-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Silenced: Flight 800 and the subversion of justice, part 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Zap. Salingerized. As O'Meara's audiotape revealed, however, it was the mocking and evasive Goelz who raised the issue of a missile, not O'Meara. Wrote Insight editor Paul Roderiquez, "In my experience as a veteran newsman, journalists would never roll over and allow government bureaucrats to use them to slime their colleagues. Yet that precisely is what recently happened." Goelz, by the way, had honed his transportation skills lobbying for riverboat gambling interests on the Missouri. In 1992, he moved on to Tennessee where he worked as a paid staffer for the Clinton-Gore get-out-the-vote effort. By 1997, he was the top administrator for the world's most sophisticated accident investigation agency. Only in Clinton's America. Much more chilling is the case of Jim and Liz Sanders. Aware of the dissatisfaction within the TWA community, reporter Jim Sanders sought out a few good sources at the investigation hangar on Long Island. Liz introduced Jim to Terrel Stacey, a TWA manager and 747 pilot. Stacey was identified to Sanders as "a straight arrow, go-by-the-rules kind of guy," the least likely potential source. But given the consequences for being wrong, that's exactly the kind of person Sanders hoped to find. "What he told me over those first hours," relates Sanders, "was one thing – 'I know there's a cover-up in progress.'" Soon after their meeting, Terrel Stacey began to feed Sanders a series of documents related to the debris field – that is, what falls off a plane and in what order. Sanders, a retired accident investigator for a California police department, analyzed the sequence of events and saw what appeared to be a path of destruction sweeping right across the plane. When Sanders showed Stacey the path, Stacey for the first time connected that destruction to a reddish residue trail across those very rows, 17-19. According to Stacey, the FBI had taken samples of the residue months before but had refused to share the analysis with the other investigators, including Stacey, TWA's number two man on site. Stacey knew the plane well. He had flown it from Paris to New York just the day before the crash. Without prompting, he volunteered to take the next step – secure some residue for testing. When he found he couldn't scrape the residue off, Stacey removed two pinches of foam rubber out of a universe of thousands and sent them to Sanders that night by FedEx. Sanders had one sample tested in a California lab. He sent the second piece of foam rubber to a producer at CBS News' 60 Minutes program for safekeeping as prearranged. The elements identified by the lab proved to be consistent with residue from a solid fuel missile or warhead explosion. On March 10, 1997, the Riverside Press-Enterprise in California ran a front-page story on Sanders' research that was quickly picked up by other papers across America. This was no longer a polite debate about theories. If Sanders' results were right, then someone in the FBI had not merely made a mistake, he had committed a crime. Sanders waited anxiously for an alternative explanation from the feds. He knew they would have to provide one. He didn't have to wait long. The day after the article appeared, March 11, Dr. Bernard Loeb of the NTSB told a House Aviation Subcommittee, "One thing I can say categorically is that there is no such thing as a red residue trail in that airplane." On March 7, however, the FBI's Jim Kallstrom had told The Riverside Press-Enterprise, "There is a red residue trail. It has nothing to do with a missile. I'm not going to get into it." Who was lying about the residue trail, Kallstrom or Loeb? Again, it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Between March 7, when the FBI learned that a sample of the residue was out of its control, and March 11, when Loeb testified, it seems likely that the relevant seatbacks had been ripped out of the reconstructed airplane, never again to be seen. Technically, they may have both been telling the truth. As to the cause of the fuss, the missile residue, well it was really just glue – or so said the NTSB. In truth, the glue hypothesis was pure damage control. The media, as had become all too typical, never bothered to ask for proof. They should have. The fabric sample that senior NTSB scientist Dr. Merritt Birky sent to NASA for testing could have come from anywhere. Said Birky in a tape-recorded conversation, "So, in trying to prove we have the same samples as Sanders, I'm not sure it gets us very far. Supposing