Although he got a C in his language class when he was in school at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Searcy resident Scott Follett’s first book has created a stir since it was released in December. Fusing his knowledge of airplanes with some investigating and a little speculation, in his book IGARI: Where MH-370 and the World Changed Course Forever, Follett explores a possible scenario that could account for the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370.
Follett grew up in Michigan, and when he graduated from high school in 1979, he joined the military. He went to West Point, where he studied engineering.
“West Point was the hardest school,” he said. “It’s very prestigious. There were opportunities there, and it was challenging.”
After graduating from West Point, Follett spent eight years in the military, going into aviation when he was finished with school. Over those years, he was stationed around the world, including locations in Germany, South Korea and Texas. At one point he served as the youngest officer on Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War.
“I flew helicopters, the broken ones,” Follett said. “At least I knew what was wrong with them before I went up. It’s when they don’t tell you what’s wrong that it can get exciting.”
Follett’s secondary specialty when he was in the Army was nuclear-weapons development.
“I never did anything with it, but it was on my retirement,” he said, “and it does tie into the book.”
After his time in the Army, Follett got a job in Wisconsin as a hydraulics engineer, leading the design team that developed the first electrohydraulic valve for agriculture.
“I saw some recently and realized they hadn’t changed at all,” he said.
Seventeen years ago, Follett was hired by Bosch and relocated to Searcy to be a quality engineer. He is also an adjunct instructor for several local colleges and universities, including Arkansas State University-Beebe, ASU-Beebe at Searcy and Pulaski Technical College.
Follett said he never thought of himself as a writer. He does not really write a lot in his spare time, and he did not get great marks in language when he was in school.
“My language teacher at West Point gave me a C,” he said. “He actually had me down as a failing grade, but I pulled off an A on the final so I could avoid summer school.”
Even with his lack of interest in writing, Follett published his first book, IGARI, last year. The book could be classified as historical fiction, Follett said, as it explores a fictional plot around the disappearance of MH-370. The plane was lost from radars of air-traffic control on March 8, 2014, at a point in the South China Sea called IGARI. The plane has not been found.
As news started to break on the plane’s mysterious circumstances, Follett was examining the evidence through the lens of his experience with aircraft and engineering. Some of the speculations out there simply did not add up, Follett said, and he started forming his own theories.
“The biggest theory was that the pilots did it,” he said. “In order for the pilots to do it, I knew that from my experience in aviation, it would have to be the entire flight crew, not just the pilots.”
Follett said the theory he has developed started with the passengers, not the pilots. Two passengers in particular captured his attention, and he believes they tie the plane’s disappearance to the Middle East.
“Onboard that flight were two Iranians with fake passports,” he said. “Now we have to go back to 1990. In 1990, Iran and Libya bought these centrifuges from Pakistan. These centrifuges spin this uranium. … In November 2007, somehow a virus got into the main centrifuges and the main nuclear centrifuges in Iran.”
This virus set them back two years, Follett said, and Iran lost nearly 1,000 of their centrifuges. At that point, Follett said, Iran became very good at cyber warfare.
“Well, the plane disappears with two Iranians with fake passports,” he said. “It was a Boeing 777, which is fly-by-wire, which means it literally takes off, flies and lands without any pilot input at all. The electronics bay is actually separate from the pilots. They’ll override the computer program. If you go in there and change the computer program to allow no inputs, you could override the pilots’ inputs and take over control [of the plane]. My gut feeling is that the Iranians were there to make sure the pilots didn’t get in the electronics bay.”
Follett said he does not believe the plane will be found, and if it is, all of the instruments that contain the information on what happened to the plane would not be recovered. No one has taken credit for the plane’s disappearance, but Follett has a few possibilities outlined in his book about who he thinks is responsible.
The book is short — less than 70 pages — but Follett said he has been happy with the response he has gotten to his book. Part of his goal was to provide a lot of research and theories to allow readers to do their own digging. While his book is considered fiction, Follett said, he thinks the theories outlined in IGARI are at least plausible, and he wants people to look into his ideas and make their own conclusions.
“It fits too well,” he said. “That’s not the way you prove a theory. It doesn’t mean it’s true just because we can’t disprove it. Without getting that plane up or getting another plane hacked, we won’t know. … I keep waiting for someone to tell me it doesn’t work. The ones who tell me it doesn’t work don’t back it up with fact.”
For more information on IGARI, visit www.amazon.com/IGARI-Flight-MH-370-Changed-Forever-ebook/dp/B00OL05J4W.
Follett said this book probably won’t be his only venture into authorship, and he has another idea he is working on now.
When he is not writing, working or teaching, Follett said, he helps his wife, Martha, with her business, Latina Imports. He also spends time with his son, Eddie, who is a senior at Searcy High School. He helped Follett edit the book and is considering the next step in his life, which might include time at Vanderbilt University or the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.
Staff writer Angela Spencer can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or aspencer@arkansasonline.com.