By Jeffrey Lord
Is Zaharie Ahmad Shah a real-life Marko Ramius? Is the mystery of Malaysia flight 370 lifted straight from a famous bestselling thriller-turned-Hollywood-blockbuster? Recall: A brand new high tech Soviet nuclear submarine vanishes with officers and full crew aboard. A frantic search begins, though the alarmed Kremlin is silent about the fact that it has been notified by the captain that he intends to defect and hand the sub over to the Americans. The officers — but not the crew — are in on the plan.
The Israeli government is alarmed that the vanished Malaysian plane has in fact been hijacked to Iran in order to attack Israel with a weapon of mass destruction, and the New York Times reports that the “first turn that diverted the missing Malaysia Airlines plane from its route was entered into a computer system, most likely by someone in the plane’s cockpit.”