A very hostile letter, sp. Were there any replies?

White House knowledge of a threat prior to the loss of TWA Flight 800
* 2. They knew the Administration had dodged a bullet in 1994 when Maryland State Police found a fully armed French Mistral MANPADS missile ready to fire on its tripod directly under a busy northeastern air route.

Evidence for the possibility is not evidence for the act.

* 3. Iranian officials warned the Administration that they considered enactment of the Iran/Libya Sanctions Act tantamount to an act of war!

A good point, but iran's statement does nothing to target commercial or civilian aviation.

* 4. Later that month, a huge truck bomb was deployed against the US Air Force barracks complex at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Three weeks later, TWA Flight 800 was shot down only hours after an explicit warning of an attack was received in London and Washington that taunted the President.

The president was "taunted". I wonder what that means...

Did Iran make open and persistent claims for the downing of flight 800? I don’t recall any.

* 5. The White House, the CIA and the FBI were aware of the threat and they knew preventing that attack was their primary responsibility.

And here, the very next paragraph, the "taunt" becomes a "threat".

* 7. We can provide testimony that immediately after Flight 800 was shot down, Mr. Clinton called an FBI command post supporting the Olympics and informed them Flight 800 was downed with shoulder-fired missiles.

How does this claim make Clinton's assessment "immediately after" the event correct?

Witnesses or "Untouchables"?
* 2. At the NTSB Public Hearing in December of 1997, the word "witnesses" was not even mentioned. Before and since, they have been ridiculed, slandered and liabled in official videotapes and statements made by government spokesmen.

I would need to see doco (court transcripts, public newsletters) for that. Arguing against a witness is hardly the same as ridicule, slander and liable. If the witness is credible, the account will stand until a more credible account is presented. If a witness had difficulty with this fact, then I guess his/her feelings are going to get hurt, and they can then say they were ridiculed, slandered and liabled.

Justice Department suppression of Missile Evidence
* 5. In December 1996, FBI missile team members told military experts that two separate commercial fishermen dredged up and threw back a MANPADS first stage, the missile ejector-motor can. The ejector motor, about the size of a Coke can, fires in the tube, ejecting the missile, then drops in the water when the missile 2nd stage booster ignites.

* 6. The fishing vessel Alpha Omega recovered one of these motor cans in early October, 1996, while trawling for scallops about 2 nautical miles from Flight 800's explosion point. The crewman, not realizing the importance of his find, noted the two distinctive ignition wires attached to the can before he threw it overboard.

And this missile residue is -- where?

Tossed back to the fishes. It's at the bottom of the harbor in a known area, and nobody can find it -- even though some of the smallest pieces of the downed craft have been recovered?

How long has this canister been down there?

The only connection between the found-and-discarded piece of hardware, which possibly belongs to the described missile, is Comdr. Donaldson's insistence that it does, and the only connection between the supposed missile and flight 800 is, again, Comdr. Donaldson's insistence that it does. Was the part labeled as a missile component? Were these fishermen experts in military weaponry? Did the finders point to a picture in some FBI book and, as a consensus, say, "Yeah, it looked sorta like this one here."

* 10. Interrogated for hours, the Alpha Omega crewman insisted the can he found had the same features, ignition wires, etc. but was somehow different.

And this implies that what was found was "different" from what was expected.

Is there anything more about this? It would help Comdr. Donaldson’s case if there is.

* 25. Jet fuel is over 700 times the density of air. A MANPADS missile warhead's fragments would be stopped in a few feet of fuel, negating high velocity fragment damage to aircraft components. Mr. Kalstrom's public statements repeatedly used the lack of high velocity fragment damage as an excuse to ignore witnesses and shutdown the investigation.

A nice try, but this would require a direct hit, dead center of the fuel tank, and he’s already argued that one away himself:

“Military computer modeling of the TWA 800 engagement, using Stinger data, shows the missile’s velocity would degrade to 400 meters per second as it climbed through 13,700 ft. This would cause the circular error probability (CEP) to expand to 20 ft. or more, allowing an impact almost anywhere on the aircraft.”
-- Comdr. William S. Donaldson, III USN, Retired

Item 25 would also require that the missile not explode, as it most likely would, and that the superheated fragments would not weld themselves to the aircraft debris, which they most certainly would.

* 26. The Navy China Lake missile impact "Quick Look Engineering Study" identified 4 criteria for expected damage if a shoulder fired missile hit a 747-100 inboard main fuel tank. All four are caused by hydraulic over pressurization of fuel tanks. All four are in evidence on the left wing. None of these criteria have ever been seen in previous air crashes.

Never?

And for all things there is always a first. Sounds like a cop-out, I know, but it remains true. At this particular point, the missile-evidence remains lacking.

* 30. At the time the FBI investigation was prematurely shut down in November of 1997, the FBI had failed to identify a fast moving boat captured on radar only 2.9 nautical miles from Flight 800 when it exploded. Mr. Schirilo, who replaced Mr. Kalstrom, admitted that fact in a letter to Congressman Traficant.

I believe I saw further doco, perhaps a voice recording or transcript from you page-of-many-links, showing the craft to be a U.S. Navy vessel on tactical maneuvers (which prompted the Navy = culprit angle that's still being played), and the doco went on to state there were a number of Navy ships in the area of flight 800's crash.

* 31. After his retirement, Mr. Kalstrom was taped stating the boat captured on radar was really a helicopter. Considering the radar target was non-transponder and was tracked on the surface at speed below 36 knots for 35 minutes prior to disappearing over the horizon, even FBI agents have acknowledged Mr. Kalstrom's excuse is nonsense.

Here, I see that Comdr. Donaldson finds the FBI's assesment of Mr. Kalstrom to be worthy of merit. Perhaps if the FBI disliked more of the same things Comdr. Donaldson hates they would get along better.

Referencing for convenience really bothers me. The source should be either credible, or not.

Anyway, I recall Mr. Kalstrom’s statement in the telephone recorded interview that it “looked like” it might have been a helicopter to him, not that it conclusively was. I might be wrong on this point, but it really doesn’t matter. Without the “smoking gun”, we’re a long way from any conviction.

* 32. Witnesses afloat and ashore observed a six second missile burn (Stinger rocket burn is 6 ½ seconds) coming from the near vicinity of the unidentified boat.

At last count, that would be -- 107 stopwatches.

You also wrote: "And that the eyewitness accounts describe a missile is likely what the eyewitnesses wanted to believe. It is not their fault, but odds are they are wrong. There is no hard evidence to back their claims."



So, all the witnesses "wanted" to see the same thing. Could you present any evidence to support your claim here? Why would several hundred people "want" to see a missile shoot down a jet, or is this convenient mass hallucination just your speculation?





That is not what I said, in fact you even pasted it above. I said "the eyewitness accounts". Neither you, nor I, have ever listed "all the witnesses", and neither does the page of links you like to hold so dear. According the Comdr. Donaldson, there are only 107 witnesses who claim the possibility of a missile strike. I'm sure there is a relatively large number of witnesses who disagree with that assessment, but those are the people we will never hear from, because they say the plane simply crashed. A missile striking a passenger airliner makes far better print.

The "hard evidence" of their claim is the crashed 747 and the 260 victims of this attack on an American commercial jetliner.

Again, the fact that flight 800 went down with all hands and passengers was never disputed. This fact, however, does nothing to reveal why. A missile fragment that obviously associates itself to the crash is still required.

This may come across as nitpicking, but it really isn’t. This is plain old everyday analysis, and it’s what one has to expect when dredging up the bodies of recent victims with a want to charge someone with murder. The case still needs to be proven.

Dan