Hijacked MH370 Abductees Search 'Smokescreen'

The Malay government has said that MH370 was hijacked, either remotely or pre-programmed to fly off of its flight path to Beijing, as reported Friday by CBS News. If correct, 239 passengers were either kidnapped or rendered. The issue at hand is whether officials and the public need to face facts about “smokescreen pings,” as experts describe below, and a cyber war in the U.S.-led “war on terror” with a hallmark of secretly rendering persons of interest and detaining them in black sites.

239 MH370 passengers kidnapped or rendered?

In criminal law, kidnapping is taking away or transporting a person against that person’s will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority. This may be done for ransom or in furtherance of another crime.

In today’s U.S. so-called “war on terror”, it claims global authority for the CIA to illegally kidnap or “render” any individual anywhere in the world and take that person to another country against their will. While this illegal practice began under President George W Bush, President Obama has maintained it.

“Under executive orders issued by Obama, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States. 

“Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street. – LA Times

Extraordinary rendition or irregular rendition is apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another. During the U.S. ”war on terror” under President George W. Bush, the term became associated with US practices of abducting and transferring “terrorism suspects” to countries known to employ torture for interrogating. The process has continued under President Barack Obama, although new rules claim to prevent torture of abducted individuals. In August 2009, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder accepted results of the Special Task Force on Interrogations and Transfer Policies: the U.S. will be limited to seek “assurances from the receiving country” as such.

Dog and pony show coming to en end

Finally, officials have largely rulied out a fire causing the plane to go missing. As independent researchers have argued for weeks, officials now says a fire severe enough to disable pilots or cause various systems on the jet to go haywire, for instance, almost certainly wouldn’t allow a big jet to keep cruising for hours without compromising the structure or additional critical aircraft systems. 

No physical evidence exists as the result of the MH370 Search and Rescue (SAR) TV drama. 

Officials have said since week one of the MH370 humanitarian crisis that the jetliner was hijacked, probably remotely, like a smart plane or a drone. Now, U.S. investigators reportedly increasingly suspect whoever hijacked MH370 programmed its flight-control computer to guide the plane through a series of predetermined navigational points, and the route was keyed in before the jet disappeared from radar, two unnamed people briefed on the probe now say, according to WSJ.

Now, officials increasingly concur the hijacker pre-programmed the flight path, before the plane departed Kuala Lumpur. One interesting related fact is that the flight had an unexplained last minute gate change, never accounted for by officials.

Only two publically available pieces of evidence exist that link the jetliner to the southern Indian Ocean where officials determined the focus of the SAR needed to be conducted: Inmarsat data, that experts agree was nothing more than a “smokescreen,” and the Maldives islanders’ eyewitness accounts, that officials simply dismissed. Nevertheless, a conclusion based on the UK’s Inmarsat led to abandoning all earlier search areas, and concentrating all efforts on the Australian-led area

Inmarsat Smokescreen

A Malaysian government report dated March 25 described a new analysis by the U.K.-based satellite operator Inmarsat PLC. It showed Inmarsat had developed an “innovative technique” to establish that the plane probably headed south after “vanishing.” Independent experts who analyzed that report, however, said it is riddled with inconsistencies. Even worse, those experts say data that the report presents to justify its conclusion of a crash in the Indian Ocean appear to have been fudged.

The UK-based Inmarsat has a history of not aiding humanitarian search and rescue missions of individuals deemed terror suspects or non-combatant enemies of the U.S. who were rendered to or through Diego Garcia for “enhanced interrogation” (torture). In fact, the UK involvement in the US kidnapping, detaining in secret black sites and torturing has been “beyond complicity.” [New Chilling MH370 Diego Garcia Links, April 12, 2014) Yet the entire Indian Ocean SAR focus has been dependent on the UK's Inmarsat.

Background

 The New York Times has cited two anonymous U.S. officials saying that MH370's first turn was not made by someone manually overriding Flight 370's flight computer by grabbing the controls, but rather by someone with sufficient knowledge of the aircraft to change the destination in that computer. The process to change the Boeing 777's destination only involves "seven or eight keystrokes" and implies someone with a working knowledge of the aircraft was in the cockpit to make the change, either just before or after take-off. US officials report that the change could have been pre-programmed into the computer, implying it could have been done without the pilot ever knowing it had happened, as any targeted individual knows can happen with computers. 

People (unnamed) briefed on the probe said investigators suspected the plane's initial turn to the west was programmed manually using the flight computer, but they now believe the rest of the route through the strait also might have been executed the same way.

During the first few days after MH370 "disappeared," (except perhaps the U.S. military, the Central Intelligence Agency and possibly other nations' military forces) supposedly no one had any idea what happened to the jetliner after it left Malaysian radar coverage around 2:30 a.m. local time on March 8. Malaysia Airlines (MAS) did not issue a media statement about the crisis until 07:24, one hour after the Boeing was scheduled to arrive in Beijing. The statement was that contact with the flight had been lost by Malaysian ATC at 02:40.

