Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash | Hacker News Reader

Citing new evidence, families sue feds, Raytheon, Lockheed over 1996 TWA crash

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235 pointshammock258 comments

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The lawsuit[0] is worth a read and goes into quite a bit of detail about the claimed timeline. Roughly:

* Upgraded missile defense systems were deemed a national security priority around this time

* Navy ships compatible with these systems were 5 years out, so…

* Live missile testing happens at a compatible land base in New Jersey, under congested airspace

* Multiple civilians report seeing missile tests in & around the date of the TWA crash

* Missile test hits TWA jet. Instead of the NTSB running the investigation (like normal), the CIA and FBI are immediately put in charge

* CIA/FBI confiscate records, run PR campaign claiming the crash was “NOT A MISSILE”, mislead the families and general public about the incident

* Missile tests continue post-crash

Damning if true, to say the least.

[0] https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Massachusetts_District_Cou...

I distinctly remember how very soon after the crash, the TV announced that the DOD put out a statement that there were no ships nearby and the plane wasn't hit by a missile. Before anyone accused anyone of anything. It seemed a bit too suspicious for that to be among the first things on the news.

Eh, you're aware there's always knowledgeable people tracking activities and just because there's no immediate discussion in public doesn't mean those watchers arnt questioning.

Ergo, this is a useless factoid.

I don't understand the New Jersey connection; the plane went down quite far from the NY/NJ border: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800#/media/File:TWA...

There’s a naval weapons station right to the southwest of that track, about 50 miles away maybe. A navy SM-2 missile has an unclassified range of 90 nautical miles. It’s likely that they would have been testing some variant of this missile for vertical launch, perhaps with some new phased array radar experiments and such. Up to the 90s, the navy was still using rail launched missiles and traditional radar emitters and the article talks about ships several years out that can’t be used for these tests, which I assume are thee first of current AEGIS ships.

I feel terribly for these families, but the evidence presented in this filing is circumstantial at best: it adds nothing to contradict the overwhelming evidence (including the recovered fuselage) that nothing collided with the aircraft.

It’s easy to see ghosts everywhere, and sometimes they really are there. But TWA 800 probably isn’t one of those cases.

As someone who lived on Long Island at the time, I can tell you that there were dozens, if not hundreds, of eye witnesses from both the beach and the water that claimed to have seen a missile fly up and hit the plane. There was explosive residue consistent with a missile found on on the wreckage of the plane. One of the lead investigators thought it was a missile, and he was shuffled out of the investigation.

Don’t know why you are being downvoted, I am also from Long Island and remember the same accounts at the time

Because it’s exactly the kind of circumstantial, already-mediated evidence we’re talking about: can you, as a civilian, reliably distinguish a missile arc from a burning fuselage at dusk from miles away? I know I can’t.

The one's going up and the other's coming down.

If you read the NTSB’s report, you’ll note that they address this explicitly: the front half of the plane more or less sheared off, causing the back half to pitch up before descending.

That was the "CIA analysis" that was published on the front page of Newsday after the crash that had absolutely nothing to do with the hundreds of eye-witness accounts. Hundreds of people saw a missile fly thousands of feet up from sea level to the plane, which subsequently exploded. Nothing these people saw had anything to do with what happened to the plane after it broke up, which is what the CIA/sanitized-NTSB report addressed. Their further absurd claim that the explosive residue found on the wreckage from the plane was tracked in on the bottom of some passenger's shoe was similarly insulting to the intelligence of everyone who was following the investigation. Combined with the purging of several lead investigators - decades-long veterans of many crash investigations - who insisted that the plane was shot down by a missile, everything points to a missile attack and a coverup.

If you think you know you can't you're probably right. I would think and give credibility to the idea that people can distinguish between something moving up/away from the horizon into the sky and vice versa.

Please see the adjacent response: part of the fuselage almost certainly ascended before its final descent. That’s the part that I am not confident I would be able to distinguish.

They’re not just claiming circumstantial evidence. The plaintiff says they have FOIA documents describing confiscated Navy radar tapes that show an object striking TWA 800.

Damning if true, but a lot hinges on documents we haven’t seen.

That would indeed be damning if true! I suppose we’ll see if and when those are made public.

It seems pretty damming that the evidence was withheld in the first place.

Not really. The NTSB (or FBI, or CIA) is not compelled to release any particular piece of material, especially not if all already public material sufficiently explains what happens.

I don’t particularly trust the FBI or CIA, but that alone is not good enough, nor is circumstantial evidence that is adequately accounted for.

Those documents would be circumstantial evidence because they only show that the author claimed that there were radar tapes showing something hit TWA 800.

If the radar tapes still exist and can be presented as evidence, that would still be circumstantial evidence because they only show what the radar measured. The meaning of those measurements require interpretation to come to a conclusion that a missile hit TWA 800.

I’m not saying this would not be strong evidence, just that it would be circumstantial evidence and not direct evidence.

They are represented by a top tier litigation firm, not some random lawyer trying to make a name for himself. I'm sure they have expert witnesses lined up.

Expert witnesses always agree with whomever hired them. Just a point to consider.

The real filter is, of course, on being able to hire credible expert witnesses who agree with you.

That is a purely monetary filter. The court is not able to determine which experts are credible and which aren't.

That's not hard.

I once saw a professor emeritus from a major CS/EE university who had founded their CS program and semiconductor program, had a bazillion highly ranked papers in those fields, a ton of patents including several that laid the foundations for modern integrated circuits, was an IEEE Fellow, a National Academy of Engineering member, and more I don't remember, testifying that the term RAM as commonly used in CS and EE includes hard disks, CD-ROM, and floppies.

I was doing some work for the opposing side and asked their lawyers how that expert could possibly say that. Surely if his friends or colleagues found out it would tarnish his reputation I though.

What they told me was that STEM communities, both academic and industrial, are well aware of how expert witness gigs work. Lawyers tell you what they need to do, and you find some argument for their position that isn't definitely a lie (in this case RAM stands for "Random Access Memory", and hard disk, CD-ROM, and floppy are indeed memory and have random access so of course are RAM), write up a report stating that, show up at the trial, have your impressive credentials read, and spend maybe an hour being examined and cross examined. In exchange for this you get enough money for a big fancy RV or a nice boat.

So when his colleagues learn that he said it is normal in CS to include floppies and disks and CD-ROM when talking about a computer's RAM they don't think he'd gone nuts or senile. They just think he must have wanted an RV or boat or to remodel his house and took an expert witness gig.

Our expert, who had a similar list of credentials, was using the gig to pay for a $100k car.

I’m sure they do. I wasn’t trying to imply they don’t have good evidence. I was only taking issue with the description that it isn’t circumstantial and secondarily the misconception people have that circumstantial evidence is weak evidence.

The only direct evidence in this case is eye witness testimony, and the government has done a pretty good job of undermining that with their typical “your lying eyes” argument. So this will be a battle of circumstantial evidence.

It would directly contradict the claim that a fire caused the crash

> If the radar tapes still exist

Read the lawsuit, they have the tapes.

A radar that was under test. Could it be clutter or ghost track? Was it detected independently by other systems?

> overwhelming evidence (including the recovered fuselage) that nothing collided with the aircraft.

Anti-aircraft missiles don’t necessarily collide with the target. They can spray sharpnel/fragments at the target. Only a few of those in the fuel tank or engine would be necessarily. So unless they recovered all the fuselage parts, it might be hard to discount the missile as the cause.

Wonder if anyone who confiscated those tapes from the Navy would be willing to come forward after these years and explain why they did it that.

I believe over 95% of the airframe has been recovered at this point, with no evidence of an external explosion or collision. I suppose the evidence could be solely present on the 5% that wasn’t recovered, but that requires a significant speculative leap.

The SM-2 has direct-hit capability. If it did directly hit the fuselage without the NTSB being briefed on its capabilities, it could easily be mistaken.

