TWA 800 Investigation
by Ian Williams Goddard[Click here to scroll past the article to view the Links.]
Traces of the explosive PETN (used in both bombs and guided missiles) were found on the debris of TWA flight 800, which crashed off the Long Island shore on July 17, 1996 killing 230 people. The crash has been classified as an accident.
The finding of PETN was, however, not revealed to the public at an FBI or NTSB press conference. The only reason this most significant discovery became known to the American people was because several high-level investigators leaked the information to the New York Times.
According to Reuters, the first FBI reaction to this leaked report was an official "no comment." When chief FBI crash investigator James Kallstrom was asked how long he had known about this evidence, Reuters reported that "Kallstrom would not disclose how long he had known of the findings."
According to the New York Times article, "The [positive] test was conducted as long as two weeks ago, investigators said. But instead of announcing the finding then, FBI officials decided to take extraordinary precautions to keep the findings secret as long as possible. The information was so tightly controlled that only three or four senior investigators knew about it until several [others] were told at a private briefing."
The FBI withheld this major evidence for two weeks, and the only reason it ever got out was due to a leak. During those two weeks what were we being told by Kallstrom & Co.? That they had no definite evidence of a missile or bomb on board.
Yet, even as explosives residue was found on the bodies of victims and on the outside of the plane, the FBI moved quickly to sweep away the evidence that had become know to the public by suggesting that the explosive material must have been inadvertently tracked into the plane by Gulf War soldiers or as a result of bomb training supposedly conducted inside the plane a few weeks before.
When asked by the press about the leaking of truth to the public, Reuters reported that "Kallstrom appeared irritated. He said if the information had come from anyone on his staff, he would fire them."
Investigators at the reconstruction hangar in Calverton, New York consistently scored positive PETN "hits" with their "highly sophisticated" Egis bomb-detection system. However, secondary explosives tests conducted at FBI headquarters in Washington DC were consistently negative on the same debris. The second negative tests always superseded the first positive tests.
According to the New York Times, with their positive tests
constantly contradicted by the FBI in DC, hangar investigators
began to suspect that these FBI findings were part of an attempt
to cover up the truth. As 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. To put it bluntly,
the investigators believed the FBI was lying. The above citation
is the testimony of investigators telling us that they believe
the FBI is conducting a cover-up. The evidence suggests that while
the truth stops at the top, the rank-and-file investigators are
generally honest and through them reporters have gotten the most
true picture."
It appears that even within the investigation, investigators operate
in a atmosphere of pervasive secrecy. Describing the day-to-day
conditions inside the TWA 800 debris reconstruction operation
-- the center of the investigation -- the New York Times
reported that, "Word spread by whispers and winks. The secrecy,
even among the federal agents, had people waiting to find 'secure
lines' before telephoning colleagues. The investigators invented
loaded phrases of circumspection."
Such an effort of investigators to hide information not only from the press but from other investigators clearly suggests that the investigation has been broken down according to plan into compartmentalized units that hide information from each other. Such organization ensures that nobody can see the big picture and thus that everyone below the top is mostly in the dark.
The evidence very strongly suggests that rank-and-file investigators are being intimidated into silence against their initial and natural inclinations to tell the truth. Such instinctive honesty is why, in case after case, we get the truth from a given investigator but then silence, indicating that after their wrongful respect of the truth they were censured.
For example: after Medical Examiner Dr. Charles V. Wetli informed reporters that passengers in the forward portion for the plane were hit hardest -- indicating that the major event was in the front, not the center of the plane -- the New York Times reported that Dr. Wetli and others then "backed off even the shadings of meaning their examinations had produced. An explosion had happened and killed people was as much as he could say."
TWA pilots who were interviewed by the St. Louis Post Dispatch said that they had come to the conclusion that "people who had information concerning the explosion, including those who reported seeing a missile, had been pressured to remain silent."
The FBI's desire to conceal the debris from public view was clear from the start. The FBI even made sure that all photographs were developed on-site so as to prevent the possibility that the truth might leak out through private-sector photo shops. As Newsweek (08/5/96) reported, "FBI men stopped NTSB officials from photographing the wreckage because 'they didn't want our people taking pictures and sending them out to Snappy photo' as opposed to a secure FBI lab..."
