Jack Cashill: Reopen the TWA Flight 800 Case

American Thinker ^ | June 07, 2009 | Jack Cashill

[neverdem]

Nearly thirteen years after the destruction of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, I had begun to think that the case was a dead issue, but then two unexpected and unrelated events caused me to think otherwise.

The first was a phone call from one of the three most important eyewitnesses to the case.  The second, two weeks later, was the still-mysterious crash of Air France Flight 447 off the coast of Brazil. 

This eyewitness put a further dent in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) claim that a fuel tank explosion brought down TWA Flight 800.  The crash of Flight 447 has put TWA 800 back in the news again.   If the media are going to look to 800 as a template for 447, they need to know what the eyewitnesses to the 800 crash actually saw.

The eyewitness in question may be prepared to tell his story publicly.  After giving his testimony to the FBI in July 1996, for personal reasons, he had chosen to remain silent.  He is still sufficiently wary that I will shade his testimony and refer to him only as "Surfer."  What I will share, however, is his one, entirely damning, new revelation.

The other two critical eyewitnesses I will identify by name and FBI number.  The first is Mike Wire, #571. I have become good friends with Mike and his wife Joan since meeting them while doing research on the book, First Strike, that I co-authored with James Sanders in 2003.  (The documentary that Sanders and I produced in Spring 2001 is available online.  Part 1 sets the scene) 

The second key eyewitness, Joseph Delgado by name, 649 by number, was at the time the principal of Westhampton Beach High School.  He was not thrilled that Sanders and I had identified him in First Strike, but he acknowledged that our facts were accurate.  No one provided the FBI a more precise description of the event than Delgado.  His illustration of the same is stunning.

The surfer saw the events just about as clearly as Delgado.  What he also saw, in addition to the apparent missile, was the break-up sequence of the aircraft.  He described it accurately to the FBI long before the NTSB came to the same conclusion based on radar and the debris field. 

These are just three of the 270 eyewitnesses by the FBI's own count that saw a flaming, smoke-trailing, zigzagging object appear to destroy TWA Flight 800.   All three followed the object off the horizon.  Delgado and the surfer tracked TWA 800 separately from the object and witnessed the moment of impact.  Wire and the surfer saw the object "arch over" before the strike. The New York Times interviewed none of these three, none of the 270 for that matter.

A no-nonsense, 6'-7" millwright and U.S. Army vet, Mike Wire watched events unfold from the Beach Lane Bridge in Westhampton on Long Island.  He came to play a key role because the CIA based its notorious video animation on Wire's perspective.  Why the CIA was involved in a domestic airplane "accident" is anyone's guess.  The media never bothered to ask.

The FBI showed the CIA video just once.  That was in November 1997 when it officially bowed out of the case.  The FBI needed it to negate the stubborn testimony of the eyewitnesses.

A key animation sequence in the CIA video showed not a missile but an internal fuel tank explosion blowing the nose off the aircraft. According to the video's narration, TWA 800 then "pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its last recorded altitude of about 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet."  This rocketing aircraft was alleged to look like a missile and to have confused the eyewitnesses.  (The animation begins at the 8:30 mark of Part 2 of "Silenced"). 

This animation was essential to close the investigation. Without it, there was no way to explain what these hundreds of official FBI eyewitnesses, many of them highly credible, had actually seen.

According to the official record, the three key eyewitnesses were re-interviewed by the FBI in 1997.  The authorities paid most attention to Delgado.  On May 8, 1997, agents from the FBI and the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, California, interviewed Delgado at his Long island school.  According to FBI notes, the China Lake rep was introduced to Delgado simply as "a member of the Department of Defense."

Delgado told the authorities once again that he had seen an object like "a firework," ascend "fairly quick," then "slow" and "wiggle" then "speed up" and get "lost."  Then he saw a second object that "glimmered" in the sky, higher than the first, then a red dot move up to that object, then a puff of smoke, then another puff, then a "firebox."  The agents seem to have taken him seriously.

In Mike Wire's first interview on July 29, 1996, at his Pennsylvania home, he told an FBI agent exactly what he had seen, and it tracks closely with Delgado's account.  Here is how the agent recorded the conversation on his "302:"

Wire saw a white light that was traveling skyward from the ground at approximately a 40 degree angle.  Wire described the white light as a light that sparkled and thought it was some type of fireworks. Wire stated that the white light 'zig zagged' (sic) as it traveled upwards, and at the apex of its travel the white light "arched over" and disappeared from Wire's view. . . . Wire stated the white light traveled outwards from the beach in a south-southeasterly direction.

