|
foiac.org Freedom of Information Advocacy Coalition |
|||
The Withheld Flight 800 Shrapnel EvidenceMay 2005
SUMMARY: In a 5-year freedom of information litigation ( Sephton V. FBI ) the FBI asserts that they cannot find any of the most critical forensic evidence from their $40 million investigation of Flight 800. In March this year a federal judge ruled in favor of the FBI and thereby accepted the FBI’s failed search as “adequate” under the law. The forensic details about hundreds of metal fragments and other evidence removed during autopsies was never shared within the official investigation by the FBI; not with the County Coroner, nor with the relatives of the victims, nor even the NTSB. As vital evidence, those objects potentially painted a detailed forensic picture of the actual explosion of Flight 800: its specific chemistry, its force and its physical composition and probable origin . Despite this large sampling of intimate details of the explosion, eight years later it can still only be described as mysterious. No one has yet been told exactly what that forensic picture showed. Exacerbating the controversies around the investigation, the FBI now claims that they can’t find any of those forensic details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------
In March this year the Federal District Court in Springfield Massachusetts ruled that the FBI performed an adequate search for forensic records that described the metallic fragments and other objects removed during autopsies following the explosion of TWA Flight 800. The ruling by Judge Michael Ponsor in favor of the FBI is the final word from the lower court in a five-year freedom of information (FOI) litigation initiated in July 2000 on behalf of family members, TWA employees, and citizen researchers concerned with aviation safety and scientific integrity.
The FBI asserted that in the 6 years since I first requested the forensic details about the shrapnel under the Freedom of Information Laws, that they could not find any details describing exactly what any of those objects were, nor any details of where they originated, nor any specific information about what sort of residues were detected on them.
The 580 pages the FBI did eventually release during the litigation detailed the meticulous logging-in of hundreds of unknown objects obtained during autopsies as important evidence, and numerous memos describing intensive forensic efforts to analyze and identify them. That intensive forensic effort by the FBI was totally justified because those objects yielded by the autopsies were arguably the most valuable, comprehensive and uncontaminated representation that could possibly be obtained from an explosive event that was otherwise scattered randomly on the winds into the Atlantic Ocean from 12,000 feet.
Among those 580 pages released there was only one page that related to the forensic examinations of an actual item of evidence. Only this one page provided any specific forensic results from that entire forensic investigatory flurry around those items. At a court hearing on October 5th 2004, Judge Michael Ponsor ordered the FBI to submit a sworn declaration that they had, at some point in the last 6 years, performed an adequate search. In early November the FBI filed a response with the court refusing the judge’s request. The FBI was unwilling or unable to comply with the judge’s order and refused to provide the court with a simple declaration that they had performed an adequate search.
My difficulty obtaining details of the shrapnel should not have been surprising. According to the County Coroner, Dr. Charles Wetli, they had never provided him with any of the results either. That in itself constitutes a serious irregularity in the investigation and yet its very weirdness typified the whole investigation. Dr. Wetli was obliged by federal law to relinquish the autopsy evidence items to the FBI. And it makes a great deal of sense that he should because of the vast and sophisticated forensic explosive expertise the FBI has at its disposal. But Dr. Wetli also has the statutory responsibility and obligation as the Chief County Medical Officer to determine the cause and manner of death. The FBI, by law and by convention, is required to provide such forensic evidence to the coroner. He cannot really conclude an adequate inquest until he has those very pertinent facts of the case.
Equally surprising, the FBI failed to share the forensic results with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) as well.
In August 2000 the NTSB finally concluded that it was probably an unlucky spark that found its way from the outside of the fuel tank all the way inside that blew the 747 apart. And that word probably is pivotal, because actually they did not find any of the direct evidence of a spark, which typically leaves small but distinctive weld marks and pitting on any two metal surfaces where such an arcing event occurs. They did find most of the center fuel tank and there was no doubt at all that it had exploded at some point in the catastrophic event. They spent approximately $50 million, but if the NTSB got it correct, it was purely a lucky guess.
In 1998 Burt Simon, the chair of the NTSB group assigned to produce a medical forensic report, confirmed (in a phone call) that the FBI had given them all of the evidence objects obtained from the autopsies, but none of the forensic details or specific identification details of those objects. To not have the most fundamental and important details about this vital evidence made no sense. To have not a clue was totally ludicrous given the statutory-defined tasks of the NTSB. According to the mandates of Title 49 law that the NTSB operates under, they are required specifically after accidents to do “survivability” studies about what the objects flying around a cabin hurting people were, and where and how they originated. Without knowing those answers a final NTSB conclusion is impossible and premature.
