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| The Hypnotic Shoe Grenade Psychologically Reinforcing Passenger Fear after 9/11 Joe Vialls, Christmas Eve 2001, Latest Update 20 January 2002 |
| Richard Reid a.k.a. Tariq Rajah, "Patsy" on Flight 63 Taken into Custody |
| Passengers have learned to accept the unorthodox on airliners nowadays, from sky marshals idly twiddling with their Glock semi automatic pistols, to bottles of free champagne designed to restore your good humor if the sky marshal accidentally squeezes the trigger and shoots you instead of a hijacker. But hey, you asked for it really didn’t you? Slashing away at your steak on an aircraft with a plastic knife, is nowadays grounds for lawful homicide. But what if you decide to change your routine for a while, and do something unexpected though perfectly legal. Say, for example, you decide to light a sulfur-based match and wave it around near your own shoe. Remember, lighting a match on an airliner is perfectly legal until the precise point at which the flame comes into contact with a banned and lethal (sic) Lucky Strike or Marlboro cigarette. What then? Will the sky marshal shoot you full of holes on mere suspicion of random guilt, or will you simply be treated like any other bored and eccentric passenger on the flight? Recent events on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami indicate that if you try any such thing, you will be beaten to the floor by a bunch of furious passengers, tied to a seat in row 27, then be heavily “sedated” by two doctors who just happen to be on the same American Airlines flight. This is exactly what happened to a man on board Flight 63, despite the fact he did not suddenly shout “I have a bomb and you’re all going to die!” In fact the man did not say anything until long after he was wrestled to the floor, whereupon he apparently muttered “You’ll see. Just you wait and see.” Despite the FBI trying to attach all kinds of sinister implications to this statement, a more likely explanation is that the man was probably referring to the legal suit he intended to take out against the barbarians who suddenly mishandled him. The man, identified far too quickly by the FBI as Richard Colvin Reid a.k.a. Tariq Rajah a.k.a. Abdel Rahim, boarded Flight 63 quietly enough at Paris Charles de Gaulle, took his seat and later ate his in-flight meal. Then Richard (let’s call him Richard for now), lit his sulfur-based match and the sky suddenly fell on his head. Why? From the passenger viewpoint there was absolutely no evidence that Richard was a potential “suicide bomber”, nor any visible evidence that he was armed with anything more dangerous than a sulfur-based match. Ask yourself a simple question here. Would you as a normal passenger on a normal airliner recognise a covert terrorist weapon concealed in someone's shoe, then raise the alarm? Of course not. Most airline passengers are not anti-terrorist specialists and would have no idea what they were looking at. Perhaps the man had some chewing gum stuck to the sole of his shoe? Few travellers watching the free in-flight movie would take it any further than that. We know from his fellow passengers that Richard said nothing at all, which means that in order to generate the required and resulting extreme level of activity and panic, someone else sitting near him must have quietly told the cabin crew that Richard had a bomb. There is no other possible explanation. The next question is whether or not Richard actually knew he had a bomb in his shoe, and whether or not the alleged bomb was actually armed. Remember, all we know for certain at this stage is that Richard allegedly had a bomb in his shoe, and the FBI has stated that the bomb in question was an “improvised” device consisting of a combination of det cord and C-4 grade plastic explosive, where the det cord was the “fuze” and the C-4 the “main charge”. But how could the FBI have possibly known this so quickly? Det cord looks very much like the white plastic washing line you hang in your garden, and C-4 plastic explosive looks and smells very similar to the less powerful C-3 and Semtex varieties. To be sure of the materials, a full chemical analysis would be required, or the FBI must have known the exact chemical composition of the materials in advance of the incident. The most critical point here is that neither Richard nor his assumed minder had a detonator cap. Thus for the following reasons, there was less than a one-percent chance of the alleged bomb exploding. As already stated, det cord (known to most as “Cordex”), looks like white plastic washing line with a black core. Though a high explosive in its own right, Cordex needs a detonator to initiate an explosion. If you light the end of a piece of Cordex with a