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Government Corruption

Could the TWA 800 Cover-Up Finally Come Undone?

2022-09-30

[American Thinker] A month ago American Thinker published my article on whistleblower William Teele, the ten-year U.S. Navy vet who shared his own perspective on the TWA Flight 800, the 747 that blew up off the coast of Long Island in July 1996. In that Teele was not on the ship that fired the missile, I asked for those with more information to share what they knew by contacting me through my website.

The quantity and quality of the response stunned me. As a spoiler alert, no respondent admitted to being a witness, and some did not believe the Navy fired the missile. That said, all were respectful and informative. Several added corrective or confirming details. Some sample intros:

While working as a commercial airline (NWA) Captain...

I spent 3-and-a-half years aboard the USS Nimitz...

I'm a retired USN Commander...

I was a GMM or gunners mate missiles while in the US Navy...

I'm retired mil. I have studied weapons for decades...

I am a retired Navy Surface Warfare Officer Captain...

I was a first officer flying the Airbus A320 for Northwest Airlines...

I was in the Navy for 20 years, four ships (3 of them "shooters")...

I was qualified as a Surface Warfare Officer

As much as I would love to hear from a firsthand witness, I believe the courts hold more immediate potential. On June 28, 2022, attorney John Roddy with the Boston firm of Bailey and Glasser filed a lawsuit on behalf of numerous family members of those killed in the 1996 crash. Based on the research of physicist Tom Stalcup, the suit is stunning in its sophistication and detail.

I first met Stalcup when I interviewed him for a documentary on TWA 800 called "Silenced" that James Sanders and I produced in 2001. I was a latecomer to this extraordinary story, but Stalcup had been deeply involved in the case from very nearly the beginning and remains committed to this day.

As a quick refresher, TWA Flight 800 left JFK airport in New York en route to Paris on July 17, 1996. Twelve minutes after its 8:19 departure the ill-fated 747 blew up off the south coast of Long Island, killing all 230 souls aboard.

The suit wastes no time in establishing its central argument: "After the incident, the federal government released a false report contending that the explosion was the result of an electrical fire in the airplane’s center." The real cause, the suit argues, was "an errant United States missile fired at aerial target drones flying nearby."

Based on the "overwhelming evidence" uncovered by Stalcup through his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation in Massachusetts federal court, the suit names as the government defendants in this tragic mishap the Missile Defense Agency, the United States Department of Defense, and the United States Navy.

The contractor defendants cited are Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Working "side-by-side," these defendants were reportedly testing the Aegis Weapons System and firing SM-2 missiles with live warheads at aerial missile targets off the coast of New York "in close proximity to commercial airline flight paths." The suit leaves open the possibility that more than one "warship" was involved in the launch.

The suit walks through the well-established facts surrounding the investigation. The FBI froze out the National Transportation Board despite the NTSB’s legal responsibility to manage domestic air crashes. According to the suit, "The FBI also enlisted the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency ("CIA")." Yes, the CIA was involved from day one, but I suspect that "enlisting" the agency was not the FBI’s idea.

The suit adds new information, namely that "the FBI removed all copies (original and duplicates) of Navy radar tapes from the Navy, placing them out of the NTSB’s reach."

The suit addresses the CIA animation used to discredit the scores of excellent eyewitness, but adds this detail, "Despite outwardly proclaiming that the cause of the TWA 800 explosion was, in the CIA’s words, ’NOT A MISSILE,’ several internal government communications (that have only come to light in the recent FOIA litigation) indicated that a missile was involved."

The suit reviews the history of Navy’s Aegis Missile system responsible for the misfire. The Department of Defense (DOD) pushed the system quickly through production and deployment thinking the missile threat from hostile countries "here and now." Although the suit does not mention this detail, there was a real fear at the time of terrorists using planes as missiles, a fear that proved tragically well-grounded five years later.

Posted by:Besoeker

#12 NoMoreBS
Good point. Clinton would have had to do SOMETHING about this act of war. But what and to whom? Unless they got the goods on the actual perp, that would be a hell of an obstacle while the clamor for retribution got louder.
Then what if turned out to be a donor to the Clinton Foundation? Or the State Department retirement fund?

Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2022-09-30 16:57

#11 ^There isn't enough beer in the world.

Posted by: Super Hose 2022-09-30 16:36

#10 Hell of a thing to keep a crews worth of guys quiet.

