As the agencies and Lahr both understand, the zoom-climb is the Achilles heel of the TWA Flight 800 investigation.
The zoom of a disrupted, noseless 747 is not impossible, when you factor in the mass and inertia of the craft, coupled with the way basic physics works: forces act on a body, about its centre of mass. Remove mass from the nose of an aircraft and it pitches up (you can demonstrate this yourself with a convenience-store toy balsa glider: take the metal weight on the nose off, and throw it. Bear in mind, the balsa glider doesn't contain much mass and therefore is a poor fit for the inertia part of the equation). I am quite confident that I know more about aerodynamics than Ray Lahr and Cashill... but all that is immaterial. Because despite what they say, the zoom video they are so obsessed with played no significant part in the final determinations of fact.
In other words, the core of Lahr's case is a lie. He has picked something he thought he could attack and decided it was the keystone of the investigation. It was not. (The wreckage examination was the keystone of the investigation).
to negate the stubborn testimony of the hundreds of eyewitnesses who had sworn they saw a flaming, smoke-trailing, zigzagging object destroy TWA Flight 800.
Anyone who says this has not read the 700-plus (ISTR it's 722) witness statements, all of which are in the docket. I have. There is no one single sttatement that describes what Cashill said here. Not one; Cashill is lying again. There are just over 100 of them that saw a streak. Of those, there are a couple that saw the streak go in every direction of the compass... and up, and down, and sideways. There are 18 that can be interpreted as seeing a streak go from the horizon up the the plane: 18/722. (or whatever the denominator is). There is no one consensus that emerges from the witnesses. That is why Cashill, Lahr, and the others out to line their pockets with the bereaved families' money always fixate on the same three or four statements (a couple of which conveniently get more elaborate in each telling). More than one of their fave witnesses was proven to have been unable to see what he claimed to see (his view on the ground was obstructed, or his field of view from onboard another aircraft did not include the point in space where TWA 800 was).
To make its case, the FBI presented a video prepared by the CIA.
The video was made to try to understand the sequence of events and was shown to the public because, given the median educational level, more people can grasp a video than a written report, let alone a page of numbers and calculations. Again, it was used at an intermediate stage of the investigation and plays no significant part in the determination of facts or of probable cause. There is extensive physical evidence for the probable cause advanced by NTSB.
This animation was essential to close the investigation.
Gee, who said:
in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility... the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.If you guessed "Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf," you're right. And repeating a lie, as Cashill does, does not make a lie any more true, just more common.
Without it, there was no way to explain what these hundreds of eyewitnesses – many of them highly credible – had actually seen.
Two lies: the necessity of the video to the proof (or for that matter, the necessity of the zoom -- neither is necessary, for, as Sherlock Holmes was wont to say, "when you have excluded the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, is the truth." And lie #2, "hundreds of eyewitnesses." Cashill and Lahr must pick their missile witnesses from among that small pool of 18, and then torture their statements until they confess.
A veteran safety investigator
He was the union (ALPA) party to a handful of investigations. The principal official duty of the union party is to ensure that safety information developed is communicated to the line pilots. The unofficial duty, which everyone understands is why the union guy is really there, is to try to get the pilots off the causation hook. (NO one has suggested that the pilots are in any way responsible for TWA 800. The union was a party to the investigation and concurred in the findings of fact and probable cause, a detail a liar like Cashill will never mention).
...and a serious researcher in the field of gravity,
First time I've noticed this claim. Maybe he's made it before and I've missed it, but it's pretty whimsical. I would bet $10 that the scientists who actually are "serious researchers in the field of gravity" have never heard of him. Most unlikely that an elderly retired pilot suddenly became a gravity expert. Possible, but as we know Lahr already has a hobby: a complex conspiracy theory that ties in TWA 800 with the Olympics and President Clinton, all based on supposition, without a shred of evidence, which should clue you in as to his MO.
...he learned that not a single eyewitness had seen the plane ascend...
A factual statement as far as it goes. But of the 700-plus witnesses, probably fewer than 20 actually saw the plane while it was intact. Most of them were aircrew on other planes, who were on the lookout for traffic.
Lahr has done an excellent job pulling the sometimes-fractious TWA 800 community together to assist him.
Boy, is that an understatement: "sometimes-fractious." A tatterdemalion gang of government-haters, tinfoil-hats, and cranks of all kinds, lined up behind a few marquee names. The one thing they have in common is that they haven't read the evidence. But has he pulled them together? Hell no. This week another tin hat is arguing another lawsuit on the same tired nonsense in Springfield, MA, while Malibu Ray argues his in sunny California. There strategy appears to be to lose in every district court in the nation independently. So far, it's going well; they've lost in Long Island, NY, and have yet to argue cases in CA and MA. Soon it will be three states down and 47 to go and some poor bastard of a lawyer for CIA will be answering the same pathetic motions in Alaska, Puerto Rico, and Guam. Maybe their goal is to bankrupt the agency so it can't afford the power bill for the waves it's beaming at their brains.
