Terrorist Motives?

Submitted by Michael C. (United States), Jul 10, 2002 at 02:27

Mr. Pipes,

You wrote: "Gamil al-Batouti, an EgyptAir copilot, yelled "I put my faith in God's hands" as he crashed a plane leaving Kennedy airport in October 1999, killing 217. Under Egyptian pressure, the National Transportation Safety Board report shied away from once mentioning Batouti's possible terrorist motives."

It would be helpful if you delineated exactly what "terrorist motives" you are talking about. As I recall, whatever Mr. al-Batouti said, it was done so quietly that translators, etc. had a very hard time figuring out just what the man was saying. To make matters worse, the NTSB and others, were so anxious to wrap this thing up and go home, that they didn't even bother getting various opinions on the translations, and doing sufficient research to make their conclusions stand up to even cursory scrutiny. This case is still unresolved, and there is certainly no proof that Mr. al-Batouti is guilty of crashing that plane. If I am wrong, please point me to the data that backs up your statement. The man may very well be guilty, but this is another example of how poorly our international law enforcement/intelligence gathering operations were (and are) operating. Frankly, I don't blame the Egyptians for getting bent out of shape over this incident.

Think about how different Sept. 11 might have been if the FBI, NTSB, etc. had been able to put a slam dunk case of terrorism together against the co-pilot, or any other individual or group.

Michael

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