Lockerbie.2023
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00:00The following program contains distressing scenes.
00:19That night, we wondered why they were coming racing through
00:22from one field to another.
00:25We thought, what is scared the sheep?
00:31We were very lucky there was no sheep killed with all the...
00:35Everything that came down. ..everything coming down.
00:50This is the red suitcase that was quite the thing to see.
00:55Well, there's the house.
00:57And that's how near it was.
00:59And these things were all in the front of the house.
01:02Yeah.
01:05It's a trolley, I think, a foot trolley.
01:08Yeah.
01:10Yeah.
01:13And that was the door...
01:17..that we found.
01:18Yeah.
01:21You just thought, just a few hours before,
01:24they'd all gone in that door, hadn't they?
01:27And here it's lying amongst them.
01:30Yeah.
01:35Pan Am Flight 103 crashed into the Scottish village of Wackerby.
01:39270 lives lost.
01:41It was Britain's worst ever air crash.
01:44We have no knowledge of how this accident happened.
01:48We're trying to find out.
01:50It was an attack on America.
01:52Largest crime scene in history.
01:53200,000 pieces of evidence.
01:55My daughter hadn't just died in an accident,
01:57but had been brutally murdered.
01:59They killed our children.
02:00To be lied to for 30 years.
02:02I think the US government had an agenda.
02:04Reagan is the biggest terrorist in the world.
02:07If it's up to our government, we might not ever know the truth.
02:14Nothing is what it seems in Lockerbie's story.
02:25Come on.
02:30Come on.
02:33Sit. That's a good boy.
02:35You stay there.
02:36You stay there, OK?
02:39Both my grannies came from the Isle of Skye.
02:42And Flora, my daughter Flora, was very fond of Skye.
02:46She used to come up here whenever she could.
02:50That's a picture of her just behind you on the wall over there, isn't it?
02:54That is her attending the Skye Ball.
02:59She was a very striking girl.
03:02Very easy to talk to and to get to know.
03:06And she used to make her own dresses.
03:09And not because I pushed her, but she finally decided to go into medicine
03:14and she was actually part way through her medical training.
03:19She was just on the eve of her 24th birthday that year, 1988.
03:27She rang up to ask us if we minded if she went over to America
03:32to meet her boyfriend over Christmas.
03:35And, of course, not being total ogres, we said,
03:39yes, if that's what you want to do.
03:42Everything was booked up,
03:44everything was booked up, except there were plenty of seats available
03:48on a certain flight known as Pan Am 1A3,
03:53which is why we're talking now.
04:06Before, you know, 1988, no one had really ever heard of Lockerbie.
04:12It was dotted on the A74 on the way to Glasgow.
04:16You might have had a stop in at the chip shop for a bite to eat, maybe.
04:23Life here was just undramatic.
04:29The 21st of December, 1988, will stay with me forever.
04:37It was three months into my police career.
04:41I was just about to turn 19
04:43and I happened to be the youngest recruit in Scotland at the time.
04:49And I was just about to turn 19,
04:51and I happened to be the youngest recruit in Scotland at the time.
04:56I got into the car about 20 to 7 to be at a Christmas party
05:01just outside the town.
05:05We were actually plucking turkeys for Christmas.
05:08So we had help and we were all sitting round the table
05:11having our supper through in the kitchen.
05:14It was a dark, windy night.
05:16A windy night, yes.
05:19I was only 17.
05:21I was only 17.
05:23Well, basically, we were just sitting there watching the television.
05:27My father was away getting a turkey for Christmas.
05:32I think we were watching This Is Your Life.
05:38Well, that night, we had tea.
05:42We were sitting watching TV.
05:45Now, we're planning to give a Christmas surprise
05:47Now, we're planning to give a Christmas surprise
05:49to the man who 40 years ago
05:51brought this lovable character to life.
05:54And it was three minutes past seven.
05:59And I can always remember three minutes past seven that night.
06:03And I'm here to say, Harry Corbett, This Is Your Life.
06:13I heard this loud noise.
06:17We heard it like bang, bang, bang.
