Email - Dated: 02-08-09 16:31:54
EDT
I have just read the David Rose article on the crash of AA 587in the Vanity Fair issue of September 2002. It seems that the article focussed very heavily on possible uncontrolled rudder movements and composite material failure while the eyewitnesses were given minimal exposure. I asked a couple of people unfamiliar with the details to read the article and tell me what they concluded from the piece. To a person their reaction was identical - that Victor Trombettas and David Rose had done a great job of proving that the Airbus should be grounded. "Why even the pilots don't want to get into them" was one reaction. Now first I must tell you my bias up front - I believe that a bomb or missile took down this aircraft and that it was a terrorist act. As I have shown with TWA 800 when you get a lot of eyewitnesses saying basically the same thing you have got to take them seriously.
Two eyewitnesses to the Nov. 12 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 said over the weekend that investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board are wrong to focus on potential structural defects as the cause of the disaster - insisting instead that the plane's tail came off over New York's Jamaica Bay only after it exploded in a fireball. "It was after the explosion," eyewitness Tom Lynch, a retired firefighter, told the New York Post. "I'm telling you, the tail was there until the second explosion." "No tail fell off, not before the explosion. I swear to that," Lynch told the paper's Steve Dunleavy. The eyewitness said there was absolutely no doubt about what he saw. "I had my head up taking in that beautiful, clear day and was staring straight at the plane. It made a bank turn and suddenly there was an explosion, orange and black, on the right-hand side of the fuselage. It was a small explosion, about half the size of a car." He continued: "The plane kept on going straight for about two or three seconds as if nothing had happened, then vwoof' - the second, big explosion on the right wing, orange and black. It was only then that the plane fell apart. It was after the explosion and I'm telling you, the tail was there until the second explosion." Lynch, who lives near the Belle Harbor, N.Y., crash site, said he knew 13 others who also saw the explosion and/or fire. One, retired police lieutenant Jim Conrad, told Dunleavy: "I saw exactly what Tom saw. I was near a stoplight at the Marine Parkway Bridge. First, the small explosion. The plane kept on going, tail intact, then the big explosion and the plane nose-dived. The first thing I said was, 'The bastards did it again.'" Lynch said he's tried to contact the FBI and the NTSB but they weren't interested in his story. Ditto Sens. Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton and his congressional representative, Anthony Weiner, who also gave him the brush-off. "I got no response from anyone," he said. Last week NewsMax.com asked New York state's newly appointed public security czar, James Kallstrom, why a traffic surveillance video that reportedly captured Flight 587's midair breakup has not been publicly released. "I have not seen the tape. I heard some mention of it. But I've not seen the tape and I really have no knowledge of it," Kallstrom said. "Why it hasn't been released, I suspect, is because the investigation is ongoing. But I don't know the answer to that." Witness Richard Kvies and a friend were sitting in Howard beach near the airport having a coffee outside while waiting to watch the Concorde take off. They were looking to the south and the airplane was traveling from Kvies's left to his right (east to west) and clilmbing slightly. He observed the aircraft for about thirty seconds. A bright yellow flash of light, very much like a camera flash, appeared where the right wing met the fuselage. The size of the flash was approximately the width of the fuselage from top to bottom. The plane stopped its forward and upward progress and descended vertically while maintaining its same attitude. A stream of white smoke rose vertically as it fell from the location where the flash had appeared. Richard is a special forces Vietnam veteran and a retired N.Y. City police officer. Richard expressed the view that it looked like some type of armament hit the aircraft. Kieves was one of the callers to 911 to report the crash.
Witness - Angela Fogarty was traveling east bound on the Belt Parkway just past the Knapp street exit and saw departing from JFK in the upper left side of her windshield. She looked away for a split second and then looked back because she thought she saw an object come in contact with the underside of the plane behind the right wing. She took her eyes off the plane and then as she looked back she saw the explosion. There was a huge orange red fireball (larger than fuselage) that was located where the right wing meets the body of the plane. The fireball turned into black smoke at this time; Fogargy saw what she believed to be the right wing separating from the aircraft. Fogargy reported that the plane was completely intact prior to the explosion and that what she thought was the wing was in fact the vertical stabilizer. Realizing that I look at things from this perspective you might understand why two pieces in the Vanity Fair article immediately jumped out at me. The bombing of Khobar Towers was one of the first acts by Osama bin Laden against the United States. Note this incident involving a TWA flight to Israel. Three weeks to the day before TWA 800 was shot down, on June 27, 1996 (note this date), at the same time in the evening, in approximately the same location as the TWA 800 downing, and within hours of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the Coast Guard received a report of "three red flares" launched 25 miles south of Shinnicock Inlet. An air and surface search was carried out which found nothing out of ordinary. There was no vessel in distress. TWA Flight 848 (New York to Rome) blocked out at exactly 10:00 pm on June 26, 1996 and assuming normal handling, Flight 848 would have passed about 11 NM South of Shinnecock Inlet at 10:29 p.m. EDT. TWA Flight 884 (New York to Tel Aviv) was scheduled to depart before FL 848 but blocked out late at 10:19 p.m. EDT.
On June 27, 2002 (note this date), a calm, sunny day over the green patchwork of Gloucestershire, England, Captain Pete Bruder was in command of an American Airlines A300-600 on its way from London's heathrow airport to New York. At 22,000 feet, he says, "it just went, Bang! It was like someone pushed the whole plane. It went left, right, left, and back to where we started. We got slammed." In the main cabin, a flight attendant was thrown into a passenger's lap as the plane lurched from side to side. "Everyone in back was terrified," Bruder says. Unwilling to risk an Atlantic crossing, he returned to Heathrow. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the British NTSB, held an investigation. There was nothing on the flight-data recorder that indicated what might have happened, and no evidence of a fault. The weather was stable. Minutes ahead of the A300-600 had been a Boeing 777. The investigators could not be certain, but reported that "it is most probable that the reason" for the Airbus's experience was the 777's wake vortex. Bruder - who at the time had 10,500 hours' flight experience - is unimpressed. "When you hit wake vortex, the plane rolls: up one side, then down again when you get through it. This was different. Something made an input on the rudder on that plane, and you'll never convince me it didn't." What a coincidence! But is doesn't stop there.
