A Question For Real Airline Pilots

[Blue]

I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline pilots
and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
want to tell the answer.

I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.

Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.

[Peter Duniho]

"Blue" > wrote in message ...
> [...] additional mechanical devices
> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an
outside
> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.

If you believe airliners have remote controls, you probably also believe a
shoulder-fired missile shot down TWA 800.

In any case, even if such an absurd idea were true, no one would ever admit
it.

That's the hallmark of all the best conspiracy theories. The theory itself
precludes the conspiracy ever being revealed.

Pete

[Bill]

Yes I did read where this is being developed so that the plane could be
controlled from the ground or another aircraft. I dont know the status of
the project.

Bill


"Blue" > wrote in message ...
> I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline
pilots
> and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
> want to tell the answer.
>
> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring
to
> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical
devices
> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an
outside
> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.
>
> Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.
>
>

[Quilljar]

If I WAS a real life airline pilot, there wd be no way that I would answer
such a question, for Pete's sake!

Even asking it is a bit dogy..

[Bill-R]

Well I heard it on CNN some time ago and also read about it , so its not a
state secret. The guts of the technology might be, but the fact that its
being developed has already been stated.

Bill


"Quilljar" > wrote in message
...
> If I WAS a real life airline pilot, there wd be no way that I would answer
> such a question, for Pete's sake!
>
> Even asking it is a bit dogy..
>
>

[Rob Andrews]

"Bill-R" > wrote in
:

> Well I heard it on CNN some time ago and also read about it , so its
> not a state secret. The guts of the technology might be, but the fact
> that its being developed has already been stated.
>
> Bill
>

I just saw something on Discovery Wings (I think it was) about this.

They did something like this back in WWII. Outfitted B-17's with remote
control gear, and had another aircraft fly along side to direct it. The
B17 was packed full of bombs, etc. and to be flown into the heavily
fortified submarine pens in France and Germany.

[Whistler]

On Wed, 19 May 2004 11:22:17 -0400, "Bill-R" > wrote:

>Well I heard it on CNN some time ago and also read about it , so its not=
a
>state secret. The guts of the technology might be, but the fact that its
>being developed has already been stated.
>
>Bill
>
It already happens in the Predator drones, so utilizing it in a civil =
aviation
environment should be trivial. I wouldn't be surprised if El-Al have =
something
like this in the pipeline if not operation.

[Blue]

"Whistler" > wrote in message
...
On Wed, 19 May 2004 11:22:17 -0400, "Bill-R" > wrote:

>Well I heard it on CNN some time ago and also read about it , so its not a
>state secret. The guts of the technology might be, but the fact that its
>being developed has already been stated.
>
>Bill
>
It already happens in the Predator drones, so utilizing it in a civil
aviation
environment should be trivial.

What I am specifically referring to is not trivial. The guidance
electronics and mechanics which I am sure you are referring to is "trivial"
in the sense that it is all available now and has been for years.

Though trivial in the engineering emplementation, what I am referring to
mind bogglingly complex in the political implementation. The word "evil" is
unescapable

I am referring to the complete taking away of control from the cockpit,
i.e., NO cockpit override of control surfaces, engine controls, gear
control. No one in the cockpit could have any control whatsoever over the
plane, including the decision to relinquish control.

The first to reply have been revealingly strident in their disagreement to
discuss this question, even stating that it is "none of my business."
Nothing could be MORE of "my business," and everyone else in this country
old enough to vote .

[FLY135]

"Blue" > wrote in message ...
> I am referring to the complete taking away of control from the cockpit,
> i.e., NO cockpit override of control surfaces, engine controls, gear
> control. No one in the cockpit could have any control whatsoever over the
> plane, including the decision to relinquish control.
>
> The first to reply have been revealingly strident in their disagreement to
> discuss this question, even stating that it is "none of my business."
> Nothing could be MORE of "my business," and everyone else in this country
> old enough to vote .

Freaking out about asking this question is ridiculous. I would imagine that
every pilot out there would walk off the job if something like this was
implemented. I guess the people who suggest it have never heard of secure
cockpit doors with locks.

[Bill-R]

"FLY135" <fly_135(@ hot not not)notmail.com> wrote in message
link.net...
>
> "Blue" > wrote in message
...
> > I am referring to the complete taking away of control from the cockpit,
> > i.e., NO cockpit override of control surfaces, engine controls, gear
> > control. No one in the cockpit could have any control whatsoever over
the
> > plane, including the decision to relinquish control.
> >
> > The first to reply have been revealingly strident in their disagreement
to
> > discuss this question, even stating that it is "none of my business."
> > Nothing could be MORE of "my business," and everyone else in this
country
> > old enough to vote .
>
> Freaking out about asking this question is ridiculous. I would imagine
that
> every pilot out there would walk off the job if something like this was
> implemented. I guess the people who suggest it have never heard of secure
> cockpit doors with locks.
>


The more I think about this question, and it is certainly not a ridiculous
question, I recall Boeing doing tests on jets going back to the 707 days
with complete ground control via remote, so that they can crash test the
planes. So its been around and its been used and if it were implemented in
civil aircraft then it would be a bonus. Maybe it has been the cost factor
over the years why it hasnt been done, but I dont think it would be
technologically difficult to do it.

Bill

[Peter Duniho]

"Blue" > wrote in message ...
> [...]
> The first to reply have been revealingly strident in their disagreement to
> discuss this question, even stating that it is "none of my business."
> Nothing could be MORE of "my business," and everyone else in this country
> old enough to vote .

The first to reply was me, and the point of my reply was to point out how
absurd the idea is.

Even if it was politically feasible, it would be idiotic to add remote
control to airliners. After all, about the only deterrent right now to
terrorists crashing airliners is that they have to die with the plane.
Given them a remote control, and they don't even need to do that.

And before you say "well, we'll just secure the remote control", think for a
moment just how impossible that would be.

Pete

[Peter Duniho]

"Bill-R" > wrote in message
...
> [...] I dont think it would be technologically difficult to do it.

It would be technologically trivial to implement. That's not the point.

[Doug Cox]

"Bill" > wrote in message

> Yes I did read where this is being developed so that the plane could be
> controlled from the ground or another aircraft. I dont know the status of
> the project.

Brilliant idea. Then Osama can fly planes into buildings by remote control.

That'll save him half a few suicide bombers per plane that he can use
elsewhere...

Doug Cox.
Work to ride, Ride to work...
http://toosmoky.d2.net.au

[Blue]

"Peter Duniho" > wrote in message
...
> "Blue" > wrote in message
...
> > >
> Even if it was politically feasible, it would be idiotic to add remote
> control to airliners. After all, about the only deterrent right now to
> terrorists crashing airliners is that they have to die with the plane.
> Given them a remote control, and they don't even need to do that.
>

It is provocative to look at something from a different angle. Try these:
(1) with a plane configured like this real "terrorists" are not even
necessary they can just be figmentary patseys. (2)Alternatively, if real
the terrorists can be expecting to merely hijack the plane when in fact
they were set up to die as patseys. (3)And yes, real terrorists could just
have the remote as you suggest but those terrorists would have to be very
special terrorists to be able to swap identical planes. Even more
fascinating is the morphing together of all three of these scenarios.

[Peter Duniho]

"Blue" > wrote in message ...
> It is provocative to look at something from a different angle. [...]

Well, sure...once you start talking about absurd possibilities, the sky's
the limit. Why limit yourself to three absurd possibilities?

Though, I don't really understand your #3. My point is that if *someone*
can take over an airplane by remote control, then terrorists can take over
an airplane by remote control. There's no need to "swap identical planes".
You just take over your airplane of choosing by remote control.

Pete

[Thomas Peel]

Blue schrieb:
>
> I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline pilots
> and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
> want to tell the answer.
>
> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.
>
> Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.

Would you want to fly in a plane equipped like that? I would not. The
chances of the system going wrong leaving the plane being controlled by
nobody are higher than the chances of being hijacked by a suicide
bomber.
You should read Bruce Schneier's book about real security.
http://www.schneier.com/book-beyondfear.html

T.

[coustanis]

Blue wrote:
>
> I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline pilots
> and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
> want to tell the answer.
>
> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.
>
> Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.

A remote controlled airliner has already been done. There's a well
known test
on an airliner in the desert.
The heavy was equipped with special fuel tanks and anti-misting fuel.
The idea was to try to reduce the explosion / fire hazard in an airliner
when it crashed.
So, they outfitted an airliner with this fuel setup, installed remote controll,
flew it and crached it into the desert.
The airplane flew well but the test failed. The fireball was spectacular.
There is a video around that's not too hard to get.

[Blue]

"Blue" > wrote in message ...
>
> "Peter Duniho" > wrote in message
> ...
> > "Blue" > wrote in message
> ...
> > > >
> > Even if it was politically feasible, it would be idiotic to add remote
> > control to airliners. After all, about the only deterrent right now to
> > terrorists crashing airliners is that they have to die with the plane.
> > Given them a remote control, and they don't even need to do that.
> >
>
> It is provocative to look at something from a different angle. Try these:
> (1) with a plane configured like this real "terrorists" are not even
> necessary they can just be figmentary patseys. (2)Alternatively, if real
> the terrorists can be expecting to merely hijack the plane when in fact
> they were set up to die as patseys. (3)And yes, real terrorists could
just
> have the remote as you suggest but those terrorists would have to be very
> special terrorists to be able to swap identical planes. Even more
> fascinating is the morphing together of all three of these scenarios.

To help in understanding (3) and "morphing together":

http://www.public-action.com/911/robotplane.html

[Glenn Jacobs]

On Thu, 20 May 2004 14:24:03 +0200, Thomas Peel wrote:

> Blue schrieb:
>>
>> I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline pilots
>> and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
>> want to tell the answer.
>>
>> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
>> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
>> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
>> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
>> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
>> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.
>>
>> Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.
>
> Would you want to fly in a plane equipped like that? I would not. The
> chances of the system going wrong leaving the plane being controlled by
> nobody are higher than the chances of being hijacked by a suicide
> bomber.
> You should read Bruce Schneier's book about real security.
> http://www.schneier.com/book-beyondfear.html
>
> T.

I am in total agreement with you. There would have to be a way to disable
the remote control from the cockpit and how would you keep the hijackers
from learning how to do this?

I will get Schneier's book. I have a couple of his booksand have met him,
but didn't know about that book.

He also has an email news letter that comes out monthly that usually has a
lot of info on various types of security. to subscribe go to
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram.html>.

JakeInHartsel

[Glenn Jacobs]

On Thu, 20 May 2004 13:56:53 GMT, coustanis wrote:

> Blue wrote:
>>
>> I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline pilots
>> and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
>> want to tell the answer.
>>
>> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
>> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
>> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
>> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
>> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
>> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.
>>
>> Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.
>
> A remote controlled airliner has already been done. There's a well
> known test
> on an airliner in the desert.
> The heavy was equipped with special fuel tanks and anti-misting fuel.
> The idea was to try to reduce the explosion / fire hazard in an airliner
> when it crashed.
> So, they outfitted an airliner with this fuel setup, installed remote controll,
> flew it and crached it into the desert.
> The airplane flew well but the test failed. The fireball was spectacular.
> There is a video around that's not too hard to get.

It really did not fly per se, it simply was run down the desert the the
landing gears were sheared off and it "flew" a short distance before
crashing. There was some obstructions in fron of it to assure that the fuel
tanks would rupture.

JakeInHartsel

[David CL Francis]

On Wed, 19 May 2004 at 16:25:42 in message
>, Bill-R > wrote:

>The more I think about this question, and it is certainly not a ridiculous
>question, I recall Boeing doing tests on jets going back to the 707 days
>with complete ground control via remote, so that they can crash test the
>planes. So its been around and its been used and if it were implemented in
>civil aircraft then it would be a bonus. Maybe it has been the cost factor
>over the years why it hasnt been done, but I dont think it would be
>technologically difficult to do it.

Remotely piloted full size aircraft go back years - certainly before
WW2. Everyone who has flown a radio control model has done it.

However the philosophical, psychological and safety aspects on doing
this with civil airliners is immense. There are problems of range,
control methods at distances and not least the danger that a system that
involved the possibility of remote compulsory take over seems, on the
face of it, something that might get a lot of attention from hi-jackers.
No need to risk their lives or commit suicide - they might just take
over a ground station or kidnap someone who knew the right codes and use
their own equipment. I can see even more possibilities for concern.
--
David CL Francis

[Kevin Darling]

Glenn Jacobs > wrote in message >...
> On Thu, 20 May 2004 13:56:53 GMT, coustanis wrote:
> > A remote controlled airliner has already been done. There's a well
> > known test on an airliner in the desert. The heavy was equipped with
> > special fuel tanks and anti-misting fuel. [...]
>
> It really did not fly per se, it simply was run down the desert the the
> landing gears were sheared off and it "flew" a short distance before
> crashing. There was some obstructions in fron of it to assure that the fuel
> tanks would rupture.