Later, it emerged that Subang Air Traffic Control lost contact with the jetliner at 01:22, but failed to notify Malaysia Airlines until 02:40. Neither crew nor the onboard communication systems relayed a distress signal, indications of bad weather, or technical problems before the aircraft "vanished from radar screens."

On 11 March, Inmarsat gave a partner company its data analysis and other documents indicating the plane was nowhere near either side of Malaysia, where more countries and ships had been searching three days since the plane disappeared. That information was relayed to Malaysian officials by Wednesday, March 12. Inmarsat shared the same information with British security and air-safety officials on Wednesday, according to two people briefed on the investigation. (Wall Street Journal) Four days passed before the SAR team officials allowed Malaysian government to provide satellite data showing Flight 370 flew several hours away from the original search area.  

Disclosures about how that information made its way into the investigation "underline how international efforts to find the plane have been repeatedly marred by distrust among the countries involved," WSJ reported, without naming countries. According to the Malaysian government, its hands were tied: It was not to make any public statement without all key leaders involved in the SAR concurring.

Inmarsat documents included a map showing two divergent north and south corridors for the plane's route stretching some 3,000 miles from the plane's last previously known location. New Scientist reported that, before the aircraft's disappearance, two Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) reports were automatically issued to engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce's monitoring centre in the United Kingdom, and The Wall Street Journal, citing US government sources, asserted that Rolls-Royce received an aircraft health report every thirty minutes for five hours, implying the aircraft remained aloft for four hours after its transponder went offline.

The next day, Hishamuddin Hussein, acting Minister of Transport, refuted details The Wall Street Journal had reported. He asserted that the final engine transmission was at 01:07 MYT, before the flight's disappearance from secondary radar. The WSJ then amended its report and stated the belief of continued flight was "based on analysis of signals sent by the Boeing 777's satellite-communication link... the link operated in a kind of standby mode and sought to establish contact with a satellite or satellites. These transmissions did not include data..."

Inmarsat said on March 14 that "routine, automated signals were registered" on its network, and analysis of "keep-alive message[s]” that continued to be sent after air traffic control first lost contact could help pinpoint the aircraft’s location.  Inmarsat did not provide its information directly to the Malaysia government, Instead, it provided its information to a corporation that in turn, gave it to the Malaysia government.

“This information was provided to our partner SITA, which in turn has shared it with Malaysia Airlines,” Inmarsat stated in a written statement on the 14th. SITA, originally known as Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, is a multinational information technology corporation that specializes in providing IT and telecommunication services to the air transport industry – for a fee. SITA is owned by members of the air transport industry, who make up the SITA Board and SITA Council. 

“Constant mobile innovation promises to reshape the entire passenger journey,” says Allison ONeill, VP of Passenger Solutions at SITA.

“In the latest issue of Air Transport IT Review see why all eyes are fixed on mobility to provide better service for today’s travelers,” SITA boasts on its website.

A week passed before Inmarsat reported its engineers noticing that in the hours after the Boeing 777 disappeared, it continued exchanging data-less electronic handshakes, or “pings,” with a geostationary satellite over the Indian Ocean – eight pings in total.

“Each ping conveyed only a tiny amount of data: the time it was received, the distance the airplane was from the satellite at that instant, and the relative velocity between the airplane and the satellite,” explains Jeff Wise of Slate. “Taken together, these tiny pieces of information made it possible to narrow the range of possible routes that the plane might have taken.”

If the plane was presumed to have traveled south at a steady 450 knots, for instance, Inmarsat could trace a curving route that wound up deep in the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia, according to Wise. Based on Inmarsat data, ships and planes began scouring that part of the ocean.

Each time satellite imagery revealed a scattering of pollution and debris in the area, media declared it “Breaking News”; officials said it was ”new and credible information”; and then it was declared another false lead – making for an extended TV “news” performance sham. Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott even declared in front of parliament that the latest satelite imagery represented “new and credible information” about the fate of the airplane, yet it was preditably another false alarm.

Ping data “ambiguous’ at best

“Given a presumed starting point, any reconstructed route could have headed off in either direction,” Wise says. “A plane following the speed and heading to arrive at the southern search area could have also headed to the north and wound up in Kazakhstan. Why, then, were investigators scouring the south and not the north?”

According to the March 25 report, Inmarsat used a new kind of mathematical analysis to rule out a northern route.

“Without being very precise in its description, it implied that the analysis might have depended on a small but telling wobble of the Inmarsat satellite’s orbit,” Wise says.

