Joe Sharkey At Large

…You’ll be hearing a lot about the transponder on the Legacy 600 as the Brazilian authorities continue scrambling to find any way possible to shift blame to the American pilots and keep it away from the sorry mess that is Brazil’s air traffic control system — and the Brazilian air force, which runs that system and jealously guards its honey-pot of a budget.

It’s now generally accepted that the Legacy’s transponder was not working properly as the business jet passed through the air sector of Brasilia and into the radar and radio blind zone where the responsibility for the plane shifted to the ATC center near Manaus. It is also not in any serious dispute that Brazilian air traffic control explicitly assigned the Legacy to an altitude of 37,000 feet, on a collision course with a Gol 737 coming in the opposite direction.

The federal police accusation against the pilots, cobbled together in a last-minute attempt to keep them from leaving the country Dec. 8, deftly ignores the weight of evidence that air-traffic control caused this disaster, and instead accuses the pilots, in effect, of failing to notice that their transponder wasn’t working, thus causing a threat to Brazilian air traffic security.

In their reckless lunge to criminalize the accident and scapegoat the pilots, the Brazilian authorities have conspicuously failed to address what is now also no longer in dispute: grossly unsafe conditions in Brazil’s air traffic control system, aggravated by a demoralized work force, some of whom are inadequately trained, and a large number of whom are not proficient in English, the mandatory language of aviation the world over.

Instead, the Brazilians are seeking to build a case against the pilots based on a transponder, an electronic device in the cockpit that provides a backup signal for air traffic control and triggers an anti-collision alarm to any approaching aircraft. Once air traffic control had the two aircraft on a collision course, bearing down on each other at a closing speed in excess of 1,000 miles an hour, and once the two planes disappeared into a radar blind zone that Brazilian authorities until recently loudly insisted did not exist, the transponder and the anti-collision warning system it is designed to trigger would have been the last possible slim chance the two aircraft had of avoiding impact.

Aircraft avionics are hugely complicated, and there is no way a pilot can be expected to be aware of every electronic device on a plane. “A transponder is not on the scan list” of things a pilot is routinely expected to monitor, one veteran pilot told me.

There is no signal to tell a pilot that a transponder has failed or switched into the standby mode. However, it is fully expected that ATC — where controllers should know instantly if a transponder has failed in a plane they are monitoring — immediately notifies an aircraft that its transponder isn’t transmitting.

According to Brazilian authorities (not to mention actual reliable sources), the Legacy transponder was not transmitting for 50 minutes before the collision. There was no communication from air traffic control to that effect.

The model of transponder used in the Legacy 600 does, incidentally, have some recent history. On Sept. 12, the Federal Aviation Administration published a so-called “Airworthiness Directive” addressing certain transponders made by Honeywell which, the FAA directive said, are prone to “erroneously going into the standby mode.” Among the aircraft equipped with the transponders in question are certain models in the Embraer 135 and 143 lines. Legacy 600 are business jets based on those commercial jet models. Both Embraer and Honeywell have said that the transponder on the Legacy 600 involved in the Sept. 29 accident was not one of those involved in the directive.

Nevertheless, the issue of a possibly faulty transponder was not considered urgent. Embraer requested and received from the FAA a 14-day extension of the time required to bring affected transponders into compliance. “Embraer asserts that the loss of the transponder does not pose so great of a hazard to justify such an urgent compliance time,” said the FAA, which had originally asked for compliance by 15 days after the effective date of the directory, Oct. 17.

“We have determined that extending the compliance time to 14 days will not adversely affect safety,” the FAA directive said.

On such thin straw the Brazilians are building a criminal case against the two Americans while they continue covering up the real cause of the disaster. As I have said here often, the fix is in.

Meanwhile, in an indication of just how harebrained the Brazilian authorities are, and how much this issue is being shaped to appeal to public sentiment in Brazil, the police official in charge of the criminal investigation, Ramon da Silva Almeida, actually felt the need to denounce the American pilots for their appearance on the “Today” show Friday morning, during which they told interviewer Matt Lauer that they did nothing wrong.

“They are doing what one would expect, defending themselves,” the police chief sarcastically informed O Globo of the pilots’ statements on American television.

Wonderful Waldir Pires also remains in the act. “The Minister of Defense Waldir Pires denied that the government detained the two pilots,” O Globo reported yesterday without a hint of irony.