06:22And the pheasants were shouting.
06:26So we all jumped up, looked out the window.
06:28And I looked out the window
06:30and there were this bright red flames in the sky.
06:36There was like a great big mushroom ball of fire
06:39that all you could see and the thing just over the hill
06:41that was just sort of coming out of the locker room.
06:44All of a sudden, outside the rear entrance of the house,
06:48there was a huge explosion outside.
06:53Everything was in darkness.
06:55So I managed to get through to the kitchen.
06:58I managed to find a torch.
07:00And there were rubble, there were stones, there were soil, everything.
07:05There was glass. The windows all blew in.
07:09And I shone the torch outside.
07:12Oh, my God, unbelievable.
07:15There were bodies all over the place, everywhere.
07:21And I shone the torch on the hedge.
07:24And this young girl was over the hedge,
07:28lying over the hedge with one shoe on.
07:31I could always remember that.
07:35One high-heeled shoe.
07:43Constable, fire.
07:45Casualty at north.
07:57This incident is in bad place. Locker bay.
08:00Here is gas explosion.
08:02Doctor and ambulance required.
08:05Doctor and ambulance is helping in town, over.
08:07Message reached from fireman Greasy.
08:09Code 10. Over.
08:11I thought I was witnessing some kind of chemical tanker crash
08:15on the A-74 ahead of me.
08:20And then a sergeant emerged out of the smoke and he said,
08:24Colin, there's a huge hole in the road in Sherwood Crescent.
08:27You'd better go to the police station and sign on.
08:33We thought it was a military aircraft,
08:35because they were still practising in the dark, you see.
08:39And we just thought, oh, my goodness, one of them boys have crashed.
09:01People were completely numb and confused.
09:07Why was there a huge explosion at one end of the town
09:10and why was the other end of the town also affected?
09:16It didn't initially make any sense.
09:21After supper, we just set off down the hill.
09:25Here's stuff lying on the side of the road.
09:30And we had took one look and we thought,
09:32this has been no military plane.
09:35We could tell it must have been a passenger.
09:43And you were guessing how many people maybe was on that plane
09:47and you would think, my goodness,
09:49how many hundreds of people are in mourning right now.
09:56Before we go, we have an unconfirmed report
09:58from the Ministry of Defence that a Boeing 747 airliner,
10:01we know only that it's a civilian airliner,
10:03has crashed in the Lockerbie area of Dumfriesshire.
10:07We don't know what airline,
10:09but the report makes it plain that it is a civilian airliner.
10:13I was making a Christmas calendar to send out to members of the family
10:18and I was suddenly and abruptly called by my wife, Jane,
10:22because on the television was this message
10:25about a terrible disaster happening in the borders
10:28between Scotland and England.
10:31And Jane concluded immediately that Flora was on that plane.
10:49The radio reported that a Pan American flight
10:53had disappeared from radar, Flight 103.
11:01And I said to my mother,
11:03oh, that's the flight that John's going to come home on tomorrow.
11:09And I said, you know, those families,
11:12they're never going to be the same again.
11:16And...
11:20And so everybody bowed their head
11:23and we just had our moment of silence and a bit of a prayer.
11:31And I didn't realise that, you know,
11:34I was really praying for myself and my family
11:38and I never imagined that, you know,
11:42this was something that I would ever be a part of.
11:53I was working for Radio 4 in Edinburgh.
11:56Fortunately, I found someone in the radio station
11:58who comes from the area and was able to navigate me
12:02right into the middle of the town.
12:05So you were one of the first journalists on the ground?
12:08Yeah, I would imagine so, yes.
12:12The first thing you notice,
12:14there's an overwhelming stink of aviation fuel
12:18filled the whole town.
12:20And it was such a bizarre scene because it was so close to Christmas.
12:25There was no electricity, obviously,
12:27all the lights in the houses were out,
12:29but the light of the flames,
12:31you could quite clearly see Christmas trees
12:33and Christmas decorations.
12:37It was really hard to comprehend exactly what had happened.
