Raytheon, and Hani Hanjour's flight of fantasy

[Minstrel Boy]

Raytheon is a leading defense contractor, and is responsible for "Global Hawk" and remote control technologies beloved of the Pentagon.

There are some funny things about Raytheon.

A USA Today story from October 2001, announced that Raytheon had remote-flown a FedEx 727 to a safe landing on a New Mexico air force base in August 2001, without a pilot.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/techreviews/2001/10/2/remote-pilot.htm

On at least three of the four sparsely occupied hijacked flights, there was a Raytheon employee. Including, on Flight 77, the plane which hit the Pentagon, Stanley Hall, director of program management for Raytheon's Electronics Warfare Division. A colleague called him "our dean of electronic warfare" (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/12/victim-capsule-flight77.htm).

Also, in the days following 9/11, at least some of the bin Laden family were flown out on private planes from Raytheon's own airfields.

Now, about Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot of Flight 77.

He was so unskilled, he'd been denied a Cessna just three weeks before. He'd tried to learn to fly for years, but his instructor found him hopeless.

Yet three weeks later, Hanjour is said to have piloted a commercial airliner at 500 miles per hour so aerobatically a flight controller believed she was following the path of an F-18, perform a 270 degree spiralling descent of 5,000 feet over Washington in a matter of seconds, going out of his way to hit the Navy side of the five-storey high Pentagon: the one side which was virtually empty and undergoing reconstruction, and the only side whose exterior wall had been hardened to withstand attack.

Here's a MIHOP speculation: to ensure the hijackers did the damage, and only the damage the cabal needed, control was taken from them while in flight.

Whatever became of the black boxes of the WTC and Pentagon planes? The electronic readings and the cockpit conversations may have been illuminating.

[Bolo Boffin]

1. Doesn't this belong in the 9/11 forum?

[Minstrel Boy]

4. No. Posted by Admin. today:

There is no rule requiring threads to be moved to the 9/11 forum

I have asked people complaining about this to send me links, but I have so far not received any. The request still stands.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=120&topic_id=10009

[Bolo Boffin]

9. So what's the new info here that requires this to be in GD?

I'm not understanding the recent push to get 9/11 related subject matter into the General Discussion forum.

[Minstrel Boy]

23. Don't you know?

It's COINTELPRO, baby. :evilgrin:

Okay, sorry - "what's the new info here?"

Well, if you knew all of this already, please put your hand up.

[number6]

2. amazing how old Hani could fly 40 ft of the ground..

at 400 mph, knock down light poles, crash right into
the 1st n 2nd floor on the pentagon without plowing
into the ground or skimming the roof ...
truly amazing :shrug: ...and the dude couldn't fly a Cessna
worth a shit.. nothin to be skeptical :eyes: about
..no sir ee

[Bolo Boffin]

10. Aerobatic Flight Techniques

http://store.pilotshopworld.com/skaeflte.html

For 20 dollars, you too can learn to bank an aircraft.

[number6]

14. wow for 20 bucks I can learn to bank a 757 , fly 40 ft off

the deck, knock down 30 ft tall light poles and
crash into the 1st floor of a Bldg, WITHOUT messen up
the grass wooo - eeee
...:wow: ... kick ass

[Minstrel Boy]

3. A visual aid:

The cockpit of a Cessna, which was beyond Hanjour's ability in mid-August of 2001:



The cockpit of a 767, which he is said to have piloted on Sept 11 at 500 miles per hour, managing a 270 degree spiralling descent of 5,000 feet to plant the jet in the ground floor of the Pentagon:

[Bolo Boffin]

5. This Hani Hanjour?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/09/eveningnews/main525012.shtml

CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewarthas learned that the surveillance flights were conducted prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. Hani Hanjour, the hijacker who is believed to have piloted American Airlines Flight 77 that struck the Pentagon, conducted test runs in careful preparation for the final attack.

Law enforcement officials tell Stewart they have now confirmed that Hanjour rented small aircrafts in the Maryland and New York areas three weeks before the attacks.

They say he made practice flights using those aircrafts in the vicinity of both the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers. The purpose of the flights, officials surmise, was to study landmarks and examine possible approach routes to the targets.

[number6]

7. so, can I see a copy of the rental records please ?

;)

[Bolo Boffin]

8. I'm guessing that CBS saw the records before reporting this...

...unless you think they're in on the conspiracy.

[number6]

12. great, I'd still like to see em myself

not like I don't trust the corporate monopoly "news"
propaganda media, but you know how us tinfoil nutters are ..
;) :smoke: :tinfoilhat:

[Minstrel Boy]

26. No, this Hani Hanjour. From Newsday:

This fleshes out the story of the "test runs" alluded to in the CBS story:

"At Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md., 20 miles west of Washington, flight instructor Sheri Baxter instantly recognized the name of alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour when the FBI released a list of 19 suspects in the four hijackings. Hanjour, the only suspect on Flight 77 the FBI listed as a pilot, had come to the airport one month earlier seeking to rent a small plane.

