Posted on 03/24/2004 4:31:03 PM PST by js1138
Clarke's complicity in crash cover-up
Posted: March 24, 2004
1:00 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, the one that was used to discredit the 270 eyewitness to a likely missile attack.
Clarke, you see, was involved in the creation of that animation. He has boasted about it. Clarke, in fact, was involved with TWA Flight 800 from the beginning. As designated chairman of the Coordinating Security Group on terrorism in July 1996, it was he who called the critical meeting that began about 90 minutes after the crash of TWA Flight 800 in the White House situation room.
Gathered in the room that night were some 40 representatives of the agencies involved. Teleconferencing in on the room's eight monitors were terrorist experts from around the nation. Represented either in person or on screen were the Pentagon, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Secret Service, the CIA, the State Department, the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House. The NTSB, which should have been present, was not.
The FAA made it clear that, at this point, there was no effective deterrence if terrorists were planning to take out additional planes. The attendees realized that two days before the Olympics and a month before the political conventions, a terrorist scenario had the potential to virtually shut down the airline industry and cripple the economy.
President Clinton knew this all too well and dreaded it. He was squirreled away that night in the family quarters, likely with access to satellite and other data not shared in the situation room. Just four months shy of pulling off one of the great political comebacks of all time, Clinton lived in mortal fear of an incident that could throw the advantage to war hero, Bob Dole. And this was one such incident.
Unlike President Bush, Clinton obviously did not share his sentiments with Clarke. Clarke called the security meeting in good faith and executed it in the same spirit. The presumption reigned during the meeting that the destruction of the plane had been a terrorist act. Years later, Clarke casually acknowledged "the widespread speculation within the CSG that [TWA 800] had been shot down by a shoulder-fired missile from the shore." Those gathered had received the heads-up from the FAA on the radar data. They were aware of reports that streaks of light had been seen in the sky heading towards the plane prior to the explosion. They knew that the plane had vanished without a word of distress from the pilots, a fact that suggested terrorism as well.
When, however, the White House let it be known the next day that all talk of missiles should go away, an obliging Richard Clarke played a role in helping the missiles do just that.
The final cleansing of the likely missile attack from history came some 16 months later. What made Nov. 18, 1997, so memorable – and so controversial – was less the FBI press conference that concluded the criminal investigation than the 15-minute, CIA-produced zoom-climb animation that concluded the press conference.
As with all perceived successes, everyone wanted credit. A New Yorker profile post-Sept. 11 gave the honors to the late FBI anti-terrorism expert John O'Neill. The New Yorker's source was none other than Richard Clarke. According to Clarke, O'Neill insisted that TWA 800 was out of range of the most-likely shoulder-fired missile, the Stinger.
O'Neill believed that the "ascending flare" must have been something else, like "the ignition of leaking fuel from the aircraft" Clarke, who was clearly in the loop, played along He also credits O'Neill with persuading the CIA to create a visual recreation of the same. It is hard to know whether Clarke was complicit in the CIA plot or just plain ignorant, but neither speaks well for his credibility.
"The case of TWA 800 served as a turning point because of Washington's determination and to a great extent ability to suppress terrorist explanations and 'float' mechanical failure theories," wrote Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism Yossef Bodansky in1999. "To avoid such suppression after future strikes, terrorism-sponsoring states would raise the ante so that the West cannot ignore them."
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, while terrorists prepared to raise that ante, New Yorkers went about their business, unknowing, unsuspecting and totally unprepared.
For this, they can thank, among others, Richard Clarke.
I just figured they didn't want to give Osama another victory so soon after 9/11. So they just announced it was mechanical failure. The giveaway was that they announced it while the whole town was still in flames, and they couldn't even get to the plane itself.
Similar to the TWA800, where they announced that it was mechanical failure before they pulled one piece off the ocean floor.
Yes.
You can take this to the bank. If the 9/11 terrorists had only hijacked one aircraft and crashed it into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, there would have been some other explanation for what happened.
There was a time recently when conspiracy theory threads were being yanked. It may have had more to do with the poster than the topic.
My experience with the military is exclusively land based but I've got to believe that an exercise where even the remote possibility of the sequence of events necessary for the sort of "mistake' that you say happened, off the coast of NYC's immediate suburbs, directly in an international flight path where the traffic is so heavy that you can stand on the beach and see as many as a dozen commercial craft in the air, is beyond the scope of what the Navy plans.
Let's not even consider the number of people who would know about it...in the hundreds at least. I guess though that we can expect every 19 year old Seaman on those ships to shut up just because.
It's not just the streak, though. And this is what makes the accidental shoot-down very plausible.
Many eyewitness accounts of the "streak" were dismissed out of hand because they were not consistent in their description of what they saw -- particularly in terms of the trajectory. But it's not as if these people were describing any number of different flight paths . . . All of them basically came down to two different groups: some of them saw a streak go from Point 1 and travel in Direction A, while others saw a streak go from Point 2 and travel in Direction B.
What they saw was two different "streaks" -- an unmanned drone that is used by the Navy as a target in its weapons tests, and the missile itself that was fired at the drone from a different ship.
Right you are.
The CG of the aircraft moved aft by a large distance after the nose fell off. With the wings still located in their normal position, and the CG drastically aft of the normal flight envelope limit, the pitching moment created by the torque of the center of lift being out in front of the CG would have caused the aircraft to pitch up violently, stalling the wings long before any 3000' "zoom-climb" could have ever taken place.
I have yet to speak to an active or retired airline pilot who believes the Gov't explanation for TWA 800. Everyone believes it was a missile.
The only doubt is whose missile was it (friend or foe)..... and whether or not there was more than one.
One clue here is that Flight 800 was not supposed to be flying that low -- it was supposed to be flying at 16,000 feet or more. It was ordered to descend to make way for a northbound USAir flight into Providence, Rhode Island (flying in a path that was perpendicular to Flight 800's path) that was running behind schedule that night and should not have been in the area.
I know I'm just speculating here -- but the facts as I understand them indicate the very real possibility that Flight 800 was brought down simply because a U.S. Navy target drone got too close to it.
I'm still waiting for someone to tell me that time slot wasn't assigned to an Israeli airliner. I read it here, but I don't know the source.
I think you're probably right. As it is now, the lies about the War on Terrorism that are being deliberately put out by the bureaucracy and their media allies on a daily basis could pretty much fill an entire book.
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