12:44I mean, imagine when they said,
12:46oh, the golf course is covered in bodies, apparently.
12:50You're kind of built in to dismiss that,
12:54and you think, oh, that can't be true.
12:56You know, it's obviously just small-town exaggeration.
12:59And, of course, it's exactly what had happened.
13:02The golf course was covered in bodies.
13:08There have been no survivors reported from the crashed aircraft,
13:13and we're waiting for Dr Hill to give us an official stand-down.
13:18He's not prepared to do so
13:20because they still have several helicopters
13:22out in the area bringing in casualties.
13:26But so far, as I can make out,
13:29these casualties are corpses.
13:33And I think we could quite safely say
13:35to those who have turned up voluntarily,
13:38we probably won't require their services,
13:40and thank you very much for coming out.
13:53A few days later...
14:01Very early on in the morning, not long after dawn had broken,
14:05we flew out to Lockerbie.
14:09There's an enormous hole in the ground
14:12where Pan Am Flight 103
14:14is thought to have made its first contact with the ground.
14:18It must be about 30 feet deep,
14:20and on either side of the hole,
14:22houses are absolutely shattered.
14:25And as we move over Lockerbie,
14:28you can see that there's a massive hole in the ground
14:31where Pan Am Flight 103 is thought to have made its first contact
14:35And as we move over Lockerbie,
14:37you can see the trail of devastation
14:39wreaked by the 747
14:41as it bounced and burned its way across the town.
14:48We're now flying right out along the trail
14:50of the wreckage and debris.
14:54The fields here are littered with what are easily as recognisable
14:58as parts of the fuselage and wings of the 747,
15:03stretching out in a seemingly straight line of death.
15:10I've been told that the crew were found
15:13strapped in their seats in the cockpit.
15:19Gosh.
15:25Yeah, it was, you know, an image you just won't forget.
15:30And we were low enough to, you know, to quite clearly see features
15:35and see that people were, to all intents and purposes,
15:39just, you know, sitting out in the grass,
15:41but of course they were all dead.
15:49The bodies we found would be the furthest from Lockerbie,
15:54the furthest away from the crash site.
15:58It looked like a young person,
16:00full head of hair.
16:02Black hair.
16:03Black, shiny hair, yeah.
16:08He was lying on the ground with the seat on top of him.
16:14He desperately wanted to know who he was.
16:18And we were thinking about a young wife,
16:21maybe children, parents, you know.
16:26He started trying to put a picture together.
16:31We developed quite a love for our boy who called him.
16:36You know, we didn't know who he was at all.
16:43But he got attached to him some way.
16:49For nearly 24 hours, we were keeping an eye on him up there, you know.
16:56It was about three o'clock in the afternoon, the next afternoon,
17:00before they came for their man.
17:12My father come back past Tundergarth Church,
17:15where the cockpit was, and he said that we would go out and see.
17:26People were going home for Christmas,
17:28so there was Christmas presents and luggage,
17:31and obviously the bodies.
17:39We found the toddler just over that hedge in the next field.
17:46She was just this little girl with blonde, blonde hair.
17:49It's the one thing that sticks in my mind.
17:56My father didn't want the bodies getting attacked by foxes or wildlife.
18:03We were out in the pick-up truck, and we just lifted them
18:06and took them into the locker room.
18:09We were trying to do what we could do to help.
18:13Police and the rescue services have so far recovered about 150 bodies.
18:1860 of them were found on a golf course,
18:20about 40 others found in a housing estate,
18:23and again about another 50 in another housing estate.
18:27So far, most of the bodies lie where police and the rescue services found them,
18:30covered by tarpaulins.
18:34My father, he never really talked about it.
18:38I suppose the death and the bodies maybe just affected him a bit more,
18:42that's what it was.
18:45But in them days, it was just basically you had to get on and deal with it yourself.
18:50It was just what it was.
18:54MUSIC
19:08I don't know what made me take the camera.
19:14Maybe people think it's horrific, something to do, you know,
19:18but it was just for myself, you know.
19:24I can say to people that that was my house at the time of the disaster.
