Say it ain't so, Jim
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© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
I hate to see a good cop get screwed.
The reason is, I grew up in a world of cops. My grandfather, my father, my uncle, at least three of my cousins and several of my childhood friends are, or have been, cops, mostly in our hometown, Newark, N.J. – a city where a cop earns his keep. For the same reason, I hate to see cops lie, cheat or betray their trust. It dishonors their profession and my family both.
In fact, what attracted me to the TWA 800 case was less the murky details of an aviation disaster than the conspicuous injustice done to retired cop turned investigator reporter, James Sanders, and his wife, Elizabeth. Both were arrested and convicted for doing no more than seeking the truth.
What, in turn, has troubled me the most since I have been involved is the performance of the chief cop on the case, then FBI bureau chief, Jim Kallstrom. In many ways, Kallstrom reminds me of the blunt, tough, sons of the working class with whom I grew up. In other ways, alas, he reminds me of those opportunistic politicos who would sacrifice a cop's career in a heartbeat if they thought it would advance their own.
In an article we wrote a month ago, James Sanders and I made the case that Kallstrom was a better man than those around him – a victim of his circumstances. That thesis was largely mine. But after finishing Pat Milton's account of the FBI's TWA 800 investigation, "In The Blink of an Eye," I have begun to reassess it.
There is an irony at work here. Milton's book, published in 1999, resulted, as she tells us, "from the willingness of the FBI to open itself up to a journalist." Milton did not disappoint. She fawns on Kallstrom to the point of embarrassment. She refers to all dissenters as "conspiracy theorists" and does so ad absurdum. Even those in Congress who dissent, she accuses of having a "private agenda."
In reading Milton's book, I found myself wanting to believe Kallstrom, the "symbol," as she calls him, of the government's "strength and caring." I always have. I hate to see a cop go wrong.
For me, the moment of hard reckoning came late in Milton's account. Here, she portrays Kallstrom heroically facing down his inquisitors at a congressional hearing in July of 1997, a year after the crash. Among those challenging Kallstrom was then congresswoman Patricia Danner. Danner's "private agenda" was her need to protect TWA, headquartered as it was, claims Milton, in Danner's St. Louis district.
"If the government was covering up the cause," Milton writes, "the airline could avoid the suits brought by the victims' families." One problem here. Pat Danner represented the Kansas City area about 250 miles and four congressional districts away. (Random House published Milton's book by the way. Dan Rather called it "meticulously researched.")
In any case, Danner asked Kallstrom if the FBI had interviewed all the witnesses. Replied Kallstrom, "We have interviewed all of them once, most of them more than once and some of them as many as three or four times, yes."
A common complaint – even among key eyewitnesses – is that they were interviewed only once, and indifferently at that. Consider, for instance, the treatment of the three most critical eyewitnesses. National Guard pilot Major Fritz Meyer was interviewed for five minutes by the FBI. Navy NCO Dwight Brumley, who watched the accident unfold from US AIR 217, had one cursory FBI interview by an agent with no aviation experience, and that was it. The CIA based its critical animation upon an FBI "reinterview" with U.S. Army veteran Mike Wire that never took place.
As with Wire, the purpose of most follow-up interviews, even the real ones, seemed less to clarify than to dissuade or discredit. Only one month after the crash, the FBI ceased eyewitness interviews altogether. Not a single interview took place for nearly two months. Since then, the FBI has re-interviewed fewer than 2 percent of the witnesses. For its part, the NTSB interviewed no civilian eyewitnesses. The CIA interviewed no eyewitnesses at all.
If one remembers anything about Oliver North, it is that "he lied to Congress," a serious offense in the eyes of Washington and the people who report on it. One could argue in Kallstrom's congressional testimony, however, that he was merely "parsing his words," a common phenomenon in the Clinton years.
Kallstrom's responses to Representative James Traficant of Ohio are harder to defend. In speaking of the dog training exercise alleged to have taken place on the Flight 800 plane in St. Louis in June of 1996, Traficant asked Kallstrom, "Do you know for sure that that dog was on the plane."
"We know for sure," Kallstrom answered. Curiously, in Nov. 1996, two months after the dog story broke, Kallstrom had been far less conclusive about the dog training. In his conversation with Jim Lehrer on the PBS News Hour, Kallstrom admitted that he was not "absolutely" sure "how the chemicals got there."
