JFK "terror" plot: I smell a fish .. another red herring. Here is why ..

The US Attorney was hysterical. The FBI was gloom and doom. Against a backdrop of four more losers (reminiscent of the Miami guys .. or central casting for "C" flicks), the government mouthpieces spun a scenario of vast death and destruction from an attack on JFKs fuel supply. They kept emphasizing "jet fuel", because the public always assumes jet fuel is highly explosive. In fact, jet fuel is kerosene and is much less volatile and burns cooler than gasoline. Big fire? Yes. Black smoke? Yes. But, this is just more fear mongering. Opportunistic fear mongering.

To put the danger in perspective, were JFK's fuel supply blown-up, consider this: I survived the destruction of one of the largest fuel storage facilities (fuel dump) in the world, at the time. In 1971 a VC sapper unit infiltrated the huge P.O.L. (petroleum, oil, lubricants) dump at Cam Ranh Bay in Viet Nam. The explosions and fires were spectacular (and damn close, too). Millions of gallons of JP-4 and 145-octane Avgas burned for hours. Big fire; chokin' black smoke. The fuel dump was totally destroyed. But ... BUT!: There was not one US casualty during the whole conflagration.

Fuel farm and fuel pipeline fires tend to be spectacular, but self-contained. A big fire at JFKs fuel farm would not spread to the terminals (but other extremely well co-ordinated attacks could cause problems there, assuming these bozos had that capability). The economic disruption to JFK and the USA from an attack on the fuel farm would not be significant. The fuel farm attack at Cam Ranh Bay destroyed a hell of a lot of war materiel, but the war continued at the same pace. There was plenty of fuel to send my young ass back into the mouth of that cat-o-death for many, many nights to come.

like the guys who were maybe thinking about planning to blow up Chicago, the "Miami 7." If they were real professional terr'ists they'd have known it's pretty hard to blow up liquid jet fuel.

But, hey -- gotta keep the masses scared. Did the Terra Lert go up another notch yet?

As it is, she can't carry on a water bottle. I want sanity re-applied to airline safety. And Homeland Security abolished.

I saw the 1st Cav ammo dump go after a 122 strike in 1968. This was just before 2nd Brigade went into Khe Sanh, so there was a lot of extra stuff on hand. 4 underground tanks full of gasoline or something went up in succession. When the first one went you could see a gigantic mushroom cloud, and the concussion was terrific. I literally thought a nuke had gone off. I had been sitting on a bunker a couple miles away watching the fireworks (artillery rounds, flares, tracers, etc.) blowing when the first big boom came. I rolled backwards off the bunker. In the seconds afterwards, I was thinking "Oh, shit, I've been cooked. I wonder how long it will take for my face to fall off." There were 2 guys actually in the dump when it blew. They dove into a bunker. They survived with no harm I heard about, although for the next several days they went around saying "Eh?" a lot when you tried to talk to them.

The ammo dump at Cam Ranh was huge and that whole conflagration was un-contained. When each one of the 26 blockbuster bombs blew it would scatter smaller bombs and rockets all over the base. It lasted over 12 hours. Every 15,000-pounder created a giagantic mushroom cloud and a hell of a shock wave.


Morning after POL dump attack, Cam Ranh Bay 1971


Cam Ranh Bay ammo dump attack, 1971


26 of these suckers cooked-off from about 2 am until noon

by posting as if there was a real threat? We already know from comments from people that knew the victims that they would have never done such a thing.

op says there was not a threat, is blasting them for saying there was. Hmm, off to use search function for further enlightenment.

he is agreeing with Bush that there was a threat. He is giving support to the claim that these guys wanted to actually do this thing. He is framing the discussion in the way that they want us to. We should not do that. There was no threat, and talking as if there was and about the affects of the made-up threat, he is legitimizing Bush's claims. That is the huge problem here.

What? There was no threat, what bushites say was a threat was not a threat. That is what OP is saying. By saying there was no threat, OP is legitimizing Bush's claims and this is the huge problem here? Ohkay.

My head is spinning.

this is just like the dudes they rounded up im miami that were gonna blow the sears tower in chicago. no definitive plans, no material to do the deed, nothing besides a conversation or two of jacked up hyperbole, if even that. meanwhile, our ports go unprotected and millions of tons of cargo come into densely populated urban areas w/o ever being so much as even eyeballed. and the really dangerous mofos are the ones in the WH and the board rooms of somw the major multi-national corporations that are destroying this country. America can survive al-q and islamic extremists and even the christian extremists. but the corporate juggernaut is the one with the strangle hold.