With a sample of hundreds of items of evidence that were definitely present at the explosion or soon after and were the least likely to be contaminated or scrubbed by ocean and sludge, there is almost a statistical certainty that the right explosion hypothesis could be determined, and the incorrect theories could be scientifically and reliably eliminated. For instance the possibility that a hot metal fragment from some other initial explosion ignited the fuel tank could have been eliminated with virtual certainty if there were no such fragments present in any of the victims. Such fragments would be virtually impossible to locate in any other manner; they would not lodge in a disintegrated metal fuel tank and they would be impossible to identify among the bric-a-brac typically found just of the shores of Long Island.
Because the reports of many witnesses described a missile like object rising from the surface, the FBI swarmed to Long Island and took control of the investigation as a probable crime scene. The shrapnel removed from victim bodies was therefore treated like bullets found at any crime scene would be. In fact some of the sensitive forensic tests that are routinely applied to such shrapnel evidence are akin to those developed to categorize and trace bullets and are as definitive. With so many fragments from so many victims all over the aircraft they were very precious evidence that potentially described in excruciating detail exactly what transpired in the final moments of the flight.
When TWA Flight 800 exploded off Long Island in July 1996 over 730 witnesses were interviewed by the FBI and reported what they saw. Whatever caused the multiple explosions reported by those eyewitnesses was inevitably and indelibly recorded by those hundreds of pieces of shrapnel that blasted throughout the cabin of the 747. That is because the elevated temperatures and pressures of any explosion cause distinctive physical and chemical changes and deposit chemical residues that often provide unique forensic signatures. That record was etched on metals and absorbed by plastics and clothing. Therefore when the autopsy teams removed hundreds of pieces of metal fragments and particles and other foreign bodies from within and on the bodies of the 230 victims they were immediately handed over to the FBI as some of the first and most important potential evidentiary clues to the origin of the explosion.
During 1997 various published criticisms of the official investigation caught my attention but it was not until December of that year that I realized there was a serious problem. One of the official investigators assigned by TWA, Captain Terry Stacey, was indicted for stealing evidence and the journalist he gave it too, retired cop James Sanders was indicted too, as was Elizabeth Sanders his wife. Stacey was one of TWA’s most experienced and most competent captains. His career record read like a text book for professional airline captains. Stacey misappropriated a piece of seat cover that had absorbed a suspicious red-colored residue. He took it because he and others within the investigation were having trouble getting any forensic results from the numerous FBI Lab technicians assigned to the investigation. Sanders sent it off to an independent Lab for chemical analysis and when the analysis results proved to be consistent with rocket fuel he reported that fact. The FBI illegally seized the journalist Sander’s laptop computer and thereby discovered Stacey’s role.
As a loyal TWA employee who had lost many good friends and colleagues in the disaster, Stacey felt morally committed to make sure the investigation was done with integrity and diligence. When the FBI indicted him, TWA management exhibited no similar loyalty or commitment to the truth and under pressure from the FBI they suspended him and coerced him to cooperate with the FBI no matter what. The treatment of Stacey was a clear message to other investigators that might otherwise have succumbed to any similar acts of conscience. It worked well and there were no more leaks from inside the investigation. The arrest of Jim and Liz Sanders was an even heavier-handed message of intimidation for journalists to stay away. And it also worked adequately and they mostly stayed right away.
It is astounding that the above scenario could have occurred without media uproar and public outrage and yet it happened so. The fact that the FBI still can’t find crucial evidence in the investigation substantiates Stacey’s original dilemma and motivating factor of a lack of reliable forensic support.
More fundamentally, when three solid citizens like Stacey and the Sanders family are in serious trouble with the law purely due to their integrity, we are all in serious trouble with them. From that point on I could not so easily shrug off Flight 800 as an irrelevant catastrophe and an unfortunate aberration in aviation safety science.
My concern had also been increased in November 1997 when the FBI decided to use CIA “expertise” to explain away the hundreds of witness reports that were consistent with a missile event. It rang so hollow that I followed the example of many other citizen researchers and got actively involved in the effort to find out the truth. See: www.raylahr.com for a retired pilot’s effort to find out the truth.
The FBI repeated time and again during 1996 and 1997 that they were trying to choose between three theories for the cause of the explosion; a bomb, a missile or a mechanical cause (like a spark). They repeated it loudly enough, long enough and often enough that it seemed to hypnotize the media into a stupor regarding close critical attention to the tightly controlled details of the investigation.