Uh, oh! Back down the rabbit hole we tumble! Not detained? Hey, where were these guys for 70 days?

—-

Back in the days before piety replaced curiosity as the driving impulse of the news business, the current situation in Brazil would have made for great reporting: A horrendous mid-air collision with 154 tragically dead and an obvious coverup to scapegoat two American pilots who were detained for two months without charge and escaped the clutches of the crazed Brazilian media during a high-speed chase to the airport, all accompanied by a tuba quintet of harrumphing Brazilian brass hats.

Ah, but those days are gone. Now we have stenography to inform us, accompanied by a whispered admonition, as if in the incensed fog of High Mass, to wait for the Authorities to speak before making a judgment based on one’s own reasoning.

Where to begin anew?

Oh, I know. First let’s hear from good old Wonderful Waldir Pires, the Brazilian defense minister responsible for the air traffic control system that basically collapsed in Brazil after controllers, afraid that the blame for the accident might shift where it belongs (to them), threw a prolonged workplace tantrum starting in early October.

Wonderful Waldir, you might remember, was the genuis responsible for the crackpot theory that the accident could only have been caused by the American pilots executing wild loop-d-loops in the business jet that collided with the Gol 737 airliner, killing all 154 people on the 737.

From O Estado de S. Paulo, Brazil’s largest newspaper:

“Augusto Nardes, minister of the Union Accounts Court, said yesterday that he heard the minister of defense, Waldir Pires, affirming that [it] ‘is necessary [to have] much faith, pray a little,’ so the crisis in the air sector will be solved [by] the end of year.”

Last Friday, the Brazilian police, in a remake of a Keystone Kops short subject, desperately slapped the two pilots with a bizarre charge — basically, “failing to ensure the safety of Brazilian air space” — on the day a court had ordered their release.

This came after a six-hour session at federal police headquarters during which the pilots refused to answer questions because they were informed at the onset that they would be formally accused no matter what they said. Once the pilots got their passports back late that afternoon, they were driven to the airport in Sao Paulo where a private jet waited. The drive to the airport was a high-speed chase, with Brazilian media in hot pursuit until they were foiled by a squad of mounted police at the gate where the private jet waited.

The private jet was a surprise to the pursuing media, who had assumed the pilots would leave Brazil on the early evening American Airlines nonstop to New York. In fact, a handful of Brazilian reporters had bought tickets on that flight, figuring they could corner the pilots on the nine hour trip home.

(There was some extra anxiety on the pilots’ end, incidentally. Private jets can’t take off after 6 p.m. in Sao Paulo, and as the police inquiry stretched into late afternoon there was some question about whether they’d get out to beat the deadline).

Then a gathering of about 200 relatives and friends to welcome the returning pilots back home at MacArthur Airport in Long Island last Saturday was portrayed in the Brazilian media as a “celebration party” that insulted the honor of Brazil and the memory of the 154 who died. The Brazilian media implied that the pilots — detained for 70 days without charge or evidence of charge while the police frantically cobbled together their bizarre accusation during that final day’s sesssion — should have skulked home in disgrace, rather than into the welcome embrace of wives, children, parents, other relatives, friends.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Meanwhile, certain elements of the media, abroad and even here, now have their steno pads out once more.

Never mind that every invesigation so far has shown a clear breakdown in air-traffic control on the ground leading to the crash. Never mind that it is not in dispute that air traffic control ordered the business jet to maintain 37,000 feet on a direct collision course with a 737 that was out of touch in a notorious radar and radio blind zone over the Amazon that authorities refused to concede even existed. And never mind that during the 70 days the pilots were detained, with all of the preliminary investigations long completed, no evidence was produced against them.

Memories are so short, with so much to keep track of! Every day, in so much of the media, the world is new, without context! No, today’s story is that a malfunction of the transponder on the Legacy 600 business jet was the main cause of the crash.

Now, I guarantee you that the transponder on that airplane will be shown to have malfunctioned — and that this will become known as one of the factors that FAILED TO PREVENT a horrible collision. But that mid-air collision had already been firmly set in motion by egregious human and systems errors in Brazil’s air-traffic control system, which is now widely acknowledged as riddled with major faults.

