This must be posted in full here.. .. .Vindication. .When a British military helicopter crashed, killing 29, the pilots were blamed. It took their fathers eight years to clear their names. .. .David Walmsley. .The National Post. . . .Press Association. .. .Flight-Lieutenant Jonathan Tapper, a Special Forces electronic warfare officer with expertise in navigation systems, was in command of the Chinook helicopter that inexplicably crashed on Mull of Kintyre, on Scotland's southwest coast, in 1994. Last month, he and his co-pilot, Richard Cook, were posthumously exonerated by the House of Lords.. .. . . . . .Press Association. .. .Flight Lieutenant Richard Cook was one of the pilots of a Chinook helicopter on a flight from Royal Air Forces base in Aldergrove, Northern Ireland, to Inverness,.... .. . . . . .Chris Bacon, Press Association. .. ....Scotland, which crashed in 1994, on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, while flying in thick fog. All 29 people on board were killed.. .. . . . . .Press Association. .. .Lieut. Cook's father, John Cook.... .. . . . . .Press Association. .. ....and Mike Tapper father of the helicopter's second pilot, Lieutenant Jonathan Tapper, urged the British government to take action after two senior Royal Air Force officers concluded the pilots were responsible for the accident. On February 5, 2002, the House of Lords cleared the pilots of blame.. .. . . . . .The dull thud of the Chinook as it glanced against the rock masked the enormity of the crash. In an instant, the giant twin-rotor helicopter was enveloped in a massive fireball as the aviation fuel ignited, turning the heather-covered hillside called Beinn na Lice (Slab of Stone) into a burning mess. The river of fire ran all the way down the mountain, to the Irish Sea 800 feet below.. .. .Driving down the hillside on that June afternoon in 1994 was Hector Lamont, the lightkeeper on this tip of the Mull of Kintyre, on Scotland's southwest coast. He heard the aircraft approaching and he could not understand why it was flying so low. But he could not see it through the mist.. .. .Russell Ellacott, a tourist cycling the area scouring for old Second World War aircraft wrecks, felt the downwash of the giant twin rotors as the Chinook passed overhead. Tearfully reflecting on that day, Mr. Ellacott estimates he was a matter of yards from the aircraft as it flew over him and, moments later, smashed into the rock. "It was like a vision, like you visualize Hell to be," he later told me. He saw small pockets of fire mixed with bodies. The tangled wreckage of the craft was littered across the entire slope. These people, these things, they must be mannequins, he thought. It must be some kind of search and rescue exercise. Of course, it was not.. .. .- - -. .. .It had begun as just another day for the crew of Chinook Zulu Delta 576 stationed at Royal Air Force Aldergrove, a heavily secured Northern Ireland military air base adjacent to the civilian Belfast International Airport. The first historic IRA ceasefire was three months away from being signed and security around the perimeter was tight. The four-man helicopter crew flying the afternoon sortie to Inverness, Scotland, were among the Royal Air Force's elite. Flight-Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper, 28, and Richard Cook, 30, together with Loadmasters Graham Forbes and Kev Hardie, both expert navigators, were the front line in the fight against terrorism. Lieut. Cook was suppposed to join the British Special Air Service (SAS) later in the year. He was co-pilot for the flight that Thursday afternoon, using the controls -- the cyclic, the footpedals -- from his seat on the right-hand side of the cockpit. Lieut. Tapper was the Special Forces electronic warfare officer, an expert with navigation systems. As today's captain, he commanded the flight from the left-hand front seat of the helicopter. Loadmaster Forbes is believed to have been standing at the front end of the aircraft, or possibly sitting in the jump seat between the two pilots. He was probably the best "loadie" the RAF has produced. The main role of a loadmaster on a Special Forces flight is navigation, to ensure safe flight. They act as an extra pair of eyes and must, if they consider it dangerous, demand the flight be halted. The captain will obey any such demand. Trust between loadie and pilot is vital; it becomes second nature.. .. .Look at Kev Hardie's record. Loadmaster Hardie was a Gulf War veteran who had a couple of years earlier helped shout instructions by intercom to the pilots 80 feet in front of him as they weaved a giant Chinook away from a suspected surface-to-air missile attack behind Iraqi