Posted on 12/09/2005 5:08:08 PM PST by concretebob
The rumor mill started humming Monday morning, Nov. 28, after ABC Radio aired the following report:
FBI and Homeland Security agents spent part of the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at a plane leaving Los Angeles international airport. ABC's Alex Stone has the details.
... the pilots radioed air-traffic controllers saying what appeared to be a rocket had been fired at the aircraft and missed as American Airlines Flight 621 was climbing over the water. It had just taken off from LAX. The plane was enroute to Chicago ... When it landed, FBI agents spoke with the pilots. Sources say those agents now believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket that passed by and they don't think it was any threat to the aircraft.
This report did not run for long, possibly no more than once or twice. Still, thousands of people heard it, and many of those were understandably suspicious when no other major media outlet picked up the story.
Not satisfied with rumors, retired United Airline pilot, Ray Lahr, and aviation audio expert, Glen Schulze, decided to investigate. The pair have been cooperating in Lahr's ongoing Freedom Of Information Act suit in federal court against the CIA and the National Transportation Safety Board regarding the demise of TWA Flight 800. What they have found about the LAX flight is inconclusive, but intriguing, and deserves serious inquiry.
For starters, the flight was AA 612 and not AA 621 as reported. Lahr and Schulze checked its progress using the LAX airport monitor. Those interested in doing the same can enter Nov. 26, 12:49, 20-mile range, and then click on "start."
You will see every airplane aloft in the Los Angeles area on the map. In about a half minute, "AAL612" appears as a green aircraft crossing the shoreline. If you click on the aircraft, it will turn red, and the flight data will appear in a box to the right. Over the next few minutes, the aircraft turns south. At approximately 6,000 feet and off the coast of Redondo Beach, a new target will appear.
"The unidentified target's altitude does some funny things," observes Glenn Schulze, "from a constant 1,500 feet to suddenly showing 7,500 feet where it remains, which is the same altitude as AA FL 612 at this point in AA FL 612's climb-out."
According to Lahr, AA 612 seems "to split and become TWO! It remains TWO for a while, both targets moving together, then they separate, the mirror target fades, and AA 612 (thank God) is alone again, heading slightly south east."
The unidentified target appears for 12 to 13 sweeps of the FAA LAX TRACON radar rotating at a 4.7-second sweep rate. "This target can not be easily explained away as a radar ghost or artifact or swamp gas," adds Schulze, "as it exists and tracks over the ground for almost 50 seconds as it travels along with AA FL 612. Dynamite evidence!"
What makes the evidence particularly compelling is that the pilots apparently saw what the radar was reporting. Those who are interested in the pilot's commentary can go to the following site. The relevant conversation is at the very end of this segment, during the last minute. This conversation takes place several minutes after the incident and alludes to an earlier conversation.
ATC: Flare or a rocket?
AA 612: It looked more like a rocket.
ATC: American 612, how far away was it from your position?
AA 612: It was about half way between us and the coastline when we first called that last center guy.
Whatever the pilot saw prompted enough concern for LAX officials to contact the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. It also prompted a very serious report on ABC radio.
The most comprehensive reporting on the subject appeared Dec. 3 in an LAX area newspaper called The South Bay Daily Breeze. The headline says it all: "Smoke Trail Wasn't Threat to Plane, Say Investigators."
The article describes what the pilot saw as an "an unusual vapor trail," one that was "at least a mile below the airplane." FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller assured the readers that this presumed trail "absolutely posed no threat." This claim would be more reassuring had the FBI not also convinced the reporter that "whatever left the vapor trail did not appear on radar, and the pilot never reported seeing any kind of projectile."
The existing evidence would seem to refute all of those claims. The pilots saw not a vapor trail, but a "flare or a rocket." They saw it when the plane was no higher than 6,000 feet. Anything "at least a mile below them" would likely be swimming. The radar did pick something up, and the pilots considered the event sufficiently alarming to report it.
A veteran Airline Pilots Association safety investigator, Lahr was once much more likely to accept aviation authorities at their word. Having spent the last several years fighting them for information in the federal courts, he has grown increasingly skeptical.
The FBI may have its reason for quieting fears, Lahr understands, but as the distorted investigation of TWA Flight 800 has shown, a pacified population is a vulnerable one.
That link was interesting until I got to the WXXA-TV digital video story of a "strange, missile-like, unidentified aerial object" passing near an airliner. What a joke, that's a friggin' bug flying near the camera!
