Dr. Ludwig de Braeckeleer

Tehran denounces the downing as criminal act

Part 12, JULY 14 1988 'The effort to second-guess the actions of the captain of that ship will be rebuffed.'' VP G. Bush Iran's foreign minister, Ali-Akbar Velayati, told the U.N. Security Council that the U.S. downing of an Iran Airbus 665 by the USS Vincennes was "a barbaric massacre."

US Compensation: With or Without Strings Attached?

Part 11 - JULY 13 1988 ''What's a life worth under international law? No one really knows.'' -- Richard B. Lillich, University of Virginia Law School According to a recent poll, three out of five Americans oppose compensation. Those sentiments are hardly surprising given Teheran strained relation with the West, and the US in particular. Few have forgotten the destruction of the US embassy in Iran. And many have suspected that Tehran played a role in the murder of 241 U.S. servicemen in Beirut.

Reagan: US will pay compensation to Iranian families

Part 10 ''From the initial point, it has been our belief that this was a justifiable defensive action. We have seen no data or information to change that conclusion.'' Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman

British Intel reports critical of US shot down

Part 9 - "Facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan, July 11 1988 Republican National Convention The Sunday Times of London reported that a British intelligence report is ''severely critical'' of the United States Navy in the downing of an Iranian airliner on July 3. The British report is based on radio communications monitored in the Persian Gulf.

Iran refuses cease-fire with Iraq

Part 8 - JULY 10 1988 ''Why is America allied with Iraq? Any blind man can see who started this war. Why is America shooting down our civilian plane? I am a diplomatic man and a religious man. I think we should be friendly with everybody, but not if they hate us so.'' Abdullah Nafeiri, Tehran restaurant owner

Tehran Denies Discord in Response to Airliner Downing

Part 7 "We suggest that the United States has some additional crimes stored away for Iran, and that is why we do not push for any revenge. Wise people understand why we do not take revenge." --Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaker of Iran's Parliament and commander of the armed forces

Tehran asserts right to revenge

Part 6 ''This is one of the biggest crimes of any war.'' Iranian President Ali Khamenei, July 8, 1988 A crowd estimated at 10,000 chanted ''Death to America!'' - in English - as President Ali Khamenei, speaking alongside 72 coffins draped in Iranian flags, vowed revenge and called the downing of the airliner by a United States warship ''an act of murder.''

American Flag Carriers up Security

Part 5 ''We are taking the threats seriously.'' Stephen Heckscher, Spokesman for Trans World Airlines in London, July 7, 1988

Pentagon begins its investigation of airliner shot down

Part 4 ''We made a tragic mistake, and innocent people were killed through no intent of the United States. It seems to me compensation, as a humanitarian gesture, is appropriate.'' Brent Scowcroft, President Ford's national security adviser, July 6, 1988

Iran supreme leader calls for real war against USA

Part 3 ''We must all be prepared for a real war and go to the war fronts and fight against America and its lackeys.'' Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, July 5, 1988

(Diary of a Vengeance Foretold Part

If anything, the captain could be criticized for holding his fire as long as he did. From what they're saying, he waited a long time. I'm not so sure I would have waited that long." -- Joseph Metcalf III, Navy's former deputy chief of naval operations for surface warfare

Diary of a vengeance foretold

The second half of 1988 witnessed the destruction in flight of two civilian airliners. On July 3rd, Iran Airbus 665 was shot down by a US Navy ship over the Persian Gulf. On December 21st, Pan Am 103 exploded over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. According to the official version of History, the downing of the Iranian jetliner was a tragic mistake while the obliteration of Pan Am 103 was an act of terrorism blamed on two Libyan agents.

CFP Identifies Lockerbie Secret Doc

Last year, the SCCRC granted the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing a second appeal on the basis that his conviction may have been unsafe. Among the grounds justifying the decision, the Committee stated that the Crown had not given the defense access to a secret document which may be vital to establish the innocence of Megrahi. The Westminster Government, not the Lord Advocate, has imposed a Public Interest Immunity certificate in order to prevent the defense to see the very document which justifies the second appeal in the first place.

FBI’s Bullet-Lead Technique Wrong

"We cannot afford to be misleading to a jury. We plan to discourage prosecutors from using our previous results in future prosecutions." --Letter from Dwight E. Adams, then FBI lab director, to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III In 1995, former Baltimore police Sgt. James A. Kulbicki was convicted of first-degree murder. The prosecutor convinced the jury that Kulbicki killed his mistress with his off duty .38-caliber revolver. The scientific evidence was irrefutable. The bullets recovered from the victim's body and from the crime scene had been fired by his gun.

Spielberg to Direct Lockerbie Bombing Movie

Legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg will direct a movie regarding the Dec. 21, 1988, bombing of Pan Am 103 over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland. The movie is an adaptation of the book Flight 103, written by former Israeli officer and MOSSAD agent Juval Aviv. ”I believe the book will have an impact around the world because what happened over Lockerbie that day affected so many people in so many countries, and continues to do so,” Aviv said a few weeks before the release of the book.

Was There a Second Irangate?

Only half of the Iran-Contra affair has been told. --Amiram Nir, counterterrorism advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, point-man of Oliver North in the Iran-Contra operations, from an interview with Bob Woodward, Summer 1988: While reviewing some materials concerning various Iranian political events having occurred during the last years of Khomeini, I came across a fantastic piece of information which allows us to identify with great probability, in fact with near certainty, the man previously only known as "Witness C" or by his alias, Abolghasem Mesbahi.

The man who was not there

This case is not closed. The investigation continues, it has continued since the plane went down and it will continue until every individual who we can identify who played a role in this tragedy is brought to justice. US Acting Deputy Attorney General Bob Mueller January 31, 2001 -- The day of the Lockerbie Verdict [1]

Lockerbie: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Governments lie. They do it all the time. And, much as we'd like to believe otherwise, the US government is no exception. There were times when we may have believed otherwise. But after Vietnam and Watergate, we know better. -- The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War, July 1 1992, ABC News, Ted Koppel. In some sense, the true and enduring mystery of the Lockerbie bombing is why so few people died. If one is willing to accept the official version of the tragedy, is it not indeed a miracle that an airliner flying from London to New York at Christmas time was actually half booked?

Confession of an Iranian Terror Czar

"In fact, the public has the right not only to justice but to protection. For if, as a consequence of incompetence or cynical realpolitik, the true culprits are not tracked down and prosecuted, they and their government sponsors are free to orchestrate further murderous outrages. And experience shows that this is precisely what they do." -- David Horovitz, The Jerusalem Post, October 11 2007

The NSA - Crypto AG sting

For decades, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has been reading effortlessly ultra sensitive messages intercepted from all parts of the world. This extraordinary feat was not the consequence of the work of some genius cyber mathematician.