Posted on 12/14/2006 9:28:35 AM PST by Hal1950
Slowly but surely, retired United Airline Capt. Ray Lahr and attorney John Clarke are prying open the can of worms known as the TWA Flight 800 investigation, and sooner or later the major media will have to take notice.
WABC in New York already has. Two weeks ago, the station's Jim Hoffer did a short feature headlined "Major court ruling in TWA Flight 800 case." What proved to be most newsworthy about the feature, however, was not the ruling in question but a surprising admission by former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz.
As Hoffer noted, and has been reported here previously, a U.S. district court judge in Los Angeles has granted Lahr access to most of the documents he has requested to get at the truth behind the alleged 3,200-foot "zoom climb" of the damaged aircraft.
In the WABC feature, Hoffer interviewed not only Lahr but also Goelz, who oversaw the investigation. Wittingly or not, Goelz made the stunning comment that "whether [TWA Flight 800] climbed 3,200 feet or not is really irrelevant."
Irrelevant? Really? The FBI and the CIA did not think so. In 1996-1997, the two agencies climbed over the notorious "wall" to collaborate on an animation showing how a crippled 747 could climb rocket-like for 3,200 feet after its nose had been blown off. This animation was critical. The FBI needed such a scenario to silence the media and close the case.
The CIA video could not have been more definitive. "The Eyewitnesses Did Not See a Missile," reads an underlined script on the video screen. No, "What the witnesses saw was a Boeing 747 in various stages of crippled flight." The FBI showed the CIA video at its final press conference in November 1997, thereby ending any serious investigation.
Despite doubts, the NTSB stuck to the story. At the final NTSB hearing in August 2000, Dr. David Mayer, acting chief of the NTSB's Orwellian-titled "Human Performance Division," reaffirmed the zoom climb. "As the airplane maneuvered in crippled flight," said Mayer in an attempt to explain what the eyewitnesses saw, "it appeared to fly nearly straight up." Tellingly, at no NTSB hearing were the eyewitnesses, several of them pilots or military personnel, ever allowed to testify.
Goelz himself knows just how relevant the zoom climb is. His claim that "there is absolutely no evidence that a missile was fired at this aircraft" hinges on the zoom climb. Without it, there is no way to explain the testimony of the 270 FBI eyewitnesses who had seen lights streaking up toward the plane in the seconds before it exploded. Without it, that eyewitness testimony becomes once again all but irrefutable evidence of a missile strike.
Much of that testimony was vivid and specific. One travel industry professional, for instance, told the FBI that she was standing on the beach when she noticed a 747 "level off." With her eye still on TWA Flight 800, she watched in awe as a "red streak" with a "light gray smoke trail" moved up towards the airliner at a 45-degree angle. Then, the "red streak went past the right side and above the aircraft before arcking [sic] back down toward the aircrafts [sic] right wing."
She saw "the front of the aircraft separate from the back" and watched as the burning pieces of the debris fell from the aircraft. She provided a drawing that showed the scenario in some detail, including the "upside down Nike swoosh," which ended at the plane's right wing. By the way, she correctly identified the departure of the plane's nose long before that detail became publicly known. For the record, hers is one of perhaps 100 comparably strong testimonies.
A veteran safety investigator and a serious student of aerodynamics, Ray Lahr thought the zoom climb scenario a canard the moment he saw it. There is scarcely a pilot anywhere who disagrees with Lahr. Buttressed by wide support in the aviation community, he began his nine-year quest to see the evidence used to calculate the zoom climb.
Lahr is making progress. The Los Angeles judge clearly sided with him. He ruled that the case Lahr and Clarke presented was sufficiently strong "to permit plaintiff to proceed based on his claim that the government acted improperly in its investigation of Flight 800 or at least performed in a grossly negligent fashion."
Ten years out, the evidence for a missile strike grows stronger by the week. A Pulitzer awaits the first major media organization to tackle this case in a serious way. Shamefully, none ever has.
Get Jack Cashill's groundbreaking exposé, "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America"
Carville said so too two days later. I heard it with these here two ears
There is a long list of aircraft destroyed by explosions resulting from igniting fuel vapor. One of them was TWA 800's sister aircraft which blew up in flight after a lightening strike ignited fuel vapors in its wingtank. Currently, the FAA is considering with holding certification of the Airbus 380 for use by US operators because its fuel tanks do not provide any protection from the ignition of fuel vapor.
Man-portable surface-to-air missile.
They're small. They're short-ranged. They have a pretty tight ceiling. They don't have a lot of "spare" momentum at sustainer motor burnout.