How could such a thing happen? Well, pilots have been telling me for two months that they are amazed it doesn’t happen more often. Not just in Brazil, but all over.

And how could a transponder fail without notice? Easy, given the blind faith engineers have placed in avionics technology, which many pilots claim is inadvertently creating a safety hazard in the air.

However, for the coverup to continue in Brazil, as it will, it must be accepted that 1. Air-traffic control was not the main culprit and 2. The American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, were grossly negligent or criminally responsible for turning off the transponder or failing to notice that it was not operarting correctly.

Why would any pilot in his right mind do that?

Oh, I forgot, to do “loop-d-loops” over the vast Amazon skies! Yes, we are back to the loop-d-loops, folks. From yesterday’s O Estado de S. Paulo:

“Up to now there is not a plausible explanation about what led the equipment to stop working. … That reinforces the suspicions that rose soon after the tragedy that the device would have been turned off by the American pilots, although inadvertently, for [the purpose of] not [following] procedures or to ‘test’ the jet, making maneuvers.”

Yes, the Brazilians will probably throw a couple of hapless air-traffic controllers over the side as a token gesture. But it’s pretty clear that as of now, the coverup continues and the systemic problems affecting Brazil’s air-traffic control system are being swept under the rug. And, as I have suspected from day one when we made an emergency landing at a jungle air base, the fix is in.

Coming soon: Which Brazilian federal police official was once locked in the trunk of his car by four hookers?

–end

Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino arrived home in a private jet that landed around noon today at MacArthur Airport on Long Island. The two pilots left Brazil yesterday on a flight that stopped over for the night in Miami before continuing today to New York.

About 200 relatives and friends greeted them when the plane — a Legacy 600 business jet, the same model as the plane involved in a mid-air collision in Brazil Sept. 29 — taxied in after landing. They included Mr. Lepore’s wife, Ellen, and children Michael, 8, and Nichole, 3, and Mr. Paladino’s wife, Melissa. The guests also included the pilots’ parents, as well as Excelaire Chief Executive Officer Bob Sherry and other executives, and U.S. Rep. Peter King, who had worked to pressure Brazilian authorities for their release. Also there were four of the five passengers who had been on the Legacy during the crash: David Rimmer and Ralph Michielli of Excelaire, Henry Yandle, of Embraer, and me.

—–

The two American pilots held since a mid-air collision on Sept. 29 have left Brazil and are en route home. They’re expected to arrive in Long Island late tonight.

Before having their passports returned, they were accused of unintentional wrongdoing by police at an all-morning session at police headquarters in Sao Paulo. The pilots — who were questioned repeatedly by the miltary and by Federal Police two months ago, but not since — invoked their right not to answer questions in Sao Paulo after learning at the beginning of the session that they would be formally accused no matter what they said.

There was a period of initial confusion about the accusation, which is called an indiciar and is more akin to an arraignment charge than a formal indictment. The pilots left Brazil thinking they had been actually charged with involuntary manslaughter. The actual accusation is, in the words of one legal expert I spoke with, “bizarre and evidently cobbled together.” Police and prosecutors openly argued today over what the penalty might be on conviction before deciding to base it on the penalty for involuntary manslaughter, and to toss some some years onto it.

No evidence was presented to support the accusation. The press release refers vaguely to “elements of proof existing in the police inquiry.” This is presumably a reference to interrogations of the pilots (and Legacy passengers) in the days after the crash. To date, however, no evidence implicating the pilots has been publicly produced by the police or military authorities.

There has been speculation that a temporarily malfunctioning transponder, a small electronic communications device in the cockpit, might have contributed to a chain of mishaps and errors at air-traffic control centers on the ground that caused the crash, though there has been no evidence produced yet that the plane’s transponder malfunctioned. One police official told reporters today that the accusation is based on the idea that the pilots could have been negligent in failing to ensure that the transponder was working properly.

Here is the official press release, translated from Portuguese, describing the accusation and penalties:
——-
“Press Release

This morning, the pilots of the Legacy aircraft were at the Superintendency of the Federal Police in São Paulo and were interrogated. They exercised the right to remain silent, constitutionally protected, even after having been told that this was a moment in which they could exercise their defense and give their versions and explanations about the facts. Federal Police assigned to the Coordination of Operational Aviation accompanied the act.

