TWA 800

by Jack Cashill

  Authorities had an incentive to discount the Kabot photo and the Muma fax. In its summary the FBI acknowledged that three submarines—the USS Normandy, the USS Trepang, and the USS Albuquerque—were in the “immediate vicinity of the crash site.” So too, said the FBI, were an Aegis cruiser and a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion. The P-3, in fact, just happened to be flying about seven thousand feet above TWA 800 when the plane was blown out of the sky. Were there a drone or target missile in the mix, the U.S. Navy would have had all the “combatants” needed for a Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) missile test.

  In 1996, the Navy was in the process of introducing this enormously complex system. The CEC was created to integrate the information coming from each of the combatant’s sensors—range, bearing, elevation, Doppler updates etc.—and feed the integrated picture back to the individual combatants. In the CEC live-fire tests, which began as early as 1994 in Puerto Rico, drones played the role of “unknown assumed enemy.” The P-3’s role was to relay data among the various units involved.

  In July 1996, this information was not classified. If curious, the FBI—or the media—could have reviewed a comprehensive article in the November 1995 John Hopkins APL Technical Digest titled simply, “The Cooperative Engagement Capability.” One color illustration captured an actual test off the Virginia coast in 1994 when the various ships in the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower battlegroup successfully cued and tracked a tactical ballistic missile. In the middle of the illustration, relaying information among the vessels, was the P-3.9

  The P-3 should have given the game away. The authorities could explain away the hundreds of missile sightings on July 17, the radar track of a missile, the photo of a drone, the photo of a smoke trail, the missile sightings on July 12 and July 17, even the location of ships and submarines. There was no denying, however, that right in the middle of the mix, exactly where one would expect to find a surveillance aircraft in a missile test, was the P-3. Its transponder “broken,” the plane was flying within a mile or so of what was said to be the first spontaneous mid-air explosion in the era of Jet-A fuel. This was either most freakish coincidence in the history of aviation or the proverbial “smoking gun.” If the media needed to confirm their suspicions, they should have asked the Navy brass why the P-3 was sent on a meaningless sub-hunting exercise hundreds of mile away while the terrorists who allegedly shot down TWA 800 were still at large. Finally, the media might have asked Jim Kallstrom how FBI investigators overlooked so obvious a lead.

  I do not presume to know the exact details of what happened the night of July 17, 1996, but the evidence for a missile test gone awry overwhelms the dispassionate observer. With Ramzi Yousef on trial in New York, with serious people worried about the threat to attack America with flying bombs, with the Atlanta Olympics just two days away, with Saddam Hussein celebrating Iraq’s Independence Day, it made sense for the Navy to test its cooperative engagement capabilities in the Atlantic, arguably even in the crowded air space around New York. The probable tests on July 7 and July 12 caused no stir. It seems likely that the Navy increased the degree of difficulty on July 17, perhaps in response to a genuine threat. If the participants had merely cued and tracked as they did in the earlier test off the Virginia coast, two hundred thirty people would not have died that night. As was true with the Vincennes in 1988, something went wrong.

  Based on available evidence, it appears that at least two missiles detonated near TWA 800 in quick order, one at the No. 3 engine on the right side, and the second and fatal blast, according to the IAMAW, at “the lower left side of the aircraft.” If there were a drone in the mix, it seems to have been destroyed.

  Several very good witnesses named the right wing as the site of one explosion, including Witness 73 and fisherman William Gallagher who “saw something hit the right side of the plane.”10 As the New York Times reported, investigators found traces of PETN on the right wing within five days of the crash and confirmed traces of PETN inside the fuselage near the right wing. ALPA’s Jim Speer had a section of the right wing tested for nitrates, and when it tested positive the FBI shut the test down. The No. 3 engine appeared to have been the first object blown off the aircraft.

  The IAMAW, the most forthright participant in the NTSB investigation, spoke openly of the left side blast. Although restrained in its language, the union’s final report had the ring of truth about it: “A high pressure event breached the fuselage and the fuselage unzipped due to the event. The explosion [of the center fuel tank] was a result of this event.” In layman’s terms, a blast—“outside of the aircraft in close proximity to the aircraft”—ripped open the center fuel tank and caused the fuel to vaporize and explode.