Bring up a satellite photo of JFK Airport (Google Maps is a good choice). Center the map on the Terminal Area. Now follow the highway to the west until it reaches Federal Circle (just before the Belt Parkway). Now, keep going west along what is markerd as "Pan Am Ave" . See the round tanks across the waterway? That is the fuel farm that was at risk. About a mile from any of the passenger terminals, and close to only the long-term, parking lot. Blowing this up, (assuming this group of proto-terrorists could have figued out how) would have made for dramatic fil, and probably would have closed the adjacent runway for a while, but it would not have closed the airport or put many people in danger.

That being said, our reaction should not be "the Government is trying to gin up a fake threat to scare us". It should be "the Government's foolish adventure in Iraq has increased the "at home" threat by radicalizing our own citizens."

You know I respect your opinion on this kind of thing, having been in the thick of it.

Damn their fear mongering.

In other words, these were just another bunch of malcontents fantasizing what they could do if they had brains and ambition. There is no indication thus far that any of them had enough upstairs (or in the bank) to assemble the means to mount such an attack.

Excuse me if I'm not terribly impressed yet.

I want to see how long it takes before it comes out that a govt plant was the one who urged them on.

CNN interviewed a guy from the Terrorism Task Force (I think) and HE SAID this was being investigated for several years, and we all caled it mission impossible. The plan these guys had couldn't have succeeded!

As soon as I heard that guy, I knew the whole thing was just another scare tactic!!!!!

But a spokesman for Buckeye Partners said, "Pipelines don't blow up"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/nyregion/03plot.html?...

But a spokesman for Buckeye Partners, the company that operates the pipeline, said that an explosion at a fuel-tank farm at the airport would not ignite the pipeline.

“It’s not like the pipeline is a stick of dynamite and the whole thing would blow up,” said Roy Haase, the Buckeye spokesman. “Pipelines don’t blow up.”


So who's telling the truth? The US Attorney for NY OR the spokesman for the Pipeline Company? This story is only hours old and already I'm dismissing the whole thing as nothing more than Bushco proganda. I'm sure any second Faux News will connect Hugo Chavez to the Al-queda cell in Trindad!

It has to do with line pressure, pumping stations, check valves, back-fire valves and manifolds, and that sort of thing. A local breach of a pipeline (natural gas or liquid petroleum) can result in a very localized explosion and fire. A 60-inch natural gas pipeline ruptured by an errant back-hoe can blow that back-hoe and operator to kingdom-come and damage structures in the nearby vicinity. But the problem is outside the pipe and limited to the site of the breach.

into voting Rethug so they can protect us from the goblins.

Nadler of NY...and isn't Ashcroft getting called into a secret hearing on wire illegal wiretapping sometime this week or next??

and cnn said this included the Air traffic control center ( ATC) ..and yet 3 weeks ago there was no mention other than ABC NY local news and Keith Olberman about ATC contollers being imprisoned in the NEWARK /LGA ATC and being carbon monoxide poisoned!!..AND THERE WERE NO GAS OR CARBON MONOXIDE WARNING SYSTEMS IN THE ATC CENTER..

but on CNN they said that they knew for a long time that the ATC CENTERS were going to be used for this so called plot...

this story is more bullshit..total bullshit!!

after 9/11 all airport employees had to get new ID's and background checks..at all three NY airports..how do i know?? i was a flight crew..and i know what was required after 9/11 within days!!
i won't go further explaining..but no one could any longer have id's that weren't fitted with speical holograms in them that could not be replicated!

fly

JFK terror plot : USA Bush appointee Roslynn Mauskopf needs another look
This is what I've found...

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0210,barrett,32841,5.h...
The Louima Prosecutor
Pataki and D'Amato's Pick Is Unqualified and Tainted
by Wayne Barrett
March 6 - 12, 2002

The breathtaking Louima reversals—reconstructing the Blue Wall of Silence—require that George Pataki withdraw his nomination of Roslynn Mauskopf as U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, the office that faces the daunting challenge of achieving justice in that case and in the recently overturned conviction of Yankel Yosenbaum's alleged killer, Lemrick Nelson.

If Pataki will not act, Senator Chuck Schumer, who chairs the judiciary subcommittee that reviews these appointments and told the Voice last week he was "troubled" by Mauskopf's lack of federal prosecutorial experience, must send her name back to the Bush White House. Schumer has just assembled a judicial screening committee of 14 lawyers—including Loretta Lynch, the former U.S. attorney who oversaw the Louima prosecutions until last year—to make recommendations to him about New York appointments. That committee is scheduled to interview Mauskopf next week.

The U.S. attorney must decide whether to reargue the Louima decision before the full Court of Appeals, take it to the solicitor general for appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, retry Charles Schwarz on the assault charge, or re-indict all three cops for lying to state and federal investigators. Once these decisions are made, he must have the experience and commitment to make them stick. Alan Vinegrad, who personally tried the Louima and Nelson cases, has been the acting head of that office since Lynch left in May 2001. A coalition of minority clergy and leaders, led by Andrew Young and Fernando Ferrer, is now reportedly petitioning Schumer to allow Vinegrad to remain until some of these critical matters are concluded.

