-Caveat Lector- Theory links plane crashes to secret military 'killer beams' TWA Flight 800 and Swissair Flight 111 both took off from New York's JFK airport. Both departed on Wednesday, and both lifted off at precisely 20:19 hours. Both travelled the same initial route. A Harvard a professor postulates that both planes crashed as a result of electromagnetic transmissions of a military origin that sparked the fire and explosion that felled the passenger jets two years and 47 days apart http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20001009/424319.html George Jonas National Post ============================================================= THE THEORY On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed into the Atlantic near East Moriches, Long Island. Two years and 47 days later, on Sept. 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111 caught fire and crashed into the Atlantic near Peggys Cove, N.S. In the Sept. 21, 2000, issue of The New York Review of Books, an essay by Harvard professor Elaine Scarry looks at electromagnetic interference as a possible factor in both accidents. Ms. Scarry calls on the authorities to investigate her theory vigorously, and concludes by promising a sequel to examine links not only between the TWA and Swissair crashes, but also another air disaster in the same region, the 1999 crash of EgyptAir Flight 990. THE AUTHOR The EgyptAir sequel, which has duly appeared in the Oct. 5 issue, is the Ivy League academic's third visit to the topic. Ms. Scarry's original essay came out in The New York Review of Books on April 9, 1998. The extensively footnoted 13,000-word piece postulated the hypothesis of electromagnetic interference as well, though then only in relation to TWA 800. The article later resulted in an exchange of letters between Ms. Scarry and James E. Hall, chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, published in The New York Review of Books during the summer of 1998. >From this, the reader might assume Ms. Scarry is a scholar specializing in a technical discipline. In fact, the 54-year-old professor teaches English and American literature and language. While no specialist in electrical engineering, Ms. Scarry brings to her task a high degree of literacy and what British academics call "the apparatus" of sourcing and scholarly footnotes. She also appears to carry Sherlock Holmes's conviction that once the impossible is eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, will be the truth. FACTS ABOUT THE DISASTERS We know that TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-100, was brought down by an explosion in its centre fuel tank about 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK airport in New York. We also know that on the day of the disaster, the centre tank's ullage and temperature were conducive to forming an explosive mixture. No explosion occurs, however, without an ignition source. The National Transportation Safety Board's final report, released in August, reiterates that investigators have been unable to pinpoint a source of ignition in the fuel tank. In the case of Swissair Flight 111, the high-tech MD (McDonnell-Douglas) 11 reported smoke on the flight deck approximately 55 minutes after departing New York's JFK airport. Ten minutes later, while the aircraft was preparing for a precautionary landing in Halifax, the crew declared an emergency. After that, smoke and fire evidently overwhelmed the aircraft's systems and pilots. Ninety seconds later, several electrical systems failed simultaneously and all communication ceased. The jet crashed into the ocean about 56 kilometres from Halifax airport at 21:31 EST, some 72 minutes after taking off. The Canadian Transportation Safety Board has so far issued no finding on the origin and cause of the fire, although some reports suspect the wiring in the plane's entertainment system. ELECTROMAGNETIC SIGNALS Just about everyone has encountered stray electromagnetic emissions, such as a TV channel becoming snowy when a neighbour plugs in a vacuum cleaner. In the southern United States, pilots nicknamed a small mountain "Singalong Hill," because nearby ground transmitters caused navigation instruments to break into popular songs from time to time. In the current issue of Private Pilot magazine, Bill Fedorko describes how a ringing cellphone killed the engine in his Jeep. I have my own anecdotal evidence: When I fly my Cessna 177RG west of Toronto City Centre Airport at approximately 2,500 feet, my GPS (global positioning system) often blanks out for 15 to 30 seconds. I believe my GPS blanks out because of electromagnetic interference, perhaps from transmitters on top of the CN Tower. Needless to say, my suspicion is totally nonscientific. My flying partner, a much more experienced pilot, tells me the culprits are aircraft structures blanking out satellites; the proximity of nearby ground transmitters is purely coincidental. But even though it is not fully