Posted on 11/09/2006 9:04:16 AM PST by Hal1950
This week I received a communication from retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr. It contained two items of great interest – one dollop of good legal news and one unexpected and truly incredible report.
The legal news concerned Ray's success in Los Angeles District Court after years of "long and lonely and expensive" effort. Judge Howard Matz had succinctly mandated that "Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) shall produce to plaintiff the material set forth in Exhibit A and the National Transportation Safety Board shall produce to plaintiff the material set forth in Exhibit B." Significantly, the judge also authorized Lahr attorney John Clarke to file for fees and costs. This is a definite win.
Lahr has been suing for release of the information that the two agencies in question had used to produce their notorious zoom-climb animation subsequent to the 1996 downing of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island – animation that was used to discredit the testimony of hundreds of eyewitnesses, many of them military and aviation personnel. Lahr sees this animation as the Achilles' heel of a consciously skewed investigation, and in this he is correct.
Lahr also sent me a CD review of the case titled merely "TWA Flight 800 Crash Evidence Review," which I will hereafter refer to as "the Review." Before I finished reading it, I sent Lahr an e-mail, which read in part:
"Brilliant work on your explication. I am only halfway through it, but I am totally impressed. Everything else that has gone before it is the work of amateurs, mine included."
The message I got back from Lahr, however, floored me. He did not write this report. He received it anonymously in the mail. I was stunned. The Review in question is the most sophisticated piece of investigative reporting that I have ever read on this or any other crash. The unknown author likely put years into this work. He surely comes from within the aviation community, which may explain his desire for anonymity. He argues crisply, patiently and comprehensively. He provides ample illustration of his contentions and rarely, if ever, does he exceed his knowledge base.
Most impressive is his knowing synthesis of all the available evidence – radar, eyewitness, physical, audio, GPS, debris field – to recreate in detail the flight taken and damage done by each of the missiles fired at TWA Flight 800. What is more, the author uses only the evidence that was available to the National Transportation Safety Board to reach conclusions that they should have reached with the same data.
The Review author believes that based on the debris field alone, "the administration would have known within the first two weeks after the crash that missiles brought down the aircraft." Although prudent in his accusations, he strongly suspects that the long delay in recovering the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder indicates that the decision to misdirect the investigation "actually occurred the night of the disaster." With this conclusion, I fully concur.
No one who reads this Review can doubt for a moment that the government has engaged in a massive misdirection in the gathering of evidence. Every major media outlet owes it to its audience to assign its best technical writer to read and review this work. The one CD includes the entire NTSB report as well.
To make things simple, I will happily provide a copy of the entire Review to any interested major media party. The author asked that the information be shared. Interested observers, who are willing to identify themselves, can obtain a pdf copy of Part I of the Review by contacting me through my website, .
In the weeks to come, I will break down the information into manageable chunks. For now, allow me to summarize the author's approach. The Review is divided into four parts. Each of the first three parts is dedicated to the destructive path of one given missile.
In the way of example, the author argues that the first of the three was a large surface-to-air missile launched from 16 to 22 miles west of the crash site. The missile approached the aircraft on a descending track from the rear and struck it without exploding. The author is very specific in his detail, to wit, "This impact broke the horizontal stabilizer pitch trim jackscrew in tension and caused the aircraft to pitch upward." Not all the writing is this technical, but where specifics are needed, the author does not shy from providing them.
The fourth part, and the one least supported by existing evidence, is dedicated to other unidentified objects in the sky that night. The author makes the public relations mistake of calling them UFOs. What he means are unidentified aircraft. They do not come from outer space. I will call them UACs.
In the book "First Strike," James Sanders and I argue that a UAC may very well have been in the mix, and that UAC may have been a terrorist plane. The author, too, believes that a UAC was in the mix as well as three missiles, but he does not believe that the UAC was a manned aircraft. He makes a compelling argument that the UAC information that the FBI gathered was so hot that it was simply not allowed in to the official record. Every now and then, however, some information bled in accidentally. The most obvious example of the same was a photo taken by Linda Kabot that seemed to show a slender cylindrical object flying away from the scene of the crash.
Wisely, the author refrains from saying who fired the missiles or launched the aircraft, although the evidence strongly leads away from anything but a highly sophisticated military operation. It is possible that terrorist involvement may have gone no deeper than warnings given and credit claimed. Someone in Washington knows just how deep that involvement was.
The author argues that an independent panel from outside Washington is essential to conduct a new investigation. "Otherwise," he contends, "the same insider influences in both political parties, who have prevented the truth from being revealed previously, would control the investigation's outcome."
In the best of all possible worlds, Ray Lahr's case may just crack open the official door.
This last one may be from some pinko rag so until I can find the source, well, don't be too sure of the content.
