Conspiracies for dummies

MSNBC

Conspiracy warning! Blame Charles Johnson and his LGF site.

He picked up a story from an English tabloid Sunday that included a video of an exploding airplane. It was billed as an FBI recreation of the Richard Reid scenario to gage how successful the hapless shoe bomber might have been.

Johnson's astute readers tipped him to the hoax and he pulled the video with an explanation:

It’s a fake. Kudos to LGF reader ‘PETN Sandwich’ for discovering the source: an L-1011 test in January 1998. (PDF file.)

The file is located here. Drudge foolishly ran it this morning, guess he doesn't read LGF. But it did lead to this post, so make of it what you will..

Although the video has nothing to do with Reid per se, it is quite interesting by itself. Performed in 1998, the exploding L1011 was intended to help the FBI and TSA determine the minimum sized explosive needed to blow up an airliner as well as determining ways that baggage compartments might be strengthened. In other words, stuff the government is supposed to be doing to keep us safe. A good thing.

That said, any longtime reader of this blog might now guess where this post is heading. Explosions? Airplanes? You don't say.

The commenters at LGF wandered off into discussions of past aircraft disasters focusing on American Airlines Flight 587 in November 2001. You may recall that was the accident where the tail just fell off. Many thought this was surely terrorism, especially coming so soon after 9/11 and by the fact that witnesses said they saw a flash of fire along the wing area.

Admittedly it's quite bizarre when a tail simply falls off an airplane but Airbus has had their share of problems with the composite tail sections before. After studying this case for awhile and talking with a 747 captain about excessive use of rudder it's clear to me this could have been an accident. Matter of fact, Occam's Razor says it likely was. But we must apply the Razor fairly and evenly, and in doing so it lends suspicion to the other crash off Long Island some years back, TWA 800.

The NTSB listed the probable cause as a spark in the wiring of the fuel gage sensor inside the center wing tank although it wasn't definitive. They found scant evidence to prove a short circuit existed prior to the explosion itself.

Reid's shoe bomb apparently contained PETN with a TATP detonator. During the course of investigating TWA 800 a reddish substance was found on a few seatbacks near the middle of the airplane. A soap opera soon ensued between an FBI agent and a former cop who wanted to investigate this material (who later went to jail for tampering with a crash) but bottom line, the red substance was found to be explosive residue.

After giving up the notion it was seat glue the FBI later said it came from a bomb-sniffing dog exercise a few weeks prior. That fact remains in question because the officer never wrote down the tail number of the aircraft he tested. But just think about this for a second. If indeed the reddish substance was left from a careless dog exercise then TWA allowed one of their aircraft to fly around for weeks with explosive residue on a seat right in front passengers. Quite surreal. Care to apply Occam's Razor here?

There's more smoking gun evidence, mainly the fact that FAA has dragged its feet on mitigation technology for the nation's fleet, but what sealed it for me was 9/11. Why? The trauma of that day just might have brought out some truth.

In the heat of emotion three two politicians, an FBI agent and a journalist with knowledge of 800 called the event a "bombing" during media interviews. Not a crash, not an explosion, not an accident, but a bombing. John Kerry, George Stephanopoulis were the known politicos, Katie Couric the journalist and James Kallstrom the FBI man. He was in charge of the investigation.

Why might they do this? The horror of 9/11 made it obvious we were at war. Perhaps they figured that any past cover-ups, for reasons of national security or otherwise, were rendered moot. The other possibility is they ALL got 800 mixed up with the Pan Am Lockerbie crash from the late 80s, something I'd be willing to entertain if not for the number of folks making the same mistake. Ironically, NBC was rumored to have possessed amateur footage of the 800 crash but turned it over to the FBI. Katie worked for NBC.

Why is any of this important? Well, one of the theories on how 800 was lost was an errant Navy missile. The 9/11 statements taken in combination with the inexplicable red on the seatbacks, the funny CIA-produced video explanation, the lack of any corrective action and the unlikely nature of an exploding fuel tank leaves the conclusion this was an act of terrorism. Recall that Ramzi Yousef was sitting in a Manhattan cell awaiting his trial for planning "Operation Bojinka", a plot to blow up 747s over the Pacific. So much irony.

Anyway, if 800 was terrorism we can't simply crucify Bill Clinton because many other entities on both sides of the fence were probably not averse to an accident finding. As in the past we're dealing with hindsight world here--nobody knew 9/11 would happen at the time. But we should learn from the past, not repeat it. Case in point--several people tied to the Clinton administration in 1996, namely Bill Richardson and Mrs. Clinton herself, are running for president in 2008. Initial indications say they both favor a return to the halcyon days of a law enforcement approach to terrorism. A blockbuster revelation such as 800 being the product of terrorism certainly might shoot down that notion.