  Yes, the center fuel tank did blow up. The IAMAW confirmed as much. No one ever said otherwise. The IAMAW, however, did not shy from rejecting the official NTSB position on the fuel tank’s role in the plane’s destruction: “We have not been a party to any evidence, wreckage or tests that could conclude that the [center fuel tank] explosion was and is the primary contributor to this accident.”11 As of August 14, 1996, the New York Times was reporting much the same, specifically that “the center fuel tank caught fire as many as 24 seconds after the initial blast that split apart the plane.”12

  For its part, the NTSB could offer no evidence to rebut the IAMAW case for an external blast save for an absence of “physical evidence.” In the light of what is now known about the corruption of the investigation, this argument carries no weight. The one honest member of the FBI missile team noted that a missile triggered by a proximity fuse “would likely leave little or no evidence of a hit on the aircraft.” Then too, as the NTSB conceded in its final report, “Some areas of fuselage skin and [center fuel tank] are missing.”13 Why doubt that officials who distorted witness observations, rearranged the debris field, and reinterpreted all data and visual imagery to fit their preferred scenario would have qualms about making physical evidence go “missing.” According to the NTSB’s Hank Hughes, who openly protested the “disappearance of parts from the hangar,” this evidence did not go missing by accident.

  Accidents can happen. This was a huge one, a tragic one. But the larger wrong, the moral wrong, the uncorrected wrong began after the plane’s destruction. The Navy could not have—and would not have—concealed its responsibility unless authorized to do so. Nor would the FBI and CIA have intervened on their own initiative. These authorizations could only have come from the White House. This was the rare White House in American history, perhaps the only one, reckless enough to have authorized a cover-up this bold.

  Much about the government’s performance in the TWA 800 investigation surprises, but none of it shocks. Governments inevitably fail the people. Our founders knew this. They constructed a constitution that accounted for the weaknesses of human nature. As a corrective, they passed the First Amendment. “Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1799, “but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light.”14 Two centuries later, Jefferson’s trust in the press was thoroughly betrayed.

  In his review of Stalcup and Borjesson’s TWA Flight 800, the Times’ Neil Genzlinger wondered whether there was a government agency with the credibility to reopen the investigation, especially given how “poorly” the agencies in question came off in the documentary. In an unwitting bit of institutional self-criticism, Genzlinger concluded, “It’s hard to imagine any entity that would command the authority that could put the Flight 800 case to rest.”15 The readers of that article—or this book—have to ask, “How about the New York Times?”

  NOTES

  ONE: THE BREACH

  1.Transcript, 9/11 Commission Hearing, CNN, March 24, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/24/nfcnn.01.html.

  2.TWA Flight 800, NTSB docket materials, DCA-96-MA070, August 2000, Exhibit 4A, appendix B.

  3.Ibid.

  4.NTSB Aircraft Accident Report, In-flight breakup over the Atlantic Ocean, Trans World Airlines
Flight 800 Boeing 747-131, N93119, near East Moriches, New York, July 17, 1996 (Washington, DC: Diane Publishing, 2000), 232, http://bit.ly/1LqLGsX.

  5.Hillary Rodham Clinton’s White House Schedules, New York Times, March 20, 2008, http://projects.nytimes.com/clinton-schedules.

  6.Transcript, Witnessed: The Crash of TWA Flight 800, CNN, July 19, 2014, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1407/19/csr.01.html.

  7.Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 121.

  8.Phone interview with Robert Patterson, July 15, 2004 (est.) and follow-up in person interview, Newport Beach, California, October 15, 2006.

  9.NTSB docket materials, Exhibit 4A, appendix M.

  10.Transcript, Witnessed.

  11.Robert Woodward, The Choice: How Clinton Won (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 421.

  12.Ibid., 367.

  13.Evan Thomas et al., Back from the Dead: How Clinton Survived the Republican Revolution (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997), 79.

  14.Patricia Milton, In the Blink of an Eye: The FBI Investigation of TWA Flight 800 (New York: Random House, 1999), 7.

  TWO: CONSPIRACY THEORIST

  1.Loren Fleckenstein, “New Data Show Missile May Have Nailed TWA 800,” Press-Enterprise, March 10, 1997.

  2.FBI press release, December 5, 1997.

  3.FBI New York Office Press Release, November 18, 1997, http://www.lchr.org/a/11/j/fbitwa.htm.

  4.NTSB Hearing, August 22, 2000, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Portal:TWA_Flight_800_investigation/Day1.

  5.Transcript, “Jim Kallstrom’s Take on the Plane,” March 20, 2014, http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/03/20/jim_kallstrom_s_take_on_the_plane.

