Posted on 11/01/2006 6:26:07 PM PST by Swordmaker
Zoom Climb Lawsuit
October 31, 2006
My individual battle to pry information out of the CIA, the NTSB, and the NSA regarding TWA Flight 800 has been long, and lonely, and expensive. But at last I have achieved a favorable judgment from the federal court. Although Judge Matz emphasized that he is not expressing any opinions pertaining to the underlying premise of a missile, he has determined that I am entitled to most of the requested data and calculations pertaining to the zoom-climb.
JUDGMENT OF THE COURT by Judge A. Howard Matz: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) shall produce to plaintiff the material set forth in Exhibit A and the National Transportation Safety Board shall produce to plaintiff the material set forth in Exhibit B.
Plaintiff may file a motion for award of attorneys fees and costs by not later than 11/15/06. Defendants' response shall be filed not later than 12/20/06. Plaintiff's reply shall be filed by not later than 1/8/07. Court will rule upon the papers without a hearing. Parties shall not be precluded by the fact that they have approved this judgment as to form from appealing any aspect of this judgment or of the orders dated 8/31/06 or 10/4/06 (See document for further details)(ir.)(Entered: 10/18/2006)
When and if I receive the requested information, I feel confident that it will show that false assumptions were made regarding the zoom-climb that was propounded in order to discredit the eyewitnesses who reported seeing a missile. Namely, when the nose was blown off, the CG moved 10 feet aft, the aircraft immediately pitched up into a stall, and the aircraft could never climb and then dive as depicted in the zoom-climb scenario. This may be some vindication for this ALPA statement which was included in the official NTSB TWA800 accident report:
"Furthermore, although ALPA does not doubt the technical capability of the NTSB, we are concerned that this analysis was essentially accomplished by only one individual at the Board, with little or no party input or participation. It is a well known and accepted tenet of engineering analysis that the output (results) can only be as accurate as the input data."
Thus far, that input data has never been revealed. If it is released and the zoom-climb is disproved, the government must then acknowledge the eyewitness missile reports. Then the government must determine who fired the missile.
Against all of the rules of evidence, the NTSB adopted the zoom- climb conclusion without providing any supporting data or calculations. It is unfortunate that the missile issue was avoided by this zoom-climb ruse. If the missile issue had been squarely faced, TWA might be flying today. Instead, TWA took the fall for allegedly operating an older aircraft with maintenance that didn't detect a potential spark. Nonsense, that accident wasn't TWA's fault. We can't role back the clock and reinstate TWA, but we can, at least, clear TWA's name.
We don't know who fired the missile. But if it was terrorist missile, and if that had become known, the country would have been alerted to the terrorist threat, and 9/11 might possibly have been averted.
The defendants may appeal this judgment, and if they do, it will delay the final decision. I would appreciate any support that ALPA might feel free to give. In my opinion, it has always been apparent to pilots that you can't blow apart the center section of the wing including the loss of nose and cockpit, and still have the unbalanced and critically damaged aircraft continue to fly and climb. There was no zoom-climb. Three airline crews saw the airplane explode and fall down to the ocean. Someday, the truth shall prevail.
Sincerely, Ray Lahr
Link to the Judge's Decision in PDF format. Windows users will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Red residue was found on seats transversing the cabin right at the location of the decapitation of TWA-800:
Seats with red residue in rows 17 through 19..
The NTSB explained the residue away with some sleight of hand.
"On page 9 of the NTSB Fire & Explosions Factual Report appears the following statement.
Selected seat back panels in rows 17, 19, 24, and 27 were damaged, exposing a brown to reddish brown colored material. This material was analyzed by infrared spectroscopy. Analysis showed the material to be consistent with a polychloroprene 3M Scotch-Grip 1357 High Performance contact adhesive. The report is attached in Appendix III-Tests and Analysis."
But is the red residue really consistent with 3M 1357 Adhesive?
SEAT RESIDUE TEST RESULTS
TEST ONE RESULTS from samples of the red residue visible on 15 seats of the reconstructed TWA 800 in Calverton Hangar. The test was performed at Santa Fe Lab in California at the request of James Sanders.
TEST TWO RESULTS for polychloroprene 3M Scotch-Grip 1357 High Performance contact adhesive from an UNSOAKED sample provided by 3M, performed by Coffey Labs, Portland Oregon. FBI and NTSB claimed that the "red residue" on the seats was the 3M 1357 Adhesive either in native form or after soaking in sea water. 3M 1357 Adhesive is normally green in color.
TEST THREE RESULTS From fabric samples taken from a 747-200 sister ship to TWA 800 soaked for 22 days in water taken from the Atlantic Ocean. Tests were performed under the direction of PhD candidate/researcher Thomas Stalcup.