Indeed every effort was made to keep debris out of public sight. In an article about the recovery scene on the public beach after the crash, Newsday described a boathouse that was used to store the evidence that the Navy crash-recovery team was bringing ashore, observing that, "[T]he boathouse... remained cordoned off by police tape. Windows in the boathouse are blocked with cardboard, and the media is forbidden to take pictures because investigators don't want evidence photographed."
Not only is the FBI hiding (a) the debris, (b) the reconstruction, (c) the radar records, (d) the satellite records, (e) the photo negatives, but throughout the investigation, even before the gathering of debris, the FBI and NTSB have constantly favored a bomb on-board or mechanical failure even when they are said to have zero supporting evidence, over the missile theory with over 150 consistent and uniformly triangulated eyewitnesses accounts of a missile hit according to investigators.
The Veracity of the Russell Report
The Internet document declaring that TWA 800 was shot down by a Navy missile, which Pierre Salinger held as evidence, is widely reported and assumed to be an anonymous fabrication, written by some clever con-artist. The fact is that the author is a known, retired crash investigator with connections inside the TWA 800 investigation.
As USA Today (10/31/96) said, "Richard Russell, a retired United Airlines pilot and former crash investigator, shouldn't have been surprised when an authoritative sounding e-mail he sent to fewer than a dozen friends Aug. 22 --claiming a government coverup in the crash of TWA Flight 800 -- was copied across the 'Net." The article also says he sticks by his report but must protect his source.
The New York Times (11/17/96) states that the "anonymous message that began circulating in late August... was written on America Online by Richard Russell, a 66-year-old Floridian and former United Airlines pilot. Russell later told reporters that he never intended his message -- originally a private E-mail communication sent to about a dozen friends who were aviation accident investigators -- to be widely distributed."
"Russell can't be accused of courting publicity. He says he has been contacted by several major television shows, but they've all lost interest because he won't give up his source."
If there were a coverup underway, it would most logically surface around the edges; that is, the real story would leak through reliable people with verifiable inside connections within the body in which the coverup is being perpetrated. That is exactly the case here.
The Watergate affair, generally accepted as a "true coverup," rested largely on the anonymous source "Deep Throat," yet we tend to accept the veracity of this secret source to the extent it's consistent with accepted facts. Consistency should dictate that the same standard would hold for the Russell document.
Consistency with Multiple Sources
The St. Louis Post Dispatch (11/09/96) interviewed several TWA pilots who, based on inside knowledge, say that TWA 800 was hit by a U.S. Navy missile. Consistent with an AP report (09/23/96), one TWA pilot of 20 years said investigators found a hole in the plane believed to be caused by a missile. Another pilot said "high-level sources in the Pentagon" indicate it was a Navy missile hit. One pilot said, "At least nine out of 10 pilots will tell you they believe this was a missile. We know of military practices where they will lock onto commercial aircraft for testing, but then do not detonate the missile."
The Workers World News Service (09/19/96) reported that many TWA and airport workers, based on their inside knowledge, find the Navy guilty of the TWA 800 disaster.
WCBS-TV of New York reported (09/05/96) that information leaked from the top-secret crash investigation suggests that TWA 800 may have been downed by a military missile. The report quickly disappeared, as FBI and White House officials condemn the idea of Navy culpability as absurd and a sign of mental imbalance.
The Jerusalem Post (07/21/96) says French Defense Ministry agents believe that TWA 800 was taken out by a Navy missile. While many victims were from France, French investigators were, in violation of routine in international disaster protocol, forbidden from assisting in the FBI-NAVY-NTSB top-secret investigation.
Consistency of Russell Report With Facts
The Russell report, apart from the claim of Navy guilt, gives information that is consistent with fact. It states that a U.S. Navy guided-missile ship that did the firing was in area W-105. This is true, although the Navy claims it was too far away. Area W-105 was also activated at the time for military maneuvers. The Russell report also says that the ship was intended to fire a missile over a P-3 Orion, which would measure the missile's course. In fact, a P-3 Orion was at the very location Russell's report indicates it should have been. To my knowledge, Russell's report was the initial source for many of these details.