After the light disappeared, the 302 continues, Wire "saw an orange light that appeared to be a fireball."  Although the CIA chose to build its animation squarely on Mike Wire's perspective, the story the CIA video told bore almost no relation to the one Wire had told the FBI. 

The NTSB transcribed its 1999 conversations with the CIA analysts responsible for the video.  (NTSB Witness document, Appendix FF, Docket No. SA-516, April 30, 1999).  In this document, the CIA analysts concede the problems that Mike Wire's original 302 presented. 

Said one, "We realized that if he [Wire] was only seeing the airplane, that he would not see a light appear from behind the rooftop of that house."  In other words, the CIA could not square its account of a self-imploding airline turning into a rocket with Wires' account since TWA 800 was at least 20 degrees above the horizon, well above the rooftop. So, claimed the CIA analyst, "We asked the FBI to talk to [Wire] again, and they did."

It was during this follow-up interview with the FBI, some time in 1997, that Wire was reported to have changed his mind, now admitting that he had first seen the ascending light high above the rooftop. How high?  Said the CIA analyst,  "[Wire] said it was as if - if you imagine a flag pole on top of the house it would be as if it were on the top or the tip of the flag pole."

The CIA analysts based their video on this second interview with Mike Wire.  "FBI investigators determined precisely where the eyewitness was standing," says the narrator while the video shows the explosion from Wire's perspective on Beach Lane Bridge. "The white light the eyewitness saw was very likely the aircraft very briefly ascending and arching over after it exploded rather than a missile attacking the aircraft."

The CIA animation converts Wire's "40 degree" climb to one of roughly 70 or 80 degrees. It reduces the movement of an obvious smoke trail from three dimensions, south and east "outward from the beach," to a small, two-dimensional blip far off shore.  It places the explosion noticeably to the West of where Wire clearly remembers it.  Most problematically, it fully ignores Wire's claim that the streak of light ascended "skyward from the ground" and places his first sighting 20 degrees above the horizon, exactly where Flight 800 would have been.

In fact, Wire never told the FBI anything about a flagpole.  He could not have.  He never talked to the FBI, the NTSB or the CIA after July of 1996. The CIA and/or the FBI fabricated the entire interview and added the flagpole detail to make the interview seem real.  The 302 from this alleged second interview is not in the official NTSB record.

The surfer added confirming detail to Wire's account.  After thirteen years, he finally read the 302s the FBI had prepared.  The first one from 1996 was entirely accurate.  The second one from 1997 added very specific new details about the surfer that served to discredit his testimony.  Not only were the details untrue, the surfer told me, but, as in Wire's case, there was no second interview.

Delgado presented more of a challenge.  The serious nature of his second interview suggests that there was still a force within the bureaucracy struggling to get at the truth.  By the time of the NTSB's final hearing in August 2000, that force had obviously been suppressed. 

At the hearing the task of discrediting Delgado fell to one Dr. David Mayer, who headed up the NTSB's Orwellian-titled "Human Performance Division."  He too solved his problem with a flagpole.  As Mayer described events, everything Delgado saw occurred "between these two flagpoles."  Mayer then used an illustration to show where those flagpoles were located and vectored Delgado's line of sight from between those flagpoles out to sea.

"So again," said Mayer, "it doesn't appear that this witness was looking in the right location to see where flight 800 would have been when it would have been struck by a hypothetical missile."  If he were looking in the wrong direction, Mayer implied, none of his testimony could possibly matter.

One major objection here. In none of the FBI notes does Delgado ever mention a flagpole, let alone two flagpoles. With good reason. There weren't any at his location in Westhampton. Like the CIA analysts, Mayer created flagpoles that did not exist and entered them into the official record.

Mayer knew better.  In researching this article I discovered a detail I had missed before.  On July 20, 1996, three days after the crash, the Suffolk County Police went to the high school parking lot where Delgado had been standing and did a GPS reading of his angle of vision.  Mayer had total access to this information.  He suppressed it.  And he was not the only one to suppress information.  There is powerful evidence to suggest that the authorities consciously corrupted the testimony of the three most critical eyewitness to the crash.

The NTSB has since fully abandoned the CIA "zoom-climb" explanation, but it worked to distract an administration-friendly media.  For a new administration so keen on transparency, and a media so keen on exposing the past abuses of our intelligence agencies, and for the families of air crash victims looking for closure, TWA Flight 800 would seem like a very good place to start clearing the air. 

It is time to reopen the case.

[DB]

My mistake. I didn’t read the entire article. The implication from the start is that their fate was related (why else would it reopen TWA flight 800?).

[DB]

I probably misread something earlier... Basically that they would be trying to fly over the storm and that this particular storm had wicked weather at 50,000 feet - or something to that affect...