You're thinking of SM-3, not SM-2, and SM-3's minimum altitude is somewhere in the rarefied upper atmosphere when it burns out and can separate the kill vehicle. Not even the abortive SM-2 Block IV was hit-to-kill.

That said, all SAMs without nose proxy fuzing are /theoretically/ capable of directly impacting their targets. Only a scant handful of ABM-specialized interceptors are designed to do so in order to ensure either complete warhead destruction OR a miss that doesn't produce a boatload of shredded debris clutter.

A direct hit would shred a huge amount of of the airplane, the expanding cloud of non-warhead missile bits would blow a hole through the other side, and the entire thing would be LITTERED with shrapnel.

A marginal intercept is unlikely; you'd need the missile itself to fail in some way; airliners are, unfortunately, effortless targets. Even then, it would have to miss by an absolutely humongous distance (probably larger than a proxy fuze could measure, so command-detonated by the launching system) to golden BB one single piece of shrapnel into a vital airplane bit.

There are a nigh-infinite number of ways anti-air engagements can go, but virtually none of them result in splashing the target without poking a telltale quantity/distribution/shape of holes in it.

I'm not. The SM-2 has contact fuze capability in some models. Look it up. This was almost under active development at the time, as the SM-2 Block IV.

I'm not talking about therotically here. The SM-2 was at the time in a development program that involved direct hits.

A test warhead for direct hit capability is something that was tested for the SM-2 repeatedly, and was almost certainly being tested around the time this incident happened.

You would not expect any fragmentation in such test. Since hit to kill capability was under development at the time, and since test missiles often have dummy warhead, you could reasonably expect exactly what I said.

Ahh, I'm so used to thinking of SM-2 IV as stone tablet-tier ancient history that it didn't even occur to me that there was a time when it was under development!

If you're talking low TRL dev shots where you dgaf about putting the real boom in since you're just measuring miss distance (presuming you're referring to the IVA's new steering/seeker/dorsals before uhh... 97 or whenever they shipped it?), that makes a great deal more sense.

I am still extremely skeptical that one could punch a missile that huge and that speedy through an airliner without it being blindingly obvious, but it certainly wouldn't have any standard frag bits flying around.

> overwhelming evidence

Well yes, of course it would look overwhelming if all the contradictory evidence and testimony was buried. Not to mention any evidence they fabricated to support their cover-up.

You're really missing the main point of the lawsuit.

I’m not missing that. My point is that the actual evidence is pretty threadbare, and vaguely gesticulating about a conspiracy does not actually conjure stronger evidence.

Is it possible a missile really did blow up TWA 800? Sure. But I am not convinced by arguments that are effectively appeals to my latent distrust for the CIA, much less arguments that boil down to fill-in-the-dots conspiracy pattern matching.

Circumstantial evidence is still evidence, evidence by implication. Direct evidence is that which is directly asserted, like eyewitness statements, recordings, or recovered items.

Almost all of the evidence the NTSB accumulated for TWA 800 is circumstantial evidence, apart from things like the flight recorders, the eyewitness statements and physically recovering the aircraft. Even the proverbial phrase "smoking gun" would be circumstantial evidence of a murder, not direct proof.

The NTSB's circumstantial evidence is quite thorough, including literal experiments the Board performed. It's mostly quite strong, and it explains the nearly-irrefutable direct evidence (e.g. cockpit recordings, the state of the recovered instruments at the time of the accident).

Also, direct evidence can sometimes be the most unreliable. Eyewitness statements, for example, are notoriously flawed, as our memories are not perfect hard disk dumps, but are malleable. Even in this case, it's possible that the FBI & CIA or even the NTSB itself "poisoned" the direct testimony of the hundreds witnesses on shore, at sea or even in the air. (My own bias is that I have much more respect for NTSB investigators.)

The NTSB's report is nearly persuasive to me, other than the ignition source. Regardless, I do think the NTSB's recommendations & subsequent FAA action have made air travel safer as a result of their work (again, almost all of it circumstantial).

I'm really not convinced, the linchpin of the missile argument is that the CIA and FBI were put in charge to cover up a missile shootdown, but it's pretty well documented that they were put in charge because it was a suspected terrorist attack. Everything else is circumstantial evidence at best. I'm certainly interested in what shakes out of this court case, but as of right now it just seems like a typical conspiracy theory to me.

From the paperwork:

45. Two other eyewitnesses, Air National Guard pilots, Captain Christian Baur and Major Frederick “Fritz” Meyer, similarly stated that they witnessed events that indicated a missile struck TWA 800. 46. On the day TWA 800 went down, Captain Baur and Major Meyer were flying in a Black Hawk helicopter near the area of the TWA 800 incident. Captain Baur recalled seeing an object with a “rocket type motor . . . moving quick” toward TWA 800. After the crash, Captain Baur flew to the area and conducted a search and rescue.

None of that is new. They said that at the time. Dozens/hundreds of witnesses said same. Exactly zero of whom have ever seen a missile before and would know what one looks like.

In fact many of the witnesses were active duty military and military veterans who knew exactly what a missile looked like.

Just like in civilian life, most people in the military are truck mechanics, cooks, and suchlike. Imputing expertise upon such people is misdirection, just the same kind of misdirection this filing is using to impute authority on a person by citing him as "a physicist" and consistently referring to him as "doctor" out of context.

Even truck mechanics, cooks, and the like have plenty of opportunities to see missile launches.

EDIT :

Missiles are far faster, and crucially, are on fire from the ground up. They go much straighter and produce much more consistent light than a burning half-plane, which is not capable of ascending anywhere close to vertically. They also make drastically different sounds, as one is supersonic and the other very much is not.

They really do look and sound very different. I would expect someone who has seen and heard dozens of launches of that exact missile to be able to make it out quite easily. There are plenty of videos of that online and the difference is quite obvious. Especially someone who is used to this exact model of missile would be able to tell them apart.

Yes, but how many have seen a mid-air explosion of a 747 to compare against?

"It looked like a missile" may be entirely true. It may also be true that a burning, rapidly climbing half of a 747 looks a bit like a missile from afar.

Re: edit:

> Missiles are far faster

Speed is notoriously hard to measure visually. Watch a A380 come in for a landing and you'll swear it's barely moving.

> are on fire from the ground up

Most of the eyewitnesses were over the horizon from any potential launch site.

> They go much straighter and produce much more consistent light than a burning half-plane, which is not capable of ascending anywhere close to vertically

A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing.

> They also make drastically different sounds, as one is supersonic and the other very much is not.

People largely reported hearing an explosion, not a sonic boom.

Of everything you said

> A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing.

Is doing some very heavy assuming.

I don’t know about “vertical”, but the pitch-up theory is the NTSB’s own, not the sole assumption of the person you’re responding to.

It's not an assumption.

Here's what a tail-heavy 747 does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUWC2jfjqI

you will notice a rapid lack of upwards ('vertical') movement in that video.

You’ll notice it’s taking off, not at cruise speed, and still makes a thousand or more feet into the air.

Unfortunately I can't find altitude graphs or anything for national airlines 102, so can't really back up my argument with facts, but I'm gonna take a guess and say it wasn't flying like a rocket vertically upwards for 1000 feet. My guess is that it would have stalled very quickly after it nosed up too far and started dropping.

You make a good point about TWA 800 being at cruise speed compared to the cargo flight, and let's assume you're right and it does manage to nose up and keep going for some time: in that case you'd see something go upwards after an explosion, not streak towards it - though eyewitness accounts in times like that have been known to be flakey, so i give up here.

> in that case you'd see something go upwards after an explosion, not streak towards it...

Unless there's a subsequent explosion of the now-burning half a plane.

There's a good set of animations on https://imgur.com/a/zin7CRo that illustrate the theory of what happened.

> Most of the eyewitnesses were over the horizon from any potential launch site.

Yes, you will still see it ascend over the horizon. Not so for a level plane.

