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Quietly, Officials Seek Clues In Lives of Flight 800's Dead By PAM BELLUCK and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI The New York Times; Section 1; Page 1; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk August 18, 1996, Sunday, Late Edition - Final

With the underwater inquiry into the explosion of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 failing to yield definitive answers about the cause of the crash, investigators say their best hope for a break in the case may lie above ground in the other, seldom-discussed prong of their inquiry -- the hunt for human suspects.

Investigators discovered one curious detail, that about a week after the crash, someone tried repeatedly to get a cash advance from Mr. Ferrat's credit card, which his business administrator in Switzerland had canceled after the explosion. Law enforcement officials said they believed that the credit card had probably washed up on the sand and was found by a beachcomber.

It is a climate in which any gap in a person's biography or any abrupt change in personal or financial status is examined, no matter how seemingly incidental or farfetched. Veterans of previous cases say that under such scrutiny almost anyone -- including passengers, airport workers and others with access to the plane -- can seize investigators' attention. Federal agents have held off interviewing the grieving families of the 230 passengers and crew members who died when Flight 800 broke apart after takeoff from Kennedy International Airport on July 17. But through their own record checks, and their inquiries into tips from landlords, friends and others, investigators have identified several potential suspects or targets of a bombing -- leads that have been examined and discounted.

Just as investigators looking at the physical evidence started with theories about the cause of the crash and then began knocking them down one by one as parts were recovered from the ocean, their work on the human side of their investigation is not closing in on a theory so much as eliminating possibilities.

The process will intensify as the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducts a thorough examination of the passengers while continuing to look at those with access to the plane. Investigators said they have already followed these trails without coming any closer to real clues. They have:

*Taken a closer look at an Algerian passenger identified on T.W.A.'s list only by his last name. The 1985 explosion of an Air-India flight off the coast of Ireland was traced to a bomb packed in a suitcase that was checked by a "Mr. Singh," someone who never boarded the flight.

*Checked out the personal life of a New York City flight attendant who was estranged from her husband and who had a generous life insurance policy.

*Questioned associates of a Sri Lankan airport employee with a background in chemical engineering who tried and failed to get a job with T.W.A. shortly before the crash, and who quit his job and abruptly moved to Angola a few days after the explosion.

Investigators say that not one of these people is now viewed as a potential suspect or target of a bomb attack. But the scope of the investigation is no more focused. Could someone on the plane's previous flight from Athens to New York have hidden explosives in a seat cushion? Was a passenger the victim of an insurance scam, an enemy or an estranged spouse?

The process of closely studying the backgrounds of passengers and others is part of every investigation into terrorist bombings of commercial jetliners. After the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, investigators chased down dozens of innocent details from passengers' lives that, when viewed suspiciously, made them seem like plausible suspects or targets. "Almost everyone on the plane, almost everyone you ever met, has something that can get your imagination going," said an F.B.I. agent who worked on the Flight 103 case and who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A recent fight, a divorce, a business deal, an overseas connection -- when you don't know what you're looking for, it's easy to see all kinds of possibilities."

In the end, no suspicions were confirmed. A Federal indictment charges that the bomb had been in a bag checked by a terrorist who never boarded the plane.

In the Pan Am case, the agents' task was eased when forensic experts determined that the blast occurred in a specific cargo bin containing checked luggage belonging to a small number of passengers. Those investigating the T.W.A. crash have no such advantage. The debris from Flight 800 was spread over a miles-long stretch of ocean off Long Island.

"I have great sympathy for the people running this investigation," said Morris D. Busby, who was the coordinator of counterterrorism for the State Department during the Flight 103 investigation. "Right now, the investigation is by nature unfocused, and until they find a forensic clue they're going to have to run down every lead no matter where it takes them."

Investigators have not declared that Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb, but that is their leading theory. They have so far been able to determine that the explosion did not occur in the cargo hold, the cockpit or the galley and now suspect it occurred in or under a passenger's seat or in a bathroom, food cart or overhead luggage bin.

The search for possible human clues is in its earliest phases. But already, agents have searched the jail cell and telephone records of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man the F.B.I. calls the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing, who is on trial on charges that he planned to bomb United States airliners in Asia.

They have examined some passengers' tax returns, credit records, insurance policies and employment histories. They have searched court records for divorce proceedings or other legal problems and have questioned hundreds of eyewitnesses to the crash, as well as baggage handlers, mechanics and others with access to the plane. They have conducted inventories at local military bases to determine whether missiles or explosives were missing.

