Was TWA Flight 800 Destroyed by Two Missiles?

"And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air ..."
-- Francis Scott Key

Chris Baur and Fritz Meyer were New York Air National Guard pilots who witnessed the crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996 and flew straight to the scene.

Baur stated: "Almost due south of the helicopter, there was a hard white light, like burning pyrotechnics, in level flight. I was trying to figure out what it was. It was the wrong color for flares. It struck an object coming from the right and made it explode". Baur saw a streak moving from his left to his right and towards the TWA aircraft.

Meyer said he saw "a streak of light moving from my right to my left". The streak that Meyer saw was traveling in the same direction as the TWA flight. The streak was red-orange in color and ended in a yellowish-white explosion that looked like the detonation of an anti-aircraft shell. "It left a cloud of smoke just like a flak explosion," Meyer said, and "one to two seconds later, there was a second, hard explosion almost pure white in color. Immediately thereafter there was a third explosion and a fireball".

On July 29, 1997 the Riverside Press reported that Meyer was convinced he had seen an "ordnance explosion" near the plane. He commented: "The explosion of the fuel was not the initiator of the event. It was one of the results. Something happened before that which was the initiator of the disaster."

The two pilots were describing separate missiles: both missiles exploded and the fuel from the aircraft then ignited in a "fireball".

In March 1998 Meyer spoke to the Granada Forum (a conservative organization located in Hollywood, CA) and described an interesting phone call he had received which supported his position that he and Baur had witnessed two missiles.

"After my picture appeared on television I received a phone call one night from an anonymous person - the person just got on the phone and said: 'You don't know who I am but I work for Sikorsky'. And he said I knew a friend of yours and he mentioned the name of a friend who had died in a crash up at Sikorsky in an H53. And then he mentioned a conversation that I had had with this deceased person where the two of us were standing at a small bar, called 'The Matchbox', having a beer after we had just finished a flight so I knew that this person did in fact know my friend. He said there is a tape -- and I don't think it is a tape -- I think it is a digital disk -- there is a tape of the Sikorsky radar which shows two targets approaching TWA Flight 800 before the impact -- one a high speed supersonic and one subsonic. The Sikorsky radar is not up in Bridgehampton - the Sikorsky radar is in Riverhead - it's actually just 5 miles north of the Suffolk County airport, which I was flying to. It is a remote site run by the U.S. Navy Virginia Capes authority and they lease the digital information to Sikorsky so that when helicopters are out there being tested, Sikorsky has the most sophisticated data radar that the Navy has watching their helicopters. When I went down to talk to my congressman in Washington, an assistant of his showed me a list of all the data that the FBI said they were holding -- all the documentation. I looked for this particular tape on it because the gentleman on the telephone had told me that the FBI had come in the next morning and confiscated it -- he used that word. The tape was not on that list and so in an interview in Washington I told Congressman Traficant that I didn't see this radar tape on the list that the FBI had given to Congressman Forbes. After my interview with him, Congressman Duncan sent a letter to the FBI specifically asking for this tape by name - just nailed it down and said: "Do you have this?" Even though it wasn't on the inventory that they presented to the Congress, they then admitted that they did have it in their possession -- said it didn't show anything unusual -- but refused to release it to anybody." (A video of Meyer's presentation is available from Dennis Whipple, 2315 Marine Avenue, Gardena, CA 90249.)

Other eyewitnesses saw both missiles describing them as 'flares', 'objects' or 'streaks'.

Rosa Gray Khalilch saw "double orange flares" streak upward and explode into a large orange fireball. The flares were arcing and trailed by gray smoke.

Tom Stalcup, a research assistant in the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, Florida, interviewed Barbara Pacholk on January 28, 1998. Pacholk said she saw "two objects" rise from the surface. The first object exploded near the tail and the second near the nose. She also noticed two large navy vessels on the ocean. One of these vessels, Pacholk declared, quickly left the area after the tragedy.

Frank Lenahan and his wife were sitting on their outside deck when Frank saw "two red streaks", very vivid in color, ascend. He brought this to the attention of his wife who turned and saw one of the streaks go west to east, straight across the horizon just above the dune line. They didn't follow the streaks all the way up as they assumed they were fireworks.

These direct witnesses' reports are markedly consistent with those of the two NY Air National Guard pilots.

Circumstantial evidence supports the proposition that more than one missile was launched as TWA Flight 800 flew overhead. On August 25, 1996 The Times of London reported that "one of three shoulder-fired Stingers" was successful in striking the aircraft. It also indicated how the missiles were brought into the United States:

"U.S. officials are investigating reports that Islamic terrorists have smuggled Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the United States from Pakistan. Senior Iranian sources close to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran claimed this weekend that TWA flight 800 was shot down last month by one of three shoulder-fired Stingers of the type used by Islamic guerrillas during the Afghanistan war. The sources said the missiles arrived in America seven months ago after being shipped from Karachi via Rotterdam and on to the Canadian port of Halifax. They claimed an Egyptian fundamentalist group backed by Iran was responsible for smuggling the weapons across the Canadian border into the United States. The group, the Gama'a al-Islamiya, comprises followers of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States over the 1993 New York World Trade Center bombing. A senior White House official responsible for counter-terrorism told The Sunday Times of London that he had seen a report that a Stinger missile had been smuggled into the United States from Pakistan. The official, who was involved in collating intelligence relating to the TWA inquiry for the White House, said investigators were aware of reports that Stingers may have been smuggled into the country. 'If a Stinger was the cause of this, our first theory would be that it came from Afghanistan.' The official was commenting on reports from Tehran that claimed several groups funded by the religious authorities in Iran are active in the United States. The reports claim one previously unknown underground group called Falakh may have as many as 50 highly trained terrorists in the country."

Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman's associate in the World Trade Center bombing, Ramsey Yousef, stayed in a house provided by Osama bin Laden while living in Pakistan.

STRANGE INCIDENTS: BEFORE AND AFTER TWA 800's DESTRUCTION

On the evening of June 26, 1996 the Coast Guard received a report of 'three red flares' launched 25 miles south of Shinnecock Inlet - approximately the same location that TWA Flight 800 would explode exactly three weeks later. This report came within hours of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia conducted by Saudi dissidents funded by Iran and believed to have been directed by Osama bin Laden. An air and surface search was carried out which found nothing out of ordinary. There was no one in distress on the ocean.

This incident was brought to the FBI's attention on March 17, 1997 when Philip E. Kuhlman, a resident of Moriches, New York sent a letter to James Kallstrom (who headed the FBI investigation into TWA 800) in which he wrote:

"I am a retired SA (Special Agent) of the FBI who incidentally resides in the vicinity of the area where TWA flight 800 came down. I feel constrained to write this letter to you in view of all of the furor recently over the possibility of TWA flight 800 being brought down on July 17, 1996 by friendly missile fire. This letter could indicate that possibly flight 800 might have been brought down by hostile missile fire. On Monday, July 22, 1996 I belatedly read the following newspaper article which appeared on page 186 of Dan's Papers, July 5, 1996 edition under the heading of 'U.S. Coast Guard Blotter'. (Dan's Papers is an Eastern Long Island weekly newspaper.):

A sailing vessel hailed Coast Guard Station Shinnecock on channel 16 VHF-FM at sunset on June 26, reporting three red flares. The Coast Guard 41-foot Utility Boat responded to the reported position, 25 nautical miles south of Shinnecock Inlet. Station Shinnecock searched throughout the night, along with a Coast guard helicopter and a fixed wing plane from Air Station Cape Cod, with no results. The Coast Guard rescue helicopter returned at sunrise and found no evidence of any distress."

Mr. Kuhlman continued: "Upon reading the above, I became curious when I realized that this 'red flare' incident occurred on the same day of the week, a Wednesday, as the downing of flight 800 only three weeks earlier. It also happened at approximately the same time of day and at approximately the same location. I wondered whether this could be a test missile firing on June 26, or perhaps could it be a failed attempt to bring flight 800 down on that date?"

The letter concluded with this advice:

"At this late date at least a thorough check of the Coast Guard records concerning the 'three red flares' sighting on June 26 should be undertaken. Further, an attempt should be made to identify the reporting 'sailing vessel' and to interview all persons aboard that boat that evening. Also, all Coast Guard personnel aboard the Coast Guard Utility Boat, helicopter and fixed wing plane should be interviewed for any pertinent information. It should be ascertained whether the Coast Guard made any visual or radio contact with any vessel in the so-called distress area at that time."

When no reply was received from Kallstrom, Kuhlman wrote to Dan's Papers commenting:

"Concerning this letter I sent to Kallstrom, much to my chagrin and amazement, I never received an answer from either him or one of his subordinates -- not even a brief letter advising me that his matter had been checked out and found to be of no significance. Believe me, in the good old days, when I was still with the FBI and might have been one of the men called upon to assist in the handling of this matter, Mr. Hoover would have insisted that a letter of this nature be answered."

Kuhlman continued: "Did it (the FBI) know beforehand -- the identity of the 30 knot vessel that was picked up by Islip radar that evening? (July 17, 1996) This was a large, 50 foot-plus ship, that had been at sea more or less under the path of Flight 800 and which had steamed away, going Southwest, afterward, over the horizon. There has been no official identification of this ship and there has been no evidence that this vessel, right beneath the breakup of Flight 800, ever radioed anyone of what it must have witnessed. Well, in view of this unidentified ship revelation on the night that Flight 800 went down, my curiosity has again been aroused as to the possibility of this vessel being identical with the mysterious 'distress' vessel on the evening of June 26, 1996." (Kuhlman's letters may be read in their entirety in the 'Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 for The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation, U.S. House of Representatives, July 17, 1998'. This report is available on the internet at http://www.twa800.com/ (Click Here.)

At about the time that these three 'flares' were launched TWA Flight 848 from Kennedy to Rome was passing overhead. Flight 848 left the gate at exactly 10:00 p.m. that night and assuming normal handling, it would have passed about 11 nautical miles South of Shinnecock Inlet at 10:29 p.m. EDT. More significantly, however, TWA Flight 884, traveling from New York to Tel Aviv, was scheduled to depart before FL 848 but left the gate late at 10:19 p.m. EDT and would otherwise have been over that location during the launch of the 'three red flares'.

TWA Flight 848 was to be involved in another incident four months after the downing of TWA Flight 800. On November 16, 1996, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 712 left Kennedy at 9:25 p.m. bound for Frankfurt. One of the pilots reported an orange light, which he described as a 'rocket' coming from the left-hand side to the right hand side of the airplane and he stated that the 'rocket' had ascended through the aircraft's altitude. Boston apparently confirmed two unidentified blips on radar. The tapes were turned over to the FBI and NTSB since the object(s) rose directly out of Long Island Sound.

TWA Flight 884 (New York to Tel Aviv) was following close behind the Pakistani flight and was diverted by a controller. The government dismissed the incident as a meteorite observation, which leaves unanswered how the meteor ascended out of Long Island Sound.

GOVERNMENT CAN'T KEEP THEIR STORY STRAIGHT

In a December 17, 1996 article The Washington Times stated:

"An official with the Defense Intelligence Agency, spy arm of the Pentagon, has informed congressional staff members that, in his opinion, a shoulder-fired missile brought down TWA Flight 800. The same DIA official, described as an expert in missile technology, told the staff members last week that he personally was called in by the FBI in the days following the explosion of the TWA jet to assist with witness interviews."

The article went on to report that a congressional source present at the briefing by the DIA official reported: "In his opinion, the plane was brought down by at least one shoulder-fired missile" and then the source remarked, "When he said that, we all took a deep breath."

After seeing the CIA video depicting the U.S. government's explanation of the crash, witness Barbara Pacholk told the New York Post (November 19, 1997):

"I know what I saw, I saw several fires go across the sky. One hit the plane at the tail and the second hit at the front, just before the wings. The fire came from both ends and met in the middle and exploded. Then the nose dropped, hung there for a minute. I understand that when a plane bursts into flames the flames fall, but this was a fire going up towards the plane. I wouldn't accuse anyone of wrongdoing, but I'm definitely still wondering what happened."

Commander William S. Donaldson USN (Ret.) - former Officer-in-Charge of Carrier Battlegroup's Air Traffic Control Center, pilot and military accident investigator, developed additional eyewitness evidence that two missiles were fired towards TWA Flight 800. Donaldson located the firing points of the missiles by triangulating witness bearing lines as described in his 'Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 for The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation, U.S. House of Representatives, July 17, 1998'. The report, which was provided to Congressman Traficant, may be read on the internet at http://twa800.com/report/Final.PDF. (Click Here.)

Donaldson has access to one hundred and seven witnesses on four aircraft, nineteen boats, and thirty-one locations ashore. They were located in a 360 degree circle around the missiles' engagements and from their testimony he has concluded the following:

A missile was fired from a location one nautical mile off shore and three nautical miles east of Moriches Inlet.

(In an earlier article written for Newsmax.com Witnesses Saw Missile Destroy TWA Flight 800, I opined that circumstantial evidence shows TWA Flight 800 was brought down by the Osama bin Laden organization and that this terrorist attack was only one of a series of missile attacks in the New York metropolitan area which began as early as November 1995 and continued through the summer of 1997.)

The second missile was fired approximately 10 miles out to sea from a surface vessel that sailed away from the disaster at 30 knots.

Was this missile also fired from a terrorist vessel, or was it fired from a naval vessel responding to the firing of the in-shore missile? The suspicion of naval involvement exists because Kallstrom admitted in a telephone conversation recorded by Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media, that there were U.S. naval vessels directly under TWA Flight 800 on a "classified mission." (The conversation may he heard at http://www.twa800.com/Radio/ships.rm. (Click Here.)

What was the objective of this classified mission? Was it an "anti-terrorist" mission, which failed in its objective and in that failure unfortunately contributed to the downing of TWA Flight 800 by firing the second missile? On August 9, 1996 The Seattle Times reported that investigators had chronicled an "unusual" amount of radar use among slow-moving ships along the coast for several days before the crash. What were these ships monitoring? Were they in that area because of the June 26, 1996 'three red flares' incident? Was the U.S. government aware that terrorist missile launches had occurred in the Long Island area prior to the TWA Flight 800 incident and was it trying to stop them?

Nearly three years later, little is written about TWA 800. But in some circles, it is not forgotten. On April 8, 1999 Congressman Traficant wrote to Defense Secretary Cohen in which he stated:

"Regrettably, despite numerous assertions by my office, the NTSB and the FBI that there has not been a 'cover-up' relative to the Flight 800 investigation, many people continue to contact me with allegations that the U.S. Navy was responsible, in some shape or form, for this tragedy. In order to 'close the loop' on my investigation, I would appreciate it if you could answer the following questions for the record:

1. How many U.S. Navy vessels, including submarines, were within 300 miles of the crash site of Flight 800 at the time of the crash?

2. Could you please detail the names, vessel types and location for each of these vessels?

3. Did any of the above-named vessels fire any missiles at any time on July 17, 1996? (The full text of the letter may be read at http://twa800.com/Letters/Cohen.htm. Click Here.)

Perhaps Secretary Cohen would also answer an additional question: Why did none of the U.S. naval vessels on the "classified mission" render assistance to a U.S. aircraft that had just crashed into the sea in the middle of their secret operation?

In the winter of 1995/96 Michael Hull observed a missile launch just off I-95 highway in Connecticut. After TWA FL800 was destroyed Hull contacted the FBI numerous times with this information but elicited no response. A citizen researcher, Hull has continued to research the downing of TWA 800 with other interested private individuals.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-27, from WorldNetDaily, by David M. Bresnahan:

DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800

Is there proof of missile?
Investigator releases new evidence

A former naval officer says the Clinton administration has evidence to prove TWA Flight 800 was downed by a missile and is doing all it can to cover it up.

More than 100 eyewitnesses interviewed by the FBI all describe seeing a missile, says retired Navy Cmdr. William S. Donaldson III, a former military crash investigator, trained flight controller and expert investigator. Portions of the missile have been recovered, but have been secreted away, he says. An operations manual for the search for missile parts was issued by the FBI, and an official government report was unable to rule out a missile and called for further investigation -- something that has not been done, according to Donaldson and other confirming sources.

For the past two years Donaldson has headed up a private investigation of the controversial crash. He is now convinced a missile brought down TWA Flight 800 causing the death of 230 people on July 17, 1996.

Donaldson claims the federal government has done everything in its power to cover up what really happened to Flight 800. The cover-up, he charges, has included prosecution of a journalist who was investigating flight debris evidence and was convicted on federal charges, as well as manipulating the official investigation to obtain the desired results rather than seek the truth.

During his two years of private investigation, Cmdr. Donaldson and a group of retired aviation specialists have interviewed over 100 witnesses who saw what they claim was a missile rise from the water and hit TWA Flight 800. Those witnesses were also interviewed by the FBI.

The witnesses were located in a full circle around the crash site on four aircraft, 19 boats, and 31 locations on shore. Many of the witnesses have expertise which would enable them to distinguish a missile from a burning aircraft.

The reports by these witnesses has been discredited by the government by claiming they did not understand that what they saw was the burning aircraft, not a missile, and by stating that after being confronted with the facts they no longer believe they saw a missile.

"Their live testimony alone will prove the aircraft was shot down," Donaldson told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview. "This is why the Justice Department has kept air crash investigators away from witnesses for two and a half years."

Donaldson believes he has obtained enough evidence to present to a grand jury and bring about indictments for "a cover-up of the felony murder of 230 innocent people."

The FBI confirmed that it used as many as 1,000 agents in the process of interviewing witnesses. The methods of interviewing and detailing what those witnesses told them were lacking, according to Donaldson.

The FBI investigators should have made recordings or even videotapes of the interviews with the witnesses. They also failed to ask technical questions which would have enabled them to perform a triangulation and identify where the missiles was launched. Donaldson complained that the FBI simply wrote a few notes about each interview.

"That means the agent goes back to his office, depending how aviation wise he is, and scribbles down a 302 form, which is a summary of the interview. He keeps the notes and puts it in a folder with the 302 form. The 302 form then becomes the judgment, which has been filtered by a non-aviation smart investigator," Donaldson explained.

The FBI did not use any special equipment to take bearing lines from each witness location. They also did not ask questions related to speed of what witnesses saw going up and hitting the airplane. Witnesses were also not asked how many seconds it took from the apparent launch to the time of contact with the airplane.

He said he blames the lack of proper questions by the FBI on "lack of skill as an investigator." He said he did not believe the agents were purposely trying to cover anything up. In fact, he said some of the agents were genuinely excited about what they were being told. That enthusiasm soon died. They were told to investigate only the evidence which supported the government claim of a center wing tank explosion, not a missile, according to FBI agents who cooperated with Donaldson's investigation.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration research ship Rude (pronounced "Rudy") was able to reach the crash site of TWA Flight 800 the morning after the crash. The very high-tech vessel is equipped with side sonar.

"Finally when Capt. Debeau got the last transponder position the aircraft had actually transmitted from, and got the course and the speed, he plugged into his computers and got a ballistic solution to where the airplane went," explained Donaldson.