>A tail-heavy half of a 747 could absolutely go vertical for a bit with the entire nose missing.

No, it can't. In the unlikely event that it can keep from stalling, a positive feedback loop from being aerodynamically unstable would send it in a spin. It wouldn't be able to pitch up for more than a few seconds before spinning wildly or disintegrating from aerodynamic forces. Most likely it is already in a state of stall and basically in a fall.

> People largely reported hearing an explosion, not a sonic boom.

Sonic booms sound just like explosions. Here is what a high supersonic to hypersonic missile sounds like : https://youtube.com/shorts/QknqE1IIgHc?feature=share

> Yes, you will still see it ascend over the horizon.

You notice something out to sea. It's a lit object rising up into the air. There's then an explosion. This describes both "missile hits plane" and "burning plane flying upwards explodes".

> No, it can't.

I mean, tell that to the NTSB, who didn't have much objection to the CIA's theory. Or the world's community of aviation engineers, who a) weren't part of the conspiracy and b) didn't riot over something you're claiming is obviously impossible.

Essentially, it did this, but at a much higher starting speed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sUWC2jfjqI

> In the unlikely event that it can keep from stalling...

Yes, it would stall. If you want to stall a plane, one of the easiest ways ways is to pitch up sharply.

> It wouldn't be able to pitch up for more than a few seconds before spinning wildly or disintegrating from aerodynamic forces.

Yes, that's the ka-boom part of what was seen. There's an animation based on the reconstruction at https://imgur.com/a/zin7CRo that demonstrates this, exactly as you describe - pitch up, flip over, disintegrate.

> Sonic booms sound just like explosions.

Then we agree that "people said it sounded like a missile" is not meaningful.

> Even truck mechanics, cooks, and the like have plenty of opportunities to see missile launches.

Not necessarily. Based on my time in the US Army, the opportunities for most troops to see missile launches first hand are fairly low. Even for those of us who were in air defense. Live fire exercises were rare, and we never got to fire any in Afghanistan.

That specific base was home to a missile testing center, where dozens were shot.

Missiles don't really look any different to what you'd think it would. They look just like very big fireworks until they burn out (and then they are basically invisible, just like fireworks).

Pretty sure plenty of people have seen missiles on the evening news at some point in their lives.

Missile launches perhaps, but not missiles in flight.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B6wsujROvXg

Missile videos like the one above are common. 1996 was soon after the gulf war, tons of missiles were broadcast in the news during that time.

At the point of impact, 15000 feet in the air and 120 miles downrange, it would not have looked anything like that. The missile would have been in a terminal glide and there would have been a huge trail of smoke all the way back to Philadelphia.

Ah, I'm finally in my element here. I went through a few years in which I saw many anti-aircraft missiles, and there's nothing so unintuitive about them that a layperson would confuse them with, say, a cloud. In other words, it's a thing in the sky with fire and smoke coming out one end, traveling way faster than you would expect. Probably making a loud, high-pitched roar, depending on where you're sitting. I can't imagine 40 people giving the same mistaken testimony. On the other hand, mass hysteria is a thing, so who knows.

The witness accounts of the supposed missile cited in the official account all describe the missile as ascending, but to fit the theory of this lawsuit it would have been fired from 120 miles away - let's just ignore that this is far out of the effective range of the rocket in question - and would have appeared to have been travelling horizontally to observers on the ground.

> I went through a few years in which I saw many anti-aircraft missiles...

How many exploding, breaking-up 747s, though?

I don't think we ever had the training budget for that.

Come now. If you've seen one detonation compromosing a man made structure, nevermind one that is carefully constructed specifically to repeatedly take off under its own power you've seen about all you need to see.

Quite simply, “that looks like a missile” and “that is a missile” are not the same. Especially from 20+ miles away.

> Quite simply, “that looks like a missile” and “that is a missile” are not the same. Especially from 20+ miles away.

It could be superman.

> In other words, it's a thing in the sky with fire and smoke coming out one end, traveling way faster than you would expect.

With respect, by the time a patriot missile reaches a target like an airliner at altitude, the motor is long burnt out. No fire and no smoke (until the fuze detonates), just kinetic energy being bled for terminal guidance.

Sure, if it was a patriot missile? And since it obviously hit the wrong target who says the range was long enough to reach engine burn out. The deniers here are just making shit up.

Sometimes the government and its contractors would do better to own their mistakes, take the financial hit, and move on. Yet here we are 25 years later still dealing with it and burning credibility.

I’ve now seen hundreds of missiles striking their targets thanks to the Ukraine war. It looks pretty much exactly like you would guess it looks like.

In person or via videos online? I have to imagine a video, where you know ahead of time what the topic content are, is different than mowing the lawn one evening and seeing an explosion with no context or immediate explanation.

What exactly differentiates a missile from any other sort of rocket, that someone who hadn't seen a missile before would not know what it looks like?

A missile in flight looks like a small aircraft from the ground.

> None of that is new.

What appears to be new is the claim that they have FOIA documents describing radar tapes that show something hitting the plane.

> Exactly zero of whom have ever seen a missile before and would know what one looks like.

I think the two Air National Guard officers cited in the parent comment likely had seen missile launches before.

> Exactly zero of whom have ever seen a missile before and would know what one looks like.

I'm very skeptical of these claims, but many, many people--including people on Long Island--have seen missiles.

I've seen many, and I've seen them get diverted out of the air by anti-missile systems, and I've seen them strike the ground near me. (This is all from spending at least 4 month/year in Israel over the past 59+ years.)

The linchpin of your argument seems to be that we need to believe the official reason given, and that the CIA would never lie to the American public.

That sounds naïve to anyone with even a passing familiarity with American history.

Whereas the lynchpin of your argument, inasmuch as there is one, is "pfff, who needs evidence when you can have allegations instead".

Rather, the linchpin of their argument is "a public explanation given by the CIA carries less weight than no explanation at all".

And why was it a suspected terrorist attack?

https://www.state.gov/1993-world-trade-center-bombing/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings

Because terrorism exists. If there are reports that an aircraft suffered from an explosion while in flight what would you think?

> And why was it a suspected terrorist attack?

Because when a plane explodes with zero warning, or indication of fault, it's the first thing people suspect.

It sounds to me like some legal, social media PR is happening in this case.

> they were put in charge because it was a suspected terrorist attack.

Good thing the US government doesn't have a long history of using terrorism as an excuse to expand its own power beyond all reasonable limits.

Oh wait...

Exactly which part of this is new evidence? What you wrote is the basis of the original conspiracy theory, that NTSB rejected.

Also we have multiple recent events of a commercial jet being shot down by a contemporary AA system, in each of those the causality is pretty obvious.

eg: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENykmLaXkAAGslH.png

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-the-destruction-of-...

For reference: this crash was covered in great details by "Admiral Cloudberg": https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/memories-of-flame-the-cr...

Here's the part of his conclusion relevant to this new development: "And it is perhaps understandable that we struggle to ascribe an event so utterly horrible to the mere banality of fate, a sequence of mundane events that could have happened anywhere and at any time. No, we find it much more comfortable to believe that humanity is the only force capable of imagining an act of such malice, closing our minds to the knowledge that the unthinking universe could just as easily conjure those 54 terrible seconds of existential agony. Believing that that agony was the product of a human mind allows us to indulge our fantasy that someone is in control, saving us from the disturbing thought that perhaps we, too, are merely passengers aboard a pilotless airplane hurtling toward an uncertain zenith."

Eh, I'd say the vast majority of people find it much more comforting to embrace the "mere banality of fate" explanation than to even entertain the idea that an errant missile test could be covered up by putting intelligence agencies in charge of the investigation -- let alone that it actually was.

Disinterested parties perhaps, but folks who the event touches them emotionally… they want reasons.

