All language subtitles for Lockerbie.2023.S01E01.720p.WEB-DL.x264_track4_[eng]

The following programme
contains distressing scenes.

MARGARET: That night...

we wondered why they were racing
through from one field to another.

We thought, 'What has
scared the sheep?'

HUGH: We were very lucky
there was no sheep killed,

with all the... Everything that
came down... everything coming down.

This is the red suitcase.

That was quite the thing to see.

Well, there's the house.

That's how near it was. These things
were all in front of the house, yeah.

That's a trolley, I
think, a food trolley.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that was the door.

That we found, yeah.

We just thought,

'Just a few hours before,

'they'd all gone in
that door, hadn't they?'

And here, it's
lying amongst them.

Yeah.

TV: Pan Am Flight 103 crashed into
the Scottish village of Lockerbie.

270 lives lost.

It was Britain's
worst ever air crash.

REAGAN: (TV) We have no knowledge
of how this accident happened.

We're trying to find out.

MAN 1: It was an
attack on America.

MAN 2: Largest crime
scene in history.

MAN 3:200,000
pieces of evidence.

JIM: My daughter hadn't
died in an accident -

she has been brutally murdered.

MAN 4: They killed our children.
MAN 5: To be lied to for 30 years

MAN 6: I think the US
Government had an agenda.

GADDAFI: Reagan is the biggest
terrorist in the world.

VICTORIA: If it's up
to our government,

we might not ever
know the truth.

MAN: Nothing is what it
seems in the Lockerbie story.

JIM: Come on. Come on.

Sit, there's a good boy.

You stay there.

You stay there, OK.

'Both my grannies came
from the Isle of Skye.

'And Flora - my daughter Flora -

'was very fond of Skye, she used to
come up here whenever she could.'

INTERVIEWER: That's
a picture of her...

'just behind you on the
wall over there isn't it?

That is her attending
the Skye Ball.

She was a very striking girl.

Very easy to talk to

and to get to know.

And she used to make
her own dresses...

and not because I pushed her.

But she finally decided
to go into medicine.

And she was actually part way
through her medical training.

She was just on the eve

of her 24th birthday
that year, 1988.

She rang up to ask
us if we minded

if she went over to America...

to meet her boyfriend
over Christmas.

And of course, um,

not being total ogres, we said,
'Yes if that's what you want to do'.

Everything was booked up, except
there were plenty of seats available

on a certain flight
known as Pan Am 103...

which is why we're talking now.

(DOG BARKS)

COLIN: Before, you know, 1988,

no-one had really ever
heard of Lockerbie.

It was dotted on the A74,
on the way to Glasgow.

You might have had a stop-in at the
chip shop for a bite to eat, maybe.

Life here was...

just... undramatic, you know?

The 21st of December 1988

will stay with me forever.

It was three months
into my police career,

I was just about to turn 19.

And I happened to be the youngest
recruit in Scotland at the time too.

Got into the car
about... twenty to seven,

to be at a Christmas party
just outside the town.

(DOG BARKS)

We were actually plucking
turkeys for Christmas. (LAUGHS)

So, we had help, and we were
all sitting round the table

having our supper,
through in the kitchen.

HUGH: It was a dark, - windy night, yeah.
- It was.

DAVE: I was only 17.

Basically, we were just sitting
watching the television.

My father was away, getting
a turkey for Christmas.

('THIS IS YOUR LIFE'
THEME TUNE PLAYS)

I think we were watching
'This is Your Life'.

(PLANE ENGINE REVS OVERHEAD)

(TV BACKGROUND CHATTER)

TV: Now, we're planning to give
a Christmas surprise to the man

who, 40 years ago,

brought this loveable
character to life.

And it was three
minutes past seven.

(TV AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

I can always remember three
minutes past seven that night.

ASPEL: (ON TV) And I'm here to say,
Harry Corbett, 'This is Your Life'.

PETER: I heard this
loud noise. (DOG BARKS)

We heard, like, banging
bang, bang, bang.

(BIRDS SQUAWK)

And the pheasants
were all shouting.

(BIRD SQUAWKS)

So, we all jumped up,
looked out the window.

There was like a great
big mushroom ball of fire.

