POSSIBILITIES
MORE OMINOUS
THAN INITIALLY THOUGHT
THAN INITIALLY THOUGHT
MISSING
MALAYSIAN AIR LINES FLIGHT MH370:
IF SOME ONE
STOLE IT: WHO AND WHY?
TIME FOR THE
INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTER TERRORISM
COMMUNITY TO
WAKE UP
TAGS:
MALAYSIA AIR LINES FLIGHT MH370, INTENTIONAL COURSE CORRECTION,
CONTINUED
CONTROLLED FLIGHT AFTER “GOING MISSING”,
POSSIBLE
HIJACKING, CHINESE AND MALAY AUTHORITIES RELUCTANT
TO
SHARE DATA, ABRUPT COURSE CHANGE – BY A HUMAN HAND,
INDIAN
OCEAN NOW PART OF GRID SEARCH
(Friday March 14, 2014 Eagan,
Minnesota) While it has been almost seven days since the Malaysia Air Lines
Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China “went missing” the
search efforts seems more daunting than it was six days ago. Points and
counterpoints, suppositions, innuendos and recriminations from military and
civilian officials in countries throughout this region are being more hotly
argued. With scant evidence of any kind to go on and, what evidence the Malaysian
and Chinese governments may or may not have in their possession, they have not
released for others to analyze. But
there has been enough leaked by various functionaries but even these highly
placed confidential sources are reporting inchoate, often contrary information.
There has been a subtle shift
in both the officials in the Malay and
Chinese governments as they have conceded that possibly the plane was “sabotaged”,
“hijacked”, “stolen” (?), or some other nefarious feat has rendered the Boeing
777-200 all but vanished from the planet.
Perhaps there is something lost in translations between the different
countries and ethnicities. For example,
employing the term “sabotaged” implies that the aircraft was in some way
tampered with or otherwise programed to fail once underway. Given the latest radar data made available, Flight
MH370 veered very sharply west at approximately the same time the flight data
recorder ceased sending telemetry to the ground. Such an abrupt, sudden maneuver appears to be
indicative of some “human” control, of a distinct intention to alter the plane’s
course. By the time the plane’s
transponder stopped making “pings” with ground radar and tracking stations the
Flight was allegedly determined to have passed over the northern tip of
Malaysia and over the Malacca Straits.
For the sake of discussion let’s
say the plane was hijacked, “stolen” if you like, now the possibilities have
gotten everyone’s attention. Not just
anybody can fly a 777 with sufficient competence to execute some of the maneuvers
that are being reported to have occurred.
Embedded within the telemetry, transponder and other sensory output
devices on the aircraft and in her engines, is the indication that the plane
flew an additional four, and perhaps up to five hours more after it went
missing from ground tracking. There is
also evidence of steep and rapid alterations in altitude and course corrections
that strongly suggest an experienced pilot was at the helm.
So now we have someone in
control operationally, of the jumbo jet.
Was it their intention to land it somewhere and save it for later use in
a terror attack? Will is suddenly
reappear on ground radar stations next week, next month or next year only to have
it crashed as a gigantic airborne “dirty bomb”, or fully laden with more
readily accessible conventional explosives?
You see where this is going. It
could at this very minute be hidden at some large facility in a remote portion
of the already remote islands and atolls that dot the seas and oceans in that
part of the world, being repainted and retooled for a suicide mission. Once again the counter terrorism conundrum rears
its evil head. Intelligence, military
and law enforcement agencies around the world have profound reasons to be
concerned.
As was written here yesterday (http://broodingcynyx.blogspot.com/2014/03/flight-mh-370-conventional-hijacking.html) if in fact this turns out to be the
real scenario it would have required the participation of many people and the
cooperation of authorities who could be bought or bribed or have their families
held hostage until the mission is completed unless they do what the terrorists
ordered of them. A 777 requires an
enormous runway construct on which to land and take off. It would likely need to be refueled or, at,
least topped off, depending on the target the terrorists have in their designs. These facts would almost certainly suggest
that this episode is a “state sponsored” terrorist act. It is hard to imagine a feat of this scale,
scope and technical sophistication succeeding without people with a certain “skill
set”, without very specific knowledge and aviation and technical experience.
