From:
http://misc.biztravel.com/content/news_and_views/branc/072000branc.htm
What Happened to TWA 800?
July 20, 2000
By: Joe Brancatelli
A day after the downing of TWA 800 four years ago this week, an
executive of an international airline invited me to lunch. From
the moment I slid into the banquette at his stodgy private club,
I knew this was going to be a different kind of lunch altogether.
"What's your take on TWA 800?" he asked before I could settle
in. The question stunned me. Over all the years I had known this
guy, he never speculated on matters of safety or security, and
once said sourly, "Never say 'crash' to an airline guy" when I
jokingly asked about the "crash" of his company’s stock price.
"Well," I stammered. "There's no 'good' news here. If it was a
missile, there's gonna be hell to pay. If it was terrorism, the
recriminations and the security measures will be positively
fascist. And if it was mechanical, it was catastrophic failure
like we've never seen before."
"It was a missile," the executive said evenly. "Friendly fire.
We kept telling the military this would happen one day. And the
bastards just kept doing it and doing it. And now hundreds of
people are dead."
I didn't say anything. We didn't even have water on the table
yet and here was this wild accusation from an airline guy I
considered Mr. Button Down. I took a quick mental inventory of
what I knew about him: he was former military, his son was a
pilot, and we'd had a brief conversation a couple of months back,
when one of his airline's planes was chased by two military
fighter jets across the North Pacific.
"What are we talking about?" I finally managed to mumble.
Grimly, the executive laid out his theory: TWA 800 took off, was
picked up on radar by U.S. fighters, and then made the "target"
by a giddy pilot. As so often happens, this military pilot was
playing an ad hoc war game: lock onto a commercial jet, make
believe it is an enemy plane, then blow it out of the sky. Only
this time, the executive insisted, something went terribly wrong
and the game turned real.
"For years we've been complaining about the military locking
onto commercial jets and using them for target practice," the
executive said. "We go down to the Pentagon and bitch and they
promise it'll never happen again. Then, when it does happen
again, they say, 'no harm, no foul.' I think they just fouled."
Over the course of this very peculiar lunch, the airline
executive also laid out several eerie scenarios: watch the
government attempt to discredit, then ignore, then awkwardly
explain away the eyewitness accounts that support the "missile
theory." Watch the President make an unprecedented gesture to the
families of the TWA 800 victims. Watch how the cockpit recorders
will reveal no signs of crew comments indicating mechanical
failure. Watch how a mechanical problem will be vaguely blamed,
yet no 747s will be grounded. Most of all, he said, "Watch the
players."
"What do you mean, 'Watch the players?'"
As if quizzing a befuddled child, he said, "Who has the
statutory authority to investigate air crashes in this country?"
"Well," I said, "The National Transportation Safety Board,
except if…"
"Except if there is criminal activity involved and then the FBI
is in the mix."
"So, what's the point?"
"Like I said, watch the players. Forget about what they say and
what they do. Eventually, they will tell you its not a bomb, it
not a missile, it’s a mechanical. But watch how the FBI doesn't
go away. If it is a mechanical, the FBI has no legal authority to
be anywhere near the NTSB. But watch how the FBI will never go
away."
I left that luncheon scared. I wondered how a right-thinking,
by-the-book airline executive became a conspiracy freak. Except…
Except how come no airline executive I know thinks this luncheon
conversation was strange? How come, whenever I’ve asked about TWA
800 over the intervening four years, they obsess about the number
of times their aircraft have been "targets" of military jets
playing war games?
Except how come everything that airline executive predicted
during that lunch has come true?
The government has gone to extraordinary - sometimes laughable -
lengths to discredit, ignore, then explain away eyewitness
accounts. President Clinton and the First Lady did take an
unprecedented step. They flew to Kennedy Airport to console the
families of the TWA 800 victims. They didn’t even do that last
year when American Flight 1420 crashed in the President’s home
state of Arkansas. How come the cockpit recorders didn't yield
any clue of a mechanical failure? How come not a single 747 was
ever grounded if there really is a catastrophic problem with
their center fuel tanks?
And, how come, if you watched the players, the FBI did remain
intimately involved with the investigation? The now-retired
deputy FBI director, James Kallstrom, shadowed the NTSB from the
moment TWA 800 went down. He told anyone who’d listen, including
Congress, that there was no criminal activity. Yet he and the FBI
hung around for 16 months, bullying, badgering, ridiculing and
covering up. Kallstrom even corrupted the NTSB and, by the NTSB's
own admission, forced the official hearings to forgo testimony
from eyewitnesses.
After years of misinformation and odd obfuscation, the NTSB says
it may finally release its tainted report on TWA 800 sometime
next month. But who’s going to believe it now? Whatever NTSB
says, the report will forever be the aviation equivalent of the
Warren Commission. It will raise more questions than it will
answer. It will do nothing to quell the rumor mongering, the
conspiracy theorists, the nut jobs, the honestly tormented and
the truly obsessed. That is what always happens when you do a
hatchet job on an investigation.
I don’t know what happened to TWA 800. I’m not qualified to say.
But I’m not stupid: I know that something is very wrong here.
Very wrong.
E-mail Joe at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or call him toll-free at
877-510-1746 with your tips, ideas, suggestions and gripes.
The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and are not
necessarily those of biztravel.com. Comments and suggestions to
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