However, the 53-page report, by Rear Adm. William M. Fogarty of the U.S. Central Command, also finds - though it does not say so directly - that nearly all the details about the downing reported at that first news briefing were incorrect.
For example:
*At the original news briefing on July 3, Adm. William J. Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the plane was flying at 9,000 feet and descending at a "high speed" of 450 knots, "headed directly" for the Vincennes.
In fact, the report concludes - based on computer tapes inside the Vincennes' combat information center - that the plane "was ascending through 12,000 feet at a speed of approximately 380 knots," and that it had reached 13,500 feet by the time the missile knocked it out of the sky. "At no time" did the Airbus "actually descend in altitude," the report said....
...The report confirms earlier admissions that the plane had been flying "within the established air route."
*Crowe had also said, "There were electronic indications on Vincennes that led it to believe that the aircraft was an F-14." A Pentagon spokesman, Dan Howard, elaborated later, saying that the plane's identification beacon, known as a transponder, was "squawking" a code over "Mode 2" - a military channel - and that the code was "very similar" to that emitted just days earlier by known F-14s.
Howard further said the Vincennes crew had "interrogated" the beacon three times and had received the military code each time.
However, the report says the Iranian plane "was not squawking Mode 2" at any time, and that a radar operator on the Vincennes received this signal only once - not three times. The report says the signal was probably coming from a military aircraft on the ground at Bandar Abbas aircraft, most likely a C-130 transport plane, an F-4 fighter or an F-14.
This happened, the report says, because a Vincennes radar operator who "read" the plane's beacon while it was still on the ground accidentally kept the target indicator focused on the ground for 90 seconds after the plane took off.
What a clusterf*$k. Can we please get back to some slight form of governing :not:
