THE DOWNING OF TWA FLIGHT 800: 'Hey, look at the fireworks'

It arrived shortly before noon, Washington time, on July 17 – a fax sent to Al-Hayah in London, the most prestigious Arabic language newspaper. Sent by the Islamic Change Movement – the jihad wing in the Arabian Peninsula – the warning came one day after the group had taken responsibility for the destruction of Khobar Towers. It was as serious as a truck bomb:

As the sun was about to rise on the Arabian Peninsula, it was about to set on Long Island. At 8:31 Dwight Brumley, whose long Navy career included special expertise in electronic warfare, put down the book he was reading and glanced out the window of US Air 217. Night had already fallen to the east, the direction in which he looked.

"I noticed off the right side what appeared to be a small private airplane that was flying pretty much at a course right at the US Air flight," Brumley recounts. "I followed it until the fuselage and the inboard wing cut off my field of view. My first thought – that was awfully close!" Brumley estimates that the plane passed a mere 300 or 400 feet beneath him.

About 15 seconds after the small plane had passed, Brumley noticed "what appeared to be some kind of a flare," but he realized quickly that this bright, burning object ascending off the ocean was no flare. "It was definitely moving pretty much parallel to the US Air Flight and it was moving at least as fast, perhaps even faster."

As the flare-like object raced north, and Flight 800 ascended slowly and innocently east along the Long Island coast, Mike Wire, a millwright from Philadelphia working on a Westhampton bridge, saw a streak of light rise up from behind a Westhampton house and zigzag south, southeast away from shore at about a 40 degree angle, leaving a white smoke trail behind it.

Richard Goss, upon seeing the same object, turned to his friends at the yacht club and said, "Hey, look at the fireworks." Everybody turned to look, and they all watched it climb. "It was bright, very bright," says Goss, "and, you know, that almost bright pink … and orange glow around it, and it traveled up."

Vacationer Lisa Perry, on her Fire Island deck, watched an object shoot up over the dunes of Fire Island.

"It was shiny, like a new dime," says Perry. "It looked like a plane without wings. It had no windows. It was as if there was a flame at the back of it, like a Bunsen burner. It was like a silver bullet." The object was heading east, southeast toward the Hamptons.

As Paul Angelides walked out onto his Westhampton deck, he picked up what was likely the same object now high in the sky. From his angle, it appeared to be a "red phosphorescent object ... leaving a white smoke trail." At first he thought the object a distress flare, but he soon realized it was too large and moving too fast. Spellbound, he followed the object as it moved out over the ocean in the direction of the horizon.

Goss followed it, too. "It seemed to go away in the distance toward the south, and that's when I saw it veer left, which would bring it out east. It was a sharp left."

From a Westhampton school parking lot, Joseph Delgado saw Brumley's streak, the one heading north toward shore and slightly west. As he told the FBI, he saw an object like "a firework" ascend almost vertically. The object had a "bright white light with a reddish pink aura surrounding it." The tail, gray in color, "moved in a squiggly pattern." From Delgado's perspective, the object "arced off to the right in a south westerly direction."

At 8:31, FAA radar operators out of Islip saw an unknown object appear on screen and head toward Flight 800. At the same moment, FAA radar picked up something else unusual – a ship of good size nearly right under Flight 800's airborne position.

The two National Guard pilots in their nearby helicopter now picked up the streaks high in the sky. Capt. Chris Baur saw the streak Brumley had first observed: "Almost due south, there was a hard white light, like burning pyrotechnics, in level flight. I was trying to figure out what it was. It was the wrong color for flares. It struck an object coming from the right and made it explode."

Maj. Fritz Meyer, a winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service over Vietnam, saw the southbound projectile clearest. "It was definitely a rocket motor," says Meyer.

Delgado saw a second object "glitter" in the sky and the first object move up toward it. He thought at first it was "going to slightly miss" the glittering object, TWA 800, but it appeared to make "a dramatic correction at the last second." Then Delgado saw a "white puff."

"From my vantage point," says Goss, "there was a direct explosion that followed, and then after that there was a second explosion that was off to the east a little farther that was much larger."

Meyer saw a bright white light also. "What I saw explode was definitely ordnance," he said. "The initiating event was a high velocity explosion, not fuel. It was ordnance."

"I then saw a series of flashes, one in the sky and another closer to the horizon. I remember straining to see what was happening," says Angelides. "There was a dot on the horizon near the action, which I perceived as a boat."

"About two seconds later," claimed Meyer, "lower, I saw one or two yellow explosions, from that the fireball, third. The first two high-velocity, the last low-velocity petrochemical explosion."

"Then a moment later there was another explosion, and the plane broke jaggedly in the sky," says Perry. "The nose is continuing to go forward; the left wing is gliding off in its own direction, drifting in an arc gracefully down; the right wing and passenger window are doing the same in their direction out to the right; and the tail with its fireball leaps up and then promptly into the water below. The sounds were a huge BOOM! – then another BOOM!"

"You could feel the concussion like a shock wave," reports Mike Wire of the initial blast. Indeed, it shook the bridge on which he was standing in Westhampton even at ten miles distance.

"The sounds shook the house," remembers Angelides. "My wife, who was on the bathroom floor drying our son from his bath, felt the floor shaking as she heard the noise and I heard her cry out, 'What is going on?'"