The exercise of the right to remain silent does not alter the decision determining the return of their passports, as this is a resolution strictly by the courts, emitted by the Federal Regional Tribunal of Brasilia, and complied with by the Federal Police.

The pilots of the Legacy airship were charged under Article 261, Section 3, combined with Articles 263 and 258, all in the criminal code, which define the crime of “exposing a ship or airship to danger” in the involuntary mode, aggravated by the result of “death”.

The penalty defined for the charge is the same applied to involuntary manslaughter, increased by a third, under the terms of Article 258 of the Criminal Code.

The decision to charge them was taken based on elements of proof existing in the police inquiry, which point to the lack of the caution that is necessary, expected, and can be demanded of pilots during the realization of a flight.

The investigations have still not been completed, and other conducts may be identified as causes of the accident.

The police inquiry will be sent to the Federal Court of Sinop/MT, on the 13th of December, with a request for additional time to continue the investigations.

Sector of Social Communication/Superintendency of the Federal Police in São Paulo
Tel (11) 3616-5011/5013″

(By “other conducts,” it was made clear in an oral presentation, the police meant conduct by other parties.)
—-

Robert Torricella, a United States-based lawyer for ExcelAire Service, the business-jet charter company in Long Island that employes the pilots and owns the Legacy 600 jet involved in the collision that killed 154 on a Gol 737 airliner, called today’s proceedings in Sao Paulo “absurd.”

Immediately after their passports were returned, the pilots, Joe Lepore, 42, and Jan Paladino, 34, were whisked to the airport where they boarded a waiting private jet for the long flight home to Long Island. This thwarted a handful of Brazilian reporters who had booked tickets on the nightly American Airlines nonstop to New York from Sao Paulo, figuring they would corner the Americans during the nine-hour flight.

They are have been told they must return to Brazil, if ordered, to answer questions in any future judicial proceeding. The Brazilian investigations into the crash, being conducted by the Air Force (which runs air traffic control) and by the Federal Police, are expected to take 10 months to a year before completion.

Preliminary investigations, based on evidence such as cockpit voice controllers and air-traffic-control center data, have indicated that the crash was caused by a series of human and technical systems errors in air-traffic control that put a commercial Gol 737 airliner, and the Legacy 600 business jet being flown by the two pilots with five passengers on board, on a head-on course. The airplanes collided 37,000 feet over the Amazon. All 154 on the 737 died while the damaged business jet made an emergency landing at a jungle air strip.

In addition, air traffic controllers have testified — and appeared on Brazilian television to state — that they mistakenly misread the Legacy’s altitude before the crash and were unable to communicate with either the Legacy or the 737 as the two planes flew on a collision course in a so-called blind zone over the Amazon where radar and radio communications are known to be unreliable.

—

…are a hoax.

Every day, I get an e-mail or two from someone who has just been forwarded an e-mail with two photos that are described as showing terrified passengers on the Gol 737 as the plane, its rear section blasted open to the sky, plunges to its death.

The e-mail with the photos has been circulating for about six weeks. I’ve even had them forwarded to me by pilots.

They’re not real.

As the brilliant rumor-debunking Web site Snopes.com points out, the images purporting to be the Gol 737 in its final moments are actually screen shots from the pilot episode of the television series “Lost.” Indeed, Snopes.com points out, “actress Evangeline Lilly, who portrays the character Kate Austen in that show, is clearly identifiable in the left-hand side of the first photograph.”

The breathless text (”INCREDIBLE. AMAZING”) accompanying the e-mail that is driving the hoax claims the photos were found on the memory stick of a digital camera recovered from the wreckage of the plane in the Amazon jungle. A fictional owner of the camera and his survivors are even described. He was traced, the text says improbably, through the “serial number of the camera.”

Discerning readers picked up several clues that the photos were a hoax. One, the interior shots show that the aircraft is level, as seen by the sky and clouds visible through the blasted-away back section of the fuselage. Yet it’s known that the real Gol flipped over and went into a horrifying death spiral at impact at 37,000 feet. Two, even if you don’t recognize the actress (I don’t; I’ve never seen “Lost”), the faces don’t appear to be Brazilian, and nearly all of the passengers on the Gol flight were Brazilian. Three, the colors and design of the interior of the aircraft shown are not those of the Brazilian airline Gol.

