ZGram - 10/12-2001 - "Truly thought-provoking stuff!"

[Ingrid Rimland]

 Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 12, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Read this carefully written analysis of "9-11" and make of it what you
will.  If you are a conspiracy buff, there is a website I find interesting:

http://eionews.com/

[START]

"Home Run"

 Electronically Hijacking the World Trade Center Attack Aircraft

 Copyright Joe Vialls, October 2001

(The author is a former member of the Society of Licenced Aeronautical
Engineers and Technologists, London)

 In the mid-seventies America faced a new and escalating crisis, with US
commercial jets being hijacked for geopolitical reasons.

 Determined to gain the upper hand in this new form of aerial warfare, two
American multinationals collaborated with the Defense Advanced Projects
Agency (DARPA) on a project designed to facilitate the remote recovery of
hijacked American aircraft.

 Brilliant both in concept and operation, "Home Run" [not its real code
name] allowed specialist ground controllers to listen in to cockpit
conversations on the target aircraft, then take absolute control of its
computerized flight control system by remote means. From that point
onwards, regardless of the wishes of the hijackers or flight deck crew, the
hijacked aircraft could be recovered and landed automatically at an airport
of choice, with no more difficulty than flying a radio-controlled model
plane.

 The engineers had no idea that almost thirty years after its initial
design, Home Run's top secret computer codes would be broken, and the
system used to facilitate direct ground control of the four aircraft used
in the high-profile attacks on New York and Washington on 11th September
2001.

 Before moving on to the New York and Washington attacks, we first need to
look at the ways in which an aircraft is normally controlled by its pilot,
because without this basic knowledge, Home Run would make no sense. In
order to control an aircraft in three-dimensional space, the pilot uses the
control yoke (joystick) in front of him, rudder pedals under his feet, and
a bank of engine throttles located at his side. Without engine thrust the
aircraft would not fly at all, so the throttles are largely self
explanatory: For more speed or altitude increase throttle, for less speed
or altitude decrease throttle.

 In order to raise or lower the nose of the aircraft, the pilot pulls or
pushes on the control yoke, which in turn raises or lowers the elevators on
the horizontal tailplane. To bank the aircraft left or right, the pilot
moves the control yoke to the left or right, which in turn operates the
ailerons on the outer wings. Lastly, to turn left or right at low speed or
"balance" turns at high speed, the pilot presses the left or right rudder
pedals as required, which in turn move the rudder on the vertical
stabilizer.

 Back in the early days of flight, the control yoke and rudder pedals were
connected to the various flight control surfaces by thin cables, meaning
the pilot had direct physical control over every movement the aircraft
made. This was no great problem for an average man flying a small biplane,
but as aircraft grew ever bigger, heavier and faster over the years, the
loadings on the control yoke and rudder pedals became huge, certainly well
beyond the ability of a single pilot to handle unaided. By the late fifties
we were well into the age of hydraulics, where just like the power steering
on your automobile, hydraulic rams were placed in line between the pilot's
control cables and each individual control surface. Now when the pilot
moved the control yoke, the cables activated sensors, which in turn
activated one or more hydraulic rams, which in turn moved one or more
control surfaces. For the first time since Bleriot and the Wright brothers,
pilots were of necessity being steadily distanced from direct control of
their own aircraft.

 When the multinationals and DARPA finally came on the scene in the
mid-seventies, aircraft systems were even more advanced, with computers
controlling onboard autopilots, which in turn were capable of controlling
all of the onboard hydraulics. In combination these multiple different
functions were now known as the "Flight Control System" or FCS, in turn
integrated with sophisticated avionics capable of automatically landing the
aircraft in zero visibility conditions. In summary, by the mid-seventies
most of the large jets were capable of effectively navigating hundreds of
miles and then making automatic landings at a selected airport in zero-zero
fog conditions. All of this could be accomplished unaided, but in theory at
least, still under the watchful eyes of the flight deck crews.

 In order to make Home Run truly effective, it had to be completely
integrated with all onboard systems, and this could only be accomplished
with a new aircraft design, several of which were on the drawing boards at
that time. Under cover of extreme secrecy, the multinationals and DARPA
went ahead on two very obvious hard requirements at this stage, the first a
primary control channel for use in taking over the flight control system
and flying the aircraft back to an airfield of choice, and secondly a
covert audio channel for monitoring flight deck conversations. Once the
primary channel was activated, all aircraft functions came under direct
ground control, permanently removing the hijackers and pilots from the
control loop.

 Remember here, this was not a system designed to "undermine" the authority
of the flight crews, but was put in place as a "doomsday" device in the
event the hijackers started to shoot passengers or crew members, possibly
including the pilots. Using the perfectly reasonable assumption that
hijackers only carry a limited number of bullets, and many aircraft
nowadays carry in excess of 300 passengers, Home Run could be used to fly
all of the survivors to a friendly airport for a safe auto landing. So the
system started out in life for the very best of reasons, but finally fell
prey to security leaks, and eventually to compromised computer codes. In
light of recent high-profile CIA and FBI spying trials, these leaks and
compromised codes should come as no great surprise to anyone.

