The desk of Jack Cashill - World Net Daily
Posted on 08/19/2005 5:27:07 AM PDT by Libloather
MEGA FIX
N.Y. Times continues to avoid TWA 800 connection
Posted: August 18, 2005
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that State Department analysts had warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 about the dangers of Osama bin Laden's impending move to Afghanistan.
Deep in the article, the Times reports that the State Department assessment was "written July 18, 1996." Nowhere in the article does the Times mentioned what happened the day before.
What happened on July 17, 1996, is that TWA Flight 800 exploded on a beautiful summer night only 12 minutes out of JFK along the affluent well-populated south shore of Long Island. By all accounts, this crash threw Washington into a virtual war footing. A State Department assessment produced on July 18, 1996, was as likely to have been routine as one produced on Sept. 12, 2001.
On July 18, the last day of official honesty, Times reporters were all over the place, and they were pressing for the truth. On that day, unnamed "government officials" – most likely the FBI – told the New York Times that air-traffic controllers had "picked up a mysterious radar blip that appeared to move rapidly toward the plane just before the explosion."
These officials and the Times unequivocally linked the radar to the multiple eyewitness sightings and the sightings to a missile attack. According to the Times' sources, "The eyewitnesses had described a bright light, like a flash, moving toward the plane just before the initial explosion, and that the flash had been followed by a huge blast – a chain of events consistent with a missile impact and the blast produced by an aircraft heavily laden with fuel." As one federal official told the Times that first morning, "It doesn't look good," with the clear implication of a missile strike.
This was the last day these officials were open with the media about the possibility of a missile. Once they changed the story, so did an oddly quiescent Times. The words "radar" and "eyewitness" would all but disappear from the Times' reporting after the first day. Nor, inexplicably, would the Times investigate the role of the military in the downing of TWA 800, not one paragraph, and not one word about satellites and what they might have captured.
As it happens, the Atlanta Olympics opened on July 19, the day the above stories were reported. Were the White House to acknowledge that an attack from outside the plane had caused its destruction, the Federal Aviation Administration might well have been compelled to shut down aviation on the East Coast. Accordingly, all missile talk ceased on that day. The investigation was forced into a false dialectic between bomb and mechanical. And the government, especially the FBI, would make the Times its unwitting messenger.
The day of the president's visit to Long Island eight days after the crash would prove to be something of a milestone. On that same day, for the first time, unnamed "law enforcement officials" – most assuredly the FBI – told the New York Times that they "supported the theory that the plane was destroyed by a bomb." At a separate briefing that day, FBI honcho James Kallstrom reinforced the theory. "We know there was a catastrophic explosion," he admitted, "It was caused by some kind of bomb, obviously, explosion." Yet, there was never any evidence of the same then, nor would there ever be, at least not a conventional bomb within the plane.
Besides, by this time the FBI had already interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses – pilots, vacationers, fishermen, surfers – and they were all telling the same story. A typical sighting came from a Westhampton school parking lot, where school principal Joseph Delgado saw an object like "a firework" ascend almost vertically. The object had a "bright white light with a reddish pink aura surrounding it." The tail, gray in color, "moved in a squiggly pattern." From Delgado's perspective, the object "arced off to the right in a south-westerly direction."
Delgado saw a second object "glitter" in the sky and the first object move up toward it. He thought at first it was "going to slightly miss" the glittering object, TWA 800, but it appeared to make "a dramatic correction at the last second." Then Delgado saw a "white puff." Delgado and at least 750 other people – and probably thousands – watched as the plane's fuel tanks exploded, and Flight 800 morphed into what Delgado described as a "firebox" and others as a "fireball." Amazingly, the New York Times would only speak to one eyewitness, and not one of the 270 who saw the object's ascent.
To its credit, the FBI pushed to the terrorist side of the equation and pulled the Times with it. The Times' article on Aug. 14 – "Fuel Tank's Condition Makes Malfunction Seem Less Likely" – was the most provocative yet.
According to the Times, investigators "concluded that the center fuel tank caught fire as many as 24 seconds after the initial blast that split apart the plane, a finding that deals a serious blow to the already remote possibility that a mechanical accident caused the crash." One official was quoted as saying that parts of the tank were in ''pristine condition.'' Said another official who insisted on anonymity, ''It is clear that whatever set off the tank did not severely damage the tank. Something else, most likely later, blew up the tank.''
There was more. Investigators told the Times that the pattern of the debris "persuaded them that a mechanical malfunction is highly unlikely." From their analysis of the debris field, these investigators concluded the following, a summary that still has all the appearance of unvarnished truth:
The blast's force decapitated the plane, severing the cockpit and first-class cabin, which then fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The rest of the plane flew on, descending rapidly, and as it did thousands of gallons of jet fuel spilled out of the wings and the center fuel tank between them. At 8,000 feet, about 24 seconds after the initial blast, the fuel caught fire, engulfing the remainder of the jetliner into a giant fireball.
"Now that investigators say they think the center fuel tank did not explode," read the Times account, "they say the only good explanations remaining are that a bomb or a missile brought down the plane."
And then Richard Clarke got involved. About four weeks after the crash, based on his own rough timeline, Clarke visited the site of the investigation on Long Island. There he casually stopped to talk to a technician. Their presumed conversation, reported in Clarke's "Against All Enemies," is so utterly disingenuous it needs to be repeated in full:
"So this is where the bomb exploded?" I asked. "Where on the plane was it?"