You could see the thing
just over the hill,

that was just sort of
coming out of Lockerbie.

There was glass.
(CAR ALARM WAILS)

Oh my God.

Unbelievable.

Everywhere.

(POLICE RADIO CHATTER
AND SIREN WAILS)

WOMAN: (ON RADIO) Over.

MAN: Come on, Jack.

Over.

MAN: (ON RADIO) Over.

COLIN: I thought I was witnessing
some kind of chemical tanker crash

on the A74 ahead of me.

And then a sergeant
emerged out of the smoke,

and he said, 'Colin, there's a hole
in the road in Sherwood Crescent.

'You'd better go to the
police station and sign on'.

Move back please folks,
live electricity cable.

We thought it was a
military aircraft,

because they were still
practising in the dark, you see.

We just thought, 'Oh, my goodness,
one of them boys have crashed.'

WOMAN: We seen the
house lighting up.

Keith has gone to the door. 'Just
shut it cos it's too frightening.'

Oh, my God, it was terrible.

And then sparks, and then
the whole thing went down.

(STUTTERS) Oh, I didn't
know what was happening.

Like, I just got a
fright. Shaking, I was.

(SIREN WAILS IN DISTANCE)

People were completely
numb and confused.

Why was there a huge explosion
at one end of the town,

and why was the other end
of the town also affected?

It didn't initially
make any sense.

After supper, we just
set off down the hill.

Here's stuff lying on
the side of the road.

And we had took one
look, and we thought,

'This has been no
military plane'.

We could tell, it must
have been a passenger.

And you were guessing how many
people maybe was on that plane.

And you would think,

'My goodness! How many hundreds of
people are in mourning right now?'

REPORTER: (ON TV) Before we go,

we have an unconfirmed report
from the Ministry of Defence

that a Boeing 747 airliner -

we know only that it's
a civilian airliner -

has crashed in the Lockerbie
area of Dumfriesshire.

We don't know what airline,

but the report makes it plain
that it is a civilian airliner.

JIM: I was making a
Christmas calendar,

to send out to
members of the family.

And I was suddenly and abruptly
called by my wife Jane,

because, on the television,

there was this message
about a terrible disaster

happening in the borders
between Scotland and England.

And Jane concluded
immediately that...

Flora was on that plane.

(POLICE RADIO CHATTER)

MAN: Aircraft
involved, a Pan Am 747.

VICTORIA: The radio reported
that a Pan American flight

had disappeared from radar.

Flight 103.

And I said to my mother,

'Oh that's the flight that John's
gonna come home on tomorrow'.

(SIREN WHOOPS)

And I said, you know,
'Those families...

'..they're never gonna
be the same again'.

And, um...

and so everybody
bowed their head.

And we...

we just had our
moment of silence,

and a bit of a prayer...

and, um, I didn't
realise that, you know,

I was really praying
for myself and...

and my family and...
I never imagined that,

you know, um, this...

this was something
that I would ever be...

a part of.

DAVID: I was working for
Radio Forth in Edinburgh.

Fortunately, I found someone
in the radio station -

who comes from the area -

and was able to navigate me right
into the middle of the town.

INTERVIEWER: So, you were one of
the first journalists on the ground?

Yeah. I would imagine so, yes.

(SIREN WAILS)

The first thing you noticed
was an overwhelming...

stink of aviation fuel
filled the whole town.

It was such a bizarre scene, because
it was so close to Christmas.

There was no electricity, obviously
the lights in the houses were out.

But the light of the
flames, you could...

quite clearly see Christmas
trees and Christmas decorations.

It was really hard
to comprehend...

exactly what had happened.

I mean, Imagine when I said,

'Oh the golf course is covered
in bodies, apparently'.

You're kind of built
in to dismiss that,

you'd think 'Oh
that can't be true',

you know, 'it's obviously
just small town exaggeration',

and, of course, it's exactly
what... what had happened.

The golf course was
covered in bodies.

MAN: There have been no survivors
reported from the crashed aircraft.

And we're waiting for Dr Hill to
give us an official 'stand down'.

He's not prepared to do so,

because they still have several
helicopters flying around the area,

bringing in casualties.

But so far as I can make out,

these casualties are...

are corpses.

