by Jack Cashill
The “best people,” with the New York Times in the lead, pushed back hard. On November 24, 1996, for instance, just four months after the crash and a year before the FBI closed its investigation, the Times ran an all-too-typical article headlined “Pierre, Is That a Masonic Flag on the Moon?”3 In the first sentence reporter George Johnson singled out the ostensible target, the Internet with its “throbbing, fevered brain.” Johnson directed his contempt, however, at those ordinary Americans whose Internet use threatened the Times’ hegemony on the news. “Electrified by the Internet,” Johnson complained, “suspicions about the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800 were almost instantly transmuted into convictions that it was the result of friendly fire.”
On the tenth anniversary of the crash in 2006, CNN’s Jeffery Reid nicely captured the anti-Internet bias still prevalent in America’s newsrooms. Reid explained how ten years earlier a “slew of sinister conspiracy theories” diverted investigators’ attention from the accepted cause of the disaster, a center fuel tank explosion, “most likely” caused by a spark in its vapor-filled center tank. “So prevalent were these theories,” Reid added, “that the term ‘Pierre Salinger Syndrome’—the belief that everything on the Internet is true—entered the lexicon.”4
In the real world, no one suffered from Pierre Salinger syndrome, least of all Pierre Salinger. As press secretary to President John F. Kennedy, Salinger helped create and sustain the Camelot mythology in which he himself—a quotable, cigar-chomping citizen of the world—played an integral part. Salinger was nothing if not connected. He stood just feet from Robert Kennedy when the senator was shot. He served briefly as a U.S. Senator from California. And in the years that followed, he made a nice career for himself as a journalist and international public relations executive. In 1996, his name still opened doors on both sides of the Atlantic, but he overestimated his clout.
About a month after the TWA 800 disaster, retired United Airline pilot and accident investigator Dick Russell received a phone call from Jim Holtsclaw, a friend of his who served as a deputy regional director for the Air Transport Association (ATA).5 Although Holtsclaw worked out of Los Angeles, he had been in Washington for a regular monthly ATA meeting soon after the TWA 800 disaster. In Washington, a friend alerted Holtsclaw that the air traffic controllers in New York sensed something amiss. The friend put Holtsclaw in touch with one of them. “I’ll send the radar tape,” the controller told him. “You decide what you are seeing.”6
Holtsclaw knew something about radar. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Air Traffic Control School and the FAA Air Traffic School, served as LAX Control Tower manager and ATC manager with American Airlines before moving on to the Air Transport Association. As he would later testify under oath, he had received a copy of the radar tape recorded at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON). It showed, in Holtsclaw’s words, “a primary target at the speed of approximately 1200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800.”7
“Target” was controller-speak for “unknown object.” That first night a missile strike seemed the obvious cause of the plane’s demise. MSNBC, on the air for just two days, had secured an amateur video showing an object approaching the plane. Russell saw the video several times before it was pulled. Although the government and the media would scramble to change the storyline, CNN was still reporting on July 19 that “radar records reviewed by military officials showed a mystery blip in the vicinity of the TWA flight path.”8
Those officials had reason to be concerned. CNN’s Negroni provided the most detailed account of this radar data in her book Deadly Departure. This account has added value in that it represents what attorneys call an “admission against interest.” Negroni’s primary source was Ron Schleede, then a deputy director of aviation safety at the NTSB. On the morning after the crash, July 18, an FAA official showed him a radar plot that got his complete attention. “Holy Christ, it looks bad,” he said at the time. He told Negroni, “It showed this track that suggested something fast made a turn and took the airplane.” This was the same track that alarmed Holtsclaw and the air traffic controller who tipped him off. That same morning, said Schleede, “The FAA was working with people at the top secret level. They were in a crisis room with intelligence people and everybody else.”9
During their phone conversation, Russell wrote down what Holtsclaw had to tell him verbatim.10 Russell had no trouble believing it. He had been suspicious since Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon first announced the crash. Russell had been around long enough to know that civilian plane crashes were not the natural bailiwick of the Defense Department. Russell e-mailed Holtsclaw’s highly specific message to eleven confidantes who shared his interest in air safety. The gist of the e-mail was that “TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy guided missile ship which was in area W-105.” Wrote Russell, “It has been a cover-up from the word go.”11 Although recipients had vowed to keep the information among them, one of them posted the information on the Internet, and it somehow found its way through French intelligence and on to Pierre Salinger.
