WASHINGTON — The U.S. government does not regulate exports of commercial jet simulators, or restrict their use here by foreigners, but some Pentagon export-control officers think they should be controlled in light of recent terror attacks.
Many of the Middle Eastern hijackers had trained on high-end simulators at Florida flight schools, and then applied the skills they learned by piloting jetliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Many of the Florida flight schools, such as Huffman Aviation International Inc., actively recruit in foreign countries. Some 70 percent of Huffman’s students are foreign.
Peter Leitner, a senior strategic trade adviser at the Defense Department, thinks foreigners should be required to apply for federal licenses to operate jet simulators here. He also thinks commercial simulators should be placed on the list controlling dual-use
exports.
“Those damn things need to be controlled,” he told WorldNetDaily.
As it stands now, exports of simulators unique to military aircraft, particularly ones that drop bombs, are controlled by the State Department.
But most commercial simulator exports are not restricted.
“You can sell one to Saudi without a license,” said a Commerce Department export licensing officer.
“But if they go to a terrorist country like Iran or Iraq,” he said, “they would require a Treasury [Department] license.”
Technical operating manuals for commercial jets are regulated, he says.
“If you had a pilot’s manual for a Boeing 767, then that would be regulated at an anti-terrorist level of control,” the Commerce official said.
A simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft was found in suspected terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta’s luggage, which never made it aboard the 767 he hijacked out of Boston.
In December, Atta logged about three hours on a Boeing 727 simulator at SimCenter Inc. near Miami. He likely was at the controls of American Airlines Flight 11 when it hit the first Trade Center tower.
SimCenter owner Henry George says that Atta had mentioned Egypt, but did not reveal exactly where he was from.
The simulators are more technologically advanced than off-the-shelf software programs like Microsoft Flight Simulator.
The 727 simulator, which carries a multimillion-dollar price tag, is a full-motion machine that twists and turns on hydraulic pistons. The interactive video includes 3-D graphic landscapes of Manhattan, including the twin towers, and Washington, including the Pentagon.
Foreigners don’t have to go to flight schools to train on simulators. They can just rent out the equipment.
Commercial pilots licensed to fly jumbo jets agree that the Islamic hijackers demonstrated an advanced level of navigation skill, despite having little actual flight time. They point to the simulators.
“I have watched the second aircraft fly into Tower 2 many times on news shows,” said Ron Talcott, a Tacoma, Wash., pilot licensed to fly 757s and 767s. “The pilot was correcting to create the impact point even at the last moment, as you can see from the changing bank angle moments before the impact.”
Added Scott Gibson, an American Airlines captain who flies 767s out of Miami: “These guys knew a lot of the procedures – and we trained them.”
“But, hey, we’re training nuclear physicists at Harvard who are Pakistanis,” he added. “These guys can go back to Pakistan and design a nuclear bomb to use against us.”
“That’s just what we do in this country,” he lamented.
Read U.S. equipped terror
sponsor
Suspicious Arab men entered U.S. at DFW
Several Middle Eastern men entered the country on visas at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport about two weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal immigration inspector says. One of the men said he was enrolled at a Fort Worth flight school.
“I remember two guys, both clean-shaven, coming in from the United Arab Emirates,” the inspector told WorldNetDaily. “One was short, about 5-6, the other was tall, about 6 feet.”
“They were headed back East,” he added.
Another man, older and in his forties, was going to the Meacham Field flight school in Fort Worth, he says.
“I allowed him to enter, but still had some lingering questions in my mind,” said the inspector, who wished to remain anonymous. “I didn’t know if he was telling the truth.”
The inspector, who works the Immigration and Naturalization Service inspection line at American Airlines Terminal A, says he also allowed in a young, clean-shaven Middle Eastern man, about 5-8, who stood out because he was accompanied by a Turkish girlfriend.
“A Muslim hooked up with a Turk is an unusual coupling,” he said.
Against the backdrop of the Sept. 11 hijackings, the Middle Eastern immigrants really stand out now.
“They’re kind of stuck in my brain,” he said, although they didn’t show up on any federal watch list for known or suspected terrorists at the time.
FBI investigators, who continue to profile suspects in the PENTTBOM case, declined comment.
Bomb scare at Quantico
On Sept. 13, bomb-sniffing dogs picked up the scent of what security officers at Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia thought to be a bomb in a truck entering the base.
But it turned out to be just a shipment of ammunition.
“A package in the truck was suspected of containing explosives,” a Quantico spokesman told WorldNetDaily. “But on further examination, we determined it posed no threat.”
“It actually was an ammo shipment for the sporting goods section of our PX,” he explained.
The base, which has closed off its back entrance, has been on high alert since the terrorist attacks.
PC Army drops ‘fox hole,’ ‘dog tag’ from lingo
The U.S. Army has dropped use of the venerable term “dog tag,” out of respect for service women.
“We don’t call them dog tags anymore,” said Bonnie Bell, warrant officer at the National Guard Bureau. “They’re ‘ID tags.'”
Seems women found the term offensive, since “dog” is also a derogatory name for an unattractive woman.
But the term “fox holes” also has been officially banned — even though “fox” is a complimentary name for an attractive woman.
“Fox holes are now called ‘fighting positions,'” Bell said.
“Females perceived it to be a term that could be used to sexually harass them,” explained Bell, who personally thinks women are being too sensitive in reading so much into such tried-and-true military jargon.