And then confusion, a hellish, horrific confusion. "There seemed to be a lot of chaos out there," says Angelides. Now he, Wire, Perry, Meyer, Baur, Goss, Delgado and Brumley watched as the plane's fuel tanks exploded, and Flight 800 morphed into what Delgado described as a "firebox" and others as a "fireball."

"It got much larger, maybe four or five times as large," says Brumley, who was watching the explosion from overhead. "It was the same explosion. It just got bigger. My first thought was, 'Boy, what was that?'"

"When that airplane blew up it immediately began falling," adds Meyer. "It came right out of the sky. From the first moment, it was going down."

Brumley saw the burning debris hit the water and turned to summon a flight attendant. As he did, a passenger in the seat behind him, James Nugent, cried out, "Did you see that too?" Brumley and the others were hardly alone in what they had seen. On that soft summer eve, thousands were watching the sea and the sky. More than 700 of them would share their stories with the FBI.

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Clinton covered up this terrorist attack because it might have thrown the '96 campaign into chaos. The small plane might have chickened out at the last moment or just missed. It is hard to hit another plane when you have a significant speed and climb rate disadvantage.

Good morning, JohnHuang2-- like so many artifacts from "the Golden Age of clinton," this horrible travesty will probably never be solved.

Too much tainted, compromised, hidden evidence- no future investigator, no matter how talented, will be able to reconstruct events with any degree of confidence. Which was the point of all that tainting, IMHO.

If you do the bump list thing for the TWA 800, I would like to be added to the list. Also, there are some articles in my bookmarks you may be able to use and add to the list. I don't have time or know how to add them, but feel free to use. I don't know if they are in the list or not.

This is as fascinating as the Vince Foster murder. How can something this big be covered up so well? There has to be something criminal in here somewhere. I hope someday it will be brought to light and those responsible for the coverup will be be properly dealt with.

Not only Clinton covered it up, but James KAELSTROM of the FBI conbinced even RUSH LIMBAUGH that it was NOT a rocket that kdowned this plane.

JAMES KAELSTROM....YOU have ANSWERS that we as fellow citizens NEED to hear!!

"How can something this big be covered up so well?"

It isn't covered up. It's merely denied. It's the big lie morphed into the big cynical joke (like those soviet era jokes about "they pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work"). Everyone knows it's a lie, but the vast majority (especially among those "in charge") persist in mouthing the words that all know to be false.

Shortly after 9/11, Stephanopolus was talking to Jennings about communications aboard Air Force One--the press at the time was making a stink about President Bush being away from the White House during the first few hours after 9/11. Stephie said that they (Clinton Admin) could be in direct contact with the President on Air Force One at all times and mentioned communications during the bombing in OK City and the BOMBING of TWA Flight 800. Just a word thrown in there incorrectly? Or maybe the truth leaked out of his lips before his brain could stop it! At the time, someone else on FreeRepublic mentioned they heard the same thing as I did.

As luck would have it, I had ABC on the night of TWA 800. They interrupted programming, propped Jennings in front of the camera and were scurring around for "eyewitnesses."

One after another told of the streak of light going up etc. Within an hour it all stopped (back to regular "programming") and the next day it was a different story.

I decided then I was going to get a computer and get on this "internet thing" cause I was tired of the bullcr@p from the networks. Life hasn't been the same since. . .

If you'll click on the "here" of that banner, you'll see why I can't add you- otherwise, I would.

The clinton administration was a conspiracy of like-minded criminals, so thoroughly entwined in each others' corruptions that they could not individually disengage, no matter how horrendous events became.

Hmmm..the only question I have...and keep in mind, I think it was a rocket attack too, is this:

Why hasn't anyone tried to take much credit for it? If I were a terrorist and I wanted the people of America to know I did it, I would be shouting it from the rooftops. SOMEONE would have run the story, even if it was the international press...

I remember something similar to that. Not that it was a bombing, but that TWA 800 was "mistakenly" listed in a series of terrorist acts that occurred in the 1990s.

I've got my own idea about this -- As I was watching the news coverage on the night of 9/11, it suddenly dawned on me that Flight 800 was shot down by the U.S. Navy in response to to a very credible threat that it had been hijacked and would be flown into the World Trade Center.

I know it is easy to say that terrorists shot down flight 800 but there was a navy ship in the area at that time also.What i would like to know is who was on that flight ,like people who at the last minute did not get on the flight that killed ron brown,and then died on flight 800,coincedence right?

Why hasn't anyone tried to take much credit for it?

It is beginning to look as if ME terrorism was involved in OKC too. Why has no one stepped up to take credit?

Of course, one answer could be that ME terrorism was working hand in glove with forces placed within the administration, no? Perhaps even the very highest level.

The problems I have with this is the fact that the aircraft had taken off only 15 minutes or so before and that would have been much to short of time for the hijacking to be discovered, communicated to the authorities, a course of action determined, and then carried out. Another problem is that it is more likely that a fighter would have been dispatched to intercept rather than shooting a missile into the crowded air traffic. Add to that the fact that had a Navy ship been used to down the aircraft then someone on the crew would have talked by now and the launch would have been seen from shore. A missile shoot can't be covered up. Finally, looking at the eyewitness accounts in the article you have missiles coming from different directions and in different shapes and sizes and colors. A lot of it still makes no sense.

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