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"
And your irrefutible source for the altitude the plane was at at the moment when the first damage occured is?.... or do you assume that the altitude it was last noted at was that altitude?
Shhh, no one wants to hear that. Trust me, I've tried and TRIED.
Aw, c'mon... can you at least point me to a reference?
Same reason he did it in Oklahoma. Ignore the threat and just make people happy. Run your term by the polls.
http://www.icstars.com/Flight800/TWAflt800Long.html
"OK, I am ready for the flames.
TWA Flt 800 was hit by a meteorite."
Is that what you would have done?
Great book! So was Night Fall.
And the government would have a massive coverup to deny it was a meteorite why again?
The fact that it had been above MANPADS maximum ceiling for over a full minute before anything unusual occurred.
What was the first unusual thing that occurred? And how do you know it?
Too much concern about hiding the truth here.
I wouldn't be surprised if it were all to protect Clinton's sorry person.
The first thing I thought of at the time was the fact that the U.S. was days away from hosting the Olympics in Atlanta. We couldn't discourage tourists from traveling to the U.S.
One of his best, for sure.
Yes. And the "zoom climb" theory is irrelevant. For starters, the accident investigation that analyzed the actual cause of the TWA 800 explosion was not conducted by the FBI or CIA. Its findings did not support a 3200' "zoom climb" either. But it was able to conclusively determine the sequence of the aircraft's destruction, including the initial explosion in the center wing fuel tank. Whether or not the aircraft "zoom climbed" had zero to do with what caused that initial explosion. The accident investigation was a joint effort between the NTSB, Boeing and TWA, all of whom agreed absolutely that zero evidence of criminal activity could be found anywhere on or in the aircraft. The criminal investigation conducted by the FBI was separate from the accident investigation, but was terminated when the FBI could not find any evidence of foul play. That Jack Cashill refuses to acknowledge the difference between the FBI's criminal investigation, and the completely separate NTSB accident investigation is just par for his profit driven, bogus reporting. He is using Ray Lahr's goose chase to sell more books and milk more money out of a tragedy. Cashill is a ghoul and Lahr is a dupe. They deserve each other.
Yes, if I heard an explosion, I certainly would look up.
And being human, my mind would create images and scenarios, some of which would not be based in reality, and over time I would come to accept them as what actually happened.
Eyewitness testimony from much later is not good. Even asked immediately following an event, people get major details wrong, including the sequence of things that happened.
So it is easy to imagine people, especially those who have been convinced to "come forward" because they have read web pages that tell them about the plane being shot down, who would have, in their mind, without knowing it, reconstructed the events to their current perception.
What I would likely NOT have done is been watching some airplane flying through the sky, watching to see if someone shot something at it.
Not nearly as old as the BS the government has been spreading to make the sheeple go back to sleep and not worry about the ROP killing us in our own country.
A friend of mine flew for Boeing for a number of years, he's now retired. A few years back he and his wife stopped by to visit for a couple of days ... while they were here the subject of TWA Flt. 800 came up in conversation. He was very skeptical of the NTSB findings ...
Well they could conceivably have seen or heard the missile launch, which drew their attention to the sky, then they saw the "end game". Some probably would have been looking at the aircraft or just in its direction.
The eyewitnesses I find most credible were the two Air National Guard rescue pilots, one of who initially said that the explosion was definitely an ordnance explosion, which he had seen before as a pilot in Vietnam. He later somewhat recanted that observation, IIRC.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.