This from Newsmax.com site.

Now, can you see the heavy-handed "pattern" of interference and intimidation common to those who seek to challenge this administration's "chosen" opinions?

And, as shown, the media rolls over and complies with a "Yes, Ma'm, yes ma'am - Right away; three bags full" whenever their "heros" face uncomfortable quesions ......

< by Philip Weiss

J. Bruce Maffeo came out of Federal District Court at 40 Centre Street on Feb. 9 after arguing the appeal of his client, investigative reporter James Sanders, and looked around to see how many journalists had shown up. Just three: me, Allan Wolper of Editor & Publisher and Mr. Wolpers student at Rutgers, Tina Bui.

Mr. Maffeo got a disgusted look. "The press marginalized Jim as a kook," he said. "And now they walk by him like hes a dog run over by a semi."

Back in 1997, Mr. Sanders got two swatches of seat material from a disgruntled source inside the investigation of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 to test for rocket fuel. The test backed his theory that a Government missile brought the plane down, he reported, thereby enraging the Government, which prosecuted him and his wife, Liz, for aiding and abetting the removal of parts from a crash site, a law aimed at scavengers. Since then, the couple has lived a journalists nightmare. They had to sell their house, their son had to leave college. Mrs. Sanders lost a beloved job.

Their case has what her attorney Jeremy Gutman calls "totalitarian" overtones: The Government has repeatedly characterized the couples crime as putting out "misinformation" or, as NBC put it, "what the [F.B.I.] calls a plot to rewrite the history of T.W.A. 800."

That should have been a wake-up call, said Eve Burton, deputy general counsel for the New York Daily News, but she couldnt get other news organizations to support a friend-of-the-court brief. "I regret to say there was not a lot of enthusiasm," said First Amendment lawyer Victor A. Kovner. "I thought the Reporters Committee was filing something." No, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said it didnt know about Mr. Sanders appeal in time. "They never stepped up to the plate," Mr. Maffeo grumbled.

The truth is the press never liked Jim Sanders. "Hes a little bit of a wacko and belligerently antigovernment," said a media source.

Whats fascinating about this case is not whether Mr. Sanders is right or wrong (though I think hes mostly right). Its how the media exercises self-censorship. The same year Mr. Sanders was indicted, two women in important jobs whom he worked with in challenging the official story on T.W.A.800lefttheirjobsfollowingpainful ordeals: Kelly OMeara, administrative assistant to Representative Michael Forbes, whose district was nearest to the crash, and Kristina Borjesson, a producer for CBS News.

Their stories point up a deep divide in our public life between a highly paid institutional press that instinctively trusts Government and a segment of the public educated by Waco and the Clinton scandals that doesnt. In the old Soviet Union, critics were put in psychiatric hospitals. Now the media merely labels them "wacky" and ignores them.

IN JULY 1996, T.W.A. FLIGHT 800 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island, killing all 230 aboard. Jim Sanders, then a 51-year-old former cop whod published books on conservative causes, was a natural to write about it. His wife, Elizabeth, was a longtime T.W.A. employee who knew that many at the airline had doubts about the official investigation.

Mrs. Sanders called Terrell Stacey, a top T.W.A. pilot who had flown the plane the day before it crashed and was a member of the National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Captain Stacey was disturbed. He knew that a veteran pilot who had witnessed the crash from the air had been warned not to use the word "missile" to describe what he saw to the press. He felt that the F.B.I. was not sharing information and had lagged in testing a suspicious red residue on some seats.

The author and pilot met secretly, and in January 1997 Captain Stacey removed two two-inch swatches of foam from two seats and sent them by Federal Express to the journalist at his Virginia home. Mr. Sanders said he felt he was acting legally. All he wanted were "scrapings." There was plenty of material left.

He had one strip tested at a California lab. He said the test revealed high percentages of magnesium and calcium, consistent with solid rocket fuel, and he shared the findings with an old friend, David Hendrix. A seasoned reporter at the Riverside, Calif., Press-Enterprise, Mr. Hendrix had investigated T.W.A. 800 for months for a simple reason: The Government had misled him when it said initially that no military assets were near the crash. On March 10, 1997, the Press-Enterprise bannered Mr. Sanders news on the front page.

