Posted on 01/27/2002 8:58:49 AM PST by Asmodeus
Sunday, Jan. 27, 2002
Frustrated investigators looking into the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 have an important new piece of evidence. Government sources tell Time that analysts at the National Transportation Safety Board last week got their first look at a remarkable videotape of the deadly accident. Recorded by a surveillance camera at a New York City area tollbooth, the tape captures nearly the entire catastrophe that sent the Airbus A300 crashing into a residential neighborhood in Queens less than 3 min. after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 12. According to an NTSB source, the plane can be seen "flying along normally and intact, and suddenly things start to go very wrong." The video records the plane as it begins its descent. The crash is obscured, but the tape continues to run and smoke can be seen rising from the scene. Experts at the NTSB are optimistic that the tape will help answer critical questions about the precise sequence of events as the plane began to break apart, and exactly how and when the tail section separated from the body of the plane. This is the second video record the board has obtained of the crash, but the first one was virtually useless because the plane could be seen only as a tiny speck.
This was an international flight, so that means every person who checked luggage had to be checked with the manifest. That was mandated by the FAA before 9/11.One of the big questions is "Is bag-matching a sham?"
Many people THINK the airlines now have to x-ray or manually inspect all checked luggage now. This is not true. Airlines are free to substitute bag matching for actually inspecting checked bags. In other words, they can do NOTHING more than make sure you and your bag are both on the airplane. This, of course, does NOTHING to stop suicide bombers or people getting duped into carrying a bag for someone else. And there is an example of each: Pan Am 103 was bombed with a device hidden in a stereo, carried by an unwitting accomplice, and we have the shoe bomber, ready to die an even more gruesome death than everyone else in the plane.
Airline security is a JOKE, and a coverup of AA587 being bombed keeps the airline customers from demanding the joke be stopped. That is the issue.
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