Jack Cashill: Reopen the TWA Flight 800 Case

American Thinker ^ | June 07, 2009 | Jack Cashill

[neverdem]

Nearly thirteen years after the destruction of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, I had begun to think that the case was a dead issue, but then two unexpected and unrelated events caused me to think otherwise.

The first was a phone call from one of the three most important eyewitnesses to the case.  The second, two weeks later, was the still-mysterious crash of Air France Flight 447 off the coast of Brazil. 

This eyewitness put a further dent in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) claim that a fuel tank explosion brought down TWA Flight 800.  The crash of Flight 447 has put TWA 800 back in the news again.   If the media are going to look to 800 as a template for 447, they need to know what the eyewitnesses to the 800 crash actually saw.

The eyewitness in question may be prepared to tell his story publicly.  After giving his testimony to the FBI in July 1996, for personal reasons, he had chosen to remain silent.  He is still sufficiently wary that I will shade his testimony and refer to him only as "Surfer."  What I will share, however, is his one, entirely damning, new revelation.

The other two critical eyewitnesses I will identify by name and FBI number.  The first is Mike Wire, #571. I have become good friends with Mike and his wife Joan since meeting them while doing research on the book, First Strike, that I co-authored with James Sanders in 2003.  (The documentary that Sanders and I produced in Spring 2001 is available online.  Part 1 sets the scene) 

The second key eyewitness, Joseph Delgado by name, 649 by number, was at the time the principal of Westhampton Beach High School.  He was not thrilled that Sanders and I had identified him in First Strike, but he acknowledged that our facts were accurate.  No one provided the FBI a more precise description of the event than Delgado.  His illustration of the same is stunning.

The surfer saw the events just about as clearly as Delgado.  What he also saw, in addition to the apparent missile, was the break-up sequence of the aircraft.  He described it accurately to the FBI long before the NTSB came to the same conclusion based on radar and the debris field. 

These are just three of the 270 eyewitnesses by the FBI's own count that saw a flaming, smoke-trailing, zigzagging object appear to destroy TWA Flight 800.   All three followed the object off the horizon.  Delgado and the surfer tracked TWA 800 separately from the object and witnessed the moment of impact.  Wire and the surfer saw the object "arch over" before the strike. The New York Times interviewed none of these three, none of the 270 for that matter.

A no-nonsense, 6'-7" millwright and U.S. Army vet, Mike Wire watched events unfold from the Beach Lane Bridge in Westhampton on Long Island.  He came to play a key role because the CIA based its notorious video animation on Wire's perspective.  Why the CIA was involved in a domestic airplane "accident" is anyone's guess.  The media never bothered to ask.

The FBI showed the CIA video just once.  That was in November 1997 when it officially bowed out of the case.  The FBI needed it to negate the stubborn testimony of the eyewitnesses.

A key animation sequence in the CIA video showed not a missile but an internal fuel tank explosion blowing the nose off the aircraft. According to the video's narration, TWA 800 then "pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its last recorded altitude of about 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet."  This rocketing aircraft was alleged to look like a missile and to have confused the eyewitnesses.  (The animation begins at the 8:30 mark of Part 2 of "Silenced"). 

This animation was essential to close the investigation. Without it, there was no way to explain what these hundreds of official FBI eyewitnesses, many of them highly credible, had actually seen.

According to the official record, the three key eyewitnesses were re-interviewed by the FBI in 1997.  The authorities paid most attention to Delgado.  On May 8, 1997, agents from the FBI and the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California, interviewed Delgado at his Long island school.  According to FBI notes, the China Lake rep was introduced to Delgado simply as "a member of the Department of Defense."

Delgado told the authorities once again that he had seen an object like "a firework," ascend "fairly quick," then "slow" and "wiggle" then "speed up" and get "lost."  Then he saw a second object that "glimmered" in the sky, higher than the first, then a red dot move up to that object, then a puff of smoke, then another puff, then a "firebox."  The agents seem to have taken him seriously.