And I think we could
quite safely say -

to those who have
turned up voluntarily -

we probably won't
require their services.

And thank you very
much for coming out.

JIM: Very early on the morning,
not long after dawn had broken...

we flew out to Lockerbie.

DAVID: (ON DEVICE) There's an
enormous hole in the ground

where Pan Am Flight 103...

is thought to have made its
first contact with the ground.

It must be about 30 feet deep,

and, on either side of the hole,

houses are absolutely shattered.

And as we move over Lockerbie, you
can see the trail of devastation -

wreaked by the 747 -

as it bounced and burnt
its way across the town.

We're now flying right out along the
trail of the wreckage and debris.

The fields here are littered
with what are easily recognisable

as parts of the
fuselage and wings...

of the 747...

stretching out in a seemingly
straight line of death.

I've been told that the crew were
found strapped in their seats,

in the cockpit.

Gosh.

Yeah.

(SIGHS) Yeah, it was a...

it was, you know, an image
you just won't forget.

And we were low
enough to, you know,

to quite clearly
see features and...

see that people were...

to all intents and purposes, just,
you know, sitting out in the grass.

But of course,
they were all dead.

HUGH: The body we found...

would be the furthest
from Lockerbie,

the furthest away
from the crash site.

MARGARET: Mm-hm.

It looked like a young person.

A full head of hair
and... Black hair.

Black, shiny hair, yeah.

He was lying on the ground
with a sheet on top of him.

You desperately wanted
to know who he was.

And we were thinking
about a young wife...

maybe children, parents.

You know, you started trying
to put a picture together.

Aye.

We developed quite a love for 'our - boy', as we called him.
- Yes, aye.

You know...

we didn't know who he
was... No... at all.

But you got attached
to him in some way.

For nearly 24 hours, we were...

keeping an eye on him
up there, you know.

Just about 3 o'clock in the
afternoon, the next afternoon,

before they came for the man.

(SHEEP BLEAT)

DAVE: My father came back,
past Tundergarth Church,

where the cockpit was and...

he said that we
would go out and see.

(RADIO CHATTER) People were
going home for Christmas.

So, there was Christmas
presents and luggage and...

obviously, the...

the bodies.

We found a toddler,
just over that hedge,

in that... in the next field.

She was just this little girl
with blonde, blonde hair.

It's the one thing
that sticks in my mind.

My father didnae want the
bodies getting attacked

by foxes or wildlife.

We were out in the pickup
truck, and we just lifted them,

and we took them into Lockerbie.

We were trying to do
what we could do to help.

TV: Police and rescue services have
so far recovered about 150 bodies.

60 of them were found
on a golf course.

About 40 others found
on a housing estate.

And, again, about another 50
on another housing estate.

Most of the bodies lie where police
and rescue services found them,

covered by tarpaulins.

My father, he never
really talked about it.

I suppose the death
and the bodies

maybe just affected him a
bit more is what it was.

But, in them days, it was just
basically you had to deal with,

get on and deal with it yourself,
that was just what it was.

(CHATTER)

INTERVIEWER: Wow, oh my gosh.

Aye.

Point me out Ella
Ramsden's house?

That one there. Just
the end one there.

That's it.

REPORTER: Memories of the night
disaster came to No 71 Park Place

will never leave the
woman who lived there.

Ella Ramsden scrambled from
the wreckage clutching her dog.

Her budgie was rescued
later by a fireman.

I'm so sorry for the
people that have died,

and their families.

More difficult for them.

I've only lost a
house, that's all.

And just... (SIGHS)

(RADIO CHATTER)

REPORTER: It's now more than 12 hours
since Britain's worst air disaster.

It's now known that 258
people died on the plane.

Eleven local people, including
three children, are still missing,

and are now presumed dead.

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

my sister-in-law,

and their house is just...
there's just a 30-foot crater.

I cannae even find the house.

It's... It's gone like.

DAVID: In Sherwood Crescent,

where the wing full of aviation
fuel hit the ground and exploded...

that's where the people
on the ground were killed.

And of course some of the
bodies were never found.

They were completely vapourised.

The houses were vapourised such
as the intensity of the explosion.

THATCHER: It is even
worse in daylight...

than it looked on
television at night.