Sanders' comes out differently?" The samples did come out differently. Charlie Basset of NASA confirmed as much. He signed a notarized statement saying the sample he tested had nothing to do with the Sanders residue. It is not hard to tell the difference. The Sanders' samples are erratically streaked in a dark orange. The NTSB sample shows an almost perfectly applied layering of reddish pink that Bassett identified as red dye. On screen, the contrast is glaring. In December of 1998, in the course of discovery for his criminal trial (for conspiracy), Sanders was able to photograph the given seat, 19-2. He found no other trace of red around the square that had been removed for testing. In fact, he later detected through photo analysis that the entire seatback had been replaced, a rare re-upholstering job on a downed airplane. As to Sanders' second sample, the one that could have easily revealed the chicanery afoot, CBS handed the fabric over to the FBI without protest and refused to renew the contract of the Emmy award-winning producer who received it. So much for an honest test. So much for a free press. With the media in check, the conspirators could proceed with a brazenness that stuns even the cynic. After the residue story first broke, and with Jim in seclusion writing his book while he still had the chance, the FBI leaned on Liz Sanders to reveal Jim's source. "I was not about to give up a fellow employee and a friend," says Liz. "So we thought it would be in everyone's best interest if I disappeared for a while." Despite Liz's sacrifice – she would spend 8 months in an Oregon trailer park and lose her job at TWA – the FBI found its way to Stacey, came down on him hard, arrested both Liz and Jim for conspiracy, and seized Sanders' computer without a warrant. "The day I was arrested was surreal," says Liz. "It was something I would never thought could happen to an innocent normal person in the United States." Adds Jim Sanders, "The FBI handcuffed Liz with her hands behind her back and dragged her through throngs of reporters. Never once did any reporter think of writing a story in defense of a wife of a journalist. That was a low moment." Liz's crime? She introduced Jim to Stacey. She and Jim were tried together as thieves in a conspiracy to steal government property, a law written to ward off scavengers. The federal jury was not allowed to know that Sanders was a reporter, let alone that he was pursuing evidence of a cover-up by the same government agencies prosecuting him and his wife. The jury convicted them both. Before sentencing, the NTSB's Jim Hall sent a letter to the judge. He wrote: " … this is not a so-called victimless crime … These defendants have traumatized the families with the release of misinformation, the only plausible cause of which is commercial gain." Left unsaid was that this avowed champion of the free press had a vested interest in sending Sanders to prison and shutting his investigation down. The judge thought better of it and put both Jim and Liz on probation. Lying eyes Despite all the incentives not to, the eyewitnesses continued to plead their case. To make its "no physical evidence" mantra stick, the administration somehow had to shut them up. Enter the CIA. For reasons unclear, the FBI contracted with the CIA to analyze the witness testimony. During a November, 1997, press conference, the FBI shared the CIA's analysis with a national television audience. In the course of a showy 15-minute video, much of it animated, the CIA argued that when the nose of the plane broke off – due of course to a spontaneous explosion in the center wing tank – the plane pitched up and climbed like a rocket for more than 3,000 feet to 17,000 feet in altitude. This climb, not a missile, is what the 736 official eyewitnesses must have seen. This explanation stunned the aviation world. Says Ray Lahr, a retired United pilot and a veteran ALPA crash investigator, "All the pilots that I've spoken to think it's ridiculous." Lahr argues that when the nose left the aircraft, the center of gravity moved aft, "like putting two people on one side of teeter totter." He adds, "The plane would not have any opportunity to climb." Cmdr. Donaldson, the head of the Associated Retired Aviation Professionals, reached similar conclusions. A 25-year Navy carrier pilot with 89 combat missions in Vietnam and a dozen aviation accident investigations under his belt, Donaldson is not one to be taken lightly. He has dedicated the last five years of his life to this investigation. "Once it goes beyond about 20 degrees nose up," says Donaldson of the plane, "it can't fly anymore because