Posted on 11/09/2006 9:04:16 AM PST by Hal1950
This week I received a communication from retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr. It contained two items of great interest – one dollop of good legal news and one unexpected and truly incredible report.
The legal news concerned Ray's success in Los Angeles District Court after years of "long and lonely and expensive" effort. Judge Howard Matz had succinctly mandated that "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." Significantly, the judge also authorized Lahr attorney John Clarke to file for fees and costs. This is a definite win.
Lahr has been suing for release of the information that the two agencies in question had used to produce their notorious zoom-climb animation subsequent to the 1996 downing of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island – animation that was used to discredit the testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses, many of them military and aviation personnel. Lahr sees this animation as the Achilles' heel of a consciously skewed investigation, and in this he is correct.
Lahr also sent me a CD review of the case titled merely "TWA Flight 800 Crash Evidence Review," which I will hereafter refer to as "the Review." Before I finished reading it, I sent Lahr an e-mail, which read in part:
"Brilliant work on your explication. I am only halfway through it, but I am totally impressed. Everything else that has gone before it is the work of amateurs, mine included."
The message I got back from Lahr, however, floored me. He did not write this report. He received it anonymously in the mail. I was stunned. The Review in question is the most sophisticated piece of investigative reporting that I have ever read on this or any other crash. The unknown author likely put years into this work. He surely comes from within the aviation community, which may explain his desire for anonymity. He argues crisply, patiently and comprehensively. He provides ample illustration of his contentions and rarely, if ever, does he exceed his knowledge base.
Most impressive is his knowing synthesis of all the available evidence – radar, eyewitness, physical, audio, GPS, debris field – to recreate in detail the flight taken and damage done by each of the missiles fired at TWA Flight 800. What is more, the author uses only the evidence that was available to the National Transportation Safety Board to reach conclusions that they should have reached with the same data.
The Review author believes that based on the debris field alone, "the administration would have known within the first two weeks after the crash that missiles brought down the aircraft." Although prudent in his accusations, he strongly suspects that the long delay in recovering the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder indicates that the decision to misdirect the investigation "actually occurred the night of the disaster." With this conclusion, I fully concur.
No one who reads this Review can doubt for a moment that the government has engaged in a massive misdirection in the gathering of evidence. Every major media outlet owes it to its audience to assign its best technical writer to read and review this work. The one CD includes the entire NTSB report as well.
To make things simple, I will happily provide a copy of the entire Review to any interested major media party. The author asked that the information be shared. Interested observers, who are willing to identify themselves, can obtain a pdf copy of Part I of the Review by contacting me through my website, .
In the weeks to come, I will break down the information into manageable chunks. For now, allow me to summarize the author's approach. The Review is divided into four parts. Each of the first three parts is dedicated to the destructive path of one given missile.
In the way of example, the author argues that the first of the three was a large surface-to-air missile launched from 16 to 22 miles west of the crash site. The missile approached the aircraft on a descending track from the rear and struck it without exploding. The author is very specific in his detail, to wit, "This impact broke the horizontal stabilizer pitch trim jackscrew in tension and caused the aircraft to pitch upward." Not all the writing is this technical, but where specifics are needed, the author does not shy from providing them.
The fourth part, and the one least supported by existing evidence, is dedicated to other unidentified objects in the sky that night. The author makes the public relations mistake of calling them UFOs. What he means are unidentified aircraft. They do not come from outer space. I will call them UACs.
In the book "First Strike," James Sanders and I argue that a UAC may very well have been in the mix, and that UAC may have been a terrorist plane. The author, too, believes that a UAC was in the mix as well as three missiles, but he does not believe that the UAC was a manned aircraft. He makes a compelling argument that the UAC information that the FBI gathered was so hot that it was simply not allowed in to the official record. Every now and then, however, some information bled in accidentally. The most obvious example of the same was a photo taken by Linda Kabot that seemed to show a slender cylindrical object flying away from the scene of the crash.
Wisely, the author refrains from saying who fired the missiles or launched the aircraft, although the evidence strongly leads away from anything but a highly sophisticated military operation. It is possible that terrorist involvement may have gone no deeper than warnings given and credit claimed. Someone in Washington knows just how deep that involvement was.
The author argues that an independent panel from outside Washington is essential to conduct a new investigation. "Otherwise," he contends, "the same insider influences in both political parties, who have prevented the truth from being revealed previously, would control the investigation's outcome."
In the best of all possible worlds, Ray Lahr's case may just crack open the official door.
There were IIRC about 200 witnesses, and a few were interviewed, 8-9, and all disregarded. The real report was published on the net by the government GPO, and may still be available - it's not too long.
Just a thought here - and this may be pure tinfoil - but consider this:
1) The plane was shot down by Libyans.
2) Clinton did not have the stomach to go to war
Fast forward to 2001:
1) 9-11
2) U.S. to Libya: We have the evidence to prove you shot down TWA-800. We also have the political capital to clean your clock unfettered and send you to a fiery grave.
3) Ghadafi (crapping a brick) to U.S.: I'll give up my nuclear program and we'll call it even.