And the number of
houses that are damaged,

Um, and...

the people in them must've wondered
just whatever was happening.

As indeed the people in
the aircraft must've...

had this, well...

it was just terrible.

JANE: People get on planes...

like we used to take
buses when I was a child.

And, so, we never saw any...

danger in Flora...
going to America.

JIM: They put a number up,
you know the way it is.

Heathrow, I couldn't
get through to at all.

And eventually, we ended up ringing
the Pan Am desk in New York.

They were able to tell us
that Flora was on that flight.

And at the same time, we could
hear chaos in the background.

And you could hear
women screaming.

MAN: Whoa! (WOMAN SCREAMS)

(WAILING) My baby!

A lot of American families
had congregated at JFK Airport

to get the latest
news on this crash.

Because most of the
victims were American.

VICTORIA: I turned
the TV back on.

And there was an 800
number that said, you know,

to call that number,
and it was busy-busy.

And then finally, I, um...

got through.

I said, you know, 'I've been told
my husband was on this flight'.

'Uh, what's his name?
What's his nationality?'

I'm desperate. I'm saying, 'Why are
you asking me all these questions?

'I just need to know if John Cummock
was on the flight or wasn't he'.

And they started taking all
this different information,

and they said, 'Well, really, we
can't confirm anything right now'.

I said, 'So, you can't confirm
if he was on the flight?

'And you can't confirm that
this plane has crashed?'

And, um, they said, 'No, um, we're
just taking information right now'.

And I said: 'How cruel is this?'

I said, you know, 'I have
three little children'.

John happened to be
in London on business.

And every day, we
would always talk.

He called me first
thing on December 21st.

We had talked about preparation for
Christmas and the kids, you know,

waiting for Santa and
daddy to come home.

And it was also
going to be, uh...

when we were gonna
be celebrating...

our youngest daughter's
third birthday.

He made no mention that he was
going to be changing his plans,

and trying to come home
early and surprise us.

TV: Now, America's number
one primetime news.

Evening, everyone. James
Adams with Angela Robinson.

Thanks for joining us.
Maurice is off tonight.

'It was literally
raining fire'...

Of course, in the media,
everything was about...

the flames and the wreckage.

With more than 250
people on board.

And in the foreground
was all debris,

and there were, you know, bodies
covered with orange tarps.

And in the right side
of the foreground

was a brown attache case.

I'd given John that attache
case for our anniversary,

on August 23rd of that year.

So, that photograph
solidified to me

that he really was
on board the plane.

That's how, really, my...

was the beginning
of my nightmare.

(WEEPS) Um...

DICK: Generally speaking, 747s
don't fall out of the sky.

So, the first suspicion was,

something bad happened
to that plane.

The FBI, we had somebody in
charge of the investigation...

that was me.

INTERVIEWER: I just want
to actually start...

I just wanted to show
you these pictures.

These were actually taken
by a colleague of yours.

Oh, yeah, I know about these
pictures... some of them.

I remember seeing
the seats, yeah.

(SIGHS) That shoe...

we had a picture of that shoe...

on our office wall
in Washington.

Sort of a reminder.

We weren't doing this for ourselves,
we were doing it for them...

and we devoted resources to
finding out what happened.

We have a requirement to...

obtain the very best
evidence that we can,

to allow us to try
and find a cause...

of the accident.

Uh, or if it is an accident.

To do that, we have to carry
out a very meticulous search.

The Scottish police
had resources.

They were a very
civilised, well-trained,

excellent police agency.

REPORTER: Hundreds of police,
from forces throughout Scotland,

are now involved in
the search for debris.

Reports are coming in, from far
and wide, of further sightings.

From the very first night,

they treated it
like a crime scene,

with the goal of first
bringing in all of the bodies

and all the aircraft parts.

So, we asked, 'We would
like to work with you',

recognising they are in
charge of the investigation.

And the FBI is not used
to not being in charge.

Um, I have been appointed as
the investigator in charge

for this particular accident.

There obviously are a
number of potential causes

for an in-flight breakup.

We are looking for evidence...

to try and find the
point at which...

things first
started to go wrong.

REPORTER: Pan Am Flight
103 began in Frankfurt,

then passengers changed
planes at Heathrow

for the flight on to New York.

