What We Now KNOW About TWA Flight 800

On July 17, 1996, TWA 800, a Paris-bound 747, blew up ten miles off Long Island’s south shore, killing all 230 souls on board. In the days leading up to the anniversary, I will share some fresh insights on this tragedy and the much too successful cover-up that followed.

After 25 years investigating the destruction of TWA Flight 800, I have learned to temper my enthusiasms. That said, I continue to take heart when I see signs of life. Perhaps the most promising development in the case is the progression through the courts of Krick v. Raytheon.

Ronald Krick is the father of Oliver Krick, a 25-year-old student flight engineer killed in the crash. Krick has been joined in the suit by relatives of other deceased passengers and crew. The defendants are the Raytheon Company, the Lockheed Martin Corporation, and the United States government.

The Krick suit gained momentum when it absorbed information gleaned from a FOIA suit brought by Tom Stalcup, a no-nonsense physicist who has been pursuing this case since he was a grad student in 1996. To establish his claims Stalcup was granted subpoena power and was able to depose several key witnesses from within the investigation.

Stalcup appeared in the 2001 documentary, Silenced, produced by me and my late partner James Sanders. In 2013 Stalcup and the late Kristina Borjesson, formerly of CBS News, produced the excellent documentary, TWA Flight 800. What follows are extended passages from Krick v. Raytheon.

—On July 17, 1996, a Boeing 747 headed for Paris took off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport at around 8:20 p.m. Within twelve minutes of takeoff, the plane exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Long Island, New York. All 230 passengers and crew members perished.

—After the incident, the federal government released a false report contending that the explosion was the result of an electrical fire in the airplane’s center fuel tank.

—Only recently, thanks to the work of physicist, Dr. Thomas Stalcup, through his Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) litigation in Massachusetts federal court, has evidence emerged proving that TWA 800’s explosion was not caused by any defect in the airplane, but instead by an errant United States missile fired at aerial target drones flying nearby.

—The evidence unearthed by Dr. Stalcup establishes that the United States, including its agencies, such as the United States Missile Defense Agency (formerly known as the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization), the United States Department of Defense, and the United States Navy (the “Government Defendants”), acting in concert and working side-by-side with Raytheon Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation (the “Contractor Defendants”) and DOES 1 through 20, inclusive (collectively the “Defendants”) were testing the Aegis Weapons System and firing SM-2 missiles with live warheads from warship(s) at aerial missile targets off the coast of New York in close proximity to commercial airline flight paths. One such missile struck TWA flight 800, causing it to break apart and crash into the Atlantic Ocean, killing everyone aboard.

—Newly discovered evidence also shows that these Defendants engaged in a top-down cover-up to prevent the public from learning the truth about TWA 800. Proof of this cover-up, and of Defendants’ underlying culpability for the crash, was only recently unearthed by Dr. Stalcup after more than a decade of FOIA litigation against the Government Defendants.....SNIP

My moment of awakening, to the fact that the government lies to us and covers stuff up happened in the Flight 800 crash over Long Island Sound. It was July 17, 1996, and I took a Mental Health day from work. I was tuned to MSNBC. Back in those days, MSNBC had not yet become an asylum for the politically insane, and actually had decent coverage about Clinton's many foibles, to eventually cover his scandals and subsequent impeachment.

Suddenly, Norah O'Donnell, who was working there at the time (and actually was a pretty decent journalist back then) cut into the programming with an announcement that Flight 800 had crashed, with no survivors. I moved right in front of the TV to watch.

Within 2 minutes, a video was posted that showed that the crash COULD NOT have been caused by a missile.

Click
Click
Click

Wait, what???!?

No one had even mentioned the word 'missile'.... and the video was watermarked "CIA Video".

CRAZY.

Why would the CIA be producing this video within minutes of the crash? Why would it be distributing it so quickly? Why would it mention a missile, when NOBODY ELSE WAS?

These things set off my Whoa-This-Is-Weird-Radar.

Later, it was demonstrated that 670+ people saw a flame streaking up to meet the plane. You know, like a missile. One of those people was a National Guardsman, aloft in a plane, who just so happened to be a Missile-Plume expert.All of these witnesses were roundly scoffed by the government, and the official lie stood: It was a spontaneous center-fuel-tank explosion, and what everyone saw was the cabin section flying upwards.M

Despite the fact people were describing the plume flying up from the horizon-line, you know, the ground.

Yah right. Gotchya.

The motivation was obvious: If people thought a commercial airliner was struck by either a terrorist missile, or a friendly missile that went astray, airline traffic would collapse...and in 1997, Clinton did not need that distraction, not with his legal problems.