The F.B.I. was enraged. It called Mr. Hendrix and summoned the Sanderses, threatening to indict the couple if they didnt reveal the name of the source Mr. Sanders called Hangar Man. In the noblest journalistic tradition, the Sanderses refused. Mr. Sanders feared that the F.B.I. would raid his house and seize the second sample. He sent it on to the Press-Enterprise to preserve it for a corroborative test.

The newspaper felt lonely. Its bombshell story had been all but ignored by the mainstream press. "James Kallstrom [the F.B.I. chief in New York] finally called us back the day before the story ran and said, I can tell you that it is not traces of missile fuel," said Mel Opotowsky, former managing editor. "What is it then? we said. I cant tell you, he said. Then the next day we published our story, and he and his lieutenants said, It was glue. Why didnt he tell us that before? He didnt even try, off the record. I dont trust that man."

But the media took Mr. Kallstrom at his word (this in spite of later tests showing that 3M glue used in the 747 has a tiny percentage of heavy metals). Fearing legal consequences, the Press-Enterprise sent the package on, unopened, to a CBS producer to whom Mr. Sanders was talking. Kristina Borjesson was media elite: a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, an Emmy Award winner for investigative reporting at CBS Reports.

The F.B.I. got wise to Ms. Borjesson when it found her name on an overnight package at Mr. Sanders house. It called CBS and asked if it had the material.

"CBS rolled over," Mr. Sanders recalled. "Kristina was beside herself. She was describing the fear inside CBS, the terror inside CBS when the Government threatened to come in and destroy the place, instead of describing the excitement of joining the battle with an agency out of control."

CBS dissociates itself from Ms. Borjesson. Josh Howard, a senior producer at 60 Minutes, said, "Her official relationship with CBS ended before she pitched that story. She had maybe a month to go on her contract. She was anxiously looking around for other projects to prolong her employment."

Ms. Borjesson said there was more to it. She had been told to look into T.W.A. 800 months before. "I was unwilling to accept the fabric without permission from a CBS executive, and senior producer Josh Howard gave me that permissionwhich is why the fabric ended up in his desk," she told me. "I had offered it first to CBS Evening News, and they said No. I told Josh, Be aware that a grand jury sitting in Brooklyn wants to subpoena anyone interfering with evidence. Josh said, Weve dealt with grand juries before. I was thrilled. I remember telling him that 60 Minutes was the last broadcast with balls."

Mr. Howard said he has no recollection of those events, and that he never saw the sample. "All I got from her was a proposal for a story. It sounded kind of wacky, and we said, No thanks."

(Ms. Borjesson said Mr. Howard was lying. She faxed me a typescript of a memo, dated April 13, 1997, that she wrote to Jonathan Sternberg, CBS counsel, setting out the sequence of events. The memo said she offered the material to Mr. Howard, and "Howard agreed to take it." The memo was C.C.d to Mr. Howard, who told me he does not recall seeing it.)

In any case, CBS gave Mr. Sanders sample back to the Government, and Ms. Borjesson soon left the network (and eventually went to work for CNN). "She was expendable," said someone who then worked at CBS. "Kristina wanted to find out what happened. She didnt care where it ended up. In this instance, she was going against the grain of what the network had committed to."

The showdown between the Government and CBS, virtually unmentioned in the mainstream press, set the tone for events to come. The network had refused to air Ms. Borjessons interviews of Mr. Sanders. It believed its senior correspondents, who had close associations with Government sources and assured their desks that Mr. Sanders was out to lunch. "The guys I talk to who I have a history with and I trust, they saw nothing, not a scintilla of evidence of a missile," said Bob Orr, a Washington correspondent for CBS. He said he was never impressed by Ms. Borjesson. "What was her level of access and expertise, and who did she talk to? Who were her sources? One, and he was alarmingly thin."

