All language subtitles for Mayday.S07E02.Lockerbie.Disaster.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

Its a few days
before Christmas...

...the residents
of a small Scottish town
prepared for the holidays.

Danger is
fast approaching.

The street was on fire,
lawns were on fire,
and houses were on fire.

I had never seen
anything like that.

Christmas is just
going to be remembered
for all the wrong reasons.

A devastating
plane crash shatters a village

and captures
the attention of the world.

It was one of the
most significant terrorist
attacks in history.

The mystery
is finally cracked
by a piece of debris

smaller than a fingertip.

Mayday, mayday...

October the 26th,1988,
near Dusseldorf.

For weeks,
German police have been
following a group of

suspected terrorists around
the ancient town of Neuss.

Today,
they'll make their move.

In the trunk of their car,

police make an
unusual discovery.

Police raid apartments
used by the two men.

They find a number
of blank passports,

and a small arsenal of weapons.

When police closely examine
the radio recovered
from their car,

they find
it's wired with explosives.

Those devices
used a combination of an
improvised barometric device

and a timer,

a short delay timer.

All of these devices were,
in fact, supposed to go
onto an aircraft.

A barometric timer
is set off by changes
in altitude.

It's triggered when it
reaches a certain height.

Since that guarantees
a plane will be in the air
when the bomb goes off,

it's a favorite device
for those targeting
passenger jets.

The two men arrested in Germany
work for a well-known
terrorist organization,

the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine.

The leader of the
PFL-PGC Ahmed Jabril

made a speech in Libya in 1986,

and one of the things
he said was that

until there's peace
in the Middle East,

there would be no safety
for anyone traveling on an
American or an Israeli airliner.

Hafez Dalkamouni
is shipping weapons
to Syria and Lebanon.

Marwan Kreeshat
is a notorious bomb maker,

responsible for bringing down
at least one passenger jet.

It's just a couple of months
until the busy
Christmas travel season.

With the two men under arrest,

German police have made
commercial aviation
a little safer.

Two months later,
Pan Am Flight 103 is on its way
from London to New York.

The jet has just taken off
from Heathrow Airport.

There are 259 people on board.

Most of the passengers
are American.

Charles McKee actually works
for the U.S. government.

Khalid Jaafar
lives in Detroit

and is returning home
from a trip to
Lebanon and Germany.

The first part of the trip to
the United States takes the
plane northwest over Scotland.

The so-called Daventry departure
is one of six preset routes

that jets follow on their way
out of Heathrow.

Lockerbie is one of
several small towns
the plane will pass over.

Tucked away
in the Scottish Lowlands,
residents are barely aware

that they live below
a busy aerial highway.

Pan Am calls this 747
"Clipper Maid of
the Seas."

As it levels off at 31,000 feet,
the crew gets in touch
with Air Traffic Control.

Good evening, Scottish.
Clipper One Zero Three.

We are level at three one zero.

One Zero Three.
You are identified.

Captain James
MacQuarrie is 55 years old.

Like many passengers
on this pre-holiday flight,
he's heading home.

Five miles below,
the people of Lockerbie
prepare for Christmas.

Michael Gordon is
chatting with a friend

when a strange rumbling noise
fills his house.

Hang on. There's
something odd outside here.

The weather
that night was a bit wild.

So there was a fairly strong
westerly wind.

Um, I could hear it hitting
the window in front of me.

From my window I can see
Lockerbie because my house
sits up on the hill.

And I heard this noise
which was above
the noise of the wind.

And the noise sounded like
thunder and the noise got
louder and louder.

And I could hear the noise
then got to the stage of
being similar to a jet fighter.

And at that time we had
a lot of military aircraft
passing through the area.

However, I saw dark objects,
dark things falling from the sky

against the lights
of Lockerbie.

I could see these black objects
coming down.

And then from my right,
quite high on my right,

I could see a long,
thin black object,

which had a fire on the upper
surface coming in

and it was making its way
towards Lockerbie.