You must be thinking of a different test. The one that most people
think of was like this, according to NASA:

"On the morning of December 1, 1984, a remotely controlled Boeing 720
transport took off from Edwards Air Force Base (Edwards, California),
made a left-hand departure and climbed to an altitude of 2300 feet. It
then began a descent-to-landing to a specially prepared runway on the
east side of Rogers Dry Lake. Final approach was along the roughly
3.8-degree glide slope. The landing gear was left retracted. Passing
the decision height of 150 feet above ground level (AGL), the aircraft
was slightly to the right of the desired path. Just above that
decision point at which the pilot was to execute a "go-around," there
appeared to be enough altitude to maneuver back to the centerline of
the runway. Data acquisition systems had been activated, and the
aircraft was committed to impact. It contacted the ground, left wing
low. The fire and smoke took over an hour to extinguish. "

[Blue]

"David CL Francis" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 19 May 2004 at 16:25:42 in message
> >, Bill-R > wrote:
>
> >The more I think about this question, and it is certainly not a
ridiculous
> >question, I recall Boeing doing tests on jets going back to the 707 days
> >with complete ground control via remote, so that they can crash test the
> >planes. So its been around and its been used and if it were implemented
in
> >civil aircraft then it would be a bonus. Maybe it has been the cost
factor
> >over the years why it hasnt been done, but I dont think it would be
> >technologically difficult to do it.
>
> Remotely piloted full size aircraft go back years - certainly before
> WW2. Everyone who has flown a radio control model has done it.
>
> However the philosophical, psychological and safety aspects on doing
> this with civil airliners is immense. There are problems of range,
> control methods at distances and not least the danger that a system that
> involved the possibility of remote compulsory take over seems, on the

The "compulsory" or "commandeering" aspect of flying a fully loaded airliner
from a following airplane is the point of this thread. Also, the
possibility that our own government was involved.

Many may want to toss this off as absurd, hateful and not worth considering
yet that is exactly what our government has done in the past.

(1)In 1964, the US military, with Johnson's full support, came before the US
Congress and claimed that the North Vietnamese attacked the USS Maddox in
what is now referred to as "the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Johnson asked
Congress to give the military the right to go into Vietnam and fight.
Congress agreed and passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which marked the
beginning of the bloody Vietnam conflict. Naturally it turns out that the
military's claims were false. The Vietnamese never fired on any US ship. It
was a lie made up to give the military what it wanted, a free hand to wage
war. The skipper and many crew members of the USS Maddox stated as much
years after the end of the conflict

(2) In 1968 the placing of the USS Pueblo off North Korea was probably the
rehearsal for the USS Liberty below but the Koreans were careful not to sink
the ship and blew our plans. LBJ in charge again.

(3)1973 Israel/America(LBJ) plan sinking of USS Liberty spy ship off coast
of Egypt with Egypt to be the patsy and inflame US populace against Israel's
sneak attack against Egypt and Syria
LBJ in charge again this time assuming that another screw up as with the
Pueblo would occur but did with the complete incompetance of the Israeli
military causing LBJ's resignatio

No coincidence that Lyndon Johnson was an architect of all these
demonstraqtions of just how we here are "led" by our refusal to take these
things as "our business."


Simply horrific to think that we are to take high treason as business as
normal here in the United States but the evidence for it is overwhelming.

Something that has been said by more than one cabinet minister around the
table at the first meeting with Bush Jr. is their surprise that Bush did not
only have any particular knowledge of their departments but also had zero
interest in them. Indeed he made it plain that his only interest was
making war with Iraq and Afghanistan and his orders to them were to just
give me a reason - and deniability.

This plan of his was never spoken to his fellow Americans, the real
(supposed) government of America, during his campaign. In fact Bush never
mentioned those countries once to us.

Party animals can rant their knee-jerk hatred of this thinking but it has
not a thing to do with political parties .
This is about power pure and simple and how to get it and use it without
blowing it. Bush is a Texas Republican and LBJ is a Democrat and a most
probable close Bush family friend and fellow Texan.

[rob]

I was wondering if this was going to turn into a 911 conspiracy thread.
Looks like I was right.

[Peter Duniho]

"rob" > wrote in message
...
> I was wondering if this was going to turn into a 911 conspiracy thread.
> Looks like I was right.

Turn into? It started that way.

[Briarroot]

Blue wrote:
>
> (3)1973 Israel/America(LBJ) plan sinking of USS Liberty spy ship off coast
> of Egypt with Egypt to be the patsy and inflame US populace against Israel's
> sneak attack against Egypt and Syria
> LBJ in charge again this time assuming that another screw up as with the
> Pueblo would occur but did with the complete incompetance of the Israeli
> military causing LBJ's resignatio

LOL! It was Egypt and Syria that attacked Israel, not the other
way around. Oh, and Richard Nixon was US President in 1973 and
had been since 1968. Is the rest of your screed on a par with
this idiocy?


"What a maroon!" --Bugs Bunny

[Blue]

"Blue" > wrote in message ...
>
> "David CL Francis" > wrote in message
> ...
> > On Wed, 19 May 2004 at 16:25:42 in message
> > >, Bill-R > wrote:
> >
> > >The more I think about this question, and it is certainly not a
> ridiculous
> > >question, I recall Boeing doing tests on jets going back to the 707
days
> > >with complete ground control via remote, so that they can crash test
the
> > >planes. So its been around and its been used and if it were implemented
> in
> > >civil aircraft then it would be a bonus. Maybe it has been the cost
> factor
> > >over the years why it hasnt been done, but I dont think it would be
> > >technologically difficult to do it.
> >
> > Remotely piloted full size aircraft go back years - certainly before
> > WW2. Everyone who has flown a radio control model has done it.
> >
> > However the philosophical, psychological and safety aspects on doing
> > this with civil airliners is immense. There are problems of range,
> > control methods at distances and not least the danger that a system that
> > involved the possibility of remote compulsory take over seems, on the
>
> The "compulsory" or "commandeering" aspect of flying a fully loaded
airliner
> from a following airplane is the point of this thread. Also, the
> possibility that our own government was involved.
>
> Many may want to toss this off as absurd, hateful and not worth
considering
> yet that is exactly what our government has done in the past.

(a) Nov 22 1963 JFK murdered in Dallas putting Lyndon Johnson into the
American presidency.
Republican plumbers of Watergate fame arrested on overpass dressed as
bums
and inexplicably released. Bush SR, a CIA agent is in Dallas on
"assignment.
Bush who was a major architect of the attack on Cuba that JFK refused
to support soon after JFK murdered rockets to top of CIA.

> (1)In 1964, the US military, with Johnson's full support, came before the
US
> Congress and claimes that the North Vietnamese attacked the USS Maddox in
> what is now referred to as "the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Johnson asked
> Congress to give the military the right to go into Vietnam and fight.
> Congress agreed and passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which marked the
> beginning of the bloody Vietnam conflict. Naturally it turns out that the
> military's claims were false. The Vietnamese never fired on any US ship.
It
> was a lie made up to give the military what it wanted, a free hand to wage
> war. The skipper and many crew members of the USS Maddox stated as much
> years after the end of the conflict
>
> (2) In 1968 the placing of the USS Pueblo off North Korea was probably the
> rehearsal for the USS Liberty below but the Koreans were careful capture
and
not to sink the ship and blew our plans. LBJ in charge again.
>
> (3)1967 - June Israel/America(LBJ) plan sinking of USS Liberty spy ship
off coast
> of Egypt with Egypt to be the patsy and inflame US populace against
Israel's
> sneak attack against Egypt and Syria. (There is no doubt of this as anyone
can ascertain
by a google search on USS Liberty.
http://www.google.com/search?q=uss+liberty
LBJ was "invited" to join in on the war
but told Israel "my people won't go along with it" The USS Liberty fiasco
was intended to address that problem.
> LBJ in charge again this time assuming that another screw up as with the
> Pueblo would occur but did with the complete incompetance of the Israeli
> military causing LBJ's resignation.

(4) Can't omit Bush Sr's luring Iraq into invading Kuwait in 1990 by
dispatching
April Glaspie to Baghdad to tell Hussain in reference to his dispute with
Kuwait that
"But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border
disagreement with Kuwait."
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html
Also, google up "april Glaspie for many other references to her complicity
in this.
>
> No coincidence that Lyndon Johnson and George Bush Sr were architects of
all these
> examples of just how we here are "led" by our refusal to take these
> things as "our business."
>
>
> Simply horrific to think that we are to take high treason as business as
> normal here in the United States but the evidence for it is overwhelming.
>
> Something that has been said by more than one cabinet minister around the
> table at the first meeting with Bush Jr. is their surprise that Bush did
not
> only have any particular knowledge of their departments but also had zero
> interest in them. Indeed he made it plain that his only interest was
> making war with Iraq and Afghanistan and his orders to them were to just
> give me a reason - and deniability.
>
> This plan of his was never spoken to his fellow Americans, the real
> (supposed) government of America, during his campaign. In fact Bush never
> mentioned those countries once to us.
>
> Party animals can rant their knee-jerk hatred of this thinking but it has
> not a thing to do with political parties .
> This is about power pure and simple and how to get it and use it without
> blowing it. The Bushs are a Texas Republicans and LBJ is a Democrat and
a most
> probable close Bush family friend and fellow Texan.

Thanks to briarroot for his knee-jerk rant allowing me to correct the USS
Liberty date.

A side note, I was on the top floor of the South Tower of the WTC a few
months
before it was destroyed and was surprised at the amount of air traffic at
all times near the tower.
Also, the plane that crashed in PA was cdlosely followed by a small jet
without markings of any kind.
A witness said that it appeared to have "government colorations and
appearance."
No part of any of the four planes was allowed to be inspected bringiing into
suspicion the installed "comandeering apparatus."

I think we should consider whether or not we want "war presidents" as Bush
boasts of being -
or an executive branch at all. The Roman Republic that all admire didn't
have one and was truly
admirable until Ceasar simply took it over and it went down hill from there.
Our first constitution had no chief executive either and when it was revised
to our present constitution
much consideration was given to three simultaneous executives.
The principle reason we ended up with a president was the overwhelming
popularity of George Washington
who was considered - and was- indispensible to the nation. Unfortunately we
were unable to clone him.

[coustanis]

Glenn Jacobs wrote:
>
> On Thu, 20 May 2004 13:56:53 GMT, coustanis wrote:
>
> > Blue wrote:
> >>
> >> I have a question that can only possibly be answered by real airline pilots
> >> and pilots of the heavy oil-burners at that. Even they may not know - or
> >> want to tell the answer.
> >>
> >> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
> >> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
> >> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
> >> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
> >> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
> >> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.
> >>
> >> Hope a real airline pilot will comment on this question.
> >
> > A remote controlled airliner has already been done. There's a well
> > known test
> > on an airliner in the desert.
> > The heavy was equipped with special fuel tanks and anti-misting fuel.
> > The idea was to try to reduce the explosion / fire hazard in an airliner
> > when it crashed.
> > So, they outfitted an airliner with this fuel setup, installed remote controll,
> > flew it and crached it into the desert.
> > The airplane flew well but the test failed. The fireball was spectacular.
> > There is a video around that's not too hard to get.
>
> It really did not fly per se, it simply was run down the desert the the
> landing gears were sheared off and it "flew" a short distance before
> crashing. There was some obstructions in fron of it to assure that the fuel
> tanks would rupture.
>

It flew all right. It shows in the video as it descends in a flat
attitude until it impacted the desert floor.
The rest is, as they say, history.

[Harold A. Climer]

On Wed, 19 May 2004 16:30:48 GMT, Rob Andrews > wrote:

>"Bill-R" > wrote in
:
>
>> Well I heard it on CNN some time ago and also read about it , so its
>> not a state secret. The guts of the technology might be, but the fact
>> that its being developed has already been stated.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>
>I just saw something on Discovery Wings (I think it was) about this.
>
>They did something like this back in WWII. Outfitted B-17's with remote
>control gear, and had another aircraft fly along side to direct it. The
>B17 was packed full of bombs, etc. and to be flown into the heavily
>fortified submarine pens in France and Germany.
I think this is how Joe Kennedy Jr. died in such an attempt. so it
goes back that far.
Harold A. Climer
Dept. Of Physics,Geololgy, and Astronomy
U.T. Chattanooga
318 Grote Hall
615 McCallie Ave
Chattanooga TN 37403

[S.A.C.D.]

This is an aviation group not a politics one!!!

--
Salud y Suerte

[Kevin Darling]

"Blue" > wrote in message >...
> I have heard that most if not all of the heavies now flying have special
> equipment in them to thwart hijacking. The equipment that I am referring to
> is not just an autopilot which is standard but additional mechanical devices
> to completely remove control from the cockpit making it possible to take
> control away from the flight officers and giving that control to an outside
> pilot which could be in a following aircraft or at an airport or anywhere.

