Posted on 03/16/2014 3:43:42 PM PDT by Jack Hydrazine
A former security chief for El Al believes that the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 points directly to Iran.
Isaac Yeffet, who served as head of global security for Israel’s national carrier in the 1980s and now works as an aviation security consultant in New Jersey, said investigators were correct in honing in on the two fake-passport carrying Iranian passengers on the doomed flight, and they have wasted valuable time by exploring other leads.
“What happened to this aircraft, nobody knows. My guess is based upon the stolen passports, and I believe Iran was involved,” he said. “They hijacked the aircraft and they landed it in a place that nobody can see or find it.”
In the immediate aftermath of the aircraft’s disappearance, which occurred last week during a standard night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, Malaysian officials and the media were fixated on the story of two Iranians who had made it onto the plane with stolen passports. As the days wore on and the investigation uncovered new and confusing details, with officials admitting that the plane could have traveled for as long as seven hours without radio contact, and that its potential location could be anywhere from northern Kyrgyzstan to the southern Indian ocean, attention has shifted to the pilots and to far-flung conspiracy theories. This is a misstep, said Yeffet, and one that would not have happened in Israel.
“This would never have happened on an Israeli plane,” says Yeffet. “An El Al aircraft was hijacked for the first and last time in 1968. Since then, there has not been a single flight where security did not check every single name.”
However, it would have taken more than just a pair of Iranians with forged documents, Yeffet said, to pull off such an astonishing crime. “I can’t believe for a second that if these people planned to hijack the aircraft, it was just them,” he said. But based upon the tried-and-true Israeli intelligence strategy of profiling, the pilots, he said, are unlikely suspects.
“We are talking about a captain who is 53 years old, who has worked for Malaysia Airlines for 30 years, and suddenly he became a terrorist? He wanted to commit suicide? If he committed suicide, where is the debris?”
Adding that the captain in question, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was known to be happily married and comfortably well-off, Yeffet said the profile simply does not fit. “From the United States to China to Japan, everybody is searching for this aircraft or piece of it. And there is no sign. So in my opinion, the aircraft was hijacked. And it was an excellent plan from the terrorists, to land in a place where they can hide the plane and no one can find it.”
Lt. Col. (Res) Eran Ramot, an IDF fighter pilot and the head of aviation research at Israel’s Fisher Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies, however, drew other conclusions.
“It would be very complicated [for someone other than the pilot to have flown the plane],” Ramot said, based on the stunning revelations that the flight not only made a total U-turn from its planned route but also dipped in between radar points for hours and had all of its tracking systems manually turned off. “It takes somebody that knows how to operate an airplane like this.”
Like Yeffet, Ramot believes the plane was being intentionally flown to a secret location, and he went as far as to say he is holding out hope that the 239 passengers and crew who were on board are still alive.
“We don’t know any better yet,” he said. “One of my theories is that the airplane landed in Bangladesh. It could reach there, it’s very close to Afghanistan. It could have landed on airstrip there, and everybody on board is still alive. It could be done.”
Asked what would have happened if the plane – which went undetected for hours as it blipped across Malaysian radars – had entered Israeli airspace, Ramot said, “It would not go unnoticed, that’s for sure. Action would have been carried out, the least of which would have been an interception to escort it.”
That doesn’t mean that the Malaysian military wasn’t paying attention, he added. It’s simply that in Israel, the margin for taking chances is significantly reduced.
“It’s a matter of atmosphere,” he said. “Here, every blip on the screen is suspicious because that’s the way we live. That’s our daily program. I can’t imagine they pay as much attention, but if a blip runs wide or runs strange, I would expect them to notice.”
Pini Schiff, one of Israel’s top aviation security experts, said that if there is any comfort that Israelis can take from the story of MH 370, which is proving to be one of the most confounding aviation disasters of all time, it is that it could never happen to a plane flying out of Ben-Gurion International Airport.
“It simply wouldn’t happen at Ben Gurion,” he said. “The level of security at Ben Gurion and on all El Al planes is so high, there is nothing more they could do… Nations are not spending billions of dollars the way the Israeli government is protecting Israeli aviation, because the threat against Israeli aviation is so high. What we are doing in Ben Gurion is an operation that is not being done in any other airport in the world. Not in the United States, not in Britain, not in Germany, not anywhere.”
