Now is the right time in our country's history to release the JFK files.  [Scroll down]  Another possible example is TWA 800, which may have been accidentally shot down by a U.S. navy ship missile and for which numerous eyewitness accounts of a projectile heading up toward the plane were discounted.  Many employees across many government agencies and the military would know the false narrative, yet no one has spilled the beans — and this after quite a decent interval of time.

JFK Is Easy, Now Do TWA Flight 800.  With a likely assist from French intelligence, [Pierre] Salinger was put in touch with retired United Airline pilot and accident investigator Dick Russell.  Russell had been suspicious about the cause of the crash since Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon first announced it.  Russell had been around long enough to know that civilian plane crashes were not the natural bailiwick of the Defense Department.  Having gathered information through his own network of aviation insiders, Russell sent a summary e-mail to his associates with the message, "TWA Flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy guided missile ship which was in area W-105. It has been a cover-up from the word go."  Although recipients had vowed to keep the information among themselves, one of them posted the information on the internet, and it somehow found its way to Salinger.  Salinger called Russell about the intel and visited him in Florida soon afterwards.  In addition to the information Russell and his colleagues had been sharing, Salinger had with him several government dispatches that reinforced the theory that the U.S. Navy accidentally shot down the 747.

What TWA 800 Had in Common with Hunter B's Laptop.  On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 left JFK airport in New York City heading east to Paris.  Twelve minutes after its 8:19 departure the doomed 747 blew up off the south coast of Long Island, killing all 230 souls aboard.  On August 23, 1996, the New York Times reported on its front page, above the fold right, "Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of Flight 800."  According to the Times, only the FBI's uncertainty about whether the device was a bomb or a missile kept it from declaring TWA 800's destruction a crime.  On that same day, above the fold left, was the headline, "Clinton Signs Bill Cutting Welfare; States in New Role."  The Clintons had an election to win.  One of those storylines would have to go.  A month later, the administration started floating the possibility of a mechanical failure, and the bomb and missile story lines, despite the "prime evidence," were allowed to die.  Legendary JFK press secretary and former U.S. senator Pierre Salinger knew better.

Could the TWA 800 Cover-Up Finally Come Undone?  A month ago American Thinker published my article on whistleblower William Teele, the ten-year U.S. Navy vet who shared his own perspective on the TWA Flight 800, the 747 that blew up off the coast of Long Island in July 1996.  In that Teele was not on the ship that fired the missile, I asked for those with more information to share what they knew by contacting me through my website.  The quantity and quality of the response stunned me.  As a spoiler alert, no respondent admitted to being a witness, and some did not believe the Navy fired the missile.  That said, all were respectful and informative.  Several added corrective or confirming details. [...] As much as I would love to hear from a firsthand witness, I believe the courts hold more immediate potential.  On June 28, 2022, attorney John Roddy with the Boston firm of Bailey and Glasser filed a lawsuit on behalf of numerous family members of those killed in the 1996 crash.  Based on the research of physicist Tom Stalcup, the suit is stunning in its sophistication and detail.

Evidence confirms that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by the U.S. military, followed by a massive coordinated cover-up.  The official story surrounding the tragic crash of Trans World Airlines (TWA) Flight 800 back on July 17, 1996, maintains that the airplane just "exploded" out of nowhere, and that there was no terroristic foul play.  However, William Henry Teele III, a 10-year Navy veteran-turned-whistleblower, offers a different version of events that pegs the United States military as the culprit.  Though not intentional, according to Teele's account, several U.S. Navy vessels were in the area at the time.  And one of them launched a missile that struck TWA 800 and sent it plunging into the sea off the coast of Long Island, N.Y.  Jack Cashill from American Thinker wrote a book about all this back in 2016.  He published an article the other day stating that he believes Teele's account to be legitimate, based on who he is and his presence on one of the ships in the fleet that witnessed the TWA 800 incident first-hand.

The TWA 800 Whistleblower Is Legit.  In the past few weeks, I have received numerous inquiries about ten-year Navy veteran William Henry Teele III.  After years of quietly providing information to me and other investigators into the July 1996 destruction of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, Teele has gone public and is naming names.

Make No Mistake About It — TWA Flight 800 was Shot Down by the United States Navy.  On July 17, 1996, at approximately 2031 hrs., twelve minutes after takeoff from JFK Intl.  Airport on a scheduled flight to Rome with a planned stopover in Paris, France, commercial Airliner TWA Flight 800 was "shot" out of the sky by the United States Navy.  A massive cover-up ensued, with the FBI suppressing the truth in an effort to save Bill Clinton's 1996 re-election chances.  It was a surface-to-air missile that blasted the 747-100 right out of the sky killing 230 people, becoming the third-deadliest aviation accident in U.S. history.  There are naval personnel who were on one of three U.S. Navy submarines in the area off Long Island, New York on the night of July 17 twenty-two years ago.  Some naval personnel who were aboard those submarines have long since retired.  They were, no doubt, threatened to keep silent about what really happened, on pain of court-martial or worse.

Unaddressed issues corrode America like battery acid.  These days, when it comes to news reports about issues that matter, a lot falls through the cracks. [...] Will we ever know who really took down TWA-800?  Why did the FBI suddenly and forcefully take over a crash investigation from the NTSB that purportedly was simply due to mechanical causes?  What did all those people on the Long Island beaches see arcing into the sky that night?  Was this perhaps where the co-opting of the FBI really gathered steam?

Washington Post Gets the Leads for a Bombshell Story.  On July 16, Lori Aratani wrote a lengthy article for the Washington Post detailing the NTSB's decision to destroy the remains of TWA Flight 800, "the Paris-bound jetliner that crashed shortly after takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport 25 years ago Saturday killing all 230 people onboard."  This much Aratani got right, but that is about all.  On Monday, July 19, I started skimming the article with the expectation that Aratani was simply going to recirculate the party line of twenty or so years' standing.  She did not disappoint.  "The crash made headlines for years, the tragedy of the loss compounded by suspicions the plane may have been the target of a terrorist attack," Aratani wrote.  "Ultimately, after a four-year investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the cause was an explosion in the plane's center fuel tank, the result of a flammable mix of fuel and air ignited by a spark."  Standard nonsense.  There were, in fact, "suspicions" the plane may have been the target of a terrorist attack, but there was overwhelming evidence the 747 was the unfortunate victim of friendly missile fire.  And almost no one in the aviation community, save those who were paid to say so, believed that a spontaneous explosion in the center fuel tank destroyed the aircraft.

TWA 800: 25 Years of Deep State Deception.  On July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800, a Paris-bound 747 out of JFK, blew up off the coast of Long Island.  It seemed somehow fitting that James Kallstrom, the public face of the FBI investigation into the plane's destruction, would die two weeks before the 25th anniversary.  As a patriot, a Vietnam vet, and an outspoken critic of all things Clinton, Kallstrom once held promise as the insider most likely to come clean.  He never did.  As to my own involvement with this story, until the evening of February 23, 2000, I was as naïve as a CNN anchor.  Before that evening, I would have dismissed out of hand anyone who dared suggest that elements of the FBI and CIA would conspire with the White House and the New York Times to cover-up the cause of so public a disaster.  February 23, 2000 was the night my education began.