I think that it is good policy to interrupt the terrorists' intent.
I would agree, but I think the American people's right to know the truth of events may be more important.
Why the down play...could be NOT to give terrorist any publicity at all?
Do you think the news medias' advertising departments would like a story that would hurt the profits of some of their biggest customers, the airlines? If people were afraid to fly, the economic ripples would put the economy into another recession
TWA 800 story also had two combat experienced pilots witness the missile attack.
Hey thanks for your service!
Well, of course, one of the knee jerk reactions of any governmental bureaucracy is to cover things up because ordinary people can't be trusted not to panic. But then they should at least stop and think, would it be better to release or conceal this information to achieve the political purposes of our administration?
When clinton was in office, he had the additional reason that it would have been a real bother to have to deal with fantical Arabs. He had other things he was more interested in, like intervening in Haiti and Bosnia to support politically correct groups, and the last thing he wanted to do was get into a war with Islam--especially since he decided that he wanted to fight on the other side, to please his European Socialist friends.
But now the situation is different. Bush does have an interest in fighting the Muslim threat, or at least he did earlier. The press is mostly bent on denying that there is any real threat to our country, except for Arab resentment and European anger that Bush is stirring up by staying in Iraq.
How can you fight a war against Muslim enemies if you hide the fact that it is going on?
Yes, so I recalled. And a ton of other evidence as well, including the stuff the FBI was so anxious to prevent anyone from testing all over the seat covers. The most probable theories were a) that the plane was accidentally shot down in a Navy exercise going on in the area; and b) that it was shot down from a small boat by terrorists.
Frankly, I doubt a). It would seem to provide a more logical reason for covering it up, but I doubt that that many sailors could keep the secret this long. So, the only logical explanation is b).
What several observers said is that if it had been a fuel tank explosion, it would have been orange-red. But it was brilliant white, the color of an ordnance type explosion.
It's noticeable that Boeing was never sued, and nothing much was ever done to fix the combustibility of airplane fuel, which in fact was exceedingly unlikely to explode in the first place. Indeed, Boeing ceased protesting, probably under threat of losing contracts, but they never really admitted any fault.
No, the odds are about 95-5 that it was a terrorist missile (some witnesses say two missiles) that brought it down. There is also some talk that it may have been a Chinese made missile, since evidently China has given these SAMs extended range, but I won't get into that.
I should say that electronics is not my field, which is probably why the army promptly sent me to electronics school and then to the Hawk Missile training program in Huntsville, Alabama.
The army has a habit of putting people in fields other than the ones they might be qualified in. When I showed up for basic training in Fort Dix, it turned out that the Company Clerk couldn't read. Presumably they made him a clerk for that very reason. When it was KP time, he would hold up his list on a clipboard next to our chests, and compare the look of the names on the printed sheet with the names on our nametapes. Worked fine, but a little slow.
That was quite a while ago. Semiconductors and printed circuit boards had been invented, but Hawk missiles and radars still used miniature vaccuum tubes and copper wires, I think because they thought they would stand up better to stress and possible EMP bursts. I remember they were worried about the possibility of hairline cracks in the circuit boards. So we used wires, clips, and solder.
Where I come from, transponders pick up incoming radar and answer it with a return transmission. They don't just transmit all the time. That's what I was suggesting. The return transmission is much brighter than a return echo because it doesn't have to make the round trip. Of course it can also be on a different frequency, and normally contains an ID code of one kind or another. Either IFF or in this case the flight number.
On the other hand, if someone shouts "Fire" in a crowded theater, you should look around, and if you see some smoke, the proper thing to do would be to calm the shouting fellow down to prevent a panic, while you organize an orderly evacuation of the theater.
There is smoke in most of the cases we're talking about here. So somebody ought to at least take the trouble of investigating. And if there is a fire, they should tell people about it in an orderly fashion.
I heard Jack Cashell discuss this on Barabaras Simpson's show on KSFO last weekend. He stated he was initially directed to this incident by inquiries from some Freepers.
This whole thread has degenerated into a urinary dispersal match and that's a shame. The fact is, there is a real discussion to be had about the real possibility of a terrorist missile attack on commercial airliners. It may or may not be the case here but let's at least keep an open mind on BOTH sides of the debate.
And if on inspection it is a smoldering cigar butt, you put it out and let the show go on.
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