Thursday June 1 1:48 PM ET Missiles Fired to Test TWA 800 Blast Theory By Jim Wolf WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators fired heat-seeking ''Stinger'' missiles from a Florida beach in April to try to rule out one possible cause of the 1996 crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, officials said Thursday. The test launches were meant to determine whether streaks of light reported by several witnesses to the aircraft's mid-air explosion could have been missiles. Paul Schlamm, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, which ordered the tests and is heading the investigation, said the goal was ``to establish a baseline of information on what might be visible from a shoulder-fired missile'' like the Stinger. An anti-aircraft weapon, the Stinger was widely distributed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to irregulars who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Several hundred of them are reported to remain in the hands of guerrillas, some of whom have turned their holy war against their former patron, the United States. Flight 800, a Boeing 747-100, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 1996, 14 minutes after taking off from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport en route to Paris, killing all 230 people aboard. Investigators have said they have found no physical evidence of a missile or a bomb in what has become the largest transpiration accident investigation in U.S. history. Attorney General Janet Reno told reporters Thursday that she remained persuaded that no criminal activity was involved. She said she was ``as sure as I can be about anything, but you always look for additional leads or other circumstances.'' The test firing of Stinger missiles was first reported by the Washington Post. The launches were carried out by Army experts at Eglin Air Force Base near Pensacola, Fla. on or about April 28, Schlamm said. He said the impetus came from witness reports collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The tests would ``complete the analysis of the witness documents and close off one open area as we come to the end of this investigation,'' Schlamm said. He said he did not know how many missiles had been fired. The safety board plans to hold a final hearing on the crash in late August, when it is to determine a ``probable cause'' of the crash. It has already established that the aircraft's nearly empty center fuel tank exploded, but has not pinpointed the source of ignition. A preliminary conclusion held by some investigators is that an electrical glitch touched off fuel vapors in the tank, causing the blast that blew the craft apart. But witnesses' accounts of a streak of light in the sky around the time of the crash have continued to fuel conspiracy theories centered on a possible missile attack, partly because there were numerous boats in the area from which a Stinger could have been fired. Writing on the changing nature of terrorism in a U.S. Army War College publication in 1995, one expert, Stephen Sloan, warned: ``A Stinger missile aimed at a jumbo jet as it takes off or as it approaches a large metropolitan airport could cause tremendous casualties.'' NTSB investigators decided their probe could not be considered complete unless they made a detailed comparison between what witnesses reported and the sights and sounds a missile would make in the same atmospheric conditions and lighting as prevailed that evening on the Long Island coast. The test procedures were designed to ``replicate as closely as possible the lighting conditions'' at the time of the explosion, Schlamm said. ''This was a dotting of the I's and a crossing of the T's,'' the Post cited a source as saying. ``Some concluded it would be very nice to know for certain what you would see. What would a missile look like?'' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Steve Wingate California Director SKYWATCH INTERNATIONAL Anomalous Images and UFO Files http://www.anomalous-images.com <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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