Pentagon: Missing Airline Conspiracy ‘Ridiculous’
A photo of what appears to be wreckage from the Malaysian Airlines jetliner peppered with shrapnel damage.
The Virginian-Pilot | Dec 24, 2014 | by Mike Hixenbaugh
Pentagon officials say a former French airline boss's bold theory about what really happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is "ridiculous."
Marc Dugain, the former chief executive of now-defunct Proteus Airlines, believes the U.S. Navy may have shot it out of the sky, a theory that's getting a lot of media attention in Europe and online conspiracy forums.
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby fielded a question about the theory on Monday. "This claim is too ridiculous to deserve a serious response," he told reporters.
Dugain lays out his case in two articles in French magazine Paris Match.
"Without getting into conspiracy theories," Dugain said in a radio interview after the piece was published, "it is a possibility that the Americans stopped this plane."
Despite denials by international authorities, Dugain is convinced that the Boeing 777, which had more than 200 people on board, crashed near the American Navy base on Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean. It's possible, he wrote in the magazine, that the plane had been hijacked by hackers and that the United States then shot it down to prevent a terrorist attack.
Australia has been spearheading the hunt for the plane, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean off western Australia. In the weeks following the airliner's disappearance, a number of U.S. Navy ships and aircraft assisted in the search.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/12/24/pentagon-missing-airline-conspiracy-ridiculous.html