19:33Part of the aircraft came from right back of here
19:39and it was catapulted right up into here.
19:44Oh, my gosh.
19:46And that's Ella Ramson's house.
19:49But up in the apex, there were a body still in the seat.
19:57Up there.
20:02MUSIC
20:06MUSIC
20:16Put me at Ella Ramson's house?
20:19Not in here. Just stay in Windier.
20:23That's it.
20:28Memories of the night disaster came to No. 71 Park Place
20:31will never leave the woman who lived there.
20:34Ella Ramson scrambled from the wreckage, clutching her dog.
20:38Her budgie was rescued later by a fireman.
20:42I'm so sorry for the people that have died and their families.
20:47More difficult for them. I've only lost a house, that's all.
20:55On the 21st of December, seven o'clock,
21:00I go out there.
21:02Always have done.
21:06And I can always see that.
21:10I can always see that body shown the torch on.
21:15I just...
21:18I can always do that.
21:21I always will.
21:25It's now more than 12 hours since Britain's worst air disaster.
21:29It's now known that 258 people died on the plane.
21:3411 local people, including three children, are still missing
21:37and are now presumed dead.
21:40As far as I know, I've lost my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law,
21:45and their house is just a 30-foot crater.
21:49I can't even find the house. It's gone, like...
21:54In Sherwood Crescent, where the wing full of aviation fuel
21:59hit the ground and exploded,
22:02that's where the people on the ground were killed.
22:07And, of course, some of the bodies were never found.
22:10They were completely vaporised.
22:13The houses were vaporised, such is the intensity of the explosion.
22:18It is even worse in daylight
22:21than it looked on television at night.
22:24The number of houses that are damaged,
22:27and the people in them must have wondered
22:30just whatever was happening, as indeed the people in the aircraft
22:34must have had this, well...
22:37It was just terrible.
22:41People get on planes like we,
22:44people get on planes like we used to take buses when I was a child.
22:50And so we never saw any danger in Flora going to America.
22:58They put a number up, do you know the way it is?
23:03Heathrow, I couldn't get through to at all.
23:07And eventually we ended up ringing the Pan Am desk in New York.
23:11They were able to tell us that Flora was on that flight.
23:17And at the same time you could hear chaos in the background
23:21and you could hear women screaming.
23:24My baby!
23:33A lot of American families had congregated at JFK airport
23:38to get the latest news on this crash
23:41because most of the victims were American.
23:44I turned the TV back on and there was an 800 number
23:48that said, you know, to call that number, and it was busy, busy.
23:55And then finally I got through,
23:59and I was able to get through to the Pan Am desk.
24:03I was able to get through to the Pan Am desk.
24:07I was able to get through to the Pan Am desk.
24:10And finally I got through.
24:15I said, you know, I've been told my husband was on this flight.
24:19What's his name? What's his nationality?
24:22And I'm desperate, you know, I'm saying,
24:24why are you asking me all these questions?
24:26I just need to know, was John Kumok on the flight or wasn't he?
24:29And they started taking all this different information
24:33and they said, well, we really, we can't confirm anything right now.
24:37I said, so you can't confirm if he was on the flight?
24:40And you can't confirm that this plane has crashed?
24:44And they said, no, we're just taking information right now.
24:49And I said, how cruel is this?
24:52I said, you know, I have three little children.
25:02John happened to be in London on business.
25:05And every day we would always talk.
25:10He had called me first thing on December 21st.
25:15We had talked about preparation for Christmas
25:18and the kids, you know, waiting for Santa and Daddy to come home.
25:22And it was also going to be when we were going to be celebrating
25:26our youngest daughter's third birthday.
25:28He made no mention that he was going to be changing his plans
25:33and trying to come home early and surprise us.
25:38Now, America's number one primetime news.
25:43Evening, everyone. James Adams with Angela Robinson.
25:46Thanks for joining us. Morris is off tonight.
25:49It was literally raining fire.
25:51Of course, in the media, everything was about the flames and the wreckage.
25:55With more than 250 people on board.
