Questions Surface about Benin Jet Crash

DAKAR, Senegal - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday.

Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June — a month after the jet's disappearance.

The plane's old tail number was not fully covered, and the plane was reregistered in Guinea and flown by Lebanese-owned Union des Transports Africains, pilot Bob Strothers said.

"We saw it on the ramp," Strothers said by telephone from the Guinea capital, Conakry. "A new registration had been painted on the aluminum part, and underneath ... you could see the old registration number, which matches the plane that went missing."

The plane that crashed off Benin on Christmas Day, killing at least 130 of the 161 people aboard, was Guinean-registered and operated by Union des Transports Africains.

Strothers said he believed UTA had at least two Boeing 727s at the time of the crash, making it impossible for him to judge whether the vanished Angola plane and the crashed Benin jet were the same.

Strothers first disclosed his information before the Christmas Day crash, in which the plane, carrying mostly Lebanese, clipped a building at the end of the runway and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.

The information heightened the mystery surrounding the missing jet, which took off from an airport in Luanda, Angola, on May 25 and disappeared.

The United States has led an international hunt for the Angola 727, using satellite surveillance to check airstrips around the world, fearing that terrorists might have taken the Angola plane for a Sept. 11, 2001-style attack.

American officials also have cited a possible business dispute as a reason for the disappearance of the Angola jet.

But aviation officials in Lebanon and others there who are knowledgeable about the country's aviation industry discounted the idea — telling the AP that the plane that crashed off Benin appeared much older than the one that went missing from Angola.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said, "We're aware of the reports. We're checking into them."

U.S. officials have refused to provide any details concerning the search for the Angola plane, with Fintor saying all efforts were being made to find it.

Union des Transports Africains officials could not be reached for comment Friday.

UTA offices in Guinea and in Lebanon have been deserted since the Christmas Day crash, with police surrounding the Guinea offices.

The Christmas Day crash killed the wife and son of the airline's owner, who survived. He and the plane's Libyan pilot have not been seen publicly since leaving the hospital.

Angola aviation officials said they would withhold comment pending more information.

In Guinea, transport officials said they investigated Strothers' report that the planes were the same and found it to be false.

"He was mistaken," senior aviation deputy Dominique Mara said. "This wasn't the plane from Luanda. The Transport Ministry has denied this claim."

Guinea Transport Minister Cellou Dallein Diallo told reporters in Conakry that UTA took out insurance on a Boeing jet on June 27 — a month after the Angola jet disappeared. It was unclear Friday when UTA started flying the 727 registered to it.

Also, the FBI (news - web sites) has put out a worldwide alert for American Ben Charles Padilla, who allegedly was seen boarding the Angola jet with another man just before it disappeared.

According to Padilla's family in Florida, he was hired to repossess the jet after Air Angola failed to make lease payments.

His sister, Benita Padilla-Kirkland, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel she feared the plane crashed or the 51-year-old Padilla was being held against his will.

The Angola plane bore the tail number N844AA when it disappeared. A Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) online database said that tail number is assigned to a Boeing 727 registered to Aerospace Sales & Leasing Co., Inc., in Miami.

It was that number that Strothers said he saw on the jet at the Guinea airport in June.

On Christmas Day, an AP reporter on the scene of the crash noted the number GIH 161 V71 on the tail of the downed plane.

That number was different from both that of the Angola jet and of the jet Strothers said he saw in Guinea in June.

In Lebanon, Lebanese survivors of the Christmas Day crash said the jet that crashed was antiquated and in bad shape — clearly much older than the plane that disappeared in Angola, aviation experts said.

Associated Press reporters in Benin; Guinea; Beirut, Lebanon; and Paris contributed to this report.

Did the FBI ever find John Doe 2?

There *was* an error in identification by an employee where McVeigh rented the truck - a man named Todd Bunting was mistaken for JD #2.

The rest of the story is the thing legends and conspiracy theories are made of ...

Also - NO connections put McVeigh in contact with ANY other conspirators other than Terry Nichols, and Michael Fortier.

ALL you can come up with are isolated, unconnected incidences and 'reports' - NO links.

From:
THE JOHN DOE TIMES,
Vol. V, Number 3,
22 March 1997
The the *source* for all this JD #2 and (conspiracy talk) was the result of a dis-information campaign conducted by TMcV's defense attorney - and John Doe #2 was a case of mistaken identity ...
Less than two weeks after the blast, investigators had found a man who exactly fit Kessinger's description of John Doe 2.The man, an innocent soldier named Todd Bunting, had been in Elliott's Body Shop the day after McVeigh rented the Ryder truck. But Kessinger stubbornly insisted that he had seen the two men together on the same day. Only last November ['96] did Kessinger finally change his mind and identify Bunting as John Doe 2. Jones, McVeigh's lawyer, relished bringing out Kessinger's contradictions at a hearing last month. Despite the judge's order not to talk about evidence or strategy to reporters, Jones kept feeding speculation to the press. There was the suggestion that two Ryder trucks were involved in the blast and that the Feds had been warned before the bombing. Government sources say Jones's theories are farfetched. But by hiring conspiracy-minded detectives (at taxpayer expense: Jones has so far billed the government for about $10 million), he hopes to baffle prospective jurors. The FBI also has to worry about reports that its lab has become slipshod. Fortunately for the government, the FBI lab "whistle-blower," Frederic Whitehurst, was once Burmeister's mentor. In fact, Whitehurst is on record saying that some of Burmeister's OKBomb work was "brilliant."
If Jones is going to play the role of Johnnie Cochran, he must find a sympathetic jury. The pool around Denver may have some anti-government views. It takes only a single juror to hang a verdict. But it would have to be a very stubborn juror indeed to hold out in the face of the evidence against Timothy McVeigh.

"IT'S ALIVE!": JOHN DOE #2 RETURNS FROM GRAVE TO HAUNT FEDERAL PROSECUTORS

"He's baaack!" Like the shuffling, undead villain of a bad Fifties' science fiction movie, John Doe #2 returned from the grave today, haunting Federal prosecutors who only last week had proclaimed he had never existed.

At the press conference after the pre-trial hearing described in the articles below, one of the prosecution team blithely denied that they had ever ruled out John Doe #2's existence. Standing behind him was Beth Wilkerson, Gorelick's coverup queen on the prosecution team, looking quite green, as if she had just ingested a very large turd. Wilkerson, you see, had told Judge Matsch just that not too long ago, denying on the record that the federal government had any evidence that anyone other than McVeigh had planned and carried out the worst terrorist attack on American soil.

The meltdown of Mr. Kessinger's "John Doe #2 as Todd Bunting" story, the revelation that he had changed his original identification only after a meeting in which he was pressured to do so by two FBI agents and a federal prosecutor, and the continued and unshakeable testimony of Kessinger's boss, Eldon Elliott, all served to resurrect John Doe #2 from the grave the prosecution thought they had dug for him.

The Lazarusian rebound of John Doe #2 was featured as the lead on all three networks ("The Three Blind Mice, as someone has charitably called them). My favorite reaction was that of McVeigh's attorney Stephen Jones, who replied with a laugh and a smile to a question about the rebirth of John Doe #2, "That boy's got more lives than a cat."

It remains to be seen if the major media will now begin to follow the leads about John Doe #2 developed by the private investigation of Glenn and Kathy Wilburn, and written about by journalist J.D. Cash which have been detailed in previous issues of The John Doe Times. Should they wish, we would gladly provide the government or the media with Michael Brescia's prison address.

http://www.constitution.org/okc/jdt04-03.htm

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.