The F.B.I told Argentina today that it believed Iranian Embassy officials were involved in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center in which 86 people were killed. Officials gave Interior Minister Carlos Corach the findings of 40 agents who traveled to Argentina earlier this year to investigate the bombing, which blew apart the country's largest Jewish community center, in the heart of Buenos Aires. The attack followed the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, which killed 29 people...
The Iranian government organized and carried out the bombing of a Jewish community center here eight years ago that killed 85 people and then paid Argentina's president at the time, Carlos Saúl Menem, $10 million to cover it up, a witness in the case has said in sealed testimony. According to the witness, a high-level defector from Iran's intelligence agency who gave his name as Abdolghassem Mesbahi, Mr. Menem, who was president from 1989 to 1999, benefited for years from his ties to Iranian intelligence officials. They courted him as a valuable contact, Mr. Mesbahi said, for his combination of rising political power, Muslim ancestry and connections to Argentina's small but influential Syrian-Lebanese community. Mr. Mesbahi, the Iranian defector who provided the testimony, met with Argentine investigators in Germany in 1998 and again in Mexico in 2000, speaking at various times in Persian, English, German and French with a Spanish-language translator present. Argentine and German officials describe him as a senior operative who has provided valuable information about Iranian terrorist operations in Europe and Asia through the mid-1990's. He defected to Germany in 1996, reportedly because he was upset at his agency's involvement in the killing of dissident intellectuals in Iran and abroad. Mr. Mesbahi said the planning for the attack in Buenos Aires began in 1992, led by Mohsen Rabbani, cultural attaché at the Iranian Embassy at the time, and supervised by Hamid Naghashan, a senior official of the Iranian intelligence agency. One cell focused on "cooperating with members of the Argentine police, corrupting them or threatening them to collaborate with the attack," Mr. Mesbahi said, according to the transcript. "Another devoted itself to obtaining the explosives" in Brazil, he said. Immigration and Foreign Ministry records here confirm, the officials said, that several Iranians who were said to have been involved in the plot visited Argentina in the months preceding the bomb attack. Mr. Mesbahi said that after the attack, negotiations took place in Tehran with an emissary, a bearded man of about 50, sent by Mr. Menem. The result was that "$10 million was deposited into a numbered account that Menem had indicated," Mr. Mesbahi said, paid from a $200 million Swiss account controlled by Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was Iran's president at the time, and by a son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. In return, Mr. Mesbahi said, Mr. Menem agreed to "make declarations that there was no evidence against Iran that it was responsible." The Menem government initially blamed Iran, but the cumulative effect of later statements, arguing that there was insufficient proof, has been to sow uncertainty about responsibility for the bombing. After the bombing, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader and still holds that post, publicly expressed his approval. "By gathering together groups of Jews with records of murder, theft, wickedness and hooliganism from throughout the world," Ayatollah Khamenei said, "the Zionist regime has created an entity under the name of the Israeli nation that only understands the logic of terror and crimes." And we find that on the anniversary of this attack there were missile incidents in the United States seen by no less than four American aircraft when on March 17, 1997 (note the date), subsequent to the TWA 800 downing, a missile was observed by Northwest Airlines 775, US Air 1937, Delta 2517 and Northwest Airlines 361. Northwest Airlines Flight 775 was travelling from Newark to Minneapolis and Flight 361 from Laguardia to Minneapolis. Both flights departed at 6:55 PM and reported the missile about 15 Minutes into their flights. Here are the transcripts from my website where you can also listen to the actual tapes (http://hometown.aol.com/bardonia/index.htm - See "The Tale of the Tapes", "As Time Goes By", and "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever". NWA 775: Air Center it looks like we see ah - this is Northwest 775 - on a southerly heading - a missile or something. Do you know anything about that? Controller: Northwest 775 - you see a what? NWA 775: It appears to be a missile on the south of our course here - straight south of us - off our left - it's climbing and heading south. Controller: Due south of your position, heading south? NWA 775: Yea, and climbing rapidly. Controller: Going through about what altitude now? NWA 775: Oh man, it's like over 30,000 and on its way up. It was a rocket or a missile and I don't know - it's out of sight now. Controller: You think it was a rocket or a missile? NWA 775: Affirmative. It was extremely bright. Anybody else in the area I'm sure would have seen it. Controller: Roger Another Pilot: Don't scare us! Controller: Say again. Other Pilot: Don't scare us .... unintelligible Controller: Definitely a missile of some sort. Multiple conversations somewhat garbled. Controller: 843 west of ?? reported spotting a missile 10 south of his position heading south .... Other Controller: They're all talking about it. USA 1937: Holy ?Mary - (unintelligible) a ?240 heading - Did you see that? Controller: What did we miss? USA 1937: A rocket going up to the southeast of our ?180 Controller: From who? USA 1937: US Air 1937 Another pilot: It sure is. Controller: How far away do you think? USA 1937: ?God only knows. Controller: Little Aberdeen is out there that' why I'm asking. It's about ninety miles away from you so it could be there they do that rocket testing. USA 1937: Yeah it was about 170 degrees from us and I don't know about how far. Controller: Yeah that would be about right. USA 1937: Yeah it was off our left wing tip. Another pilot: Where did that rocket launch from? Controller: I didn't know anything about it. The only thing I'm guessing from where the US Air told me was the direction was correct for Aberdeen proving grounds. Other pilot: Unintelligible... Commuter 533 ... 180 heading and about six miles from my position. It was definitely a rocket. Controller: Yea that would be a little bit to the west of Aberdeen but I guess it's hard to be exact. Other pilot: Yea I just looked at it and saw a plume coming out of it and then it disappeared but the plume is still there. Delta 2517: Center, Delta 2517. Controller: Go ahead. Delta 2517: You guys do you have any missile launches or anything tonight? Controller: I believe there is one .... I don't know what the status is. Delta 2517: Well it just went up - ... we just lost .. .... pretty awesome off the left side. Controller: OK - you could see it. ..... Unintelligible .... We are .... all the traffic for it. Delta 2517: Where did that thing come from? Controller: I don't know. Delta 2517: I was sitting here thinking the comet looks good tonight. Man ... The Federal Aviation Administration stated that a missile sighted by several commercial airline pilots flying over the northeastern United States on March 17 was actually part of a Navy test off the coast of Florida. But how does one explain that a missile test off the coast of Florida was observed by only these aircraft flying in the NY metropolitan area especially when a similar incident occurred one year earlier over Long Island Sound?