TWA Flight 800 remnants to be scrapped, 25 years after explosion killed 230 passengers, crew.  The bones of one of America's worst air disasters are finally being laid to rest.  But there will be no special grave or burial ceremony for the battered, twisted and fire-scarred chunk of fuselage from TWA Flight 800 which exploded minutes after takeoff 25 years ago this month over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 passengers and crew members who were bound for Paris and then Rome.  A 93-foot-long, two-story, white, silver and red aluminum and steel section of the doomed Boeing 747 jetliner is about to be chopped and melted into scrap.  Or as the National Transportation Safety Board officially calls the process:  "Certified destruction."

The New York Times Has Been Ridiculous for a Long Time.  Indeed, the only difference between the Times and the old Soviet Pravda is that Pravda readers knew they were being lied to.  If I had to pick a date that the joke started to become obvious, I would pick July 17, 1996, twenty-four years ago today, the day TWA flight 800, a Boeing 747, crashed off the coast of Long Island, killing all 230 good souls aboard.  As I heard from several reporters who covered this story, the New York Times owned it.  The FBI channeled virtually all new information through the Times, and the Times reported that information very close to uncritically.

Isikoff, Hosenball and the Media-Deep State War on Truth.  As the media-deep state Russia Hoax unravels, two journalists deserve special attention:  Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball.  Isikoff, now chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, was the first to break the story that the FBI was investigating Carter Page. [...] I first met Isikoff and Hosenball in Newsweek's cramped Washington office in 2003.  I was there promoting a book I had just coauthored with James Sanders on TWA Flight 800, the 747 that blew up off the south coast of Long Island in July 1996.  I knew Isikoff largely through his reporting on the Lewinsky affair.  Hosenball I knew for his role, witting or otherwise, as the CIA's chief propagandist in the TWA 800 investigation.  In the way of background, in November 1997 the FBI showed a CIA-produced animation to discredit the hundreds of credible eyewitnesses to a missile strike on the aircraft.  Hosenball fell hard for the CIA video.  Under his byline, Newsweek ran a fully affirmative, nine-frame, full-color recreation captioned with the unlikely boast, "CIA Photos."

No One Noticed When Clinton and Obama Abused Whistleblowers.  Here are two unfortunate realities:  the first is that whistleblowing becomes virtuous only when a Republican is the one being whistled on; the second is that deep state Democrats have a habit of manipulating whistleblower laws when it suits their purposes.  I could write a book — I've written several, in fact — on whistleblowers the major media chose to ignore.  The two examples that follow, one regarding Bill Clinton, the other Barack Obama, should give a sense of how the worms in Washington turn.  The first case involves TWA Flight 800, the 747 that inexplicably crashed off the coast of Long Island in July 1996.  As to deep state involvement, the Clinton Department of Justice illegally seized control of the investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board and handed it off to the FBI, which, in turn, ceded real control of the investigation to the CIA.

Dog whistle:
Why did Trump hold a rally in this small Pennsylvania town?  If there was a reason President Donald Trump chose the small Pennsylvania town of Montoursville to hold a campaign rally, no one in the media is saying what it is.  In the absence of any answers, let me suggest one, admittedly more speculative than proven but a possibility nonetheless.  In 1996, during the midst of Bill Clinton's desperate drive to become president, 16 French club members from the Montoursville high school and five of their chaperones died in the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island.  Although the phrase has been much abused, there is none better than "cover-up" to describe what followed.

The FBI Manufactured '302s' before Mueller.  As the TWA investigation progressed past November 1996 and Bill Clinton's successful re-election, the CIA got serious about fulfilling its unprecedented mission, namely discrediting the eyewitnesses to a domestic airline crash.  By failing to interview a single one of the more than 250 eyewitnesses to report an apparent missile strike, the New York Times made the CIA's job a whole lot easier.  According to a theory the CIA concocted, an internal explosion blew the nose off the doomed 747.  The noseless fuselage then tilted back and rocketed upright for nearly a mile.  According to the CIA, this zoom climb confused hundreds of credible witnesses into merely thinking they had seen a missile.  Only one person stood in the CIA's way of selling this preposterous scenario to a willfully ignorant media.  That was the head of the FBI missile team, Steve Bongardt.  Bongardt demanded to know why the CIA analysts failed to account for the eight witnesses who saw an object "hit the aircraft" or the numerous witnesses who saw the object move from east to west, the opposite direction of TWA 800.  In all, he cited some thirty "problem witnesses" whose accounts did not begin to square with the "agency scenario."

The Escalating Assault on Citizen Journalism.  In December 1997, after the FBI arrested independent journalist James Sanders for investigating the destruction of TWA Flight 800, not a single reporter at a post-arraignment press conference managed to frame even one First Amendment question.  In fact, the Newsday reporter argued the government's case, insisting the Justice Department found insufficient evidence to declare Sanders a journalist.  The fact that Sanders had already written two successful investigatory books did not count.  By challenging the media's defense of a Democratic administration, Sanders all but sacrificed his First Amendment rights.  At the time of Sanders's arrest roughly 40 percent of America was using the Internet.  Within 20 years that figure would approach 90 percent.  The Internet was the great equalizer.  It enabled citizen journalists to report stories that the major media underreported or failed to report at all.

We Need To Know If Intelligence Agencies Covered Up The 1996 Crash Of TWA 800.  While recently watching a documentary on the Smithsonian Channel about a 1987 plane crash in California purportedly caused by a deranged passenger, I realized a profound shift had occurred in my accepted wisdom, my "worldview."  During its investigation of the crash, the FBI allegedly found a vital piece of evidence at the scene, which led to them identifying a suspect behind the crash.  It dawned on me that I doubted the veracity of both the evidence the FBI supposedly found and of the documentary itself.  Then I realized that my doubt was purely a result of everything we've learned about the FBI's involvement in the greatest political crime in America's history through its pivotal role to undermine Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and in the blatant cover-up of Hillary Clinton's crimes as secretary of state.  It also brought home why President Trump needs to reopen the 1996 TWA Flight 800 plane crash investigation.

TWA 800.  Jack Cashill talked about his book TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover-Up, and the Conspiracy, in which he takes a critical look at the official story surrounding the crash of TWA flight 800, which went down in the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 1996.  [Video clip]

Strzok Farce Shows Obstacles to Opening TWA 800 Case.  Although I remain hopeful the truth about TWA 800 will one day surface, the [Strzok] hearing reminded me of the many obstacles the truth faces.  The most formidable obstacle is the media, particularly the New York Times.  The saying goes that a scandal becomes a scandal only when the Times calls it a "scandal" on the front page.  Given this definition, Barack Obama and his media acolytes can pass a lie-detector test when they speak of Obama's "scandal-free" presidency.  From the moment Strzok entered the committee hearing room, one could sense his confidence that the Times and other media, as well as the Democrats on the committee, would represent his interests.  He was right.

How the FBI, CIA, and NYT Collaborated to Sway the 1996 Election.  The idea is floated frequently that the still nameless Russian collusion scandal is "worse than Watergate."  It may well be, but that comparison overlooks a more useful parallel.  The gold standard of government conspiracy remains the investigation into the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 off the south coast of Long Island.  The ensuing cover-up involved many of the same players as in the Russia conspiracy and for the same immediate goal:  to secure a presidential election for a Clinton.  As with the Russia scandal, not all the collaborators in the TWA 800 case were equally motivated or equally powerful.  The White House drove the conspiracy through its Justice Department.  The CIA executed it without conscience.  The FBI grudgingly yielded to the CIA.  And the New York Times dutifully reported what the FBI whispered in its reporters' ears.