It's a moot question.

There's no need for such a setup now. Cockpit doors have been
reinforced, pilots won't open it even if everyone's being killed in
back, heavies with large fuel loads probably have an air marshall
aboard.

In short, it's doubtful that another 9/11 can take place in the same
way as before, at least with passenger airliners.

[rottenberg]

ShoarmaBoy > wrote in message >...
> This is true for normal military aircraft where they use it already.
> But i don't think this is going to be inserted in real life boeing 737NG's
> or other commercial airliners because this also is a system that can be
> hijacked. If they break into the control room. Also than you should be
> able to hack the system if it's a remote system to be able to be controled
> from the ground...
> Never thought of that?
>
> Tom
> (Boeing 737NG command officer)

Let's not forget that it also requires fewer men - instead of breaking
into three cockpits, you can break into one control room for three
planes (and likly nore planes than that). That's the sort of logical
gap that obviously eluded Blue, along with his devoted acceptance of
conspiracy theories that at least border on libel.

[Blue]

My, my. this thread just won't die! And now I have a hated adversary to
boot.

On topic, I have been on top of the World Trade Center and was surprised by
the many planes in the air surrounding it. The planes would have to have
been flown by a following plane. Also, the Pennslyvania plane was followed
by an unmarked Gulfstream jet such as Cheney uses.

Also, when JFK took over the CIA presented him with a plan eerily like the
one used for 911 including a plane switch of a CIA lookalike for a civilian
plane which would be remotely flown over Cuba and destroyed there to incite
American lemmings into supporting a war with little guy Cuba who had just
kicked George Bush SR's ass with his hair-brained Bay of Pigs invasion .
JFK , crossed him up by refusing to support the mess. To the plan for a
false downing of an American passenger jet he did the unthinkable, he sent
RFK to the military chest beaters where he announced: " My big brother says
for you guys to stick your kill Cuber plans up your asses." There had been
several of them. (or words to that effect.)

The principal operator there, Bush Sr, not only didn't forgive that he was
arrested on the RR overpass with the Rep "plumbers" and instantly released
by the Texas mounted police. Then the false attack scenario was carried
out by LBJ in 1964 with the Gulf Of Tonkin incident that everyone agrees was
faked by him to get us into Viet Nam where JFK had just announced that ALL
Americans would be removed from VN by xmas 1963. LBJ managed to kill some
55,000 innocent Americans there in a hopeless civil war intervention that
had nothing to do with the spread of communism.

LBJ tried it again in 1967 in "conspiracy" with our "allies" in Israel with
the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt which was to inflame Americans into
supporting a war against Egypt. The attempt was a failure only because of
the complete incompetancy of our "allies" in Israel who were simply unable
to sink the unarmed and unarmored converted Liberty ship.

And speaking of asses, Mr Rottenberg who has apparently been secretly
tracking me as part of a conspiracy, would you like to add something here?

"rottenberg" > wrote in message
om...
> ShoarmaBoy > wrote in message
> >...
>> This is true for normal military aircraft where they use it already.
>> But i don't think this is going to be inserted in real life boeing
>> 737NG's
>> or other commercial airliners because this also is a system that can be
>> hijacked. If they break into the control room. Also than you should be
>> able to hack the system if it's a remote system to be able to be
>> controled
>> from the ground...
>> Never thought of that?
>>
>> Tom
>> (Boeing 737NG command officer)
>
> Let's not forget that it also requires fewer men - instead of breaking
> into three cockpits, you can break into one control room for three
> planes (and likly nore planes than that). That's the sort of logical
> gap that obviously eluded Blue, along with his devoted acceptance of
> conspiracy theories that at least border on libel.

[rottenberg]

"Blue" > wrote in message >...
> My, my. this thread just won't die! And now I have a hated adversary to
> boot.

"Hated adversary" – isn't that a bit grandiose, I mean even compared
to your prior conspiracy ravings? I guess then you can't pigeonhole
those who disagree with you as a bunch of reactionaries looking for
hated enemies.

> On topic, I have been on top of the World Trade Center and was surprised by
> the many planes in the air surrounding it. The planes would have to have
> been flown by a following plane. Also, the Pennslyvania plane was followed
> by an unmarked Gulfstream jet such as Cheney uses.

This is so weird. I remember being on top of the WTC also once and
also noticing lots of airplanes looking really close. Okay that was
about 25 years ago. But then, in 1996-98 I was working at 40 Wall
Street, only a few blocks away from WTC, and I saw what looked like a
lot of low-flying planes again. I even saw one that looked exactly
like one of the airplanes that flew into the towers – same two wings,
two engines, even the exact same markings (silver body, red & blue
stripes). WTF, if NYC wasn't close to a major commercial aviation
corridor, I'd go completely bonkers!!

Oh, and what do you mean that the "planes would have to have been
flown by a following plane"? How do we know that the Pennsylvania
plane was followed by a Gulfstream? And what difference does that
make anyway? Speilberg is supposed to use a Gulfstream. Lots of rich
types have Gulfstreams. Sid Lumet used a Gulfstream in "Sabrina" –
now are we gonna blame Julia Ormond for 9/11?

> Also, when JFK took over the CIA presented him with a plan eerily like the
> one used for 911 including a plane switch of a CIA lookalike for a civilian
> plane which would be remotely flown over Cuba and destroyed there to incite
> American lemmings into supporting a war with little guy Cuba who had just
> kicked George Bush SR's ass with his hair-brained Bay of Pigs invasion .

More theories? I'm not even sure what sense that makes – a plane
exploding over Cuba to incite Americans? Why would a plane exploding
over Cuba get Americans to support a war against Cuba? Maybe you
meant to say a Cuban plane to fly past Cuba and explode in Miami.
That's more plausible – but is there any proof or even any evidence
that the CIA actually had such an idea? Even if they had, what does
that really prove? The idea of crashing planes into buildings or
ships or fabricating acts of military aggression isn't an original
idea. I've been flying Cessnas on PCs since 1987, routinely trying to
fly between the towers on MS Flight Simulator. Sometimes I did it
right, sometimes I didn't. (although I stopped after 9/11) I now
suppose you'll accuse me of working "for the company". In any event,
the idea that we were waiting for the right spark and had to fake one
is nonsense – when the Soviets missiled Cuba up in '62, the point was
to prevent war at all costs, including an invasion of Cuba.

> JFK , crossed him up by refusing to support the mess. To the plan for a
> false downing of an American passenger jet he did the unthinkable, he sent
> RFK to the military chest beaters where he announced: " My big brother says
> for you guys to stick your kill Cuber plans up your asses." >

That's funny, I would have assumed that he'd send McNamara, the guy he
actually kept around to run the military.

>There had been several of them. (or words to that effect.)

The effect being to make RFK sound like a man who spoke English as a
second langugae. I mean seriously....

> The principal operator there, Bush Sr, not only didn't forgive that he was
> arrested on the RR overpass with the Rep "plumbers" and instantly released
> by the Texas mounted police. Then the false attack scenario was carried
> out by LBJ in 1964 with the Gulf Of Tonkin incident that everyone agrees was
> faked by him to get us into Viet Nam where JFK had just announced that ALL
> Americans would be removed from VN by xmas 1963. LBJ managed to kill some
> 55,000 innocent Americans there in a hopeless civil war intervention that
> had nothing to do with the spread of communism.

So now it's LBJ? I thought it was the CIA or Bush Sr.? McNamara
stood by LBJ when it came to pushing the Tonkin incident as one of
preemptive attack by North VN, and near unanimity by a US congress
sealed the deal. Where's the CIA? This is the problem I have with
conspiracy theorists - basically a conspiracy theory gives you no
tools to fight against the evil they purport to reveal - they only
tell you who to hate and why. Arabs, Jews, Liberals, conservatives,
LBJ, RFK etc. At least a decent conspiracy theorist can do a better
job of it. I thought this was about the CIA, then against Bush - now
its against another president, from the other party, who ran on a
different agenda. Just who are you talking about here?

> LBJ tried it again in 1967 in "conspiracy" with our "allies" in Israel with
> the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt which was to inflame Americans into
> supporting a war against Egypt. The attempt was a failure only because of
> the complete incompetancy of our "allies" in Israel who were simply unable
> to sink the unarmed and unarmored converted Liberty ship.

Incompetency of the Israelis? Needed to inflame support for Israel?
I must be an idiot – the Liberty incident has been one of the
thorniest issues of Israeli-American relations, yet one the Israelis
claimed to have carried out in fact. I've neevr seen any indication
that they ever tried to fob the attack on the Egyptians. Perhaps they
hit the Liberty because they feared the Americans would leak intel to
the other side by accident (or deliberately as was done in the
Iran-Iraq war). But a frame-up? Never. Even if the Israelis,
(AFAIK, never took out a target like a ship) sunk the Liberty and
convinced the world that the Isreali-marked planes and ships used in
the attack were actually Egyptian – what would be the point? Israel
wasn't South VN. LBJ didn't have to bottle up the Suez with carrier
battle groups, or commit hundreds of thousands of troops. There was
no need to manipulate world opinion, let alone American opinion that
was desperate enough to risk the ire of American by killing Americans.
For their faults, Israeli forces were not ARVN. It took little to
drum up sympathy for one nation surrounded by Soviet aligned enemies,
and the support the Israelis needed could have been done covertly – so
why the idea of subterfuge, in a plan that could have wrecked Israel's
standing with America and the rest of the world? And what sort of
support would the Israelis have gotten had they pulled it off and
shifted blame to the Egyptians (they have since accepted the blame,
though to what degree is admittedly debateable, as is the sufficiency
of redress)? The very next year saw the capture and brutal treatment
of the crew of the Pueblo. @0 years later saw the attack against the
Stark. Yet The Pueblos seizure saw no new war against DPRK, and
relations with Iraq remained stable until the invasion of Kuwait,
years after the Stark.

> And speaking of asses, Mr Rottenberg who has apparently been secretly
> tracking me as part of a conspiracy, would you like to add something here?

I didn't say anything about asses. I think we can safely say that
this thread has degenerated into...

Oh ****, what the hell.

Yeah – you got me. The above is just a load of bull****. It turns
out that I'm really the acting DDCI of the NSA. I'm the guy
responsible for keeping you conspiracy theorists busy by releasing
useless and meaningless documents with strategic redactions. Life is
boring here in Area-51, and playing mind-tag with you guys is the only
entertainment we get, aside from making alien babes take off their
clothes and dancing for us, then dissecting them the morning after.
The problem is that we all have our deep-dark secrets. Mine actually
stemmed from my role as the undisclosed producer for a movie called
"Hangar 18" with Robert Vaughn. You may remember "Hangar 18" as that
flick which made it uncool to believe in Alien conspiracies. It was
actually intended to preempt a more plausible picture starring Roy
Scheider and Gene Hackman, and make it so uncool that it would take
decades before anybody could bring any semblance of respectability to
the UFO-conspiracy community. Here's a quick flash for you "six
degrees of Kevin Bacon" people out there – yeah I know most of you
were happy enough to Link Robert Vaughn to Christopher Lee ("Starship
Invasions"), and Lee to Sean Astin (LotR) who was in "Whitewater
Summer" with Bacon; It turns out that one of the alien corpses was
actually none other than Mark Metcalf, that's right, Lt. Niedermayer
himself from "Animal House". During the autopsy scene, one the
scientists are supposed to get into this long philosophical discussion
about the advanced alien species, and I was pretty lazy when it came
to scripting this scene (I figured they could ad-lib there way through
it) so it took forever to get. It was like on the 9th take, and
Metcalf is starting to get really ****ed off. So this female
scientist is saying something like "why have they crossed the gulf of
space to set foot on our world?" What profound message have they
brought for mankind?" (See why it took forever to shoot this scene?
The cast and crew laughed themselves silly – we were going to hire
some telekenitics from Honduras so they could run the cameras without
being in the same room, and also because they we didn't think they
could laugh if they couldn't understand the dialog.) Anyway,
brilliant-but-sensitive female scientist (who cried whenever the rest
of us laughed at her) goes into her bit about the profound alien
message thing, ans crews it up..again. I yell "cut" and Metcalf jumps
off this slab-thing that he's on and goes totally postal (and this was
before we even knew what that meant). "YOU WANT A MESSAGE? YOU WANT
A ****ING MESSAGE FROM AN ADVANCED ****ING CIVILIZATION!?!? HERE'S
YOUR ****ING MESSAGE: YOU'RE ALL WORTHLESS AND WEAK!!! NOW DROP DOWN
AND GIVE ME ****ING 20!!!" Anyway the female scientist is floored,
and we're laughing so hard, we don't notice that she's having this
total break down right there in front of us. We found out years later
that she got on "Dynasty" based on her ability to loser her mind, a
talent we believe she perfected on our set. So I guess her story had
a happy ending, until Dynasty was cancelled, the story was sad again.

