Humint Events Online: 9/11 Hijacker Tactics, Part II

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

9/11 Hijacker Tactics, Part II

(Part I is the previous post)

Besides knives and boxcutters, the hijackers supposedly used mace and/or pepper spray as well as fake bombs.

While the fake bombs might scare some passengers, I do not think that a bomb-like device would help them get rid of the pilot and co-pilot, which was essential to their scheme. In other words, if the hijackers were going to blow the plane up, whhy would they care about who is flying it? Also, it is not clear how they got these devices on board in the first place-- surely something obviously bomb-like would have been detected by even the worst airport screener. Did the hijackers assemble the "bomb" in flight? This is somewhat hard to believe. The fake bomb device actually sounds quite a bit like what was used in the terror drills run on airplanes prior to 9/11, as described by Nico Haupt and his colleagues.

With regard to the mace and/or pepper spray, when used with a good knife, this could indeed be a deadly combination. That is, spray mace/pepper spray in the eyes to disable the person, then stab them. Although a bit tricky to pull off, this could work. It is not clear if this tactic was used however. The 9/11 Commission report only refers to using mace/pepper spray as a way of clearing out the passengers from the front of the plane. If the hijackers indeed did this, it is incomprehensible that one of the flight attendents wouldn't call the cockpit and warn the pilots of a hijacking. And then the pilots should have alerted air traffic control. Again-- the fact that this didn't happen is a giant hole in the official 9/11 narrative.

Mace/pepper spray in theory should have been something that wouldn't have been allowed on the plane. It is not clear why the hijackers would have taken a chance of this getting caught before they boarded. But if they indeed got it on board, then this could have increased their effectiveness significantly.

I still don't understand how the mace/pepper spray would prevent a pilot or co-pilot from punching in the hijacking code to the transponder or just making a radio call to ATC that there was a hijacking.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

Powered by Blogger