these wings are no longer into the wind. They can't produce lift." Dr. Tom Stalcup, a physicist and chair of FIRO, the Flight 800 Investigative Research Organization, argues the law of the conservation of energy. "The radar data shows that the plane didn't slow down. If it didn't slow down, it didn't climb – if it didn't climb, the witnesses didn't see the plane climb, they saw something else." What the witnesses did see was perhaps best captured by Air National Guard helicopter pilot, Major Fritz Meyer, a man with 30 years of experience as a search and rescue pilot and the first to arrive at the scene of the crash: When that airplane blew up, it immediately began falling. It came right out of the sky. From the first moment it was going down. It never climbed. The thought that this aircraft could climb was laughable. In fact, not one of the official 736 witnesses reported seeing a crippled plane ascend like a rocket or ascend at all. Nor does any physical evidence support this theory. As to the manufacturers of the 747, consider their muted response to the CIA animation: Boeing was not involved in the production of the video shown today, nor have we had the opportunity to obtain a copy or fully understand the data used to create it … The video's explanation of the eyewitness observations can be best assessed by the eyewitnesses themselves. Almost to a person, those witnesses dismissed the CIA animation. Says Meyer, "It was totally ludicrous." Adds Paul Angelides, "That bore no resemblance whatsoever to what I saw." And Mike Wire, "When I saw the scenario I thought it was strange because it was nothing like what I observed." False witness Mike Wire's denial is the most troubling. In a stunning bit of chutzpah, the CIA recreated the missile-like ascent of Flight 800 and its subsequent fall from exactly the same perspective Wire had on Beach Lane Bridge in Westhampton. Wire was the CIA's poster boy. But at the time, he didn't know it. Mike Wire was originally interviewed by the FBI's Philadelphia office, and his testimony is among the most detailed of all the witnesses. Said the CIA of Wire, "In his original description, he thought he had seen a firework and that perhaps that firework had originated on the beach behind the house." But if Wire had seen something come up from behind the house, what he saw could not have been Flight 800 – this, the CIA itself acknowledged in an 85-page transcript. According to the CIA, the plane began its rocket-like ascent 20 degrees above the horizon. As the story goes, the CIA then called the FBI and asked that Wire be interviewed once more. This time, Mike Wire now admitted to the FBI that, yes, he had first seen the streak when it was 20 degrees in the sky. Several problems here – disturbing ones. In its hearings the NTSB made the point repeatedly that first impressions are usually the most reliable. So why go back to interview Wire months after the original interview? Much more disturbing: The FBI did not re-interview Wire as claimed. Never. Wire's wife did take one call from an alleged FBI agent, but when Wire called the number back, he got a New York publishing house and presumed the call a fraud. Even if the FBI had called back, Wire would not have changed his testimony. He has not changed it to this day. What is more, a boater just a few hundred yards away saw the same streak rise off the horizon and traces it exactly to the spot where Wire does. Facts did not deter the CIA. "FBI investigators determined precisely where the eyewitness was standing," said the CIA video, this despite the fact that the FBI had met with Wire in person only once, and that in Philadelphia. Said Jim Kallstrom, explaining why he called off the criminal investigation in November of 1997, "In fact, we ran out of things to do." If Kallstrom were really looking for meaningful activity, he might at least have sent an agent to talk to Wire. "The white light the eyewitness saw was very likely the aircraft very briefly ascending and arching over after it exploded rather than a missile attacking the aircraft," continued the CIA narrative solemnly. The animation itself not only eliminates the streak's rise off the horizon, but it moves the explosion dramatically to the west of where Wire clearly remembers it taking place, the better to transform Wire's ascending missile into a noseless plane. At this juncture, one question nags the observer. Why choose Wire's testimony to alter? Best guess: the CIA reasoned that an unassuming union millwright from Philadelphia would have much less access to the media than an affluent vacationer on the Long Island coast. In this sense, the CIA