Anyway, the problem was that we couldn't come up with a good ending.
Scientists find the aliens, and politicians don't want anything found.
The ending had to be plausible enough so that UFO conspiracy
theorists would think that they could convince Americans as to its
truth, yet too stupid for anybody to really believe. Nobody thought
it possible, and it turns out that it wasn't. What we didn't
understand at the time, was that conspiracy theorists can
believe/doubt anything they want. But we still wanted a good ending.
So there I was, on the "red eye" Jennifer 737 out of Groom Lake,
heading out to Vegas, hoping free drinks on the strip would loosen me
up. I hadn't a case writer's block this bad since I script-doctored
for Hal Holbrook in "Capricorn One" earlier that year. You know what
the brilliance of "Capricorn One" was – we hired Hal Holbrook. This
guy could ad-lib in ****ing Shakespeare; he could out ad-lib Mamet,
and this was before anybody even knew who Mamet was. Kris Kraft
doesn't even give the guy a script – just tells him what point he
wants Holbrook to get across. Remember "Capricorn One" - it was this
edgy movie about how Holbrook fakes this mission to mars that James
Brolin, OJ and that guy from "Law & Order" were supposed to fly.
Kraft asks him to give this speech to James Brolin and OJ Simpson
about how tired America is of the space race, and that nobody thought
the dream was worth the cost. We weren't expecting anything major,
and Kraft didn't even stay on the set to watch it (he gave us some
bull**** excuse joke about that he had to run and sabotage a Soviet
launch – man that Kraft was such a crack-up; Goldin was nowhere near
as funny; you ever wonder why the "Law & Order" guy is so much
snappier in this movie than he is on that show? Kris Kraft!!). So
Holbrook gets the idea for this speech, and goes ballistic. We think
he's mad at us, but then we realize he;s in character, so we keep the
cameras rolling. "The program costs too much? The ****ing program
costs too much!?! **** you assholes – you don't know what a dream
costs!!" and he garnishes it with this great anecdote about Apollo 17,
how when networks preempted a re-run of "Lucy" for the -17 landing,
people complained "I could understand if it was a new episode, but
this was a re-run!!" Anyway, there I am on this Jennifer 737 nursing
a Harley's Bristol Cream when I notice this guy across the aisle
giving me the eye. Then I remembered that kid we brought in to add a
dash of realism to the alien autopsy sequence for "Hangar-18" (here
was a guy who knew what a blown apart bodylooked like on any planet;
I think he was also a consultant on "Quincy"). I hadn't even met the
guy, but everybody knew Osama Bin Laden by reputation. Now, since it
was my decision to bring the guy back from Afghanistan, I figured I
owed the guy a well-done. Turns out the guy is fascinating, and funny
as hell. After Jennifer sets down, we spend the next 18 hours
schmoozing at the airport bar. How cool was he? We had to be the only
guys in Vegas paying for their own drinks – that's how hard it was to
get out of that bar. Then we come to my problem. At this, a moment
of silence, then he looks off at this fully loaded Eastern 727 and
asks me what would happen if that plane came down anything but softly,
and anywhere but a runway. And I go that it would cause two things –
boom & yauch!! More to the point, why would an airplane just happen
to "land" on Hangar-18? He shakes his head – obviously I had missed
the point. He reminds me that, engaging the Soviets, he studied the
history of their hardware, and reminded me of the 1973 Paris air show,
where the Tupolev SST disintegrated in the air, but not high enough to
avoid killing anybody on the ground. The point is that people were
killed on the ground because they were near a huge agglomeration of
airplanes. He was surprised that stuff like this didn't happen more
often. And it didn't have to be next to an airport – just nearby. I
don't remember if airlines had deregulated by then, but the point was
that air traffic was expected to sky rocket in the next few years – no
matter how far away you were from an airport (even a moderately sized
one) – you'd have a dozen jumbos daisy-wheeling over your house. But
even before then, Hangar-18 itself was on an air force base – it was a
****ing hangar for crissakes (okay, so maybe Osama didn't say
"crissakes", but the rest of what he said was…err.. to that effect).
So I get out of that bar and head on the next Jennifer flight out.
Problem solved – but I had to get out of Vegas, or the idea would just
die. And Vegas could wait, I mean, the MGM Grand wasn't just going to
****ing vanish, was it? So there it was – Robert Vaughn decides to
destroy Hangar-18 by crashing an airplane into it. Airplanes crash
all the time, and sometimes they even crash on airports – says one of
my characters. 1980 comes and goes, the film is a flop, The
Scheider/Hackman movie never comes together, Spielberg totally
re-writes "E.T." to omit more than the bare display of the government
in action on UFO's (and any suggestion that it was covert). In other
words, mission accomplished.

A few years down the line, the Russians start dropping rulers like
flies. Something big is in the offing, some of us even start to
question whether the Soviets are gonna last to see the 75th
anniversary of the revolution. Problem is that they talk tough – and
because of that, the administration starts talking about stripping
civilian intel to pay for a six hundred ship fleet, and for a bunch of
new wings of airplanes, some of which didn't even exist yet.
Remembering my shmooze with OBL, I head out to Langley one day and
give the boss what I know. The next war will rely on "unconventional
warfare" – by which I meant terrorism but enhanced. We already knew
that terrorists liked to hijack planes, and that they also knew liked
to drive semtex-loaded vans into things. We also knew that we could
engineer a spectacular air disaster (we had that botched controlled
crash of the Boeing 720 on film). So if hijackers liked to blow
things up, why did they go to so much trouble to keep from blowing up
airplanes they hijacked. Were they afraid that people would give in
to their demands before they had a chance to blow up the planes? Were
they afraid of losing a cause to fight for? Airline crews are like
bank tellers – both are (were) trained to be very cooperative in
emergency situations. So why were hijackers so careful about the
planes they hijacked? Simply combining the idea of a suicide hijack
was part of that American impulse to synthesize and create – the same
spirit of invention that created high-concept movies and peanutbutter
cups. Not to say that I thought it represented an American virtue to
actually carry out the attack, onviously it was an evil thing to do.
Only that it felt great that I could conceive such a thing possible,
and perhaps forestall it. So I gave my pitch to Casey, and he was not
enthused. He did give me the benefit of the doubt – was this an
attack that might be carried out against the Russians (by which he
meant – was this something we should do?) or a "canned goods" plan (by
which he meant, an attack we'd carry out against ourselves and frame
others for.)? I told him that I thought this was neither – an attack
that might actually be made against us by bona-fide enemies. Here he
lost it – what enemies? The Reds had 180 divisions against us, and
god knew how many nuclear-equipped aircraft. Who would believe the
Reds would do something like that when they've got firepower against
us. I guessed that he was thinking I meant a simulated attack against
us), so I reiterated that this would be a genuine attack, by genuine
enemies, but he discounted this as well. In The Company, we broke the
enemies down to several groups – liberal media, the Soviets and their
backers, and the so-called the "Maverick enzyme" (allies in name who
would backstab us). Due to jurisdictional constraints, drug cartels
were deliberately excluded.) There wasn't going to be an attack,
simulated or actual. Terrorists liked to hit us on foreign soil, and
let the media have its way with us at home (they had jurisdictional
constraints of their own). The Russians don't need terrorism –
they've got 180 ****ing divisions. Man, I didn't know that an old guy
could yell "****ing!!" like that, but Casey did – no wonder he was
DCI. The Russisns wouldn't need to hit us as long as they were as
strong as they were, and that wouldn't change for a century. Even if,
by some miracle, the WarPac just evaporated, who would hit us on our
own soil? The last person who would try that would be some stateless
organization (again, interpreting my plan as being one undertaken by
us to frame others), and a third world country would never want to
consider giving us the right to go in and completely kick their asses.
We didn't even go into Cuba after Angola or Grenda. A major attack
like the one I considered would be nuts for another country to
undertake – they had us by the balls wherever our flag flew
(embassies, garrisons, ports), they'd never need to hit us on our
soil. Even stateless organizations like ones we backed in Afghanistan
kept things "far from home" (AFAIK, he was right on this one – I
couldn't think of a single op Bin Laden took on definite Russian or
just plain Soviet soil). The disappearance of the Soviets wouldn't
make it any more feasible or likely that such an op would go forward –
now we wouldn't have the Russians breathing down our necks. I tried
playing a trump card by combining the two circumstances that Casey had
considered in isolation – what if the Soviets disappeared and we
wanted to undertake such a mission to justify some US military ops.
Casey looked at me long and hard, then he asked me against what sort
of people we'd be framing for the mass murder of maybe a couple
hundred Americans. I knew that we wouldn't be framing a single
country – there have to be easier and cheaper ways to mobilize
America, like the threat of harm (always scarier than the harm
itself), the possibility that its weapons aren't as 3rd world as their
plumbing, or simply the idea that they were arab. In our circles, the
arabs were always "soft sell". Instead, I went with the idea that a
huge, yet shadowy organization, tied to no single country, with
operations everywhere and operatives from anywhere. That way, we
could justify going everywhere. At this, Casey turned beet red – I
thought his head was gonna fly off. But he kept his voice cool. "Mr.
Rottenberg (and he didn't even put the accent on "rotten" like
everybody else does) the point of covert operations of the sort you
describe wouldn't give us the license to invade anywhere we liked, it
would pretty much nail us to the wall unless we hit every country on
the planet, and no matter what country we hit, there would always be
some joker running around saying we'd hit the wrong one. We'd be tied
down with our soldiers getting "Montezuma's Revenge" in **** holes no
one cares about, and don't matter that much to our global interests.
Where are the resources supposed to come from, Mr. Rottenberg. Oh
that's right, the Soviets are gonna vanish. Okay, Soviets are gonna
vanish, and we're gonna find ourselves with a ton of free troops and
toys ready to go wherever we want them to. Oh, except that once those
Soviets vanish, you're gonna have a ton of crazy congressman thinking
that we can save money by cutting troop levels. Even if we turned
this into some multi-national chase for guys with fake passports and
wire cutters, nobody would be able to justify the spending needed to
keep our forces to the same level we do today [again, this was during
the cold war]. We could dredge up those horror stories about the
"Islamic Bomb" but that wouldn't require the sort of mass-murder you
suggest, and if we ever decided that we wanted (or needed) to
concentrate our forces against any one nation, we'd be stuck, because
we'd by then committed ourselves to a war against guys who aren't part
of any nation." The problem with stateless organizations is that they
aren't really all that stateless – if they don't have the majority of
the populace and the government in their pockets, they've got the
right ministers ready to do their bidding and the craven remainder of
the government who's afraid to question them. Yet, despite the camps,
the refuge and the other forms of open and enthusiastic support, we
dare not go against these sovereign backers of the stateless because
the rest of the world claims them as innocent. Surprisingly, I agree.
I'm big on the idea that not everybody must receive their punishment
in this world – a higher plane and a higher power are more effective
for revealing sin and inflicting the just reward for it.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Casey adroitly put it (now playing with the
"rotten" to wild abandon) no idiot would dream up the idea of a
stateless enemy if they could avoid it, when doing so would create a
large, insulated class of terrorist sympathizers. It was impossible
to shake him of this idea, especially since he was devoted to the idea
that the Russians were forever.

Year later, after the wall fell, and Casey fell, and 9/11 fell, I gave
the CIA my goodbyes, and hoped to strike it rich in Hollywood like
such famed Company vets as John Demme, David Lynch and both "Spikes"
(Lee & Jonze). However, I was to find my dreams dashed by the men
whose experience on "Hangar 18" I made a living hell. "Ad lib this,
you stupid ****ing rotten-moron!!" Spielberg yelled. Now Steve is the
main man in tinsel town – and how do I go against that firepower. For
the second time in my life, the conspirator has to wonder, how does he
survive the conniving of others?