I'm willing to be skeptical and conclude an FBI agent talked out of turn based on numerous miscalculations and speculations they've had in the past. Richard Jewel comes to mind. Also, experienced profilers had the D.C. sniper pegged as a lone, angry white man in his 30s, driving a white utility van.
What exactly was the motivation?
1. '96 Olympic Games in August
What would have been the international "buzz" if we had terrorists shooting down airliners in our country? Thousands of empty seats in Atlanta (the South, a CRUCIAL area for re-election)
2. Presidential Election in November
We already know that the Clintons sold their souls to China to get re-elected. A terrorist coverup is peanuts.
Let us know when there is proof.
Believe what ever you wish!
No, I haven't. It's been too long since I read a secular book. I find more comfort now a days in reading the Bible. Sounds weird but it's actually a consistent comfort. I also enjoy reading archaeologist stuff that fills in the culture of that time and what the customs were at that time. I find it altogether to be fascinating and brings Bible stories to life. I never thought I'd be doing THAT.
I rarely believe what I wish, if only I could then I might come up with a Three Missile theory.
Ditto.
Also, if terorists had that level of sophistication as far as their assets were concerned, why no 2nd, 3rd, 4th attck and so on?
Did any terrorist organization even claim responsibility for this?
When that single plane incident didn't do the damage they had hoped it would, terrorists would have to find something more spectacular that could not be denied or discounted as accidental. And they did.
I don't think that was just an isolated incident by a distraught man- IMHO it was a calculated act by a terrorist who probably has other associates we should be looking at but haven't, at least not publicly.
Like it or not, though, it is better for us economically to pretend everything is just an accident that can be fixed if we just solve some technical problem with the equipment. The stocks people get the willies if only fix for the problem is war.
Yeah, but they'd keep silent to protect THEIR OWN butt.
[* My note: This is the paper which has in the past and continues to receive messages from al Qaeda]
JULY 1996 : (MOVEMENT FOR ISLAMIC CHANGE TAKES CREDIT FOR RIYADH & KHOBAR TOWERS BOMBINGS) In July 1996, the Movement for Islamic Change claimed credit for both the Riyadh and Khobar Towers bombings in a fax to an Arabic newspaper in London. A wave of arrested followed, with Saudi Arabia holding some 40 Saudi suspects by November 1996. - "Khobar Towers Bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia," the Washington Post, June 25, 1996
I understand that in all previous cases, all similar planes were upgraded, patched, whatever, to fix the problem.
It certainly appears to be the case that there is/was no problem with the plane's design.
There had been a terrorist summit in Teheran in June. TWA and Khobar Towers were taken down in July. In late July the US launched an operation against Imad Mugniyah when we interdicted a ship in the Persian Gulf named Ibn Tufail. The operation was called off at the very last moment in a classic White House gut check move we also saw happen over and over in our hunt for al Qaeda pal Aidad in Somalia. Clinton couldn't bring himself to nab these guys and didn't want an "incident" so he would NEVER give final approval to nab anyone. He choked.
JULY 1996 : (PERSIAN GULF, US 'ATTEMPT' TO NAB MUGNIYAH) In the Persian Gulf, in late July 1996, US warships, a full complement of military hardware, and nearly 4,000 Marines, sailors and SEALs, were praying they could pull off the mission of their lives. They had been assigned to grab the man, who before September 11th, had killed more Americans than any other terrorist. His name is Imad Mugniyah, and U.S. intelligence believed they had tracked him to the waters of the Persian Gulf, aboard a merchant ship, the Ibn Tufail. Marine commander John Garrett helped plan this top-secret mission to take down the ship, and take Mugniyah into custody. This is the first time he has ever talked about it publicly. In fact, no one involved has ever talked about it, until now. Dan Rather reports. ...One month earlier, 19 Americans had been killed in the bombing of the Khobar Towers Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia. The suspected mastermind? Imad Mugniyah. When intelligence indicated he might be aboard the Ibn Tufail, a massive operation was mounted almost overnight. ... There was nothing left to do but pull the trigger on the plan. In place, ready to attack, were 60 SEALs assigned to board the ship in secret. Dozens of Marine commandos, and hundreds of others were ready to search the ship from stem to stern. Then with one word from Washington, all the planning, all the adrenaline, and all the hope… for thousands of American sailors and Marines, came crashing down. The mission was called off. Says Short: “I was just stunned. I mean disbelief. I mean it had been almost 48 hours at that point. And none of us had slept, and at the end of that, they tell you that it’s off, not standby, not be prepared, to just forget about it.” http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/01/60II/main507784.shtml
Assuming the people who know/knew are still alive.
Dead men tell no tales
AUGUST 23, 1996 : (BIN LADEN'S 'DECLARATION OF WAR' ON US) Date on bin Laden's written "declaration" of attack against the US. The document was written and published about two months after the bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Demands included the removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia, and the overthrow of the government of Saudi Arabia.
Then in Afghanistan the Taliban moved on Kabul and took that city in September.
They were at war but we were still playing cops and robbers.
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