would have been right (their craft, after all, is deception). Wire did not become aware of his role in this recreation until March of 2000. Still, the CIA underestimated Wire. An Army vet, with service in Korea, Wire has refused to roll over. With his wife's encouragement, and with no reimbursement, he made the four-hour drive from Philadelphia so that we could interview him on Beach Lane Bridge and position him exactly where he was on that fateful night. Neither the FBI not the CIA asked him to do that. No one in the CIA ever talked to Mike Wire. In fact, the CIA talked to no eyewitness. The agency reached its startling conclusion after reviewing only about 12 percent of the FBI's summaries, many of these hasty and slapdash in the first place. Situation comedy "It is difficult to put into words the enormity (sic) of this investigation." Jim Hall, December 8, 1997 NTSB hearings. Producing a video gives one a perspective that writing a book does not. It forces the producer to watch the people whose story he is telling over and over again. One gets to know them like family. In fact, before I agreed to this project, I spent three days with the Sanders in their Florida exile (they apparently are the two felons in that state who did not vote), watching hours of video and looking for holes in their argument. What I saw only strengthened their case. Among the more revealing of the footage I watched is the final NTSB hearing on Flight 800, August 23, 2000. To read about Jim Hall is one thing. To see him in action is another. Imagine Floyd the Barber from Andy's Mayberry now as chairman of the NTSB: Kindly, bumbling, full of empty bromides – in so far over his head one cringes on his behalf. Now picture Howard Sprague, Mayberry's officious, self-deluding town clerk. Imagine him a little more unctuous and a little less charming, and you have the hearing's best supporting actor, Dr. David Mayer, head of the NTSB's Orwellian-titled "Human Performance Division." At the 2000 hearings, the job of discrediting witnesses fell to Dr. Mayer. "As you well know," Mayer piously informed the NTSB Board, "the work of the committee is under the party process. If we would interview witnesses, we would form a group and the group would interview the witnesses." Please note the words "if" and "would" and the following clarification by Mayer's boss, Dr. Bernard Loeb. "In this particular case, some of these witnesses we did not get to because the FBI initially interviewed them. That is a slight difference." "Some of the witnesses"? Despite the clear directive of Title 49 that the NTSB be the "priority" agency on the crash scene, the NTSB did not interview a single one of the more than 700 civilian witnesses. Its staff talked to only a handful of military people and, then, not until 1997. As Jim Hall acknowledged more than once, "I would like to emphasize normal procedures were not followed." For the record, not a single eyewitness was allowed to testify at any NTSB hearing. In 1997, the FBI prevented the NTSB from introducing any witness testimony or talk of explosive residue lest, mirabile dictu, the FBI one day decide to reopen the criminal investigation it had just closed. The FBI also cancelled the screening of the CIA animation. Wrote Kallstrom to Hall, "Until the NTSB has definitively determined an accidental cause for the crash, I believe it is prudent to withhold from public disclosure or discussion the identities of witnesses and the raw investigative details of the criminal investigation." By 2000, witnesses would have only caused problems for the NTSB whose mechanical thesis was now drafted in blood. The NTSB did not, however, shut out all alternative theories. At the 1997 hearing, a witness was allowed to speak to the possibility of a meteor strike. Said Hall, congratulating himself on his open-mindedness, "The meteorite. We got a lot of correspondence on meteor strikes." At the 2000 hearing the NTSB did, at least, consider the witness notes gathered by the FBI, including that from one witness chilling enough to impress even Dr. Mayer. "Witness 649 described events that certainly do sound like a missile attacking the airplane," Mayer admitted. So specific and powerful is 649's drawing, in fact, that when we animated it for the video, it made my editor and myself shudder in terror for the poor souls on board. Still, Dr. Mayer dismissed 649's testimony, and he did so for one reason only: as Mayer described it, everything 649 saw occurred "between these two flagpoles." Mayer then used an illustration to show where those flagpoles were located and vectored 649's line of sight from between those