"However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons."

http://www.newsday.com/ny-usflight232380680sep23.story

[Aries]

6. I guess he was so unskilled, he had to turn on the automatic pilot...

Which then proceeded to fly like Chuck Yaeger.

http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/news/planes_reconstruction.htm#aa77

"...Authorities contend that Hanjour was at the controls and that the plane may have been on autopilot.

Controllers say the plane crossed the Pentagon at 7,000 feet and then made a sweeping circle to the right, during which time it dropped down to near surface level.

The plane swept low over a traffic-jammed highway and slammed into the western face of the building at 9:45...."

You know, I would almost be tempted to accept the findings of the "independent" 9/11 commission if they could clear up this one anomaly. But it would probably be like pulling a thread, and the whole sweater would come unravelled, so I'm not breathless with anticipation.

[number6]

11. old Hani should have rented a 757 to do his practice runs

er by the way I'd like to see all the paper work for
all 4 pilots licenses ..

[Bolo Boffin]

13. You would think that Raytheon could have kept their employees...

...off those flights, since their Global Hawk technology was going to be used to seize the airplanes. Sounds like a pretty poor way to organize a fake hijacking.

[number6]

15. you know boloboffin, I think your a little too interested in this

9-11 stuff :tinfoilhat: :smoke: ;)

[Bolo Boffin]

16. Excuse me?

What are you implying?

[number6]

19. what me imply

:evilgrin: :D

[Bolo Boffin]

21. I'm sorry?

Are you afraid to explain yourself? You made the remark but you won't stand by it. Hm.

[number6]

25. sarcasm bolo, dark humor

like my work is so secret I don't know what im doing
or "If I tell you... I'll have to kill you"
or are you men in black, cointelpro
lighten up bolo >>humor<<

[seventhson]

17. Intelligence reports in July 2001 said Osama would use remote control

to fly jets into American targets.

It was reported HERE on July 3, 2001:


http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html


Maybe the Raytheon guy needed to die or disappear. Maybe he sopulda talked and it was all poetic justice. Maybe he's in the BFEE witness protection program living high on opium in Afghanistan and a huge paycheck.

The fact that Hatfild reported the remote control aspect and that the technology exists and has been used (and that Hatfield was "suicided" two weeks after this story was published after getting BFEE death threats against him and his family)
makes this story all the more important.

The remote control aspect always seemed feasible on 9-11, just as the emp scenario seems most likely in Pennsylvania crash on 9-11 AND in Wellstone's murder.

I believe it.

[Minstrel Boy]

22. The last thing James Hatfield ever wrote, wasn't it?

July 3, 2001:

"According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

"Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?"

James Hatfield, author of Fortunate Son, found dead in a hotel room of a drug overdose, on July 18.

[Bolo Boffin]

24. The "high profile American target" in Hatfield's article...

...is Dubya. This is referring to the possible attempt on Dubya's life at the G8.

[paulthompson]

18. This Hani Hanjour

The one, that in Jan. 2001, a flight school manager said,

"I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52408,00.html

He was so bad, the school reported him to the FAA to have his license taken away. (Yet another 9/11 mystery is how he got the license in the first place - the FBI won't say where or when)

A pilot so bad, that even in the middle of August 2001 he was unable to fly a small plane solo, and the instructor tried to talk him out of ever being a pilot.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A59451-2001Oct14¬Found=true

Yet,

"Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm..."

This page has a lot more links:

http://home.earthlink.net/~killtown/flight77/hijackers.html

Given that Hanjour at best had marginal flying skills, why would al-Qaeda have put their most important operation ever in the hands of such a dimwitted buffoon, who apparently even had such a slim grasp of the basics of hygiene that he had a film of green slime on his teeth?

Oh, and by the way Minstrel Boy, nice find with that AP/USA Today story.

[Bolo Boffin]

20. And yet a few days later, he's renting planes and flying them around DC

He seems to have brushed up.

[Minstrel Boy]

27. Hardly. He was with an instructor, and the instructor

refused him rental without more lessons:

"At Freeway Airport in Bowie, Md., 20 miles west of Washington, flight instructor Sheri Baxter instantly recognized the name of alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour when the FBI released a list of 19 suspects in the four hijackings. Hanjour, the only suspect on Flight 77 the FBI listed as a pilot, had come to the airport one month earlier seeking to rent a small plane.

