TWA Flight 800 investigators break silence in new documentary, claim original conclusion about caus

reply to post by Soloprotocol


Yes it was.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by Soloprotocol

 

Yes it was.

cheers Zaphod58......I remember that well...

reply to post by EViLKoNCEPTz


The two theories that were discussed around the island (the dive shop that I was a regular client provided a ton of equipment and support to the recovery teams beginning the afternoon after Flight 800 exploded) and have not been debunked are:
1. The never discussed EL AL flight was the flight targeted by an extremist group who fired a device from a boat, but because the EL AL flight was delayed at the gate, TWA 800 was the next flight to share the same flight path and those firing the device shot down the wrong flight. The timing was specific to send a clear message and create chaos days before the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

2. An accidental launch during the international military exercises taking place off the coast of the Island at that time.

reply to post by madmac5150


Excellent find, S & F.
I still say all those people were Murdered and I believe that!
Here's a pretty good video.

what makes me wonder about this is:
the center-wing tank showed clear evidence about an explosion from inside out, and all pieces surroundig it where recovered and did not show any missile impact.

Hence a missile would most likely hit the wing, so what is going on here ?

From what i remember the theory of a missile was part of the investigation, but later dismissed, after the wreckage has been examined.

For those who don't remember:
the original report concluded, that the almost empty tank under the cabin in the center of the wings has been exposed to unusual high temperatures, caused by the air-conditioning system (airpack) sitting below the tank, cause the plane was standing on ground with running engines for an unusual long time.
The temperatures caused remaining fuel to vaporize into an air-fuel mixture, which was able to ignit at a certain state, due to damaged wiring of something inside the tank (don't remember if it was a fuel pump or a sensor).
As an evidence for an in-tank explosion of vaporized fuel they found an inner wall from the tank with impact markings at positions just a fuel deflagration could have caused. The wall was kind of bent down and intact. an impacting missile would have caused other damage, it would have ripped the wall up and into pieces.
the explosion (if it already can be called an explosion, i'm unsure but i think the report stated deflagration). however, ripped essential elements of the fuselage out of position, causing the plane to disintegrate.

There were photographs and the whole chain of evidence was complete and conclusive.

I read the report with great interest, cause i was shocked to hear that the damaged wiring in other planes was thought to remain where it is, because it would have been too expensive to replace it. This however lead to constructing a system to flood the tanks with nitrogene when empty, which was thought to be a better solution to avoid future incidents with wiring and vaporized fuel.

And now this ?

calling this a forged report would mean Boeing and others invested MILLIONS to upgrade wiring and implement a system for filling up the tanks with inhert gas ?

i strongly believe Fox has been fooled on this !

reply to post by TheCrimsonGhost


I lived it and have been following it for years. I'll have to go through my documents when I get home to find the specific links from reputable mainstream publications which document the bidding war for the video and the FBI confiscation. I thought it would be in my Pocket/ReadItLater but it is not.

reply to post by TMJ1972


It was a short circuit in one of the fuel probes they concluded. The fuel vapor was pushed above the ignition point by the air conditioning unit under the tank while they sat on the ground with the AC running, then the wiring to one of the probes had been chafed to the point it shorted inside the tank.

I was sitting in a bar when the breaking news came across that it had crashed, and the center wing fuel tank was the first thing I said (this was less than 2 hours after the crash). The Air Force had recently lost two KC-135s to center wing fuel tank explosions (caused by faulty fuel pump designs).

Glad people are growing a conscience. Maybe (fingers crossed) more and more will follow suit.

reply to post by Zaphod58


A number of the students were high school students from Williamsport, PA.
My now deceased father-in-law told me something interesting the night that it happened.
He was at work when a coworker received a call from her son in the US Navy. He said that the ship that he was stationed on shot Flight 800 down. It was accidental, according to him.
I know that it sounds incredible in that someone would have surely talked about it since then and what reason would there be for the government to cover it up.
But that is what I heard the night that it occurred.

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

Originally posted by NickDC202
I was glued to MSNBC all night and will never forget the airing of an amateur video showing what appeared to be a missile soaring up from the ocean and then an explosion in the sky. That explosion was TWA 800.

I didn't see that. I wonder if anybody taped the broadcast? Sometimes I would tape stuff so I could watch it later and FF through the commercials, but I wasn't watching MSNBC at that time.