Here’s the link to Snopes’s debunking, which has the e-mail text and the photos:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/brazil737.asp

The hoax, Snopes.com says, was perpetrated by a Brazilian blogger who has since copped to it, “claiming he was attempting to demonstrate that people only skim the first paragraph or so of articles and don’t really absorb or think critically about what they’re reading.”

The American pilots, Joe Leopre and Jan Paladino, are being interrogated today by police in Sao Paulo amid reports that they might be charged later today with involuntary manslaughter before they are released, as anticipated, after the questioning.

The pilots are in police headquarters in Sao Paulo this morning for a day-long interrogation that precedes their anticipated release, which is expected sometime between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. The pilots have been detained in Brazil since the Sept. 29 mid-air collision over the Amazon in which 154 people on a Gol 737 airliner died.

Keep in mind that it is no longer in dispute that the Sept. 29 crash was caused by a series of air-traffic control human errors and technical breakdowns that added up to a catastrophe. The pilots could be charged in some form before (and if) they are allowed to leave the country later today.

Here is an explanation of why:

Reacting to the ongoing air-traffic control protests, which have caused a major internal crisis with delayed and cancelled flights and crowds sleeping overnight in airports, the government — and especially the military and the federal police — are desperate to buy time for cover and to let things cool down as the investigations into the crash drag on for as much as a year. This is the argument being made by some authorities in Brazil: The pilots could be charged with something before they’re let go, just to deflect blame from the controllers and the military till things settle down. (This, of course, would be a travesty of justice).

By the way, Brazil has several forms of “indictment,” one of which isn’t a formal criminal charge but basically a notice that you are a subject in a criminal investigation. The lesser form of indictment doesn’t conform to the U.S. sense of the word as a charge that you must stand trial as an accused criminal. If that is what in fact comes up, watch how readily some elements of the U.S. news media will screw up the linguistic nuance.

The background:

Once it became clear that Brazil’s poorly staffed, badly maintained air traffic control system (which is run by the military) was at fault, underpaid, sullen controllers staged a protracted work protest that has caused chronic delays in Brazil’s air traffic for six weeks. That came to a head on Tuesday, when a federal court finally ordered that the pilots be released in 72 hours. Aware that blame was shifting their way, controllers threw a new tantrum and shut down three of the country’s major airports.

It’s now approaching prime summertime/Christmas holiday travel season in Brazil, and the controllers are making a point about blame: Send it our way and we’ll really shut the system down. Thus the American pilots — who have been charged with nothing and presented with no evidence that they are guilty of anything — cannot be seen leaving Brazil as the innocent men they in fact are.

That’s why the police authorities — mindful of the anti-American hysteria that has driven much of this case — might well announce some kind of charge, possibly a low-grade “indiciar” indictment, that is legally taken to mean: There are indications this person may be involved in what could be a crime, and this person must answer further questions in a future legal proceeding.

The pilots, if they are released tonight, will be legally bound to return to Brazil if summoned for further judicial proceedings.

But it could get worse. Some police and military authorities are trying to get a court order today that would prevent the pilots from leaving. But that’s a long shot.

Most of the bets are that the pilots get out tonight. Just in time for the evening news in Brazil, expect to see two brave and innocent Americans, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, perp-walked in Sao Paulo for the benefit of a media mob.

As someone in Brazil who has followed this closely told me this morning: “Once you understand that it this point it’s not about Jan and Joe or the airplane accident, but about enhancing the police chief’s career through publicity, and avoiding the appearance of Brazil knuckling under to U.S. pressure, what’s going on becomes much less confusing.”

And don’t forget, Venezuela’s newly reelected President Hugo Chavez, who rides anti-Americanism like a surfboard, is in Brazil on a state visit. Hugo announced in Brazil yesterday that Brazil’s president is planning a trip to Havana soon to visit Fidel Castro while Fidel is “recovering.” A fellow with a fine-tuned publicity monitor like Lucky Lula wouldn’t want to be standing hat-in-hand at poor old Fidel’s death bed having just knuckled under to the Americans, now, would he? How mortifying (to use that word deliberately) would THAT be?

Meanwhile, the air-traffic-control tantrum continues, after protests that shut down airports Tuesday night and hobbled the system for two days afterward. If you are flying in Brazil, keep in mind that you could be subject to serious delays and/or cancellations. The same with flights to and from Brazil.

