Air crash investigation. TWA 800 CH 7 1930 26 April.

[Tarkeeth]

In view of the above programme I thought the following which I received last year may be of interest.
*
TEN-YEAR COMMEMORATION OF TWA FLIGHT 800
*
by CAPT Ray Lahr


What really happened on the evening of July 17, 1996, off the shore of Long Island?*??With sincere apologies to those who may not wish to be reminded, this is what I believe happened.*??On a pleasant summer evening, TWA800 was making a normal climb on its flight to Paris.At about 13,800 feet, it was hit by one or two missiles.A missile ignited the CWT (center fuel tank).The explosion blew off the nose section, ruptured the front wing spar (which is also the front of the CWT), and broke the keel beam that runs under the bottom of the CWT. The wing separated and the aircraft fell in two flaming balls, each ball fed by the fuel from the separated wing.*??Does this sound at odds with the CIA/NTSB scenario that says that a spark of unknown origin ignited the CWT and blew off the nose, and that the crippled aircraft then made a z oom-climb that the eyewitnesses mistook as a missile?Yes, in my opinion there was no zoom-climb.However, a missile was politically unacceptable, so the CIA invoked the zoom-climb in a desperate attempt to dismiss the missile seen by the eyewitnesses.Please consider what the eyewitnesses saw.*??Major Fred Meyer saw a missile arc across the sky from right to left.It culminated in at least two ordnance explosions (bright white flashes like flash-bulbs).His copilot, Captain Chris Bauer, was sitting on the left side of the cockpit, and he looked up in time to see a second missile rising from left to right. Then came the huge fuel explosion, and all of the debris fell downward out of the fireball in two flaming streams.*??Captain David McClaine and First Officer Vincent Fruschetti on Eastwind Flight 507 were inbound descending to 16,000 feet.They were head-on toTWA800 which was climbing outbound and was limited to 15,000 feet until they were past each other.The East wind crew had been visually tracking the oncoming landing lights of TWA800 for a few minutes. As Captain McClaine reached up to turn on his own landing lights,TWA800 just blew up and the aircraft fell down to the water in two balls of flames. This was confirmed by two other airline crews on nearby flights.*??Chief Petty Officer Dwight Brumley was a passenger on U S Air 217.He had a window seat and he watched the missile rise and arch over prior to the explosion of TWA800. The debris fell downward.*??Mike Wire, Lisa Perry, Paul Angelides, and William Gallahger all saw the missile rising from near the surface towards TWA800 prior to the explosion. The debris fell downward.*??The list goes on.However, not a single eyewitness saw the CIA scenario of an explosion, a zoom-climb, a second explosion, a dive, a third explosion, and then a plunge into the ocean.*??In support of the eyewitnesses, Captain Richard Russell received a video tape of the ATC radar scope showing four rapidly approaching blips just prior to the explosion.*??So how does the NTSB respond to the eyewitness reports?The NTSB simply says that all ofthese eyewitnesses were wrong and that they didn't understand what they were seeing.The radar blips were anomalies. Furthermore, the NTSB did not allow a single eyewitness to testify at either of its public hearings.*??Now mind you, with rare exception, the NTSB did not interview the eyewitnesses, even though the NTSB is charged with that responsibility by Congress.Instead, the NTSB was shoved aside by the FBI, and the FBI conducted the interviews by itself, not even allowing the NTSB to participate in the interviews.Then, in order to discredit the eyewitnesses, the FBI called in the CIA, the master for cover stories.The CIA likewise had not interviewed the eyewitnesses.Instead, the FBI provided the CIA with a selected portion of its 302 forms (a 302 form is the interviewing agent's written recollection of an interview). The witnesses were assigned numbers by the FBI so that their identities could be kept secret. The interviews themselves were not video taped, or audio taped, or even transcribed verbatim.*??Working only from the 302 forms provided by the FBI, one individual CIA agent concocted the zoom-climb hypothesis to explain away all of the eyewitness missile reports. A zoom-climb is a rapid pull-up into a steep climb utilizing the forward speed of the aircraft.Such a steep climb is much beyond the capabilities of the engines alone on a large transport aircraft. This CIA agent proposed that after the nose was blown off, the flaming aircraft zoom-climbed from 13,800 feet to about ?17,000 feet.The eyewitnesses supposedly mistook the flaming B747 for a missile.Never mind that the eyewitnesses saw a missile rapidly rising from the surface, not a lumbering aircraft rising from a point two and a half miles in the sky.The CIA agent passed his zoom-climb c onclusion to the FBI the following morning.Then the NTSB was brought on board.From that moment on, the investigation was shaped to fit the zoom-climb hypothesis.*??The CIA created a video animation of its hypothetical zoom-climb and presented it to the FBI.In turn, the FBI presented the video to the world in a prime-time national television program in November, 1998. Boeing wasn't pleased, and it issued a statement the following day saying that it had no knowledge of the data used for the video. The FBI declared there was no evidence of criminality and that it was withdrawing from the investigation.However, the FBI did not release the evidence that it had gathered and analyzed, nor did it release the lab reports that it had prepared.The FBI was not a cooperative partner regarding the sharing of information.*??There is reason to believe that something exploded in the passenger cabin of TWA800, and foreign objects were imbedded in some passengers. Red residue wa s found on a row of seat backs. James Sanders, investigative reporter, had some samples analyzed. The residue was consistent with rocket fuel.The FBI stood by during the autopsies and confiscated all of the foreign objects as they were removed.Those objects were sent to the FBI's own lab for analysis.Reports were written but never released, not even to the other agencies. A determination that the objects were explosive fragments from a missile would have undermined the predetermined cause as being a spark of unknown origin.*??Graeme Sephton, an engineer and citizen investigator, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the FBI lab reports.Mr. Sephton was denied.He initiated a lawsuit.Surprisingly, he won and the court ordered the FBI to produce the reports.Subsequently, the FBI came back and said it had searched for the reports and couldn't find them.The court then ruled that the FBI had made a good faith effort, and Mr. Sephton was denied.The most widely publi cized and most expensive accident investigation in the history of aviation, and the FBI loses its own lab reports?That is highly unlikely.Presumably, the objects still exist.Obviously, the FBI does not want the public to know what it found.*??When I saw the CIA video animation on national television, all of my experience told me that the zoom-climb was impossible.An aircraft cannot continue to fly if the center section of the wing blows up, andthe nose, including the cockpit, rips off.Even if the wing had remained intact for a few seconds, the pitch-up after the nose departed would have created an extra g force that would have collapsed the weakened wing.*??In addition to assuming that the wing remained intact, the zoom-climb scenario had to make additional assumptions about the condition of the aircraft in order for the zoom-climb to be viable. Let's explore those assumptions.*
First, we must also assume that the thrust of the engines remained balanced- all engines had to maintain the same thrust or all had to quit simultaneously to keep the aircraft from yawing and flipping.Remember that when the cockpit left, all engine control cables and electrical wires were ripped away.Which cables snapped first?Was each engine calling for full thrust or shut-down?It is highly unlikely that the thrust remained balanced.*??Second, we must also assume that the control surfaces of rudder, elevator, and ailerons remained balanced and neutral.Again, all control inputs to those surfaces were ripped away with the departure of the cockpit.In flight, all of those surfaces are constantly being manipulated either by the pilot or the autopilot.Unfortunately, the pilots and autopilot departed with the cockpit.*??Third, we must also assume that the aircraft did not stall during the zoom-climb.A stall would not have left enough forward speed to reach the point where the aircraft impacted the ocean.Now this assumption was impossible. When the 80,000 pounds of nose departed, the c.g. (center-of-gravity) moved about 11 feet toward the tail. The aircraft immediately pitched up and stalled (a stall is when the wing no longer produces lift). The stall was inevitable with the aft c.g. After the aircraft stalled, the aft c.g. would continue to drag the aircraft deeper into the stall and pull it down tail first. There was no way to recover from the stall. The aircraft could never get its nose down and dive as depicted in the CIA video.*??When the aircraft exploded, there was enough forward speed to free-fall to the impact point.But let's assume that there was a zoom-climb and that the zoom-climb was almost complete before the stall.The zoom-climb had to come at the expense of forward airspeed.A zoom-climb is a trade of kinetic energy (speed) for potential energy (altitude). Without a dive and some help from an un-stalled wing, the aircraft could not convert the altitude back into the required forward airspeed.It would have crashed short of the actual impact point.*??Thus we see that the CIA adopted an impossible set of assumptions in order to make its zoom-climb scenario feasible.The wing had to remain intact.The aircraft had to remain in lateral balance and trim.The aircraft could not be allowed to stall.In my opinion, none of these assumptions were valid.*??There was one other step that had to be taken to protect the zoom-climb scenario.The last four seconds of the flight data recorder had to be removed.Those four seconds probably showed the break-up sequence and the loss of the wing.Mr. Glen Schulze, an expert in that field, carefully studied the timing blocks on the FDR tape and established that those four seconds were indeed missing from the tape.Commander Wi lliam Donaldson discovered that the very last recorded data segment indicated an external explosion in the vicinity of the external sensors for the flight instruments.*??I have been struggling for most of 10 years trying to get the CIA and NTSB to release the data and calculations used for the hypothetical zoom-climb.They have steadfastly refused.My lawsuit is scheduled for another hearing on July 10, 2006.It is almost too much to hope for, but there is a slight chance that we might get some good news for the 10 year commemoration.*??Although I am a former Navy pilot, and a retired United Airlines pilot, and a former Safety Representative for the Air Line Pilots Association, I no longer represent any of those organizations. This presentation represents my own personal opinions.
Captain Ray Lahr



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[Capt Kremin]

For those who found the above impossible to read... Iparagraphed it below!!


TEN-YEAR COMMEMORATION OF TWA FLIGHT 800
by CAPT Ray Lahr


What really happened on the evening of July 17, 1996, off the shore of Long Island?

With sincere apologies to those who may not wish to be reminded, this is what I believe happened.