> Here's the part of his conclusion relevant to this new development

This quote isn't even remotely relevant to the new developments and it's extremely obvious you didn't even take 30 seconds to skim the docket.

They've obtained significant new evidence through FOIA litigation that shows the Navy's Aegis missile system missed its intended target (a test drone) and hit TWA 800 instead. One of those pieces of evidence is a set of Navy radar tapes (previously confiscated by the FBI) that show an object heading towards TWA 800 and then spiraling away. They also have dozens of witnesses who saw the missile tests happening, including two Air National Guard pilots who were flying in a Blackhawk nearby when they saw the missile hit TWA 800 and then proceeded to the crash site to see if they could help rescue anyone.

> > Here's the part of his conclusion relevant to this new development

> This quote isn't even remotely relevant to the new developments and it's extremely obvious you didn't even take 30 seconds to skim the docket.

It's completely relevant, because it characterises the motivations behind the filing of a time-wasting, straw-clutching lawsuit by those desperate to believe some conspiracy.

The singular problem with any of these endeavours is that they completely fail to even attempt to show how their theories account for the actual damage and crack patterns seen on the wreckage pulled out of the sea. We have a very good, consistent working theory for how the observed damage came to be, so if anyone's going to take an alternative theory seriously, it has to also account for that.

> They've obtained significant new evidence through FOIA litigation that shows the Navy's Aegis missile system missed its intended target (a test drone) and hit TWA 800 instead.

The new evidence doesn't show this. It suggests it may be a possibility, but that possibility contradicts other, hard evidence.

> straw-clutching

If that's how you characterize the plaintiff's recent acquisition of Navy radar tapes (previously seized by the FBI) that show a missile hitting the plane and then spiraling away I have to seriously question your ability to objectively evaluate the facts of the case.

If you knew anything about radar, you'd understand that the chasm between what would be needed to show what you think it shows, and what it actually shows is pretty vast.

Avianca Flight 203, the one Pablo Escobar blows up in the TV show Narcos, was probably an engine failure.

https://reportajes.elespectador.com/avianca-203/?outputType=...

As usual the official story and some details don't match, and the plane engines misterously disappeared from the crash site, preventing further inspection.

The FBI was involved.

I was always curious about how so many witnesses saw a streak of light shoot up to the plane which then exploded. I was never convinced by the video the CIA released that explained what those witnesses actually saw was a trail of burning jet fuel going away from the plane.

The theory isn't just "it's burning jet fuel", though; it's that the plane broke apart, and that the now tail-heavy back section with the wings flew upwards as the nose fell to the water. It's not an insane idea, and is at least partially backed by radar data.

Not an insane idea? How much lift can a pair of wings generate without thrust or stabilization? If the plane broke apart in mid-air, as you say, the engines would have shut down immediately. The only "thrust" the back section had remaining is the inertial energy from its moving mass. Without attitude control and with a huge gaping hole in the front acting as an air brake, I struggle to see how the plane could have climbed any more than a few meters before stalling.

If it were that obvious, cover-up would be impossible. You’d have had hundreds of aeronautical engineers screaming to everyone who’d listen.

Well there were thousands of architects and engineers screaming ideas about 9/11. Doesn’t mean much

https://efiles.portlandoregon.gov/Record/7884068/File/Docume...

> I struggle to see how the plane could have climbed any more than a few meters before stalling.

This is because you understand neither aerodynamics, or what happens to planes during failures, specifically big ones where when the front falls off.

Thankfully, other people do.

This is not a good-faith comment. This is incredibly dismissive without providing any supporting information. Do better.

Sorry, just bored of the self-centered "I don't understand this thing, so therefore it can't be true" mentality that seems to be a common trait across most conspiracy theorists.

Yeah the fact that it was the CIA releasing the video always seemed like a red flag to me. Why were they even involved in the investigation? Why didn’t those statements come from the FAA?

That's readily answerable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800

> At the start of FBI's investigation, because of the possibility that international terrorists might have been involved, assistance was requested from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

> Why didn’t those statements come from the FAA?

They wouldn't normally; without any potential of criminal activity, they'd come from the NTSB.

So why did the CIA produce a video about the fuel tank exploding, when that is something clearly within the purview of the NTSB? Why did they continue to devote resources when it was established that it was not a terrorist attack?

Aviation incident analysis is not one of the CIA’s core competencies, but propaganda is.

Incident analysis - especially where explosives are concerned - is absolutely something the CIA does regularly. (As is causing such incidents.) If I asked the CIA to determine if something was enemy(ish, in this case) action, I'd expect to get a fairly detailed report explaining why or why not back.

I'm skeptical until they provide some details on the FOIL documents received.

The NTSB worked for four years and released a report, as expected.

Wouldn’t the CIA first ask if you needed it to be or not be enemy action?

Sure, if you come to the CIA with "we need you to fake a report", they'll likely fake a report. In that scenario, though, I strongly suspect the 95% reconstructed fuselage wouldn't have been permitted to be a NTSB training aid for two decades afterwards.

How many other air remains had such done to it? 25 years seems a long time.

MH17 was similarly reconstructed.

https://www.reuters.com/world/mh17-aircraft-wreckage-viewed-...

Modern laser scanning makes retaining the original long-term less important, apparently.

It sounds more like "take over" than "assistance."

- Missile system being tested in the area

- Dozens of witnesses who report seeing missiles in the weeks before and after the crash

- Multiple witnesses including Blackhawk pilots flying nearby who saw a missile hit the plane

- FBI and CIA take over and freeze out the NTSB

Yeah I'd say there were a few red flags lol

So this tells us its OK to lie as long as 200 people die and you can tie up the evidence for a couple decades.

I'll remember that when I'm teaching my kids its bad to lie about stealing an extra cookie. Thanks CIA, etc

People still believe the Pearl Harbor attack was an inevitable occurrence or a radar detection and communications problem almost 100 years later. President Roosevelt told General Marshall to send a message to the Hawaiian commanders: "Don't interfere with Japan's overt act of war. The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act."

Maybe in 100 years the questions and evidence presented in the 5 hour documentary "September 11: The New Pearl Harbor (2013)" will be answered and/or justified.

Can you source that quote?

The closest I can find that made it to actual commanders is:

"If hostilities cannot repeat not be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. This policy should not repeat not be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense."

Which is very different from the conspiratorial intent you're implying.

Yep, I believe that's the exact quote. The US started putting impossible demands on Japan to suffocate them economically and militarily and when it was obvious that Japan was pushed to the breaking point the attack on Pearl Harbor was "allowed" to justify the ensuing war back home.

Interestingly I see a lot of parallels in the war in Ukraine right now. The US and EU started arming bordering countries and applying extreme economic sanctions on Russia in rapid succession and "everyone" was surprised that the invasion occurred. Now everyone sees Russia as the overt oppressor. Mission accomplished?

https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/did-the-us-provoke-japans-...

> The US started putting impossible demands on Japan to suffocate them economically and militarily ...

This is the same historical revisionist nonsense floated by Japanese right wing to claim that Japan was somehow "forced" to attack America and WW2 was a just war of defense.

> The US and EU started arming bordering countries and applying extreme economic sanctions on Russia in rapid succession and "everyone" was surprised that the invasion occurred.

Precisely what sanctions did the US and EU levy before Russia invaded Ukraine?

Japan had plenty of oil and energy to sustain peaceful operations. They "needed" more oil to wage their land war in China and naval conquest across the Pacific. They tried negotiating with the Dutch to get oil from the Dutch East Indies. When these negotiations failed, they hatched a plan to take that oil by force. The subsequent oil embargo against Japan was a response to that. The reason they picked a fight with America was because the American occupied Philippines was located directly between Japan and the Dutch East Indies. They knew that to take the Dutch East Indies they would need to take the Philippines as well, so they decided to destroy the US Navy first.

