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.

[djf]

Not to mention that contrary to what some have said here about no missile parts being found, there were in fact multiple finds of Stinger (or a Stinger type) first stage ejectors in the days/weeks following the incident.

[ladyjane]

Okay, neither the Clinton nor the Obama administration did/will re-open the investigation.

However, President Bush had eight years to do so. He also had eight years to shut down our borders, to deport the illegals, to begin to control Fannie Mae, etc. ad nauseum.

A prime responsibility of the government is to protect its people. What are they protecting us from, information?

[waxer1]

See Commander Donaldson’s REport. You can view it at twa800.org or .com.

It has a picture of it in the report. you should read it.

I have to say that I don’t know what weapon brought it down, or the semantics of how they work, but in light of 911 and how that took place nothing surprises me at all.

All I know is that after speaking with a couple of commercial pilots and talking with my cousin who is the head of security at detroit airport, I am convinced that something brought that plane down on purpose and the plane just did not explode.

[waxer1]

correction not detroit airport. Sorry.

[lentulusgracchus]

Your linked website records that MANPADS systems are 2-for-6 against civil-aviation targets. The two airliners known to have been destroyed were older models (a 727 and a 737) operated by smaller regional airlines.

A MANPADS missile has never yet succeeded in destroying a civil-aviation heavy.

[Thermalseeker]

What are they protecting us from, information?

You have it backwards. Most politicians don't care one wit about you or me. All they care about is themselves and their interests. Every decision they make is grounded in how it will ultimately impact them. They are, in fact, protecting themselves from us. Make no mistake. They are not protecting us at all. If they were indeed looking out for our best interests there would never have been the information sharing "wall" erected between the FBI, CIA and the military which ultimately led to the 9/11 attacks. If they looking out for our best interests the southern border would have been sealed 25 years ago. If they were indeed protecting our interests they would not be printing and borrowing money at such an alarming rate. If they were indeed protecting our interests Obamalamadingdong wouldn't be talking about killing missile defense right at a time when North Korea and Iran are about to have operational intercontinental ballistic missile technology. Ditto this ridiculous center fuel tank theory for the cause of the downing of TWA800.

Go down the list of virtually every decision politicians have made in the past 30 odd years and it's clear they are only looking out for themselves. Every aspect of a politician's life and every decision they make is first and foremost about them and no one else.....once you understand and accept this undeniable fact, the rest is easy to understand.....

[Non-Sequitur]

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

Would it? The 747 would have been near the upper limit of the SA16/SA18 altitude and, depending in where it was launched, overall range.

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.

For a heavily laden 747 climbing to altitude, the center of the IR signature would be one of the four engines cranking out the heat. By rights any IR guided missile would have hit an engine or wing.

[David1]

See my post #15. See Part 1, 2, and 3 of the youtube clips.

[Non-Sequitur]

Nope. Didn't happen that way.

How did it happen?

[Senator John Blutarski]

lentulusgracchus wrote: “A MANPADS missile has never yet succeeded in destroying a civil-aviation heavy.”

..... unless, of course, TWA800 was the first. The US government and the civil aviaiton industry certainly consider manpads as a legitimate threat.

[erman]

If I may just venture an odd thought to you and any other FReepers.

Both these accidents happened over the waters edge or very near it. IF a ship was positioned under known flight paths couldn't a larger missile be used instead of the SA or stinger type. Maybe an intermediate size one....

Or as I suspect there might be someone with no ego but extreme survival traits that has figured out a way with either timing device, GPS or barometric trigger to bring planes down over water, making identification of source very difficult and that the object isn't only terror but to cripple the airline/travel/international business activity of the the infidel.

Just odd that the weird ones happen over water. Of course they ARE weird cause they happened over water and therefore difficult to assess fully.

[Thermalseeker]

How did it happen?

I don't know. I do know, however, that is was not vapors the center fuel tank that exploded, at least in so much as the fuel vapors were not the initial source of the explosion that brought down TWA800. It's simple chemistry.

Since the fuel tanks on all aircraft are vented to the outside to allow for expansion and contraction of the fuel and the tank with changes in altitude and therefore changes in air pressure, there simply was not enough oxygen present to allow for explosive combustion of kerosene vapors at 12,000'-14,000' msl inside the tank. Plain and simple, it didn't happen that way. Kerosene vapors are hardly explosive at sea level. They certainly aren't capable of creating an explosion at 12,000' msl. I have no idea what really brought TWA800 down, but it certainly was not a fuel vapor explosion....

[Thermalseeker]

By rights any IR guided missile would have hit an engine or wing.

The 747 has 5 engines. Don't forget the APU in the tail. It's a little turbine engine that powers the on board systems. You can see the tailpipe of the APU at the rear of a 747 fuselage. Most big jets have one.....

[erman]

see my post #91, that’s what I was thinking...

[GBA]

If Flight 447 was flying at approximately 50,000 feet...

Doing a quick web search, the highest service ceiling I saw listed for the Airbus A330 is 39,370 ft (12,000 m).