On a pleasant summer evening, TWA800 was making a normal climb on its flight to Paris. At about 13,800 feet, it was hit by one or two missiles. A missile ignited the CWT (center fuel tank).The explosion blew off the nose section, ruptured the front wing spar (which is also the front of the CWT), and broke the keel beam that runs under the bottom of the CWT. The wing separated and the aircraft fell in two flaming balls, each ball fed by the fuel from the separated wing.

Does this sound at odds with the CIA/NTSB scenario that says that a spark of unknown origin ignited the CWT and blew off the nose, and that the crippled aircraft then made a z oom-climb that the eyewitnesses mistook as a missile?Yes, in my opinion there was no zoom-climb.However, a missile was politically unacceptable, so the CIA invoked the zoom-climb in a desperate attempt to dismiss the missile seen by the eyewitnesses.Please consider what the eyewitnesses saw.

Major Fred Meyer saw a missile arc across the sky from right to left.It culminated in at least two ordnance explosions (bright white flashes like flash-bulbs).His copilot, Captain Chris Bauer, was sitting on the left side of the cockpit, and he looked up in time to see a second missile rising from left to right. Then came the huge fuel explosion, and all of the debris fell downward out of the fireball in two flaming streams.

Captain David McClaine and First Officer Vincent Fruschetti on Eastwind Flight 507 were inbound descending to 16,000 feet.They were head-on toTWA800 which was climbing outbound and was limited to 15,000 feet until they were past each other.The East wind crew had been visually tracking the oncoming landing lights of TWA800 for a few minutes. As Captain McClaine reached up to turn on his own landing lights,TWA800 just blew up and the aircraft fell down to the water in two balls of flames. This was confirmed by two other airline crews on nearby flights.

Chief Petty Officer Dwight Brumley was a passenger on U S Air 217.He had a window seat and he watched the missile rise and arch over prior to the explosion of TWA800. The debris fell downward.

Mike Wire, Lisa Perry, Paul Angelides, and William Gallahger all saw the missile rising from near the surface towards TWA800 prior to the explosion. The debris fell downward.

The list goes on.However, not a single eyewitness saw the CIA scenario of an explosion, a zoom-climb, a second explosion, a dive, a third explosion, and then a plunge into the ocean.

In support of the eyewitnesses, Captain Richard Russell received a video tape of the ATC radar scope showing four rapidly approaching blips just prior to the explosion.

So how does the NTSB respond to the eyewitness reports?The NTSB simply says that all ofthese eyewitnesses were wrong and that they didn't understand what they were seeing.The radar blips were anomalies. Furthermore, the NTSB did not allow a single eyewitness to testify at either of its public hearings.

Now mind you, with rare exception, the NTSB did not interview the eyewitnesses, even though the NTSB is charged with that responsibility by Congress.Instead, the NTSB was shoved aside by the FBI, and the FBI conducted the interviews by itself, not even allowing the NTSB to participate in the interviews.Then, in order to discredit the eyewitnesses, the FBI called in the CIA, the master for cover stories.The CIA likewise had not interviewed the eyewitnesses.Instead, the FBI provided the CIA with a selected portion of its 302 forms (a 302 form is the interviewing agent's written recollection of an interview). The witnesses were assigned numbers by the FBI so that their identities could be kept secret. The interviews themselves were not video taped, or audio taped, or even transcribed verbatim.

Working only from the 302 forms provided by the FBI, one individual CIA agent concocted the zoom-climb hypothesis to explain away all of the eyewitness missile reports. A zoom-climb is a rapid pull-up into a steep climb utilizing the forward speed of the aircraft.Such a steep climb is much beyond the capabilities of the engines alone on a large transport aircraft. This CIA agent proposed that after the nose was blown off, the flaming aircraft zoom-climbed from 13,800 feet to about 17,000 feet. The eyewitnesses supposedly mistook the flaming B747 for a missile.Never mind that the eyewitnesses saw a missile rapidly rising from the surface, not a lumbering aircraft rising from a point two and a half miles in the sky.The CIA agent passed his zoom-climb c onclusion to the FBI the following morning.Then the NTSB was brought on board.From that moment on, the investigation was shaped to fit the zoom-climb hypothesis.

The CIA created a video animation of its hypothetical zoom-climb and presented it to the FBI.In turn, the FBI presented the video to the world in a prime-time national television program in November, 1998. Boeing wasn't pleased, and it issued a statement the following day saying that it had no knowledge of the data used for the video. The FBI declared there was no evidence of criminality and that it was withdrawing from the investigation.However, the FBI did not release the evidence that it had gathered and analyzed, nor did it release the lab reports that it had prepared.The FBI was not a cooperative partner regarding the sharing of information.

There is reason to believe that something exploded in the passenger cabin of TWA800, and foreign objects were imbedded in some passengers. Red residue wa s found on a row of seat backs. James Sanders, investigative reporter, had some samples analyzed. The residue was consistent with rocket fuel.The FBI stood by during the autopsies and confiscated all of the foreign objects as they were removed.Those objects were sent to the FBI's own lab for analysis.Reports were written but never released, not even to the other agencies. A determination that the objects were explosive fragments from a missile would have undermined the predetermined cause as being a spark of unknown origin.

Graeme Sephton, an engineer and citizen investigator, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the FBI lab reports.Mr. Sephton was denied.He initiated a lawsuit.Surprisingly, he won and the court ordered the FBI to produce the reports.Subsequently, the FBI came back and said it had searched for the reports and couldn't find them.The court then ruled that the FBI had made a good faith effort, and Mr. Sephton was denied.The most widely publi cized and most expensive accident investigation in the history of aviation, and the FBI loses its own lab reports?That is highly unlikely.Presumably, the objects still exist.Obviously, the FBI does not want the public to know what it found.

When I saw the CIA video animation on national television, all of my experience told me that the zoom-climb was impossible.An aircraft cannot continue to fly if the center section of the wing blows up, andthe nose, including the cockpit, rips off.Even if the wing had remained intact for a few seconds, the pitch-up after the nose departed would have created an extra g force that would have collapsed the weakened wing.

In addition to assuming that the wing remained intact, the zoom-climb scenario had to make additional assumptions about the condition of the aircraft in order for the zoom-climb to be viable. Let's explore those assumptions.

First, we must also assume that the thrust of the engines remained balanced- all engines had to maintain the same thrust or all had to quit simultaneously to keep the aircraft from yawing and flipping.Remember that when the cockpit left, all engine control cables and electrical wires were ripped away.Which cables snapped first?Was each engine calling for full thrust or shut-down?It is highly unlikely that the thrust remained balanced.

Second, we must also assume that the control surfaces of rudder, elevator, and ailerons remained balanced and neutral.Again, all control inputs to those surfaces were ripped away with the departure of the cockpit.In flight, all of those surfaces are constantly being manipulated either by the pilot or the autopilot.Unfortunately, the pilots and autopilot departed with the cockpit.

Third, we must also assume that the aircraft did not stall during the zoom-climb.A stall would not have left enough forward speed to reach the point where the aircraft impacted the ocean.Now this assumption was impossible. When the 80,000 pounds of nose departed, the c.g. (center-of-gravity) moved about 11 feet toward the tail. The aircraft immediately pitched up and stalled (a stall is when the wing no longer produces lift). The stall was inevitable with the aft c.g. After the aircraft stalled, the aft c.g. would continue to drag the aircraft deeper into the stall and pull it down tail first. There was no way to recover from the stall. The aircraft could never get its nose down and dive as depicted in the CIA video.

When the aircraft exploded, there was enough forward speed to free-fall to the impact point.But let's assume that there was a zoom-climb and that the zoom-climb was almost complete before the stall.The zoom-climb had to come at the expense of forward airspeed.A zoom-climb is a trade of kinetic energy (speed) for potential energy (altitude). Without a dive and some help from an un-stalled wing, the aircraft could not convert the altitude back into the required forward airspeed.It would have crashed short of the actual impact point.

Thus we see that the CIA adopted an impossible set of assumptions in order to make its zoom-climb scenario feasible.The wing had to remain intact.The aircraft had to remain in lateral balance and trim.The aircraft could not be allowed to stall.In my opinion, none of these assumptions were valid.

There was one other step that had to be taken to protect the zoom-climb scenario.The last four seconds of the flight data recorder had to be removed.Those four seconds probably showed the break-up sequence and the loss of the wing.Mr. Glen Schulze, an expert in that field, carefully studied the timing blocks on the FDR tape and established that those four seconds were indeed missing from the tape.Commander Wi lliam Donaldson discovered that the very last recorded data segment indicated an external explosion in the vicinity of the external sensors for the flight instruments.

I have been struggling for most of 10 years trying to get the CIA and NTSB to release the data and calculations used for the hypothetical zoom-climb.They have steadfastly refused.My lawsuit is scheduled for another hearing on July 10, 2006.It is almost too much to hope for, but there is a slight chance that we might get some good news for the 10 year commemoration.

Although I am a former Navy pilot, and a retired United Airlines pilot, and a former Safety Representative for the Air Line Pilots Association, I no longer represent any of those organizations. This presentation represents my own personal opinions.
Captain Ray Lahr

[J430]

Seems my post was merged:ooh: So edited to make more sense.

When you read about supposed residue found on seats from 3 rows being that of a rocket propelled device it does make you wonder if the truth is really being told. Or more the point which story is the truth.
Conspiracy theories abound.
I just hope there is less repeating and recapping after every ad break this time! The producers must think we have the attention span of a goldfish:ooh: Ok some of us might!