When CBS folded, it put wind in the Governments sails. "I was devastated," Mr. Sanders said. "My chance for vindication, to force the media to turn around, was gone. I realized I was in serious, serious trouble."

In what was later ruled an illegal seizure, the Justice Department took Mr. Sanders computer. And violating its own guidelines for investigating journalists, it subpoenaed his phone records, thereby discovering Terrell Staceys number. Captain Stacey pled guilty to a misdemeanor and cooperated with authorities, and in December 1997 Mr. Sanders and his wife were arrested, paraded before a mob of reporters with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. In a press release, Mr. Kallstrom inveighed against Mr. Sanders views, saying he had "increased the pain already inflicted on the victims families."

This Orwellian theme was later sounded by Jim Hall, the chairman of the N.T.S.B., in a letter to the judge seeking stiff sentences. "[T]his was not a so-called victimless crime," Mr. Hall wrote. "These defendants have traumatized the families with the release of misinformation, the only plausible cause for which is commercial gain."

Mr. Halls statement apparently backfired. In sentencing Jim Sanders and his wife to probation last July, the Federal judge called Mr. Sanders a serious journalist.

The press doesnt want his company. The New York Times slurred Mr. Sanders, who has published two books about the crash, as a "self-styled freelance investigative journalist." And many journalists distance themselves from him, saying there is a crucial difference between taking documents and property.

Maybe, but Victor A. Kovner warns that under the Governments theory of the crime, journalists might be criminals if they ask sources to give them documents that are illegal for those sources to remove. Moreover, the samples were a form of information, there was plenty left, and the whistle-blower, Captain Stacey, testified that he gave them to Mr. Sanders "of my own volition," seeing them as a way to expose corruption.

"This was not some wild grabbing at things," Mr. Gutman argued in appeals court. "We dont depend on the authorities as the sole source of information on their doings. We need journalists."

Thats the problem. The institutional press has always accepted the Governments line and never seen Mr. Sanders story as legitimate. Worshipful of Government sources, CBS two years ago hired James Kallstrom, who had by then left his F.B.I. job, as a commentator on law enforcement matters!

"You can investigate the underbelly of America all you wantthe disenfranchised, the dispossessed," Ms. Borjesson said. "But you start looking into the Government or the powers that be, you walk into a buzz saw."

Finally, theres Ms. OMeara. A tenacious blonde with a street-smart manner and 17 years of experience on Capitol Hill, she was the administrative assistant to Representative Forbes when the plane crashed in the waters off his district. Mr. Forbes asked her to look into the crash. Over the next year, she shared information with the reporter David Hendrix and, like him, concluded that the Government had lied about how close military assets were to the plane.

Mr. Forbes did not return phone calls about Ms. OMeara, but Diana Weir, his former chief of staff, said that the Congressman initially pressed Ms. OMeara to get answers, then cooled on the case. A crisis occurred when Ms. Weir and Ms. OMeara got permission to tour the hangar containing the recovered debris, and brought along Ms. Borjesson, late of CBS. Mr. Kallstrom called Mr. Forbes. "I was furious," he said, according to a new book about the crash, Deadly Departure, by Christine Negroni (Cliff Street Books). Mr. Kallstrom saw Mr. Forbes office as a center for "conspiracy" thinking, orchestrated by "some strong person with a lot of leeway."

That was Ms. OMeara. No longer on speaking terms with her boss, she said, she quit. She later became a reporter at Insight on the News, a weekly magazine published by The Washington Times.

She and Ms. Borjesson also worked on a documentary about the scores of eyewitnesses who say they saw something streaking from the ocean toward the plane. This documentary was for a show, Declassified, that was being produced by Oliver Stone and slated to air on ABC. But the Stone connection grew controversial, and ABC canceled the program. "I talked to 30 eyewitnesses and then wrote them letters saying we were sorry," Ms. OMeara said. "It took a lot for them to agree to come forward."

