Someone fired on the Klingons.
The Enterprise did not fire on the Klingons.
The Klingons did not fire on themselves.
Therefore, a third ship must have fired on the Klingons.
No third ship was detected.
Thus, an undetected third ship fired on the Klingons.
Thus, a ship that can fire while cloaked.

Brilliant deduction, and a good job on the part of the writer to set that up. But here's my question: why did Spock automatically assume that it was a KLINGON ship? I probably would have guessed that the Romulans were up to something. Perhaps there was something going on with the Rommies that we've never heard about?

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Where's the bathroom on this ship?

a) Klingons
b) Romulans
c) Federation

Of course, it does make logical sense for Spock to assume the Klingons above the other two options: he'd been in contact with the Chancellor, and the Chancellor probably kept him informed on the backlash to the proposed peace treaty ... so it would sorta make sense he might think Klingons right off the bat ...

Or at least, enough to make them the prime suspect among the possible alternatives.

Another possibility: the Enterprise and Quo'nos 1's rendezvous point was kept very secret, and was in fact coordinated between the two ships, so NO ONE else knew where they would be meeting ... and that would cut the Rommies right out of the equation.

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"[Smith] ran on an agenda that was revolutionary for his time -- a 45 cent minimum wage, limiting the workweek to six days, building a bridge to the 1930's -- and I want to say it's quite a tribute to Al Smith that Governor Bush has adopted the same agenda." - Al Gore

What was clear was that there was a cloaked ship doing the firing. Also, 1) the ship was firing Federation torpedoes and 2) it was obviously the source of the leaking neutrinos. The first fact wouldn't rule out anybody, since of course Klingons and Romulans would have a reason to imitate Fed torps. The second fact could be the decisive one.

Also possibly 3) the ship *wasn't* detected by sensor X or scanner Y, ruling out certain larger or "noisier" ship types like Klingon battlecruisers or heavy dreadnoughts. Thus, the direct leap to Klingon BoP specifically.

Andrew

About the larger ships: at that point in the Trek timeline, the only ships that had ever cloaked had been the Birds of Prey (Klingon and Romulan). I'd bet that the larger Klingon Cruisers couldn't cloak, or at least couldn't cload as of TMP, otherwise they'd have used it to escape V'ger.

Y'know, maybe if the Enterprise and Kronos 1 had actually been warping to Earth, instead of crawling there on Impulse, the BOP wouldn't have got off such as easy shot...

Also, be reminded that it was Valeris that suggested that it was a Klingon BOP. And Valeris was also a traitor.

Liam: The TNG tech manual states that the Enterprise-D can be pulled from warp for any reason whatsoever. Translation, ships are at warp only when they need to, to conserve fuel and stuff. That may have been the thing with the Enterprise-A and Kronos 1. After all, they warped to the rendezvous point.

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"My Name is Elmer Fudd, Millionaire. I own a Mansion and a Yacht."
Psychiatrist: "Again."

Valeris didn't actually say that it was a Klingon ship. She said "A bird-of-prey." Rommies have those, too. IIRC, everyone just automatically assumed that it was a Klingon BoP. "Why would they assasinate their own chancellor," and such.

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Where's the bathroom on this ship?

I'd agree with the suggestion that the assumption was that no one but the Klingons and the Federation would know the location of the meeting. Now, we later learn that elements of the Romulan Empire were in on it too, but no one knew that at the time.

From the tech point of view, big ships *were* known to have a cloaking capability at that date. After all, we saw the Klingon/Romulan battlecruisers cloak in TOS "The Enterprise Incident". So if Spock/Chekov could immediately deduce that it was not just a Klingon ship, but a Klingon *BoP* specifically, then there's good reason to believe that they reached this conclusion based on "tech evidence" (e.g. what the cloakship was emitting and what it wasn't, and what weapons it used, etc.). So first they would deduce that it was a BoP, and only then they would go "Of course, this means that the assassins must be Klingons".

From the political point of view, Romulans were quite obviously buddy-buddy with the Feds at this time. Still, this shouldn't have stopped Spock from holding them as the prime suspects, since the crime was obviously aimed at igniting a Fed-Klingon war and Romulans would be the ones to benefit from that.

So apparently, there was another, stronger reason to suspect the Klingons themselves. Whether it was this tech thing (that is, the crew could immediately identify the assailant as a Klingon BoP because of some tech telltales) or perhaps inside info (e.g. Gorkon had told Spock that an assassination attempt by his kinsmen was imminent) or something else... I vote for the tech evidence theory.

Also, I still believe BoP is a general name for a small scout/attack ship with a cloak.