flagpoles out to sea. "So, again," said Mayer, "it doesn't appear that this witness was looking in the right location to see where Flight 800 would have been when it would have been struck by a hypothetical missile." One more problem. In none of the FBI notes does witness 649 ever mention a flagpole, let alone two flagpoles. With good reason. There weren't any at his location in Westhampton. This is all easily verifiable, but the major media had long since ceased to care. Late in the investigation, the NTSB staged a missile test. "We did not do this to prove whether or not it was a missile strike," said Mayer, "We have known for a long time it wasn't." How the NTSB could have hoped for an unbiased result given its predisposition beggars the imagination, especially since it tested just one class of missile out of many. For all that, Witness 649, like many others, described – even drew – a virtually identical pattern to the one the test witnesses reported. According to his witness documents, 649 saw an object like "a firework," ascend "fairly quick," then "slow" and "wiggle" then "speed up" and get "lost." Then he saw a second object that "glimmered" in the sky, higher than the first, then a red dot move up to that object, then a puff of smoke, then another puff, then a "firebox." Mike Wire's description is virtually identical to 649's – as are many others. In video editing, when we superimposed the smoke trail of the missile test on Wire's gestures or on 649's drawing, it left us speechless. Curiously, too, the CIA animation acknowledged Wire's description of a tell-tale wiggle but quietly attributed that to an airplane in crippled flight. At this juncture, the NTSB hearing – as it often does – gets bizarre and Clintonian. No one likes to lie, not even David Mayer. So he fudges. In a "hypothetical missile attack," Mayer testifies, a witness would first have seen one streak of light, the hypothetical missile. Then he would have seen a second streak of light, the "airplane in crippled flight." "What horrible luck!" I say to Creech in a darkly humorous moment. "First the nose falls off the plane spontaneously, without any hint of an explosion, and then it gets hit with a missile." No other reading of Mayer's testimony makes sense. "We could not find anyone describing this scenario," says Mayer semi-honestly, "one that began with two sequential streaks of light and concluded with a fireball." Of course, no one saw that scenario. It is preposterous. Nor can Mayer's double talk be written off to nervousness or confusion. It was all scripted and rehearsed. Other witness drawings might have proved even more awkward to explain away than 649's. But fortunately for the NTSB, at least 30 of the drawings have turned up missing. According to an NTSB exhibit, however, 96 witnesses did report seeing the streak come off the horizon. Still, this did not deter the agency from creating its own animation, one that also showed a noseless plane ascending from a starting point 20 degrees above the horizon. "We studied all the witness reports," said Mayer fatuously. "They are consistent with crippled flight, not a missile." Cmdr. Donaldson strenuously disagrees. His disgust for the NTSB theory of breakup is palpable. "They got smart when the CIA got laughed out of town by aviators," he scoffs. "The NTSB figured they'd get away with half of it. So they said it climbed 1,700 feet. It didn't." To sell the NTSB theory, Mayer had to discredit all the witness testimony and each of the key witnesses one by one, Mike Wire included. As he did in the case of 649, Mayer unveiled a stunning series of rationalizations, one more contrived than the next. In the case of consulting engineer, Paul Angelides, Mayer claims that in his July 21, 1996, interview with the FBI, Angelides mentions seeing only "a red flare descending." Adds Mayer, "He makes no mention of other details." This is nonsense. Angelides – whom we interviewed at length – gave the FBI a detailed, point-by-point sketch of what he saw from the deck of his beach house, and this included an object streaking out to sea, a second streak rising off the horizon, a ship, as well as the climactic fireball. This charade climaxed with his discussion of the "fifth witness," Major Fritz Meyer. Through an elaborate series of charts, Mayer made a specious, almost comical, case that, given the time it took the National Guard helicopter to reach the crash site – it arrived, in fact, when bodies were still falling from above – Major Meyer "saw a fireball, not a missile." *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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