known how cellular phones and other electronic equipment interfere with aircraft instruments or controls, airlines forbid the use of electronic devices by passengers, especially during critical phases of flight, such as takeoff or landing. HIRF HAZARDS Experts view electromagnetic interference (EMI) as a force that has a potential influence on aircraft electronic systems. When EMI comes from sources outside the aircraft, it is often referred to as a High Intensity Radiated Field (HIRF). HIRF may be ground-based, as in fixed transmitters, or emitted by a passing ship or plane. Traditionally, electromagnetic emissions have been viewed as manageable risks. Airlines have no concern flying over ground transmitters (at a safe altitude, of course). Civilian aircraft do stay away from areas occupied by military operations, or enter them only when they are not "hot" (i.e., when the military releases them to the Federal Aviation Authority for civilian traffic), but that's because pilots don't like being rammed or used for target practice by aspiring fighter jocks. Planes have been mainly trying to avoid things that stick up from the ground, or things that go bump in the night (or day). They have not worried much about killer beams. A force that interferes with aircraft instruments and controls, though hazardous, is a far cry from a force that blows up planes or sets them on fire. The question that arose in connection with TWA Flight 800 -- and, to Ms. Scarry's mind, also in relation to Swissair 111 -- was novel: Could the signal strength of electromagnetic sources be sufficient to spark an explosion in a fuel tank or ignite a fire in a cockpit? What gave this question added validity was that HIRF from military transmitters -- for example, from weapons systems of electronic warfare -- was likely to be significantly stronger than electromagnetic emissions of civilian origins. The exact signal intensities, ranges and effects of such HIRF sources, being military secrets, were not known. It was advisable for investigators of the TWA 800 disaster to consider them. Planes rarely blow up all by themselves. The initial suspect in the TWA 800 disaster was sabotage, followed by a rare atmospheric disturbance, or even a meteorite strike. But when it came to light there were at least 10 military aircraft and vessels in the vicinity of the doomed jet, the suggestion that TWA 800 was brought down by a stray missile rapidly gained ground. Although "vicinity" ranged from about 1,829 metres to more than 290 kilometres, conspiracy buffs noted the military craft included surface ships, submarines, helicopters and fixed-wing airplanes, several of which had the capability of launching air-to-air or surface-to-air projectiles. Within weeks, the Internet was abuzz with missile speculations. As a conspiracy theory, electromagnetic interference is superior to missiles. For one thing, it is harder to disprove. Missiles have radar signatures; they make discernible holes in whatever they hit, and they are likely to leave chemical residue on the wreckage. In contrast, radiation fields and electronic pulses can vanish without a trace. The conspiracy theorist's perennial favourite (that the government was testing some new ordnance that accidentally knocked out a civilian airliner) works even better if the ordnance is a space-age creature of electronic warfare. The suggestion that officialdom wants to hush up an incident is all the more plausible if the cover-up is not just to protect a military snafu, but a secret weapon right out of Star Wars. WHERE TWA 800 AND SWISSAIR 111 MEET The place where TWA and Swissair meet is essentially in Ms. Scarry's mind. In her September essay, the Harvard professor notes that in the two years and 47 days that separate the accidents, there were close to 18 million departures in the United States, two of which led to "a mysterious electrical catastrophe." The two airliners that fell victim to these catastrophes could have taken off from any airport in America, but in fact they both took off from New York's JFK. Not only that, but both departed on Wednesdays, both lifted off at exactly 20:19, and both travelled along the same initial departure route. Although TWA met with disaster 12 minutes after takeoff, while Swissair 111 first reported trouble only after 55 minutes, it has come to light that radio communications between air-traffic control (ATC) and the Swissair liner were disrupted for 13 minutes. The disruption began approximately 14 minutes after takeoff, when Flight 111 was occupying roughly the same airspace in which Flight 800 came to grief two years and 47 days earlier. Ms. Scarry proposes that if the disruption in Swissair 111's radio communications was the first sign of an EMI/HIRF event, it occurred in almost the same spot and at the same time as the TWA explosion. This is why the two events may be connected. THE OFFICIAL POSITION National Transportation Safety Board investigators say they did