“Golfer was interviewed three times by the SCCRC officials but to date his identity has been one of the most closely guarded secrets concerning the whole Lockerbie affair. Let’s underline Golfer’s importance. If Lockerbie is Scotland’s Watergate then Golfer is our Deep Throat.”

Policing Lockerbie, A Bella Caledonia Special Investigation — Sept. 7 2011

June 21 2019 — Over the years, many people have tried to identify GOLFER, but no one ever succeeded. Until now…

In May 2012, the Sunday Herald published the full Lockerbie Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) 800-page report. For those who like statistics, this report contains 285,300 words, and a total of 1,384,109 (no space) characters.

The chapter regarding GOLFER was redacted to hide his identity. But one letter of just one word had been only partially redacted. After a bit of thinking, I came to the conclusion that this letter was a (Times New Roman) capital G. And that was all that was needed to start cracking a two-decade-old secret. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

RELATED POST: Lockerbie — Lobster Magazine : The View From The Bridge by Robin Ramsay

RELATED POST: Lockerbie — Who Is The Mysterious GOLFER? [Part I : Trust No One]

RELATED POST: Lockerbie — Who Is The Mysterious GOLFER? — Part II : “Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” [UPDATE]

RELATED POST: Lockerbie 30th Anniversary — What do you think about the Lockerbie verdict? [Poll Result – March 2019]

UPDATE (January 7 2021) — When I claimed in June 2019 that I had managed to guess a key redacted part of the Lockerbie SCCRC report, most people were skeptical.

This work was very important as it revealed for the first time the identity of GOLFER, which is the reason why these words had probably been redacted in the first place.

To be candid, even my biggest fans told me that this was highly speculative! Last night, almost two years later, someone sent me these two key paragraphs. Enjoy!

On June 17 2019, in the second part of this series — Lockerbie — Who Is The Mysterious GOLFER? [Part II : Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.] — I wrote:

“Let us magnify the first redacted part of paragraph 5-18. About 7 characters before the end, the top of a letter appears clearly. It is a capital — upper case —  ‘G’. [The report probably uses the ‘Times New Roman’ font.] And the last character seems to be a ‘y’. Could the proper name be ‘Germany’?

And how does the SCCRC Report refer to ‘Germany’ anyway? The SCCRC Report uses the following expression: “the former West Germany”. And that is a perfect match!”

And here is the non-redacted paragraph 5.18:

On June 21 2019, in this post — the third part of this series — I confirmed my earlier prediction.

Here is what I wrote:

First thing first. Was I wrong when I guessed “GERMANY’ in my previous post? (…) I decided to look for a similar clue. There is one in paragraph 5.29.

Again, it seems that the redacted country is “the former West Germany”. And it is not obvious to suggest anything else.

“He said that during the police investigation he had carried out enquiries in the UK and the US as well as the former West Germany.   Part of his role in the latter, he said, involved creating a “profile” of …”

And here is the non redacted paragraph 5.29:

Elementary my dear Watson? Not really… First I got lucky. Manual redaction is of course a sub-optimal “solution” to secrecy requirements.

If the top of the G of Germany had been correctly blacked out — just a tenth of a millimetre up — in paragraph 5.18, I would have had NOTHING to work with.

Nevertheless, that very tiny mistake was more than enough to solve the case!

After that, it was just patient work… All I had to do was to compare what I had learned about GOLFER from the SCCRC report and what was known about the Lockerbie investigators seconded to West Germany.

But this turned out to be tricky as Sherlock Holmes let me badly down when I came to the surreal conclusion that I had eliminated all of them.

The only explanation was that Golfer had lied to the SCCRC, and I got lucky a second time as I could remember someone who had told the same lie two decades earlier.

There is some real irony in this story. GOLFER had hoped that he could hide behind a lie, and for many years he succeeded. But, in the end, it is this very lie that allowed me to identify him.

I wonder how many FBI experts could have managed to guess the word ‘Germany’ and from there on, how many would have been able to identify GOLFER?