When it hit, it was a
most horrendous explosion,

and I could hear the tiles
on the roof of my house lifting.

Hello? Hello?

When the explosion
took place, the telephone line
stopped functioning.

Lockerbie is burning.

Enormous flames
reach into the night sky.

Michael Gordon races
to the neighborhood
that is hardest hit.

The street was on fire,

The lawns were on fire
and houses were on fire,

and it was difficult
to go without

finding my trousers burning
and my shoes burning.

You had to jump about
quite a bit because
everything was on fire.

But I remember,
at that point, finding an
airline ticket

and it was perfectly intact.

There was no damage
by fire or, uh, fuel,
or contamination of any sort.

And the airline ticket said
London Heathrow to JFK.

Somehow,
Pan Am Flight 103
has fallen from the sky

and smashed
into Lockerbie, Scotland.

In the daylight, the full horror
of the crash of
Pan Am Flight 103 is obvious.

Several houses on the ground
have simply vanished,

vaporized when the plane
smashed into them.

An enormous crater is torn
through the southern edge
of the town.

Fifteen hundred tons of rock
and earth have been blasted out
of the ground.

Eleven people from Lockerbie
are dead...

along with all 259 people
who were on board.

As far as I know,
I've lost my brother-in-law,

uh, my sister-in-law
and their house is just,
is just a 30-foot crater.

In the ruins
of their homes,

they search for
the bodies of the
aircraft's passengers.

Such a catastrophe, so sudden,
so great a shock
for a quiet town.

It looked like a scene
out of hell. This whole
road was ablaze.

We didn't know what it was
and then we rushed outside

and just all this
debris coming down.

Air crash
investigators have arrived

in Lockerbie within hours
of the crash.

Mick Charles
is the Lead Inspector

for the British Air Accidents
Investigation Branch, the AAIB.

One of the first sites
we went to was the
site of the crater

that was still smelling
very much of aviation fuel
for a start.

And scattered all around
were bits of debris,

and in some cases
human tissue as well.

Charles quickly
gathers his team to
begin looking for clues.

It was all heaving,
it was happening,
there were loads of people

and it was to some extent chaos.

You'll be organized into groups,
headed by
an AAIB inspector.

Does anyone have
any questions?

The sooner we start the better.

More than a thousand
police officers and 600
members of the military

pour into Lockerbie.

You always have
this sense of wanting

to get to grips with what it is.
It was quite clear that whatever
it was, was colossal.

Any debris
that's found is put into
clear plastic bags

and left to be collected later.

Dark bags are used
to store human remains.

It's just days before Christmas,
but the holiday spirit
has been shattered.

At the start
of the investigation,

what we were doing
was finding out which bits
of the airplane were where,

actually finding
all of the airplane.

The sheer scale
of the disaster
is difficult to comprehend.

Chris, the RAF have
offered us a helicopter.
Can we use it?

Absolutely.

With so much wreckage
being found, investigators
need to get a bird's eye view

and locate the largest
fields of debris.

The maps of that area
were in very short supply

and we ran out
of them very quickly.

So we had to use
black and white
photocopies initially.

Investigators bring
local police officer Michael
Gordon with them,

to help in the search.

The intention was for me
to be able to identify

geographic landmarks
and identify parts
of the aircraft.

They soon
get a better sense
of their enormous task.

When we were
in the helicopter,

we could see
the wreckage came out on,
in a cone shape,

emanating from Lockerbie.

And the cone shape
got wider and wider
the further from Lockerbie.

The principal feature that
I was looking for was to try
to establish some pattern

of, of the wreckage,
which showed...
Which would basically help

me direct
the ground investigators.

They're shocked
by what they find.

Pieces of the plane are
scattered over an area larger
than all of London...

more than 2,000
square kilometers.

It quickly becomes clear that
Pan Am 103 was coming apart
long before it hit the ground.

