Hush Money stops the leaks.
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.
I don't know, and they're not saying.
ML/NJ
Yes, you can. I have never operated even a radar detector. I assume you will claim that this proves that the CIA Cartoon was accurate, and there was no missile connected with the TWA 800 disaster.
ML/NJ
No actually they felt they had to explain what it was that all those witnesses saw, so they came up with the CIA Cartoon. (The CIA is regularly involved in airplane accident investigations, right?) They claim the stricken plane soared up to 17000 feet, and that's what the folks on the ground saw going up: TWA800 not a missile.
The only problem with this is they forgot to talk to the witness most likely to be in a position to know whether TWA800 climbed at all after the explosion. You say you are a pilot so you know that one of the things a pilot is taught early on is how to judge if traffic is above, below, or at nearly the same altitude as he is.
The NTSB failed to talk to Eastwind Airlines pilot Dave McClaine. Yeah, maybe his FBI 302 is probably in their Appendix with the rest of them. I don't even know what it says. (The FBI interviewed McClaine a day or two after the accident. McClaine told me that as soon as he told them he didn't see a missile, they were done with him and they never talked to him again.) But MacClaine was flying at 16,000 staring at opposite direction TWA 800 about 20 miles distant when it exploded. He says TWA 800 was below him, stayed below him, and never went up.
Maybe with all the excitement the NTSB/CIA just forgot to ask McClaine about their cartoon, or maybe they weren't interested in what he would have had to say?
I wonder: do you think your fellow pilot Dave McClaine is incapable of judging the altitude of other aircraft; or do you think the NTSB et al., need to come up with a more reasonable explanation for all those witness reports they thought they needed to explain?
ML/NJ
No. And the "CIA cartoon" was not part of the NTSB investigation. If your information on this incident came from sources other than conspiracy sites, you'd know that. But as is evidenced by your next post, you really are doing nothing more than repeating what professional conspiracy conmen have told you.
As I previously mentioned, the CIA video had nothing to do with the NTSB, or the NTSB report. It was part of the FBI's criminal investigation of the incident. The FBI believed TWA 800 was the result of an international terrorist incident. That is how the CIA became involved. But as the investigation continued, it became clear that there was no criminal actions involved in what happened to TWA 800.
"The only problem with this is they forgot to talk to the witness most likely to be in a position to know whether TWA800 climbed at all after the explosion."
That is completely untrue. The NTSB was especially interested in the Eastwind Pilot and not only interviewed him specifically, but included a specific analysis of his statements in their report. But...you wouldn't know that since you've proven time and again that you have no idea what is actually in the NTSB report. Here's a link to the report. Go to page 243 titled "The Pilot of Eastwind Airlines Flight 507". NTSB Report
"You say you are a pilot so you know that one of the things a pilot is taught early on is how to judge if traffic is above, below, or at nearly the same altitude as he is."
I am a pilot, and one of the first things I learned was you can never put all your trust in what your eyes are telling you. Especially during twilight hours and when all you can see of another aircraft is its lights. But does it interest you in the slightest that the Eastwind Pilot, the person with perhaps the clearest view of the whole event, very clearly states that he saw no signs or indications of anything hitting TWA 800 before it exploded?
"The NTSB failed to talk to Eastwind Airlines pilot Dave McClaine."
As I've already stated, you are wrong again. Just read the NTSB report. You will realize that your fascination with the CIA video is irrelevant to the NTSB investigation. The NTSB does not support what was in the CIA video and did not include it in any part of its investigation.
ML/NJ
So let me see if I've got your theory right. You believe that there was some sort of subsurface to air missile test takeing place and the missile got away and took out the 747?
But I'm off with my family to watch today's NASCAR race. Go Dale!
Well, I had a look at the page you suggested. It does appear that McClaine spoke to the NTSB in March 1999, which was more than a year after I last talked with him and almost three years after the accident. (As I previously stated, he told me that the only time he was questioned by anyone in an official capacity investigating the accident was a day or two after it occurred.)
Now what about this page? They fail to mention the guy's name! Apparently, the only thing they learned from him in their interview was that he paused for ten seconds before reporting the explosion. And they provide no transcript. That must have been a hell of an investigation. BTW, I believe the statements he made on the night of the accident were to his company. You cannot tell this from the Great Report. But you can tell he waited ten seconds to report the explosion. That really helps to focus on what happened. You make it seem in what you said that they analyzed the statements he made in this NTSB interview, but really the only statements the mentioned (not analyzed) were selected statements he made shortly after the accident.