ELEMENT | TEST ONE | TEST TWO | TEST THREE |
Magnesium | 18% | 2.5% | .007% |
Silicon | 15% | .0005% | .0004% |
Calcium | 12% | .0020% | .0011% |
Zinc | 3.6 % | .043% | .0002% |
Iron | 3.1% | .0041% | .001% |
Aluminum | 2.8% | .0065% | .0018% |
Lead | 2.4% | NONE | NONE |
Titanium | 1.7% | .00012% | .0002% |
Antimony | .53% | NONE | NONE |
Nickel | .38% | NONE | NONE |
Manganese | .21% | NONE | NONE |
Boron | .081% | .0016% | .001% |
Copper | .053% | NONE | NONE |
Silver | .032% | NONE | NONE |
Chromium | .032% | NONE | NONE |
The test results, revealing [in the red residue] a mixture of metals consistant with materials found in military missiles, was then published in the Riverside [CA] Press-Enterprise and in James Sanders' book.
This ia an absolutely false assertion.
It is an amazing logical leap... the government can continue to ignore the eyewitnss reports... or they can claim it was a "bolide".
Or, it can be that the hydrocode was wrong, and bad input data may be irrelevant.
Read Peter Lance's book, "CoverUp." Chapter 5, TWA 800: Bojinka Fulfilled, is a must-read.
TWA800 center wing tank ping.
How much money has already been spent on these studies?
You think it was a friend or foe test? You are seriously a nutcase.
Please tell me some of the other apparent accidents that were later found to be terrorism.
I hadn't heard of that crash. What are the details?
Why?
Don't think much of the military, do you?
For example?
Ask any police investigator and they will tell you that the least reliable evidence in any criminial investigation will be eyewitness testimony.
OK, this is a factual accusation. What is your source? The NAVY was conducting a submarine exercise many, many miles away from the accident scene.
Then, the Navy finally admitted that there were a number of ships in the area which steamed away from the area just after the downing of TWA 800.
Where and when? You are accusing the Navy of murder. You made the charge. Back it up.
The ships were, of course, ordered to depart the scene to hide their role in the airliner's crash.
Once again, you are making an extremely inflammatory charge with nothing but your attitude to back it up. In classical logic, and in court, the one making the allegation has to prove it.
I subscribe to the theory there was a secret missile test to see if a missile intercept could distinguish between friend or foe in the busy airspace.
Your "theory" has several problems. The most serious of them:
Once again you are making what a judge would call "an assertion without evidence" and order stricken from the record. A less judicious temperament would call it a lie.
The White House ordered the cover-up of that August fiasco as Clinton was running for reelection in November and would surely have been blamed for the reckless murder of innocents aboard TWA 800 at his authorizing the secret test.
Not only is there no evidence for this loopy belief on your part, it's not even logical. The Clinton crowd would have absolutely no problem blaming such an event, if it occurred, on the military. His civilian oversight appointees to the DOD included people like Les "cut Special Forces, they'll just get us into a war" Aspin and Sara "Marines are all extremists" Lister.
Further, the military has absolutely no compunction about investigating its own. During the Clinton years, the Navy actually did strike a Japanese research vessel with a sub. Not only did they hang the captain out to dry when it was over, but the captain crash-surfaced and rendered what assistance he could. Remember the scores of Naval Aviators hosed by Tailhook during the Clinton years?
In more recent years, we've seen thorough investigations of Abu Ghraib (Army), prisoner abuses in Afghanistan (Army/CIA), various shootings (Marines and Army), and several service academy rape charges (which have, in some cases, led to courts-martial and acquittals, and have, in all cases of which I am aware, turned out to be based on false accusations. Yet the military investigates).
In every case, the investigation got underway because a service member with a conscience came forward to commanders or to other command authorities (CID, chaplains). there are many routes by which a military member with concerns can circumvent the chain of command and elevate his or her concerns to a higher level (including, FWIW, direct contact with members of Congress). I have been personally involved in the three types of investigation that military authorities conduct (accident, preliminary (art 15-6) and criminal. I can say with confidence that these investigations are independent and have never even heard of one that had a charge from commanders other than, "get me the truth and let the chips fall where they may."
In other words, even assuming that the Clinton White House was so morally bankrupt that they would conceal the murder of hundreds to avoid dealing with a political problem that they could easily have dealt with, they would never have been able to sell a cover-up to the uniformed military. Not. Gonna. Happen.
I have done a lot of research on TWA 800.
You need to expand your research resources beyond The National Enquirer and equivalent websites, and books from the scam-the-widows industry. Start by getting a pilot's licence and an education in aeronautical engineering, and call me back when you catch up.
The FBI completely commandeered the investigation of the crash in violation of federal law which requires the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) to conduct such investigations.
