NYP: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON FLIGHT 800?-- NATIONAL GEO AND THE LI MYSTERY

New York Post ^ | January 29, 2008 | Linda Stasi

[OESY]

...Tonight's "The Final Report: Investigation of TWA Flight 800" on National Geographic Channel presents a brilliant, well-researched look into what the investigators found - and what they didn't find.

The show details the animosity that existed from day one between the NTSB and the FBI.

The NTSB is usually the final word in all air crashes. But because a number of eyewitnesses on the ground saw streaks flying towards the aircraft right before it exploded, and air traffic controllers reporting blips around the aircraft, the FBI came in and took over the investigation, calling it a possible crime.

There were immediately three prevailing theories. One was friendly fire. The US Navy runs weapons training exercises in a 300-mile-wide swath near the flight path.

The second held that it could have been terrorists with ground-to-air missiles.

The third was that there had been a bomb on board.

The producers interview most of the players in the investigation including eyewitnesses; Robert Francis, the former chairman of the NTSB who was not happy to have the FBI crawling over his investigation; James Kallstrom of the FBI, who knew that 747s just don't randomly blow up; Leon Panetta, then-White House Chief of Staff; as well as cops who dove for the wreckage, like Vincente Termine.

After this show, you may trust the government even less than you do now. Or you may think they are as honest as they possibly could be in simply admitting that they just don't know.

Whatever you conclude, you won't conclude that National Geographic didn't do a very thorough job. Great reporting.

[an amused spectator]

Now I’m going to lay awake nights and worry about that...

[null and void]

My work here is done...

[Go_Raiders]

“Show me the science!”

Good luck with that. The evidence was never properly handled, catalogued and archived. No one is ever gonna be able to examine this scientifically.

[DoughtyOne]

You know, I may have harbored a grudge against him inappropriately for a long time. I happen to remember some unsavory things he did at the time that made me think he was dirty, but perhaps he was forced into it.

I have to tell you, I would sooner retirn and spill my gutts than do what he may have been forced into.

[UCANSEE2]

“Anyone remember a similar incident just in the last three or four years? I think it was on the west coast where a pilot reported a missile streaked by his aircraft which was several thousand feet in the air. Several on the ground also saw it.”

---

Yes. and it wasn’t the first ‘close call’ they had had in that area.

[null and void]

Yes. Coming out of LAX, IIRC...

[nycgal]

I saw that video clip as well. It was taken during some kind of get together on an outside deck. As soon as I saw it I told my wife it liiked almost exactly like the patriot missiles I had seen in Saudi Arabia during the first gulf war.

I too remember that video with the details about the deck and a party. It's amazing that it can't be found. Kind of 1984ish...there's no video yet we all remember it.

I also saw the video. As I remember it, it was taken during a party at a Long Island home. People were being filmed and you could see the stream of light going up in the background.

[an amused spectator]

I have to tell you, I would sooner retirn and spill my gutts than do what he may have been forced into.

They'd find a way to take away your retirement money.

[nycgal]

I somehow suspect that Nelson DeMille got some input about Flight 800 from Jim Kahlstrom. No proof...just female intuition.

[bobsatwork]

This can only be because you have no knowledge, or worse.. Your first link shows a report filed ten days after the incident. How does this contradict what I said?

[ml/nj]

You cannot really expect the police to have located the witnesses, conducted all their interviews, and filed all their written reports within three and a half hours of the crash. Do you really think all these disparate people pretended they saw essentially the same thing based in interviews within days of the event. What would they have based their reports upon? Was it a giant conspiracy, or did they all have the same dream within a day or two? What?

ML/NJ

[sono]

They vilified Pierre Salinger for the missile theory.

[bobsatwork]

You cannot really expect the police ... No, I don't think that at all. I do think that if, say, five people called the NYTimes, CBS, police, Fox, Drudge, etc, all saying "I saw a missile", it would have been reported. On July 17 or 18. News orgs have no problem repoting "witnesses claim seeing..." type of stories, and police have no problem reporting they are following up on witness reports, without waiting to complete investigations (almost daily I hear stories like "police are investigating claims that shots were heard", or similar). What do I think? I think on the night of the 17th witnesses saw something they did not understand - a ball of fire (maybe two), a streak of light. THEN they heard about TWA800, and the widely held suspicion of a bomb or missile, and then concluded that the streak they saw was a missile. And, no, I don't think they are liars, drunks, hallucinating, etc.

[nina0113]

I have to tell you, I would sooner retirn and spill my gutts than do what he may have been forced into.

But would you prefer to bury one or more family members?

[DoughtyOne]

Aw come on, you don’t think the Clintons or better yet their shaddow enforcers would be involved in something like that do you? ;-)

Yes, that is the reality isn’t it.

[RinaseaofDs]

Agreed.

Anyone that has done any inspections of large fuel tanks is that there’s a ‘sweet zone’ in which an explosion can occur. The amount of fuel left in the tank means very little. It’s the ration of fuel to air in correspondence with the volume. Too much fuel vapor, and air becomes too saturated to sustain combustion, too little and it won’t either.

I found the ‘bare wire in the CFT’ a pretty thin final cause. 747’s are built to take abuse. Fact is, for whatever reason, we are never going to know what happened. I’m fairly certain it had nothing to do with wires in fuel tanks.

[mfish13]

Nope. A shoulder fired missile just does not have the propellant to get that high up.

[RaceBannon]

Yes, thwe more modern ones do. The REDEYE didn’t, but the SA-11 and upo do and so do the modern Stingers

That is only straight up, though, slant range, not zigging to catch something jinking and still get over 12 Angels.

[Straight Vermonter]

You didn’t say Muslims you said Arabs. Lebanese, Jordanians & Egyptians are Arab whatever their religion might be.

[null and void]

I thought you were bright enough to get the underlying message.

I guess not.

Focus on one word, miss the point.

*sigh*