match it will start to melt, and eventually drip all over the floor. A welding torch might have more disastrous results, so please do NOT try this at home! The C-4 plastic explosive, known intimately to everyone who has ever watched a Steven Segal movie, is one of the most overrated explosives of our time. Sure it is far more powerful than C-3, and sure only limited stocks are allowed to be kept at individual US military bases, but it does not possess the magical powers sometimes attributed to it by filmmakers. For example, 334 grams of its Czech equivalent “Semtex H”, packed in a Toshiba radio, is supposed to have destroyed Pan American 103 at Lockerbie in 1988. Rest assured this is impossible The primary reason C-4 is so prized is because it is easy to shape and relatively hard to set off by accident. C-4's main ingredient is RDX, which is also used in fireworks. The puttylike substance can be easily molded by hand. Its shape can dictate the force and direction of its blast. It is relatively insensitive to impact, friction or fire. Could simple Richard with the sulfur match have located and acquired the Cordex and C-4 unaided? Doubtful, unless he had some very useful contacts, especially for the C-4. And remember that any expert setting the device up for Richard in advance, would certainly have included a proper detonator and discreet trigger. Believe me, those with direct access to C-4 know how to make bombs that work… Media reports that Richard was travelling on a "forged" passport are completely untrue and deliberately misleading. Our pretend "suicide bomber" was travelling on a valid British passport in the name of Richard Colvin Reid, issued on 7 December 2001 by the British Embassy in Brussels, Belgium. The British are very fussy about issuing passports, and normally require reams of supportive paperwork, signed photographs and so on, proving the applicant is who he claims to be. True it is possible to obtain even a British passport by deception, but it is a job requiring considerable expertise and access. As with the "designer" high explosives in the dummy bomb that could not possible have been detonated on the aircraft, this attention to detail points towards the direct involvement of a person or persons who knew exactly what they were doing. With the hard evidence available to date, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the entire incident on Flight 63 was set up as a psychological reinforcer, designed to re-sensitize Americans and others to air travel, especially over the Christmas period and in the run-up to the Winter Olympic Games. This conclusion is supported by the choice of an American Airlines Boeing 767, one of which also ripped through the Trade Center in New York. After this, who would travel "American" or to "America"? If this is the case then repeat incidents, lethal and non-lethal but always different, will take place during the next few months. The American Economy is already on its way down to rock bottom, a process that can only be accelerated by incidents such as these. Update 27 December 2001 Discreetly ignored by the establishment media, the Metropolitan Police in London has confirmed Richard Colvin Reid is indeed British. "Tariq Rajah" is complete fiction and "Abdel Rahim" might (or might not) be the name he used to allegedly worship at the Brixton mosque in south west London. In a rare and quite extraordinary "coincidence", Mr Reid is now alleged to have "known" Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin who lived in Brixton, and who has been charged in America with conspiracy over the September 11 attacks, and suspected of organising the hijacks of the planes (sic) which destroyed the World Trade Center. Well now! Here we are with the American Government furiously trying to convince a skeptical public that physical "Arab Hijackers" flew the remotely-controlled jets into the World Trade Center, when along comes a convenient nutter loaded up with C-4 and Cordex, conveniently "proving" a link between Arab Terrorists and American Airlines, and between Zacarias Moussaoui and American Airlines. This is the sort of "lucky break" that intelligence officers have wet dreams about... This fantastically convenient link was made by Abdul Haqq Baker, 35, chairman of the Brixton mosque in south west London, who " issued his warning" two days after Briton Richard Reid appeared in a Boston court. Mr Baker said: "If they have got the likes of Rahim, there are a lot more and we are very concerned about that." Mr Baker added "Mr Reid may have known another worshipper at the mosque, Zacarias Moussaoui." He said there was a period at the end of 1998 when the two men attended the Brixton mosque and may have come into contact with each other. The entire Flight 63 incident now