Best of breed is the Stinger, and the general consensus is that the Stinger, against a non-maneuvering target and with the most favorable intercept geometry, just runs out of kinetic energy at 12,000 feet.
The place to employ a Stinger is much closer to JFK airport, when the aircraft is flying lower and slower.
He's one of my favorites. I'm reading his latest book "Wild Fire". Takes place a year after 9-11 and has the same character,Corey and Mayfield.
The book's premise is terrific.
I was referring specifically to the "faulty wiring" as the causal agent. It was an absolute first.
As an open question, does anyone know of any other aircraft recovery who's protocol was to blast all parts with seawater before uploading?
In 1990, the center wing fuel tank on a Philippines Airlines 737 plane exploded while it was being pushed back from the gate. In 2001 the same thing happened to a Thai Airlines 737 plane while it was parked at the gate. I think that the problem was more widespread than you imagine.
And hopefully last. As has been already pointed out, "one off" incidents in something as complex as a jumbo jet are not a rare thing at all. Also, remember that TWA 800 was an old airframe when it exploded. One of the oldest 747's still flying at the time. Its sister aircraft had already blown up in flight after being struck by lightening (another one time bad deal for 747's). And as I'm sure you are aware, aircraft of a type may look identical on the outside but be very different on the inside. Take its clothes off, and a 747-100 is not like a 747-200, which is not like a 747-400 despite all of them being 747's.
And there were even older airframes out there over a decade earlier--707 cargo haulers and the like. The wiring on one of THOSE planes should've caused an earth-shattering "KABOOM!"
I have no idea what happened, and have not heard anything that convinces me that the exact sequence of events are known or ever will be.
That said, my beach club is on the Long Island sound and under what I guess is called the glide path or an approach to LGA (LaGuardia Airport). We are in New Rochelle, directly across from David's Island the old army staging area (Ft. Slocum). On certain evenings, if you look northeast towards Connecticut, you can see 3 or 4 planes at a time, one behind the other coming in to land. There's something fascinating about about watching them.
Also when we do the "booze cruise" around Manhattan, in addition to stopping and playing patriotic music at the Statue of Liberty, we used to stop at LGA and watch the planes roar overhead REALLY low as they come in to land. What a rush! Can't do that anymore since 9/11.
Only if their wiring and fuel systems were identical to that of TWA 800's. Just because Ford Pinto's go "KABOOM" when they get rear ended, does not mean that Ford Mustangs or Model T's should also go "KABOOM" on impact.
Getting interesting. Bookmark for later printing.
Sheeple dip.
IIRC no group came forward after the Locherbie Scotland Pan Am bombing.
It's a ittle hard to convince people that large buildings and naval vessels just sort of blow up by themselves. But apparently a lage segment of the American public is willing to believe that an airliner can.
Wow. Our alumni newsletter several years ago mentioned him on TWA 800.. or so I thought. I went back and checked and sure enough there he was mentioned as being on TWA 800... so I wasn't going crazy. I then researched it further and found that he was not on TWA Flight 800, but was actually on Swissair Flight 111, which met the same fate two years later. This was an apparent editorial error I am now making folks aware of. Here I was telling everyone TWA 800 all these years (not having checked) and it was actually Swissair 111. Thanks for clearing this up... something I should have checked on years ago.
Please coulain how hundreds of people saw a separate object streaking upward towards the plane before the event.
Yes, the mind can play tricks, but I see no reason why people's minds would "create" a missile if they saw a plane explode in the sky. I think a reasonable person that saw a plane explode in the sky with no missile trail to be seen would assume that something on the plane exploded, such as a bomb. There would be no need for the mind to "create" something additional for it to make mental sense.
Why do you think?
He was in bed with these people and he was a coward... Why is it John Doe #2 from Oklahoma City was all but forgotten? Why is it that Bubba never even visited WTC after the first bombing??
Simple, he is a coward and a narcissist. He'll shoot a missle at a tent to keep Monica off the front page, he'll send in the helicopter gunships to murder people fleeing a burning building... he'll order our ship to be a sitting duck in a port in Yemen.. etc etc etc...
Clinton Administration loathed the military and believed all enemeies of this country were Justified, we were the bad ones... shame on us for being successful.
I have also thought "hey, why didn't anyone take credit for it if it was terrorism?". Then again, did al Qaeda take credit for 9/11 right after it happened? NO. In fact, they denied it. Also, if they shot down the wrong plane as some suggested, that would be additional reason for them to not "take credit" for it.
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