The point is not whether Ms. OMeara, Ms. Borjesson and the witnesses are right or wrong (though I think theyre right). Its that democracy depends on airing such views. Yet simply raising questions about the official version has meant being discredited. "Once youve lived through this thing, you say, Whoa," said Ms. Weir, now a town council member in East Hampton, L.I. "It has nothing to do with politics, Democrat or Republican, it has to do with the Government. Its like, you hear about the Tuskegee experiments 40 years later."

Last summer, Ms. OMeara developed startling information, radar data the N.T.S.B. released three years after the crash, showing a score of unidentified vessels in a military warning area 25 miles from the crash.

Preparing her story, Ms. OMeara went to the N.T.S.B. and interviewed three officials. The meeting was tense. The officials made gratuitous comments like, "Is he part of the conspiracy?" and scoffed at the notion that the blips might be significant. "Did you identify any other military planes out there?" Ms. OMeara asked. "It all depends on what you mean by out there." "How about a 30-mile radius from the crash site?" "I dont know, I just cant answer that question off the top of my head."

Minutes after the interview ended, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post learned of it and called Ms. OMearas editor. Then he published an item on Ms. OMeara, quoting N.T.S.B. managing director Peter Goelz saying that Ms. OMeara was "extraordinarily antagonistic." The piece said she had had several "incarnations" before she was a reporter, including work on an Oliver Stone "docudrama." (It was a documentary.) Needless to say, Mr. Kurtz did not consider the new data, or the Governments failure to release it earlier or explain it. His piece gave the impression of Ms. OMeara as a nutcase who did not know how to behave in company.

I asked Mr. Kurtz what value he saw in printing a one-sided story (Ms. OMeara didnt return his calls) undermining a reporter before she even published her work. He said it was like writing about George Stephanopoulos becoming a commentator. Readers should be forewarned about Ms. OMearas background as an "advocate."

But what was she an advocate for?

"At a minimum, skeptical of the official explanations in the T.W.A. 800 case."

This column ran on page 1 in the 2/21/2000 edition of The New York Observer>>

By the way....the national media NEVER identified George S. as a former administration spokesman, nor as a paid Democratic, nor as anything but a "journalist" or "reporter" or more frequently "an analyst" -implying even more that he is an independent, honest ource of unbiased views.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 17, 2000

Answers

Grreat information and post! Thanks!

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 17, 2000.

Well, now, if it wasn't rocket fuel residue, it could not have been downed by a SAM or SAMs, thus it could not have been, for example, terrorists (what's the saying about paybacks are ...?). And, if it wasn't terrorists, the public has no reason to get a little of that queasy feeling, right?

But this same administration has missed few chances to keep indoctrinating us to the idea that we will see biochem incident, and sooner than later. Darn good thing my sinuses are acting up!

-- redeye in ohio (not@work.com), February 17, 2000.

Thanks a lot Robert.

This is valuable information.

-- Rick (rick7@postmark.net), February 17, 2000.

This NewsMax outfit is a welcome surprise--

see also:

Open Letter Re: The Unexplained Loss of TWA Flight 800 -- Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, III - USN, Ret. -- April 5, 1999

Was TWA Flight 800 Destroyed by Two Missiles? Michael N. Hull April 26, 1999

TWA 800: Media Watchdogs, FBI Pets -- NewsMax.com -- January 24, 2000

This last one contains links to the other 9 parts of a 10-part series on TWA 800.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 17, 2000.

TWA 800! So soon we forget. What is the official explanation for this tragedy?

-- (nemesis@awol.com), February 17, 2000.

Great post. Wonder how much more spam we'll see tonight. Hot board. Lots of distractions. Kill 'em Sysops. Looks like we're on a roll.

-- mike in houston (mmorris67@hotmail.com), February 17, 2000.

Ah ----- the plot thickens.

Here are a large group of French families - supposedly represented by an official French magistrate (who investigates "like" we do with a grand jury judge) - supposed to "investigate" various causes, who has done nothing of any sort of an investigation. In fact the official magistrate has done all she could to inhibit the families' investigation and appears completely incompetant.