Here, you are making an absolutely false statement. NTSB investigates accidents but has always ceded authority in criminal cases since before there was an NTSB (for example, the CAB accident board ceded authority to the FBI In a 1955 bomb case which turned out to be a guy killing his mother for the insurance). NTSB resources are made available to FBI as required. If the FBI discovers that a crash was not, after all, criminal, they should cede authority back. In this case there was some disagreement between FBI and NTSB over the case, and since then they've modified their procedures for working together, but the law is what the law was. See NTSB reg 830 among others. (Every pilot has a copy on his shelf... it's in his FAR/AIM book).
The laughable animation... a violation of all laws of physics and no serious scientist could agree with the conclusions of the presentation.... animation was created by the CIA
It's been well documented that a CIA expert volunteered to do the animation because he had the computer tools and expertise to do so. Conspiracy tools love the "CIA animation," because in their small TV-stunted brains they hate and fear the CIA, and they think the animation is weak science. The NTSB ultimately did not use the animation.
As far as the laws of physics are concerned, most of the "dropped like a rock" theories don't take into account two things: the ultimate resting places of the parts of wreckage, which have been GPS plotted to within a couple meters, and (rather critically) the inertia of the main body of aircraft wreckage. Lahr attempts to do this when he says the loss of forward structure would produce a CG shift that would produce an instant stall. In fact, inertia can delay stalls, as any sportsman-level acro pilot can show you. An aircraft can be completely stalled, out of control, and still go up... just not indefinitely. A 747 has significantly more inertia than an Extra 300 or Pitts.
Finally, the burden of proof rests on the individual (or tool, in this case) making the accusation. Ray Lahr and his happy band of widow-soaking tools have been making accusations for over ten years. The burden of proof is, as it has ever been, on them. Yet all they can do is drum, drum, drum on tangential imperfections in the data (this whole court case in this thread is about the input data that were used in the computer animation, that looms large in loon-dom but was not used in the official findings of cause).
All in service of a theory which postulates a cover-up of mass murder going from the President through the lowliest $40k/year investigator at NTSB, including just about the whole Navy (400,000 officers and men), and the whole FBI, and everyone at Boeing and all the airlines that operate and have operated the Boeing 747 since 1970.
Dude, you are in no position to toss the word "laughable" around. Believing in this loopy theory requires a two-year-old's command of logic.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
But I won't just bash your theory for the authors of same -- that's an ad hominem attack. I just want to make sure everyone in this thread knows that the conspiracy tools include plenty of people boiling with hate and racism (Rivero) and with gutter morals (Sanders).
So I'll address your "red residue" directly. It was... bottom sediment. Here is the relevant excerpt from the alt.disasters.aviation FAQ.
2.1.5) What was that "red residue?" Should I believe the Sanders sample results?
Contributed by Dr. George O. Bizzigotti
Author James Sanders has made a significant argument based on a red
residue found on certain seat cushions in the TWA wreckage. Sanders
clandestinely obtained a sample of that residue, and submitted it for
elemental analysis. The composition of the residue was reported as
follows:Magnesium 18%
Silicon 15%
Calcium 12%
Zinc 3.6%
Iron 3.1%
Aluminum 2.8%
Lead 2.4%
Titanium 1.7%
Antimony 0.53%
Nickel 0.38%
Manganese 0.21%
Boron 0.081%
Copper 0.053%
Silver 0.032
Chromium 0.032%Sanders asserted that this analysis is consistent with solid rocket
fuel; his assertion is supported primarily by quotes from an
anonymous "retired Hughes Missiles engineer and propellants
specialist." However, there is abundant technical literature that
indicates that solid rocket fuels fall into two general categories:
nitrocellulose-based fuels and composite fuels containing aluminum,
ammonium perchlorate, and a polymeric binder, typically butadiene or
polysulfide rubber. Sanders arguments concern composite fuels, so
I'll concentrate on that. Kirk-Othmer's Encyclopedia of Chemical
Technology (4th ed., Vol 10, p. 72) indicates that composite rocket
fuel is typically 70 percent ammonium perchlorate, 18 percent
aluminum, and 12 percent polymeric binder; if the binder is
polybutadiene, one would expect the fuel to have a composition of
18.00% aluminum, 10.66% carbon, 3.74% hydrogen, 21.12% chlorine,
8.35% nitrogen, and 38.13% oxygen. Other compositions are possible, but
none come any closer to matching Sanders' result. Sanders results account
for 63% of the elemental composition, so any carbon, hydrogen, chlorine,
nitrogen, and oxygen can account for no more than 37% of his material
versus the 82% expected based on the technical literature's
composition. The aluminum value is lower than expected by a factor of
six. Clearly, the measured composition does not match (typical
criteria are measured = expected plus or minus 0.4%) the expected
composition.I begin as a skeptic because Sanders source is a "retired Hughes
Missiles engineer and propellants specialist." Hughes doesn't make
rocket motors; they buy them from subcontractors (e.g., Aerojet,
Alliant Techsystems, Morton Thiokol) that formulate the propellant.