In Mike Wire's first interview on July 29, 1996, at his Pennsylvania home, he told an FBI agent exactly what he had seen, and it tracks closely with Delgado's account.  Here is how the agent recorded the conversation on his "302:"

Wire saw a white light that was traveling skyward from the ground at approximately a 40 degree angle.  Wire described the white light as a light that sparkled and thought it was some type of fireworks. Wire stated that the white light 'zig zagged' (sic) as it traveled upwards, and at the apex of its travel the white light "arched over" and disappeared from Wire's view. . . . Wire stated the white light traveled outwards from the beach in a south-southeasterly direction.

After the light disappeared, the 302 continues, Wire "saw an orange light that appeared to be a fireball."  Although the CIA chose to build its animation squarely on Mike Wire's perspective, the story the CIA video told bore almost no relation to the one Wire had told the FBI. 

The NTSB transcribed its 1999 conversations with the CIA analysts responsible for the video.  (NTSB Witness document, Appendix FF, Docket No. SA-516, April 30, 1999).  In this document, the CIA analysts concede the problems that Mike Wire's original 302 presented. 

Said one, "We realized that if he [Wire] was only seeing the airplane, that he would not see a light appear from behind the rooftop of that house."  In other words, the CIA could not square its account of a self-imploding airline turning into a rocket with Wires' account since TWA 800 was at least 20 degrees above the horizon, well above the rooftop. So, claimed the CIA analyst, "We asked the FBI to talk to [Wire] again, and they did."

It was during this follow-up interview with the FBI, some time in 1997, that Wire was reported to have changed his mind, now admitting that he had first seen the ascending light high above the rooftop. How high?  Said the CIA analyst,  "[Wire] said it was as if - if you imagine a flag pole on top of the house it would be as if it were on the top or the tip of the flag pole."

The CIA analysts based their video on this second interview with Mike Wire.  "FBI investigators determined precisely where the eyewitness was standing," says the narrator while the video shows the explosion from Wire's perspective on Beach Lane Bridge. "The white light the eyewitness saw was very likely the aircraft very briefly ascending and arching over after it exploded rather than a missile attacking the aircraft."

The CIA animation converts Wire's "40 degree" climb to one of roughly 70 or 80 degrees. It reduces the movement of an obvious smoke trail from three dimensions, south and east "outward from the beach," to a small, two-dimensional blip far off shore.  It places the explosion noticeably to the West of where Wire clearly remembers it.  Most problematically, it fully ignores Wire's claim that the streak of light ascended "skyward from the ground" and places his first sighting 20 degrees above the horizon, exactly where Flight 800 would have been.

In fact, Wire never told the FBI anything about a flagpole.  He could not have.  He never talked to the FBI, the NTSB or the CIA after July of 1996. The CIA and/or the FBI fabricated the entire interview and added the flagpole detail to make the interview seem real.  The 302 from this alleged second interview is not in the official NTSB record.

The surfer added confirming detail to Wire's account.  After thirteen years, he finally read the 302s the FBI had prepared.  The first one from 1996 was entirely accurate.  The second one from 1997 added very specific new details about the surfer that served to discredit his testimony.  Not only were the details untrue, the surfer told me, but, as in Wire's case, there was no second interview.

Delgado presented more of a challenge.  The serious nature of his second interview suggests that there was still a force within the bureaucracy struggling to get at the truth.  By the time of the NTSB's final hearing in August 2000, that force had obviously been suppressed. 

At the hearing the task of discrediting Delgado fell to one Dr. David Mayer, who headed up the NTSB's Orwellian-titled "Human Performance Division."  He too solved his problem with a flagpole.  As Mayer described events, everything Delgado saw occurred "between these two flagpoles."  Mayer then used an illustration to show where those flagpoles were located and vectored Delgado's line of sight from between those flagpoles out to sea.

"So again," said Mayer, "it doesn't appear that this witness was looking in the right location to see where flight 800 would have been when it would have been struck by a hypothetical missile."  If he were looking in the wrong direction, Mayer implied, none of his testimony could possibly matter.

One major objection here. In none of the FBI notes does Delgado ever mention a flagpole, let alone two flagpoles. With good reason. There weren't any at his location in Westhampton. Like the CIA analysts, Mayer created flagpoles that did not exist and entered them into the official record.

