'I Know What I Saw...'

'I Know What I Saw...That Was No Mechanical Problem...No Way!' By Peter Gelzinis BostonHerald.com 11-13-1 ROCKAWAY BEACH, NY -"I will never believe it was an accident. They'll never convince me of that." Eugene Sanfilippo kept looking past the microphones and notebooks, down 131st Street toward Jamaica Bay and a vision that the rest of us could not see. It was past three in the afternoon, the sky above this sliver of Queens was clear, but all this lanky, 45-year-old bus mechanic could see was a huge orange ball of flame; he could still feel the unbearable heat; he could hear people screaming; he could taste the acrid black smoke. And he was still afraid. "When I heard the explosion, I thought we were under attack," Sanfilippo said. "My first impression was that they'd hit us with a nuclear bomb. I figured it was just like the World Trade Center. And I watched that burn from the (Jamaica) bay." Miles away from where Eugene Sanfilippo stood, at the edge of a new Ground Zero, a mayor, a president's spokesman and a slew of FAA officials were urging us to think "accident." But they were not standing in Rockaway Beach. They did not lose neighbors and friends across the bay in Manhattan on Sept. 11. Black crepe still hangs here, along with the memories of funerals for roughly 80 cops, firefighters and stockbrokers. To look into Eugene Sanfilippo's eyes was to see there were no coincidences. "Every day," he said, "I fear more and more for the safety of my family. Why should we be made to suffer this way?" Tommy Rayder, who works at JFK Airport, kept looking past the fire barricades, toward a place where the autumn leaves had been burnt off the trees. The homes that were gone belonged to neighbors Tommy knew, "because in this part of the city, we all know everybody." "I want to believe it was mechanical. I'm hoping it was an accident. These days," Tommy Rayder sighed, "an accident is what you pray for. "That's a weird thing to say isn't it? Here, a jet plane comes down in the middle of a neighborhood, and you pray it's an accident because you can't bear to think they'd do it again to us. "Not here, not in Rockaway. You figure it couldn't happen again cause we already suffered enough." Standing a few feet away, James Gill tried as best he could to comfort his wife who appeared to be deep in the throes of this new suffering. "We are up on the Cross Bay Bridge," James Gill said, "driving over from Richmond Hill to look at a house. "My wife saw the whole thing. What she saw was an explosion, way forward on the engines, sort of just behind the cockpit. "I had to pull over, just there on the bridge. Amanda was hysterical. She dialed 911 on the cell phone, and just started to scream, `Help me! Help me!' " After being rocked by the sound of an initial explosion, James Gill said he looked up to see American Flight 587 in flames and attempting to bank, only to wind up in a flat death spiral. "I was in munitions in both the Army and also the Navy. I know what I heard and what I saw. That was no mechanical problem. No way!" Howard Greenberg rushed home from his law office in Manhattan to find his wife shell-shocked. After seeing the plane fall, and believing it was going to kill both her and her children, Howard Greenberg said his wife spent the next few horrific hours running over body parts in the direction of her neighbors' burning homes. She was carrying blankets and water. "I'm afraid," Howard Greenberg said, "that my wife believes this is another incident. She'd probably tell you that herself if she was able to talk. I'm afraid that's impossible. "Personally I might like to believe that it was something else, but when you've been told that this whole area is being considered as a crime scene, and that FBI agents are looking in your yard and on your roof for evidence, for pieces of jet wreckage or human beings, then it becomes hard to make a case for coincidence. "Now that all may change, but right now this is simply too much to fathom." After being told to vacate her home, Lilly Reynolds looked into the faces of the strangers swarmed around her. "You know, after so many of our neighbors and friends died in September we were just getting back to some idea of normal, then this happens. "My God, you say, they've done it again. What else are we supposed to think?"

"My father was a retired aviation expert and crash investigator. His take was that TWA800 was shot down by two missiles. You requested URLs of information disproving your thesis... there is only one you need and it has links to much more: www.twa800.com."

Very few "crash investigators" and/or "aviation experts" [whatever that's supposed to mean], active or retired, have any experience interviewing witnesses to anything and only a handful of those few who have some interviewing experience have any real expertise at doing so. That's why the most seasoned interviewers the NTSB has are usually assigned to the NTSB Witness Group.