consider EMI/HIRF as a possible ignition source for the fuel-tank detonation in the TWA disaster. Although some potential emission sources were not disclosed to the public, the U.S. Department of Defense's Joint Spectrum Center listed for NASA scientists working with the safety board all "external emitters" whose signals could have crossed the flight path of TWA 800. In her September essay, Ms. Scarry quotes NASA as concluding these external sources could, at most, have introduced 0.1 millijoule of energy into the fuel-quantity indicator wire, the one potential ignition source inside the centre fuel tank. It was estimated that minimally double this amount would be required to produce ignition, although a supplementary paper put out by NASA called for further studies on this point. The safety board's dismissal of EMI/HIRF as an ignition source might have ended the matter for some people, but not for Ms. Scarry. After all, the board could only say what did not ignite the volatile vapour in the fuel tank; it could not say what did. FROM FACTS TO FICTION The connection between two mysterious electrical catastrophes has been triggered for Ms. Scarry by the fact that they befell two aircraft on identical routes out of JFK, departing on an identical day of the week -- Wednesday -- at identical times. The coincidence is temptingly suspicious. The only trouble is, JFK is a busy airport. Airlines favour departure times for Europe between 19:00 and 21:00 hours. In such peak periods, a plane will take off nearly every minute. In 14 months, about 700 planes may depart JFK at 20:19, of which about 100 may lift off on Wednesdays. If two planes crash after taking off on Wednesday at 20:19, it has no more significance than that all other planes that took off on all other Wednesdays at 20:19 did not crash. Identical flight paths need not be significant either. TWA 800 and Swissair 111 flew the same initial departure route because it is one of the Standard Instrument Departure (SID) routes out of JFK. Hundreds of other planes that did not crash also took the same route. There are electronic highways laid out in the sky, and planes follow them in much the same way as cars follow roads. Many cars break down on the New York State Thruway, not because there is anything peculiar about the New York State Thruway, but because it is used by many cars. But coincidence in locations or numbers has an odd effect on some people's minds. One of Ms. Scarry's English seminars, for instance, examines the question of "Why Poetry Matters When the Century Ends." Her thesis is that Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Hardy all wrote some of their significant works in the last decade of their respective centuries. While this preoccupation is quite harmless in literary studies, in an investigation of air accidents, it can be mischievous. Ms. Scarry analyzes radio traffic between Swissair 111 and ATC on the assumption that the breakdown in communication that starts at approximately 14 minutes into the flight may be the first sign of an EMI/HIRF event. She finds it especially significant, even sinister, that even though ATC was unable to contact Swissair 111 for 13 minutes, the flight was described by the authorities as "uneventful" until the crew reported smoke in the cockpit. Without saying it in so many words, Ms. Scarry comes close to seeing this as evidence of a conspiracy. Pilots take a different view. Captain David Frid, left-seater for a major airline, agrees such disruptions in radio traffic should not happen, but in fact they do. He estimates they occur about once a month. The cause may be nothing more sinister than a "finger problem." Some routes require many frequency changes -- for instance, during the short flight between Toronto and Pittsburgh, a crew must punch or dial in more than 20 radio frequencies -- and pilots sometimes mishear or misdial a number as they are handed from one sector to another. Ms. Scarry notes that as communication radios have two screens, one for the frequency in use and the other for the next frequency, if a pilot misses a new frequency, he still retains the first. She does not seem to realize only one screen is active. If a pilot misdials a new frequency, then activates it, the fact that the previous frequency is still displayed on his standby screen is meaningless. It will not help a controller in contacting him. This appears to have happened to Swissair 111. After Swissair was handed off by the Hampton controller to the Cape section, ATC could no longer raise the crew either on the newly assigned frequency or on the one they had just left. Hampton and Cape controllers made several tries during the next 13 minutes. Swissair 111 finally contacted Boston Center over the Nantucket sector, and neither the pilots nor the controllers attributed any significance to the interruption. Capt. Frid considers this par for the course. If the inadvertent radio silence does not require ATC to unscramble