As Statfor concluded, "Working with the knowledge we currently have, including the fact that the US military conducts missile tests in this area on a regular basis, everything points to a missile launched by the United States. Still, why deny knowledge of something that appears to be a rather routine launch at a time when the president is out of the country?"
The apparent missile launch on Monday is the latest in a series of high-profile but unexplained events involving the US military. In 2006, US nuclear missile parts were sent to Taiwan, supposedly by accident. In September 2007, it was learned that a nuclear-armed B-52 bomber flew over the US without authorization. And in 2008, a US military report was leaked in the European media noting that over 1,000 nuclear missile parts had gone missing.
Last year there was the fighter jet-escorted flight of Air Force One, a Boeing 747 used exclusively for the travel of the US president, at a low altitude over Manhattan. President Obama claimed to have no knowledge of the flight, which was explained as a secret "photo op" to obtain pictures of the president's plane flying near the Statue of Liberty.
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