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Teenage Pilot Challenges U.S. Aviation Security
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| Tampa crash
raises security questions |
WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (IslamOnline
& News Agencies) - The teenage pilot who deliberately crashed his Cessna
plane into a Tampa, Florida skyscraper left a note expressing “sympathy”
towards Osama bin Laden.
Police
reports said late Sunday that 15-year-old Charles Bishop was acting
alone,according to a note found in the wreckage.
The
note, which Tampa Police Chief, Bennie Holder, characterized as a suicide note
was found in Bishop's pocket, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"He
expressed sympathy toward Osama bin Laden and the events of 9-11," the
police chief told reporters.
Holder
claimed there was no indication that Bishop had any hidden, terror-related
motives, declining to elaborate on the contents of the hand-written note
investigators found on his battered body, still strapped into the plane's
cockpit.
"He flew the plane deliberately into the building," Holder said.
Bishop, a ninth-grade student at East Lake High School, was "a loner"
with few friends, Holder said.
"We can assume he was a troubled young man," the police chief added,
stressing there was no indication Bishop had the intention of hurting anyone
else on his apparent suicide mission.
Investigators have interviewed his family and plan to pore over documents and
information stored in his computer, officials said Sunday.
But they evaded repeated questions about possible security lapses that allowed
the novice student pilot to take off relatively unhindered.
Bishop arrived at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport Saturday
right on time for his private afternoon flying lesson.
He boarded the Cessna 172 plane to carry out preflight activities but instead
took off at around 5:00 pm (2200 GMT) -- without his instructor and without
authorization.
"The aircraft was airborne for approximately nine to 12 minutes and flew in
unauthorized airspace after an unauthorized take-off," said National
Transportation Safety Board investigator Butch Wilson.
Bishop's flight took him west, then north through military airspace over MacDill
Air Force Base in Tampa, but the plane was not considered a threat, said
Lieutenant Colonel Rich McClain.
"We didn't see (him) as a threat" because the plane did not make any
threatening maneuvers, he said. "We informed the Tampa tower, probably six
to seven minutes after takeoff."
A U.S. Coast Guard HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter, already in the vicinity, was
dispatched to intercept Bishop's Cessna as well as a pair of U.S. National Guard
F-15 fighter jets from the nearby Homestead Air Reserve Station on Florida's
east coast, McClain said.
The helicopter's crew desperately tried to gesture Bishop to bring the plane
down. Their efforts went unheeded.
"It's hard to speculate about what the pilot was thinking, but it looks
like he flew into the building intentionally," Coast Guard Lieutenant
Patrick Bacher, the helicopter's co-pilot, told reporters Saturday.
MacDill,
like military installations nationwide, has supposedly been on a heightened
state of alert since the September 11 attacks by four hijacked commercial
airliners on U.S. targets that killed about 3,000 people.
But
as the home of the U.S. Central Command, which is coordinating the U.S. military
operations in Afghanistan in response to the attacks, security at MacDill is
particularly tight, McClain noted.
Meanwhile,
the White House refrained from terming the crash a terrorist attack, repeating a
statement released to reporters Saturday that there was no evidence to suggest
the crash was a terror attack.
"An investigation is underway, so we are not going to be making any new
statements," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said in response to the
announcement in Tampa.
CNN’s online news service said that the crash raised new questions about
security at flight schools.
“Flight
instructors said little can be done to avert a repeat of what happened in Tampa.
One aviator called the incident a "breach of trust" more than a
security breach,” said CNN.
It
added that the congress has approved more than $60 billion since September to
combat terrorism at home and abroad and to rebuild from attacks on the World
Trade Center and Pentagon.
That
figure, CNN said, is approximately five times what the nation spent to fight
terrorism the previous year. Some costs are one-time expenses or will decrease
(such as reconstruction costs), but other antiterrorism programs are likely to
grow.
However,
the network said that the crash raised a number of important questions such as:
“Should the federal government issue national security alerts in response to
undisclosed, vague threats? & What is the U.S. government doing to fortify
homeland defense?”
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