Over Lockerbie, the
crew went silent.

TV: It didn't look as though the
pilot was in any particular trouble.

No trouble at all. They were
having normal conversations.

And then suddenly,
the plane disappeared.

COLIN: The aircraft was flying at
a bearing of about 320 degrees.

Kind of northwest-ish,
at 31,000 feet.

At 07:02pm and a few seconds,

the nose cone rips off
the front of the aircraft.

TB: Investigators will want to
see if there was any evidence

of a sudden cabin
depressurisation,

that could be caused by a
massive technical failure,

or by a bomb explosion.

Whatever happened to this plane
may have started about in here,

an area of the plane where a
cargo hold runs underneath.

At that point, it
starts to plummet

and dive directly
towards the town.

But because it was
quite windy that night,

as the aircraft breaks up,

the lighter things
blew much further east.

The debris field
extended, in fact,

as far as the east
coast of England,

right into Northumbria.

All of that debris field

had to be searched,
systematically.

Field by field, tree by tree.

600 plus searchers had
to gather each morning.

DICK: It was humongous.

845 square miles.

The largest crime
scene in history.

REAGAN: I wanna express
our sorrow and our concern

for the families and friends
of those who died in the crash

of the Pan American flight 103.

Christmas is a special
time for the young...

for those who carry the twin
promises of hopes and dreams.

And on this flight were the hopes
and dreams of many young people,

including the tragic loss of so many
students from Syracuse University.

A tragedy that steals the hopes
and dreams from our society

magnifies the loss...
to our society.

May God be with them.

MAN: As at half-past
three this afternoon,

the temporary mortuary at
the town hall is now full.

We have opened a second mortuary at
the ice rink at Lockerbie Ice Rink,

where in total we
have now received,

between the two
mortuaries, 150 bodies.

We have, as yet, no positive,
formal identifications.

JIM: I had spoken to the guy

who had been put in charge of
the post-mortems of the bodies.

And I said, 'Look,
I'm a doc too,

'and I want to see
my daughter's body.'

And he said, 'I
understand, I'll fix it.

'Come to the ice rink'.

And by the time... I got there,

he and the men with him
had taken Flora's body -

from amongst all the others -

and put it aside in a
little alcove with, um...

some flowers there and things.

(SIGHS) But, um...

she'd been so damaged.

She hadn't been damaged by
the explosion on the plane,

but mainly by impact
with the ground,

which had so altered her
face and her head that she...

well, she was
barely recognisable.

I asked him if, um...

if I could look
at her left foot,

because she had a little
pigmented spot on her big toe.

So, the cloth was taken off her.

I looked at her feet.

There was the spot...

on her undamaged foot.

JANE: I didn't want to see
her when she had been killed.

I wanted to remember her as...

I had last seen her.

Full of life.

INTERVIEWER: And Flora
was your firstborn?

She was. Yes. And...

you know, she was...

everything that a
parent could wish for.

Beautiful, bright,
lively, intelligent, yeah.

And, we were very proud of her.

A very kind guy who was
organising all this for me...

said, 'Anything else I can do?'

So, I said, 'Yes. 'Could I
have a lock of her hair?'

He was kind enough to do that.

Human kindness can be very
important when these things happen.

VICTORIA: The immediate need that I
had, and a lot of the other families

was to find out how to get
our loved ones identified,

and how to get them home.

The US State Department was
supposed to be helping us...

but they weren't.

Our government abdicated... all
their responsibility and role

of, um, crisis
management and assistant

to the victims'
families to Pan Am.

And so here's Pan Am, who...

is really circling
the wagons thinking,

'Oh well we might be
sued, or whatever'.

And they weren't
helping us at all.

DAVID: No-one does come to
Lockerbie with clean hands.

There's so many twists and
turns in this whole story,

from the very first
day that it happens.

People trying to get
off the hook, you know?

The insurers trying
to pass the buck.

The airline trying
to save itself.

It was just a mass of people.

There were people from the FBI.

Obviously.

There were also people
from murkier ends of...

of the US intelligence
community...

on the ground there,
as you would expect.

You know, I just don't understand
why they would bother denying it.

But they do to this day.

Nothing is what it seems
in the Lockerbie story.

You know, nothing quite adds up.

