by Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 16, 2010
from
OnLineJournal Website
|
Previously published in the
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR).
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and
nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of
the Wayne Madsen Report . |
(WMR)
-- WMR has learned from two El Al sources who worked for the Israeli airline
at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport that
on
9/11, hours after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
grounded all civilian domestic and international incoming and outgoing
flights to and from the United States, a full El Al Boeing 747 took off
from JFK bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.
The two El Al employee sources are not Israeli nationals but legal
immigrants from Ecuador who were working in the United States for the
airline.
The flight departed JFK at 4:11 pm and its departure was, according to the
El Al sources, authorized by the direct intervention of the U.S.
Department of Defense.
U.S. military officials were on the scene
at JFK and were personally involved with the airport and air traffic control
authorities to clear the flight for take-off.
According to the 9/11 Commission report, Transportation Secretary Norman
Mineta ordered all civilian flights to be grounded at 9:45 am on
September 11.
The New York Air Traffic control center’s audio tape of recollections of air
traffic controllers made an hour and a half after the 9/11 attacks were
destroyed by an air traffic control manager who did not face criminal
charges for destroying physical evidence on the worst terrorist attack in
American history.
The Transportation Department later claimed the
destruction of the tape was the result of mere “poor judgment.”
-
The El Al flight took off two days
before commercial flights were permitted to resume on September
13.
-
Private flights were only permitted to
resume on September 14.
-
On September 13, a chartered Lear jet
flew three Saudis, including a member of the Saudi royal family,
from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky.
-
On September 14, a chartered Northstar
Aviation flight flew four Saudis from Providence, Rhode Island to
Paris.
On
August 22, 2005, WMR reported:
“Four Americans flew with ‘Air Bin Laden’
flight transporting Bin Laden family members to Saudi Arabia and
Europe nine days after 911. The post-911 domestic flights of Bin Laden
family members out of the United States with the sanction of
the Bush White House were not the only
instances where Americans have flown with the family that spawned “Al
Qaeda” leader Osama Bin Laden.
WMR has obtained a passenger list from a
September 20, 2001, Aero Services private charter flight from Le Bourget
Airport, north of Paris, to Geneva, and on to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (King
Abdulaziz International Airport-OEJN). On the list are a number of Bin
Ladens, as well as four Americans, including a Los Angeles Police
Department officer named Jason Blum who flew to Le Bourget from
Los Angeles.
A previous list provided to Sen. Frank
Lautenberg showed Mr. Blum departing from the Bin Laden party in
Boston. The newly obtained list shows he accompanied the Bin Ladens to
Paris Le Bourget.
The other three Americans on the passenger
list are:
-
J.P. Buonono
-
Joseph Allen Wyka
-
Ricardo V. Pascetta.”
Although much has been written about the “Bin
Laden” and other Saudi flights in the days after 9/11, the El Al
flight on the afternoon of September 11 is the first instance of
Israelis departing the United States while commercial traffic was grounded.
There have also been reports that the FBI seized FAA records
concerning the events of 9/11 from the New York
Air Route Traffic Control Center in Islip,
Long Island.
The ARTCC has responsibility for flights out of
JFK.