Paul, doesn't surprise me that you guys were contacted after 9-11. The bureaucrats are afraid of the people they work for. Common sense has no bearing on their thinking. They are worried about a 50+ year old airplane simply because it has an "F" designation, nevermind that it might be totally impractical for ANY bad guy to use it in a threatining manner ! The last bad guys they dealt with used B-757s full of thousands of pounds of fuel to do their dirty work. So what do our govt heroes do ? They start verifying that long dead severely obsolete aircraft are still chained to the ground ! On the UH-1s, why should they care ? There are thousands out in the real world as well as bigger,better,newer, and more accessible civilian helicopters all over this country that are more suitable for bad guy work than a couple of old Hueys! How stupid.
On the F-84/F-86 comment. News flash The same people in the USAF, NMUSAF, and FAA who won't let an F-84 fly don't want an F-86 to fly, they also don't like the T-33, T-38, T-28,F-4, A-4, F-104, etc... flying. If they had a mechanism to ground and seize them, they would. Their take on those types of aircraft flying is that somehow the individuals that own and operate them are rogues who have somehow worked outside of carefully crafted rules that were put in place to specifically keep them from flying. I have seen letters accusing us of being irresponsible, thieves, and a danger to the system that could cause the very downfall of the National Museum system !
We actually had some lame brain write in a letter that the Navy was very uneasy about releasing a tactical jet aircraft (TA-4 Skyhawk) to civilians in light of 9-11. Nevermind that legislation had been passed into law mandating that it happen. I pointed out that we were talking about an 11,000 lb aircraft that with full fuel carried about 10,000 lb. You also don't just jump into a vintage jet, start it up and go. It takes some effort to get it into the air.
Paranoia, that's all it is paranoia.