Posted on 02/28/2002 9:31:30 AM PST by Asmodeus
AIM Report: 2002 Report # 03 - CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS A LIE? I CAN'T
By Reed Irvine |
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2002 Report #03 | February 25, 2002 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS A LIE? I CAN'T
My by-line is on this article because it involves some very sensitive conversations that I have had and opinions about them that are best discussed in the first person. I am revealing the name of the Navy master chief who last November told an acquaintance of his that on the evening of July 17, 1996, he was on the bridge of the USS Trepang, a submarine that was practically underneath TWA Flight 800 when the plane exploded and crashed into the sea. His acquaintance, whose name I wont disclose because it adds nothing to the story, had called me the night before on a line in my office that had been used to take calls for the TWA 800 Eyewitness Alliance generated by an ad placed in The Washington Times on August 15, 2000. He shared our views about the cause of the crash, and we had a good conversation. The next morning he called again to tell me that he had just run into a casual acquaintance who was a retired Navy petty officer. Because of his discussion with me the night before, he brought up TWA 800. Here is an edited partial transcript of our conversation. [H for him and I for me] H: Have you ever heard of the submarine Tripanga? I obtained Beers phone number from information and found him willing to talk. In our taped interview, he was somewhat more guarded than he had been with his acquaintance. He said he didnt want to do anything that might mess up his retirement, but nothing was said about the conversation being off the record. I told him that I was with Accuracy in Media and recommended that he visit our Web site, where he would find a lot of articles we had written about TWA 800. The following is a partial transcript of the taped interview. I did not begin taping at the very beginning of the conversation. The transcript begins where the taping started. This was Thurs., Nov. 15 at 10:00 a.m. B: I told everything, you know, when the Navy came on board with everybody else on my submarine. I called Randy again the next morning, Friday, Nov. 16. He asked me to call him back Monday morning, Nov. 19. I did, and I found myself talking to an entirely different person. The confident, courageous master chief had been transformed into a quivering moral coward. He said he had talked to his skipper over the weekend and that he had been reminded that he had signed certain papers when he retired from the Navy. Whoever it was that he had talked to had scared him to death. He feared that he was going to lose his retirement because of what he told me. He claimed he had spoken off the record, but I told him that was not so and that was very clear from the tape that I had recorded. I said I didnt want to hurt him and that there was no way the Navy could rescind his disability pension because he told the truth about what he had seen on the evening of July 17, 1996. Something had obviously gone wrong and they had successfully covered it up, but that too was wrong. It would be a scandal if they tried to deprive him of his pension because he had helped expose an illegal, immoral cover-up of a mistake that had cost the lives of 230 people. Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, who tried very hard to pin the blame on terrorists, told me several times that if it turned out that the Navy was responsible he would spearhead a demand that the officers behind it be court-martialed. I told Randy that he had a moral obligation to go public with what he knew and to help us expose the cover-up. I cited the example set by another chief petty officer, Kathleen Janoski, who was in charge of photography for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Dover Air Force Base. She had found and photographed the perfectly round hole, about the diameter of a .45-caliber bullet, in the top of the head of the late Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. She had also photographed what was called the lead snowstorm inside his skull that showed up on the head x-ray. She took photos of the x-rays that were up on a light box, and it was a good thing that she did, because the one showing the lead snowstorm was destroyed. The colonel in charge rejected recommendations of three lieutenant colonels that an autopsy be performed on Browns body. Kathleen Janoski had put her job at risk when she was still on active duty. She was relieved of her duties, and she feared she was going to be court-martialed. But she nevertheless shared her photos with Chris Ruddy who reported on the suspicious hole in the top of Ron Browns head and the lead snowstorm in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. I suggested that he ought to show as much courage as she had. Kathleen Janoski retired and is drawing her pension. Nothing I could say had any effect. He explained that he had lost his job, and although his wife was working, they would be in deep trouble if he lost his pension. I can sympathize with him, but there are whistleblowers in the government who risk their jobs by exposing wrongdoing. If we want to encourage more government employees to follow their example it would make sense to reward the whistleblowers and punish those who see the wrongdoing but seal their lips and close their eyes. I couldnt budge Randy Beers, but one of the significant things about that conversation was that he did not deny the truth of anything he had told me when we first talked. When Pierre Salinger held a press conference in March 1997 and declared that TWA Flight 800 had been shot down accidentally by a U.S. Navy missile, this former presidential press secretary, U.S. Senator and ABC News correspondent, was mercilessly attacked by his former colleagues in the media. They accused him of peddling unsubstantiated Internet gossip. Salinger said that his information had been confirmed by a source who had a friend whose son was in the Navy. The son was said to have called home and told his family that we shot down the