Posted on 01/27/2002 11:38:36 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
News that a second toll booth video camera captured doomed American Airlines Flight 587's breakup moments after its Nov. 12 takeoff from New York's JFK airport raises new questions about the candor and thoroughness of investigators conducting the probe into the disaster.
Time.com reported Sunday that National Transportation Safety Board investigators "last week got their first look at a remarkable videotape of the deadly accident."
Time adds: "This is the second video record the board has obtained of the crash, but the first one was virtually useless because the plane could be seen only as a tiny speck."
In reality, both traffic surveillance videotapes - shot from a toll booths on causeways that cross New York's Jamaica Bay (adjacent to JFK) - were reportedly turned over to crash probers within four days of the disaster.
On Nov. 16 the New York Daily News reported:
"Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman Tom Kelly confirmed that the agency has given surveillance videotapes from the Cross Bay Blvd. and Marine Parkway bridges to the FBI."
At approximately 3 miles distance from JFK, a camera mounted on Cross Bay Blvd's Veterans Memorial Bridge toll booth would have had a much better view of Flight 587's takeoff than one on Marine Parkway - approximately 7 miles away.
But on Nov. 16 the News quoted MTA spokesman Kelly as saying that only one tape captured the plane's breakup - which turned out to be from the more distant Marine Parkway vantage point.
That could have been an oversight on his part. Kelly told NewsMax.com later that day that he had not personally reviewed either videotape but relied instead on the accounts of others.
Kelly also told NewsMax.com, "We turned (the Marine Parkway tape) over to the FBI and they have now turned it over to the NTSB."
Did the FBI withhold from the NTSB the much closer Cross Bay Blvd. videotape?
Otherwise, why is an NTSB source now telling Time.com that the agency got its first look at that better video last week, more than two months after the FBI reportedly took possession of both tapes?
More troubling still, however, is Time.com's claim that the more distant Marine Parkway Bridge tape was "virtually useless."
That's not what a reporter who actually examined the footage said on Nov. 17:
"The tape, viewed by the Daily News, shows a white outline of the jetliner against a clear sky in fairly steep decline. Seconds later, the outline disappears and the video shows a blurry, white undefined patch as the plane apparently breaks apart."
The toll booth obscures the moment of impact but, said the News:
"At the end of the bridge videotape sequence, which has been turned over to the FBI, there appears to be a puff of white smoke in the sky."
Nov. 12, the day of the crash, was a cloudless day in New York, a fact that makes that "puff of white smoke" particularly problematic for investigators who have bent over backwards to ignore the accounts of dozens of eyewitnesses who say they saw a midair explosion and fire before the plane broke apart.
Does the closer Cross Bay Blvd. videotape undermine the NTSB's repeated attempts to blame the crash on mechanical failure? Time.com's source will only say the new evidence shows Flight 587 "flying along normally and intact, and suddenly things start to go very wrong."
Stay tuned.
What if the experts have reason to decide to deep-six it (it got lost; it got ruined, it got stolen; we never got it; when we looked at it, there wasn't anything on it, etc)? I would say, keep a few copies in a safe-deposit box or elsewhere safe).
IF that's what they really want to do...
Yeah -- I'm sure it's already been done . .
MsLady : It's a residue that's invisible, but obvious, as I understand it.
Right. The puff of smoke is at the END of the sequence -- where one would expect that a plane breaking up in mid air would produce clouds of fuel, etc.
Had the puff of smoke occurred at the BEGINNING of the sequence, then the bomb explanation would at least have some evidence going for it.
So the tinfoilers are wrong again -- batting 0. As usual.
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