I am not convinced that those FBI experts who read ’21B’ instead of ‘SIB’ because they were holding a key piece of evidence upside-down may have been able to pull it off…

RELATED POST: Parody — Do you have what it takes to be an FBI Intelligence Analyst?

This discovery has several far reaching consequences which I will explain in a following post.

But I will make a quick point.

While researching the identity of GOLFER, I discovered that the story of the infamous “fifth device” was a fairy tale.

RELATED POST: One Year Ago — Has Iran President Just Admitted Responsibility for Lockerbie? [A personal story about the infamous 5th device]

While I was profiling every single Lockerbie investigator who had been seconded in Germany, I realized something quite astonishing.

Someone had erased one file — and just one single short file — among literally a zillion of documents. That missing document caught my attention. Why would anyone would want this file to disappear? This mystery piqued my interest…

So, I managed to obtain this document and the conclusion was abundantly obvious. The story of the fifth device had been fabricated by people who wanted to create a plausible link between Iran and Pan Am 103.

Sadly, some people continue to refer to the fifth device as if its story was true. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

END of UPDATE

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

Sherlock Holmes

Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!

To make it easier for the readers to retrieve various chapters of my book, I have created a special page  “Lockerbie” where all the links to the chapters will be listed with a brief description.

You can access that page directly as it appears at the far right of the top bar of this blog.

Lockerbie — Three Decades of Lies: J’Accuse…!

June 21 2019 — According to the information disclosed in the SCCRC Report, GOLFER is a former Strathclyde Detective Sergeant  who was on the witness list at the Zeist trial.

In my last post, I explained how I had managed to ‘read’ a redacted sentence which indicates that, during his first interview, GOLFER told the SCCRC investigators that he had worked in Germany. The list of all police officers who worked in the Liaison Office in Germany is known.

Therefore, one would think that the identification of Golfer would be an easy task. One could be wrong.

After making a list of the police officers who had worked in the BKA Liaison office — set up in Meckenheim, West Germany — I checked every one of them against the known profile of the GOLFER.

With a bit of research, it was straightforward to eliminate all of them but one: former DS John McGowan from the Strathclyde police force.

Not only was John McGowan the ‘last man standing’, specific information singles him out.

Indeed the GOLFER claims that he drew up the profile of Khaled Jaafar. And I know that John McGowan was in charge of that task! End of the story? Not so fast…

Intel Today managed to collect a few pieces of information regarding John McGowan and the conclusion was as surprising as it was puzzling: John McGowan was not the GOLFER.

How can that be? There is no one left on the list. Every suspect has been ruled out.

Logically, there can be only two explanations.

The first possibility is that I have guessed incorrectly the word “GERMANY” in my previous post.

The alternative is that GOLFER lied to the SCCRC investigators when he claimed that he had worked in “the former West Germany”.

First thing first. Was I wrong when I guessed “GERMANY’ in my previous post?

It is possible even if several people told me that they really believe that I am right. I decided to look for a similar clue. There is one in paragraph 5.29.

Again, it seems that the redacted country is “the former West Germany”. And it is not obvious to suggest anything else.

He said that during the police investigation he had carried out enquiries in the UK and the US as well as the former West Germany.   Part of his role in the latter, he said, involved creating a “profile” of …

We thus come to the second branch of the alternative. The GOLFER lied to the SCCRC when he claimed that he had worked in Germany. And now, that possibility rings a bell.

On 29 October, 1989, David Leppard started a long series of articles on Lockerbie published in the Sunday Times.

In May 1991, Leppard published a book titled: “On the trail of terror”. Much of the book was based on the series published in the Sunday Times.

I have always been intrigued by the many inconsistencies of Leppard’s work.

There are inconsistencies between his articles, inconsistencies between his articles and his book, and inconsistencies between various chapters of his book.

Let us focus on one important issue: the story of the suspicious white plastic residues.

In the last article of his series published on December 24 1989, Leppard reports an extraordinary development.

The title tells it all: “Plastic links terror team with Lockerbie bombing”. Explanation.

“Ministry of Defence officials now believe a white plastic residue recovered from the crash site is the same material as that in alarm clocks bought by the group at the shop in Neuss, near Dusseldorf, two months before the bombing.”