Yeah – you got me. The above is just a load of bull****. It turns
out that I'm really the acting DDCI of the NSA. I'm the guy
responsible for keeping you conspiracy theorists busy by releasing
useless and meaningless documents with strategic redactions. Life is
boring here in Area-51, and playing mind-tag with you guys is the only
entertainment we get, aside from making alien babes take off their
clothes and dancing for us, then dissecting them the morning after.
The problem is that we all have our deep-dark secrets. Mine actually
stemmed from my role is as the undisclosed producer for a movie called
"Hangar 18" with Robert Vaughn. You may remember "Hangar 18" as that
flick which made it uncool to believe in Alien conspiracies. It was
actually intended to preempt a more plausible picture starring Roy
Scheider and Gene Hackman, and make it so uncool that it would take
decades before anybody could bring any semblance of respectability to
the UFO-conspiracy community. Here's a quick flash for you "six
degrees of Kevin Bacon" people out there – yeah I know most of you
were happy enough to Link Robert Vaughn to Christopher Lee ("Starship
Invasions"), and Lee to Sean Astin (LotR) who was in "Whitewater
Summer" with Bacon; It turns out that one of the alien corpses was
actually none other than Mark Metcalf, that's right, Lt. Niedermayer
himself from "Animal House". During the autopsy scene, one the
scientists are supposed to get into this long philosophical discussion
about the advanced alien species, and I was pretty lazy when it came
to scripting this scene (I figured they could ad-lib there way through
it) so it took forever to get. It was like on the 9th take, and
Metcalf is starting to get really ****ed off. So this female
scientist is saying something like "why have they crossed the gulf of
space to set foot on our world?"
What profound message have they brought for mankind?" (See why it
took forever to shoot this scene? The cast and crew laughed
themselves silly – we were going to hire some telekenitics from
Honduras so they could run the cameras without being in the same room,
and also because they we didn't think they could laugh if they
couldn't understand the dialog.) Anyway, brilliant-but-sensitive
female scientist (who cried whenever the rest of us laughed at her)
goes into her bit about the profound alien message thing, and Metcalf
jumps off this slab-thing that he's on and goes totally postal (and
this was before we even knew what the phrase meant). "YOU WANT A
MESSAGE? YOU WANT A ****ING MESSAGE FROM AN ADVANCED ****ING
CIVILIZATION!?!? HERE'S YOUR ****ING MESSAGE: YOU'RE ALL WORTHLESS
AND WEAK!!! NOW DROP DOWN AND GIVE ME ****ING 20!!!" Anyway the
female scientist is floored, and we're laughing so hard, we don't
notice that she's having this total seizure right there in front of
us. We found out years later that she got on "Dynasty" based on her
ability to loser her mind, a talent we believe she perfected on our
set. So I guess her story had a happy ending, until Dynasty was
cancelled, the story was sad again.

Anyway, the problem was that we couldn't come up with a good ending.
Scientists find the aliens, and politicians don't want anything found.
The ending had to be plausible enough so that UFO conspiracy
theorists would think that they could convince Americans as to its
truth, yet too stupid for anybody to really believe. Nobody thought
it possible, and it turns out that it wasn't. What we didn't
understand at the time, was that conspiracy theorists can
believe/doubt anything they want. But we still wanted a good ending.
So there I was, on the "red eye" Jennifer 737 out of Groom Lake,
heading out to Vegas, hoping free drinks on the strip would loosen me
up. I hadn't a case writer's block since I script doctored for Hal
Holbrook in "Capricorn One" earlier that year. You know what the
brilliance of "Capricorn One" was – we hired Hal Holbrook. This guy
could ad-lib in ****ing Shakespeare; he could out ad-lib Mamet, and
this was before anybody even knew who Mamet was. Kris Kraft doesn't
even give the guy a script – just tells him what point he wants
Holbrook to get across. Kraft asks him to give this speech to James
Brolin and OJ Simpson about how tired America is of the space race,
and that nobody thought the dream was worth the cost. We weren't
expecting anything major, and Kraft didn't even stay on the set to
watch it (he gave us some bull**** excuse joke about that he had to
run and sabotage a Soviet launch – man that Kraft was such a crack-up;
Goldin was nowhere near as funny). So Holbrook gets the idea for this
speech, and goes ballistic – "The program costs too much? The ****ing
program costs too much!?! **** you assholes – you don't know what a
dream costs!!" and he garnioshes it with this great anecdote about
Apollo 17, how when they preempted a re-run of "Lucy" for the landing,
people complained "I could understand if it was a new episode, but
this was a re-run!!" Anyway, there I am on this flight nursing a
Harley's Bristol Cream when I notice this guy across the aisle giving
me the eye. Then I remembered that kid we brought in to add a dash of
realism to the alien autopsy sequence for "Hangar-18". I hadn't even
met the guy, but everybody knew Osama Bin Laden by reputation. Now,
since it was my decision to bring the guy back from Afghanistan, I
figured I owed the guy a well-done. Turns out the guy is fascinating.
After Jennifer sets down, we spend the next 18 hours schmoozing at
the airport bar. How cool was he? We had to be the only guys in Vegas
paying for their own drinks – that's how hard it was to get out of
that bar. Then we come to my problem. At this, a moment of silence,
then he looks off at this fully loaded Eastern 727 and asks me what
would happen if that plane came down anything but softly, and anywhere
but a runway. And I go that it would cause two things – boom &
yauch!! More to the point, why would an airplane just happen to
"land" on Hangar-18? He shakes his head – obviously I had missed the
point. He reminds me that, engaging the Soviets, he studied the
history of their hardware, and reminded me of the 1973 Paris air show,
where the Tupolev SST disintegrated in the air, but not high enough to
avoid killing anybody on the ground. The point is that people were
killed on the ground because they were near a huge agglomeration of
airplanes. He was surprised that stuff like this didn't happen more
often. And it didn't have to be next to an airport – just nearby. I
don't remember if airlines had deregulated by then, but the point was
that air traffic was expected to sky rocket in the next few years – no
matter how far away you were from an airport (even a moderately sized
one) – you'd have a dozen jumbos daisy-wheeling over your house. But
even before then, Hangar-18 itself was on an air force base – it was a
****ing hangar for crissakes (okay, so maybe Osama didn't say
"crissakes", but the rest of what he said was…err.. to that effect).
So I get out of that bar and head on the next Jennifer flight out.
Problem solved – but I had to get out of Vegas, or the idea would just
die. And Vegas could wait, I mean, the MGM Grand wasn't just going to
****ing vanish, was it? So there it was – Robert Vaughn decides to
destroy Hangar-18 by crashing an airplane into it. Airplanes crash
all the time, and sometimes they even crash on airports – says one of
my characters. 1980 comes and goes, the film is a flop, The
Scheider/Hackman movie never comes together, Spielberg totally
re-writes "E.T." to omit more than the bare display of the government
in action on UFO's (and any suggestion that it was covert). In other
words, mission accomplished.

A few years down the line, the Russians start dropping rulers like
flies. Something big is in the offing, some of us even start to
question whether the Soviets are gonna last to see the 75th
anniversary of the revolution. Problem is that they talk tough – and
because of that, the administration starts talking about stripping
civilian intel to pay for a six hundred ship fleet, and for a bunch of
new wings of airplanes, some of which didn't even exist yet.
Remembering my shmooze with OBL, I head out to Langley one day and
give the boss what I know. The next war will rely on "unconventional
warfare" – by which I meant terrorism but enhanced. We already knew
that terrorists liked to hijack planes, and that they also knew liked
to drive semtex-loaded vans into things. We also knew that we could
engineer a spectacular air disaster (we had that botched controlled
crash of the Boeing 720 on film). So if hijackers liked to blow
things up, why did they go to so much trouble to keep from blowing up
airplanes they hijacked. Were they afraid that people would give in
to their demands before they had a chance to blow up the planes? Were
they afraid of losing a cause to fight for? Airline crews are like
bank tellers – both are (were) trained to be very cooperative in
emergency situations. So why were hijackers so careful about the
planes they hijacked? Simply combining the idea of a suicide hijack
was part of that American impulse to synthesize and create – the same
spirit of invention that created high-concept movies and peanutbutter
cups. Not to say that I thought it represented an American virtue to
actually carry out the attack, onviously it was an evil thing to do.
Only that it felt great that I could conceive such a thing possible,
and perhaps forestall it. So I gave my pitch to Casey, and he was not
enthused. He did give me the benefit of the doubt – was this an
attack that might be carried out against the Russians (by which he
meant – was this something we should do?) or a "canned goods" plan (by
which he meant, an attack we'd carry out against ourselves and frame
others for.)? I told him that I thought this was neither – an attack
that might actually be made against us by bona-fide enemies. Here he
lost it – what enemies? The Reds had 180 divisions against us, and
god knew how many nuclear-equipped aircraft. Who would believe the
Reds would do something like that when they've got firepower against
us. I guessed that he was thinking I meant a simulated attack against
us), so I reiterated that this would be a genuine attack, by genuine
enemies, but he discounted this as well. In The Company, we broke the
enemies down to several groups – liberal media, the Soviets and their
backers, and the so-called the "Maverick enzyme" (allies in name who
would backstab us). Due to jurisdictional constraints, drug cartels
were deliberately excluded.) There wasn't going to be an attack,
simulated or actual. Terrorists liked to hit us on foreign soil, and
let the media have its way with us at home (they had jurisdictional
constraints of their own). The Russians don't need terrorism –
they've got 180 ****ing divisions. Man, I didn't know that an old guy
could yell "****ing!!" like that, but Casey did – no wonder he was
DCI. The Russisns wouldn't need to hit us as long as they were as
strong as they were, and that wouldn't change for a century. Even if,
by some miracle, the WarPac just evaporated, who would hit us on our
own soil? The last person who would try that would be some stateless
organization (again, interpreting my plan as being one undertaken by
us to frame others), and a third world country would never want to
consider giving us the right to go in and completely kick their asses.
We didn't even go into Cuba after Angola or Grenda. A major attack
like the one I considered would be nuts for another country to
undertake – they had us by the balls wherever our flag flew
(embassies, garrisons, ports), they'd never need to hit us on our
soil. Even stateless organizations like ones we backed in Afghanistan
kept things "far from home" (AFAIK, he was right on this one – I
couldn't think of a single op Bin Laden took on definite Russian or
just plain Soviet soil). The disappearance of the Soviets wouldn't
make it any more feasible or likely that such an op would go forward –
now we wouldn't have the Russians breathing down our necks. I tried
playing a trump card by combining the two circumstances that Casey had
considered in isolation – what if the Soviets disappeared and we
wanted to undertake such a mission to justify some US military ops.
Casey looked at me long and hard, then he asked me against what sort
of people we'd be framing for the mass murder of maybe a couple
hundred Americans. I knew that we wouldn't be framing a single
country – there have to be easier and cheaper ways to mobilize
America, like the threat of harm (always scarier than the harm
itself), the possibility that its weapons aren't as 3rd world as their
plumbing, or simply the idea that they were arab. In our circles, the
arabs were always "soft sell". Instead, I went with the idea that a
huge, yet shadowy organization, tied to no single country, with
operations everywhere and operatives from anywhere. That way, we
could justify going everywhere. At this, Casey turned beet red – I
thought his head was gonna fly off. But he kept his voice cool. "Mr.
Rottenberg (and he didn't even put the accent on "rotten" like
everybody else does) the point of covert operations of the sort you
describe wouldn't give us the license to invade anywhere we liked, it
would pretty much nail us to the wall unless we hit every country on
the planet, and no matter what country we hit, there would always be
some joker running around saying we'd hit the wrong one. We'd be tied
down with our soldiers getting "Montezuma's Revenge" in **** holes no
one cares about, and don't matter that much to our global interests.
Where are the resources supposed to come from, Mr. Rottenberg. Oh
that's right, the Soviets are gonna vanish. Okay, Soviets are gonna
vanish, and we're gonna find ourselves with a ton of free troops and
toys ready to go wherever we want them to. Oh, except that once those
Soviets vanish, you're gonna have a ton of crazy congressman thinking
that we can save money by cutting troop levels. Even if we turned
this into some multi-national chase for guys with fake passports and
wire cutters, nobody would be able to justify the spending needed to
keep our forces to the same level we do today [again, this was during
the cold war]. We could dredge up those horror stories about the
"Islamic Bomb" but that wouldn't require the sort of mass-murder you
suggest, and if we ever decided that we wanted (or needed) to
concentrate our forces against any one nation, we'd be stuck, because
we'd by then committed ourselves to a war against guys who aren't part
of any nation." The problem with stateless organizations is that they
aren't really all that stateless – if they don't have the majority of
the populace and the government in their pockets, they've got the
right ministers ready to do their bidding and the craven remainder of
the government who's afraid to question them. Yet, despite the camps,
the refuge and the other forms of open and enthusiastic support, we
dare not go against these sovereign backers of the stateless because
the rest of the world claims them as innocent. Surprisingly, I agree.
I'm big on the idea that not everybody must receive their punishment
in this world – a higher plane and a higher power are more effective
for revealing sin and inflicting the just reward for it.
Nevertheless, as Mr. Casey adroitly put it (now playing with the
"rotten" to wild abandon) no idiot would dream up the idea of a
stateless enemy if they could avoid it, when doing so would create a
large, insulated class of terrorist sympathizers. It was impossible
to shake him of this idea, especially since he was devoted to the idea
that the Russians were forever.

Year later, after the wall fell, and Casey fell, and 9/11 fell, I gave
the CIA my goodbyes, and hoped to strike it rich in Hollywood like
such famed Company vets as John Demme, David Lynch and both "Spikes"
(Lee & Jonze). However, I was to find my dreams dashed by the men
whose experience on "Hangar 18" I made a living hell. "Ad lib this,
you stupid ****ing rotten-moron!!" Spielberg yelled. Now Steve is the
main man in tinsel town – and how do I go against that firepower. For
the second time in my life, the conspirator has to wonder, how does he
survive the conniving of others?