He reported that Capt. Debeau was contacted by the National Transportation Safety Board and was asked to pick up surface debris. This was unusual because the ship was the best equipped of all units on the scene to look for items below the water, not recover floating items which could be more easily picked up by larger vessels which were better equipped to do that.

"There were six other Coast Guard Cutters that were bigger ships on scene and didn't have that vital gear on board that the Rude did," said Cmdr. Donaldson. "You start screwing around with something on the surface when you're a sub-sea observer -- it's a waste of your mission. The NTSB gives him a surface job and that screws up his looking for the debris on the bottom. Eventually he passed it off to a cutter."

Within just 10 hours of searching the bottom for debris, the Rude provided detailed maps to the NTSB which showed the exact location of the under water debris fields. Despite having such vital information so quickly, orders from the White House prevented any recover effort for almost a week.

Official Coast Guard logs indicate that a call was placed to Weeks Marine, Inc. with a verbal agreement for that company to begin salvage recovery immediately. That contact was made shortly after the crash. Weeks Marine had the largest salvage vessel on the East Coast just a short distance away in transit.

The large ship was equipped for just this type of operation with large cranes, 50 tethered divers, and plenty of deck space for the debris. The FAA also placed a call to Weeks Marine just after the crash. They were ready to go to work by the time the Rude had completed their maps of the location of the debris.

"What I'm telling you is, by the 19th in the morning, with divers on board they could have started extracting major sub-sea debris. Putting it on deck on the Weeks Marine barge," explained Donaldson.

A call from the White House changed all that. Rather than begin salvage of debris and bodies just a day and a half after the crash, recovery was delayed until the 23rd when Navy equipment arrived from Norfolk, Va., Donaldson says.

While FBI and NTSB investigators were telling the press and families of crash victims that they were working as fast as possible, they were really purposely slowing down that process, according to Donaldson. He claims that evidence was damaged and lost because of the delay.

Initial media reports of witnesses seeing a missile were immediately discredited by the FBI. The press willingly accepted the FBI explanation that the witnesses saw the burning plane, not a missile. Donaldson blames the media for being so willing to accept government reports without checking on the validity of those reports. He also says the government has been operating an organized plan to discredit anyone who does not agree with its explanation of the crash.

Donaldson has requested the results of government tests on critical parts of the debris from the crash. His requests have met with significant resistance and refusal to cooperate.

"The left-side body wall is a critical piece of hardware on the aircraft," he explained to WorldNetDaily. "It no longer exists. It's the common wall in the tank system between the center wing tank and the number two main, which is the first tank out on the left wing. That wall was blown in to the center tank at extremely high energy.

"Now the first thing they should have done, as soon as they had enough pieces that they could identify them coming from that side of the tank is make a determination as to which way that wall failed. Did it fail going out, or did it fail going in to the center wing tank number one? To lock it down, you send it for electron microscope work.

"What that will tell you is the stress line in the metal. They know the outer layers. They know the failure numbers on it. You can determine the rate that it failed, in other words did it, was it a shock, or was it a stretching failure? All of that is left in the edge metal."

An NTSB lawyer responded to Donaldson's request for info and admitted the proper tests were not done and will not be done on the section of the plane in question, and said the exam was done with a jeweler's eye piece.

"If they move on to the final report and they don't have an edge analysis on that side body wall then you can use that thing for toilet paper. It's not going to be worth a d---. I told him three of four more anomalies but I was wasting my time -- he's a lawyer," said Donaldson in frustration.

He now has pictures of the evidence. He says the government explanation does not stand up to the evidence and the reports issued by their own scientists who examined that evidence.

"In forensic evidence you have this huge shock damage to the left wing that blew out hundreds of square feet of side body wall and turned them into BBs. I mean, I'm not kidding you. Little pieces always mean high energy. Big pieces, or bulge pieces, mean a much lower energy state. It's simple. But they won't even talk about it. That's what's so frustrating," he explained.

Donaldson has obtained copies of government documents which clearly indicate that the FBI conducted an intensive search of the ocean floor to specifically locate and find pieces of a missile. He has also found a witness who found one of those vital pieces.

Calls by WorldNetDaily requesting comments from the FAA, FBI, and NTSB public affairs officers have not been returned. TWA spokesman Jim Brown said, "Therefore, there is nothing to exonerate us for because there's nothing we've been accused of."

from TPDL 1999-Apr-28, from WorldNetDaily, by David M. Bresnahan:

DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800

Were missile parts hidden away?
New evidence of cover-up found by investigator

Portions of a missile used to shoot down TWA Flight 800 have been recovered by the FBI, but have been secreted away according to one military investigator.

Retired Navy Cmdr. William S. Donaldson III is an aviation mishap analyst and former naval crash investigator with extensive experience. He has been investigating the crash for over two years with other concerned, retired aviation professionals. The organization, Associated Retired Aviation Professionals, has obtained evidence from official government investigators who are unhappy with what they see as a cover-up.

The FBI, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the military knew from the beginning that the evidence and eyewitness reports pointed to a scenario that the commercial flight with 230 people on board was brought down by a missile, the independent investigators say. Cmdr. Donaldson claims they secretly searched for and found actual remains of the missile itself.

"What happened was it blew virtually all the top skin off that wing. That's a phenomenon that's never seen and cannot happen without the presence of a high-explosive weapon," he said of the initial evidence.

The Associated Retired Aviation Professionals interviewed more than 100 witness who were also interviewed by the FBI. Those witnesses all described seeing a missile go up from the water and hit TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. The FBI discredited those witnesses.

"The bottom line is the witnesses saw it, the forensic evidence backs it up, now here comes the kicker. The FBI knew what it was because they were the first with the information -- with the witnesses and everything else. Apparently the missile team was pushing to go out there and look for the key parts that would be on the bottom from that missile," explained Donaldson to WorldNetDaily.

If a missile was fired at the commercial airline it would leave some physical evidence. This would include portions of the missile body, and part of the initial launch system of the missile.

"Whatever's left after it hits the aircraft and probably goes through it would land, considering where witnesses saw the missile go up, the missile body would land to the northwest of where the missile body exploded. That's a key point to remember," explained Donaldson.

The type of missile most likely used to hit the plane is known as MANPADS, for "man portable air defense system." Such missiles include the U.S.-made Stinger, which is available to terrorist groups. Other similar missiles could also have been used, according to Donaldson.

When such a missile is launched, it has a first stage which falls back to earth within 100 feet of launch. The portion which falls back, and would have landed in the ocean, is the ejector can. That item would be located on the ocean floor near the site where the launch took place, most likely on a small boat.

The FBI began a detailed, thorough search of the bottom Nov. 4, 1996. It hired four trawlers and stationed two FBI agents on each 24 hours a day until the search ended suddenly April 30, 1997.

"So the FBI was looking for that first stage," said Donaldson. "They put together a manual, which I now have, that they sent with the agents out to these scallop trawlers that they hired."

"The cover story was they were hired to clean the bottom for little parts, and also one story the British bought that they were looking for the last of the human remains," explained Donaldson. "Both stories were essentially just cover stories. The real purpose of the $5.5 million effort was to find these missile parts."

The captains of those four trawlers were given written descriptions of several high-interest items the FBI was looking for, without telling them what those items were. The FBI accidentally left behind the documents detailing what they were looking for when they completed the search. Those documents were obtained by the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals in the course of its investigation and have been made available to WorldNetDaily (see related documents, below).

"The ops (operations) orders were to the FBI agents that rode those boats, and there were always two agents that rode each boat. They were checking every load that comes in and tagging and bagging anything that wasn't organic. The rule was any of the three high-interest items you were to be discreet to keep the crew from recognizing that it's found, and to use a secure cell phone to report immediately back to headquarters. It specifically said, to avoid other interested parties from finding out that these things were found. I got it in black and white," explained Donaldson when he provided copies of the documents.

WorldNetDaily also received copies of the trawler maps 1which show that the main area of search by the trawlers was outside the known area of the TWA Flight 800 debris field. An area which is in the direction a missile would travel according to Donaldson. The search area corresponds to the range of a MANPAD missile.

"This trawling area is huge, and only a very small pie-shaped area in that huge circle actually had debris (from the aircraft) in it. There's no aircraft debris to the north of the track. But to the northwest, which would be the ballistic curve from where the eyewitnesses saw the missile come up, was trawled heavily. Just as much as the actual debris area was," explained Donaldson.

The ejector can had already been found before the FBI began a search for it. A trawler that participated in the search for debris found it very close to the area predicted as the launch site.

"The guy on deck pulled in a load about two miles from where Flight 800 exploded. The can was in the net. He looked at it and he couldn't figure out what it was. He thought it was a fuel filter or something. He picked it up, looked at it, sees two wires coming out of it, which are the ignition wires. He handled it for a while and then he threw it over board," described Donaldson of his investigative interview with the worker on board the trawler.

"When the FBI agents came aboard this same ship, just by happenstance, they hired them to do part of the trawling. When he (the worker) saw the pictures of what these guys were looking for he said, 'You're too late. I've already found one.' That trawler's where I got all the maps and the manual. These guys left all this crap on board, so I got it," he explained.

The captains of the four trawlers were surprised when it was suddenly terminated. They expected to continue searching for many months because they had not completed a search of the area shown in the maps. The FBI agents were under orders not to disclose when they found items.

Donaldson firmly believes a shoulder-fired, MANPAD missile is responsible for the downing of TWA Flight 800. He believes President Clinton most likely knew about the threat and did nothing about it.

He says the White House received a threat and knew of an attempt to down a commercial flight in the same area just a few weeks prior to Flight 800. The Federal Aviation Administration could have ordered flight controllers to randomly change the flight path of each flight to thwart efforts to target aircraft, according to Cmdr. Donaldson. That precaution was taken for flights from Atlanta during the Olympics where the military anticipated a threat to commercial aircraft.

"Before Flight 800 was shot down they were very concerned, they actually sent military people to work with the FAA and look at the approaches around Atlanta to see if they could change them randomly to make it more difficult for a shoulder fired missile operator to necessarily be in range," said Donaldson. "They looked at the approaches, and they may have manipulated some of them a little bit, but they essentially had full knowledge, or at least a suspicion that with missiles in country that that would be a likely target.

"The president made a call down there to the FBI command post and told them that 800 had been shot down. I think the quote I got from the guy was, 'We are at least 80 percent certain that Flight 800 was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile.' The implication is, be alert. You're next," described Donaldson.

He believes the cover-up will continue. The goal of Associated Retired Aviation Professionals is to bring about indictments of those responsible for covering up the truth of the downing of Flight 800 and exposing the reasons behind it. Their investigation is still underway.

"We've been dealing with him for a couple years. We just think he's wrong. He's off base," said NTSB spokesman Paul Schlamm of Cmdr. Donaldson. The FBI and FAA have not responded messages left by WorldNetDaily.TWA spokesman Jim Brown said, "There is nothing to exonerate us forbecause there's nothing we've been accused of."

from TPDL 1999-Apr-14, from NewsMax:

TWA Investigators Found Guilty

In a stunning development, the jury deliberated a mere 45 minutes before finding James and Debra Sanders guilty of conspiring to steal a piece of the TWA 800 plane's wreckage and aiding and abetting in the theft.

TWA 800 exploded mid-air three years ago, killing all 230 passengers. The Sanders obtained a small piece of the wreckage, which showed a red residue. Laboratory analysis showed the residue was similar to missile fuel, supporting a widely held theory that the tragedy was caused by a missile, and not a center fuel tank explosion as the government claims.

The lab analysis was not the focus of the trial.

"This is a simple case of theft of evidence, and nobody would have any problem with the prosecution if it involved bank robbery, narcotics or organized crime," said U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter.

The Sanderses were prosecuted under a recently enacted law barring the theft of wreckage from a plane crash.

A sentence has not yet been passed but federal guidelines call for a prison term of 0 to 6 months.

The couples' lawyers said they plan to appeal.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-15, from Jewish World Review, by Philip Weiss:

Prosecuted for criticism of feds' investigation?

(JWR) ---- (http://www.jewishworldreview.com) THE GUILTY VERDICTS AT U.S. DISTRICT COURT in Uniondale, L.I., against the writer James Sanders and his wife Elizabeth on April 13 hardly vindicate the Government's decision to prosecute. The case was misbegotten from the start, an effort to quash criticism of the investigation of the Trans World Airlines Flight 800 crash.

Federal interest in the Sanderses began two years ago when the Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., ran a front-page story highlighting Mr. Sanders' belief that a missile caused the crash in July 1996. Mr. Sanders based his statements on two pieces of foam bearing a suspicious red residue that a source, nicknamed "Hangarman," had removed from the wreckage and which Mr. Sanders paid to have tested privately for explosive materials.

The Government threatened to indict Mr. Sanders if he did not name Hangarman. Mr. Sanders refused to give up his source. Next, the Government went after a T.W.A. employee, Lee Taylor. Her crime? Letting Mr. Sanders use her apartment to write a book on the crash. She signed an immunity agreement and gave the Feds Mr. Sanders' computer. Then the Government subpoenaed Mr. Sanders' phone records, which took them to Hangarman: Terrell Stacey, a longtime T.W.A. pilot who served in the investigation. Mr. Stacey copped a plea, and, on April 5, Mr. Sanders and his wife, a former T.W.A. stewardess, went on trial in Uniondale, L.I., for conspiring to take evidence.

Four skeletal 747 seats were carried into the court, and Captain Stacey took the stand. In monotones, he said he had taken the stuff off the seats because the investigation seemed off track. The F.B.I. was not sharing information with other parties. It seemed indifferent to testing the red residue. And the Government had specifically ordered an Air National Guard helicopter pilot who witnessed the crash from the air to stop using the word "missile" when he talked to the press.

"James Sanders did not create the pressure inside Terrell Stacey," argued J. Bruce Maffeo, Mr. Sanders' attorney. "The Government did. At every step of the way, he saw evidence being covered up, witnesses being told to forget. He wanted to find out the truth."

Unfortunately for the Sanderses, their noble motivation was all but irrelevant to the legal issue of whether they conspired to remove the material, under a law aimed at souvenir-hunters. Evidently, the jury saw little choice but to convict. But the journalist and his wife have already suffered considerably. Mrs. Sanders lost her job as a trainer of flight attendants and had a negligible role in the matter-making two phone calls to Captain Stacey. The Sanderses have had to sell their house, cash out their 401(k). The F.B.I. identified the real crime when it said Mr. Sanders was trying to "rewrite the history" of the crash, whose cause is officially unexplained.

Years ago, there was glory in rewriting history and talking about Government cover-ups, but the discourse is now so complacent and sophisticated that Mr. Sanders' beliefs seem in bad taste. No one in the press community has embraced him despite the obvious First Amendment issue. No, his case smacks of nutdom. He is a conservative whose earlier books concerned POW's, he gets support from Accuracy in Media. The New York Times called Mr. Sanders a "self-styled freelance investigative journalist" and said the courtroom gallery teems with "conspiracy theorists."

What the gallery teems with is independent-minded people who buy the missile theory (and, yes, a few moonbeams).

Young Tom Stalcup blew off classes to drive up from Tallahassee, Fla., where he is a graduate student in physics. He wore the same beaten black loafers to court for five days. Graeme Sephton, an electrical engineer, drove down from Massachusetts with a pot of oatmeal on the passenger seat and a sticker on the bumper, "End Racist Death Penalty," then crashed in Mr. Stalcup's hotel room. Raymond Lawrence, a minister who directs pastoral services at Presbyterian Hospital, trained out from Manhattan to cover the trial for his iconoclastic journal, Contra Mundum.

I mention these three because they come from the left-a hopeful sign to me that the counterestablishment, so rife with right-wingers, is at last becoming ecumenical.

But what everyone in the gallery shares is outrage over the Government's misrepresentation of scores if not hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw a streaking object many of them compared to a flare going up from the water toward a plane. At the one public hearing held by the National Transportation Safety Board, no eyewitness testimony was allowed. Meantime, Mr. Sephton, Mr. Stalcup and a handful of other investigators with technical credentials have conducted a shadow investigation.

Their discussion takes place largely on the Net, and the mainstream media ignore them. The feeling is mutual. The day The Times dismissed him as a conspiracy theorist, I handed Mr. Stalcup the article. He glanced at it and raised an eyebrow, then put it aside indifferently to watch the trial.

A videotape was then playing, a tour of the hangar. The wreckage lay in blasted twisted piles. At the defense table, Mrs. Sanders quietly wept.

from TPDL 1999-Apr-8, from NewsMax:

Defense Blunts Star Witness in TWA 800 Trial

On Wednesday, onetime TWA check pilot and crash investigator Tyrrell Stacey testified against James and Elizabeth Sanders, the couple now on trial in a Uniondale, New York federal courtroom for conspiracy to solicit classified evidence in the still unsolved 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800.

Stacey, who was assigned to help with the NTSB investigation into the crash, is the government's key cooperating witness against the Sanders. Stacey testified that he gave Mr. Sanders swatches of seat fabric bearing a red residue. An independent lab analysis later revealed that the residue's composition was similar to that of missile exhaust.

Based on the fabric evidence and other anomalies he uncovered, Sanders authored his 1997 book, "The Downing of TWA Flight 800". The author contends that a missile brought the plane down, killing all 230 passengers and crew. Sanders argues that First Ammendment protections cover his own independent crash investigation, including the gathering of evidence obtained from Stacey.

Stacey's account is the centerpiece of the government's case against the investigative journalist and his wife, who had trained some of the flight attendants killed in the 800 disaster as a TWA employee.

It was the second day of setbacks for the prosecution. Stacey's testimony lasted most of the day but failed to score any significant points against the defendants.

Reached late Wednesday at his Uniondale hotel room, Mr. Sanders told Inside Cover, "It was a fantastic day. Stacey got on the stand but he really didn't provide the government with any damaging information. In fact, I had one reporter come up to me afterwards and ask, 'Sanders, can you explain the government's case to me because I can't see it?'"

Sanders said that his lawyer Bruce Maffeo was particularly effective in Wednesday's cross examination of Stacey, eliciting an account of how the FBI had coached another witness to trim his testimony.

"Stacey admitted, based on his own inside knowledge, that one eyewitness to the explosion was ordered not to use the word missile," the defendant explained. The revelation, though already covered in Sanders book, was apparently new to most in the courtroom.

Sanders told Inside Cover that reporters sitting directly behind him were audibly stunned by Stacey's account of what seems like FBI witness tampering.

Tyrrell Stacey is scheduled to continue his testimony on Thursday.

Sanders added a postscript to today's court action, which may reveal even more evidence of bad faith in the government's TWA 800 investigation.

"Back in December 1998, because I was under indictment, I was covered by rule 16 of the federal code, which gave me an absolute right to go back to Calverton and re-examine the wreckage," Sanders told Inside Cover. Calverton Air Force Base was used to reassemble pieces of the plane pulled from the ocean. 800's carcass is still at the Calverton hangar today.

"I took 250 new photos of the plane and compared them with the NTSB shots taken in 1996 and 1997. After comparing the before and after photos, I can tell you there are significant, very significant alterations in a key area of the plane."