How would you know who to believe,,,,,,,:\
J:ok:

[Casper]

In 1996 Holtsclaw was serving as the deputy assistant for the Western Region of the Air Transport Association. Within a week of the crash, Holtsclaw received the radar tape directly from an NTSB investigator frustrated by its suppression. "The tape shows a primary target at 1200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800," swears Holtsclaw on the Lahr affidavit.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The above is documented fact. For further info, check out:
http://www.twa800.com/index.htm

[56P]

TWA Flight 800 Missile Theory
Physical Evidence

Trans World Airlines flight 800 suddenly exploded off Long Island, New York on July 17, 1996. All 230 passengers died. Within days ABC News reported that more than 100 eyewitnesses indicated Flight 800 was shot down by a missile. [1] Having examined witness sketches, let us now examine physical evidence.
High Velocity Fragments
Many anti-aircraft missiles are designed to detonate in the proximity of a target and kill it with a spray of fragments. According to the official report, small holes produced by "fragments" traveling as fast as bullets were found in Flight 800. The following graphic illustrates (a) an external detonation, (b) the location of two holes described in the official report, (c) the trajectory of the causal fragments, and (d) a photograph of one of those holes published in the official report. [2]

proximity detonation outside Flight 800

Small holes in Flight 800 described in official report. Photos from official report. [2]
Officials concluded that the two holes located above were made by "fragments" traveling along a downward trajectory at velocities between 1,000 and 1,500 feet per second. [2] These two holes where located in the pressure deck of the rear landing-gear bay (B) as shown. Other small holes produced by downward- traveling fragments were found in recovered portions of the center wing tank (A) the sudden explosion of which reportedly destroyed Flight 800. [3] Matching the speed of bullets such fragments may have ignited fuel vapors in the center tank.


Known Missile Evidence
After a Russian airliner was accidentally hit by a missile from a Ukrainian military exercise, small holes were evidence of the missile strike. On the left, a Russian investigator points to a small hole made by shrapnel from the missile that investigators concluded exploded outside that Russian aircraft. [4, 5]

And Yet No Missile Evidence?
Given that officials concluded that small holes found in Flight 800 were made by "fragments" traveling 1,000 to 1,500 fps -- as fast as bullets -- along a trajectory inconsistent with fuel-tank shrapnel, how did they conclude that there was no missile evidence? While items of physical evidence are real, categorical schemata are mental constructions. Officials imposed a categorical schemata onto the small holes that arbitrarily placed penetration velocities at or below 1,500 fps into the "not missile evidence" category. Since no penetration velocity was reported to exceed that limit, none of the small-hole evidence could fall into the missile- evidence category even though fragments traveled as fast as bullets along a trajectory that fuel-tank shrapnel could not follow.
Questions: Why are there holes from projectiles that traveled downward like bullets through Flight 800? Other than a high-explosives detonation, what could accelerate small fragments to bullet-like velocities along the indicated trajectories? The official investigation provides no answer. Apart from defining the projectile holes as "lower velocity," and thus not missile evidence by decree, the NTSB provides no causal explanation for the existence of these high-speed impacts.

Evidence of Evidence Tampering
Conclusions derived from physical evidence are only as reliable as the integrity and preservation of that evidence. Because parties to the official Flight 800 investigation have reported that physical evidence has been altered, destroyed, and disappeared, the official conclusions about the physical evidence are questionable.
Senior NTSB official Hank Hughes testified before a Senate Committee about the disappearance and destruction of Flight 800 evidence. [6] He testified that FBI agents would remove physical evidence from the Calverton hangar without proper notification (other insiders have reported the same). Hughes testified that in one case FBI agents were caught sneaking into the hangar at 3 am on a Saturday morning. Hughes also testified that
"an agent from the FBI was brought in from Los Angeles... [he] had some experience in bomb investigations, and I saw him in the middle of the hangar with a hammer in the process of trying to flatten a piece of wreckage. In investigative work, you do not alter evidence. You take it in its original state and preserve it. But I actually saw this man with a hammer, pounding on a piece of evidence, trying to flatten it out." [7]
Hughes testified further that "contrary to universally accepted forensic procedure" [8] all clothing from Flight 800 passengers -- which could contain traces of explosives -- was co-mingled and stored wet, which allowed mold to grow on the clothes. According to Hughes this "destroyed" any evidentiary value the clothing could have provided. [9] Hughes described the standard protocol for handling clothing as follows:
"Stated procedure for any clothing in a crime scene or other accident site -- and the procedures are basically the same, there is no difference between a crime scene and an accident scene investigation in terms of the handling of evidence -- but wet clothing, whether it is wet by chemicals, body chemicals, blood, or water, salt water in this case, the proper procedure is to air dry the clothing, wrap it in clean butcher paper after it has been photographed, catalog it, and put it away for safekeeping." [9]
Hughes also discovered that seat cushions and seats from Flight 800 that disappeared from the hangar had been dumped in a dumpster. [9] Investigative journalist James Sanders had acquired two tiny samples of Flight 800 seat cushioning from the Calverton hangar that was covered with a red residue containing high concentrations of elements found in missile fuels and explosives. [10] Shortly after Sanders published his findings the cushioning from the residue-covered seats was stripped off the seats and removed from the hangar. [11] Could that residue-covered seat cushioning that disappeared be the same seat cushioning Hughes discovered in a dumpster?
In his testimony before the Senate, Hank Hughes listed many other alarming instances that seriously compromise the reliability of the official Flight 800 investigation. [8]

More Evidence of Tampering
Linda Kuntz, a TWA employee and former party to the official investigation, observed what she believed to be evidence that NTSB officials were altering data to make it appear that seats from the rear of the plane found in the western debris field were instead found further to the east. Linda Kuntz called on the assistance of two New York Police Officers who photographed the evidence in question. They then informed TWA attorneys, who informed the NTSB. The NTSB then contacted the FBI in order to have Kuntz investigated for taking photographs in violation of regulations. Kuntz was then dismissed from the investigation and threatened with indictment and prosecution. [12]
Major Frederick Meyer, a New York Air National Guard pilot, was assigned to transport a piece of Flight 800 wreckage from the Calverton hangar to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC. About this special piece of wreakage, Meyer told the Village Voice:
"I knew from looking at it that it was the leading edge of some aerofoil -- horizontal stabilizer, rudder, or wing -- and it had punctures in it. We're talking about a piece of aluminum alloy that is very strong and rigid. In this were dimples with holes in the center of the dimple, like something was driven through with incredible force." [13]
Meyer said the holes "were about 3/4 of an inch to one inch in diameter." [14] When I asked him if the punctures appeared to come from the outside, he replied: "The dimples around each hole indicate that something passed through from the outside to the inside." [15] Penetration from the outside to the inside would be consistent with an external explosion, such as the explosion a proximity-fused missile warhead would deliver.
Unfortunately the whereabouts of that important evidence is unknown. Robert Davey, a Village Voice reporter, tried to tack it down without success. As he reported in the Village Voice, FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette "says the FBI returned the wing with the suspicious holes in it to the NTSB investigation in Calverton... However, NTSB director Goelz says he is not aware of any piece from a wing edge with holes in it." [13] Perhaps it slipped into a black hole.
Speaking of black holes, the New York Times reported: "Certain federal agents, calling the FBI's laboratory in Washington a 'black hole,' remained convinced that the bureau was hiding its positive lab confirmations." [16] This was after investigators at Calverton kept sending debris with traces of explosives to FBI headquarters only to have the FBI consistently declare those traces to have been false positives, even though investigators at Calverton were using the highly sensitive and accurate EGIS detection system. [17]
Evidence of evidence tampering in the official Flight 800 investigation keeps coming in. Just last August (2000) Agence France Presse reported that Glen Schulze, a flight data recorder (FDR) expert, [18] determined that the last four seconds of FDR data had been tabulated but was removed from the data before it was released to the public. [19] The last seconds of FDR data are the most important evidence for diagnosing the cause of a crash. Schultze recently published his analysis of the FDR data. [20]
Additionally, the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization (FIRO) has filed a lawsuit against the FBI for its failure to release data in compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. [21] The data in question pertains to shrapnel recovered from bodies. The chief medical examiner for the crash, Charles Wetli, had stated that "virtually all of the bodies had shrapnel" and that "FBI agents were here and standing with us while we were doing the autopsies and taking the shrapnel that we found." [22] What became of that critical evidence? Obviously someone at the FBI knows, but it seems they don't want us to know. FIRO is also suing the NTSB for its refusal to release radar data. [23]

In Conclusion
Even if all the examples cited above and others not cited here were not deliberate acts of tampering, it would still not be reasonable to conclude that the physical evidence refutes eyewitness accounts of a missile engagement when so much of it has been damaged, destroyed, disappeared, withheld, or remains unrecovered under the ocean. The claim that a lack of physical evidence of a missile trumps Flight 800 missile witnesses is only as reliable as the integrity and preservation of all physical evidence. That claim is therefore clearly not reliable. Furthermore, with respect to evidence that has managed to survive the official investigation, it seems that definitional standards used by investigators serve to define potential missile evidence out of existence, thereby preventing the possibility of its discovery.
________________________________________
[1] The Washington Times, 07/24/96, cites ABC News report.

[2] NTSB Public Exhibit 15B: Examination of Small Holes.

[3] Ibid, pages 4-7.

[4] BBC: 'Missile traces' in plane wreckage. 10/9/01.

[5] Melnyk, Yuriy. Russian Tu-154 airliner downed by the Ukrainian anti-aircraft complex. York Vision, 132, November 2001.

[6] Senate Hearing 106-534. Administrative Oversight of the Invetigation of TWA Flight 800. May 10, 1999.

[7] Ibid, transcript page 11.

[8] Ibid, Hank Hughes Senate-Hearing notes.

[9] Ibid, transcript, page 10.

[10] FIRO: The Red Residue of TWA Flight 800: A Brief Description and the Scientific Paper-trail.

[11] FIRO: Red Residue Stripped from Seats.

[12] Associated Retired Aviation Professionals Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Actions of the NTSB and the FBI. pages 20-21.

[13] Davey, Robert. Flight 800 The Missing Evidence. The Village Voice, April 15, 1998.

[14] Eyewitness Meyer Speaks to the Granada Forum.

[15] Personal corresponadnace with Major Meyer.

[16] The New York Times: Behind a Calm Facade Investigation Embodied Chaos, Distrust, Stress. Joe Sexton, 08/23/96.

[17] TWA 800 Case Files, Vol 2, No. 1, August 1997.

[18] Resume of Glen H. Schulze.

[19] Agence France Presse: Independent panel criticizes TWA Flight 800 crash report. August 22, 2000.

[20] The Four Missing Seconds, Analysis from the Flight Data Recorder, Glen Schulze. September 26, 2000.

