Free Republic

Bloggers have taken to calling Jamie Gorelick “The Mistress of Disaster” and with good reason. As Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton, she penned the infamous “wall” memo that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information in the run-up to September 11. After leaving the Justice Department, she headed over to Fannie Mae, where as vice-chair she helped wreck the American economy. From Fannie Mae, Gorelick careened back to the less than useless 9-11 Commission, whose mission she did her best to subvert. Few bloggers, however, have asked why Fannie Mae handed a middling bureaucrat with no financial or housing experience...

When published in hardback in 2006, Peter Lance’s investigative book, Triple Cross, deserved more attention than it got. Thanks to U.S Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor of Scooter Libby and Rod Blagojevich, the paperback release of Triple Cross will get much more attention than the hardback release did three years ago. "Of particular interest to me, Lance details how the Ali Mohamed case intersected with the TWA Flight 800 case, a subject that Lance is not afraid to tackle." Fitzgerald does not approve of the book’s thesis, a thesis embedded in the original subtitle, “How Bin Laden’s Master Spy Penetrated...

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. ...

What Does Leon Panetta Know About TWA 800?Excerpt: "Best evidence is that MSNBC, which had gone on the air just two days prior to the TWA 800 disaster, won a bidding war for the amateur video.According to an MSNBC editor, who refuses to talk on the record, "three men in suits" came to the station’s editing suites the night of the crash, removed the tape, and threatened the editors with serious consequences if they ever revealed its contents.At Leon Panetta’s confirmation hearing, some bold senator just might want to ask the presumptive CIA chief what happened to the videotape. As...

Last week, I received an email from a former 747 pilot named Thomas Young. In early August 1996, Young explained, he was laid up in a Hong Kong hospital with a back injury. His employer, Polar Air Cargo, flew his wife Barbara out to join him. They had little else to do but watch TV. Here is what they saw. The videotape began with people milling about on a deck facing a body of water. In the background, a streak of†light can be seen leaving a point below the edge of the deck, accelerating as it climbed; it passed behind...

Aafia Siddiqui is believed to be an al-Qaeda operative. Among the documents in her possession were handwritten notes referring to a “mass-casualty attack” listing locations commonly known to be targets: Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the Empire State Building. But one target, Plum Island, remains virtually unknown to the American public. If Siddiqui really is an al-Qaeda operative, the consideration that this government facility (officially known as the Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center) is a target is unnerving....

absolutely horrifying scenes, but Olberman's rant against RNC is turned on his head.

Do paired dates prove Iraq-al-Qaida connection? Posted: August 21, 20081:00 am Eastern © 2008  In late April 2003, after the fall of Baghdad, CNN correspondent Wolf Blitzer replayed an earlier conversation he had had with the Iraqi foreign minister, the wily Tariq Aziz.One overlooked part of this conversation caught the very sharp eye of aspiring filmmaker Chris Kusnell.When Blitzer asked Aziz about the fate of missing U.S. Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher, Aziz answered that Speicher was killed in a crash on night one of the Gulf War. As proof, Aziz volunteered that Speicher was not among the POWs released...

I dedicated my book, What’s The Matter With California, to a retired United Airline pilot named Ray Lahr, “a true Californian and patriot”—and with good reason. Today, the tireless World War II vet and his intrepid attorney, John Clarke, are all that stand in the way of the successful execution of the single most astonishing cover-up in American peacetime history. What makes this whole event so astonishing is that TWA Flight 800 went down with 230 good souls on board in full view of literally hundreds of eyewitnesses on Long Island’s affluent south shore. Even more astonishing, although 270 of...

“We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” Hillary Clinton told the editorial board of The Sioux Falls Argus Leader last week in explaining her reason for staying in the presidential race. This comment evoked predictable outrage from the Obama-happy media. “The politics of this nation is steeped enough in blood, Senator Clinton,” wailed MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in higher dudgeon than usual. “You cannot and must not invoke that imagery! Anywhere! At any time!” Unfortunately for an earlier black rival of the Clintons with presidential aspirations of his own, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, the then Clinton-happy media...

