How Sandy Berger Paid Back the GOP

On July 6, 2006, Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, announced that it had added a new member to its high-profile, five-member advisory board – former Democrat Rep. Lee Hamilton.

True to form, the major media ignored the Hamilton appointment. They should not have. Hamilton, who had served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had just joined a firm headed by the man who had criminally undermined that very Commission, Stonebridge chairman and founder Samuel "Sandy" Berger.

In the words of a recent House Committee report, Berger had perpetrated "a disturbing breach of trust and protocol that compromised the nation's national security," a breach that had come at the expense of the 9/11 Commission's very mission.

The unseemly nature of this new alliance apparently did not trouble Hamilton, Berger or the Washington media. By the spring of 2006, Berger felt sufficiently comfortable in his relationship with that media to execute a brazen, political drive-by on the one man who most seriously threatened the Clinton legacy and his own reputation, namely Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania.

Berger began his spring offensive in March 2006 with a fund-raiser for Weldon's opponent, Joe Sestak. Almost universally despised by his Naval colleagues, the former vice admiral was forced into retirement for what the U.S. Navy charitably called "poor command climate." Before being recruited to run for Congress, Sestak had not lived in Weldon's district for 30 years.

Although hosted by Berger, the fund-raiser was held at the law offices of Harold Ickes, a veteran Clinton fixer, and Janice Enright, the treasurer of Hillary Clinton's 2006 Senate campaign.

Before the campaign was through, Clinton insiders would enlist Stonebridge's director of communications to serve as Sestak's campaign spokesperson, summon former President Clinton to rally the troops, and finally call in the federales. Their motives were transparent even to the local media.

"A Sestak victory," observed suburban Philadelphia's Delco Times early in the campaign, "would muzzle a Republican congressman who blames Clinton for doing irreparable harm to America's national security during the 1990s."

As the No. 2 Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Weldon had not only exposed the Clinton administration's lethal "Able Danger" breakdown, but he had also catalogued the CIA's failures before Sept. 11 in his book "Countdown to Terror." And he wasn't stopping there.

In late July 2006, I accompanied Mike and Joan Wire to visit Weldon in his D.C. office. The Wires, who live in suburban Philadelphia, had arranged the interview.

I happened to be in New Jersey at the time so we drove down together. The interview lasted two and a half hours and ended only because I had to leave.

Mike Wire just happened to be the most critical of the 270 eyewitnesses to an apparent missile strike on TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996. As is well enough known, the government had argued that a mechanical failure brought down the plane.

To make the story work, however, the FBI and/or the CIA had to manufacture from whole cloth a second interview with Wire that fit their invented scenario.

To get some sense of what Wire and others actually witnessed, I have put two relevant sections of the video "Silenced" on YouTube. The skeptical reader would do well to review these clips: Part 1 and Part 2.

As late as 2001, I was as skeptical about TWA Flight 800 as the next guy. It was then that I met James and Elizabeth Sanders. The Sanders and TWA Capt. Terrel Stacey had been arrested in 1997 and charged with conspiracy.

An investigative reporter, Sanders was doing the job the major media had chosen not to do. Elizabeth, a TWA trainer, had introduced her husband to Stacey, then working inside the investigation; nothing more.

Before committing to co-produce "Silenced," I had flown to Ft. Lauderdale, where the Sanders were living, and spent three days reviewing their evidence and assessing their character. As I learned, the government arrested the three of them – and convicted the Sanderses – only because they had been closing in on the truth.

When the Wires and I met with Weldon and his aide Russ Caso, we showed them sections from "Silenced," but we were not revealing anything they did not know or at least suspect. What most intrigued Weldon was the cast of characters involved in the misdirection of the TWA Flight 800 investigation. Many of those characters were working to unseat him.

Sandy Berger: Col. Buzz Patterson, who carried the nuclear football the summer of 1996, identifies then Deputy National Security Adviser Berger as the one person holed up in the family quarters with the president on the night of July 17, 1996. In addition to his other services, Berger donated $1,000 to the Sestak campaign. Sestak was the only congressional candidate to whom Berger gave money.

Tony Lake: As national security adviser, Lake was Berger's immediate boss. Although he stayed out of the family quarters on July 17, he, too, was in the loop that night. At 3 a.m. he received a call from the president asking that he "dust off the contingency plans." Lake donated $500 to Sestak. It was his only federal donation in 2006.

Richard Clarke: The anti-terror honcho takes credit for discovering the exploding fuel tank theory that provided a mechanical explanation, however contrived, for TWA Flight 800's demise. He is likely also responsible for bringing the FBI and CIA together to create the "zoom-climb" animation seen in the YouTube clip, which was used to discredit the eyewitnesses. Clarke donated $2,100 to Sestak. It was the only federal donation he made in 2006.

John Deutch: Deutch was serving as CIA director the night TWA Flight 800 went down. Several months later, in a scandal that foreshadowed Berger's own, Deutch was discovered to have loaded classified documents onto to his personal computer and taken them home. His motives were never made clear. He eventually signed a plea agreement and agreed to pay a $5,000 fine only to be pardoned the next day by President Clinton. Deutch donated $500 to Sestak, one of of only two congressional candidates he supported in 2006.

Mary O. McCarthy: In 1996, McCarthy, a CIA analyst, served as an intelligence officer on the National Security Council. In 1998, Berger appointed her as special assistant to the president. In 2006, the CIA fired her for allegedly leaking secret information about overseas prisons to the Washington Post. The only federal candidate to whom she donated in 2006 was Joe Sestak. To give some sense of the politicized nature of the CIA, McCarthy donated $2,000 to John Kerry in 2004.