The families' attorney thus is fighting the French legal system and government, the French press' deliberate ignorance (ignoring) of the conflicts, AND the US NTSB and FBI. Further, a second attorney is doing he can to try to "close the books" by getting what amounts to payoff from Boeing.

Notice - this second attorney has "decided" it is mechanical in nature, that is Boeing fault, and that Boeing should pay. Of course, this means that if Boeing pays (is repaid by US (?) in the same kind of deal that Loral and Texas Instruments had with Communist China and the Clintons' administration) - then this lawsuit is closed down.

Also, again notice that the "press" has no interest in the story. They (the French press in this case) AGAIN don't want conflicting stories published.

This from WorldNetDaily's site today. Original from Insight magazine.

---...---...---...---...

Suppressed TWA Data Looks New in Paris

------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Kelly Patricia OMeara from Paris omeara@insightmag.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Almost four years ago, a TWA jumbo jet exploded in midair. Now, the families of the 42 French victims are wondering why pertinent radar information has been withheld.

Relatives of the victims of the as yet unexplained 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, N.Y., want to believe they are being told the truth by investigating U.S. agencies. Their faith in the investigators is so strong, in fact, that when confronted with evidence that has been withheld from them for nearly three-and-a-half years, their first instinct is to question the legitimacy of the evidence rather than demand an explanation of the omission. The classic catch-22 in this instance is that while many family members believe the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, has lied to them, they nonetheless are willing to accept as authentic only the evidentiary pronouncements by the board.

This point recently was underscored when more than a dozen French family members of the victims of TWA Flight 800 met in Paris to discuss the status of the ongoing $40 million official U.S. probe of the downing of the jumbo jet. The families tell Insight they feel isolated from the investigation, separated not only by an ocean and language barriers but also by a French legal system that prohibits their direct participation. They expressed astonishment during their first look at radar data that, to date, have been published only by Insight (see New Radar Blips and TWA 800, Sept. 20, 1999).

These data, which cover a much wider geographical area than previously acknowledged, reveal that at about the time of the accident, nearly two dozen surface vessels and aircraft entered military warning area known as W-105, which was in close proximity to the site of the crash. Critics say such facts add fuel to the fire of those who believe that the Department of the Navy may have played a role in the crash. Although this information was available to federal investigators within hours of the disaster, inexplicably it was withheld from NTSB Exhibit 13A of the CD-ROM record of evidence provided at the December 1997 public hearings on the disaster in Baltimore. It seemed incredible to the families, they report, that the NTSB would withhold the data and that no other news organization  French or U.S.  carried this major news break concerning the investigation.

Why should we believe, says Catherine Breistroff, who lost her 25-year-old brother, Michel, that they [NTSB] would give up the data? Why would they just give you the information? Has the NTSB confirmed that this interpretation of the data is correct? If we write to the NTSB, who is to say they wont lie to us? What difference will it make? Already we have not been given all the information. Everybody lies to us and we dont know what to believe.

Christophe Delange also lost his brother, Sylvain, on Flight 800 and voices the feelings of many others: I dont have any hope in the political process anymore. I have stopped looking on a personal level, but it really disturbs me that something is right here and it appears as though it has been hidden from me. I have no personal convictions, but this radar data is very disturbing news. We have this new information, but what do we do now?

Although the French families feel excluded from the investigation, they nonetheless have taken one step that their American counterparts have not. An attorney representing some of them has hired a professional aviation investigator, Serge Roche, to conduct an independent enquiry into the cause of the crash. A retired commercial airline pilot, Roche is an expert in air-accident investigations and airline security. He makes no bones about what he believes caused the center wing tank, or CWT, of the Paris-bound 747 to explode. As he presents evidence that supports a likely missile involvement, he expects to be attacked for disputing the official theory of a mechanical malfunction.

A source close to the investigation tells Insight that a lawsuit against Roche has been threatened if he persists in pursuing the missile theory. Roche is not concerned about such warnings and remains committed to a thorough investigation. I am doing my job, asking questions. How can they sue me? he asks.