"However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons."

http://www.newsday.com/ny-usflight232380680sep23.story

[number6]

29. yes , allegedly "he's renting planes and flying them around DC"

"However, when Baxter and fellow instructor Ben Conner took the slender, soft-spoken Hanjour on three test runs during the second week of August, they found he had trouble controlling and landing the single-engine Cessna 172. Even though Hanjour showed a federal pilot's license and a log book cataloging 600 hours of flying experience, chief flight instructor Marcel Bernard declined to rent him a plane without more lessons."

color me skeptical about Hani's pilot skills ...

[paulthompson]

28. Hanjour or...?

I too would like to see more evidence supporting that. Where are the eyewitnesses, who for all we know probably would say, "yeah, we let him fly a bit in mid-August, but boy did he suck."

But even if he was taking some more flights, he was doing it badly. Here's a guy who studied flying on and off for ten years and still sucked, was repeatedly called hopeless, and suddenly he's supposed to become a decent pilot in the last three weeks?

And again, why on Earth would al-Qaeda give such an important job to such a doofus? They had years to find four good pilots. Even some of the other hijackers on some of the other planes (aside from the three other pilots) probably had better flying skills than Hanjour - though it's not widely reported, some of the others did do some flight training.

Then there's the curious fact that there was no seat assignment for him on the plane (there is a belated story of him buying a ticket, but still no seat assignment).

I don't think Hanjour was the pilot. This gets back to the whole issue of some of the hijackers not being who the FBI says they are.

[number6]

30. right on Paul T

:thumbsup: great points ...

[paulthompson]

31. So...

Does boloboffin still think Hanjour was the great pilot to fly Flight 77 into the Pentagon?

[Minstrel Boy]

33. Hanjour was a worse pilot than Oswald was a marksman...

I guess they both got lucky, eh?

More on Hanjour's skillset:

"In the spring of 2000, Hanjour had asked to enroll in the CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale, Ariz., for advanced training, said the center's attorney, Gerald Chilton Jr. Hanjour had attended the school for three months in late 1996 and again in December 1997 but never finished coursework for a license to fly a single-engine aircraft, Chilton said.

"When Hanjour reapplied to the center last year, 'We declined to provide training to him because we didn't think he was a good enough student when he was there in 1996 and 1997' Chilton said."
http://www.newsday.com/ny-usflight232380680sep23.story

And yet The Washington Post wrote on Sept 12, before the identification of Hanjour:

"...just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers' screens, the sources said.

"Less than an hour after two other jets demolished the World Trade Center in Manhattan, Flight 77 carved a hole in the nation's defense headquarters, a hole five stories high and 200 feet wide.

"Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm, possibly one of the hijackers. Someone even knew how to turn off the transponder, a move that is considerably less than obvious."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A14365-2001Sep11¬Found=true

[Robb]

32. How do ya figger that Raytheon

"Is responsible for" Global Hawk?

What about Northrop Grumman, who got $70 billion to build the prototypes? How about TRA? Hughes? Loral? How come their execs didn't get on the plane?

"On at least three of the four sparsely occupied hijacked flights, there was a Raytheon employee."

Now I'd like to call on our statistics people... Go! :D

Any other huge companies have employees on three or four planes? Did you check? Or are you just picking what facts you think are interesting and supportive of a theory? :thumbsdown:

[Minstrel Boy]

34. Raytheon electronic components are used in Global Hawk.

It was sloppy of me to seemingly suggest Raytheon was wholly responsible. And Raytheon's significance to remote control flight technology is not limited to a single weapons platform.

And yeah, it would be interesting to see how many other companies had such representation on the flights. At least three of four is, I think, statistically significant for a company of Raytheon's size and strategic value, and for flights so sparsely filled.

But hey, it could mean nothing at all. As I said in my original post re: assuming control mid-flight, this line of inquiry is currently pure speculation. It's just one that makes more sense to me than the official story.

[Minstrel Boy]

35. about Flight 77's flight voice recorder

I've read variously that it was said to contain nothing useful, or that the data was unrecoverable. (Mid-September 2001, Robert Mueller said the FBI "had not gotten any information from the voice data recorder from Flight 77." http://www.sptimes.com/News/091501/Worldandnation/FBI_analyzing_voice__.shtml)

The data recorder was solid state and located in the tail section. It had an impact tolerance of 3,400 Gs /6.5ms and a fire resistance of 1100 deg C /30 minutes.

A solid-state data recorder of the type used on Flight 77 has never been destroyed upon a crash.

From Scientific American, September 2000:

Certification tests ensure that flight recorders are crashworthy by simulating the extreme conditions of an aviation catastrophe.

A. Crash Impact Test: a gas gun shoots the recorder into an aluminum target, producing a maximum force of 3,400 g's.


B. Penetration Resistance Test: a 500-pound weight with a hardened steel spike is dropped on the recorder from a height of 10 feet.


