MSNBC and the missing videotape: Jack Cashill examines network's role in TWA Flight 800 cover-up

On April 20, 2001, a Peruvian military jet pilot confused a small plane carrying missionaries for one carrying drug runners and shot it down. In the last two weeks, MSNBC has been leading the charge to bring this case to closure.

Its on-air personnel – Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough in particular – have been asking hard questions about why no charges have been brought against CIA agents who may have lied about the nature of this crash. The MSNBC website invites citizens to communicate their concerns about this presumed cover-up through MSNBC to the U.S. government.

This would be all well and good were it not for the likely role that MSNBC played in the cover-up of TWA Flight 800. On July 18, 1996, about 12 hours after TWA Flight 800 exploded off the coast of Long Island, a military officer – off the record – told a very tired Fox News senior reporter that "a major screw-up" had occurred and that the "White House" had ordered the military to "stand down" for 48 hours until policy decisions were reached.

This did not surprise the Fox journalist. For hours the previous evening, Fox News had reportedly been involved in a bidding war for an amateur video tape of the 747 being destroyed by what appeared to be missile fire. When the electronic bidding war reached $50,000, Fox was eliminated from the process.

The high bidder seems to have been NBC and/or its new sister network, MSNBC. This makes market sense in that MSNBC had been launched just two days prior, and the publicity would have been well worth the cost. Still, I say "seems" because my sources here will not speak on record, nor will MSNBC follow up on queries. Here is exactly what I know, no more, no less.

In the summer of 2001, my partner James Sanders, and I were negotiating with Broadcast Network News (BNN) – the world's largest independent news producer – to distribute our documentary on the subject of TWA Flight 800, "Silenced." These were serious negotiations. The person with whom we were communicating was BNN's chief executive officer, Steve Rosenbaum.

One day that summer, Rosenbaum called me in a state of high excitement. "Jack," he said, "you will not believe the conversation I just had." Although Rosenbaum thought our video had market potential, he was not at all convinced of our thesis, namely that missiles had been fired at TWA Flight 800. The conversation in question eliminated just about all doubt.

As Rosenbaum explained, he had been interviewing a candidate for a position as BNN's technical director at a rooftop cafe when an airplane passed overhead. The conversation moved naturally to airplanes and then, with Rosenbaum taking the lead, to TWA Flight 800.

"I've seen the video," said the candidate, who had until recently been working at MSNBC.

"No," the candidate answered, "the video, the actual video of the plane being shot down."

As the candidate told Rosenbaum, late on the night of the crash, editors at MSNBC had the tape on their monitors when "three men in suits" came to their editing suites, removed the tape, and threatened the editors with serious consequences if they ever revealed its contents.

The threats worked all too well. Despite my repeated requests, Rosenbaum could not get the technical director, whom he hired, to go on record. Over the years, I have asked various producers at MSNBC to follow up, but if they did, they kept what they learned to themselves.

Earlier in his research, Sanders had been approached by a technician at another station who had monitoring the competition's feeds from Long Island and made a bootleg copy of that same amateur video. What is more, he withheld a copy from the FBI when its agents came to confiscate whatever relevant tapes his station might have. Despite a series of phone calls, Sanders could not persuade the technician to hand over the tape. His fear was palpable enough, however, to convince Sanders that he was telling the truth.

Although I have not seen the video myself, I have heard from scores, if not hundreds, of credible people who swear they saw it on television in the first hours after the crash. That at least one among the hundreds of eyewitnesses would have had a video camera handy during a beautiful summer sunset evening makes perfect sense. The FBI admits to having confiscated two still photos and predictably writes off the images to dirt or scratches on the lens. A video would have been much harder to dismiss.

Nelson DeMille has obviously heard these stories as well – and perhaps more. In his best-selling novel, "Night Falls," a confiscated amateur video drives the plot. Although he spices the video up a bit in the retelling, DeMille is not just spinning fantasy. His insider details have the ring of authenticity about them.

What makes the MSNBC involvement all the more ironic is that the CIA was responsible for producing the 15-minute animated video used successfully to discredit the eyewitness testimony. If the MSNBC producers are interested in exposing not just a routine CIA cover-up, but the most consequential cover-up in American history, my fellow investigators and I will be happy to lead them right to the source.