By the time of the congressional hearing, with no new evidence to contradict him, Kallstrom had grown more confident. He and the NTSB had managed to make this storyline stick – even though the story was false, and they knew it.
According to the FBI's own account, St. Louis airport police officer Herman Burnett finished the training on an empty plane no earlier than 12:15 p.m. on the day in question. Given TWA standards, however, a crew of at least 17 would have boarded the Flight 800 plane at about 10:50 a.m. Besides the crew, there would have been maintenance, food service and gate agents coming and going during the dog training exercise, not to mention the passengers. But the police officer, remember, saw no one.
We know the boarding time because we know the departure time. The "Pilot Activity Sheet" for June 10, 1996 shows that TWA No. 17119 – the plane that would become Flight 800 – left St. Louis for Honolulu at 12:35 p.m. with Vance Weir as pilot and Thomas D. Sheary as first officer.
Federal officials were aware of this time as well. A letter from Kallstrom to Traficant reveals that the Flight 800 plane, according to FAA documents, "was parked at Gate 50 from shortly before 700 hours (7 a.m.) until approximately 1230 hours (12:30 p.m.) on that date."
Officer Burnett recorded only his time and "widebody." No documentation puts the officer and his dog at this gate or on the Flight 800 plane. And no one in management could have possibly remembered an unwritten gate assignment 10 weeks after so routine an exercise.
So if not the 800 plane, which "widebody" could the officer possibly have used? According to TWA records provided by the FBI, another 747, Number 17116, the sister aircraft – a veritable clone – was parked one gate over.
This second plane – bound for JFK International as TWA Flight 844 – would not leave the gate until 2:00 p.m. This later departure would have allowed TWA staff ample time to load and board the plane after the officer finished the training exercise at about 12:15.
By the way, although the FBI conducted 7,000 interviews in Kallstrom's "no stone unturned" investigation, its agents did not bother to interview Capt. Weir or First Officer Sheary. For the record, neither has ever seen a dog exercise on any plane they have flown. For that matter, the FBI interviewed Burnett only after the NTSB had leaked the dog-training story, and Burnett believes he was on another plane.
It gets worse. "Isn't it a fact," asks Traficant, "that where the dog was to have visited, that it is not the part of the plane where the precursors of SEMTEX were found?" Traficant here refers to PETN and RDX, chemicals commonly found in bombs and in missile warheads.
"That's not true," Kallstrom answered. He then added the kind of detail that would make a defense lawyer cringe. "It is very important where the packages were put, Congressman. And the test packages that we looked at, that were in very bad condition, that were unfortunately dripping those chemicals, were placed exactly above the location of the airplane where we found chemicals on the floor."
As CNN casually reported on Sept. 20, 1996, the training aids were "well-wrapped packages of explosives." If the explosives remained well wrapped throughout the exercise, the FBI could not make a convincing case that these training aids were the source of the residue.
The FBI and the NTSB had to convince the media that not only was there an exercise on board, but that it was a sloppy, incompetent one. To pull this off, they needed a scapegoat – and found one in Burnett, an officer with 17 years on the St. Louis airport police force, two of those dedicated to daily dog-training exercises. The Feds portrayed the African-American Burnett as a buffoon, one who, with his dog Carlo, quickly became something of a running joke among the FBI.
Patricia Milton piled on. "Yeah, I could have spilled more than just a little," she quotes Burnett as saying of the training aids. "The training aids were old and cracked, and we hadn't used them in a while, so more than usual might have come out."
Burnett said no such thing. I talked to him a few months ago. The first thing he said of his treatment at the hands of the Feds: "I am pissed off to this day." "I never lost any," he said of the chemicals. "I never spilled any." The officer related this to me with clarity and conviction. He added, "There was never any powder laying loose." As to his alleged confession of the same, he answered, "I just hate that they twisted my words. I know what I did and how I did it."
To give further cover to this elaborate charade, NTSB Chairman Jim Hall had to pretend that the St. Louis episode exposed some larger system-wide problem. In a letter to the FAA that chastised Officer Burnett, he demanded that the agency "develop and implement procedures" to assure "an effective K-9 explosives training program."
In this same letter, however, Jim Hall makes a curious admission: "During the recovery of wreckage from TWA Flight 800, trace amounts of explosives were found on the interior surfaces of the cabin and cargo area."