[21] FIRO Complaint Against FBI.

[22] CNN Interactive: Six months later, still no answer to TWA Flight 800 mystery. 1/17/97.

[23] FIRO Complaint Against NTSB.

CRASH of TWA FLIGHT 800

[bushy]

They stated that Jet A has a flashpoint of 38.5 gegrees. If true that is scary. Our ambient temperature here often exceeds that.

[J430]

Bushy
I am not a chemical engineer or scientist, but i thought that sounded a bit low, however it was not made clear that the value is determined at approx 14,000' (half an atmosphere roughly) and less pressure lowers boiling points and it giot me thinking, so I went and did a google.....well if the first thing I found is not that of a research paper done about TWA800. Its heavy reading but here it is.
www.galcit.caltech.edu/EDL/publications/reprints/galcit_fm99-4.pdf

But when you look at Shell's Aviation data sheets......:eek:
Colour Colourless. Pale straw.
Physical State Liquid.
Odour Characteristic.
pH Value Data not available.
Vapour Pressure <0.1 kPa at 20ºC.
Initial Boiling Point circa 150ºC.
Final Boiling Point circa 300ºC.
Solubility in Water Negligible.
Density 775 to 840 kg/m3 at 15°C.
Flash Point 38ºC minimum (Method: Abel Setaflash).
Flammable Limits - Upper 6%(V/V) maximum.
Flammable Limits - Lower 1%(V/V) minimum.
Auto-Ignition Temperature >220ºC.
Kinematic Viscosity 1 to 2 mm2/s at 40°C.
Vapour Density (Air=1) Greater than 5.
Partition co-efficient, n-octanol/water log Pow 2 to 6.
Other Information The above properties are generic.

So there you go. Still less a problem than good old AVGAS!
J

[Peter Fanelli]

It was brought down by a meteorite.

That was the "missile" seen "rising from the surface and striking the aircraft."

Only it wasn't rising from the surface, it was entering the atmosphere from down over the horizon south of Long Island.

I believe this after having a close encounter with a meteorite myself late one night near Port Lincoln.

Now the evidence is on the bottom of the ocean, but who's going to suspect an innocent looking rock.

[Marauder]

Peter,


That wasn't a meteorite, it was a well aimed Bollinger Cork fired your way by CK

[BombsGone]

An F111 in 2002 had a fuel tank explosion of the type theorised by the NTSB. Ageing aircraft old wiring etc. The NTSB report is both well researched and plausible representing the most likely chain of events. It was written by professionals with a vested interest in promoting flight safety.

The conspiracy theories attached to TWA 800 are bollocks as the number of people who would have to be complicit in the cover up makes it unreasonable in the extreme. But then again maybe man didn't walk on the moon. If such rubbish didn't tie up valuable resources as mentioned in the TV show it would be laughable.

[aircraft]

Ahem...

The NTSB investigation found that the origin of the fuselage rupture was the centre fuel tank. Enough of the wreckage was recovered to show clearly where the break started and how it progressed around the fuselage, resulting in the separation of the nose section.

The evidence of a missile strike would be EXTREMELY OBVIOUS if a missile had entered the fuselage.

There have been other cases of exploding fuel tanks. The Iranian air force had a 747 explode in flight and there was the Thai Airways 737 that exploded shortly before passengers were about to board.

The explosive residue found on some seats was found to have gotten there as the result of an earlier exercise training bomb sniffing dogs. If I recall correctly, it was 3 seats and they were adjoining.

This happened in 1996 and was a really big event. If it was a conspiracy, a very large number of people would have to be kept quiet - the navy personnel, those involved in the wreckage recovery and those involved in the investigation (which included both the NTSB and the FBI). There would have to be at least 500 people across these groups. Each of these people have family members and other acquaintances that would notice something funny about the person if they had suddenly become party to such a disaster.

People need to realise that things like this happen. The idea that it was shot down by a missile is just too improbable.

[Peter Fanelli]

Yep they found that the centre fuel tank exploded, but I don't believe they ever proved an ignition source.

It was a hot rock.

[Angle of Attack]

Umm an ignition source was a fuel tank quantity indicator that was short circuited by a high amperewire that provided a high voltage surge which sparked shortly before the explosion. It was recorded as two surges on the CVR shortly before the explosion. The me, now generation, can't believe that $hit happens and planes go down, Get me more common sense and less youtube generations! haha!

[aircraft]

Peter Fanelli wrote:
Yep they found that the centre fuel tank exploded, but I don't believe they ever proved an ignition source.

It was a hot rock.

So how do you know it was a "hot rock"? You seem to be saying that because you have seen a meteorite, it must have been a meteorite. That's an interesting way of establishing cause and effect.

Only it wasn't rising from the surface, it was entering the atmosphere from down over the horizon south of Long Island.

I believe this after having a close encounter with a meteorite myself late one night near Port Lincoln.
You don't seem to understand the trajectory of meteorites or "shooting stars". They don't follow the curvature of the earth as you are implying. It may interest you to know that the vast majority of shooting stars are the size of a grain of sand.

When you say "close encounter" how do you know how close? To estimate distance to an object you have to know the size of the object. Your object was, presumably, a streak of light. How can you tell whether a streak of light is 1 mile away or 1,000 miles away.

The NTSB declared the ignition source to be of unknown origin because they couldn't definitely say it was from wiring. If I remember correctly though, there were aspects of the wiring that gave them cause to strongly suspect it.

[Peter Fanelli]

I base my OPINION, I am allowed to have one am I not, on the reports of a "missile" seen rising from the surface of the water and striking the aircraft coupled with my view of the smoke trail left after a satellite re-entered the atmosphere visible from Baltimore several years ago. The traffic reporter was mid report when he saw the satellite but I was unable to see it in the direction I was travelling. A couple of minutes later I turned into BWI airport and was surprised to see a smoke trail not coming from above down towards the earth but rising up from the horizon and climbing from my perspective to a point where it apprently completely burned up.

Now, how do I know it was close. Well I'd just descended through about 4000' of solid cloud into visual conditions beneath when the cloud above me lit up a bright orange and after a few seconds the object appeared beneath the cloud and impacted the surface somewhere beyond Pt Lincoln. Was it close? Any object close enough to light up my surroundings vs the size of the universe it came from I think I'm within my rights to call close.

Getting back to the issue at hand, try to imagine an object approaching the earth from over the horizon to a viewer on Long Island NY with a re-entry point out of sight over the horizon (Not very far away to someone on the ground) the object then comes into view appearing to the viewer on the ground to rise from the horizon (or US Navy ship if you like) and TWA 800 just happens to be in it's path. Imagine if you will that it's not the size of a grain of sand but big enough to punch a hole in the aircraft and proceed into the centre fuel tank, it might also just be hot enough to cause ignition.

Given the lack of any PROOF of ignition by other sources I feel I'm entitled to entertain my version of what COULD have happened. Oh and by the way, this isn't a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory would be the US navy shooting it down with a missile. I'm talking about a freak of nature. Unless of course the USA has a base on the moon and they're chucking rocks at airliners.

By the way, think a meteorite would be too small to penetrate a 747?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap021118.html

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap030506.html

[BombsGone]

Peter your perfectly entitled to an opinion and I don't doubt that a meteor is capable of downing an aircraft. However as I stated official NTSB reports give there conclusions based on the mose likely chain of events or "most probable cause". In this case several real changes and positive benifits to air safety have come out of the TWA report. Fuel tanks have now been redesigned and ignition sources more carefully checked. So from the report and my own experience I'll go with their version of events.

As for the conspiracy theory stuff you could draw parallels with the KAL 007 shoot down which inspired several conspiracy books later shown to be complete bollocks. Here is an article outlining the shoot down and associated conspiracy stuff. I'd hate to think of what all this misinformation did to the greaving relatives.

http://www.jamesoberg.com/russian/kal007.html

[Thirty Eight South]

Interesting conjecture, but arguing of the mechanics of what bought the 747 down isn't addressing the point as there's considerable witness and documentary evidence that supports the missile hypothesis, most of which has been ignored or manipulated by the NTSB e.g. - evidence tampering, false and misleading presumptions based on the requirement to support the official explanation of the story - that the 747 center fuel tank ignited fuel vapour with an inert wiring system that served as an ignition source: that explanation is a load of bolloxs.

Building a causal theory based around what you want to have happened automatically excludes any evidence that is non supportive (or as Einstein was fond of saying 'If the facts don't fit the theory, that's too bad for the facts') for example the wreckage fragmentation and spread pattern of the debris supports an external ignition source and/or impact..missile, meteor, donut or whatever

The question is: 'What was it about this accident that the US was determined to prevent from being acknowledged?'

- Here's a theory - that the entire eastern seaboard was (and is) susceptible to ground shoulder launched SAM's remotely launched from any location, and that the US does not have an effective response to this, can't afford it and can't police it just to prove there airways are risk free and that the threat was understood before the event and is still an existing threat.

As with all theories you have to determine the consequences, in this case it's easy as the knock on effects of this admission as phenomenal:
- Paralyzingly the eastern approaches airways until it can be proved there is no non acceptable risks
- Determining acceptable civil aviation counter measures
- Carriers insurance ect, ect.

When you have no faith in the aviation investigation authorities ability to remain non partisan, you have to challenge the assumptions presented as fact. You can't discount 400 credible eye witness accounts about a trace moving from sea level towards the 747 followed by an explosion without being laughed out of the room. And if that official explanation is bolloxs, then what are ones are as well?

[aircraft]

Thirty Eight South,

... that the 747 center fuel tank ignited fuel vapour with an inert wiring system that served as an ignition source: that explanation is a load of bolloxs.
What is bollocks about it? As I said in a previous post, there have been instances of exploding centre fuel tanks before. For a spark, you just need a higher voltage wire (somewhere else in the aircraft) arcing with a wire that runs to something in the fuel tank.

As an experiment, you can easily create two sets of wiring where an arc from one set induces a high current and spark in the other. The location of the arcing can be a long way from where the spark occurs - ask any electrician.