There is admittedly much we still do not know about the explosion of TWA Flight 800, but we know enough about the CIA cover-up to bring indictments. Before turning on the CIA, however, MSNBC might want to look inward. The CIA at least had the excuse of national security. If MSNBC had reasons for betraying its journalistic ethics, I am not sure I know what they are. Indeed, had its new executives stuck to their guns that night, they might very well have prevented Sept. 11.

TWA 800: 'Obstruction of Justice Was Ongoing'
January 11, 2000

First in a NewsMax.com exclusive series of installments based on James D. Sanders' book "Altered Evidence," exposing the government's tampering with evidence, cover-up and misleading the public in the crash of TWA Flight 800.

It has it all: political villains, a lawless "Justice" Department and government shills masquerading as major media journalists.

Two hundred thirty-five years ago John Adams warned that "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right . . . and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers."

The Clinton administration began its shameful march through the 1990s by framing Billy Dale, longtime head of the White House Travel Office. The FBI enthusiastically joined in the mandated witch hunt to use the awesome power entrusted by "We The People" to the government in a shameless effort to frame and destroy Dale.

Simultaneously, the Justice Department engaged in a sordid affair now simply known as "Waco," and the cover-up of the death of Vince Foster soon followed.

Bimbo eruptions saw White House harassment, intimidation and vilification of a multitude of women.

Every step of the way, major media's first reaction has been to help the Clinton administration destroy the messenger. Reluctantly, grudgingly, major media have occasionally engaged in timid, superficial coverage of the immoral/unethical/criminal act of the moment. But never, ever have major media sallied forth when the end result could be the destruction of the Clinton administration.

"Altered Evidence" gives the reader an inside view of what happens in America today when a journalist takes on a hopelessly corrupt government. The introduction to "Altered Evidence" by James Sanders follows.

* * *

I'm a retired police officer and investigative journalist. For almost 15 years I have used the skills learned on the job in Southern California law enforcement to investigate wrongdoing within the federal government. This is my fourth book related to the subject.

On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 with 230 passengers and crew, crashed less than 10 miles south of Long Island. All on board died.

During the first hours after the crash, the airwaves were filled with eyewitness accounts of a missile streaking up into the air and a plane falling from the sky.

Within two months the New York Times was carrying Flight 800 stories that sounded more like FBI propaganda than journalism. And NBC Evening News became the preferred method by which the National Transportation Safety Board began to spin a story around a mysterious mechanical event that may have been the cause of it all.

Reporters began to tell me stories that questioned the official government line, intimating that it had been spiked. Stories about Navy divers removing highly sensitive debris from the ocean floor within 48 hours after the crash; about military officers admitting off the record that a major "screw-up" had caused the crash; that Navy sources were talking of a large concentration of Navy ships south of Long Island, the launch of a drone and "friendly fire."

I eventually developed sources within the government and the Flight 800 investigation. A stream of documents – and forensic evidence – became available establishing beyond a doubt that obstruction of justice was ongoing at the senior-most levels of those government agencies that controlled the investigation.

I wrote a book entitled "The Downing of TWA Flight 800." Released in April 1997, it provided the American public with a view of the TWA Flight 800 investigation never before revealed.

******

TWA 800: Missile Evidence Doesn't Lie
January 12, 2000

Second in a NewsMax.com exclusive series of installments based on James D. Sanders' book "Altered Evidence," exposing the government's tampering with evidence, cover-up and misleading the public in the crash of TWA Flight 800.

Government documents used to write my book "Altered Evidence" told of a much different event initiating the crash of TWA Flight 800 than the government’s version.

These documents reported that Federal Aviation Administration radar technicians saw a missile on their scopes and immediately notified the White House. The documents also revealed there was damage to the recovered debris consistent with a missile warhead explosion in the center-wing tank (CWT).

The documents said there was an initial, narrow area of damage that crossed the Boeing 747 in the area immediately in front of the CWT, generally in a right-to-left direction.