bears all the hallmarks of a fumbled CIA black operation, in this case aided and abetted by its junior subsidiary British MI6, located on the south bank of the River Thames in London. It is no big trick switching someone's shoes for another similar pair, either on the aircraft while the passenger is asleep, or earlier in his Parisian hotel room. Then all you have to do is strike a sulpur match, shout "he's got a bomb", and your unwitting Patsy is in the bag. The FBI would do well to check the passengers seated in the immediate proximity of Richard Reid on Flight 63. This claim is not made in ignorance. During 1996 I was invited to travel from Australia to Libya on a diplomatic visa, in order to discuss my fresh evidence in the WPC Yvonne Fletcher case, which proved conclusively that Policewoman Fletcher was killed outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984 by shots scientifically backtracked on video and audio to 8 St James Square, a building occupied by two American multinationals and the CIA. That story can be read here. As will be obvious, The CIA and MI6 did not approve of this trip to Libya and said so discreetly, but I proceeded anyway. On arrival at Frankfurt in Germany aboard a Lufthansa jumbo, for transfer to a flight bound for Malta and then Libya, I found my shoes had been replaced while I was asleep with a similar (but slightly different) pair. Assuming a mistake but unable to locate anyone wearing my own shoes, I walked to the terminal in my socks for the simple reason I considered wearing second hand shoes unhygenic. As my old credit card records show, I then had to pay $200.00 for a new pair of shoes purchased just outside Frankfurt Airport, at which point I threw my "replacement" shoes from the Jumbo into a garbage bin. In isolation this incident proves nothing of course, but a precursor tends to. When I joined the Lufthansa flight in Jakarta, the aircraft had a passenger load of about 320 souls, most of them Germans speaking German and returning from holidays in Bali. In what was almost a statistical impossibility, I sat down in my allocated seat, and found myself sitting next to the only other Englishman on the flight, a "jolly nice chap" who owned a travel business in southern England, and whose son "was in the Special Air Services at Hereford [England]", or so he claimed. At Frankfurt my new chummy friend was first off the plane and I never saw him again. The visiting card that he handed me on the Lufthansa jumbo, later turned out to be false. What a surprise! Do I believe or fear that my "replacement" shoes contained a thin layer of C-4 between the inner and outer soles, and that I was a make-believe bomb waiting to be arrested? Hell no! But I do believe that the replacement shoes probably contained a thin layer of cannabis resin or opium or cocaine in the same area, and that Maltese customs would have been tipped off in advance about the "drug smuggler". That would have automatically got me twenty or more years in a Maltese prison, where I would no longer have been even a minor threat to American or British intelligence. Western intelligence agencies are famous for black operations like these, and there are dozens of other documented examples. Where Flight 63 is concerned, the Agencies effectively killed two birds with one stone. A false connection was established between Arab hijackers and American Airlines, and between Zacarias Moussaoui and American Airlines. Secondly but importantly, fear of flying was reintroduced and reinforced greatly, frightening the public and politicians alike. When frightened, you tend to be far less critical of intelligence agency "advice" about what to do next. The bottom line is that the CIA and MI6 engineered the Flight 63 incident to put themselves firmly back in the driving seat. Update 29 December 2001 At a hearing in US federal court, FBI agent Margaret Cronin said Richard Reid was in possession of a "functioning, improvised device," which "if placed beside an outer wall could have or would have created a large hole in the fuselage of the plane." The federal court heard from the FBI that the improvised device contained an explosive called TATP. It seems that one part of the FBI has no idea what any other part of the FBI is doing or saying. The highly stable C-4 & Cordex bomb configuration of yesterday, has suddenly changed [or more likely been switched] to highly unstable TATP today. The full name for TATP is triacetone triperoxide, a dangerous improvised high explosive known to have been manufactured by "terrorist" organizations. Problem! Triacetone triperoxide has a highly distinctive crystalline structure [and odor] quite unlike the putty explosive substances found immediately after Reid's arrest. Perhaps Agent Cronin would like to backtrack