For the first time in my life I find myself in agreement with Lord Fraser,” he said. “I’ve always held the opinion that Megrahi did not purchase clothing in Mary’s House.

“Without that there was insufficient evidence to convict him.

“[Gauci] made so many errors between the descriptions he gave of the man who bought the clothing at the time and his identification some 14 years later. To say that the evidence could in any way, shape or form be relied upon struck me as being beyond belief.”

Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP instrumental in organising the trial at Camp Zeist, described Fraser’s comments as an “extraordinary development”.

“I think there is an obligation for the chairman and members of the Scottish criminal review body to ask Lord Fraser to see them and testify under oath — it’s that serious,” he said.

“Fraser should have said this at the time and if not then, he was under a moral obligation to do so before the trial at Zeist. I think there will be all sorts of consequences.”

Lisa Mosey, whose 19-year-old daughter, Helga, was one of the victims, said: “I think it’s an amazing thing for him to say. I’m surprised. “The trial of Megrahi did not convince us of his guilt, it left more questions than answers. I hope this encourages the commission to review Megrahi’s appeal.”

Professor Robert Black, emeritus professor of Scots law at Edinburgh university also believes Fraser’s apparent shift is important. “It’s very interesting that someone who was Lord Advocate, the man who, with the attorney-general of the United States, said ‘we know who did it’ is clearly less confident now than he was back then. I am always pleased at any sign of people coming round to the view of Lockerbie which I have held since the trial.”

Meanwhile in Greenock prison, as Megrahi whiles away the hours in his cell, where he is said to enjoy a range of perks including unlimited telephone calls and access to Arabic television, he may take some comfort from Lord Fraser’s comments.

While Fraser is this weekend being criticised for failing to voice his concerns sooner, Megrahi, who faces at least another two decades in jail, can only wait and watch, and perhaps allow himself a small hope. The Libyan may even dare to believe that freedom is within his grasp. For those convinced of his innocence, justice may yet prevail.

[enditem]

2005 Times Newspapers Ltd. - The Times - Scotland - Url.: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2090-1839039,00.html

How matrix media work - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/8g3dp

Earlier text:

FPF: The general manager of Al Arabiya television

Disinformation: What's Syria's Next Move

Sun Oct 23, 2005 12:27

Concerns: What's Syria's Next Move* - an item by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed

''Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven''

The general manager of Al Arabiya television, Mr. Al Rashed is also the former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al- Awsat, and the leading Arabic weekly magazine, Al Majalla. He is also a senior Columnist in the daily newspapers of Al Madina and Al Bilad.

He is a US post-graduate degree in mass communications. He has been a guest on many TV current affairs programs. He is currently based in Dubai. - [And writes this lousy story. I wonder who's paying. - HR]

Mr. Al Rashed:

In your article - which I do not agree with because it contains very much disinformation - you write the following: "the existence of clear evidence against Syria similar to the evidence of Libya's involvement in the Lockerbie bombing."

IS THIS WHAT YOU MEAN, AS PUBLISHED IN THE UK: "POLICE CHIEF - LOCKERBIE EVIDENCE WAS FAKED"

The Scotsman by the way, is a rather conservative newspaper - Url.: http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1855852005

This is the bad reality, which you - certainly with your job - should/must know, and either you're an ignorant, or you keep silent. Both is a shame.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm
Lockerbie - as I wrote in Holland - is a $2.7 billion Sham and Shame

UN quote: "This has been a political court case, where the verdict already was decided upon in advance", a shocked Professor Köchler - UN-observer at the Scottish Lockerbie Court in the Netherlands - stated.
"A SPECTACULAR MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE " THE UN OBSERVER CALLED IT. 

Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm

This should change your point of view, if you're not totally victimized by the matrix many live in.

With the main questions: Who profits? Who's guilty?*

The Matrix story can be found at - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cvzeb

YOU'LL UNDERSTAND REALITY - AND THE ROLE YOU PLAY IN LIFE - MUCH BETTER WHEN READING THIS BOOK: "AMERICA'S 'WAR ON TERRORISM' - by Michel Chossudovsky [ISBN 0-9737147-1-9] - Url.:
http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html

AND CAREFULLY READING AND TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE INHUMANITY BEHIND THE MATRIX, AND THE STORIES BEHIND THE LINKS BELOW.

