Clarke's complicity in crash cover-up

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.

Judge adds CIA as a defendant

Posted: December 19, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Retired United Airline pilot Ray Lahr took his case against the National Transportation Safety Board to a Los Angeles Federal District Court on Monday.

In a largely procedural hearing, Judge Howard Matz added the CIA to the short list of defendants, which also includes the NTSB and Boeing, and advanced the case forward through the system. Lahr's attorney, John Clarke, expects to have resolution by spring or summer. Both he and Lahr gave the judge high marks for fairness and for seriousness of purpose.

As reported last week, Lahr is suing the defendants to release the calculations they used to conclude that TWA Flight 800 rocketed vertically more than 3,000 feet once its nose blew off from an alleged fuel-tank explosion. He and others believe the CIA created this scenario to negate the stubborn testimony of some 270 FBI eyewitnesses who had sworn they saw a flaming, smoke-trailing, zigzagging object ascend, arc over and destroy TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island seven years ago.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:JFkwhy03bXUJ:www.wnd.com/news/article.asp%3FARTICLE_ID%3D36221+United+Airline+pilot+Ray+Lahr&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Saudi plot has Flight 800 implications
WorldNetDaily ^ | Dec 30, 2003 | Jack Cashill

Posted on 12/30/2003 1:45:22 AM PST by hotpotato

Last Saturday, the Mail on Sunday, a British newspaper, credibly reported a Saudi terrorist plot that may well have implications for understanding the destruction of TWA Flight 800.

According to the Mail, Saudi authorities arrested two pilots who were preparing to fly two light aircraft, each loaded with explosives, into a passenger plane. Apparently, they were stopped while on the flight-line at an airport near Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital. Details are sketchy because the Saudis have allegedly attempted to withhold information from authorities abroad.

"These terrorists are potent and inventive and I very much hope the British government will take note of these developments," Patrick Mercer, the opposition Conservative spokesman for British Homeland Security, told the Mail. "They must defend our airspace and issue timely, accurate and meaningful warnings to both airlines and passengers."

If the Saudis covered up an attempted mid-air bombing, they may not have been the first to do so. In our book "First Strike," James Sanders and I make the case that U.S. Navy missiles intercepted a terrorist plane packed with explosives on a mission comparable to the one planned by the captured Saudi pilots. We believe the resulting explosion devastated the doomed 747, which was then in close proximity.

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1048561/posts

Page 1
Captain Ray Lahr (ret.)

October 31, 2002
The Honorable Warren B. Rudman Co-Chairman U.S. Commission on National Security

Dear Senator Rudman: I was one of the millions who watched your interview on PBS this evening and I applaud your work on behalf of this nation. I served in the war ahead of you – I was a Navy pilot in World War II and then spent my career as a pilot for United Airlines. I note that you served with distinction in Korea. I would like to mention two other Navy pilots, Commander William ‘Bill’ Donaldson and Major Fred ‘Fritz’ Meyer, who served in the war behind you, namely Viet Nam (Fritz later joined the National Guard which explains the Major).

During your interview you mentioned the shoot-down of TWA800. It was shot down, as you know. Fritz was in a helicopter with Captain Bauer and they were making a practice ILS approach at the Suffolk airport waiting for it to get dark so that they could practice night refueling. They were on short final with Captain Bauer flying and Fritz handling the radios and lookout. The tower called and said there was a Cessna entering the traffic pattern for their runway. Fritz was leaning forward in the cockpit trying to pick up the Cessna when he saw a missile arc across the sky. It disappeared momentarily and then there were at least two bright-white military ordinance explosions.

Then followed the huge fuel explosion and fireball. All of the debris fell downward out of the fireball. Fritz immediately cleared from the tower and flew to the accident site. They were the first on the scene and they stayed out there looking for survivors until they ran low on fuel.

Fritz and I have become friends and I can provide to you a video tape and an 8 page transcript of his description of the accident. Or you may call him at (631) 495 3999 or email him at fmeyer8775@aol.com.

Would you believe that the FBI interviewed 750 eyewitnesses, yet not a single one was allowed to testify at the accident investigation hearing?

Commander Donaldson retired from the Navy with just about every rating a pilot can get including accident investigation. Bill just couldn’t accept the misinformation appearing in the media. He launched his own investigation and he formed an Association of Retired Aviation Professionals to help. No less a person than Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, joined Bill’s cause.

Admiral Moorer even made a personal appeal to Congress to reopen the investigation. Bill devoted the last years of his life trying to present the truth to the public. He went into Walter Reed hospital with a back problem. They operated on his brain and we lost a wonderful patriot.

However, Bill’s research was put onto a website and it is being continued by his brother, Bob Donaldson. Please go to www.TWA800.com and you will find an unbelievable amount of evidence supporting the shoot-down.

My personal involvement started with the FAA radar tapes which showed a missile approaching TWA800 prior to the explosion. The controllers immediately reported what they had seen and the word went right to the top. A copy of the tape reached my fellow pilot, Captain Richard Russell, and he showed it to me. When word got out on the internet, the FBI threatened Captain Russell and then came to his house and confiscated a tape.

Pierre Salinger was ridiculed for releasing the same information. In order to discredit the eyewitnesses, the CIA proposed that after the nose was blown off of TWA800, the aircraft continued to fly and climb 3200 feet trailing flames. This was supposed to be the rising bright streak seen by the eyewitnesses (never mind that the eyewitnesses saw the streak rising from the surface, not from a point 13,800 feet in the sky).