[lentulusgracchus]

Plus, I’ve been to those beach areas, specifically the Morichies, 15K is about right, they still look big in the sky

Well, the missile theory has a few problems (setting the eyewitnesses aside for a minute), the first being tactical. I'm unaware of a MANPADS that can reach an aircraft reliably at 13,000'. The Stinger's operational ceiling is about that, or rather less. The copies cranked out by the Soviets and Chinese are about the same, for obvious reasons (their propellants aren't any better than ours).

And remember the attempt in Kenya a few years ago to take down an airliner with a pair of ex-Soviet SA-14's (the Stinger copies I referred to). The attempt failed.

A further problem for the TWA 800 missile enthusiasts is the fact that the explosion occurred dead-center in the aircraft, whereas SA-14's, Stingers, etc., are IR homing and typically strike an engine. Recall the DHL Airbus A300 freighter that was struck on one wing (photo) over Baghdad by an SA-14 MANPADS but managed to land safely.

If TWA 800 had been struck by an SA-14, a) it might easily have survived the attack and landed safely, the 747 being a big, capable aircraft with multiple system redundancy, and b) if it had succumbed, the sequence of events would have been a lot different.

[Thermalseeker]

Basically that they would be trying to fly over the storm and that this particular storm had wicked weather at 50,000 feet - or something to that affect...

They were transitioning what is known as the "inter tropical convergence zone" or the ITCZ. This is where trade winds from the northern and southern hemispheres converge. This convergence often results in very violent convective weather. My guess is weather wasn't the only factor, though. Usually, a crash is caused by a series of events that stack up on each other to cause the crash. All too often the last item in the stack sadly is pilot error....

[LS]

The simple fact is this: eyewitnesses see anything and everything, which is why they are largely unreliable in any trial.

Forensics don't lie. The forensics of the airplane showed

*no explosive material of the type associated with any known warhead, and certainly not on any "Stinger" type missile.

*This was explained away in "First Strike" as the (what I will call) "attack" missile didn't explode---it "passed through." This would be more unusual than electric static charge, more about which I will comment in a moment.

*Since Saunders had no explosive residue, he then focused on the infamous "red residue" that he claimed could be evidence of a "pass through" missile---i.e., one that didn't explode but simply passed through the airplane. Problem: this also would not cause the explosion. Saunders then hypothesized that such a missile wasn't the "attack" missile, but now changed his story to claim it was an off-course drone from a Navy exercise being chased by an "attack" missile. Ok, so now we have TWO missiles, neither of which showed up on ANY radar screen anywhere.

I have yet to find any military person who thinks a Stinger, given the range, altitude, and distance, could have reached TWA 800. It was at the very, very extreme end of a Stinger IF . . . IF . . . the shooter was perfectly situated underneath TWA 800. But then see problem #1: no explosive residue.

The so-called red residue of a pass through missile was explained by other chemical reactions, and for such a pass through missile to have been the culprit, it would have left massive, other consistent signatures everywhere---in hull entry, throughout every piece of recovered (compromised) material. No such evidence was ever found.

No radar has ever detected missile evidence; the Navy staunchly denied ever conducting tests, and no Navy person has ever once broken with that denial.

As to the static electricity, this was reproduced on the show "Mythbusters" a few years ago. They achieved a fuel tank explosion under similar (not exact) conditions that to them was stunning in the violence of the explosion. It literally blew their test article apart.

[LS]

This is still at the extreme, extreme end of any hand-held missile. Remember, it's not just altitude---it's distance. You can say 15,000 feet, but that's if you are directly underneath. For every foot away from the target you are, it is altitude PLUS distance.

[LS]

See my critique. Saunders is way off base if you look at the forensic evidence. I don't exclude the idea of a government coverup, but a) Mythbusters did recreate the fuel tank explosion on their stupid little budget, and b) there is zero evidence of explosive residue in the 800 wreckage.

See my critique above. One more point: You could say, "Well, the terrorists used a pass through missile without an explosive warhead." Wow. That would be a first, and it would be taking a phenomenal risk that it would have the effect it did. If it passed through the hull but didn't cause an explosion, it would damage the plane, but not necessarily destroy it.

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

Correct...and the last one was in Arkansas last week.

[Thermalseeker]

It literally blew their test article apart.

The Mythbusters did nothing to reduce the oxygen content of the atmosphere around their test subject to mirror the oxygen content in the center fuel tank of TWA800 at 12,000'-14,000'. Since they didn't do this their "test" was meaningless....

[djf]

Rubbish.

There are multiple unidentifieds on the radar images.