  6.Patricia Milton, In the Blink of an Eye: The FBI Investigation of TWA Flight 800 (New York: Random House, 1999), 353.

  7.William Langewiesche, “Dead End Story,” New York Times, September 26, 1999, https://www.nytimes.com/books/99/09/26/reviews/990926.26langewt.html.

  THREE: THE BEST PEOPLE

  1.“Top 10 Stories of 1996,” CNN.com, http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/1996/year.in.review/.

  2.Whittaker Chambers, Witness (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2014), 793.

  3.George Johnson, “Pierre, Is That A Masonic Flag on the Moon?” New York Times, November 24, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/24/weekinreview/pierre-is-that-a-masonic-flag-on-the-moon.html.

  4.Jeffrey Reid, “‘Pierre Salinger Syndrome’ and the TWA 800 Conspiracies,” CNN.com, July 17, 2006, http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/12/twa.conspiracy/.

  5.Phone interviews with Dick Russell, the most recent and detailed on July 25, 2015.

  6.Phone interview with Jim Holtsclaw, July 28, 2015.

  7.Affidavit, James Allan Holtsclaw, October 25, 2002, http://twa800.com/lahr/affidavits/j-james-holtsclaw.pdf.

  8.“What Happened to TWA Flight 800,” CNN.com, July 19, 2015, http://www.cnn.com/US/9607/19/twa.investigation/index.html?_s=PM:US.

  9.Christine Negroni, Deadly Departure: Why the Experts Failed to Prevent the TWA Flight 800 Disaster and How It Could Happen Again (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 138–39.

  10.Affidavit of Richard Russell, January 2, 2003, http://twa800.com/lahr/affidavits/m-richard-russell.pdf.

  11.The e-mail was published by CNN.com in August 1996, http://www.cnn.com/US/9611/08/twa.update/email.html.

  12.Jocelyn Noveck, “Pierre Salinger’s TWA Flight 800 Missile News Conference,” Associated Press, November 8, 1996, http://www.welfarestate.com/twa800/pierre.htm.

  FOUR: THE VIDEO

  1.Thomas Jefferson letter to Charles Yancey, 1816, http://famguardian.org/Subjects/Politics/thomasjefferson/jeff1350.htm.

  2.Unless specified otherwise, all the quotes that follow can be found in Jack Cashill and James Sanders, Silenced, 2001.

  3.FBI New York Office Press Release, “FBI: No criminal evidence behind TWA 800 crash,” November 18, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/US/9711/18/twa.fbi.presser/.

  4.TWA Flight 800, NTSB docket materials, DCA-96-MA070, August 2000, Exhibit 4A, appendix B.

  FIVE: THE MAN ON THE BRIDGE

  1.Jack Cashill and James Sanders, Silenced (2001).

  2.TWA Flight 800, NTSB docket materials, DCA-96-MA070, August 2000, Exhibit 4A, appendix FF.

  3.NTSB Aircraft Accident Report, In-flight breakup over the Atlantic Ocean, Trans World Airlines Flight 800 Boeing 747-131, N93119, near East Moriches, New York, July 17, 1996 (Washington, DC: Diane Publishing, 2000), 236, http://bit.ly/1LqLGsX.

  4.“Navy Aircraft Testing May Have Caused Earthquake-Like Sonic Boom Felt from New Jersey to Long Island,” NBC New York, January 27, 2016, http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Earthquake-Sonic-Boom-Shaking-New-Jersey-New-York-Connecticut-Long-Island-Tri-State-Shaking-NY-CT-NJ-366886661.html.

  5.NTSB docket materials, Exhibit 4A, appendix Z.

  6.David Hendrix, “Witnesses Boost Missile Theory,” Press-Enterprise, October 20, 1997, cached at http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/AUDIO.html.

  7.Letter from George Tenet to Jim Hall, March 15, 1999, cached at TWA Flight 800: The Impossible Zoom Climb, raylahr.entryhost.com, “CIA records released to Tom Stalcup,” records 76–100.

  8.Randolph M. Tauss, “The Crash of TWA Flight 800,” https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/public-affairs/entertainment-industry-liaison/twaflight.pdf.

  9.Executive Order 12333—United States intelligence activities, Federal Register, December 4, 1981, http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12333.html.

  10.FBI New York Office Press Release, November 18, 1997.

  11.CIA documents cached at TWA Flight 800: The Impossible Zoom Climb, raylahr.entryhost.com, “CIA records released to Tom Stalcup,” records 51–75.