traffic, most controllers will not make a fuss. Such a glitch isn't considered an "event." Possibly the Swissair pilots failed to notice 13 minutes of radio silence because they were already preoccupied with some anomaly. But if they were, they did not report it for another 26 minutes. They re-established radio communication at 20:48 EST, and first talked about smoke in the cockpit at 21:14. This is hardly evidence of a HIRF event occurring at about the same time and place as the explosion of TWA 800. Ms. Scarry's literature professor's ears lead her astray in amusing ways as she tries to decipher the language of air-traffic controllers. She quotes the Hampton controller's remark to his Cape colleague: "Negative joy on that Swissair," then explains in a footnote it probably indicates regret, meaning (in her words): "Of the two possible outcomes of my inquiry, the result is not the one hoped for." But "negative" is just an ATC word for "no," and "no joy" is an old fighter-pilot's slang for "no contact." The opposite is "tallyho," meaning "traffic in sight." Both date from the Battle of Britain, and both have found their way into civilian pilot-controller communications. THE CORRESPONDENCE In response to Ms. Scarry's 1998 essay, National Transportation Safety Board chairman James E. Hall points out that "examination of the Flight 800 flight-data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder did not indicate any unusual signals before the end of the data," and "it would be unusual if only one airplane operating in the area was affected by EMI or HIRF. The flight crews of other airplanes operating nearby did not report any problems with their airplanes." Ms. Scarry disputes this. She underlines there were some "unusual signals" on the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) of Flight 800. The pilot commented on a "crazy" fuel gauge shortly before the plane blew up. As for other aircraft reporting problems while flying in the vicinity, the crew of a U.S. Navy P3 plane did file a report of multiple difficulties, some "possibly electrical," after their return to base. Ms. Scarry asks Mr. Hall if these reports, made available to citizens under the Freedom of Information Act, have been studied and considered by the safety board. What Ms. Scarry seems not to realize, is that a fuel gauge with a tic is hardly an "unusual signal." If there were any causal connection between HIRF and a fuel indicator going "crazy," we would have to conclude that every 10th flight encounters HIRF. As for the gripes of the P3's crew, pilots routinely present mechanics with a so-called "squawk list." Before one could see significance in a particular P3's squawk list for July 17, 1996, one would have to compare it with the squawk list of the same P3, as well as other P3s, for random days before and after the event. Whatever her understanding of aviation matters, Ms. Scarry displays considerable dexterity in manipulating bureaucracies. In one of her letters to Mr. Hall, she writes: "Several distinguished scientists -- upon learning of the Safety Board's inclusion of the subject of HIRFs in its TWA 800 inquiry -- have recently stated to me their own sense of the importance of including the possible effects of military and civilian electromagnetic transmissions in the inquiry (quite apart from whether a High Intensity Radiated Field event is in the end found to be the cause of the plane's fall)." Then she lists some eminent names in the field, such as Robert L. Walker, professor of physics (emeritus) at Caltech. This sounds impressive, until one remembers that asking a scientist if he would like to see "the possible effects of military and civilian electromagnetic transmissions" included in an National Transportation Safety Board inquiry will very likely elicit an affirmative answer. EMI is a stimulating topic, and from a scientist's point of view, broadening an inquiry cannot hurt. What is so dazzling is Ms. Scarry's use of general interest by renowned experts as if it amounted to a validation of her theory. THE EGYPTAIR SEQUEL In her most recent essay, Ms. Scarry allows at the outset that Flight 990 does not fit her pattern in many ways. The EgyptAir jet that was lost on the night of Oct. 31, 1999, took off on a Sunday at 1:19, not on a Wednesday at 20:19. Furthermore, Flight 990 didn't follow the same departure route along the coast of Long Island. It headed south into W-105, one of several military warning zones along the coast, before being routed east across the Atlantic. Routings through military zones are routine whenever they are not "hot." But the most significant difference is that the Egyptian transport neither exploded nor caught fire in the air. It just dove into the ocean after 31 minutes of flight, about 60 nautical miles off Nantucket. As far as could be determined from the jet's cockpit voice and flight-data recorders or "black boxes," it had suffered no systems failure before it began its fatal