There are two possible explanations for the TWA 800 downing:
1) The "Friendly Fire" theory:
The U.S. Navy was conducting an exercise in which the two missiles fired from north of the aircraft's flight path were meant to intercept a "drone missile" launched from a position south of TWA 800's flight path. Unfortunately, TWA 800 had been delayed in its climb to cruising altitude and was struck by the drone missile and was destroyed by the two intercepting missiles.
2 The "State-sponsored Terrorism" theory
This has two parts....
a) The simultaneous firing of three terrorist missiles in a triangulated attack on TWA 800 was a state-sponsored attack. The U.S. government was conducting an anti-terrorism operation knowing that missiles had been fired at commercial aircraft off the East Coast of the United States prior to the downing of TWA 800. It failed to prevent the attack.
b) The U.S. government was conducting an anti-terrorism operation knowing that missiles had been fired at commercial aircraft off the East Coast of the United States prior to the downing of TWA 800. Two terrorist missiles fired from north of TWA 800's flight path were also travelling in the direction of a vessel sailing to the south of TWA 800's flight path. One missile was launched from this vessel in response to this perceived threat. (A very similar mistake was made by the USS Vincennes when it mistakenly shot down an Iranian airbus airliner over the Persian Gulf on July 3, 1988.
The evidence presented on my website
http://hometown.aol.com/bardonia
favors 2a as the most probable cause. Several of the main Internet researchers who share technical information and ideas, agree on the general details of the "What happened?" question while disagreeing on the "Who caused it?" question. I have focused on the terrorist explanation for reasons which will become clear as you peruse the documentation presented on the website.
For a complete discourse on the "Friendly Fire" explanation you might begin with the TWA Case Files website at:
http://www.multipull.com/twacasefile/default.htm
I suggest,however, that the U.S. government knew terrorist missile launches were occurring in the Long Island area prior to, and after, the TWA 800 incident and had tried unsuccessfully to prevent them. James Kallstrom admitted in a telephone conversation with Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media that there were U.S. Naval vessels under Flight 800 on a classified "maneuver". Was this "classified maneuver" an anti-terrorist operation? Circumstantial evidence shows that TWA 800 was brought down by the Osama bin Laden organization and the downing was one of a series of missile attacks in the NY metropolitan area from November 1995 through the summer of 1997. At the time of the TWA 800 downing Osama bin Laden had a "formal" agreement with the government of Iran to attack American and Israeli interests. A war with Iran in 1996 was not in the long term interest of the United States given that in the Iranian elections a government more inclined to open a dialog with the West was moving into power under Present Khatami. Thus in my opinion the United States government decided to declare that the center fuel tank of the TWA 800 aircraft exploded from an ignition source which is unknown and leave matters at that.
The same policy appears to have been followed in another terrorist attack funded by Iran.
July 3, 2000 NewsMax.com
U.S. Sides With Iran Over Terrorist Victim The Clinton-Gore administration admits destroying 900 subpoenaed records needed to force Iran to compensate an American family whose daughter died in a terrorist attack. The victim's father is alleging the Justice Department got rid of its own files deliberately to avoid having to seize Iranian frozen assets to pay a $24 million judgment against Iran that the New Jersey family won in 1998. The administration is making an effort to placate the new government of Iran, which is on the State Department's list of terrorist states. The issue of Iranian financial assets frozen in the United States is key to Washington's hopes of resolving amicably its differences with Tehran. According to the World Tribune: Stephen Flatow's daughter, Alisa, was killed in 1995 in Gaza during an attack on an Israeli bus by the Islamic Jihad terrorist group under orders of Iran. He said his family had requested the 800 to 900 documents, related to licensing of U.S. transactions with Iran, as part of the family's effort to seize part of the Iranian frozen assets as compensation to satisfy the judgment. Flatow said a Justice Department attorney, Andrea Cohen, wrote to him that those files were destroyed due to lack of storage space. "We are beyond shock," Flatow said. "We are disgusted. And, if it turns out that the destruction was purposeful, I am going to see to it that heads roll at Treasury."
Perhaps this is the correct policy to follow as events have revealed.
