What happened to Curt Weldon?

The 10-term Congressman from Pennsylvania was defeated last year, partially as the result of an 11th hour influence peddling scandal involving his daughters. Some attributed it to a political hit, going as far as blaming Karl Rove, since Weldon was reportedly at odds with the administration over Able Danger. While it may be fun to speculate about Rovian plots it's hard to believe the RNC would give away his seat so easily.

Some say it was Weldon who shot off his own foot with grandiose conspiracy theories as outlined in his book, for example. Others blamed the Democrats, a natural choice.

No doubt the DNC wanted him out just like all the rest, maybe more. In what might seem a strange backdrop to this story, let's review President Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this past fall:

A three-star admiral, who was on my National Security Council staff, who also fought terror, by the way, is running for the seat of Kurt Weldon in Pennsylvania.

Was it merely a coincidence Weldon's name was the only Republican he mentioned in his laundry list of militaristic Democrats running for Congress, or did he drop the name for a reason? That question got the attention of reporter Jack Cashill. Get ready, because from here the story turns a little tinfoilish.

Seems Congressman Weldon had entertained Cashill and Mike Wire in his office last summer (Wire was one of the eyewitnesses of the TWA 800 crash). Below is a video clip from Cashill's documenary on 800:



Here's part two.

The men discussed the case, including Sandy Berger's trip to the Archives. Berger was reportedly very interested in Richard Clarke's notes, something initially explained away by the thwarted Millennium plot. That was puzzling, since by all measure the Millennium plot could be seen as a Clinton victory against terrorism, even if it was stopped autonomously by a border patrol agent. In any case, not enough to risk stealing documents from the Archives.

It's only reasonable to ask whether Berger was searching for other morsels, like mentions of bin Laden while in the Sudan, the Bojinka plot, or possibly flight 800. 9/11 Commissioner Lee Hamilton should have plenty of time to find out, since he's now working with him at Berger's consulting group.

Like everyone else, Cashill has a self-interest here since he's hawking a book and video about 800. His book was co-authored with James Sanders, a freelance investigator whom the government tossed in jail for tampering with evidence during the 800 investigation. Sanders had recruited an FBI crash investigator to sneak him out a sample of seat fabric that had red stains on it, which he had independently analyzed. It turned out to be explosive residue, a finding the FBI did not deny but later explained by saying the aircraft had been visited by a bomb-sniffing dog test in St. Louis weeks before the crash. There was a certain flimsiness to that explanation, but it pacified the media.

I read Cashill's book several years ago and thought his overall theory was rather absurd. He postulated that a small terrorist aircraft carrying explosives was trying to kamikaze into TWA 800. In the process of trying to shoot it down the Navy mistakenly shot down the 747. He's lately backed off that theory, first mentioning a possible Iraq connection and now seemingly leaning towards the Navy theory minus the terrorist plane. Somehow that brings us back to Berger.

Rank and file conservatives and even some Congressional Republicans were stunned over the Burglar's sentencing. How in hell did he get off with a slap on the wrist when others would be serving time with no chance of ever regaining their clearance? For the sake of argument, let's assume he was fishing around the Archives trying to remove evidence of a covered-up Navy shoot down or even a terrorist plot. Could that explain it? Keep in mind the Navy missile theory could involve many on both sides of the political spectrum, including defense contractors. Lawsuits can be expensive, both financially and politically.

Still speculating here, so let's assume a less sinister scenario, such as the ordnance used was from a top-secret project that nobody wanted to expose to our enemies at the time. The surface vessel closest to the crash site has never been identified.

There's still a viable terrorism angle as well. While shoulder fired missiles have limited effectiveness against planes at flight 800's altitude, other more sophisticated systems don't suffer that lapse. That brings the mystery boat into play. As to previously mentioned smoking guns, it was probably a coincidence that Ramzi Yousef was simultaneously standing trial in Manhattan for the Bojinka Plot since there's no overwhelming evidence the plane was struck by the type of micro seat bomb he'd used against another 747 in the Philippines two years earlier. There's no evidence linking Saddam or bin Laden.

What about Iran? As far as we know they never retaliated for our shoot-down of Iran Air 655 over the Persian Gulf in 1988, and it's not like them to forget. If they were involved perhaps they pulled it off on Iraq's National Liberation Day, a day commemorating Saddam's rise to power, in an effort to draw us into an attack and subsequent quagmire, allowing them to project power westward. Think about what's happening nowadays and yep, that might say something about 9/11, if true.

We already know that Tehran had a hand in the Khobar Towers bombing of June 25, 1996, less than a month before the 747's crash. Only months before that, on Nov. 13, 1995, another bombing had occurred at a US military training center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Ironically, the group who took credit for the Riyadh attack also took credit for downing TWA 800, calling itself the "Islamist Movement for Change". According to MIPT:

Islamic Movement for Change was a shadowy organization of which very little is known. The group was supposedly supported by the Iranian government and comprised members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The group’s stated aims have included evicting American and British troops from Saudi Arabia and toppling pro-western states in the Middle East.

How does this relate to Weldon? It might not, unless he was closing in on some answers and they pulled the plunger on him with that half-baked scandal (meanwhile William Jefferson and John Murtha got reelected). If Iran was involved, as Weldon had speculated in his book, it's possible parties on both sides simply wanted to hush him up. Think about how the Bush administration is handling that country right now.

Mind you, there's always the equal probability the plane simply blew itself up as the NTSB claimed while in Pennsylvania the voters thought Weldon was becoming a borderline loon and just swept him out in the Progressive duststorm. We may never know.

As to 800, while I enjoy a good conspiracy it must pass the smell test. Occam's Razor says airplanes don't routinely explode while in flight or we'd have seen many previous examples and we haven't. We've been told 800 had an overheated fuel tank containing non-explosive Jet A vapors preheated by the tarmac on an 86 degree day. If such were the case then ALL planes sitting on tarmacs in summer are time bombs, especially those down south where summer temperatures are 10-15 degrees warmer.

And if commercial planes are at such risk from spontaneous explosions why has nothing been done to mitigate the problem? That's outrageous. To date the NTSB and FAA have only given some lip service to the "problem", never mandating the fleet be fixed. I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

MORE 2/4/07

Seems Weldon wasn't alone in warning us about Iran. Don't know if we can trust this woman on foreign affairs after her recent equivocation on Iraq, though.

Also blogging Marie's Two Cents, Never Yet Melted, Cinnamon Stillwell, Daily Pundit,