Blake 777
Possibly the biggest disappointment of Hishamuddin's responses to 4 Corners was his inability or unwillingness to acknowledge that in choosing not to have the military scramble an intercept to the unidentified aircraft showing on primary radar, the opportunity to gather valuable information was lost. Hishamuddin took the tack "What would have been the point? We weren't going to shoot it down - it was civilian
There is a serious flaw in the Minister's reponse : How does he ( and the Malysian air force ) knew it was civilian and not hostlile ? We were told the primary target was never identified in real time. That was acknowledged by a Malaysian general in a press conference in the early days.
Otherwise if it was identified, then why leave the search going on for days in the Souh China sea?
For me the minister response in the programme is just Communications crisis management to hide the fact that their air defence did not work very well that night.
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