Lockerbie forensic scientists suspected that some white plastic residues associated with the primary suitcase were parts of the bomb trigger mechanism.

Therefore they conducted a chemical comparison of these items with alarm clocks that had been used by members of a terrorist cell recently arrested in Germany during operation Autumn Leaves.

According to the article, there was a positive match between one of these alarm clocks and the plastic residues.

And yet, Leppard writes in his book [page 97]:

“Hayes conducted a chemical experiment , comparing the plastic on the circuit boards of these clocks with the mysterious white plastic recovered from the bomb debris. Unfortunately, these inquiries would prove inconclusive.”

And if you think that this example is quite bad enough, get ready for much worse.

Near the end of his book, Leppard describes accurately a memorandum (dated 19 December 1989) titled: “Items of interest at RARDE – Circuit board”.

This memo identifies who — and when — was tasked with the job of obtaining the alarm clocks in Germany.

“On 18 December 1989 a message was passed to DI McAteer in Germany highlighting the interest in the three digital alarm clocks and requesting that he attempts to obtain three identical clocks or controlled samples for RARDE.”

There is no doubt that this information is correct. The memo is factual evidence.

As you learned from my last post, McAteer was indeed a member of Pat Connor’s team in Germany. The test were conducted at RARDE the same month.

And yet, much earlier in his book [page 97], Leppard writes that:

“Detective Sergeant Ian Hazelton, from LICC, was sent to Germany to buy clocks similar to those found in the PFLP-GC flat in Neuss.”

This statement is a transparent lie. The source of this idiotic and anachronistic ‘information’ can only be Detective Sergeant Ian Hazelton himself.

Concerned by the leaks published by the Sunday Times, Detective Chief Superintendent John Orr — the Senior Investigating Officer — dispatched two officers to interview Leppard in order to discover his source.

As a result, Detective Sergeant Ian Hazelton was removed from the Lockerbie investigation.

Ian Hazelton (born August 13 1947) retired [as a Detective Sergeant] from the Strathclyde police in 1995 after 30 years of service.

Hazelton was on the witness list [n° 517] but he did not testified. His name does not appear once in the trial’s transcripts.

Ian Hazelton was the source of Leppard’s article and he is the GOLFER.

After Megrahi’s lost appeal, Hazelton contacted Eddie MacKechnie and, amazingly, he managed to “sell” him the old story of the alarm clocks he claimed to have bought in Germany.

When interviewed by the SCCRC, he had to pretend that he had worked in Germany.

The end.

UPDATE (August 18 2020) — GOLFER was one of the main sources of disinformation in the Lockerbie Affair.

Time and again, he lied about the case and fabricated evidence blaming Iran for the tragedy of Pan Am 103.

The SCCRC suspected that GOLFER was paid for his lies. This claim is not without merit.

An insider has shown me an extraordinary document. The defense team of Megrahi was discussing rewarding GOLFER with… Golf Trips — what else? — to South Africa! Where else?

What do you conclude from this?

The same people who have been denouncing the “salmon fishing trips” organized by the Police for their “Star Witness” Tony Gauci were offering just the same kind of bribes for GOLFER’s lies.

That is despicable! The Lockerbie Case, it seems, has only attracted the very worst kind of human beings.

Folks in Scotland like to say that, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

I want to know who paid for GOLFER’s lies. Everything else will follow…

END of UPDATE

REFERENCES

Policing Lockerbie, A Bella Caledonia Special Investigation (September 7 2011)

NEWS RELEASE: ABDELBASET ALI MOHMED AL MEGRAHI (28 June 2007)

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Lockerbie — Who Is The Mysterious GOLFER? [Part III : Unmasking the Devil]

Lockerbie — Who Is The Mysterious GOLFER? — Part III : Unmasking the Devil [UPDATE — Who Paid GOLFER for His Lies?]

BREAKING — Who Is The Mysterious GOLFER? — Part III : Unmasking the Devil [UPDATE — Unredacted Lockerbie Report confirms Intel Today Analysis]