"Has anyone ever reported any information about USAir Flight 3684 from Baltimore to MacArthur (Islip, Long Island) Airport the evening of March 17, 1996 -- four months to the day before TWA Flight 800 went down? Just after dark, the plane was beginning its approach to MacArthur, when there was an explosion just forward of the tip of the right wing -- a ball of bright orange that appeared from inside the plane to be about 20 feet in diameter, followed by a concussion that shook the plane. Everyone looked at everyone else: "What the hell was that?" No announcement from the cockpit. As we got off the plane, we asked the flight attendant, who didn't have a clue. Next day and on several occasions afterwards, I sought information from the airline, the media, the FBI (Sorry, we can't comment on that, Ma'am). What happened? I could never find out. Does anyone know? If so, please refer me to sources". Which brings me back to the Vanity Fair article where I read on page 231. On March 17, 2001 (note the date), Northwest Airlines Flight 985 was taking off from Detroit. At a speed of 110 knots - much too slow for sustainable flight - the nose began to lift. The pilot tried to lower it, using the flaps, but, as the official report says, "the airplane was unresponsive. The airplane became airborne and climbed to an altitude of 20 to 30 feet above the runway.". The only way to avoid a crash was to cut the engine power. At last the plane "settled to the runway", its tail end striking the tarmac. It plowed off the end and continued for another 700 feet before coming to a stop in mud. The aircraft was badly damaged, but no one was seriously hurt. What a coincidence! But it doesn't stop there. On November 12, 2001 American Airlines Flight 587 went into an uncontrolled dive and crashed within minutes of takeoff. The crash occurred on the fourth anniversary of the conviction of Ramzi Yousef for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Another coinicidence you say? Well to me it seems more than a coincidence that an attempt was made less than two months after the AA 587 crash to bomb AA 63 on the anniversary of the bombing of PA 103.
The man in seat 29C should have set every alarm in the airport and airline security system ringing. Refused entry to American Airlines Flight 63 from Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris only 24 hours earlier, the man travelling under a British passport in the name of Richard Reid tripped almost every signal switch designed for a potential hijacker or suicide bomber. He was a young male, hairy and olive-skinned and travelling alone. Despite embarking on a transatlantic flight to a holiday destination, Miami, he had no checked luggage. According to unconfirmed reports he was flying on a one-way ticket. Reid was noticed in the departure lounge at Paris by Thierry Dugeon, a French television journalist on his way to Miami for Christmas. "There was nothing that made him stand out," M Dugeon said. In fact, despite delays in the flight that meant it did not take off until 12.15pm local time (11.15am GMT), two hours late, "Reid" did nothing to attract the attention of the flight crew until the Boeing 767, with 197 passengers and crew on board, was midway between the French and American coasts. It was three and a half hours into the flight, just on the "point of no return" when an aircraft with an emergency on board is most vulnerable. Sitting in 29C, an aisle seat, "Reid" rose to let the woman in 29A go to the lavatory. He then crossed the empty seat between them and sat in the window seat himself. An American Airlines hostess saw him bending down in the footwell and holding and striking a match.
FBI agents are investigating the possibility that the shoe bomber Richard Reid was trying to mark the anniversary of the Lockerbie bombing with a suicide attack. He first tried to board a Paris to Miami flight on Friday, Dec 21, the 13th anniversary of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988. But it was not until 24 hours later that he managed to get a flight on the American Airlines service carrying 197 people. |
The Wave and Victor Trombettas, (who runs a website www.usread.com) devoted to the investigation of the crash of Flight 587, deserve heaps of credit for running as good a meeting as you’ll ever attend in Rockaway. They’d secured the banquet room at the Beach Club---free of charge---for the purpose of bringing together all witnesses of the crash, so that they could share their stories. On one hand, nothing could be accomplished---the NTSB and FBI and other investigators had no interest in the meeting or eyewitness accounts. On the other hand, the very credible witnesses lent each other some measure of reassurance---they might be ignored and disregarded by officials but they know what they saw...
The witnesses offered compelling, detailed stories. The perspectives were quite varied..The NTSB is a true bogeyman in this. It’s easy to understand that the government, fearing economic devastation, would be inclined to steer clear of sabotage or terrorism as an explanation why a tailfin of a plane suddenly broke free...
A recent article appearing in the NY Times besmirching eyewitness accounts was clearly spoon-fed from the NTSB. Okay, you want to stamp eyewitnesses as unreliable? Well, at the very least get their statements immediately. The NTSB waited months before asking eyewitnesses for their accounts. Of course, it’s easier to make the "unreliability" argument if you gather statements months after the fact...
Plane Crash Linked to
Defective Parts
Italian police have arrested six people for trafficking in defective Airbus spare parts that are suspected of causing the November 12 American Airlines crash in Queens, New York, in which 265 people died. Officers of the Italian Finance Police, working in conjunction with the FBI, checked over six aging Airbus A300s that were parked in a hangar at Leonardo da Vinci airport in Rome. Officers said the planes had been dismantled for spare parts by an Italian company, Panaviation, to sell to American, Canadian and other airlines, using false documentation claiming they were airworthy. Police have seized three container loads of aircraft spare parts in Naples that Panaviation was shipping to the United States for sale...
Second
Video of Flight 587 Casts Doubt on Crash Probe
News that a second toll booth video camera captured doomed American Airlines Flight 587's breakup moments after its Nov. 12 takeoff from New York's JFK airport raises new questions about the candor and thoroughness of investigators conducting the probe into the disaster...
In reality, both traffic surveillance videotapes - shot from a toll booths on causeways that cross New York's Jamaica Bay (adjacent to JFK) - were reportedly turned over to crash probers within four days of the disaster...Did the FBI withhold from the NTSB the much closer Cross Bay Blvd. videotape? Otherwise, why is an NTSB source now telling Time.com that the agency got its first look at that better video last week, more than two months after the FBI reportedly took possession of both tapes?
