12 minutes after takeoff from New York’s JFK Airport, TWA Flight 800 was blown out of the sky, killing all 230 people onboard. “Significant Naval units” were in the area, according to a Navy document. Three radar picked up a missile launch. Navy radar observed the missile closing in on the TWA 747, per a Navy radar database uncovered under the Freedom of Information Act. Two key witnesses observed the same missile merge with the aircraft. What happened is not too difficult to determine.
What Was The Bright Object Detected On Radar?
There was an initial report that something had been picked up on Air Traffic Control radar, but this report was quickly withdraw. Associated Press on (07/19/96) reported ” Radar detected a blip merging with the jet shortly before the explosion, something that could indicate a missile hit.”
It’s important to remember that in normal operation, Air Traffic Control radar does not detect aircraft, but aircraft transponders. A transponder is a special type of radio in the aircraft that listens for a radar beam. When it detects a radar beam, it immediately sends out a coded signal with an identifying number (assigned by the Air Traffic Controller on the ground) as well as the altitude of the aircraft. The Air Traffic Control radar will then use this extra data to display useful information to the Air Traffic Controller.
All air traffic operating inside the Terminal Control Area is required to have an operating radar transponder. Unless the Air Traffic Controller displays the skin paint return, any air traffic without a transponder will not be seen.
Federal investigators striving mightily to conjure up a politically contrived “Magic Mechanical” explanation made up inside the 1996 Clinton White House have not uncovered one scintilla of evidence pointing toward such a conclusion. In fact, Brookhaven and Sandia national labs, after exhaustive testing, established scientifically that no rational basis exists for calling the loss of TWA Flight 800 a mechanical event.
That warm July evening, a lady identified by the FBI as witness 73, from Madison, N.C., was standing on a beach on the south side of Long Island near Moriches Inlet, her feet in the cool ocean water, watching TWA Flight 800 about eight miles to the south over the Atlantic Ocean at 13,800 feet heading toward Paris, France. The 747 was easily visible – not a mere speck in the sky as the FBI would allege. As she watched the 747 level off she wondered where its lucky passengers were going.
Then, “while keeping her eyes on the aircraft, she observed a ‘red streak’ moving up from the ground toward the aircraft at an approximately 45 degree angle. The ‘red streak’ was leaving a light gray colored smoke trail. The ‘red streak’ went past the right side and above the aircraft before arcing back toward the aircraft’s right wing. (She) described the arc’s shape as resembling an upside down Nike swoosh logo. The smoke trail, which was light gray in color, was narrow initially and widened as it approached the aircraft.” The interviewing FBI agent’s handwritten notes said the missile struck the 747 “right in front of the right wing. She then observed the front of the aircraft separate from the back. …
“(She) was then asked if she had any opinion about what it was that she observed that evening. She replied that she believed that she witnessed a missile, which had been fired from a boat which was located somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.”
At the same time witness 73 observed TWA Flight 800 from a beach near Moriches Inlet, a commercial fisherman, Mike Gallagher, on his boat about eight miles due west of TWA Flight 800, observed the 747 heading east. He then observed an orange streak rise from the ocean, travel upward at an approximate 45 degree angle, approach TWA Flight 800′s right side. Gallagher initially thought the missile would miss the 747. At the last second, however, the missile turned sharply upward into the plane.
Gallagher, drawing a sketch of the 747 from an overhead view, told me the missile struck the aircraft at the point where the leading edge of the right wing meets the fuselage.
ABC World News Sunday, 07/21/96, interviewed witness Lou Desyron, who reported, “We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color. …once it went into flames, I knew that wasn’t a flare.”
Other pilots in the air reported seeing a bright light near the jumbo jet before it exploded.
In the month following the disaster, more than 700 of those witnesses would speak on record with the FBI. The truth of what they saw has only become clear in the last year or so with the release of a treasure trove of CIA documents.
As the documents reveal, the CIA quietly cooperated with the FBI on its criminal investigation and wrestled the witness analysis away from the FBI, the NTSB and even the Defense Intelligence Agency.
These key witness statements, along with approximately three dozen more, were criminally altered during a cooperative FBI-CIA effort to come to a magic mechanical conclusion. Each statement was altered without witness permission, to indicate the witness observed fire cascading down from the 747 and not missile-fire traveling upward to TWA Flight 800.
The names on the CIA documents are redacted, but the intentions of the CIA analysts bleed right through. Their job was to make missile talk go away.
In a July 30, 1996, internal memo, headlined “Hold the Press,” a CIA analyst warned of an impending FBI report on a likely missile strike.
