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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Memoir is inaccurate, not apolitical, and not truthful, February 5, 1999
By A Customer
The controversy over the Helsinki matter was immediate and long running...no just unresolved. Revell's covering of it in his book is accurate...he is inaccurate on Thurman for one. Accuracy (and honesty) is like virginity - either you've got it or you don't.Even though the threat was apparently circulated within some parts of the Department of State, it certainly did not receive widespread dissemination. - European papers showed it posted in Moscow and Karen Decker said - not anonymously, and on tape - that is was disseminated. "Widely" is relative - there were NO EUROPEAN STATE DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES RETURNING TO THE US 3 DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS ON THE US FLAG CARRIER - res ipsi loquitor. At the time I was was assigned to a major European Embassy, with among other things, responsibilty for Internatinal Terrorism and I did not learn of the Helsinki matter until the PA103 tragedy. Well the BKA gave those pictures to as many government and airline agencies as possible. So its an anonymous post vs Karen Decker on ABC - if true, not a good job why brag about it ? But somebody warned those embassy people and posted those warnings. Immediately upon learning of the threat, a team of FBI and Finnish police were dispatched to conduct an extensive investigation to resolve the Helsinki call, which they did, and it was in no way connected to PA103. To suggest otherwise simply flys in the face of the facts. What facts ? The face saving newspaper accounts a week after the fact - Chris Revell's apparently simultaneous of rebooking and the Helsinki warnings are actions that speak louder than anything Buck Revell has to say. Why anyone would think that the FBI and the many other agencies, both from the US and Europe, who investigated PA103 would ignore such a significant development is incomprehensible. - incromprehensible to anyone oblivious to Middle Eastern affairs, oil interests, or Iranian politics. Conspircy theorists (a derisive rhetorical flourish ...anything involving more than a single individual can be referred to as "a conspiracy" - aimless) fail to accept that the investigation involved thousands of individuals from hundreds of agencies, all of whom were trying to solve the largest muder in American history. Hardly thousands except at the most trivial level; and interestingly neither the media nor Revell treat it as "the largest murder in American history" - although its true. But in fact it was a necessary payback for the ghastly Vincennes incident - which was an equally homicidal event. A dyed in wool patriot like Revell overlooks that. These individuals were dedicated, professional and for the most part, apolitical. According to Seymour Hersh "Revell can be a very political bureaucratic, for sure, and has been...." -- Revell's exchanges with Bruce Porter, comments on Louis Freeh, and on Sessions shows Revell is a political as you can get. The handling of Lockerbie was just doing the companies bidding (and if he used the inside information to save his kid along with the Embassy people he was only being human ...but if so it proves that on Dec 5-7, 1988 Revell did not think it was a "hoax" .... and he does not have what it takes to own up to that.) They would not have been swayed to lower their standards by any administration or group. And I can assure you that there was never any pressure from any source on the investigators. -- facts trump everything, but circumstantial evidence and named, taped accounts, and published facts trump anonymous tipsters, not published, presenting no facts.
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by Danny O Coulson