What is more, over 150 witnesses reported a missile flying across the sky, which then hit TWA 800, causing it to explode. "Deep Throat's" story was never so well corroborated. As one witness, Lou Desyron, told ABC World News (Sunday, 07/21/96), "We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color... Once it went into flames, I knew that wasn't a flare."
Another witness said (N.Y. Daily News, 11/09/96), "It looked like a big skyrocket going up, and it kept going up and up, and the next thing I knew there was an orange ball of fire." The New York Post (09/22/96) reported that 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.
Salinger "Totally Sure" TWA 800 Missile Theory is True
Pentagon, Federal Investigators Insist He's Wrong
PARIS (CNN) -- March 13. 1997 -- Former newsman Pierre Salinger insisted again Thursday that a Navy missile downed TWA Flight 800, this time offering a 69-page document and a set of radar images to bolster his case.
"We have now reached the point where we are totally sure what we are saying is true," Salinger, a former ABC News correspondent and press secretary to President Kennedy, told a Paris news conference.
The FBI, Pentagon and federal air safety investigators previously have discredited the theory, which spread through the Internet following the July 17, 1996, crash. On Thursday, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman James Hall called Salinger's allegations "irresponsible."
All 230 people aboard the Boeing 747 were killed when the plane went down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York.
At the news conference, Salinger and Mike Sommer, an investigative reporter and former Salinger colleague at ABC News, showed radar images they said were taken from an air traffic control video from John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the flight took off.
The images, also released in Paris-Match magazine Thursday, show a blip identified as Flight 800, and another blip heading toward it that Salinger claims is the missile that brought down the plane.
The tape "completely confirms a missile fired down TWA 800," Salinger said. At the news conference, Salinger and Sommer claimed the 'missile was fired during a "super-secret" U.S. Navy exercise off Long Island and was meant to target a Tomahawk missile, but hit Flight 800 instead when it "lost its lock on its original target."
They claimed the missile was either a kinetic energy missile or a continuous rod missile. Sommer said the kinetic missile would explode near the target and a continuous rod missile would "slice through" the plane.
Salinger's report says witnesses monitoring secret Navy anti-terrorism exercises reportedly heard a male voice say, "Oh, my God, I just hit that plane."
Salinger said there was, to his knowledge, no audio tape of a U.S. sailor saying a missile from his ship had shot down TWA 800. Instead, Salinger said he spoke with the father of a sailor who said his son told him, "Dad, we shot it down."
Report: Russian satellite has proof published on Thursday that the U.S. government should "reveal the truth" or face Russian disclosure based on satellite photography.
"We don't want to get the Russians involved, but unless the U.S. government cooperates, we may have to," Salinger told the newspaper.
Two Russian satellites active above the scene of the disaster produced videotapes showing a missile hitting the TWA aircraft, according to the report Salinger released in Paris.
Salinger said a presidential commission was established last year to look into similar alleged incidents of military missiles shooting down or threatening civilian aircraft. He said there had been 44 such cases since 1978, and of these 26 had resulted in planes being shot down and 600 passengers killed. The report, he said, was now allegedly in the hands of Vice President Al Gore.
In an examination of an early draft of Salinger's report, CNN found it to be littered with errors and misinformation. The report lacked legitimate attributions, beyond unnamed sources and unnamed experts.
The FBI's lead investigator in the Flight 800 disaster, James Kallstrom, repeatedly has said investigators have reviewed every available radar picture and concluded there was no evidence of a missile being fired. The NTSB and the Pentagon also have dismissed Salinger's work.
"Our investigators have looked at all the radar tapes that exist from that evening and have not seen anything that indicates a missile track or missile hit," NTSB Chairman Hall told CNN in a live interview Thursday.
"We're going to continue this investigation. We'll be responsible and responsive to anything that's put out on the public airwaves," Hall said. "But this just borders on irresponsible to say the Navy shot this down and that whole ships of people are involved in some massive government coverup."
Over 90 percent of the downed plane has been recovered from the ocean and "there is no physical evidence today of a bomb or a missile hitting that aircraft," Hall said, adding that he was willing to have NTSB investigators talk with Salinger and review his evidence. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon on Wednesday described Salinger's work as "bunkum."
