-Caveat Lector-
Investigator releases new evidence
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This is the first of a three-part series on the downing of TWA Flight 800.
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By David M. Bresnahan
� 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
A former naval officer says the Clinton administration has evidence to prove
TWA Flight 800 was downed by a missile and is doing all it can to cover it
up.
More than 100 eyewitnesses interviewed by the FBI all describe seeing a
missile, says retired Navy Cmdr. William S. Donaldson III, a former military
crash investigator, trained flight controller and expert investigator.
Portions of the missile have been recovered, but have been secreted away, he
says. An operations manual for the search for missile parts was issued by
the FBI, and an official government report was unable to rule out a missile
and called for further investigation -- something that has not been done,
according to Donaldson and other confirming sources.
For the past two years Donaldson has headed up a private investigation of
the controversial crash. He is now convinced a missile brought down TWA
Flight 800 causing the death of 230 people on July 17, 1996.
Donaldson claims the federal government has done everything in its power to
cover up what really happened to Flight 800. The cover-up, he charges, has
included prosecution of a journalist who was investigating flight debris
evidence and was convicted on federal charges, as well as manipulating the
official investigation to obtain the desired results rather than seek the
truth.
During his two years of private investigation, Cmdr. Donaldson and a group
of retired aviation specialists have interviewed over 100 witnesses who saw
what they claim was a missile rise from the water and hit TWA Flight 800.
Those witnesses were also interviewed by the FBI.
The witnesses were located in a full circle around the crash site on four
aircraft, 19 boats, and 31 locations on shore. Many of the witnesses have
expertise which would enable them to distinguish a missile from a burning
aircraft.
The reports by these witnesses has been discredited by the government by
claiming they did not understand that what they saw was the burning
aircraft, not a missile, and by stating that after being confronted with the
facts they no longer believe they saw a missile.
"Their live testimony alone will prove the aircraft was shot down,"
Donaldson told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview. "This is why the
Justice Department has kept air crash investigators away from witnesses for
two and a half years."
Donaldson believes he has obtained enough evidence to present to a grand
jury and bring about indictments for "a cover-up of the felony murder of 230
innocent people."
The FBI confirmed that it used as many as 1,000 agents in the process of
interviewing witnesses. The methods of interviewing and detailing what those
witnesses told them were lacking, according to Donaldson.
The FBI investigators should have made recordings or even videotapes of the
interviews with the witnesses. They also failed to ask technical questions
which would have enabled them to perform a triangulation and identify where
the missiles was launched. Donaldson complained that the FBI simply wrote a
few notes about each interview.
"That means the agent goes back to his office, depending how aviation wise
he is, and scribbles down a 302 form, which is a summary of the interview.
He keeps the notes and puts it in a folder with the 302 form. The 302 form
then becomes the judgment, which has been filtered by a non-aviation smart
investigator," Donaldson explained.
The FBI did not use any special equipment to take bearing lines from each
witness location. They also did not ask questions related to speed of what
witnesses saw going up and hitting the airplane. Witnesses were also not
asked how many seconds it took from the apparent launch to the time of
contact with the airplane.
He said he blames the lack of proper questions by the FBI on "lack of skill
as an investigator." He said he did not believe the agents were purposely
trying to cover anything up. In fact, he said some of the agents were
genuinely excited about what they were being told. That enthusiasm soon
died. They were told to investigate only the evidence which supported the
government claim of a center wing tank explosion, not a missile, according
to FBI agents who cooperated with Donaldson's investigation.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration research ship Rude
(pronounced "Rudy") was able to reach the crash site of TWA Flight 800 the
morning after the crash. The very high-tech vessel is equipped with side
sonar.
"Finally when Capt. Debeau got the last transponder position the aircraft
had actually transmitted from, and got the course and the speed, he plugged
into his computers and got a ballistic solution to where the airplane went,"
explained Donaldson.
He reported that Capt. Debeau was contacted by the National Transportation
Safety Board and was asked to pick up surface debris. This was unusual
because the ship was the best equipped of all units on the scene to look for
items below the water, not recover floating items which could be more easily
picked up by larger vessels which were better equipped to do that.
"There were six other Coast Guard Cutters that were bigger ships on scene
and didn't have that vital gear on board that the Rude did," said Cmdr.
Donaldson. "You start screwing around with something on the surface when
you're a sub-sea observer -- it's a waste of your mission. The NTSB gives
him a surface job and that screws up his looking for the debris on the
bottom. Eventually he passed it off to a cutter."