At the time, Salinger was working in Paris where the interest in TWA 800 remained high. Thirty-six French citizens died in the crash. Salinger called Russell about the rumors and visited him in Florida soon afterwards. In addition to the information Russell and his colleagues had been sharing, Salinger had with him several government dispatches that reinforced the theory that the U.S. Navy accidentally shot down the 747. As to Salinger’s motives, Russell believes that he seriously disliked the Clintons. He remained a loyal enough Democrat, however, to sit on his information until it lost its political punch. He broke his silence at an aviation conference in the French resort city of Cannes two days after the November 4 presidential election. There, Salinger told the assembled executives that he had “very important details that show the plane was brought down by a U.S. Navy missile.” He added the obvious: “If the news came out that an American naval ship shot down that plane it would be something that would make the public very very unhappy and could have an effect on the election.”12
American authorities did not care what role Salinger had played in Camelot. They were quick to swat him out of the Kennedy pantheon. The FBI, the White House, the Navy all took a shot. Salinger was unready for the assault. The documents he had were sketchy, and his knowledge base was shallow. The media found the subject irresistible. In the month of November 1996 alone, the New York Times ran four articles with headlines that mocked Salinger. George Johnson was particularly merciless. “It was all linked to Whitewater,” Johnson wrote, “unless the missile was meant for a visiting U.F.O.?” Johnson’s reference to “Whitewater” was not uncommon. He made slighting allusions as well to Waco, Ruby Ridge, Arkansas state troopers, Vincent Foster, and other sources of amusement in Clinton-era newsrooms. What Johnson was attempting to do, and he was hardly unique in so doing, was to paint TWA 800 as one wacky anti-Clinton conspiracy out of many. What he did not do—no one at the Times did after the first two days—was speak to any of the 258 FBI witnesses to a likely missile strike.
At the time, I must confess to having enjoyed the attacks on Salinger. It was not that I trusted the Clintons. I did not, but like many Americans, I trusted the U.S. Navy or certainly wanted to. Salinger’s accusations seemed not just wrongheaded. To me, they seemed borderline treasonous.
Chapter: FOUR
THE VIDEO
We called our documentary Silenced. It opened with a relevant quote from Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”1 The problem we faced, the problem Whittaker Chambers faced, was a problem even our founders faced. This was a problem rooted deep in human nature: the temptation to not know, to remain ignorant even in the face of evil—especially in the face of evil. As I was learning, the magnitude of the TWA 800 deception helped protect it. Skeptical as I was of the administration’s good intentions, even I had a hard time believing that its
minions could execute such spectacular legerdemain. Skepticism made sense. We made Silenced to help overcome it. An honest recounting of known facts might not stir the best people from their slumber, but it just might rouse the “great body of the nation” to ask questions.
Here is what we knew for sure in the spring of 2001 and shared in Silenced.2 At 8:19 p.m., on a pleasantly cool evening, TWA Flight 800 left JFK Airport in New York with 230 people on board bound for Paris. The 747 headed east in fair skies along the affluent south coast of Long Island. Twelve minutes into this so-far uneventful flight, witnesses along the coast began to notice inexplicable phenomena in the sky. Mike Wire, working on a Westhampton bridge, watched as a flaming streak of light rose up from behind a beach house and zigzagged south-southeast away from shore. Senior Navy NCO Dwight Brumley saw another streak from his window seat thousands of feet above TWA 800 on US Air Flight 217. This second streak rose up towards his plane before leveling off and heading north towards Long Island on a course perpendicular to TWA 800’s. Engineer Paul Angelides tracked the southbound streak from his Westhampton deck and then watched in awe as the northbound streak rose off the horizon.