Normally, you're seeing
a fairly contained
accident site.

In Lockerbie, it was
nothing like that because

um, initially the police
had identified half a dozen
discrete sites.

A 747 is made up
of more than six million parts.

In the mangled remains
of the jet,

investigators need to find
the one that will tell them
what happened.

The plane's cockpit is eerie
proof that Pan Am Flight 103
broke apart in mid-air.

Severed from
the rest of the plane,

it's four kilometers
east of the city.

When looking at the cockpit,

I was looking at
the roof of it, and the windows
were intact,

the actual nose part
had cracked open,

but it was as if
it had been chopped off
just after the cabin,

and you could walk around
the back and look into the
cabin section from the back.

Inside the cockpit,

investigators note
the positions of various
switches and controls.

They find the autopilot is on,
and the oxygen masks
are still stowed.

This is a fairly standard
procedure which we would do
in any such investigation.

Um, the end result was that
there was nothing at all
untoward found in the cockpit.

It was... Everything was
consistent with cruising flight.

Soon, investigators
discover why the damage to
Lockerbie was so devastating.

The main wreckage which fell
on the town of Lockerbie
was the wing,

which is basically both the left
and right wing complete
with a structure in the middle.

Investigators estimate
that the plane was loaded down
with 90,000 kilograms of fuel.

A hundred and fifty tons

descending
essentially vertically

at up to about 500 knots speed,

and there's an
awful lot of energy in that,

and that's what
created the crater.

To find the cause
of the crash however,

investigators will have
to look elsewhere.

They need to examine
wreckage found
south of Lockerbie.

These pieces would
have come off at the beginning
of the disaster.

While the painstaking
work of collecting
evidence continues,

investigators comb through
maintenance records.

Those records raise concerns
with the plane's age.

Clipper Maid of the Seas
was the fifteenth 747
ever built by Boeing.

This was one of
the older Boeing 747s.

It was built in 1970,
so it was 18 years old

and had got something
like 75,000 flying hours.

Perhaps some critical part of the plane
had given way

as it flew over Lockerbie.

The two obvious
possibilities were

that it was a straightforward
structural failure,

or it was possibly
the result of sabotage.

Mick Charles?
Tom Thurman, FBI.

Good to meet you Tom.
I was expecting you.

While the investigators are searching
for possible answers

in the history of the plane,

the second possibility,
sabotage, is also being pursued.

We were there
to provide
technical expertise to

the Scottish investigators into
explosives and explosive damage,

and the tell-tale sign
that it could be a bomb.

Just three
and a half years
before Lockerbie,

a bomb had brought down
an Air India jet
just off the Irish coast.

In that case the plane,
and vital clues sunk deep
to the bottom of the sea.

But the wreckage of
the Pan Am flight litters
the Scottish Lowlands.

If it was a bomb,
there's a chance that important
evidence can be found.

What kind of logistical effort
is it going to take

to find everything,
and I mean everything,

and bring it back
to the location

to be able to look at it
and come to some conclusion.

With the fragments that
we found on the ground,
we were picking those up.

We were looking for blast damage
on these pieces of metal.

But until we found something
that said it was a bomb,
physical evidence,

it was an accident.

We were very mindful
of the fact that

there was plenty of reports
in the media about it
being a terrorist act.

It's a question of what evidence
you find and which direction
to take the investigation.

In the first 24 hours,

four separate groups
have claimed responsibility
for bombing the jet.

We the guardians
of the Islamic revolution
are undertaking

this heroic execution in revenge
for the blowing of the Iranian
airplane by America.

Dick Marquise is an expert
on international terrorism

working for the American FBI.

A number
of organizations
either claimed credit for

or were given credit,
including groups from Iran

and the Palestinian groups
and one Irish group also
claimed responsibility for it.

Six months earlier,
the U.S. Navy shot down
an Iranian passenger jet.

Two hundred and ninety
people were killed.