JIM: The flight on which Flora
got her seat at the last minute

was only two-thirds full.

How many flights, two or
three days before Christmas,

to the States, are
only two-thirds full?

Answer - only those fights where
people have been warned off.

She wasn't warned off.

Nobody told us.

INTERVIEWER: What was
the 'Helsinki Warning'?

Yeah. We did some
filming with Jim Swire,

and he still remains
angry about it.

DICK: Yeah. And I
understand that.

I totally understand
that and he's right.

In early December,

someone called the US
Embassy in Helsinki

and made a threat.

Within two weeks' time,

someone will carry a bomb
on board a Pan Am flight

from Frankfurt to
the United States.

People working for US agencies

were made aware
of that warning...

and were given the chance

to make alternative
arrangements.

Whereas the normal travelling
public weren't given that chance.

The American authorities

put notices up on the
noticeboards of their embassies,

telling them that there'd been a
terrorist threat to this flight,

and they might want to avoid then
to get home for Christmas, you see -

to their families in
the United States.

The sabotage theory was given
further weight this morning,

when it emerged that American
diplomats in Europe...

were warned that a Pan Am plane
could be a terrorist target.

Interpol warned airlines and police
authorities in 147 countries,

including Britain.

VICTORIA: There were over ten
bomb warnings on these flights.

And we wanted to know
who got the warnings

and what did our
government do about it?

WOMAN: We receive dozens
of threats each day.

We notified the people who have
responsibility for security.

DICK: If nothing
else, it looked bad.

'We protect ourselves.
We don't protect you'.

And I feel that we
had a responsibility

to let everybody know there
was this potential threat.

Such a public statement,

with nothing more to go on than
an anonymous telephone call...

you'd literally have closed down
the air traffic in the world.

REPORTER: Mr Reagan...
(AUDIO DAMPENS SPEECH)

No.

Obviously, Pan Am
wasn't mandated

to enhance security,
search the plane,

or warn the passengers.

But what really
petrified all of us

is that this was going to
happen to somebody else.

And we didn't want
any American -

anybody - to go through
what we had gone through.

JIM: All I was
after was the truth.

I felt I had a right
to know the truth

about how my daughter
had come to be killed.

And why she wasn't protected
against being killed.

And those were the bases in
which we very soon found...

we were being ritually and profusely
deceived by the authorities.

MICK: A number of items of
wreckage, passenger baggage

and part of the framework
of a metal luggage pallet...

are being examined by Ministry
of Defence scientists.

Each of these will be subjected

to lengthy chemical and
metallurgical forensic examination.

However...

it has been established

that two parts of the metal
luggage pallet's framework...

show conclusive evidence...

of a detonating high explosive.

Much investigative
work remains to be done

to establish the nature
of the explosive device,

what it was contained in,

its location in the aircraft,

and the sequence of events...

immediately following
its detonation.

From what you've heard, you'll
understand that this operation

has developed into a
criminal inquiry...

of international dimensions.

There is no doubt anymore,
the 259 passengers and crew

of Flight 103 were
killed by a bomb.

DICK: Within a week, we knew

that it was a terrorist attack
against the United States -

and against an American carrier
- that killed 270 people.

What we wanna do is
find out who did it.

And bring them to
justice, you bet.

At the time, it was the
biggest terrorist attack

against the United
States in history.

And of course, you have to think
what was the logic and the reason?

BRUCE: The mid-1980s were
really a remarkable time,

in terms of
international terrorism.

Virtually every day, there was some
news of some new terrorist attack,

airplane hijackings,
airplane bombings,

attacks on embassies,
assassinations of individuals.

And there was a veritable
alphabet soup of terrorist groups.

There was ANO, the Abu
Nidal Organization,

PFLP, Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, PFLPGC -

the Popular Front for Liberation
of Palestine General Command -

the Provisional Irish Republican
Army, PIRA, Hezbollah.

(MAN YELLS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

(CROWD CHANTS) And it sort
of the fed the anonymity.

Like, who were these
people? Who was behind them?

Why were they
doing these things?

And it's often very hard
to find clear answers.

Or the certainty that we wish we
could attach to terrorist incidents,

that exist in the
rest of the world.

