Posted on 04/30/2002 12:32:08 PM PDT by Asmodeus
TWA 800: An Insider’s View
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
April 30, 2002
A new book details the experiences faced by several journalists who began looking into the destruction of TWA Flight 800, the airliner that blew up off the coast of Long Island in 1996, killing all 230 aboard. Titled Into the Buzzsaw, the book consists of accounts by journalists who challenged the official line and were either fired or came under considerable pressure. It was edited by Kristina Borjesson, a former CBS award winning producer and investigative reporter, who also wrote the title essay based on her own experience.
Borjesson defines it this way: "The buzzsaw is what can rip through you when you try to expose anything this country’s large institutions — be they corporate or government — want kept under wraps. The system fights back with official lies, disinformation and stonewalling." Her remarkable story is about the TWA crash, the investigation that followed and the media coverage of the tragedy.
A week after the crash, she was assigned to look into it. Bob Orr, who was assigned to the story for the CBS Evening News, told Borjesson that his sources were saying it was a mechanical failure, but she was hearing other things. CBS law enforcement analyst Paul Ragonese, a Brooklyn cop, told her he heard that the military was involved in something twelve miles out to sea. She wrote in her notes of what he said that there would be "finding absolutely of bomb or missile."
This led to an unbelievable journey for a woman who could not imagine herself, a self-described "elitist," trying to take on "America’s Journalist establishment." But the evidence piled up that government officials were lying and covering up. James Sanders, a retired cop turned author and reporter, had come into possession of two strips of foam rubber from seatbacks on Flight 800 that contained a red residue that tests proved to be consistent with missile exhaust. The FBI insisted it was just glue. Sanders gave Borjesson one strip for CBS to do a second analysis. She turned it over to her bosses, who under pressure from the FBI surrendered it to them.
Her story tracks the entire investigation. She explains how the evidence mounted. The debris field didn’t fit the government theory. Hundreds of eyewitnesses saw a streaking object collide with the plane. Radar data showed an object hit the plane. It also showed numerous vessels in or heading for an active military warning zone. She heard lie after lie from the government. She saw those lies parroted on CBS. Independent investigators were labeled conspiracy theorists. Hank Hughes, a veteran federal crash investigator, testified that the FBI had altered and tampered evidence and violated every normal investigative procedure.
Borjesson was fired by CBS. The buzzsaw continued for her when she was asked to produce a segment on TWA 800 for an Oliver Stone show on ABC, but it too got spiked. This is a remarkable story by a disillusioned media insider whose eyes have been opened to the degree to which the media are willing to swallow government lies.
Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@aim.org
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Many have been led to suspect or believe the "missile witnesses" and "missile(s) shootdown" allegations published for years by Reed Irvine of Accuracy In Media, the Donaldson brothers and Ian Goddard, among others. The NTSB denies their allegations. It should go without saying that one side or the other is spreading misinformation.
The "Missile Witnesses" Myth is a detailed and documented rebuttal of the allegations that there were “missile witnesses”. None of those alleging there were "missile(s) witnesses" have been able todate to provide anything remotely resembling a meaningful rebuttal of it.
Similarly, none of those making the "missile(s) shootdown" or "bomb" allegations have been able todate to publicly present any physical evidence that a missile or bomb was involved in the disaster, much less anything remotely resembling a meaningful rebuttal of The Sworn Testimony of FBI Chief Metallurgist William Tobin that there was no physical evidence of either a missile or bomb in the wreckage.