lines. That helicopter was transporting the now legendary SAS patrol, Bravo Two Zero, which went on to become the most decorated in British military history. In short, because the four men belonged to the RAF's Special Forces flight, they were the most trusted, the most capable. Twenty minutes after takeoff, they would be dead.. .. .So, too, would 25 of the best anti-terrorism experts ever assembled: detectives, MI5 agents, military intelligence officials. For 24 chaotic hours, the government refused to name the six MI5 agents. At least one widow did not realize her husband was a spy until after he was dead. The secrets and the experience these 24 men and one woman possessed and their experience were lost and could never be replaced. In a single moment, an RAF accident had achieved what a generation of IRA terrorists had failed to do.. .. .An hour later, as I passed the frozen food section in the supermarket of my hometown in Northern Ireland, the tinny music blaring from the speakers was interrupted by a news flash, shortly after 7 p.m. "Reports are coming in..." As everyone in Northern Ireland knows, it's the four words dreaded most. It means another life targeted, another murder, perhaps a big bombing. This, however, was different. "Reports are coming in that a military helicopter has crashed on the Mull of Kintyre." I was 15 minutes into a vacation after having spent the previous months reporting too many killings. Late 1993 had been the bloodiest period in Northern Ireland since the early 1970s. My work as a hard news reporter had left me exhausted.. .. .So, on hearing this news, my initial instinct, I have to confess, was one of relief. This was a job for the Scottish reporters, and maybe a few from London who would be sent to the scene too. I didn't need to worry. But as I walked the 20 minutes home and a cold wind bit my ears, my heart told me my holiday was already over.. .. .I tuned in to the radio for the 8 p.m. bulletin to hear that the downed aircraft was a Chinook with unnamed security personnel on board, flying from near Belfast to a security conference in Inverness, Scotland. Reports suggested no survivors. I phoned my news editor and took the train 60 miles back to Belfast and work. I was the most junior reporter and expected to cover the funerals, at most. To my surprise, my boss, Murray Morse, took a huge leap of faith and sent me to the scene.. .. .It was obvious to us all as we stood on the Mull of Kintyre the morning after the crash that this was a massive story. But what had caused this accident? What had allowed a Special Forces crew to fly into the side of a hill in broad daylight?. .. .Sabotage by terrorists was the first and most obvious suspicion but "the personality of the wreckage" as air accident investigators called it, suggested otherwise. It was relatively confined and there was no telltale residue to suggest an explosion had downed the helicopter.. .. .If not a bomb, then what about a flaw in the aircraft? Again, this was all but ruled out. After all, the Chinook was an old reliable warhorse that had gotten the Americans out of Saigon. The RAF wouldn't let VIPs on board an aircraft if they didn't trust it. You don't play chicken with your finest. So attention turned to the pilots.. .. .According to an RAF rule, deceased pilots could only be found negligent "if there was no doubt whatsoever." Because deceased pilots were by definition not around to defend themselves, this rule was written to protect them, to give them the benefit of any doubt.. .. .After a year-long investigation, in June, 1995, the RAF concluded the cause of the accident was a mystery. No positive fault could be found. The president of the RAF Board of Inquiry, Wing Commander Andy Pulford, said there was insufficient evidence to find either pilot guilty of even, what he termed "human failings." The story of the RAF's worst peacetime accident would end with the clumsy but accurate conclusion that there was no definitive cause.. .. .There was no black box, no eyewitness (only ear witnesses), no radar trace, no final radio call. 20% of the aircraft was simply obliterated in the fireball, the remaining 80% was Category 5 scrap damage. Because of this lack of evidence, the investigation was more complex than Lockerbie, the case of the PanAm flight that was blown out of the sky over Scotland by Libyan terrorists several years before.. .. .But, remarkably, upon reviewing the board's finding, two senior officers, Sir William Wratten and Sir John Day, decided, without providing additional evidence, that it was their opinion that both pilots must have ignored the fundamental tenets of basic airmanship, and flown the aircraft too fast, too