airliner. Salinger said the father did not want to be identified, fearing his son would suffer retaliation for disclosing information the Navy wanted to keep hidden. That, of course, was dismissed as hearsay. We succeeded in verifying that Randy Beers was a chief petty officer on the Trepang and that he was the ships corpsman. We verified that Lt. Michael Leitner, with whom he drank Diet Pepsi on the Trepangs bridge on the evening of July 17, 1996, was also a member of the crew. What Beers said about the Navy ships in the area that night and the exercise that was being conducted confirmed what we already knew from the radar data obtained by the Flight 800 Independent Research Organization, FIRO, and what Jim Kallstrom had told me about the three Navy vessels on a classified maneuver. I wrote a column about what Randy Beers had revealed, but I did not include in it his name or the name of his submarine. Finding someone in the Navy who was willing to talk as freely as he did was an important breakthrough. He was the answer to those who were sure that the Navy could not have been responsible for shooting down TWA 800 because it would have been impossible to keep a secret like that when so many Navy personnel would have known about it. In the five and a half years since TWA 800 was shot down we heard stories about Navy personnel who had told family or friends that the Navy did it, but we were never able to make contact with them. The response to the column was encouraging even though it did not get the attention of the big media. I was persuaded by the e-mail I received that we should reveal Randy Beers name and the name of his submarine. The Navy had claimed that the Trepang was 117 miles from the TWA 800 crash site. The exposure of that lie and the fact that it took so long for someone on the sub to expose it should have shaken up those who have so confidently insisted that a secret like that could not remain hidden for long. However, I was surprised to get a few responses from individuals who completely missed this important lesson. The claim that the Navy couldnt have done anything wrong because someone would have revealed it, dies hard. My last conversation with Randy Beers was on February 5. I wanted to tell him that I was going to reveal his name, and I left a message saying it was important that he call me. He did. He first asked me if I was recording the call. I wasnt and I said so. He then said that he was so upset that he had experienced trouble sleeping for two months. But he had found a solution to his problem. He told me that he was notorious for telling tall tales and that all that he had said about where the Trepang was and what he had seen was false. He claimed he just made it up. He said the submarine was at its homeport in Groton, Connecticut that night, not beneath TWA Flight 800 when it was blown out of the sky. He said he didnt know anything about any exercise that was taking place and he had never heard of W-105, the large area off Long Island that is regularly used by the military for testing and training. He said at least twice that this was his story and he was sticking to it. That is a gag line that says, in effect, I am lying but dont expect me to admit it. The transcripts of his conversations with his acquaintance and me have been printed out because they are the best evidence that he was not lying. He had no reason to lie to either one of us. What he says and the way he says it has the ring of truth. It is consistent with what we know from other sources. I asked him for references who would attest to his propensity to lie. He gave me one name, someone who had served on the Trepang. He doesnt know where he is now. The office manager of the firm where he worked for over a year attested to his honesty. The fact that he was worried sick when we had our second conversation and was virtually begging me not to report what he said shows that the idea of claiming that he had told tall tales had not yet occurred to him. If he were a habitual liar, he would not lose a lot of sleep worrying about his lies. Unfortunately his stratagem casts a cloud over his credibility, giving the media an excuse for ignoring anything he says. We are printing a list of the officers and petty officers who were on the Trepang in 1996. We will try to locate and question them and FOIA their FBI 302s (interview reports). Your help is invited. PARTIAL SHIP'S ROSTER, U.S.S TREPANG (SSN-674), 1/12/96
AND LEADING PETTY OFFICERS
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Note for non-pilots: The airspeed, altitude and rate of climb instruments on an aircraft are all variants of simple air pressure sensors. The readings can be (and were) analyzed back to the actual air pressures causing those readings. The readings of the last second of the flight recorded an air pressure (overpressure) higher than any that exists in nature and could only have been caused by an explosion external to the plane. Those readings could not even have been recorded by the recorder if an explosion of the center fuel tank was the initial event, since the explosion itself would have instantaneously severed the wires connecting the several sensors with the data recorder, which is located in the rear of the plane.
For example, who was responsible for ordering the test of a new complicated ship defense system (known as CEC) under the busiest air traffic lanes in the world.
Another consideration might have been the upcoming 1996 presidential election. I don't think that "Slick Willy" Clinton was about to take the heat over such a screw-up just prior to the election.
Instead - look at the ruptured area around the Forward Cargo bay Door, observe the red paint that was impacted onto the white paint area ABOVE the area where the door would have ruptured ... never mind this missile crap - a rupture due to a FCB door explains this transference of paint
Remember - ruptures DID occur in Boeing 747 aircraft due to the FCBD - look up UAL811 for instance ...
If you had included the entire paragraph and also included Tobins reply for the readers, including the highlighted portion therein, the answer to your question would have been obvious.