September 1997
The American Spectator
Letter from John B. Roberts II in reply to an earlier one from James Hall - Chairman of the NTSB
Early this summer Hall testified before Congress that a meteorite may have blown up TWA, an event about as likely as an attack by a UFO. Apparently, Mr. Hall is prepared to got to any length to avoid confronting evidence of terrorism in the crash of TWA 800..... minute traces of PETN and RDX were found in TWA 800. Hall would have us believe they came from a bomb-sniffing dog test. But the St. Louis Police Department test record says only that a "wide-bodied jet" was used in the test, and provides no serial number for the aircraft......As TWA's 800's debris was being hauled ashore, it was being tested by the EGIS high-tech explosives detection system operated by FBI technicians and BATF bomb experts. Within five days of the crash, EGIS registered the first of more than a dozen "hits" for PETN on the aircraft. The FBI laboratory--whose work, even before it was subsequently criticized by the Justice Departments's inspector general, was questioned by FBI agents working on EGIS--confirmed only two findings. Do the EGIS findings mean that there was once much more explosive residue .... Whether there were two positive findings or a dozen, the dog-test explanation is almost as zany as Hall's meteorite theory..... Hall states that the U.S. lacks intelligence leads, but 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.
TWA 800 - The Explosive Traces Line Up With The Hole In The Fuselage.
Witness Meyer did not and could not have seen a "flak" shootdown of the airliner at 13,800 feet at 8:31:11 only 3-4 seconds before he saw the reportedly 2000 feet in diameter Massive Fireball explosion fill the sky between 5500 and 7500 feet at approximately 8:31:47. And, of course, he indicates that he and his crewmates agreed at the time that only about 10 seconds elapsed between the time the Massive Fireball exploded and the splashdown of its flames.
My post 8 links to a presentation of physical evidence. Would you like to respond to the substance of this presentation?
From What Really Happened
As to the plane, it was not particularly old and certainly no more explosive than the average 747. If the NTSB had believed what Goelz has said, they would have recalled those planes quicker than you could say "Firestone." Ask the machinist's union. Ask any TWA pilot. Ask a Boeing engineer. After spending $40 million, the NTSB was unable to identify a scenario that would allow the plane to blow up.The potential damage caused by the truth about this appalling event coming out must be grave in the extreme. Just MHO.
Quote from your link The "Missile Witnesses" Myth
“Just after the initial explosion at 8:31.07.5 PM, the aircraft pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its cruise altitude of 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet. This is consistent with information provided by National Transportation Safety Board and Boeing engineeers indicating that the front third of the aircraft, including the cockpit, separated from the fuselage just two to four seconds after the initial explosion. This significant sudden loss of mass from the front of the aircraft caused the rapid pitch-up”.
This is the bases of the Zoom climb theory to explain (quote from The "Missile Witnesses" Myth) “The rising, burning aircraft is consistent with what some eyewitnesses described as "an ascending, bright white light resembling a flare or firework".
The "Missile Witnesses" Myth does no dispute what the eyewitnesses described as "an ascending bright white light but used the Zoom climb theory to explains what they say they saw
However the radar tract of TWA 800 (On public record and on the web)does not support the Zoom climb theory
The radar track is two dimensional just showing direction and forward ground speed and not altitude.
But you can deduce from it if an aircraft is climbing or diving from forward ground speed.
An aircraft going 500 mph in level flied, assuming 0 winds, would have a 500 mph forward ground speed and aircraft going strait up or down would have a 0 mph forward ground speed.
For any angle from level to strait up or down you would see a slowing of forward ground speed on the radar track
So if TWA 800 went in to a zoom climb after the it exploded what would the radar track show?
A steady forward airspeed before the explosion them a rapid slowing of forward ground speed as it goes in to a zoom climb.
However the climb must end and the aircraft stalls out or pitches over and starts to go down.
During that transition from going up to going down the radar track of forward ground speed should a change and show forward ground speed increase for a time… the track should have some what of an “S” curve
The radar track for TWA 800 does not show this “S” curve..
The track shows a simple curve (till just before impact) of and aircraft loosing forward ground speed going down only ..
There is no indication of a zoom climb in the radar track just an aircraft going down
I not sure on any else on TWA 800..may be the eyewitnesses did no see what they described.. But I am sure of one thing .. there was no zoom climb
I'd like to see that one.MR would make a con man look like a saint.
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