[cva66snipe]

No link aviable I know of. But I've live here and remember it well. Sometime around the mid 1970's a man hi-jacked an airliner in Atlanta or Cincinatti I believe it was and ordered it to go to Knoxville. He then proceeded to have it circle Oak Ridge for several hours threatening to crash it into the weapons plants here. The odds of sucess would have been nill as no one knows what's where. The man is out of prison. I remember seeing a knoxnews.com article on him. Castro kept him a while then we got him back and he did some more time.

How serious do we take national defense? In this same area is the first TVA dam that was build about 15 miles upstream from Oak Ridge. While the Manhattan Project was going on during WW2 the dam had gun placements below it. There was concern that a rouge plane from Japan or Germany, or possibly a stolen plane would work it's way up the Missippi & Tennessee River and take it out. Oak Ridge was a secure city and the old guard stations still stand today in some places. The Air Force up till I think the late 1960's operated a radar base north of Oak Ridge.

We need to rethink our International Water Boundry and set it to at least 15 miles out with a Coast Guard beefed up to enforce it.

[exodus]

Thanks, cva66snipe.

[Howlin]

Vienna, 7 November 2001 (RFE/RL) -- The notion of nuclear terrorism is not new. In 1972, a Southern Airlines commercial jet flying in the southeastern United States was hijacked by three men who threatened to fly it into the Oak Ridge federal nuclear installation in Tennessee.

Luckily, the threat remained just that. But the idea sounds chillingly familiar to the events of 11 September, when hijackers used three fuel-laden jetliners to attack and destroy New York's twin towers and part of the Pentagon, near Washington.

One nuclear expert, in fact, suggests that the fourth plane hijacked on 11 September may have been bound for a nuclear facility.