[GRASSLEY continued] Let me ask you something along the same line and that is about advice and how this went and what needs to be done for the future. We've had FBI officials claim that the TWA flight 800 investigation was so good that it's a model for the future. Is it a model for the future?
TOBIN: I can only address the material science and the scientific issues but I would say, yes, it's a model but it's model of how now to integrate proper science and how not integrate the scientific conclusions into the strategic decision making process. But clearly that's on the opposite end of the spectrum from the term that I believe the model was intended.
I'll make a simple deal with you, show me the actual logs of the bomb sniffing dogs tests that were claimed to be the origin of the explosive residue, and I will move on Should be a simple chore for somebody with your superior investigative abilities.
The evidence is overwhelming for objective investigators that there were no missile(s) witnesses and that there was no evidence Flight 800 was the victim of a bomb or missile(s). The burden of proving otherwise always has and continues to rest exclusively with the tinfoils.
Those who choose to chase moonbeams have to expect to do their own legwork.
There many forensic items that have been downplayed or outright ignored. A piece of orange metal from a target drone was found in the debris field suggesting that maybe a friendly fire accident occured. What about the "shrapnel" in the bodies of the victims?
Big question. Why the CIA cartoon showing a highly improbable, (actually physically impossible) sequence of events which was to convince everyone that the witnesses didn't see a missile track but a 747, with its nose detached and its tail broken off, was still able to climb several thousand feet before falling to the ocean. For gods sake, all the laws of physics have to be suspended to believe that scenario. There is also radar information to boot.
I do know this Kallstrom and his buddies were there to interfere with the investigation and they did a wonderful job. Kallstrom was on one of the Fox shows and I was ready to throw the clicker at the TV when he stated categorically that the diesel fuel in the center fuel tank exploded. For crying out loud how many jet engines do you know of that use diesel fuel? Compare this to his statement after 911, (the transcript is at the Donaldson website along with Kerry and Stephanopolous's statements).
Door falling off. I don't think so!
Read #102 again. The quoted statement was made by Ian Goddard
There was a strong rumor floating around TWA about missiles and since Sander's wife was employed as a chief steward(or close) for TWA, then Sander's of course had vital interests in getting to the bottom of things. He was only acting as an agent of Stacey's. Now tell me.... the good citizen I think you are... that you......... would not do the same thing?
What "vital interests"? Specifically.
Sanders is reportedly a former police officer. If so, he should have known the vital importance of getting the competent legal advice and guidance necessary to come to an informed decision about what he was contemplating.
Did he?
Is it? Well maybe you are starting to catch my drift. With regard to the data you posted, perhaps you can define "unobstructed view" for me. Did all the witnesses who had an unobstructed view say the missile came from the sea or land? Did they all agree on its point of origin? Did they all report it as the same color? Did they all say it flew directly toward the target, or did it fly a shifting flightplan? Out of the 755 reported witnesses I could probably build a bar graph that could "prove" just about anything. Like your bar graph, it would be meaningless.
It is still depicted graphically on their site here: http://www.ntsb.gov/events/TWA800/exhibits/Ex_10A.pdf (pg 52)
"the data perfectly recorded an overpressure created by an ordnance explosion near the front of the plane."
Based on a comparison to what data? I'm not saying there isn't data out there showing what an overpressure from an ordnance explosion looks like on an FDR...I'm just wondering where it is. Interestingly, every parameter recorded by the FDR spikes in the last second it is recording. Not just the pressure instruments. That includes things like the mic switch position, the flight control positions, aircraft heading etc, which might indicate an electrical surge to the FDR causing a faulty record as it shut down.
lol. You forgot Geraldo Rivera and the crew from Hard Copy.
I'm not certain what is currently posted at the NTSB website on this subject. I do know that there was a thorough examination of the flight recorder data when it first came out by several skilled aircraft accident examiners who determined that these sensors had shown an overpressure (not electrical spikes) consistent with an ordnance explosion in the region of these sensors. The people involved were amazed that the NTSB had posted this data, which contradicted their own position on the cause of the crash. This discussion went on for days soon after release of the data and was posted on the Lsoft TWA 800 discussion site. That original printout was then REMOVED from the NTSB site and another one substituted.
I've been tempted at times to consider your posts on FR as uninformed/stupid. But you obviously are not. I now believe that you may very well be on this site to plant deliberate disinformation.
By the way, those of us who doubt the NTSB's analysis of the crash have good company: Boeing and the association of aircraft mechanics. It seems that the only two groups that still adhere to the center fuel tank nonsense are the government (who probably shot down the airliner), and trial lawyers involved in aircraft liability work (who would not be able to sue anyone if it were proven that a missile had taken down the airliner).
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