Having just attended a dynamic news conference in Washington, D.C. on the crash of TWA flight 800, I heard ABC News radio reporter Tim Scheld provide a report on his network saying that military veterans, aircraft accident investigators, and eyewitnesses had described a flare-like object that went into the sky before the crash. He got that part right. But Scheld then quoted government sources as saying that the missile theory couldn't be true because there was no evidence of a missile hitting the plane and no missile damage. So it looked like the government theory -- that a mysterious fuel tank accident caused the crash -- appeared to be holding up. The government got the final word.

Like Cliff, I was at that news conference, which featured a journalist, James Sanders, who was prosecuted by the government for obtaining evidence that a missile hit the plane. Jim said other pieces of the wreckage also showed evidence of a missile. What's more, he showed the reporters at the news conference photographic evidence of missile damage to the plane. Going through a series of slides of the plane wreckage, he explained how federal agents manipulated this evidence to try to cast doubt on the missile theory. So how could ABC News radio reporter Tim Scheld report that there was no evidence of a missile hitting the plane?

It turns out that Scheld wasn't even at the event. He is based in New York, where he supposedly monitored what went on. The material was fed to ABC News offices in Washington, D.C. and New York. This is what passes for investigative journalism today. If Scheld was following the proceedings from afar, he must have been asleep or doing other things, for he seemed completely unaware of Sanders' remarks.

His handling of Sanders' revelations is typical of media coverage of this case. The news conference featured one TWA 800 family member, two eyewitnesses, and three independent investigators. Another, Dr. Tom Stalcup, chairman of the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, discussed testimony by a top government investigator, Hank Hughes, that an FBI agent had been observed trying to flatten a piece of the wreckage. This was additional proof of altering the evidence to discredit the missile theory.

All of the participants in the press conference agreed that the government theory makes no sense. Stalcup said that 260 eyewitnesses saw a streak of light in the sky, and 94 of them saw the flare-like object emerge from the surface and go into the sky where it hit the plane. The government claims they were actually seeing flames from the plane as it was breaking apart, when its nose fell off, and it continued moving up in the sky. This is not only physically impossible, it contradicts eyewitness testimony about where the flare coming from and where it was going. The government attempt to explain away the eyewitness testimony is a cruel joke.

Those eyewitness statements were kept secret by the government for three and one-half years, until they were released this April. Stalcup announced that his group was filing suit to force the government to release more information, including evidence that the victims were hit with "foreign bodies," possibly shrapnel caused by the missile blast. (30)

 

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