Jamie Gorelick Knew What Team She Was On.  [Scroll down]  What followed in the next several weeks was the most ambitious and successful cover-up in American peacetime history.  At its quiet center was Gorelick.  With the help of a complicit media, she and her cronies transformed a transparent missile strike into a mechanical failure of unknown origin.  Given her role, the months after the crash had to have been emotionally harrowing.  She did not know whether she would wake up one morning to find Washington Post reporters at her door eager to make her their John Mitchell or H. R. Haldeman.  Perhaps such anxiety may have inspired her to leave the DOJ in January 1997.  If so, the media missed the story.  In an article on her departure, the New York Times failed to explain why the "hard-driving, efficient" deputy was stepping down or what she intended to do next.  Nor did the paper mention her role in the TWA 800 investigation.  There was nothing routine about Gorelick's next career move.

In Search of Nelson DeMille's TWA 800 Video.  [Scroll down]  The sentence that he and his wife composed, "If this was a Navy missile, there goes Clinton's reelection" goes a long way in explaining the rationale behind the most successful cover-up in American peacetime history.  The 21st anniversary is Monday, July 17.

The Day the New York Times Lost All Credibility.  [Scroll down]  If one had to pick a day when the Times lost all credibility with Sanders and other independent journalists, it would be September 21, 1996.  On that day, the Times' Matthew Purdy told of how the St. Louis police used the TWA 800 plane to train a bomb-sniffing dog six weeks before the crash.  The trainer placed explosives throughout the plane and encouraged the dog to find them.  One law enforcement official told Purdy the explosives were kept in tightly wrapped packages but conceded, "Testing can leave traces behind."  The following day, September 22, the Times published what would prove to be the investigation's obituary.  "Can you imagine what a defense lawyer would do to us?" one investigator told reporter Don Van Natta.  "This pretty much knocks out the traces, unless we get something much more concrete."

Jared Kushner, Beware of Jamie Gorelick.  In 1996, [Jamie] Gorelick stepped up her game, taking a lead role in the investigation of the TWA Flight 800 disaster.  This was the 747 that inexplicably blew up off the coast of Long Island in July 1996 killing 230 people.  As deputy attorney general serving under a feckless Janet Reno, Gorelick's assignment was to rein in the FBI.  Five weeks into the investigation, she summoned FBI honcho Jim Kallstrom to Washington and served up a dose of political reality.  To be sure, no account of the Aug. 22 meeting provides any more than routine detail, but behaviors began to change immediately afterwards.  The FBI had already leaked to the New York Times information that would result in a headline on Aug. 23, top right:  "Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of Flight 800."  This article stole the thunder from Clinton's election-driven approval of welfare reform in that same day's paper and threatened to undermine the peace and prosperity message of the next week's Democratic National Convention.  What followed in the next several weeks was the most ambitious and successful cover-up in American peacetime history.  At its center was Gorelick.  With the help of a complicit media and the active involvement of the CIA, she and her cronies transformed a transparent missile strike into a mechanical failure of unknown origin.

Hillary's Health Is a Media Scandal.  As this incident makes painfully clear, to report facts that the media choose to suppress makes one a "conspiracy theorist," at least until the facts become too obvious for the media to ignore. [...] In the two months since my book on TWA 800 was published, I have faced this same conundrum.  Although almost everyone in the aviation industry knows the 747 was shot out of the sky in July 1996, the media will not report this politically inconvenient fact unless it becomes too obvious to ignore.

TWA 800: My Improbable Lunch with the Chairman of the NTSB.  [Scroll down]  When the subject of TWA 800 emerges, the networks still turn to people like [Peter] Goelz and [Jim] Hall.  They have become the public face of the NTSB, which is one reason why the board has lost almost all credibility with the aviation community.  Someone needs to rescue the NTSB, and America for that matter.  That so flagrant an injustice has been allowed to stand for twenty years tells us much too much the state of the nation today.

One 'Conspiracy Theory' Trump Needs to Push.  [Scroll down]  From her logs, we know that Hillary and President Bill Clinton returned to the White House at 8:35 p.m. on the night of July 17, 1996.  Former Chief of Staff Leon Panetta tells us he called the president at 9 p.m. with the news that TWA Flight 800 blew up off the coast of Long Island.  My source at the White House has confirmed that the Clintons and their consigliere, Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, holed up in the family residence throughout the night.  Berger was the Clintons' political guy.  His boss, Tony Lake, left the room whenever politics surfaced.  That night, with re-election looming, all decisions were political, and no one can doubt Hillary's active role in the conversation.  By 3 a.m. the Clintons had settled on a strategy.  At that fabled hour — the one Hillary would mythologize in her run against Barack Obama — Bill called Lake with the following message:  "Dust off the contingency plans."  For the time being, the president would quietly blame terrorists for the presumed missile attack.  That night, the Department of Justice had the FBI take the investigation over from the National Transportation Safety Board, the NTSB.  Although illegal, this move was made publicly.

TWA 800: Calling Agent Bongardt, Your Nation Needs You.  [Scroll down]  "CIA will continue to look at problematic witnesses," the analyst responded to the dissenting agent.  He got to work quickly.  On the very day the analyst sent this memo to his superiors, April 29, 1997, a second "302" was prepared for the most "problematic" of the FBI, eyewitnesses, Witness #73.  In this second interview, #73 conceded that she had been drinking 'Long Island Ice Tea' cocktails" before witnessing the explosion, a concession that undermined her original testimony.  As #73 told me years later, she did not know what a Long Island Iced Tea was, did not drink, and did not give a second interview.  In her initial interview three days after the crash, she not only described a missile attack on the 747 in stunning detail, but she also "observed the front of the aircraft separate from the back," a fact that took the authorities weeks to confirm.

Hillary, Gorelick, and the Corruption of the TWA 800 Case.  [Scroll down]  The Clintons did not want their fingerprints anywhere near this mess.  They preferred to work through the Department of Justice, which Hillary had staked out as her own personal fiefdom.  Like just about everything she touched, the DOJ was both highly politically and seriously dysfunctional.  Nanny issues sidelined the first two attorney general candidates.  Insisting that a woman — any woman — head the department, Hillary finally settled on the feckless Miami prosecutor Janet Reno.  For the next eight years the Clintons would have to work around her.  Needing someone to work through, they finally found a fixer worthy of the number two position, a little-known DC litigator named Jamie Gorelick.

When the Government Lies:  TWA Flight 800.  When you look at all the evidence behind the tragedy of Flight 800, it was very difficult not to conclude that the government's investigation was faulty and scripted, and that the probable cause of the incident was some fuel cell problem was completely unbelievable.  It was July 17, 1996, and Flight 800 occurred right in the middle of the sweet spot of a string of terrorist attacks on America, on American interests, on President Clinton's watch. [...] President Clinton's time in office saw the highest level of terrorism activity directed at American interests:  buildings, embassies, a Navy warship, and over a dozen high-capacity aircraft were targeted or attacked.  Other commercial aircraft had been shot down and that news was ignored.  These were "spectacular operations."  And according to the National Transportation Safety Board Flight 800 was just a jet with a bad set of wires in a fuel tank.  The only airplane in the history of flight to have exploded in flight because of a possible short circuit in a fuel tank.

My Personal Hole in the Sky.  I applaud those who are creating documentaries and writing books that reveal insight into the aftermath and investigation of that July 17th, 1996 disaster.  My memoir does include my opinion that the 258 witnesses who saw a missile have been rejected by the official investigation.  But mostly my memoir is a personal interest story.  It reveals what it's like to be in love, and to lose her — along with my international airline — all in a single unpredictable moment.  13,760 Feet — My Personal Hole in the Sky is a memorial at altitude for 230 passengers and crew, and if you read it, you too will yearn for answers.