It was the first moment in my life that I realized that the government would lie to us, boldly and without shame, even when a half-a-thousand eyewitnesses contradicted them.

It was the first moment my vision became clear to just how venal and conniving the government could be.

Over the years I have developed some strong opinions about TWA 800, and stronger ones about the nature of its discussion, so bear with me.

Here are two of my main posts on previous threads about TWA-800:
After the USS Gettysburg Misfire, Can We Talk About TWA 800? #166.
Wreckage of fatal TWA Flight 800 to be destroyed 25 years after crash #64
Actually, for a TWA-800 thread, this thread was pretty civil.

Back to the question of what kind of missile could have done it. Then why it wound not work. TWA-800 was flying at 340 knots, 630 km/h, and exploded at 13,000 feet, 10 miles offshore, 8:30 PM, dusk/twilight. Most of the witnesses who say they saw a missile were 10 to 20 miles away on land.

All anti-aircraft missiles use solid fuel rocket motors which burn for a few seconds. After burn out, the missile which still weights several hundred pound and traveling supersonic flies on its own inertia. Hollywood and TV showing missiles having their rocket motors spewing flame and smoke is to look good for movies and TV.

Then there are the limits of the human eye. The eye has a resolution of around 1/60 a degree. Anything with an angular measure less than that, they eye can't see. Try looking at bridge or freeway intersection from a couple miles away. You will be able to see the bridge or intersection, not the power poles or streetlights. If you can't see the poles or streetlights, then you can't see smaller, similarly cylindrically shaped missiles at supersonic speeds further away.

Wikipedia on the Stinger surface to air missile (SAM) says "It has a targeting range of up to 15,700 feet (4,800 m) and can engage low-altitude enemy threats at up to 12,500 feet (3,800 m)." Stingers also have a seventeen second self-destruct timer. The Russian equivalent, the 9K32 Strela-2 (Nato reporting name Strela) has similar maximum operating limits. For a 1980s or 1990s Stinger, TWA-800's altitude was above the engagement and at the edge of the targeting envelope. The probability of a Stinger or Igla self-destructing short of target or missing is much greater than a hit. Anyone capable of using a Stinger in a terror attack scenario like this would have to know the limitations of the weapon under the circumstances they would use it to avoid getting caught before launching the attack, disregarding getting away with it.

The smallest missiles that have the performance to have hit TWA 800 are SAMs like the French-German Roland (retired in US service), French Crotale, UK Rapier, Russian 9K33 Osa or 9K31 Strela-1 (SA-8 Gecko or SA-9 Gaskin, respectively). Except these are towed, on 6x6 or 8x8 wheeled or tracked vehicles. These would either have to be on the shore or on a barge or ship with the deck area to carry them. This is impossible to ignore 10 miles of shore and has no chance of not getting caught first, forget getting away with it.

Next up are the big ship mounted SAMS like the ones the Ticonderoga class carries, single or two stage Standard missiles. Except for the facts that in real life, the US Navy test missiles well away from civilian air traffic and has numerous safeguards (the fact that this gets explained on this forum repeatedly and there are many here who keep ignoring this is disappointing, but I digress).

At 10 to 20 miles, missiles from Stingers to the big naval SAMS like the Standard are all too small and too fast for to see, especially after the motors burn out.

In summary:
Small, easy to hide missiles like the Stinger lack the performance to shoot down TWA 800.
The bigger missiles that could shootdown TWA-800 are as conspicuous as a school shooting.
While the US Navy does a lot of stupid things, they aren't that stupid.
Wat witnesses claim to see is outside the limits of human vision.

It was the first moment my vision became clear to just how venal and conniving the government could be.

I'd have to say it was the election of Clinton that did it to me. It was the worst mistake the nation had made in my life up to that point.

Yes, Carter was a horrible incompetent president, but he appeared as a decent man, so it is understandable how the nation could have elected that idiot, but Clinton was an obvious piece of shit. From his draft-dodging, to his lying about drug use, to his protesting American in foreign countries, to his sorties out into the communist countries like Russia and the Eastern block, the man was an utter piece of shit and the nation should never have elected this corrupt bastard.

So far as flight 800 was concerned, it looked hinkey to me when it happened in 1996, but at that time I figured the truth would come out. I thought it might have been an accidental missile from a Navy ship, and I mostly forgot about it until about 14 years later when it was brought up again in the context of a conversation about "Conspiracy theories." The conversation turned to the flight 800 incident, and I was told many startling things about it.

And that's when I realized that Bill Clinton was an even greater piece of shit than I had initially thought.

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