US kowtows to Egypt on Flight 990 crash

US KOWTOWS TO THE EGYPTIAN CONSPIRACY THEORY-- As the probe
developed, at Egypt's request, the U.S. National Transportation Safety
Board has delayed turning the lead role in the probe over to the FBI to
run a criminal investigation. El-Batouty's words, taken together with
the flight data recorded on the doomed airliner's "black boxes," have
largely convinced American investigators that Batouty was responsible--
a team of Egyptian technical experts and security officials sent over
to examine the evidence initially agreed with the Americans' suicide
theory - until they were overruled by their higher-ups in Cairo. A
second, more senior team of Egyptian officials, led by an Air Force
general who is close to President Hosni Mubarak, was dispatched to
Washington. While some U.S. investigators swore that all sides were
trying to cooperate and remain open-minded, other top law-enforcement
officials said the Egyptians were seeking to "stonewall and obstruct"
the probe.
For public consumption, the American government was not rushing
to judgment. National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jim Hall
excoriated "unidentified sources" who have led the media to "speculate
on undocumented information" that can be "flat-out wrong." But inside
sources say the tapes are deeply incriminating to the EgyptAir copilot.
The Clinton administration wants to avoid a diplomatic dust-up with
Egypt.
11/99-- Egyptians hail the US decision to gather more information
before launching a criminal investigation, despite all the evidence
pointing to the co-pilot's guilt-- the Egyptians say it's a moral and
political victory, even if the result does not change. The NTSB backed
off from referring the matter to the FBI purely to assuage Egyptian
public opinion-- the press and the man on the street have been
infuriated; the head of the Egyptian State Information Service claims
the facts are not known and only wild hypotheses are being made. Many
Egyptian Muslim leaders are offended that the co-pilot's religious
utterance, which is an unpardonable sin under Islam, was a key factor
in arousing suspicion of criminal intent, and claim that cultural bias
and misunderstanding are leading a rush to judgment.
Clearly, the co-pilot crashed the plane, and the truth would have
come out long ago, except that the truth has been suppressed in order
to appease hysterical Egyptian public opinion-- obviously not people
used to hearing the facts as they are formulated in a western
democracy. These are the same Arabs, who have little regard for the
truth, with whom Israel is supposed to make peace, as safeguarded by
treaties--mere pieces of paper. Given the hysterical lies-- from both
the Egyptian government and public-- about the deliberate Egyptair
crash, such treaties with these same governments and publics are a
slender reed upon which to rest peace hopes with Arabs.
Interviewed in the street, Egyptians almost universally refused
to believe that one of their countrymen could have done such a thing -
especially while invoking God. Washington is in no hurry to disillusion
them. The State Department, CIA and FBI regard the Mubarak regime,
which has cracked down on Islamic extremism in recent years, as an
essential ally in the war on terrorism. But there is nothing to
indicate a mechanical malfunction, bad weather or a bomb. So far, all
the evidence points to one unlikely suspect: a 59-year-old copilot who
liked to play squash, read comic books, worship Allah and care for his
extended family. Al-Batouty was on board Flight 990 as a relief pilot,
expected to take over the copilot's seat a few hours into the 11-hour
flight between New York and Cairo.
EL-BATOUTY CRASHES THE PLANE-- About a half hour out of JFK
Airport, Batouti can be heard on the plane's recorder asking the
captain, Ahmed al-Habashi, if he could fly the plane-- The captain
agreed. Turning over the controls to Batouti, Captain Habashi left the
cockpit, perhaps to use the bathroom. On the cockpit flight recorder
Batouti can be heard repeating "Tawakilt ala Allah" over and over.
(EgyptAir has confirmed to U.S. investigators that Batouti's voice can
be heard on the tape.) "The frequency and the way the invocation was
made," said a senior US law-enforcement official, "did not indicate
that he was using it as part of everyday speech." This source said
Batouti repeated the oath exactly 14 times-- he kept on saying it, both
right before and right after the plane went into a dive. At 1:49.46
a.m., someone - almost certainly Batouti - disconnected the plane's
autopilot. Eight seconds later, the flight-data recorder shows, he
pushed forward the copilot's yoke - the joystick and steering column -
and throttled down the engines, putting the plane's nose down at a
40-degree angle. The plunge was so precipitous that the passengers
inside the cabin experienced a sense of weightlessness, as if they were
flying in space. The plane plummeted faster and faster. Fourteen
seconds into the dive, as Flight 990 neared the speed of sound - too
fast for a big commercial jet - an alarm, signaling that the aircraft
had exceeded 0.86 Mach speed, sounded in the cockpit with a siren and
accompanied by a flashing light. A few seconds later, as air rushing
under its wings exerted a natural lift, the plane nosed up slightly.