Like his colleagues, Schiff said that his guess is as good as anyone’s as to the fate of MH 370, but he also believes there’s a good possibility that it has been brought down, intact, on a hidden runway in some far-flung corner of the world.
“It will be found. It may take a month or a year, but eventually, it will be found,” he said. “This aircraft didn’t vanish. It exists somewhere in the world, and it will be found, probably in one piece.”
“Iran has a national airlines so why would they need to steal a plane.”
They do not think like us. For them everything is about honor, and pissing on us by stealing an American jet and rigging it with a nuke equals the ultimate vengeance.
President Karzai has ordered all Americans to leave Afghanistan IMMEDIATELY!! The Muslims all know what is going to happen - and are scared.
Why would he nosedive it into the ocean? He doesn’t want the aircraft to be found?
Read up on EgyptAir flight 990 that was nosedived into the ocean. They found debris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
Thanks. That makes perfect sense.
“Do you realize what would happen to anyone who even looks like a Muzzie if a nuke was detonated in the US?”
You’re thinking like a white man. They do not care if Muslims in the US become targets. They do not cherish life as we do.
Nope. The EgyptAir flight broke up in midair and came down in pieces.
Then those that bite the bullet here would be declared shahids (martyrs) of Allah.
There were small pieces of wreckage found that had separated from the aircraft before impact but that’s it.
I have had hypoxia. I was part of a flight crew, on plane that had a slow leak - at first, I started to feel sluggish. All the passengers were dozing— about 50 of them, with the exception of a man dressed in military attire and a toddler. I sat by the man and told him I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t doze off but eventually went to the cockpit and they went to a lower altitude. It was like the scene in Wizard of Oz where the Good Witch of the East made it snow after the Wicked Witch of the West put Dorothy and everyone to sleep. Just like the movie, all the passengers woke up, one by one.
I didn’t know what was happening but it was slow and I couldn’t react like I normally would have. Sadly, it makes sense that the plane could have been depressurized. If so, all the passengers are gone. No one needs the complications of hostages.
That’s right.
I have heard that the source of fissionable material can be identified by it's unique atomic signature on the fallout.
Whether or not anyone acts on that evidence is a different story altogether.
Iran has a national airlines so why would they need to steal a plane?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Deniability
-——Iran has a national airlines so why would they need to steal a plane?-—
To provide it with Emirate air markings to take out Dhahran or Riyadh
Well I guess we’re blessed that no nuclear material has ever gone missing from the United States or Russia...
It’s on the Drudgereport.
The craft needs to be found as it was stolen to be used as an WMD. The pilot killed all on board and just wanted the plane.
He has now delivered it to Al Qaeda in Pakistan who are removing the corpses, refueling the craft and fitting it with either a Paki nuke or high explosives.
This plane was not taken as a trophy, but as part of a larger, diabolical plan.
This is just 2000 feet above the plane's service ceiling, no way it would break up. Their oxygen tanks would work as they had prepared for this well in advance and knew what they were doing.
This plane is in the hands of Al Qaeda right now being outfitted with either a Paki nuke or packed to the gills with conventional explosives. The bang from this is going to make 9/11 look like a firecracker.
No resistance because nobody knew that anything was wrong. They all just slipped into unconsciousness and then death silently and unaware of what was happening.
Just like in 1999, when the Lear Jet carrying Payne Stewart lost cabin pressure. All on board died while the plane was in the air and continued to fly until it ran out of fuel. Just a few seconds delay putting on your oxygen mask is enough to finish you off.
They didn't even realize it. It happens so suddenly and you are unaware. The best way to silence all on board so you could steal an aircraft. This also explains why their phones continued to ring and not get answered.
Including an engine. The EgyptAir suicide pilot also shut the engines down about the time he began the descent.
I've never heard what the aircraft's attitude was at the time of impact but since the pilot and copilot were struggling for control, I suspect it didn't go in perpendicular.
It doesn’t have to be perpendicular to nosedive in.
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