After interviewing 144 witnesses, the FBI was convinced there was a “high probability” that the incident was caused by surface-to-air missiles.
According to the reporting FBI agents, the evidence was “overwhelming.” The witnesses were “excellent” and their testimony “too consistent” for the cause to be anything other than a missile.
The unnamed CIA analyst boasted of how he discouraged the FBI from pursuing this angle. Said the analyst of his FBI counterpart, “He had little to refute our concerns.” The FBI report was never released.
That same CIA memo held another surprise. The FBI received reports from four witnesses claiming to have seen “a similar surface-to-air something” launched on July 7, 1996.
“If true,” said the CIA analyst, “the FBI would now have witnesses reporting seeing something race towards the sky on the 7th, 12th and 17th.”
The sighting on July 12 had been captured on video. Thanks to the relentless efforts of James Sanders, we now have that video. Yes, a missile went up, and something came down in flames.
Soon after the July 17 crash, the FBI began to feed the CIA its witness summaries, called 302s. Working with only a third of the 302s, the CIA analysts came to a bizarre conclusion.
According to the CIA, a spontaneous fuel tank explosion blew the nose off TWA 800. The aircraft then “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.”
This zoom-climb, the CIA insisted, confused the witnesses into thinking they saw a missile rocketing upwards. In March 1997, CIA Director Tenet sent FBI director Louis Freeh a letter assuring him that “what these eyewitnesses saw was the crippled aircraft after the first explosion had already taken place.”
The collaboration between the FBI and the CIA climaxed with a dramatic showing of a CIA-produced zoom-climb animation at the FBI’s case-closing November 1997 press conference.
“What the witnesses saw,” the narrator reassured the media, “was a Boeing 747 in various stages of crippled flight.” An animation recreated the flight with the nose-less 747 rocketing upwards more than 3,000 feet.
As can now be proved beyond argument, however, the CIA willfully corrupted every witness summary they reviewed and manufactured at least three “second” interviews for critical eyewitnesses.
In a CIA document from March 1999, an unnamed analyst even owned up to the zoom-climb con. The “maximum CIA calculated altitude in the final study was about 14,500 feet,” he conceded, not the 17,000-plus feet the animation claimed.
Actions have consequences. Unintended consequences drove the criminal cabal to ever increasing lawlessness as they tried to get ahead of the information curve descending upon them.
Here’s the indisputable evidence. The Navy had “significant Naval units” in the area of TWA Flight 800, per the Navy’s own document. In July 2003 the Navy destroyed the document containing a detailed explanation of the Naval units – only those three words were released, in response to a FOIA request, as a means to describe the secret information. We need not wring our hands and wonder what was in that classified document. We know for certain the words in the document were even more significant than the synopsis statement: “significant Naval units.” We know where those significant Naval units were because of a weather inversion that night making it possible for FAA radar to look over the horizon where a Navy exercise was under way, just south of TWA’s flight path, no later then 2015 hours, East Coast time – approximately 16 minutes before TWA Flight 800 was shot down.
A probable missile launch southwest of TWA 800 was picked up by three radar, two FAA and one Navy. The FBI and NTSB covered it up – compelling evidence it was indeed a missile launch site. It came from the precise area of the ocean described by Mike Gallagher.
The U.S. Navy RP-44 radar picked up the missile approaching the right side of TWA Flight 800. The Navy covered up this evidence, bumping it up to compelling evidence.
The No. 3 engine, only a few feet from where two key witnesses placed the missile warhead blast, was blown away from the right wing – which jibes with the two key witness statements. It was the first major debris to fall into the ocean. This was a missile “signature,” so the FBI/NTSB moved this engine by paper alteration thousands of feet east where the last of the 747 debris fell into the ocean.
The warhead blast moved upward at an approximate 40 degree angle, blasting the floor of the center-fuel-tank (aka center-wing-tank) upward, as much as 16 inches into the right side of the 747′s Business Class – another missile signature. The 747 reconstruction at Long Island’s Calverton Hangar was therefore altered to hide yet another missile signature. Metal blown upward was cut away. The remainder was placed in a downward position, consistent with the magic mechanical scenario.
The warhead blast left explosive residue and/or solid fuel residue on the right wing, the right side fuselage exterior, inside the center-wing-tank and on the right side of the 747′s Business Class – a missile signature.
I obtained a residue sample, and after initial elemental analysis, a retired missile scientist said it was consistent with an incendiary warhead – unique to the U.S. Navy in 1996 – launched by one of the “significant Naval units” south of the 747.