C. Static Crush Test: an actuator applies 5,000 pounds of pressure.


D. Deep Sea Submersion Test: the recorder must survive 24 hours in a chamber filled with pressurized seawater.


E. Fire Protection: it is subjected to flames of 1,100 degrees Celsius.


http://sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0003BC0F-DDD0-1C73-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2

[paulthompson]

36. black boxes

Minstrel Boy,

Airliners typically have two black boxes. Both black boxes for Flights 77 and 93 were found.

It's very curious too that the four black boxes for the flights crashing into the WTC were never found. For instance, reports said one of the cockpits survived nearly intact, complete with a burnt body still strapped into one of the pilot's seats. One of the black boxes is put right in that area.

The duration and intensity of the WTC fires - black boxes are supposed to withstand that, esp. as we're finding out the fires didn't rage so hot for so long after all.

The WTC collapses were pretty intense events, and I could see a box or two being destroyed. But all four? Especially when so much plane wreckage survived, from rows of seats to even Satam al Suqami's passport (supposedly, anyways, cough cough).

[Minstrel Boy]

37. Of all the jets, it's the voice recorder from flight 93,

the one plane which did not strike a target, which is said to have been recoverable, and given a partial release.

It survived a high-speed crash, nose first into the ground. Yet all recorders from the other three were either destroyed or never found. Funny, that.

[Serenity-NOW]

38. Funny thing about that crash

Since there was no wreckage to speak of, not just black boxes, no seats, wings, bodies or anything.

[Minstrel Boy]

39. the crash was funny, but not that funny.

Conspiracy researcher John Judge's refutation of the "no-plane" thesis:

1. It's route was followed from Ohio and announced in advance and reported on up to and including the hit. We in DC knew it was coming at us for at least 30 minutes, and for much longer at the Pentagon. The plane was never "lost to radar" for 30 minutes, only for a few when its abrupt turn left spotters in the tower looking in the direction of its previous course and not finding it. Turning off the transponder only turns off an identifying tag, it does not cause any inability to see the plane on radar. Beyond all the FAA and NORAD radar tracking it, there is separate and special radar on 24/7 in the P-56 restricted area around DC and even radar on the roof of the Pentagon that was pointed out to me in 1998 as "watching the skies to make sure they don't fly a plane in here". The "they" referred to "Muslims" who had been calling in death threats daily, supposedly.

2. Eyewitness accounts abound in the local area, and people were quoted all day on the local news who saw the plane hit. I have since spoken to at least half a dozen people who were eyewitness to the event and saw the plane make the descending loop and fly along Wilson Blvd and then so low it took off lamppost lights. Some people hit the ground it was coming in so low. Ground crew members who survived the crash, and not all did, were describing their own horror on local news afterwards. One woman in the building saw the tip of the nose crash through her office. We know the plane hit here in DC, because people saw it, hundreds of them.

3. As to the amount of damage done, much is made by the speculators of the fact that the wings did not punch a larger hole in the building. What is in the wings of those planes? The fuel. The wings disintegrated on first contact, and the explosion started when the plane bottomed out just short of contact with the building and bounced into it. The construction crews were burned alive, not crushed by debris. Only 15 people died inside the building of the 185 total, 164 passengers and crew were on the plane, and the rest of the dead were workers outside. That side of the Pentagon was virtually empty and had been for some time because the building had been under reconstruction quite visibly on that side for 5-6 years and part of that was to reinforce the building from external attack. In fact some photos show the difference in damage on either side of that reinforcement work and it is striking. That plane went 270 degrees out of its way at high speed, a very sophisticated maneuver with no possible military advantage, to hit the empty side of the Pentagon. There, as in New York, I would argue that they minimized the number of deaths by timing and method of attack.

4. I thought that day when Flight 77 and its Dulles/LAX route were announced that a fellow researcher and dear friend had died because she rides that flight all the time as an airline attendant for American. As fate would have it she was home caring for her dying father that day and survived. But her friends did not. She was taken, with other attendants and ground crews who had worked that route into the crash site to view the wreckage. She clearly recognized parts of the plane she had ridden in hundreds of times and identified items. She was also shown autopsy photos and forensic evidence photos which included a severed arm. From the bracelet on the arm she knew it was the remains of her best friend at work.

There is no question that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Remaining agnostic on this point also gives ammunition to the perpetrators of the stand-down and serves to discredit the other good work that continues to be done about the reality of what happened that day. It is my feeling that this thesis was actually part of an intentional disinformation campaign that spreads red herrings to discredit the real findings. "These conspiracy theorists will believe anything" say our detractors. Let's discover and present the hard facts and force the coincidence theorists to come up with plausible explanations instead of spewing out speculations we cannot back up and leaving ourselves on the defensive.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/f77FoF.html