More troubling still, however, is Time.com's claim that the more distant Marine Parkway Bridge tape was "virtually useless." That's not what a reporter who actually examined the footage said on Nov. 17: "The tape, viewed by the Daily News, shows a white outline of the jetliner against a clear sky in fairly steep decline. Seconds later, the outline disappears and the video shows a blurry, white undefined patch as the plane apparently breaks apart."...
"At the end of the bridge videotape sequence, which has been turned over to the FBI, there appears to be a puff of white smoke in the sky." Nov. 12, the day of the crash, was a cloudless day in New York, a fact that makes that "puff of white smoke" particularly problematic for investigators who have bent over backwards to ignore the accounts of dozens of eyewitnesses who say they saw a midair explosion and fire before the plane broke apart...Time.com's source will only say the new evidence shows Flight 587 "flying along normally and intact, and suddenly things start to go very wrong."
Flight
587 Witnesses Charge Cover-Up
Dozens of eyewitnesses to the Nov. 12 crash of American Airlines Flight 587 now say the government is ignoring their claims that the Airbus 300 exploded in midair before breaking up minutes after takeoff at New York's JFK airport.
Six Flight 587 witnesses, including a recently retired police lieutenant and a fire department deputy chief, have written to the National Transportation Safety Board to demand a full public hearing on what they saw, the New York Post reported Monday.
"The NTSB is not acknowledging the many eyewitness accounts of the in-flight fire or explosion, many from people who are adamant that the fire occurred before any tail or engine breakup," retired firefighter and eyewitness Tom Lynch told the paper. Lynch said he saw two fireballs erupt from the plane's right side and insisted, "There were no falling parts until the second explosion of flames - I'll go to my grave with that." Another witness not quoted by the Post corroborated Lynch's account almost exactly in an interview just minutes after the crash.
Additionally, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority traffic surveillance tape that reportedly captured Flight 587's short flight was turned over to the FBI...In a weekend interview with the Post, an NTSB spokesman made no mention of the video but said that over 200 Flight 587 witnesses had been interrogated and that their accounts were being considered...
The Mystery of American
Airlines 587
"There's no use trying, " she said: "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." --Lewis Carroll 1832 - 1898
American Airlines now becomes focus of terrorism with two attacks. AA Flight 587 is apparently bombed on December 12, 2001. Eyewitnesses insist an explosion preceded the loss of the tail. Evidence builds that AA 587 is another TWA 800 cover up. Man attempts to blow up AA Flight 63 using a bomb in his shoe. He attempted to board the same flight the previous day on December 21, the anniversary of the bombing of PA 103...
Could it be possible that it was a storm in 1987 that caused the crash? Impossible you say but investigators are now in "unknown" territory and this may become a "mystery crash". How about a "hertofore unknown type of rudder malfunction" or "hidden damage that eluded inspectors". Still not convinced? Then how about "some combination"? [January 2, 2002; Page A04 Washington Post]
Storm
Upset Jet on Ground in 1987
Investigative Sources Say It's Unlikely Knock to Tail Caused N.Y. Crash
The Airbus A300 that lost its vertical tail fin and crashed into a New York neighborhood Nov. 12 had been blown backward onto its tail in 1987 by a violent storm that swept the Airbus factory in France as the wide-body plane sat outside awaiting completion, said sources close to the investigation...Airbus sources said the aircraft was carefully inspected after the storm and no damage was found...
But investigators said they cannot overlook potential evidence, no matter how old or remote, in a crash that has defied explanation...National Transportation Safety Board investigators, Airbus sources and French authorities shy away from calling the disaster a "mystery crash,"...
No one found any indication of terrorism. The engines checked out fine. Weather does not seem to have been a factor. But almost everything else remains on the table and many months may pass before investigators can confidently identify a probable cause. (?)
Airliner
in N.Y. Crash Not Part of '87 Incident
The Airbus A300 that was blown back onto its tail by a storm in France in 1987 was not the American Airlines plane that crashed in New York on Nov. 12, the company said yesterday...
January 5, 2002
The New York Times
Investigators looking into the crash of an American Airlines flight in Queens in November have so far found no pre-existing flaw in the jet's tail section and are now focusing on the performance of the pilots, who they believe triggered the airplane's wild rolling and yawing in the seconds before it went down. The data recovered from American Airlines Flight 587 showed that the plane hit turbulence from a plane in front of it and seconds later, began to swing violently and break up before it fell 2,900 feet to the ground, killing 265 people.
The vertical tail of the plane, and the rudder attached to it, were the first parts to break off, and investigators began to look early on at whether that caused the crash, possibly because of some undetected flaw. But now, after extensive testing of the tail, they have found no pre-existing problem. And so they are intensely exploring whether the pilots, in trying to correct and control the plane after the turbulence, might have put more stress on the tail than it was designed to handle. "A brand-new tail would have broken," said one investigator, underlining his belief that the effort by the pilots to control the plane set in motion the fatal series of events...
EMail: Dated 02-01-06
Allied Pilots Association Responds to Comments Contained in New York Times Article Concerning American Airlines Flight #587 Accident Investigation: 'Unconscionable and Inappropriate'
FORT WORTH, Texas, Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ --The Allied Pilots Association (APA), which serves as collective bargaining agent for the 11,000 pilots of American Airlines, has expressed serious concerns over comments contained in a New York Times article today regarding the investigation into the November 11, 2001 accident involving AA Flight #587...According to the article, "after extensive testing of the tail, investigators have found no pre-existing problem.'' The article goes on to say that investigators "are intensely exploring whether the pilots, in trying to correct and control the plane after the turbulence, might have put more stress on the tail than it was designed to handle,'' which suggests that the pilots made improper, excessive rudder inputs.In response, APA pointed out that the information contained in the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) has not yet been validated. The DFDR includes such information as rudder inputs and other control surface positions that could yield clues to the accident's cause... said Captain John Darrah, APA President...