You can't discount 400 credible eye witness accounts about a trace moving from sea level towards the 747 followed by an explosion
400 credible eye witnesses? Where does that number come from? Were they all saying essentially the same thing (e.g. position of origin of missile trace, appearance of trace, etc).

A funny thing about witnesses - they can imagine they saw anything you suggest they saw. I once heard of a case where a radio station, as a late night prank, reported that strange lights had been seen in the air over the city. There soon followed hundreds of callers to the station, saying they had seen the lights. The callers went on to give their own descriptions.

[Thirty Eight South]

My mistake- it wasn't 400, that was from memory. In fact it's 700, take a look at the link and wade through this:

http://twa800.com/witnesscd/eyewitnesshighlights.htm

(you can google search this info)
The New York Post, in its story of September 22, 1996, reported, Law-enforcement sources said the hardest evidence gathered so far overwhelmingly suggests a surface-to-air missile...

The FBI interviewed 154 "credible" witnesses -- including scientists, schoolteachers, Army personnel and business executives -- who described seeing a missile heading through the sky just before TWA 800 exploded.
"Some of these people are extremely, extremely credible," a top federal official said.
FBI technicians mapped the various paths -- points in the sky where the witnesses said they saw the rising "flare-like" object -- and determined that the "triangulated" convergence point was virtually where the jumbo jet initially exploded.

The clue to this investigation is the exclusion of the eye witness reports from the official answer.

If the 747 tank explosion cause can be explained, it can be replicated: why didn't the NTSB go out to the Mojave, find a decommissioned 100 series 747 and replicate the explosion? The more conjecture, the more room there is to postulate and defend alternative theories, however unsubstantiated they may be

The only way that the tank explosion can be explained is if you exclude all of the other factual information (including the exclusion of electrical bonding and probability)...bolloxs is about as polite as you can get having reviewed the information

Challenging official explanations of events doesn't make them conspiracy theories either, it just makes them alternative theories

[Chronic Snoozer]

Has anyone heard of a motive or a claim of responsibility if the scenario of a missile is to be believed? (and don't tell me it was the second gunman on the grassy knoll.)

[Thirty Eight South]

You have to decide who's missile - US Navy or a third party?

if it's a US navy missile, it's a cover up. If it's a third party (and that could be anyone) it's terrorism. Clinton and his posse understood that having the eastern seaboard exposed to shoulder launched missiles was/is a nightmare-with no solution.

But, look at the evidence - Navy exercise, missile trace path witnessed (disputed, but backed up by evidence), flight path, radar tracks, flight path post impact (missile, meteor, what ever)

The evidence does not support the fuel tank explosion theory

[Casper]

You are right, Thirty Eight South. The actual evidence does NOT support a CFT explosion, unless induced by a missile. The witnesses included a military helicopter pilot who described the explosion as being caused by ordnance, a scene with which he was very familiar.

Those who discredit the missile theory are simply not familiar with the actual facts. Try reading "First Strike."

And, further, why does the FBI still refuse to release information on the shrapnel removed from bodies of the victims? Why does the FBI still have any input to the investigation if, as claimed by the NTSB, no crime was involved? The investigation is still officially listed as "pending inactive" which permits the FBI to withhold information. Why, if the crash was really caused by a CFT explosion?

Clinton has much to answer for over this one.

[HotDog]

bushy: They stated that Jet A has a flashpoint of 38.5 gegrees. If true that is scary. Our ambient temperature here often exceeds that.
The flash point of a flammable liquid is the lowest temperature at which it can form an ignitable mixture in air. At this temperature the vapor may cease to burn when the source of ignition is removed. A slightly higher temperature, the fire point, is defined as the temperature at which the vapor continues to burn after being ignited. Neither of these parameters are related to the temperatures of the ignition source or of the burning liquid, which are much higher. The flash point is often used as one descriptive characteristic of liquid fuel, but it is also used to describe liquids that are not used intentionally as fuels.

[Chronic Snoozer]

Well, 38S, an accidental missile strike during an exercise, expertly covered up involving hundreds of investigators and others, is a lot harder to believe than the fuel tank explosion. (of which, there have been others)

Terrorism seems unlikely because up till now there hasn't been any claim of responsibility - highly unusual for terrorists.

Not sure what Clinton has to do with it, he probably knows less than you.

[aircraft]

Thirty Eight South:
My mistake- it wasn't 400, that was from memory. In fact it's 700, take a look at the link and wade through this
I looked at that page - it shows 64 witness accounts drawn from a total of 755 witnesses. Were all 755 saying the same thing? I looked around a bit on that website but couldn't find any proper summary of the eyewitness accounts - plenty of stuff claiming to be a "summary" or an "analysis", but as the site is pushing the missile theory, it was all heavily skewed toward that theory.

The clue to this investigation is the exclusion of the eye witness reports from the official answer.
That is not true. The NTSB did recognise that there appeared to be a significant number of witness reports suggesting a missile like trace. They constructed a simulation of the flight path after the nose section broke off and this flight path (flaming and climbing steeply) could have been the trace the witnesses reported.

The evidence does not support the fuel tank explosion theory
Only to those that want to believe something far more fanciful! How can you say this? There is the known possibility of arcing of wiring resulting in a spark. There have been other cases of exploding centre fuel tanks. The wreckage clearly showed the origin of the explosion and how the break up proceeded.

As I said in a previous post, if there had been evidence of a missile entering the aircraft, or exploding in close proximity, it would have been extremely obvious. Could this have been hidden or covered up? With about 500 people (my guess) involved in the wreckage recovery and investigation that is way too many people to keep quiet.

If you think that somehow all these people have kept quiet because they were told to, or threatened to, then you really are delusional. Remember that this number of 500 becomes about 1500 when you add in family members and acquantances.

[Casper]

________________________________________

________________________________________
How Sandy Berger paid back the GOP

________________________________________
Posted: January 29, 2007
11:11 p.m. Eastern

On July 6, 2006, Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, announced that it had added a new member to its high-profile, five-member advisory board – former Democrat Rep. Lee Hamilton.

True to form, the major media ignored the Hamilton appointment. They should not have. Hamilton, who had served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had just joined a firm headed by the man who had criminally undermined that very Commission, Stonebridge chairman and founder Samuel "Sandy" Berger.

In the words of a recent House Committee report, Berger had perpetrated "a disturbing breach of trust and protocol that compromised the nation's national security," a breach that had come at the expense of the 9/11 Commission's very mission.
(Column continues below)

The unseemly nature of this new alliance apparently did not trouble Hamilton, Berger or the Washington media. By the spring of 2006, Berger felt sufficiently comfortable in his relationship with that media to execute a brazen, political drive-by on the one man who most seriously threatened the Clinton legacy and his own reputation, namely Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania.

Berger began his spring offensive in March 2006 with a fund-raiser for Weldon's opponent, Joe Sestak. Almost universally despised by his Naval colleagues, the former vice admiral was forced into retirement for what the U.S. Navy charitably called "poor command climate." Before being recruited to run for Congress, Sestak had not lived in Weldon's district for 30 years.
Although hosted by Berger, the fund-raiser was held at the law offices of Harold Ickes, a veteran Clinton fixer, and Janice Enright, the treasurer of Hillary Clinton's 2006 Senate campaign.

Before the campaign was through, Clinton insiders would enlist Stonebridge's director of communications to serve as Sestak's campaign spokesperson, summon former President Clinton to rally the troops, and finally call in the federales. Their motives were transparent even to the local media.
"A Sestak victory," observed suburban Philadelphia's Delco Times early in the campaign, "would muzzle a Republican congressman who blames Clinton for doing irreparable harm to America's national security during the 1990s."
As the No. 2 Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Weldon had not only exposed the Clinton administration's lethal "Able Danger" breakdown, but he had also catalogued the CIA's failures before Sept. 11 in his book "Countdown to Terror." And he wasn't stopping there.

In late July 2006, I accompanied Mike and Joan Wire to visit Weldon in his D.C. office. The Wires, who live in suburban Philadelphia, had arranged the interview.

I happened to be in New Jersey at the time so we drove down together. The interview lasted two and a half hours and ended only because I had to leave.
Mike Wire just happened to be the most critical of the 270 eyewitnesses to an apparent missile strike on TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. As is well enough known, the government had argued that a mechanical failure brought down the plane.

To make the story work, however, the FBI and/or the CIA had to manufacture from whole cloth a second interview with Wire that fit their invented scenario.

This was criminal obstruction, and it is easily verified.

To get some sense of what Wire and others actually witnessed, I have put two relevant sections of the video "Silenced" on YouTube. The skeptical reader would do well to review these clips: Part 1 and Part 2.
As late as 2001, I was as skeptical about TWA Flight 800 as the next guy. It was then that I met James and Elizabeth Sanders. The Sanders and TWA Capt. Terrel Stacey had been arrested in 1997 and charged with conspiracy.
An investigative reporter, Sanders was doing the job the major media had chosen not to do. Elizabeth, a TWA trainer, had introduced her husband to Stacey, then working inside the investigation; nothing more.

Before committing to co-produce "Silenced," I had flown to Ft. Lauderdale, where the Sanders were living, and spent three days reviewing their evidence and assessing their character. As I learned, the government arrested the three of them – and convicted the Sanderses – only because they had been closing in on the truth.

When the Wires and I met with Weldon and his aide Russ Caso, we showed them sections from "Silenced," but we were not revealing anything they did not know or at least suspect. What most intrigued Weldon was the cast of characters involved in the misdirection of the TWA Flight 800 investigation. Many of those characters were working to unseat him.

Sandy Berger: Col. Buzz Patterson, who carried the nuclear football the summer of 1996, identifies then Deputy National Security Adviser Berger as the one person holed up in the family quarters with the president on the night of July 17, 1996. In addition to his other services, Berger donated $1,000 to the Sestak campaign. Sestak was the only congressional candidate to whom Berger gave money.

Tony Lake: As national security adviser, Lake was Berger's immediate boss. Although he stayed out of the family quarters on July 17, he, too, was in the loop that night. At 3 a.m. he received a call from the president asking that he "dust off the contingency plans." Lake donated $500 to Sestak. It was his only federal donation in 2006.

