Dissent Inside the TWA Probe

...Oxley says NTSB investigators were perplexed by her findings, which showed all explosive residue dissipating completely...

...An accidental explosion could account for this result, but counter-terrorist experts note that the missing debris comes from a portion of the aircraft noted as a favorite spot for terrorist bomb placement...

...Kallstrom understood that subsequent front-page stories, attributed to unnamed NTSB sources in Washington, about crash probers favoring a malfunction theory JOHN B. ROBERTS II is a television producer and freelance journalist...

...NTSB investigators theorize that these unrecovered pieces might be the source of the electrical energy that ignited fuel air vapors in the tank...

...For sixteen months, the FBI and NTSB had shared joint jurisdiction over the probe of the July 1996 TWA crash, and the working relationship between the two agencies had often been tense...

...The working relationship between the two agencies had first ruptured a year earlier, in late 1996, when Chairman Hall and NTSB staff in Washington gave background briefings to the New York Times and Washington Post...

...Throughout 1997 Hall's pet theory received intensive media coverage...

...Shepherd himself prefers not to talk about replicating the explosion, and says only that "we'll know a lot more a year from now...

...This would include examining eyewitness reports of a missile attack, the FBI's findings of explosive residue, and Kallstrom's stated belief that a small bomb could have destroyed the plane without leaving a great deal of evidence...

...Shepherd has never worked for the NTSB before, and this is his first aircraft accident investigation...

...McCord noted that a high-tech laser imaging system was used to map the wreckage zones...

...Say it is a focused charge directing itself out of the plane...

...Before Navy divers and salvage teams could thoroughly search the Red Zone debris field, it was buffeted by back-to-back storms and finally by Hurricane Fran...

...differing little from a flight simulation Boeing carried out in 1996...

...As one FBI official who asked not to be identified said: "We're leaving open the possibility of sabotage...

...The FBI objected...

...We're not closing the books on this...

...Counter-terrorism expert Larry Johnson concurs...

...The prospect that some piece among the tons of unrecovered wreckage might be found to reveal conclusive evidence of a terrorist attack is why the FBI refuses to close its TWA 800 criminal probe...

...34 February 1998 • The American Spectator Inside Icentral fuel tank flaw brought down TWA 800...

...Still, Shepherd is convinced the alternative theories of a bomb or missile attack aren't plausible...

...There is no doubt that a great effort was made to recover TWA 800...

...The timing was perfect...

...Hurricane Fran created sufficient turbulence to bury debris beyond the reach of the laser imaging system...

...Salvage teams divided the wreckage fields into zones...

...One aviation consumer group recently wrote to investigators to question the adequacy of recovery operations...

...But it's unlikely the NTSB will advance public knowledge of another area: the possibility that the absence of typical high-explosive damage on TWA involves improvised munitions of the kind routinely taught to military special forces personnel...

...As it turns out, the NTSB has it own reasons for wanting the missing parts found...

...The bottom of a wine bottle is basically a shaped charge," he says, explaining that a glass container might have been used to focus the charge, and that as a result the customary metal debris found after a bomb blast would be missing in the TWA 800 case...

...The size of the search area and the limits of high-tech recovery meant that despite the herculean efforts of Navy salvage teams key pieces of TWA 800 remain underwater...

...He cautions that it was the recovery of physical evidence which led to an identification of the terrorist perpetrators...

...The media would accept the NTSB chairman's comments as authoritative, and the malfunction theory would take political heat off the administration...

...Investigators in Long Island thought they detected PETN more than a dozen times during the initial weeks of the salvage operation...

...It has been described as about the size of a two-car garage, from eye level...

...In an extraordinarily detailed news conference last November 18, Kallstrom went to great length to debunk theories that a U.S...

...plane to veer sharply to the left...

...BY HN B. RC E RTS I Probe 0 was an end run around the FBI...

...Yet scientific tests indicate that after weeks of immersion in saltwater, no plastic explosive residue whatsoever ought to have been traceable on TWA 800...

...The combination of unrecovered debris and mysterious findings of explosive residue might suggest that the probe needs a renewed salvage operation in the Red Zone wreckage field...

...The Egis system is specifically designed to detect plastic explosives...

...o doubt Shepherd will advance the NTSB's knowledge about the theoretical possibilities of accidental central fuel — tank explosions...

...You don't necessarily have to look on it as a huge bomb, if it were a bomb...

...I write to express again [emphasis added] my views, concerns, and objections to those portions of the public hearings, scheduled to begin on December 8,1997 in Baltimore, that address the criminal investigation into the TWA 800 tragedy," Kallstrom wrote...

...The question of how the center fuel tank ignited is not the only enigma in the investigation...

...As we have discussed, the FBI has not closed the criminal investigation because of the possibility that new evidence could be discovered in the course of the continuing National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) inquiry, from intelligence sources or wreckage that heretofore has not been found...

...Hall's background sessions reflected more than a bureaucratic turf battle...

