TWA Flight 800 investigators break silence in new documentary, claim original conclusion about caus

There is a pretty great documentary about this already. It's from a series called Conspiracy?



It presents both the government's side and the various conspiracy theories (terrorist RPG from a fishing boat, accidentally shot down by our own navy, accidentally damaged by the airforce trying to shoot down a small suicide plane that was going to crash into it).

I'll be interested to see this new one.

reply to post by madmac5150


The funny of it is I was not much of a CT'er at the time. I had seen America Under Siege so I wasn't in complete darkness but I was more interested in drinking than anything else. Why I would have bought into a CT then doesn't make much sense, but then there's much about the 90's I don't remember because of the bottle.Just doesn't seem like it was almost twenty years ago. Time flies, eh?

Worth a look ? I remember in The UK there has been a few tv documentaries over the years discussing the missile theory

whatreallyhappened.com...



The New York Post, in its story of September 22, 1996, reported,



Law-enforcement sources said the hardest evidence gathered so far overwhelmingly suggests a surface-to-air missile...
The FBI interviewed 154 "credible" witnesses -- including scientists, schoolteachers, Army personnel and business executives -- who described seeing a missile heading through the sky just before TWA 800 exploded.

"Some of these people are extremely, extremely credible," a top federal official said.

FBI technicians mapped the various paths -- points in the sky where the witnesses said they saw the rising "flare-like" object -- and determined that the "triangulated" convergence point was virtually where the jumbo jet initially exploded.


The New York Times, on July 19th, 1996, reported,



" [ Witnesses reported ] a "streak of light" hitting the plane just before it blew up."

And perhaps most tellingly, from the Associated Press, on September 23, 1996,



"...a source...said on condition of anonymity... ``There's metal bent in, metal bent out. Metal you can't tell. I see a hole going in and a hole going out..."

reply to post by NickDC202


Found it. It wasn't video but a photograph of "something" in the vicinity of flight 800.

Here's the pic: give me a sec and I'll grab the URL to the site discussing the photo well.

SIte: www.users.globalnet.co.uk...

I worked with a guy who was an airline mechanic at the time of it but this was a few years later and one day he said "Did you ever hear of TWA flight 800"? I said yeah and his response was just "They shot that FER down and everybody knows it and Boeing took the hit but will get big government contracts to smooth things out" Just out of the blue

reply to post by EViLKoNCEPTz


Good find, but they didn't air a slideshow; they aired a video.
If you look at the Cashill article I quoted earlier, journalist and TWA 800 expert James Sanders has the evidence log documenting the FBI confiscation of the video that night.

EViLKoNCEPTz, the video being completely removed from the coverage and never shown or mentioned again in the days after the explosion was the single event I can point to that caused me to become more curious about the way things work and wonder how something could just disappear. Of course I was in my teens at the time and if not for that single event, I may never have discovered sites like this or look deeper into events.

reply to post by NickDC202

. . . because the EL AL flight was delayed at the gate, TWA 800 was the next flight to share the same flight path and those firing the device shot down the wrong flight.

That would be my guess.
And I think why the government is so intent on hiding the facts is probably because it was a US weapon given to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.
Expect to see more of this sort of thing as a result of the weapons given to al qaeda fighters in Syria by the US.

en.wikipedia.org...:Twa_800_witness_319.PNG
this witness mentioned a orange "flare" going upwards before the explosion

reply to post by jmdewey60


Good thoughts. I'd add that the opening ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics occurring a couple days after Flight 800 was a big factor in the direction that the investigation took. (Also note that NBC is the network that broadcast the 1996 Olympics and NBC owns MSNBC; so when the government pressure to make the video disappear would have more of an impact on NBC given the timing)

Y'know, I am so glad I read this thread. I was so confused because I know I saw the video of a missile hitting it, then the next week saying it was an accident. I worked at Boeing at the time and we took the hit for it, but I noticed we got a huge military contract that was supposed to go to Lockheed. My wife and I both saw it, but could not find anyone else who had.

This floors me; I was in the NYARNG at the time, and they tasked us out to do the recovery of the wreckage along the beach, they told us up and down it was a faulty fuel probe or something in the center fuel tank

What is done in secret is truely being shouted from the rooftops these days hey?

I've noticed that folks are posting links to various documentaries about Flight 800; that is awesome, there aren't many but there are some good ones.