> "rottenberg" > wrote in message
> om...
> > ShoarmaBoy > wrote in message
> > >...
> >> This is true for normal military aircraft where they use it already.
> >> But i don't think this is going to be inserted in real life boeing
> >> 737NG's
> >> or other commercial airliners because this also is a system that can be
> >> hijacked. If they break into the control room. Also than you should be
> >> able to hack the system if it's a remote system to be able to be
> >> controled
> >> from the ground...
> >> Never thought of that?
> >>
> >> Tom
> >> (Boeing 737NG command officer)
> >
> > Let's not forget that it also requires fewer men - instead of breaking
> > into three cockpits, you can break into one control room for three
> > planes (and likly nore planes than that). That's the sort of logical
> > gap that obviously eluded Blue, along with his devoted acceptance of
> > conspiracy theories that at least border on libel.

[Jay Williams]

ROFL...

You know this is going to wind up getting sent all over the internet as
proof of the "conspiracy"... You ought to go ahead and send a copy to
snopes.com so they can get ahead of the game! <grin>

"rottenberg" > wrote in message
om...
> "Blue" > wrote in message
>...
> > My, my. this thread just won't die! And now I have a hated adversary
to
> > boot.
>
> "Hated adversary" - isn't that a bit grandiose, I mean even compared
> to your prior conspiracy ravings? I guess then you can't pigeonhole
> those who disagree with you as a bunch of reactionaries looking for
> hated enemies.
>
> > On topic, I have been on top of the World Trade Center and was surprised
by
> > the many planes in the air surrounding it. The planes would have to
have
> > been flown by a following plane. Also, the Pennslyvania plane was
followed
> > by an unmarked Gulfstream jet such as Cheney uses.
>
> This is so weird. I remember being on top of the WTC also once and
> also noticing lots of airplanes looking really close. Okay that was
> about 25 years ago. But then, in 1996-98 I was working at 40 Wall
> Street, only a few blocks away from WTC, and I saw what looked like a
> lot of low-flying planes again. I even saw one that looked exactly
> like one of the airplanes that flew into the towers - same two wings,
> two engines, even the exact same markings (silver body, red & blue
> stripes). WTF, if NYC wasn't close to a major commercial aviation
> corridor, I'd go completely bonkers!!
>
> Oh, and what do you mean that the "planes would have to have been
> flown by a following plane"? How do we know that the Pennsylvania
> plane was followed by a Gulfstream? And what difference does that
> make anyway? Speilberg is supposed to use a Gulfstream. Lots of rich
> types have Gulfstreams. Sid Lumet used a Gulfstream in "Sabrina" -
> now are we gonna blame Julia Ormond for 9/11?
>
> > Also, when JFK took over the CIA presented him with a plan eerily like
the
> > one used for 911 including a plane switch of a CIA lookalike for a
civilian
> > plane which would be remotely flown over Cuba and destroyed there to
incite
> > American lemmings into supporting a war with little guy Cuba who had
just
> > kicked George Bush SR's ass with his hair-brained Bay of Pigs invasion .
>
> More theories? I'm not even sure what sense that makes - a plane
> exploding over Cuba to incite Americans? Why would a plane exploding
> over Cuba get Americans to support a war against Cuba? Maybe you
> meant to say a Cuban plane to fly past Cuba and explode in Miami.
> That's more plausible - but is there any proof or even any evidence
> that the CIA actually had such an idea? Even if they had, what does
> that really prove? The idea of crashing planes into buildings or
> ships or fabricating acts of military aggression isn't an original
> idea. I've been flying Cessnas on PCs since 1987, routinely trying to
> fly between the towers on MS Flight Simulator. Sometimes I did it
> right, sometimes I didn't. (although I stopped after 9/11) I now
> suppose you'll accuse me of working "for the company". In any event,
> the idea that we were waiting for the right spark and had to fake one
> is nonsense - when the Soviets missiled Cuba up in '62, the point was
> to prevent war at all costs, including an invasion of Cuba.
>
> > JFK , crossed him up by refusing to support the mess. To the plan for
a
> > false downing of an American passenger jet he did the unthinkable, he
sent
> > RFK to the military chest beaters where he announced: " My big brother
says
> > for you guys to stick your kill Cuber plans up your asses." >
>
> That's funny, I would have assumed that he'd send McNamara, the guy he
> actually kept around to run the military.
>
> >There had been several of them. (or words to that effect.)
>
> The effect being to make RFK sound like a man who spoke English as a
> second langugae. I mean seriously....
>
> > The principal operator there, Bush Sr, not only didn't forgive that he
was
> > arrested on the RR overpass with the Rep "plumbers" and instantly
released
> > by the Texas mounted police. Then the false attack scenario was
carried
> > out by LBJ in 1964 with the Gulf Of Tonkin incident that everyone agrees
was
> > faked by him to get us into Viet Nam where JFK had just announced that
ALL
> > Americans would be removed from VN by xmas 1963. LBJ managed to kill
some
> > 55,000 innocent Americans there in a hopeless civil war intervention
that
> > had nothing to do with the spread of communism.
>
> So now it's LBJ? I thought it was the CIA or Bush Sr.? McNamara
> stood by LBJ when it came to pushing the Tonkin incident as one of
> preemptive attack by North VN, and near unanimity by a US congress
> sealed the deal. Where's the CIA? This is the problem I have with
> conspiracy theorists - basically a conspiracy theory gives you no
> tools to fight against the evil they purport to reveal - they only
> tell you who to hate and why. Arabs, Jews, Liberals, conservatives,
> LBJ, RFK etc. At least a decent conspiracy theorist can do a better
> job of it. I thought this was about the CIA, then against Bush - now
> its against another president, from the other party, who ran on a
> different agenda. Just who are you talking about here?
>
> > LBJ tried it again in 1967 in "conspiracy" with our "allies" in Israel
with
> > the USS Liberty off the coast of Egypt which was to inflame Americans
into
> > supporting a war against Egypt. The attempt was a failure only because
of
> > the complete incompetancy of our "allies" in Israel who were simply
unable
> > to sink the unarmed and unarmored converted Liberty ship.
>
> Incompetency of the Israelis? Needed to inflame support for Israel?
> I must be an idiot - the Liberty incident has been one of the
> thorniest issues of Israeli-American relations, yet one the Israelis
> claimed to have carried out in fact. I've neevr seen any indication
> that they ever tried to fob the attack on the Egyptians. Perhaps they
> hit the Liberty because they feared the Americans would leak intel to
> the other side by accident (or deliberately as was done in the
> Iran-Iraq war). But a frame-up? Never. Even if the Israelis,
> (AFAIK, never took out a target like a ship) sunk the Liberty and
> convinced the world that the Isreali-marked planes and ships used in
> the attack were actually Egyptian - what would be the point? Israel
> wasn't South VN. LBJ didn't have to bottle up the Suez with carrier
> battle groups, or commit hundreds of thousands of troops. There was
> no need to manipulate world opinion, let alone American opinion that
> was desperate enough to risk the ire of American by killing Americans.
> For their faults, Israeli forces were not ARVN. It took little to
> drum up sympathy for one nation surrounded by Soviet aligned enemies,
> and the support the Israelis needed could have been done covertly - so
> why the idea of subterfuge, in a plan that could have wrecked Israel's
> standing with America and the rest of the world? And what sort of
> support would the Israelis have gotten had they pulled it off and
> shifted blame to the Egyptians (they have since accepted the blame,
> though to what degree is admittedly debateable, as is the sufficiency
> of redress)? The very next year saw the capture and brutal treatment
> of the crew of the Pueblo. @0 years later saw the attack against the
> Stark. Yet The Pueblos seizure saw no new war against DPRK, and
> relations with Iraq remained stable until the invasion of Kuwait,
> years after the Stark.
>
> > And speaking of asses, Mr Rottenberg who has apparently been secretly
> > tracking me as part of a conspiracy, would you like to add something
here?
>
> I didn't say anything about asses. I think we can safely say that
> this thread has degenerated into...
>
> Oh ****, what the hell.
>
> Yeah - you got me. The above is just a load of bull****. It turns
> out that I'm really the acting DDCI of the NSA. I'm the guy
> responsible for keeping you conspiracy theorists busy by releasing
> useless and meaningless documents with strategic redactions. Life is
> boring here in Area-51, and playing mind-tag with you guys is the only
> entertainment we get, aside from making alien babes take off their
> clothes and dancing for us, then dissecting them the morning after.
> The problem is that we all have our deep-dark secrets. Mine actually
> stemmed from my role as the undisclosed producer for a movie called
> "Hangar 18" with Robert Vaughn. You may remember "Hangar 18" as that
> flick which made it uncool to believe in Alien conspiracies. It was
> actually intended to preempt a more plausible picture starring Roy
> Scheider and Gene Hackman, and make it so uncool that it would take
> decades before anybody could bring any semblance of respectability to
> the UFO-conspiracy community. Here's a quick flash for you "six
> degrees of Kevin Bacon" people out there - yeah I know most of you
> were happy enough to Link Robert Vaughn to Christopher Lee ("Starship
> Invasions"), and Lee to Sean Astin (LotR) who was in "Whitewater
> Summer" with Bacon; It turns out that one of the alien corpses was
> actually none other than Mark Metcalf, that's right, Lt. Niedermayer
> himself from "Animal House". During the autopsy scene, one the
> scientists are supposed to get into this long philosophical discussion
> about the advanced alien species, and I was pretty lazy when it came
> to scripting this scene (I figured they could ad-lib there way through
> it) so it took forever to get. It was like on the 9th take, and
> Metcalf is starting to get really ****ed off. So this female
> scientist is saying something like "why have they crossed the gulf of
> space to set foot on our world?" What profound message have they
> brought for mankind?" (See why it took forever to shoot this scene?
> The cast and crew laughed themselves silly - we were going to hire
> some telekenitics from Honduras so they could run the cameras without
> being in the same room, and also because they we didn't think they
> could laugh if they couldn't understand the dialog.) Anyway,
> brilliant-but-sensitive female scientist (who cried whenever the rest
> of us laughed at her) goes into her bit about the profound alien
> message thing, ans crews it up..again. I yell "cut" and Metcalf jumps
> off this slab-thing that he's on and goes totally postal (and this was
> before we even knew what that meant). "YOU WANT A MESSAGE? YOU WANT
> A ****ING MESSAGE FROM AN ADVANCED ****ING CIVILIZATION!?!? HERE'S
> YOUR ****ING MESSAGE: YOU'RE ALL WORTHLESS AND WEAK!!! NOW DROP DOWN
> AND GIVE ME ****ING 20!!!" Anyway the female scientist is floored,
> and we're laughing so hard, we don't notice that she's having this
> total break down right there in front of us. We found out years later
> that she got on "Dynasty" based on her ability to loser her mind, a
> talent we believe she perfected on our set. So I guess her story had
> a happy ending, until Dynasty was cancelled, the story was sad again.
>
> Anyway, the problem was that we couldn't come up with a good ending.
> Scientists find the aliens, and politicians don't want anything found.
> The ending had to be plausible enough so that UFO conspiracy
> theorists would think that they could convince Americans as to its
> truth, yet too stupid for anybody to really believe. Nobody thought
> it possible, and it turns out that it wasn't. What we didn't
> understand at the time, was that conspiracy theorists can
> believe/doubt anything they want. But we still wanted a good ending.
> So there I was, on the "red eye" Jennifer 737 out of Groom Lake,
> heading out to Vegas, hoping free drinks on the strip would loosen me
> up. I hadn't a case writer's block this bad since I script-doctored
> for Hal Holbrook in "Capricorn One" earlier that year. You know what
> the brilliance of "Capricorn One" was - we hired Hal Holbrook. This
> guy could ad-lib in ****ing Shakespeare; he could out ad-lib Mamet,
> and this was before anybody even knew who Mamet was. Kris Kraft
> doesn't even give the guy a script - just tells him what point he
> wants Holbrook to get across. Remember "Capricorn One" - it was this
> edgy movie about how Holbrook fakes this mission to mars that James
> Brolin, OJ and that guy from "Law & Order" were supposed to fly.
> Kraft asks him to give this speech to James Brolin and OJ Simpson
> about how tired America is of the space race, and that nobody thought
> the dream was worth the cost. We weren't expecting anything major,
> and Kraft didn't even stay on the set to watch it (he gave us some
> bull**** excuse joke about that he had to run and sabotage a Soviet
> launch - man that Kraft was such a crack-up; Goldin was nowhere near
> as funny; you ever wonder why the "Law & Order" guy is so much
> snappier in this movie than he is on that show? Kris Kraft!!). So
> Holbrook gets the idea for this speech, and goes ballistic. We think
> he's mad at us, but then we realize he;s in character, so we keep the
> cameras rolling. "The program costs too much? The ****ing program
> costs too much!?! **** you assholes - you don't know what a dream
> costs!!" and he garnishes it with this great anecdote about Apollo 17,
> how when networks preempted a re-run of "Lucy" for the -17 landing,
> people complained "I could understand if it was a new episode, but
> this was a re-run!!" Anyway, there I am on this Jennifer 737 nursing
> a Harley's Bristol Cream when I notice this guy across the aisle
> giving me the eye. Then I remembered that kid we brought in to add a
> dash of realism to the alien autopsy sequence for "Hangar-18" (here
> was a guy who knew what a blown apart bodylooked like on any planet;