At 8:31 p.m., Wire, Brumley, Angelides and hundreds of others, perhaps thousands, watched helplessly as TWA 800 exploded in mid-air. Air National Guard pilot Major Fritz Meyer had little doubt what caused the plane to explode. “It was definitely a rocket motor,” he said. “What I saw explode was definitely ordnance. I have enough experience. I saw one, two, three, four explosions before the fireball.” No one was in a better position to see. Meyer was in a helicopter over the Long Island shore facing southbound.
“The plane broke jaggedly in the sky,” said witness Lisa Perry. “The nose is continuing to go forward; the left wing is gliding off in its own direction, drifting in an arc gracefully down; the right wing and passenger window are doing the same in their direction out to the right; and the tail with its fireball leaps up and then promptly falls into the water below.”
In the course of Silenced, we told in brief the story of James and Elizabeth Sanders. We delved into the radar data, the physical evidence, the debris field, the rocket residue, the flight data recorder, the cockpit voice recorder, the characteristics of Jet A fuel, and other technical information. Without question, the most compelling part of the video was the eyewitness testimony. No network had ever interviewed Mike Wire, Lisa Perry, Paul Angelides, Dwight Brumley, or Major Fritz Meyer. Ten years after the disaster, CNN’s Internet-basher Jeffrey Reid did not even know they existed. Those who watched Silenced were finally able to compare the credibility of the witnesses to that of the government officials tasked with discrediting them. To the dispassionate observer, it was no contest. The witnesses knew what they saw. Despite all the incentives not to, they continued to plead their case and go public with their dissent. We paid no one for his or her testimony.
To make its “no physical evidence” alibi stick, the administration somehow had to trivialize the witness testimony. Recently discovered CIA memos show the CIA got the assignment immediately after the crash. The agency’s quiet work behind the scenes culminated in the public premiere of an animated video in November 1997. The FBI showed the video during a news conference announcing the suspension of its criminal probe. Although the networks would never air the video again, we got hold of a copy and included relevant sections of it in Silenced.
“The following program was produced by the Central Intelligence Agency.” So began the narration of what has come to be called the zoom climb video. The narrator explained that there were three major theories as to what destroyed TWA 800: bomb, missile, or mechanical failure. What concerned investigators, however, were reports “from dozens of eyewitnesses” who had allegedly seen objects in the sky before the explosion. “Was it a missile?” asked the narrator. “Did foreign terrorists destroy the aircraft?” Of course not. “What the witnesses saw,” the narrator reassured the media, “was a Boeing 747 in various stages of crippled flight.” After some thoroughly confusing misdirection about sound analysis, the narrator weighed in with his money quote, underlined on screen in case someone might miss the point, “The Eyewitnesses Did Not See a Missile.”
As to what the witnesses did see, the CIA and other agencies involved could never get their stories quite straight. This was evident on the very day of the video’s premiere and would become problematic as the investigation ground on. The narrator talked of “a trailing cascade of flames” falling to the horizon, and the video showed as much. The FBI claimed this was the image that confused the witnesses. “What some people thought was a missile hitting the plane was actually burning, leaking fuel from the jet after the front part had already broken off,”3 reported CNN, paraphrasing the FBI.
The CIA narrator, however, said something quite different. “Just after the aircraft exploded,” he insisted, “it pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its last recorded altitude of about 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet.” The animation showed the plane doing just that. As the narrator explained, when the nose of the plane broke off, the sudden loss of mass caused the plane to turn up and climb. This rocketing, noseless 747 was what witnesses “repeatedly described as an ascending white light resembling a flare or firework.”