In case you feel like answering:

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

* Syria's Next Move - by Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed - Url.: http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=2308

* FPF-HR - The Dutch author this far has worked abroad for international media for more than 4 decades, as a fully independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism.

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.:http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi(It.) Balkenende(NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.:http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/

* MSNBC - Poll: Ninety-four (94) percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/

* ''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report: ''Over 100.000 killed in the illegal Iraq war''-Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5gys7

* Bush interview. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6bal9

* Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2vmc8

* The must-see three-part BBC Documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," puts it bluntly: "Al-Qaeda is a (neocon) myth." - See Url.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html

* In Indonesia they steal millions, making and 'fighting' their own terror - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cq36f

* Wayne Madsen: ''What has Israel to do with 9/11?'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bj754 - 'American neocons' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/b5vsb - The US Federal Reserve and the private banks owning it - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/d3ntq

* Are their Corporate News Media Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

* Brainwashed? - Take the free 'Gullibility Factor' test to find out if you're really a mind slave, or not - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cbgnc

* Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel' - Url.:http://tinyurl.com/22p6c

* Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5k7vx

* American car magnate Henry Ford investigated 85 years ago the global problem - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2xz35

* Help all the troops of whatever nationality to come back from abroad! We need them badly at home in many countries - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE PAID FOR BY TAXES - to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

* The World Can't Wait! - Drive out the neocons and their 'Bush Regime' - Mobilize for November 2, 2005! - Url.: http://www.worldcantwait.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html

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Lord advocate Fraser: my Lockerbie trial doubts

This the Lockerbie reality - Url.: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4460.htm

The Sunday Times - England - October 23, 2005

"not entirely happy with the evidence"

by Mark Macaskill

LORD Fraser of Carmyllie, the former lord advocate who issued the arrest warrant for the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, has cast doubt on the reliability of the main witness in the trial.

The former Conservative minister described Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper whose testimony was central in securing a conviction against Abdelbasset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, as “not quite the full shilling” and “an apple short of a picnic”.

Fraser, who as Scotland’s senior law officer was responsible for indicting Megrahi, says he is now not entirely happy with the evidence against Megrahi during his trial in 2001 and in his subsequent appeal.

While making clear that this does not mean that he believes Megrahi was innocent of the 1988 atrocity, in which 270 people were killed, Fraser said he should be free to leave Scotland to serve the remainder of his sentence in Libya.

His intervention is the most significant yet in a series of developments that have cast doubt on the safety of the conviction against Megrahi.

Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie on December 21, 1988 after an explosion in the cargo hold. Megrahi was sentenced to 27 years following a trial presided over by three Scottish judges in the Netherlands. A condition of his sentence was that he served the full term in Scotland. His co- accused, Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was cleared.

Lawyers acting for the former intelligence officer and head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines have since claimed to have uncovered anomalies suggesting that vital evidence presented at the trial came from tests conducted months after the terror attack. The new evidence is due to be presented in an appeal to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission next year.

Earlier this month it was reported that officials from Britain, America and Libya had met to discuss moving Megrahi back to Libya on the condition that the appeal is dropped.

A key plank in the case against Megrahi was provided by Gauci who claimed that he sold Megrahi clothes that were believed to have been wrapped around the bomb. Fraser said that he believes Gauci was a “weak point” in the case and has expressed concern that he was a “simple” man who might have been “easily led”.

“Gauci was not quite the full shilling. I think even his family would say (that he) was an apple short of a picnic. He was quite a tricky guy, I don’t think he was deliberately lying but if you asked him the same question three times he would just get irritated and refuse to answer,” he said.

“You do have to worry, he’s a slightly simple chap, are you putting words in his mouth even if you don’t intend to?” Fraser said he has been invited to Tripoli to meet Colonel Gadaffi after the Libyan leader learnt of his views but, so far, he has declined.