The crash of Flight 800 took place at the peak of the governments concerns about terrorism prior to 9-11 and the initial reports that witnesses had seen a streak of light track to a huge fireball explosion in the sky immediately put the possibility of a missile shootdown, maybe a terrorist missile shootdown, on top of the probable cause list. James Kallstrom reported that to Janet Reno and Louis Freeh who relayed it to the White House and congressional leaders and the FBI promptly was authorized to take charge of the investigation with Kallstrom as top dawg.

Kallstrom, started off with the most unprofessional and stupid decision possible, to have FBI agents - unqualified by experience and training for the role - interview the air disaster witnesses instead of the NTSB Witness Group which had been created exclusivly for the purpose of making sure that air disaster witnesses would be interviewed by EXPERTS. Perhaps because of the FBI agents lack of experience and training for that role, Kallstrom had them provided with a list of questions to ask about the fiery streak and it's origin AND instructed them to move fast to "nail the scumbags who did this" as evidenced by the complaints from witnesses that they were interviewed for only about 5 minutes, obviously far less time than necessary [even for expert interviewers using tape recorders] to conduct thorough and complete interviews of witnesses to a major air disaster. In other words, the FBI agents were instructed to look for a few specific observations - not ALL of each witness's observations.

That's the same tunnel vision interviewing procedure followed by ALL of the tinfoil hat "missile shootdown" amateurs since - including your notion of a a reliable source for information about what the witnesses saw. Bill Donaldson is now deceased. The evidence that he had neither the experience nor training to properly and thoroughly interview the Flight 800 witnesses and that his interviews of some of them were with tunnel vision is abundant, such as his touting of witness Fred Meyer as a "missile shootdown" witness without noticing that Meyer could not have possibly seen a missile shootdown of the 747 at 13,800 feet only 3 to 4 seconds before he saw the huge fireball explode in its wreckage at least 6000 feet lower in the sky. Which is all reviewed in detail and documented here.

ALL of the tinfoil hat "missile shootdown" promoters have demonstrated the same tunnel vision analysis of the observations of the Flight 800 witnesses. Digressing for a moment from the subject of your favorite to demonstrate how destructive tunnel vision is to the analytical process, I'll mention the touting by Ian Goddard of witnesses Sven Faret and Ken Wendell as his "missile shootdown" stars - while never noticing that the fiery explosion they saw in the sky took place BELOW their own flight altitude of 8500 feet. Click here for the detailed report of witnesses Faret and Wendell - which they personally prepared because their FBI interview was so brief and superficial. Incidentally, I don't believe you'll find their complete report anywhere else including in ANY of the tinfoil hat "missile shootdown" websites, including your favorite, that of the Donaldson brothers.

The brothers have also touted some of the FBI 302 form interviews as "missile shootdown" evidence, ignoring or oblivious to the fact that those interviews are NOT "witness reports" for the reasons explained here and most of the witnesses names are unknown, only their FBI witness numbers. FBI 302 forms are only evidence, at best, of the agents' understanding of what witness # - - - likely during a rushed brief interview - IF that's the right 302 form for witness # - - -. The reality is that it would be impossible for anyone to determine conclusively what any of those witnesses said, much less what they saw, thanks to James Kallsltrom's unprofessional and stupid conduct at the outset of the investigation.

For a dramatic demonstration of how the tinfoil hat "missile shootdown" interviewers with tunnel visionsee only what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear but NOT what the witness actually told them, click here for the transcript of one such interview with witness Dwight Brumley and notice how his answers are not only IGNORED but the same leading questions that were asked and the answers ignored are asked again. And again. And again. Some of his answers are shown in the transcript as n/a. Not applicable?

Brumley's fascinating answer in the following exchange will be of interest to ANY expert interviewer:

19: You told me before they [FBI] never even asked you all these [questions]?

No, no, no, uh-uh....It wasn't until I talked to Commander Donaldson...it wasn't until he talked to me that I had anybody with any aviation expertise really sit down with me and really parse what I said and clarify and get me to, in my mind, go back through it, step-by-step.

I don't expect you or any of the other tinfoil hat "missile shootdown" promoters to understand why that answer is so interesting, or for that matter even to understand much of the foregoing at all because [1] you ALL lack the experience and training necessary to understand it, [2] you ALL closed your minds on the subject long ago, and [3] like ALL conspiracy theorists, anything contrary to your own horrendously biased mindsets is seen as "government disinformation".

Just keep in mind that this country is at war and that inciting suspicion, fear and hatred of our government gives aid and comfort to our enemies. Publicly shooting your mouths off now about things your have no expertise on is stupid.

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