Wednesday April 7, 1:25 AM

FBI Loses First Round in TWA 800 Case

TWA 800 defendant James Sanders was upbeat when reached by Inside Cover late Tuesday. His trial on charges of conspiracy to obtain secret evidence from the wreckage of the July 1996 air disaster was only in its second day and already presiding Judge Joanna Seybert had handed the prosecution a major defeat.

"The judge quashed the illegal seizure of my computer hard drive, which is very good news for us, " Sanders said, referring to the FBI's confiscation of manuscripts which he argues should be protected by the First Ammendment. "They hadn't even bothered to get a warrant," Sanders complained.

The story of Sanders' independent investigation into the still unexplained crash is told in his 1997 book, "The Downing of TWA Flight 800". As a working journalist, he obtained fabric swatches from the plane's seats and had them analyzed by a California laboratory. Their conclusion? Red stains on the material were identical in composition to missile exhaust.

Despite more than a hundred eyewitnesses who told investigators they saw a streaking object strike TWA 800 that July night, the FBI and NTSB have discounted the missile theory. That's what makes Sanders' discovery of missile exhaust trace evidence so problematic for the government.

Early courtroom reactions seem to favor Sanders, with several offering praise for his attorney Bruce Maffeo's opening arguments. But Wednesday's session will be key.

That's when former TWA crash investigator Terry Stacey takes the stand. Stacey is now the government's key cooperating witness against Sanders and his wife Elizabeth, who is also named in the indictment. The conspiracy charge rests on the allegation that Sanders solicited Stacey to obtain the fabric samples.

Elizabeth Sanders is charged on the basis of a single conversation with Stacey, during which her husband says the fabric evidence wasn't even mentioned.

"Wednesday is going to be quite a day," Sanders told Inside Cover, eagerly anticipating public exposure of what may be one of the worst government cover-ups of the century.

from Associated Retired Aviation Professionals, from http://twa800.com/Sanders/CEO.htm:

Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, III - USN, Ret.
Aviation Mishap Analyst
P.O. Box 90, Clements, Maryland 20624
Web site: twa800.com

April 5, 1999
Mr. Philip M. Condit
The Boeing Company
P.O. Box 3707, Mail Code 10-10
Seattle, WA 98124-2207

Mr. Gerald L. Gitner
Trans World Airlines
One City Center
515 North Sixth St.
St. Louis, MO 63101

Re: The unexplained loss of TWA Flight 800

Gentlemen,

Over the last four months our investigation into the loss of TWA Flight 800 has produced information far surpassing that contained in our July 20, 1998 Interim Report to Congress. We can now prove, before a jury or other independent fact-finding body, that the aircraft was shot down. We can also explain why the Administration covered it up and expose some of the methods they employed to do so.

Your corporations are being scapegoated and defrauded by Administration officials because, had the truth about this incident been reported before November of 1996, it could have derailed the reelection of Clinton/Gore. Exposed now, it could send guilty parties to jail for Misprision of Felony Homicide.

We can provide your attorney's with witnesses, documents, or reference material that will support the following text:

White House knowledge of a threat prior to the loss of TWA Flight 800

1. The Administration knew that in 1996, surrogates from rogue states had access to MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems) or shoulder-fired missiles in mid-eastern weapons bazaars. $5,000 would acquire the least capable model, the Russian SA-7. $50,000 would buy the most capable, the Chinese Vanguard, a deadly new missile upgraded from US Stinger technology transferred to the Chinese in the early 90's. Superior to the Stinger, this missile has a much longer range. The Administration also knew Iran had a limited number of US Stinger missiles in inventory.
   
   
2. The Administration was aware that, worldwide, MANPADS missiles had already claimed 26 civil transport aircraft and was only a matter of time before a U.S. Flag carrier would be targeted and hit. They knew the Administration had dodged a bullet in 1994 when Maryland State Police found a fully armed French Mistral MANPADS missile ready to fire on its tripod directly under a busy northeastern air route.
   
   
3. In response to sanctions unilaterally levied against Iran by Mr. Clinton in 1995, Iranian surrogate's car bombed US troops in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and later smuggled MANPADS missiles into the US from across the Canadian border. Iranian officials warned the Administration that they considered enactment of the Iran/Libya Sanctions Act tantamount to an act of war!
   
   
4. When Mr. Clinton signed the Iran, Libya Sanctions Act of 1996, a decision was made by the Iranian Supreme Council to approve attacks on major American targets. Terrorist surrogate groups from nine countries were summoned to Tehran to meet with Iranian officials in June of 1996. Later that month, a huge truck bomb was deployed against the US Air Force barracks complex at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Three weeks later, TWA Flight 800 was shot down only hours after an explicit warning of an attack was received in London and Washington that taunted the President.
   
   
5. The White House, the CIA and the FBI were aware of the threat and they knew preventing that attack was their primary responsibility.
   
   
6. We can show the Administration anticipated incorrectly that, if the missiles were used, they would be targeted against Olympic air traffic landing or taking off in the Atlanta area.
   
   
7. We can provide testimony that immediately after Flight 800 was shot down, Mr. Clinton called an FBI command post supporting the Olympics and informed them Flight 800 was downed with shoulder-fired missiles.
   
   
8. The White House, the CIA and the FBI political leadership have waged an unrelenting disinformation campaign from the onset. This has ranged from the White House spokesman stating, "Anyone in government that says this was a missile only has half a brain", and to the CIA cartoon that libeled hundreds of eyewitnesses.
   
   

Witnesses or "Untouchables"?

1. The day after Flight 800 was shot down, the Justice Department, helped by 1,000 FBI agents, began the process of converting hundreds of witnesses into the first American "untouchable cast". The political leadership of the NTSB aborted its mission in one surrender of its responsibilities after another. When the Justice Department illegally ordered the NTSB crash investigators to have no contact with witnesses or their statements, and the NTSB complied, the investigation was over, the cover-up and Misprision of Felony Homicide had begun.
   
   
2. At the NTSB Public Hearing in December of 1997, the word "witnesses" was not even mentioned. Before and since, they have been ridiculed, slandered and liabled in official videotapes and statements made by government spokesmen.
   
   
3. On March 15, 1999 the derailment of the Spirit of New Orleans after she hit a steel truck at a railroad crossing in Bourbonnaise IL, prompted a media wide call for witnesses by NTSB officials. It seems a witness was needed to prove the truck had driven around the safety gate. Apparently, investigations are much simpler and witnesses more creditable for the NTSB when there is no White House interest.
   
   
4. We have access to 107 witnesses on 4 aircraft, 19 boats, and 31 locations ashore. They were located in a 360° circle around the missile engagement. Their live testimony alone will prove the aircraft was shot down. This is why the Justice Department has kept air crash investigators away from witnesses for 2 1/2 years and also one reason they are conducting a malicious show-trial prosecution of author and outside investigator James Sanders and his wife. It's hard to interview witnesses from a Federal prison. The FBI failed to identify and interview 17 of these people. Among these 17 are witnesses on a boat who may have seen the escaping shooter.
   
   

Justice Department suppression of Missile Evidence

1. It appears, aggressive FBI missile-team field agents eventually solved the problem as to the cause of the crash, but had no support in the FBI leadership. In fact, the FBI leadership seems to have deliberately withheld vital information from their own agents.
   
   
2. George Gabrial, the senior FBI Agent on Long Island and personal friend of Mr. Kalstrom, was a close witness on his boat. We can provide witnesses who overheard him say he believed what he observed was a missile. FBI missile-team members did not know he was a witness until we informed them.
   
   
3. The FBI has videotape that was shown to military experts of a missile shot from off the coast of Long Island that failed to engage a target. This first attempt was nearly coincidental to the Khobar Towers attack 3 weeks before Flight 800’s loss.
   
   
4. By late September, 1996, FBI missile-team members had established informal liaison with military missile guidance experts. By that time the FBI knew witnesses at sea on all sides were pointing to a missile launch a few miles southeast of Flight 800's explosion point. What they observed fit the profile of a MANPADS missile engagement.
   
   
5. In December 1996, FBI missile team members told military experts that two separate commercial fishermen dredged up and threw back a MANPADS first stage, the missile ejector-motor can. The ejector motor, about the size of a Coke can, fires in the tube, ejecting the missile, then drops in the water when the missile 2^nd stage booster ignites.
   
   
6. The fishing vessel Alpha Omega recovered one of these motor cans in early October, 1996, while trawling for scallops about 2 nautical miles from Flight 800's explosion point. The crewman, not realizing the importance of his find, noted the two distinctive ignition wires attached to the can before he threw it overboard.
   
   
7. Despite overwhelming forensic evidence of a weapon impact in the number 2 main tank of the left wing and witness testimony of a missile attack, the Administration would not fund military missile experts or allow the FBI to trawl for missile parts until after the November 1996 elections.
   
   
8. The Alpha Omega was one of five trawlers contracted by the Navy Supervisor of Salvage for trawler operations. When FBI agents finally came aboard in November 1996 to begin trawling and brought pictures of three objects they were looking for, it was that point the crewman told them they were too late, he had already found and discarded an ejector can!
   
   
9. Responding to the previous findings, Special Agents Bongardt and Otto took a live ejector motor can from a Stinger missile aboard all the trawlers under contract, showing it to captain and crew.
   
   
10. Interrogated for hours, the Alpha Omega crewman insisted the can he found had the same features, ignition wires, etc. but was somehow different.
    
    
11. That interrogation should have prompted the FBI leadership to suspect they may have been dealing with the longer-range Chinese Vanguard or Russian SA16/18 missiles.
    
    
12. It is clear from the Supervisor of Salvage's operational trawling maps depicting "missile firing zones" and the FBI Trawling Operations Manual in our possession, that the Justice Department's intent was to find and hide from "other Interested Parties", missile ejector cans, missile battery cooling units and the last Flight 800 Scavenge Pump the NTSB was trying to blame as a source of a spark.
    
    
13. The $ 5 million trawling operation was funded by NTSB, contracted to civilian scallop boats through the Navy Supervisor of Salvage from 4 November 1996 until it was suddenly terminated on 30 April 1997, yet the trawlers were manned 24 hours a day by teams of FBI agents. Up until 30 April 1997 the scallop boat captains had been told the operation would continue indefinitely for months or even years. FBI agents got the word via cell phone to shut down the operations. On two of the boats, when the captains refused to stop until the Navy contractor on board told them to, the agents threatened force to make the captains shut down. The first agent backed down when the captain told him he would go anywhere at gunpoint, but the agent could expect to be charged with piracy on the high seas when they got ashore. The second agent backed down when the captain informed him that he was armed also and he was the captain and they weren't going anywhere!
    
    
14. The FBI's trawling plan was flawed in the following ways.
    
    

    a. The missile firing zones depicted on the charts were 1.75 NM and 2.7 NM radius circles. These distances are accurate for two types of MANPADS but the Chinese Vanguard exceeds those ranges.

    b. They used the last transponder response from the aircraft as the aircraft explosion point. The aircraft was travelling east over 2,900 feet between each transponder response. A two-second error would move the trawling off by 1/4 mile.

    c. They failed to notice, until December 1996, a recorded surface radar contact only 2.9 NM from Flight 800 when it exploded!

    d. They failed to identify that boat!

    e. They failed to adjust the trawling lines to cover that boat's surface track while it was in range of TWA Flight 800.

15. The FBI told military experts they had a witness who perfectly described a MANPADS engagement terminating in an impact on Flight 800’s left wing root. It includes boost; sustainer-motor burn and total missile fly-out time typical of the US Stinger and its copies.
    
    
16. Military thermal imaging of B747-100’s provided to the FBI by China Lake Naval Air Weapons Facility, indicate a MANPADS missile fired from a low forward quarter would guide toward the three air pack exhaust ports, directly under the center wing tank and not, as publicly stated for the engine nacelles. See attached Thermal Imaging.
    
    
17. Military computer modeling of the TWA 800 engagement, using Stinger data, shows the missile’s velocity would degrade to 400 meters per second as it climbed through 13,700 ft. This would cause the circular error probability (CEP) to expand to 20 ft. or more, allowing an impact almost anywhere on the aircraft.
    
    
18. Stinger guidance technology provides a last instant steer-forward command to avoid a miss by flying through an engine exhaust plume. Such a command would explain a missile, fired from in front, steering for the air pack exhausts under the center wing, impacting forward on the left wing root leading edge.
    
    
19. The Stinger, for example, has a two-pound warhead with three fusing options, contact, penetration and time-out.
    
    
20. Using stinger missile fly-out data provided to the FBI by military experts, the combined velocity of missile body and aircraft at impact would be 1950 ft/sec.
    
    
21. If the cockpit voice recorder hasn't been tampered with, an audio laboratory should be able to discern this velocity through its analysis of recorded frequencies. This may be why the NTSB has refused to allow the Cockpit Voice Recorder group to convene and study the data generated from the Bruntingthorpe tests done in England.
    
    
22. E = ½ MV² would predict kinetic energy available at impact of over 1.2 million foot pounds.
    
    
23. The kinetic energy from a missile body entering the number two main, ¾ full of fuel, at mach 1.8 would cause the tank to burst from hydraulic overpressurization.
    
    
24. Fused for penetration, the two-pound high explosive warhead, bursting in the fuel could impart an additional 200-PSI spike of hydraulic ram overpressure.
    
    
25. Jet fuel is over 700 times the density of air. A MANPADS missile warhead’s fragments would be stopped in a few feet of fuel, negating high velocity fragment damage to aircraft components. Mr. Kalstrom’s public statements repeatedly used the lack of high velocity fragment damage as an excuse to ignore witnesses and shutdown the investigation.
    
    
26. The Navy China Lake missile impact "Quick Look Engineering Study" identified 4 criteria for expected damage if a shoulder fired missile hit a 747-100 inboard main fuel tank. All four are caused by hydraulic over pressurization of fuel tanks. All four are in evidence on the left wing. None of these criteria have ever been seen in previous air crashes.
    
    
27. The China Lake report’s first two recommendations were to detonate shoulder-fired missile warheads in fuel tanks to determine if the fragments would be trapped and to do live firing of these missiles at inboard main tanks to compare to left wing damage on Flight 800.
    
    
28. Mr. Kalstrom ignored all seven recommendations; cherry picked statements out of the China Lake report and used them out of context in the media to argue the aircraft was not shot down.
    
    
29. When Mr. Kalstrom was faced with having to take action on the China Lake report he chose to shut down the investigation.
    
    
30. At the time the FBI investigation was prematurely shut down in November of 1997, the FBI had failed to identify a fast moving boat captured on radar only 2.9 nautical miles from Flight 800 when it exploded. Mr. Schirilo, who replaced Mr. Kalstrom, admitted that fact in a letter to Congressman Traficant.
    
    
31. After his retirement, Mr. Kalstrom was taped stating the boat captured on radar was really a helicopter. Considering the radar target was non-transponder and was tracked on the surface at speed below 36 knots for 35 minutes prior to disappearing over the horizon, even FBI agents have acknowledged Mr. Kalstrom’s excuse is nonsense.
    
    
32. Witnesses afloat and ashore observed a six second missile burn (Stinger rocket burn is 6 ½ seconds) coming from the near vicinity of the unidentified boat.
    
    
33. Senior Justice Department officials need to be compelled to answer under oath why testing essential to determine if Flight 800 was brought down by a shoulder fired missile was not funded and why they ignored the forensic evidence, military experts, witnesses and their own FBI field agents.
    
    

The search for the Black Boxes

1. Discovery of the plight of the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder and their two Ducane pingers, after water entry, may be the key to unlocking the cover-up. We can show a Grand Jury how Mr. Clinton personally involved himself.
   
   
2. The NTSB is extremely sensitive to the subject of Black Boxes. They opened the boxes without any investigators from the Interested Parties present. They refused to allow TWA's investigator to listen to the voice recorder more than once.
   
   
3. The Voice Recorder has a "sound like damaged tape" precisely seven seconds prior to its end. Seven seconds prior to missile impact would be coincidental to MANPADS booster ignition. A visually bright event that could be seen by the First Officer.
   
   
4. Dr. Loeb has refused to release Addendum number two to the Flight Data Recorder Analysis that was written to rebut our interpretation of the last data line. The NTSB even refuses to let the Voice Recorder Analysis group reconvene!
   
   
5. The Administration's explanation of the circumstances under which the USS Grasp" divers found the Digital Flight Data Recorder and the Cockpit Voice Recorder is highly questionable.
   
   
6. According to divers we interviewed and the Navy Supervisor of Salvage Report, Navy divers from the USS Grasp found the recorders during Dive #2 and Dive #3 on the evening of 23 July 1996. The Administration maintains these same divers found them more than 24 hours later at 2330 hours on 24 July 1996. East coast TV news coverage ends at 23:30.
   
   
7. The most probable motive for this deception was to ensure investigators, who are Parties to the Investigation, were not witnesses when NTSB/FBI officials were alleged to have first opened the boxes in Washington during the early morning hours of 25 July 1996.
   
   
8. The boxes should have been found in the aircraft tail cone section, or within its debris. Instead, divers from the Grasp found each box 30 feet apart on a hard sand bottom, devoid of any attached debris and neither Ducane Pinger was operating. They appeared just as they would if dropped overboard from a boat!
   
   
9. Somehow both Ducane Systems fixed themselves while in FBI custody. They were found to be fault-free in laboratory test days later.
   
   
10. The small cylindrical Ducane Pingers are mounted on the narrow front face of each oblong rectangular box. They are protected from damage because they are bolted firmly to the inside angle of a short piece of angle iron. Because of their shape, the probability of either free falling box landing on the bottom with the pinger stuck in the sand, would be akin to a free falling domino landing on it's end and remaining standing in that position.
    
    
11. The only way Ducane Pingers can be silenced under water without evidence of damage is by partly unscrewing the battery connection.
    
    
12. The probability of both undamaged Ducane Pingers failing simultaneously in a shallow open ocean environment, on top of a hard sand bottom, approaches that of a spontaneous aviation kerosene explosion in an ignition-free Boeing 747-100 fuel tank.
    
    
13. We consider the fact the NTSB has remained mute about these alleged Ducane failures is Prima Facie evidence of either abject incompetence on the part of the NTSB who should have opened an inquiry into the cause, or proof of a cover-up of NTSB misconduct.
    
    
14. Weeks Marine, Inc. was verbally contracted by both the Coast Guard and FAA officials the night of the crash to position for salvage operations. They were on site the next morning with the best salvage equipment available in the Atlantic. It was superior to Navy assets, but Weeks Marine was stood down by the NTSB. It would be five more days before Navy divers would be on scene to recover recorders, bodies, etc! Why the forced wait?
    
    
15. Holding Weeks Marine, Inc. to standby while ordering Navy assets to respond from far away points deliberately condemned victims trapped in bottom wreckage to five additional days of ravage by natural elements. This grossly compounded the grief of the families and put at risk the ability of medical examiners to identify all remains. The White House was responsible for this order.
    