Mauskopf, who was a prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office for 13 years and has been Pataki's inspector general since 1995, would be the first U.S. attorney in Brooklyn without any credentials as a federal prosecutor in at least the last 30 years. The résumé she submitted to Schumer does not specify a single significant case put together by her IG office, which has been faulted in both news accounts and a state audit. Other than assisting in an '80s garment-center prosecution led by Eliot Spitzer, who has since become the state attorney general, she lost her only other major case as a Morgenthau aide, when a 1994 jury acquitted boxer Ray Mercer on charges of trying to fix a heavyweight fight.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0210,barrett,32841,5.h...

And this...

Pataki Patronage
The Guv's Attempt to Name a Prosecutor Lays Bare His Own Scandal
by Wayne Barrett
February 27 - March 5, 2002
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0209,barrett,32637,5.h...

Will his chairmanship of a powerful Senate subcommittee protect New York from a soiled appointment?

George Pataki was one of the few governors invited to spend Sunday night at the White House after fellow Yalie George Bush's dinner for all 50 governors, the New York Post tells us, adding that he is also a hot prospect for vice president on the 2004 ticket. That would seem to make all the more interesting the solitary patronage appointment Bush has sent to the Senate on Pataki's recommendation: the largely ignored and pivotal nomination of Roslynn Mauskopf as the next United States attorney for Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.

The selection of Mauskopf for one of the top prosecutorial posts in the country is a window into the seedy side of Pataki's Albany, as well as a consequence of his continuing alliance with ex-senator and current big-time lobbyist Al D'Amato. It is also a measure of the will and judgment of the only man in Washington who can stop it, Senator Chuck Schumer, who defeated D'Amato in 1998 after airing a television commercial called "Decades" that documented D'Amato's long history of sleaze. If Judiciary Subcommittee chair Schumer rubber-stamps Mauskopf, he will be installing a candidate whose ties to D'Amato are so incestuous that he might well have picked her himself if he were still in the Senate.

Mauskopf, a former assistant in Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office, has been the state inspector general under Pataki since shortly after he took office in 1995. Her appointment was a product of her friendship with Barbara Jones, a top Morgenthau aide who'd been dating D'Amato for years and has since been named to the federal bench. Over the course of her years in Albany, Mauskopf became extremely close to Jones's best friend, Zenia Mucha, the legendary political operative who has been both D'Amato and Pataki's top aide. The Post and New York Law Journal have published stories faulting her social ties to those at the head of a government she is charged with independently investigating.

What's most disturbing is that if confirmed by the Senate, Mauskopf will be taking over an office that just launched an investigation involving D'Amato. Newsday and the Times revealed last week that the office is probing Computer Associates International (CA), the giant Long Island software company whose financial and accounting practices have been likened to Enron and Global Crossing. CA chair Charles Wang has long been so tied to D'Amato that he broke records orchestrating $128,000 in hard and soft money contributions to aid D'Amato's 1998 re-election, encouraging 14 CA employees or spouses, including a Wang secretary, to give the federal maximum. He and another CA executive have given Pataki $60,000 since March 1999. Six months after D'Amato left the Senate in 1999, Wang helped name him to CA's 10-member board of directors.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0209,barrett,32637,5.h...

And this..
http://newsa3.topsite2007.com/Tops-Search-BushCos-US-At... /
A Different Kind of U.S. Attorney Scandal
Or, how to stay in the good graces of Karl Rove

by Wayne Barrett
April 10th, 2007 2:13 PM


New York’s two United States Attorneys–Roslynn Mauskopf, who runs the Brooklyn-based Eastern District, and Michael Garcia, the head of Manhattan’s Southern District–have gone unmentioned in the weeks of news coverage about the eight federal prosecutors unceremoniously fired in Washington. But the saga of what’s happened in these two elite jurisdictions is one more alarming indication of how badly politicized the evaluation process is at the Bush Justice Department.


