There was the trail across several seats of a chemical that was analyzed by an outside laboratory that claimed the residue was essentially solid rocket fuel exhaust but that the FBI claimed was Contact Cement used to adhere the seat back cloth on just those row's upholstery to the foam rubber. Boeing said they did not use anything like that for adhesive and that all seats would use the same adhesive.
An airline pilot who was part of the investigation and his wife were brought up on charges of stealing aircraft wreckage souvenirs, which was a law for the general public removing pieces from the wreckage sites, for taking a small section of the cloth to submit it to the outside lab when they could not get any answers to their questions about why there was this obvious track across the reconstructed cabin. When they kept making waves about it the seats were moved so the track was not obvious anymore.
As I recall there were strange ball bearing like spheres that penetrated many of the bodies recovered. There were also many puncture holes in the fuselage from similar holes. There was an obvious entry hole on one side of the fuselage and an exist on the other. . . photos were shown and then withdrawn. Next time those areas of the aircraft reconstruction were shown, no holes, the holes had been pushed back together so they looked just like torn metal instead of entry and exit holes. There was damage on the left wing (IIRC) that according to military ordnance specialist had all the appearance of high velocity explosive damage, not low velocity damage. These were claimed to be water damage caused by water impact. The ordnance experts said that was impossible. These suspicious explaining of every strange thing away and ignoring experts all added up to making people suspect that there was a cover up in progress.
The NTSB accepted the FBI's "expert" on metallurgy and his conclusions on the event. He was merely a self-taught FBI agent who had no degree in metallurgy. In later years his claims that one could identify bullets by their distinctive metallurgy that resulted in the conviction of numerous defendants turned out to be dead wrong when actual metallurgist showed that bullets made by qualified bullet manufacturers were the SAME over several years and that one batch of metal was essentially identical to another from the same manufacturer because their quality control of their alloying process was that good. This finding resulted in the overturning of numerous convictions in which the FBI metallurgy lab had identified bullets as coming from the same batch etc. and the conviction hung on the defendant owning bullets by that manufacturer, all on this FBI "expert's" claims of expertise, and that bullets would be different in different boxes and could be matched to those in the same box! It was HIS testimony when only 10% of TWA-800 had been recovered that no evidence explosives had been found.
In actual fact, evidence HAD been found. There were traces of explosives on the seats, but they pooh-poohed that by saying that was just residue of a bomb-sniffing dog training exercise that had been done on the plane a couple of weeks before the disaster, which they announced quite vocally. However, it turns out that it was NOT the same plane where the training exercise took place. That they did not announce vocally when the records of the training exercise were examined and the aircraft registration numbers were compared. They did not match. It was another 747 entirely. So, one has to ask, did the residues of explosives on TWA-800's plane come from?
Those questions, like the actual source of the reddish "rocket fuel residue/contact cement", depending on who you believe, went un-answered. (Incidentally the two who took the sample were not allow to use the reason they took the sample in their trial as evidence, or the results they got! Also, incidentally, the track indicated by those seats went from those openings in the fuselage that seemed to be a missile entry and exit. Just coincidence? Why did they move the seats to positions they did not belong in afterwards to obfuscate the trail of red residue if it was just contact cement?)
Good info Sword! I still can’t figure out why the blown to pieces plane was even brought up from the ocean’s floor in the first place. If the Gov. new soon after what took it down, as in a missile, why would they even rebuild it and then have to try to cover up/lie about explosive residue and missile entry/exit points that they had to have known would be present. They could have lied to the public, that bringing the remains back to land to rebuild was to much of a task, do hard to do, etc. etc. etc. any number of the basic type lies we get from the Gov. Any thoughts on that angle Sword?
I happened to be home that day, taking a 'mental health day' from work.
The news that it happened broke on MSNBC (that is back in the days when it was a reasonable news station, not a propaganda branch of the White House).
Within MINUTES of the breaking news, a graphic came on explaining how it was a center fuel tank explosion and *definitely* not a missile.
The watermark on the graphic was ‘Property of the CIA’.
Wait, what?
I read it again.
‘Property of the CIA’.
I got right up close to the television, a 46" CRT model.
‘Property of the CIA’.
Later, I saw that same graphic repeatedly used, but NOW it said, “Property of the FAA’.
I knew within 10 minutes of the reporting of the plane being downed that it was an enemy missile, just by how the authorities were acting.