[LS]

There is always a variable that cannot be reproduced. But it’s funny how quickly people want to disregard any test that doesn’t support their thesis-—which has already been disproved.

[LS]

Evidence?

[Blueflag]

US Navy Standard missile could.

But far more likely is
(1) pilots lost control of the aircraft in turbulent/grey skies, it departed controlled flight and the airframe broke apart due to mechanical stress, or
(2) a small bomb exploded on-board the damaged the aircraft to the point it degraded and fell apart in the sky.

[Blueflag]

As a former race track firefighter, I can tell you that sealed fuel tanks, even partially filled ones, even heated ones, *DO NOT* explode from internal ignition. We used to demonstrate the fact during noob training by dropping a lit match down the gas tank filler tube of a wrecked passenger car. The fumes at the mouth of the tube flared, and then the match went out.

Once you understand the explosive limits and flammable limits of various fuels, you’ll KNOW the TWA 800 explanation is just absurd.

Just to make you think a bit ... *IF* TWA 800 was hit center mass by a missile, it was probably radar-guided, not IR, like a ‘Stinger’. THAT implies a level of sophistication not usually associated with your garden variety Achmed-the-jihadist level of terrorist. So, who was on that airplane that needed ‘dying’? So much so that serious SAM technology needed to make certain it worked. An IR-guided SAM might have only hit an outboard engine, or even missed all together, considering the altitude and the frontal aspect ratio of the shot. A 747 is a sturdy bird. I personally doubt a ‘Stinger’ or similar would have been able to cause what happened to TWA 800.

[AlexW]

“See my critique. Saunders is way off base if you look at the forensic evidence.See my critique. Saunders is way off base if you look at the forensic evidence.”

Well, I have no interest in reopening an old sad story.
I merely said that I was in the camp that says IT MAY HAVE BEEN SHOT DOWN.
I can only go by the statements of many eye witnesses.
I have no other opinions about it.

As for the AF flight, it is just one of those things.
Something went wrong at the wrong time.

[Thermalseeker]

There is always a variable that cannot be reproduced. But it’s funny how quickly people want to disregard any test that doesn’t support their thesis-—which has already been disproved.

I'm not disregarding anything pertinent. I'm stating a simple fact of the chemistry of combustion. You can't have explosive combustion of kerosene without oxygen. Oxygen doesn't exist in sufficient quantities at a pressure altitude of 12,000'-14,00' msl to allow for explosive combustion of kerosene.

In order to get kerosene vapors to achieve explosive combustion at that altitude it must be compressed. This is precisely what happens inside a jet engine.

Since the center fuel tank, and, in fact, all fuel tanks on all aircraft are vented to the outside ambient pressure in order to allow for fuel and tank expansion and contraction as the aircraft ascends and descends, where did the oxygen inside the tank come from that allowed the vapors in the tank to achieve explosive combustion? It's a really simple question, and one that nobody, not the CIA, the FAA, the FBI, the NTSB, none of them, and certainly not "Mythbusters". has answered.

You can parrot all the so-called answers from the FBI, CIA, FAA, NTSB (and Mythbusters) as loud and proud as you want, but it still doesn't answer this simple question of chemistry.....

[waxer1]

When you have a group of over 100 witnesses, two of them were FBI agents on an outing, taking out a full length ad proclaiming that they saw a missile hit the plane I believe them.

I will always say that that plane was brought down by terrorist period.

[Blueflag]

I agree with you about the missile. *IF* it was a missile, it was likely a radar-guided, or a least terminally-guided (radar or optical) missile in order to hit center mass. AND when you add on the altitude of the strike, the scenario of Achmed with a Stinger or similar just doesn’t make sense.

ALSO, the nature of the reports of the missile track and smoke trail do NOT align to the flight characteristics of one of the US Navy’s big SM-1s, or SM-2s. So let’s leave the US Navy out of this.

I’ll go with a sophisticated attack using a radar-guided SAM

[waxer1]

In order to get Jet-A fuel to explode it has to be agitated. You cannot just put a match to it, it won’t burn.

So what caused the fuel to explode?

[Thermalseeker]

In order to get Jet-A fuel to explode it has to be agitated.

No, it has to be compressed, thereby enriching the oxygen mixture.

You cannot just put a match to it, it won’t burn.

Kerosene will barely burn at sea level. If you throw a match into a pan of kerosene, 9 times out of 10 it will go out. That's because the vapors aren't explosive and cannot achieve explosive combustion, even at sea level pressure.

So what caused the fuel to explode?

Whatever caused the airplane to explode. I don't know what was the cause, but quite obviously fuel vapor wasn't it......