And remember this, too: Brazil is one of the most crime-ridden of the countries that have a solid tourism business. Street crime is rampant and getting worse. Three times this year, for example, armed bandits have attacked shuttle buses that take foreign tourists from the airport in Rio to their hotels, robbing all aboard.

But the masked bandits are not anti-tourist, just opportunistic. Last night, for example, robbers in Rio blocked a car whose passengers were Brazil’s Chief Justice, Ellen Gracie Northfleet, and the Supreme Court vice president, Gilmar Mendes.

“The Justices were dagged out of the car by the armed men and were kept under the barrel of guns, while policemen in charge of their security, driving in two other cars, watched the whole scene without reacting,” Francesco Neves writes this morning on Brazzil.com, the online news magazine.

The masked gunmen stole the car the justices were in and all of the justices’ valuables. The security detail accompanying the justices explained later that they didn’t react because they were afraid the gunmen would harm the officials.

——

A touching visit in Brazil.

(For context, please see earlier post: “STATE DEPT. TO PILOTS: DROP DEAD!” for some speculation on why the State Department has been conspicuously afraid to intervene in the case of the American pilots).

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who easily won reelection last Sunday, is on a state visit to Brazil this week “for discussions on energy and infrastructure cooperation between the two countries,” Brazzil.com reports tonight. [MY NOTE: Read that that as, Venezuela will cut a deal to sell Brazil more oil and gas at a good price, in return for closer ties.]

[Also, I presume Chavez arrived by private jet, avoiding Brazilian airports hobbled by the air traffic controllers' protests.]

After meeting with Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, “Chavez told reporters that the Brazilian President is planning a trip to Cuba to visit Fidel Castro, who is recuperating from an undisclosed disease.” [MY NOTE: Do note the compliant tone of the word "recuperating," when everybody knows Fidel is on his death bed.]

Chavez said, “Lula expressed his wish to visit Fidel. We are worried. I got a note from Fidel two or three days ago and the information I have from Cuba is that the recovery is still slow.”

The recovery is slow because the alternative is imminent. Lula, get the private jet out and hurry.

Fidel is, well let’s just say he does not have a lot of time, being such a busy man and all.

——————

From Brazzil.com today. [Annotations by me]:

[NOTE: Please do keep in mind that the authorities routinely manipulate various elements of the compliant Brazilian news media to send up trial balloons to see if they can sway public opinion, especially when political tensions are high.]

Headline: “Prosecutor and Police Try Last-Minute Maneuvers to Keep Pilots in Brazil.”

By Roberto Espinoza

“Brazil’s Public Attorney Office and Federal Police are doing their best to prevent that American pilots Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, implicated in the collision with the Boeing 737 on Sept. 29, leave the country tomorrow as ordered by a Brazilian higher court of justice.” (MY NOTE: Note the subtle shift here to using the word “implicated,” in conformity with authories’ mood. The pilots have not been charged with anything, and no evidence has been presented to charge them with anything.)

“Failing that, they will at least try to leave a strong impression on those following the news of the release and on the pilots themselves.” (MY NOTE: Air traffic remains a mess in Brazil as controllers, fearful that releasing the pilots will impute blame to the controllers (where it squarely belongs), threaten to bring the system to a halt over the year-end holidays, when summer tourist season also begins in Brazil).

(My NOTE, continued): The air-traffic situation in Brazil has now become a full-blown political crisis for the government, which has allowed itself to be backed into a corner by controllers and their military bosses, whose greatest fear is losing their control of the ATC system and its honey-pot of a budget.)

The American pilots are allowed by a regional federal court order to pick up their passports after 6 p.m. Friday. The Federal Police have scheduled one more interrogation session with the pilots — for Friday. Anyone thinking what I am: Hail Mary pass?

Meanwhile, as I said, Brazil’s air-travel system remains in chaos, with long lines and people sleeping in terminals all night. Air traffic control computers broke down in Brasilia Tuesday as controllers intensified their protests. Two major airports were shut down and operations at a third, Sao Paulo, were severely curtailed.

