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CNN Sunday Morning

Man Arrested, None Seriously Injured in Flight 63 Incident

Aired December 23, 2001 - 07:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's get back to Flight 63 diverted to Boston. The American Airlines jet was on a transatlantic flight from Paris to Miami yesterday when a flight attendant saw a man trying to set his shoes on fire. The man said he was, quote, "wired," implying his shoes were explosives.

CNN's Bill Delaney picks up the story from there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A holiday season flight from Paris to Miami diverted to Boston's Logan Airport. American Airlines Flight 63 escorted in by F-15 fighter jets because a passenger may have had C-4 explosives or something like it in his shoes. A flight attendant smelled something sulfury and saw a passenger with a lit match.

(on-camera): Passengers and flight attendants then overpowered the man who carried a British passport identifying him as Richard Reid. So immigration officials were checking the document's authenticity. The FBI took the passenger into custody.

(voice-over): Passengers disembarked at Logan Airport, among them two doctors who reportedly used tranquilizations to subdue Richard Reid.

THIERRY DUGEON, PASSENGER: A doctor obtained -- there were two doctors on the plane and they came and gave him some shots. I think it was Barium. I'm not sure. But something like to calm him down.

DELANEY: One flight attendant bandaged, reportedly bitten in the course of the confrontation that may have prevented a disaster.

TOM KINTON, AVIATION DIRECTOR, LOGAN AIRPORT: We did an X-ray of the shoes onboard and the shoes did -- both shoes appeared to have wires and other things contained in them. At this point, we then set up a removal by the bomb team of the shoes and isolated them on the airfield and disrupted them, as per procedure.

DELANEY: Disrupted means the substance in the shoes was rendered harmless. C-4 is a powerful explosive that killed 19 U.S. service personnel in the terror attack on the Khobar Towers in Duran, Saudi Arabia in 1996, an attack linked to Osama bin Laden. It was not immediately clear whether the passenger could actually have detonated what was in his shoes, though airport officials instituted shoe checks at Logan Airport in the wake of the incident.

Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we're going to get now or more now on Flight 63 from CNN's Kathleen Koch. She's live at Boston's Logan International Airport where the American Airlines plane was diverted.

Good morning, Kathleen.

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Kyra. Well, we've got some of those passengers, apparently now, on their way to their eventual destination in Miami. Some of them -- the 185 passengers -- left last night. Though, I heard an interesting story upon arrival from the shuttle driver who took my hotel that he returned two of those passengers not to the terminal but to a hotel here, a young Italian couple. Apparently, the wife was so terribly distraught and upset by what happened that this young couple that was on their way to a vacation in the Bahamas simply turned around and went back to Italy -Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Now, Kathleen, there was an FAA warning that came out prior to September 11 about how to check for certain things with regard terrorism, correct? And one of them was checking shoes.

KOCH: Exactly, Kyra and normally these alerts are not put out to the general public. These are very important security alerts and I'll read this one to you. It said, quote: "We are concerned that hijackers may attempt to smuggle disassembled weapons onboard an airliner by hiding weapon components within their shoes. This method of weapon concealment has been demonstrated in the past by non- terrorist related hijackers. In May 2000, the hijacker of Philippines Airlines 812 successfully smuggled a handmade pistol onboard the flight by disassembling it and concealing it within his shoes."

So Kyra this alert went out but I must admit that in my flights recently, I had not seen anyone checking shoes. So it was just very quick thinking on the part of this flight attendant that this man was stopped.

PHILLIPS: And this flight attendant, I understand, was bit on the hand. Where there any other injuries?

KOCH: Apparently, another flight attendant received minor injuries. And Kyra, this does lend some support to an argument that's been made very vocally by the flight attendants since September 11 that they need some sort of additional training, some marital arts training, some additional weapons or support in that cabin because now that the pilots are very much locked into the cockpit, the flight attendants, they feel, are really the last line of defense. So they said they need some extra support and certainly, they got a lot of support from the passengers onboard this flight.

PHILLIPS: So what's happening now to try and prevent this? Are the security measures being stepped up even more? Is it all being reevaluated?

KOCH: Well, Kyra, as Bill Delaney reported in his report, in his package, that here at least at Boston's Logan Airport they are checking shoes now, having passengers remove them and carry them through the magnetometer. I do not know that similar steps are being taken in Europe. That is where this flight originated, in Paris.