Jack Cashill's TWA 800: Time to Reopen the Investigation.  While most of the mainstream media condemned the idea that the plane was brought down by a missile or missiles as a conspiracy theory, Accuracy in Media fought to expose the government cover-up through the use of the Freedom of Information Act.  We also produced a documentary titled TWA 800:  The Search for the Truth, which maintains that TWA Flight 800 did not simply explode.  The flight was brought down by one or more missiles.  The FBI interviewed 736 eyewitnesses who saw TWA Flight 800 fall out of the sky.  As AIM reported, "Eyewitnesses were not allowed to testify, and their words were only summarized in FBI reports which they could not personally review."  Accuracy in Media's founder Reed Irvine scoured the eyewitness statements for additional clues to this mystery and discovered that one of the statements mentioned the word "wire," which was in fact a name that the redactors failed to redact.

TWA 800: Jim Kallstrom's Road to Redemption.  When I see former FBI New York honcho Jim Kallstrom appear on Fox News, I see a tortured soul.  As boldly honest as he has been on the subject of Islamic terrorism, this once honorable man has lived a lie for the last twenty years on the subject of TWA Flight 800.  Others have lived the lie as well, but none so personally. [...] When Kallstrom arrived on the scene in Long Island the day after the crash in July 1996, the truth was indeed what he was seeking.  By July 30, 1996 — less than two weeks after the 747 blew up — FBI agents had interviewed 144 "excellent" witnesses to a missile strike.  As revealed in a recently unearthed CIA memo, the evidence was "overwhelming" and the witness testimony "too consistent" for the cause of the plane's destruction to be anything other than a missile.  1996 being an election year, however a missile strike on an American airliner involved far too much political risk for the Clinton White House.  Working through the CIA, its operatives took effective control of the investigation.  For reasons only he knows, Kallstrom knuckled under.

Jack Cashill's TWA 800: Practicing Journalism in a Failed Republic.  Ten years into my second career — journalism — July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 was shot down by the United States Navy just south of West Hampton, Long Island, shortly after 2030 hours.  It was the second time in four days the United States Navy shot something out of the sky in the waters south of Long Island, and I have the video to prove it.  The 747 was seriously injured when the force of a thermite warhead, unique to the United States Navy in 1996, struck in the area where the leading edge of the right wing attached to the fuselage.  A few feet away was engine number three, the first significant piece of the 747 to hit the water about 14,000 feet below, so close to JFK Airport that it was outside the initial search area.  Its factual location was so damaging to the FBI/CIA cover-up ordered by the National Security State that its actual location was expunged from the debris recovery log and moved more than 5,000 feet to the east to comport with a mechanical explanation.

TWA 800: How the CIA Hijacked the FBI Investigation.  Within hours of the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the Long Island coast on July 17, 1996, the FBI seized control of the investigation from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).  Although illegal, this was done in full view of an indifferent media.  What the media did not see was the CIA's illegal seizure of the investigation from both the NTSB and FBI.  We know about this quiet coup now thanks to a treasure trove of CIA documents recently unearthed through the Freedom of Information Act separately by attorney John Clarke and physicist Tom Stalcup.

TWA 800: Breaking — Air Traffic Controller Tells All.  [Scroll down]  Within a half hour of the crash, Clinton anti-terror czar Richard Clarke was summoning a high level meeting at the White House.  A civilian plane crash never before prompted this kind of response.  The eyewitness accounts had yet to come in.  The radar tape had set the wheels in motion.  CNN's Christine Negroni provided the most detailed account of the radar's reception in Washington in her book Deadly Departure, an otherwise predictable rehashing of the government position.  Negroni's primary source was Ron Schleede, then a deputy director of aviation safety at the NTSB.  On the morning after the crash, July 18, an FAA official showed him a radar plot that got his complete attention. [...] He told Negroni, "It showed this track that suggested something fast made a turn and took the airplane."  That same morning, said Schleede, "The FAA was working with people at the top secret level.  They were in a crisis room with intelligence people and everybody else."  That same day, before the story could be suppressed, authorities were telling the New York Times about "a mysterious radar blip that appeared to move rapidly toward the plane just before the explosion."

TWA 800: What the CIA Did to Mike Wire, Witness 571.  [Scroll down]  When cornered, the CIA analyst responded, "He [I] was an important eyewitness to us.  And we asked the FBI to talk to him again, and they did."  This was nonsense.  The FBI never spoke to me after the initial Lash interview. [...] I do not know who generated this false interview to fit their scenario, but I stand by my original approved statement made to agent Lash.  No other statement exists as there were none.  The CIA built its case-closing animation around an interview that never took place.  I would learn later that the CIA manufactured interviews with several other key witnesses.  This whole experience has left me disillusioned with the FBI, disillusioned with the CIA, and totally disillusioned with the news media that bought this whole story without ever questioning it — even after the truth about the fake interviews had become impossible to deny.

TWA 800: The Great Untold Story of Our Time.  On the pleasant summer evening of July 17, 1996, TWA Flight 800 left JFK Airport in New York bound for Paris.  Twelve minutes after takeoff, about ten miles south of the popular south shore of Long Island, at least two surface-to-air missiles blew the 747 out of the sky, killing all 230 people on board.  I write the above with 100 percent confidence.  I owe that confidence to the efforts of a small corps of committed individuals — eyewitnesses, independent researchers, whistleblowers from within the investigation, and family members who have turned their grief into action.  In attempting to get at the truth, at least three of these people were arrested, several others were thrown off the TWA 800 investigation, and every one of them was ridiculed.

TWA Flight 800 Anniversary Stirs Memories.  Friday, July 17th, marked the 19th anniversary of the deaths of 230 people on TWA Flight 800.  There remain unaddressed questions about how this jet mysteriously exploded off the coast of Long Island. [...] I'm sure there will be much more coverage next year, for the 20th anniversary.  But the media continue to do a disservice to America and the memories of those lost, by ignoring this enduring scandal and its many victims.  They are not interested in re-litigating the facts because the facts overwhelmingly point to an administration cover-up, and to expose this scandal would implicate the Clintons in yet another scandal.  Andrew Danziger, a 28-year airline veteran, spoke out this past April about the transparent government cover-up that took place nearly two decades ago.

Former Obama pilot: TWA Flight 800 was not blown up by a faulty fuel tank; it was shot down.  [Scroll down]  Investigators determined there was a crack in the insulation, which allowed high voltage from the lighting circuitry to create a spark that ignited the vapors in the empty tank.  I have a problem with this theory. The probes that measure fuel quantity were recovered from the bottom of the ocean during the salvage effort.  They were cleaned, and they all passed stringent tests.  There wasn't a single piece of cracked insulation in the 159 miles of wire recovered in the investigation.  Conveniently, lengths of wire where the cracks were imagined to exist were supposedly among the 16 miles of wire that weren't recovered.  I say supposedly for good reason.  According to my colleague who worked for TWA, the mechanics and their representatives were denied access, in the early going, to the hangar where all of the recovered material was stored and being re-assembled.

9/11 mastermind revealed an Al Qaeda plot to bring down airliner just weeks before the TWA 800 crash.  The FBI had advance warning of an al-Qaeda plot to bring down a commercial airliner on American soil just weeks before the 1996 TWA 800 crash that claimed 230 civilian lives.  Now, a series of previously-confidential FBI documents obtained by investigative journalist Peter Lance and seen by MailOnline, provide compelling evidence that the crash was an act of terror orchestrated by the man now believed by many to be the true architect of 9/11.

