The Great Media Scandal Keeps Getting Greater {TWA 800}

Two items have put the veteran investigative reporter – and my partner on the documentary "Silenced" and the book "First Strike" – on his own personal Code Orange.

One is the news out of JFK that Islamic terrorists are up to their old tricks again. At JFK? My, who da thunk it?

The second, and more personally galvanizing, is that Sanders has just gotten a big batch of new TWA Flight 800-related documents from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act.

These documents stem from Sanders' stillborn civil suit against a government that convicted him and his wife, Elizabeth, of conspiracy for his reporting on the TWA Flight 800 investigation.

In the course of our history, citizens have received worse treatment at the hand of a generally benign government. But no reporter has been treated more shabbily at the hand of the media – ever.

In truth, the Clinton years did not bring out the best in the major media. During the TWA 800 investigation in particular, they hewed to the government line with a pride and passion that would make Edward R. Murrow squirm in his grave.

Undaunted now as then, Sanders wades through these new documents like a wily prospector in Sutter's Creek. Most of the gold has been stripped away or redacted, but if you know what to look for, as Sanders does, the nuggets stand out.

His sense of humor somehow intact, Sanders forwards key documents to my shared fax under the heading, "SECRET – sensitive journalism. Do not read. If you do, you will turn into a Democrat."

The one document that intrigues me most tells of Sanders' treatment at the hands of that great 57th Street institution, CBS News.

In the way of background, Sanders had granted an exclusive interview to Emmy Award-winning CBS producer Kristina Borjesson the same day a story about his research broke in California's Riverside Press-Enterprise.

"New Data Show Missile May Have Nailed TWA 800," screamed the paper's one-inch, front-page headline on March 10, 1997.

Working with Terrel Stacey, TWA's 747 top manager inside the investigation, Sanders had received, among other information, a few foam rubber bits of seatback that contained the DNA of the investigation, streaks of an unknown red-orange residue.

Sanders had the residue tested at an independent West Coast lab, which found it to be consistent with exhaust from a solid fuel missile. To verify his claim, Sanders had sent a separate sample to CBS.

After the CBS interview had been videotaped, however, Borjesson grew alarmed when she realized no one at the "Evening News" was editing the piece.

Frustrated, she walked into a meeting of news executives and asked why the network wasn't doing the story on Sanders and his documents.

"You think it's a missile, don't you?" queried an executive she didn't recognize.

"I don't know what the hell it is," Borjesson shot back, "but don't you think we should be doing a story that asks a few questions about this guy and his documents?" The silence that followed was, as Borjesson admits, "deafening."

When she had walked in to the room, she honestly believed she was about to correct an oversight at a level where it could be corrected quickly. "I walked out of there," said Borjesson, "feeling like I'd cooked my own goose."

When CBS finally aired the story, it used what Borjesson calls "a classic avoidance tactic" to keep Sanders off the air while reporting – and dismissing – his side of the story.

Borjesson was elated, however, when "60 Minutes" expressed its interest in doing the story. She thanked its senior producer, telling him "60 Minutes" was the "last broadcast with balls." Borjesson put the residue sample in the producer's desk for safekeeping until she could locate a lab.

The FBI 302 tells the dispiriting story of what happened next. Two special agents visited CBS and talked to a senior attorney, Howard Jaeckel. Jaeckel told the FBI that "disclosing a source is very sensitive to us."

That much perfunctory business out of the way, Jaeckel and CBS eagerly cooperated with the FBI to the point of deep-sixing any scheduled production on the subject and meekly handing over the untested residue sample.

Abandoned by the last broadcast with balls, James and Elizabeth Sanders were charged with conspiracy under a law that had been enacted to discourage scavengers and souvenir hunters, not reporters.

At the time of their arraignment on Long Island, none among the media managed to pose even one First Amendment question. The reporters found it much more comfortable to frame the Sanders' transgression as simple theft.

When the Sanders' lawyer attempted to bring this issue into focus, Newsday's Bob Kessler argued the government line, insisting the Justice Department had not found sufficient evidence to declare James Sanders a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection.

This shocked Sanders in that the Riverside Press-Enterprise article had identified him as an "investigative reporter," detailed his previous nonfiction books, and described his inquiry into the TWA 800 investigation over the preceding five months.

Another reporter asked the attorney why his client did not immediately return the residue to the NTSB and turn Stacey in to the FBI. Sanders shook his head in disbelief. Was it only a generation ago that the New York Times made Daniel Ellsberg a hero by publishing the purloined and fully classified Pentagon Papers?

