http://www.sungazette.com/News/articles.asp?articleID=7006
Federal investigators blame Flight 800 disaster
on short circuit, but bomb, missile theories persist
By STEPHANIE FARR - sfarr@sungazette.com
(excerpt)
Donald Nibert, father of Flight 800 victim Cheryl Nibert, met with many eyewitnesses to the crash shortly after it happened. He said he has felt, from the beginning, that the cause of the accident was friendly fire.
From a fighter pilot who was working helicopter activities with the National Guard on the night of the crash to civilians who saw the explosion from the ground, there were many people who told Nibert they observed a missile, or the exhaust trail of a missile, right before the plane went down.
“It tells me something is not right,” Nibert said. “So I had questions, reasonable questions.”
Montoursville Mayor John Dorin remembers getting a phone call from then-president Bill Clinton just a day after the crash.
“At that point, we were talking about terrorists. He said, ‘I’m going to do my best — if this was a terrorist situation — to solve this problem,’ ” Dorin said. “He said he was putting his best people on this tragedy.”
Dorin said at first, “there was no question about it,” most people thought the downing of Flight 800 was the result of a terrorist attack. But three years later with no cause in sight, Dorin sent a letter to the president asking for conclusions.
When a conclusion was determined, Dorin said, he spoke with the father of one of the victims who told him that he accepted the theory. Dorin said he supported that decision.
“But in the back of my mind, I’m not completely satisfied. People, to this day, will swear they saw something go up,” he said. “There’s always going to be a question, but all these agencies looked at it, and I’ll accept that.”
Nibert took his questions to the agency officials working on the investigation. He asked one NTSB official if there were any satellites covering the area of Flight 800’s path on the evening of July 17. He was told there were three — and that all three had failed to operate on that particular pass.
“So I asked what the probability was that one would fail on a clear night,” he said. “I was told that was classified information.”
Former school district superintendent David P. Black, now retired, said he knows many people spent a lot of time and energy on the investigation of Flight 800.
“At this point, I’m willing to accept their explanation,” he said. “But I know there’s some contradictory evidence.”
The questions in Nibert’s mind kept him up at night and spurred him to ask Jim Hall, former chairman of the NTSB, for the original flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders from Flight 800. The NTSB could not release the cockpit voice recorder under law, Nibert said, but Hall did provide him with a copy of the flight-data recorder.
Nibert had the material independently analyzed by two specialists. One found there was at least two seconds edited, deleted or removed from the end of the tape while the other found there were at least four seconds missing, Nibert said.
When Nibert and Hall’s experts met to discuss the discrepancies, the testimony presented by Nibert’s experts was not refuted by any of the NTSB’s analysts, Nibert said.
Upon returning home from the meeting, Nibert wrote Hall a letter discussing the presentation. Nibert said he sent the letter on a Thursday and on Monday, the day the letter should have arrived at Hall’s office, Hall resigned. Nibert said he has not heard any answers from the NTSB since that day.
Although Nibert and Hall shared heated words over the investigation, Nibert said he does not believe Hall was at fault, or even aware of a possible cover-up.
“I still have respect for Jim Hall,” Nibert said. “I feel that (the position) was beyond his capacity and he was kept in the dark.”