    
16. Circumstantial evidence indicates the Administration, knowing the aircraft to be shot down, may have ordered a covert recovery, laboratory examination and reinsertion of the recorders to ensure the aircrew did not describe the attack on audio tape. Scuba divers could have recovered the recorders on the afternoon of 18 July and dropped them back overboard after 10 am 22 July, before the USS Grasp and Navy divers were on scene. During that period of time NOAA research vessel Rude and the motor vessel Pirouette were simultaneously sent 5 miles off the main debris field on a "wild goose chase" by the NTSB. Both ships had been mapping that field with side scan sonar!
    
    
17. Properly done, a scuba team equipped with a Ducane locator amplifier tube, held over the side, could position a small boat directly over active Pingers, dive and recover the boxes in a single effort. Active pingers can be detected by divers300 yards away.
    
    
18. We have a witness that has passed a polygraph test and has provided a sworn affidavit that a member of the NTSB leadership told him the recorders were found and examined by 20 July. The Coast Guard told both TWA maintenance and Congressman Forbes that the recorders were found on 18 July. The next day, 19 July, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was told the aircraft was shot down by terrorists. Senators Hatch and D'Amato made public statements to the same effect.
    
    
19. White House, NTSB and Justice Department officials need to be compelled to explain these events and their actions under oath. We also have other individuals who have asked to remain anonymous who should be questioned under oath.
    
    
20. Despite a steep learning curve and the best efforts of some if its most aggressive field agents, FBI leadership has demonstrated itself to be functionally illiterate in the critical areas of; military weapons and tactics, radar interpretation and air crash investigation. The fact the White House failed to immediately assign appropriate elements of the Department of Defense as lead investigators in the missile inquiry is inculpatory.
    
    
21. Gentlemen, we have the "FBI Trawler Operations Manual" and Operations Order as well as other documents left behind aboard a contract boat by FBI agents. If found, the Justice Department intended to hide from your companies; the last fuel scavenge pump, a missile ejector can and the missile battery cooling unit!
    
    

TWA Flight 800 was the 27^th civil aircraft shot down worldwide by shoulder fired missiles. The Administration’s actions have greatly increased the danger of a recurrence, not only because of the deception of this case but because administration policy deliberately fails to link any terrorist act to the government of the Sponsor State. This provides political cover for the Administration's lack of action and sanctuary to deadly enemies.

I will point out the coincidence of the Clinton Administration's pro Arab, anti Israeli policy shift and the arrival on our shores of a creditable anti-aircraft threat under the control of rogue states. In 1994, the Maryland State Police found a fully armed French MANPADS missile, the Mistral, ready to fire on its tripod, directly under a heavily used air corridor near Westminster Maryland.

Our research also found U.S. Stinger technology transferred to China in the early 90’s enabling them to produce the Vanguard, a quality shoulder fired Chinese missile. It was deployed first in 1996. If past history is an indicator, the China / Iran weapons transfer link bodes ill for future air commerce.

In a worse case scenario, absent a respected American Commander-in-Chief, Iran’s Supreme Council, or other rogue state, could successfully shutdown or disrupt major traffic hubs worldwide by activating surrogate cells armed with Vanguard. If they can shoot down one, why not a half dozen on a single day?

Gentlemen, the time to act is now, regardless of any arrangements you may or may not have had to accept. Once the American people understand the truth, your corporations will be indemnified against any further political extortion from this administration.

We would ask, in the interest of long term air safety, that you take an aggressive and public pro-active stance. Challenge the Administration; educate the media and the electorate. Severance from a politicized and fraudulent Federal investigation is no penalty and maintenance of the status quo is certainly no prize.

Sincerely,



William S. Donaldson


cc:

The Honorable Slade Gordon
Unites States Senate
The Honorable Orin Hatch
Unites States Senate

The Honorable George Boinovitch
Unites States Senate

The Honorable John J. Duncan, Jr.
U. S. House of Representatives

The Honorable Henry Hyde
U. S. House of Representatives

The Honorable Porter Goss
U. S. House of Representatives

Judge Kenneth W. Starr
Independent Counsel USDJ

District Attorney James M. Catterson, Jr.
Suffolk County Office of the District Attorney

Col. Sommeres
Air Attaché’, Embassy of France

Gen. Bernardis
Air Attaché’, Embassy of Italy

Gen. Avi Barber
Air Attaché, Embassy of Israel

Adm. Jay Johnson
Chief of Naval Operations

Adm. G. W. Prueher
Commander in Chief, Pacific

Vadm. W. J. Fallon
Commander, Second Fleet

Vadm. H. E. Browne
Commander, Third Fleet

Directors
The Families of TWA Flight 800
P.O. Box 1061, Clifton Park, NY 12065

from the Canadian Press, 1999-Mar-5, by Stephen Thorne:

Swissair jet reports possible missile off NYC

OTTAWA (CP) - A Swissair pilot reported his 737 jet was nearly hit by an unidentified flying object, possibly a missile, near the area off New York where a TWA airplane crashed in 1996, The Canadian Press has learned.

Swissair Flight 127 was cruising at 23,000 feet on Aug. 9, 1997, when the pilot interrupted an address to passengers to report the near miss by a round white object, says a report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

"Sir, I don't know what it was, but it just flew like a couple of hundred feet above us," he radioed Boston air traffic control. "I don't know if it was a rocket or whatever, but incredibly fast, opposite direction."

"In the opposite direction?" asked the controller.

"Yes sir, and the time was 2107 (Greenwich mean time). It was too fast to be an airplane."

The controller asked another aircraft if its crew saw anything like a missile in the area. The reply was negative. He then asked the Swissair pilot again how far above the plane it was.

"It was right over us, right above, opposite direction, and, and I don't know, two, three, four hundred feet above. All that I can tell, 127, is that (we) saw a light object, it was white, and very fast."

Investigators interviewed the captain and first officer on Aug. 10, 1997. The flight engineer hadn't seen the object and was not interviewed.

The report, filed under NYC97SA193, said the flight was opposite John F. Kennedy Airport at 5:07 p.m. Eastern time - near the area where TWA Flight 800 went down July 17, 1996, after taking off from JFK; 230 died.

Some believe a missile caused the midair explosion of the TWA Boeing 747 off Long Island, N.Y. Authorities have reached no official conclusion but have been leaning toward faulty wiring in the plane's fuel tank.

The transportation safety board report said the Swissair captain saw the cylindrical object for less than a second. He did not see any wings and was not sure it was an aircraft.

"He had never been so close to other traffic before," said the report. "It passed over the cockpit, slightly right of centerline. If it had been any lower, it would have hit the aircraft.

"As the object passed by, there was no noise, no wake turbulence, and no disruption or anomalies with any of the flight or engine instruments."

The plane was flying in clear weather to Boston from Philadelphia at the time. The sun was at the pilot's back. He apparently did not have time to take evasive action.

"There was no exhaust or smoke, no fire, and he could not accurately discern its size. The captain reported his total time as 15,000-plus flight hours. He had never seen a missile in flight."

The first officer, whose flight time totalled 7,500 hours, said he was bent over to adjust the volume on his headset when he looked up and saw the object pass overhead "very quickly.

"It was close enough that he ducked his head because he thought it would hit them. . . . He thought it passed about 100 to 200 feet above the airplane and between the right side of the fuselage and the No. 3 engine."

The first officer said no markings were visible and the object appeared to be the size of a thumbnail held at arm's length.

He said he had previously encountered a weather balloon over Italy, and the object did not look like the balloon. He had witnessed missile launches from the ground previously, the report said.

The report said the nearest weather balloons are launched from Upton, N.Y., 43 nautical miles northeast of JFK twice daily, at 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. Eastern time and usually take 25 to 28 minutes to reach 23,000 feet.

Balloons are light tan or brownish, or black and red, said the report, adding the wind was blowing from the north, almost at right angles to the aircraft.

Investigators also checked radar data and plotted the plane's flight path.

"There was no evidence of an opposite direction target, either beacon or non-beacon," said the report.

from TPDL 1999-Jan-18, from Insight magazine, by Kelly Patricia O'Meara:

TWA Flight 800: Reasonable Doubt?

Insight has learned the Boeing Co., in an attempt to limit its liability, may defend itself in civil litigation with the theory that the airliner was downed by a U.S. missile.

In the rough-and-tumble world of civil litigation, the almighty dollar is king. Whether in a divorce proceeding or product-liability or wrongful-death lawsuit, plaintiffs seek huge awards and defense counsels dig in to avoid or minimize the payout. So it should come as no surprise that lawyers on both sides of the multimillion-dollar lawsuit involving the destruction of TWA Flight 800 are gearing up for a knock-down-drag-out fight should the case ever go to trial.

But in monitoring the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Boeing Co. and the law firms representing families of the 230 dead from that July 17, 1996, midair explosion just east of Long Island, N.Y., Insight has uncovered a bizarre twist that shows the extent to which some defendants believe they must go to avoid huge liability judgments.

According to confidential sources, Boeing is considering whether to spring a stunning legal tactic in its defense -- one that greatly is upsetting some of the families mourning the loss of loved ones. Based on interviews and secret corporate documents, Insight has discovered that if the civil case goes to trial the legal team representing the giant airplane manufacturer may invoke a missile theory to try to absolve Boeing of liability.

Moreover, it has been learned, Boeing's legal team already has raised the missile claim as a tool to chip away at the resolve and ultimate financial demands of the victims' families, hoping to reduce settlements by half.

"At this point, Boeing is seeking a 50 percent discount on each case because of its belief that a jury will conclude a missile downed Flight 800," declares one of the secret legal memos obtained by Insight. As a well-placed source explains: "Boeing attorneys will try to plant reasonable doubt and make a jury believe that a missile downed TWA 800."

That Boeing would engage in such a ploy has shocked the families and their lawyers, most of whom have come to agree with the consensus conclusion by the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, that Flight 800 was downed by an explosion in the plane's center fuel tank caused by mechanical failure and not by a missile fired either accidentally by elements of the U.S. military, which were scheduled to conduct air/sea training exercises nearby, or by terrorists with a grudge against the United States.

However, according to Insight's sources, Boeing's lawyers believe that members of any jury drawn from New York would walk into court with the preconceived notion that it could have been a missile that blew Flight 800 out of the sky. They are convinced that in the absence of proof-positive that mechanical failure was at fault, it would not take much to get a jury to consider the possibility that a missile downed the flight.

Jim Walters, vice chairman of the Airline Pilots Association, or ALPA, Accident Investigation Board, finds it hard to believe Boeing could have any evidence that a missile was involved. "Boeing has signed off on -- agreed with -- all or most of the field notes during the investigation," he says, adding: "Their best defense would be that they were fully in compliance with Federal Aviation Regulations [or FARs], but this is a highly unusual event.

"In nearly 700 million hours of air time," Walters explains, "only twice [in plane disasters] could they not be traced to a known ignition source. The first was a 737 that blew up in the Philippines but, because that aircraft had been modified by the operator from its original design, it shouldn't be included in the list. The only other explosion with an unknown ignition source causing the explosion of the center wing tank, or CWT, is TWA 800."

But according to sources and attorneys for the families, the missile theory makes legal sense as a device to hold down the settlement. "I think they [Boeing] would try and put up a missile defense because anything else would make them liable," says Douglas Latto, an aviation attorney with Baumeister & Samuels, one of the five law firms handling the claims of the victims' families. Although he says he is unaware of Boeing lawyers even considering a missile defense, he could not rule it out as a possible legal tactic and, perhaps, one already subtly raised in motions on file with the New York court.

Meanwhile, the investigation is riddled with evidentiary holes -- enough, in fact, that the Senate Judiciary Committee is planning hearings this year to look into some of the problems that surrounded the $20 million federal investigation.

Among the more troubling issues that have fueled a large number of conspiracy theories and may add credence to Boeing's possible defense are the inconsistencies in the Navy's accounts of the location of their vessels in the area at the time of the disaster, and whether exercises were taking place off the coast of Long Island on the evening of the crash.

Very early in the investigation it was learned that live-fire exercises were scheduled for the week of July 15-21 in the Narragansett Bay Operating Area, or NBOA, 80 to 100 miles north of the crash site. Despite a Local Notice to Mariners that was issued by the U.S. Coast Guard cautioning about these exercises, Navy officials subsequently claimed that no tests were conducted on those dates in that area.

The Navy Department had in December 1996 explained the purpose of a nearby Orion aircraft's mission as follows: "The P-3 dropped sonobuoys during the training portion of the flight; sonobuoys gravity dropped; all sonobuoys accounted for."

In February 1997, the Department of Defense general counsel said "the closest U.S. Navy vessel at the time of the crash was the USS Normandy ... 185 nautical miles from the crash site," and that the "VP-26 P-3C (P-3 Orion aircraft) was flying on a routine training flight approximately 55 miles southeast of the site."

Nearly six months after the general counsel's office explained that the USS Normandy was the "closest" vessel to the crash site, the story changed. In June 1997, the general counsel's office reported that "the Navy has confirmed that there were no submarines in the vicinity of the TWA Flight 800 crash site at the time of the crash. Only two submarines were operating north of the Virginia Capes Operating Areas at the time. These submarines were operating approximately 107 and 138 miles from the crash site."

But the same June report also upgraded the P-3 from a "routine" training flight. Now it "was en route to operations with the USS Trepang, the submarine that was approximately 107 miles from the crash site." Despite the earlier December statement that the P-3 had "dropped sonobuoys," the Navy backpedaled, reporting "the P-3 had not released or deployed any sonobuoys." If the two submarines were 107 and 138 miles from the crash site, the USS Normandy was not the "closest" vessel.

Today the U.S. Navy no longer claims the Normandy was the "closest" vessel, is mum about the location of any submarines and avoids any mention of the P-3's mission. Some are troubled that, nearly two-and-a-half years after the tragedy, the same Navy that controlled the salvage operation of the Flight 800 wreckage has been unable to provide consistent information about its assets in the area and the nature of their exercises on the night of the tragedy.

And, despite news accounts saying that all the families of the victims accept the FBI and NTSB conclusion that the destruction of the 747 was caused by a mechanical failure, some people, including Don and Donna Nibert, have serious doubts.

It was late in the evening of July 17, 1996, when the Niberts learned from TV news broadcasts that the flight carrying their 16-year-old daughter, Cheryl, to Paris had exploded over the Atlantic. Unlike most of the families who lost loved ones on the doomed flight, the Niberts long have believed that the aircraft was downed by a missile. Within two days of the crash, Don Nibert had raised the issue of military involvement with members of the Secret Service and also the former head of the FBI's New York office, James Kallstrom, who in an effort to comfort Nibert told him, "The Navy assures me that all their missiles are accounted for."

Nibert continued to press for answers to his concerns and ultimately felt shunned by the FBI's lead investigator. "Kallstrom wouldn't talk to me directly after we had an exchange about the military having lied about other matters," Nibert says. Just before Christmas last year, the Niberts began to look for answers outside of official government sources.

"I was wondering why I hadn't heard from anyone" was the response Nibert got from Fred Meyer, a retired major of the New York Air National Guard, when he reached out to those who claim to have witnessed a missile intercept the plane. Meyer is one of hundreds of eyewitnesses to the explosion and, as a member of the Air National Guard, he assisted in the recovery efforts.

"A streak came across the sky from my left center and proceeded further to my left.... There was an explosion ... a high-velocity explosion; a fuel-tank explosion would have been a low-velocity explosion," says Meyer.

Of the 753 people believed by the FBI and the NTSB to have witnessed the fireball, 80 to 100 have described the event in great detail. But details of what many witnesses said they saw never has been made public -- which may change soon when the NTSB Witness Group releases a summary report including the original FBI FD-302s, the official forms used by the FBI to record witness statements.

In a Dec. 3, 1997, letter to James Hall, chairman of the NTSB, Kallstrom was uneasy with allowing eyewitness participation in the public hearings held in Baltimore in December 1997. "The FBI objects to the use of any of the 244 eyewitness FD-302s or summaries prepared by the NTSB in connection with this hearing ... and to calling any eyewitnesses to testify at the public hearing," Kallstrom wrote.

Furthermore, in the same letter Kallstrom expressed additional concerns about eyewitnesses: "[T]he FBI objects to the use of the CIA video at the hearing if the purpose is to examine the eyewitnesses' observations or negate the possibility that a missile caused the crash." Hall agreed to Kallstrom's requests and eyewitnesses were not invited to participate at the hearings and their statements were not made available to participants.

But to many of the eyewitnesses, regardless of what they believe they saw, the events of that July night, high up in the sky where a fireball plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean, there remains mystery. For some, there remains anger about the presentation of a CIA video used by the FBI as a public prop to explain what might have happened to TWA 800 because it doesn't accurately reflect what they say they saw.

It is this pool of doubt and concern that Boeing may tap into as it prepares defenses to explain why it should not be held liable for the tragedy. In fact, Insight has learned that since at least the spring of 1997, attorneys at Perkins Coie, Boeing's lead attorneys, have been interviewing eyewitnesses. "They wanted to know what I saw," Meyer said in a recent interview with Insight. "I gave them a list of names I had of other witnesses that they may want to interview."

Planting a theory in the minds of the jury that a missile brought down Flight 800 is not enough, however. "Boeing would have to prove it. They just can't stand up and say 'Hey, we have a theory,'" says Larry Posner, a leading commercial-litigation trial attorney. On the other hand, "The families are going to have to prove it was mechanical," Posner adds.

Calls to Boeing and its lawyers as well as plaintiffs' counsel were not returned for official comments.

from http://www.press-enterprise.com/newsarchive/1998/07/18/900745447.html:

Military exercises stoke theories on TWA crash

By David E. Hendrix
The Press-Enterprise

With this week's acknowledgment that the National Transportation Safety Board is looking into a theory that electromagnetic interference may have caused the explosion of TWA Flight 800 two years ago, investigators again face an irksome question: Did a U.S. military unit accidentally cause the Paris-bound jumbo jet to break up off the shore of New York's Long Island and kill all 230 aboard?

No, the FBI, Navy, Pentagon and NTSB's investigators have said to previous suggestions of military involvement in causing the nation's second deadliest civil air disaster.

Yes, says a cadre of friendly-fire advocates who have included retired Navy officers, former Kennedy-era White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, airline pilots who fly East Coast air corridors restricted by military activity, free-lance journalists and members of the public, some of whom proclaim themselves "citizen investigators."

Long before the electromagnetic interference theory, "friendly fire" theorists had a list of reasons to suspect the Boeing 747 was the victim of a military accident. They cite ships off shore, rocket-like streaks in the sky seconds before Flight 800 exploded, other incidents where missiles or jet fighters came close to airliners, and even a military drone that went out of control the evening of July 17, 1996, the night Flight 800 crashed.

While the truth may never be known, a series of inquiries under the federal Freedom of Information Act has produced documents showing the FBI was not being candid in earlier statements about military activity in the Atlantic Ocean near the scene of the crash.

Thousands of pages of official records, many released to The Press-Enterprise in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, do not point to military responsibility.