All parties to the investigation, including APA, American Airlines, the National Transportation Safety Board and Airbus, have all been directed to refrain from public discussion of any elements of the accident investigation."It is unconscionable and highly inappropriate for a so-called 'investigator' to speculate in the news media concerning the accident's cause,'' said Darrah. "This particular line of speculation is particularly objectionable to us, as it calls into question the professional reputation of two fine aviators who are not here to defend themselves."It is APA's intention to vigorously defend these pilots and to insist that the accident investigation proceed free of speculation and finger pointing...
Across
N.Y., Many Doubt Crash Was an Accident
Ann Marie Ruggiero, 27, simply does not believe it. Standing behind taut yellow police tape on a gentle fall afternoon, staring at the burned-out shell of her friend's house, she says she cannot believe the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 was an accident..."It just seems too strange that this happened on Veterans Day, almost exactly two months after September 11th. I want to believe it was an accident." She looks at the ground. "But I can't." Neither, it seems, can many New Yorkers. In interviews across the city, almost everyone contends the circumstances are too strange...
"No one in there thinks this was an accident," said Gisela Martinez of the Community Association of Progressive Dominicans..."They all think it was terrorism," she said. On the A train crossing Jamaica Bay, Christine Sabat, 30, said she is convinced it was an "inside job" -- a commonly held view around New York. Someone must have tampered with the plane. "It's just too weird the way it all fell to pieces," . "Didn't they inspect that plane? It had to be an inside job. Trust me. Somebody who worked at the airport got to that plane."
The skepticism is not limited to the Queens neighborhood where the plane fell, where the stench of burned jet fuel still hangs and reminds one, almost exactly, of the smell at ground zero. It is not limited to Dominicans. It is not limited to victims' families. It is everywhere...
Flight
587 Video Shows 'Puff of Smoke' in Sky
A second-by-second videotape of the final moments of doomed American Airlines Flight 587 shows a puff of smoke in the sky seconds after it crashed outside New York's JFK Airport Monday, lending credence to eyewitnesses who say the jetliner exploded before slamming into a Rockaway, N.Y., neighborhood.
Though Flight 587 probers have not released the key videotape, shot from a Metropolitan Transportation Authority highway surveillance camera, reporters from New York's Daily News were allowed to view it Friday.
"The tape ... shows a white outline of the jetliner against a clear sky in fairly steep decline," the News reported in Saturday editions. "Seconds later, the outline disappears and the video shows a blurry, white, undefined patch as the plane apparently breaks apart." Visible in one of the final frames of the sequential videotape is "a puff of white smoke in the sky."...
Enhancement of the Flight 587 video could confirm the accounts of eyewitnesses...[who] saw "an enormous flash" near the wing on the A-300 Airbus before it dropped from the sky...Dozens of witnesses told various media outlets they saw the jet either explode or catch fire before it crashed.
An explosion would be a problem for NTSB officials, who spent the better part of the last few days trying to sell the idea that the plane's vertical stabilizer snapped off...because of "wake turbulence" from a Japan Airlines 747 that had taken off two minutes earlier.
Independent aviation experts have generally scoffed at the NTSB theory. "[747 wake turbulence] is not strong enough to be able to break off a tail or to compromise any sort of a normal airplane," said ABC News aviation analyst John Nance on Friday...
Crash
Investigators Study Tail Fin
Neither turbulence from another jet nor pressure placed on the rudder by a desperate pilot should have been enough to snap off the tail of Flight 587, aviation experts said Friday - raising the prospect that something was wrong with the plane before it left the ground...
"It seems to me this was a very extraordinary crash. In fact, we don't have a parallel,'' Blakey said before she and other investigators left New York for Washington, where the inquiry will continue for months... NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said the agency was looking at whether to suggest keeping planes farther apart, since wakes dissipate over distance. Experts suggested more distance wasn't needed in this case.
"The wake vortex of a 747 should not bring down an aircraft,'' said Tom Ellis, a spokesman for the Nolan Law Group, a Chicago firm that represents victims of airline accidents. "The A300 is designed to withstand forces of that nature. It should be well within its design tolerance. There's got to be something that interferes with the ability to recover.'' ...
Flight
587 a 'Blip' on Surveillance Video
The takeoff of doomed American Airlines Flight 587 can be seen as a "blip" on a videotape taken by a New York Metropolitian Transportation Authority surveillance camera, an MTA spokesman told NewsMax.com Friday. "My understanding of what's on the tape is that it's just like a little blip," said the MTA's Tom Kelly. "And the NTSB is trying to enhance it."...
Even if Flight 587's image is a tiny blip on the MTA video, the tape could be a crucial piece of evidence in the air crash probe that has baffled investigators since Monday. Dozens of eyewitnesses report seeing either an "enormous flash," an explosion or a fire near the Airbus-300's wing before it broke apart over Jamaica Bay. An explosion large enough to be seen by witnesses all around the bay might also appear on the tape...
American
587: Manipulation of the Public Mind for Political Purpose
James D. Sanders
"Mechanical" causes short-term economic pain. Within weeks the public anxiety over dying in a plane crash will be gone. BOMB causes the public to believe the enemy can strike anywhere, anytime..."
We are at war. Our enemy specializes in finding new and creative ways to destroy airplanes in order to terrorize America. American Airlines Flight 587 crashed shortly after liftoff from JFK Airport, New York. Neither engine exploded in flight, per The Washington Post. Both engines and vertical tail section "appear to have broken away from the aircraft before the crash,"...
Less than 30 minutes after American 587 crashed...the FBI declared it to have been the victim of a mechanical failure. Establishment media immediately disseminated this transparent manipulation of the public mind as serious news...We are at war. Our enemies specialize in blowing up commercial aircraft. "If there was an explosion on the plane," the crash should be treated as a crime until a non-criminal cause has been found...
"'We're utterly baffled,' said one official. 'This is not even within statistical calibrations,'"...'Everything points to an accident,' said Marion Blakely, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board. 'The communications from the cockpit were normal until the last few seconds before the crash.' "
This statement would soon be proven factually false. The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded multiple significant events requiring extensive analysis. Any of these significant events could be evidence of a crime. Real investigators must spend significant time investigating and analyzing before "everything points to an accident."
Establishment media never challenged this transparent disinformation effort...As American 587 plummeted toward the ground, Reuters put out a wire story saying " 'There is credible information of an impending attack inside Saudi Arabia – and one wonders whether inside America itself,' said Saad al-Fagih...
