Lockerbie: Megrahi may have been the victim of a political fix, but don't expect the CIA to set the record straight

Poor old Gordon is getting pilloried again, this time for finding nothing to say on the release of the Lockerbie bomber. I admit his excuse is thin; the Scottish justice system may be devolved, but it can’t be denied that this case does have a teensy-weensy bit of a foreign policy angle, and that isn’t devolved.

But perhaps that mighty brain has been processing Wittgenstein, who famously ended his Tractatus with the insight: “If something can’t be spoken of, best to shut up about it”. For there is, indeed, nothing to say. Everyone knows, however often it’s denied, that one factor in the public view of this case is that there was something rather iffy about the trial, and that Megrahi may have been the expendable victim of a political fix. This can never be openly admitted. The world and his granny have been firing off more or less convincing theories about what really happened: but no-one knows, or those that do can be counted on one’s fingers. Nobody is ever going to set the record straight, because the CIA is (somehow) involved, and they don’t do that sort of thing. This may be because there are still actual repercussions to be feared; more likely, because the truth will embarrass someone one doesn’t want to embarrass; but possibly because there is a certain amount of macho posturing about secrecy going on. Nobody takes themselves more seriously than the American diplomatic/security establishment.

So we can speculate all we like: we’re never going to know. Gordon might as well maintain his Zen posture. Personally, having close-range experience of what terminal prostate cancer is like, I’m with Kenny MacAskill: no need to pile on the agony. And may Megrahi be forgiven his sins, whatever they were.