My best source inside the investigation said there was a reddish-orange residue trail in this exact area. Eventually, he obtained two small samples of the residue, which I had tested. They were consistent with the residue from a solid-fuel missile.

Further investigation, coming after the publication of my earlier book, "The Downing of TWA Flight 800," established that more than 98 percent of the residue's volume was consistent with an explosive event.

The government counterattacked, arguing that the residue was glue. After months of ducking and dodging, the NTSB finally announced that the residue was 3M 1357 HP Adhesive. It pointed to NASA chemist Charles Bassett as the scientist who confirmed this fact.

I obtained a notarized affidavit from Bassett. His written statement debunks the government’s glue allegation.

I sent a sample of 3M 1357 HP adhesive to Florida State University to be tested and compared with my residue's elemental analysis. FSU confirmed beyond any doubt that the government lied about my residue sample being 3M glue.

Then, Dr. Merritt Birky, the National Transportation Safety Board bureaucrat in charge of the Flight 800 Fire and Explosion Group, admitted the government had never tested my residue. Why? He indicated the government was afraid of the results.

By this time you can almost visualize Department of Justice agents swooping down and hauling away the responsible miscreants, parading them through a frenzied throng of media.

Unfortunately, the department, including the FBI, was involved in this scheme to obstruct justice and rewrite the history of TWA Flight 800. They were not about to investigate and imprison themselves.

Three months after my book was published, the head of the NTSB, under oath, before Congress, admitted that the NTSB had essentially removed a mechanical malfunction as possible cause of the downing of Flight 800:

Congressman Traficant: I would just like the panelists to answer my questions yes or no. If you can’t, just say you can’t answer it. First question, Mr. Hall. Hypotheses and theories and opinion, not fact, correct? Hypothesis is theory, correct?

NTSB Chairman Jim Hall: Yes.

Traficant: To this point, has any physical evidence, conclusive forensic evidence, to prove it was a mechanical failure that caused the explosion of the center fuel tank? Yes or no.

Hall: We’re looking into that.

Traficant: I want a one [word] answer. I know it is tough at this point.

Hall: No.

The NTSB has exhaustively searched for a politically correct "mechanical" answer. Forty million dollars later the answer is still "NO."

"Altered Evidence" reveals what really happens in America when the politically correct answer is exposed as fraudulent by aggressive journalism.

Introduction
CDR. William S. Donaldson, USN (ret.), challenged the official NTSB position on the cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 in a series of letters to James Hall, Chairman of the NTSB between April 1997 and December 2000. During those four years, CDR. Donaldson worked with other Retired Aviation Professionals, including some previous crash investigators as well as persons inside the NTSB investigation itself. CDR. Donaldson has extensive experience as a Naval crash investigator and he and others concluded that the NTSB's explanation of the Center Wing Tank explosion was not credible. With the help of these other concerned aviation professionals, CDR. Donaldson produced an extensive report on the cause of the crash. The initial Interim Report was delivered to the House Aviation Subcommittee on July 16th, 1998. Since that time a great deal of new information has surfaced.

Information uncovered in early 1999 now shows that TWA Flight 800 could have been shot down by one or more shoulder-fired missiles. The FBI was briefed by military missile experts in the Fall of 1996 that Flight 800 was well within the range of a shoulder fired missile. The FBI conducted a covert dredging operation for stinger missile parts between November 1996 and April 1997. CDR. Donaldson brought this new evidence to the House Aviation Subcommittee in testimony on May 6, 1999. Unfortunately, the major media and the Congress are content to swallow the official line without question.

This website is dedicated to CDR Donaldson's memory and outstanding leadership in searching for the truth.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:vaogy19ct80J:www.twa800.com/+jim+hall,+ntsb,+twa+800&hl=en

Ex-NTSB honcho tries to torpedo 'First Strike'
Posted: March 15, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

There is something sad about Peter Goelz – something sad about the once-proud party that produced him, something sad about the unseemly process that raised him up.

That process transformed a man whose only prior transportation experience had been as a lobbyist for sleazy riverboat-gambling interests into the managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.

What the process could not do, however, was change the man. Despite the Washington veneer, Goelz remains, at heart, the dirty trickster he once was.