The documents do show a busy field of exercises, some involving the sophisticated electronic warfare activities that led Harvard University Professor Elaine Scarry to suggest electromagnetic interference should be considered as a fourth possible cause for Flight 800's crash because of the proximity of military units at the time of the crash.

Mechanical failure, a bomb and a missile strike were early suspects in the crash investigation but the FBI has ruled out the latter two.

Almost four months after the crash, Navy Rear Adm. Edward Kristensen, who directed the Navy's support of the Flight 800 investigation and debris recovery, said one Navy P-3 and the guided missile cruiser USS Normandy, "185 miles south," were "the only two assets that the Navy had operating off of the East Coast . . . in the vicinity or close to the TWA 800 crash site."

Documents show that was not the case:

· The Navy's aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt has never been among the ships publicly listed as out to sea that night. Yet, the carrier was at sea and its planes involved in round-the-clock exercises that extended across a huge reach of ocean along the Virginia and Maryland coasts, according to Navy documents.

· Units of a submarine group operating in the military exercise area beginning less than 20 miles from the crash site have yet to be identified.

· Four mystery radar targets, believed to be ships, were within six miles of the crash site at the moment TWA 800 exploded. The NTSB does not know their identities and the FBI's Flight 800 spokesman said he did not know about the ships or the extent to which they were investigated. The four mystery vessels were spotted by shore radar units. None is detected responding to the Flight 800 disaster.

· An Atlantic Fleet watch officer was told about 24 hours after the crash to keep the names of three merchant ships that could have been near Flight 800 "in house Navy for the time being." The identities of those ships still have not been released.

· The USS Normandy, a guided missile cruiser that non-official sources early on said fired a missile that mistakenly hit Flight 800, is listed in two different locations at 8 p.m., a half-hour before the crash, and two different positions at the time of the disaster.

A number of other submarines and military aircraft also were involved in exercises in the area. The key to calculating whether any of those units could have been involved in the crash seems to hang on the position of the Normandy. And it's that position that is most in doubt.

According to conflicting reports and documents, the Normandy was 185 to 290 miles south of the crash site.

The closer range puts three or more subs, a patrol plane and carrier exercises in proximity to the Normandy; the outer limit adds more subs, a guided missile frigate and carrier jets to the pool of military units operating in the vicinity.

The distance also adds or subtracts certain weapons as potential suspects.

In new-age warfare, that could be an important factor.

Control of some missiles and drones can be passed from ship to airplane to ground units and strike beyond the launcher's individual targeting capabilities.

The Normandy's closest position, "185 miles south," puts Flight 800 within range of the ship's combat radar but beyond its anti-aircraft missiles, which have a listed range of 100 miles; the farthest position -- 290 miles -- puts the TWA flight out of reach of the Normandy's radar, which can track targets at ranges around 200 miles.

The ship was moored about 20 miles from JFK Airport -- Flight 800's takeoff point -- the morning of the crash. The Normandy left for Norfolk, Va., its homeport, at 9:05 a.m., according to the ship's deck log.

The cruiser's missile capabilities include the Tomahawk and Harpoon for land and ship targets. Its Standard missiles are supersonic defensive weapons designed to kill attacking aircraft or missiles up to 100 miles away and 80,000 feet high.

None of the ship's eight Standards was fired and it had no Tomahawk or Harpoon missiles aboard for that trip, according to Atlantic Fleet responses to Freedom of Information Act requests.

If the Normandy was 290 miles south of the crash site, then the attack submarines USS Oklahoma City and USS Boise were north of the Normandy; the special forces submarine James K. Polk was within the same arc; the attack sub USS Albany, guided missile frigate USS Estocin and fleet auxiliary ship USNS Lenthall nearby. Another half-dozen ships were 50 to 140 miles south of that point.

· Some missile exercises were scheduled the day and evening Flight 800 went down, but they were to the south and involved National Aeronautic and Space Administration tests from Wallops Island, Va., and Navy ships.

In addition, a Navy unmanned aerial vehicle went out of control that evening and crashed in the northern Virginia countryside.

The Navy's new computerized warfare systems helped fuel speculation friendly fire downed Flight 800, but no evidence of their involvement has been uncovered.

Cooperative Engagement Capability, or CEC as it is known, enables ships to fire missiles at targets the crew itself has never identified and permits other air, ground or sea units to adjust the weapon's path in flight. The program, based on advanced computer technology, led to speculation that a ship might have fired a missile at one target, with the crew not knowing the weapon actually struck another.

Both East Coast ships capable at the time of such warfare, the cruisers Anzio and Cape St. George, were in port in Virginia the night of the crash, according to Navy documents.

There was some cooperative combat activity that night but it had to do with computer tests, not live-fire exercises, according to Navy responses to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The CEC center at Dam Neck, Va., reported problems with its computer software and hardware after linking up earlier in the day with the Anzio and Cape St. George in preparation for sea trials the next day -- the day after Flight 800 went down.

A CEC live-fire exercise was conducted in the Atlantic off the Maryland coast on Sept 11, 1996, less than two months after Flight 800 went down.

In the demonstration, the cruisers Anzio and Cape St. George, sisters of the Normandy, teamed their radar to knock down a missile-like drone launched by the Navy frigate USS Clark.

The Anzio-Cape St. George teamwork allowed the second ship to extend its radar coverage from an 8-mile radius to a 25-mile radius and knock down the incoming drone with a missile, according to Defense Department accounts.

The newest question surrounding possible military involvement is under study by the Defense Department's Joint Spectrum Center in Annapolis, Md.

Strong electronic energy generated by radar, military tracking equipment, jamming devices and electronic countermeasures can be hazardous to a plane's health, according to Defense Department research papers cited by Harvard's Scarry.

As many as 24 service members were killed in the 1980s in air accidents believed caused by electromagnetic sources, according to Scarry's research.

The military considers bursts of electromagnetic energy a weapon, according to published studies, and now shield aircraft and ships to try to counter the problems. Civilian aircraft have no comparative requirement.

July 17, 1996 -- Flight 800's crash date -- was a busy day in a busy week for the military along the Northeast seaboard, according to official documents.

Air Force and Navy jet fighters, submarines, an errant Navy drone flight, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, landing ships, elite special forces, the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and its planes, NASA missile shots, gunnery exercises, missile tracking exercises, computerized tests of over-the-horizon warfare programs and anti-submarine activities were among the units and approved operations.

The exercises peaked during the afternoon, most before Flight 800 arrived in New York from Greece, and waned into the evening, according to copies of messages and documents used to request, approve and monitor the activities.

Three submarines -- the Trepang, Albuquerque and Wyoming -- were the closest Navy ships now acknowledged. Submarine Group 2 also had a large military exercise area reserved for round-the-clock operations 20 miles from the crash site.

A review of standard weaponry aboard the subs suggests they are an unlikely source for a surface-to-air missile. Jane's Publications missile expert Paul Beaver, however, says the U.S. Navy has experimented with sub-launched anti-aircraft missile systems. Some subs carry short-range shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles for shore missions. No publicly released information suggests such weapons were on board the subs near Flight 800.

The absence of apparent missile tracks in radar returns or infrared-sensing satellite images has been used to officially discount the missile theory. Modern missiles, however, are designed to avoid radar and infrared detection. One radar tape does show a short burst of mystery images near Flight 800 just before it crashed but investigators have dismissed those as "false returns," possibly the product of temperature inversions.

The FBI, Navy and North American Air Defense Command said no missiles were fired that night.

· Another conflict relates to what the Normandy was doing at 8:30 p.m., just before Flight 800 went down.

The crew was conducting "basic engineering casualty control exercises," which normally leads to reducing the Aegis electronic combat tracking system to a range "somewhat less than 150 miles," Kristensen said. The ship, therefore, could not have tracked Flight 800 and analysis of the ship's tapes showed no images of the jetliner, he said.

The Normandy's log, which notes every fluctuation in fog, speed, equipment change and on-board exercise, records no exercise or radar reduction that night.

· No Navy unit received as much early scrutiny as a P-3 anti-submarine patrol plane from Brunswick, Maine, according to records obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Navy P-3 was among the first on the crash scene. P-3 crewmembers said they turned back to the crash to offer aid when they heard reports a civilian jetliner exploded in midair.

The four-engine turboprop aircraft passed less than 3 nautical miles (3.45 miles) from and 6,300 feet above Flight 800 about 15 seconds before some unknown "initiating event" began dismembering the jumbo jet to make it crash, according to NTSB records.

Navy documents say the P-3 passed within 2 nautical miles (2.3 miles) of Flight 800. Navy officials were concerned something might have dropped off the P-3 and hit the jetliner, creating some kind of cataclysmic chain reaction. But a post-flight examination of the plane and cargo showed there were no "TFOAS" -- Things Falling Off Aircraft -- a July 31, 1996, message says.

FBI, NTSB, North American Air Defense Command, Federal Aviation Administration, Atlantic Fleet headquarters, and Chief of Naval Operations investigators interrogated the 12-member crew within days and exoneratedthem, according to reports.

The P-3 was on its way to a 9 p.m. rendezvous with the nuclear submarine Trepang as part of an exercise.

The Trepang was in a special 7,800-square-mile area set aside just for that operation. The Press-Enterprise previously reported the exercise was to begin at 8 p.m., before Flight 800's takeoff, but the Navy officer providing the information did not adjust for Daylight Saving Time.

Published 7/18/1998

from http://www.weissbach.com/TWA800/Sanderschapter1.html:

The Downing Of TWA 800
By James Sanders

Chapter 1

ANATOMY OF A TRAGEDY

As the evening of July 17, 1996 began, Eastenders on Long Island's south fork had no idea that only a few miles away a joint naval task force was assembling for a critical test of a top secret weapons system. In towns like Westhampton, Mastic Beach, and along the Shinnecock Bay Inlet, as midweek parties began, as recreational boaters set out into the warm night, they could not have foreseen the light show that would soon light up the skies. At 2000 hours, July 17, 1996, a world away from the town of Southampton's resort beaches, military zone W-105, thousands of square miles of ocean located south and southeast of Long Island, was activated by the United States Navy. Within minutes, from different locations around the sector, military activity increased as the various units participating in the operation deployed their aircraft and surface vessels. The 106th New York Air National Guard put a C-130 and HH-60C helicopter in the air. The Coast Guard cutter "Atak" patrolled just south of Long Island's Gabreski Air National Guard base, her sailors catching the last few rays of deep orange before the sun finally disappeared for the night.

Over the horizon, to the East, in zone W-105, U.S. Navy AEGIS guided missile warships prepared for the final evaluation of a multibillion-dollar upgrade to their software, radar, and Standard IIIA and IV antiaircraft/antimissile missile. The AEGIS radar and target management system was the pride of the U.S. fleet, so powerful that Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser personnel were said to have bragged that a ship like the USS Normandy could single-handedly fight a nuclear war with a small country, and win. "AEGIS arrogance", they called it, a pride supported by the stubbing Tomahawk cruise missile tubes and the surgically accurate antiaircraft and antiship weapon that Bristled form the cruiser's deck. AEGIS warship protected the fleet and could fight battles on land, sea, or air, and in just a few short weeks, the USS Normandy herself would steam into the Adriatic to relieve the USS Arleigh Burke AEGIS destroyer and take up station to bombard the Bosnian Serb rebels with a barrage of Tomahawks. But that was still months away. Tonight, the system itself had to be tested as the surface vessels sailed into position. At the same time, a Navy plane, with newly upgraded electronic equipment designed to work with AEGIS, slowly cruised. The plane was the key to the new top secret and highly complex radar tracking system that was in its third year of testing. The aircraft's onboard computer hardware, weighing 535 pounds, was the platform for a new software upgrade linked directly to the AEGIS waship's radar system. If all ran like clockwork, the computer link and integrated radar and communications net would make it possible for a defensive envelope to be extended more than thirty miles over the horizon even in the most dangerous of costal battle theaters, despite the foulest of weather and the darkness of night. But would it work?

Zone W-105 was selected for this final precertification test because of the complexity of the area. It was as close to a simulated Persian Gulf environment as the Navy could get without leaving U.S. coastal water. Long Island offered dense ground-clutter, and the constant flow of commercial air traffic out of JFK gave the navy the "neutral" radar blip it needed to test the discrimination skills of the targeting software. Meanwhile, navy planes were approaching the exercice area to present "friendly" electronic signatures for AEGIS to track and compute into the task force battle array. A "hostile" presence would soon appear in the form of a BQM-74E Navy drone missile launched in the vicinity of Shinnecock Bay, east of Riverhead, Long Island. The 106th New York Air National Guard and Coast Guard units would be "traffic cops" for the Navy drone as it briefly passed over land en route to zone W-105.

The drone, the friendliest, the neutrals, the task force surface naval vessels, the National Guard aircraft, and the interlocking radar were all part of a test of the Navy's new Cooperative Engagement Capability or CEC, an integrated radar network designed to be fully compatible with the Army's missile defense system in order to give the battlefield zone closest to the water comprehensive protection from cruise and ballistic missiles. The Army's antimissile development was controlled by a command called Force 21, with a headquarters at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, just outside of Eatontown, near the Jersey shore. Attached to this Army program was a senior Navy Officer named Admiral Edxard K. Kristianson, whose expertise in computers and integrated data management system arrays made him the perfect candidate for senior-level liaison with the Army for this multibillion-dollar 21st-century warfare.

At about the same time as the naval units were heading into position, the gate agents for TWA's New York to Paris Flight 800 were announcing final boarding. As families said good-bye, fathers hugged their daughters, and husbands and wives promised to call one another as soon as the plane landed safely, the TWA cabin crew was checking seatings assignments on the computer printout. Out of the tarmac, the baggage handlers were putting the last of the luggage aboard, while in the cabin, Captain Steven E. Snyder and his first officer Ralph G. Kevorkian completed their preflight checklist. Earlier that day, TWA Flight 800 had flown in from Athens and had to be cleaned, checked, put through maintenance, refueled, and resupplied for the return flith to Europe. The area around the huge 747-100 was like a small city as the ground crew fought against the clock to get the plane airborne on schedule. Even as children at the departure gate pressed their noses against the glass to watch the train of little baggage trucks wind away from the landing gear, no one could have known the fate that awaited Flight 800.

Not in their most terrifying nightmares could anyone, neither passengers nor crew, have conceived of the engine of destruction that was assembling itself just offshore, or of the resulting fireball that would consume everyone onboard when the plane's path brought it near the hot zone W-105.

For several days before the final test on July 17, an Army unit had been deployed at the Long Island site, participating in several training missions that included the launch of several drones. Shortly before 2030 hours on July 17, an all-clear signal was given to the drone's launch platform. No general aviation or commercial aviation traffic was in the area. Is was safe. The missile launch unit fed in the trajectory instructions to the drone's computer and watched as the automatic launch sequence counted off to ignition. Within minutes of the all-clear, the drone was airborne.

At about the same time as the all-clear signal, Linda Kabot from Westhampton Beach on Long Island was snapping off party photographs at the Republican fundraising event from an outdoor restaurant deck overlooking Shinnecock Bay. Linda was focusing her camera at the smiling faces of local Republican politicos and friends, not realizing that in the background high overhead in the purple sky, that little streak of light she'd seen would turn out in one of the photos to be an image of the Navy BQM-74E Navy drone, quickly descending to its altitude coordinates shortly after its launch.

In its preprogrammed trajectory, avec the Navy drone reached its preset altitude, it then dropped to thirty feet above sea level and accelerated to more than 500 mph as it began a long left turn away form the clutter of Long Island's land mass. The drone settled into a east-southeast heading toward the Navy AEGIS surface task force cruising on station just over the horizon. As the missile shot through the darkness at the speed of an airliner, the passengers aboard Flight 800 were just settling into a routine in the minutes after their late takeoff. Seatbelts began unfastening as the cabin flight attendants began preparations for the long service through the night and into the breaking dawn over Europe, eight hours away.

High overhead at 20,000 feet a Navy P-3 Orion deployed from Brunswick Naval Air Station, Maine, turned its infrared tracking system on as it assisted the hundreds of millions of dollars in Navy high-tech tracking equipment spread along the shore from Virginia to Long Island, installed to monitor the ongoing development of the Navy's CEC warship defense system. Tonight the P-3 would be part of the invisible eyes ot the network, monitoring along with the land-based equipment, every phase of what the navy expected to be perfect shootdown of the drone missile already on its way into the heart of the AEGIS task force.

The Navy had invested a lot of money in the development of CEC, even before the disastrous Exocet missile attack on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf during the Iran-Iraq war, when American warships escorted oil tankers up and down the Strait of Hormuz while under hostile Iranian shore batteries. Amid the flights of commercial airliners form both adversaries, U.S. and allied military aircraft, and hostile aircraft from Iran, it was next to impossible to discriminate between targets, neutral, friend or foe. The heavy traffic, Saddam Hussein maintained, was how the Stark was attacked by his fighter pilots in the first place. It was part of the reason for the deployment of CEC.

Because of the complexity of modern electronic warfare, in which the front lines obliterate traffic of all types, CEC was designed to be an almost surgical radar tracking, evaluating, and targeting system which would make it possible for the Navy to enter hostile environments like the Arabian Sea. CEC could identify and track all commercial traffic, and friendly military surface and air traffic in and out of the countries bordering the Sea, while remaining on the lookout for a hostile cruise missile launch from any direction. The Navy believed this system would allow them to discriminate electronically among friend, foe, and background clutter and still fight a battle. At least that's what the Navy thought as their warship and planes glided into position on the night of July 17, turned their combined radars on, and began sweeping the area for the commencement of this final precertification test.

Deep inside the electronic brain of a second Navy P-3 working with CEC, the radar communications equipment in the plane linked to the AEGIS-CEC transmitted signals along a downlink to the vessel's AEGIS radar computers. They began to decipher images from among the land clutter, friendliest, neutrals, and the hostile BQM-74E Navy drone missiles rapidly heading toward the task force. It was as if combined radars and computers suddenly took an electronic snapshot of the entire area and identified friend from foe while eliminating neutral aircraft. Then, almost instantly, the interlocking software of each AEGOS-CEC platform acquired the target drone, but were suddenly jammed by electronic interference. One radar broke through the interference, however, computed a shot through the thickening fog of multiple "hostile" electronic jammers, plotted its trajectory, and commanded the software to automatically select the platform best positioned to make the shot.

The computer software then launched a Navy Standard IIIA or IV antimissile missile, specifically altered to function with this new equipment, toward the oncoming drone. From over the horizon, no one except Navy personnel could see the whoosh of the rocket launch as the missile took off from its tube. The antimissile missile climbed high into the evening sky and rocketed west in the general direction of the low-flying cruise-missile drone, toward a position where its onboard computer was expecting to receive a midcourse correction. This signal was supposed to fine-tune the Standard missile's trajectory in order for the inboard semiactive radar homing device to lock onto the target as the Standard missile began its plunge toward the drone a few thousand feet below. At least that was the plan.