As the OP refers to the new EPIX documentary which debuts on Monday, 17 July 2013 and the new information it reveals; I think people may have missed the hidden treasure in the EPIX Press Release that I posted earlier here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Hint: No need to wait until 17 July 2013....

Originally posted by jmdewey60
And I think why the government is so intent on hiding the facts is probably because it was a US weapon given to the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.
Expect to see more of this sort of thing as a result of the weapons given to al qaeda fighters in Syria by the US.

The only shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile in the US inventory is the FIM-92 Stinger. The Stinger has a theoretical range of almost 16,000 feet, but the farther out the target is, the less reliable the missile is. The Block II would have increased the range to over 26,000 feet but it was cancelled when it was over 5 years behind on development. The effective range on a Stinger is in the 13,000 foot range.

The other problem with a MANPADS is that an IR missile would be more likely to home in on engines, not center fuselage. While the center fuselage is going to be hot due to the AC unit, it's usually not going to be the hottest point on the aircraft at that point in the climb. The engines would have just been throttled back after several minutes at near full power, and would have been hotter than the center fuselage, which would have attracted a missile much faster than the center wing fuel tank.

Another problem is that one of the military witnesses said he saw a light dropping down in altitude before the explosion. That would mean that the missile would have had to climb above Flight 800, and drop back down. That would have led to either an upper fuselage impact, or an engine impact. The four engines showed no damage, and an upper fuselage impact wouldn't have shattered the airframe (contrary to Hollywood missiles don't cause aircraft to explode in midair). Even a delayed impact fuse, like some MANPADS use wouldn't cause the plane to explode like that.

Originally posted by TMJ1972
what makes me wonder about this is:
the center-wing tank showed clear evidence about an explosion from inside out, and all pieces surroundig it where recovered and did not show any missile impact.
i strongly believe Fox has been fooled on this !

I did not use all your post because it would be a long quote. But, at least one person has said that the fuel tank portion 'came in' with the walls upright and not bent in, that wing parts were removed from the hangar by the FBI without a paper record, and that is supposed to be part of the enquiry record. That the DIA talked about a video that they thought was of a missile, and that it was not included in the enquiry. You could look at this link,
prorev.com... for starters

There is a lot of things written out there, and it will take time to get it together to make up your own mind, much like 9/11 really, with things that 'never happened before' It's all very contentious stuff.

I remember this like it was yesterday. I lived in that local area of Long Island and was very familuar with the area they were showing and talking about. The day the F.B.I took over and started telling us the "why" it happened, is the day I knew it was not a spark in the fuel tank. IMHO our own Navy shot it down, they were in the area and this plane was in this corridor at the wromg time as per flight records, An Israeli flight was supposed to be before this flight, in the same flight path. Mulitiple eye witness's simply ignored and told they did'nt see what they saw.

Full length video explanation by the F.B.I at a huge cost....spells BS story cover-up.

reply to post by smurfy


FBI's removal of wreckage without following good procedure is pretty well known and was criticized at the time (or soon after) - see the wiki page on alternative theories

lol....747 is prob one of the top 3 airplanes out there that are flawless with even the basic maintenance schedule. That tank didnt blow up because of faulty nothing.

reply to post by smurfy


Fuel tank problems have occurred a number of times through the years. A Pan Am flight exploded after a lightning strike ignited one of the fuel tanks in the wing, blowing the wing apart. The Air Force has lost a number of aircraft, including at least two KC-135s to fuel tank explosions, along with several other aircraft that I can think of.

The 747-131 especially had "explosion proof" tanks in the center wing tanks especially, but they were only tested when they were new. Boeing never retested the system to see what effect aging would have on the system. It was found after the crash of 800 that the center wing fuel tank heated more with lower fuel levels in it. As the plane climbed out, the altitude changes, and the air conditioning pack around the fuel tank heated the tank to temperatures that would allow flashover with fairly minimal effort.

The center wing fuel tank when heated, at certain altitudes can have a flashpoint of less than 100 degrees. The CWT spends most of the flight well within the flammability zone, where the 6 wing tanks are only within that zone for a minimal portion of the flight. Add a spark to that, and you have a disaster on your hands.

reply to post by superluminal11


They've lost 747s to a number of mechanical problems. While the design of the aircraft is outstanding, and incredibly safe that doesn't mean that it's immune to problems such as center wing fuel tank explosions. In fact the 100 series were more vulnerable to them due to their age. Even with well maintained aircraft at a certain point you're going to start to see age related problems.