Internet commenters like to make a big deal out of the oil embargo, saying that America twisted Japan's arm and forced them into a war. This is not true. Japan's arm was twisted by their own imperial ambition which demanded that oil. If they never had that ambition they would not have needed that oil in the first place, nor would they have been slapped with an oil embargo.

Or maybe neighbors were armed because Russia has a long history of invading them.

In Europe, everybody has a long history of being invaded by everybody else, so trying to spin that as "Russia bad" requires a very myopic outlook.

Russia also has a long history of being invaded from the West. That's why Russia is super nervious about NATO expansion.

Last time Russia was invaded: the time they helped a genocidal maniac try to conquer Europe, 80 years ago.

Last time Russia’s neighbors were invaded by them: well, obviously, now.

That genocidal maniac is who unites the EU today. If you no longer blame Germany for Hitler you can't in any kind of good faith blame Russia for Soviet Union's pact with Hitler.

I’m fine blaming the current genocidal maniac: Putin.

Most of Europe lost their taste for war a few generations ago, and have since tried to create a world where constant invasions of their neighbors is no longer the status quo.

They are weary of Russia because Russia never got with the program. Russia does not believe that a peaceful future is possible, assumes the old status quo will continue, and act accordingly by continuing to invade their neighbors.

And just to preempt the inevitable whataboutism; America never got with the program either. Not really. But America isn't the one threatening Western Europe with war, and Eastern European countries like Poland and Ukraine choosing to align themselves with America/NATO to protect themselves against Russia speaks volumes about the relative threat of America vs Russia to peace in Europe.

Few generations is not enough. Having a few generations between large-scale war is how Europe operated in the last 200+ years. Maybe it's just few generations o'clock.

Add to that how Europe absolutely botched both Bosnia and Kosovo and had full-scale wars there. Your arguments about world peace are bogus. Europe is encircled in a ring of fire made from ex-USSR, Middle East and Maghreb. All the wars in the world happen around Europe specifically. Maybe it's time to ask why.

As you can see now, not all of Ukraine wants to align itself with America/NATO.

Not sure if all the wars in the world happen around Europe, unless you literally mean AROUND not IN. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_confli...

Most of these wars do not happen in core Europe, but they come dangerously close to it: Cyprus, Bosnia, now Ukraine.

Meanwhile, East Asia or Americas just don't see that amount of action. Africa does, but that's another story.

It's like someone is throwing wars towards Europe.

> The US and EU started arming bordering countries and applying extreme economic sanctions on Russia in rapid succession and "everyone" was surprised that the invasion occurred.

I think you're getting things out of order there - the economic sanctions came after the invasion.

Don't forget that Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014; that also was met with sanctions.

Lets indulge this - if that was the plan, youd hope they would be better prepared for Russia shutting off the gas pipelines. If they didnt switch to renewables and nuclear, at least they would have full gas storage and LNG terminals and contracts in place?

Instead, they were caight with their pants down

1. You should never use the CIA as a moral example for your children.

2. With respect to lying about hundreds of people dying, is that really a surprise to you? Just a few possible examples off the top of my head.

RMS Lusitania, claimed to be carrying tens if not hundreds of tons of undeclared high explosives, which would have made it a 'legitimate' target for the u-boat that sank it. This is officially denied, but the Royal Navy has since endeavored to destroy the wreck and warn divers away from investigating it.

K-219, a Soviet ballistic missile sub, sank in early October 1986. Later that month USS Augusta, an American attack submarine, went in for repairs to a smashed radar dome. The US Navy denies any connection between the two.

K-129, another Soviet ballistic missile sub, sank in 1968. The US Navy figured out where it was before anybody else, claiming to have found it using sonar buoys and Bayesian search techniques. A few days after K-129 sank, USS Swordfish went into port for repairs after a supposed collision with sea ice. The US Navy denies any connection between the two.

MS Estonia was a ferry that sank in 1980 when the front loading doors failed. Allegations that the ferry was being used to smuggle military hardware were denied by everybody, then the wreck was deliberately buried under thousands of tons of gravel so that nobody can inspect it.

1988, the US Navy shoots down Iran Air Flight 655. The US Navy claims it was self-defense because their Aegis cruiser misidentified the Airbus A300 as an Iranian F-14.

Unfortunately, if the USA may repeatedly hit-and-run Soviet/Russian submarines it sounds like a worthy tactic instead of an accident. Blame should be on the Soviet/Russian side for failing to counter.

If there were collisions, I think they were probably accidents. For one, deliberate collisions would risk the loss of the American submarine too. They weren't built for ramming.

Secondly, the circumstance of an accidental collision seems very believable. Such collisions would not have been freak accidental encounters; the main mission of US attack subs at the time was to tail Soviet ballistic missile subs very closely and not be detected. The Soviet submarine commanders had some inkling of this, and responded by making erratic maneuvers to "clear their baffles" (essentially, look behind themselves, where their sonar was otherwise blind.) Trailing an unpredictable submarine very close is inherently risky. I think the blame falls on the circumstance of the Cold War itself, which compelled both sides to believe their actions were necessary.

Also allowing the Soviets to claim an undersea accident vs “you totally rammed our sun you idiot” allows them to save face and also prevents escalation.

And it has happened to others that almost certainly weren't trying to kill each other: In 2009, a French and a UK ballistic missile sub collided

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Vanguard_and_Le_Triomphant...

not to mention quite a few more incidents of subs ramming surface vessels, which should be even easier to avoid.

When the incident happened I worked with a woman who had served in the Navy at sea. Her opinion was that if the they had accidentally shot down an airliner during a training/practice exercise, hundreds of people on the ship would know about it and it would be impossible to keep them all from talking.

Is there anyone from that ship who is on record saying "yeah, we shot down that plane?"

How many rank and file military personnel would be present for a capabilities test of a classified, state-of-the-art missile system?

That's not exactly the same as a training exercise.

The ship was at sea, so presumably the full ship's complement? That's a bit over 300 people for an Aegis destroyer.

Her point was that the accident wouldn't be knowledge that could be kept confined to the bridge/CIC and soon everyone on board would know about it.

But the claim in the suit isn't that the missile was fired from any ship, but from a land base in New Jersey.

Navy ships compatible with these systems were still 5 years out...

If you're referring to the naval radar scans, only the people present on the bridge (and really only a handful of those...) would need to participate in any coverup, and that's only if the official account differs significantly from what was recorded. If the official explanation is plausible enough based on the data, which it seems to be, then you don't need any participation from the ship at all.

From the docket, the claim is that it was from land not from a naval warship:

> Although the SPY-ID(V) would later become a key component aboard the next wave of Navy destroyer ships, in 1996 the only option with the hardware and computing power sufficient to operate the SPY-ID(V) was a New Jersey land-based testing site called the Combat Systems Engineering and Development Site (“CSEDS”).

There are still hundreds of people at a testing facility - and many of those would likely be civilian contractors, so not even under the military's direct control.

How would all hundreds know though? I have no idea what happens on the other side of the floor in my building, let along the other floors. And my data isn’t even classified

Do the fire off rockets at your work - they're fairly distinctive and loud.

Except the test didn't happen at sea. It happened on land at a testing site. See 64+ of the lawsuit [0]

[0] https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Massachusetts_District_Cou...

This is one of those conspiracies that always seemed probably true, based on my cursory examination of the evidence.

Or the other way, assume a weapons test went horribly wrong; what would the result be?

Missile damage to aircraft leaves very distinct and VERY obvious traces as you would expect from a bunch of shrapnel suddenly slicing through the fuselage at hundreds of different points. If you want an example look at the reconstructed fuselage Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which got shot down over Ukraine. 95% of the fuselage of TWA 800 was recovered. It was not hit by a surface to air a missile.

What if it was skin-to-skin impacted by an unarmed missile?

TWA 800 violently exploded in mid air. That would not be caused by an inert missile impact. The high speed impact of an inert body into an aircraft the size of a 747 is not a reasonable explanation for a violent in-flight breakup on top of the fact that there is literally zero evidence for it. The most likely explanation is exactly what is written in the official report.

