Posted on 01/29/2008 12:45:23 PM PST by OESY
...Tonight's "The Final Report: Investigation of TWA Flight 800" on National Geographic Channel presents a brilliant, well-researched look into what the investigators found - and what they didn't find.
The show details the animosity that existed from day one between the NTSB and the FBI.
The NTSB is usually the final word in all air crashes. But because a number of eyewitnesses on the ground saw streaks flying towards the aircraft right before it exploded, and air traffic controllers reporting blips around the aircraft, the FBI came in and took over the investigation, calling it a possible crime.
There were immediately three prevailing theories. One was friendly fire. The US Navy runs weapons training exercises in a 300-mile-wide swath near the flight path.
The second held that it could have been terrorists with ground-to-air missiles.
The third was that there had been a bomb on board.
The producers interview most of the players in the investigation including eyewitnesses; Robert Francis, the former chairman of the NTSB who was not happy to have the FBI crawling over his investigation; James Kallstrom of the FBI, who knew that 747s just don't randomly blow up; Leon Panetta, then-White House Chief of Staff; as well as cops who dove for the wreckage, like Vincente Termine.
After this show, you may trust the government even less than you do now. Or you may think they are as honest as they possibly could be in simply admitting that they just don't know.
Whatever you conclude, you won't conclude that National Geographic didn't do a very thorough job. Great reporting.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
If it were a missile and covered up, it was in the interests of Clinton’s poll ratings at the time, not our nation’s security.
Maybe I’m dense, but I just don’t get why anyone would cover up an attack. What would be the point of that?
If it were an attack wouldn’t there be a strong probability that the perps would do it again, seeing how easy it was and successful they were at carrying it out and avoiding capture?
It it had been a deliberate attack and by a foreign power, not some yahoo with a shoulder rpg being an idiot (like the dopes aiming laser lights at commercial airplanes from their yards) what would the Clinton administration, or any administration for that matter, have to gain by hiding it?
They all have loved ones traveling by commercial aircraft.
I just don’t get the conspiracy angle.
As for the so called eye-witnesses, I just don’t put much stock in them. Ever hear the conflicting eyewitness accounts of a shooting, or accident or other traumatic event? Not that reliable at a close distance, much less miles away.
You memory is wrong. The Lewinskey story broke in January of 1998, flight 800 occured in July of 1996.
I’ve always thought that if it had been friendly fire, we would have known right away, because Clinton hated the military and would have done anything to make our military look bad.
This, combined with the fact that Saddam (who was a great funder of low-budget terrorist attacks) was building up to some kind of celebration and announced his people should expect a great message at dawn that day (which it would have been in Iraq at the hour that the flight was shot down here) affirming the glories of his Islamic regime...
In addition, there was normally an El-Al flight to Israel that left at that time, but it had been delayed that evening and the TWA flight had taken its place in the line.
I’ve often wondered if this was one of the reasons that Iraq was one of our first objectives.
OK, time to take off the tinfoil hat...
I keep my 19MAR96 TW0800 ticket stub on my office wall. I had taken that flight numerous times.
.
The final proof that it was a short circuit in the center fuel tank is that they NTSB grounded all 747’s to inspect the wiring...
Uhoh...tinfoil alert.
I don’t understand your post. With all due respect, Mr. O’Hara doesn’t know for sure where his son is? He (the son) was either on the flight or not, right?
Color me unimpressed. Anything that mentions the Center Fuel Tank, and/or anything associated with it is disinformation.
ML/NJ
Clinton was into the “why can’t we all just get along” theory, where the US was always wrong and our hated military was not to be relied on, and any threat was just an alarmist illusion. Look at all the foreign terrorist attacks he completely ignored; if we were lucky and one of the planners lived here, there’d be trials in US courts, but there was never any serious retaliation for any of them.
It was very important to him to avoid challenges from other countries and to court our enemies; why do you think we were on the side of the Muslims in the Balkans?
I spent hundreds of hours as a kid at the beach watching aircraft land and takeoff at JFK, and to me this is a personal thing, not a political thing.
About 5 years ago I knew a man who was (still is) employed by Boeing to inspect crashes. I asked him about TWA 800.
He said it was a missile.
“Maybe I’m dense, but I just don’t get why anyone would cover up an attack. What would be the point of that?”
I’m not sure what the point is, but if you remember the first WTC attack, the administration played it down as much as they could.
For many hours, the “official line” was that there had been a transformer explosion!
In later press conferences the president kept referring the first major attack on the continental United States by foreigners as a “police matter” or words to that effect.
And the perps, or buds of the perps, did attack again.
... regarding my previous post - he was not personally involved in the TWA 800 investigation. He was just speaking from his knowledge of the details and his personal experience with crash investigations.
The explosion occurred almost exactly where Richard Reid was sitting with his shoe bomb. I believe the same thing happened. Interior bomb set off center fuel tank. There has never been a reported spontaneous center fuel tank explosion in history.
You are confusing TWA800 with the crash of the plane in Yugoslavia which Ron Brown was aboard. Just before the Monica story broke it had been revealed that there was a bullet hole in Ron Brown's head. People were asking questions. But a blow job from a fat groupie is much more important than the questionable circumstances of the Ron Brown plane crash, and so we all talked about Monica.
ML/NJ
Anyone who watched television during the days after the crash had to notice the FBI's James Kalstrom, who, in the early days, held the theory it was a missile, was visibly uncomfortable when, in the later stages of the investigation, he stated that there was no external force, and the explosion was most likely fumes the center fuel tank.
Someone made Kalstrom toe the line.....I believed then, and still believe, it was Bill Clinton!
THERE WAS VIDEO OF THIS EXPLOSION
IT WAS SHOWN ON TV AT LEAST ONCE - I KNOW BECAUSE I SAW IT
(others here on FR have said they saw it to)
THERE WAS AT LEAST ONE STREAK OF LIGHT SHOOTING STRAIGHT UP AND THEN THE EXPLOSION
Why watch if they don’t know what happened and they’re trying to discredit the gov’t. We all know it was Bush’s fault..
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