As far as conspiracy theories go, the thing that must remain hidden is the possibility that the bomb got on board because it was on a CIA protected drug run. And it is established fact that CIA was helping run drugs on those paths at that time. That’s not to say that CIA did it, but rather that it was the perfect opportunity for getting a pretty big bomb on a plane. (The general – and laughable – counter to that is that it was a “rogue” operation about to be burned…hardy har har. CIA’s never shied away from running drugs. There’s nothing rogue about it; it’s the bread and butter.)

Nobody wants to see the victims’ families suing the US government for letting something like this happen while it was breaking its own laws in order to break more laws. Not to mention the PR disaster it would be on “The Arab Street”…Americans probably wouldn’t even notice. I guarantee that no Senators would notice.

And on that point, what would have to happen so that those materials could be released? I just don’t know enough about the entanglements of the Scottish legal process to say. But I do wonder what’s in there. On the one hand, I don’t imagine that the Scottish government would be particularly concerned about embarrassing the British government. On the other hand, if this was a frame-up, why did three Scottish judges go along with it?

The one common point between the Scottish and British governments, I believe, was that no one wanted Megrahi to die in Scotland.

The accusation is that Megrahi was released as part of a deal between the British government of Tony Blair and the Libyans, involving lobbying from BP. Indeed there *was* a deal about prisoner exchange which was agreed by the Blair government and Libya, though what part BP had to play isn’t know.

But…

1. Megrahi wasn’t released under a prisoner exchange deal.

2. Megrahi wasn’t released by Blair’s government.

Justice, even cases of international terrorism is a devolved matter in the Scotland. Megrahi was tried, at Camp Zeist, under *Scottish* Law, not British law (there is no such thing – Scotland has always had a separate legal system). Since 1999, responsibility for the Justice system in Scotland has rested with the Scottish Executive (since 2007, the Scottish Government). It was the Scottish government who released Megrahi, not under a prisoner release agreement, but under a compassionate release scheme, which all Scottish prisoners are eligible for. A small number of prisoners are released this way each year in Scotland – if the medical evidence suggests they are terminally ill, they are almost never refused. The same sort of thing happens in US prisons. Now, the medics seem to be wrong, which is unfortunate for everyone but Megrahi, but the evidence a year ago was that he was terminally ill.

Notably, two weeks earlier the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs was released for the same reasons – and he is also still alive today.

Now, the politics bit…

The current Scottish Government is a minority administration formed by the Scottish National Party. They are a mainstream, mostly left-of-centre (broadly speaking, all five political parties in the Scottish parliament are to the left of the Democrats), social democratic party committed to an independent Scotland. This is important. They won power in 2007 after beating the Labour party by a single seat.

The SNP are *not* friends with Labour. In the central belt of Scotland, which includes the cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, they are bitter, bitter enemies. Whatever deals were being done between Blair and Gaddafi, the Scottish Government were not party to them.

This kind of puts a hole in the whole conspiracy theory thing, doesn’t it.

Oh and “Call me Dave” – the new Prime Minister who was over this week? Well, he doesn’t like any of them. In Scotland, he leads the Conservative and Unionist Party – union in this case referring to the United Kingdom. No friend of the SNP and certainly no friend of Blair.

Ahem. Do keep us informed. If there WAS a railroad, and if US officials were involved, and the gods help us, Iran was behind it, then it might very well result in another round of hearings into steroid use in professional sports, and I need to be ready for that.