-Caveat Lector-
"At a hearing by Senator Grassley's judicial subcommittee, the FBI was
accused of being in a rush to prove that a terrorist bomb or missile downed
TWA Flight 800."
Report: Problems in TWA Probe
By SHANNON McCAFFREY
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal agencies failed to share important information with
each other a previous time they investigated the crash into the Atlantic of a
big airliner that had taken off from New York, a congressional report says.
The criticism Monday of the handling of the investigation of TWA Flight 800
came as crash experts assembled again, this time to try to determine why
EgyptAir Flight 990 fell into the waters off Massachusetts.
The assessment by the General Accounting Office said that a report by the
Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, which pointed early on to the
explosion of a center fuel tank as the cause of the TWA crash in 1996, was
never forwarded to the National Transportation Safety Board. The ATF provided
the January 1997 report to the FBI, but the FBI never sent it the safety
board, the report said.
Had the FBI immediately provided the report to the safety board, changes
might have been implemented sooner in the Boeing 747's center wing fuel tank,
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and other critics said Monday.
``We ought to have an ethic of overreporting,'' Grassley said. ``Especially
when it comes to passenger safety.''
The GAO investigation was prompted by Grassley, who is chairman of the
Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the
Courts. At a hearing by his subcommittee in May, the FBI was accused of using
heavy-handed and sometimes bumbling tactics in a rush to prove that a bomb or
a missile downed the plane.
Grassley, R-Iowa, asked for the GAO - Congress' investigative arm - to look
into the whether the FBI had furnished the report to the NTSB, as officials
said at the hearing.
But while GAO investigators say that the official ATF report never made its
way to the NTSB, they say there is no evidence that it was purposefully
withheld.
``It looks like it fell through the cracks,'' said the GAO's assistant
director of Investigations, Ron Malfi.
An investigation by Grassley's subcommittee and the GAO also found that
Boeing Co. knew of problems with the fuel tanks on its jumbo jets as early as
1980 but never disclosed that information to NTSB officials investigating the
TWA crash until this June.
The FBI is now assisting the investigation into the crash early Sunday
morning of EgyptAir Flight 990 off the coast of Nantucket. Like TWA Flight
800, the EgyptAir Flight took off From John F. Kennedy Airport on Long
Island. Everyone aboard was killed.
FBI spokesman Jim Davis would not comment on the GAO report, but he also
said, ``We learned a lot from the TWA investigation.''
``It would be fair to say we are being extra-conscientious,'' Davis said of
the EgyptAir inquiry. ``No one here is saying we have to handle this with kid
gloves because of TWA but I do think it is in the back of people's minds.''
The NTSB did not return a phone call seeking comment on Monday. ATF spokesman
Jeff Roehm declined to address the contents of the report directly but said
that the agency ``has tremendous experience in the area of explosive
investigations'' and looked forward to being of assistance when needed.
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