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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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."

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