The American government
claims it was an accident,
but Iran has vowed revenge.

Other threats had been made
in the weeks before the crash.

The American embassy in Helsinki
received an anonymous warning
that a bomb would soon be put

on a Pan Am flight
leaving from Frankfurt.

Officials eventually discounted
the threat, but a notice was
posted in American embassies.

Many of the passengers
who boarded Flight 103,

had come from Frankfurt
on a connecting flight.

Right. Excellent work, everyone.

Then on Christmas Eve,
just three days after
the crash of the plane,

the investigation gets
an enormous break.

Everyone clear on what
they need to do this evening.
Terrific. Tom, can I see you?

Absolutely.

Here. You might like to put your
gloves on, I think for this.

Mick Charles had a bag
and had a piece
of metal in the bag.

What is it?

We think
it's a piece of luggage rail.

It helps guide the cargo
containers into place.

Inspectors in the field
discovered items
which they recognized as

being not part of a normal
failure sequence
that you would expect

if it had been
a structural failure.

Mick, this has been very
near an explosion.

That's what
we thought as well.

Small marks
have been made on the metal.

Craters that are the tell-tale
signs of a bomb.

The hot gases
of the combustion process
of the explosion hits a piece

of particular metal,
and it puts pits in it,
like you would take a blowtorch.

You take a blowtorch
and you have a piece of metal
and you just barely touch

the piece of metal,
it will make a little hole down
into the metal.

It's the first piece
of wreckage from outside
the town of Lockerbie

to show any signs
of being damaged by fire.

Where did you find it?

I'll take you out
in the morning.

The Scottish
countryside is about to become

the largest crime scene
in the world.

It's Christmas Day, 1988.

But in Lockerbie, Scotland,
people are still reeling from
a devastating plane crash.

Christmas is just
gonna be remembered
for all the wrong reasons.

It's just tragic for everybody.

I'll never believe in God again.

For air crash investigators,

December the 25th
is treated like any
other day at work.

That was in my mind the most
distinguishing characteristic
of Lockerbie.

And although
it's over Christmas,

you just, you just stay there
and you do what you have to do.

Investigators converge on a farmer's field
outside of the town.

Over here!

Keep yelling.
We can't see you!

Over here!

The weather had turned horrible.
Foggy, kinda misting rain.

You couldn't see 10 feet
in front of you,

and there was debris literally
all over the place.

Another piece
of the baggage compartment rail
had been found.

That looks like the piece
that you showed me last night.

About 20 inches is just gone.

And lo and behold,
that was the other piece
of the skid rail

that was literally
sticking in the ground.

We made some photographs.
It was like...
It was a Christmas present.

That we could go out there
to this farm and find

the other piece of metal that
had been blown off.

Now we were not fascinated,
we were pumped.

This piece also
has pits and craters in it,

indications that it was
close to an explosion.

The pieces
of wreckage are part
of the southern debris field,

and near the beginning of it.

The placement suggests
they were some of the first
parts to break off the plane.

We were very suspicious
that it was a bomb which had
caused this destruction.

Um, but we were not prepared
to say anything

until we'd had those details
confirmed by
the forensic experts.

A British
forensics lab has made
the critical link.

Traces of two chemicals
used to make plastic explosive

are found on the debris
recovered near Lockerbie.

On December the 28th,
just seven days after the crash,

investigators have their proof,
and announce it to the world.

It has been established

that two parts of the metal
luggage pallet's framework

show conclusive evidence
of a detonating high explosive.

The crash
of Pan Am Flight 103
is now officially a crime.

Our mandate with regard
to Lockerbie was find out
who did it and prove it,

uh, because what we wanted to do
was bring someone to justice

and make them answer
for killing 270 people.

With terrorism
now the official cause,
rumors start to fly.

Speculation eventually focuses
on two passengers.

Charles McKee works for
the U.S. Department of Defense.

Charles McKee was returning
from the Middle East
where he was working,

uh, trying to free hostages that
had been taken in the Middle
East during the mid-1980s.