Mayer knew better.  In researching this article I discovered a detail I had missed before.  On July 20, 1996, three days after the crash, the Suffolk County Police went to the high school parking lot where Delgado had been standing and did a GPS reading of his angle of vision.  Mayer had total access to this information.  He suppressed it.  And he was not the only one to suppress information.  There is powerful evidence to suggest that the authorities consciously corrupted the testimony of the three most critical eyewitness to the crash.

The NTSB has since fully abandoned the CIA "zoom-climb" explanation, but it worked to distract an administration-friendly media.  For a new administration so keen on transparency, and a media so keen on exposing the past abuses of our intelligence agencies, and for the families of air crash victims looking for closure, TWA Flight 800 would seem like a very good place to start clearing the air. 

It is time to reopen the case.

[waxer1]

I do not believe for one minute it was a military training exercise that went wrong.

That plane was shot down by terrorist. Rank and file military would have spilled the beans.

[Blueflag]

OK, as a firefighter, I can tell you that liquid fuels DO NOT EXPLODE. Only fuel vapour-oxidzer (O2 in this case) with the right molecular ratio/mixtures (and vapour pressures) will explode.

Jet fuel is sprayed into the compressed air section of a jet engine so that the droplets can sufficiently vapourize and BURN (not explode) in the presence of sufficient oxidizer (O2).

That center wing tank had been partially fueled for quite a while. I *seriously* doubt the air-fuel-vapour mixture above the liquid fuel in that tank was an explosive mixture.

I cannot rationally support the static discharge/explosion in a fuel tank theory.

[waxer1]

That is if you believe the government line.

Ok, you are presuming that the wiring is on the inside of the tank. The pilots I spoke with said no. The wiring is on the outside of the tank.

What caused the tank to explode? I have seen pictures of the tank, and it is bowed from the outside in. Why is that? I am no expert, but it seems to me that if the tank exploded it would bow outwards. True?

[waxer1]

“Since the center fuel tank, and, in fact, all fuel tanks on all aircraft are vented to the outside ambient pressure in order to allow for fuel and tank expansion and contraction as the aircraft ascends and descends, where did the oxygen inside the tank come from that allowed the vapors in the tank to achieve explosive combustion? It’s a really simple question, and one that nobody, not the CIA, the FAA, the FBI, the NTSB, none of them, and certainly not “Mythbusters”. has answered.”

Thank you!

[Thermalseeker]

I can tell you that liquid fuels DO NOT EXPLODE.

The flash point of Jet-A is 100.4F. This means that all the vapor inside the tank would have had to be at 100.4F, at sea level pressure, for a simple electric spark to ignite it and cause it to burn explosively. The autoignition point of Jet-A is 410F. This means that all the vapor inside the tank would have had to reach 410F in order for spontaneous combustion to occur. Both of these temperatures assume sea level pressure and oxygen content. Neither of these things happened on TWA 800's center fuel tank and even if they did, as you say, there wasn't enough oxidizer to allow for explosive combustion. It just didn't happen that way.

[lentulusgracchus]

If it had been the Navy that took down TWA 800, they wouldn't have found anything bigger than a wing section. Look what the Vincennes did to that Iranian Airbus. The Biggest piece that came down was a wing. Sad, but there it is.

There is still the problem of the lack of physical evidence of a high-energy explosion. Now, if the FBI (in the days of Reno Justice) had said that, I could see someone's having room for skepticism; but this part of the investigation was controlled by NTSB. If the aircraft had been speared by a SAM, it would be pretty hard to miss or conceal the evidence.

[Non-Sequitur]

IIRC, the official explanation of the internal explosion of the fuel tank by static electricity never occured before that in any airplane.

In May 1991 a Lauda Air 767 tore itself apart over Thailand. The cause was identified as a sudden deployment of the thrust reverser on the number 1 engine. That had never occurred before and it hasn't happened since. Airliners are carefully designed, manufactured, and maintained. But nothing is 100% guaranteed. On rare occasions failures happen. They seldom happen again because the cause is identified and corrective actions implemented.

[waxer1]

Hi,

I read Commander Donaldson’s Report. Yes, I agree with you. I know a couple of commercial pilots and they said the same thing you just said. They were told to keep quiet, but they did tell me that most if not all pilots believe that the plane was brought down purposely.