Commercial planes rising into the sky from JFK were unwitting participants in this final test of 21st century technology. As TWA Flight 800 climbed towards 14,000 feet, heading eastbound over the water for Paris, it was about twelve miles off the south coast of Long Island over the horizon to the west of the military exercise as it crossed into the warning zone and technically became a "neutral". At the same time, the electronic receiver onboard the Navy Standard missile began sweeping its secure radio frequency, waiting for the course correction commands form the AEGIS computers to direct the weapon, now at its predesignated point, to where it was supposed to attack its prey.

But prior to the mandatory midcourse correction the last AEGIS-CEG radar still tracking the missile and the drone through the heavy electronic jamming suddenly went completely blind. The drone and Standard missile could not be tracked. In two earlier tests all but one radar had been put out of action by electronic jamming. On July 17, the Standard missile was no longer under the control of the AEGIS-CEC system. Following its internal programming, it continued on its westerly course at 3000 feet per second actively searching for a target.

In an instant, the Standard's internal radar acquired TWA Flight 800 at well above and to the west of the target drone. The antimissile missile's radar turned sharply to the right, aimed its inert warhead at the 747, and painted an electronic bull's-eye on an area just in front of the right wing. The missile leveled off in a direct line to its impact point, and then at full speed slammed into the fuselage several feet below the passenger cabin.

There was no instant explosion, as the dummy war head missile sliced through the huge plane like a sheet of paper, depositing a trail of reddish-orange residue in its wake. It roared through the fuselage and exited through the left side of the plane, just forward of the left wing, where it left a hole large enough to walk through. After the missile exited, passengers, seats, galleys, food carts, and suitcases were sucked out of the interior through the hole in the left side, leaving a 4700 foot trail of debris along the sea bottom during phase one of the three phase breakup.

On its way through the interior of the 747, the missile seriously weakened the front of the nearly empty center fuel tank. The plane went into a dive, and eight seconds and 4700 feet after the initial missile impact, a small explosion occurred, beginning approximately in the middle of the center fuel tank. The top of the fuel tank bowed upward, but at this stage of the breakup, did not rupture. This caused the floor of the passenger cabin also to bow upward, breaking loose seats in the center rows 21, 22, and 23. The explosion completed the separation of the front of the plane from the fuselage, initiating phase two.

The force of the explosion followed the path of least resistance: forward, blowing out the weakened front of the center wing tank. The explosive force caused the forward fuselage to separate a few feet in front of the missile's path, where the fuselage had been greatly weakened. This blast propelled row 15, seats 1,2 and 3, about six-tenths of a mile to the left, while a large piece of the fuselage above the R2 door sailed six-tenths of a mile to the right. The front end tumbled end over end off to the left as the remaining section of the plane continued on in a steep dive.

The pilotless stump of the 747 began to roll to the left until the left wing tip pointed toward the water below. The fire from the center wing tank spread rapidly up the right side of the fuselage and right wing. At about 7500 feet the inner right wing tank exploded. The engines and about ninety-eight percent of the center wing tank came to rest on the ocean floor more than 12,000 feet east of the missile's point of impact.

As quickly as it happened, it was over. Flight 800 was gone, spread across the water in a flaming swath. Moments earlier, a Long Island FAA radar technician staring into his electronic view screen thought he had seen something approaching TWA Flight 800 just before it disappeared from the radar. He saw "conflicting radar tracks that indicated a missile." Then he filed his report and the paper trail had begun.

A short time after the incident, the White House Situation Room was advised that preliminary assessment of FAA radar data indicated that a missile had shot down TWA Flight 800, en route from JFK to Paris with 230 passengers aboard. By 2 a.m. on July 18, key federal intelligence and investigative personnel were informed via White House teleconference that TWA Flight 800 was brought down accidentally by a friendly missile during a Naval exercise. They had on their hands, they were told in the blamelessly antiseptic world of military corporatese, a "situation." The Department of Justice Command Center and FBI Strategy Information Operations Center also came to life as Flight 800 information began to trickle in. Each was connected by a video teleconference system (VTS) to the White House Situation Room. The initial talk in the room focused not on a bomb, but on a missile. Some eyewitnesses thought they had seen something bright arching toward the jet just before it blew up. At the next video conference, about dawn, an FAA representative said there was indeed a "strange radar blip."

But there were far too many people crowding into these teleconferences to let the missile analysis stand. So word was put out that "at air traffic control on Long Island, FAA officials reviewing radar tapes were unable to find even the mysterious blip".

The radar tape did not remain on Long Island for long. It went to the FAA Technical Center in Washington, D.C. The FAA Technical Center team, headed by the FAA's Tom Lintner, concluded that there was an "unexplained blip" on the radar tape. U.S. military missile experts told the FBI that a missile with a semiactive radar homing system would show up on an FAA radar set in transponder mode, but that a shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile would not.

According to Newsweek , writing in the aftermath of the crash, when news of the disaster had been reported in almost every newspaper and magazine in America, the possibility of a missile bringing down Flight 800 was the topic of conversation at the 6 a.m. VTS teleconference. They said that the Stinger theory - the Stinger is a shoulder-fired, American-manufactured missile - resonated with the FBI, which had picked up intelligence that some terrorists had been shopping for the lethal weapons. As the 6 a.m. meeting got underway in the VTS room, there was "a lot of breathless talk" about attacks by missiles, or MANPADS. Still, some experts were dubious. The Stingers handed out to the Afghan and Paki "muj" by the CIA were at least a decade old, and probably junk by now. The Pentagon cast further doubt on the Stinger theory with some simple math. The effective range of a Stinger is just over two miles, and its sensor can't lock on aircraft much above 11,000 feet.

The Pentagon had a growing problem. They had temporarily halted the CNN nonstop coverage of a possible missile by having a high-level source "leak" disinformation, that the blip was an "anomaly", which CNN then authoritatively passed on to the public. But now they had the potential for a bureaucratic leaking sieve if they didn't get the missile talk under control. So a coordinated program of leaks began to appear, and gradually began to neutralize the few clues being unearthed by a few intrepid reporters.

Whether the president or vice president actually knew about these events in the hours immediately following the crash or even whether they knew about the cause of the crash itself is a matter of conjecture. Nevertheless, somewhere within the topmost echelons of the military establishment, whether it was for national security or purely political reasons, a cover-up was initiated to conceal the real cause of the crash from the American people. Maybe the identities of the ships in the task force had to be hidden. Maybe it would be too embarrassing to reveal with the Democratic convention only a few weeks away. We only know that the true details of some of the most critical evidence assembled on the floor of the hangar at Calverton have never been revealed to the public.

This cover-up would have been easier to maintain had there been no witnesses. But witnesses were everywhere, and they had to be discredited or dismissed. Thirty-four civilians at various locations along the flight window across Long Island saw the missile rise out of the ocean and intercept Flight 800. After extensive FBI and military debriefings, these thirty-four people were found to be highly credible, too credible to be dismissed as flaky. Each, from a different location, had seen a missile exit zone W-105 and intercept Flight 800. For example, an on-duty Air National Guard pilot saw a missile going from east to west slam into TWA Flight 800. The Air National Guard put out a press release the next day saying only that an unknown object, going from east to west, was seen by the captain. A woman on a boat south of Long Island was taking photos while facing the east. One of the photos shows a missile trail rising out of zone W-105.

The missile itself had left tangible evidence of its flight path through the aircraft in the form of a solid fuel residue deposited on the seats in rows 17, 18, and 19. It also left a red trail attached to airplane parts that fell off into the ocean during the first eight seconds of the plane's breakup.

Knowing that the United States Navy shot down the plane with a missile, a plan of action was developed to remove evidence from the scene that would implicate the United States Government. Coast Guard MPs from a closed facility with only a skeleton crew maintaining and guarding it were brought over to guard a dock when sensitive debris was brought to shore.

One source described a Coast Guard MP team that observed this happening. The story is partially confirmed by the New York police officers who observed a highly sensitive diving operation in the Red Zone during the first days after the crash. They were prohibited from the area during the multi-day course of the operation. Debris was brought to the surface and placed on the boat, but it did not go to Calverton hangar, they said.

But the source of the Coast Guard MP team story went further. He said that not only was the recovery of airplane wreckage a clandestine operation, but that the team was debriefed by intelligence personnel - they identified themselves as CIA - and warned that anything they say to the media or to any other sources would be a violation of national security and that they would be punished accordingly.

A team of Navy divers was brought in to dive in a particularly sensitive area of the Red Zone. No divers from any other organization were allowed to approach this area.

The Navy divers brought debris up and placed it on a ship which delivered the cargo to the dock guarded by the Coast Guard MPs, who watched as missile parts were off-loaded and placed on a truck. Pieces of the 747 that had red residue attached were also loaded onto the truck, which then drove off to an unknown location. Unbeknownst to those charged with removing the evidence from the crime scene, they missed some of the reddish-orange residue.

On August 3, 1996, a seat was recovered from the ocean floor with a significant amount of reddish-orange residue attached to its back side. Over the next few weeks, as the seats in rows 17, 18, and 19 were recovered, FBI investigators at the Calverton hangar saw the residue trail extend entirely across the cabin, scorched into the backs of most of the seats in these rows. The FBI took five samples of the reddish-orange residue for analysis. But, once tested, the results became part of a criminal investigation and the FBI declined to release their findings.

As the cover-up moved forward, it took the form of a lengthy process of creating new truths while systematically hiding the evidence. A series of nightly leaks to the press by unnamed government "sources", the content of which became increasingly illogical, kept conditioning the American population into believing whatever the NTSB suggested. Ultimately, they settled on a "mechanical" finding. But the real cause all along was a terrible lack of judgment on the part of the Navy, who had used innocent civilians as human guinea pigs as they rushed a multibillion-dollar weapons system into its final certification test before it was ready.

© 1997 James D. Sanders.

 

• Go back to the WEISSBACH TWA 800 Page

 

The Downing Of TWA 800 By James Sanders

Buy This Book Now

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Government Cover-Up Exposed
The Book the FBI Doesn't' Want Published

Zebra Books is rushing into print THE DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800 by James Sanders, an investigative journalist and former police officer. Sanders, who has thoroughly and independently researched the case, now presents extensive supporting evidence that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy missile that killed 230 people on July 17, 1996. Evidence indicates that top government officials knew the truth just a few hours later, and immediately ordered a campaign of disinformation. The book which contains 16 pages of photographs will be available in mid-April.

Among the evidence:

• Proof of the straight line pattern of reddish-orange residue left in the missile's wake on the passenger seats
  
• The structural damage to the plane: a bullet-like entrance and exit "wound"
  
• The original FAA radar report indicating an unidentified object approaching the plane that the FBI tried to suppress
  
• 34 independent eye-witnesses to the "flare in the sky"
  
• Photographic proof of the missile
  
• Confirmation of the Navy's target/missile exercises in the restricted area where flight 800 went down

Who launched the missile? Who is behind the cover-up? How far does it extend?

Now, Saunders, who specializes in crash-scene investigation exposes the shocking truth behind the nation's worst air disaster--and what the Government has been doing to keep it hidden from the American public. Saunders uses original, first hand scientific evidence, actual U.S. government documents and inside sources.

Editor's Note: Reed Irvine's AIM is a reputed CIA intel/counterintel front organization, and this series may be intended to complete a dialectic (mechanical failure vs. terrorist attack) while the real explanation of TWA800 is US military action - accidental or otherwise, and almost surely involving electronic warfare (a variety of EW assets were in the immediate vicinity of TWA800 at the time of its failure, including a P-3 Orion (EW specialized) directly above it). There is something very smelly about the whole TWA800 schmear, in fact.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-14, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Joey MacLellan:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 1

Military Aviation Group Calls For Congressional Investigation

A group of retired military personnel, experienced in aviation accident investigations, is calling for congressional hearings and possibly a special investigator to review the TWA Flight 800 incident which killed 230 people when the plane exploded over the Atlantic Ocean just south of Moriches on July 17, 1996.

In the 109-page report, written by Commander William S. Donaldson, US Navy (Retired), the group charges that the plane was destroyed by two high explosive anti-aircraft warheads (one fired from near the Moriches Inlet and the other from a ship about 17 nautical miles off shore), and that the President and Department of Justice impeded the investigation.

This report has been "intentionally narrowed to focus primarily on physical evidence, witness testimony and actions of officials in the Justice and Transportation departments that have had a direct impact on the historical record of the TWA Flight 800 incident," wrote Donaldson, whose investigation was conducted in cooperation with the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals. The report was funded, in part, by the Subcommittee on Aviation under the authority of the U.S. House of Representative Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure.

"Like most Americans," said Donaldson, "I was very concerned when TWA Flight 800 mysteriously exploded ... just two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics."

The retired Navy commander said he followed the FL 800 investigation in the media, initially, because "it was so unusual for something like this to happen to a Boeing 747 without an obvious external cause."

Because the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB) plays a "vital role in assuring the safety of the commercial airline industry," Donaldson said he was "confident the NTSB would quickly discover the cause."

However, a year later, he said he read a letter in the Wall Street Journal from NTSB Chairman James Hall suggesting that "TWA FL 800 exploded due to some undiscovered mechanical failure, rather than some external cause, such as a bomb or missile."

The NTSB, with assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), came up with its mechanical malfunction theory, he noted," despite the known safety properties of modern Jet Fuel and the fact that there were hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw something streaking up from the surface which ended in the explosion of TWA FL 800."

In the report, Donaldson wrote, "As a Naval aviator and crash investigator, I was very familiar with anti-aircraft missiles as well as the properties of Jet-A Fuel and did not believe it possible that the fuel would explode spontaneously." In fact, he added, "the fuel, which is very similar to regular kerosene, will not easily light with a match, unless the fuel is misted in the atmosphere or aerated by a fuel injector."

After consulting the Aviation Fuels Handbook and conducting simple experiments with Jet-A Fuel, Donaldson said, "I became convinced the Center Wing Tank did not explode without some external cause."

He said he contacted Hall with his concerns, but was "immediately rebuffed."

That reaction, along with the fact that the NTSB refused to allow any eyewitness testimony at an official FL 800 hearing in Baltimore, and that the only discussions at the hearing concerned the Center Wing Tank (CWT) explosion theory, alarmed Donaldson.

"They appeared to only be interested in selling their story to the media and the public." However, he added, "there are thousands of aviation professionals who do not believe the `official' version of the tragedy and there are hundreds of eyewitnesses on Long Island who know what they saw and do not appreciate the government telling them they were wrong."

Using statements from 47 eyewitnesses, the report offers what more than 400 people (residents, scientists, military personnel and business executives) saw on that clear night over the Atlantic Ocean. The report also lists 15 reported missile sightings off the East End of Long Island between June 1987, and September 1997 - including FL 800 on July 17, 1996.

"Based on the fact that TWA FL 800 was the likely target of a state [another nation] sponsored terrorist attack, which is an Act of War, and the fact that the Administration has covered up this act for political expediency prior to the 1996 election, the Congress should... Hold Congressional Hearings into the cause of the crash of TWA FL 800 [and] Request the Justice Department appoint an Independent Counsel to investigate."

Suffolk County Congressional members Michael Forbes, Rick Lazio and Gary Ackerman said they have not read the report but will have their respective staff review the information.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-15, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Joey Mac Lellan:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 2

Was Mechanical Failure Theory Wrong?

The National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB), with assistance from the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, has maintained that the cause of the explosion that downed TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996 was an electronic malfunction in the Center Wing Tank (CWT).

However, Commander William S. Donaldson (Retired) author of the 109-page Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Action of the NTSB and the FBI is disputing those findings. The report was given to the Congressional Subcommittee on Aviation in July - two years after the FL800 incident.

The NTSB office in Calverton declined to comment and no one answered the phone at the Washington D. C. office number Calverton provided.

Declining to comment on Donaldson's report, FBI Agent Joseph Valiquette said, "This was one of the most thorough investigations ever conducted by the FBI." Valiquette, a spokesman for the New York FBI office, added that the FBI's investigation on Flight 800 "for all intent and purpose is closed, but we still maintain contact with the NTSB and will jump back in if any criminal cause is found."

Donaldson's group, Associated Retired Aviation Professionals includes such notables as Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN (Ret.) former chairman of the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff; Rear Admiral Mark Hill, USN (Ret.) former commander of the USS Independence; and Brigadier General Ben Partin, USAF (Ret.) who designed the Continuous-Rod Warhead for the BOMARC anti-aircraft missile.

They are suggesting that FL800, carrying 235 passengers and crew members, was destroyed by two high powered anti-aircraft warheads - one fired from near the Moriches Inlet, and the other from an unidentified ship about 17 nautical miles off shore.

"Like most Americans," said Donaldson, "I was concerned when TWA Flight 800 mysteriously exploded" and initially followed the investigation in the media because "it was so unusual for something like this to happen to a Boeing 747 without an obvious external cause."

In the report, Donaldson charges that the NTSB has used "propaganda" to convince the media and public that a Boeing 747, containing Jet-A fuel, could explode despite the fact that Jet-A fuel is non-flammable kerosene, that the tank was actually devoid of fuel in the first place, and that "not one single piece of center wing shrapnel has been located in Flight 800 baggage containers, water tanks or anywhere forward of the Center Wing Tank."

The commercial Boeing 747 aircraft began its career in the seventies. Since that time, "there has never been an in-flight explosion in any Boeing built airliner of Jet-A kerosene fuel vapor/air mixture in any tank, caused by mechanical failure," wrote Donaldson.

Yet, in congressional testimony and statements to the media, the NTSB "cited the loss of an Air Force 707 and 3 KC135 air to air tanker aircraft to fuel tank explosions as examples of mishaps similar to TWA FL800," wrote Donaldson, who was a flight instructor and Air-Wing Safety Officer in charge of crash investigation for mishaps ashore and afloat.

Officials at the Air Force's safety center, out West stated "there is no record of a 707 loss, and all three KC135s were fueled with JP4, a fuel as volatile as automobile gasoline."

FL800 had Jet-A fuel "which is similar to regular kerosene [and] will not easily light with a match, unless the fuel is misted in the atmosphere or aerated by a fuel injector," according to Donaldson's report.

Even after admitting publicly that it knows "little about the flammable properties of Jet-A fuel," the NTSB told the media that a CWT explosion had caused the Philippines Air 737 crashed in 1990.

Donaldson, however, noted that video and still photography taken after the Philippines Air 737 fire was extinguished, "show the Center Wing Tank did not explode."

The plane's "undercarriage, wheels and center wing box (tank) were structurally sound enough to carry the load of engines and fuel ... under tractor tow," he noted. "Had the Center Wing Tank actually exploded in the manner the NTSB leadership suggests, the aircraft would have dropped on the ramp ..."

The latest data, shows "Jet-A fuel to be safer than previously described in the Aviation Fuels Handbook. In other words, the inference that Jet-A fuel posed some heretofore-unknown risk factor has proven to be totally false," Donaldson states.

"The amount of fuel vapor, and therefore the potential flammability in a tank is primarily dependent of the temperature of the liquid fuel in the tank," wrote Donaldson.

The liquid fuel temperature in the Boeing 747's CWT can be easily taken through the tank's low point drain while the plane is on the ground. This is often done, he said, to check for water ice or contaminants "in a simple two-minute procedure at virtually no cost."

