FAA Grounds US Aircraft Carrying Anti-Jihad Banner
The Federal Aviation Authority, pursuant to FBI orders, grounded the aircraft that Florida Family Association paid to pull a banner which stated “AIG Sponsors Jihad TV” around MetLife Stadium. The FAA has stated that they lost the control tower audio recording of this act of censorship after receiving a Freedom of Information Act request. However, the FAA provided a written account of the event in which they verified the FBI’s actions and stated in part “The Front Line Manager (FLM) disclosed he could not recall ever requesting any other aircraft to leave the area.”
The FBI has been unresponsive to numerous communications that requested a reason as to why their agency commanded the FAA to order the grounding of the aircraft.
The FLM’s statement that “he could not recall ever requesting any other aircraft to leave the area” unmistakably means the federal government censored Florida Family Association. Did an AIG official ask an FBI official to ground the plane? Could the FBI have deleted the audio recording of the conversation between the control tower and pilot given the FAA’s finger pointing letter?
Florida Family Association tapes 10 hours of programming on Al Jazeera America every day and communicates with each advertiser. Top advertisers are featured in articles at floridafamily.org. One hundred ninety-seven out of 221 companies have stopped advertising on Al Jazeera America.
(AIG) is the only Fortune 500 company that has advertised on Al Jazeera America during the past 15 months. Florida Family Association decided to use aircraft banners to publicize AIG’s ardent support for Al Jazeera America after the company ignored thousands of emails from concerned consumers. The project was placed on hold to allow time for the FAA to respond. Florida Family Association did not receive the written response from the FAA until Dec. 16, 2014. The FBI was given four weeks to respond before making this act of censorship public.
In February 2012, the FBI cowered to the pressure from Islamist groups by removing 876 pages and 392 presentations from their educational resources because the materials were offensive to Islamists. In 2013, the FBI cowered again to Islamist groups by stopping their Most Wanted advertising campaign which helped the agency gain information regarding the whereabouts of dangerous terrorists. Now the FBI is censoring the private sector’s criticism of American corporate sponsorship of Islamist television.