As for not seeing a missile, McClaine agreed with me that the reason he might not have seen a missile was that if it was there, it would have been launched from below him. You know that forward and down is not a point of great visibility in most airplanes. The missile apparently rose quickly so it would have been visible to him for at most a fraction of a second, during which time he says his attention was focused upon the light "on the plane." He didn't see a missile, it's true; but he didn't deny the possibility.
I notice you avoided all of my questions concerning McClain's ability and position to judge whether any burning part of TWA800 climbed after the plane was stricken. You seem as disinterested in this as the NTSB. (Hmmm.)
ML/NJ
I didn't say it was subsurface, but otherwise, yes, that's what I think happened.
ML/NJ
The same people who broadcast the lie that Bush dynamited the levee in New Orleans will do everything in their power to suppress this report. (Clinton was president when 800 went down, Bush was president during the flood in New Orleans)
BTTT
Actually, I've tried to address your points. And I did comment about the NTSB report you cited. Maybe you could give me more than ten minutes to respond?
The Peanut Gallery (And there is a Peanut Gallery! One of them sent me an email to cheer me on last night.) will note that you said no witnesses said there was a "missile" (as if it matters that a woman might describe it as a "flair") and I send you a link to a video of a former combat pilot saying it was miltary ordinance and in typical liberal fashion you lash out with an ad-hominen suggestion that this pilot is as trustworty as John Kerry. (I hope you're not using the NTSB report as some reference about what Meyer, whom they also did not identify or quote, has said in the past. But in a confusing section that follows the one you directed my attention to in the NTSB report there is reference the "witnesses in the HH-60 Helicopter," one of whom was Meyer though you cannot tell this from the report. I wonder why?)
ML/NJ
Hush Money stops the leaks.
So does honor and threats.
ML/NJ
You keep talking about the subs, I assume you believe one of them shot it off?
It's a safety investigation. They don't ever publish the names of interviewees.
"As for not seeing a missile, McClaine agreed with me that the reason he might not have seen a missile was that if it was there, it would have been launched from below him."
Think about that for a second. If he could see TWA 800, he could also see anything described as a "streak of light" that hit it. He was 20 miles away and just over 1000 feet above TWA 800. At 20 miles, he could easily see all the way down to the water below TWA 800. And no matter how hard you stare at a point of light 20 miles off your nose, you cannot fail to pick up other moving lights in your peripheral vision. Especially any lights resembling a burning rocket motor.
"I notice you avoided all of my questions concerning McClain's ability and position to judge whether any burning part of TWA800 climbed after the plane was stricken."
Whether or not TWA 800 climbed after the initial event of its destruction is entirely irrelevant. It had no bearing on the outcome of the NTSB investigation. And in my experience, it is nearly impossible to tell at 20 miles out, whether an aircraft is +/- 2000 feet of your altitude, or in the middle of climbing through your altitude. Especially when all you see of that aircraft is its landing light.
Hmmmm. If I was prone to believing in such things, I would suspect some kind of conspiracy involved in your participation on this thread. One wonders why "the Peanut Gallery" doesn't have the courage just to participate on this thread themselves.
"you said no witnesses said there was a "missile" "
That isn't what I said. In fact, I specifically pointed out that witness #73 describes a missile that magically circles TWA 800 before impacting a wing she couldn't have seen. But more to the point, it is the conspiracy advocates that falsely claim, over and over again that hundreds of witnesses reported seeing a missile strike TWA 800. Almost nobody suggested what they saw was a missile. And even fewer reported seeing anything actually strike TWA 800. That claim is just one more line of BS from conspiracy advocates.
"I send you a link to a video of a former combat pilot saying it was miltary ordinance and in typical liberal fashion you lash out with an ad-hominen suggestion that this pilot is as trustworthy as John Kerry."
I asked if you wanted to discuss his testimony. It is as trustworthy as John Kerry's. To start with, he clearly states in his initial interviews that nothing he saw resembled a missile. And since you probably haven't read it, here is a transcript of his interview with the NTSB. Maj Meyers
And oh, by the way, here is the complete transcript of Capt McClaine's interview with the NTSB. Capt McClaine
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