On March 3, a day before the release of First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America, Goelz planted a hostile review of the book in Amazon. The "one-star" review reads as follows:

Garbage In Garbage Out, March 3, 2003

Reviewer: pgoelz1 from Alexandria, Va. This is another attempt to try and profit from tragedy. First it was the Navy who supposedly shot down TWA Flight 800 and tried to cover it up. Now with our fighting men and women held in somewhat higher esteem that theory seems almost unpatriotic. The authors now try and slightly shift the blame – but in the end, no matter how you slice it, it's still all baloney. Save your money.

Goelz served with the NTSB during the entire course of the four-year TWA Flight 800 investigation – the last three years as managing director. That he conceals this fact in the review is at best duplicitous. That he finds the still unresolved death of 230 people worthy of a pun-filled prank is downright disgraceful.

To be sure, Goelz has good cause to conceal his role. The picture James Sanders and I paint of Goelz in "First Strike" does not flatter. It involves one example after another of misdirection and dissembling.

A political crony of NTSB Chairman Jim Hall, Goelz was invariably prepared to say what the situation demanded. He and Hall had gotten to know each other in the Clinton-Gore Tennessee campaign of 1992. Neither had any experience related to the work with which the NTSB is tasked, but Goelz had the ability to stay on message, a useful talent in Clinton's Washington.

Instructive in the ways of Goelz's style is his treatment of Kelly O'Meara. O'Meara had served as Long Island Congressman Michael Forbes' chief of staff before becoming a reporter. In fact, it was her aggressive pursuit of the truth about TWA Flight 800 that led to her controversial departure from Forbes' office.

Early in 1998, someone inside the NTSB had quietly released new radar data showing a large number of radar blips moving in unison between 22 and 35 miles south of the TWA 800 crash site. This piqued O'Meara's interest. Reporting for Insight magazine, which is published by the Washington Times, O'Meara interviewed Goelz and asked him what the data meant – and why it had not surfaced before. O'Meara had no sooner left his office, however, than Goelz called Howard Kurtz of the rival Washington Post to plant a story defaming her. Kurtz would quote Goelz as saying: "She really believes that the United States Navy shot this thing down and there was a fleet of warships."

As O'Meara's audiotape revealed, however, it was the mocking and evasive Goelz who raised the issue of a missile, not O'Meara. Wrote Insight editor Paul Roderiquez: "In my experience as a veteran newsman, journalists would never roll over and allow government bureaucrats to use them to slime their colleagues. Yet that precisely is what recently happened."

More...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31540

Salinger 'totally sure' TWA 800 missile theory is true
Pentagon, federal investigators insist he's wrong

March 13, 1997
Web posted at: 10:49 a.m. EST (1549 GMT)

In this story:

* Salinger: Video 'confirms a missile'
* Report: Russian satellite has proof
* Missile theory discredited
* Tape seized from pilot
* Related stories and sites

PARIS (CNN) -- Former newsman Pierre Salinger insisted again Thursday that a Navy missile downed TWA Flight 800, this time offering a 69-page document and a set of radar images to bolster his case.

"We have now reached the point where we are totally sure what we are saying is true," Salinger, a former ABC News correspondent and press secretary to President Kennedy, told a Paris news conference.

T R A N S C R I P T S

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ggh8lToINi8J:www.cnn.com/US/9703/13/twa/+jim+hall,+ntsb,+twa+800&hl=en

Tape seized from pilot

Investigators say three possible crash theories remain -- a bomb, a missile or mechanical failure -- but they insist the investigation has ruled out an errant missile strike by the U.S. military.

The FBI this week launched a criminal investigation, hoping to stop missile theorists. On Tuesday, agents seized a videotape that former pilot Richard Russell claimed was FAA tape showing radar images of a missile near the doomed plane.

Salinger first based his friendly fire claim on a memo Russell wrote and circulated on the Internet.

The videotape was examined closely and found to have no indications of any missile, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The FBI also has been trying to question a former California police officer who said he obtained and did tests on an actual piece of the wreckage.

Paris Bureau Chief Peter Humi, Correspondent Peg Tyre, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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