That kind of information would be strictly limited on a need-to-know basis; the hospital corpsman following doctor's orders would not necessarily know that he was performing experiments.
If a full crew heard the scuttlebutt of "holy s--t, we shot down an airliner", total secrecy would be nearly impossible. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, but it's darned unlikely.
So you think our military shoot down civilian airliners and cover it up? I suppose you think that they barbecue babies and stomp on kittens in Iraq, too. What makes a person loath the military that much?
I, for one, am still waiting.
That's because they were all being replaced by the Mk.1 Sooper Dooper Cosmic Nuclear Death Ray.
Obviously they were evil geniuses during those odd moments when they weren't being bumbling incompetents.
when I was in my USMC/VA retirement classes at San Diego, there was a Navy diver in there and he told me that he dove on the recovery site and had orders to move & hide all missle parts that were recovered underwater & moved to a site away from the crash site. I did not believe that our goverment [at that time] would kill somany of our fellow citzens. But then there was Waco, Ruby Ridge, & Ok. City [which I still believe that the goverment had some hand in it]
Some of us my believe that I need a tinfoil hat, for this posting, but it is my humble offering on this matter.
Did he happen to mention how he was able to tell the missile parts from the airplane parts in a hundred feet of water, low visibility, and while wearing diving equipment? Just curious.
I do not remember that much from this week of my life, but if you had noticed that a lot of the really small parts did not come up from the bottom. As to the visabality question, from the viedo footage that I have seen, it was possible to see a bit in a very limited fasion with the high intensity lights that they were using underwater on the dive gear.
But your friend said he wasn't bringing up the parts, he was hiding them. He was moving them. So how did he tell which was which? I think it's a reasonable question.
As to the visabality question, from the viedo footage that I have seen, it was possible to see a bit in a very limited fasion with the high intensity lights that they were using underwater on the dive gear.
But I'm curious as to how he could tell missile from airliner? The plane exploded. The missile, if there was one, would have exploded first. There aren't a whole lot of recognizable pieces left after that.
Having spent time in the Marines you are no doubt aware of the term 'sea story', and the difference between a sea story and a fairy tale. Now, how did your friend's story start out?
It was on a Chris Matthews show a couple years ago.
It also account for the quick rush to judgement about Richard Jewell.
Assuming you meant John Kerry, I heard him say all the troops in Iraq were stupid the other day. That didn't make him believable in my eyes, nor would anything he had to say about TWA800. Or anything else I can think of for that matter.
I spent 24 years in the military, over 9 of it on active duty. I served on a number of destroyers and frigates, all armed with missiles. I've seen missile shoots in the day, in the night. I've seen missiles go up, I've seen them hit their target, and I've seen what happens when they come down, too. And I'm here to tell you that there flat aren't that many recognizable pieces left when all is said and done. And I'm talking big missiles, Standards and Sea Sparrow. Take a small, portable missile and there is even less left in even smaller parts. And they don't all have a big 'M' on the debris, so you can tell them from the airplane parts. If you want to believe that your friend could recognize dime-sized pieces of missile in and among all the millions of pieces of airplane then go right ahead. Had your buddy spun the same tale to me I'd have given him the same response I'm giving you. I spent enough time around sailors not to be surprised at anything they say.
I also recall Kalstrom saying he thought it was a bomb and we'd know in a short time. I also recall Mr. Hall of the NTSB accidently falling overboard on one of the search ships. My tinfoil hat suggested that it was a warning to him to remain silent about the findings.
I have no idea what was in the water. I do remember that when explosive residue was found it was said to be from a dog training session on that plane. That was never confirmed.
I recall reporters at the site saying that there had been middle east 'chatter' surrounding the downing of the plane.
It wasn't long before all suggestion of a terror attack was a forbidden topic.
Yes, Demille also has a book, I think it is "Nightfall" about flight 800.
"No way could this have been kept a secret."
Yeah, any conspiracy therories which involve dozens of parties are highly suspicious. No compelling evidence.
As to who Clinton wanted dead it was probably the same person who was supposed to be on Ron Brown's plane. As for all the "people in the know" I bet they were tricked into believing that it was an unfortunate accident. Imagine if all the investigators just helped cover up the "accident" and did not even bother to actually look at the physical evidence.
Some but not all. Americans, even American military members, tend to think for themselves. Yes they obey orders, especially immediate orders, but they think for themselves too.
There is no way several ships of sailors, and some missile troops, from whichever service, would keep something like this quiet.
If you read the officers oath, you'll see that there is nothing in there about obeying orders, but rather supporting and defending the Constitution, and fulfilling the duties of their office.
I have absolute faith that one or many of them would have spilled the beans.
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