...As evidence of Mr. Clinton's impact, the campaign cites the Pennsylvania primary, which Sen. Clinton won by a margin of nearly 10 percentage points over Sen. Obama. Campaign data show that Sen. Clinton won by huge margins in several rural counties that her husband visited: 44 percentage points in Armstrong County, 44 points in Cambria County, 48 points in Carbon County and 50 points in Greene County. This compares with an edge of 26 points for Hillary among rural voters statewide. In Bucks County, a Philadelphia suburb that Mr. Clinton visited, Sen. Clinton won by 26 points, compared with only...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys, but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small business circles. A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit event production community — and anyone else who will listen — to get their cash upfront when doing business with her. Her campaign, say representatives of the two companies, has stopped returning phone calls and e-mails...

Clinton didn't pay health insurance bills By: Kenneth P. Vogel March 31, 2008 10:53 AM EST Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out. Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda. The campaign provides health insurance to all its employees, their spouses, partners and children – and that wasn’t interrupted by any lag in payments to insurance providers, said Jay Carson,...

Predictably, Hillary, when the National Archives released 11,000 pages of your schedule as first lady, the media focused on the unenlightening and the inconsequential. Where were you when Bill soiled Monica's blue dress? Where were you when Bill was impeached? When did you first start work on health care reform? But Hillary, there is one question that needs to be asked, one that cuts right to your own claim to the presidency: Where were you at 3 a.m. on the morning of July 18, 1996? In the ad that helped you win the Texas primary, a hushed male voice solemnly...

Did Clarke’s “Almost War” cause The Real One? January 31, 2008 - WND.com © Jack Cashill by Jack Cashill This is the sixth in a six-part series detailing the risks to American national security if Barack Obama (or Hillary Clinton) should ever choose to let Richard Clarke back into government. Clarke is currently one of Obama’s top national security advisors. "If they've been secretive in the past, they'll be secretive as president," Barack Obama said on the stump recently in reference to Bill and Hillary Clinton. But the keeper of the Clintons’ deepest secret now serves not the Clintons but...

...Tonight's "The Final Report: Investigation of TWA Flight 800" on National Geographic Channel presents a brilliant, well-researched look into what the investigators found - and what they didn't find. The show details the animosity that existed from day one between the NTSB and the FBI. The NTSB is usually the final word in all air crashes. But because a number of eyewitnesses on the ground saw streaks flying towards the aircraft right before it exploded, and air traffic controllers reporting blips around the aircraft, the FBI came in and took over the investigation, calling it a possible crime. There were...

On the Sunday morning of July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR655. The first missile struck the tail and right wing and broke the aircraft in half. All 290 people aboard were killed. Misunderstanding America, the Iranians claimed that our Navy had intentionally destroyed the plane. The Navy did no such thing.

More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him—likely by accident—one seriously smoking gun. The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney, John Clarke of Washington DC, details a communication that took place six days after the crash: "On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis...

TWA FLIGHT 800 was DOWNED in 1996 by a MISSILE, not the fuel tank! HOW MANY JOBS WERE LOST DUE TO CLINTON COVERUP?? 2002 - The GOVERNMENT COVER-UP is STILL GOING ON! TWA Flight 800 shot down on July 16, 1996. On July 15 a communiqu‚ was issued by Islamic jihad connected to Iraq. It read: "The mujahideen [holy warriors] will deliver the ultimate response to the threats of the foolish American president. Everyone will be amazed at the size of that response. Their time is at the morning-dawn," which corresponded to dusk in New York when TWA Flight 800...

FBI suppressed video of TWA explosion Posted: August 30, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern Recovered debris from TWA 800 More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him –likely by accident – one seriously smoking gun. The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney details a communication that took place six days after the crash: "On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a...

Called "No Survivors"

Thankfully even the most heavily used bridges almost never collapse. Bridges near the ocean with salt water spray are particularly vulnerable to weaknesses caused by corrosion yet they too rarely collapse. In fact the handfull of bridges that have collapse are a result of earthquake, poor engineering (this reveals itself almost immediately after construction) or some other easily identifiable factor. We are now in the second day and no one yet has a clue why the bridge collapsed. This is extremely peculiar. The design was not exotic and the location of the bridge was not in any area prone to...