> I think he was also a consultant on "Quincy"). I hadn't even met the
> guy, but everybody knew Osama Bin Laden by reputation. Now, since it
> was my decision to bring the guy back from Afghanistan, I figured I
> owed the guy a well-done. Turns out the guy is fascinating, and funny
> as hell. After Jennifer sets down, we spend the next 18 hours
> schmoozing at the airport bar. How cool was he? We had to be the only
> guys in Vegas paying for their own drinks - that's how hard it was to
> get out of that bar. Then we come to my problem. At this, a moment
> of silence, then he looks off at this fully loaded Eastern 727 and
> asks me what would happen if that plane came down anything but softly,
> and anywhere but a runway. And I go that it would cause two things -
> boom & yauch!! More to the point, why would an airplane just happen
> to "land" on Hangar-18? He shakes his head - obviously I had missed
> the point. He reminds me that, engaging the Soviets, he studied the
> history of their hardware, and reminded me of the 1973 Paris air show,
> where the Tupolev SST disintegrated in the air, but not high enough to
> avoid killing anybody on the ground. The point is that people were
> killed on the ground because they were near a huge agglomeration of
> airplanes. He was surprised that stuff like this didn't happen more
> often. And it didn't have to be next to an airport - just nearby. I
> don't remember if airlines had deregulated by then, but the point was
> that air traffic was expected to sky rocket in the next few years - no
> matter how far away you were from an airport (even a moderately sized
> one) - you'd have a dozen jumbos daisy-wheeling over your house. But
> even before then, Hangar-18 itself was on an air force base - it was a
> ****ing hangar for crissakes (okay, so maybe Osama didn't say
> "crissakes", but the rest of what he said was.err.. to that effect).
> So I get out of that bar and head on the next Jennifer flight out.
> Problem solved - but I had to get out of Vegas, or the idea would just
> die. And Vegas could wait, I mean, the MGM Grand wasn't just going to
> ****ing vanish, was it? So there it was - Robert Vaughn decides to
> destroy Hangar-18 by crashing an airplane into it. Airplanes crash
> all the time, and sometimes they even crash on airports - says one of
> my characters. 1980 comes and goes, the film is a flop, The
> Scheider/Hackman movie never comes together, Spielberg totally
> re-writes "E.T." to omit more than the bare display of the government
> in action on UFO's (and any suggestion that it was covert). In other
> words, mission accomplished.
>
> A few years down the line, the Russians start dropping rulers like
> flies. Something big is in the offing, some of us even start to
> question whether the Soviets are gonna last to see the 75th
> anniversary of the revolution. Problem is that they talk tough - and
> because of that, the administration starts talking about stripping
> civilian intel to pay for a six hundred ship fleet, and for a bunch of
> new wings of airplanes, some of which didn't even exist yet.
> Remembering my shmooze with OBL, I head out to Langley one day and
> give the boss what I know. The next war will rely on "unconventional
> warfare" - by which I meant terrorism but enhanced. We already knew
> that terrorists liked to hijack planes, and that they also knew liked
> to drive semtex-loaded vans into things. We also knew that we could
> engineer a spectacular air disaster (we had that botched controlled
> crash of the Boeing 720 on film). So if hijackers liked to blow
> things up, why did they go to so much trouble to keep from blowing up
> airplanes they hijacked. Were they afraid that people would give in
> to their demands before they had a chance to blow up the planes? Were
> they afraid of losing a cause to fight for? Airline crews are like
> bank tellers - both are (were) trained to be very cooperative in
> emergency situations. So why were hijackers so careful about the
> planes they hijacked? Simply combining the idea of a suicide hijack
> was part of that American impulse to synthesize and create - the same
> spirit of invention that created high-concept movies and peanutbutter
> cups. Not to say that I thought it represented an American virtue to
> actually carry out the attack, onviously it was an evil thing to do.
> Only that it felt great that I could conceive such a thing possible,
> and perhaps forestall it. So I gave my pitch to Casey, and he was not
> enthused. He did give me the benefit of the doubt - was this an
> attack that might be carried out against the Russians (by which he
> meant - was this something we should do?) or a "canned goods" plan (by
> which he meant, an attack we'd carry out against ourselves and frame
> others for.)? I told him that I thought this was neither - an attack
> that might actually be made against us by bona-fide enemies. Here he
> lost it - what enemies? The Reds had 180 divisions against us, and
> god knew how many nuclear-equipped aircraft. Who would believe the
> Reds would do something like that when they've got firepower against
> us. I guessed that he was thinking I meant a simulated attack against
> us), so I reiterated that this would be a genuine attack, by genuine
> enemies, but he discounted this as well. In The Company, we broke the
> enemies down to several groups - liberal media, the Soviets and their
> backers, and the so-called the "Maverick enzyme" (allies in name who
> would backstab us). Due to jurisdictional constraints, drug cartels
> were deliberately excluded.) There wasn't going to be an attack,
> simulated or actual. Terrorists liked to hit us on foreign soil, and
> let the media have its way with us at home (they had jurisdictional
> constraints of their own). The Russians don't need terrorism -
> they've got 180 ****ing divisions. Man, I didn't know that an old guy
> could yell "****ing!!" like that, but Casey did - no wonder he was
> DCI. The Russisns wouldn't need to hit us as long as they were as
> strong as they were, and that wouldn't change for a century. Even if,
> by some miracle, the WarPac just evaporated, who would hit us on our
> own soil? The last person who would try that would be some stateless
> organization (again, interpreting my plan as being one undertaken by
> us to frame others), and a third world country would never want to
> consider giving us the right to go in and completely kick their asses.
> We didn't even go into Cuba after Angola or Grenda. A major attack
> like the one I considered would be nuts for another country to
> undertake - they had us by the balls wherever our flag flew
> (embassies, garrisons, ports), they'd never need to hit us on our
> soil. Even stateless organizations like ones we backed in Afghanistan
> kept things "far from home" (AFAIK, he was right on this one - I
> couldn't think of a single op Bin Laden took on definite Russian or
> just plain Soviet soil). The disappearance of the Soviets wouldn't
> make it any more feasible or likely that such an op would go forward -
> now we wouldn't have the Russians breathing down our necks. I tried
> playing a trump card by combining the two circumstances that Casey had
> considered in isolation - what if the Soviets disappeared and we
> wanted to undertake such a mission to justify some US military ops.
> Casey looked at me long and hard, then he asked me against what sort
> of people we'd be framing for the mass murder of maybe a couple
> hundred Americans. I knew that we wouldn't be framing a single
> country - there have to be easier and cheaper ways to mobilize
> America, like the threat of harm (always scarier than the harm
> itself), the possibility that its weapons aren't as 3rd world as their
> plumbing, or simply the idea that they were arab. In our circles, the
> arabs were always "soft sell". Instead, I went with the idea that a
> huge, yet shadowy organization, tied to no single country, with
> operations everywhere and operatives from anywhere. That way, we
> could justify going everywhere. At this, Casey turned beet red - I
> thought his head was gonna fly off. But he kept his voice cool. "Mr.
> Rottenberg (and he didn't even put the accent on "rotten" like
> everybody else does) the point of covert operations of the sort you
> describe wouldn't give us the license to invade anywhere we liked, it
> would pretty much nail us to the wall unless we hit every country on
> the planet, and no matter what country we hit, there would always be
> some joker running around saying we'd hit the wrong one. We'd be tied
> down with our soldiers getting "Montezuma's Revenge" in **** holes no
> one cares about, and don't matter that much to our global interests.
> Where are the resources supposed to come from, Mr. Rottenberg. Oh
> that's right, the Soviets are gonna vanish. Okay, Soviets are gonna
> vanish, and we're gonna find ourselves with a ton of free troops and
> toys ready to go wherever we want them to. Oh, except that once those
> Soviets vanish, you're gonna have a ton of crazy congressman thinking
> that we can save money by cutting troop levels. Even if we turned
> this into some multi-national chase for guys with fake passports and
> wire cutters, nobody would be able to justify the spending needed to
> keep our forces to the same level we do today [again, this was during
> the cold war]. We could dredge up those horror stories about the
> "Islamic Bomb" but that wouldn't require the sort of mass-murder you
> suggest, and if we ever decided that we wanted (or needed) to
> concentrate our forces against any one nation, we'd be stuck, because
> we'd by then committed ourselves to a war against guys who aren't part
> of any nation." The problem with stateless organizations is that they
> aren't really all that stateless - if they don't have the majority of
> the populace and the government in their pockets, they've got the
> right ministers ready to do their bidding and the craven remainder of
> the government who's afraid to question them. Yet, despite the camps,
> the refuge and the other forms of open and enthusiastic support, we
> dare not go against these sovereign backers of the stateless because
> the rest of the world claims them as innocent. Surprisingly, I agree.
> I'm big on the idea that not everybody must receive their punishment
> in this world - a higher plane and a higher power are more effective
> for revealing sin and inflicting the just reward for it.
> Nevertheless, as Mr. Casey adroitly put it (now playing with the
> "rotten" to wild abandon) no idiot would dream up the idea of a
> stateless enemy if they could avoid it, when doing so would create a
> large, insulated class of terrorist sympathizers. It was impossible
> to shake him of this idea, especially since he was devoted to the idea
> that the Russians were forever.
>
> Year later, after the wall fell, and Casey fell, and 9/11 fell, I gave
> the CIA my goodbyes, and hoped to strike it rich in Hollywood like
> such famed Company vets as John Demme, David Lynch and both "Spikes"
> (Lee & Jonze). However, I was to find my dreams dashed by the men
> whose experience on "Hangar 18" I made a living hell. "Ad lib this,
> you stupid ****ing rotten-moron!!" Spielberg yelled. Now Steve is the
> main man in tinsel town - and how do I go against that firepower. For
> the second time in my life, the conspirator has to wonder, how does he
> survive the conniving of others?
>
> Yeah - you got me. The above is just a load of bull****. It turns
> out that I'm really the acting DDCI of the NSA. I'm the guy
> responsible for keeping you conspiracy theorists busy by releasing
> useless and meaningless documents with strategic redactions. Life is
> boring here in Area-51, and playing mind-tag with you guys is the only
> entertainment we get, aside from making alien babes take off their
> clothes and dancing for us, then dissecting them the morning after.
> The problem is that we all have our deep-dark secrets. Mine actually
> stemmed from my role is as the undisclosed producer for a movie called
> "Hangar 18" with Robert Vaughn. You may remember "Hangar 18" as that
> flick which made it uncool to believe in Alien conspiracies. It was
> actually intended to preempt a more plausible picture starring Roy
> Scheider and Gene Hackman, and make it so uncool that it would take
> decades before anybody could bring any semblance of respectability to
> the UFO-conspiracy community. Here's a quick flash for you "six
> degrees of Kevin Bacon" people out there - yeah I know most of you
> were happy enough to Link Robert Vaughn to Christopher Lee ("Starship
> Invasions"), and Lee to Sean Astin (LotR) who was in "Whitewater
> Summer" with Bacon; It turns out that one of the alien corpses was
> actually none other than Mark Metcalf, that's right, Lt. Niedermayer
> himself from "Animal House". During the autopsy scene, one the
> scientists are supposed to get into this long philosophical discussion
> about the advanced alien species, and I was pretty lazy when it came
> to scripting this scene (I figured they could ad-lib there way through
> it) so it took forever to get. It was like on the 9th take, and
> Metcalf is starting to get really ****ed off. So this female
> scientist is saying something like "why have they crossed the gulf of
> space to set foot on our world?"
> What profound message have they brought for mankind?" (See why it
> took forever to shoot this scene? The cast and crew laughed
> themselves silly - we were going to hire some telekenitics from
> Honduras so they could run the cameras without being in the same room,
> and also because they we didn't think they could laugh if they
> couldn't understand the dialog.) Anyway, brilliant-but-sensitive
> female scientist (who cried whenever the rest of us laughed at her)
> goes into her bit about the profound alien message thing, and Metcalf
> jumps off this slab-thing that he's on and goes totally postal (and
> this was before we even knew what the phrase meant). "YOU WANT A
> MESSAGE? YOU WANT A ****ING MESSAGE FROM AN ADVANCED ****ING
> CIVILIZATION!?!? HERE'S YOUR ****ING MESSAGE: YOU'RE ALL WORTHLESS
> AND WEAK!!! NOW DROP DOWN AND GIVE ME ****ING 20!!!" Anyway the
> female scientist is floored, and we're laughing so hard, we don't
> notice that she's having this total seizure right there in front of
> us. We found out years later that she got on "Dynasty" based on her
> ability to loser her mind, a talent we believe she perfected on our
> set. So I guess her story had a happy ending, until Dynasty was