Unexplained by Hall or Kallstrom is how explosives could possibly have been found in the cargo area where dog training never takes place. Kallstrom, in fact, swore that these "dripping" packages were placed "exactly above the location of the airplane where we found chemicals."
The "location" in the passenger cabin runs roughly from rows 17 to 27 on the right side of the plane, This is beyond dispute. But this area in no way matches the "zig zag" pattern in which the officer placed the five training aids. In fact, the officer made no placements at all within the area where the chemicals were found.
This was brazen. Kallstrom was claiming that the five training aids placed by an experienced officer in "well wrapped packages" accounted for confirmed residue traces across a wide swath of the right side of the passenger cabin and in the cargo hold. He had told Traficant that all of the aids had been placed in this swath when, in fact, none of them had. There is no way to "parse" so conscious a distortion.
After reading Kallstrom's testimony to Traficant, knowing what I know, I lost all faith in Kallstrom. I still think he resisted doing what he had to do, but he did it. He squandered a lifetime's credibility on a cover-up that has no justification. In the process, he hurt a lot of people – cops Sanders and Burnett among them – and betrayed many more, his fellow FBI agents included.
"Telling the truth is one of my great faults," Milton quotes Kallstrom as saying.
That is one fault, alas, that Kallstrom has kept well under control.
Remember that - "THE THREE MOST CRITICAL WITNESSES".
Witness Meyer did not and could not have seen a "shootdown" of the 747 at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12 only 3-4 seconds before he saw the Massive Fireball explosion [informally estimated at 2000 feet in diameter] fill the sky between about 5500-7500 feet at approximately 8:31:47.
SOURCE
Meyer has been presented by the infoil hatters as an unflappable witness because of his air combat experience.
[quote] From: eb4
To: fmeyer8775@aol.com
Date: 05/12/98 14:48:16
Subject: TWA Flight 800
Frederick C. Meyer, Major, New York Air National Guard (ret.)
William Donaldson, Commander, US Navy (ret.) contends that you observed a missile shootdown of TWA Flight 800 and has made available a copy of your presentation to the Grenada Forum of your observations http://members.aol.com/bardonia/meyer.htm
In that presentation, it appears that you very carefully and precisely described the sequence of events that you observed along with a similarly careful and precise estimate of the elapsed time between the events that you saw, including a total of 3 to 4 seconds between what appeared to you to be a "flak" explosion and the eruption of the Massive Fireball.
The altitude at which the Initiating Event took place that decapitated TWA Flight 800 was 13,700 feet. Private pilot Sven Faret and his passenger, Ken Wendell, prepared a similarly detailed report of what they saw of the disaster which can be reviewed in its entirety by clicking on http://www.webexpert.net/rosedale/twacasefile/aviator.html and it will be noted that they flew over to the smoke could left by the Massive Fireball and stated that the top of it was at 7700 feet and the middle at 7500 feet, from which it seems reasonable to conclude the Massive Fireball erupted at about 7500 feet or less.
The obvious question: How could you have seen a "flak" shootdown of the 747 at 13,700 feet only 3 to 4 seconds before you saw the Massive Fireball erupt at 7500 feet?
Thank you in advance for your clarification.
Elmer Barr
[end quote]
[quote]
From: FMeyer8775 Date: Wed, 13 May 1998 09:27:07 EDT
To: eb4@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: TWA Flight 800
Whoever you are ; since you do not extend to me the courtesy of identifying yourself: The answer to your question: I don't know .
There are some obvious possibilities;
1. My estimate of time is off -perhaps because my heartrate was accellerated by adrenalin. Upon a recap with my crewmates we all estimated the time it took for the fireball to fall at approx. 10 seconds. And yet our perception was that it fell slowly. Our time estimates are probably erroneous. But - we tell what we saw and estimated;let the experts sort it out.
2 You're probably talking about Sven ,who flew over about 5-10 minutes later after traveling east and turning back. I believe his testimony,having heard it from him and discussed it with him. It's different from mine but that will always happen when witnesses are questioned. There are good reasons for it. The reasons do not diminish the testimony. While Sven was approaching, the smoke (having weight and density) was descending . How much? I don't know. But possibly 1,000ft.or more.