There aren't many details in the article. Hopefully the film will have more. But if it was really ordinance I would have thought that it would leave a signature about the source, and the article says they don't speculate about the source.

Originally posted by EViLKoNCEPTz
There was no radar evidence of a SAM

The article linked in the OP does say something about radar evidence:

“They also provide radar and forensic evidence proving that one or more ordinance explosions outside the aircraft caused the crash.”

edit on 18-6-2013 by Arbitrageur because: clarification

My recollection of this is - the Navy was in the area conducting drills. From what I understand they us civilian/commercial aircraft as mock targets, but obviously not with live ammunition. I always felt this was an accident they needed to cover up because the population would freak out knowing that the military use civilian craft as mock targets.

reply to post by butcherguy


I heard that before, but it doesn't make sense. There were no radar tracks that connected to the TWA flight. As close as they were to NYC one of the radars would have seen something. They were still within the range that a primary radar would pick up a skin paint, even of something as small as a missile. The other thing is that a ship launched missile has a huge visual signature that no one reported seeing (even the helicopter flying in the area missed it).

This is the JDS Kongo launching an SM-2/3.




That signature would be pretty hard to miss, even from near shore.

reply to post by EViLKoNCEPTz


You have to look pretty hard to find the details because it's not something readily advertised. For all I know, models in the current versions can't even do it. However, a pesky little rumor out there suggests that the Stinger SAM system has or at least had a kinetic mode to operate in where it functioned like a BIG bullet. Punch through but not explode. 'Course...That's just rumors and all because I'm sure such an actual capability isn't talked about or anything.

reply to post by NickDC202

I remember the video of what looked like a rocket. It was later explained that it was actually fuel being ejected and then ignited from the aircraft. Never bought that explanation.

When this happened, I was dating a serviceman in the Navy. He told me it was a missile, but wouldn't say how he knew or why he thought that. He could've been pulling my chain, but he was a very honest guy and mentioned it casually.

He was home on a short leave and we'd gone to the park for a picnic. There was a news report on the radio about the flight and I remember speculating about a bomb. He said "No, it was a missile. We've already determined that."

Then he wouldn't say anything else. It was the first time I'd heard the missile theory.

Take it with a grain of salt, but there you go.

reply to post by TheCrimsonGhost


This is NOT the source I know I have at home, but I came across it Googling as I am on the train commuting home. I'll have more sources for you in a couple hours TheCrimsonGhost, I promise.

Jack Cashill, the co-author of "First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America" wrote the following article on 30 August 2007. In the article he cites information obtained by his "First Strike" co-author and leading TWA 800 expert journalist James Sanders.

Although I have not seen the July 17 video, I have heard from scores, if not hundreds, of credible people who swear they saw it on television in the first hours after the crash. Some have described it to me and other independent investigators in perfect detail.

MSNBC, launched just two days prior to the disaster, seemed to have won the bidding war for the rights to the July 17 video. I say “seemed” because my source will not speak on record, nor will MSNBC follow up on queries.

What I have been told, however, is that late on the night of the crash, editors at MSNBC had the tape on their monitors when “three men in suits” came to their editing suites, removed the tape, and threatened the editors with serious consequences if they ever revealed its contents. The threats worked all too well. Despite my repeated requests, my source, who was one of the MSNBC editors in question, will not go public, and this video too has disappeared from the official record.

The evidence of a suppressed video, or videos, correlates well with information that my investigative partner James Sanders had received in response to an earlier FOIA petition. As Sanders’ documents reveal, on July 31, 1996, an FBI facility in Quantico, Va. sent back to the FBI office in New York “one original VHS-C Video Cassette Tape, 10 processed VHS video Cassette tape copies, 30 B & W video prints, 49 color video prints.”

Based on the notations on Sanders’ documents, these copies seem to be of the July 17th videotape. The newly un-redacted document in question does not confirm this video’s existence, but it does show the willingness of the authorities to suppress highly relevant video evidence. The question remains: Evidence of what? If there is full agreement among independent investigators that missiles were fired on the night of July 17, 1996, there is no consensus as to who fired them or why. The apparent July 12 video can be interpreted in two ways. The MANPAD reference by the DIA would seem to strengthen the case for terrorist-fired missiles. But the earlier date argues more strongly for a missile test than for a terrorist misfire.

