Vanished: Flight 777 is a suspense thriller and thought experiment by this author, John T. Cullen. On this website, I discuss new findings starting July 2015, explain the original impetus and urgency for my novel (*not* a conspiracy novel), and tell you why the premise is as important today and in the future as it was when I published the novel in June 2014.

Buy Links. At bottom right, you can find some of the many buy links (including explanatory blurbs and more) at leading retailers online including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and more. Through Smashwords, the e-book edition is available at B&N, Apple, iBooks, Kobo, and many other outlets.

Background to a Thriller Like all U.S. citizens, I lived through the horrific events of 9/11. In my case, it was from the vantage point of my livingroon in San Diego, starting about 5:45 a.m. PST. I had risen early, and had just returned from a trip out for donuts and coffee. I intended to simply take a break, eating breakfast while watching the news. Like many U.S. citizens, and in fact people around the world, I barely rose from that seat over the next day or two.

Beginning with the first tentative little confused reports that "a small plane may have crashed into the World Trade Center" (in New York City) on CNN, within minutes the news grew more and more grim. While a reporter was interviewing a woman about what she had seen, in real time, on live TV, I witnessed the second plane flying into the other tower. The reporter's words were something to the effect that "now we know this was not an accident."

Those images, along with the epochal scenes of thick smoke billowing for miles over the Manhattan skyline, and terrified commuters on foot fleeing the city on the bridges, remain engraved in my mind and will be so for the rest of my life. That is the background for my decision to urgently write the book I did, titled Vanished: Flight 777.

Thought Experiment, Not Conspiracy Theory. You'll notice that I chose as part of the title '777' instead of 'MH370'. I published the book at the beginning of June 2014, just three months after the plane's disappearance on 8 March 2014. I purposely wanted to avoid pointless controversies, and to avoid being lumped in with a few opportunists who cranked out half-baked theories, presumably for the cash. Like a few other elements of my novel, that fine point was missed by those who chose not to read or take seriously the review copies I mailed out as standard publishing procedure. The fact is, the premise for the book remains as alive and vital today as it was in early June 2014.

Avoiding Another 9/11. First of all, as I explained, my motivating factor to set all other projects aside at that time in favor of this book was the fear of another 9/11. There are three major lemmas or givens (like paths) to any possible analysis of this mystery. I chose one of the three, which turns out to be the one nobody seems to want to discuss, and therefore I must discuss it all the more vehemently.

Three Lemmas or Givens (Paths). Of the many possible event sequences to hopefully one day explain the mystery of MH370, there are three possible groupings. They are (1) accident; (2) sabotage; (3) hijack. All three remain on the table. I did not write a crystal ball revelation or a sensationalist conspiracy theory. I followed a scholarly, logical path of argumentation. Remarkably, as of 30 July 2015 when I write this, nothing has yet been mentioned by the many talking heads on media that in any way contradicts the premise and execution of my novel. The one divergence, of course, is that in my book the terrorists go on to attempt a strike against the West (the Great Satan; that's you and I), far worse than 9/11 with a heavily weaponized Boeing 777. In reality, it now appears that the plane did go down at sea. The talking heads seem to be stuck on ((1) accident or (2) sabotage, though none of their scenarios adds up to 100%. I have stressed the vitally needed (3) hijack with intent of greater malice. I claim no greatrer or lesser credibility for my scenario, except to say that a fair, logical, rigorous thinker is perpetrating a thought crime by not considering it. I will add some thoughts about this on this website. Remember, the book is available in print and e-book formats very inexpensively for anyone who cares to go the extra step.

It's About Logic and Reality. We have to consider seriously all three lemmas or givens on the possibilities tree; not just the first two as talking heads seem to be fixated on doing, despite reports of U.S. intelligence estimates pointing to human interference (lemmas #2 and #3). On this website I will go over some of the points I made in the book. As I did in the entries at Clocktower Books following publication in 2014, I will probably set up a new timeline for continuing discoveries. The bottom line to the hijack (#3) scenario is: even if the plane did not reach Africa—which would have been the best base, close to targets in Europe, Israel, and U.S. Navy carriers in the Mediterranean—we now have a thought experiment to demonstrate the lethal possibilities of a commercial airliner hijack (or theft; think about it). During the intervening year, we have had the suicide scenario of Germanwings Flight 9525 on 24 March 2015. The problem with ascribing suicide (part of lemma #2, sabotage) to MH370 is that in all cases I know of where commercial pilots committed suicide and took their passengers with them, it was a matter of finding a quick way down, not of flying around for hours. As I pointed out before, from the example of Pakistan's Dr. Kahn covertly passing nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Libya some years ago, there is no dearth of technical expertise in the hands of Islamic terrorists. On the same note, a realistic assessment is that, in the cesspool of human depravity that is the Middle East, certain Saudi elements, along with Emiratis and Pakistanis and others, were clearly guilty of harboring Osama bin Laden (one of many articles. As of 2015, it is apparent that Mullah Omar, the primitive fanatic and torturer of Afghanistan, likely died in a Karachi, Pakistan hospital. It is also evident that Pakistan's intelligence services facilitate many maniacal attacks by Islamic extremists Lashkar-e-Taiba including the 2008 Mumbai attacks and others.

It is almost incidental which of the major branches of Islam these terrorists belong to (Sunni or Shi'a) since what Westerners may not realize is that 90% of the Middle East chaos involves a fight to the death between governments belonging to these factions. The degree of hatred is at least equivalent to that between rival Protestant and Catholic factions in Europe from the 1500s to at least the 1700s, with religious wars and countless lives lost in a European blood bath that seemed to have no end, and all of it manipulated from behind the scenes by both Catholic and Protestant princes and clerics for their personal gain. The situation in the Middle East should be largely understood in this light, although one who believes in the redemption of humankind will in the same breath hope for an eventual turn to peace and light. Certainly, the people of the region are as capable as any others, given the opportunity. Ultimately, it took the Europeans a series of devastating wars crescendoing with two world wars and, effectively, the suicide of Europe in the mid-20th Century to achieve an exhausted state of democracy and tolerant secularism. Even at that, there are some troubling dark notes in the fledgling European Union, which is not free and clear of potential political conflicts, if not worse (with some help from Russian demagogue Putin). The primitive majorities and their absolute, sectarian tyrants in the greater Middle East region may be centuries from achieving any sort of resolution and ending their mutual blood bath. There is more to the story even than that, but anyone doubting the capabilities, the willingness, the motives, and the multinational high-level support for terrorist attacks like that outlined in my novel Vanished: Flight 777 should seriously rethink their ideas.

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