Richard Clarke: The anti-terror honcho takes credit for discovering the exploding fuel tank theory that provided a mechanical explanation, however contrived, for TWA Flight 800's demise. He is likely also responsible for bringing the FBI and CIA together to create the "zoom-climb" animation seen in the YouTube clip, which was used to discredit the eyewitnesses. Clarke donated $2,100 to Sestak. It was the only federal donation he made in 2006.
John Deutch: Deutch was serving as CIA director the night TWA Flight 800 went down. Several months later, in a scandal that foreshadowed Berger's own, Deutch was discovered to have loaded classified documents onto to his personal computer and taken them home. His motives were never made clear. He eventually signed a plea agreement and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine only to be pardoned the next day by President Clinton. Deutch donated $500 to Sestak, one of of only two congressional candidates he supported in 2006.
Mary O. McCarthy: In 1996, McCarthy, a CIA analyst, served as an intelligence officer on the National Security Council. In 1998, Berger appointed her as special assistant to the president. In 2006, the CIA fired her for allegedly leaking secret information about overseas prisons to the Washington Post. The only federal candidate to whom she donated in 2006 was Joe Sestak. To give some sense of the politicized nature of the CIA, McCarthy donated $2,000 to John Kerry in 2004.

Jamie Gorelick: Gorelick does not have the excuse of knowing Sestak from his work on the National Security Council. Gorelick served as deputy attorney general in the Justice Department. Still she donated $3,000 to the Sestak campaign, the most she gave to any candidate in 2006.

Gorelick, of course, was one of five Democrats appointed to the 9/11 Commission – and for no more obvious reason than her stake in keeping talk of TWA Flight 800 out of the commission room.

On Aug. 22, 1996, the politically reliable Gorelick met with the FBI brass and directed their efforts away from any serious terror or missile leads. From this point on, the FBI was tasked with finding an alternative explanation for the explosive residue found throughout the plane and duly reported to the New York Times for the previous month.

This FBI search culminated in an exculpatory tale of a sloppy dog-training exercise aboard the Flight 800 plane five weeks before the crash. Though easily disproved, the story satisfied a painfully incurious media.
Unfortunately for America, by suppressing talk of TWA Flight 800, the Clinton administration had to suppress talk of a very real terror plot against the United States that culminated in the events of Sept. 11.

In the way of background, in January 1995, the Philippine police shared with the FBI detailed plans for an aerial terrorist assault on the United States. Those plans called for the use of hijacked airliners and/or explosives-filled private aircraft as flying bombs to attack the United States.

The architect of those plans was Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing and a cohort of 9-11 chief strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his alleged uncle.

Richard Clarke obviously took Yousef's planes-as-bombs plots seriously. In planning security for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, Clarke warned of the possibility of terrorists hijacking a 747 and flying it into a packed Olympic stadium.

The U.S. Navy apparently took Yousef's plans seriously as well. On July 17, 1996, National Liberation Day in Saddam's Iraq and two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics, a small fleet of ships and subs, some perhaps NATO, cruised off the coast of Long Island, locked and loaded.

One of two things happened next: Either Navy missiles intercepted a terrorist plane and inadvertently took out TWA Flight 800 in the process; or, more likely, while practicing to intercept a terrorist plane in the kind of crowded air corridor where such an attack would likely occur, Navy missiles accidentally destroyed the 747.

In either case, the U.S. Navy did not have the will or the wherewithal to conceal this on its own. That decision would have been made in the family quarters of the White House in the early morning hours of July 18.

Those few subordinates in the know would have been told that the decision was made for reasons of national security. A more urgent reason, of course, was to secure Clinton's re-election a few months hence.

The evidence for Navy involvement has been greatly enhanced by the research of Capt. Ray Lahr on the west coast and the legal work in the federal courts by his counsel, John Clarke. Highly useful, too, has been a new and stunningly sophisticated crash analysis drafted by an apparent insider (or insiders), whose identity remains stubbornly unknown.

As a result of Lahr's work in particular, the NTSB and FBI have quietly abandoned the CIA zoom-climb scenario shown in the YouTube clip and rely now only on a quiescent media to ignore the un-rebutted testimony of some 270 eyewitnesses to a missile strike.

In the summer of 1996, President Clinton had a keen interest in the planes-as-bombs plot as well. Soon after the destruction of TWA Flight 800, Col. Buzz Patterson was returning a daily intelligence update from the Oval Office to the National Security Council when he "keyed on a reference to a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons."

"I can state for a fact that this information was circulated within the U.S. intelligence community," Patterson writes, "and that in late 1996 the president was aware of it." The president's handwritten comments on the documents verified the same.

Most likely to keep the subject of TWA Flight 800 off the table, all talk of planes as bombs ended in the summer of 1996. Incoming National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was not even warned about the possibility. Richard Clarke verified as much when he testified before the 9/11 Commission.
"Knowledge about al-Qaida having thought of using aircraft as weapons," admitted Clarke, was "5-years, 6-years old." He asked that intelligence analysts "be forgiven for not thinking about it given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it."

As to President Clinton's legacy-killing notes on the Yousef plot documents, they obviously did not find their way to the 9/11 Commission. Not surprisingly, according to the National Archives staff, "Berger was especially interested in White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke's personal office files." Berger reviewed these and "original NSC numbered documents" on his first visit to the Archives.

The House report noted, "Had Berger seen 'a smoking gun' or other documents he did not want brought to an investigatory panel's attention, he could have removed it on this visit."

When the Wires and I left Weldon in July 2006, he was on his way to review the Berger evidence. Weldon was the one man in Washington willing and able to put all the pieces together of what loomed as the most serious scandal in American political history. But this was not to be. The Clintons and their cronies had other plans.

During the now legendary Chris Wallace interview with President Clinton in late September 2006 on Fox News, the nation saw just how potent were the guns aimed at Weldon.

"A three-star admiral," Clinton announced out of nowhere, "who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania." He did not even mention Sestak by name. He may not have known it. Other than President Bush, Clinton mentioned no other Republican than Weldon.

It is not easy to take out a popular 10-term congressman. Weldon's enemies, however, had a nasty little ace up their sleeves. A week after President Clinton visited Weldon's district to fire up the troops, the McClatchy Newspapers broke a story attributed to two anonymous sources, namely that Weldon had "traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter."

Alleging a need to act quickly because of the leak, the FBI raided the homes of Weldon's daughter and a friend on Monday, Oct. 16. By noon of that same day, a group of nearly 20 Democrat protesters were milling outside Weldon's district office in Upper Darby, carrying matching signs that read "Caught Red-Handed." The story received a great deal of unreflective attention from a media desperate for a Democrat win, and Weldon went down to defeat.

The move against Weldon was naturally attributed to the Bush Justice Department. As the Berger case proved, however, there are powerful forces operating in the Justice Department and FBI that seem to have no greater goal than protecting the Clinton legacy and advancing the Democrat agenda. The idea that Karl Rove somehow orchestrated the Weldon hit makes sense only in the nether reaches of the liberal blogosphere.

Sometimes, as in the case of Watergate, conspiracy is not a theory. It's a crime. Still, the major media will use the "conspiracy theory" mantra as an excuse to ignore this story.

To this point, the "respectable" conservative media have been intimidated into following their lead. It is past time for those media to show some sand.

[Thirty Eight South]

Only to those that want to believe something far more fanciful!
-Always a good idea to know what you're talking about - show the evidence, not some popular science mumbo jumbo about domestic electricians inducing sparks. You've heard about electrical bonding presumably (amongst others)

How can you say this?
-Because I know what I'm talking about

There is the known possibility of arcing of wiring resulting in a spark.
-If there's a 'known' possibility it wouldn't be certified to fly (or get through design), or the fix would have been mandated

There have been other cases of exploding centre fuel tanks.
-Really, name one?

The wreckage clearly showed the origin of the explosion and how the break up proceeded.

- The evidence presented showed what the NTSB wanted to support. The scatter pattern wreckage map is contradictory to the NTSB's theory.
Just out of curiosity, what part of the previous posts don't you understand?

that should keep you busy

[HotDog]

Thirty Eight South,
There have been other cases of exploding centre fuel tanks.
-Really, name one?

The NTSB noted in its release that since the TWA accident, there have been two fuel tank explosions on jetliners. One occurred in 2001, in the center wing tank of a Boeing 737 parked at the terminal in Bangkok, Thailand.
The board is currently investigating the explosion last month in the left wing fuel tank on a Transmile Airlines 727 cargo plane in Bangalore, India.

[BombsGone]

Thirty Eight South Wrote

- Because I know what I'm talking about

I'm not so sure

-If there's a 'known' possibility it wouldn't be certified to fly (or get through design), or the fix would have been mandated

Have a quick search around for Airworthiness Directives (on reputable websites) relating to fuel tanks and the posibility of explosions. You'll find several. I have first hand (not on the internet) proof that fuel tank explosions can and do happened.

I can't be bothered rebutting the other "evidence". The NTSB is a reputable safety body with a strong history of technical skill. Your basically saying you know better without direct access to the evidence. I just don't buy the cover up theory.

[aircraft]

Thirty Eight South,

... show the evidence, not some popular science mumbo jumbo about domestic electricians inducing sparks. You've heard about electrical bonding presumably (amongst others)
Haven't "heard about electrical bonding" - you may have to enlighten me. The "evidence" for the spark is the bleeding obvious, provided you know a little electrical theory. Would you like me to elaborate? I can outline a simple experiment you could conduct at home which will result in a spark at a point distant from where the arcing occurs. I would be happy to do that, but you could get the same rundown from a LAME with electrical qualifications.

On the "known" possibility of a spark resulting from arcing:
If there's a 'known' possibility it wouldn't be certified to fly (or get through design), or the fix would have been mandated
This possibility has been known about for as long as man has been using electricity. Provided the insulation is in reasonable condition, there is virtually no risk, but if the insulation has deteriorated sufficiently, or has been damaged, then the risk level starts to become significant.