Being struck violently by an unarmed missile could have caused a massive structural failure of the aircraft, which then exploded.

> literally zero evidence for it.

There is literally circumstantial evidence for it, as well as eye-witness testimony. This is not "proof" by any stretch, but it's certainly evidence.

My understanding is that the chronology of all eyewitness accounts for the missile have been after the airframe was known to have broken up, meaning that they were most likely seeing large sections of the burning fuselage. Are there other eyewitness accounts that don’t match that, or are you saying that the official chronology is itself suspect?

Eyewitness accounts are unreliable and may be completely mistaken. But nevertheless, they are evidence.

'Evidence' doesn't imply 'proof'.

The existence of evidence is not veridical in nature: that’s why we classify evidence as circumstantial, observed, etc.

In other words: if nothing has changed about the eyewitness accounts in the last 26 years, then there is no new reason to doubt the (overwhelmingly likely) explanation for them.

I responded to the claim "there is literally zero evidence for it" by pointing out that there is circumstantial evidence, and eyewitness accounts.

The problem is that this circumstantial evidence contradicts actual hard evidence on the wreckage.

Circumstantial evidence that seems to be contradicted by other evidence is still evidence. To claim that there is 'literally zero evidence' is literally wrong.

> My understanding is that the chronology of all eyewitness accounts for the missile have been after the airframe was known to have broken up

This statement is absurd on its face unless all the witnesses were simultaneously staring at the seconds ticking on a nuclear clock as they witnessed the plane explode. The whole thing would've transpired in less than a minute. There's no way they could pinpoint the timing of witnesses observations that accurately.

I’m not entirely sure how a loose wire in a fuel tank can cause an explosion but a loose missile in the same tank cannot.

95% of the wreckage was recovered and painstakingly reconstructed in a hangar, then kept for 25 years (and notably, used as a training aid for NTSB investigators during that time). Barring some sort of "huh, this looks like something went in rather than out", that's a fairly hard theory to push.

>That would not be caused by an inert missile impact

Why not? Inert missile punches through a fuel tank, aerosolizing the fuel, and either the missile engine or a damaged aircraft engine ignites it.

That would cause a fire, not a detonation. The same way gas tanks don't actually explode if you shoot them, they spring leaks and those leaks may catch fire but actual booms require very specific circumstances. Specifically, they require the correct mixture of air and fuel vapors but that doesn't require a missile impact to ignite. Something much more mundane like a spark is just as effective and about 5 orders of magnitude more likely to occur.

TWA 800 broke apart as a result of a major overpressure event. The particular mode of in-flight failure observed in TWA 800 is very difficult to cause by poking a single missile sized hole anywhere in the aircraft. Not theoretically impossible, but difficult to the point that it's not a reasonable explanation. You have to take the combined probability of 2 very unlikely events rather than just 1.

That's helpful, though comparing a (perhaps) 1900kg missile that's 53cm/21in in diameter with a ~1000°C exhaust temp to a bullet isn't quite right.

> a spark is just as effective and about 5 orders of magnitude more likely to occur.

Seems you know of data about commercial airline fuel tank spark explosions. I didn't find much about this problem online. When else did this seemingly under-reported catastrophic commercial airline event happen?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_Airlines_Flight_143

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_Airways_International_Fli...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_214

All fuel tank explosions. Modern aircraft have equipment specifically to mitigate fuel vapor in the tanks because of these sorts of incidents.

TWA 800 also caused improved maintenance requirements of wiring that might arc/spark, as inspections of other aircraft found widespread metal shavings, non-standard wiring, and eroded insulation in nearly every aircraft they took a look at.

>> The high speed impact of an inert body into an aircraft the size of a 747 is not a reasonable explanation for a violent in-flight breakup

Please explain this assertion. It makes no sense (at least to me).

It's exceptionally difficult to make a large airliner explode like a gas station in a 1980s action movie by hitting it with an inert missile-sized body. You could certainly cause damage which would cause it to eventually crash but TWA 800 violently exploded in mid air, which is different.

Thank you -- this is exactly the sort of unpacking of the idea that I was asking for.

Yeah, it could. A 747 is designed to withstand all sorts of failures, but impact by a missile is not one of them.

Loss of structural integrity could easily cause violent breakup by aerodynamic forces. A 747 is not going to stay together if the pointy end isn't into the wind. Then there's all that fuel suddenly released and atomized, and fuel absolutely loves to burn. Remember that fireball when the airliners hit the twin towers?

My dad flew F-80s in the Korean War. The F-80 had a nasty characteristic. If you flew it too fast, it would pitch up, and the sudden aerodynamic forces would rip the wings off. Unfortunately, the engine was more than powerful enough to do this in level flight, so the pilot had to be keenly aware of this at all times.

(The solution was swept wings, exemplified by its successor, the F-86.)

> Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

This is what seals it for me. Sadly, so much time has elapsed, and the world has turned to such shit, that we have multiple other incidents to compare to. Not just MH17, but also PS752, and many others that did not receive as much attention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...). TWA800 looks nothing like these.

Test missiles often have dummy or instrumented warheads. You would not expect it to look anything like.

And while normal warheads typically try to narrowly miss to maximize fragmentation, the SM-2 is quite unique in that it is specifically designed with a contact fuze as fragmentation doesn't work very well for many of its intended targets.

Occam’s razor, alas.

Only if it was frag warhead, it could have been a continuous-rod warhead.

>Missile damage to aircraft leaves very distinct and VERY obvious traces

And conveniently the CIA prevented the NTSB from doing their normal investigation, so I guess we'll never know what obvious traces may or may not have been.

That theory falls apart instantly. The NTSB housed the 95% reconstructed fuselage and used it for training for more than two decades.

And that explanation falls apart instantly when you consider the fact that the FBI was criticized by a neutral third party for removing some of the wreckage without any documentation.

The IAMAW wasn't a "neutral third party"; the union's members were the ones potentially responsible for the maintenance faults resulting in the alleged short-circuit in the fuel tank.

> Problems with the aircraft's wiring were found, including evidence of arcing in the fuel quantity indication system (FQIS) wiring that enters the tank. The FQIS on Flight 800 is known to have been malfunctioning; the captain remarked on "crazy" readings from the system about 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the aircraft exploded.

> The NTSB housed the 95% reconstructed fuselage

To anyone familiar with the CIA's behaviour over the past half a century or so, that says "the CIA discretely disposed of the 5% of the fuselage that did have obvious traces of missile damage". We don't know that that's actually true, but that's the level of trust the CIA has earned.

FBI and CIA could easily “unrecover“ parts of evidence with those marks.

(“The IAMAW strongly criticized the FBI's conduct during the investigation, including the undocumented removal by FBI agents of wreckage from the hangar where it was stored”, from the Wikipedia link above.)

A missile with a dummy warhead could easily bring it down without exploding. Just hit it where structural failure would result. What you'd want to look for is an appropriately sized hole, and residue from the missile's exhaust.

The reason for the warhead is to improve the odds of the bringing down the airplane.

The radar tapes show something impacting the plane and then "spiraling away", sounds like it could easily be a collision by a missile without a warhead.

> For example, Dr. Stalcup obtained several FBI records never released to the TWA 800 families or the public. One described an “original [Navy radar] tape” showing an object “heading straight for TWA 800.” Another describes an object on radar “impact[ing]” TWA 800 and “spiral[ling] away,” while also stating that witnesses described seeing a “flair (sic) going up. . . . , orbit/circle another object. Subsequently debris fell from the sky.”

No it could not unless it impacted at exactly the wrong place. Downing planes with missiles is hard: much of a plane can survive having a hole in it, while there are a few critical sections.

A AIM-9 crashed into a MIG, didn't go off, got stuck, and reverse engineered after landing.