Nov. 12, 2001, is a case study in manipulation of the public mind for political purpose...The decision makers decided that BOMB would not be the answer.
They further decided to take positive action to immediately remove establishment media discussion of BOMB as a serious consideration. Political necessity trumped investigative integrity. BOMB would immediately be eliminated from the public psyche...the public must be lied to, for the noble purpose of lessening economic pain for the greatest number.
If a bomb brought down the plane, it is an answer that would destroy what is left of the airline industry, plunging the economy into a deep recession, perhaps a depression, during a war for national survival. Lie to the public; reassure the collective mind that tragic accidents occasionally happen – particularly if you fly out of JFK Airport.
"Mechanical" causes short-term economic pain. Within weeks the public anxiety over dying in a plane crash will be gone. BOMB causes the public to believe the enemy can strike anywhere, anytime...American 587 provides significant insight into collective liberty. We are being lied to. It is in the collective interest, therefore the lie is told for noble reason – the collective good. Collective liberty isenhanced. Individual liberty is diminished...
Feds
Downplay Flight 587 Explosion Reports
Just two days after the FBI said it was investigating witness accounts that American Airlines Flight 587 exploded in midair before it broke apart...NTSB investigators are pushing the theory that air turbulence from another jetliner...caused the crash that scattered wreckage covering a half-mile-wide area...We are consistently looking for any sign of sabotage and not finding any,"..."There is no evidence of any bomb, or any sabotage, at this point."...That's not what the investigators were saying just hours after the crash, as reported in an Associated Press alert that flashed into newsrooms across the country...
"I keep hearing the authorities talk about an engine falling off the plane and [then] an explosion," eyewitness Rod McHale told the New York Post. "That's not what I heard and saw. There was an explosion and then the engine fell off...
Aviation expert John Nance told WABC Radio's Gambling that probers were grasping at straws.
GAMBLING: The theory that this plane, Flight 587, was going through the wash of a 747 ahead of it - that really seems to be sort of a bogus theory.
NANCE: It really is. I think a lot of folks jumped on that last night, I think, misunderstanding the reality that these aircraft fly through severe turbulence.
My morning yesterday in New York began with a bang. An American Airlines flight went down near JFK. Many people here began bracing for another wave of attacks. But none materialized. Maybe this awful disaster was just an accident. Maybe not.
The FBI came out within a half hour of the incident to say there was no apparent terrorism, just a mechanical plane failure. Larry Klayman’s Judicial Watch quickly issued a press release slamming the FBI for its snap assessment. Whatever you may think of Judicial Watch, on this one it batted a homerun. How could any reasonable person come to any conclusion on this crash so fast?
So far, we know an engine fell from the jet. Engines typically don't just fall off planes. Okay, let's say for the moment the crash was not caused by a bomb. What caused the mechanical failure? How about possible sabotage from one of the ground crew? An investigation first needs to be conducted – and only then a conclusion drawn.
But the government is so anxious to calm an already panicked public; it is trying, at every opportunity, to hold back any possibility of bad news...Some officials are holding back the truth, perhaps to protect the economy.
Yes, the economy is shaky and another terrorist act against a civilian jet will only hurt. But in the long run, fairytales don't help. We ignore the truth and bad news at our peril. I don't believe in holding back bad news. Failing to tell the public "bad news" doesn't lead to better news, just more trouble.
The reason we Americans are in this terrorist predicament is because of the increasing deceit coming from our government. This process of deceit is a decades-long one. We all know now the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a provocation – and that the government fed the public lies about the progress of the Vietnam War. In the end, the U.S. government lost South Vietnam, and years of public trust was eroded.
When Clinton came to power in 1993, he brought "government by deceit" to a new height. One episode during the Clinton years that may have parallels to Monday's crash was the 1996 crash of TWA 800...
Crash
Experts: Feds Too Quick to Rule Out Terror
Government officials should not be so quick to assure Americans that the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 was not a terrorist act, two longtime investigators of past plane tragedies have told NewsMax.com. Further, a former government inspector says regardless of whether Monday’s crash was an accident or terrorism, it indicates a huge problem.
Former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Vernon Grose says he’s afraid the agency’s chairwoman, Marion Blakey, may have to "eat crow, and big time” in her statement that "at this stage, all indications are that this is an accident.”
"Now that should never have been said, especially by the NTSB,” the Reagan-era member told NewsMax. "She [had] no evidence. They [had] not been there yet...Grose was joined in his criticism by Reed Irvine, whose Accuracy In Media (AIM) conducted a thorough independent probe of the TWA 800 crash of July 1996...Neither Grose nor Irvine is alleging that the crash Monday in Queens, N.Y., was an act of terrorism. But they say all the facts are not in yet. And some hard questions need to be answered first. "If the tail left the airplane before the engines did,” that is cause to ponder, said Grose, a 50-year veteran of such investigations...
Respected longtime federal investigator Mary Sciavo agrees...that terrorism could not be ruled out "because of the rarity of an in-flight breakup.”..."if this is what they think happened [an accident], then this is catastrophic.”"...Either we have the worst in-flight breakup in U.S. history, or we have "tampering,” which may or may not be related to the Sept. 11 terrorists...
In case you haven't noticed, the mainstream media got their marching orders from their government handlers early on November 12. The fire from the crash of AA flight 587 was barely extinguished before they started touting the official government position that this was probably just an accident - not an act of terrorism. By the time the 10pm news came on that verdict was all but official.
It always gives me such a feeling of confidence in my government when they assure me of what has happened without having to conduct one of those pesky "investigations". Don't you agree? After all, we all saw what happened on 9-11, the first time we ever had an Islamic terrorist attack on American soil that the government couldn't cover up. The economy went into recession, the unemployment rate took its biggest jump in 21 years, and consumer confidence went straight into the toilet. We don't want any more of that now do we? Of course not!
After all, if you allowed an investigation to prove that our own government is allowing Islamic terrorists to work as mechanics or in other service capacities at major airlines, thereby putting them in exactly the right position to sabotage our planes, how long do you think it would take for the flying public to ground every plane in this country by simply refusing to fly?