Posted by: Spats Pelosi7529 2022-09-30 14:24

#9 The MANPAD comments above fit my overall sense that this could be the true story. What needs to be added is the question of WHO fired it, and from what platform. Iranians in a pleasure craft, fishing boat never seems to get mentioned or discussed a lot, which I find curious. Seems to me they had motive, certainly easily enough acquired means, and would have been able to exit the country in short order. If such an op took place, perhaps the political considerations (Clinton era, not the apogee of American political courage) of the moment argued against letting it be known?

Posted by: NoMoreBS 2022-09-30 14:12

#8 A commander signing for a ship with twenty missiles owns twenty missiles. He'll not be signing if he counts nineteen.It would have been replaced, which means the paper trail.Every step up the resupply chain will be down one of those expensive birds and wants paper to explain it.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2022-09-30 13:32

#7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/12/02/saratoga-missile-firing-seen-as-accidental/8e5bc2cc-654b-474f-9633-0ae3ffce6ad0/

The link is to the incident where Saratoga whacked a Turkish frigate during a failed drill. I was in Turkey at the time. It is possible. Personally, I don't think you can keep a lid on that type of mistake for this long.

Posted by: Super Hose 2022-09-30 13:08

#6 Valid cmnts Rich.

Posted by: Besoeker 2022-09-30 09:56

#5 Couple of items: This presumes the Navy is dumb enough to be shooting the Big Ones in such a busy area. As if the Army were doing artillery near an elementary school playground. First time? Whose idea was this?
The feds needed three contradictory explanations for the explosive residue. In the procedures manual--you could look it up--civilian airliners do not show explosive residue. So credibility is looking kind of lame, here.
If you want an intro, although by nature and nurture a grunt, I had the misfortune to spend a year in Air Defense. Once I discovered the Nike Hercules lacked bayonet fittings, I lost interest in the proje itself.
What follows has nothing to do with anything I learned while in that post. However, I do recall what the thing looked like. It looked like any other SAM, like a pencil with little bitty fins. Some maneuver, according to stuff shown in the last couple of decades, by gimbaling the motors. But, even so, they don't turn sharp and may have a problem with violently-maneuvering aircraft. So they have proximity fuses and huge warheads. You don't need a bomb the size of a 155mm round--or larger--to bring down an aircraft with a direct hit. But you need a goodly chunk of destruct if the best you're going to get is sort of pretty close.
Which is to say if one of these marvels is looking at a straight, not fast as lightning, modest by military standards climb, putting the missile into the first-class liquor cabinet would be no problem and with that huge warhead, we should be picking up tinfoil from all over.
We have only the feds' promise none of the vics have frags in them.
The feds dragged out a guy to say it's usual for people who see an aircraft blowing up to have an optical delusion that something went up from the surface. And not only anti-aircraft gunners. Riiight. But they needed this dude to discredit the witnesses.
A full-size SAM launch lights up the sky. That wasn't reported.

IMO, it was a MANPAD, now having all-aspect seekers. Hit the centerline tank and set it off. MANPADs have warheads in the 6-7 pound range. That's less than an 81, for heaven's sake. Everybody knows this. MANPADs do not blow up aircraft. They make the aircraft incapable of flying and, if lucky, hit something the aircraft is carrying which blows up the aircraft.
800 was at the top end of known MANPAD envelopes.

One third-hand suggestion was to find how many 747 were out of service while having their fuel sensors replaced.

Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2022-09-30 09:19

#4 MH17 reconstruction photos

Posted by: Snash Shairt9621 2022-09-30 07:36

#3 Link to much larger photo.

Web page photo was taken.

Posted by: Snash Shairt9621 2022-09-30 07:31

#2 Aw jeeze, not this disinformation again. The reassembled airframe showed a center fuel tank explosion from the inside. The tank and airframe were bowed outwards, not inwards as if it were from an external explosion.

If the cause really were an SM-2 missile, where is the missile debris? Where are the holes and fragments from the 240lb (AFAICR) blast frag warhead that would be embedded in the airframe and passengers. Malaysia Airlines MH17 airframe and passengers were littered with warhead fragments and shrapnel holes when the Russians shot it down over Ukraine with a missile half the size of a SM-2.

Posted by: Snash Shairt9621 2022-09-30 07:23

#1 The Raytheon SM-2 required additional testing ?

Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3 July 1988 by two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired by the USS Vincennes, a guided-missile cruiser of the United States Navy. Wikipedia

Posted by: Besoeker 2022-09-30 06:40

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