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Shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, or MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems), have proliferated throughout the world. They can be purchased on the military arms black market for as little as $5,000. More than two dozen terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda, are believed to possess such weapons. The FBI estimates that there have been 29 MANPADS attacks against civilian aircraft resulting in 550 deaths. At least 25 of the reported attacks have been attributed to non state actors. Even though a U.S. airliner has not been attacked by a missile, the question well may be when, not if, such an attack will happen....

I have created a public register of "bump lists" here on Free Republic. I define a bump list as a name listed in the "To" field used to index articles. Free Republic Bump List Register

Almost eight years after TWA Flight 800 was blasted out of the sky, a federal judge permitted discovery to go forward in a civil case James and Elizabeth Sanders have brought against the federal government and eight named defendants. A retired cop turned journalist, Sanders alleged that the defendants – namely certain federal officials involved in the Flight 800 investigation – perverted the system, using ordinary criminal process for the improper purpose of quelling the free speech of him and his wife, Elizabeth, the plaintiffs in the case. "Not only is the chilling of free speech of citizens not what...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How Richard Clarke concocted the TWA 800 'exit strategy' ... and why -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 5, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern Editor's note: James Sanders co-authored this commentary. Also, the price has been slashed on "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America"! The latest book by Jack Cashill and James Sanders explains how a determined corps of ordinary citizens worked to reveal the compromise and corruption that tainted the federal investigation. © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Richard Clarke takes no credit for what is likely an act of criminal obstruction of justice On July 17, 1996 – Liberation...

Clarke's complicity in crash cover-up Posted: March 24, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Jack Cashill © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com While counter-terrorism expert and man-of-the-hour Richard Clarke is in a chatty mood, someone might choose to ask him what he knows about TWA Flight 800. If no one in the media will, perhaps retired United Airline pilot Ray Lahr will get the chance to put Clarke under oath. Lahr next goes to court on April 5 in Los Angeles to advance his suit against the National Transportation Safety Board, the CIA and a reluctant Boeing for their role in creating the CIA's preposterous zoom-climb animation,...

Report: FBI Agents Took Ground Zero Souvenirs FBI Had No Policy On Taking Mementos POSTED: 1:44 a.m. EST February 26, 2004 UPDATED: 1:14 p.m. EST February 26, 2004 Story by wnbc.com NEW YORK -- According to a Justice Department report, at least 13 FBI agents entrusted with removing evidence following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, removed items for souvenirs or gifts, NewsChannel 4 reported. According to the confidential report, agents removed American flags, marble building chunks, patches from World Trade Center security guard uniforms, World Trade Center signs and keys and a Tiffany globe. "To think of taking...

Airline captain takes NTSB to court Posted: December 12, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com On Monday, Dec. 15, Retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr takes his case against the National Transportation Safety Board to court, the last adversary this unlikely activist ever expected to face. Lahr has no illusion about the challenge he faces, but he is focusing his attack on the most vulnerable point of the NTSB's defense – what he calls "the zoom-climb scenario" – and he has marshaled some impressive forces to help breach it. The government first advanced this scenario six years earlier – Nov. 18, 1997,...

In July, I had the privilege of speaking on the subject of TWA Flight 800 at the famed Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to a surprisingly large and impassioned audience. To help publicize the talk, both Melanie Morgan and Barbara Simpson obliged me by having me on their respective talk shows on San Francisco's radio superstation, KSFO. It was on Barbara Simpson's excellent show that the call came in. The caller, a banker, had neither read the book, "First Strike," nor was he familiar with its thesis. But he did have an interesting story to tell. Two years earlier, in...

My partner, James Sanders and I, have recently received what may be the single most convincing document proving a conscious government cover-up of the true fate of TWA Flight 800. In a government filled with the faint-hearted, it is always reassuring to find one person who is not afraid to tell the truth. The person in question is Bogdan Dzakovic. A five-year Coast Guard veteran, Dzakovic has worked for the Security Division of the Federal Aviation Administration since 1987 and now works for the Transportation Security Agency. Dzakovic made the news a while back for filing a Whistleblower Disclosure against...

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 301 7th Street, SW Room 5125 Washington, DC 20407 July 17, 2003 Dear Members of the 9-11 Commission: Recently, I wrote to you about Terrorist Missile Activity in the NY – Washington metropolitan areas. A copy of this correspondence is attached at the end of this letter. In that earlier correspondence I suggested that you reexamine missile activity which was reported both prior to and following the TWA 800 crash. On this anniversary of the TWA crash I would like to submit for your consideration a detailed summary of the eyewitnesses’...