You'll notice I didn't call 9-11 the "first Islamic terrorist attack on American soil". Just the first one that the government couldn't cover up. I'm sure you all remember the first one - the now infamous TWA 800, back on July 17, 1996. Remember how that one turned out? Even after dozens of witnesses came forward to testify that they saw a missile rise from the surface of the Atlantic and intercept flight 800 in mid air government investigators were still able to fabricate a conclusion completely at odds with the evidence. But to do that, they had to get Boeing to take the fall...
Doomed Plane's Number Is Lottery
Winner
The New Jersey Lottery will pay out more than $1 million to thousands of lottery winners who bet on the flight number of the jetliner that crashed in New York this week, lottery officials said on Tuesday...
American Airlines Flight 587 plunged into a quiet Queens neighborhood on Monday morning...Hours later, not only did "587" turn out to be the winning number in the New Jersey Lottery's Pick-3 game, but players wound up buying a whopping 27,829 winning tickets. They each won $16, and the money won by other types of tickets that also contained the flight number pushed the total payout over $1 million. The macabre twist of fate did not end there, however, because a slight variation on the plane's flight number -- 578 -- had also been the winner in a midday lottery drawing...
Aviation
Expert: Bomb Is One Likely Cause of Flight 587 Crash
An aviation expert said Wednesday that an in-flight bomb explosion could explain why Flight 587's vertical stabilizer sheared off intact and fell into New York City's Jamaica Bay, a half mile from where the rest of the plane crashed in the Belle Harbor section of Rockaway. "That tail coming off is very puzzling," the expert, speaking on condition of anonymity, told New York's Newsday.
"There are only a handful of ways it can come off," he explained, saying that there was either a structural problem with the tail, or something else broke away from the plane and sheared it off, "or a bomb."...
Investigators said that catastrophic engine failure likely brought Flight 587 down, NTSB officials have repeatedly insisted there was "no evidence" that Flight 587's crash was anything but an accident. But the tail section became the focus of new scrutiny late Tuesday when investigators said an inspection of the Airbus-300's two engines showed no evidence of engine failure or burnout...
"When they pulled the tail section from the water, I have to say that was quite a shock," said former Transportation Department Inspector General Mary Schiavo...The tail fin was pulled from the water showing no damage except for the smooth seam where it had previously been attached to the Airbus-300's fuselage."The tail section, to me, points to even greater problems and other problems for this aircraft,"...
"I think terrorism is a possibly," the former DOT official said. In accounts that have apparently been dismissed by NTSB investigators, witness after witness described seeing a midair explosion..."I saw an enormous flash where the wing meets the plane," eyewitness Jackie Powers told WABC Radio"I saw the plane going across Jamaica Bay," a witness told WABC. "It was trying to ascend and then it just exploded."...Another eyewitness said, "The right wing seemed to catch fire and explode. The wing was on fire with a trail of smoke behind it."...
'I Know What I Saw...That
Was No Mechanical Problem...No Way!'
"I will never believe it was an accident. They'll never convince me of that." Eugene Sanfilippo kept looking past the microphones and notebooks, down 131st Street toward Jamaica Bay and a vision that the rest of us could not see..."When I heard the explosion, I thought we were under attack," Sanfilippo said. "My first impression was that they'd hit us with a nuclear bomb...
At the edge of a new Ground Zero, a mayor, a president's spokesman and a slew of FAA officials were urging us to think "accident."...To look into Eugene Sanfilippo's eyes was to see there were no coincidences... "I want to believe it was mechanical. I'm hoping it was an accident. These days," Tommy Rayder sighed, "an accident is what you pray for. "That's a weird thing to say isn't it?...
"We are up on the Cross Bay Bridge," James Gill said, "driving over from Richmond Hill to look at a house. "My wife saw the whole thing. What she saw was an explosion, way forward on the engines, sort of just behind the cockpit...After being rocked by the sound of an initial explosion, James Gill said he looked up to see American Flight 587 in flames and attempting to bank, only to wind up in a flat death spiral. "I was in munitions in both the Army and also the Navy. I know what I heard and what I saw. That was no mechanical problem. No way!"...
Howard Greenberg said, "that my wife believes this is another incident..."Personally I might like to believe that it was something else, but when you've been told that this whole area is being considered as a crime scene, and that FBI agents are looking in your yard and on your roof for evidence, for pieces of jet wreckage or human beings, then it becomes hard to make a case for coincidence...
Former
NTSB Official Doubts Accident Caused Flight 587 Crash
Aviation expert and former National Transportation Safety Board official Vernon Grose said late Monday that he's increasingly skeptical that the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 was purely accidental. "I am backing away from the ready idea that this is simply an accident," Grose told Fox News Channel's John Scott.
The veteran air crash prober said that he questions the sequence in which the plane broke up over Jamaica Bay before slamming into a residential area in Rockaway, Queens...the vertical stabilizer of the aircraft with the American Airlines insignia right on it [fell into] Jamaica Bay long before the engine fell off in Queens..."Earlier today I thought it was simply the loss of an engine that caused this," Grose said. "But I'm not convinced now.... I am becoming more skeptical."
A senior Bush administration official told CNN initial indications are that there was an explosion aboard the plane, an Airbus A300, but that the source of the explosion is unknown.
Pilots
Struggled To Control Jetliner
The cockpit voice recorder from American Flight 587 indicates the pilots struggled to control the jetliner after a rattling was heard less than two minutes into takeoff, investigators reported Tuesday.
George Black Jr. of the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators do not yet know what caused the "airframe rattling noise," but witnesses describe a remarkably similar story. "They saw the aircraft wobble, they saw pieces come from it and that it went into a steep, spiraling dive into the ground," Black said at an evening press conference...
The NTSB is trying to determine why the vertical stabilizer – or tail fin – and the attached rudder separated in flight just before the crash...the rudder was found nearby Tuesday...Agency officials told reporters they do not know what ripped the 25-foot-tall tail fin off the fuselage cleanly, as if it had been sliced by a knife...
More
Eyewitnesses Describe Midair Explosion
Additional eyewitnesses to the crash of an American Airlines A-300 say they saw a midair explosion before the jetliner plummeted to the ground in Far Rockaway, Queens, Monday morning. "The right wing seemed to catch fire and explode. The wing was on fire with a trail of smoke behind it," one witness told WABC Radio in New York. He said the explosion took place as the plane was ascending.