Jamie Gorelick: Gorelick does not have the excuse of knowing Sestak from his work on the National Security Council. Gorelick served as deputy attorney general in the Justice Department. Still she donated $3,000 to the Sestak campaign, the most she gave to any candidate in 2006.

Gorelick, of course, was one of five Democrats appointed to the 9/11 Commission – and for no more obvious reason than her stake in keeping talk of TWA Flight 800 out of the commission room.

On Aug. 22, 1996, the politically reliable Gorelick met with the FBI brass and directed their efforts away from any serious terror or missile leads. From this point on, the FBI was tasked with finding an alternative explanation for the explosive residue found throughout the plane and duly reported to the New York Times for the previous month.

This FBI search culminated in an exculpatory tale of a sloppy dog-training exercise aboard the Flight 800 plane five weeks before the crash. Though easily disproved, the story satisfied a painfully incurious media.

Unfortunately for America, by suppressing talk of TWA Flight 800, the Clinton administration had to suppress talk of a very real terror plot against the United States that culminated in the events of Sept. 11.

In the way of background, in January 1995, the Philippine police shared with the FBI detailed plans for an aerial terrorist assault on the United States. Those plans called for the use of hijacked airliners and/or explosives-filled private aircraft as flying bombs to attack the United States.

The architect of those plans was Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing and a cohort of 9-11 chief strategist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, his alleged uncle.

Richard Clarke obviously took Yousef's planes-as-bombs plots seriously. In planning security for the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, Clarke warned of the possibility of terrorists hijacking a 747 and flying it into a packed Olympic stadium.

The U.S. Navy apparently took Yousef's plans seriously as well. On July 17, 1996, National Liberation Day in Saddam's Iraq and two days before the start of the Atlanta Olympics, a small fleet of ships and subs, some perhaps NATO, cruised off the coast of Long Island, locked and loaded.

One of two things happened next: Either Navy missiles intercepted a terrorist plane and inadvertently took out TWA Flight 800 in the process; or, more likely, while practicing to intercept a terrorist plane in the kind of crowded air corridor where such an attack would likely occur, Navy missiles accidentally destroyed the 747.

In either case, the U.S. Navy did not have the will or the wherewithal to conceal this on its own. That decision would have been made in the family quarters of the White House in the early morning hours of July 18.

Those few subordinates in the know would have been told that the decision was made for reasons of national security. A more urgent reason, of course, was to secure Clinton's re-election a few months hence.

The evidence for Navy involvement has been greatly enhanced by the research of Capt. Ray Lahr on the west coast and the legal work in the federal courts by his counsel, John Clarke. Highly useful, too, has been a new and stunningly sophisticated crash analysis drafted by an apparent insider (or insiders), whose identity remains stubbornly unknown.

As a result of Lahr's work in particular, the NTSB and FBI have quietly abandoned the CIA zoom-climb scenario shown in the YouTube clip and rely now only on a quiescent media to ignore the un-rebutted testimony of some 270 eyewitnesses to a missile strike.

In the summer of 1996, President Clinton had a keen interest in the planes-as-bombs plot as well. Soon after the destruction of TWA Flight 800, Col. Buzz Patterson was returning a daily intelligence update from the Oval Office to the National Security Council when he "keyed on a reference to a plot to use commercial airliners as weapons."

"I can state for a fact that this information was circulated within the U.S. intelligence community," Patterson writes, "and that in late 1996 the president was aware of it." The president's handwritten comments on the documents verified the same.

Most likely to keep the subject of TWA Flight 800 off the table, all talk of planes as bombs ended in the summer of 1996. Incoming National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was not even warned about the possibility. Richard Clarke verified as much when he testified before the 9/11 Commission.

"Knowledge about al-Qaida having thought of using aircraft as weapons," admitted Clarke, was "5-years, 6-years old." He asked that intelligence analysts "be forgiven for not thinking about it given the fact that they hadn't seen a lot in the five or six years intervening about it."

As to President Clinton's legacy-killing notes on the Yousef plot documents, they obviously did not find their way to the 9/11 Commission. Not surprisingly, according to the National Archives staff, "Berger was especially interested in White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke's personal office files." Berger reviewed these and "original NSC numbered documents" on his first visit to the Archives.

The House report noted, "Had Berger seen 'a smoking gun' or other documents he did not want brought to an investigatory panel's attention, he could have removed it on this visit."

When the Wires and I left Weldon in July 2006, he was on his way to review the Berger evidence. Weldon was the one man in Washington willing and able to put all the pieces together of what loomed as the most serious scandal in American political history. But this was not to be. The Clintons and their cronies had other plans.

During the now legendary Chris Wallace interview with President Clinton in late September 2006 on Fox News, the nation saw just how potent were the guns aimed at Weldon.

"A three-star admiral," Clinton announced out of nowhere, "who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Curt Weldon in Pennsylvania." He did not even mention Sestak by name. He may not have known it. Other than President Bush, Clinton mentioned no other Republican than Weldon.

It is not easy to take out a popular 10-term congressman. Weldon's enemies, however, had a nasty little ace up their sleeves. A week after President Clinton visited Weldon's district to fire up the troops, the McClatchy Newspapers broke a story attributed to two anonymous sources, namely that Weldon had "traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter."

Alleging a need to act quickly because of the leak, the FBI raided the homes of Weldon's daughter and a friend on Monday, Oct. 16. By noon of that same day, a group of nearly 20 Democrat protesters were milling outside Weldon's district office in Upper Darby, carrying matching signs that read "Caught Red-Handed." The story received a great deal of unreflective attention from a media desperate for a Democrat win, and Weldon went down to defeat.