MH 17 versus TWA 800.  Boeing, the designer of the 747 that was Flight TWA 800, is highly staffed with bright scientists who undoubtedly know well these phenomena, and who took them into consideration in the design of their aircraft.  It is unthinkable that they would design an airplane vulnerable to destruction as described by government investigators.  This diminishes the plausibility of the government's story.  And there is another negating factor that looms large:  of all the thousands of aircraft that have ever flown, there has never been an instance of an accident resulting from a fuel tank explosion without an external cause.  Michael Barr, Director of Aviation Safety at the University of Southern California, disbelieves the government's story.  He says, "These planes just don't blow up.  There's too many firewalls, too many checks and balances."  Taken together, these two points cast the government's story into serious doubt.  It seems unlikely that the crash was due to any endogenous cause.  Where, then, does that leave us?

Anderson Cooper: 'TWA Flight 800 Was Shot Down'.  [Scroll down]  "Zoom Climb," the theatrical highlight of the FBI investigation, was designed to negate the stubborn testimony of the eyewitnesses.  An animated sequence in "Zoom Climb" shows an internal fuel tank explosion blowing the nose off the 747.  According to the video's narration, TWA 800 then "pitched up abruptly and climbed several thousand feet from its last recorded altitude of about 13,800 feet to a maximum altitude of about 17,000 feet."  This rocketing aircraft was alleged to look like a missile and to have confused the eyewitnesses.  This animation was essential to close the investigation.  Without this zoom climb scenario, the FBI had no way to explain what hundreds of official eyewitnesses had actually seen.

Why Congress Must Reopen the TWA 800 Investigation.  [Scroll down]  Contrary to NTSB regulations, [Hank] Hughes, although a group chairman, was not allowed to write an analysis of what he found.  The evidence his group gathered led him to much the same conclusion as the IAMAW's.  The pattern of seat damage and passenger injuries strongly suggested not a low-speed fuel tank explosion, as the NTSB would later insist, but "a high-order explosion from a military-type explosive detonating a significant distance away from the airframe." Says Hughes, "This was the first time in my 26 years as an NTSB accident investigator that I had been ordered not to write an analysis."  Hughes was not the only high-level investigator whose analysis was suppressed.  As he notes, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Charles Wetli and the NTSB's Aero-Medical Forensic Consultant, Col. Dennis Shanahan, M.D., were also told not to submit analyses of their findings.  The most spectacular bit of mischief involved the CIA.

NTSB Stands by Cause of TWA Flight 800 Explosion.  The board said Wednesday [7/2/2014] that a team of investigators not part of the original investigation has confirmed NTSB's previous finding that an oxygen buildup in a partially empty fuel tank caused an explosion that destroyed the plane in-flight off the coast of Long Island, New York.

The Best Mob Story Ever.  [Scroll down]  In July 1996, the case was still dragging on when [Louis] Freeh assigned [Jim] Kallstrom to head up the TWA Flight 800 investigation.  For the first five weeks Kallstrom did a credible job before buckling under White House pressure on or about August 22.  I have always wondered what combination of carrots and sticks the White House used to misdirect the investigation away from the obvious missile strike to a fully contrived mechanical failure.  Without making the connection directly, [Peter] Lance suggests a possible carrot.

TWA Flight 800: Hillary Rodham Clinton's Benghazi warm-up.  Hillary Rodham Clinton, the nation's first co-President, was as much a powerful political influence and purveyor of false reality then as she is today.  In fact, the parallels between her role in the narrative of TWA Flight 800 and the official story behind the murders of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, are strikingly similar. [...] There were 270 documented eyewitnesses to the events of that night, each observing what can best be described as a missile striking the aircraft.

What really happened? Doc raises questions about doomed TWA Flight 800.  Seventeen years ago today, TWA Flight 800 took off from JFK bound for Paris.  Twelve minutes later it exploded over the water near East Moriches, Long Island — killing all 230 passengers on board.  Before a day had passed, reporters, particularly John Miller, found eyewitnesses who swore they saw at least one streak of light fly from the surface of the earth, weave to the side, aim directly and then strike the plane, causing a massive explosion.  The FBI and the CIA took over the investigation determining, finally, that the crash had been caused by an explosion of unknown origin in a fuel tank.  It was not, the government insisted — and attempted to prove — anything other than an accident.  There was no missile, they said.

How 9/11 mastermind revealed Al Qaeda plot to bring down airliner.  The FBI had advance warning of an al-Qaeda plot to bring down a commercial airliner on American soil just weeks before the 1996 TWA 800 crash that claimed 230 civilian lives.  Now, a series of previously-confidential FBI documents obtained by investigative journalist Peter Lance and seen by MailOnline, provide compelling evidence that the crash was an act of terror orchestrated by the man now believed by many to be the true architect of 9/11.

CNN Edits Out Comparison of TWA 800 and Benghazi.  On this past Saturday morning [6/22/2013], I did a live remote from Kansas City for CNN's "New Day" program on the subject of TWA Flight 800, hosted by Alison Kosik.  What follows is the transcript as it appears on CNN.com.  What does not appear I will explain later.  Inherent in this transcript is the Achilles heel of what is arguably the most successful bit of government propaganda in American peacetime history.  Unwittingly, what the CNN editors left in is more damning than what they took out.

What CNN Cut Out of the TWA 800 Interview.  [Scroll down]  On August 2, 1996, Clinton had yet to get the investigation under his full control.  If telltale chemicals were not found, perhaps the eyewitness testimony could be marginalized.  This seems to have been the plan.  If so, the investigators could "reassemble the plane," and that Potemkin dumb show would take the investigation past the November election.  Unfortunately for Clinton, the FBI found "telltale" residue of the explosives PETN and RDX throughout the plane, and the New York Times reported the same.

New Evidence Suggests TWA Flight 800 Was Shot Down Leaving New York.  On July 17, 1996, TWA flight 800 took off from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City carrying 212 passengers and 12 flight crew.  As the Boeing 747-100 climbed in altitude and turned towards its destination of Paris, the plane exploded just off the shore of East Moriches, New York, killing everyone on board.  A number of witnesses at the time claimed that they had seen something like a missile or flare strike the plane just before it exploded.

Can You Believe This is a Lie? I Can't.  I am revealing the name of the Navy master chief who last November told an acquaintance of his that on the evening of July 17, 1996, he was on the bridge of the USS Trepang, a submarine that was practically underneath TWA Flight 800 when the plane exploded and crashed into the sea.  His acquaintance, whose name I won't disclose because it adds nothing to the story, had called me the night before on a line in my office that had been used to take calls for the TWA 800 Eyewitness Alliance generated by an ad placed in The Washington Times on August 15, 2000.  He shared our views about the cause of the crash, and we had a good conversation.

TWA Flight 800 Investigators Claim the Official Crash Story Is a Lie.  A new film claims the official government report on the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 is an elaborate fabrication, but the most shocking part of the story is that charges are being leveled by some of the very investigators who put the report together.  Six experts who appear in the film were members of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation team that concluded the crash was an accident, but they now claim they were silenced by their superiors.  The movies, "TWA Flight 800" will debut on EPIX TV next month, on the 17-year anniversary of the crash.

Former investigators 'break silence' about NTSB cover-up of TWA Flight 800 crash.  A group of former NTSB investigators argue in an upcoming documentary that the crash, which occurred off the coast of Long Island in 1996 and killed 230 people, was not caused by a fuel tank explosion, as the agency said.  Investigators from the first probe of doomed TWA Flight 800 called Wednesday [6/19/2013] for a new examination of the tragedy, resurrecting old claims that a missile downed the plane.

