They relied on everything available. That's a far cry from taking innaccurate data points and connecting them to prove a conspiracy. As for the radar, what was the ducting condition at that moment? What was the gain setting? What is the RCS of a vertical airliner missing a wing at various aspects? But these things you don't question.
As to why, both the CIA and the NTSB trotted out their cartoons to impeach the eyewitnesses who said they variously saw something climb to the plane and hit it. They used the cartoons to impeach the witnesses by claiming it was proof that what they saw was the crippled nose-less plane zoom climbing, trailing burning fuel. If the zoom climb did not occur then the eyewitnesses are not impeached.
So your problem is that they actually listened to eye witnesses and made an attempt to correlate their testimoney to the facts? OK. Its quite possible that the eye witnesses were wrong, they often are, and that the government was also wrong. Even if you had credible evidence that no climb occurred, it proves nothing in regard to a missile. As for the zoom climb "discrediting" the witnesses, that's nonsense. Accident investigations put together pieces of the puzzle, they don't "discredit" facts. The witnesses seeing a missile is NOT a fact, that they claim to have seen a light show that they (having never seen a missile) took to be a missile, is a fact.
To put an extreme damper on your conspiracy theory, SAMs do not burn all the way to target. Unless you are insisting that it was a long range SAM like an SM2 or SA-20, the rocket motor accelerates the missile to speed and burns out in seconds. SAMs that fit into the plausible category, make a big flash at launch and would be invisible at night through the rest of their flight.
Also your "engines at idle" assertion is just that, an assertion. So Boeing designs the engines to go to idle if input is interrupted, so? I'm always fascinated at the parsing of conspirists over what can't be believed and what can't be challenged. You can't fathom that the engines could have stayed at full power because it doesn't fit your template.
False. The zoom climb scenario's were created solely to discredit the eye witnesses. The cartoons were used to impeach their statements so that there was no eyewitness "testimony" allowed in the hearings. A good number of them were familiar with missile trails and ordnance explosives and some were quite explicit in what they saw. NOT ONE was allowed to testify before the NTSB because they had been "discredited" by the CIA/NTSB zoom climb cartoons explaining away of what they said they had seen.
Again you come back with "inaccurate data points" without providing any evidence of inaccuracy. They are inaccurate because YOU claim them to be. I cannot believe that the Islip Primary Radar is inaccurate by "hundreds of yards"...
Also your "engines at idle" assertion is just that, an assertion.
No, it is a statement from Boeing... when the signal from the cockpit is lost, the engines revert to idle. It is not an assertion that is even challenged by the NTSB. It is accepted as a fact.
You can't fathom that the engines could have stayed at full power because it doesn't fit your template.
No, it doesn't fit YOUR template. The designer and builder of the aircraft says that the engines will revert to idle when the signal from the cockpit is lost... but YOU want them to stay at full power so you ignore what the experts testified to. You are the one who is dancing... and you don't do it well.
Even if you had credible evidence that no climb occurred, it proves nothing in regard to a missile.
There we can agree... that's why I refer to the start of the TWA800 tragedy as the "initiating event."
In past threads on FreeRepublic I have posted the exact math... formulae and all... showing the results of which I have posted here. I challenge you to fit the CIA's 3200 foot zoom climb or the NTSB's 1600 foot zoom climb into the time available and the energy available.
Both the CIA and the NTSB have refused to release their calculations even in the face of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. They claim it would reveal "proprietary information" belonging to Boeing. However, Boeing released a statement also questioning the zoom climb and stated that they had provided no information regarding such a climb.
I haven't even gotten into the insignificant differences that either an additional 3200 or even 1500 feet would appear in relation to 13,800 feet of altitude to witnesses viewing the incident from the various viewpoints. Do the trigonometry... the few degrees of change certainly could not be mistaken for "rising from the horizon," or "appearing over the roof," etc.
Let's accept the government's Center Wing Tank explosion theory for the moment. The Center Wing Tank is not just an empty space that can be filled with fuel... it is structural as well. In fact, aside from the keel of the aircraft, it is probably the most important structural component. It is a box built of transverse structural girders to which the wings are attached to the fuselage. It bears the weight of the plane and transfers the forces of the engines' thrust and the wings' lift to the aircraft. If it had "exploded" the structural integrity of the box would have been severely compromised... in fact, that is one of the reasons the left wing was not found with the main body. How, then, did these wings remain attached under extreme stress of a zoom climb? We are talking huge, beyond design tolerance, forces that are required when the forward momentum of the aircraft is supposedly converted to upward momentum through lift.