Jim Hurd II crouched among the petunias and wispy pennisetum grasses at the TWA Flight 800 memorial Monday, trying to fix broken lights for Tuesday night's prayer service. Since his son, Jamie Hurd III, died on the flight on July 17, 1996, Hurd, 62, travels to Smith Point Beach each July on the anniversary of the crash from his home in Severn, Md. During much of the rest of the year, he urges airline industry groups to outfit airplanes with a device that would have prevented the explosion that killed his son. Yet 11 years after the center fuel tank...

On this day in history TWA was downed - witnesses saw a streak of smoke like a trailing missile hit TWA 800. If you believe the "official story" about TWA 800 that the Clinton Administration forced on the public with the help of the FBI and CIA you need to read this book and listen to all of the witnesses. I’m convinced that this was an terrorist strike on our Airlines. Bill Clinton wanted this story to go away, so a "Center Fuel Tank" story was hatched, Janet Reno with the help of FBI and the CIA ran with this...

Nearly 11 years after a fuel tank exploded on TWA Flight 800, killing 230 people off the South Shore of Long Island, a congressional committee voted yesterday to force the Federal Aviation Administration to act to prevent similar explosions. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee added language to the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act that would require the federal government to make so-called inerting systems standard equipment on commercial airlines. If passed by the full Congress, the FAA would have to require the installation of the safety equipment on the nation's commercial fleet to begin by the end of the...

UK filtration and advanced materials group Porvair is among a number of companies working to prevent accidents like the one that killed 230 passengers aboard TWA flight 800 in a fireball off Long Island. The Boeing 747 en route to Paris from New York exploded 12 minutes after takeoff from JFK International airport on 17 July, 1996. The cause was the subject of intense debate for years, but investigators concluded vapours ignited in a fuel tank. Nearly eleven years later, Boeing has given initial approval ('qualification') for one of Porvair’s filter designs to prevent similar explosions in aircraft fuel tanks,...

James Sanders is stirring again. Two items have put the veteran investigative reporter – and my partner on the documentary "Silenced" and the book "First Strike" – on his own personal Code Orange. One is the news out of JFK that Islamic terrorists are up to their old tricks again. At JFK? My, who da thunk it? The second, and more personally galvanizing, is that Sanders has just gotten a big batch of new TWA Flight 800-related documents from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act. These documents stem from Sanders' stillborn civil suit against a government that convicted...

MONTOURSVILLE, Pa. -- Long before terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, Rudy Giuliani consoled victims of a horrific tragedy that bound New York to this small tightly knit borough. The Republican presidential candidate returned to Montoursville High School on Sunday night, more than a decade after 16 students and five chaperones died aboard TWA Flight 800 when it crashed off the Long Island coast on July 17, 1996. Giuliani, then New York mayor, rushed to mourners' sides after the Paris-bound jumbo jet fell ablaze into the Atlantic Ocean a dozen minutes after taking off from Kennedy airport. All 230...

Actually, Angela Clemente resists the designation "PI" – private investigator. The self-effacing 42-year-old refers to herself as a "paralegal" with a strong background in clinical lab work. Of course, given her modesty, Clemente will absolutely freak at the word "best," especially now that she finds herself being hounded by forces within the FBI and Department of Justice. Still, it is hard to deny the accomplishments of Clemente and her recently deceased colleague, Stephen Dresch. The pair has shed more light on the major mysteries of the Clinton era than the FBI and the New York Times combined. In March 2005,...

It now looks like the American people will never learn how - and why - Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy "Sticky Fingers" Berger, stole and destroyed classified documents from the National Archives. That's because Berger - in a significant, but little-noticed, move - has short-circuited the last investigation into his sordid little burglary. As Byron York reports at National Review Online, Berger last week voluntarily surrendered his law license. Now, that's hardly as serious a step as it sounds, since - as Berger freely admitted - "I have not [practiced law] for 15 years and do not envision returning...