25:58And in the foreground was all debris.
26:01And there were, you know, bodies covered with orange tarps.
26:05And in the right side of the foreground was a brown attache case.
26:13I had given John that attache case for our anniversary
26:17on August 23rd of that year.
26:20So that photograph solidified to me that he was going to be
26:23on board the plane.
26:29That's how really my, was the beginning of my nightmare.
26:54Generally speaking, 747s don't fall out of the sky.
26:59So the first suspicion was something bad happened to that plane.
27:06The FBI, we had somebody in charge of the investigation.
27:11That was me.
27:14I just wanted to actually start, I just wanted to show you these pictures.
27:18These were actually taken by a colleague.
27:20Oh, yeah, I know about these pictures.
27:23Some of them.
27:32Remember sitting in the seats, yeah?
27:37But that shoe, we had a picture of that shoe
27:41on our office wall in Washington.
27:44Sort of a reminder.
27:46We weren't doing this for ourselves, we were doing it for them.
27:51And we devoted resources to finding out what happened.
28:00We have a requirement to obtain the very best evidence that we can
28:05to allow us to try and find a cause of the accident,
28:09or if it is an accident.
28:12To do that, we have to carry out an investigation.
28:14To do that, we have to carry out a very meticulous search.
28:18Scottish police had resources.
28:21They were a very civilized, well-trained, excellent police agency.
28:26Hundreds of police from forces throughout Scotland
28:29are now involved in the search for debris.
28:32Reports are coming in from far and wide of further sightings.
28:35From the very first night, they treated it like a crime scene
28:40with the goal of first bringing in all of the bodies
28:44and all the aircraft parts.
28:48So we asked, we would like to work with you,
28:51recognizing they are in charge of the investigation.
28:55And the FBI is not used to not being in charge.
28:58I have been appointed as the investigator in charge
29:02for this particular accident.
29:05There obviously are a number of potential causes
29:07for an in-flight breakup.
29:10We are looking for evidence to try and find the point
29:14at which things first started to go wrong.
29:20Pan Am Flight 103 began in Frankfurt.
29:23Then passengers changed planes at Heathrow
29:26for the flight on to New York.
29:28Over Lockerbie, the crew went silent.
29:30It didn't look as though the pilot was in any particular trouble,
29:33no trouble at all.
29:34They were having normal conversations
29:36and then suddenly the plane disappeared.
29:39The aircraft was flying at a bearing of about 320 degrees,
29:43kind of northwest-ish at 31,000 feet.
29:487.02 in a few seconds,
29:51the nose cone rips off the front of the aircraft.
29:55The investigators will want to see if there was any evidence
29:58of a sudden cabin depressurization
30:01that could be caused by a massive technical failure
30:02or by a bomb explosion.
30:05Whatever happened to this plane may have started about in here,
30:09an area of the plane where a cargo hold runs underneath.
30:12At that point, it starts to plummet and dive
30:16directly towards the town.
30:19But because it was quite windy that night,
30:21as the aircraft breaks up,
30:23the lighter things blew much further east,
30:26so the debris field extended, in fact,
30:29as far as the east coast of England,
30:30right into Northumbria.
30:34All of that debris field had to be searched systematically,
30:39field by field, tree by tree.
30:42600-plus searchers had to gather each morning.
30:48It was humongous.
30:52845 square miles.
30:56The largest crime scene in history.
30:59I want to express our sorrow and our concern
31:03for the families and friends of those who died
31:06in the crash of the Pan American Flight 103.
31:10Christmas is a special time for the young,
31:13for those who carry the twin promises of hopes and dreams.
31:17And on this flight were the hopes and dreams
31:19of many young people,
31:21including the tragic loss of so many students
31:24from Syracuse University.
31:25A tragedy that steals the hopes and dreams from our society
31:29magnifies the loss to our society.
31:33May God be with them.
31:35It's half past three this afternoon.
31:38The temporary mortuary at Town Hall is now full.
31:43And we have opened a second mortuary at the ice rink
31:46at Lockerbie.