Inside the plane, once weightless passengers were slammed against their
seats by the kind of G-forces a fighter pilot might feel maneuvering
his plane in a dogfight. Refreshment carts would have become heavy
projectiles. Amid this chaos, investigators believe, Captain Habashi
was struggling back into the cockpit. According to the Batouti family,
the two EgyptAir pilots often dined and shopped together on foreign
trips. On the voice recorder, through a tremendous clatter and roar,
Habashi can be heard asking his flying mate, "What's happening? What's
going on?" Habashi somehow scrambled into the pilot's seat and began
pulling back his yoke in a desperate attempt to lift the plane out of
its dive. "Work with me. Pull with me," he called on Batouti. But
Batouti apparently worked against his captain. Only one second after
Habashi began fighting to pull the plane out of its dive, the flight
recorder shows, someone - investigators believe it was Batouti -
reached down and flipped a switch to turn off the plane's engines. At
the same time, he continued to press forward on his yoke to keep the
nose of the plane pointed down. As a result, the plane's elevator
panels on the tail split, the left one, on the captain's side, pushing
the plane up, the right one, on the copilot's side, driving it down.
This can happen only if each pilot exerts enormous pressure on the
control stick. Investigators regard it as key evidence that the pilots
were fighting against each other. A few seconds later somebody pulled a
handle - located on the pilot's side but within easy reach of the
copilot - that extends the plane's air brakes, metal panels along the
wing. Had the plane just begun its dive, air brakes might have slowed
and steadied the plane. At this stage, however, the brakes just made
the aircraft that much harder to control. At 1:50.37, or 51 seconds
after the plane began to dive, electrical power started to cut off. The
black boxes stopped recording, and the plane soon crashed.
El-Batouti had no apparent history of depression, is claimed by
the Egyptians to be a sober-minded husband and father. He and his wife,
Umaima, were about to celebrate their 35th wedding anniversary with a
trip to New York-- his son Karim recalled his father as prudent and
supportive. Batouti did not seem dispirited about retiring-- He was an
active supporter of the pilots union, one of a group of pilots who
criticized patronage and alleged corruption in the management of
EgyptAir. Unless he had an independent income, he may have been living
beyond his means. He seemed to be bankrolling two of his sons,
particularly one who just graduated from the police academy in Cairo.
Pilots who knew Batouti in Cairo said that he liked to live well. They
recalled that when he visited New York, he eschewed the subway for
taxis and dined at fancy restaurants. Batouti also had an expensive
and troubling family illness to attend to - his 10-year-old daughter,
Aya, suffers from lupus.
The Batouti family has shown home videos of parties at the
Batouti house where men and women dance together, something that
ultra-orthodox Muslims would not countenance. He was an observant
Muslim who made pilgrimages to Mecca six times, most recently six
months ago with a group of EgyptAir pilots. Walid al-Batouti scoffed at
the suggestion that Uncle Gamil had secretly signed on with an
extremist sect. "He hated terrorists," said Walid, "because it affected
us. It affected me personally." The tourist industry that helped
support both EgyptAir and Walid's tour-guide business was devastated
after the Luxor killings. Because they fear another fall-off in
tourism, as well as for reasons of national pride, many Egyptians hotly
accused the United States of trying to shift the blame for the crash of
Flight 990 while covering up U.S. complicity. "The Americans are
spreading these lies about my husband to hide their role in sabotaging
the plane," Batouti's widow told a neighbor and friend last week. Many
Egyptians tend to look for plots and conspiracies. Some believe that
Washington officials are in cahoots with Boeing to conceal evidence of
a mechanical failure. Others suggest that Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence service, was behind the crash. As "evidence," they point
out that EgyptAir and the Israeli national airline share the same
runway at Kennedy Airport, have similar schedules, and that both
airlines' crews stay at the same New York hotel.
