Background Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai. On 3 July 1988, the aircraft operating on this route was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes under the command of William C. Rogers III. The incident took place in Iranian airspace, over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, and on the flight’s usual flight path. The aircraft, an Airbus A300 B2-203, was destroyed by SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired from Vincennes. All 290 people on board died. The cruiser Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters after one of…
Author: John Greenewald
Background On April 19, 2018, the online news agency AXIOS published the following about the release of the memos: Copies of former FBI Director James Comey’s memos have been delivered to Congress, reports the Associated Press who has obtained and is reviewing 15 pages of the memo. Why it matters: The memos are “believed to be central” to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Per Politico, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said Congress would get two versions of the memos: an “unclassified version with sensitive information redacted and a classified unredacted version that would be transmitted through a secure channel on…
Background FNARS (FEMA National Radio System) is a FEMA high frequency (HF) radio network to provide a minimum essential emergency communications capability among Federal, State, local commonwealth, and territorial governments in times of national, natural and civil emergencies. Federal call signs for state emergency operations centers and FEMA facilities nationwide and are typically in the WGY### group. FEMA According to FEMA’s website: FEMA’s mission is to support our citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate all…
Background Since the viruses was first discovered, HIV and AIDS have long been rumored to have been a biproduct of American experimentation. Varying conspiracy theories and groups alleged that HIV/AIDS was created in a laboratory, and grew beyond anyone’s control. One write-up by Wikipedia explains a few of the theories: Jakob Segal (1911–1995), a professor at Humboldt University in then-East Germany, proposed that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates…
Background According to the BBG website: The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is a networked global media agency. The five media organizations that comprise the BBG complement and reinforce one another in a shared mission vital to U.S. national interests: to inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy. Together, the BBG media organizations communicate each week with more than 278 million people across the globe. In June of 2017, I requested a copy of the main pages to the BBG’s “employee only” intranet website. In August of 2017, the BBG released a CD-ROM…