All of this evidence
Cashill seems to think the opinions of people like Lahr are "evidence." (And busted bits of airplane are not?) Well, what evidence does Lahr have? He boasted to the Albequerque Journal that he had spent "almost $10,000" on his investigation. The TWA 800 investigation cost the taxpayers at least $30 million. The difference is that the taxpayers got value for their money. Lahr's supporters get the same old straw men -- and appeals for money.
One question that has never been resolved is just how the CIA animation project came to pass.
It's explained in the NTSB docket. Cashill really should read it some day, even though it will put him out of a job if he does...
Within 30 minutes of TWA Flight 800's destruction, Clarke relates in his book, he had convened a meeting of the CSG in the White House situation room.
Not an unreasonable reaction. The closer to the event, the more possibilities are open -- and the more unreliable the information is (which is why the conspiratroids place all hope in witnesses and sing "la la la la la" when you mention the several ways the physical evidence excludes a missile).
"The FAA," Clarke reports, "was at a total loss for an explanation.
This is not unusual in the immediate aftermath of a mishap. We were pretty mystified by AA 587, Alaska 261, and US Air 427, too. Not to mention many GA crashes. Ever see reporters trying to wring a probable cause out of an NTSB or FAA tin-kicker while the crater is still smoking? Happens all the time. The reporters are just doing their jobs, but if the FAA guy is doing his the reporters are going to be disappointed.
Clarke here serves up two significant untruths....The first is that the Federal Aviation Administration was at "a total loss" for an explanation.
Investigation procedure is to call such a meeting when the possibility of crime or terrorism (both FBI responsibilities) can't be ruled out.
Clarke also deceives the reader about altitude.
"Deceives" is a pretty strong word, considering that Clarke, whatever his pros and cons, is not a pilot or even a conspiracy geek. The difference between 13,800 and 17,000 means something to the FAA. It does not mean anything to Clarke, most likely. It doesn't significantly alter the atmosphere through which the 74 was passing with respect to its physical properties, and most importantly, it doesn't do a missile any good. Neither an SA-7 nor a Stinger (nor their foreign equivalents) is a threat to an aircraft at either altitude. Cashill is arguing a straw man here.
Did Clarke get the number wrong in memory (probably) or was he given an initial inaccurate number by somebody (possibly)? Well... it doesn't make any difference.
"The FAA," he writes, "initially reported spotting a radar blip on their tapes that indicated there was another plane or projectile near TWA Flight 800 when it exploded."
Before you talk about radar tapes, go to AvWeb and read Don Brown's Say Again column archive. All of it. When you're done you'll have a rudimentary understanding of radar and its limitations in the ATC environment, and you'll be ready to tackle the radar testimony and exhibits in the NTSB docket.
After this Cashill goes off on a dishonest tangent, suggesting that because the FAA would not say its people had never thought there were high-speed blips on the tape, that meant the FAA still stands by the missile story.
"The tape shows a primary target at 1200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800," swears Holtsclaw on the Lahr affidavit.
Holtsclaw's expertise on radar and tapes is....? All together now, everybody...? I can say one thing with confidence: he hasn't read Don Brown's column.
...five different explanations ... obvious dissembling
In an investigation, numerous theories are considered and rejected or accepted as they are proven or disproven. As I have mentioned many times, there is incontrovertible physical evidence that no missile caused the crash of 800.
....why investigators felt the need to smuggle out evidence. Holtsclaw's informant would be the first of several – at least four of whom would be either suspended from the investigation or arrested....
Ah. Here we are referring to Cashill's other great investigator, former male stewardess (and felon) James Sanders (always ID'd in Cashill-speak as a "former aviation professional." Uh-huh, so's the kid driving the gas truck) but he is so discredited now that even Cashill daren't mention his name.
Within weeks of the crash, the FBI would interview more than 700 eyewitnesses.
From the alt.disasters.aviation FAQ:
Forty witnesses said it came from the sea, ten said it came from land.146 gave a direction. 77 said it ascended, 11 said it descended, 47 said it both ascended and descended, 9 said it flew level.
Direction of travel... total shotgun approach.
North: 7
Northeast: 2
East: 12
Southeast: 12
South: 7
Southwest: 3
West: 18
Northwest: 3
If you average them out... which is akin to saying that immersing one hand in molten lead and the other in liquid nitrogen is, on average, comfortable...
The trouble comes when you try to fit a missile to the statements.
