Free Republic

Anxious FBI chiefs are trawling through 'numerous' top-level investigations spanning 22 years for fear they were compromised by convicted bureau spook Charles McGonigal, DailyMail.com can reveal. The forensic clean-up operation ranges over the entire time the philandering former head of counterintelligence in New York worked for the agency. McGonigal, 55, has already been sentenced to four years and two months in prison for taking money and conspiring with a sanctioned Russian oligarch who is a crony of despot President Vladimir Putin. But the full possible repercussions of his treachery are outlined in a sentencing memorandum by the US government for...

This is an abbreviated version of the excellent Epix Documentary. The linked page has links to Part 1 and Part 2 of this program. Highly recommended as an introduction or a refresher to the TWA 800 disaster. (Spoiler alert: It was a Navy missile.) ML/NJ

A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges Thursday for allegedly taking bribes from a mobster to supply him with inside information that led to four underworld slayings in Brooklyn. R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, was arrested in a case of "confidential leaks, payoffs and death" dating back two decades, District Attorney Charles Hynes said. DeVecchio pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bail. He did not speak at his arraignment. One of the two alleged mob hitmen behind the slayings was jailed without bail. The other was in Florida, awaiting extradition.

The wreckage of TWA Flight 800 is set to be destroyed — nearly 25 years after the doomed aircraft crashed off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 people on board. For the last two decades, the reconstructed Boeing 747 has been housed in a Virginia hangar and used by the National Transportation Safety Board as a training tool for accident investigators. But the federal agency on Monday announced it planned to decommission and destroy the wreckage, as its lease on the 30,000-square-foot Ashburn warehouse is set to expire.

On April 30, 2004 Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s book “The Politics of Truth” will be released. Wilson has been an opponent to the Iraq war, having proposed instead continued UN sanctions and inspections in a “containment” strategy. But his fame first derives from his well-known July 6, 2003 New York Times editorial piece “What I Didn’t Find in Africa”. Second, from the media exposure of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee connected to studying proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In media reports Wilson is usually introduced as the person who disproved President Bush’s State of the Union speech...

Some truths CNN reveals only accidentally. One such truth Anderson Cooper shared on the night of July 17. In speaking about the shoot down of Malaysian airliner MH 17 earlier that day, Cooper referred back to “July 17, 1996, when TWA Flight 800 was shot down off the coast of Long Island in New York.”

Serious movement in D.C. – and if I hadn't been there, I would not have believed it. For several months Joan Wire and her daughter have been trying to secure an appointment with a highly effective government official we'll simply call Mr. Washington. Joan Wire is the stalwart wife of Mike Wire. Mike is the storied "man on the bridge," the single most critical eyewitness in the saga of TWA Flight 800, the 747 that was inexplicably blown out of the sky on the night of July 17, 1996. The CIA built its notorious zoom-climb animation around Mike's position on...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Bolstered by eyewitness accounts and the Internet, the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of New York 10 years ago spawned a slew of sinister conspiracy theories, most notably the belief that a missile from a U.S. Navy ship was responsible. So prevalent were these theories that the term "Pierre Salinger Syndrome" - the belief that everything on the Internet is true - entered the lexicon. For investigators, the conspiracy theories wasted time and diverted valuable resources. Investigators ultimately determined that Flight 800 was the victim of a center fuel tank explosion, most likely...

The very same day that the Clintons go to Long Island to meet with the TWA Flight 800 families, security guard Richard Jewell is patrolling the grounds of Centennial Park in Atlanta. He's a little Barney Fife-ish, but a good guy and very observant. Right around midnight, Jewell spots a large, olive-green, military-style backpack, known as an Alice pack, under a bench. He immediately shares this information with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. When the GBI cannot find the pack's owner, the GBI officer and Jewell begin to clear an area around the pack. Soon afterward, the pack explodes. Two...

WELLSVILLE -- Despite having three places he was involved in searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday, Dr. Kenneth M. Berry, 46, of Wellsville, was arrested, but on a domestic violence charge in New Jersey. Point Pleasant Beach (N.J.) Police charged Dr. Berry with four counts of assault and a temporary restraining order was issued by Judge James A. Ligouri. Agents from the FBI executed a search warrant at two homes in Wellsville Thursday as part of an investigation into "the origin of the anthrax-laced letters mailed in September and October of 2001 which resulted in the deaths...

True BelieverBy Steve Rhodes I will spend most of this interview wondering if David Schippers is out of his mind. You remember David Schippers. He is the diehard Chicago Democrat hired by the Republicans to prosecute Bill Clinton’s impeachment. He was the genial, grandfatherly man with the salt-and-pepper beard sitting at the witness table before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, the lawyer barely concealing his contempt for the President, famously peering over his eyeglasses in a dramatic pause and then declaring, “Life was so much simpler before they found that dress, wasn’t it?” Life was so much simpler before I...