NASA testing of residue from the center-wing-tank and Business Class tested positive for explosive. The NTSB ordered further testing halted and samples returned. The FBI and NTSB went public, falsely saying the NASA tests showed the tested residue to be “glue.”
The debris field that was pre-altered said the missile evidence was altered to read magic mechanical failure.
The flight data recorder was altered, removing the final four seconds or some multiple of four seconds.
Two federal judges assisted the cover-up. Federal District Court Judge Joana Seybert culled the pool from which 12 jurors were to be chosen to determine whether I conspired with an NTSB investigator to have residue tested to determine if it, too, was evidence of a missile. Judge Seybert removed anyone who believed the federal government might be guilty of a cover-up. She then blocked me from presenting a First Amendment defense.
Former senior NTSB investigator Hank Hughes and TWA Flight 800 co-producer Tom Stalcup respond to inaccurate statements provided by former NTSB Managing Director Peter Goelz’ during his June 20th, 2013 appearance on CNN’s ‘Situation Room’.
The Navy document in my possession proving beyond any doubt that “significant Naval units” were in the area of TWA Flight 800 when it was shot out of the sky would have been an invaluable defense.
The Navy radar database I possessed with four data lines partially redacted to hide the missile approaching the 747s right side would have been an invaluable defense.
The FAA and Navy radar showing the missile launch would have been an invaluable defense.
The two key witnesses observing the missile approach and strike the right side of the 747 near where the right wing and fuselage connected would have been an invaluable defense.
The No. 3 engine blown away – as it must have been per the two key witness statements – the first major debris to fall from the stricken aircraft, a missile signature, would have been an invaluable defense.
NTSB and FBI factually false statements about NASA tested residue being glue when it had tested positive for explosive would have been an invaluable defense.
Revealing to the jury the alteration and cover-up of each significant part of the FBI/NTSB “investigation” would have been an invaluable defense.
But the judge said no First Amendment defense.
Even though the district court judge admitted there was no direct evidence against my wife, she was indicted when I refused to provide the FBI with the names of all those assisting my investigation of criminal acts. That would have been quite a list because a rather large insurrection was in the making inside Calverton Hangar. I even had a source very close to FBI Director Louis Freeh.
The Justice Department admitted no evidence existed for my wife, Elizabeth Sanders, to be made a “target” of the criminal cabal inside the TWA 800 investigation. Judge Seybert said it was OK for the wife of a journalist to be targeted in the absence of any evidence. So, even in the absence of any direct evidence at any stage of the DOJ/FBI investigation of Liz Sanders, it was OK for the jury to conclude she was guilty from indirect evidence. None existed, except what came out of the prosecutor’s mouth, and that allegedly does not count.
So Liz’s attorney appealed to the federal 2nd Circuit Court where Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat in judgment as the only actual current member of the 2nd Circuit on the three judge panel. During oral arguments, Sotomayor agreed that it was OK to target the wife of a journalist, even in the absence of evidence.
Sotomayor could not find a reason to uphold Liz Sanders’ conviction in the factual court transcript, so she altered the factual record. Liz’s attorney filed a brief pointing out the alteration. Sotomayor refused to overturn the conviction, implicating her in the DOJ conspiracy to deprive my wife of her civil rights. Sotomayor has been rewarded for her lawlessness. She is now a member of the United States Supreme Court.
America’s Department of Justice and Executive Branch would make a banana republic proud. Over the last decade, DOJ has argued in public and in court that the First Amendment’s freedom of the press no longer exists. Sometimes the statement will be qualified by “prior publication” being a possible exception under some circumstances. By 2004 that possible qualifier to DOJ’s extermination of press freedom was gone. Assistant U.S. Attorney James Fleissner said freedom of the press exists only under one circumstance, in a “very, very narrow” way where, as the AP wrote, “there has been intimidation or bad-faith investigations.” I know from personal experience that Fleissner’s words are factually false, which eliminates any First Amendment protection for journalists.
Sources: http://www.wnd.com/2013/08/the-clinton-criminal-cabal-cover-up/; http://www.wnd.com/2016/06/the-deep-undeniable-heart-of-the-twa-800-scandal/: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/TWA/twa.php#axzz4cGL9VjyY
New Evidence Points to TWA-800 Cover Up
by William Boardman
On 19 June 2013, a group that includes credible professionals in aviation, investigation, media, and physics formally petitioned the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to reopen its long but inconclusive investigation of the strange mid-air explosion that brought down TWA Flight 800. The NTSB responded:
“…the witness summaries did not differ substantially from the evidence available during the NTSB’s original investigation.
