Judith Miller, TWA 800 and the Death of Press Freedom

NewsMax ^ | 7/6/05 | James D. Sanders

[wagglebee]

This is right on point.

[Criminal Number 18F]

This guy's a felon who's been flogging a lie to bereaved family members for almost ten years now. Now he reinvents himself as a martyr to press freedom. Oh, please...

For one thing, he was never a member of the press.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Porterville]

It's a party- Huslters for everyone.

[ken21]

WOW!

[Alberta's Child]

In the aftermath of TWA 800, with a fully informed citizenry, America's masses would have demanded real protection based on real facts, not federal propaganda.

Baloney. There a very strong possibility that the real cover-up of TWA 800 was that the incident didn't involve terrorism at all -- it was an accidental shoot-down of TWA 800 by a U.S. or NATO military vessel conducting exercises off the south shore of Long Island that night.

[wagglebee]

I agree that he is suspect, but the government's story about TWA 800 has never seemed true to me.

[ladyinred]

Great find! This is a keeper.

[ladyinred]

You could be correct, but more evidence points to terrorism. That is what I think happened.

[bitt]

'According to three media sources - one deep inside NBC on July 17, 1996, when missile-fire brought the giant 747 down - in the hours after TWA Flight 800 was shot down a bidding war ensued for a video showing missile-fire bringing down TWA Flight 800. The bidding went above $50,000, at which time, the Fox News team, New York, was blocked from further bidding. The video ended up in the hands of NBC, where it was confiscated by the FBI.

The head of the Fox News team in the field on Long Island was then approached by an American military officer who said there was a major screw-up, the White House had ordered a 48 hour "stand-down" while it decided how to handle this crisis. Dominant media had a decision to make. Significant evidence of missile-fire was already in hand. Much more was easily available. There were witnesses who watching TWA Flight 800 as it headed east toward Paris. They then watched as a missile approached and brought the plane down. They didn't see some mysterious light way off in the distance. They were not confused. They knew what they had seen.

We now know the FBI and CIA knew they witnessed missile-fire, according to documents recently unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act.

The New York Times would have had this vital information if it merely conducted an honest investigation. It did not. Instead, it allowed the FBI to feed it an approved storyline, complete with selected facts – a bomb brought the 747 down. A political decision was then made at the top of the Clinton administration. It was an election year. A criminal act might provoke the sleeping masses.

The lapdog New York Times might lose its role as the dominant media "investigative" team. The Beast could lose control of the crisis. Truth could conceivably prevail if the shills at the New York Times ceased running interference for the National Security State. '

snip

In all probability, 9-11 would never have happened if the New York Times had merely done the job the Founding Fathers assigned. In the aftermath of TWA 800, with a fully informed citizenry, America's masses would have demanded real protection based on real facts, not federal propaganda.

[ken21]

i agree.

interesting, it's a taboo subject.

[jammer]

Really, who can possibly know? You both seem to agree with me that whichever optional explanation is true (or neither), the government is lying. That's just its nature and a premise that has to be accepted.

I think our debating it--which has been, and still would be, interesting--obfuscates the point of the post: America as we knew it in, say, the 1950's, is close to moribund. Another tragic USSC decision.

[Ramius]

Baloney. There a very strong possibility that the real cover-up of TWA 800 was that the incident didn't involve terrorism at all -- it was an accidental shoot-down of TWA 800 by a U.S. or NATO military vessel conducting exercises off the south shore of Long Island that night.

Highly unlikely. While I've never been all that happy about the center fuel tank explanation... the keeping of a secret ~requires~ that there are only a few people that know that secret. A naval vessel has hundreds of people onboard, and then perhaps hundreds more ashore in the exercise that would all know what happened. Opsec in the Navy is pretty good... but its not that good. Somebody would squawk.

[federal]

bookmark

[Alberta's Child]

Actually it's the other way around -- the strongest evidence indicates that IF TWA 800 had been brought down by a missile, then it really couldn't have been terrorism at all.

There are two basic factors that strongly indicate that it was highly unlikely that TWA 800 was brought down by a missile fired by terrorists:

1. If it were terrorists, then they picked a terrible location from which to attempt something like this. TWA 800 was flying at an altitude of something like 13,000 feet at the time it was "hit," which means it would have been at or near the limit of almost any conventional surface-to-air missile. If a terrorist wanted to shoot down a passenger jet flying out of Kennedy Airport that night, he would have positioned himself much further to the west -- where outbound aircraft from JFK weren't flying so high.

2. Related to #1, Flight 800 was flying several thousand feet lower than usual that night -- to make way for a northbound United Airways flight to Providence, Rhode Island that was running behind schedule. This was a turn of events that a terrorist could not possibly have foreseen -- if he had positioned himself at that location, he would have been firing under "normal" circumstances at a target that was several thousand feet higher than an altitude already at or beyond the edge of his missile's range.

[OldFriend]

The left was screeching for an investigation, screeching for the Justice Department to recuse itself and they got their wish.

A special prosecutor!

Evidently they wanted to simply allow Joe Wilson to lay blame without proof and they would stand idly by.

[ken21]

so why were the two journalists tossed in jail for stealing into the fbi's hangar where the debris was being reassembled?

[OldFriend]

You are the one spewing baloney.

[Alberta's Child]

You raise a valid point, but your basic premise that an accidental shoot-down would be difficult to keep secret doesn't just apply to an accidental shoot-down -- it also applies to any number of other explanations involving terrorism. The number of crew members on a naval vessel who would have been aware of what happened would be dwarfed by the number of U.S. government officials who were involved in the investigation.

And yet we all know that their "investigation" was a pile of bullsh!t -- which obviously requires complicity on the part of many people. I don't know anybody who believes that nonsense about an "exploding center fuel tank."

[Alberta's Child]

What does that have to do with the facts of the case? I am certain that the U.S. government has covered up the real cause of the TWA Flight 800 crash -- and they would go to whatever lengths necessary to keep the real cause from being made public regardless of what that cause was.