[Tall_Texan]

Let's review:

We have a terrorist Muslim sect that's at war with the U.S. A plane going from Taipei to Newark is stopped in Seattle because somebody called JFK airport to report a smallpoz contamination aboard.

Smallpox, itself, had been eradicated from natural sources so any contamination would have to be from terorists. Let's check the flight manifest. Any Arabs on the plane? Shouldn't be too tough to spot. Any whacked-out kids from commiecenter Marin County, CA on board? Not hard to check either.

Since we know the terrorists perfer to victimize American-based airlines, why should we be suspicious of a Taiwanese airline? And why would the anonymous tip come to JFK Customs when the flight wll be arriving in Newark?

Honestly, I smell a prank here. Probably someone who had a bad experience on EVA and wants to pay them back for their inconvenience.

[freeasinbeer]

I don't think you can conclude that they only target american airlines. If anything, terrorists are oportunistic. They happened to choose american airlines, as there was no other option for them to get the timing of the events down. Much easier to find four or more of the thousands of domestic flights that are near your 'targets' rather than trying to get flights based from overseas synchronized.

[tallhappy]

Since we know the terrorists perfer to victimize American-based airlines, why should we be suspicious of a Taiwanese airline? And why would the anonymous tip come to JFK Customs when the flight wll be arriving in Newark?

You make good points and I agree it is almost certainly a hoax.

But, the above is not right. Back in 1995 they had planned to blow up 10 planes in a day, all of them going from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Manilla. They set off a bomb on one Phipinio airline as a dry run. Before they did the big one, called bojinka, they started a fire at their Manilla apartment cooking up the explosives and were caught.

So there is precedent for them using or planning to use flights from the region.