As we noted in Silenced, the CIA explanation mystified not only the eyewitnesses, but also the aviation experts. Among those we interviewed on camera was Dick Russell’s friend and mentor, Ray Lahr. A retired United Airlines pilot, Lahr enlisted in the U.S. Navy right out of high school in 1943. He was still in training when the war ended, but he elected to get his commission and remain in the reserves. In 1953, he began his career as a pilot with United Airlines and remained with the company until his retirement in 1985. While still with United, he pursued advanced studies at UCLA in gravity, a field that Lahr describes as “the love of my life.” In addition, he worked with the Airline Pilots Association (ALPA) as an accident investigator. Given his background, no one in America was better positioned to critique the CIA zoom climb than Lahr.
Lahr is an American original. He has since become a good friend. At the time of our interview he was seventy-five years old. With his close-cropped dark hair and compact, athletic build, he looked twenty years younger. He still does. “All the pilots that I’ve spoken to think it’s ridiculous,” Lahr said of the zoom climb. He argued that when the nose left the aircraft, the center of gravity moved “aft,” to the rear of the plane. “The tail section fell backward,” witness Lisa Perry told the FBI.4 Lahr described the phenomenon as “putting two people on one side of teeter totter.” He added, “The plane would not have any opportunity to climb.” It would be so out of balance, he argued, that it “would immediately stall and fall out of the sky.”
The most formidable of the zoom climb’s critics to appear in Silenced was Bill Donaldson. As a twenty-five-year Navy carrier pilot, Donaldson flew more than seventy strike missions over North Vietnam and Laos. Retired at the time of TWA 800’s destruction, Donaldson wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal critical of the investigation in 1997. That letter led to the formation of a high-level group of TWA 800 dissenters known as the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals, which he headed.
In high school, Donaldson had been an all-state football player, and in his mid-fifties, he still looked the part. When he spoke, people listened. The fact that he had investigated a dozen aviation accidents during his tenure with the Navy added to his natural air of authority. Tragically, while we were putting together our video, Donaldson was suffering from a fatal brain tumor. He died at fifty-six, just weeks before 9/11. Although I had never met Donaldson, I spoke with him about the crash and watched clips of his public presentations that we included in Silenced. “Once it goes beyond twenty degrees nose up,” said Donaldson of the aircraft in one dramatic show-and-tell, “it can’t fly anymore because these wings are no longer into the wind. They can’t produce lift.” There was, in fact, a certain force that caused the plane to fa
ll out of sky, Donaldson deadpanned. “It’s called gravity.”
Chapter: FIVE
THE MAN ON THE BRIDGE
The CIA analysts never interviewed Mike Wire, the fellow who saw the incident from a bridge in Westhampton. One would think they might have, given that they built their animation around his perspective. We interviewed Wire, and we did so on the bridge in question. This no-nonsense, six-foot, seven-inch millwright told us and showed us what he told the FBI five years earlier. In Silenced, we created our own animation of what he had actually seen.
On that fateful evening, Wire was working late with several engineers and electricians to open a new bridge on Beach Lane. It now spans the Quantuck Canal that separates the mainland from the pricey spit of a beach beyond. Wire’s job put him in the windowless switchgear room at the base of the bridge. Needing a breather, he surfaced at about 8:30 and leaned out casually over the rail with his eye on the dunes and beach houses beyond. From this vantage point, he saw—and felt—events unfold.
Soon after the event, Wire returned to his Richboro, Pennsylvania, home. Alerted to what Wire had seen by a co-worker, FBI agent Daniel Kilcullen called Wire on July 23. The brief conversation convinced Kilcullen that Wire deserved an interview. On July 29, agent Andrew Lash showed up chez Wire, and Wire told his story. At the time, he had no idea that hundreds of others had seen what he had seen. After his interview, Wire returned to work and gave the incident little thought. He did not pay much attention to the news accounts until November 18, 1997, the day the FBI wrapped up its investigation. After seeing an abbreviated version of the CIA video on the news, he presumed it to be “some temporary scheme to pacify the public.”1 He did not learn of his starring role in the complete video until AIM’s Reed Irvine found him in the spring of 2000. An Army vet, Wire was about to get a fresh look at the way the government worked.