31:48We're going to be at the ice rink
31:51at the end of the day.
31:53We're going to be at the ice rink
31:56at the end of the day.
31:58And we're going to be at the ice rink
32:01at the end of the day.
32:02We've opened a second mortuary at the ice rink,
32:05at Lockerbie ice rink,
32:07where in total we have now received between
32:09the two mortuaries 150 bodies.
32:13We have as yet no positive formal identifications.
32:16I had spoken to the guy who had been put in charge of the post-mortems of the bodies.
32:36I said, look, I'm a doc too, and I want to see my daughter's body.
32:43And he said, I understand, I'll fix it, come to the ice rink.
32:48And by the time I got there, he and the men with him had taken Flora's body from amongst
32:56all the others and put it aside and said, I'll cope with some flowers there and things.
33:04But she'd been so damaged, she hadn't been damaged by the explosion on the plane, but
33:12mainly by impact of the ground, which had so altered her face and her head that she,
33:17well, she was barely recognisable.
33:23I asked him if I could look at her left foot, because she had a little pigmented spot on
33:30her big toe, so the cloths were taken off her feet.
33:36There was a spot on her damaged foot.
33:46I didn't want to see her when she had been killed.
33:52I wanted to remember her as I had last seen her, full of life.
33:59And Flora was your firstborn?
34:01She was, yes.
34:02And, you know, she was everything that a parent could wish for, beautiful, bright, lively,
34:11intelligent girl.
34:14And we were very proud of her.
34:26A very kind guy who was organising all this for me said, anything else I can do?
34:32So I said, yes.
34:33Could I have a lock of her hair?
34:37He was kind enough to do that.
34:43True kindness can be very important when these things happen.
34:57The immediate need that I had and a lot of the other families was to find out how to
35:02get our loved ones identified and how to get them home.
35:08The US State Department was supposed to be helping us, but they weren't.
35:15Our government abdicated all their responsibility and role of crisis management and assistance
35:22to the victims' families to Pan Am.
35:25And so here's Pan Am, who is really circling the wagons thinking, oh, well, we might be
35:31sued or whatever.
35:33And they weren't helping us at all.
35:43No one does come to Lockerbie with clean hands.
35:46There's so many twists and turns in this whole story from the very first day that it happens.
35:54People trying to get off the hook, you know, the insurers trying to pass the buck, the
35:58airline trying to save itself.
36:03It was just a mass of people.
36:06There were people from the FBI, obviously.
36:11There were also people from murkier ends of the US intelligence community on the ground
36:18there, as you would expect.
36:21You know, I just don't understand why they would bother denying it.
36:25But they do to this day.
36:30Nothing is what it seems in the Lockerbie story, you know, nothing quite adds up.
36:38The flight on which Flora got her seat at the last minute was only two-thirds full.
36:44How many flights two or three days before Christmas to the States are only two-thirds
36:50full?
36:51Answer, only those flights where people have been warned off.
36:55She wasn't warned off, nobody told us.
36:59What was the Helsinki warning?
37:01Yeah, we did some filming with Jim Swire and he still remains angry about it.
37:06Yeah, and I understand that.
37:08I totally understand that and he's right.
37:15In early December, someone called the US Embassy in Helsinki and made a threat.
37:28Within two weeks' time, someone will carry a bomb on board a Pan Am flight from Frankfurt
37:35to the United States.
37:42People working for US agencies were made aware of that warning and were given the chance
37:50to make alternative arrangements, whereas the normal travelling public weren't given
37:56that chance.
37:58The American authorities put notices up on the notice boards of their embassies telling
38:03them there had been a terrorist threat to these flights and they might want to avoid
38:08them to get home for Christmas, you see, to their families in the United States.
38:13The sabotage theory was given further weight this morning when it emerged that American
38:17diplomats in Europe were warned that a Pan Am plane could be a terrorist target.
38:22Interpol warned airlines and police authorities in 147 countries, including Britain.
38:28Lo and behold, there were over 10 different bomb warnings on these flights and we wanted
38:33to know who got the warnings and what did our government do about it?
