Swedish Members of JIG Appear to Reject Critical Aspects of the Official Report on the Sinking of the Cheonan

by Scott Creighton (H/T to Jay for bringing this to our attention)

Logo, Page 1 full report

The 300+ page “final” Joint Investigation Group (JIG) report on the sinking of the Cheonan has been released and by their own accounting, the reason for the release of the report is to bolster sinking confidence in the last “final” report they released, on May 20th 2010 (which was universally rejected as being almost a complete fabrication). The officials themselves finally had to admit that the image they used in their May 20th presentation was in fact NOT a match for the evidence they supposedly found on May 15th of this year (with a “special net”) and since that evidence (the supposed propulsion system and steering section of a CHT-02D torpedo made in North Korea) again by their own statements, is the key evidence held against North Korea, they spent a great deal of time and effort trying once again to rebrand their entire case around it. And once again, they failed to prove their case with regard to the torpedo evidence comparison to the supposed drawing of the North Korean CHT-02d torpedo, which I will detail further in my next article. 

In a blow to conclusions that are already under attack from leftwing politicians and activists, a team of experts that investigated the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan have admitted showing a diagram of the wrong North Korean torpedo when they presented their findings at a press conference on May 20. 

When queried by journalists about discrepancies between the CHT-02D torpedo that attacked the Cheonan and the one depicted in the diagram, investigators said Tuesday that the pictured torpedo was of the model PT-97W and that the error was due to “a mix-up by a staff member while preparing for the presentation.”  Chosun IIbo , June 30, 2010

But in this article I wish to focus on a rather telling aspect of the new full report – the dissenting opinion of the Swedish team  of the JIG members to the findings of the most important parts of the report.

The public in South Korea has lost faith in the official report on what happened to their military vessel, the Cheonan and subsequently they want to know what really caused the loss of the lives of 46 of their sailors. Seeing this as a potential PR problem, the government of the Republic of Korea, with the “assistance” of the U.S. Department of State and Hillary Clinton, is mounting a deeply divisive propaganda campaign directed at those people who question the “official story”

… Many South Koreans are also skeptical. A survey by Seoul National University’s Institute for Peace and Unification Studies showed that only three in 10 trust the findings of the international inquiry.

… South Korea yesterday released a full report into the deadly sinking of a warship blamed on North Korea, saying it was acting to quell “groundless” suspicions about who was to blame for the tragedy.

… “Even within the Republic of Korea [South Korea], the reality is that there are individuals who raise doubts about the investigation results based on their own interest, and they are taking irresponsible actions such as spreading groundless accusations,” said the report.  JoongAng english

The people of the Republic of Korea have good reason to be skeptical and angry. They are being lied to. Repeatedly.

But it’s not just the people of the Republic of Korea who seem to refute key aspects of the report.  Aside from the Russians and the Chinese who have announced that they don’t find the report’s conclusions to be grounded in scientific fact, turns out, neither does the members of Swedish team of the Joint Investigation Group. Looks like they don’t support the work of the other members of the group or at least, they aren’t going to sign-on to those conclusions that they produced.  Those conclusions are the most important parts of the supposed case against North Korea.

The JIG investigation team was made-up of investigators from 5 different countries; the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and of course the United States. The team was broken down into 4 different investigation groups with representatives of the different nations working within certain groups and on certain parts of the overall investigation. Only the United States and South Korea had members of their teams working on every one of the 4 investigation groups.

The first four pages of the full report are reserved for the signatures of the heads of the five teams from the various nations participating in the investigation. They each have a signed statement showing support for the findings of the final report.  An example of the typical signature of approval is provided below.

As you can see, Thomas Eccles, team leader of the U.S. team, “concur[s] with the finding and conclusions of this report”. It is a unequivical acceptance of the entire report. Most of the signatures repeat the exact same language.  Most, that is.

The Swedish team leader, Mr. Agne Widholm, reserves his support to ONLY those aspects of the report that the Swedish team was involved with. Which means they do not support the most critical aspects of the report

The following image is taken directly from the report itself. It details which team members worked on which of the 4 investigative subcategories.

(click on image for larger view)

As you can see, the Swedish team was not involved with the evaluation of the explosive analysis nor the overall intelligence analysis. For that matter, according to the report, they were not involved with the retrieval of the key piece of evidence, the torpedo itself, nor the evaluation of it and the comparative drawings.

These two aspects of the Joint Investigative Group’s findings are by far and away the most important and supposedly damning with regard to finding that North Korea fired a torpedo which sank the Cheonan on March 26th of this year.  It is extremely telling when one team of this investigation refuses to support the conclusions of the others especially when it comes to these aspects of the official case study.

The United States had 15 members helping with the “investigation” including one “Public Affairs Officer” who was involved in every aspect of the investigation. The United Kingdom provided 2 members, Australia provided 3 and Sweden provided 4 in all for a total of 24 Foreign Investigation Team members.

When the country providing the second largest team of investigators in a study such as this refuses to support the findings of the rest, then there must be a serious problem. And there is. But that is for tomorrow.

[preview of tomorrow's article]

Also of significance… the images of the supposed North Korean CHT-02D torpedo come from a torpedo export catalog and that is the basis for their entire argument. They have yet to release that catalog to the press or the public.

Citing military confidentiality, the JIG did not respond to calls for it disclose a torpedo export catalog that reportedly includes specifications of the torpedo in question. Hankyorah

And once again, there are several discrepancies between the image of the recovered evidence and the drawing they provided. The first of which I show below. The motor is too large to fit in the housing they detail in the drawing. The length is correct, but the width is far too large.

Allow me to explain…

Another way to tell it is the wrong size is to compare the size of the motor to the rest of the torpedo, in the case of the evidence, that would be to the rudder controls plate in the tail section, which in the drawing, the motor housing is about the same size, but again the motor of the evidence is much larger by comparison.

As Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. once said… “If it don’t fit… you must acquit“