The move against Weldon was naturally attributed to the Bush Justice Department. As the Berger case proved, however, there are powerful forces operating in the Justice Department and FBI that seem to have no greater goal than protecting the Clinton legacy and advancing the Democrat agenda. The idea that Karl Rove somehow orchestrated the Weldon hit makes sense only in the nether reaches of the liberal blogosphere.

Sometimes, as in the case of Watergate, conspiracy is not a theory. It's a crime. Still, the major media will use the "conspiracy theory" mantra as an excuse to ignore this story.

To this point, the "respectable" conservative media have been intimidated into following their lead. It is past time for those media to show some sand.

Craig,

You wrote: "OK, I should be working (I mentioned, I'm an engineer) but I went ahead and read...." I give you credit for acknowledging that sometimes it's not laziness that keeps us from reading and doing everything we desire. Other events may demand our attention and time.

Thank you for your links. BTW, it was interesting that the link to NTSB Official Factual Reports Regarding this Accident has been deactivated. However, the links to NTSB's Exhibits and PowerPoint presentation still work, but they appear flawed, undoubtedly a reflection of overall report. Still, it's important not to rush to judgment.

Of note, there were 736 witnesses of which about 44 were judged highly credible. Yet, NTSB discounts witness statements because some had memory errors. Too, the witness photograph (declared defective by the FBI) that showed a streak toward TW800 was ignored by NTSB. Meanwhile, at least three credible witnesses in the presentation noted two explosions:

A Witness

• She saw a red dot of light that appeared to
be a roman candle moving east parallel to
the horizon. One or two seconds later the
dot became bigger and started to fall fast.
The dot then blew up into a fireball. A
second fireball developed and the two
fireballs fell separately.

USAir Flight 217

• Observed blinking lights of an airplane flying
underneath USAir flight 217.

• About 15-20 seconds later, observed a light
that appeared to be a “flare.”

• Observed an initial small explosion in the
same area that he last observed the flare.

• Within a second later, the small explosion
turned into a large explosion.

Helicopter Pilot

• Saw a streak of red light moving very fast
from his right to his left. It moved almost
horizontal in a gently descending curve.

• Observed the streak for 1 or 2 seconds, saw
explosion, second explosion

• Fireball developed, and took 8 to 10 seconds
to fall to the ocean

Sources: Accident Investigation: http://www.ntsb.gov/events/twa800/
Witness Reports: http://www.ntsb.gov/events/twa800/8_Witnesses.htm

I should add that my characterization of a "double explosion" is my own construction, not derived from any conspiracy literature. But, let's debunk the MSM myth that conspiracies don't happen. Although almost universally used as a pejorative, conspiracies are like a good murder mystery. The reader follows the clues to the evidence, excluding the irrelevant, forming and testing hypotheses, and ultimately drawing conclusions on what transpired. As always, it is helpful to observe what we know and what we don't, and who had the means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime or cover-up, and effect results. There is wide agreement it was an election year.

My observation is that NTSB's presentation does not appear to be an honest recitation of facts. It is highly selective of known evidence, offers no alternative theories to debunk with logical argument, and does not address major criticisms of report opponents. In other words, one doesn't have to argue conspiracy to see that things ain't kosher. Evidence gone missing such as satellite images and witness photos and other evidence still classified add fuel to the controversy. Instead, NTSB has created a backlash by not being straightforward with the discerning public. The fact that MSM and federal employees who lost whistleblower protections were co-opted is not surprising. The then-current president began his administration by firing all U.S. attorneys and replacing them with those he trusted as politically reliable. Many were duped.

Even your linked ADA FAQ gives the impression of an orchestrated effort to obfuscate with overwhelming and irrelevant engineering data. On point, here's a statement contributed by Dr. George O. Bizzigotti, a biochemist in McLean, VA, who years later lent support to Clinton's strike on the al Qaida 'aspirin' factory in Sudan by identifying a precursor chemical to nerve gas.

Sources: http://yarchive.net/chem/biochemistry_books.html, http://yarchive.net/mil/nerve_gas_sudan.html

Dr. George O. Bizzigotti:

"Here's an interesting example of why some of us with technical
backgrounds are skeptical of some of the eyewitness reports. Lisa Perry
was quoted in Dan's Papers, Long Island, 15 May 1998, as follows:

"'The plane stopped for an instant, as something would when it had
suffered an impact, not just an explosion. Then it began to fracture - as
if you had slammed a frozen candy bar down onto a table. You could see the
spaces in between the parts of the plane. Then a moment later there was
another explosion and the plane broke jaggedly in the sky.'"

"Paul Adam has made this point before, but I would like to go into detail
here so that hopefully everyone can appreciate the arguments. I have
seen estimates that put Ms. Perry's position 15.7 nautical miles (18
statute miles) from the crash site; that's 95,400 feet horizontally.
Because she was on the ground, and TWA 800 was at 13,800 feet, she was
96,400 feet from TWA 800. A Boeing 747 is 232 feet long and 64 feet
high, so TWA 800 would have appeared in Ms. Perry's field of view as 8.3
arc-minutes high by 2.3 arc-minutes wide.

"Now let us digress into the world of bio optics. Our eyes work because
photoreceptor cells on our retinas absorb light. we (sic) are only capable of
telling whether or not a cell absorbs the light, so each cell
corresponds to a pixel in an image. The maximum density of the
photoreceptors in the human eye is 160,000 per square millimeter. This
translates to a minimum distance between these receptor cells of 2.8
micrometers. One degree of visual angle is equal to 288 micrometers on
the retina, so the minimum distance between receptor cells corresponds to
0.6 arc-minutes. Based on this, the image on Ms. Perry's retina likely
covered something like 50 cells out of the 100 million receptor cells in
her field of vision.