OBJECTIVE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES TO POINT TO PILOT INTENT AND
EGYPTIAN LIES-- 1/00-- Examination of the shattered Boeing 767 has
revealed no signs of a mechanical failure that would have caused the
plane to plummet 40 minutes into its 11-hour flight-- the plane was
mechanically sound and it was doing what it was supposed to. The
National Transportation Safety Board has said there are no plans to
reconstruct the aircraft, which speaks volumes about the investigation,
experts said. "I think they're fairly convinced they know what
happened based on the radar data, flight data and voice data."
Investigators have said the cockpit voice recorder contained some
utterance, perhaps a prayer, before the plane went into its fatal
plunge--the flight and radar data alone make it clear someone forced
the aircraft down. The FBI has been involved from the start and has
uncovered no evidence of terrorism or conspiracy. EgyptAir and
El-Batouty's family continue to angrily reject the theory of an
intentional crash, and EgyptAir chairman Mohamed Fahim Rayan said in
Cairo that the plane's nearly sonic-speed descent was the result of
"something happening" in the tail apparatus.
8/00-- U.S. investigators still have found no evidence that a
mechanical failure played any role in last year's crash of an
EgyptAir jetliner-- But NTSB Chairman Jim Hall, still hamstrung by
politics, said investigators have not drawn any conclusions about what
did cause the jet to slam into the Atlantic Ocean, upon release of a
1,660-page report laying out factual evidence gathered on the crash of
Egyptair Flight 990. The FAA rules out aircraft failure and still,
obviously for reasons of pure politics, refuses to ascribe causation.
Studies show a struggle between the pilot and El-Batouty for the
controls of the plane, and El-Batouty repeatedly stated "I rely on God"
as the plane nosedived. El-Batouty had in the prior days engaged in
repeated episodes of sexual impropriety at a New York hotel.
The new reports compile the findings of investigators in such
areas as human performance, aircraft structure, power plants,
maintenance, air traffic control-- also included a partial transcript
of the final minutes of conversation in the doomed plane's cockpit.
Egyptian officials still vehemently rejected any suggestion that
El-Batouty could have committed suicide, saying mechanical failure on
the Boeing 767 or possibly even a bomb or missile are more likely
explanations; and US officials have kowtowed to these sensibilities.
But there was no indication that the Board was backing away from
the suicide theory. In fact, the report contained an FBI investigative
report that for the first time poked a hole in the portrayal by
Egyptian officials of El-Batouty as a devout Muslim and devoted family
man. The FBI report stated that El-Batouty had been investigated by a
New York hotel's security staff for a number of incidents that
allegedly included exposing himself. In Cairo, El-Batouty's family
angrily denounced the allegations-- "They are running out of things
to say, so they are ruining the guy's reputation," said Walid
El-Batouty, the co-pilot's nephew-- "They are trying to raise
anything to divert people from the real reason (for the crash)."
Mohsen El Missiry, the head of the Egyptian aviation group assisting in
the investigation, also took issue with the speculation at the NTSB
news conference. "This is painful for the family," El Missiry said.
He said Egypt's representatives believe further analysis is needed of
the Boeing 767's elevator control system, which is used to point the
nose of the plane up or down, and of radar data collected at the time
of the crash. The 767 has been involved in only two fatal incidents.
An air traffic control recording released earlier showed no radio
transmissions from Flight 990 to controllers or other aircraft in the
final minutes before the plane crashed. The last word was a routine
"good morning" signoff. Hall has testified before Congress that the
movements of the plane were "consistent with a deliberate action on
the part of one of the crew members." Also, information from the
flight data recorder released early in the investigation showed the
plane's autopilot was switched off before it was put into a steep
dive. Both engines on the Boeing 767 were also turned off. Rejecting
that theory, families of the crew members have filed suit against
Boeing. The elevators are designed to operate in unison. Investigators
are trying to determine if the split was caused by the plane's
breakup, a jamming problem in one of the elevators, crew panic or even
a struggle for control by two people in the cockpit.

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