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foiac.org Freedom of Information Advocacy Coalition |
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March 2007
Eleven years after the explosion of TWA Flight 800 it is very reasonable to ask why is it still generating such strident critiques and angst? A Google search on “Flight 800 skepticism” generates hundreds of relevant hits. And some of those hits provide more credible analysis by independent researchers than the web sites of the government agencies that had responsibility for investigating Flight 800.
There are many reasons why Flight 800 still has compelling relevance to our whole society.
My involvement is driven by concern about the fundamental reliability of how we construct and comprehend our reality and concerns about how easily our society can be deceived or manipulated. If science can be spun and the media used as a tool to serve political or economic agenda then we have a serious problem. Bad science is dangerous science. Or as Yogi Berra is sometimes quoted: The biggest problem isn’t what we don’t know, but rather what we think we know that just ain’t so. To be small and easily misled is to be in danger from others. But to be large and powerful and easily misled is doubly perilous, both from without and from within. It invites exploitation. It risks perilous and unnecessary misadventures. But it was the symbolic head of the investigation, Jim Hall, whose prescience recognized the much greater importance of the government's investigation of Flight 800. At some of his photo-ops in 1997, Jim Hall, then Chairman of the NTSB, stated that the Flight 800 investigation would serve as the model for future government investigations. In retrospect that was a scary suggestion considering the overall performance of the official investigation. In summary, it was an expensive, made for TV boondoggle of an investigation. For the $100 million price tag we got a dawdling and acrimonious investigation which took 4 years but found no definite cause for the explosion. On the way to that equivocal answer, this tightly controlled, very compartmentalized, multi-agency task force "model" investigation boasted the following benchmarks and peculiarities: 1. The FBI mislaid analysis of the most critical shrapnel evidence before anyone apparently got to see it (see: Shrapnel Lawsuit Archive, tabs www.foiac.org). 2. They engaged the CIA to create a slick, made-for-TV animation to explain away what the witnesses who thought they saw a missile actually saw. (see: www.raylahr.com ) 3. They blamed a dog to explain away the explosive residues that were discovered on the salvaged wreckage. 4. They re-built the wreck of the 747, which may not have helped to find the cause, but made a great visual prop for the otherwise unenlightening investigation. That tortured hulk made an awesome investigation logo – and with frequent TV spots throughout 1997 it was another nail in the coffin of TWA. Fully reassembling a million salvaged pieces was itself an unusual and controversial investigatory tool. But it served for stagy misdirection as the cameras wistfully panned and zoomed along the wreck, largely missing the conflicts happening among the shadows between the FBI, the FAA, the NTSB and the BATF. TV voiceovers with poignant stills of the wreck, took little notice of the 2 official investigators and a journalist that were banned from the site, one TWA investigator that was indicted for excessive diligence, and a journalist indicted for conspiring to obtain lab results that the FBI had missed. Similarly there were the made-for-TV NTSB public hearings where the eyewitnesses of the explosion were banned from testifying. Was Flight 800 the model for the future? Since then we have had various 9/11 investigations, the WMD Commissions on Iraq, Abu Ghraib and others. Many might conclude that Jim Hall’s future has now arrived. Carefully designed and choreographed investigations where nothing too damning is discovered and no one above the level of a Private Lynndie England is ever held accountable. While there are many other Flight 800 researchers with many other generally civic-minded motivations, most of them are driven by a sense of betrayal that the government would use their tax dollars to deceive them.
And a sense of betrayal certainly goads many family members of the 230 victims, who feel profoundly angry that the government now appears to have taken them under their wing very early in the investigation merely as a damage control strategy. They feel that their trust was exploited and that they were used. In any case many family members are very dissatisfied and skeptical about an investigation that has continued to withhold details such as the CIA’s and the NTSB’s simulation calculations, and the forensic details about the origins of the shrapnel removed from the victims’ bodies.
So I would here acknowledge and thank those many family members for their generosity and sometimes heroic efforts to demand that this tragedy be faced with honesty and integrity. After any ghastly tragedy the surviving relatives have an immensely long and lonely journey to face; interminable days, nights, mornings, of absence.
To some of them, the government's official investigation stands like a shabby edifice that dishonors the ones they loved. And they fully realize that ultimately, knowing the truth will not explain or redress their loss, or bring any child or parent or sibling back. But above all, they would wish that we learned from this event and that thereby, if humanly possible, it never be visited upon any others.
Many aviation professionals are concerned about the implications for aviation safety if an investigation as incomplete and unsuccessful as this one becomes the accepted standard.
Right from the get go there was the appearance of something amiss in the investigation. There were complaints by many within the investigation that the FBI was using intimidation and was being controlling and obstructionist. As mentioned above, some of the official investigators working under the aegis of the NTSB were threatened or removed from the investigation for being too conscientious. In no other aviation accident investigation has a senior investigator (Captain Terry Stacey) and a journalist (Jim Sanders) and a journalist’s wife (Liz Sanders) ever been indicted for an effort to do unofficial quality control and peer review. In total, the effect was very unfortunately consistent with the appearance of a cover up. Any investigation that even has the appearance of a cover up should be considered a failure. Its credibility and therefore its conclusions are worth little.
Some researchers are concerned that the missile-like object that so many witnesses saw and that the CIA was so determined to dismiss as an optical illusion had something to do with terrorists. They argue that if such was the case, that it should have been addressed properly in 1996. They argue that there might then have been an awareness that prevented or curtailed the September 11 attack.
Some are motivated by an unrelenting aversion to Bill Clinton and an implacable conviction that the Clinton administration was incorrigibly and thoroughly dishonest. They will probably keep gnawing at that bone until Hilary retires from politics and makes it inconsequential.
And finally, there is a profound human fascination with unsolved mysteries. And until the evidence is reexamined with more rigor, the cause of the explosion will remain a mystery. The NTSB could not find any hard evidence pointing to the source of the explosion in the center fuel tank. And further, some of the material evidence threw into doubt the assumption that the fuel tank was the primary event.
Graeme Sephton
See also: Bad Science is Dangerous Science
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