those agents who managed to transform putty into crystals somewhere between American Airlines Flight 63 and the FBI laboratories. A neat trick by any standard, as difficult as alchemists of old changing lead into gold. . Agent Cronin's comments on the placement of the explosive substance are also enlightening, perhaps even Freudian when considering the FBI's obsession with the crash of Pan Am 103 at Lockerbie in Scotland during December 1988. Cronin's comment "if placed beside an outer wall [of the Boeing 767] could have or would have created a large hole in the fuselage..." are of course meaningless unless we know the exact quantity of TATP, an explosive which does not readily adapt to a directed-energy shaped charge of the kind neeeded to penetrate a hardened aircraft fuselage . So why on earth did Margaret Cronin make this rambling speculative comment to the court? After all, Richard Reid was seated in the passenger cabin, a long way away from the "outer wall" of the aircraft, which is protected by an inner wall and substantial padding inbetween. During the trial of the two Libyans suspects in the Pan Am 103 case [story here], FBI forensic experts were ridiculed by the defence for claiming that the aircraft was destroyed in mid-air by a small Semtex-H charge hidden in a suitcase, which in turn was hidden inside a baggage container. Experts for the defence argued, and effectively proved, that such a small charge could only penetrate the aircraft fuselage if "placed hard up against the fuselage skin itself". This defence claim was completely supported by the precise damage found on the wreckage of Pan Am 103 after fragment recovery. Think about it. By making this ridiculous claim about TATP on American Airlines Flight 63, the FBI labs are actually admitting they were wrong about Pan American 103, or were duped into making claims about Pan American 103 they would later regret. We will soon find out. Once again in one of those rare but convenient coincidences, Libyan "bomber" Megrahi's Appeal will he heard by the full bench of the Scottish Court sitting at camp Zeist in Holland in late January 2002, about three weeks from now. The down side to this appeal is that, if Megrahi is found not guilty or not proven guilty, British authorities will be compelled to open the Lockerbie can of worms all over again, a prospect certain to chill the blood of a few members of MI6 and the Mossad. Because the assumed amount of Semtex H could only have destroyed Pan Am 103 if placed hard against the outer fuselage skin, it follows that the bomber or bombers would need direct access to the outer fuselage skin, protected at all times in flight service by that thick inner skin with padding inbetween. The only place where the inner skin is ever removed, thus exposing the outer skin for placement of the Semtex H charge, is at the second-line engineering facilities in America. Specifically where Richard Colvin Reid is concerned, his father Robin Reid has allegedly told a British newspaper that his son was "determined enough" to commit suicide, but would never have harmed others unless he was "brainwashed." Most interesting recent news is that Israeli government officials have now admitted that Reid traveled to Israel for "around 10 days" in July, then moved to to Amsterdam, where he worked as a dishwasher at several restaurants between August and November. Then after a 10-day stay in Belgium where he obtained his passport, Reid apparently traveled by train to Paris on December 16. Six days later he boarded Flight 63 in Paris. Perhaps someone can explain exactly how this part-time dishwasher came to have enough spare cash to travel to Israel on El Al airlines without a passport for ten days in July, then even more spare cash to buy an expensive airline ticket from Paris to Miami aboard American Airlines Flight 63? Update 31 December 2001 Stranger and stranger... According to the Telegraph newspaper of London, "On December 7, Reid flew to Brussels where he tricked consulate officials into giving him a new British passport, even though several pages of his old one had clearly been ripped out in an effort to cover his tracks." He did what? British officials do not, repeat NOT, issue replacements for passports which have been defaced, without first conducting an inquiry into the matter. What British officials ARE prepared to do, is issue a replacement for a passport which bears a visa that might of itself place the passport holder at risk in another country. The most obvious example here is the Israeli visa stamped in Reid's passport for his ten-day visit to Israel, which might well have placed him at risk in any radical Arab country he visited thereafter. But Reid must have been told about this special provision. By whom was he told? Presumably