There have been other cases of exploding centre fuel tanks.
-Really, name one?
In a previous post in this thread I named: the Iranian air force 747-100 and the Thai Airways 737. Today I learned of a 737 in the Philippines. The 747 suffered the explosion in flight but the 737s were both on the ground. Other posters have mentioned specific cases, but I am unaware of those.

I did some research today on the investigation of TWA 800. That research consisted of watching a documentary that I had taped from TV years ago. What I write below has been drawn from that documentary.

Thirty Eight South again:
If the 747 tank explosion cause can be explained, it can be replicated: why didn't the NTSB go out to the Mojave, find a decommissioned 100 series 747 and replicate the explosion? The more conjecture, the more room there is to postulate and defend alternative theories, however unsubstantiated they may be
The NTSB did conduct tests. They rigged a 747 CFT with temperature sensors then subjected the tank to the same heating conditions that were endured by TWA 800. To Boeing's surprise, the inside of the tank got to temperatures well above that needed for an explosion. The hottest sensor showed a reading of 127 degrees F.

Another test was to evaluate whether an exploding CFT could subject enough force to the airframe to cause it damage. Boeing had expressed doubt that such an explosion could result in the aircraft being brought down. The NTSB test showed that in fact, the force from the explosion was "3 times that needed to damage the airframe".

The "smoking gun" would have to be the visible evidence provided by the pieced-together wreckage. In the documentary, Jim Wildey, Chief Metallurgist NTSB, takes us on a guided tour of the pieced together fuselage around the vicinity of the CFT. Standing in the "dry bay" ahead of the CFT and immediately aft of the front spar, he points to witness marks on the back side of the front spar.

The witness marks are clearly visible in the video. Conspiracy theorists would probably say that the NTSB put them there with a mallet. He goes on to say the following:

"These witness marks (were created by) spanwise beam 3 (which) broke at the top, rotated forward and impacted the back of the front spar. This is the result of an 'overpressure event' or an explosion inside the wing centre section fuel tank."

The "spanwise beam 3" is one of the forward beams across the CFT. During the wreckage recovery from the sea floor it was noted that one of these spanwise beams was found some distance from the main remains of the CFT (which should have been mostly intact).

Jim Kallstrom, Assistant Director FBI, was in charge of the FBI investigation. On the subject of missile strike evidence he had this to say:

"... we wouldn't be looking at little holes in the plane the size of dimes and quarters. If a missile from the USS Normandy hit the plane it would demolish the plane, and evidence, metalurgy evidence would be EVERYWHERE. People wouldn't be looking at little pieces, 10 times, and saying "I wonder?". It would slap you across the face."

[Thirty Eight South]

The same Jim Kallstrom presumably.
FBI's Kallstrom angrily denies any TWA probe cover-up


SMITHTOWN, New York (CNN) -- Officials from the FBI, Navy and National Transportation Safety Board angrily denied Friday a claim by former White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger that a Navy missile might have shot down TWA Flight 800.
"What we can say is that the United States military did not shoot a missile at this airplane. The United States military did not shoot anything," FBI assistant director James Kallstrom told a news conference

The ntsb took a fuel tank into the desert and were surprised it got hot? hardly science. They didn't take the experiment to it's conclusion - which is spontaneous ignition , not surprising considering they don't determine the cause in the ntsb report - only probability and conjecture:

NTSB Number AAR-00/03
'National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the TWA flight 800 accident was an explosion of the center wing fuel tank (CWT), resulting from ignition of the flammable fuel/air mixture in the tank. The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty, but, of the sources evaluated by the investigation, the most likely was a short circuit outside of the CWT that allowed excessive voltage to enter it through electrical wiring associated with the fuel quantity indication system'

what's not in the report is the ambient temp at the time of the ignition - the 747 is at 13 000 feet, at approx 230 kts: the ambient temp and the fuel tank temp are much lower than the red herring ground temp in the CFT. fuel is conductive; thermal conductivity in metallic materials is the same. I could go on, but I'm getting bored with this

as for the ntsb being the source of information for a tv documentary and providing the evidence, no thanks. The structure deformation evidence isn't conclusive, there's no mention of fastener shear loads and tension loads causing plastic deformation ect. Witness marks are just that-evidence of impact.what's required is detailed grain analysis, heat induced structural changes and the over pressure trace mapping ect, ect

[HotDog]

You are all wrong! Ask John Barry Smith and he will prove to you that it was caused by the failure of the fwd cargo door midspan latch.:rolleyes: :ugh:

[Casper]

Discovery Channel scoops CNN on TWA 800 story
Slant Index: 2.29 (vote)

Email this story
Discovery Channel’s recent program examining the cause of the TWA 800 disaster not only scoops CNN’s previously aired ”No Survivors” program on the same subject, but is a far superior investigative report. Discovery’s ”Best Evidence” takes a critical look at the available hard evidence and the government’s conclusions pertaining to the jetliner’s demise. By contrast, CNN’s ”No Survivors” contained a number of factual inaccuracies, the result of CNN’s producers relying too heavily on official sources and failing to verify the information those sources provided.

For example, CNN based their crash sequence animation that showed Flight 800 climbing sharply after exploding on government simulation data. But the government admitted that the simulations were ”steered,” and outside experts have shown that they do not match the hard radar evidence.

The government used the climb scenario based on their steered simulation data to explain eyewitness accounts of a missile. At a major FBI press conference in 1997, the CIA released an animation showing TWA 800 climbing and said the aircraft ”may have looked like a missile”.

The producers of ”Best Evidence” looked closely at the data behind the government simulations and found that the CIA’s animation did not match the hard radar evidence. FAA radar sites that recorded what actually happened to Flight 800 show that the jetliner banked left and descended after exploding.

For the first time on national television, former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom admitted that he had reservations about the CIA’s animation. ”In retrospect,” he told Discovery’s producers, ”I shouldn’t have asked the CIA” to produce the animation of Flight 800’s final moments.

But CNN’s producers, who also interviewed Kallstrom, apparently did not confront the chief FBI investigator for the TWA 800 case about the discrepancy between the radar data and the CIA animation. In fact, the controversy surrounding the CIA or any other government animation was not mentioned at all in CNN’s program. Instead, CNN simply cited the government as their source and ran an animation based on the government’s invalid data. Clearly, CNN’s producers did not review the available hard evidence--the radar tapes--to verify the information provided by the official government sources they used.

”No Survivors” interviewed the first eyewitness contacted by authorities. Naneen Levine said the object she saw rose off the surface and arced to the west--opposite to the direction Flight 800 was flying. CNN didn’t investigate this discrepancy, but instead let Mr. Kallstrom explain that she probably saw the plane on fire.

On the other hand, ”Best Evidence” allowed structural engineer and eyewitness Paul Angeldes to comment on the government’s explanation of what he saw. He said the government’s theory doesn’t account for the object he saw, which he said first appeared close to shore and in a completely different part of the sky than where Flight 800 was flying.

CNN’s ”No Survivors” didn’t discuss any of the wreckage that went missing during the investigation, not even the wreckage FAA radar sites tracked exiting Flight 800 at apparent supersonic speeds.*

”Best Evidence” displayed the hard radar and debris field evidence confirming the existence of the high-speed wreckage. When Discovery’s producer asked how this wreckage vanished from the investigation, FBI chief TWA 800 investigator James Kallstrom said it may have been sent to Washington for further analysis. Kallstrom provided no further details on the whereabouts of this wreckage.**


cnnX editorial

Flight 800 crashed off the coast of Long Island, NY in 1996 killing all 230 people onboard. Hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a streak of light in the sky before Flight 800 exploded. Two Air National Guard pilots in the air at the time identified the streak as a missile.

Government animations were used to discredit eyewitnesses, not to help explain the cause of the crash. Once the jetliner broke in two, what happened later--the plane climbing, according to the government--had nothing to do with the cause. Yet even with the government's explanation, a majority of the relevant witnesses (including Naneen Levine from "No Survivors" and Paul Angelides in "Best Evidence") still contradict the official crash scenario.

Valuable reporting techniques include fact-checking and obtaining multiple sources for information. When "Best Evidence" applied these techniques, they uncovered significant lapses in the official investigation and got a former FBI Assistant Director to second-guess his judgment. When CNN neglected these techniques, they aired an inaccurate report and got scooped.


If you missed the Discovery Channel show, it will air again on February 15th at 1PM EST.

*FAA radar sites recorded this wreckage traveling at an average speed of approximately 500 mph over four seconds. Because wreckage exiting an aircraft rapidly decreases its speed due to the extreme force of air resistance, this piece of wreckage most likely had an initial velocity far greater than the speed of sound, which at Flight 800's altitude was approximately 700 mph.

**No analysis of this wreckage has ever been publicly released.

[aircraft]

Casper, Thirty Eight South and any other conspiracy theorists,

What would it take for you to believe the official version of events?

If you feel inclined to answer with something like "for the NTSB and FBI to admit that it was a missile" then you don't quite understand the question.

[Casper]

The below FAA information and the interview with Major Myers (Air Guard helicopter pilot who had witnessed missiles in Vietnam and who was one of the closest living witnesses to the TWA 800 explosion) are some, only some, of the reasons why I consider the official version with extreme suspicion.
----------------------------------------------------------------
In truth, to its credit, the FAA refused to change its story despite the pressure to do so. When in November 1996, the NTSB leaned on the FAA to "agree that there is no evidence that would suggest a high-speed target merged with TWA 800," the FAA refused.

"We cannot comply with your request," the FAA's David Thomas responded. "By alerting law enforcement agencies, air traffic control personnel simply did what was prudent at the time and reported what appeared to them to be a suspicious event. To do less would have been irresponsible."

To set the record straight on this issue, Ray Lahr persuaded one key witness, James Holtsclaw, to go public for the first time. In 1996 Holtsclaw was serving as the deputy assistant for the Western Region of the Air Transport Association. Within a week of the crash, Holtsclaw received the radar tape directly from an NTSB investigator frustrated by its suppression.

"The tape shows a primary target at 1200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800," swears Holtsclaw on the Lahr affidavit.