Though the FBIs lead investigator on TWA Flight 800, James Kallstrom, has referred to the independent investigators who have been publishing their findings on the Internet as bottom-feeders, such sources have provided carefully authenticated information, some of which Roche has verified and incorporated into his analysis. Based on evidence he has collected on his own, information gathered from the NTSB Baltimore hearings and through other independent investigators, Roche says he is sure that the mechanical theory is false. In fact, despite repeated reports in the press that the NTSB has concluded the explosion was caused by a spark inside the CWT, the official investigation remains active and the NTSB has yet to provide any evidence of the source of ignition inside the CWT.

Roche believes that the NTSB has withheld important information, but he also cites failures by the French magistrate responsible for conducting an official investigation for the families of French victims. And he says that the press on both sides of the Atlantic has failed to insist on answers.

In France, says Roche, journalists are basically hard-news writers. Its more day-to-day news. But they also are very aware and worried about what happened to [former White House press secretary] Pierre Salinger when he came out with his report of the first radar tape. More importantly, journalists never asked for the NTSB CD-ROM [showing the radar scan of the area at the time of the explosion] because they didnt know about it. What we have to do is force the issue by going back to the United States and interviewing the eyewitnesses, going into the hangar and having the ability to view the wreckage. Then I can bring this information back to the press and hopefully they will finally do their job. The revelation [by Insight] of the new radar data should have been enough to get them involved again, but although more than a dozen reporters covered the Paris conference and saw and heard the presentation of the new radar data, not one news organization mentioned it.

Meanwhile, Roche and the families tell Insight they believe much of the blame for the lack of press enthusiasm about the story should fall on the French magistrate. She has been totally unresponsive to the families wishes, complains Roche. The magistrate is put in place to conduct an investigation. This magistrate has no background in aircraft accidents and one year after the accident, and after the NTSB preliminary report was prepared for the Baltimore hearings, she finally traveled to the United States and came back with the NTSB CD-ROM of the investigation. When pressed by the families for information, she complained that she didnt have the correct software to read the CD-ROM, then complained that she could not interpret the information. I have written to her numerous times, including one letter that posed more than 100 questions about the investigation, but to this day Ive not re-ceived even one response. Because she wont do what is required, I am obliged to go around her, but without the magistrates intervention I cannot get into the hangar at Calverton [New York] to view the wreckage. I have no doubt that the NTSB and FBI have not provided all the truth, but I also need to see the physical evidence firsthand.

Under French law, family members are prohibited from making direct contact with the NTSB and FBI, and therefore are forced to work through the magistrate. However, based on the discussion among the family members who attended the weekend conference, it appears they are ready to make a formal request to get the current magistrate replaced with someone better suited to investigate aviation disasters and more responsive to the families inquiries. They will take up the matter when all of the families of the 42 French victims meet in Paris in late March.

But even within this small group of people there are divisions. The families who attended this conference, says Roche, believe in the possibility that something other than a mechanical problem caused the CWT to explode. The other families believe what the NTSB is telling them because they are the official agency. Some of the families even have suggested that I am being paid by Boeing and thats why Im pursuing the missile scenario. This is absurd.

Lawsuits have been filed on behalf of the French families against Boeing, TWA and the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA. However, according to Maitre Portejoie, the Paris-based attorney representing just two of the French families and under contract with Frank Granito, the New York attorney representing a large number of French and American families, I am just the executor of my clients wishes. I am paid to represent my clients who believe the cause of the explosion was mechanical. Many consider this an odd response given that Portejoie hired Roche to investigate the cause of the crash. Two days after the conference with the French families, and nearly five months after Insight published the new radar data, Portejoie still had not seen the radar data and had not deposed the NTSB, FBI or eyewitnesses, let alone reviewed the eyewitness statements.

