MH370 - Just fancy that!

We haven't heard much about the search for the Malaysian Airlines B-777, flight MH370, which went "missing" back in March. Buried on the inside pages of the mainstream papers, some weeks back, was a squib about the search being resumed in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, west of Australia, but when or if this actually happened was unclear.

Regular readers of WWW [and if you're not one, why not?! Ed.] will recall Walt's repeated advice to search near the British territory of Diego Garcia, a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, graciously leased to the US military for use as a strategic air force and intelligence base. See "Latest on MH370: Inmarsat says search was off target; Canadian ex-pilot blames Malaysian authorities for 'bungled inquiry', suggests ulterior motive" and "Aussie officials now say maybe MH370 WAS hijacked", both posted in June.

Well, guess what, boys 'n' girls? There are others who think that there's a lot more to the story than we've been told by "the authorities" in general and the US military in particular. France 24 reports that French author Marc Dugain -- a former CEO of Proteus Airlines -- theorizes, in a six-page article in Paris Match, that there has been a cover-up in the disappearance of the airliner, which could have been hacked and then shot down by the Americans!

M Dugain believes argues that MH370 crashed near... wait for it... Diego Garcia. The Americans have always officially denied that flight MH370 came anywhere near Diego Garcia, but then, what else would they say. After all, the US military does not have a sterling record of truth-telling.

M Dugain's theory into the disappearance has all the ingredients of a spy thriller and, says France 24, has grabbed the French public’s attention. His investigation took him to the neighbouring Maldives -- nice place to go for business purposes if you can manage it! -- where residents told local media on March 9th (the day the plane disappeared) that they had seen an airliner fly in the direction of Diego Garcia.

"I saw a huge plane fly over us at low altitude," a fisherman on Kudahuvadhoo island told Dugain. "I saw red and blue stripes on a white background" –- the colours of Malaysia Airlines. Other witnesses confirmed the sighting, but their claims were promptly dismissed by "the authorities".

So what happened? M Dugain speculates that a modern aircraft such as Malaysia Airlines' Boeing 777 could have been hijacked by a hacker. "In 2006, Boeing patented a remote control system using a computer placed inside or outside the aircraft," he wrote. This technology led him to the idea of a "soft" remote hijacking.

But the writer also suggests that a fire could have led the crew to deactivate electrical devices, including transmission systems.Whatever the initial reasons for leaving its flight path, M Dugain suspects that the plane headed to Diego Garcia, where a number of scenarios may have played out, including the US Air Force shooting it down for fear of a 9/11-style attack.

M Dugain met the mayor of neighbouring Baarah island, who showed him pictures of a strange device found on a beach two weeks after the plane had disappeared. The object was immediately seized by the Maldives military. Two aviation experts and a local military officer concluded that the object was a Boeing fire extinguisher.

For the extinguisher to have floated, the writer says, it must have been empty, having been automatically triggered by a fire. He adds that precedent exists in which fires on board aircraft caused all passengers and crew to die of asphyxiation, while the plane’s automated systems extinguished the blaze and kept it in the air.

The rest of his article draws more conclusions from the information that has remained buried than from new facts. He notes that the search operation in the southern Indian Ocean was based on satellite data from the last organization to receive a signal from the airliner. That would be Inmarsat, a British company which is "very close to intelligence agencies".

For M Dugain, the suppression of testimonies from the Maldives, the unlikely event that Diego Garcia’s US intelligence officers "equipped with the best technology in the world may have 'lost' a 63-metre-long object", and the secrecy surrounding the cargo in the plane’s hold all point towards a large-scale cover-up.

And that, dear readers, is exactly what Walt said, about half a year ago. But why (I hear you asking) would the Americans shoot down a civilian airliner which was, for whatever reason, off-course? Because they're paranoid! That's why!