by the Israelis. Think about it. Quite apart from protecting Reid in any radical Arab countries he might visit in the future, the new passport also (very conveniently) removed all evidence of Richard Reid's expensive trip to Israel earlier this year. Were it not for a single hawk-eyed western journalist, Reid's funded trip to Tel Aviv on El Al Airlines would still be a completely unknown factor. What we must all do now, is completely ignore the "case" being "developed" against Richard Reid by the mainstream media, and focus instead on what we know are hard facts. We know by their own admission that the Israelis flew Reid to Tel Aviv on one of their own jumbos from Amsterdam, personally escorted by an armed guard. We know that Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63 in Paris, and we know that he was later taken into custody. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is all we know about Richard Reid in terms of hard corroborated facts, so the rest must be regarded as media pulp fiction. If Reid really had (as the newspapers claim) flitted backwards and forwards to Muslim Pakistan for two years, the sheer volume of Pakistani visas in his old passport , carried until 7 December 2001, would have permanently barred him from access to Israel - so the Pakistani visas never existed, and Reid thus never went to Pakistan. It really is that simple. Now then, why oh why did the Israelis decide to fly this confused young man to Israel for ten days? RICHARD REID PLEADS INNOCENT - 18 JANUARY 2002 BOSTON (AP) — The man accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with bombs in his shoes pleaded innocent Friday to nine terrorism-related charges in federal court. Richard C. Reid, a 28-year-old British citizen, answered "Not guilty" to the first eight charges, including attempting to murder the 197 passengers and crew members aboard American Airlines Flight 63 on Dec. 22. For technical reasons, the defense had the judge enter the innocent plea on the ninth charge. Reid appeared in U.S. District Court in Boston in heavy shackles and looked down during much of the brief hearing. Reid was subdued by flight attendants and passengers on the Paris-to-Miami flight after he allegedly attempted to light afuse protruding from his shoes. Authorities said each shoe contained a plastic explosive often used by terrorists. They said the homemade bombs could easily have ripped a hole in the plane if Reid had successfully ignited them. The indictment said Reid "received training from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan," but it provided no other details about Reid's alleged ties to the network. Reid's case is being prosecuted in Boston because the plane was diverted to the city's Logan International Airport. He could get five life sentences if convicted. Reid's attorney, Tamar Birckhead, has said the indictment does not indicate that Reid worked on behalf of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network or any other terrorist network. Birckhead asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Dein to enter an innocent plea on Reid's behalf to the ninth charge in the indictment, attempted wrecking of a mass transportation vehicle. The charge was created by Congress in an anti-terrorism bill enacted after the Sept. 11 attacks Birckhead said there was a "potential defect" in the charge. She questioned whether the American flight would qualify for the charge. "To allege that a 767 airplane is a vehicle, let alone is a vehicle used in urban mass transportation, is a stretch," Birckhead said. Reid has been held without bail since his arrest Dec. 22 on the lesser charge of interfering with a flight crew. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in Washington on Wednesday that the charges "alert us to a clear, unmistakable threat that al-Qaeda could attack the United States again." A U.S. official said Reid may be an al-Qaeda target scout, and an Israeli official said it was possible Reid was gathering intelligence for large-scale terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv and other cities. Both spoke on condition of anonymity. Reid converted to Islam while in prison for petty crimes. He later worshipped at the same London mosque as Zacarias Moussaoui, charged with conspiracy in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. In an interview with Britain's Channel 4 News on Thursday, Reid's father, Robin Reid of London, said he could not believe his son is an international terrorist. "He'd been brainwashed," he said. "I think I know my son well enough to know that he wouldn't have, he couldn't have, thought of doing this on his own." Hijack By Remote Control Pan Am 103 Vialls Investigations |
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