Of course, just four years later, as soon as a Republican re-occupied the White House, whistleblowing came roaring back into vogue with almost comic ferocity.

At the end of 2002, self-parody reached something of journalistic peak when Time magazine named as its "Persons of the Year" three female whistleblowers.

"They took huge professional and personal risks to blow the whistle on what went wrong at WorldCom, Enron and the FBI," said the newly vigilant Time, "and in so doing helped remind us what American courage and American values are all about."

And because no claimed responsibilty we should ignore the attack?

The fact that nobody claimed responsibility makes me wonder if there was an attack to begin with.

They did... our press either didn't report it... or, taking the lead from the administration's attitude, deliberately discounted any claims:

"In the absence of explanations, theories abounded. One focused on a fax sent Wednesday to an Arabic language newspaper in Beirut warning of an attack. State Department and CIA officials confirmed they had received copies of the fax Thursday. The message said "tomorrow morning we will strike the Americans in a way they do not expect and it will be very surprising to them," according to one official. A counterterrorism source familiar with the fax said that it was sent at 11 a.m. New York time Wednesday, more than nine hours before the bombing. But a CIA source said that the agency "does not attach too much significance" to the fax.
"The fax, written in Arabic, ends with the following threat: "The Mujahadeen will respond harshly to the threats of the stupid American president. All will be shocked by the magnitude of the response. The determining of the place and time are in the hands of the Mujahadeen. The invaders must get ready to leave alive or dead; and their rendezvous will be morning, and isn't morning near." U.S. News and World Report magazine, in the July 29, 1996 issue, identified the group who sent the fax as, "The Movement of Islamic Jihad/The Jihad Wing of the Arabian Peninsula." [Editors Note: 8pm Eastern Time in New York is early morning in the Persian Gulf.]"
Newsday.com, July 19, 1996
. . . Senior Iranian sources close to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran claimed this weekend that TWA flight 800 was shot down last month by one of three shoulder-fired Stingers of the type used by Islamic guerrillas during the Afghanistan war. The sources said the missiles arrived in America seven months ago after being shipped from Karachi via Rotterdam and on to the Canadian port of Halifax. They claimed an Egyptian fundamentalist group backed by Iran was responsible for smuggling the weapons across the Canadian border into the United States. The group, the Gama'a al-Islamiya, comprises followers of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States over the 1993 New York World Trade Center bombing."
The Times of London, August 27, 1996
" . . . at least one terrorist has claimed credit for the TWA 800 bombing. World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Ahmed Yousef told authorities his group is responsible. Yousef's claim has not been made public, but it is in the FBI file."
The American Spectator, Sept. 1997

If you can read Arabic, here is the Al Hayat article threatening the attack.

Yet, other longtime supporters of the missile(s) theory such as Swordmaker and tpaine contend that the huge fireball exploded at about 7,000 feet.

Yes, I did and do.

What difference does it make? Simply put, the 747 could not have been a missile(s) shootdown victim if the huge fireball bal explosion took place at anywhere near 7,000 feet moments after the fiery streak.

That's the strawman argument you propose to shoot down the missile theory. You are assuming the huge fireball was the initiating event. It wasn't.

Here is the TWA-800 timeline I created several years ago on FR. . . .

These facts were well known... I created a timeline of the event back in September of 2002 that accounted for all of the known facts at that time. I reproduce it for you here. You attention is particularly pointed to the entry listed in red...