There is new technology that's on the horizon, whole body scanning, that can detect this sort of thing, scan you from top to bottom, but it's relatively controversial, only being used right now by U.S. Customs officials for people are suspected of perhaps smuggling drugs or weapons or some other sort of contraband into the United States. So not on the horizon very soon to arrive here at the airports -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: But what's the next for the suspect? He's in FBI custody. What do you know about him?

KOCH: All we know is that, again, he is said to be 28 years old and apparently, identified himself to those on the plane as being Jamaican. So we -- he is in custody here in Boston, but we're not sure exactly what is going to happen to him immediately.

PHILLIPS: All right, our Kathleen Koch with the latest on Flight 63. Thanks so much -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: So many questions this morning about this flight, what appeared to be a disaster averted. For some answers to these questions, we turn now to our analyst who has been joining us from a military analyst point-of-view low these many months, Major General John Shepperd. He joins us from Tucson, Arizona this morning. He also happens to have experience as a commercial airline pilot, also an F-15 pilot, headed up the Air National Guard wing that intercepted this particular aircraft at one time or another. So he's got a lot of expertise.

Let's start first of all onboard the plane, General Shepperd. By the way, good to have you with us.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Onboard that plane, it seems to me, my theory has been that since 9/11 it's almost incomprehensible that passengers would allow anything to on fold much beyond what we saw here. People are going to intervene aren't they?

SHEPPERD: Yes, it's really changed from the old days, Miles. In the old days, the idea was get the airplane on the ground, don't cause any problems, do anything the hijackers want, follow their directions and then, let the police sort it on the ground. That all changed with 9/11 and right now, if you case a ruckus on an airplane especially with the pilots bolted in into the cockpit now with the doors, you're taking your life in your own hands because it's very apparent that the flight attendants and also the passengers are going to grab you. And it's risky business because any kind of altercation in that cabin now.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's -- not to second guess the pilots too much in this because we don't know the full details, but we're told they were about 90 minutes outside of Boston when all of this ensued. Would you have tried to put the plane down sooner perhaps, if you had the opportunity or is Boston a good, safe harbor, if you will?

SHEPPERD: Well, of course, it always is -- depends upon the communication between the pilots and what's going on in the back end. The pilot in command always has the final say. From where they were, it's not likely that you would have gone anywhere else especially after the passenger was subdued.

There are some places that physically are closer. If I understand the flight track of the airplane, you could have gone into probably Bangor, Maine. It would have been a little closer. There are also some other places, Gander, that type of thing, depending on the actual flight track. Though with the passenger subdued, it's likely that Boston was the smart place to go because of the people on the ground that are trained to handle this type of thing once you get on the ground.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about those F-15 intercepts and the escort they provided. You intercepted many times, in your career out of Otis, their National Guard base, Russian bare bombers as they came down the coast. That was just part of the Cold War drill, if you will. An entirely different mission now really if you think about it for the Air National Guard. What would their standing orders have been as they went out to intercept this 767?

SHEPPERD: Well, its standard orders with one being changed again from the old days, the old standing orders were that you were to join up on the airplane and basically trail it out of sight and tell the FAA where it's going. Now, of course, with the orders being that there is the possibility that you will have to shoot down an aircraft if the aircraft is deemed to be a threat to something on the ground such as what happened with the collision with the World Trade Center.

On the other hand, in this particular case, the pilots obviously knew what was going on, were communicating with the FAA, were likely being told to simply join up alongside the airplane and try to communicate with hand signals with the pilot and through the FAA as well, finding out what's going on inside.

The F-15 pilots can't talk directly to the airliners. They don't have a VHF radio at this time. Maybe down the line we'll equip them with that. But right now, they have to talk through the FAA. So it's just escort duties and keeping track of the airplane, landing assistance and being there of course if the airplane ever had to be brought down to the fatal order issued through the NORAD join of command.

O'BRIEN: What an awful order that would be. And just quickly, before we get away, I know you're not necessarily an expert in aviation security, but I find it very hard to believe that they allowed a person on an international flight without any checked baggage or for that matter even a carry on. All he had was his passport. Do you consider that a breach of security?

SHEPPERD: Well, I'll have to leave that to the FAA. I'm not sure what their triggers are. But it sure triggers it in my mind. And of course, the C-4 explosive that he likely had in his shoes, according to the reports, is not something that'll show up on a metal detector at all. So there are a lot of questions -- going to come out of this about what we're going to do about explosives, what we're going to do about shoes and then of course, the other triggers about how about hand baggage, no checked luggage, that type of thing. Lots of questions to be asked.

O'BRIEN: General Shepperd, you're a fountain of information as always. Thanks very much. We appreciate it.

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