low in worsening weather conditions and could not be excused, even in death, from the inevitable charge that they had been grossly negligent. A year after the crash, it was this conclusion alone that was released to the public, to the press and to Parliament in June, 1995, by way of a one-and-a-half page statement. The complete 400-plus page RAF report was a restricted document, and the fact that the president of this same inquiry had spent 12 months going through the evidence, only to clear the pilots, was not released.. .. .The reviewing officers' damning judgment against the pilots was read in the House of Commons by Sir Malcolm Rifkind QC, the then Defence Secretary. The two Special Forces loadmasters could not have affected the proper conduct of the sortie and were absolved of blame. Had they survived, the pilots would have faced manslaughter charges.. .. .Two dead pilots. Their reputations in tatters, their honour taken away. This is where the senior RAF officers expected the matter to end, and, indeed, it nearly did. I managed, however, to obtain a copy of the report and set about trying to understand where the truth lay. Why was it, I wondered, that Parliament and the press were only given the conclusion of the reviewing officers, when the president of the board had so clearly rejected the finding of pilot error against Lieut. Tapper and Lieut. Cook?. .. .- - -. .. .Two years after the accident, I am standing in the living room of John Cook's three-bedroom home in Hampshire, southern England. It's not long after I first tracked the Cook family down, determined to get their side of the story. The television documentary crew I am working with has set up. A camera pans the room, settling first on Sara, Lieut. Richard Cook's widow, who is sitting with their three-year-old daughter, Eleanor. It then moves to Sara's father-in-law, John, sitting to the left. The three are looking straight ahead at a television playing a home video. A handsome young man has hoisted baby Eleanor high above him and makes airplane noises as he "flies" his daughter overhead, hand on her tummy, her little legs kicking as she squeals with delight. Three years on and Eleanor bounds up, pointing to the television. "There's daddy," she says excitedly. She runs back to her mother who hugs her tightly. I look at John. "There's daddy," he says softly, echoing his granddaughter. "There's daddy ..." His hands are clenching the armrests of the chair he is sitting in. He gets up from his chair, sobbing softly, inconsolable, and leaves the room. It is, I discover, the first time he has seen the video.. .. .John Cook's wife, Joy, died the year before the accident. It is the one blessing he can find, that his wife didn't live long enough only to bury her eldest son. John Cook is a retired Concorde pilot who flew for nearly 40 years. He and his son spoke the same language. He talks of "my beautiful son, a beautiful aviator." His voice is barely audible as he recounts now distant afternoons at the pub with Rick. Just before the official report was released, he told Sara and his younger son, Chris, who also served in the RAF, that they had to be prepared for a finding of pilot error. "We admit in our family, there is such a thing as pilot error," he says. "And if the investigators don't have a cause, then they go the traditional route. 'Pilot error' often means we don't see anything wrong with the aircraft and in the absence of a fault, the pilots will be held to blame. We accept that.". .. .But when the report was delivered in June, 1995, he says the language was harsher than he could have imagined. Reading the finding of gross negligence for the first time, sitting at a desk at RAF Odiham, his son's base in Hampshire, in southern England, John Cook lifts his head and addresses his late son's commanding officer, Peter Crawford, a respected officer who also reviewed the RAF inquiry and agreed with the inquiry president that the pilots should not be blamed. "Why?" John Cook asks. "Why, when there is no evidence whatsoever? You go and tell your superiors [Sir William Wratten and Sir John Day] ... this is war.". .. .The initial battle is to take place six months later in January, 1996. Because the helicopter crashed in Scotland, a Fatal Accident Inquiry, an extensive inquest, is to be held in Paisley, near Glasgow. It will the first opportunity both families have to question the government position.. .. .It is also my first chance to meet Mike Tapper. I scan the courtroom, where three rows of chairs have been placed to the left of the Sheriff, Sir Stephen Young, to accommodate the relatives of the 29 passengers and crew. A police officer who identified his