Ex-probers call to reopen case of downed TWA Flight 800 on new 'explosion evidence'.  Six former investigators of the crash of TWA Flight 800 say they have new evidence that the jumbo jet was brought down by an "external explosion" off Long Island — and are demanding that the 17-year-old case be reopened.  The National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI ignored hundreds of eyewitness reports, as well as radar data, indicating that a missile downed the JFK-to-Paris flight in 1996, killing all 230 people aboard, the probers said.  "We don't know who fired the missile," said Jim Speer, who investigated the crash for the Air Line Pilots Association.  "But we have a lot more confidence that it was a missile."

Filmmaker asserts new evidence on crash of TWA Flight 800.  A documentary on the 1996 explosion that brought down TWA Flight 800 offers "solid proof that there was an external detonation," its co-producer said Wednesday [6/19/2013].  "Of course, everyone knows about the eyewitness statements, but we also have corroborating information from the radar data, and the radar data shows a(n) asymmetric explosion coming out of that plane — something that didn't happen in the official theory," Tom Stalcup told CNN's New Day.

TWA Flight 800 investigators break silence in new documentary.  A group of whistle-blowers, including a number of aviation experts, have come forward in a new documentary to claim that the official explanation for the crash of TWA Flight 800 was wrong and a gas tank explosion did not bring down the flight off the coast of Long Island 17 years ago.  However, the six whistle-blowers, all part of the original investigation team, stopped short of saying the plane was shot down.

DOJ-Media-Intel Election Interference Predates Trump.  The [Sandy] Berger case is the deep state's Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering its mysteries.  In 2004, while reviewing files at the National Archives in preparation for the 9-11 Commission hearing, Berger, Bill Clinton's national security advisor, stole highly classified documents, stored them under a construction trailer during a break, retrieved them at day's end, admittedly cut them up, and threw the pieces away.  On April 1, 2005, the DOJ announced its extraordinary plea deal with Berger — a $10,000 fine and a three-year suspension of his top-level security clearance.  Long before Trump's emergence, Democrats were playing by a radically different set of rules.  At least three of the DOJ attorneys mishandling the Berger case were Democrat donors.

Editor's Note:
The following article was written a few months after the TWA 800 crash, and is especially interesting because it forecasts the costs passenger profiling, automatic screening, bag matching, sniffing for explosives and huge delays at airports, long before the September 11 hijackings.

The Cost of Antiterrorist Rhetoric:  Nearly five months after the tragic TWA flight 800 crash, we still do not know whether the 230 people on board were killed by a terrorist act.  With 95 percent of the wreckage recovered, there is little support for the theory that a bomb or missile caused the crash.  Nonetheless, the White House quickly reacted to the incident by immediately implementing several heightened security measures and creating a White House Commission on Aviation, Safety, and Security (the Gore Commission).

Who knew what, and when?  Isaac Yeffet, the former director of security for El Al Airline [...] has continued to insist that TWA Flight 800 was destroyed as the result of a terrorist attack, and Yeffet is in a position to know something about terrorism.

What does Dick Morris know about TWA 800?  On July 15, I was able to question Morris on Paul Schiffer's excellent Cleveland-area radio show.  Although in his new book Morris refers to TWA 800 as one of three "attacks" in the "terrorist summer of 1996," he clearly did not want to talk about this incident on the air.

TWA Flight 800:  By the numbers.

Iraqis behind 747's demise?  Evidence is growing that terrorists — possibly orchestrated by Iraq — bear ultimate responsibility for the demise of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996, according to authors Jack Cashill and James Sanders.

Ex-NTSB honcho tries to torpedo "First Strike".

Jailed author of Flight 800 book vindicated:  Justice Department concedes wrongdoing in case against Journalist James Sanders.

How the New York Times blew its biggest story:  Scooped by the Washington Post on the second biggest political scandal of our time, Watergate, the New York Times had a chance to even the score.  The paper had an all but proprietary lock on the most consequential political cover-up in recent American history, the case of TWA Flight 800.

No longer an accident!  The jury is in on TWA Flight 800, and the verdict is clear:  There is absolutely no evidence of either a mechanical failure, or of a bomb planted in the fuselage.  Indeed, all available evidence suggests the explosive event that destroyed the ill-fated airliner in 1996 was caused by a terrorist group called the Islamic Change Movement.

Seeking New Light On TWA Flight 800:  The deadliest U.S. airline disaster prior to the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was the July 17, 1996, midair explosion that destroyed TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, N.Y.  Six years later, while the official investigation has been closed (or forever forgotten in "inactive pending" status), the nature of the explosion that killed the 230 passengers of the Paris-bound jumbo jet is very much on the radar of independent investigators.

New book reveals evidence of terrorism in downing of TWA Flight 800:  "First Strike" uncovers substantial new information, including a terrorist connection, about the fate of TWA Flight 800.

Official TWA 800 Findings Challenged:  Metals of "unknown origin" were found in the bodies of many of those who died in the crash.  The FBI asked the Brookhaven National Laboratory to analyze pellets found in the bodies.  They contained zirconium and barium, indicative of an incendiary device foreign to a Boeing 747 airliner.  The NTSB acknowledges that the source of these pellets is unknown and that the FBI did not try to determine the source.

TWA 800 and official lies:  The news media should be demanding that the government identify the armada revealed by the radar and explain what it was doing.  Those with the most clout didn't cover the news conference.  They haven't learned Waco's important lesson -- the bigger the crime, the bigger the cover-up. C-SPAN covered the three-hour news conference live, showing the public how the establishment media cheat them by ignoring very important news.

Why did Al Gore really drop out?  After the events of Sept. 11, the story of how Al Gore helped subvert the investigation into TWA 800 and undermine airport security may well have been part of the calculus that put Al Gore out of the race.

TWA 800 controversy heats up.

Silenced no more!  Intelligence professionals feel betrayed.  The lawlessness of the Clinton administration is ignored.  The potential for continued corruption of the intelligence apparatus is significant as long as the cancer remains within.

TWA Flight 800: The cover-up begins to unravel.  Flight 800 is mostly an ugly memory for people these days.  The U.S. government issued an explanation that a fuel tank had somehow exploded.  Yet, they flatly denied any evidence existed of foul play, including the possibility that Flight 800 had been blown out of the air by a missile.  All but a few journalists accepted the government's version of events.  Few bothered to investigate the numerous eyewitnesses, the radar records and the physical evidence that all suggested a strikingly different explanation of Flight 800's untimely demise.  And those few who did question the government's version were made to look like fools or, worse, thrown in jail and prosecuted as criminals for meddling in an official investigation.

American 587:

Editor's note:
More and more often, when a disaster occurs, government spokesmen quickly assure everyone that the event was just an "isolated incident".  Sometimes this happens suspiciously soon, as in the case of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in New York City two months after the September 11 attacks.  Federal officials went on TV within a couple of hours after the crash to claim that it was not a terrorist act.  After any other crash, it has taken as long as a year to learn the official cause.

The incident leaves a lot of unanswered questions, but there are also un-asked questions, because the mainstream news media apparently isn't interested in questioning the government's official version of what happened.  I find this very frustrating.  The "mainstream" news media seems to have suspended all skepticism and critical thinking, repeated the official explanation of the crash, and has swept the whole thing under the carpet.  And these days, anyone who disagrees with the government and the news media is considered quite a kook.