They can’t tell me the means, but in no way did that center fuel tank exploded like that.

[waxer1]

Thank you for correcting me. ;-)

I knew it was something like that, but I just could not put it into words.

[Non-Sequitur]

I still think it was either terrorism or friendly fire from a Navy or Coast Guard training exercise gone wrong. Either way, the goobermint IS hiding something.

So you think that the Navy shot down the Air France flight, too?

[LS]

Nor do you answer the simple question of forensics. Where is the explosive residue . . . anywhere?

[Non-Sequitur]

So what caused the fuel to explode?

The center tank was empty. Fuel didn't explode, fumes did.

[LS]

I’m willing to accept it “may have been shot down,” but to do so, neither you nor I can rely on “eyewitnesses.” There is abundant, massive, forensic evidence, none of which shows any missile parts, or explosive residue.

[waxer1]

“The center tank was empty. Fuel didn’t explode, fumes did.”

Is it true or not that fumes do not build up in the fuel tanks because the tank is vented to the outside of the plane? So it could not have been the fumes.

If you look at the picture of the tank itself why is the tank bowed inward? The source of the explosion came from the outside.

[Thermalseeker]

Nor do you answer the simple question of forensics. Where is the explosive residue . . . anywhere?

I didn't address the actual cause because I don't know what caused it. I didn't say it was a missile or other explosive device, nor did I ever mention any explosive residue or the lack thereof. Perhaps you are reading someone else's comments and attributing them to me. I don't know what brought down TWA800, but I do know it was not a fuel vapor explosion......

[Thermalseeker]

Fuel didn't explode, fumes did.

Nope. Didn't happen that way.

[Senator John Blutarski]

lentulusgracchus wrote:
“...the missile theory has a few problems (setting the eyewitnesses aside for a minute), the first being tactical. I’m unaware of a MANPADS that can reach an aircraft reliably at 13,000’. The Stinger’s operational ceiling is about that, or rather less. The copies cranked out by the Soviets and Chinese are about the same, for obvious reasons (their propellants aren’t any better than ours).”

..... TWA800 would have been a relatively easy target for a Soviet SA16/18, which even then was 15 year old technology.

“A further problem for the TWA 800 missile enthusiasts is the fact that the explosion occurred dead-center in the aircraft, whereas SA-14’s, Stingers, etc., are IR homing and typically strike an engine. Recall the DHL Airbus A300 freighter that was struck on one wing (photo) over Baghdad by an SA-14 MANPADS but managed to land safely.”

..... Maybe yes, maybe no. An IR guided missile will target the center of the target’s IR signature. Also, the SA16/18 has multiple fuzings: delayed impact, magnetic, or grazing.

“If TWA 800 had been struck by an SA-14, a) it might easily have survived the attack and landed safely, the 747 being a big, capable aircraft with multiple system redundancy, and b) if it had succumbed, the sequence of events would have been a lot different.”

Even older manpads were capable of bringing down a multi-engine airliner

[ http://www.smokeinthecockpit.com/menu_pages/manpads.html ]

As the IRA once said: “you have to be lucky every time; we only have to be lucky once”.

And the final fly in the ointment is that, presuming a missile attack occured [which I believe] we are assuming that it was a manpad device. It is also perfectly feasible for a larger and more capable missile system to have been fitted to a small ocean-going vessel [think fishing trawler]. Far-fetched? Perhaps. But certainly not outside the realm of possibility.

[Senator John Blutarski]

No explosive residue? Perhaps.

But propellant residue might well be another story.

[lentulusgracchus]

I have seen pictures of the tank, and it is bowed from the outside in. Why is that? I am no expert, but it seems to me that if the tank exploded it would bow outwards.

Are you sure about the deformation? I haven't heard that one before.

Still ..... no chemical residues, no abundant shrapnel fragments as one would expect, if it were a missile. Many missiles above the MANPADS class are designed to do much of their disassembly work through fragmentation, such as the expanding-rod warheads common in U.S. Navy SAM's and AAM's.

[mick]

ping for later