colleagues' remains after the crash is also there. In front of the rows set aside for the bereaved, sits Mr. Tapper, with his head bowed. He is reading a sheet of paper on his lap. I decide not to disturb him. He is sitting with his lawyer and beside him sits John Cook with his legal team.. .. .I am there to cover the inquiry, which will last four weeks, for The Belfast Telegraph. At the break on about the third day, Mr. Tapper approaches me, hand outstretched. We speak for a few moments, though strangely, it's about nothing in particular. I tell him I'm looking forward to the evidence in the coming days. He smiles, pained, but his eyes look beyond me.. .. .In the years that follow, I learn more about Mike Tapper, a former banker, a former submariner who remains passionate about naval history. He is just as stubborn as John Cook.. .. .Mr. Tapper began fighting his son's case before he even knew he had to. Within a week of the crash, Mike drove from his home in Norfolk on England's eastern seaboard, to confront his son's commanders at RAF Odiham.. .. ."They were expecting a grieving father. And, yes, while I was grieving I certainly wasn't prepared to just roll over. No, indeed. I said to them, What the hell was going on with this aircraft? My son didn't trust it, he didn't trust the navigation system. I told them that Jonathan had real problems with the introduction of the Mk2. What sort of an air force were they running?". .. .The answer didn't come that day, as he flew across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland where he prepared to bury his son. His daughter-in-law was seven months pregnant and grieving. Jonathan had, like his father, loved the outdoors and he enjoyed the military life. Friends described him as cerebral, conscientious, extremely cautious.. .. .So a year later, when the RAF verdict of gross negligence was delivered as the official cause, it was salt in the wound. As Mike Tapper recalls: "Signals coming out of the Royal Air Force suggested the boys would be blamed but the violence of the language did surprise us. We were not expecting that.". .. .The poisonous fight should have ended when Sir Stephen Young, the Scottish sheriff, published his detailed finding, based on about 16 days of evidence. The test he faced for finding fault in the accident was less rigorous than the RAF test. Sir Stephen had only to establish the cause based on a balance of probabilities, not on absolute certainties, but he struggled and in the end concluded that the cause of the accident could be something "beyond our imagination." The families presented their own legal defence at significant cost, running to more than $100,000 each, but in an early signal of what they were to face, the Ministry of Defence and the two Air Marshals who had written the gross negligence finding did not back down. Senior officers let it be known they did not believe Sir Stephen had the sufficient expertise to overrule experienced aviators.. .. .- - -. .. .It is where the matter may have ended. But in the years that followed, a new, more private flank in the war to clear the pilots' names opened up. John Cook turned a bedroom in his home into what he termed his War Room. He wrote letters to politicians, he read letters from his son's colleagues. One precious letter from a very senior Special Forces officer concluded with the words: "In short, Rick was not a man to go down lightly.". .. .Mr. Cook bought a computer, installed e-mail and typed messages and updates in his painstakingly slow, single-finger manner. He wrote to everyone he knew and to many he didn't. It was the bitterest of ironies that this pilot, who had taken the lead in negotiations in the 1960s for the installation of black boxes on commercial aircraft, should 30 years later have his son die in an aircraft without a black box.. .. .In 1999, when I visited Mike Tapper and his wife, Hazel, at their home in Norfolk, a couple of hundred miles to the east of the Cooks, I was impressed with what appeared to be a conscious decision to separate their family life from the fight to restore their son's honour. The inside of their home is idyllic, tranquil, organized. Across the driveway lies Mike's other world. Inside a converted shed, just six strides from his front door, lies his battle headquarters. The telephone sits near a fax machine. Paper is everywhere. Thousands of pages of evidence, of research, of perhaps even a clue leading to a possible cause. Sitting there with his hands behind his head, he looks more relaxed as we discuss his strategy. It is the same face I saw first in Scotland in 1996. His smiles, though broad, last only a few seconds. He purses his lips, his eyes, their natural twinkle missing, gaze into the distance. Five years on, and I think to myself, this is a man not yet allowed to grieve.. .. .