Multiple Shooters Possible, Study Says In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot the two bullets that struck and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., May 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Phyre Technologies, Inc., a San Diego based technology development company successfully demonstrated its GOBIGGS(tm) fuel tank safety system at the FAA's Atlantic City Technology Center. GOBIGGS(tm) (Green On-Board Inert Gas Generation System), is the first environmentally friendly system designed to protect aircraft from fuel tank explosions like TWA 800. This is the result of several years' development in the anticipation of a pending FAA ruling, requiring improved fuel tank safety systems on commercial passenger aircraft. Over two weeks, various flight conditions were tested. This included ground operations, multiple rate accents, descents, and high...

On the night of July 17, 1996, while George Tenet was deputy director of Central Intelligence, TWA Flight 800 took off from JFK headed for Paris only to disappear into a black hole off the coast of Long Island 12 minutes later. So powerful was the gravitational field of that hole that not even a single proton of information about the doomed flight has escaped it, at least not in Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm." There is much to overlook here, and Tenet has no excuse for doing so. A presumed terrorist attack on an airliner...

PACIFIC MISSILE RANGE FACILITY, KAUAI, Hawaii: In a first-of-its-kind dual missile defense test today, Raytheon Company produced Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) and Standard Missile-2 (SM-2) simultaneously engaged targets over the Pacific Ocean. This was the first time a U.S. Navy ship demonstrated simultaneous ship engagements against both cruise and ballistic missile targets. It was the eighth successful intercept for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system's SM-3. The SM-3 Block IA destroyed a short-range ballistic missile target in space while SM-2 Block IIIA engaged a cruise missile threat at a lower altitude. Both intercepting missiles were fired from guided missile cruiser USS...

Ex-CIA Director George Tenet says the intelligence extracted from terror suspects in the Agency’s “High Value Detainee” program, which includes so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” was more valuable than all the other terror intelligence gathered by the FBI, the National Security Agency and the CIA. In his first network television interview, the nation’s former top spy denied any torture took place, but tells Scott Pelley that the High Value Detainee program saved lives and allowed the U.S. government to foil terror plots. The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday, April 29 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network....

American Airlines is hoping to help other airlines save money by reducing the amount of fuel carried in airplanes. American Airlines and California-based TDG Aerospace Inc. have developed equipment that will protect the center fuel tank inside the Boeing 757, eliminating the need for the airline to carry extra fuel - and lightening the aircraft by 1,000 pounds. The Universal Fault Interrupter, which was engineered and tested at American's Tulsa Maintenance Base, protects the center fuel tank from electrical sparks that could cause an explosion. Safety regulations require airplanes to carry extra fuel in case of emergencies and to guard...

ASHBURN, Va. - TWA Flight 800 burst into flames, broke into pieces and plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean near Long Island, N.Y., in July 1996. All 230 passengers and crewmembers lost their lives. More than 10 years later, a large section of the fuselage has been reconstructed in a Loudoun County hangar at the National Transportation Safety Board's Training Center, a facility rented from GW's satellite campus here in Ashburn, Va. While so many lost their lives on that plane, its reconstruction now serves as an educational tool for students and professionals studying disaster. Most people are unaware of the...

NTSB Chairman Says all Passengers Should Have the Same Level of Safety Regardless of the Age of the Aircraft Washington, DC -- National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark V. Rosenker today addressed an aviation conference in California reiterating the agency's concern with aging aircraft. "We have investigated several accidents and incidents that have highlighted the safety implications resulting from aircraft aging and these accidents repeatedly demonstrate the importance of effective airworthiness programs throughout the service life of aircraft," Rosenker said. "With the proper maintenance program, these accidents involving aging aircraft could have been prevented." During his speech in Palm Springs,...

What prompts this column is an e-mail I received last week from a retired USNR commander and former TWA pilot, with whom I had had no prior contact. He recounted a conversation that he had shortly after the mid-air destruction of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996, off the coast of Long Island. He had a particular interest in the plane's demise for two reasons. One is that he was a qualified accident investigator. The second is that he had flown that very same flight a week earlier. "It had to be a bloody missile, probably an un-armed Tomahawk,...

