Reply #94: nothing arbitrary? of course not

[reorg]

>No testimony may "just as well" be dismissed as unreliable and inconsistent. There is nothing arbitrary about the correct procedure and presumption. Your starting pont must be that a witness on oath speaks in good faith.<

And then you try to establish whether his account is reliable, e. g. by questioning him about minor details. "Why did you feel relieved when she called" may be one such question. If the witness then gives different answers at different points in time, it is only prudent to assume that he is thoroughly confused or may be lying.

Another test of his reliability is comparing the wording of his various accounts. If he, e. g., never quotes his wife's first words on the phone verbatim (lack of authenticity and detail, see above), even says he cannot remember exactly what was said at which point in time, but then uses always the same phrase to describe the beginning of their conversation: "she told me they were herded back into the plane", a prudent interviewer must not rule out the possibility that he is trying to stick to certain talking points.



>Perhaps there was a mixture of cell phone calls and airphone calls. What would you do if you'd failed to get through? A sensible attempt would be to contact a third party to get a message through indirectly.<

You seem prone to all kinds of speculation with respect to the medium of those calls.

Incoming calls were probably not recorded, I assume (where I live, they are not, at least no longer than a few days).

There may be records of outgoing cell phone calls. The question is: whose phones were actually used? Probably very hard to establish. It is unlikely that investigators were interested in finding such records. Why would they? The public has not been made aware of such findings, if any. Questions regarding the authenticity of such calls were never raised in the media.

There may be records of outgoing airphone calls. To my knowledge, such records were never publicly mentioned.

On what legal basis could anyone request that they be produced? Who would have to produce them, the phone company Verizon or the FBI?