Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit INTELLIGENCE ISSN 1245-2122 N. 44 New Series, 23 September 1996 Publishing since 1980 FRONT PAGE: U.S.A. FRENCH INTELLIGENCE EXPLANATION FOR TWA 800 The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the FBI, which usually comes up quickly with coherent explanations for aircraft accidents or terrorist attacks against aviation, still do not have a single credible explanation for the inflight 17 July explosion that destroyed the TWA Flight 800 Boeing 747 off Long Island, New York. This lack of explanation has left the door open to an increasingly wide variety of theories that will continue to grow, according to one specialist, "until the U.S. presidential elections are over". Other specialists are waiting for the "first serious intelligence leak" that may help eliminate some theories and concentrate attention on one of the three "major" explanations: a terrorist bomb on board Flight 800; a "missile hit"; a catastrophic malfunction of the Boeing 747. Currently, the least credible of the three is the last, but, as we mentioned in our previous issue: "U.S. authorities continue to downplay suggestions that mechanical failure might have caused the plane to drop rapidly from 4,800 meters to 3,000 meters before exploding and falling into the sea off Long Island, despite the fact that a similar incident occurred in May 1976 when an Iranian Air Force 747 -- the same model as TWA Flight 800 -- exploded in mid-air near Madrid airport, killing 17 crew members. After widespread speculation that a bomb on board had caused the crash, an inquiry later concluded that a fuel leak in one of the wings was responsible" (see "Firing Missiles at Civilian Airliners"; INT, N. 43/9). The possibility of a terrorist bomb destroying Flight 800 seems to be the "most reasonable" theory and has been thoroughly covered by the major media, but it still lacks the "official seal" of the FBI and the NTSB which, as we mentioned, are usually quite capable technically of asserting this on rather short notice. Let's turn our attention to the "unacceptable" explanation that the TWA Boeing was hit by a missile. The strange sighting on 29 August, by an American Airlines pilot, of "a missile off the right wing" of his aircraft, mentioned in our previous issue, was confirmed on 11 September by U.S. NASA to have been a secret rocket-launched experiment by the Pentagon. Although the five-meter rocket fired from Wallops Island, Virginia, passed only five kilometers off the wing of American Airlines Flight 1170, NASA spokesman, Keith Koehler, publicly maintained that proper safety procedures had been followed and the rocket posed no threat to the airliner. Nonetheless, his declaration had the effect of silencing all those who said a "missile hit" against TWA 800 was "unthinkable". One established fact is that a heat-seeking missile did not hit Flight 800. A 747's four, large engines -- the infrared "hot spots" that such missiles "chase", often going right up the exhaust nozzle -- showed no damage from a nearby explosion. This would tend to exclude theories based on the firing of a shoulder-launched, head-seeking Stinger missile by terrorists in a boat off Long Island. But, as a press report stated, quoting French Defense Ministry sources, larger missiles would involve heavy infrastructure and therefore directly implicate U.S. armed forces, which alone have such capabilities in the area. This has generated the "U.S. Military Goof" theory which has since been reinforced by an anonymous Internet report, supposedly by a 747 pilot, stating that "Flight 800 was shot down by a U.S. Navy Aegis missile fired from a guided missile ship which was in area W-105 about 30 miles from where the TWA Flight 800 exploded." To correct the terminology, this means that an Aegis class guided-missile destroyer fired a Standard Missile SM-1 or SM-2 (either "medium range" or "extended range" version). According to the report, a P-3 missile tracking aircraft was in place for a test firing and flying above TWA 800 when a US Air flight, cleared to descend toward Providence, Rhode Island, appeared. This supposedly resulted in air traffic controllers demanding that TWA 800 stop gaining altitude, leveling off at 4,800 meters and flying perilously close, or into, area W-105 with its radio transponers emitting signals. According to "Intelligence" sources, an alternate "U.S. Military Goof" theory, which greatly diminishes U.S. armed forces' responsibility, is circulating among French intelligence services. According to our sources, an unidentified and unmarked aircraft flying south from Canada, and suspected of being a clandestine drug delivery flight, was picked up and "painted" by coastal radar. After repeated summons by radio and no response, the aircraft was "painted" by missile radar and given a final warning. When no reply followed, a missile was launched in the direction of the unidentified aircraft which then "ducked" into the radar shadow of TWA Flight 800 and the large Boeing 747 "caught the missile". Intelligence experts already have one such scenario on their hands; the destruction of an Italian airlines DC-9 in 1980 over the island of Ustica on its flight from Rome to Sicily (see pages 237-240 of our book, "Intelligences Secretes", 1988, Hachette, Paris). But one has to be careful, since this similarity can be used to draw attention away from a different explanation of the Flight 800 explosion. Nonetheless, in the Ustica case, it seems that a Libyan MiG pilot attempted to defect to Italy and was chased north over the Mediterranean by at least two other Libyan MiGs, intent on shooting him down. At the same time, French and American fighters were in the area, probably "scrambling" to head off the Libyans. What exactly happened is still the center of a heated controversy. Supposedly, as with Flight 800, all radar track recordings have been lost or seized and disappeared. The most "reasonable" explanation is that one of the fighters fired at the Libyan defector who flew his MiG into the radar shadow of the DC-9 which "took the hit". That this case still hasn't been resolved tends to indicate that the deadly missile wasn't Libyan. Otherwise someone would probably have leaked information long ago implicating the Libyan "bogeyman". It should also be noted that, in this case, French and U.S. military intelligence certainly know what happened, just like with TWA 800. One specialist mentioned the possibility that perhaps Washington has Paris "by the nose" over Ustica, and that Paris has Washington "by the nose" over Flight 800. Since Ustica was never "solved", Flight 800 may never be "solved". Nonetheless, French intelligence has leaked enough information to point a finger at the U.S. military. According to French intelligence, U.S. Navy divers recovered the serial number of the missile which destroyed Flight 800, but the Pentagon immediately had the number erased from its inventory. All radar track recordings have supposedly be seized and the NTSB has allegedly not been given access to some 3,000 eyewitness interviews by the FBI. According to one U.S. expert, a Standard Missile leaves a large plume of smoke that should have been visible from Long Island. And since the "political fallout" from such a disaster is extremely volatile and unpredictable, the Clinton administration apparently has forbidden the release of any information that would implicate the U.S. military ... at least until the presidential elections are over. * Copyright ADI 1996, reproduction in any form forbidden without explicit authorization from the ADI. A one year subscription (23 issues with full index) is US $315. 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