On 13 July 2008, The Sunday Express reported thus:

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The Lockerbie bomber is set to be sensationally freed on a 'technicality'…

Daily Express: The World's Greatest Newspaper :: UK News :: LOCKERBIE BOMBER TO BE FREED

In July 1988, an Iranian airliner was shot down by the battle cruiser Vincennes over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 people on board.

The US Navy claimed it was an accident.

In December 1988, a bomb exploded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, killing all 259 people on board, along with 11 on the ground.

Some say that Libya was accused because the US did not want the general public linking the downing of the Iranian airliner with Lockerbie.

The strategic need at this time was to have Iran and Syria lined up in a coalition that the US was about to build against against the newly demonised Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Vincennes had been sent to the Gulf, ostensibly, to protect oil tankers during the Iran-Iraq War. US military intelligence, however, was waging a covert war in support of Iraq. As well as the destruction of half the Iranian navy, the US destroyed many Iranian oil platforms during the latter stages of the Gulf War.

In the highest circles it was belived that the attack may well have been carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, with Iranian backing, in retaliation for the destruction of the Iranian airliner.

David Carlson, Captain of the Vincennes' sister ship, USS Sides, is on record as having said this:

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I view the entire affair as a gigantic screw-up. We should have held people accountable and I believe we should have apologised to the Iranians. Had we apologised, Lockerbie might not have happened.

In the 10 October 2002, edition of Counterpunch, Elson E. Boles says this:

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In June 1990, a Nightline episode revealed that officials in the Reagan administration, the State Department, the Pentagon, C.I.A., and D.I.A., lied about the locations and behaviour of the USS Vincennes' after it had shot down an Iranian airliner in 1987 killing over 200 civilians.

Author and journalist, Dilip Hiro said this in his 1991 work, The Longest War:

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In the wake of the Iranian airbus disaster, the culmination of Washington’s diplomatic, military and economic campaign in support of Saddam Hussein, Iran faced reality and effectively capitulated to Baghdad and Washington, which had coordinated their military operations against Teheran.

A suspicious number of important folk cancelled their flight on Pan Am 103 at the last moment.

80% of the staff of the American embassy in Moscow cancelled their bookings on the flight.

Just hours before the flight, Pik Botha, the former South African Foreign Minister, who was traveling to UN headquarters to sign the New York Accords, cancelled, along with his considerable entourage.

John McCarthy, then US Ambassador to Lebanon; Chris Revell, the son of Oliver Revell, Executive Assistant Director of the FBI; and Steven Greene, Assistant Administrator in the Office of Intelligence of the US Drug Enforcement Administration; also cancelled their reservations on Pan Am 103.

After an official enquiry into the performance of Will Rogers, the Captain of the Vincennes, he was awarded the US Legion of Merit by George Bush senior in 1990.

This for:

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… exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of an outstanding service.

On 1 July 1992, introducing The USS Vincennes: Public War, Secret War for ABC News, top US commentator, Ted Koppel, said this:

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Governments lie. They do it all the time. And, much as we’d like to believe otherwise, the US government is no exception. There were times when we may have believed otherwise. But after Vietnam and Watergate, we know better.