July 3, 2014

There were 2 posts published on July 3, 2014 (this is page 1 of 1).

Feds raid CIA-connected air charter in Fort Lauderdale | MadCow Morning News

I spent a little time learning from the Internet how to track planes, just ’cause I’m one of those meddling kids. I turned up an interesting report on a Miami-based drug investigation last year which has some ties (albeit tenuous) to a CIA “rogue operation.” The affidavit provided by the DEA agent in charge of the investigation reads like a “Breaking Bad” script.

Don’t know if I subscribe to every conclusion on the site but it makes for interesting reading.

They combed through the trash. They searched dozens of planes. And while TV cameras from all the Miami TV network affiliates looked on, they loaded box after box filled with aviation records into government SUV’s parked in plain sight on the tarmac in front of the office.

But today— more than two weeks after more than 100 Federal agents from the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security descended on the headquarters of the infamous and notorious World Jet Inc. at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport—if you want to know why they were there or what they were looking for, you’re two weeks too late.

That’s because the detailed 35-page affidavit supporting the request for a search warrant of Don and Bill Whittington’s air charter company filed at the United States District Court in Grand Junction Colorado has been sealed.

But not, thankfully, before it was discovered and leaked onto the Internet in an exclusive story by reporter Joe Hamel from The Durango Herald in Durango Colorado.

via Feds raid CIA-connected air charter in Fort Lauderdale | MadCow Morning News.

CIA rendition jet was waiting in Europe to SNATCH SNOWDEN • The Register

When this story broke last month that the Feds had dispatched an extradition plane to fetch Edward Snowden, I followed it with interest. I have just begun tinkering with plane tracking through their ADS-B transponders.

There are plenty of aircraft who would prefer not to broadcast their position. These include, among others, the rendition/extradition planes used by our government. Rather than use the position-broadcasting ADS-B transmitters, these aircraft use Mode-S transponders which don’t include position.

Usually these planes can only be tracked by radar, however some enterprising folks have figured out the technology needed to triangulate these planes positions, using multiple ground-based receivers. Called multilateration, hobbyists using tools like PlanePlotter can combine their receiver data to plot the position of a mystery plane. This technique has been used by activists to “out” the black ops aircraft which would normally fly below the radar (well, technically above the radar above 45,000 feet). The same technique was used to get the approximate position of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
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