- - -. .. .One of the hundreds of letters John Cook wrote in the aftermath of the Sheriff's finding was to James Arbuthnot, his local MP and at the time, the Tory Chief Whip in the House of Commons, and therefore more influential than a simple backbench MP. Aware of both the press reports concerning the contradictory nature of the original RAF inquiry and now the favourable words of Sir Stephen, Mr. Arbuthnot asked to visit Mr. Cook at home, to hear what he had to say. Mr. Arbuthnot had been a junior defence minister at the time of the accident and as was his duty he repeated the finding of negligence in the House. But when he visited the Cooks he was in for a surprise. Instead of using emotion to try to win this politician over, John Cook simply showed his MP what had been uncovered.. .. .In the weeks before the accident, Rick Cook had increased his life insurance to an estimated $750 a month on a lowly flight lieutenant's salary. Asked why, he told both his wife, Sara, and father, John, that he didn't trust the Chinook. It was an updated Mk2 model with a new flying control system and he didn't want to fly it. He wasn't ready and the aircraft wasn't ready. In the weeks leading up to the crash it had suffered a series of serious mechanical problems. In addition, the crew were told to fly the Chinook on the assumption that at any moment one of its two engines would fail. On top of this, the pilots were told to ignore cockpit engine failure caption lights for up to 12 seconds because of the number of false illuminations. Only if the light stayed on for longer were the crew to react. Another problem lay in the flying control systems of ZD 576, which jammed inexplicably less than a month before the accident. No cause was found. And then there was the fact the RAF's own test pilots had grounded future flying of the Chinook, as they wrestled to understand the Mk2 aircraft.. .. .More damning still was the concealed fact that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) was successfully suing the engine manufacturers at the time of the crash for problems related to the engine testing procedures. The government had ruled this information, which only came to light following a documentary I produced some three years after the accident, to be irrelevant. The government said the lawsuit related only to testing procedures and could not possibly be related to a fatal crash. The MoD's own expert witness, Malcolm Perks, who now lives in Canada, disagrees and considers the problems the MoD and RAF suffered with the engine control units should have been handed over to the original investigators. This, combined with the fact the last recorded conversation with Rick Cook minutes before take-off related to concerns with the engine control units, is compelling. Was Zulu Delta 576 an accident waiting to happen?. .. .Mr. Arbuthnot's initial response to his meeting with Mr. Cook was brief, to the point. "Good God!" This former defence minister hadn't known the MoD was suing the engine manufacturers at the time of the accident. And he now didn't think the elite of Northern Ireland's intelligence community should have been put aboard the craft. What Mr. Arbuthnot heard helped shift the debate.. .. ."This was an injustice, a miscarriage of justice and it has to be set aside. I shall not rest until it is," Mr. Arbuthnot told me outside the west door of the Ministry of Defence HQ in the heart of London in late 1997 from where he'd emerged following another inconclusive meeting with officials. Although a Tory Chief Whip, Mr. Arbuthnot had political influence beyond his own party and soon a non-partisan group of MPs had joined him in asking questions.. .. .In 1997, I sat with a former Special Forces Chinook pilot Andy Fairfield and briefed an early gathering of Tory MPs. They sat, dumbfounded, as we recounted the problems and the concerns with respect to the introduction of the Mk2 Chinook. Most crucially, we reminded the MPs of the RAF's own rules that if doubt exists, dead pilots cannot be found negligent. Mr. Fairfield, who had been best man at Rick Cook's wedding, later went on to become a household name as a finalist in Britain's version of the Survivor game show. He told me he had entered "to win the million pounds, so I could use it to clear my friend's name." He was voted off.. .. .From 1998 onward, the Ministry of Defence again and again told John Cook and Mike Tapper that no new evidence had turned up. Again and again the fathers pointed out what the RAF and civilian investigators had not been told about the aircraft's problems. They pointed to the largely dismissed evidence of Mark Holbrook, a yachtsman sailing around the Mull of Kintyre who was the last to see the aircraft in flight. He said he had no doubt the pilots had seen land, adding weight to the theory the pilots had been prevented for some reason from turning away from certain death.. .. .The argument for pilot error began to fall apart. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who as defence secretary had told the nation in 1995 that Lieut. Tapper and Lieut. Cook were at fault, emerged finally after some private reflection to announce publicly there had to be a new inquiry. He recounted that when the finding of negligence had landed on his desk in the spring of 1995, he asked if there could possibly have been another cause? He was told there was absolutely no doubt, the dead men were to blame. Thus reassured, he said he approved the negligence finding. But, now, five years later, he damningly revealed he had never been told about the history of technical problems associated with the aircraft. He said he was now speaking up because of fears there had been an injustice, and, most importantly, he had been persuaded by people of "massive experience, of unimpeachable integrity." Implicit in this was that he was siding with Mr. Tapper and Mr. Cook.. .. .Finally, in 2000, the Public Accounts Committee, the House of Commons' most influential committee, decided to review the procurement of the aircraft. Essentially, they would look at whether the taxpayer had gotten value for money. But the heart of the committee's proceedings was to review the basis for the Air Marshals' findings. Mindful that some four years earlier Sir Stephen Young had ruled it impossible to conclude the cause of the accident, the committee, chaired by a Tory MP, David Davies, went about its task with some muscle. Mr. Davies was a political street fighter and his language didn't betray him when his committee concluded that the Ministry of Defence had been guilty of "unwarrantable arrogance" in finding the pilots negligent. Three inquiries had sided with the fathers -- the original Board of Inquiry, the Fatal Accident Inquiry in Scotland presided over by Sir Stephen Young and now the Commons most influential committee. Each time, the MoD had refused to exonerate the pilots. This time was no exception.. .. .The honour of Lieut. Tapper and Lieut Cook remained sullied. It was always about honour, and purely so after the families agreed to compensation payments without admitting liability in 1998.. .. .- - -. .. .By now the story had become bigger than a simple fight between the grieving and the government. It had become a battle pitting establishment figures against establishment figures. Two former Chiefs of the Air Staff joined the debate and backed Sir William and Sir John in saying they believed the pilots were definitely to blame. Airspace can be "a seductive mistress," they suggested. On the other side, joining with the fathers and former government ministers, was the retired air force officer who had written the original RAF rules that "only in cases where there is no doubt whatsoever may deceased aircrew be found negligent." He believed Sir William and Sir John had been wrong to find Lieut. Tapper and Lieut. Cook to have been at fault.. .. .With the military trying to stare down the will of the Commons' most influential committee, a number of peers in the House of Lords picked up the torch, including a number of Law Lords. They voted to set up a committee to review the conclusion. For the first time, Sir William Wratten and Sir John Day would be cross-examined, asked to justify their finding in public.. .. .Those hearings began last fall. They were chaired by Lord Jauncey, a former Law Lord. A brilliant man, he was aided by four colleagues. The families knew this was the final court of appeal. They had grown tired and had agreed to accept whatever the Lords' found. Mike Tapper looked more weary while John Cook attended the hearings only with great difficulty. A deep cough had settled in his lungs. He was diagnosed with double pneumonia and spent a short stay in hospital. Those close to him feared what this last inquiry was doing to him.. .. .I returned to England in September last year to hear the two senior officers speak. At times their evidence was eccentric. Sir William counted out loud to 20 as he attempted to demonstrate to the Lords how short (or long) a time the crew had in the final second of flight to turn away from the land, and make a life-saving decision. Sir John used a series of overhead projections to explain how he came to his conclusion. He said he had the necessary "moral