Accompanying the written report was an appendix, Annex I, that consists of three diagrams, the second titled MH370 measured data against predicted tracks. This second one appears to summarize the case against the northern route in what Wise calls “one compelling image.”

One line on the graph showed the predicted Doppler shift for a plane traveling a northern route. A second line showed the predicted Doppler shift for a plane flying a southern route. A third line showed actual data received by Inmarsat. The third line matched the southern route almost perfectly, and looked markedly different from the northern route. Case closed. No more interviewing passengers’ families. No more telling the public about the Maldives islanders’ reports. No mention about the US withholding concrete evidence – CIA radar data from Diego Garcia or Pine Gap in Australia.

(Photo image: Malaysia Airlines)

The report failed to explicitly enumerate the three data points for each ping. Nevertheless, around the world, enthusiasts from various disciplines “threw themselves into reverse-engineering that original data out of the charts and diagrams in the report,” Wise says. “With this information in hand, they believed, it would be possible to construct any number of possible routes and check the assertion that the plane must have flown to the south.”

It was soon clear that Inmarsat had presented its data in a way that made the SAR goal impossible. It furthered a wild goose chase for a jetliner that officials say was remotely hijacked and independent experts say neither disappeared nor crashed. 

According to the March 25 report, “Inmarsat teased out the small differences predicted to exist between the Doppler shift values between the northern and southern routes,” Wise said. “This difference, presumably caused by the slight wobble in the satellite’s orbit that I mentioned above, should be tiny—according to Exner’s analysis, no more than a few percent of the total velocity value. And yet Page 2 of the annex shows a radically different set of values between the northern and southern routes.”

Exner said, “Neither the northern or southern predicted routes make any sense.” 

Dance of Deliberate Deception

“Given the discrepancies and inaccuracies, it has proven impossible for independent observers to validate Inmarsat’s assertion that it can rule out a northern route for the airplane,” Wise says.

Hans Kruse, a professor of telecommunications systems at Ohio University, said, “It’s really impossible to reproduce what the Inmarsat folks claim. Inmarsat’s work has been presented to the public by authorities whose inconsistency and lack of transparency have time and again undermined public confidence. 

“It’s worrying that the report appears to have been composed in such a way as to make it impossible for anyone to independently assess its validity—especially given that its ostensible purpose was to explain to the world Inmarsat’s momentous conclusions. What frustrated, grieving family members need from the authorities is clarity and trustworthiness, not a smokescreen.”

Inmarsat has failed to reply to Wise’s request for clarification of their methods.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that in recent days, experts “recalibrated data” in part by using “arcane new calculations reflecting changes in the operating temperatures of an Inmarsat satellite as well as the communications equipment aboard the Boeing when the two systems exchanged so-called digital handshakes.” But again, as Wise says, simply not enough information exists for the public to assess validity of these methods.

“It would be nice if Inmarsat would throw open its spreadsheets and help resolve the issue right now, but that could be too much to expect,” asserts Wise.

Inmarsat might be bound by confidentiality agreements with customers, not to mention U.S. laws restricting releasing information about “sensitive technologies” and “threat to national security,” the standard excuse for withholding information in best interest of the public – humanity. Anything that stands in the way or challenges the Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance goal – control of everything and every one on the planet and in space – threatens ”national security.” Furthermore, anyone threatening U.S. national security is subject to kidnapping, rendering, and detaining in a secret black site.

That Malaysian authorities can release what they want to the public is a fallacy. The Malay government has been dependent on major U.S. agencies for intel and has indicated that others providing intel have not been transparent, and its SAR team (including mainly U.S.-based agencies) had to each agree to any statement before it could be made publicly regarding the SAR.

After the SAR team’s long resisting pressure to release the air traffic control transcript, it relented. Acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein says if and when the black boxes are found, their data will be released to the public – but others say that chase is simply part of the smokescreen.

With the search for surface debris winding down, to Wise and much of the rest of the world, the mystery of MH370 is looking more impenetrable by the moment. In actuality, progressive experts reporting on the mystery MH370 never thought that the debris search would reveal anything but a plethora of evidence that it was nothing more than an expensive media performance – as was the capping of Deepwater Horizon’ Macondo Prospect well, that was actually a media dog and pony show that revealed not the real well spewing, but another one that was leaking far less than the genuine problematic well.  

Wise says if the effort to find the plane using an underwater robot proves fruitless, (as predicted) there should be a long and sustained call for the Malaysian authorities to reveal their data and explain exactly how they came to their conclusions – because, “it will be all we’ve got,” Wise says.

In reality, however, each member of the SAR team led by the Malaysia government needs to disclose how they came to their conclusions. They also need to be held accountable for a wild goose chase amid a humanitarian crisis involving 239 kidnapped passengers of a hijacked plane remaining hidden, incommunicado, more than likely at one of dozens of the CIA’s black sites.