An SM-2 and an AIM-9 have a two order of magnitude difference in kinetic energy. It's not even close. The SM-2 is 10x heavier and would impact such a target at relative velocity of Mach 2+, whereas a Sidewinder will often impact at only a few hundred kilometers an hour.

At the same time, a 747 and a MiG are two completely different vehicles.

An SM-2 has a solid chance of sinking a ship - and was seriously investigated for that application. A direct hit on a 747 is game over. It's going to go clean through, and if it's into the fuselage, cut it in two.

A 747 has plenty of wrong places that if hit would be curtains. It is not designed to resist battle damage. It is designed to resist failure of individual components.

Interesting claims from the lawsuit linked:

"However, instead of allowing the National Transportation Safety Board (“NTSB”), the agency tasked with investigating all domestic aviation incidents, to lead the investigation of the TWA 800 incident, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”)took charge. The FBI also enlisted the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency(“CIA”). Indeed, the FBI essentially froze the NTSB out of the investigation. The FBI removed all copies (original and duplicates) of Navy radar tapes from the Navy, placing them out of the NTSB’s reach, and refused to allow the NTSB to conduct eyewitness interviews or review the FBI’s records that indicated the true cause of the TWA 800 crash.

Eyewitnesses who were interviewed by the FBI recall being threatened by the organization. For example, one eyewitness recalls being told to keep quiet about the “rocket” she saw in the sky or risk her citizenship application being denied. Despite this, eyewitnesses have consistently maintained that they saw something arcing toward TWA 800 before the plane erupted into flames and fell from the sky. For example, one eyewitness testified that she saw a “rocket go up” and explode, and then saw TWA 800's flaming wreckage fall from the sky. Two other eyewitnesses, Air National Guard pilots, Captain Christian Baur and Major Frederick “Fritz” Meyer, similarly stated that they witnessed events that indicated a missile struck TWA 800. On the day TWA 800 went down, Captain Baur and Major Meyer were flying in a Black Hawk helicopter near the area of the TWA 800 incident. Captain Baur recalled seeing an object with a “rocket type motor "moving quick” toward TWA 800. After the crash, Captain Baur flew to the area and conducted a search and rescue. Captain Baur’s co-pilot, Major Meyer, testified that he recognized a “flak” explosion at the site of the TWA 800 explosion, which is what military anti-air explosives create.

Despite this evidence, the CIA concocted materials to discredit eyewitnesses who could confirm that TWA 800 had been downed by some kind of projectile. These materials included a video and animation that was displayed during a nationally-televised FBI press conference that attempted to reconcile the eyewitness testimony that the plane was struck by a projectile with the U.S. Government’s official position that the crash was caused by a defect in the plane’s center fuel tank.

Despite outwardly proclaiming that the cause of the TWA 800 explosion was, in the CIA’s words, “NOT A MISSILE,” several internal government communications (that have only come to light in the recent FOIA litigation) indicated that a missile was involved."

---

Obviously these documents are going to be attempting to paint the case in favor of the plaintiff, but seems "strange".

What always surprises me is how bad people are at covering up the cover up. Why deny access to radar tapes? Just make fake tapes that say what you want.

That sounds like work.

Making fakes is really really hard in actuality. There’s always things you forgot to fake correctly. Easiest to limit or destroy.

Making fake tapes creates additional risk of cover up discovery.

The best cover up involves the least lies.

I remember a local evening news interview with the Air National Guard crew on the same or next night after the incident. I remember at least one of them saying something about the possibility seeing a missile. At the time I thought it was a pretty big deal for a helicopter crew member to say that on the news. I always found it odd that I didn't hear more about that specific account over the coming days/weeks. That stuck with me for some reason.

Great write up/summary of the crash: https://imgur.com/a/zin7CRo

Pretty funny to look at this description on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800_conspiracy_theo...

> TWA Flight 800 conspiracy theories are discredited alternative explanations of the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 (TWA 800) in 1996.[1] The NTSB found that the probable cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 was an explosion of flammable fuel/air vapors in a fuel tank, most likely from a short circuit. Conspiracy theories claim that the crash was due to a U.S. Navy missile test gone awry, a terrorist missile strike, or an on-board bomb.

Now ask yourself, what else is the Government lying about? It will be interesting to see if the truth about 9/11 ever comes out.

If this were true, why aren’t they suing for the extraordinary coverup actions? Surely a whole lot of people up to the president should have been aware of this.

The coverup may be a crime, but it’s not a claim a civil plaintiff can recover damages for. If the defendant destroyed or hid evidence, however, the judge could order a negative inference against the defendant.

The other problem is the statute of limitations. But that should toll if the defendants hid their liability and the suit really couldn’t be brought until now.

If the FBI and CIA found the real cause, they could have released all the evidence.

Having a valid cause of action (due to new evidence) means you can ask them to release all the evidence now (or at least let the attorneys see it). Remember: discovery is the starting-point of the investigation, not the end.

To refuse discovery, the government would have to cite some other reason (e.g., national security secrets incidentally involved, like disclosing the location of the test site). But while those reasons might have been sufficient when those programs were active (and capabilities unknown) 20+ years ago, it's unlikely those reasons are still valid now, because the secrets don't convey any current capabilities. And the political will to hide them might also have changed.

So if the system works, they can hide when needed, but now they should provide all the information gathered and sequestered.

If there’s any meat in this case, they left it out of the filing. It’s basically the plane exploded, the navy owns missiles, QED. The part about the plucky retiree who unearths the truth is actually a big red flag.

What about the Navy radar tracks for an intercepting missile, and how those, like witness accounts, were actively discounted and suppressed, in favor of a "no missile" narrative?

> What about the Navy radar tracks for an intercepting missile

The radar tracks are detailed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800#Missile_or_bomb...

They're not from the Navy (they're ATC tracks), they don't intersect, and one of them's going 30 knots.

You've made about 20 comments on this thread and all of them demonstrate you haven't read a single word of the docket.

Plaintiffs now have the Navy radar tapes and they show and object hitting the plane then spiraling away from it.

> You've made about 20 comments on this thread and all of them demonstrate you haven't read a single word of the docket. Plaintiffs now have the Navy radar tapes...

Pot, meet kettle. The docket actually says this:

"For example, Dr. Stalcup obtained several FBI records never released to the TWA 800 families or the public. One described an 'original [Navy radar] tape' showing an object “heading straight for TWA 800.'"

There's no claim they have the actual tapes. We'll see what the record they've got says; that they're not parading it to the media is, at the very least, interesting.

There's a third possibility: there was a missile but it came from terrorists from a country we would like to protect, for unrelated reasons.

If there was a missile test that went wrong, there would be a considerable number of people involved.

Even if the authorities swore everybody to secrecy, they can't prevent a retiree from making a deathbed confession.

I feel you underestimate the bonds of duty and social pressure to keep things under wraps.

I remember thinking it was odd that there weren’t any airworthiness directives issued for the center fuel tank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800#Destruction_of_...

> During the course of its investigation, and in its final report, the NTSB issued 15 safety recommendations, mostly covering fuel tank and wiring-related issues. Among the recommendations was that significant consideration should be given to the development of modifications such as nitrogen-inerting systems for new airplane designs, and where feasible, for existing airplanes.

Right. But, recommendations are not airworthiness directives.

What airworthiness directive should they have issued? Mitigation systems for this issue are now required, but "shut down air travel until they're in place" would not have been feasible, especially as the issue wasn't limited to the one aircraft type.

I guess this is part of the coverup

https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf...

and

https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf...

and

https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf...

and

https://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf...

there's about ~20 total unique if I recall. Some supersede others.

I stand corrected. Didn’t see these AD’s.

Also it appears that in 2005 there were about 100 AD’s issued in response to flight 800 center tank issues.

Finally, I never stated that there was a coverup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800_conspiracy_theo...

Pulling off this coverup would require cooperation of many agencies and lots and lots of people. These kinds of things are really, really hard to do, because someone always talks.