Minutes earlier eyewitness Jackie Powers told ABC-TV News that she saw "an enormous flash" on the right side of the plane's fuselage, with debris exiting to the left...Another witness, who watched the plane crash from his boat in Jamaica Bay, told WABC Radio that the Airbus 300's wing came off and struck the tail section, which fell into the water nearby..."When I heard the pop, we looked up. On the wing side you could see flames and then the wing just came off. And then another big section of the tail, that came off and just fell to the ground...
Fireman
Mike Moran Lives One Block from Flight 587 Crash
Famed firefighter Mike Moran, who dared terrorist Osama bin Laden to come after him at an Oct. 20 benefit concert for the victims of the Twin Towers attacks, lives just one block from where doomed American Airlines Flight 587 crashed Monday morning in the Rockaway section of Queens, N.Y.
Moran, who lost a brother in the 9/11 attacks, gained notoriety when he told the Madison Square Garden crowd:..."And I want to say one more thing, in the spirit of the Irish people: Osama bin Laden, you can kiss my royal Irish a--. And I live in Rockaway. And this is my face, b---h."...Moran's terrorist dare and the fact that he gave out his approximate address in comments televised worldwide set off a firestorm of speculation on Monday...
Queens
Crash Eyewitness Accounts Point to Sabotage
Off duty pilot describes explosion, fire, and tumbling of plane from sky.
Brian Gumball interviewed a pilot that has flown that route to the Dominican Republic in that very type of aircraft . He was off duty and the plane came down near where he lived. He actually went out to see what was wrong because from the sound he knew something was wrong. He was a witness. He -Mr. Mernenis said there were two or three explosions, he saw the engine fly off one way and the wing separated and went another way. Other witnesses say they saw the same thing...
Professional
Pilots Rumor Network
"Most
unusual debris pattern. It's difficult to imagine how an apparent uncontained
engine failure might cause the vertical stabilizer to separate. (One of the
engines found at the Texaco station had a large hole in the side of the
cowling)."
Click
to view larger. "I recall
that in the Mid 1970s a C-141 crashed after straying into a thunderstorm
in England. The aircraft had rolled into 30 degrees of right bank in an effort
to escape the thunderstorm, adding to the stress on the airframe already
induced by the storm. At the crash site, number 4 engine and the vertical
stabilizer were found together in an open field, hundreds of yards away from
the main wreckage. That showed a historical correlation between engine separation
and either stress on the vertical stablizer, or perhaps the engine actually
striking the vertical stabilizer as it separated from the wing..".
"A
rather unlikely event. A power plant would not be striking the vertical stab,
not even the horizontal after a separation. Looking at the picture, it does
seem to be a clear "cut"..."un-riveted" almost. I can't come up with any
plausible scenario causing such a separation myself either. In any case the
vertical stab being separated in such way, found in bay can't have anything
to do with a possible uncontained blade separation."
"The
vertical stab was in the drink, roughly along the flight path and between
JFK and the spots where the engines landed. The main part of the a/c landed
on 133rd st; the two engines wound up at 128th and 129th streets, respectively.
This would seem to indicate a strong likelihood that the fin separated from
the craft before the engines did. Source for engine locations:
NY
Daily News"
"This
is the most perplexing crash. At first I thought that this crash may have
been a replica of the American Airlines DC10 crash at Chicago, where the
engine pylon failed because of improper pylon attachment. That engine rotated
over the wing and hit the top of the wing, causing all the hydraulic problems
that made the plane uncontrollable.
In this case I first thought that the engine may have broken off and flipped up over the wing with sufficient force to cause the wing to fail, or to somehow subsequently hit the tail assembly.
But the problem with this kind of conjecture is that both the engines appear to be near the fuselage on the ground, while the nearly undamaged stabiliser appears to have left the aircraft at some point in flight before the subsequent trajectory of the debris found on land".
"It's
reported that the right wing was on fire and that there are at least
two crash sites. This would indicate a bomb - possibly placed behind the
refueling panel on the right wing."
"Latest
on TV was a witness who said the left WING fell off. Wings don't fall off
or course, they are blown off. I think we should keep an open mind on the
possibility that this was a bomb or a Stinger. A decent sized pleasure craft
in Jamaica Bay or just offshore could launch a Stinger, and then
escape."
Radar
trace information is as follows:
9:14.34 takeoff
9:15.02 1300 feet, 200 mph
9:15.36 "plane begins to climb more rapidly"
9:16.01 2800 feet, 306 mph (last trace)
The NTSB reports no bird or foreign object damage to either engine, and no obvious sign of catastrophic engine failure in either engine. The vertical stabilizer was found one half mile east of the fuselage. The rudder was also found today in Jamaica Bay, and the flight data recorder recovered as well and flown to Washington for analysis. Both engines separated from the aircraft before impact.
From
the Cockpit Voice Recorder as reported by the NTSB:
107 seconds after takeoff roll: airframe rattle sound.
114 seconds: pilot remark of 'wake encounter'. (Apparently in reference to a Japan Airlines 747 8 miles ahead.)
121 seconds: airframe rattle sound.
125 seconds: call for "maximum power"
127 seconds: a remark about 'losing control'
144 seconds: end of recording.
"Speculation is now turning to thinking that the vertical stabilizer separated first from the fuselage. If indeed such separation was the proximate cause of the accident, what caused this to happen is unknown.
In my post above on the radar trace (assuming the radar trace values are accurate), both the rate of climb and the acceleration in speed seems to be more consistent with normally functioning engines than what might be expected if an engine had experienced a major failure. However, a company pilot on the ground at JFK is reported as supposedly saying he saw smoke from one of the engines as the airplane took off.
In any event, the flight data recorder should provide some answers very soon. As Air Force One has these engines, I am certain that both the Air Force and the Secret Service want answers quickly."
Is this all just one big strange coincidence?
Ozama's Fortress In the colonization time it used to be called "The Force". It is the military area with classic middle age style which main center is the Tower of the Honor which construction was made in 1503 and was the location of the jail until the present Century...
|
Santo Domingo
was founded in 1496,