Readers React:  AEG plays the terrorism card to boost its NFL bid

To the editor: It is shocking that sports and entertainment firm AEG, in its lust for an NFL team, would hire Tom Ridge, a former Homeland Security secretary, to play the terrorism card. (“AEG report warns rival Inglewood NFL stadium presents terrorist threat,” Feb. 27)

Perhaps the group behind the football stadium development in Inglewood should in turn hire the firm Chicken Little and Associates to report that a “dirty bomb” would more likely be detonated in a dense population zone like the downtown AEG site. Then they might start rumors that attempts to purchase yellow cake were made at various downtown bakeries.

Actually, I cannot imagine the NFL finds this at all amusing. With this absurd terrorism alert released through a third party, AEG was clearly trying to ring the bell that can’t be unrung. I believe the NFL should investigate AEG with the possibility of disqualifying it from consideration of ever hosting an NFL team.

Robert Fox, Los Angeles

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To the editor: This is a case of taking an idea and assuming the absolute worst. By raising fears that the Inglewood site’s proximity to Los Angeles International Airport would make it susceptible to a plane crash, the report assumes that nobody in the control towers or the cockpit would be doing his or her job.

If Inglewood is unsafe, then the Forum has been unsafe for more than 40 years. Yankee Stadium, Met Life Stadium, Citi Field and the National Tennis Center in New York have been unsafe for all these years. The list goes on.

For that matter, the White House and U.S. Capitol are near the flight paths for Washington’s Reagan National Airport; should we shut those government facilities down too?

This is simply taking the idea of what’s safe entirely too far and assuming the public can’t see through the obvious self-interest of a developer.

Bob Previdi, Philadelphia

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To the editor: Really? The Times gives Saturday’s top story placement to a blatant fear-mongering report commissioned by a direct business competitor to the Inglewood stadium proposal — and then barely touches on such baldfaced self-interest and dealing by AEG and other backers of a downtown NFL stadium?

I’m not a football fan and really have no horse in this race, but I say full speed ahead to Inglewood.

Ged Kenslea, North Hollywood

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To the editor: How pitiful it is to read about a preposterous report designed solely to harm a business rival of AEG. And how sad to see that Ridge has stooped to collecting paychecks by ringing imagined terror alarms, custom tailored, for a price.

Ridge and AEG should be ashamed of themselves and issue an apology to every L.A.-area homeowner and business owner who happens to live under the flight paths of airplanes.

Jim Regan, Carlsbad, Calif.

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