People did talk, but they were silenced and the media did not report on it: http://raylahr.com/ntsb-clears-up-twa-800-conspiracy-theory....

> No fewer than four serious professionals within the investigation made specific allegations of evidence theft or tampering: Linda Kunz and Terrel Stacey of TWA, Jim Speer of TWA and ALPA, and Hank Hughes of the NTSB. Their allegations were taken seriously. Kunz and Speer were suspended from the investigation, Kunz permanently. Stacey was arrested. And Hughes was denounced by the FBI’s Kallstrom for his participation in a “kangaroo court of malcontents,” namely a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing.

This is always the way it is. "It would be impossible to cover up, people would talk." "People did talk." "Those people were lying."

Plenty of people did talk, including investigators.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/new-film-feeds-con...

    "The filing states claims for negligence"

Accidently shooting down an airplane w a missile is "negligence?"

Negligent homicide? Sure.

Doing it deliberately would be murder.

If you are legally intending to fire a missile, but not intending to hit a plane, what else would it be?

I think if a shot a gun down the street intending to hit a rabbit and shot my neighbor instead I would be charged with something more than mere negligence.

That'd be a negligent discharge, and if they died, a negligent homicide.

I would think it would be at least reckless homicide. IANAL.

A tragedy. But why the cover-up? The amount of money to settle honestly was finite. Sure a fair amount, but worth going as far as they did? Is there more to this? Or just group-think gone wildly bad?

Edit / adding

The arc of my concern is, if these organizations / companies would do this for this (relatively small) amount of money, what happens - to us - when the stakes are 10x or more higher?

I'm from Long Island and clearly remember this. This is a pretty shocking possibility.

Isn't there a statute of limitations? 1996 was 26 years ago.

Homicide is typically one of the things that doesn't have a statute of limitations.

In some scenarios, SOL also starts from the discovery of the crime/tort, not the committing of it.

"the statute of limitations runs from the date the litigant obtains actual knowledge of the facts"

Which will (eventually) place the defendants here in the position of arguing that the plaintiffs should have known that the coverup was a lie.

Also I don’t know if civil suits would be subject to statues of limitation.

Civil torts definitely (can) have statutes of limitation; for example, you can only be sued for bad debt for a few years.

This would require Boeing's cooperation. Not clear why Boeing would cooperate given the legal risks.

> Not clear why Boeing would cooperate given the legal risks.

You mean other than their many billions in military contracts, and criminal penalties for releasing classified information?

I'm of the opinion that the missile theory is unlikely, but the government absolutely has ways to make Boeing of all people cooperate.

>I'm of the opinion that the missile theory is unlikely, but the government absolutely has ways to make Boeing of all people cooperate.

If the government accidentally blew the plane up and the CIA covered it up, then who exactly would be putting pressure on Boeing?

Is this a trick question?

The government and specifically the CIA, presumably.

Ah, I misunderstood you. I thought you meant the government would be pressuring Boeing to show that the CIA covered up the real results of the investigation.

>but the government absolutely has ways to make Boeing of all people cooperate.

Boeing is not 'a person' and neither is the government. Boeing is a conglomerate of affiliated smaller organizations. So is the FBI and CIA. Understanding those dynamics is what makes this scenario so implausible.

- Boeing commercial programs are separately funded from military. The executives and engineers in charge generally have no interest in committing fraud for other programs.

- Boeing has shareholders and a board of directors. There are no laws in the US that allow executives and staff to defraud shareholders and the board on behalf of the government. Employees/executives would be subject to criminal and civil liability.

- At the individual level, many of these people have security clearances. Fraud/lying on official documents is the easiest way to lose your clearance. There are no provisions for "It's OK to lie for the good guys". If you lie in an official proceeding, you are going to lose your clearance.

- FBI is composed of numerous divisions, with competing interests and turf to defend.

At the end of the day, someone at Boeing legal would have to sit down and look at this and say "Well, if the hundreds of people involved all agree to commit fraud and no one finds out, we're in the clear for some nebulous illegal kickback down the line line. Sign us up!"

> Boeing commercial programs are separately funded from military.

Boeing still has a top level of management; the CEO's purview includes everything from SLS to Air Force tankers to the 737-MAX's problems.

> There are no laws in the US that allow executives and staff to defraud shareholders and the board on behalf of the government.

National security letters are a prominent counterexample to this claim.

> There are no provisions for "It's OK to lie for the good guys".

James Clapper lied to Congress about PRISM without repercussions.

> At the end of the day, someone at Boeing legal would have to sit down and look at this and say "Well, if the hundreds of people involved all agree to commit fraud and no one finds out, we're in the clear for some nebulous illegal kickback down the line line. Sign us up!"

That's backwards. Boeing Legal would go "we've been told the following items are classified Top Secret, and all of us can go to jail for disclosing them". Loss of future programs is a consequence - the stick, not the carrot.

> Boeing is not 'a person' and neither is the government. Boeing is a conglomerate of affiliated smaller organizations. So is the FBI and CIA. Understanding those dynamics is what makes this scenario so implausible.

>At the individual level, many of these people have security clearances. Fraud/lying on official documents is the easiest way to lose your clearance. There are no provisions for "It's OK to lie for the good guys". If you lie in an official proceeding, you are going to lose your clearance.

Are these 2 arguments consistent with each other? I mean, Boeing, government and letter soup agencies don’t behave organizationally, except when it comes to upholding the right rules?

How do you figure? Reflexive anti-Boeing groupthink? The government's narrative is that the plane blew itself up, e.g. it was Boeing's fault. The lawsuit contents that the plane was shot down, accidentally, by the US military.

Boeing already took the reputational hit. If the allegations of the lawsuit are correct, it was never Boeing's fault in the first place. Boeing would be vindicated.

Of course they would be vindicated; they would just lose military contracts afterwards. In a way that’s not in any way related to this affair of course.

Boeing is part of the US government.

I do not believe this story is true, although I do not dismiss it.

Boeing successfully (for awhile) cooperated in perpetuating “the pilots were holding it wrong) with the 737 MAX.

I wonder what Pierre Salinger would have to say about this if he were alive today.

Important, if true.

Why now?

Wow, how does discovery work when there are legit natsec concerns?

I'm not sure what the legitimate national security concern would be for "we accidentally shot down an airliner 26 years ago".

IANAL, far from it, but normally the other party gets emails and other communications.

How does that work when everything is classified?

> How does that work when everything is classified?

Well, they're - vaguely - claiming to have found a smoking gun in FOIL requests.

"We have to protect all the people who were involved in the accident and coverup, some of whom may now hold important positions of power." I mean, they are still using "national security" as an excuse not to declassify JFK files nearly 60 years after the fact.

It's entirely likely some of the remaining JFK files - a big batch got released under Trump, and another under Biden - are victims of over-classification. It's a systemic problem in the government.

It's also fairly likely some of the remaining classified docs include "we asked our mole at the Russian embassy to check into it discreetly" and "spy satellites checked to see if Russia was quietly mobilizing in advance" sort of scenarios likely to remain indefinitely secret.

It's also possible that some of the JFK files might implicate an influential American ally, with whom JFK had a dispute concerning their nuclear weapons program.

What are legit natsec concerns now? How about saying yeah it happened, we're sorry and we're paying a USD 100mil each to the surviving families as a token of our regret?

I didn’t think I was going out on limb in assuming that the details and limitations of a naval defense weapon were probably something to guard.

Please note that I am not defending anyone here…

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Why have I never heard of this?

> Why have I never heard of this?

That's on you, it's been a popular theory for many years, since the very beginning. It's one of the most popular government coverup stories there is.

Tbf, the implication in the filing is that the plaintiffs weren't aware of the possibility until last year.

Eyewitnesses have been saying they saw a “rocket” fly towards it since the event but this filing indicates there is additional evidence of this known to the government.

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