[foxfield]

Another possibility was put forward by James Sanders in his Downing of TWA Flight 800. He says the terrorists intended to ram a airliner departing JFK with a smaller plane packed with explosives. US intelligence learned of the plot and alerted the US Navy. The Navy attempted to shoot down the smaller plane with two missiles. One hit TWA800, which explains the propellant residue, and the other hit the smaller plane, which explains the large, non-fuel explosion external to TWA800, but close enough that the concussion destroyed it.

The Clinton administration covered it up because the Olympics were to start in a few days and many participant teams would not have been able to fly in if the US shut down air traffic on the east coast. Also, the nominating convention was just months away.

[livius]

I read somewhere (don’t ask me where after all these years and all these threads!) that TWA 800 was actually not the target. An El-Al plane was supposed to depart at that time, but there was a delay and TWA 800 left in its place, passing along the beach at just the time the El Al plane would have done. I don’t know if that’s true, but it would certainly make sense, if the plane was shot down by jihadi nutcases (remember, the Palestinians were really attacking Israel in a big way at that time). Their failure to get that plane, plus fear of having the US cut off their funds if they were indeed Palestinian-linked, might have been one of the reasons they never went public and bragged about this.

Also, I was living in New York City and I recall a report that a couple of weeks after the attack, they found some sort of launching stand in the dunes on Long Island. Was it for a missile? Or was it just for fireworks? I don’t know, and I don’t recall what happened to that report. But I do know that there were teams searching the dunes all along that stretch of coast for evidence of some kind of launching device or some debris left by the firing of a rocket. This was reported in the newspapers at the time, indicating that their first thought was a missile attack.

That’s interesting about the Olympics, and I’m sure it factored into Clinton’s thinking.