Back in the states, Granito also has not seen the new radar data nor has he deposed the eyewitnesses, the NTSB or the FBI. According to Granito, Its hard for the families to understand that we are retained to represent them in a civil suit, not a criminal suit. My job is to establish by a preponderance of the evidence the probable cause. I dont have to prove Boeing was negligent. I dont have to find out with 100 percent certainty. I only have to prove that the product was defective at the time of the accident.

When questioned about why Boeing continues to pursue the missile theory when he is so sure the cause was mechanical, Granito says, I dont know why. But the Boeing attorneys and their engineers are not together on this. It makes Boeing very happy because it keeps the conspiracy theory alive. There is no credible evidence that this is a missile. I havent seen the radar data so I dont know what youre talking about. Would it surprise me that there are more ships and aircraft in the area? Yes. But its a big leap in logic that because there are ships out there that they shot a missile at this aircraft. This information isnt relevant. The bottom line is were never going to know what was the initiating spark inside the CWT. I have more access to the evidence than anyone, and all of the evidence points to the interior of the CWT.

Granitos remarks raise a number of questions. For instance, if he has more access to the evidence than anyone, how is it that he is unaware of the newly released radar data? Did the NTSB fail to make the radar data available to the lead attorney for the families? Why did the FBI withhold unrestricted access to the eyewitness accounts from the NTSB investigators until the bureaus criminal investigation was put in an inactive/pending status? Why did lead FBI investigator Kallstrom formally request that the eyewitness reports be withheld from the NTSB public hearings in Baltimore? And why has the NTSB yet to release the eyewitness reports to the public for review, despite Public Law No. 93-633, which requires that the NTSB report its findings and make them available to the public?

So far, the NTSB has withheld from the public two important pieces of the investigation  the radar data and the eyewitness reports. Would it be unreasonable for the families to question why the investigative bodies consider this information important while the attorney who represents them does not? Would it be relevant for the families to wonder what other information about the crash that took the lives of their loved ones is being kept from them?

Although Granitos job may only be to settle the claims, the families are interested in the truth. Bernard Jacquemot, who lost his son, Benoit, aboard TWA 800 is one who attended the Paris conference. The new radar data is important, he tells Insight, and raises many new questions about the cause of the crash. I have no idea why the NTSB would hide this information, but I would like them to explain the reason. I would like to know what the ships are that show up on this data. I am surprised that this information was not released in the press, and I find it strange that no one would cover it. All the information we get is from the American families newsletter [The Families of TWA Flight 800].

Jacquemot agrees with Roche that the French press has done little to investigate the incident because maybe they consider it an American story and now they are more interested in things that are happening today  things such as two more mysterious airline disasters  one in South Africa and one off the coast of California  which occurred during these interviews. I want to express very much my deep emotion for the families of those who died, says Granito.

Every time this happens, it brings it all back to us. We have to have a meeting with the French magistrate and the NTSB so they can answer some of these questions. We need to know why they withheld the radar data. So far, there has been no pressure to make the data public, and now we need to put pressure on them to explain it."

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 18, 2000.

Link to previous story (with radar views of the possible impact.)

http://insightmag.com/archive/200002117.shtml

---...---...---...

Notice the two radar "streaks" going towards the Flt 800 immediately to "loss of radar point" (impact point?)

IF (and I don't know and can't confirm that there was a missile involved!) that these two streaks "end" at their intersection with Flt 800's route: exactly what is expected if one (or more) missiles struck the plane - obviously the incoming missile radar track would stop when it hits the target.

Second: The other letter (from the naval officer) shows that an explosion is NOT needed to cause the rupture of the fuel tank under the fuselage, directly in the center of the plane. The kinetic energy of the missile is enough to compress and destroy the tank, thus tearing apart the aircraft from dynamic shear and distortion - with (as the evidence shows (by it absence) THAT NO EXPLOSION OR WARHEAD RESIDUE remaining to be found.

And the absence of this residue is the government's ONLY evidence/reason/excuse for rejecting the missile theory.

In effect the administration's FBI and NTSB are saying that because they claim they found no explosive residue, there was no missile impact.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), February 18, 2000.