3. Where was Sven's altimeter set and when? What is his altimeter error at 7,000 ft? This could account for a few hundred feet + or -. (The) tendency among the amateur investigators on the internet is to expect the pieces of the puzzle to fit like one you buy at the store. They don't. They never do. But that does not mean that the witnesses are wrong; it means that each perception must be analyzed from the point of observation,and time and physics applied. Over 500 witnesses saw the missile go up and explode. The F.B.I. has picked 244 interviews to save in case they have to debunk the testimony. The ones the F.B.I. saved are people with histories of dimentia,alcoholism,eye defects, uncertainty etc. The unassailable witnesses will be ignored.
What we know as certainty at this point is as follows:
1. Two missiles were launched from two separate positions south of the barrier island in the ocean. Both missiles struck the aircraft. Analysis of the wreckage and debris fields by experts not employed by the U.S. govt. reveal that the a/c was immediately subject to a lateral G force of approx. 60 Gs. This probably broke the necks of all aboard instantly(thanks be to God) The nose and tail and wing tips then all came off in rapid succession. The fuselage went into a flat spin,rapidly decelerating and plunging to the sea. The C.I.A. "cartoon" is laughable. Ask any physicist.
2. A large surface target which had been loitering offshore almost under the projected flight path of TWA800 suddenly accelerated to 30 kts and headed due south , away from the scene in violation of international law. Although not specifically identified with this target, Military vessels were seen off shore by credible witnesses. The FBI arrested a TWA employee who had taken a picture of the seat chart last year and another picture of what was represented by the N.T.S.B. to be the same seat chart last month, and called to their attention the discrepancies between the two photos. The chart was changed to hide the fact that tail section seats were found in the westernmost debris field, indicating that the tail was opened in the initial explosion.
Whoever you are , be aware that the F.B.I. and the N.T.S.B. have repudiated their respective oaths to support the Constitution of the United States. We are way beyond partisan politics. This is Treason.
[end quote]
Source
Witness Dwight Brumley:
[quote]
1. WHAT WAS THE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS?
The first thing was noticing what I thought was a private plane, it turned out to be a P3, going under the US-Air Flight, and then, oh, I don't know maybe 20 to 30 seconds later, if even that long, a few moments later I noticed the flare-like object appearing to rise off of my right side looking down, probably underneath the wing, and then rising, peaking over, pitching over, and then the first explosion, and then, oh maybe I don't know, one to two seconds later, the small explosion became much larger explosion and started to elongate as it started heading downward. And then I followed it as long as I could and then the right wing cut off my field of view. So I never actually saw the explosion, you know, whatever the flames were a part of, I never actually saw them hit the water.
2. WHAT WAS THE TIMING OF EVENTS? HOW LONG DID THE MISSILE FLY, ETC.
Oh I'm guessing, seven to ten seconds.
3. WHAT COLOR WAS THE SMOKE TRAIL?
I didn't see a smoke trail. It was just a very, very bright point of light, you know when you see an emergency flare struck. It's pulsating, but there's a core of light that doesn't change, and then there's that, almost like a hal-, I don't want to say a halo, but the corona around it that you can detect that it's, you know, burning very, very brightly.
[end quote]
Source
Note that witness Brumley guesstimates his observations of the fiery events totaled about "7 to 10 seconds" from when he first observed the fiery streak [the "flare like object"] and it then became "the first explosion" and watched it disappear under the airliner he was riding in until the Massive Fireball explosion emerged from under his plane "one or two seconds later" at which point his 7-10 seconds of observations of fiery events ended. Keep in mind that the tinfoil hatters allege the fiery streak was the exhaust trail of a missile that intercepted TWA 800 at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12. Yet, according to Brumley, the "missile" alleged by the tinfoil hatters was still zipping along until only moments before the Massive Fireball explosion [informally estimated to be 2000 feet in diameter] filled the sky between about 5500-7500 feet at approximately 8:31:47.
Witness Brumley is also quoted by AP reporter G. Stephen Bierman Jr. as follows:
''I could not positively say that what I saw was a missile. What I saw was a very bright flame of light moving parallel to my aircraft."
Source
In short, Dwight Brumley did not and could not have seen a "shootdown" of TWA 800 at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12 only one or two seconds before he saw the informally estimated 2000 feet in diameter Massive Fireball fill the sky with flames between about 5500-7500 feet at approximately 8:31:47.
Just as witness Meyer did not and could not have seen a "shootdown" of the 747 at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12 only 3-4 seconds before he saw the Massive Fireball explosion fill the sky with flames between about 5500-7500 feet at approximately 8:31:47.
