Re-Open TWA800?

Jack Cashill says “Reopen the TWA Flight 800 Case”.

Pretty good idea. Not going to happen.

I’ve always been fascinated by this case, and never bought the TWA 800 explanation about a spark in the fuel tank.

First of all, how many billions of air miles have been flown in the last 80 years? And this happens exactly once? Sorry, not buying that. Even an exceedingly rare occurrence, requiring many variables to be just so, happens more often than that.

Second, aerospace engineers go to great lengths to 100% guarantee that a spark could never occur anywhere near a fuel source. If they screwed up, well, once again, we are back to the “just once?” argument. Design failures occur more than once every hundreds of millions of trials.

Third, there is credible eyewtiness testimony from 270 people who say they saw something else happen, and evidence that some witness testimony was doctored or completely made up to support the conclusion that it was due to a spark.

Well, that’s when I say hold the phone.

Two hundred and seventy people. Not just one person, or three, or seven. And not all in one place. They didn’t even know each other. But they all looked into the night sky and saw something bright flying UP from the horizon, turn at an angle, and fly into something else and cause an explosion.

Two hundred seventy examples of this kind of independent eyewitness testimony is awfully tough to explain away. And when you read the way their testimony is twisted into something else, well, what does that tell you?

I don’t claim to know what happened, but I have heard the theories, and all are frightening.

1. Shoulder-fired SAM from terrorists in a small boat in the ocean
2. U.S. Military training accident
3. Submarine-fired missile

None would shock me, and all make more sense to me than a spark in a fuel tank.  

But I do know this: there was more than enough means, motive, and opportunity for shadowy government influence on both the investigation and the official conclusions.

I’m not going to go into tons of detail here. Read the above (including the comments, some very interesting), read Cashill’s book “First Strike”, read the twa800.com site. Examine it yourself. Make up your own mind. Remain open to theories that fit facts. That’s what I do.

Remember, though, that investigations are not perfect. They are subject to meddling, malfeasence, and ineptitude. This is the government we’re talking about. The same goverment that can’t decide if eggs are good for you or not. The same government that included corrupt and overtly political leadership at DOJ, which controls the FBI, and which used that FBI to investigate political enemies of the Clintons.

To pre-suppose that Truth often results from any investigation by that group into an “accident” with a distinct terrorist flavor is to live in fantasy land.

Governments have every motivation to cover up military accidents or terrorist operations run by other nations. Because they are not just embarrassing, they reflect potential national security flaws. And in the face of admitting “yes, some losers dressed in rags sat in a boat a few miles off our shores, and used arms we sold them to shoot down a defenseless civilian airliner”, a government may well try to steer the investigation to a more comfortable conclusion. To the extent that information can be controlled and manipulated, it may well be. None of that should shock us. 

Powerful interests intersect here. Covering up truth, rather than revealing it, is often the whole point.

Again, I don’t have the answer here. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a spark in a fuel tank.

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