Within just 10 hours of searching the bottom for debris, the Rude provided
detailed maps to the NTSB which showed the exact location of the under water
debris fields. Despite having such vital information so quickly, orders from
the White House prevented any recover effort for almost a week.
Official Coast Guard logs indicate that a call was placed to Weeks Marine,
Inc. with a verbal agreement for that company to begin salvage recovery
immediately. That contact was made shortly after the crash. Weeks Marine had
the largest salvage vessel on the East Coast just a short distance away in
transit.
The large ship was equipped for just this type of operation with large
cranes, 50 tethered divers, and plenty of deck space for the debris. The FAA
also placed a call to Weeks Marine just after the crash. They were ready to
go to work by the time the Rude had completed their maps of the location of
the debris.
"What I'm telling you is, by the 19th in the morning, with divers on board
they could have started extracting major sub-sea debris. Putting it on deck
on the Weeks Marine barge," explained Donaldson.
A call from the White House changed all that. Rather than begin salvage of
debris and bodies just a day and a half after the crash, recovery was
delayed until the 23rd when Navy equipment arrived from Norfolk, Va.,
Donaldson says.
While FBI and NTSB investigators were telling the press and families of
crash victims that they were working as fast as possible, they were really
purposely slowing down that process, according to Donaldson. He claims that
evidence was damaged and lost because of the delay.
Initial media reports of witnesses seeing a missile were immediately
discredited by the FBI. The press willingly accepted the FBI explanation
that the witnesses saw the burning plane, not a missile. Donaldson blames
the media for being so willing to accept government reports without checking
on the validity of those reports. He also says the government has been
operating an organized plan to discredit anyone who does not agree with its
explanation of the crash.
Donaldson has requested the results of government tests on critical parts of
the debris from the crash. His requests have met with significant resistance
and refusal to cooperate.
"The left-side body wall is a critical piece of hardware on the aircraft,"
he explained to WorldNetDaily. "It no longer exists. It's the common wall in
the tank system between the center wing tank and the number two main, which
is the first tank out on the left wing. That wall was blown in to the center
tank at extremely high energy.
"Now the first thing they should have done, as soon as they had enough
pieces that they could identify them coming from that side of the tank is
make a determination as to which way that wall failed. Did it fail going
out, or did it fail going in to the center wing tank number one? To lock it
down, you send it for electron microscope work.
"What that will tell you is the stress line in the metal. They know the
outer layers. They know the failure numbers on it. You can determine the
rate that it failed, in other words did it, was it a shock, or was it a
stretching failure? All of that is left in the edge metal."
An NTSB lawyer responded to Donaldson's request for info and admitted the
proper tests were not done and will not be done on the section of the plane
in question, and said the exam was done with a jeweler's eye piece.
"If they move on to the final report and they don't have an edge analysis on
that side body wall then you can use that thing for toilet paper. It's not
going to be worth a d---. I told him three of four more anomalies but I was
wasting my time -- he's a lawyer," said Donaldson in frustration.
He now has pictures of the evidence. He says the government explanation does
not stand up to the evidence and the reports issued by their own scientists
who examined that evidence.
"In forensic evidence you have this huge shock damage to the left wing that
blew out hundreds of square feet of side body wall and turned them into BBs.
I mean, I'm not kidding you. Little pieces always mean high energy. Big
pieces, or bulge pieces, mean a much lower energy state. It's simple. But
they won't even talk about it. That's what's so frustrating," he explained.
Donaldson has obtained copies of government documents which clearly indicate
that the FBI conducted an intensive search of the ocean floor to
specifically locate and find pieces of a missile. He has also found a
witness who found one of those vital pieces.
Calls by WorldNetDaily requesting comments from the FAA, FBI, and NTSB
public affairs officers have not been returned. TWA spokesman Jim Brown
said, "Therefore, there is nothing to exonerate us for because there's
nothing we've been accused of."
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Related stories:
How government stopped probers
Was there a government cover-up?
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David M. Bresnahan, a contributing editor for WorldNetDaily.com, is the
author of "Cover Up: The Art and Science of Political Deception," and offers
a monthly newsletter "Talk USA Investigative Reports." He may be reached
through email and also maintains a Website.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/bluesky_bresnahan/19990427_xex_is_there_pro.sht
ml
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