SOME OF OUR EXPERTS
Within a few miles of each
other in non-nondescript, largely windowless buildings along the roads of a sprawling
industrial park with some of the streets named after famous pilots and astronauts
is the home of the most highly regarded
airline pilot schools in the country. Some
of these schools offer flight simulator time for active commercial airline
pilots as well. It seems odd that there
is this concentration of these highly technical schools and facilities just a
few miles from the Interstates that loop around the Twin Cities. But these elite colleges have been here for
decades. In many ways these colleges had
to actively seek and attract students in the years between the end of the Viet
Nam War and the “First” Gulf War. Traditionally
commercial pilots had received their training while in the military. As our conventional military was downsized during
those years the result was a shortage of young men and women being trained to
be commercial aviators and those pilots the military did train left for higher
wages to reap the rewards of commercial aviator’s salaries once their military
obligations were over.
A leading instructor at one of
these aviation colleges, who also serves as a consultant to some private
airlines, spoke today under the conditions that neither his employers name nor
his full name be used. Once agreed, this
gentleman, Walter, as he preferred to be addressed, shed some light on the as
yet unknown fate of Flight MH370. “First,
I will tell you, the only way I am able to envision an aircraft of that size
and weight and capabilities speed-wise crashing into the ocean without a trace
are that the pilot, or someone, intentionally literally “nose-dived” it into
the sea. You know, by about this past
Tuesday, I was already speculating that the plane had been commandeered by some
country or group acting either with the consent of a government or on their own. If this is the case, this is a very serious
concern.”
Walter cut his aviator’s teeth
in the heat of the Viet Nam War. He flew
52 combat missions over Viet Nam between 1967 and 1968. He was given his own Air Squadron and
eventually returned to the cockpits of the large transport aircraft of the
day. He retired as a Colonel from the
Air Force, spent another 12 years flying commercial jetliners from the DC-3 to
the 747 and has been in his current position for just over a decade. Walter continued, “It is the duty of all
pilots to aviate, navigate and communicate. The responsibilities of a
commercial pilot with upwards of 220 passengers aboard or, even one, are
enormous and that is why continued training in simulators where we can throw
all sorts of unforeseen problems at them to be solved is vital. If somehow these pilots were compromised,
directly or indirectly, well, it is difficult to say given how few facts we
have to go on.”
CHATTER, DOTS AND POOR VISION
It has been alarming to
witness our Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other components of our
National Security, Homeland Security and State Department to backslide into the
muck and mire of complacency, ineptitude and narrow-mindedness that had them
paralyzed prior to September 11, 2001. The sad state of affairs, as revealed by
the 9/11 Committee and numerous scholarly and journalistic accounts, show a
lack of any form of intelligence “sharing” between the CIA and FBI and also a
pervasive environment of risk aversion that essentially rendered national
security efforts as virtually useless.
One just needs to recall 9-11-01 and the story as reported in newspapers
and on TV in the days immediately following the catastrophe. It was a mere 24 hours before closed circuit video
clips showed two of the hijackers boarding a plane in Portland, Maine. Officials
in every agency involved bemoaned after the fact that, they had no way of
knowing beforehand yet, within days, the identities of all the alleged
hijackers were plastered across the front page of the New York Times. Oh yes,
there were all sorts of dots not connected, all variations of information not
shared, and “chatter” that would not be deciphered until well after September
2001. The CIA and FBI not only blew
their tasks regarding the 19 Arab terrorists who committed those and they have
also been way behind the curve of virtually every important intelligence issue
ever since. They did not see the ”Arab
Spring” arising just as they did not know Russian president Vladimir Putin was
going to invade Georgia in 2008. They
were blind to the nature of the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq just as they were
in Benghazi. With all these past recent
years debating the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ability to collect and
store “metadata” from American citizens, our Intelligence community once again
finds they are involved in playing the dangerous game of “catch up”.
We are prepared to amend or
retract all or portions of that last paragraph if the mystery of Flight MH370
ends by due course; that it is proven not to be a terrorist act, an incidence
of hijacking or “piracy”. If and when
this plane is found and, it can be determined within a high degree of certainty,
that there was no nefarious activity behind its demise, than we will not judge
so harshly. Let’s all hope that there
was a mechanical or structural failure.
If it proves to be otherwise we will all be left questioning just how
far we and other countries have come, regarding security issues. We learned some crushingly horrendous truths
post 9-11-01 and it would be criminally negligent if this mystery ends with
that 777 crashing into some building in some city somewhere. The mystery deepens with each passing day.
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Brooding Cynyx 2014 © All Rights Reserved