[Blueflag]

On another note, the fact that recovery efforts off Brazil are finding relatively intact human remains indicates the plane did not fly into the ocean at flight speed. Human bodies burst like water balloons during really high speed impacts. Finding human ‘bodies’ indicates a large piece of the plane tumbling to earth with people inside; a plane that ditched badly (not likely); or sadly a body tumbling down from high altitude on its own - at a ~100 mph terminal velocity.

My hypothesis based on admittedly SCARCE facts is a mid air breakup due to a departure from controlled flight, where the airframe exceed Vne ... and then failed structurally. Said departure from controlled flight due to instrument failure and PIC disorientation. Just my three cents ...

[True Republican Patriot]

AMEN!! Maybe El Rushbo will finally wakeup from his Intellectual stupor and listen to Dr. Cashill for awhile and give him some airtime. El Rushbo will be ecstatically surprized and thrilled over the results! and AMERICA will be much more secure and protected from the Enemy within!
Lets throw the “DEAD FISH” outa Washington and The White House!

[LS]

This is a possible scenario. So that means you need

a) intel as to which flight you want to attack and precise times; and

b) back to problem 1: you'd have explosives residue. None was discovered in 800.

[Star Traveler]

You said — Correct...and the last one was in Arkansas last week.

—

There are many instances of these single and isolated attacks that you’re referring to, in that murder in Arkansas. I think that those, too, are many times, squelched, as to a connection with Islam.

There has been a long list of those kinds that show up here on Free Republic threads, usually only being connected to Islam by FReepers alone and not in the MSM. And the government is complicit in that, to be sure.

But, when I was referring to TWA Flight 800 and the Oklahoma City bombing... that’s in a completely different categorie than these other isolated cases, although they stem from the same source of Islam.

These others that I mention, take a whole different level of coordination and planning and involvement than what goes on with these isolated attacks.

I see a lot of these isolated attacks as individuals and “rogue-types” who operate on their own and are already somewhat unstable in what they do and/or they “cracked” at a certain point and went “jihad” on their own. Islam will do that to a person..., certainly.

These other attacks (like TWA Flight 800 and the Oklahoma City bombing) are not planned by unstable people (even if some here say one is unstable for doing such things; I say that they are not unstable in doing it). They are acting in a militant and military fashion and are more akin to guerrilla warfare types.

I think those individual and isolated types of attacks are much more manageable in a society like ours, as there is often not a lot of planning and once they do it, they are caught and convicted for what they have done.

It’s the events like the Oklahoma City bombing and the TWA Flight 800 shoot-down that we have much more to be concerned about and worried about — because no one knows the full level of involvement in these things, as we do with these other individual and isolated cases.

We have our *own people* in our own country doing as much, and more, than this killer did in Arkansas. I have a family member who was in the military who was killed on the way to the store and never made it back home to his family. It was a robbery and he wasn’t found for a couple of days (this was many years ago). It’s unfortunate that our own people in this country kill others of our own people, and most of the time for stupid things, like money and drugs and silly arguments, and so on.

Now, the reason for the distinction here, even though both kinds of events kill people — is that for the purposes of Islam, one is more effective than the other. When you see the individuals and the isolated killings here and there — this doesn’t serve the purpose of Islam in “terrorism”. That’s because Americans kill more Americans, themselves, than these isolated and whacked types do.

But, when Islam engages in the paramilitary and guerrilla type warfare for these kinds of results in the Oklahoma City bombing (and I do think it’s related to Islam, McVeigh notwithstanding) and TWA Flight 800, along with 9/11 events — then you’ve got something that serves the purposes of Islam in regards to terrorism. And that’s what they want. I don’t even think the “terrorists” coming out of Islam really are concerned with these other isolated incidents — but they aren’t necessarily unhappy they happen either.

Any killing of people (whether it’s an abortionist or a baby or a soldier at home, or an unknowing civilian and/or victim) — is not to be tolerated and all of these things should be and must be punished. But, in the grand plan of terrorism, certain things are more important than others.

[LS]

The propellant residue (i.e., two or three seats with a strange red residue) was the explanation of Saunders. But that doesn't wash for reasons I gave:

what terrorist in his right mind would fire a NON-explosive missile, with all the risk that entails, when there would be no guarantee of any kind of fatal damage? It would be like staging an assassination attempt with blanks.

That is precisely why Saunders backed off his "explosive" missile theory after his first edition and began to go with a "pass through" missile---there was no evidence of explosives. But that just doesn't make sense; so that led him to some sort of NAVY conspiracy with a drone that got out of hand.

Except you don't fire a drone target missile without actually shooting at it, and there is no radar signature (nor Navy record) of any test using ANY drone or subsequent missile.

It is possible that some terrorist got ahold of a Stinger, took the explosives out, managed to get conveniently right under the range/altitude limit of a flight, and then without any serious likelihood at all that a "pass through" missile would destroy a plane, shot it off anyway and got "lucky." And if you believe that, you believe that Obama will reduce the size of government.