Many people are beginning to wonder if the July 4th [2002] shooting at the L.A. Airport was an isolated incident.  Was the Oklahoma City bombing an isolated incident?  Can any plane crash, explosion or attack on a crowd of people be considered an isolated incident these days?

Was Richard Reid "Shoe Bomber No. 2"?  Some experts believe Flight 587 was downed by Shoe Bomber No. 1.

Additional notes from The Editor:
American 587 crashed before the Richard Reid "Shoe Bomber" incident.  The screening of airline passengers did not include checking everyone's shoes when American 587 crashed.  If the same event occurred today in New York City, is there any chance that any cause could be officially ruled out in a few minutes?  Of course not.

The official cause of the crash was, as I understand it, that the pilot flew the tail off of the plane by responding to the turbulence left by another plane that had been in the area two minutes earlier.  I'm not a pilot, but it seems to me that (1) if turbulence is that much of a problem, there would be crashes at DFW airport every day, because DFW frequently has departures less than two minutes apart (sometimes less than one minute), and (2) if it was possible to break off the tail by overuse of the rudders, a test pilot would have discovered this at the factory several years earlier, and (3) the engines ordinarily do not fall off an airplane as a result of turbulence.

If the official explanation were true — and I'm saying it isn't — then aerial refueling and glider towing would be impossible, and the Blue Angels couldn't fly like this.

The Air Force has done experiments with Minimum Interval Takeoff in which large, heavy aircraft take off at 15-second intervals from the same runway.  Somehow they all make it into the sky without great difficulty.  This alone disproves the official explanation of the crash of American 587.

Added 1/8/2020:
This video clip shows a series of F-35A fighter jets taking off at 15- or 20-second intervals.

Remember, at that moment in history — just two months after the September 11th attacks — the United States was one plane crash away from a full-scale economic depression.  It was vital to the economy that this incident was not portrayed in the news media as an act of terrorism, whether it really was or not.  That seems to be the most likely motivation for a coverup — the belief that the general public (that is, the economy) wouldn't have been able to handle such bad news.

Remembering America's Second-Deadliest Plane Crash.  The second-deadliest plane crash in American history took place just two months after 9/11, when American Airlines Flight 587 to Santo Domingo plummeted almost immediately after taking off from JFK, killing 265 passengers, crew members, and people on the ground.  Ten years later, despite the magnitude of this disaster, it has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by the immensity of 9/11.

Illegals, Sabotage, and Security.  [Scroll down]  Two months later, November 12, 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 (an Airbus A300-600) crashed in Belle Harbor, NY amid very unusual circumstances.  The tail and rudder and both engines separated in-flight.  Terrorism or sabotage were quickly downplayed and ruled out.  "All indications at this time are that this is an accident", stated the rookie Chairman, Marion Blakey, even before the flight recorders had been analyzed.

U.S.Read's Flight 587 Preliminary Report, Part 6.  It is impossible to reconcile the witness statements with the NTSB's conclusions about AA 587.  If the other evidence available to investigators — the debris field, tollbooth video, radar data, CVR, DFDR, cockpit warnings, Air Traffic Control tapes — were in conflict with the eyewitness statements then the NTSB's conclusions would have a strong foundation.  However, the bulk of evidence corroborates the eyewitness statements — leaving the NTSB's conclusions on a very dubious foundation.

U.S.Read's Flight 587 Page

Related?
Abu Nidal Implicated In Lockerbie Bombing:  A former associate of Abu Nidal has claimed the dead terrorist leader was responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, casting doubt on the official explanation of the attack.

Search for the Truth About Lockerbie.  Synopsis:  Pan Am Flight 103 was shot down over Lockerbie in an act of revenge for the Airbus civilian airliner that was shot down by the USS Vincennes a few months before Lockerbie and before the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war.

Was there a deal with Iran over Lockerbie bombing?  [Scroll down]  The one aspect of the inquiry that never made sense to me, as someone who has closely followed the Lockerbie case from the outset, was why Western investigators were so keen to overlook the activities of the PFLP bomb-making cell in Germany, which was caught red-handed making exactly the same kind of bomb — packed in a Toshiba radio cassette recorder — that brought down Pan Am flight 103.  I was told repeatedly that there was no DNA or other evidence to link the cell with the bombing, while there was certainly enough to implicate Libya and Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer eventually convicted of the crime.

More about Pan Am 103.

CIA held Syrian militants responsible for Lockerbie bombing.  The CIA secretly held Syrian militants, rather than Libya, responsible for the Lockerbie bombing, according to newly unearthed testimony from a former US spy in the Middle East.  Dr Richard Fuisz said in a sworn deposition in 2001 that he was told by up to 15 senior Syrian officials that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) had carried out the attack.

"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it."

— Patrick Henry  

Added 7/20/2008:
Until now I had not put anything on this web site about KAL 007 because I thought the whole story had been told and the "common knowledge" about the case was probably true.  Then I saw this article on the Accuracy in Media web site, a trusted source.

Hold Russia Accountable For KAL 007 Shootdown.  Twenty-five years have gone by with little thought for Congressman Larry McDonald, 22 children under the age of 12 years, and the rest of the 269 passengers and crew of Boeing 747 Korean Airlines Flight 007.  This is the aircraft shot down by the Soviets just west of Sakhalin Island in the international waters of the Tatar Straits on September 1, 1983.  A first in the documented history of air flight occurred.  This became a designated crash site at sea with a declaration of "no survivors," but also with no bodies, body parts or tissues, and no luggage on the surface of the sea, and none of the above under the sea.

Communists Kidnapped US Rep. McDonald After Shooting Down Airliner:  Expert.  In this interview with The New American magazine's Alex Newman, KAL 007 researcher and expert Bert Schlossberg reveals new evidence proving that the Soviet Union kidnapped the survivors from the flight they shot down en route to Korea.  According to the evidence Schlossberg has acquired, the Soviets lied about the plane being destroyed and the passengers killed.  The most well-known passenger on the flight, anti-communist Congressman Larry McDonald, a conservative Democrat from Georgia and the chairman of the John Birch Society, was tortured and interrogated at a series of sites by the KGB in Moscow and other locations.  His last known whereabouts were a camp in Kazakhstan in the mid-90s.  Schlossberg, author of Rescue 007 who lost a family member on the flight, is urging everyone to contact Trump and members of Congress to get a new official investigation launched.  [Video clip]

The crash of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752
Looks very similar to the case of TWA 800.

Anatomy of a Lie:  How Iran Covered Up the Downing of an Airliner.  When the Revolutionary Guards officer spotted what he thought was an unidentified aircraft near Tehran's international airport, he had seconds to decide whether to pull the trigger.  Iran had just fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at American forces, the country was on high alert for an American counterattack, and the Iranian military was warning of incoming cruise missiles.  The officer tried to reach the command center for authorization to shoot but couldn't get through.  So he fired an antiaircraft missile.  Then another.  The plane, which turned out to be a Ukrainian jetliner with 176 people on board, crashed and exploded in a ball of fire.

Canada Says Black Boxes From Iran Crash Should Be Sent to France.  Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday [1/17/2020] urged Iran to send the black boxes from the passenger plane shot down by its forces to France for analysis and said the first remains of victims should soon arrive back in Canada.  Trudeau told a news conference in Ottawa that France was one of the few countries with the ability to read the flight and cockpit data recorders from the jet, which he said were badly damaged.  Iran says it shot down Ukrainian International Airlines flight 752 last week by accident, killing all 176 people aboard, 57 of whom were Canadian.  "Iran does not have the level of technical expertise and mostly the equipment necessary to be able to analyze these damaged black boxes quickly," Trudeau said.