None of the physical evidence supports the theory that the streak of light observed by some witnesses was a missile.
The original investigation looked for evidence of fragments from a missile warhead and found none. Further, the damage patterns within the airplane were consistent with a center wing tank explosion. Lastly, the distribution of debris was also consistent with an in-flight breakup started by a fuel-air explosion within the center wing tank.
Ultimately, the petitioners did not showthat the NTSB’s conclusion or determination of probable cause were wrong.
The petitioners also made several other claims that didnot meet the standards set forth in the regulations.
Therefore, the NTSB is denying the petition for reconsideration in its entirety.
Epix Film Charges Cover-up, Evidence Suppression, Witness Intimidation
The petition to the NTSB was timed to help promote, and directly supported by, a new documentary, “[lightbox full=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vO7EGwBu-4″ title=”TWA Flight 800 documentary”]TWA FLIGHT 800[/lightbox],” that tells the story of how, “17 years later, inside investigators finally break their silence.” The documentary premiered on July 17 on Epix, the premium cable channel started in 2009 by Viacom, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, and Lions Gate Entertainment.
Documentary co-producer Tom Stalcup is a physicist and co-founded the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization in 1999 (www.flight800.org) to assure the integrity of the NSTB crash investigation, based on the belief that “the FBI unlawfully denied the National Transportation Safety Board access to forensic results and eyewitness interview documents” and continues to do so.
Focusing on whether TWA Flight 800 was brought down by an internal (i.e., gas tank malfunction or bomb) or external (i.e., missile) explosion, physicist Stalcup told Democracy NOW!:
The most significant piece of evidence that we have analyzed, that the NTSB has not analyzed, is the initial detonation that caused the crash. This was recorded by multiple FAA radar sites. And it was consistent [with] and corroborates the eyewitness reports. The eyewitnesses reported something going up, heading out down towards that airplane, a long distance, colliding with it in a perpendicular fashion, detonating near or at the aircraft….
And, yes, in fact, the radar evidence— the radar sites along Long Island picked up that exact event – supersonic debris exiting the right side of the— right side of the aircraft, consistent with the trajectory of that object.
Almost Everyone’s First Thought in July 1996 Was Possible Terrorism
From the start, investigators and witnesses alike suspected the explosion was a terrorist attack, by missile or a bomb aboard the plane. As the CIA summed it up in 2008, “Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) almost immediately focused on three possible causes: a bomb, a missile, or a mechanical failure.”
Because of these suspicions, the FBI took the lead in the investigation, assisted by the CIA, operating on the assumption that it was a criminal investigation. Officially, the FBI came to categorize its investigation as “Re: UNKNOWN SUBJECT(S); EXPLOSION OF TWA FLIGHT #800; JULY 17, 1996; ACTS OF TERRORISM – INTERNATIONAL TERRORISTS – EXPLOSIVE AND INCENDIARY DEVICES.”
The NTSB, an independent federal agency established by Congress to investigate every civil aviation accident in the U.S., found itself in the unusual position of having to defer to the FBI. The FBI/NTSB working relationship quickly deteriorated, becoming less a collaboration than a culture clash. This failure of cooperation in 1996 contributed directly to widespread skepticism about official narratives, including the present challenge to the reliability of the investigation.
After more than a year, the FBI decided that there were no terrorists involved in bringing down TWA Flight 800. In a nationally televised news conference on November 18, 1997, the agency announced it was suspending its investigation. That news conference featured a CIA-produced animation of the end of Flight 800, “explaining” what the witnesses had seen, whether they thought they’d seen it or not.
You Didn’t See What You Saw, You Saw What the CIA Says You Saw
Titled “What Did the Eyewitnesses See?,” the CIA animation begins with a quick summary of the takeoff, explosion, and crash “into the Atlantic Ocean, nine miles off the coast of Long Island.” Dozens of witnesses saw what looked to them like a missile. “Was it a missile? Did foreign terrorists destroy the aircraft?” the CIA narrator asks ominously. “CIA weapons analysts looked into this possibility.” (CIA Animation is also shown in the interview below starting at the 5:20 mark)
“The CIA’s conclusion: the eyewitnesses did not see a missile,” the narrator states. He goes on to describe what different witnesses really saw, according to agency experts. The narrator finally concludes, falsely, “To date, there is no evidence that anyone saw a missile shoot down TWA Flight 800.” [Emphasis in the original.]
