Vol. 1, Issue 1 , 9 January 2003

How to Prevent All Future Hijackings Without Compromising Liberty or Resorting to Racial Profiling

18 September, 2001, I sent letters to several members of Congress describing a way in which all future aircraft hijackings can be prevented without compromising the liberty of the flying public. I sent the same information to an editor of a prominent aviation magazine after he showed interest based on my assertion that I had designed a working system with today's technology that could prevent all future hijackings. To this date, not one member of Congress or the editor of that magazine has ever responded to what you are about to read. Ask yourself why.

The solutions I have seen so far have to do with on-the-ground, airport security, or securing the cockpit from the passengers. As has been shown time and again, such security measures are ongoing costs which are also subject to human frailties. Securing the cockpit can be circumvented by threats of harm to the passengers, and total airport security can only be obtained at huge cost to civil liberties.

The best solution is a one-time cost, and one that does not depend on the dedication of numerous operators to always work, one that does not violate civil rights. The best solution is to prevent the hijackers' ability to fly the plane.

This can be done with an integrated system based on board the plane and at FAA flight controls centers on the ground. Inside the plane, you tie in the autopilot to a control lockout system that can be activated by the pilot or by a ground controller who suspects or has evidence of a hijacking. Once the lockout has been initiated, it cannot be reset except by mechanics on the ground and no one inside the plane can regain control under any circumstance. You place the lockout controls and remote flight controls in areas that are inaccesible from within the plane.

When the lockout system is initiated, the autopilot is engaged and cannot be disengaged except from remote locations on the ground. The plane begins broadcasting telemetry and video information to ground controllers, and the transponder is automatically engaged, transmitting flight data information as well.

At the same time, on the ground a qualified remote pilot is paged. This remote pilot need not be on duty, as the autopilot can fly the plane while the ground pilot moves to the nearest remote piloting location, which would be any FAA control facility. His flight station would give him telemetry and forward-looking video transmitted by the aircraft through its transponder beacon or some other transmitter. Once in place, the remote pilot would disengage the autopilot and remotely fly the airplane to the nearest safe location. If a safe location is not within his area of control, control of the airplane could be passed from remote to remote, much as tracking is currently passed. Any time contact is lost with the ground control station, the autopilot automatically engages once more, until contact can be reestablished. The remote pilot would land the plane safely, or if an extreme threat exists, fly the plane to a safe location, such as over an ocean or other unpopulated region.

This system could be created from existing civilian and military technologies at a relatively minimal cost compared to the losses already suffered, not to mention the cost of manpower and training needed to monitor passengers. The advantages are that it does not rely on a large number of people working together to implement the safe return of a hijacked airliner, that it is a technological solution rather than a human solution, that you only have to pay for it once, and that you only have to monitor a small group of people to make sure that it works as intended, rather than attempting to monitor every passenger and employee on both the ground and in the air. We could focus our attention on discovering the weapons of hijackers rather than trying to identify potential hijackers before they get on board because it would prevent a hijacker's ability to direct the course of the airplane and to use it as a weapon.

Granted, this will not prevent a terrorist from blowing up a plane in midair, but it will prevent anyone from repeating what happened last Tuesday (9/11/2001).

I have since learned that the system I have described may already be in place on some aircraft, including the 757 and the 767. I have not been able to confirm this assertion. In any case, as you can see, there is virtually no way that such a system could be circumvented by hijackers unless they were able to disable it on the ground before the flight. It is a simple solution using existing technology, is safe, and in no way threatens the liberties that we are currently being forced to surrender for the sake of aircraft safety.

If such a safe, effective, inexpensive and liberty-friendly option exists, why hasn't it been utilized? Why hasn't my suggestion received one single response from any member of Congress or the aviation industry? Wherefore the silence?

 

TWA 800, Egypt Air, and 9/11

What do these three events have to do with one another? From a purely theoretical viewpoint, the downing of TWA flight 800 and Egypt Air flight 990 could have been events designed to probe and prepare the American public for what was to come.

TWA Flight 800 was the first test of the public waters, to see how well the corporate and government-controlled media could contain and control the flow of information surrounding a highly suspicious event. Despite the testimony of numerous witnesses who saw a missile-like object streak towards flight 800, and despite the evidence of a missile-like object on radar, and despite the fact that no other even marginally credible cause was ever discovered, the least likely scenario of a spontaneous empty center fuel tank explosion was the explanation presented by the media for public consumption and this is the explanation that has largely been accepted by the mainstream.

The possibility of government involvement in this explosion was treated as too unspeakable to even entertain. A missile fired from close enough proximity to down the aircraft would most likely have come from a military source. Therefore, the missile theory must be eliminated from the minds of the public, because to suggest a missile is to suggest military involvement. That is what was being tested with Flight 800, whether or not the public would entertain thoughts of the unthinkable and demand an investigation no matter what it might reveal.

With Egypt Air flight 990, the public was tested to see how willing they were to believe that a single person, specifically a Muslim, was capable of commandeering a commercial aircraft and steering it to its own destruction. Recall that early reports stated that the hijacker uttered a prayer to Allah before nosing the plane into a suicide dive. This early report (from the FBI) was later descredited (by the NTSB), but by that time the image of a suicidal Muslim pilot praying to Allah as he murders hundreds of people was firmly fixed in the public mind.

No other possibility was ever entertained, despite the protests of the Egyptian government and the statements from the family of Gamil al Batouti to the contrary. Even though the best description of the last moment of flight 990 is that of an aircraft desperately trying to avoid a collision and suceeding, only to have the plane break apart from the stresses or succumb to some second unknown force.

So what we have are two incidents occuring over the ocean off Long Island. In the first case, the public accepts an improbable explanation in favor of an unthinkable one. In the second case, the idea of a suicidal Muslim hijacker deliberately crashing the plane is firmly planted in the public mind.

Now we have 9/11. Four planes hijacked in a coordinated attack and flown into three high profile landmarks, killing over 3,000 people. Within hours of the attack, flight manuals in Arabic are found in a car in Boston. Within days, 19 Muslim men are identified as the hijackers.

Never mind that as many as four and possibly seven of the hijackers have been proven to still be alive. Never mind that one identification was 'confirmed' by the discovery of the hijacker's undamaged passport which miraculously survived the destruction of the World Trade Center and fluttered to the ground several blocks away, unburned and unscathed. The concept of the Muslim suicide hijacker has already successfully been implanted in the public mind, and the public is not only willing to accept this explanation, they have been trained to expect it. When the media offers this explanation, the public's own suspicions are merely confirmed. It is much easier to dupe someone who has already duped himself.

Never mind that, during the two hour ordeal of the hijackings, the American military completely failed to respond or even follow its own published guidelines, or that the president of the United States continued to read to schoolchildren for over 20 minutes AFTER the second tower was hit and a terrorist attack on this country was confirmed. Never mind that there are serious questions about the Pentagon attack, especially that there were no witnesses of the actual impact, the impact site is much too small, and there is no aircraft debris. The public has already been taught to accept the improbable in favor of the unthinkable.

And that is the connection.