Despite this information, the NTSB recommended that the Federal Aviation Administration impose "multiple safety recommendations that would have cost billions if implemented," the report states. "All were based on the assumptions that B747 lightly fueled Center Wing Tanks are dangerously flammable during warm weather and that FL800's loss was initiated by a spontaneously exploding tank."

Like the unsubstantiated flammable nature of Jet-A fuel, the NTSB, according to Donaldson, misled the public and commercial airline industry when it also claimed that the CWT has a tendency to heat up.

In October 1997, Donaldson said he took the temperature of a Boeing 747's CWT from an aircraft turning around at JFK for return trip to Europe. "The temperature was 69 degrees Fahrenheit, one degree hotter than ambient air temperature, despite the fact all the air-pacts had been running for the hour the aircraft had been on the ground" awaiting takeoff.

In an effort to support its CWT accident theory, the NTSB and the FBI had secret tests conducted in the United Kingdom. The outcome of those tests "are effectively classified secret."

Donaldson suggested that the tests were conducted using a propane-filled CWT instead of a Jet-A fuel because "Neither the NTSB nor any of its contractors has been able to practically demonstrate a Jet-A kerosene vapor/air explosion."

"In practical ignition tests done with Jet-A fuel, (taken from a 747 center tank after a transatlantic flight) heated to produce vapor in closed containers ... demonstrated that the vapor will not ignite until the Jet-A fuel is heated to 185 degrees," said Donaldson who participated in this test. "The igniters produced temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees and were located 12 inches above the fuel surface."

In layman's terms, he said, "if the tank were ignited at the right place with a very hot ignition source, the burn in the tank might reach a singularly unimpressive 60 pounds per square inch (PSI)."

A 60 psi burn in the CWT, he added, "is unimpressive because it could not produce the level of destruction and airborne breakup evidenced in the fuselage structure forward of the wing to the nose of the aircraft," which is what happened on FL800.

More important, wrote Donaldson, "The core theory of the NTSB is based on a false assumption that there was sufficient fuel in the Center Wing Tank of TWA Flight 800 on takeoff to cause an explosion."

That assumption, he said, "is contravened by the testimony" of TWA Captain Albert Mundo, a fully qualified TWA 747 Captain and Flight Engineer.

Through Mundo and TWA records, Donaldson documented that "there was no fuel in the Center Wing Tank" that could have exploded. Mundo, he said was the assigned engineer responsible for FL800 before it took off for a non-stop, 10-hour flight from Athens, Greece to JFK in New York.

Three days after FL800 exploded, Captain Mundo reported to the NTSB and the FBI that he "depleted the fuel to near zero" by transferring the CWT fuel directly to Number Two Main Tank, but "somehow" that was "converted to 600 pounds of fuel [in the CWT] by NTSB investigators."

Donaldson coldly notes in his report, "there has yet to be found one piece of physical evidence that supports the NTSB's contention that FL800 was brought down by an initiating event of an explosion of air and aviation kerosene vapor caused by a mechanical failure in the aircraft's Center Wing Tank."

"It is this investigator's opinion that the fuel did eventually enter the dry TWA FL800 Center Wing Tank through the CWT left side body wall (RIB) brought about by the same over pressurization that occurred in the entire left wing tank system by the detonation of a full-sized, proximity fused, anti-aircraft warhead."

The NTSB insists that "the CWT spontaneously exploded due to mechanical failure," but the evidence indicates a different scenario.

Examinations of the CWT parts, said Donaldson, "clearly show any over pressurization of the Center Wing Tank came after two ordnance explosions, and an implosion insult of the CWT itself."

Pieces of the left wing tested by NASA laboratories "found residue ... contaminated with nitrates," an indication of a missile explosion. NASA was then ordered to stop testing by the NTSB, according to Donaldson.

Some examples of missile activity include the facts that the debris field indicates that "the first place the pressure hull was breached [was] about 35 feet forward of the front wall of the center tank," that there was "Forward fuselage skin failure in tension on the bottom and compression of the top," that the "Last valid data line of the DFDR ... registers powerful explosive pressure wave and the angle of attack points directly at source of explosion coming from low left."

In addition, the report states, "Eyewitnesses observed vertical stabilizer failure after the two ordinance explosions, but prior to the third (petroleum) explosion at 7700 feet. They also place a large piece of the vertical stabilizer, found floating without sooting, a mile southwest of the fuselage/wing impacted and fire area."

Another piece of the vertical stabilizer is still missing, noted Donaldson, further charging that "NTSB officials were caught by a TWA investigator and two sergeants with the New York City Police Department falsifying this database because the only rational explanation ... would be catastrophic failure ... consistent with an airbursting weapon and totally inconsistent with a Center Wing Tank problem."

from TPDL 1998-Dec-16, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Joey Mac Lellan:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 3

Bogey At Seven O'Clock: Report Supports Missile Theory But Not 'Friendly Fire'

Most of the evidence collected by the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) indicates that TWA Flight 800 was destroyed by one or more heat-seeking Stinger missiles, according to Commander William S. Donaldson, USN (Retired), the author of the revised 124-page "Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Action of the NTSB and the FBI."

In an earlier interview, Donaldson, a member of the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals (ARAP) group, said that three U.S. manufactured Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) Stinger missiles have been reported missing from Afghanistan. Under President Ronald Reagan, Afghan rebel forces began defeating Russian forces because the United States supplied them with hand-held ground-to-air missiles (such as the Stinger) to cut down on helicopter support for Russian troops.

The commander noted that authorities knew the Stingers were smuggled into Canada and had "crossed the U.S.-Canadian boarder," but then contact was lost with the "Iranian-connected group believed to have stolen the Stingers."

He added that the use of a hand-held Stinger was initially dismissed because it was believed the Stinger did not have the range to hit Flight 800 and because the amount of blast damage appeared to be more than a Stinger would do.

The commander said he has since learned from "military experts" that a Stinger will go as high as 15,000 feet and depending on programming could cause extensive damage, especially if more than one was used on the same target. Flight 800 exploded at about 13,800 feet, killing 235 passengers and crew members.

Donaldson also noted that the missiles could be "modified Soviet (surface to air missile) SAM 6," which could be carried on any ocean-going vessel as covered deck cargo.

Information on the physical breakup sequence of the plane, the way the plane was scattered throughout the Debris Field, shrapnel evidence found in the passengers, and the final recordings taken from the Flight Recorder (Black Box) all prove the plane was destroyed by at least one missile blast, said Donaldson. The most important portion to the puzzle, he said, is that so many eyewitnesses have explained the same, or similar, descriptions of the incident.

In the report, Donaldson notes, "If one assumes that a 'reliable' witness can report an observation correctly in only one out of five observations, then there is only a 20% probability that an event reported by such a witness would have actually taken place as described ... With 40 such independent and similarly 'reliable' witnesses, the probability rises to 99.99% that the event reported did indeed take place."

According to Donaldson, "More than 150 credible witnesses - including several scientists and business executives - have told the FBI and military experts they saw a missile destroy TWA Flight 800."

Most of the descriptions of the incident coincide with the following: Witnesses reported seeing a man piloting a dark 25-foot to 35-foot "cigarette-type," round-hull speed boat that came into the Moriches Inlet from the Great South Bay and idled for a time. Just prior to the FL800 explosion the boat then sped off in a southeast direction. Some 20 minutes later, said Donaldson, witnesses for more than 20 miles described seeing a missile going up just before the plane exploded in the air.

Donaldson hypothesized that the speed boat traveled about seven nautical miles into the Atlantic Ocean and waited for FL800 to get closer. As the plane approached the boat's location, Donaldson suggested that he fired the heat-seeking missile at the nose of the plane which had its belly exposed at an estimated 30 degree climb into the sky.

The commander suggests that the missile was attracted to the refrigeration and air exhaust vents near the fuselage and left wing but struck the nose instead, and a second missile appears to have struck the wing, causing a severe explosion into the side of the passenger and Center Wing Tank portions of the plane which then resulted in a large, fiery petroleum explosion.

The night Flight 800 was shot down, Major Fred Meyer was piloting an Air National Guard HH60 helicopter between 200 and 300 feet above ground level, heading south to Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach.

"He described it as transcribing a smooth, slightly descending arc from right to left streaking across the sky terminating in a 'hard or high velocity ordinance explosion,' followed by a second 'bright white ordinance explosion,' followed some seconds later by a petroleum fireball that grew to a very large dimension."

Donaldson notes, Major Meyer possesses "unique training and experience" since he was awarded the Distinguish Flying Cross after obtaining more than 40 saves as a Navy combat search and rescue pilot off the coast of North Vietnam.

Meyer's co-pilot, Captain Chris Baur, said, "Almost due south [of the helicopter] there was a hard white light, like burning pyrotechnics, in level flight ... it was the wrong color for flares. It struck an object coming from the right and made it explode." Baur said he "told officials repeatedly that I thought a missile hit the plane."

According to the report, Tom Dougherty, walking with friends along the beach in Hampton Bays, "heard a crackling thunder-like noise, followed ... by another thunder-like noise at which time they observed a missile ... arcing out to sea. After losing sight of the missile, they saw a bright white light or glow above the cloud or haze layer at sea followed by the observation of burning pieces of aircraft flopping out of the sky."

Dougherty, said Donaldson, "is important because he heard what could be described as two distinct launch noises prior to seeing a missile in flight and because of his great distance from the aircraft crash site."

Albert Gipe, a self employed consultant, engineer and former Naval officer was 25 miles south of Long Island in a sailboat on his way to Block Island.

Donaldson said that Gipe was facing Long Island trying to make a cellular telephone call when he "saw a streak of light like a tracer bullet rise from the surface ... which terminated six seconds later in an explosion that was followed shortly thereafter by another explosion."

Lisa Perry, who was on the deck of a beach house 12 miles west of Smith Point County Park looking east toward Hampton Bays, said, "something was moving north to south over the dunes ... from the direction of the Great South Bay ... It was shiny ... It was as if there was a flame at the back of it ... It was moving much faster than the plane ... The silver object took a left turn and went up to the plane. The plane stopped for an instant, as something would when it had suffered an impact, not just an explosion. Then it began to fracture - as if you had slammed a frozen candy bar down onto a table."

An explanation of why it appeared the aircraft stopped, said Donaldson, "TWA FL800 was at 13,800 feet making 380 knots true airspeed ... when the nose of the aircraft was destroyed, breaking into hundreds of pieces."

Like many of the witnesses Donaldson has interviewed so far, these five witnesses create a triangulation of what was seen, at last count, by more than 400 people.

In a letter to Donaldson, James E. Hall, chairman of the NTSB, states, "Most of the eyewitnesses were interviewed by the FBI; the Safety Board has reviewed those interviews ... It must be remembered that the closest eyewitness was more than 10 miles from the accident site and the helicopter pilots you mentioned were more than 15 miles from the site."

Hall continued, "Please be assured that the Safety Board has not discounted the witness statements and is correlating their statements with the other factual material that has been gathered in the investigation."

In closing, he states, "you apparently believe that the TWA tragedy was the result of a terrorist missile ... you believe that I and apparently many others are covering up this criminal act [but] the NTSB has no evidence of a criminal act."

Joseph Valiquette, a special agent and spokesman for the FBI's New York office, said that the FBI's investigation was an unprecedented investigation because it was so "extensive." He said the FBI used "hundreds of investigators who conducted thousands of interviews."

Valiquette concluded that his agency also has no evidence of a criminal act. In addition, the book, "The Downing of Flight 800," written by James Sanders "describes a complex military exercise gone awry, where missiles fired from US combatants during an over the horizon test, accidentally bring down the aircraft," said the commander.

Pierre Sallinger, former White House spokesman for President John Kennedy, "asserted a similar accidental engagement by U.S. Forces," said Donaldson.

Many Long Islanders believed this theory, especially since there are at least three reported sitings of a Navy destroyer close to shore near Gilgo Beach, just west of the Fire Island Inlet in Babylon. Two other witnesses reported seeing a destroyer off shore at Davis Park in Brookhaven 2.5 hours before the plane exploded.

"Those suspicions were soundly reinforced when the White House ordered in the Navy instead of commercial sources to salvage the aircraft and the Justice Department flooded the Island with FBI agents," wrote Donaldson.

First Congressional District Rep. Michael Forbes, (R-Shirley) has been attempting to follow the "friendly fire" theory, but has been stonewalled by the Navy claiming national defense classifications on activities.

"Navy ship movements are not normally classified after the fact," said Donaldson, noting that, "Exercises and routine training are done in deep water and in appropriate warning areas after notice to airman and mariners are provided."

It is possible that a destroyer was close to land and attempted to intercept the initial missile fired, he said. But arguments against this theory include the unlikely probability of keeping a large crew silent two years after the event, and it is extremely unlikely a Navy combatant would run from an Air Sea Disaster.

"The fact is," said Donaldson, "while we believe that there is considerable forensic physical evidence that conclusively proves that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by one or more missiles, we have no proof of who fired the missiles."

For these reasons, Donaldson and ARAB have called for a Congressional Hearing and are asking the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-17, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Joey Mac Lellan:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 4 Was There A Cover-up?

There are numerous details surrounding the July 17, 1996 downing of TWA Flight 800 that do not conform to the mechanical failure theory, presented by the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to a report authored by Commander William Donaldson, a career crash investigator before retiring from the Navy.

The most conspicuous question still unanswered by those making the charge that there is a cover-up is, Why? Why would the government cover-up a situation where terrorists shot down an American airliner? Why would the government cover up a military accident?

Under normal circumstances, the NTSB would be the primary investigative agency on a commercial aircraft crash, but within hours of the incident, the FBI flooded Long Island with about 400 agents. Over the course of the investigation, the FBI said it conducted some 7,000 interviews, followed up on about 3,000 leads, and 2,000 chemical swabs from the wreck. The FBI concluded there was "No evidence [of] high explosive damage [or] explosion of a missile warhead."

"The investigation was not limited strictly to terrorist motives. All avenues of potential criminality were explored with negative results," said FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette.

Downplaying the missile theory, the NTSB and FBI are claiming that the Center Wing Tank exploded because of a spark from a wire running through or near the tank, despite the fact that TWA records show that the tank was empty and that both agencies had information proving that the Jet-A Fuel, like kerosene, "will not easily light with a match unless the fuel is misted in the atmosphere or aerated by a fuel injector."

Yet, Tom McSweeney, director of Aircraft Certification Service for the FAA, stated on national television, "What we have said to the NTSB in not adopting [its] immediate recommendation is that we believe there is a technical debate that needs to take place."

Donaldson offers numerous pages of technical information and eyewitness accounts suggesting a cover-up of some kind in his 124-page "Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Actions of the NTSB and the FBI."

One such entry in the report states that "Sikorsky aircraft [a manufacturer of helicopters for the military] in Stratford [Connecticut] indicated that Sikorsky's radar at its airport picked up an air to air missile. The radar was on tape and was turned over to the FBI.

The report further states, former Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom said, "We do have information that there was something in the sky. A number of people have described it similarly. It was ascending."

The official NTSB and FBI position, however, is "there is no evidence of a criminal act."

Kallstrom, who retired last December, could not be reached for comment.

Valiquette declined to comment on anything in the report, claiming the FBI has not read the report.

The FBI is also reluctant to comment because of the civil litigation filed by family members of the victims and because the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings because the NTSB complained that FBI acted "inappropriately" during the investigation.

According to Donaldson, most of the evidence collected by the NTSB and the FBI indicates that the Boeing 747 was destroyed by one or more missiles, killing 236 passengers and crew members.

Government officials broke investigation protocol from the beginning, said Donaldson.

"The Coast Guard rescue log shows a request for assistance was made to Weeks Marine [one of the largest salvage operations on the East Coast] within an hour of the crash."

One of Weeks' large salvage barges with one of the largest revolving salvage cranes in the western hemisphere happened to be in transit near Long Island at the time, said Donaldson.

The barge was "capable of supporting 50 hard hat divers with multiple cranes, precision grid positioning equipment as well as precision anchoring system [and] had a huge storage capacity for debris."

Donaldson's report states, "Phone calls between Weeks Marine executives and FAA officials in Washington the night of the crash led Weeks Marine to believe the FAA was extremely anxious to recover the tail of the aircraft in order to get the flight recorders."

By dawn the morning after the crash, the salvage crane was ready to begin work, but the company was advised to stand down.

A state-of-the-art Cable Laying ship owned by AT&T was in the area "equipped with high tech underwater surveillance equipment and even a robot salvage submarine" early the morning after the FL800 exploded.

"Despite the large capability advantage and ... professional salvage experience over the military units which eventually arrived at the scene, both AT&T and Weeks Marine were shouldered out of the way and never used."

Donaldson comments, "The decision made by the government concerning the marine salvage effort are difficult to understand. When a conscious choice is made to reject the best equipment and personnel for such a hazardous and complex job, the question arises as to why?"

The Coast Guard and members of the 106th Air National Guard out of Westhampton Beach reported hearing the pingers from FL800's Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) throughout the night, but "By the next day the pingers suddenly stopped."

The FDR and CVR were not officially reported recovered for another seven days, despite the fact that Major Fred Meyer, flying a HH60 helicopter "repeatedly flew over the crash scene ... utilizing precision satellite navigating equipment on board, radioed the exact position where the wreckage containing the flight recorders could be found back."

Meyer, stationed with the 106th Air National Guard was piloting the helicopter between 200 and 300 feet above the ground, heading south to Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach when the crash happened.

Meyer reported that he radioed the coordinates to a C130 crew also out of Gabreski.

Long Island's Channel 55 cameraman James Hughes, said during an interview that he and another camera crew from one of the networks were at the airport when the C130 landed. The crew, he said, stated they saw a missile heading toward FL800 just before they witnessed the explosion. The C130 crew members were pulled away from the two camera crews by what Hughes said appeared to be their superiors and came back claiming they had seen nothing.

On July 18, First Congressional District Rep. Michael Forbes reported that the NTSB informed him that the recorders had been found and recovery would be "imminent."

Forbes said he was not grandstanding as some have suggested, but was repeating what the NTSB had told him.

However, the Navy reported that on July 24, the USS Grasp "executed a three point mooring directly over the flight recorders. At 2330 hours that night Navy divers were lowered down almost within arms reach of the flight recorders."

Crash investigators for the FAA, TWA, Boeing Commercial Aircraft Company, the Airline Pilots Association and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers "were not allowed aboard the recovery ship." These investigators, said Donaldson, are "on record complaining that the NTSB opened the recorders without [them being] present. This is a violation of normal protocol."

When the recorders where later examined by the NTSB laboratory, they "were found to be operating normally."

Donaldson suggested, "The circumstances surrounding the recorder's recovery are very unusual."

The NTSB and FBI set up special "small" nets on four scallop boats contracted to drag along the bottom for parts of the plane, said Donaldson.

"This dredging operation netted `small wing pieces' [but] there is no rationale within the NTSB's Center Wing Tank theory that explains small wing pieces." A military explosive such as a high impact missile, he added, could shatter a plane into small shards.