You can do what Lahr and Cashill do... cherry-pick those witnesses, then reinterview the pliable ones to get more and more detail every year... all while putting the touch on the victims' families for money.
About four weeks after the crash, [Clarke] ... met with O'Neill, who told him that the eyewitness interviews "were pointing to a missile attack, a Stinger."
While at the same time, the physical evidence had already made the professional crash investigators of the NTSB understand that there probably was no missile, there definitely was no bomb, and that the accident may well have resulted from a fuel-air explosion in the CWFT, a rare but hardly unknown phenomenon. Thus ensued the battle between the FBI (which was still looking for a crime) and the NTSB (which was looking for the answers) over the control of the investigation, which continued for quite some time as the G-men closed off leads, before handing the investigation back to NTSB. The one good thing to come of all this mess is that FBI and NTSB have worked out better ways to work together in the future. The law requires NTSB to investigate accidents and FBI to investigate crimes and terrorism, and their procedures (as you might imagine) are radically different. Before they figure out for sure if a given case is a crime or an accident they have to work together. They have done this often before but never under so much of a spotlight. . "...15,000 feet," Clarke allegedly responds.... One would think that on so sensitive and contentious a point, Clarke would have made an effort to get the altitude of TWA 800 right or even consistently wrong."
Ah, but is Clarke's error material to his argument? Nope. MANPADS can't get to 13,800 either. In fact, targeting a specific plane at that altitude in crowded airspace would be quite a trick.
(especially with the center fuel tank being essentially empty at take-off).
What Cashill doesn't get (and what other government haters like Donaldson didn't get) is that fuel does not burn. What? Yeah. Fuel-Air mixture burns. The initial explosion of the CWFT most likely did not produce a large fireball. But it did destroy the integrity of the wing tanks -- what most people saw burning was this fuel. That it burned is, once again, proven by the physical evidence (in this case, sooting on recovered aircraft parts tells the story of the sequence of fire in the break-up).
The CIA cited only 21 witnesses.
A little projection here...
Analyst 1 then pulled out his trump card, his key witness, the man who had seen everything: "That [zoom-climb] is something that a few eyewitnesses saw. The guy on the bridge saw that." As we have documented on these pages before, the man on the bridge saw no such thing. The CIA or the FBI (or both or Richard Clarke) manufactured an interview with this man, Mike Wire of Philadelphia, out of whole cloth. Wire's "second interview" is the most crucial bit of evidence in the entire investigation, the evidence around which the zoom-climb scenario was created, and it's fully and provably counterfeit.
technicians like Ray Lahr.
LOL.
what most troubles Lahr is how three men with no discernible aviation or engineering experience could possibly have used any science whatsoever to arrive at such critical conclusions.
But he's perfectly prepared to reject the tale of the physical evidence, and cherry-pick from among the witnesses to find those whose interviews conform to your pre-existing idea... something about Clinton and the Olympics.
The truth of the matter proves elusive.
Only because of fringe hate-groups, conspiracy mongers and professional conspiracy profiteers who lie, lie, lie. People like Lahr, Jim Sanders, and Jack Cashill.
The CIA analyst lied... Richard Clarke lies... O'Neill...
Yeah, and to believe Cashill, he and his band of pathetic fringe personalities is telling the truth (despite the fact that his story changes all the time, like any good slippery conspiracy theory... it was the Navy that shot down 800... then after 911 it was the Arabs because it was unfashionable to be down on service people). To believe Cashill you also have to believe that the whole NTSB is in on it, the whole FBI, the armed services, hundreds and thousands of people covering this up. Not to mention Boeing (which took a major hit to its reputation that translated into major bottom line problems) and the world's airlines (which have eaten forty-something very expensive Airworthiness Directives as a direct result of this accident, including replacing every inch of wiring in thousands of transport aircraft.
Ray Lahr will leave it to other courts to establish who was the architect of the greatest peacetime deception in American history.
I nominate Ray Lahr, Jack Cashill, Jim "I'm sorry sir, we aviation professionals only give out one pack of peanuts on this flight, and the headset will be $2.50" Sanders, and the rest of the pack of phonies and liars that make up the TWA 800 industry.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Hmmmm. What a novel approach. You actually use facts to rufute lies, rumours and incorrect assumptions. Try not to rain too hard on Cashill's annual personal fund raiser. This whole TWA 800 thing is keeping him out of the poor house.
Yeah, sure, but what do you REALLY think?
(seriously, I apppreciate your analysis,
and I found it thoughtful and a good read)
Marvelous job. Thank you!
Great analysis. Thanks for the summary and perspective.
So few people on FR actually go to the trouble to look for facts which will lead them to truth; it's easier to look for facts that support your own ideas or just ignore facts and go with your emotions.
Thanks for the time and effort you put into this.