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Korean Air Lines Flight 85 was a Korean Air Lines flight that was on its way to Anchorage, Alaska, USA when the September 11 attacks occurred in the United States. Due to a number of factors the plane was considered by authorities to be a potential hijacked aircraft and was authorized by American officials and the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien to be shot down.
After the September 11 attacks, a call went out for all planes to return to their airports of origin (or if they didn't have enough fuel, to land in Canadian airspace). Discussing the day's events with the Korean Air office, the pilot of Flight 85 included the letters "HJK" (the code for "hijacked") in an airline text message. [1] When the pilot sent his text message, the text messaging service company, Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated (ARINC) noticed the "HJK" code.[1] ARINC officials, worried that the Korean pilots might be sending a coded message for help, notified North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). NORAD, taking no chances, scrambled two F-15 jets from the Elmendorf Air Force Base to intercept the 747, with Alaska traffic control asking the pilots coded questions. Passenger pilots are trained to answer these questions in a coded way if hijacked.
The Korean pilots, instead of reassuring controllers, declared themselves hijacked by changing their transponder signal to the four-digit universal code for hijacked, 7500.[3] Worried that a possible hijacked plane might strike a target in Alaska, Senator Ted Stevens ordered evacuations of large hotels and government buildings in Anchorage. At nearby Valdez, Alaska, the U.S. Coast Guard ordered all tankers filling up with oil to head out to sea. Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, who was in charge of the NORAD planes that scrambled to shadow Flight 85, told reporters in 2001 that he was prepared to order the Korean plane to be shot down from the sky before it could attack a target in Alaska.[1]
With NORAD telling Anchorage air traffic control that it would shoot down the airliner if it came near any potential targets, the air control told Flight 85 to avoid all population centers and head out of the country to Whitehorse, Canada. NORAD promptly called Canadian authorities seeking the go-ahead to shoot the plane down over Canadian soil. I said, 'Yes, if you think they are terrorists, you call me again but be ready to shoot them down.' So I authorized it in principle, It's kind of scary that... [there is] this plane with hundreds of people and you have to call a decision like that.... But you prepare yourself for that. I thought about it -- you know that you will have to make decisions at times that will [be] upsetting you for the rest of your life. —2001 Prime Minister Jean Chrétien[2]
90 minutes after the Korean pilots changed their transponder signal to the 7500 hijacked code, and the plane landed safely in Whitehorse, Canada. Canadian officials took no chances and evacuated all schools and large buildings before the plane landed.[4] On the tarmac, Flight 85 was greeted by armed Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers who, after interrogating the pilots, learned the whole ordeal was caused by a translation error
The US military conducted a training exercise in the five days before the September 11 attacks that included simulated aircraft hijackings by terrorists, according to a 9/11 Commission document recently found in the US National Archives. In one of the scenarios, implemented on September 9, terrorists hijacked a London to New York flight, planning to blow it up with explosives over New York.
In a second hijack scenario on the same day, ten members of another fictitious terrorist group, called Lin Po, hijacked another 747 to Anchorage, this time out of Seoul, South Korea. The hijackers were armed, their weapons having been smuggled onto the plane by ground crews before takeoff. They also had gas containers that could be detonated. Two of the plane’s passengers were killed, and the CIA and NSA warned that the group had the means to pull off an attack with chemical and biological weapons. In response, NORAD's commander in chief ordered fighters from the Alaskan NORAD Region (ANR) to intercept and shadow the hijacked plane, and get into "position to shoot down aircraft."
Originally posted by thedman
reply to post by talisman
Book "TOUCHING HISTORY" has account of Korean Airline 85 - controllers
contacted airline who said plane not hijacked, but every time called KAL85
the crew seemed to trouble understanding
Here is excerpt from Google Books
[url=http://]http://books.google.com/books?id=HlFXrXcq9X4C&pg=PA277&lpg=PA278&ots=O_-Tz-kU7o&dq=touching+history+korean&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html[/url ]
In the September 9 scenario, the fictitious terrorists’ goal seems to have been to kill New Yorkers with the rain of debris following the plane’s explosion. However, in the exercise, the military intercepted the plane and forced it away from the city. When the terrorists realized they were not near New York, they blew the plane up “over land near the divert location,” leaving no survivors. The military unit most involved in this scenario was NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), which also played a key role in the air defense response to the 9/11 attacks, two days later.
Two Days Before 9/11, Military Exercise Simulated Suicide Hijack Targeting New York
For the neads crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than a dozen potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening. At one point, in the span of a single mad minute, one hears Nasypany struggling to parse reports of four separate hijackings at once. What emerges from the barrage of what Nasypany dubs "bad poop" flying at his troops from all directions is a picture of remarkable composure. Snap decisions more often than not turn out to be the right ones as commanders kick-start the dormant military machine. It is the fog and friction of war live—the authentic military history of 9/11.
9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes
Originally posted by SPreston
reply to post by talisman
US Military 9-11 training exercise Vigilant Guardian once again rears its ugly head. Did Tricky Dick Cheney and General Meyers set this all up to cover for the 9-11 perps and the simulated 9-11 hijackings?
In the September 9 scenario, the fictitious terrorists’ goal seems to have been to kill New Yorkers with the rain of debris following the plane’s explosion. However, in the exercise, the military intercepted the plane and forced it away from the city. When the terrorists realized they were not near New York, they blew the plane up “over land near the divert location,” leaving no survivors. The military unit most involved in this scenario was NORAD’s Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS), which also played a key role in the air defense response to the 9/11 attacks, two days later.
Two Days Before 9/11, Military Exercise Simulated Suicide Hijack Targeting New York
For the neads crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than a dozen potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening. At one point, in the span of a single mad minute, one hears Nasypany struggling to parse reports of four separate hijackings at once. What emerges from the barrage of what Nasypany dubs "bad poop" flying at his troops from all directions is a picture of remarkable composure. Snap decisions more often than not turn out to be the right ones as commanders kick-start the dormant military machine. It is the fog and friction of war live—the authentic military history of 9/11.
9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes
Originally posted by king9072
Oh look, yet another astronomical coincidence.
I love how they happen to scramble jets and have them shadow it till landing, yet it's the only plane that wasn't actually hijacked.
Yet the other 4 "hijacked" planes, never even get so much as a whif of a shadow.
Gotta love the logic that goes into the official story.
The Korean pilots, instead of reassuring controllers, declared themselves hijacked by changing their transponder signal to the four-digit universal code for hijacked, 7500
Originally posted by thedman
reply to post by talisman
"TOUCHING HISTORY" has account of what happened.
books.google.com... tZI&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 277
Was miscommunication between the pilots, probably do to lack of understanding of English