There is also the unexplained evidence of red residue and other explosive residue, said the commander.

Crash investigators for the FAA, TWA, Boeing, the Airline Pilots Association and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers "were removed from the recovery operation at sea, denied access to physical evidence, denied access to FBI laboratory reports and denied access to eyewitnesses," said Donaldson.

With the help of TWA Captain Terry Stacey, a senior check pilot who was a member of the TWA investigation team; Liz Sanders, a senior TWA flight attendant, and her husband, James Sanders, an investigative reporter, obtained a swatch of material of a seat from the plane and had it independently tested.

The swatch tested positive for explosive chemicals, specifically nitrates, according to James Sanders who wrote the book "The Downing of Flight 800", which describes a complex military exercise gone awry, where missiles fired from U.S. combatants accidentally bring down the aircraft.

The Feds claim that the "plausible" reason for nitrates being on the material was because cigarette smoke residue was in the air-conditioning system of the plane.

Federal officials, said Donaldson, would not allow independent laboratories to take the residue from the wreck, so they were never really sure where the material they were testing came from.

During the hearing in Philadelphia, the NTSB and FBI prevented eyewitnesses from testifying. In October, ABC network television canceled a special program that was to be directed by Oliver Stone.

Stone, who has directed a number of "conspiracy" movies was expected to present in his documentary the theory of a missile destroying the plane. According to Stone, that would have been done predominantly by interviewing eyewitnesses. Because actual eyewitnesses were to have been interviewed on the program, ABC pulled it claiming that people would not know if it was a news documentary or fiction.

Donaldson has interviewed numerous eyewitnesses and most of them describe a similar picture: one or two (depending on the person) streaks of smoke (some describe a rising flare), two explosions, and then a fireball that fell into the ocean.

There are also conflicting reports about Navy ships being in the vicinity on maneuvers and one story suggests the ships were hunting a Russian-made Iranian submarine.

Both TWA and Boeing declined to comment on the incident or the report at this time.

Donaldson's report was done in conjunction with the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals and paid, in part, by the Congressional Subcommittee on Aviation and Accuracy In Media (AIM).

from TPDL 1998-Dec-18, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Elizabeth Tonis:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 5

Senate Judiciary Committee Investigates FBI Concerning TWA FL800

"We are confident a complete review of our conduct in regard to Flight 800 will show no stone was left unturned."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is currently under investigation for its handling of the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, according to senate investigators.

Suffolk Life has confirmed that an inquiry into the matter by a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee is currently underway.

The inquiry is headed by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), who serves as chairman of a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, responsible for oversight of the Justice Department.

Officials explained the inquiry is part of an extension of a several year investigation into the Justice Department regarding the FBI, specifically looking into the agency's criminal laboratory procedures. A Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing is expected to be held early next year on the matter, sources indicated.

Jill Kozeny, press secretary to Grassley, confirmed that one avenue senate investigators are focusing on involves charges that the FBI may have allegedly rushed to judgment, initially leaning toward and then pursuing terrorism and conspiracy theories such as a missile or bomb rather than following the evidence that ultimately led to one conclusion that the crash was due to mechanical failure. Other allegations of misconduct, ranging from poor documentation, not following procedure and improper training have also surfaced.

FBI officials who were contacted by Suffolk Life expressed confidence that the Senate inquiry would show they made every effort to conduct a thorough investigation of the crash which killed all 235 passengers.

Assistant Director Louis Schiliro, of the FBI's New York office, said, "While the FBI is not on the defensive, we will not comment on the (Judiciary) hearing because it has not begun."

However, Schiliro went on to say, "We are confident a complete review of our conduct in regard to Flight 800 will show no stone was left unturned."

Schilito praised FBI employees for their handling of the situation, saying "The FBI is proud of the people who conducted that investigation because of their hard work and dedication."

Within hours of the crash, the FBI flooded Long Island with about 400 agents. Over the course of the investigation, the FBI said it conducted some 7,000 interviews, followed up on about 3,000 leads, and took 2,000 chemical swabs from the wreck.

James Margolin, a spokesman from the public relations department of the New York division of the FBI, maintained that the FBI conducted a "thorough investigation."

"From the evidence found, the FBI determined that there was no criminal act" that caused the downing of the aircraft, Margolin noted.

He went on to emphasize that "keeping the families in mind, investigators searched thoroughly to find the truth."

In the wake of the FL800 incident, the FBI investigated claims of the plane being exploded by one or more missiles but ultimately ruled, in conjunction with the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB), that the downing was due to mechanical failure.

Despite hundreds of eyewitness accounts that at least one missile was seen just before the explosion, the NTSB and FBI jointly announced that the Center Wing Tank of FL800 exploded because of a spark from a wire running through or in the vicinity of the fuel tank.

Ted Lopatkiewicz, deputy director of public affairs for the NTSB, said he was unaware of the Senate Judiciary Investigation.

Meanwhile, authorities have indicated the subcommittees hearings are slated to take place in February, 1999.

Christine Moeser contributed to this article.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-18, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Christine Moeser:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 6

Flight 800 Group Touts Missile Theory

The Associated Retired Aviation Professionals (ARAP) was founded last year by several individuals who believe TWA Flight 800 was brought down by missiles and not by an explosion in the center wing fuel tank as the National Transportation Safety Board has stated.

The organization has caught the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) leadership in a series of misrepresentations and "out right lies" over the past year, ARAP's aviation consultant, Commander William S. Donaldson, said. After speaking with witnesses and sorting through documents, Donaldson said ARAP was able to "force" the FBI officials to admit to Congress they failed to identify a high-speed boat positioned near Flight 800 when it exploded. ARAP is currently looking for anyone who may know the location of a 30- to 40-foot high-powered racing boat, Donaldson said.

"Witnesses observed this boat passing through the Moriches Inlet and racing out to sea," Donaldson said. "This should not be overlooked as the FBI has done. We believe the people have the right to know the truth."

The organization consists of former military, civilian, and aviation professionals who organized to independently investigate the TWA crash. Many of ARAP's members are military and civilian aviators and crash investigators, Donaldson said. The senior military aviator is Tom Moorer, a retired admiral, veteran of Pearl Harbor and chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during the Vietnam War. The senior civilian aviation investigator is Captain Howard Mann, a Long Island native with 40 years of experience as a TWA engineer. Mann was instrumental, Donaldson said, in finding the cause of TWA's fatal plane crashes in 1956 and in 1967.

Donaldson investigated his first airplane crash in 1977 and after his analysis, Donaldson said it resulted from an accidental air to air missile attack of a Navy A4. He is a graduate of crash analysis training from the Naval Post Graduate School. Approach Magazine, a monthly publication for pilots, published six of Donaldson's articles on aviation. He instructed advanced air combat maneuvering, air to air gunnery, and towed airborne targets for aircraft and ships.

Donaldson has also flown in air to ground combat missions in North Vietnam and Laos. He served as the Fleet Commander's observer for expansive fleet exercises and ran multiple carrier Fleet Air Exercise as the air operations officer. He graduated from air traffic controllers school and for two years ran the carrier air traffic control center. Donaldson was the nuclear weapons targeting officer for the Fleet Commander in Southern Europe. For three years he served as a maintenance officer in a jet squadron and participated in operations against terrorists.

from TPDL 1998-Dec-18, from Suffolk Life Newspapers, by Christine Moeser:

Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 7

Newsletter AIMs To Rein In The Media

The majority of financial backing for a study, claiming TWA Flight 800 was likely destroyed by a missile, comes from the sometimes controversial group, Accuracy in Media (AIM).

AIM centers around the beliefs of its founder, Reed Irvine, an economist who at one point worked for the federal government. Its headquarters is located in an office building suite in Washington, D.C. According to Irvine, it is continuously searching for the inaccuracies and misinformation that many news organizations have reported, helping to distort the truth and ignore their obligation to include all the facts.

"Many times, journalists report on issues incorrectly," Irvine stated. For the past 29 years, "It's our job here to bring these facts to light."

Twice a month, he publishes a newsletter called the AIM Report, which is distributed to 1,000 readers who pay a $15 per year membership fee. While he admits members rarely include media professionals, he characterizes a typical AIM reader as highly intelligent and having a vast interest in current events.

"Because we don't write down to readers, and the articles tend to be lengthy, subscribers must have a serious commitment to the world around us," Irvine said. "I couldn't see an unintelligent hermit reading our reports."

FLIGHT 800 JUST ONE ISSUE

While he attempts to cover a wide range of issues, he plans to update this past June's newsletter, which criticized the media's coverage of the investigation of TWA Flight 800. Specifically referring to ABC's "PrimeTime Live" program entitled "The Mystery of Flight 800," Irvine accused the media of having a passive approach, and "helping the government try to convince the public that the cause of the tragedy was some unexplained flaw in the Boeing 747."

During the program, Bernard Loeb, director of Aviation Safety of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Flight 800 was destroyed by an explosion in its nearly empty center wing fuel tank. What PrimeTime failed to report, Irvine says, is the evidence Commander William Donaldson has produced proving this theory to be wrong.

Donaldson is a retired Navy attack pilot who spent most of his career as a crash investigator. He is an AIM member who has been conducting an independent investigation, which is funded by AIM. The result of Donaldson's on-going investigation alludes to one or more missiles causing the plane to go down, and a possible FBI cover-up.

"Journalists who have accepted the official claims that there is no evidence that a missile downed FL800 have not critically examined the evidence," Irvine wrote in his newsletter. "There are no test results that support the NTSB hypothesis."

FROM A RADICAL TO A WATCHDOG

Once a "radical," he said the main purpose of AIM is to correct inaccuracies within the media, and to ensure the public is informed from all sides. He formed the organization because of his irritation with the misinformation within newspapers and television news programs.

As an economist with the Federal Reserve System in Washington, Irvine joined a luncheon club where conservatives would gather and discuss current affairs. From those conversations, he saw a need to form an organization whose main objective would be to keep mainstream media in line. In 1969, with the help of a millionaire friend, AIM was founded.

"We felt the media was misbehaving and causing a lot of grief," he recalls. "By 1972, we began printing a newsletter focusing on factual errors made throughout the media."

The organization grew and became more vocal in the intervening years.

Many journalists and editors have criticized Irvine, accusing him of using AIM as a way to channel his own philosophical and conservative beliefs.

CRITICIZED JOURNALISTS DEFEND THEMSELVES

Sydney Schanberg, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Cambodia when he was a correspondent for the New York Times, accused Irvine in a Newsday interview of publishing fabricated, distorted accounts of that coverage. Irvine claimed he was being "soft on communism."

"I've considered what he did, with respect to my work, scurrilous," Schanberg said. "I've never seen any document or statement of his where the facts were accurate. The very name =91Accuracy in Media' is a misnomer. It's not about accuracy, and it's not about the media. It's about ideology."

Irvine critiqued another New York Times reporter in his newsletter, by saying Raymond Bonner's coverage of Central America was supporting communism. He described his articles as "worth a division to the communists in Central America." While Bonner was reassigned to the metropolitan desk not long after Irvine's claim, he denied in various news interviews his new position was prompted by AIM's diatribe.

"The point is that here is somebody who purports to monitor the press," Bonner stated. "But as far as I know, he never calls anyone for comment. I think he is irresponsible."

To his critics, Irvine says his only interest is in correcting factual errors, and he will call upon any journalist who does not do the same.

Emphasizing the public's right to be informed, he believes it is the Media's job to present all the facts in an unbiased format. Unlike fiction writers, journalists should not pick and choose facts as they see fit.

"Everyone, even those in the media, are entitled to their opinions," Irvine said. "But when you're reporting to the public, the coverage should remain untainted, so that the public can judge for themselves."

from TPDL 1999-Apr-19, from WorldNetDaily, by David M. Bresnahan:

Was there a government cover-up? Former naval officer says airliner brought down by missile

This is the second of a two-part series on the downing of TWA Flight 800. Part one describes efforts by the federal government to stop independent investigators from exposing evidence found in the crash for TWA flight 800.

A former naval officer says TWA flight 800 was downed by a shoulder-fired missile three years ago. He claims the federal government is doing all it can to cover up what really happened -- and stop his investigation.

Retired Navy Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, III is an aviation mishap analyst and former naval crash investigator with extensive experience. He has been investigating the crash for over two years with other concerned, retired aviation professionals. Their organization, Associated Retired Aviation Professionals, has issued a report to congress on the evidence they found.

That report was recently updated with additional information which Cmdr. Donaldson claims proves the government has something to hide. The new evidence clearly shows that the FBI, National Transportation Safety Board, the Department of Justice, and the Clinton administration knew within hours of the crash that the plane was brought down by a missile.

Cmdr. Donaldson just returned from a Long Island courtroom where he was a consultant in a case he says shows how desperate the government is to cover up the crash evidence.

Journalist James Sanders, 53, and his wife, Elizabeth, 52, investigated the crash of TWA Flight 800 and presented a theory of government cover-up in a book, news articles and in interviews. The two were convicted last week of conspiring to steal evidence from the wreckage of the controversial flight.

The couple claims they were given the evidence by a TWA pilot for independent testing. The test they paid for determined a piece of cloth from the wreckage had the ingredients of missile fuel on it. The government would not permit any discussion of the crash, evidence of a missile, or any other topic outside the charge of theft of the piece of wreckage during the manipulated trial, according to Cmdr. Donaldson.

The Sanderses were denied the opportunity to present their case in court, and they are now free on bail while they await sentencing in July. They could spend up to 10 years in a federal prison.

Cmdr. Donaldson has challenged the official NTSB position on the cause of the crash. Over the past two years, he has been working with other retired aviation professionals, including some previous crash investigators as well as persons inside the NTSB investigation itself.

They have uncovered significant new information that appears to show that Flight 800 was shot down by one or more shoulder-fired missiles, and that the FBI, the Justice Department and the Administration knew this from the beginning and are trying to cover up what really happened.

During preparation for the Sanders trial, Cmdr. Donaldson contacted the NTSB with questions about crash evidence. He says they did all they could to intimidate him and the Sanders' attorney.

"They went into a d--- panic mode," he told WorldNetDaily by phone. He had asked for a report on the edge analysis of the portion of the plane he believes was hit by a missile. The tests he expected to have been performed by the NTSB with an electron microscope were done with a jeweler's eyepiece.

"If they move on to the final report and they don't have an edge analysis on that side body wall, then you can use that thing for toilet paper. It's not going to be worth a d---. I told him three of four more anomalies but I was wasting my time -- he's a lawyer," he explained.

His request for information not only revealed inadequacy in the official investigation, it also pointed to efforts to derail the court case.

"They jumped all over Maffeo (Sanders' attorney) saying, 'We're going to file motions to deny your access to discovery and everything else based on the fact that Donaldson has looked at some close-up pictures of the left-side body wall.'

"They just can't stand to see the truth in the light of day. This is not rocket science. Mostly it's common sense. There are huge anomalies that have never been seen in a domestic crash before," he explained.

James Hall, director of the NTSB and head of the crash investigation, told the New York Times shortly after the crash that the plane came down as the result of an explosion in the fuel tank located in the left wing. Cmdr. Donaldson wrote to him and asked him to resign.

"It may have been overkill in the tactic category, but it was based on essential premises of a safety investigation," he explained to WorldNetDaily. "You don't have the leader of the investigation and the agency that runs the investigation making proclamations in a New York newspaper that it wasn't a missile and the cause was a center wing tank explosion when they only had about 80 percent of the airplane out of the water.

"It was a theory they were going on that was totally contravened by very serious anomalies. So here you have the leadership saying, 'OK folks, I'm going to listen to anything you have to tell me about a center wing tank explosion, but let's not waste our time looking for any other facts.'

"That's not the way these things work. You're supposed to put your experts in the field and look at everything. There's a process where you find things that are not in a normal crash situation and you highlight it," complained the former naval crash investigator who has seen what military planes look like when they are shot down.

There are essentially three theories about the cause of the crash. The NTSB has claimed it was an explosion of the center wing tank, most likely from an electrical failure. The FBI has accepted the theory of the wing tank explosion, but they think the explosion was caused by a bomb.

Both agencies have not been willing to look at any evidence that does not specifically contribute to their particular theories, according to Cmdr. Donaldson. He says the third theory, the missile theory, is getting no consideration from officials and anyone promoting the theory is being discredited.

The FBI agent in charge of the investigation, James K. Kallstrom had a friend who died on the flight and presented a flag found in the debris to the surviving family. Cmdr. Donaldson says that while the nation watched the presentation on national television, something far different was going on behind the scenes.

"At the same time he was doing that, they were preferring charges against Sanders, TWA pilot Terrell Stacey, and people that actually did lose a lot of people they were close to. Terrell Stacey knew just about all of those 53 TWA people that died on the airplane. He was a senior guy with TWA," explained Cmdr. Donaldson.

"Liz Sanders knew quite a few of the flight attendants," he continued. "She was a supervisor of training there. And the FBI put pressure on Lee Taylor. Threatened her with obstruction of justice. They scared her to death because she allowed Jim Sanders to use her apartment in Kansas City to write his book. She thought she was going to go to jail for that, so she testified as a government witness. In her case she lost a hell of a lot of friends on that plane.

"So here's Kallstrom weeping elephant tears on national television handing a flag to somebody who happened to be the survivor of a passenger on board. At the same time he's beating the (expletive) out of the TWA people that really did suffer on this -- psychologically and every other way."

Cmdr. Donaldson's investigation discovered that the one ship equipped with the best equipment for detecting crash debris under water was diverted into collecting surface debris delaying them from performing the task they were best suited for, and no other ship could duplicate.

He also reports that it only took that ship 10 hours to completely map out three different debris fields which would enable recovery to begin the morning of the second day after the crash. Recovery was delayed several more days, a fact not understood at the time by the press.

The very best recovery equipment in the world was immediately made available by Weeks Marine, Inc. and was on the scene ready to go to work. Instead orders came from the White House to wait for the Navy to send equipment from Norfolk, Virginia to conduct the salvage operation.

"What I'm telling you is, by the 19th in the morning (the crash took place on the 17th), with divers on board they could have started extracting major sub-sea debris. Putting it on deck on the Weeks Marine barge. Instead, the White House, I believe, made a deal where the Navy was going to do the salvage. That decision, the media never saw through this. They never realized that the five-day wait caused by waiting for the Navy to respond from Norfolk (Virginia) and other places to bring their salvage equipment to bear, those bodies were exposed to the elements down there for an additional five days, at least. They didn't start doing anything until the 23rd."

When families of crash victims call the NTSB to ask about Cmdr. Donaldson they are given information apparently intended to discredit him.

"They told me he doesn't know what he's talking about. They said he has no experience and that he's one of those extremists who sees a conspiracy under every rock. They said his witnesses have been contacted by the FBI and they saw the plane on fire, not a missile," said one family member contacted by WorldNetDaily who did not want to be identified, or contacted again.

Cmdr. Donaldson has no plans to give up his battle. He plans to continue to investigate the evidence and search for more.