"In addition, the angular resolution of one's eyesight is limited by
Rayleigh scattering of light. With a 2 mm pupil diameter and 500 nm
light (near the center of the visible spectrum and the wavelength that
maximally excites the receptor cells), the minimum angular separation
required to resolve two points is 1.1 arc minutes. Thus, the physical
properties of light dictate that even someone with absolutely perfect
eyesight cannot distinguish between objects less than 31 feet apart at
96,400 feet.

"By either argument, being able to distinguish the fine detail implied in
Ms. Perry's statement is unbelievable. Have someone slam a frozen six
inch candy bar on a table 208 feet away from you, and see if you can
'see the spaces in between the parts.' How can fifty pixels in a 10,000
x 10,000 image be anything more than an indistinct blur, with little
recognizable detail? Note that there's nothing ideological in this
argument; Bill Clinton has nothing to do with how retinas work or how
light is scattered by an aperture. This is simply what a century of
science has shown us about how our eyes and the universe work. Although
the overall height at the tail of a 747 may be 63 ft 8 in, the narrower
portion of the cabin has a width of only 20 ft; even someone with
perfect eyesight could barely distinguish the top of the fuselage from
the bottom at the 15.7 nm horizontal distance.

"As a result of this, assuming good faith on the part of Ms. Perry, we
are left with only two possibilities:
(1) Ms. Perry has eyes that are literally superhuman, or
(2) Ms. Perry has a fallible memory...."

Source (and continuation of argument):
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~philmil/ADA_FAQ/ADA_FAQ_twa800.htm#%3E%20%202.1.3)%20What%20about%20the%20eyewitness

As Dr. Bizzigotti emailed: "I would presume that if Jones had an airtight argument for his hypothesis you would accept it because it was a better argument, not because of his Ph.D. of his field. That's what I meant by my assertion; evaluate the argument, not the credentials." Fair enough. A consistent logical argument is key to credibility.

Dr. Bizzigotti's ocular resolution arguments are seductive unless one questions why he chose to attack the insignificant portion of Ms. Perry's statement. How he is able to discern what Ms. Perry saw without careful measurements obviously not available, i.e., how far apart pieces of the aircraft flew in the explosion, and whether the scattering parts might have given the impression to a witness, perhaps incorrectly, that the plane paused in midair. Can we really accept that Ms. Perry could not spot the cockpit of the plane separating from the fuselage because it would be impossible for her to see light between these two major sections of the plane as it broke up?

I began to wonder if Dr. Bizzigotti was an amateur magician because of this sleight of hand. We saw this tactic before as some have asserted that there is over 30 tons of reconstructed aircraft wreckage still available for training. But, what is important is not what's there, but what's missing, what went out the back door of the hanger to a second hanger off-limits to all but the inner circle, or the wreckage that was shipped directly to the Hanger 2 by politically reliable Navy guys. Remember, all New York city and state salvage crews were barred from the crash scene and second hanger.

In Dr. Bizzigotti's example, we are deluged with tons of data to determine whether a witness was accurate in her judgment that the TW800 stopped for an instant. In my mind, the more critical aspect of her observation is that there were two explosions, a fact confirmed by at least three other credible witnesses, and presumably overlooked by NTSB when they selected witness statements for the presentation--unless, as they concluded, all witness testimony was remarkably "consistent."

But, one should not reject Dr. Bizzigotti's argument simply because of his biochem credentials. It is his argument lacks credibility. Dr. Bizzigotti might as well have written, "If you want to overpower your opponents, you can either dazzle them with your virtues, or confuse them with bull-shit." Too often, people choose the latter.

Other investigations point to the spill pattern I referenced: what came out of the aircraft and in what order. The spill pattern strongly suggests that there were two explosions. First out were the seats in rows 17-19, the same ones thought to contain missile fuel residue. Next came the cockpit elements, indicating it separated from the fuselage before the center wing tank (CWT) exploded. Meanwhile, NTSB ignores this evidence and provides videos that discuss the sequence of the breakup only after CWT exploded. Nor does NTSB mention onboard communications failed a split second before CWT exploded, tending to confirm a cockpit separation in advance of the main explosion, consistent with the double-explosion scenario.

Tellingly, NTSB also fails to comment on this photo, never shown by MSM:

In summary, Sanders is familiar with the initial reports that witnesses saw a second explosion, which you claim to know nothing about. I was surprised that you were not aware of the two explosion testimony. I must conclude you are not as familiar with the findings as you would appear. You parade impressive credentials and provide links, but the linked reports do not address the specifics, nor do you.

Similarly, I would be interested in the passenger autopsy reports since if many died with their necks broken in a certain direction, that would be further corroboration of the missile strike hypothesis. If there was a considerable range of causes, one might be entitled to rule out an external attack, thus favoring a single CWT explosion. The absence of this evidence in NTSB's report (can you find it?) adds to the missile scenario. It would appear the missile was inert or failed to detonate if armed.

The Missile Impact Analysis has an interesting conclusion that "No conclusive evidence of missile impacts exists," suggesting the existence of some unspecified evidence of a missile hit. More problematic for my incipient research is the origin of the missile.

Back to the Big Question: Why NTSB withheld findings that would make its report more complete is anyone's speculation, but it does fit nicely into the theory that someone was trying divert attention away from either friendly-fire or terrorist attack scenarios in order to secure re-election. NTSB seems to have complied with the letter of political requests, but has not provided an airtight case, perhaps intentionally. Some call this lower level resistance when there is disagreement with the organization's goals, i.e., to cover up what actually happened without making oneself personally liable or vulnerable to removal. For a final NTSB report, as with National Intelligence Estimates, would not dissenting reports be important, if only to highlight argument weaknesses, which could then be addressed? How could a controversial report be complete without such dissents?

Finally, I was struck by several passages in the news article that you have not commented on and, therefore, may not have seen yet:

"In either case, the U.S. Navy did not have the will or the wherewithal to conceal this on its own. That decision would have been made in the family quarters of the White House in the early morning hours of July 18.

"Those few subordinates in the know would have been told that the decision was made for reasons of national security. A more urgent reason, of course, was to secure Clinton's re-election a few months hence.

"The evidence for Navy involvement has been greatly enhanced by the research of Capt. Ray Lahr on the west coast and the legal work in the federal courts by his counsel, John Clarke. Highly useful, too, has been a new and stunningly sophisticated crash analysis drafted by an apparent insider (or insiders), whose identity remains stubbornly unknown.

"As a result of Lahr's work in particular, the NTSB and FBI have quietly abandoned the CIA zoom-climb scenario shown in the YouTube clip and rely now only on a quiescent media to ignore the un-rebutted testimony of some 270 eyewitnesses to a missile strike."

Your comments, please.

This is also false. You're on a roll. It explicitly added that unit. Hence, your disinformation operation is blowing up in your face.

Your reading comprehension skills are weak, Paul. By it explicitly added that unit what did you mean? EO 13039 refers only to one unit, the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. I mentioned the naval units mentioned by Ian Goddard , referring to USS Grasp, USS Grapple, USS Trenton, and the other ships and a handful of EOD units that you and Goddard seem to think were covered in this Executive Order.

Looks like I caught you in another lie.

And none of you liars, frauds and tantrum-prone juveniles have yet explained how the missile got into the airplane without making a hole.

Oh wait, it was a bomb. First bomb in recorded history to contain no high explosives. Maybe it was Mentos and Diet Coke!

you make no acknowledgement of your error about "UNIONIZATION" as the point of the EO.

You're shouting, little boy. Shouting a lie does not make it come true. I acknowledge no "error" because there was no error. The EO exempts DevGru from Labor Relations Board rules which do include a whole mountain of bureaucratic nonsense. It doesn't make any difference because:

The Naval elements that participated in the TWA 800 wreckage recovery (some of which are listed by your pacifier pal Goddard Not The Rocket Scientist) are not DevGru. DevGru works for JSOC, which works for the Joint Chiefs. The other Naval units work for the Navy and (when assigned) for regional Combatant Commanders. Their chain of command only intersects DevGru's at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of Defense.
This order has zero to do with the units listed by Goddard, which are conventional amphibious and salvage ships, and EOD units. (Why EOD? Well, before they had the evidence, they had no way of knowing there was no explosive. And also, EOD men are highly skilled in handing hazardous materials, which crash sites abound in).
Regardless of any EO -- Clinton could have written an EO that required all admirals to eat dung and bark at the moon -- nothing changes the fact that the physical evidence shows conclusive evidence of an accident.

No, you're not. You're MISREPRESENTING it.

Shouting again, Paul. Are you off your anger-management meds? Or was recess cancelled today? Dude, I posted it. I read it. Every single person can read the plain meaning of the EO. It excludes a secretive (and, by the way, very small) military special operations unit from federal labor rules. A unit that does not do accident wreckage recovery at all. Their talents are in other areas.

You're the guy saying that this EO has something to do with TWA800. In classical logic, the guy making the charge has to post the proof. I'm the only one posting proof here, child. And yes, I am being contemptuous towards you. You merit such. We're supposed to take your word that that the EO had no operational relevance to the Flight 800 recovery and investigation. I.e., "Move along. Nothing to see here."

Well, actually I was hoping that you would actually follow my link and read the EO. Too much to ask, I guess. For you lurkers watching Paul repeatedly lose his cool, who might be able to read it and break it down into small words for him, it's here.

How routine was EO 13039? It amended EO 12171 which was signed by Mr Peanut. Aha! you think. Liberal Democrats! But 13039 is the only Clinton issued amendment. It was probably necessary because DevGru did not exist prior to this. (Other military special ops units are covered by other amendments, and probably other things are also. I'm not a labor lawyer, and can't speak on this with the authority I can on aircraft accident investigation, or on military operations).

But it's interesting that you haven't posted anything saying the DevGru was involved in the TWA800 recovery. You're the guy making the charge... or making up the charge, as the case may be. Now your claims as to it only applying to "special operators" and the "handful of civilians" that work in the military special ops...are totally unsupported.

I am somewhat handicapped here in that anyone who has worked in military special operations cannot reveal classified information: maybe Berger can skate, but for us it's still a felony, and I'm not about to commit a felony to win an argument with someone who can only muster the logic of a toddler.

As far as civilians working with special operators, they do, primarily in training roles. Most of the civilians who work with special operations are retired special operators themselves, who still serve their country when their shooting days are over. It's a win-win as the wise heads and experience are around to guide the latest generation of fearless young tigers. Most people respect and honor such men. Folks like you don't, and accuse them of all kinds of crimes. I know, you wanted to serve, but that 31 ASVAB is a high hill for some folks to climb.

So I cannot say anything at all, really, about the unit and who it is and what it does. However, I did post a widely-quoted third party site's analysis of what Naval Special Warfare Development Group is (or perhaps, was). I cannot tell you if that is accurate or not. But you know, read it and you just might learn something.

By the way, EO 12171 has been amended 11 times (click that link to see this): apart from 13039, the amendments were by President Reagan (4x), President George HW Bush (4x), and President George W Bush (2x). That's looking an awful lot like a pretty routine activity.