38:37We receive dozens of threats each day.
38:41We notified the people who have responsibility for security.
38:47If nothing else, it looked bad.
38:49We protect ourselves, we don't protect you.
38:53And I feel that we had a responsibility to let everybody know there was this potential
38:58threat.
38:59Such a public statement with nothing more to go on than an anonymous telephone call,
39:04you'd literally have closed down the air traffic in the world.
39:07Mr. Reagan, the suggestion though is that you care more about the diplomats that you
39:12did warn than the American public.
39:16No.
39:17Obviously, Pan Am wasn't mandated to enhance security, search the plane or warn the passengers.
39:25But what really petrified all of us is that this was going to happen to somebody else.
39:30We didn't want any American, anybody, to go through what we had gone through.
39:37All I was after was the truth.
39:41I felt I had a right to know the truth about how my daughter had come to be killed and
39:46why she wasn't protected against being killed.
39:49And those were the bases on which we very soon found.
39:53We were being richly and profusely deceived by the authorities.
40:07A number of items of wreckage, passenger baggage and part of the framework of a metal
40:27luggage pallet are being examined by Ministry of Defence scientists.
40:33Each of these will be subjected to lengthy chemical and metallurgical forensic examination.
40:40However, it has been established that two parts of the metal luggage pallets framework
40:49show conclusive evidence of a detonating high explosive.
40:55Much investigative work remains to be done to establish the nature of the explosive device,
41:02what it was contained in, its location in the aircraft and the sequence of events immediately
41:09following its detonation.
41:11From what you've heard, you'll understand that this operation has developed into a criminal
41:17inquiry of international dimensions.
41:21There is no doubt anymore, the 259 passengers and crew of Flight 103 were killed by a bomb.
41:29Within a week, we knew that it was a terrorist attack against the United States and against
41:35an American carrier that killed 270 people.
41:39What we want to do is find out who did it and bring them to justice, you bet.
41:44At the time, it was the biggest terrorist attack against the United States in history.
41:52And of course, you have to think, what was the logic and the reason?
41:59The mid-1980s were really a remarkable time in terms of international terrorism.
42:04Virtually every day, there was some news of some new terrorist attack, airplane hijackings,
42:11airplane bombings, attacks on embassies, assassinations of individuals.
42:17And there was a veritable alphabet soup of terrorist groups.
42:22It was ANO, the Abu Nidal Organization, PFLP, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,
42:29PFLP-GC, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, General Command, the Provisional
42:36Irish Republican Army, PYRA, Hezbollah.
42:42And it sort of fed the anonymity, like, who were these people?
42:45Who was behind them?
42:47Why were they doing these things?
42:50It's often very hard to find clear answers or the certainty that we wish we could attach
42:55to terrorist incidents that exist in the rest of the world.
43:02But we have to understand, just like in physics, every action has a reaction.
43:16There was a war going on in the Middle East between Iran and Iraq.
43:21And the U.S. government had gone at the request of the government of Kuwait and put American
43:28flags on tankers coming out of Kuwait, bringing oil to the West.
43:32You are approaching a U.S. Navy warship bearing a 090, 5 nautical miles from you.
43:37The USS Vincennes was a Navy ship that was sent into the Persian Gulf to protect those
43:43Kuwaiti tankers.
43:46And we told both Iran and Iraq, any attack on any one of these Kuwaiti tankers is an
43:52attack on the United States.
43:55It was July the 3rd, and the cruiser Vincennes was on patrol in the northern straits of Hormuz.
44:04By mid-morning, though, the picture had changed for the worse.
44:07A total of 13 Iranian gunboats were sighted in the area, and the Vincennes sighted two
44:12of them closing fast.
44:13Visual on the fog camera.
44:14Inbound fast.
44:15350 is inbound.
44:16350 relative?
44:17Relative.
44:18I don't know where it's hit.
44:19Hostile at 004.
44:20Troop, 21 miles.
44:21I am already moving.
44:22We support my position.
44:23My intention is to engage at 20 nautical miles unless he turns away.