The hostages McKee
was trying to release were
being held in Lebanon.

In 1988, a civil war was tearing
that country apart.

Americans were seen
as useful bargaining chips.

There was speculation
in the media that Charles McKee
may have been targeted

by terrorists because
of the work he was doing.

McKee isn't the only
passenger who captures
the attention of the media.

Khalid Jaafar
was 20 years old,

and was returning home
to the U.S. after a trip
to Lebanon and Germany.

Perhaps a bomb was carried
on board the aircraft by someone

who may have had a
Middle Eastern-sounding name.

Jaafar was examined
as a potential suspect.

The story makes it
as far as the U.S. Congress,

but no proof can be found
that Jaafar was involved

or that McKee
was the intended target.

We looked at every single
passenger on the plane

to see if, in fact, someone
could have given them a bomb.

The evidence proved
that not to be the case.

In Lockerbie,
investigators from the AAIB

continue to sort through
the tons of tangled metal.

We could, I suppose, in theory
have just stopped.

But we thought we know
it's a bomb, we have all
of the wreckage over land,

it's an ideal opportunity
to recover it all
and to understand it properly.

We knew it was a small bomb
but we didn't understand
the explosive processes.

Investigators are particularly interested
in the hull of the aircraft.

They move pieces of it
to a military hangar
just outside of town.

It was
a five-acre shed,

uh, in which was long
enough that we could

plan to lay the fuselage out,

opened up like a clam shell,

using the bottom center line
of the aircraft
as our sort of core line.

The fuselage
of an airplane is bolted
to a series of frames,

and each frame is numbered
based on how far it is
from the front of the aircraft.

Before we laid out
the wreckage two dimensionally,

we put lines and tapes
on the floor

to give us a grid,
and this grid related to
the geometry of the airplane.

They begin
to re-assemble it, like an
enormous jigsaw puzzle.

A lot of the structure
bears characteristic shapes

that you can say immediately,
"This looks like a doorframe."

A lot of the stuff has
unique part numbers

which can help you identify

small and fairly,
what you would call,
unidentifiable bits.

As the work continues,

more pieces of the plane
are found that show
tell-tale blast damage.

Right. The location
is 8-1-7-2-0-4.

When they gather
the pieces that are near
the front of the plane,

investigators make
a chilling discovery.

This is where the bomb had
started ripping the plane apart.

It became apparent
that there was an area
of the aircraft which,

in which the damage, was really
different from the rest.

The fuselage
in this section isn't torn,
but blasted to pieces.

The fuselage structure
in the area of the explosion

was blackened and sooted.

The fractures were very rapid
and jagged,

unlike normal tearing
fractures of skin.

Frame 700 runs
right around here...

Not only
do investigators now know
it was a bomb,

they know where it blasted
through the fuselage
of the plane...

...just outside of
the forward luggage compartment.

Peter Claiden
is responsible for reassembling
the cargo containers

that were directly behind
the shatter zone.

The latent goal I had
was to identify
the baggage container

that contained the device.

We had maybe
20 baggage containers
of a similar construction,

so we like, it's like having
20 jigsaw puzzles
all mixed up.

The investigators
concentrate on the cargo
containers that were found

in the southern debris field,
wreckage that was ejected
shortly after the explosion.

We concluded there were
only two on the aircraft,

one made of aluminum
and one made of fiberglass.

And they had been adjacent
to each other on the aircraft,

and they were the only two
that exhibited evidence

of an improvised explosive
device having detonated.

The metal container,
AVE 4041, is of
particular interest.

It was resting directly
behind frame 700,

where the blast damage
is the worst.

The damage caused
to the metal container
was quite severe.

The damage to the adjacent
fiberglass container,

I think you might call it
collateral damage.

Investigators create a simple framework

and attach the pieces of
the real cargo container to it.

As they do it becomes clear,
AVE 4041 carried the bomb
that brought the plane down.