On July 6, 2006, Stonebridge International, a global strategy firm, announced that it had added a new member to its high-profile, five-member advisory board – former Democrat Rep. Lee Hamilton. True to form, the major media ignored the Hamilton appointment. They should not have. Hamilton, who had served as vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had just joined a firm headed by the man who had criminally undermined that very Commission, Stonebridge chairman and founder Samuel "Sandy" Berger. In the words of a recent House Committee report, Berger had perpetrated "a disturbing breach of trust and protocol that compromised the...

The Secret Sandy Risked His All For © Jack Cashill January 18, 2007 - WorldNetDaily.com If not the most skillful of embezzlers, Samuel “Sandy” Berger is a far more formidable character than the media would have us believe. When he made his now storied sorties into the National Archives, he risked his career and his reputation in so doing, and he knew it. Rest assured, he would not have done so were the secrets to be preserved not worth the risk of pilfering them. True to form, the major media refuse to even ask the most fundamental question: just what...

The House International Relations committee issued a report last week criticizing the FBI's investigation of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The FBI failed to pursue credible information that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had help, the committee said. The FBI shouldn't have abandoned its search for John Doe No. 2, the committee said. Jayna Davis, then a reporter for a television station in Oklahoma City, said she found at least 20 witnesses who identified Hussain al-Hussaini, a former Iraqi soldier, as the man they saw with Timothy McVeigh. And the FBI should have investigated more...

The FBI's record doesn't inspire confidence that we're being well protected The House International Relations committee issued a report last week criticizing the FBI's investigation of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. The FBI failed to pursue credible information that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols had help, the committee said. The FBI shouldn't have abandoned its search for John Doe No. 2, the committee said. Jayna Davis, then a reporter for a television station in Oklahoma City, said she found at least 20 witnesses who identified Hussain al-Hussaini, a former Iraqi soldier, as the man they...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Iranian government is partly to blame for a 1996 terrorist attack that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, a federal judge ruled Friday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth allows the families of the victims of the Khobar Towers bombing to seek $254 million in compensation from the conservative Islamic regime in Tehran. Though intelligence officials have suspected a link between the Tehran government and the Saudi wing of Hezbollah, which the FBI has accused of carrying out the bombing, Friday's ruling is the first time a branch of the U.S. government has...

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...

For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction ... it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in. George Orwell, "1984" On Aug. 14, 1996, four weeks after the crash of TWA Flight 800, the New York Times confirmed what the White House feared, namely that America had suffered the most lethal attack on its homeland ever. "Now that investigators say they think the center fuel tank did not explode," wrote the Times, "they say the only good explanations remaining are...

(This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Look for Part 2 tomorrow.) Part 2TWA Flight 800 is the Rosetta Stone of 9-11. If we can accurately decipher the destruction of that plane July 17, 1996, we will be able to interpret the larger events of Sept. 11.

Of all the mainstream reporters writing today on the terror front, none has the cojones of five-time Emmy Award winner Peter Lance, author of the new book, "Triple Cross: How bin Laden's Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the Green Berets, and the FBI – and Why Patrick Fitzgerald Failed to Stop Him." Lance sets out his thesis in the subtitle of this sprawling, daring epic, but as Lance knows, the most explosive part of his book deals not with Ali Mohamed, the master spy in question, but with the fate of TWA Flight 800. This is the Boeing 747 that...

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...

Zoom Climb Lawsuit October 31, 2006 My individual battle to pry information out of the CIA, the NTSB, and the NSA regarding TWA Flight 800 has been long, and lonely, and expensive. But at last I have achieved a favorable judgment from the federal court. Although Judge Matz emphasized that he is not expressing any opinions pertaining to the underlying premise of a missile, he has determined that I am entitled to most of the requested data and calculations pertaining to the zoom-climb. JUDGMENT OF THE COURT by Judge A. Howard Matz: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) shall produce to plaintiff...