Justice Dept. paid hush money to Lockerbie witnesses

02 Oct 2009 Two key figures in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber were secretly given rewards of up to $3 million. Pan Am 103 bombing is linked to a CIA-Hizbullah-Mossad drugs ring -- and is the story connected to events in 2009 ...smugglers operated "with the full knowledge of the CIA and the German BKA - permitted to do so in exchange for intelligence from the Middle East." "In return the CIA and BKA protected al-Qasr's drug trafficking," This story is related to DoJ’s gag order of Sidel Edmonds. See: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewsViewsnolose/message/662 The claims about the payments were revealed in a dossier of evidence that was intended to be used in an appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. The documents published online by Megrahi's lawyers today show that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was asked to pay $2m to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who gave crucial evidence at the trial suggesting that Megrahi had bought clothes later used in the suitcase that allegedly held the Lockerbie bomb. Documents disclose that in 1989 the FBI told Dumfries and Galloway police that they wanted to offer Gauci "unlimited money" and $10,000 immediately. Gauci began talking of a possible reward in meetings with Dumfries and Galloway detectives in 1991, when a reward application was first made to the DoJ. The DoJ was also asked to pay a further $1m to his brother, Paul Gauci, who did not give evidence but played a major role in identifying the clothing and in "maintaining the resolve of his brother". The DoJ said their rewards could be increased and that the brothers were also eligible for the US witness protection programme, according to the documents. The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which returned Megrahi's conviction to the court of appeal in 2007 as a suspected miscarriage of justice. Many references were in private diaries kept by the detectives involved, Megrahi's lawyers said, but not their official notebooks. The SCCRC was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the DoJ's "reward-for-justice" programme but found it was after Megrahi's trial and his first appeal in 1992 was thrown out. A memo written by "DI Dalgleish" to "ACC Graham" in 2007 confirms the men received "substantial payments from the American authorities". The inspector claims the rewards were "engineered" after Megrahi's trial and appeal were over, but said there was "a real danger that if [the] SCCRC's statement of reasons is leaked to the media, Anthony Gauci could be portrayed as having given flawed evidence for financial reward." Instead, he claimed, the reward was intended to ensure the Gaucis could afford to leave Malta and start new lives "to avoid media and other unwanted attention". However, The evidence, which was due to be heard by the appeal court next month, also discloses that Gauci was visited 50 times by Scottish detectives before the trial and new testimony contradicting the prosecution's claims that Megrahi bought the clothes on 7 December 1988 – the only day he was in Malta during the critical period. In 23 police interviews, Gauci gave contradictory evidence about who he believed bought the clothes, the person's age, appearance and the date of purchase. Two identification experts hired by Megrahi's appeal team said the police and prosecution breached the rules on witness interviews, using "suggestive" lines of questioning and allowing "irregular" identification line-ups. A spokesman for the US Department of Justice also refused to comment, since Megrahi had voluntarily withdrawn his appeal. He said: "None of the allegations in the SCCRC referral, or the grounds of appeal filed by Megrahi, were finally adjudicated by the Scottish High Court of Justiary (the appropriate judicial forum) because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before the court could rule. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice will not comment further on his aborted appeal." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/02/lockerbie-documents-witness-megrahi ISRAELI Spying story the main stream media is trying to bury The story of the uncovering of the largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States should be the story of the century, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That this spy ring helped drug smugglers evade investigators should be a major scandal, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That the spy ring includes companies able to track and tap into any phone in America,- including the White House. But they are not. The media is trying to bury this story. They are spiking it, erasing it from their web sites in a chilling real-life Orwellian rewriting of history. The actions of the US media are those of people trying to protect this spy ring and those that the spy ring worked for. More holes in US electronic security The story on Israeli spying inside the focused on three companies, Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for most American phone companies, Comverse Infosys, which installs and mainstains telephone tapping equipment for US law enforcement, and Odigo, which provides services for the various "Instant Message" systems on your computer. All three companies are owned by Israel and have strong ties to the Israeli Defense Force. Both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys were implicated in the sale of telephone data which compromised US investigations into drug running. Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Towers, is the company which received a two hour advance warning of the attacks of 9-11. Now, in a chilling real life version of the plotline from "The Net", it turns out that the majority of the firewalls on US corporate and government computer systems are provided by just one company, Checkpoint Systems, which like Amdocs, Comverse Infosys, and Odigo, is headquartered in Israel. http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/spyring.html NOTICE: Material posted to this mailing list is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and/or educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml