In the case of TWA 800, we have hundreds of spontaneous eye witness accounts by people of a wide variety of backgrounds and professions as well as geographic perspectives all claiming to have seen the same thing: something streaking upwards towards the aircraft and then an explosion. For a few hours, the FBI and other investigators acted as if these accounts were credible and then suddenly the mindset and track of the investigation changed to support any theory except a missile. It quickly settled on a spontaneous explosion of the fuel tank.
In the case of the WTC attack, where hundreds if not thousands of people saw the first attack with their own eyes in close proximity to the building and many others, perhaps millions saw the second attack live on television. I saw the second attack live myself.
The similarity is that in the first case, in my opinion and that of many others, few facts support the official version and many facts support a missile attack. It has been my observation that of the people who disbelieve the official account of the incident, many are conservative. In fact, I don’t know a single conservative who accepts the government version without reservation. In my experience, only people on the Left accept the fuel tank explosion explanation.
In the WTC attack, the weight of the facts agree with the accounts from eye witnesses. In my experience, most of the people who think that the buildings were destroyed by explosives instead of the aircraft are liberal, and few who are conservative accept this alternate explanation.
In both cases, it is not the particular points of the theory of the event but what those theories imply.
In the case of TWA 800, if it was shot down as a deliberate act, then our government made a choice not to find evidence that would require us to take military action against those who carried the attack out. The implication being that Clinton wanted to avoid having to go to war in the Middle East. This is reinforced by the decision to treat the 1993 WTC bombing, as a crime as opposed to an act of war.
In the case of the theory that the 9/11/2001 WTC collapse was an “inside job” with planted explosives, the implication of that theory is that Bush wanted an excuse to go to war for various reasons, including cheap oil, to be able to invoke martial law, to suspend the Constitution, to bring about the End of Days.
While I disagee with him, Rush seems to buy it.
ML/NJ
One Aviation Week article from several years ago quoted a classified report that Flight 800 was on the very outermost edge of the "footprint" of even the best shoulder-fired missiles. There's no direct view of the exhaust, and the missile would be almost out of fuel before it got to the aircraft. Hardly an attack that would provide a high degree of confidence.
It's known that the forward section of the aircraft was instantly sliced off from the rest of the plane. That's why all voice, data, and black box recordings stopped instantly. A smaller plane, hit by a full-sized SAM, would still be functional enough for the black boxes to continue working, even for a few seconds. Unless it was hit with enough explosives to shred the entire aircraft instantly (like some of the demo films of missile tests against drones). You could blow the wing off a 747, and there would still be enough time for a mayday, and continued recording on the black boxes.
The same article mentioned that there was one incident of a center tank exploding on a jet airliner (tens of thousands of jetliners of all kinds, not just 747s). It happened on the ground, and there was enough evidence to show it was caused by a combination of major damage to high-voltage wiring passing through the tank, and just the right fuel-air mixture in the tank. Jet fuel is far less volatile than gasoline, and you have to work really hard to get the right fuel-air mixture, and a strong enough spark. It's like trying to get an explosion from diesel fuel.
The only method to produce the acknowledged evidence of instant "decapitation" (previously unknown in all of aviation history) is a high-powered explosive placed on and around the join section where the forward cabin is attached to the main body of the fuselage. Five to ten pounds of Semtex would start the process going, with aerodynamic forces finishing the job a few milliseconds later.
The implications are more dire than having someone on a boat shooting at you. It meant someone with engineering knowledge would have to get explosives inside the aircraft, and placed at the one location where it could provide a kill with a high degree of confidence.
IMO, the "exploding center tank" is pure BS. Based on what we've seen in Iraq, a MANPAD does not provide a high enough degree of damage, and it strikes a rear wing edge, or an engine, not the middle of the fuselage. Even aircraft hit by full-size SAMs do not go down in the manner of TWA 800. That leaves only an energetic explosive planted in exactly in the right spot by someone with access to the innards of the aircraft.