Another indicator that EOs are not that big a deal: that the numbers had gotten to 13,039 by 1997. Given the count between 1979 (12171) and 1997 18 years later (13039), Presidents are averaging what, almost 50 EOs a year. That's one a week, while running the country.

Another indicator: Here's the list of Clinton Executive Orders. Yawwwwnnnnnn.

A final indicator: It is quite possible for the President to issue a classified executive order, yet the text of this is published. "Hey, Bill, let's do a conspiracy." "Great idea, Hill, and we'll publish it on the White House website... it'll be our little in-joke!" Clinton may have been an awful president, but he was not stupid.

As to everything the EO means, you'd probably have to be a labor lawyer to say. But since it doesn't apply to the units you conspiratroids say it does, the ones that did the TWA 800 recovery (and pretty much the same ones that did the AA587 recovery... the JFK Jr recovery... the Swissair 11 recovery... and the Egypt Air 990 recovery... all of which mishaps I'm well versed in, because I always study these things, even ones that don't get your hating little heart aflutter, including dozens and dozens you have never heard of, but maybe if I typed them you could sound out the words).

you have established NEGATIVE PERSONAL CREDIBILITY

That's killing me, Paulie. It is a major setback to me that TWA800 conspiracy loons don't trust me. I don't know how I got to this place -- I mean, you're such a gullible bunch.

And by the way, you're shouting again. Maybe you ought to lay off the coffee, or see someone who can prescribe something for that anger problem. You know, angry people are at high risk for stroke, embolisms, and heart attacks, and I would like you to live to a ripe old age (which in your case, would be to adulthood, if not maturity). Just so you can worry yourself sick wondering when "they" will come with the black helicopters. Whop, whop, whop....

Of course, I use capitals sometimes, too. At the beginning of every sentence, and on acronyms. Try normal capitalization. It's soothing.

That's why Bubba announced his blizzard of EOs over in England right after Flight 800?

Well, I don't know which EOs you mean, as -- if you look at the link posted above -- you see that the Clinton White House issued EOs every couple days (kinda like the Reagan and Bush White Houses!). If you mean the EOs issued around the time of 13039, let's see what weighty subjects the conspiracy covers:

13035: Advisory Committee on High-Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology, and the Next Generation Internet

13036: Establishing an Emergency Board To Investigate a Dispute Between American Airlines and its Employees Represented by the Allied Pilots Association

13037: Commission To Study Capital Budgeting

13038: Advisory Committee on Public Interest Obligations of Digital Television Broadcasters

13039: Exclusion of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group From the Federal Labor-Management Relations Program

13040: Amendment to Executive Order 13017, Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry

Yep, them's heavy stuff. OK, you got me. I confess. I'm an agent for the Trilateral Commission, and it was my duty to conceal the Bilderberger Plot in the Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry. And to sneak the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into the Advisory Committee on High-Performance Computing and Communications, Information Technology, and the Next Generation Internet.

As to why Clinton issued these EOs, I assume he thought it was a good idea that we have an Advisory Committee on this or that, and that secret Navy stuff stay secret. It's for your own good, you know. If you want to stand for office on the Throw The Archives Open platform, go for it. Of course, that requires you to do something and not just whine on the internet.

So yeah, I'm really bummed that I have "negative personal credibility" with a conspiracy troll, or with all conspiracy trolls. God bless them, every one, but I don't see them when I'm designing stuff, doing usability studies, flying a coupled ILS approach to minimums, helping educate the next generation of professional aviators, or trying to help the official investigation into a mishap that took two friends' lives.

Not only do the TWA800 loons detest me, I have a bad rep with the 9-11 Twoofers (some of whom, like Michael Rivero, are the same people) and Holocaust deniers. (Hey, I already mentioned Mr Rivero.... I'll also point out this fine convocation of loons encompassing the 911 and Holocaust lies, coming soon to Arizona).

For people trying to figure out the personality disorder that is conspiracy-theory-adherence, this essay by George Case attempts a taxonomy and analysis of conspiracy theorists. Unlike Michael Rivero, most of them seem to pick one conspiracy and mostly stick to it. Anyway, there are many species of the genius loon.

Hard to fathom how being a Clinton-defending stooge, such as you are, is in any way better than being a supposedly paranoid loon

Heh. I suspect you find many things hard to fathom, apart from the many things on which your mind is made up before seeing evidence. I also think the Clinton family can take cold comfort in the support they got from me over the years. However, while you loons think you're attacking the Clintons, you really attack the FBI; the Navy; the very, very fine investigators at the NTSB who have done more to keep your pink body from being roasted in a plane wreck than you ever will be able to understand; and the FAA workers that have helped make airline travel literally safer that taking a bath in your home. Most of these people will just shake their heads when you speak and dismiss you, the way one does on encountering a homeless addict muttering to himself in the street. So for them, and because it entertains me, I engage you from time to time. But I don't respect you. I am full of compassion for one who was born retarded, but contemptuous of anyone who has made himself that way.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Hi back at ya OESY, sorry for missing your comment before.

Alas, my name is not Craig. (And I'm definitely not him, but I suspect I know whom you mean).

Time is tight, and I should have replied to your stuff instead of wasting time in kindergarten with Mr Ross. Because you do read the material, and think about it.

the link to NTSB Official Factual Reports Regarding this Accident has been deactivated.

I'll look into it. You can still get the complete docket on CDs or, I think, a DVD. Of course, you have to pay. [UPDATE: here it is: Docket Ordering Info. $5, cheap). As you've undoubtedly figured out, these link disappearances are the result of web geeks changing software or moving stuff, not organizational malice. If there was malice, why would it be the one thing the government that's organized?