"The explosion was just forward of the middle, below the floor of the passenger compartment, below row 23. But it wasn't a bomb," he added. "See the pitting pattern and the tear. It was a slow, gaseous eruption, from inside."
"What's below row 23?" I asked, slowly sensing that this was not what I thought it was.
"The center line fuel tank. It was only half full, might have heated up on the runway and caused a gas cloud inside. Then if a spark, a short circuit ..." He indicated an explosion with his hands.
The technician goes on to tell Clarke that these "old 747s" have an "electrical pump inside the center line fuel tank" and lays the blame on the pump. In fact, almost everything about the conversation is wrong. The tank was not half full, but virtually empty. The evening was a cool 71 degrees. The plane's pumps were all recovered and found blameless, and the fuel pump wiring is not even inside the tank. The National Transportation Safety Board admittedly never did find the alleged ignition source.
But pride goeth before a fall. In this one chance encounter, Clarke manages to sum up the essence of the "exit strategy" months if not years before the NTSB does, and he takes all credit for it. That same day, Clarke tells us that he returned to Washington and shared his exploding fuel-tank theory with chief of staff Leon Panetta and NSA Director Tony Lake, even sketching the 747 design.
"Does the NTSB agree with you," Lake reportedly asked Clarke? Clarke's purported response speaks to the priority politics would take over truth in this investigation – "Not yet."
Jamie Gorelick took the ball and ran. On Aug. 22, 1996, the deputy attorney general called the FBI's Jim Kallstrom to Washington and effectively put the TWA Flight 800 investigation to bed. Now, it was just a question of how best to explain away the explosive residue and the eyewitnesses.
That's because it falls on Ol Zipper Klintoon's watch. Can't be having that can we?
Whoa! Good find. Thanks for posting!!!
Whoa! Good find. Thanks for posting!!!
bppkmark
I'm surprised the NYT reports this at all. Must be some ulterior motive for doing so. Maybe they want to get it out now so that it won't embarrass Hillary later.
"The tank was not half full, but virtually empty."
Why would a plane bound for Paris have an empty fuel tank?
hmmm
Interesting theory.
Nobody has ever logically explained two problems with it, in my opinion.
Nobody, as far as I know, ever claimed credit for shooting down an American airliner. From a terrorist's viewpoint, what is the point of successfully pulling off the most spectacular terror attack in history (till then) if people generally think it was an accident?
There have been no other airliners taken down in similar fashion since. Why would they stop?
The desk of Jack Cashill - World Net Daily
They only carry what they need. No use using fuel hauling undeeded fuel.
Great article! I'm surprised that the NYT would publish such an article since they are one of the "Klintoon Lapdogs". I still believe in my heart the Flight 800 was a terrorist hit. Living in the NY area, I was watching a local TV station when "breaking news" cut in. Numerous eye witnesses claimed that they saw a streak of light racing up towards the plane. IMHO sounds like a SAM to me & no one will ever change my mind.
The New Yourk Slimes is another mouth piece for the Taliban just like Al Jazzera.
"And the government, especially the FBI, would make the Times its unwitting messenger."
I believe that the NYT actually was not unwitting at that point. I believe someone in the Clinton WH went to the publisher of the Times and blackmailed him. Remember the 900 FBI files? Is it not likely that the Clintons had files on non-government folks? The involvement of Clarke and Gorelick in the TWA 800 investigation and their subsequent roles in the 9/11 Commission are beyond coincidental, IMHO. This is a massive coverup orchestrated intially out of the WH by the Clintons. It continues today, with the role of Sandy Berger, Gorelick, Clarke, and others. This, too, will have some relation to the 1995 terrorist attack in OKC, where I believe John DOe #2 was/is an Iraqi agent. The US executed McVeigh as fast as possible, because he knew the truth. McVeigh was merely the trigger - Iraq was the trigger-puller. The Clintons are up to their necks in this, and it needs to be investigated. However, any reporter who does so is advised to proceed carefully and watch his back.
Clinton just couldn't have an act of terrorism declared such because he would have had to go to war. And that's the last thing the hater of the military wanted.
Even John Kerry and George Stephanapolous have accidentally, when speaking of TWA 800, said it was terrorism.
Same with the WTC bombing in 1993. We know an man with an Iraqi passport was involved and took refuge in Iraq afterwards.
These airplanes are capable of such long range, that it is normal that the center tanks could be empty on a "short" flight to Paris.
If the center tanks were empty, the pump switches were off on the engineer's panel and no fuel pump wiring was in the tank, there is no source for any explosion.
Aviation jet fuel isn't nearly as flammable as auto gasoline. With the combination of little fuel in the tank and the 13,000 foot thinner air, it is difficult to get the fuel/air mixture to explode.
That is the question I was about to post.
Don't quote me on this but I seem to remember that this plane has 5 tanks and thus could have taken on even more fuel for longer hauls. For the Paris flight, it was not needed so was empty since planes don't like to a)carry unnecessary weight and b)don't like to land with more than 10% fuel capacity still in reserve.
"Nobody, as far as I know, ever claimed credit for shooting down an American airliner. From a terrorist's viewpoint, what is the point of successfully pulling off the most spectacular terror attack in history (till then) if people generally think it was an accident? "
They didn't have to claim credit. That was the ugliness of the Bent Ones White House. Everything got swept under the rug. Clinton knew who did it and chose to do nothing about it because reelection was the most important thing to the Clintonistas.
It sickens me that "the one who shall go nameless" will get a pass by the MSM.
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