The Cunning Passageways of TWA Flight 800: An Unauthorized History

New English Review ^ | July 1, 2010 A.D. | Christopher S. Carson

[jfd1776]

Six months ago, authorities seized a cargo plane in Bangkok that contained 35 tons of North Korean military weapons. These included versions of the Chinese HN-5 “man-portable air defense system,” or MANPADS. The MANPADS were being shipped to Iran. The HN-5 — a copy of the Soviet SA-7— is less capable than the MANPADS Iran produces on its own.

Why, you ask, would Iran be importing more primitive missiles than the ones it already makes? The only conceivable answer is that Iran was planning to provide North Korean missiles to Iran’s proxy terrorist groups, to gain plausible deniability in case the missiles were ever used or grabbed.

In other words, Iran is now in the business of fronting MANPADS from a variety of sources to Hezbollah, the Islamic Courts Union of Somalia, al Shabaab, the Taliban, and apparently al Qaeda.

The cache of North Korean MANPADS bound for Iran is surely an omninous sign for air travelers everywhere. We know that since 1973, 30 civilian aircraft have been downed and about 920 civilians killed by MANPADS. These weapons are cheap and comparatively small. For years, intelligence officials have described them as so easy to use that firing a Stinger is compared with operating a point-and-shoot camera. And the bang they provide is priceless. One particular story comes to mind and haunts my dreams.

July 17th is the 14-year anniversary of the tragic crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, New York, which caused the deaths of 230 men, women and children. This essay is a cautionary tale-- a story of a brief period in American history when America was, as now, beset by a host of enemies from the Islamic world.

...continue reading in The New English Review

[jfd1776]

Here's a fascinating and very well-researched article on the history of terrorism from the Clinton Administration to the present... well worth a read!

[TokuMei]

Great post.

Spontaneous center fuel tank explosion, MY A*S..!

[miele man]

Thanks for posting this.

[PetroniusMaximus]

An acquaintance of mine’s father was a Boeing crash inspector. He went out and figured out wht went wrong when a plane went down. Several years ago I asked him about TWA800. He said, “It was a Missile.”

[Apercu]

Maybe “Sandy Burglar” knows........

[ThunderSleeps]

I agree with part of the premise of the article - that MANPADs in the hands of terrorists is a bad thing. However, I've never bought into the idea that one brought down TWA-800. I haven't researched it lately, but if I remember correctly -800's altitude was not favorable for a MANPADs. It was something like about 14000 ft.

This is problematic for two reasons. First, that is right at the altitude limit of most MANPAD systems of the time. That would mean the launching platform would have to be directly under the aircraft and fire just about straight up. Possible, but not likely.

If you were planning to bring down a 747, don't you think you'd put your team in a position more inside the engagement envelope?

That brings up the second point. If I remember correctly, -800 was too low. At that point in the departure path, it should've been at a higher altitude. It was held down for some inbound traffic or some such. So even if you were planning on a max altitude engagement, you wouldn't put your team there, because at that point departing airliners should have already been too high.

So a missile team wouldn't have been there, and (probably) wouldn't have engaged something right at the limits of their system. It was just luck that -800 was at that altitude at that position. You don't plan for luck. A terrorist team would've been someplace else.

I don't buy the Navy shoot-down theory either. I know for a fact the Navy is forbidden from generating a fire control solution on commercial aircraft, and they would never in a million years illuminate one with the X band terminal guidance radar. Without either of those engagement elements, there's no way a semi-active radar homing missile would've found it's way into -800.

Of course, I don't really buy the official line either. Have there been any cases of modern airliners' fuel tanks exploding? Sure it is possible, but is it even remotely probable? I honestly don't have a theory as to what happened to -800, but there are some things I'm pretty sure didn't happen to it.

[TokuMei]

Dayum, great article...!!

[IncPen]

ping

[conservative cat]

Self ping for later read.

[PhilDragoo]

Excellent article confirming the terrorist shoot-down was covered up by Clinton, Berger, Reno, Freeh et al. See also, OKCBomb

Thank heavens Obama has NASA pursuing dhimmitude and gave twelve Shadow drones to Pakistan.

[Artie]

In addition to the Jack Cashill book on TWA 800, readers would also enjoy ‘Night Fall” by Nelson Demille. Fictional, but most likely close to the truth.

[JerseyDvl]

Great ending to that one!

[moehoward]

"If you were planning to bring down a 747, don't you think you'd put your team in a position more inside the engagement envelope?"

But as we now know a good portion of these terrorists are betting on Forest Gump luck.

[ADemocratNoMore]

Excellent article. Thanks for the heads up.

[greeneyes]

Right after 9-11, George Stephanopolis was naming the acts of terrorism, and he included TWA flight 800. Odd expressions came over every ones faces, and they cut to a commercial.

When they came back on no further discussion of flight 800.

[Big Giant Head]

ping for later

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

Thank you for posting this.

[BOBTHENAILER]

CHILLING-—the cavalier treatment of the murder of Americans.

[potlatch]

There was a time I trusted our government - many moons ago, but now I know corruption has always been wending it’s way.

Thanks for the ping Phil. I am a ghost, now you see me, now you don’t, lol.

[Richard Kimball]

I don't know if it was a MANPAD, but these things convinced me it was a terrorist take down.

When the FAA attributed the explosion to the fuel tank, they made no recommendations on how to prevent it from happening again. They didn't even do an inspection of the rest of the fleet.

When Al Gore put together the committee to investigate the explosion, he included two family members of victims from the Lockerbie bombing. This was after the FAA had made the determination it was a spark in the fuel tank.

The final report focused exclusively on preventing terrorist attacks and hijackings. Why would a committee investigating a mechanical failure focus on terrorist activities? If I had a committee investigating falls in the bathroom, I'd be surprised if they came back with recommendations for putting burglar bars on the windows.

George Stephanapoulos, who was in the Clinton White House when TWA 800 went down, accidentally referred to it as the TWA 800 bombing on a show.

A lot of things can be disputed, but the first three points I mentioned are on the net, and can be Googled. Here's the quote from Stephanopoulos:

Stephanopoulos, implying that this was unnecessary, made this surprising statement: “There are facilities in the White House, not the normal situation room, which everyone has seen in the past, has seen pictures of. There is a second situation room, behind the primary situation room, which has video conferencing capabilities. The director of the Pentagon, the defense chief, can speak from a national military command center at the Pentagon. The Secretary of State can speak from the State Department, the President from wherever he is, and they’ll have this capability for video conferencing throughout this crisis. In my time at the White House it was used in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, in the aftermath of the TWA Flight 800 bombing, and that would be the way they would stay in contact through the afternoon.”

That last one could be a slip, but the US government has, for years, denied any Islamic terrorism unless it was so blatant there was no way they could deny it. To this day, they refuse to discuss the evidence in Oklahoma City.