Closely examining damage
to the floor and the side
of the container,

investigators are also
able to pinpoint
the height of the bomb...

...where it was in the container
when it exploded.

What that said to me was
that the device was
probably in a suitcase,

and that suitcase
was probably not on the floor
of the container.

It looked like
it was one level up.

According to luggage records,

it means that the bag containing
the bomb had come
from a connecting flight.

While investigators
are assembling a piece
of the metal container,

they discover a fragment of
wreckage that doesn't belong.

When looking at it,
I saw a little piece of debris
trapped in one of the folds.

So gently flexing this apart,
it fell out.

And I looked at it
and I could see
it was a fragment

of a printed circuit board,
an electronic circuit board.

Can you bring me a camera
and an evidence bag, please?

Let's get this to the lab.

I didn't know whether
it was a bomb, part of
the airplane really or what.

It could have been somebody's
shaver for all I know.

Eventually,
forensic experts in Britain
determine that the circuit board

was a piece of a specific
brand of radio.

News of the discovery
makes its way to Washington.

It reaches Tom Thurman,
who's returned
to his office there.

And lo and behold,
an identification was made
into a Toshiba SL16 radio,

and ironically enough,
the name on
the side of that radio,

just as a brand name I guess,
was called a BomBeat radio.

The radio cassette
player had hidden the bomb.

It's very similar to the one
that was recovered
by German police

when they cracked
the Palestinian terrorist cell
two months before the bombing.

Had German police somehow
missed something?

Had a bomb made here been used
on the Pan Am flight?

When the bombing happened,

one of the initial suspects
certainly was the PFL-PGC
cell in Germany.

The intelligence told us
the that PFL-PGC was probably
responsible for this.

Forty-nine passengers
who eventually boarded
the Pan Am flight

started their journey
in the German city of Frankfurt.

Their bags were placed
onto Flight 103 in London.

But the airline did not ensure
the passengers
who checked in the bags

actually got onto the plane.

Perhaps a bomb made in Germany

had slipped through
the cracks at Heathrow,

while the terrorist walked away.

We had to then,
if that was the case, prove it.

As the investigation continues,
there's a puzzling discovery.

While made by the same company,
the cassette player used

in the Lockerbie bombing
is slightly different

from the one that was seized
in Germany.

Both were contained
in Toshiba radios but one
was a one-speaker model

and the one that blew up
the Lockerbie plane
was a two-speaker,

a more updated model radio.

The difference
in the model of radio
being used raises doubts.

Perhaps the terrorists in
Germany are not responsible.

You can look at the way
a device is put together

and say, "Hey, I know
who put this together because
I've seen this before

"and this is the way
that this bomb builder
puts a bomb together."

They call it
a "bomber's signature."

Law enforcement officials
need more clues

to figure out
who had built the bomb.

Perhaps the suitcase
it was packed in
can provide those clues.

Studying small pieces
of wreckage,

British forensic experts
find that the suitcase was
a hard-sided Samsonite 4000.

Samsonite made only a few
thousand of these suitcases

and sold all of them
in the Middle East.

Several pieces of clothing
have also been identified

that were very close
to the explosion...

...likely in the suitcase
that concealed the bomb.

Most of these clothes were
made by a single manufacturer,

and were only sold
on the tiny island of Malta.

So Malta became the focus
of the investigation because
of the manufacturer

and eventually distribution
of some of the clothing
that was found at Lockerbie.

Investigators find the shop in Malta
where the clothes were sold.

The owner gives them
another clue.

The key thing
that he told us was the person
had a Libyan accent.

Something we didn't really
have evidence yet
that tied Libya to the bombing.

It was just two weeks
before the attack
on the Pan Am flight.

In 1988, Libya was reeling
from a number of confrontations
with the American military.

Economic sanctions
had been imposed.

The country was isolated,
and its leader,
Muammar Qaddafi,

aggressively anti-American.

