5/27/98 AP Zurich The Guardian (London) pg 19 Freepers Wallaby & icwhatudo ".POLICE are investigating the possibility that insurance fraud by a Swiss resident listed among the 230 people killed in the TWA Flight 800 explosion might have been behind the disaster, Swiss television reported last night. Swiss authorities have been investigating Algerian-born Mohammmed Samir Ferrat, for 18 months, the report said. ..A Geneva lawyer, Gerald Page, alleged in an interview for the Swiss television report that Ferrat took out life insurance policies worth several million Swiss francs in the weeks before the plane crashed in July 1996, half an hour after taking off from New York…. On August 19, a month after the crash, the local medical examiner in Suffolk County - in whose jurisdiction the disaster occurred - declared that Mohammed Ferrat had been positively identified as a dead passenger from TWA Flight 800. US investigators counted him out as a suspect early.. The report showed footage of the late US commerce secretary, Ron Brown, at the Washington signing with Ferrat of a pounds 62.5 million contract between Sofin and the US construction firm Chatwick Inc, which was to build residences in the Ivory Coast. Chatwick spent pounds 2.5 million on the project before halting it, the television said.." Background from icwhatudo ".According to a CNN international report, Mohamed Samir Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of Secretary Brown, who was scheduled to accompany Brown on the Bosnian trip but withdrew at the last moment for reasons still unclear, died July 17, on the ill fated TWA Flight 800. Ferrat was initially treated by the FBI as a suspected terrorist in the TWA Flight 800 explosion because he was the sole passenger on the flight roster listed only by last name. The FBI, within hours of beginning their investigation of Ferrat, oddly withdrew, telling the New York Times that "Ferrat was not at all the kind of person to take a bomb on a plane. Nor was he a likely target of a bomb plot." BROWN'S ASSOCIATE DIED ON TWA 800 http://www.usvetdsp.com/usvet/story23.htm According to a CNN international report, Mohamed Samir Ferrat, an Algerian business associate of Secretary Brown, who was scheduled to accompany Brown on the Bosnian trip but withdrew at the last moment for reasons still unclear, died July 17, on the ill fated TWA Flight 800. Ferrat was initially treated by the FBI as a suspected terrorist in the TWA Flight 800 explosion because he was the sole passenger on the flight roster listed only by last name. The FBI, within hours of beginning their investigation of Ferrat, oddly withdrew, telling the New York Times that "Ferrat was not at all the kind of person to take a bomb on a plane. Nor was he a likely target of a bomb plot. U.S. government investigators have yet to determine whether missile, bomb or mechanical failure brought TWA 800 down, killing all 230 passengers and crew. "Ferrat, it turned out," the New York Times said, "was a wealthy and highly respected businessman, money manager and investor with offices and residences in the Ivory Coast, France and Switzerland . . . FBI agents learned all this without questioning Ferrat's family, friends or business associates, many of whom were gathered in their grief at the family hotel in Virginia." One source, who asked not to be identified, suggested the FBI cleared Ferrat quickly because they either learned of his connection to Secretary Brown or Ferrat may have been on the payroll of U.S. intelligence, possibly the CIA. Ferrat was also involved with Chadwick International Inc., a northern Virginia company that exports modular homes. Chadwick, Inc., founded in 1991, got its start, according to its chairman Ronald M. Nocera, by Ferrat arranging meetings with real estate contacts in Algeria. Nocera said Chadwick, Inc. currently holds or is negotiating deals worth $560 million with developers from Argentina to Vietnam.