Iran announces arrests over shootdown of Ukrainian jetliner.  Iran's judiciary said Tuesday that arrests have been made for the accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane that killed all 176 people on board just after takeoff from Tehran last week.  The announcement came amid an upswell of anger and protests by Iranians in recent days over the downing of the jetliner last Wednesday and apparent attempts by senior officials in Iran to cover-up the cause of the crash.

Iranian shoot-down of Ukrainian plane — Here is what went wrong.  Caught red-handed with solid evidence showing it shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane — tragically killing all 176 people aboard — the government of Iran had to admit Saturday that it was guilty of the horrific attack.  Iran bears full responsibility for this unprovoked mass killing and should be required to pay compensation to the families of the dead passengers and the airline — although no amount of money can make up for the lost lives.  And airlines from around the world would be wise now to consider whether flying into Iran is worth the risk.  If some international airlines stop service to Iran it would strike yet another economic blow to the rogue regime, further isolating it from the rest of the world.

Ukraine demands punishment for Iran plane downing.  Ukraine on Saturday [1/11/2020] demanded that Iran punish those guilty for the downing of a Ukrainian airliner and compensate victims while praising Tehran for cooperating with an "objective" investigation.

Iran finally Admits shooting down Ukrainian jetliner:  Tehran says military 'unintentionally' fired missiles at Boeing 737.  Iran has finally admitted shooting down a Ukrainian jetliner earlier this week, but has blamed 'US adventurism' for the fatal 'error'.  A military statement published by the country's state TV said it mistook the aircraft for an enemy target and 'unintentionally' fired at the plane on Tuesday, killing 176.  Officials said the plane 'took the flying posture and altitude of an enemy target' as it neared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps base and soldiers did not recognize it as a passenger airliner.

Are We Really Not Going to Talk About That Ukrainian 737?  [Scroll down]  Nothing about the "engine failure" story adds up, though it seems the American media appears happy to swallow that line. [...] So yes, it looks like what happened was that one of the Iranian regime's SAM operators made a mistake and blew that jet out of the sky.  They'd just fired those 15 missiles across the border into Iraq with what looks like an eye toward creating a propaganda victory internally (Iranian state media falsely claimed to have killed 30 Americans in that strike, a lie MSNBC unquestioningly regurgitated on air) without giving President Trump reason to retaliate.  But the Iranians were terrified Trump would hit them back disproportionately, so their people, who aren't all that good at their jobs, had itchy trigger fingers and killed 176 civilians, 80 of them being their own people, in a tragic feat of incompetence.

Ukrainian 752 Shoot-Down Mirrors Fate of TWA 800.  Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is saying out loud what others have been thinking since the news broke that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed soon after taking off from the airport in Tehran — namely, that "the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile," likely unintentionally.  According to the New York Times, American officials also had a "high level of confidence" that the Iranians destroyed the airliner by mistake.  One official specifically cited two SA-15 missiles fired from an Iranian air defense system.  If Trudeau proves right, this will not be the first time an anxious military accidentally shot down a non-threatening commercial aircraft.  On July 17, 1996, a comparable missile strike destroyed TWA 800 off the coast of Long Island shortly after the Boeing 747 took off from JFK.

It Looks Increasingly Likely That Iran Accidentally Shot Down That Ukrainian Airliner.  The wreckage had hardly stopped bouncing when Iran blamed mechanical failure.  This excuse was made without benefit of investigation or even access to the 'black boxes' which Iran now refuses to turn over. [...] More and more, though, the crash of PS752 is looking like a shootdown.

Sure sounds like NBC News correspondent Heidi Przybyla is blaming Donald Trump for Ukrainian flight that crashed in Iran.  Following the crash of the Ukrainian Boeing 737-800 on its way to Kiev from Tehran (the plane was reportedly shot down with an anti-aircraft missile), it was only a matter of time before Donald Trump was blamed for it.

Media Blame Trump for Downed Ukraine Passenger Plane.  The fake news media are blaming President Trump for a Ukrainian passenger plane that was probably shot down by the terrorist state of Iran.  This is what you call trolling.  The media do not actually believe Trump is to blame. [Indeed], the media don't even know for sure yet how or why the plane went down.  None of that matters, though, because the media are no longer a news gathering institution.

Pete Buttigieg Blames Donald Trump After Reports Indicate Iran Shot Down Ukraine Plane.  Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg implicitly blamed President Donald Trump Thursday after reports indicated that Iran shot down a Ukrainian plane shortly after their military strike against the United States.

US Officials "Highly Confident" Iran Accidentally Shot Down Ukrainian Jet.  The New York Times is bringing us a little more insight into how American officials know whatever it is they know about the circumstances surrounding the fate of UIA Flight 752, which crashed just hours after an Iranian assault on American assets in Iraq.  Apparently, officials from the NTSB have been invited to participate in the investigation by Iran, and a preliminary assessment apparently led them to conclude that the plane was almost definitely accidentally shot down by a missile, echoing the destruction of Malaysian Air Flight 17, which was shot down over Ukraine.

Iran Changes Plane Crash Story As Ukrainian Theories Include Possible Missile Strike.  Iran has changed its story about what caused a Boeing 737 operated by Ukrainian International Airlines to plunge out of the sky minutes after taking off from the airport in Tehran.  After initially blaming mechanical malfunctions for the crash, a version of events that was almost instantly refuted by video footage, experts and the airline in Ukraine, Iran is now claiming that UIA Flight 752 tried to turn back after take off, suggesting that the cause of the crash was something other than the misfiring of one of Iran's Russian-made missile-defense systems, according to Bloomberg.

Iranian Missile System Shot Down Ukraine Flight, Probably by Mistake, Sources Say.  The Ukrainian flight that crashed just outside the Iranian capital of Tehran was struck by an anti-aircraft missile system, a Pentagon official, a senior U.S. intelligence official and an Iraqi intelligence official told Newsweek.  Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, a Boeing 737-800 en route from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airpot to Kyiv's Boryspil International Airport, stopped transmitting data Tuesday [1/7/2020] just minutes after takeoff and not long after Iran launched missiles at military bases housing U.S. and allied forces in neighboring Iraq.  The aircraft is believed to have been struck by a Russia-built Tor-M1 surface-to-air missile system, known to NATO as Gauntlet, the three officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, told Newsweek.

Video shows moment Ukrainian airliner is struck by missile over Iran.  Shocking video apparently shows the moment that a Ukrainian airliner was struck by an Iranian missile shortly after lifting off from an airport in Tehran.  The 19-second clip, obtained by the New York Times, shows a night sky suddenly illuminated by a flash of light, followed by a deafening boom.  By the clip's close, the sounds of sirens can be heard in the background.  US officials said Thursday that it was "highly likely" the Ukrainian International Airlines flight, which had 176 people aboard, was struck by an Iranian anti-aircraft missile early Wednesday [1/8/2020]. There were no survivors.

Iran crash:  Ukraine Boeing with 176 onboard comes down near Tehran.  A passenger plane bound for the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, has crashed a few minutes after taking off from Tehran's main international airport, killing 176 people.  Iran's Red Crescent said there was no chance of finding survivors, and Pir Hossein Kulivand, an Iranian emergency official, later told state TV all those onboard had been killed.  Victims of the crash included 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans and three Britons, according to Ukraine's foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko.  Most of the passengers were en route to Kyiv, transiting through there to other destinations.