Jack Cashill's notion that James Kallstrom engaged in a "coverup" of a missile shootdown of Flight 800 is also in irreconcilable conflict with the facts. Kallstrom made the unprofessional and just plain stupid decision at the outset to elbow aside the NTSB Witness Groups and assign FBI agents to conduct hit-run 302 form witness interviews lasting only a few minutes with a list of questions zeroing in on the missile shootdown possibility raised by the initial reports by wintesses to the police and Coast Guard of the fiery streak immediately preceding the Massive Fireball explosion. The FBI agents weren't even dispatched to conduct thorough and complete interviews. They were looking for the information necessary to pinpoint a missile launch point.
There is a sequential timeline in all events. Kallstrom should have known within hours - no more than a day or two - about the satellite sighting of the Massive Fireball explosion "about a mile above the surface" and that the destination of the fiery streak was that Massive Fireball explosion. Even if he is given the benefit of a doubt about that, the destination of the fiery streak should have been obvious to him from the witness reports flooding in to local police and the Coast Guard from the outset, dramatizing the importance of promptly determining the approximate altitude and time of that Massive Fireball explosion - and whether it was at or in the immediate vicinity of where the 747 was when it began coming apart at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12.
As it turned out, the Massive Fireball explosion [informally estimated at approximately 2000 feet in diameter] filled the sky between about 5500-7500 feet at approximately 8:31:47, thirty-five seconds AFTER the initiating event doomed the airliner and all aboard. It's all spelled out and documented in considerable detail here.
Kallstrom had his neck bowed from the outset that Flight 800 WAS the victim of a missile shootdown. When confronted with reports from his own experts that no physical evidence of a missile or bomb was being found in the wreckage, his lieutenants badgered and harrassed then FBI Chief Metallurgist William Tobin with the mantra that "260 some witnesses can't be wrong".
GRASSLEY: Did you ever hear the expression that two hundred and sixty some witnesses can't be wrong? Referring to various eyewitness accounts which supported the bomb and missile theory.
TOBIN: Yes, I did.
GRASSLEY: Under what circumstances did you hear that position? And how did you respond to those comments?
TOBIN: That was the continual argument advanced when I continued to try to use the cardboard box analogy. That basically NTSB's and my position in a material scientist position is that the box fragments --if you have a bomb in a box, the box fragments will tell the story. And my position was, I don't care how many witnesses say what, the box, the container has to tell the story. And I was continually told that two hundred and sixty some witnesses can't be wrong.
Source
After wasting the better part of $40,000,000 in his extensive efforts to prove the 747 was a "shootdown" victim - or, as time progressed, at least the victim of a bomb - and coming up completely empty handed, Kallstrom had a major PR problem - how to explain the fiery streak. It wouldn't have been necessary if physical evidence of a bomb had been found but his unprofessional rampage had failed to turn up ANY evidence of a criminal cause for the disaster and had blown away all that money. So he took the best of his agents' horrendously incomplete and inept 302 form "missile witness" reports to the CIA which led to the untenable "explanation" videos and graphics - which the tinfoil hatters soon followed with their own untenable "explanation" video's and graphics. What made them ALL untenable was that there were no witnesses - zero, NONE - to anything unusual in the sky anywhere near where or when the Initiating Event took place at 13,800 feet at 8:31:12.
All that was because none of them determined the facts necessary to prepare a sequential timeline of the major events. Had they done so, it would have soon been obvious that they were all trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Which brings us to witness Wire. One and all are invited to try to fit his report(s) into the following approximate sequential timeline of the major events - or any sequential timeline they are able to conjure up that they think it might fit into without being in glaringly obvious irreconcilable conflict with other known facts.
The timeline and location of the major events of the disaster was approximately as follows:
8:31:11 Intact and climbing 747 approaches 13,800 feet.
8:31:12 Initiating Event at 13,800 feet followed immediately by the commencement of the decapitation process.
8:31:47 explosion of Massive Fireball at 5500-7500 feet. The eyewitnesses contend that the Massive Fireball explosion was immediately preceded by the fiery streak.
8:31:55-8:31:57 splashdown of the Massive Fireball flames.
Source
Incidentally, barf hasn't tried to make his unique but still vague sled towing P-3 U.S. Navy accidental shootdown scenario fit compatibly in that or any other sequential timeline todate either. Can he? If he can't, he'll substitute his usual laniru type of response - or pretend he's ignoring the issue.