44:24The USS Vincennes was a Navy ship that was sent into the Persian Gulf to protect those
44:25Kuwaiti tankers.
44:26And the U.S. government had gone at the request of the government of Kuwait and put American
44:27flags on tankers coming out of Kuwait, bringing oil to the West.
44:28There was a war going on in the Middle East between Iran and Iraq.
44:29And the U.S. government had gone at the request of the government of Kuwait and put American
44:30flags on tankers coming out of Kuwait, bringing oil to the West.
44:53But it was an Iran Airbus, a commercial flight, Flight 655, killing everyone on board.
45:23The United States has admitted it shot down an Iranian airliner over the Gulf early this
45:30morning.
45:31The Iranians say 290 people were on board, 66 of them children.
45:36And they say 110 bodies have been recovered so far.
45:43This has not been a mistake.
45:44This was a cold-blooded murder.
45:50By definition, it was an act of terrorism, which I hope you agree that should be severely
45:56punished.
45:57I won't minimize the tragedy.
45:58We all know that it was a tragedy.
45:59But we're talking about an incident in which a plane on radar was observed coming in the
46:00direction of a ship in combat.
46:01And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:02from that plane.
46:03We're talking about a tragedy.
46:04We all know that it was a tragedy.
46:05But we're talking about an incident in which a plane on radar was observed coming in the
46:06direction of a ship in combat.
46:07And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:08from that plane.
46:09We're talking about a tragedy.
46:10We all know that it was a tragedy.
46:11But we're talking about an incident in which a plane on radar was observed coming in the
46:12direction of a ship in combat.
46:13And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:14from that plane.
46:15And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:16from that plane.
46:17And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:18from that plane.
46:19And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:20from that plane.
46:21And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:22from that plane.
46:23And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:24from that plane.
46:25And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:26from that plane.
46:27And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:28from that plane.
46:29And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:30from that plane.
46:31And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:32from that plane.
46:33And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:34from that plane.
46:35And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:36from that plane.
46:37And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:38from that plane.
46:39And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:40from that plane.
46:41And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:42from that plane.
46:43And so I think it was an understandable accident to shoot and think that they were under attack
46:44from that plane.
46:45We knew that the government of Iran were very angry at the United States, but they were
46:51not the only country.
46:55We had a whole list of others who we felt could well have been involved.
47:00In the universe of terrorism and state sponsors of terrorism, there's no shortage of suspects
47:06with renegade or rogue countries such as Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria.
47:13To use mass-screened terrorism as an instrument to foreign policy and to attempt to develop
47:18a system of cutouts to obscure their involvement so you don't have the smoking gun that would
47:24justify military retaliation.
47:27You need to have direct evidence.
47:31But in January of 1989, the Scots hadn't even found all the suitcases.
47:37They hadn't brought in all the aircraft parts.
47:42And then in late January, early February, we found a suitcase.
47:52Many of the suitcases that fell 31,000 feet to the ground would have been great commercial.
47:58They fell intact.
48:00You could take the clothes out, put them on, and go to a meeting.
48:06But this suitcase was in about 54 pieces and fragments.
48:12We pretty much thought that suitcase contained the explosive, the bomb that blew up the plane.
48:24That suitcase was determined to be a Samsonite Silhouette 4000, antique copper in color.
48:33It was in the hold of Pan Am 103 that the bomb exploded and murdered my daughter.
48:40The British authorities had been warned well before Lockerbie and had essentially done nothing.
48:47If it's up to our government, we might not ever know why Pan Am 103 was blown out of the sky.
48:55Oh, I think I know who was responsible for killing her, and I think I could prove it.
49:02The families of accidental activists, we wanted to make sure that this didn't happen again.
49:08We wanted the truth.
49:11I am Edwin Bollier.
49:14Today I can prove that I was known as an important figure in the Lockerbie affair of Pan Am 103.
49:27I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.
49:40I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.
50:10I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.
50:15I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.
50:20I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.
50:25I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.
50:30I have written a short statement, and I will start with this.