Update [2005-5-14 11:46:39 by volneysimmons]:: The reporter who told Scott McClellan that someone on K Street had taken a photo of the F-16s engaging the Cessna appears to have been April Ryan of American Urban Radio Network. Please diary if any pictures showing the F -16s and the Cessna over downtown DC appear anywhere (obviously photos such as this would be purchased by news outlets for a handsome fee). Also, does anyone know where Bernard Shaw lives? He is the only eyewiness to the engagement I have been able to find.
More on the Cessna scare story. This is worth paying attention to!
And this is not the only festering question.
- Was the plane actually forced down? I am still nagged by the audio clip I heard on the NBC Nightly News, in which someone politely asks the pilots where they would prefer to land, Gaithersburg or Frederick, and they reply "Frederick". This exchange seems inconsistent with the idea of a plane being roughly forced down.
Note these two entries from the timeline:
12:06-12:10 p.m.: F-16 jets take over intercept from Customs aircraft. Cessna flies within three miles of the White House.
12:14 p.m.: F-16s pull back as Cessna moves 12 miles from Reagan National Airport. Customs aircraft resume escort. All-clear given at White House and Capitol.
The only eyewitness account I can find of the landing, posted in a diary yesterday, does not agree with this, saying all three planes were involved in the force-down and that the pilots were unresponsive the whole time. Who's right and who's, uh, lying?
- Why land in Frederick when Leesburg was closer? Interestingly, all references to the plane flying over CIA headquarters in Langley, VA, seem to have been scrubbed from on-line stories although the NBC Nightly News made a big deal of this. I read an on-line story earlier saying that Leesburg was initially considered as a landing site, and I have seen blog references to the fact that Sen. George Allen told CNN the plane had landed in Leesburg. The only place that story still appears is in the foreign media.
But why Frederick (near Camp David) or Gaithersburg (near the wildlife refuge where Bush was bicycling) rather than Leesburg? Maybe because twelve Secret Service agents could converge more quickly in Maryland to get these guys' story straight?
- What about that picture of the interception, taken on K Street, that a reporter mentioned to Scott McClellan during the May 12 White House press briefing? Have you seen a picture yet? So far the only eyewitness to the interception is Bernard Shaw of all people, who dutifully called in his scoop to CNN. It's lunchtime, it's a big active city, where are the normal hundreds of eyewitnesses? Hmmm???
- Let the trashing begin. The pilots had outdated maps. Nope, they had purchased new maps, according to a flight club member, and they were aware of the restrictions in the DC area. So was it that they failed to get briefings about the weather as the FAA complained? Weather was a factor? It was a beautiful day. Well, the old guy needed help with the airfield fuel pump, indicating he obviously was senile. But wait, everyone has trouble with that fuel pump. Hey, they were rural and that, of course, explains everything, dunnit?
What a despicable bunch of nonsense.
Oh and P.S. the interior of the plane has been completely dismantled. Handy if you want to make sure no one will know whether their VOR monitor was working, isn't it?
