800 anniversary

It was ten years ago today that a Boeing 747 belonging to Trans World Airlines suffered some sort of catastrophic failure off the coast fo New York. CNN has been doing an anniversary feature on the crash and continued their series over the weekend, which required them to at least touch on alternate crash theories.

So how did they do it? "Pierre Salinger Syndrome".

The infamous journalist was embarrassed by having once claimed to possess evidence that the Navy shot down the plane, later debunked. CNN quoted former lead FBI investigator James Kallstrom as calling the Navy shootdown theory "crazy", but left the impression all the other alternative versions were also the work of nuts.

Their reporters failed to emulate real journalists and explore these other theories before berating them, such as the mystery surrounding a FOIA lawsuit requesting metalic fragments found in some of the victims. The FBI actually lost the suit and was ordered to produce the fragments, but later said they couldn't find them. It's hard to imagine CNN resorting to such curbside tactics if the Bush administration were involved.

I fully realize some will call me a kook. That's fine, since I'm joined by airline pilots, engineers and a former Navy Commander and his brother and several investigative journalists. By the way, I don't automatically believe in every conspiracy theory. For example, I don't believe Vince Foster was murdered or that the Trade Center was destroyed by a controlled demolition. I don't believe in the Illuminati.

I DO think that even if the NTSB was correct that no missile hit the plane, they were never able to produce an ignition source. A Ramzi Yousef-fashioned seat bomb, previously used in another 747 explosion in the far east only a few years before this crash, could have caused the "spark". Traces of explosives were found on seat-backs near the center of the plane, but the explanation was rather flimsy. Yousef was on trial in New York City for the Bojinka plot the day the plane went down.

But here's the crux. The most telling signal is the lack of action by the NTSB, FAA and airlines on 'fixing' the 'problem' now ten years down the road. The odds of a fuel tank explosion while in flight remain infintesimal, and even more so if 800 wasn't brought down by a sparked wire. They've clearly done the cost-benefit calculations.