This is roughly equivalent to "a retired Delta Airlines aircraft
designer" giving an opinion on the composition of materials in the
777; its not completely ridiculous, but one might be quicker to
accept at face value if he or she had worked for Boeing. The
anonymous source argues away most of the discrepancies, but on
closer inspection, he or she is wrong on several counts. Magnesium
(at 18 percent in the sample) has been used experimentally as an
igniter or to increase combustion temperatures, but in much smaller
proportions. The silicon (at 15 percent) is described as a "possible
binder component."However, no one has ever reported using a silicone rubber binder in a
rocket propellant, probably because silicone does not provide
sufficient energy when burned (much of the energy in solid rocket
propellants come from the organic rubber binder). Sanders also
asserts that calcium (at 12 percent) is used as a "heat or shock
sensitive explosive." That's a curious assertion; calcium nitrate
might be found in small amounts in some explosives, but it is not
found in rocket propellant. Rocket propellants are designed
specifically not to be sensitive explosives; they burn rather than
detonate (implied by the term "sensitive"). The silicon and calcium
are telling; they make up 27 percent of the sample by weight, but
they are not used in anywhere near those proportions in any rocket
propellant reported in the technical literature. Neither Sanders nor
any of the proponents of the missile theory have been able to explain
convincingly how these high levels of silicon and calcium could be
found in rocket propellant.So what could the residue be? I would note that seafloor sediments in
general are high in elements such as magnesium, calcium, silicon,
zinc, iron, and aluminum, with smaller amounts of many other metallic
elements. The exact values found in a sample are variable, i.e.,
samples taken from within feet of one another will vary by + or - 25
percent (which is why analyzing a control sample from the crash site
would not be terribly useful), but the general pattern has been
observed in many different samples (I've personally seen this pattern
in hundreds of samples over more than a decade). What I (and others)
have pointed out is that the Sanders result matches that general
pattern pretty well. The argument actually was never intended to
"prove" that the residue is sediment, but it rationalizes how a piece
of cloth that sat on the sea floor for several weeks could produce
the observed analysis. Nonetheless, the key factor for Sanders'
credibility is not whether or not he might have analyzed sediment, it
is whether the result is consistent with any known rocket propellant.
Sanders and others simply assert that the elements found in the
sample are typical of rocket fuel.Sanders credibility is also affected because he did the wrong test.
There are other tests, most notably infrared spectroscopy, that allow
the nondestructive, conclusive identification of materials. In
contrast, Sanders elected to do a destructive test that can never
conclusively prove the identity of the material, i.e., one could
prepare a mixture of totally innocuous materials that would have the
identical elemental composition. A demonstrably poor choice of
analytical procedure and an unsupportable explanation for the amounts
of the elements present are what discredit Sanders' lab analysis.
That the sample, which sat on the sea floor, matches reasonably well
with what one would expect for sediment is suggestive, but it is not
necessary to discredit Sanders' argument.
Sorry for the long excerpt, all. But I thought it best to give it verbatim.
To recap: Sanders stole the material, had the wrong tests done on it, then makes false assertions about what the material is based on an anonymous source known only to him. Swordmaker's message to us is, "trust Sanders" (via Rivero), and Sanders's message is, "trust me." That's the evidence; what do you think the jury will say? (We know what the jury did say about bottom-sand-man Sanders, who tried to raise this in his criminal trial: "Guilty!" [Actually, I think he pled guilty, so a jury never saw him -- it was many years ago -- but a guilty plea would show how he judges his own credibility, yes?)
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Don't think much of the military, do you?
Let me fix it for you:
Don't think much, do you?
Ah. There.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Well, I believe that Libya was behind Lockerbie, but consistently denied it.
I gave one example, and I'll give another. I'm virtually positive that the Norman Oklahoma suicide bombing outside the stadium was an instance of failed terrorism. But the perp is dead, and his friends are unlikely to put themselves on the jail list by speaking out.
Of course, you can argue that it wasn't terrorism, but I find that simply incredible. It's just that the authorities and the terrorists, probably a local group, share a mutual interest in keeping it quiet.
Same with OKC. There was Muslim involvement in that, several obvious connections, but the FBI and the terrorists have agreed to cover it up.
I agree with you about the curious CIA involvement. But I don't think the navy was responsible. Clinton controlled his stooges in the CIA and the FBI, and they in turn used their positions to control the agencies. In these agencies, generally when your boss says "jump," you jump, and there is better security to cover up than there would be on a naval ship with all sorts of crew having left the service since this happened.
Even an ex-CIA agent, however, knows better than to cross the clintonoids in the Agency.
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