dive. EgyptAir was late in departing JFK on the night of Oct. 31. Owing to some oversight, its flight plan was not entered into the ATC computers. As a result, the flight had to be "manually" handed off from one controller to the next. Such mix-ups are not infrequent. Ms. Scarry herself agrees they do not necessarily point to anything sinister. However, she feels these details illustrate the complexity of the external environment, in which a civilian plane on an unexpected flight path could startle military onlookers into zapping it with some secret beam of electromagnetic interrogation, which might then knock it out of the sky. Ms. Scarry provides no evidence for such a killer beam; she only calls on the authorities to look into it. No member of the travelling public would object to this, I suppose, though most people might be content to leave it to the investigators of the Canadian Transportation Safety Board or the National Transportation Safety Board. Ms. Scarry's strongest point concerns the haste with which the authorities appear to have concluded -- and then leaked to the media -- that EgyptAir's cruise relief pilot, 59-year-old Gamil al-Batouti, intentionally crashed into the ocean, killing himself along with 217 others. I consider this haste on the part of the normally super-cautious safety board investigators as puzzling as Ms. Scarry. Even without a systems failure, many explanations other than pilot suicide could account for a sudden dive into the ocean. For instance, there is pilot incapacitation. A 59-year-old airman might disengage the autopilot for any number of legitimate reasons, then suffer some kind of seizure eight seconds later. This could account for all items on the voice and data recorder tapes. DOUBTING THOMASES Conspiracy buffs assume officials tend to lie, especially in security affairs, whether they have good reasons or not. Trusting souls assume that in a democracy, officials tell the truth, even about military matters, and when they do withhold information, they have valid security concerns. What conspiracy theorists and trusting souls have in common is that both will be right and wrong from time to time. CONCLUSION Perhaps one day, we will find out Ms. Scarry was right after all. Despite our current understanding, the loss of TWA 800, Swissair 111 and even EgyptAir 990 may turn out to have been caused by High Intensity Radiated Field events. As long as we have no answer for some things -- and we have none for the actual ignition source in TWA's centre fuel tank -- we cannot absolutely exclude any answer. Suppose new evidence, whether of an official cover-up or a scientific understanding not available today, confirmed an EMI/HIRF event. Would then those who have been unimpressed by Ms. Scarry's theories owe her an apology? I do not think so. A possible EMI/HIRF occurrence was not an original hypothesis contributed by Ms. Scarry. As Mr. Hall pointed out in his April, 1998, letter, "[t]he Safety Board's investigative team has considered the possibility that EMI or HIRF was a factor in the accident." Board investigators looked at this theory before they had ever heard of the Harvard professor and her fascination with airline crashes. Whether the first to think of it or not, Ms. Scarry would still deserve credit if she had furnished evidence of EMI/HIRF as a factor in the mishaps. But Ms. Scarry has offered no evidence. She just seems enraptured by the concept, and has pestered the transportation safety board to consider it. The board did consider EMI/HIRF independently of Ms. Scarry in the TWA crash. The fact Ms. Scarry continues to push her notion, in a tone suggesting no result will satisfy her unless it confirms her hunch, is proof of her persistence, but not of the persuasiveness of her argument. If Ms. Scarry were a fortune teller instead of a celebrated academic, if she claimed the cause of the disasters came to her in a dream, it is unlikely The New York Review of Books would continue printing her ruminations. The fact it does, proves the power of neat copy. Since Ms. Scarry surrounds her hunch with the apparatus of scholarly presentation, and uses her formidable way with words to dish up what would otherwise be dismissed as another conspiracy theory by a crank, her dissertation is treated with respect. In my opinion, it need not be. Based on what we know today, the theory that electromagnetic emissions from military sources is the cause of these particular accidents is to science what Oliver Stone is to history. As for what we may discover in the future, who knows? Whatever it is, I doubt it will improve Ms. Scarry's standing as an aeronautical Sherlock Holmes. She has merely postulated the improbable without having come close to eliminating the impossible. In short, she is guessing -- and a guess is just a guess, even if it turns out to be inspired or lucky. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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