ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES,
SUNDAY, JUNE 27, 2021
USAF DENIES HOLDING FRENCH
AIRLINER AND ITS PASSENGERS
AT McGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE
An Air France Boeing 787 was forced to land at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey, early Thursday evening. Passengers and crew are being kept isolated in a huge hangar adapted to accommodate them. Despite our repeated requests, neither the army nor the airline will provide any explanation for this incident.
JOINT BASE McGUIRE-DIX-LAKE-HURST, JUNE 26. Retired couple John and Judith Madderick, aged 65 and 66 respectively, could not believe their eyes. On Thursday evening they were eating their dinner in their garden in Cookstown, New Jersey, when an airliner escorted by two fighter jets landed at the McGuire Air Force Base a mile away. John and Judith are used to the comings and goings of Super Hercules and AWACS aircraft, but in thirty years of living here they do not remember a single civilian aircraft landing at the base.
Other witnesses, including a member of the armed forces, have confirmed that the aircraft is a Boeing 787 flying under the Air France banner.
Airforce spokesman Andrew Wiley denies that any information is being withheld, but confirms that the McGuire base is completely sealed off, and guarded by soldiers from the combat arm of the Eighty-Sixth Infantry Brigade, who arrived on site during the night of Thursday, June 24. All unauthorized personnel are banned from visiting. Armored vehicles have been positioned at the two remaining entry points to the base, compared to the usual seven. These vehicles carry out checks on the base’s 4,000 military staff, whose cars are admitted one at a time, causing traffic delays on local roads.
According to a source who works for Kennedy Airport air traffic control, a damaged Boeing 787 entered national air space Thursday, giving an incorrect code for an Air France Paris–New York flight. The aircraft was immediately rerouted on orders from NORAD and diverted to a military base on the East Coast.
According to civilian staff at McGuire base, who have asked to remain anonymous, more than two hundred passengers as well as the crew have disembarked and been accommodated in a specially adapted building. Significant movements have been observed since their arrival.
The Boeing itself has been parked up in another hangar, but not before witnesses were able to take a number of photographs that prove that it is a 787-8. Some images posted on social media were quickly blocked.
Speaking for Air France, Director of Communications François Bertrand has said that none of their planes is missing. The French airline company has also supplied a list of the twenty-three Boeing 787s that it uses on half a dozen routes, including some under the banner of KLM. All twenty-three aircraft are accounted for. Records show that Boeing has delivered 387 Boeing 787-8s around the world, and Air France is their second-largest European client. Boeing also handles maintenance of its aircraft and indicates that none are missing. Furthermore, no airport on the East Coast has reported an incident concerning a commercial flight.
Reference numbers on the 787 are legible in the few images of its fuselage, and they correspond with those on a plane usually used on Paris–New York flights. Air France has acknowledged that one of its Boeings, with this same reference number, has been grounded. For “security reasons” it was sequestered by the American authorities on the morning of Saturday, June 26. It is currently at Kennedy Airport, where it will undergo numerous tests. This aircraft sustained damage in turbulence experienced during the “storm of the decade” back in March. This major weather event caused substantial damage to many aircraft and oceangoing vessels.
The identity of the aircraft forced to land at McGuire remains a mystery. Sources close to the military authorities confirm that its occupants—totaling more than 200 people—are still being held in the huge hangar at the base. International civil aviation law allows the detention of civilians without trial only under certain circumstances, strictly defined in national legislation. Terrorism is one instance, but more significantly, medical precautions can enforce the quarantining of passengers and crew. Nevertheless, this procedure can be implemented only on the orders of the president, after consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kenneth Logan, director of the CDC, responded to questions on this subject by saying that his agency is aware of no problem relating to an epidemic in the United States.
A further surprising fact is that neither the seizing of this aircraft two days ago nor the detention of its occupants has produced any reaction. The White House, speaking through its newly appointed director of communications, Jenna White, has said that no American or foreign nationals are being arbitrarily detained. On average more than one-third of passengers on Air France’s Paris–New York flights are French, but when the French Embassy was contacted, it denied that any French nationals were being held against their wishes at McGuire base. The French Embassy declined to comment further on the story.
Anja Stein,
Bureau of Investigative Reporters
SATURDAY, JUNE 26, 2021, 11:00 PM
McGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE
GENERAL SILVERIA puts the remote control down on the table, with the New York Times article still up on the screen.
“The article will be online in an hour. Don’t ask me how the NSA did it, but we’ve been offered the scoop. There it is: just two days. We couldn’t exactly hope that a great big Boeing and its two hundred passengers would go unnoticed for long.”
“Rumors circulate super-quick on the web,” says Brian Mitnick. “Five hundred mentions already and climbing. As agreed with Air France, we’ve gone into their reservation system and destroyed the original file for the passengers on the flight on March 10, and replaced it with a fictitious list. We’re currently altering the majority of flight comparison sites, eradicating traces of all trips. Even though there’s no information yet in circulation about the plane’s passengers, there are references to the arrests taking place across the country.”
“Technically they’re not arrests, they’re ‘requisitions related to national security,’ ” Silveria corrects.
“And where are all these people actually being taken?” asks Adrian.
“The FBI and the NSA are bringing them here in discreet black vans,” the general snaps irritably. “Which isn’t very clever of your two agencies—Jamy, Mitnick—if I may say so.”
“If I may comment as well, General,” replies the man from the NSA, “it’s not very clever to be keeping them all together in Hangar H. Some of them have recognized others…they now all know that they boarded the same Air France plane back in March…They’re imagining the worst, a virus or a terrorist incident…”
“The FBI has brought in psychologists for temporary duty in anticipation of the confrontation,” says Jamy Pudlowski. “These people need to be prepared for when they meet their…doubles.”
“Of course,” Silveria sighs. “We can’t gun down the two hundred forty-three people in Hangar B…It’s a hell of a shame, I agree, Mitnick, but that’s the way it is.” “CNN, CBS, and Fox are sending a little team of journalists with satellite trucks, sandwiches, and hot coffee. And Elaine Quijano on CBS Evening News just had on a rabbi and a pastor as her last guests. They revealed that the White House had summoned representatives of major religions to discuss the ‘nature of the soul,’ and that the world can expect an important announcement.”
“It was the Reform rabbi who talked, for sure,” Jamy Pudlowki says with a grimace. “He couldn’t help himself. He just loves a TV studio. And there’s more: despite all our insistence on complete secrecy, NBC has just announced not only that several renowned scientists have disappeared, but also that some of them have been brought together here…”
“Journalists have two enemies: censorship and information,” Mitnick says sententiously. “This is just the beginning…”
“It’s not the beginning, it’s the end,” says Silveria. “Meetings between the March and June passengers will start as soon as possible. And tomorrow evening, so Sunday evening, or Monday morning at the latest, the army can entrust all these lovely people to the FBI. Do you have a problem with that, Jamy?”
“Not at all, General. I know no problem that can resist the absence of a solution.”