 Activating the primary Home Run channel proved to be easy. Most readers
will have heard of a "transponder", prominent in most news reports
immediately following the attacks on New York and Washington. Technically a
transponder is a combined radio transmitter and receiver which operates
automatically, in this case relaying data between the four aircraft and air
traffic control on the ground. The signals sent provide a unique "identity"
for each aircraft, essential in crowded airspace to avoid mid-air
collisions, and equally essential for Home Run controllers trying to lock
onto the correct aircraft. Once it has located the correct aircraft, Home
Run "piggy backs" a data transmission onto transponder channel and takes
direct control from the ground.

 This explains why none of the aircraft sent a special "I have been
hijacked" transponder code, despite multiple activation points on all four
aircraft. Because the transponder frequency had already been piggy backed
by Home Run, transmission of the special hijack code was rendered
impossible. This was the first hard proof that the target aircraft had been
hijacked electronically from the ground, rather than by [FBI-inspired]
motley crews of Arabs toting penknives.

 The Home Run listening device on the flight deck utilizes the cockpit
microphones that normally feed the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), one of two
black boxes armored to withstand heavy impact and thereby later give
investigators significant clues to why the aircraft crashed. However, once
hooked into Home Run, the CVRs are bypassed and voice transmissions are no
longer recorded on the 30-minute endless loop recording tape. If Home Run
is active for more than thirty minutes, there will therefore be no audible
data on the Cockpit Voice Recorders. To date, crash investigators have
recovered the CVRs from the Pentagon and Pittsburg aircraft, and publicly
confirmed that both are completely blank. The only possible reason for
this, is data capture by Home Run, providing the final hard proof that the
attack aircraft were hijacked electronically from the ground, rather than
by "Arab terrorists".

 Many readers might by now be indignant; convinced this is incorrect or
misleading information because of "those telephone calls from the hijacked
aircraft". Which telephone calls exactly? There are no records of any such
calls, and the emotional claptrap the media fed you in the aftermath of the
attack was in all cases third-person. We had the media's invisible
"contact" at an airline who "said" a hostess called to report a hijacking,
and we had a priest (?) who "said" he received a call from a man asking him
in turn to call his wife and tell her he loved her. Presumably this man
would have had his wife's name filed in his cellphone, and faced with
imminent death would have called her direct.

 The FAA helped out by claiming that it had "overheard" a heated argument
>from a cockpit where the radio transmit switch had been left in the "on"
position. When push came to shove, the FAA was forced to retract, and admit
that the mythical argument was not on the tapes at all.

 Whether more information will be forthcoming about Home Run is unknown,
but nowadays there are large numbers of people apart from the author privy
to the basic data. As long ago as the early nineties, a major European flag
carrier acquired the information and was seriously alarmed that one of its
own aircraft might be "rescued" by the Americans without its authority.

 Accordingly, this flag carrier completely stripped the American flight
control computers out of its entire fleet, and replaced them with a home
grown version. These aircraft are now effectively impregnable to
penetration by Home Run, but that is more than can be said for the American
aircraft fleet. A casual count indicates around 600 aircraft in the USA and
elsewhere are still vulnerable and could be used in further attacks at any
time, which might help explain why America has lately been bombing the
Afghans primarily with bags of wheat. For the first time in US history,
American officials appear to be genuinely fearful of future reprisals, and
justifiably so with 600 giant bombs parked on the wrong side of their
missile defence shield.

 It is a "Catch 22" situation. In order to make all of the aircraft safe,
the flight control systems would have to be stripped out and replaced, at a
cost of billions of dollars the airlines cannot afford because they are
going broke. Nor is there enough time. The most innovative anti-hijacking
tool in the American arsenal, has now become the biggest known threat to
American national security.

 For the purpose of public reassurance I would like to publish a complete
list of aircraft which cannot be affected by Home Run, but I cannot do so
for legal reasons. Any aircraft manufacturer not on the list might feel
inclined to sue me for defamation and I can't afford that. However, there
is nothing to stop me publishing my personal choice of aircraft for a
flight from, say, Atlanta to Singapore via JFK, Frankfurt, and Kuala
Lumpur.

>From Atlanta to JFK I would probably travel on a Boeing 737, and connect
with a Boeing 777 for the onward flight to Frankfurt. At Frankfurt I would
probably board an Airbus A340 for Kuala Lumpur, and finish the journey to
Singapore on a DC9 or a Fokker 100. Naturally I might be unlucky enough to
pick an aircraft with an intoxicated pilot, or an unrelated mechanical
problem, but apart from those minor risks I'd feel pretty safe.

[END]

=====

Thought for the Day:

"I find it laughable that the agency notorious for its inability to
find a bleeding elephant in a snowbank suddenly (within hours of the
attack) has the culprit pinpointed!"

(Letter to the Zundelsite)