“I wasn’t particularly impressed with his defence. Their techniques of muddle and confusion can work for a jury but it doesn’t work for three judges,” he said.

Fraser said he believes that Megrahi should now be free to return to his native Libya to see out the remainder of his sentence.

“The transfer of prisoners is quite common but it’s important that you follow the rules of the transferring country. If he is transferred to any country I would expect him to serve out the sentence that the Scottish court imposed,” Fraser said.

William Taylor QC, the man who led Megrahi’s defence, said Fraser should never have presented Gauci as a crown witness: “A man who has a public office, who is prosecuting in the criminal courts in Scotland, has got a duty to put forward evidence based upon people he considers to be reliable.

“He was prepared to advance Gauci as a witness and, if he had these misgivings about him, they should have surfaced at the time.

“The fact that he is now coming out many years later after my former client has been in prison for nearly 41⁄2 years is nothing short of disgraceful.”

Jim Swire, spokesman for the families of victims and who lost his daughter Flora in the atrocity, said: “Lord Fraser had detailed knowledge of events and I think we have to take seriously anything he says now that is relevant to those who gave evidence at Zeist.

It is significant that a man who has been as close as he has to the investigation should be making comments like this.”

Gauci said; “I am not interested in what this man said. What matters to me is what the court said and that’s it. That’s all I have to say.”

All the members of Megrahi’s defence team were approached but have declined to comment.

[enditem] - 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd. - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cxflh

FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/66dmo
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl

* FPF-HR - The Dutch author this far has worked abroad for international media for more than 4 decades, as a fully independent foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism.

* The Nuremberg principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/byurp

* 'The war in Iraq is illegal' - BBC: video & text-interview of the United Nation's Secretary General Kofi Annan - Url.:http://tinyurl.com/5pl2v

* The leaked 'Downing Street Memos' expose the criminal lies by war criminals like Bush, Blair, Berlusconi(It.) Balkenende(NL) - their collaborating media and other malignant ilk - Url.:http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/

* MSNBC - Poll: Ninety-four (94) percent believes that George Bush and the neocon media mislead the nation to go to war with Iraq - Url.: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8248969/

* ''The Lancet'' and the ''Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health'' report: ''Over 100.000 killed in
the illegal Iraq war''-Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5gys7

* Bush interview. ABC: No WMD's but many killed: "It was worth it" - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/6bal9

* Former Secr. of State Madeleine Albright in her comment on half a million dead children in Iraq: "We think it's worth it" On CBS 60' Minutes - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2vmc8

* The must-see three-part BBC Documentary, "The Power of Nightmares," puts it bluntly: "Al-Qaeda is a (neocon) myth." - See Url.: http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html

* In Indonesia they steal millions, making and 'fighting' their own terror - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cq36f

* Wayne Madsen: ''What has Israel to do with 9/11?'' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/bj754 - 'American neocons' - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/b5vsb - The US Federal Reserve and the private banks owning it - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/d3ntq

* Are their Corporate News Media Incompetent, Criminally Negligent or Complicit? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cqpfe

* Brainwashed? - Take the free 'Gullibility Factor' test to find out if you're really a mind slave, or not - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/cbgnc

* Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel' - Url.:http://tinyurl.com/22p6c

* Neoconservatism as a Jewish Movement - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5k7vx

* American car magnate Henry Ford investigated 85 years ago the global problem - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/2xz35

* Help all the troops of whatever nationality to come back from abroad! We need them badly at home in many countries - AND WITH ALL THEIR WEAPONS, WHICH WE PAID FOR BY TAXES - to fight with us against our so called 'governments' and their malignant managers - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

* The World Can't Wait! - Drive out the neocons and their 'Bush Regime' - Mobilize for November 2, 2005! - Url.: http://www.worldcantwait.org/

FPF-COPYRIGHT NOTICE - In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107 - any copyrighted work in this message is distributed by the Foreign Press Foundation under fair use, without profit or payment, to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the information. Url.: http://liimirror.warwick.ac.uk/uscode/17/107.html
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