They are also attempting to question the 349 passengers who were on the Boeing 747 during its Athens-to-New York flight to see whether they saw anything suspicious, such as someone briefly on board in Athens who got off the plane before takeoff. None of these lines of inquiry has produced a strong theory or even the kind of solid evidence that would focus the investigation on a particular suspect. And in the absence of such evidence, the investigators have withheld questioning of the passengers' families.

"I've made a decision not to go out there and interview all these victims' families at this point on anything," said James K. Kallstrom, the head of the F.B.I. office in New York. "We know who they are. We have their addresses and names. Some have come forward to us, but we've put off going out there and interviewing because, quite frankly, we have other things that are, in my view, more important to do."

The F.B.I. and local law enforcement agencies have already begun to trace some tips about possible suspects or targets.

One passenger's landlord, for example, telephoned investigators to say that the tenant had a psychiatric history. Investigators say they searched his home and found nothing to suggest the man would blow up an airliner.

Another passenger who drew investigators' initial curiosity as a possible target was Detective Susan Hill, a 22-year veteran of the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon. Detective Hill, who had worked on more than 70 homicide cases, had recently ended her marriage to a corrections officer and had a brother on the department's bomb squad, said Lieut. Cliff Madison of the Portland Police Bureau.

After the explosion, Lieutenant Madison said, Federal investigators called and asked "if we knew of anyone who was out to get her." But he said the Portland police considered that unlikely because "she's been a detective a long time; it's not like some street cop who just put someone in jail."

The flight attendant the agents considered a possible target interested them, they said, in part because an altercation erupted among family members at her funeral. The investigators said they wondered whether such tension was indicative of problems that might have led someone to try to harm her.

Investigators said they also looked more closely at a passenger identified on the manifest as "Mr. Ferrat," with no first name or initial. Mindful of the 1985 Air-India case and the pivotal discovery of Mr. Singh, the fictitious passenger with no first name, investigators initially delved a bit deeper, but determined that there was no connection.

They learned from other T.W.A. records that the passenger's full name was Mohamed Samir Ferrat and that he had indeed boarded the plane. They also learned he was an Algerian native, a tie that sparked more questions, according to a senior law enforcement official.

In recent years, a militant Algerian Islamic faction opposed to France's support of the Algerian Government has planted bombs, hijacked planes and committed other acts of terror. Investigators also learned that on July 16, the day before the T.W.A. explosion, the faction's leader was killed.

For 48 hours after the T.W.A. crash, a senior law enforcement official said, F.B.I. agents looked at Mr. Ferrat's background. What they found reassured them that Mr. Ferrat was not at all the kind of person to take a bomb on a plane. Nor was he a likely target of a bomb plot.

Mr. Ferrat, it turned out, was a wealthy and highly respected businessman, money manager and investor with offices and residences in the Ivory Coast, France and Switzerland. His story was poignant. He had been flying to Paris after celebrating the birthday of his mother, who has been receiving treatment for liver cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland, treatment Mr. Ferrat was paying for. He was 39, engaged to an employee in his Paris office and hoped to be married and give his mother a grandchild before cancer took her life.

Federal agents learned all of this without questioning Mr. Ferrat's family, friends or business associates, many of whom gathered in their grief at the family's hotel in Virginia, having no idea of investigators' questions.

If they had talked to his relatives and friends, they might have picked up other details, like the fact that Mr. Ferrat's family had tried to persuade him to stay an extra day and take a direct flight from Washington to Paris. Or that a T.W.A. employee in the United States initially told his family he had not been on the plane. And they would have heard he was such a successful businessman that Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown witnessed the contract-signing of one of Mr. Ferrat's projects in the Ivory Coast in February, two months before Mr. Brown was killed in a plane crash in Croatia.

The investigators might have been intrigued by these details, but would have discovered that they were significant only to family and friends clinging to every memory of Mr. Ferrat.

"He was a real family guy, so devoted to his mother," said Ronald M. Nocera, a business associate and friend whose company was involved in the Ivory Coast project. "He made friends very quickly."

Still, like the friends and relatives of several passengers, Mr. Nocera said he would not be offended if investigators wanted to talk to him about Mr. Ferrat. "My colleagues and I are surprised that they haven't called us," he said.