What makes the narrator’s statement false is the evidence he himself had just acknowledged – the accounts of witnesses. Those accounts, and the CIA’s analysis of them, are all evidence, none of which has been tested in court or any other adversarial proceeding. There were at least 736 witnesses to at least part of the event and 258 of those witnesses saw something broadly consistent with a missile; of these, 38 described seeing something that closely resembled a missile rising from the ocean and looping down on the plane.
What If the Only Officially Sanctioned Conclusion Can’t Be Proved?
With the FBI and CIA determining that there was no missile and no bomb, the last remaining possibility on the investigators’ list was a mechanical failure of some sort, for which there was no immediately obvious evidence. Although the FBI slowly turned over much of its evidence to the NTSB, the air safety board still took more than four years to issue its report on TWA Flight 800. Even though that was one of the longest investigations the NSTB ever conducted, at a cost of about $40 million, it still could not reach a definitive conclusion.
Regarding the mid-air explosion that killed 230 people on TWA Flight 800, the NTSB concluded: “The source of ignition energy for the explosion could not be determined with certainty….”
Despite years of unofficial challenges to the NTSB’s final report on August 23, 2000, the safety board has not improved on its inconclusive conclusion. Officially, the board never closes an investigation, but the TWA Flight 800 investigation has apparently been inactive for 13 years. The 425-page final report is on the NTSB.gov web site. More than 17,000 supporting documents are available by request.
Almost Nobody Talks About the Navy’s Role in the TWA 800 Crash
On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 was flying over an area of the Atlantic Ocean where the U.S. Navy was conducting a live-fire exercise and had closed part of the airspace to commercial traffic, according to Kelly O’Meara, who was then a congressional aide to N.Y. Republican Rep. Michael Forbes.
Among the naval vessels taking part in the exercise were a number of surface ships and three submarines – USS Trepang, USS Wyoming, and USS Albuquerque. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, the nearest Navy surface ship did not attempt any rescue operation, but steamed rapidly away from the crash site. For the next two days, Navy divers worked the crash site while keeping others, including NTSB divers and the New York Police Department divers (who had legal jurisdiction in the area) from joining recovery operations. While the beaches of Long Island were swept by soldiers in humvees, the Navy bottom-searched an area of the Atlantic half the size of Rhode Island. Most unusually, the Navy searched out 20 miles to either side of the known debris field, even though the 747 could not have glided that distance from its altitude of 13,700 MSL even if left intact.
The Navy justified this extensive search by claiming that they could not locate the aircraft flight recorders, the “black boxes”, even though numerous private boat owners reported hearing the locator pings on their sonar and fish finders. When the black boxes finally appeared, it was reported that they had been found directly under the Navy’s deep salvage vessel.
Despite early denials, the Navy finally admitted that there had been three submarines present in the area on the night of the crash. The Trepang; a Sturgeon class attack submarine, the Albuquerque; a type 688 Los Angeles class fast attack submarine equipped with vertical launch tubes, and the Wyoming, a nuclear ballistic missile submarine just out of Groton on sea trials. It has just surfaced that something went wrong on those trials, delaying the commissioning of the Wyoming, and her captain and exec were relieved of command.
Later, was learned that the Aircraft Carrier Teddy Roosevelt also participated in the CEC exercises but was not admitted to be present at the time.
According to Jack Cashill of WND, an anonymous crew member of the USS Albuquerque, whom he calls Mack, said he had loaded secret, “experimental missiles” on his submarine for that exercise. After TWA Flight 800 exploded, Mack told his wife that he hoped it had been a terrorist attack, since the most likely alternative seemed to be a Navy accident.
Cashill and James Sanders co-wrote the 2003 book, “First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America,” in which they argue that the Clinton White House orchestrated the multi-agency cover-up in order to protect his 1996 re-election. The authors conclude that “TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a Navy missile, whose intended target was a terrorist plane on a collision course with the passenger aircraft,” according to Publishers Weekly.
Despite Conspiracy Theories, Legitimate Questions Remains Unanswered
The terrorist kamikaze plane is hardly the only conspiracy theory tied to TWA Flight 800, but the makers of the new Epix documentary don’t theorize – they lay out what they consider to be the critical evidence as the basis for their call for an investigation that will address open questions.
“We are not speculating in the least,” co-producer Stalcup told the N.Y. Daily News. “Based on the evidence, we can push [the NTSB’s] conclusions aside. I think the whole world should listen.”