But we have to understand,
just like in physics,

every action has a reaction.

There was a war going on in the
Middle East between Iran and Iraq.

And the US government

had gone at the request of
the government of Kuwait,

and put American flags on
tankers coming out of Kuwait,

bringing oil to the West.

SAILOR: (ON RADIO) You're
approaching a US Navy warship,

bearing zero-nine-zero, five
nautical miles from you.

USS Vincennes was a navy ship,

that was sent into
the Persian Gulf,

to protect those
Kuwaiti tankers.

And we told both Iran and Iraq,

'Any attack on any one
of these Kuwaiti tankers

'is an attack on
the United States'.

REPORTER: It was July the 3rd.

And the cruiser
Vincennes was on patrol,

in the northern
straits of Hormuz.

(RADIO CHATTER)

(SHIP HORN BLASTS)

By mid-morning though the picture
had changed for the worse.

A total of 13 Iranian gun
boats were sighted in the area,

and the Vincennes sighted
two of them closing fast.

Got a visual on the... (AUDIO
DROWNS SPEECH) MAN: 29.

Coming inbound fast.

Three-five-zero inbound.

Three five zero relative...
(AUDIO DROWNS SPEECH) Relative.

(GUN FIRES)

(AUDIO DROWNS SPEECH)

Zero-zero-four troop, 21 miles.

BRUCE: The USS Vincennes...

thought the plane was a suicide
attack against the ship.

(RADIO CHATTER) Oh, dead!

We had him. God,
that was a dead-on!

DICK: But...

it was an Iran airbus,
a commercial flight.

Flight 655, killing
everyone on board.

TV: The United States has admitted
it shot down an Iranian airliner

over the Gulf
early this morning.

The Iranians say 290
people were on board,

66 of them children.

And they say 110 bodies
have been recovered so far.

MAN: This has not
been a mistake.

This was cold-blooded murder.

(WAILING)

By definition, it was
an act of terrorism,

which I hope you agree that
should be severely punished.

REAGAN: I won't minimise the tragedy
we all know that it was a tragedy.

But we're talking about an
incident in which a plane -

on radar -

was observed coming in the
direction of a ship in combat.

So, I think it was an
understandable accident,

to shoot and think that they were
under attack from that plane.

MAN: We will, of
course, in due course,

have our own response
to the American crimes.

INTERVIEWER: Would it
be a military response?

Well, I do not disclose
what kind of response...

would be from our side.

But naturally, a prepared
and measured response

to the magnitude of the crime.

(CROWD CHANTING) Down, down USA,
down, down USA, down, down USA.

DICK: We knew that
the government of Iran

were very angry at
the United States.

But they were not
the only country.

(MEN SPEAK IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

We had a whole list of others,

who we felt could well
have been involved.

In the universe of terrorism
and state sponsors of terrorism,

there's no shortage of suspects,
with renegade or rogue countries,

such as Iran and
Iraq, Libya, Syria,

sponsoring terrorism as an
instrument of foreign policy.

And to attempt to develop
a system of cut-outs

to obscure their involvement...

so you don't have the smoking gun
to justify military retaliation.

You need to have
direct evidence.

But in January of 1989, the Scots
hadn't even found all the suitcases.

They hadn't brought in
all the aircraft parts.

And then in late January,
early February...

we found a suitcase.

Many of the suitcases that
fell 31,000 feet to the ground

would have been a great
commercial - they fell intact.

You could take the clothes out,
put them on and go to a meeting.

But this suitcase was in
about 54 pieces and fragments.

We pretty much thought...

that suitcase contained
the explosive -

the bomb that blew up the plane.

That suitcase was determined to
be a Samsonite Silhouette 4000,

antique copper in colour.

JIM: It was in the
hold of Pan Am 103,

where the bomb exploded
and murdered my daughter.

The British authorities had been
warned well before Lockerbie,

and had essentially
done nothing.

VICTORIA: If it's up
to our government,

we might not ever
know why Pan Am 103...

was blown out of the sky.

Oh, I think I know...

who was responsible
for killing her.

And I think I could prove it.

The families of
accidental activists,

we wanted to make sure this didn't
happen again - we wanted the truth.

EDWIN: I have written
a short statement.

And, uh, I will start with this.

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