Perhaps the bombing
of the Pan Am flight
was an attack

by Libya against
the United States.

Pouring through baggage records
for the Pan Am flight,

police discover one piece
of luggage

that had been carried
from Malta to Frankfurt
earlier that day.

Bag number B8849 had then
been sent through
to Britain's Heathrow Airport.

Once there, it was placed
on the second level
of cargo container AVE 4041.

It was the Samsonite case
investigators now know
carried the bomb.

More than a year
after the crash,

a new discovery
in Lockerbie helps simplify
the confusing series of clues.

Forensic experts discover
another circuit board

from among the clothes
that came from Malta.

It doesn't come
from that circuit board

that was in the SL16 radio.

And this circuit board
is half the size
of your thumbnail.

A photo
of the circuit board is sent
to Tom Thurman.

He believes it could be
a piece of the timer
from the bomb.

I spent months
literally looking through
all of the files of the FBI

on other examinations
that we had conducted over
many, many, many years.

The FBI has photos
of timers used to detonate bombs
around the world.

But Thurman can't find any
that match the piece found
at Lockerbie.

No... [CLEARS THROAT] Next...

After a period
I just I ran out of leads,

and at that point it was like,
okay, now we need to go outside
the physical FBI laboratory.

Thurman eventually
takes the photo of the circuit

to the
Central Intelligence Agency.

I called a contact of mine

and I said I need to bring
something over
for you to look at.

Sifting through
reports on various bombings,
Thurman finds a match.

Wait a second.

That could be the same.

Do you have this timer?

When Thurman closely
examines the timer captured
by the CIA, he's stunned.

Within a few minutes,
literally, I started
getting cold chills.

And right now
as I talk about it,
cold chills start on me,

'cause I can still
see that moment
so vividly in my mind

that I'm looking
at a circuit track

that's just like what I'm seeing
in the photograph.

This is what
we're looking for.

The timer the CIA
has was seized in Africa
a few years earlier.

Two Libyan men
were trying to get it,

and several pounds
of explosives,
past airport security.

It's identical to the timer
used to bring down Flight 103,

and wouldn't be set
off by changes in pressure,

like the barometric switch
discovered in Germany.

This device was set to go off
at a certain time,
not at a given altitude.

This is the timer.

This is a long delay timer
that brought down that aircraft.

But now we want to know,
okay, where'd this come from?

The Lockerbie bomb
used a different timer

and a different radio than
the bomb found in Germany.

Someone else was behind
the destruction of the jet.

This was not made in
somebody's home laboratory.

This was a extremely
professionally made timer.

While the criminal investigation
becomes murkier,

the accident
investigation is becoming
increasingly clear.

The investigation eventually
moves from Scotland
to Farnborough, England.

Well known for
its aeronautics industry,

the town is home to the AAIB.

Several months after the crash
of Pan Am Flight 103,

investigators launch
a massive endeavor.

They begin to rebuild
a 20-meter section
of the fuselage

from the ruined jet.

They hope that it would
give them information

their two-dimensional
reconstruction couldn't.

They can see that the explosion
tore a one and a half
by five-meter hole

in the side of the plane.

Chris Protheroe is a senior
inspector of air accidents
at the AAIB.

What was very difficult
to understand was

the fact that this area
of direct damage
was effectively a pinprick

in relation to the size
of the aircraft as a whole,

and it was very difficult
to understand how this pinprick
of damage had

resulted in such a comprehensive
destruction of the,
of the aircraft.

The bomb that brought
the plane down had less than
half a kilogram of explosive.

Yet its destructive power
was immense.

Investigators want to learn more
about how shockwaves
behave inside a jet.

It's rather like a freeze frame
on a video footage.

If you can capture that point
as the thing is coming apart,

it tells you a great deal about
the way it's coming apart.

What they discover
is that the initial blast wave

wasn't the only one
to damage the plane.