February 21, 2000 NY Times
In unusually bold language, the Clinton Administration welcomed the election results in Iran today and said it interpreted them as an unequivocal demand for greater freedom within the country and for improved relations abroad. "By all indications this is an event of historic proportions," the State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, said this evening, referring to the partial results available so far. The vote showed, he said in a statement, that the Iranian people want "engagement with the rest of the world" and "made clear their preference for greater freedoms within Iran." The parliamentary election, the most open since the fall of the Shah, has been long awaited by the Clinton administration as a test of whether it could turn around the hostile relations of the last 20 years before Mr. Clinton leaves office. A series of American inducements for opening a dialogue over the last several years, including a secret message from President Clinton last August, have all been spurned by the Iranian leadership. With the strengthening of President Mohammad Khatami's moderate forces in Iran, the Clinton administration clearly hopes that the stonewalling will at least be reduced and that Mr. Khatami will be able to make inroads into the power preserves of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who controls the military, intelligence services and the judiciary. In tonight's statement, the State Department cautioned that it remained to be seen whether the "clear hopes of the Iranian people can be translated to reality." "Obviously we hope that the trends of the elections will be reflected by a different approach to the outside world," Mr. Rubin said. In that regard, he said, the United States was most concerned to see whether Iran would change its opposition to the Middle East peace negotiations and whether it would cease its support of terrorist groups seeking to derail the current rounds of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and between Israel and Syria. The United States has recently stepped up its accusations against Iran for supporting such terrorist groups. For the United States to take real advantage of the election results, it must first find someone authoritative to talk to. The first move by the administration will most likely be to search for a way to open substantive talks, a senior administration official said today. The official pointed out, that even North Korea -- which has hostile relations with the United States and which, like Iran, is on the State Department's list of countries that sponsor state terrorism -- has official talks with the United States. Ever since Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright offered in June 1998 to draw up a "road map" to re-establish relations with Iran, the Iranian government has rebuffed the administration. Last year, the administration was rebuffed again when President Clinton sent a message that the United States had information concerning the involvement of "Iranian government officials and others" in the bombing of an American military building in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 American servicemen. In the letter, Mr. Clinton attempted to gain Iranian cooperation in the case and at the same time to test the willingness of the moderates in Tehran to engage the United States. The United States, in addition to trying to start a dialogue with Iran, has some leverage with the wide range of sanctions that have been imposed on its government. Many of these were imposed by executive order and can be lifted without the approval of Congress, where there has been criticism of Mr. Clinton's efforts to reach out to Iran. In 1995, President Clinton cited Iranian support for terrorist groups as the reason for banning all American trade with country. Some of these sanctions were relaxed to allow the sale of grain and medicine. And last December, the administration allowed Boeing to sell parts to Iran's national airline so as to ensure the safety of its Boeing 747 passenger aircraft.
Unfortunately in covering up the Iranian-sponsored attack on TWA 800 the NTSB has set a precedent that eyewitness testimony of criminal events is not to be believed. The NTSB was unable to understand the eyewitness testimony since it was excluded from this testimony by the FBI.
March 21, 2000 CNN
More than 700 witness accounts of what happened the night that TWA Flight 800 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 230 aboard, are too conflicting to lead to any conclusions, federal investigators say. Two new reports from the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday again dismissed theories -- all based solely on witness reports -- that the Boeing 747 may have been downed by a missile in July 1996. Investigators believe the crash was caused by a center fuel tank explosion possibly brought on by sparks from worn wiring, but their findings are still not complete. Of the 755 people who reported seeing the explosion, only 38 said they saw a streak of light rising straight up or nearly so -- and those accounts "seem to be inconsistent with the ... flight path" of the plane, the NTSB said. The NTSB, in its Witness Group Study report, said, "FBI witness interviewing was focused on the possibility that a missile had been used against the accident airplane. This focus may have resulted in bias on the part of some of the interviewers. "Beliefs concerning the possibility of a missile attack may have biased or colored the word choices used in reporting the witness accounts; therefore, these accounts must be interpreted carefully." A total of 258 witnesses observed a streak of light, the NTSB said. Investigators believe the streaks of light may have been from the plane during some stage of its flight before it exploded in a fireball. The NTSB witness reports conclude that the cause of the explosion cannot be determined through eyewitness accounts alone. Some witness accounts were too vague, some were too specific, and some contradictory, investigators said. The witnesses were on land, sea and air. Some were surfers. Many may have been influenced by news media reports about the explosion, investigators said. Most did not realize they were watching a plane explode, thinking rather that what they saw was some sort of fireworks display or other event.