Witnesses
Basic problem with the witnesses is that for every witness there is a countervailing witness, practically. It's also quite possible some saw a streak; considering the number of witnesses and the lousy FBI 302 interviews, NTSB (which interviews mishap witnesses literally every working day) thinks they were actually pretty consistent. Of the streak witnesses (from the NTSB witnesses PPT): "258 streak of light witnesses" of which "56 reported that the streak:(1)originated at the surface or horizon, and/or(2)traveled straight up or nearly so."

That's interesting because a missile doesn't usually look like a streak of light, and because the streak was only reported by about one witness in five.

A fire could appear like a streak. If a broken fuel tank dumped out fuel, the flames would have gone up from where it ignited (assuming the falling fuel is like a waterfall in the sky, the fire would appear to go up if the point of ignition was lower). The hundreds of thousands of fuel didn't all burn right away, because the wreckage kept burning on the ocean's surface).

And this ties in also to the picture you posted. You see, the flames really didn't come much from the CWFT -- the reason the ullage was inflammable was because of how "little" fuel was in there. The tank was empty, so all that was left was unusable fuel -- you mentioned you're a pilot, so you understand what that is, but I'll shorthand it for the other readers as the fuel that's below the level of the fuel pick-up (a gross oversimplification, especially on a big transport, but that's the general idea). Once fuel's been in the tank, the unusable fuel can't easily be removed and that much fuel just stays in there pretty much for good (or until the tank is overhauled). On a little plane, like a Piper Cherokee many students train in, the tanks hold fifty gallons with a gallon unusable on each side, so each tank holds 24 usable and 1 unusable gallon. On the 747-200, the CWFT is the largest fuel tank and the heaviest single structural component -- as it is on all Boeing airliners and the KC-135. I can't remember what the volume is of this huge tank but the unusable fuel in the tank is between 50 and 100 gallons. (That sounds like a lot... but 50 gallons is a big tropical fish aqarium and the fuel tank is the size of an apartment or small office).

So there was enough fuel to make a fuel-air mixture. And it was at the right pressure (in the vented tank, at 13,000 feet) and temperature (thanks to the air conditioners, which are designed to use the fuel in the tank as a heat sink). They didn't stop at calculating this, by the way: they flew an instrumented 747 on the same flight profile and found that the fuel-air mixture in the tank was at an inflammable temperature and pressure. (Remember, for an explosion to happen, you need to have the right temperature and pressure and fuel in the tank for an inflammable mixture -- plus, a spark. Still, I think the crews that flew these flights did a fairly courageous thing, flying the exact profile that TWA800 didn't survive. And no one gives them credit).

But while there's enough to make a damn big ban and a small fireball, there isn't enough to make the huge fireball and the lasting fire on the ocean surface that everybody remembers (this is a case where the witnesses are pretty much unanimous). But there was plenty more fuel in the plane's other tanks, mostly in the wings.

The differential sooting that you pointed out is exactly the sort of thing that investigators key on because it shows that part of the wreckage was exposed to a fire that the other part was not. This is in fact one of the things used by the sequences group to discuss the probable breakup sequence. The sequences group is very important to understanding the mishap.

Witness: "A second fireball developed and the two fireballs fell separately."

This is not inconsistent with the sequence group report.

Witness: "Within a second later, the small explosion turned into a large explosion."

Again, not inconsistent with the sequence group report. The initial explosion (for all of its violence) wouldn't have been all that visible at a distance, but some witnesses (USAIR 217) were closer.

nstead, NTSB has created a backlash by not being straightforward with the discerning public.

Unfortunately, NTSB is required to keep some stuff confidential by law (example, CVR audio). But the real mismanagement, IMHO, came from Mr Kallstrom and the FBI. The FBI really thought this was terrorism (which is simple confirmation bias, perhaps -- to a hammer, every problem is a nail). I mean, the NTSB has released mountains of stuff, and the bulk of it is still easy as pie to get to -- ten years after the accident. (Indeed, in that time NTSB has gone back and put some of its archives online, back to the Kennedy Administration). The media have done a crummy job of telling the story (but that's true in every accident, unfortunately).

The fact that MSM and federal employees who lost whistleblower protections were co-opted is not surprising.

The then-current president began his administration by firing all U.S. attorneys and replacing them with those he trusted as politically reliable.

Look, Clinton was Clinton, but something like three million people work for the federal government and you can bet that many of them didn't support him, one. Two, it is possible to keep secrets, but the difficulty increases to the power of the number of people you have involved.

ADA FAQ: yes, it takes a position, and that posiition is one of debunking both the missile and bomb conspiracy theories.

As far as Bizigotti is concerned: his background might or might not mean anything, but that someone 16 nm away (OK, 15.7) claims to have seen much in detail, well, at 16 nm on a clear day the approach controller does not expect you to have the airport in sight yet. I can't see the amount of detail that "witness" says she saw on the jet when he's at a minimum-legal three miles separation from me. If her quote is reported accurately, either she's the Bionic Woman, or Bizigotti is correct about the value of her "testimony." (Mind you, she might very well remember now this amount of detail. Science has learned that memory is not immutable, it's sort of created on the fly by our brains. This is the underlying reason why cops and lawyers all have a witness-who-saw-the-impossible story).

How he is able to discern what Ms. Perry saw without careful measurements obviously not available

Well, he makes it pretty clear that it's a mechanical impossibility to see detail on an aircraft at fifteen miles. That should also gibe with most people's personal experience. Next time a jet passes overhead, and you see the contrails that indicate it's in the stratosphere, look and see how much detail you can discern, and then remember:

that jet is at less than half the distance from you than the jet was from the witness;
looking straight up, you are also looking through only about 1/3 as much atmosphere as someone looking at an airplane 15 miles away and two miles high.