A large section of the ceiling
of the aircraft
has been pushed up

with so much force that
the rivets connecting it
to the plane's frame popped.

It wasn't torn apart
but blasted by a shock wave.

The other features
that the 3D reconstruction
allowed us to identify

were areas of remote
pressure damage

on the crown skin
and other areas
where explosive shock

had been channeled
through the internal spaces
in the aircraft.

The inside of a jet
acts like an echo chamber,

bouncing the shockwaves
of the bomb around.

They gather strength
until they encounter
a weak spot in the skin.

When they do,
they blast through.

The work in Farnborough
is powerful proof

of how destructive
even a small bomb can be.

And how vital it is
to track the bombers down.

Almost two years after
the Lockerbie disaster,

the criminal trail of evidence
brings investigators to Zurich.

The timer that
detonated the bomb

is traced to a Swiss company
called MEBO.

One of the owners of the company
admits to building it.

The timer was given
to the Libyan government,

a total of 20 of them were made,
all delivered
to Libyan officials.

Early in the investigation,
focus was directed

at the Palestinian terrorist
group in Germany.

Now, there's growing proof
that they had nothing to do
with the downing of Flight 103.

There were
any number of suspects
and it wasn't until we kept

putting everything in one pile
and the pile kept stacking up
and it spelled Libya.

Criminal investigators
have linked the timer that
detonated the bomb to Libya.

They know that a Libyan
bought the clothes
that were in the suitcase.

And they know that Libya
has a recent history of military
confrontation with America.

All they need now
is the bomber himself.

In 1999, they finally have him.

At the time of the disaster,
Abdel al-Megrahi
was an intelligence officer

for the Libyan government.

He's arrested and charged.

He was a high-ranking
Libyan official.

Uh, he certainly
could have access
to whatever he wanted.

Our investigation determined
that Megrahi also had
a front company at MEBO.

He had been there many times,
they certainly knew each other.

When you start to see
all the connections

and these things just start
fitting together it made it
easier to accept our evidence.

In 2001,
Scottish judges
sentence him to life

for the murder of 270 people.

Two years later, the government
of Libya officially accepts
responsibility for the bombing

and pays $2.7 billion
to the families involved.

Anger is also aimed
at Pan Am for the role
it played in the disaster.

A Scottish inquiry
points a finger at the company.

The passenger who checked
the bomb onto Flight 103
did not get on board.

It's a fact that Pan Am could
have discovered, had it been
following proper procedures.

One of the things we discovered
when we looked into the bombing
of Pan Am Flight 103

was that there were several bags
on that plane that did not
correspond to passengers.

One of the changes
that came about as a result
of the Air India bombing

was that airlines were forced
to make sure

no bag was put on a plane
without a passenger
accompanying it.

It's called passenger-baggage
reconciliation.

Without proper notification,

Pan Am had stopped matching
passengers and baggage
at Heathrow airport.

So that rule that said all
passengers and luggage have to
be matched was not followed.

The company
was eventually found guilty
of willful misconduct.

After the crash
and the court ruling,
Pan Am declared bankruptcy.

Twenty years after the bombing
of Pan Am Flight 103,

its shattered fuselage
still stands
in Farnborough, England.

Those pieces may soon
be used to train investigators

here and
around the world.

A critical aid in case
terrorists strike again.

The enduring feeling
I have as a result of Lockerbie,

is the tremendous level
of cooperation we had
from all the agencies.

And considering that there
were about two and half thousand
people with the military,

the police and so on
involved in this,
I think that's a great tribute.

Lockerbie was
a rare occasion that we felt
honored to be a part of

to help make,
to help make this happen.
We played small roles,

but everybody played small roles
to make big contributions
to an overall success.

In the town of Lockerbie,

there's little
evidence today of the horror

that exploded from the sky
20 years ago.

In a small church
near where the dying plane's
cockpit landed,

is a stark reminder
of the toll of terror,

and the importance of bringing
the guilty to justice.