Tape Seized From Pilot
Investigators say three possible crash theories remain -- a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure -- but they insist the investigation has ruled out an errant missile strike by the U.S. military.
The FBI this week launched a criminal investigation, hoping to stop missile theorists. On Tuesday, agents seized a videotape that former pilot Richard Russell claimed was FAA tape showing radar images of a missile near the doomed plane.
Salinger first based his friendly fire claim on a memo Russell wrote and circulated on the Internet. The videotape was examined closely and found to have no indications of any missile, The New York Times reported Thursday.
The FBI also has been trying to question a former California police officer who said he obtained and did tests on an actual piece of the wreckage.
FAA: March Missile Sightings by Jets Were Navy Test
4 Passenger
Planes in Northeast Saw Rocket
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- April 10, 1997 -- The Federal Aviation Administration now believes that a missile sighted by several commercial airline pilots flying over the northeastern United States on March 17 was actually part of a Navy test off the coast of Florida.
The National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation after four separate airline crews from three different airlines all reported seeing a rocket or missile that night.
Navy officials now say two Trident missiles were fired from a submarine off the east coast of Florida at almost exactly the same time as the pilots began reporting missile sightings nearly 2,000 miles away. The rockets landed harmlessly in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa and did not pass anywhere near U.S. commercial air space.
The missile sightings come amidst persistent -- and, investigators say, unfounded -- speculation that a military missile test gone awry may have brought down TWA Flight 800. The 747 jet crashed July 17 in the Atlantic Ocean off New York's Long Island coast, killing all 230 people aboard.
"It, again, stretches the imagination to think that the military would be involved in any kind of a missile test around New York City," said Capt. Michael Doubleday, a Pentagon spokesman.
Investigators Test Missile Strike Theory in Arizona
But while investigators have discounted the scenario that the TWA disaster was the result of a military accident, they have refused to rule out the possibility that a missile from some other source could have brought down the plane.
As recently as two weeks ago, the FBI and NTSB conducted tests in which real missiles were fired into retired military airplanes to collect information about how a missile hit would damage an airplane.
The NTSB also plans to compare sounds from those Arizona missile tests to a mysterious noise heard at the end of Flight 800's cockpit voice recorder to see if they match.
U.S. military officials continue to insist that missile tests pose no danger to civil aviation. The United States tests missiles at bases that are either near remote desert areas, such as White Sands, New Mexico, or along coasts where missiles can be fired over open ocean and from ships at sea, such as Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Tests are never conducted over populated areas or in busy commercial air corridors. And missiles are designed to self-destruct in the event a test goes awry.
"There is a lot of military activity and a lot of testing of missiles," says retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll. "But it's only done from approved locations. It's done with full notification to all concerned, and it's done under real time surveillance.
"I think that it is very clear we're not shooting an arrow into the air, and it's coming down to Earth we know not where. That's not the way business is done."
Indeed, the FAA says it is not aware of any U.S. military missile ever straying from restricted airspace, nor has the Pentagon ever failed to give proper notice of a test.
Man With TWA 800 Radar Tape Ordered to Court
NEW YORK (AP) -- April 9, 1997 -- A retired pilot living in Florida said he has been ordered into court to explain where he got a radar tape he says proves TWA Flight 800 was downed by a Navy missile.
"This is just more harassment from the government," retired United Airlines pilot Richard Russell said Tuesday. He said he has received a subpoena to appear April 16 in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to discuss the tape, which he claims was placed in his mailbox with no identification or postmark.
Russell has said the tape, seized from his home by investigators last month, shows a blip he claims is a missile headed toward Flight 800. FBI investigator James Kallstrom said the blip on the official radar tape was an unarmed Navy plane traveling through the area with a broken transponder. He did not comment on the subpoena.
Russell has been collaborating with Pierre Salinger, who has been claiming that the government is covering up evidence that the jet was downed by friendly fire. The Paris-bound 747 exploded July 17 and crashed minutes after taking off, killing all 230 people aboard.
Investigators say three possible crash theories remain -- a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure -- but they insist the investigation has ruled out an errant missile strike by the U.S. military.
Links
The Flight 800 Investigation (continually updated)Officials Admit "Bombing" of TWA800
The Mystery Boat That 'Got Away'
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