In keeping with a current style in journalism, the Associated Press today obediently takes out its steno pad and merely reports what a Brazilian press agency has been assured by the authorities. “Federal police discounted the possibility of sabotage, saying the problem appeared to be technical and that they would only investigate if asked by Brazil’s military, which runs the system …”

It ain’t often I’m speechless but, uh …

—

You read it here a month ago that this would happen. Yesterday, as soon as it became known that a federal court ordered the release of the American pilots’ passports by Friday, air traffic control in Brazil, already hobbed since the Sept. 29 disaster by a work-to-rule protest by controllers … well, it crashed.

Last night, operations at two major airports, Brasilia and Belo Horizonte, were shut down, and operations at Sao Paulo were sharply curtailed, because controllers reported that “equipment failure” prevented them from maintaining contact with aircraft.

“A communications system in Brasilia inexplicably broke down, reducing the number of radio frequencies and making it hard for controllers to reach pilots flying commercial jets in some of Brazil’s busiest air-traffic corridors,” Brazzil.com reports, quoting the Agencia Brazil news agency.

Passengers are rising up. At the airport in Brasilia, stranded passengers put on red clown noses and blew whistles in protest, according to press reports. (And no, I don’t know how or where they obtained a supply of clown noses and whistles on short notice. That sort of thing usually takes some planning).

“There has never been a collapse like this,” the chief of the aviation authority, Milton Zuanazzi, is quoted as saying on the Web site of Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil’s biggest newspaper.

Reuters quotes Franco Ferreira, a retired Air Force colonel and aviation expert, as saying” “There is no doubt this was intentional.”

It was posited here last month that the air-traffic controllers might intensify their protests and threaten to shut down Brazil’s air traffic system if, as has now happened, blame shifts from the American pilots and toward the actual cause of the Sept. 29 crash: Air traffic control.

The Usual Suspects, among them Wonderful Waldir Pires, have rushed in spinning like so many Sugar Plums from “The Nutcracker.” Not to worry! they are hollering. This is just a mere technicality! Be patient!

This is insanity. I hope I can soon retire from covering the Brazil rabbit hole beat, and I shall, once the pilots are out and home. Hopefully, that happens Friday night.

But while I plan my retirement from Brazil (with hope and faith), let me quote a few comments on this sad and sorry mess by the respected Brazilian journalist Alberto Dines, writing in the current issue of the Brazilian press journal Observatorio da Imprensa:

“With each passing day, new evidence: the government, through the Defense Minister, deceived the Brazilian nation for two months. The worst Brazilian air tragedy is linked to a political scandal of great proportions — all of this with the complicity of a large part of the media, which, once again, published groundless charges expressed by cunning and/or irresponsibile authorities.

Defense Minister Pires, Mr. Dines said, “politicized this tragedy from the very beginning. And now he is paying for that.”

—-

To me it was thrilling to see the Brazilian federal court invoke the term “habeas corpus” in its decision yesterday ordering that the passports of the two Americans, held without charge since the horrific Sept. 29 mid-air collision with a 737 over the Amazon, be returned by Friday.

I am not unmindful of the irony for Americans. I would hope that the U.S. State Department, which has been so indifferent to the plight of the pilots, might at least pay attention to those words from the Brazilian court: Habeas corpus. They define the most fundamental principle of law in a democratic society, a common-law principle affirmed by the Magna Carta. For a state to justifiably detain someone, a body of evidence must be presented for inspection within a reasonable period of time.

The word “Guantanamo” has come up very frequently in the intense reaction to this incident. Guantanamo and all it symbolizes about illegal actions by the American government in detaining suspects, even American citizens, without regard to habeas corpus.

I should add that I have nothing but contempt for the fairly sizeable number of people I have heard from in the last two months, including some Americans, who have smugly said that the American pilots, innocent or not, got what they deserved as “payback” for Guantanamo. As I replied to some of them, this is the vile logic of death squads in Iraq and Darfur, to say that innocent people anywhere should be sacrificed as payback for injustice.

It isn’t absolutely certain yet that the Federal Police or the Air Force won’t try to put up obstacles to releasing the pilots on Friday, though it appears unlikely at this point. Still, Brazilian air traffic controllers have been staging protests since October over the very idea that blame might come their way, as it certainly will come, especially once the pilots are cleared. Yesterday, major airports, including Sao Paulo and Brasilia, were virtually shut down by air traffic control problems.

Nevertheless, a Brazilian court has literally laid down the law with two Latin words that need to reverberate in every free society everywhere: Habeas corpus.

—