> cancelled, the story was sad again.
>
> Anyway, the problem was that we couldn't come up with a good ending.
> Scientists find the aliens, and politicians don't want anything found.
> The ending had to be plausible enough so that UFO conspiracy
> theorists would think that they could convince Americans as to its
> truth, yet too stupid for anybody to really believe. Nobody thought
> it possible, and it turns out that it wasn't. What we didn't
> understand at the time, was that conspiracy theorists can
> believe/doubt anything they want. But we still wanted a good ending.
> So there I was, on the "red eye" Jennifer 737 out of Groom Lake,
> heading out to Vegas, hoping free drinks on the strip would loosen me
> up. I hadn't a case writer's block since I script doctored for Hal
> Holbrook in "Capricorn One" earlier that year. You know what the
> brilliance of "Capricorn One" was - we hired Hal Holbrook. This guy
> could ad-lib in ****ing Shakespeare; he could out ad-lib Mamet, and
> this was before anybody even knew who Mamet was. Kris Kraft doesn't
> even give the guy a script - just tells him what point he wants
> Holbrook to get across. Kraft asks him to give this speech to James
> Brolin and OJ Simpson about how tired America is of the space race,
> and that nobody thought the dream was worth the cost. We weren't
> expecting anything major, and Kraft didn't even stay on the set to
> watch it (he gave us some bull**** excuse joke about that he had to
> run and sabotage a Soviet launch - man that Kraft was such a crack-up;
> Goldin was nowhere near as funny). So Holbrook gets the idea for this
> speech, and goes ballistic - "The program costs too much? The ****ing
> program costs too much!?! **** you assholes - you don't know what a
> dream costs!!" and he garnioshes it with this great anecdote about
> Apollo 17, how when they preempted a re-run of "Lucy" for the landing,
> people complained "I could understand if it was a new episode, but
> this was a re-run!!" Anyway, there I am on this flight nursing a
> Harley's Bristol Cream when I notice this guy across the aisle giving
> me the eye. Then I remembered that kid we brought in to add a dash of
> realism to the alien autopsy sequence for "Hangar-18". I hadn't even
> met the guy, but everybody knew Osama Bin Laden by reputation. Now,
> since it was my decision to bring the guy back from Afghanistan, I
> figured I owed the guy a well-done. Turns out the guy is fascinating.
> After Jennifer sets down, we spend the next 18 hours schmoozing at
> the airport bar. How cool was he? We had to be the only guys in Vegas
> paying for their own drinks - that's how hard it was to get out of
> that bar. Then we come to my problem. At this, a moment of silence,
> then he looks off at this fully loaded Eastern 727 and asks me what
> would happen if that plane came down anything but softly, and anywhere
> but a runway. And I go that it would cause two things - boom &
> yauch!! More to the point, why would an airplane just happen to
> "land" on Hangar-18? He shakes his head - obviously I had missed the
> point. He reminds me that, engaging the Soviets, he studied the
> history of their hardware, and reminded me of the 1973 Paris air show,
> where the Tupolev SST disintegrated in the air, but not high enough to
> avoid killing anybody on the ground. The point is that people were
> killed on the ground because they were near a huge agglomeration of
> airplanes. He was surprised that stuff like this didn't happen more
> often. And it didn't have to be next to an airport - just nearby. I
> don't remember if airlines had deregulated by then, but the point was
> that air traffic was expected to sky rocket in the next few years - no
> matter how far away you were from an airport (even a moderately sized
> one) - you'd have a dozen jumbos daisy-wheeling over your house. But
> even before then, Hangar-18 itself was on an air force base - it was a
> ****ing hangar for crissakes (okay, so maybe Osama didn't say
> "crissakes", but the rest of what he said was.err.. to that effect).
> So I get out of that bar and head on the next Jennifer flight out.
> Problem solved - but I had to get out of Vegas, or the idea would just
> die. And Vegas could wait, I mean, the MGM Grand wasn't just going to
> ****ing vanish, was it? So there it was - Robert Vaughn decides to
> destroy Hangar-18 by crashing an airplane into it. Airplanes crash
> all the time, and sometimes they even crash on airports - says one of
> my characters. 1980 comes and goes, the film is a flop, The
> Scheider/Hackman movie never comes together, Spielberg totally
> re-writes "E.T." to omit more than the bare display of the government
> in action on UFO's (and any suggestion that it was covert). In other
> words, mission accomplished.
>
> A few years down the line, the Russians start dropping rulers like
> flies. Something big is in the offing, some of us even start to
> question whether the Soviets are gonna last to see the 75th
> anniversary of the revolution. Problem is that they talk tough - and
> because of that, the administration starts talking about stripping
> civilian intel to pay for a six hundred ship fleet, and for a bunch of
> new wings of airplanes, some of which didn't even exist yet.
> Remembering my shmooze with OBL, I head out to Langley one day and
> give the boss what I know. The next war will rely on "unconventional
> warfare" - by which I meant terrorism but enhanced. We already knew
> that terrorists liked to hijack planes, and that they also knew liked
> to drive semtex-loaded vans into things. We also knew that we could
> engineer a spectacular air disaster (we had that botched controlled
> crash of the Boeing 720 on film). So if hijackers liked to blow
> things up, why did they go to so much trouble to keep from blowing up
> airplanes they hijacked. Were they afraid that people would give in
> to their demands before they had a chance to blow up the planes? Were
> they afraid of losing a cause to fight for? Airline crews are like
> bank tellers - both are (were) trained to be very cooperative in
> emergency situations. So why were hijackers so careful about the
> planes they hijacked? Simply combining the idea of a suicide hijack
> was part of that American impulse to synthesize and create - the same
> spirit of invention that created high-concept movies and peanutbutter
> cups. Not to say that I thought it represented an American virtue to
> actually carry out the attack, onviously it was an evil thing to do.
> Only that it felt great that I could conceive such a thing possible,
> and perhaps forestall it. So I gave my pitch to Casey, and he was not
> enthused. He did give me the benefit of the doubt - was this an
> attack that might be carried out against the Russians (by which he
> meant - was this something we should do?) or a "canned goods" plan (by
> which he meant, an attack we'd carry out against ourselves and frame
> others for.)? I told him that I thought this was neither - an attack
> that might actually be made against us by bona-fide enemies. Here he
> lost it - what enemies? The Reds had 180 divisions against us, and
> god knew how many nuclear-equipped aircraft. Who would believe the
> Reds would do something like that when they've got firepower against
> us. I guessed that he was thinking I meant a simulated attack against
> us), so I reiterated that this would be a genuine attack, by genuine
> enemies, but he discounted this as well. In The Company, we broke the
> enemies down to several groups - liberal media, the Soviets and their
> backers, and the so-called the "Maverick enzyme" (allies in name who
> would backstab us). Due to jurisdictional constraints, drug cartels
> were deliberately excluded.) There wasn't going to be an attack,
> simulated or actual. Terrorists liked to hit us on foreign soil, and
> let the media have its way with us at home (they had jurisdictional
> constraints of their own). The Russians don't need terrorism -
> they've got 180 ****ing divisions. Man, I didn't know that an old guy
> could yell "****ing!!" like that, but Casey did - no wonder he was
> DCI. The Russisns wouldn't need to hit us as long as they were as
> strong as they were, and that wouldn't change for a century. Even if,
> by some miracle, the WarPac just evaporated, who would hit us on our
> own soil? The last person who would try that would be some stateless
> organization (again, interpreting my plan as being one undertaken by
> us to frame others), and a third world country would never want to
> consider giving us the right to go in and completely kick their asses.
> We didn't even go into Cuba after Angola or Grenda. A major attack
> like the one I considered would be nuts for another country to
> undertake - they had us by the balls wherever our flag flew
> (embassies, garrisons, ports), they'd never need to hit us on our
> soil. Even stateless organizations like ones we backed in Afghanistan
> kept things "far from home" (AFAIK, he was right on this one - I
> couldn't think of a single op Bin Laden took on definite Russian or
> just plain Soviet soil). The disappearance of the Soviets wouldn't
> make it any more feasible or likely that such an op would go forward -
> now we wouldn't have the Russians breathing down our necks. I tried
> playing a trump card by combining the two circumstances that Casey had
> considered in isolation - what if the Soviets disappeared and we
> wanted to undertake such a mission to justify some US military ops.
> Casey looked at me long and hard, then he asked me against what sort
> of people we'd be framing for the mass murder of maybe a couple
> hundred Americans. I knew that we wouldn't be framing a single
> country - there have to be easier and cheaper ways to mobilize
> America, like the threat of harm (always scarier than the harm
> itself), the possibility that its weapons aren't as 3rd world as their
> plumbing, or simply the idea that they were arab. In our circles, the
> arabs were always "soft sell". Instead, I went with the idea that a
> huge, yet shadowy organization, tied to no single country, with
> operations everywhere and operatives from anywhere. That way, we
> could justify going everywhere. At this, Casey turned beet red - I
> thought his head was gonna fly off. But he kept his voice cool. "Mr.
> Rottenberg (and he didn't even put the accent on "rotten" like
> everybody else does) the point of covert operations of the sort you
> describe wouldn't give us the license to invade anywhere we liked, it
> would pretty much nail us to the wall unless we hit every country on
> the planet, and no matter what country we hit, there would always be
> some joker running around saying we'd hit the wrong one. We'd be tied
> down with our soldiers getting "Montezuma's Revenge" in **** holes no
> one cares about, and don't matter that much to our global interests.
> Where are the resources supposed to come from, Mr. Rottenberg. Oh
> that's right, the Soviets are gonna vanish. Okay, Soviets are gonna
> vanish, and we're gonna find ourselves with a ton of free troops and
> toys ready to go wherever we want them to. Oh, except that once those
> Soviets vanish, you're gonna have a ton of crazy congressman thinking
> that we can save money by cutting troop levels. Even if we turned
> this into some multi-national chase for guys with fake passports and
> wire cutters, nobody would be able to justify the spending needed to
> keep our forces to the same level we do today [again, this was during
> the cold war]. We could dredge up those horror stories about the
> "Islamic Bomb" but that wouldn't require the sort of mass-murder you
> suggest, and if we ever decided that we wanted (or needed) to
> concentrate our forces against any one nation, we'd be stuck, because
> we'd by then committed ourselves to a war against guys who aren't part
> of any nation." The problem with stateless organizations is that they
> aren't really all that stateless - if they don't have the majority of
> the populace and the government in their pockets, they've got the
> right ministers ready to do their bidding and the craven remainder of
> the government who's afraid to question them. Yet, despite the camps,
> the refuge and the other forms of open and enthusiastic support, we
> dare not go against these sovereign backers of the stateless because
> the rest of the world claims them as innocent. Surprisingly, I agree.
> I'm big on the idea that not everybody must receive their punishment
> in this world - a higher plane and a higher power are more effective
> for revealing sin and inflicting the just reward for it.
> Nevertheless, as Mr. Casey adroitly put it (now playing with the
> "rotten" to wild abandon) no idiot would dream up the idea of a
> stateless enemy if they could avoid it, when doing so would create a
> large, insulated class of terrorist sympathizers. It was impossible
> to shake him of this idea, especially since he was devoted to the idea
> that the Russians were forever.
>
> Year later, after the wall fell, and Casey fell, and 9/11 fell, I gave
> the CIA my goodbyes, and hoped to strike it rich in Hollywood like
> such famed Company vets as John Demme, David Lynch and both "Spikes"
> (Lee & Jonze). However, I was to find my dreams dashed by the men
> whose experience on "Hangar 18" I made a living hell. "Ad lib this,
> you stupid ****ing rotten-moron!!" Spielberg yelled. Now Steve is the
> main man in tinsel town - and how do I go against that firepower. For
> the second time in my life, the conspirator has to wonder, how does he
> survive the conniving of others?
>
> > "rottenberg" > wrote in message
> > om...
> > > ShoarmaBoy > wrote in message
> > > >...
> > >> This is true for normal military aircraft where they use it already.
> > >> But i don't think this is going to be inserted in real life boeing
> > >> 737NG's
> > >> or other commercial airliners because this also is a system that can
be
> > >> hijacked. If they break into the control room. Also than you should
be
> > >> able to hack the system if it's a remote system to be able to be
> > >> controled
> > >> from the ground...
> > >> Never thought of that?
> > >>
> > >> Tom
> > >> (Boeing 737NG command officer)
> > >
> > > Let's not forget that it also requires fewer men - instead of breaking
> > > into three cockpits, you can break into one control room for three
> > > planes (and likly nore planes than that). That's the sort of logical
> > > gap that obviously eluded Blue, along with his devoted acceptance of
> > > conspiracy theories that at least border on libel.
>