It's been seven years since the July 17, 1996, crash of TWA Flight 800 near Long Island, New York, and the cause remains unknown; the lingering mystery of one of the nation's worst aviation disasters is now a forgotten media spectacle. The $ 40 million federal investigation concluded that the plane was probably brought down by a fuel tank explosion, leaving the question of the blast's origin unanswered. The unexplained explosion of TWA 800 claimed 230 lives. Two days after the crash, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch told CNN: "We're looking at somebody who either put a bomb on it or...

Editor's note: This week marks the seventh anniversary of the downing of TWA Flight 800. Author Jack Cashill, whose book with James Sanders, "First Strike," presents a compelling case for terrorist involvement in the tragedy, today presents an index of facts surrounding the event and its aftermath. © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com 7 Come July 17, the number of years this crime has gone unsolved. 270 The number of eyewitnesses that the FBI admitted saw what appeared to be ascending streaks of light. 34 The number of eyewitnesses interviewed by analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency's Missile and Space Intelligence Center whose...

July 17 represents the seventh anniversary of the destruction of TWA Flight 800, an event that in "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America," James Sanders and I prove beyond all reasonable doubt was not caused by mechanical failure. July 17 also represents the realistic closing of the window to break this story in the national news. Although we show in indisputable and significant detail how the case was corrupted, the media still insist that they need a "hook." The anniversary date provides one. To bolster our case, we need your help. If you can provide or...

Posted: June 19, 20031:00 a.m. Eastern Author's note: In response to letters like this one, we are making a final drive before July 17 to pressure the government to reopen the investigation. This will include a special petition for pilots and others in the aviation community soon to be found at Reopen800.com. If this anniversary goes by without justice, or at least an attempt to seek it, the forces of injustice will have prevailed. © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Dear Mr. Cashill, I read your book, "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America," and found it not only very well written,...

TWA 800: Pilots speak out Posted: May 17, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com After my most recent trip to Washington last weekend, I have come to one sorry conclusion: The only people who believe that a fuel-tank problem destroyed TWA Flight 800 sit in America's major media newsrooms. They certainly don't sit in the cockpits of America's airliners. After some 200 radio and TV interviews and a score of live appearances, I have talked to at least 100 airline pilots. Of those, exactly one supported the government thesis. What follows are some of the unsolicited e-mails I have...

As I last reported, virtually everyone in the major media has treated Team "First Strike" respectfully in our attempt to arouse interest about the fate of TWA Flight 800. The one exception was Newsweek's Mark Hosenball. Indeed, Hosenball treated us with all the tact and diplomacy his fellow countryman, "Simon," reserves for off-key warblers on "American Idol." Hosenball's defensiveness, however, may have less to do with some idiosyncrasy of British behavior than with the fact that he has much to be defensive about. It was Hosenball, after all, who penned the media's most stirring defense of the CIA's now notorious...

On July 1, Jamie Gorelick will leave her position as vice chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association to devote more time to the bipartisan National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, more routinely known as the "9-11 Commission." Her appointment to this select ten-person commission has raised no eyebrows. It should have. As deputy attorney general, Gorelick played a key role in shaping – some would say "corrupting" – the outcome of the TWA Flight 800 investigation. Given what she knows, Gorelick could play an even more critical role in determining "prior knowledge" about the events of...

Within one month of the downing of TWA Flight 800, media reported that investigators had found traces of explosive materials in the plane's wreckage. The theory that something other than mechanical failure doomed the Paris-bound Boeing 747 on July 17, 1996, had become well-established at that time, said Jack Cashill, co-author with James Sanders of the recently released book "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America." Reassembled 747 at Long Island hangar The New York Times said Aug. 14, 1996, that "residue consistent with an explosive" had been identified by chemists in 10 field tests at Calverton,...

<p>On Nov. 18, 1997, the CIA and the FBI announced the end of the criminal investigation of TWA Flight 800 with the presentation of a video that ostensibly put to rest theories that the Paris-bound Boeing 747 had been destroyed by a bomb or missile.</p> <p>With the 14-minute video, investigators overcame the biggest obstacle to the mechanical failure theory – 736 eyewitnesses, including the key witnesses who said they saw an ascending streak head toward the jetliner before it broke apart.</p>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TWA 800 revelation: What the president knew -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 25, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com The most controversial part of our new book, "First Strike – TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America," comes at the end, in Chapter 14, when James Sanders and I argue that terrorists used a small airplane as a flying bomb to destroy TWA Flight 800. We further argue that had the truth been told on July 17, 1996, there might not have been a Sept. 11, 2001. Since the publication of the book, we have received additional evidence...