courage" to hold Lieut. Tapper and Lieut. Cook responsible.. .. .That afternoon John Cook and Mike Tapper held a press conference. The two fathers had been vindicated after all these years. "This was always about honour. Honour . . . that's all," they said. "Simple honour for the boys. We know and now the Lords have told us that blame cannot be attributed. The public knows. Now we wait for the government to catch us up.". .. .But neither man provided new evidence or any definitive proof as to the cause of the crash. They offered only their opinions. They were subjected to long, arduous cross-examination. The Lords wanted to fully understand how the officers had come to their decision.. .. .Martin O'Neill, a Scottish Labour MP, described the hearing as forensic filleting of a fine order.. .. .Susan Phoenix, who lost her husband, Ian, a police officer, in the accident and has never believed the official cause, flew in from her new home on mainland Europe to hear the arguments. I sat beside her through one day of testimony. "I didn't believe I could get any angrier, that these men [Sir William and Sir John] could hurt me any more," she whispered to me. "But I was wrong.". .. .The Lords reflected over the Christmas period. Then, this year, on Feb. 5, they reported their findings. The fathers knew in their hearts that their sons could not be found guilty. But would the Lords agree with all the other inquiries and find the cause to be simply undetermined? Would they agree with the former government ministers, including Mr. Rifkind, the then defence secretary, that an injustice had been committed?. .. .It was a mild February morning as I walked toward a building across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament. Before I could ring the doorbell, the front door had swung open. Mr. Tapper, smiling broadly, was there to shake my hand. It was 9:02 a.m. While the report was to be released at 11 a.m., the pilots' fathers were to receive their copies 90 minutes earlier. I had been invited to share this most private moment. A near-eight year journey was coming to an end.. .. .9:20 a.m.: John Cook arrives with his partner, Sue. It's a big week for the Cooks, with Chris, Rick's younger brother, having married the weekend before.. .. .9:23 a.m.: The front door opens again. This time it is Sara, Rick Cook's widow. She has since remarried and although living overseas, has travelled back to England with her husband to celebrate Chris Cook's wedding. "Two birds with one stone," she tells me. We both laugh.. .. .The six of us, Mike, John, Sue, Sara, her husband, Chris, and myself, walk upstairs to wait for the official word.. .. .Mike Tapper is sitting down, then he's standing. He paces the room. His wife, Hazel is celebrating her birthday today with their daughter. It goes unsaid what gift she wants. She is waiting at their daughter's house by the telephone for news.. .. .9:30 a.m. comes and goes, none of us noticing the specific time. John Cook is sitting, breathing deeply, resting on a cane.. .. .9:47 a.m.: Georgie Vestey, a tireless Parliamentary campaigner, walks into the room with her arms full of sky-blue coloured official reports. She is beaming. "Mike, John, it's good news. No, it's great news." Both fathers hug her. I sit smiling, content. The relief is palpable.. .. .So much rested on the words of five men. With the full authority of the Sovereign power invested in her, the committee skewered the officers' arguments. Blunt language was used, reprimanding them in particular for not seeing the difference between hypothesis and provable fact. On five individual counts, Sir John's argument of blame was torn to shreds. Parliament was staring down the might of the U.K.'s military. Would the Ministry of Defence blink?. .. .That afternoon, John Cook and Mike Tapper held a press conference. The two fathers had been vindicated after all these years. "This was always about honour. Honour ... that's all," they said. "Simple honour for the boys. We know, and now the Lords have told us, that blame cannot be attributed. The public knows. Now we wait for the government to catch us up.". .. .With the pilots now cleared, the fathers have demanded Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, formally expunges the finding of negligence from the pilots' records. His decision is expected after Easter.. .. .David Walmsley is the National Post's Political Editor.
[email protected] ; He was Associate Producer of a Channel 4 documentary, The Final Flight of Zulu Delta 576, and was named Northern Ireland Young Journalist of the Year partially for his investigation of the crash. His book on the tragedy is scheduled for publication next year.