Mauskopf, who had no federal prosecutorial experience when George Pataki convinced the White House to make her a U.S. Attorney in 2002, got the highest possible rating in the memo Alberto Gonzales’s chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, sent the White House in March 2005. She was one of many on the list that Sampson’s memo said should be retained because she had “produced well, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the president and the attorney general.” In fact, Mauskopf is such a White House favorite that in June 2006, and again this January, she was nominated for the federal bench, one of only four U.S. Attorneys tapped for a judge-ship at either time. GOP officials in New York and Washington are so determined to make her a judge that they negotiated a deal with Senator Charles Schumer, the Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has led the probe of Gonzales on the dismissals. According to Eastern District sources familiar with the terms, Schumer has agreed to support Maus-kopf’s confirmation, as well as two other GOP selec-tions, in exchange for White House support of a judge the senator will select in the next few months.
The Bush infatuation with Mauskopf is difficult to attribute to the standards that the Department of Justice (DOJ) maintains that it applies to U.S. Attorneys-her gun convictions are well below the average percent of total caseload nationally, and her immigration prosecutions barely exceed Clinton-era totals. The overall criminal caseload in her office plunged an astonishing 38 percent in her first two years. And just as when she was New York State inspector general under Governor Pataki, she has made virtually no public corruption cases. When Schumer acquiesced to her appointment in 2002, he insisted that she recuse herself on any cases involving the Pataki administration. Though her predecessor conducted major probes of the governor before she became U.S. Attorney, she hasn’t had to recuse herself-because her office hasn’t done any. She chose not to recuse herself, however, on the office’s biggest corporate corruption case-Computer Associates-even though Al D’Amato, the former senator tied to Pataki and closely linked to Mauskopf, was a CA board member and, as audit committee chair, was charged with overseeing the company’s misreported finances. D’Amato’s lobbying partner was the sole member of the Pataki screening panel who recommended her for U.S. Attorney.


While Mauskopf did not score well on the gun, immigration, and public corruption standards that the DOJ claims it uses to evaluate prosecutors, she was at the top of the charts by a standard the department has not acknowledged that it employs: enthusiasm for the death penalty. Her office has sought the death penalty against at least 16 defendants, prevailing, for the first time in 50 years in New York, with the recent sentence meted out to Ronell Wilson for the murder of two NYPD detectives. While this tally is among the highest of any federal jurisdiction in the country, she wound up withdrawing the death penalty notice in five cases. Her office originally filed capital charges against five members of a drug gang, one of whom was merely a lookout, but two weeks later, scaled back the charges against all but the ringleader. A jury eventually refused to execute the ringleader.

http://newsa3.topsite2007.com/Tops-Search-BushCos-US-At... /

It sounds like she was appointed becasue she had no experience and could possibly be corrupt. Maybe this whole JFK "terra" plot is just something to make her look good. hmmmm

there are so many voices of experience in this community that are willing to step up and shine rays of light through the bullshit! I've learned an awful lot since I've been here, and all along thought I was enough of an old dog that I wasn't capable of learning that much more anyway. :applause:

The relevant information from this report at CNN suggests that the key plotter, Russell Defreitas, is not a bright man.

Here's part of the transcript of one of his conversations with the FBI ...

"Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow ... they love JFK -- he's like the man. If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice."

Defreitas also appeared to think that blowing up a gas line at JFK would bring the US economy to its knees: "Even the Twin Towers can't touch it. This can destroy the economy of America for some time."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

I hear a little boy, yelling, "Wolf! Wolf! Wolf!" This is the third time we've been subjected to this nonsense. :eyes:

In bars every day in this country (and probably all over the world), guys swap tales and dream up schemes.. after they sober up, they forget all about most of them.. the ones who don;t forget, may continue to plan, but most lack the connections and exptertise to actually bring them to fruition.. (Lucky for the rest of us)

The whole thing reeked of bullshit, but it's great to have some empirical evidence for why it is such crap.

Plus that's a good story. My born-in-1970 ass salutes your surviving the aforementioned fuel farm destruction.

(For the lurking freepers: I understand that you have a limited command of the English language so I will translate. The last sentence means that I was too young to serve in Vietnam, but I am very happy DemoTex was able to survive the Vietnam War while actually serving in the US military, unlike all of your freeper heroes who were too busy learning to be miserable, pathetic, freedom hating assholes. You pigfuckers.)

For a couple of years after 9/11, the jet fuel tanks for Dulles International Airport (IAD) loomed just a few yards from busy Route 28, protected by nothing more than a chain link fence.

Now there is a concrete wall between the tanks and the highway. If Jet fuel tanks could be blown up that easily, don't you think that wall would have been in place within a week after a plane departing from that same airport crashed into the Pentagon?

Now, what is the real story they are trying to keep off page one?

it to the Exxon shareholder meeting as you planned? I certainly hope so.

Once again, I know it is asking alot, but would you please move back or should we just leave.

Is life better outside of Texas? We are beginning to believe so.

I was involved with testing a what if POL attack scenario and we tried to simulate what would be involved to implement such an attack. We did live testing with real tanks and HE.

Unless these 'terrorists' had specific training and equipment, their chance of pulling it off are virtually nil.

I won't go into details, so please don't ask.

As far as i'm concerned, this story is pure bullshit.