The NSTB’s inconclusive conclusion is only one issue that Stalcup and his collaborators want to see addressed. Others include:
- What was the Navy doing out there that night? Why wasn’t that investigated, or the results of any investigation made public?
- Why did the FBI fail to record a single witness interview, preferring to have agents summarize what was said in their own words?
- Why did the NSTB choose not to take testimony from any of the 700-plus witnesses to the explosion and crash?
- Why did the NTSB choose not to take testimony from the helicopter pilot who was the closest witness to the explosion? Why did they avoid Major Fred Meyer, then an on-duty Major in the National Guard, a Viet-Nam helicopter veteran, who saw the takedown of TWA Flight 800 as a missile strike? “I’m a combat vet, I know what missiles look like. And I know what I saw,” he told McClatchy’s Washington Bureau.
- Why did the NTSB consider only a missile that actually hit the plane, and not one that exploded in close proximity, even though the latter hypothesis fits more closely with the evidence?
- Why did the NTSB consider only a missile fired by terrorists? Why did an NTSB spokesman tell Business Insurance magazine in October 1996 that “friendly fire has never been something we’ve considered, or believed?
How Welcome Would Whistleblowers Have Been in the FBI or NTSB in 1996?
The original investigators who are now breaking their silence want to explain that silence and the intimidation that enforced it. And they want to expose what they see as the investigation’s incompetence and wrong doing:
- Hank Hughes was an NTSB investigator for 42 years. “TWA 800 was a one-of-a-kind event. There was no instance in my entire career that was like it, from the standpoint of the manipulation of the investigation, lack of coordination, and for that matter, the willful denial of information,” he told McClatchy.
- Bob Young was an accident investigator for TWA and says the FBI manipulated the investigators and forced them to cover up facts.
- Jim Speer, who was an accident investigator for the Airline Pilots Association, had the FBI test a piece of TWA Flight 800 for explosive residue. When the piece tested positive, the FBI kept the piece, forced Speer to leave, and told him that the machine often produces “false positives.” He later learned that the machine was highly reliable.
- Rocky Miller was an accident investigator for the Association of Flight Attendants. He disputes even the inconclusive conclusion of the NTSB report blaming the wiring: “We never found any of that. We didn’t find any evidence in the wiring on the aircraft that would have indicated that a spark occurred inside the center wing tank that would blow it up,” he told Democracy NOW!
While whistleblowers were intimidated and silenced during and after the investigation, those involved in the cover up have been rewarded for their work. With the truth about TWA 800 successfully suppressed, Bill Clinton sailed to re-election in 1996, and his wife Hillary Clinton remained politically viable. In May 1997, the Clintons rewarded Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, who oversaw the investigation, by securing for her the vice-chairmanship of Fannie Mae. After making more than $25 million over the next six years, Gorelick resigned from Fannie Mae to assume one of only five Democratic seats on the 9/11 Commission. Assistant FBI Director, James Kallstrom, would leave his post, also in 1997, to become a Senior Executive VP of MBNA Corporation.
Media Sampling Suggests Some Caution About Believing Official Stories
Following the June 19 news conference to announce the petition and documentary, news coverage was limited but largely neutral. CBS This Morning gave the story almost 5 minutes featuring the CBS reporter who was the first reporter on the scene that night, by boat. The National Journal gave more space to the NTSB non-response response than any substance.
Forbes magazine ran a piece by a former NTSB board member who had approved the original report; he defended the report and said no one even complained to him about a cover-up. CNN’s The Lead gave a forum to FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom, who supervised the original FBI investigation of TWA Flight 800. Kallstrom called the petition “preposterous” and personally attacked the petitioners, but did not address questions of substance. He was somewhat more responsive during Fox’s 12-minute report, but eventually went to ducking questions and making personal attacks.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 gave the story four minutes, during which John King pressed Hank Hughes with exaggerated claims that Hughes said weren’t his. He and two others had testified about the same problems to a Senate committee in 1997, but their testimony “fell on deaf ears,” Hughes said. “There’s no motive in this, other than we want to get it straight. It’s a matter of personal integrity for us.”
When Some Questions Aren’t Asked, How Is an Investigation Complete?
One of the issues the FBI and the NTSB continuously fudge is the possibility of a missile. They consistently say they considered whether a missile hit the plane and found no evidence of a missile hitting the plane.
The counterclaim, which the FBI and the NTSB admit they did not investigate, is that a missile exploded near the plane, without hitting it.
In both scenarios, the missile sets off the gas tank explosion that destroyed the plane.
NOTE: This article originally appeared at Reader Supported News.
