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why hasn't the government squashed the entire conspiracy with satellite recon?????

I can't say much about satellites and what I am going to say right here is speculation. I can think of three reasons why they might not do that.

Their denials are true and they don't have anything showing anything. This is less strange than it might sound, because the US is likely to use technical ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) means on unfriendly nations -- not on our own shoreline.
Maybe they have something, but national ISR technical means are used to gather critical intelligence and to provide early warning; therefore, the capabilities of this technology are very closely guarded EEFI (essential elements of friendly information). Maybe publishing this info, if it exists, would reveal too much about how well (or how poorly) our systems work. Imagine how such a release would be received in Moscow, Beijing and Teheran. (Not to mention at the desks of the New York Times -- while I'm enumerating the nation's enemies).
I have no idea if they considered this, but they could release just about anything, and it wouldn't make any difference to the conspiracy buffs. They'd just say the data was fake, or they'd focus on some non-germane detail. After all, there's already a DVD worth of data, available online for all to see. Few if any of the conspiracy buffs have read it all; most have read none of it. A few read looking for things where they can say "gotcha!" and even they their lack of basic, fundamental knowledge of the subjects they're reading about embarrasses them (like Ian Goddard saying that a bunch of Navy salvage and rescue and amphibious vessels are a "subset" of the Special Warfare Development Group).

Even though they initially denied that any of the three satellites were in range or functioning properly, apparently one of our covert spy satellites recorded the entire accident (see London times story).

I'm sorry, I don't know anything about that. In the past, DOD assets have been used many times to find and recover mishap aircraft wreckage, but I don't know about spy satellites. I do know that anybody who does know about their capabilities and operations is briefed ("read on") and warned not to ever disclose anything about it. Many of the personnel are subject to security polygraph in order to make sure they are keeping that promise. So if the story is as you recount it, either someone risked jail to tell the London Times this material, or someone who did not have access to this material made it up and "fished" the Times.

Secrecy for reconnaissance technology doesn't exist because of some conspiracy, of course; it exists so that the technology can work. If the enemy knew its capabilities and limitations, they would be able to mislead us.

Why the deceit and suppression of the eyewitnesses at the Baltimore hearings?

I don't know what "deceit" you mean. There were eyewitnesses who wanted to speak at the hearing. They weren't permitted to, this is true. I will see if I can find out more about how that decision was made. Here is some speculation, again.

The subjective recollections of witnesses -- many of whom have told wildly varying stories over the last ten years -- tell us less about what happened than the physical evidence.
While the focus of the conspiracy movement has been on witnesses who claimed to see a missile, they are a very small subset of the over seven hundred witnesses interviewed.
Several "witnesses" who are now celebrated for "speaking truth to power" are demonstrated in the appendices to the report as having been in places from which they either could not physically see the detail they claimed to see, or did not have a sight line to the mishap site. (The mishap point can be located pretty accurately in three dimensions thanks to multiple radar traces; the timing of the CVR and FDR's cutoff gibes with that location, too. ISTR that the math is in the appendices if anyone wants to check it).

It's important to understand what an NTSB hearing is, and is not. The hearing is not part of the investigation -- it's a public airing of the results of the investigation, and announcement of the finding of probable cause (if a finding can be made). Long before the hearing (months, sometimes) the factual findings of the investigation have already been released, and suggestions have been made to the FAA or other agency (NTSB also investigates train, ship and pipeline mishaps) if changes are in order. (more on that below).

It's not like a Congressional hearing, which an opportunity for grandstanding and seeking one's fifteen minutes of fame. The chance for the witnesses to speak came when they spoke to investigators back in 1996. The Board members (who are political appointees, not accident investigators themselves) are not about to give a forum to people whose only objective is to rant and abuse them. Not gonna happen.

I mentioned that the NTSB often suggests rule changes or procedures changes. In this case, the FAA ultimately issued over 40 Airworthiness Directives. An AD is sort of like a recall for your car, except, the manufacturer does not pay. The owner or operator does. The airlines would not have taken these ADs gracefully if they were not clearly safety related (the airline and pilot community does occaisionally push back on ADs. They didn't here).

One AD required B747 operators to never let the CWFT get too close to empty. (If the mixture is too rich, too much fuel to air, it's not inflammable. You can actually put out a match in jet fuel -- kids, don't try this at home because the mixture in the air right above that jet fuel is inflammable -- but if the fuel/air mix is stoichiometric -- engineer speak for "just right" -- WOOM). Another AD required the inspection (and often replacement) of millions of miles of Kapton-insulated wiring. (Even if no replacement turned out to be needed, just the inspections cost the lines millions. A plane being inspected is not carrying passengers and earning money). Some of these changes were universal and not to a specific type of aircraft, so the FAA published them as a Special Federal Aviation Regulation, SFAR 88.

In addition, FAA changed the rules under which aircraft are certified. New aircraft (like the 787 and Airbus 380) have to be protected against this type of fire. Currently, the FAA has a proposal to require that fuel-tank-inerting systems be retrofitted to all passenger jets. These systems would ventilate the ullage in some way, or replace the air with an inert gas (there are several approaches; the Air Force already does this, using nitrogen gas IIRC). The NTSB says this rule does not go far enough (they would see it applied to cargo planes, too).

The airlines don't have an extra nickel, and they haven't since 2001. If anyone there thought that these ADs were not necessary for safety, the lines (and the jet manufacturers, Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Embraer) would fight them.

For people interested in the technical side of fuel-air explosion prevention in aircraft, there's a good overview in the December 2006 Air Safety World (published by the Flight Safety Foundation). The article mentions TWA800; just about everybody in professional air safety understands the risks of near-empty Jet A tanks, and these guys have no problem understanding what happened (and working to prevent it from happening again).

Hope this information is of use to you and those others who actually seek information.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

PS. I mentioned how the Navy often helps in mishap recoveries. In the last couple weeks, a navy auxiliary (USNS ship) found the missing Adam Air airliner in Indonesia in 1800 feet of water. I think it was the Navy that sent an ROV down and solved the mystery of a Peruvian crash back in the nineties, too. Business as usual? Or more signs of the conspiracy? (cue Twilight ZOne theme. Fade).