  SIX: INTELLIGENCE MEDAL OF MERIT

  1.Randolph M. Tauss, “The Crash of TWA Flight 800,” https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/public-affairs/entertainment-industry-liaison/twaflight.pdf.

  2.TWA Flight 800, NTSB docket materials, DCA-96-MA070, August 2000, Exhibit 4A, appendix B.

  3.Ibid.

  4.Ibid., appendix C.

  5.Ibid.

  6.Ibid.

  7.Ibid.

  8.Ibid.

  9.Ibid.

  10.Ibid., appendix D.

  11.Ibid.

  12.Ibid.

  13.Ibid.

  14.Ibid.

  15.Ibid.

  16.Ibid.

  17.Ibid.

  18.Ibid., appendix E.

  19.Ibid.

  20.Ibid.

  21.Ibid.

  22.Ibid.

  23.Ibid.

  24.Ibid.

  25.Ibid.

  26.Ibid., appendix F.

  27.Ibid.

  28.Ibid.

  29.Ibid.

  30.Ibid.

  31.Ibid., appendix G.

  32.Ibid.

  33.Ibid.

  34.Ibid.

  35.Ibid.

  36.Ibid., appendix H.

  37.Ibid., appendix B.

  38.Ibid., appendix H.

  39.Ibid.

  40.Tauss, “The Crash of TWA Flight 800.”

  41.Ibid.

  42.NTSB docket materials, Exhibit 4A, appendix B.

  43.“Affidavit of Mr. Dwight Brumley,” TWA800.com, http://twa800.com/lahr/affidavits/p-dwight-brumley.pdf.

  44.Ibid.

  SEVEN: THE GOOD BUREAUCRAT

  1.Bob Woodward, The Last of the President’s Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), e-book, chapter 22.

  2.Al Kamen, “Route to NTSB Runs Through Tennessee,” Washington Post, May 28, 1993, cached at High Beam Research, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-948549.html.

  3.Phone interview with Vernon Grose, October 23, 2015.

  4.Patricia Milton, In the Blink of an Eye: The FBI Investigation of TWA Flight 800 (New York: Random House, 1999), 131.

  5.Christine Negroni, Deadly Departure: Why the Experts Failed to Prevent the TWA Flight 800 Disaster and How It Could Happen Again (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), 85.

  6.Phone interview wi
th Vernon Grose, October 23, 2105 and follow-up e-mail exchange on November 9, 2015.

  7.TWA Flight 800 Investigation/Day 2–3, Wikisource, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Portal:TWA_Flight_800_investigation/Day2-3.

  8.NTSB Witness Group Factual Report, Docket No. SA-516, Exhibit No. 4A, October 16, 1997, http://twa800.com/4a/exhibit4a.html.

  9.Megyn Kelly Reports, Fox News, June 19, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0vN1j_Q0A.

  10.NTSB Aircraft Accident Report, In-flight breakup over the Atlantic Ocean, Trans World Airlines Flight 800 Boeing 747-131, N93119, near East Moriches, New York, July 17, 1996 (Washington, DC: Diane Publishing, 2000), 255, http://bit.ly/1LqLGsX.

  11.As shown in Silenced.

  12.TWA Flight 800, NTSB docket materials, DCA-96-MA070, August 2000, Exhibit 4A, appendix G.

  13.Ibid., appendix D.

  14.Ibid., appendix C. All Perry material can be found here.

  15.Ibid., appendix H.

  16.Ibid., appendix N.

  17.Ibid., appendix O.

  18.The Washington Times, Tuesday, August 15, 2000, cached at Associated Retired Aviation Professionals: The Flight 800 Investigation, http://twa800.com/images/times-8-15-00.gif.

  19.David Hendrix, “Witnesses Boost Missile Theory,” Press-Enterprise, October 20, 1997, cached at http://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/AUDIO.html

  20.NTSB docket materials, Exhibit 4A, appendix FF.

  21.“Conspiracy Inoculation,” New York Times, November 19, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/19/opinion/conspiracy-inoculation.html.

  22.“After the Crash,” New York Times, July 19, 1996, http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/19/opinion/after-the-crash.html.

  23.“FBI: No criminal evidence behind TWA 800 crash,” CNN.com, November 18, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/US/9711/18/twa.fbi.presser/.

  24.Randolph M. Tauss, “The Crash of TWA Flight 800,” https://www.cia.gov/offices-of-cia/public-affairs/entertainment-industry-liaison/twaflight.pdf.

  EIGHT: RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM