Tuesday, February 21, 2006

I am George.....Fly me!!

I can’t remember if it was Thomas Pynchon or Kurt Vonnegut (both worthy Cornell chemical engineers) who wrote: “The worst part about being paranoid is being right…….”

"Bennie" replied to my last post about global corporate lovefests with a picture of N8068V, a Gulfstream GV jet called “The Guantanamo Express”. This plane has been the culprit in a number of the infamous ‘extraordinary renditions’ of terrorist suspects and Islamic radicals since 911. The foto was taken at the Santa Barbara airport, and Bennie’s humorous comment was that I should prepare myself for being stuffed in body bag and flown to Poland. We have worked out a communication code if he is in the opposite body bag. (We are going with the John McCain Hanoi Hilton Code). And anyway, like Poland would be culturally more bleak than Cachagua in February…..

I love Bennie, but I always double-check his comments (see paragraph 1) against objective reality.

I googled “N8068V”. Omigod! Talk about Pandora’s box.

Turns out that N8068V is now N44982, registered to Bayard Foreign Marketing in Portland. (Oregon, not Maine). All the directors of the corporation are phonies (birthdates in the 40’s and 50’s, SS#’s in the late 90’s), as were the directors of the previous owners of the plane (Premier Executive Transport, out of Boston.) The CIA doesn’t work as hard establishing fake identities for Planes as it does for Plames. Before that N8068V was N379P…..same deal.

Remember those weird English dudes who were arrested for spying on planes in Greece? Got caught at an Air Force base with fotos and lists of tail numbers of Air Force jets. Their defence (do you love the spelling?) was that they were “Plane Spotters”. We all saw the other movie……and there were no trains, just a lot of heroin and pooping in Mum's bed. If you need any proof that the English are weird…check out the nude hikers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/country/article/0,,1714260,00.html

But no….these Planespotting guys are real. They are everywhere and they are organized, like the Fuzzies. Non-political, for the most part, like the Fuzzies..... They just like planes, not plush animal costumes, but they both have anonymous sex in hotels in Ohio at their conventions. There may be some control issues, and o.c. disorder….but no matter. They have websites. They keep track of shit. N379P did fly from Sweden to Jordan. It did fly 50 times to Guantanamo from Poland, Syria, Jordan…. always returning faithfully to home base in North Carolina. When the Arab dude from Toronto got snatched and shipped to Egypt….sure enough. N379P was tracked by both a Canadian geek and an Arab geek. (The good news is they spent a lot of time at Shannon in Ireland). Transcipts of both English and Irish parliamentary proceedings mention dear old N8068V, quite a bit. Not many answers, just lots of questions.

Not that human rights dudes need to worry about fact checking. All this is public information. Tail numbers can be tracked on an FAA website. Worldwide landing permits for jets (CALP’s) are tracked by the US Army Aeronautical Services Agency. You can get a CD of all the take-offs and landings of any given plane for $6.25. The ugly record is there for all to see. For a high tech analysis, check out these guys for advice about tradecraft, and possible doctoral dissertations on N379P: http://spaces.icgpartners.com/apps/discuss.asp?guid=CE69BAAFF52045DB917F8D096893FE08

Turns out that everything all the wackos say about N8068V is true: FAA records, geek records, U.S. Army records. We snatch guys, fly them to weird places where sadistic fucks fuck them up and get them to tell us psychotic fairy tales….and then they disappear them: Jordan for torture and info, Syria and Egypt for death. Just what the Founding Fathers had in mind, I am sure. "From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli......."

Unfortunately now is sad times for N8068V. The CIA finally realized that legions of geeks knew all about it, and N8068V had more internet space than Paris Hilton. Bayard Foreign Marketing is dumping it. Check it out: http://www.usaircraftsales.com/ Number 581, '99 Gulfstream.

Below market, given the 1100 some-odd landings in only 6 years.

Don’t mind the bloodstains.

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