Similarly, I would be interested in the passenger autopsy reports

I daresay the families of the victims might not want you to. I understand why you'd like to see them, but many in the conspiracy world would have an interest more ghoulish than scientific, or at least express themselves that way. In any event it's a moot point. The law does not permit the release of this information, although I understand some of the investigative hobbyists are suing for it.

since if many died with their necks broken in a certain direction, that would be further corroboration of the missile strike hypothesis.

Several problems with that -- one, all it would say is that there was a violent shock in a given direction, not anything to do with a missile. Missile impacts do not normally break the necks of the crew and passengers of aircraft. (Remember, missiles have been hitting planes since about 1958, and airliners were first targeted by terrorists in 1979). Lots of people survive planes hit by much bigger missiles -- John McCain is one example, I think. The energy released by an aerodynamic breakup is far greater than that set free by a missile (for one that has never generated a conspiracy theory, try the Lauda Air 767 over Thailand that broke up as a result of an uncommanded asymmetrical thrust reverser deployment in cruise).

If there was a considerable range of causes, one might be entitled to rule out an external attack, thus favoring a single CWT explosion.

The cause of death is usually given quite vaguely in mishap autopsies anyway. "Multiple injuries" or "impact trauma" are the most common terms. Military accident autopsies are usually not so vague.

The absence of this evidence in NTSB's report (can you find it?) adds to the missile scenario.

Autopsy detail is withheld by law. I know it's a privacy law, but I am not sure whether it was the privacy act of 1974 or another law. IANAL.

It would appear the missile was inert or failed to detonate if armed.

Since the missile is and remains completely imaginary, an inert missile is a little easier to sell, perhaps. I know some CTs have suggested it was an inert Standard missile from a naval vessel. I'm not going to say the navy never screws up, but they never screwed up like that, and you can't really fire an inert missile... and you can't fire a warshot by accident. And when the Navy does screw up, they convene a court or board and the CO of the ship is expected to fall on his sword. (Figuratively speaking). Few jobs in the world are as accountable as Navy skipper. (For some reason Navy officers seem to turn into crappy liberal politicians, but that's neither here nor there).

The Missile Impact Analysis has an interesting conclusion that "No conclusive evidence of missile impacts exists," suggesting the existence of some unspecified evidence of a missile hit.

You're really reaching here, confusing scientific caution in speaking with a hint of other, secret evidence. If they were keeping it secret, they wouldn't hint about it at all, would they? You're giving too much weight to the word "conclusive." Because of the way the scientific method works, most scientists will never make a straight declarative sentence without a couple weasel words.

More problematic for my incipient research is the origin of the missile.

I believe your mistake is beginning with the a priori assumption that there was a missile. Missiles leave sign.

The spill pattern strongly suggests that there were two explosions. First out were the seats in rows 17-19, the same ones thought to contain missile fuel residue.

OK, I get what you mean by "spill pattern."

It's getting late and I need to turn in. I'd like to try to answer the rest of your questions. In the meantime look at Exhibit 22 (trajectory study) and Exhibit 18, the sequencing group. Also Exhibit 20 (fires) especially Appendixes I, II and III.

By the way, the photo (originally) is an NTSB official photo. Why the MSM ignored it? Well, because (1) it's not news if it's not new, (2) the MSM gives you the surface news, it's not equipped (and it's customers aren't asking it) to "go deep" into subjects, and (3) if you're referring to the annotated photo, most reporters have a very good radar for cranks and are resistant to being used (at when they can tell that's what's happening).

Finally, I was struck by several passages in the news article that you have not commented on and, therefore, may not have seen yet:

OK, OK, I will go back and read Cashill's essay (not article, there's a difference). I will comment on one part though:

the NTSB and FBI have quietly abandoned the CIA zoom-climb scenario shown in the YouTube clip

The involvement of the CIA was strictly in trying to make order of the witness and radar data, early in the investigation, as requested by FBI (not NTSB). The video (and the rough data that led to it) were discarded early in the investigation. But Cashill is still beating up this strawman because he gets to say "CIA". What he won't say is that the CIA was trying to prove the missile case and could not do so (read the CIA brief to NTSB, given to explain what CIA had done when NTSB got the investigation back from FBI. It's in the docket).

ignore the un-rebutted testimony of some 270 eyewitnesses to a missile strike.

Well, we've seen the numbers, and he's obfuscating a bit. Actually, he layers one obfuscation on another to build a wall of them. 270 (really, what, 256?) is not the number of witneses, but the number of witnesses who saw "a streak". Of those, only one-fifth thought the streak was going up from the surface. Cashill first turns a streak into a missile. Then he throws the 200 in with the 58, reversing their testimony (and ignoring what the contradiction says about the utility of witness testimony in general). Then he disregards the other five hundred witnesses who didn't say they saw a streak.

Why do you choose to believe 200 (really, 58) witnesses and ignore 500? When what they say can be spun your way. What does Cashill say about the other witnesses? Nothing! He tries to mislead his readers into thinking they weren't there.

As far as your Hangar 1/Hangar 2 speculation... it appears to me to be nonsense. Is there any evidence for it? As far as the wreckage is concerne, the stuff that was preserved is primarily the fuselage, from the back of the wing to the nose. This includes the most fragmented areas, the area where the breakup sequence began, and the entire CWFT of course.

The remaining wreckage remains accessible to legitimate investigators. It is not available to hobbyists, or "independent investigators" as they style themselves. (We can't go into Fort Knox and count the gold ourselves, either... if there's any gold, so maybe that's a bad example). We can't walk into a Marine Corps base and ask to see the men's PT scores. We have an interest in those things being done correctly, but in our federal republic specific people are delegated to see that these things are done.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

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