In fact, before the investigation was through, authorities would introduce five different explanations to rationalize away that "blip." This obvious dissembling may explain why investigators felt the need to smuggle out evidence. Holtsclaw's informant would be the first of several, at least four of whom would be either suspended from the investigation or arrested.
Within weeks of the crash, the FBI would interview more than 700 eyewitnesses.

By its own count, 270 of them saw lights streaking upwards towards the plane. Defense Department analysts also debriefed some of these witnesses, 34 of whom, according to the FBI, described events "consistent with the characteristics of the flight of [anti-aircraft] missiles."

[56P]

90% of the OFFICIAL witnesses reject the official scenario!

[aircraft]

Just how does one go about arguing with the conspiracy theorist? They reject outright any evidence or explanations advanced by the government (the enemy), so how can you put to them the counter arguments?

It is part of their mindset to regard any agency that supports or agrees with the government line as being "in on the conspiracy". This effectively means they will only listen to argument that favours the conspiracists views. Their minds are closed, in other words, yet they claim to be "seekers of the truth".

I did some research tonight on the psychology of the conspiracy theorist. It appears that the conspiracy theories give comfort on various psychological levels - they make the world a more predictable and less hostile place, for example.

Here is a good read that explores the mindset and methods of operation that are common to all conspiracy theorists (mainly to do with the 9/11 conspiracy theories):

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/research/4199607.html

I suggest that posters to this thread that favour the missile theory have a read of that page then ask themselves whether any of the tendencies and behaviours described there apply to them.

56P said:
90% of the OFFICIAL witnesses reject the official scenario!

Many witnesses reported "a streak of light", but not one single witness described a missile strike. To have described a missile strike, the witness report would have to give something like the following:

(1) a light from the buring missile motor ascending very rapidly and steeply for about 8 seconds;
(2) the light disappearing for up to 7 seconds;
(3) upon the missile striking the aircraft and igniting the CWT another light, moving considerably slower and more laterally than the first for about 30 seconds;
(4) this light descending while simultaneously developing into a fireball falling toward the ocean.

The above description is from the NTSB final report, as is the following:

The NTSB Witness Group reviewed these summaries and determined that the documents contained 736 witness accounts. Of these, the group determined that 670 witness reported seeing something that probably related to the accident, and 250 reported hearing something that was likely related to the accident. 258 accounts were characterized as "streak-of-light" witnesses ("an object moving in the sky...variously described [as] a point of light, fireworks, a flare, a shooting star, or something similar"). Of these 258 witnesses, 38 reported that the streak was ascending vertically or nearly so, 18 indicated that it originated from the surface of the earth, and 7 reported that it originated at the horizon.

599 witnesses reported a fireball; of these 264 reported seeing the fireball originate, 200 reported seeing the fireball split into two fireballs, and 217 reported observing the fireball hit the surface of the water, or disappear below the horizon. 210 witnesses reported seing both a fireball and a streak of light.

Both the FBI and the NTSB started the investigation fully expecting that the aircraft had been brought down by a bomb. Unfortunately however, this mindset was projected into the wording of the questions that were put to the witnesses. Some "contamination" of the witnesses must be regarded as having occurred.

On this point, the NTSB final report said:

In examining these accounts, the investigation noted that the interviews conducted by the FBI focused on information that might be relevant to a possibility of a missile attack, noting that some of the suggested interview questions given to the FBI agents for the interview process included assumptions that a missile attack had occured.

What should be regarded as the final word on what the witnesses saw, but
owing to the conspiracy theorist mindset, never will:

The NTSB Witness Group concluded that the streak of light reported by witnesses might have been the accident airplane during some stage of its flight before the fireball developed, noting that most of the 258 streak of light accounts were generally consistent with the calculated flightpath of the accident airplane after the CWT explosion.

[Thirty Eight South]

Good try Freud but stick to the day job or high school, whichever's appropriate. Anyone proposing domestic electrical experiments to justify a point about ignition in fuel tanks who also doesn't understand electrical bonding in aviation structures really is a plonker

Constantly referring to the NTSB to justify an argument when it's been stated that the report is not an accurate reflection of the evidence is somewhat self defeating as well, so instead of looking up conspiracry look up delusional.

Questioning the so called official version of events when the evidence is contradictory is healthy objectivity; anyway, I think there's a bell ringing somewhere for you Pavlov

[Casper]

Okay, let’s take it slowly, one issue at a time. The last sentence of the below information is sworn testimony.

Why would the FAA refuse to change its story, even after pressure from the NTSB?

And what sort of object is capable of 1200 knots?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In truth, to its credit, the FAA refused to change its story despite the pressure to do so. When in November 1996, the NTSB leaned on the FAA to "agree that there is no evidence that would suggest a high-speed target merged with TWA 800," the FAA refused.

"We cannot comply with your request," the FAA's David Thomas responded. "By alerting law enforcement agencies, air traffic control personnel simply did what was prudent at the time and reported what appeared to them to be a suspicious event. To do less would have been irresponsible."

To set the record straight on this issue, one key witness, James Holtsclaw, went public for the first time. In 1996 Holtsclaw was serving as the deputy assistant for the Western Region of the Air Transport Association. Within a week of the crash, Holtsclaw received the radar tape directly from an NTSB investigator frustrated by its suppression.

"The tape shows a primary target at 1200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800."

[chemical alli]

after working in many ctr wing tanks of 747's i find it hard to swallow ,shorted wire or not .capton wiring etc ,at 13800 ft exactly how much is the oxygen to air component for a spark to take place also fuel vapour jeta or a1 is not easy to ignite thats why ignition systems on engines is 4 joule or ten joule for inflight start,have thrown cigarette buts into buckets of jet a at ground level and never a flash ,conspiracy i love but call mulder because you will never know

[aircraft]

Casper,

Why would the FAA refuse to change its story, even after pressure from the NTSB?
I don't know what the FAA "story" was but I assume it was just an opionion, given that they don't make findings. I don't see what is a big deal with this. Please give more info on what the "FAA story" was.

"The tape shows a primary target at 1200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800."
This claim must surely have arisen from the "Paris Match" radar tapes. The Paris Match magazine selected 9 still images from "an FAA radar tape" and used them to show a supposed missile converging on TWA 800.

Of the 9 images, 6 cover the 1 minute, 27 second period before the explosion. If it is from these 6 frames that the "1200 knot" claim comes, then somebody is truly grasping at straws. In fact, it looks suspiciously like somebody has selectively chosen the individual frames so as to "manufacture" the evidence of a missile.

Here are the UTC times of each frame. Note that the interval between frames is not regular:

00 h 29 min 50 s
00 h 30 min 17 s
00 h 30 min 35 s
00 h 30 min 40 s
00 h 30 min 44 s
00 h 31 min 16 s

The 30:40 frame shows the object about 7 miles from TWA 800 and the 31:16 frame shows it as about 3 miles from the 747. You should look at these frames yourself at:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/RADAR/radar.html

The narrative on this website says that the object, visible at 30:40, remained visible (and mostly stationary, one is to assume) until 30:52. The implication is that the object then traversed the 4 miles in the 24 seconds - which, by my calculations is a speed of only 600 knots (or possibly only 400 knots, if you interpret the narrative differently).

The website narrative, however, says that the object "has had to accelerate to well over the speed of sound". Do the calculations yourself. Use the range rings to estimate distance - they are 10 NM apart.

Another curious thing about the narrative is that it says the object, visible at 30:40, "will stay on the screen for precisely 12 seconds", but the 30:44 frame does not show it!

How much of a leap is it to say that the object at 31:16 is the same object at 30:40? On this question rests the credibility of the "1200 knot" claim.

The object(s) under discussion are primary radar returns. Primary returns can be from boats, trucks, buildings - even a flock of birds. The NTSB final report has a plot of all the primary returns that were recorded in the crash area in the 20 minute period after the explosion. There is also a plot of the primary returns in the 74 second period prior to the explosion.

From these plots it can be seen that primary returns appear frequently and in almost random locations. Most of the apparently random returns probably have come from boats and shipping. Actual boat tracks (moving at speeds up to 30 knots) have been identified in the plots.

The nature of primary returns (from surface objects) is that they are generally of weak and fluctuating signal strength, hence the intermittent and apparently random appearances.

Many years ago, I was on a tour through the Perth ATC building. Whilst being shown the radar workstations, the tour guide pointed out primary targets that were intermittently appearing. "Trucks on Albany Highway" was the explanation.

Back to the 6 Paris Match stills. If all the images for the period could be seen, then one could assess just how much primary return "noise" is present and where, but to show 2 stills separated by 30 odd seconds and ask us to believe that a primary return on one is from the same primary object that is 4 miles away on another is just asking too much.

So, was this series of stills where the "1200 knot" claim originated? I strongly suspect so. The animation of this series (with yellow streak superimposed) could be seen playing in the background at a press conference given by Pierre Salinger. Also, numerous conspiracy websites show this same animation (with yellow streak).

[Casper]

If, as claimed by the NTSB, the crash was caused by a CFT explosion, why is the investigation not closed?
If, as claimed, no crime was committed, why has the FBI still got some control over the investigation? Under ICAO Annex 13, law enforcement agencies are required to withdraw from an investigation unless a crime has been committed.
Why is the investigation still in the "pending inactive" category? This category allows the FBI to continue to withhold information.

Why??

[roamingwolf]

Casper's right on the money.A bunch of people do not believe in conspiracy theories because i reckon it makes them feel helpless knowing there are forces beyond their control.At the same time I can't see how you could shut up that many service people if it was an accident.
Has anyone ever thought maybe it was not an explosion in the cft but it was deliberate.Was there anyone on the aircraft someone would want out of the way?After all the frogs were desperate enough to send in a team to sink the rainbow warrior.other foreign governments sometimes get just as desperate.the ruskies have been rumoured to have done some strange stuff.look at the guy who was killed with a poisoned umbrella in london and the radioactive poisoning in london a few months ago is another example of a desperate move to shut someone up.If someone or something was on that plane and someone else did not want it to be found an explosion by whatever means at altitude over water would do the job alright.
whatever boys and girls it certainly makes for a good story and a book or two.
Caspers right though because if the big boys thought it was really just an accident why don't they close the case?