In 1997 I already knew from press reports that there were many pieces of evidence produced by the autopsies. Based on the principles of forensic science described above, I believed that they would hold the key to the mystery of Flight 800’s fiery end. Those objects represented a macabre and indelible collage of the instants following the explosion. Dr. Wetli and his autopsy teams faithfully handed over all those mysterious fragments to the FBI for careful cataloging, examination and chemical analysis. Unlike the debris and possible evidence later fished off the bottom of the Atlantic, evidence taken from the bodies is uncontaminated by the ocean or any of the unknowns of the salvage operation. Like the critical fragments of a story, some of them could be expected to indicate definitively what exact type of chemical forces impelled them through the cabin.
I had one main question. Were the residues obtained consistent with traces of fuel products and a low temperature and pressure explosion or were they consistent with the high temperatures and pressures and residue traces associated with some other type of explosive?
A secondary question was; which locations in the 747 did the fragments appear to originate from or did they originate from somewhere else? Straightforward chemical analysis would determine exactly what the shrapnel was composed of and therefore what the origin and direction of the blast was.
Lastly, metal fragments could be examined by forensic metallurgists to assess the magnitude of the explosive forces required to shatter the metal into small fragments. Fuel explosions do not tend to create small fragments of metal. Falling from 12,000 feet and even impact with the water do not create enough force to shatter metal into small pieces. From the very outset there was good reason to treat those small metallic fragments obtained from the coroner’s autopsy teams as key evidence that might provide unambiguous details about the initial cause of the disaster.
In November 1997 the FBI concluded that there was no evidence of a bomb or missile and they closed the case and handed the investigation over to the NTSB. In June 1998 I therefore filed a FOI request with the NTSB to obtain the physical details about the shrapnel items. In July 1998 they responded that the FBI had sent them the items but no written records about them. They informed me that I should request that information directly from the FBI. It was at that point I phoned Burt Simon (referred to previously) to verify this unlikely situation and to ask him how he had concluded his reports on the investigation without some of the most essential data.
One of the reasons I initially joined the campaign by public interest researchers (see www.flight800.org ) to obtain the underlying facts of the investigation was because of my concern about the vulnerability of government science to be steered by political agenda. I was only aware of anecdotal evidence, but the Flight 800 investigation seemed like it might potentially provide object lessons in discovering and remedying such broader institutional inadequacies and failings.
Our well-being depends on government science to keep us safe from many perils through its various regulatory agencies - what we eat, drink, breathe, how we travel, media regulation, nuclear power regulation, pharmaceuticals, and so on. There are indeed many perils in the modern world and they are potentially amplified if government science fails in its regulatory or public safety obligations due to unheeded conflicts of interest. Yet the huge investment that corporations can make in political electoral campaigns leaves politicians beholden to such interests and more accessible and vulnerable to their lobbyists.
The stakes are high and this fundamental problem must urgently be addressed. As a society we cannot afford to ignorantly proceed down dangerous paths just for the short term benefit of some entrepreneurial opportunist with a well-bankrolled lobbyist. The magnitude and potential negative impact of our technologies that can quickly permeate the global marketplace afford less room for error in the current era.
Since 1998 when I got seriously involved in this effort auditing government performance, it appears things have only gotten worse. In February 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists released Scientific Integrity in Policy Making, a report documenting numerous instances in which government agencies distorted or censored scientific research when it conflicted with political convenience. ( see www.ucsusa.org ) Examples were drawn from a broad range of issues and it resonated with the scientific community so resoundingly that to date over 5000 scientists signed a statement denouncing such abuses of science. The roster of signatories includes 48 Nobel laureates and 132 members of the National Academy of Science.
The evidence of the first and subsequent UCS report proves that there is presently no effective oversight and no consequences for spinning science to suit the most powerful interests.
The annual Project Censored review of Somona State University ranked the UCS report on Government Integrity as the third most important issue of the last 12 months among many other important stories neglected by the media.
Even Burt Simon of the NTSB, who completed the survivability report without examining the autopsy shrapnel evidence, confidently assumed that someone else must have combed through it all fastidiously. It was very old and cold evidence by the time the FBI shipped it off to the NTSB.
Some critics of this inadequate investigation suggest that if there had been more rigor and better oversight and if the mainstream media had actually paid better attention to all the gaps and gaffs, that the catastrophic success of the September 11 attacks would never have occurred.
When the forensic evidence from the shrapnel and other foreign bodies is eventually located and released by the FBI the mystery of Flight 800 explosion might finally be solved.
None of us is well served in the long run with anything less. --------------------------------------------------------
Court documents from the lawsuit Sephton V. FBI can all found at the Court Website: http://www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/
Some of these court records are linked here:
Sephton Declaration, July 2004
|