FBI Supressed Video of TWA 800 Explosion

I don't know why Cashill is not definitive on the video being broadcast (it was), but the other information holds up.

reply to post by Bilk22


The CIA being brought in to produce animations explaining "what people think they saw was actually this" was an epic failure because the video the CIA produced was only met with universal laughter:

Originally posted by Zaphod58
It was a short circuit in one of the fuel probes they concluded. The fuel vapor was pushed above the ignition point by the air conditioning unit under the tank while they sat on the ground with the AC running, then the wiring to one of the probes had been chafed to the point it shorted inside the tank.

I was sitting in a bar when the breaking news came across that it had crashed, and the center wing fuel tank was the first thing I said (this was less than 2 hours after the crash). The Air Force had recently lost two KC-135s to center wing fuel tank explosions (caused by faulty fuel pump designs).

thank you for pinpointing the cause and the other Boeings being lost due to the same cause

with that ongoing examination at that time i remember these eyewhitness reports of a missile too. i also heard about the investigation team first thinking into a bomb or a missile too.

the eyewhitness reports were dismissed later on, when they found the wall from inside the tank and its conclusive damage.
They later said people usually look at the incident AFTER it already happened, and it was thought that a piece of debris with a trail of smoke falling faster and in some other direction than the two larger parts of the fuselage could have been confused with the trail of a missile.

The video about the helicopter pilot .. oh well .. so he heard the explosion of ordnance .. he actually heard that from the distance. uhm...
i don't know if you ever flew with a helicopter, but you usually hear nothing much else than the helicopter itself, because its so loud that usually all people aboard wear headphone.
So how are the chances that one can hear 'multiple explosions' through the noise of a helicopter AND the headphones.

As i said, most people got aware of it when they saw the prominent fireball. And if they see a fireball they usually conclude the use of a weapons of sort, as their first and (from their viewpoint) correct conclusion.

as i said, i looked into the investigation in great detail, cause its my job to draw conclusions from out of these reports, and i was amazed about what they figured about this inner tank wall. that thing literally told a very conclusive story what happened with that plane.

reply to post by Zaphod58

Agreed.
I was just telling the story as I heard it. It has many things that indicate that it wasn't factual, but it was striking at the time, because I heard it so soon after the incident happened. Granted, I was two persons removed from the supposed sailor, but it was striking at the time.

reply to post by NickDC202


I've found the MSNBC News clips from that night where they talk about witnesses seeing a missile but there's no mention of the tourist video. They do repeatedly talk about eyewitnesses seeing "something streaking through the sky towards the plane" but nobody had actual video of it. There is a video where the explosion occurs off frame and you can see the flash but no direct video of the explosion. I had seen a video of the explosion itself not more than a year ago when I was discussing this with someone. Unless someone went back and edited the missile out of the video of the explosion I don't think there was one of a missile itself but the explosion only.

reply to post by EViLKoNCEPTz


Yes, there is video from MSNBC's coverage the night of TWA 800; I've watched it countless times (and endless versions of it from around the web). But what is missing is any of the hour which they aired the video. As I mentioned earlier, after the FBI confiscated the video, there wasn't even a mention of it that morning on Today or ever again on any NBC News property.

From what I can testify to, pass a polygraph about and offer both of my parents as witnesses--- I woke them up as soon as it aired; it aired multiple times (loop of the same video) in a circa 60 minute period after midnight and before 3am eastern. As I mentioned in my first post on this thread (the long one), a few months ago after another unsuccessful search for the video (I thought maybe I imagined it), so I called my Dad and we discussed TWA 800 for the first time in years and years. I never asked him about the video, he brought it up to me. I asked him if he saw it and what he saw; he mentioned me waking them up late at night and gave the exact same description of the video that I recall. After talking to him about a bunch of non-related stuff, I asked to speak to my mother (who was on another floor in their house while I was talking to my dad and was not privy to our conversation). So while talking to my Mom, who is not at all a conspiracy theorist -- she's a CPA; I asked her how TWA 800 crashed. I was kind of shocked when she responded that it was brought down by a missile. I said something like "How do you know that? The NTSB said it was a spark in the center fuel tank." She responded, "I saw the video; you ran into our room, turned on our TV and woke Dad and I up telling us we have to see this and we did."