The CIA prepared a video animation of this zoom-climb and James Kallstrom presented it on national TV when he announced that the FBI was withdrawing from the investigation. Well, such a nose-less zoom-climb is aerodynamically impossible, and Boeing issued a statement the following day denying any knowledge of the data and conclusions used for the CIA animation.

Page 2
A month later, the NTSB presented a similar video animation at the public hearing. However, the NTSB also included a table of data in its report that was provided by Boeing. Using that data, I calculated that when the nose was blown off, the aircraft immediately pitched up and stalled. The most it could have climbed is about 200 feet. This is confirmed by the eyewitnesses who saw the debris fall downward out of the fireball.

I went to the NTSB hearing on August 22, 2000, and asked the NTSB author of the zoom-climb, Dennis Crider, and his supervisor, Bernard Loeb, how they had calculated the zoom-climb. They wouldn’t give me an answer. I wrote to Jim Hall, chairman of the NTSB, and asked for the calculations. We exchanged several letters but still no answer. Then I submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the CIA and the NTSB. The CIA responded that it had used data and conclusions provided by the NTSB. The NTSB responded that it couldn’t release the information because it was proprietary to Boeing. But Boeing had already denied knowledge of the data and conclusions.

Now I am preparing a lawsuit to obtain the information. I mention all of this because this secrecy on the part of our government is working at cross-purposes with your efforts to alert the public to the threats against us. Who knows, if we had faced up to TWA800, we might have averted 9-11.

Whenever possible, the government clamps a lid on terrorist actions in an effort to convince the public that the terrorists are not really hurting us. On the other hand, groups like your Hart-Rudman Commission are trying to raise public concern so that we will take preventive action. I guess the part that bothers me the most is that they are destroying my trust in my government.

Before he died, I discussed with Bill Donaldson why he was putting so much effort into this cause. His answer was, “Nobody is going to screw around with my constitution”. Well, I guess there are a few of us odd-balls out here who are willing to fight to get the truth out of our government.

Sincerely, Ray Lahr

IN AN AMAZING and disturbing sidebar to the World Trade Center attacks, a number of prominent figures have appeared on TV referring to the TWA 800 in the same category as other terrorist incidents:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC: There are facilities in the White House, not the normal situation room, which everyone has seen in the past, has seen pictures of. There is a second situation room, behind the primary situation room, which has video conferencing capabilities. The director of the Pentagon, the defense chief, can speak from a national military command center at the Pentagon. The Secretary of State can speak from the State Department, the President from wherever he is, and they'll have this capability for video conferencing throughout this crisis. In my time at the White House it was used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 bombing, and that would be the way they would stay in contact through the afternoon."

[According to Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid, Jim Sanders, in his book "The Downing of TWA Flight 800," says that there was a meeting in the White House situation room that night. He was told that high officials were watching in real time a video transmission of a Navy test of an anti-missile missile that went awry.]

FORMER FBI INVESTIGATOR JAMES KALSTROM on TV: This is the first time since TWA 800 [referring to the WTC attack]

BRIAN WILLIAMS, MSNBC: Do you think the US is still under the threat of terrorist hijackings, of aircraft being used as flying bombs? With your knowledge of the terrorism business, do you think they won't just move on to another mode of delivering terror? . . . ISAAC YEFFET, FORMER DIRECTOR OF SECURITY FOR EL-AL AIRLINES: We thought in the past, in the '70's, that what happened with the US air carriers, this would be the end of the terrorist attack. Look what happened since Lockerbie, Pan Am 103? What happened to TWA 800? Look now what happened? Who can guarantee us that the terrorists will decide no more attacks in the US, unless somebody will tell me that we took control over the terrorist organizations and we let them know that here, they cannot come."

http://www.twa800.com/index.htm
http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2001/10/03.html

JAMES SANDERS, WORLDNET DAILY:

In the last few weeks several political insiders have forgotten themselves and referred to TWA Flight 800, the airliner, which exploded in July of 1996 just east of New York City, as a terrorist incident. But only one has done it twice. That person is Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Appearing on "Larry King Live" on Sept. 11 of this year, Kerry suggested that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a terrorist act. The second admission took place on Sept. 24 on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews. On this occasion, Kerry casually recited a number of terrorist attacks against the United States, among them TWA "Flight 800."

Like Larry King before him, Chris Matthews either did not catch the remark or chose to let it pass. We have been asked a number of times whether these remarks by Kerry and others were purposeful, perhaps a signal that the time was right to come clean on the all-but-indisputable shoot down of TWA 800 and the undeniable cover-up that followed. Our temptation has been to say "no." These admissions seemed more or less innocent and accidental, the first time anyhow. But not the second. In Kerry's case, one of his aides had to have caught his initial reference to TWA 800.

If a mistake, it seems highly unlikely that it could have happened again. But it did. There is more evidence to consider. On Sept. 20, one mainstream newspaper released the story of how the so-called Gore Commission failed conspicuously to address airline safety. The paper claimed that this failure "represents the clearest recent public example of the success that airlines have long had in defeating calls for more oversight."

The paper traced that failure to a series of campaign donations from the airlines to the Democratic National Committee in 1996 in the wake of the crash of TWA Flight 800, donations likely solicited by Al Gore himself. That newspaper just happened to be John Kerry's hometown Boston Globe. This was a damning revelation, certainly to Al Gore.

The Boston Globe was the only medium to the left of the Washington Times to have released this information, and the Times did so at least a year before the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=24734

William S. Donaldson, 56, a leading investigator into the TWA 800 cover-up, has died of a brain tumor. He founded the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals and started a website, twa800.com, to document the many discrepancies in the official version of the crash and to the end remained committed to proving that the aircraft was shot down.

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