Since I made a typo in the original, here is a corrected version of the Swordmaker timeline:
---------------------
Let's see if we can construct Asmodeus' oft demanded timeline that our math seems to indicate occurred rather than his wacked out theory.
20:31:00 - Plane flying normally, altitude 13,400 ft., climbing at 33 ft/sec.
20:31:04 - Possible ground-to-air missile launch. Rate of climb accelerates to Mach 2.1.
20:31:07 - Mike Wire notices flare like object rising over house and arcing to left. in the next 8 seconds many more people notice streak, firework, etc.
20:31:10 - Major Fred Meyer sees "meteor like" object flash acorss his field of view.
20:31:12 - ~13,800 ft. - 0 sec. Last transponder return, everything normal, Aircraft climbing at 33 ft./second.
20:31:13 - ~13,840 ft. - ~1 sec. Missile strikes TWA800 on left side at approximately seat row 16-17 transects the passenger cabin spewing partially burned solid rocket fuel (and leaving a red residue on seats in this area), taking out passengers and seats in rows 17-18 and exits aircraft through right side. VDR ends in loud, strange sound. Bright white Ordnance type explosion occurs just after missile exits thin walled cabin. Blast places massive overpressure on nose of aircraft and opens wide gap in side of aircraft. Parts of missile continue on momentum at speed approaching MACH 2 at a vector 190 degrees from north, ejecta from aircraft including seats, passengers, luggage to eventually land in "crosswind blast debris" field. The blast imparts a slightly more eastward vector for the ejecta which combined with the ejecta's already present eastward momentum results in the ejecta coming to rest about 175 degrees from the point of ejection.
20:31:14 - ~13,880 ft. - ~2 sec. 400+ MPH winds acting on the gaping holes in aircraft fuselage causes the "unzip" of the aluminum skin of the nose. Windforce bends the nose up and breaks the "keel" of the fuselage. Signals to control surfaces and engines cease when wires are broken and engines revert to idle. Drag is no longer being counteracted by the thrust of the engines. The plane slows drastically.
20:31:15 - ~13, 900 ft - ~3 sec. Drag pulls the nose up and away from the rest of the fuselage and breaks loose on the right first and falls away to the left where it is still partially attached, twisting the aircraft toward the left and starts to fall pulling the left wing down, changing the vector of lift imparting a strong leftward force on the aircraft. Unbalanced drag toward the left is enormous. This accounts for the sudden leftward change in aircraft vector.
20:31:16:49 - ~13,890 ft - 4.49 sec. First post IE radar return. - The nose swings under and to the right and breaks completely loose and continues on a momentum driven ballistic fall slightly to the right (about 3 degrees) of the original aircraft vector. The noseless aircraft losing both the balance necessary for proper flight AND the thrust of the engines overcoming drag, pitches rapidly up and stalls. it may climb a very small amount during the pitch up before stall.
20:31:17 - ~13,860 ft. - ~5 sec. Gravity's inexorable pull starts the plane on its final trajectory. Drag is slowing the forward velocity and the uncontrolled aircraft is on either a ballistic fall or a somewhat aerodynamic fall.
20:31:21:13 - ~13,500 ft. - 9.13 sec. Second post IE radar return. - Uncontrolled plane pitches and yaws, lift occasionally pulls the plane in different vectors... this time a strong rightward vector. Drag continues to rip and rend the airframe just in front of the wing.
20:31:25:72 - ~12,300 ft. - 13.72 sec. Third post IE radar return. - More gyrations... now vectored back to the right.
20:31:30:37 - ~10,900 ft. - 18.37 sec. Fourth post IE radar return. - Falling steeply now. Much of the forward momentum is gone due to drag. Structural damage is weakening the Center Wing Tank's integrity and wings are no longer as strongly attached to the remaining fuselage.
20:31:32:?? - ~10,050 ft. - ~20 sec. Terminal velocity achieved of ~450 ft./second.
20:31:34:97 - ~9,100 ft. - 22.97 sec. Fifth post IE radar return. Stress is taking its toll on the wingroots. The Center Wing Tank structural members are buckling under the whipping of the plane rolling and pitching. Fuel is now leaking into the area around the Wing roots from the full wing tanks.
20:31:36:?? - ~8,500 ft. - ~24 sec. The aircraft takes a VERY sharp turn to the right (South) and one of the wing's fails, breaking away from the fuselage. The aircraft with only one wing starts to spin rapidly, spewing jet fuel and agitating it into the atmosphere, mixing it with air.
20:31:39:64 - ~7,000 ft. - 27.64 sec. Sixth post IE radar return. - Center Wing Tank explodes from spark caused by MECHANICAL breaking of metal. Volatile air-fuel mix surrounding aircraft ignited into Massive Fireball, Hot fireball begins to RISE, while burning plane falls through bottom of Fireball still spewing liquid fuel which ignites on exit from wingtanks.
8:31:43 - Elmer's "Streak of light" crippled plane appears.
20:31:44:29 - ~4,900 ft. - 32.29 sec. Seventh post IE radar return. - Still falling at 450 ft. per second.
20:31:47 - ~3,680 ft - End of streak - Elmer Asmodeus's mythical "Eyewitness Myth" Explosion of Massive Fireball at 5500-7500 feet.
20:31:48:94 - ~2,800 ft. - 36.94 sec. Eighth post IE radar return. - Shortly after the Flight TWA800 falls below the radar horizon and no further radar returns are received.
20:31:55 - ~43 sec. splashdown.
Total Elapsed time from Initiating Event (the missile strike?) = ~43 seconds. Plus or minus 2 seconds.

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