...If a device composed largely of glass or plastic were used, it might explain why Edward Kittell, an FAA special agent and bomb expert who was present throughout the TWA 800 probe, found no characteristic evidence of a bomb on any of the debris recovered to date...

...Captain Raymond McCord, supervisor of Salvage and Diving for the Naval Sea System Command, testified at the NTSB's Baltimore hearings that recovery operations focused first on the areas with the largest debris fields and then on the "fringe" areas...

...Now Hall was about to spark another explosion between the FBI and NTSB...

...In fact, the Evergreen 747 results were less dramatic than the coverage implied...

...Although the FBI had found the residue of high explosives on some of the aircraft debris, it had no conclusive evidence of sabotage...

...The initial explosion was on this side of the aircraft...

...Johnson and Poe aren't alone in wondering about small explosive charges...

...This is also where the plane broke apart...

...With the cockpit gone and controls shattered, the main portion of the jet rolled to the left, climbed, did an inverted roll to the right, and dove nose-down to the ocean...

...At the time official press briefings on the crash probe were being handled jointly, out of New York, by assistant FBI director James Kallstrom and the NTSB's lead investigator Robert Francis, who stressed the probe remained open to the possibility of a terrorist or mechanical cause...

...Although the Egis system's reliability has been questioned, following the TWA 800 explosion Egis was used by the FAA during the Atlanta Summer Olympics...

...But the debris from the initial blast fell in the Red Zone...

...Poe is part of the relatively small and elite community of bomb technicians, and is familiar with the explosive potential of pent-up, flammable vapors...

...In trying to drive home his theory that TWA 800 was destroyed by mechanical malfunction, Chairman Hall spent more than half of the week-long hearings listening to experts from the Air Force and Navy whose job it is to make military aircraft fuel tanks less likely to explode if hit by enemy fire...

...But in the weeks following the explosion of TWA 800, investigators confirmed traces of PETN and RDX on the debris...

...Something unknown ignited the fuel air vapors in the TWA 800 tank...

...Kallstrom added that he had discussed the matter with FBI Director Louis Freeh, who also objected to Hall's plans, because the hearings could compromise the ongoing criminal investigation...

...On December 9, he dissented from the view that accidental fuel tank explosions are a significant hazard on civilian aircraft...

...Russ Young, a spokesman for Boeing, says that in 12,000,00o flights of 747 aircraft, there has only been one confirmed center fuel tank explosion (a claim the NTSB does not dispute...

...Estimates of the amount of unrecovered debris vary...

...Both figures are impressive, and give the public the clear idea that not much of the aircraft and its contents are missing...

...Hall's briefings, however, steered reporters away from sabotage toward his pet theory that TWA 800's explosion was caused by accidental ignition of fuel air vapors in the plane's center fuel tank...

...This claim was far from truthful...

...At least one sympathetic colleague believes Shepherd will have to prove his case by replicating an explosion of a real center fuel tank...

...37 Oxley shared her studies with the NTSB in the fall of 1996...

...But debunking the missile-attack theory did not debunk the possibility of a bomb attack...

...They have been dismissed by the NTSB as not being credible," he says, adding that it's 100,000 times more likely that the tank will explode as the temperature of the fuel air vapor rises...

...Kallstrom acknowledged that the likelihood the FBI would find new evidence was remote, but he nevertheless made clear that, as far as the FBI was concerned, the case is not closed...

...T he explosion that destroyed TWA 800 started around the center fuel tank where the aircraft's wings join with the main passenger cabin...

...Ironically, the FBI's success in dispelling the missile attack theory has contributed to the public perception that the Bureau considers this case closed...

...In all, the search area covered 150 square miles of ocean floor 120 feet deep...

...The fuselage separated just forward of the wings, and fell...

...probe...

...Nonetheless, Hall was determined to use the Baltimore hearings to put to rest any rival theory about the cause of the TWA 800 tragedy...

...I have spoken with others, including Vince Cannistraro [a former CIA counter-terrorism officer], who have made the flat-out statement that it couldn't be a bomb that destroyed TWA 800, because we don't have corroborating intelligence information," Johnson says...

...As he explained, because light travels faster than sound, eyewitnesses easily mistook the flames from the explosion with a missile trail...

...National Transportation Safety Board staffers were hard at work putting the finishing touches on an agenda and draft witness list for the NTSB's upcoming public hearings into the TWA 800 explosion scheduled to begin in Baltimore on December 8. NTSB Chairman Jim Hall was about to inform the FBI of his plans to reveal details of the Bureau's investigation into the possibility that TWA 800 was destroyed by terrorists...

...In response, the FBI quickly reconfirmed that its criminal investigation would continue...

...The various stages of the plane's disintegration created separate areas of wreckage and debris...

...His first such briefing came only two months into the crash probe, on the same day his close political ally, Vice President Al Gore, promised airline lobbyists that no costly new security restrictions would be imposed in the wake of TWA 800 (see "The Dissent of TWA 800," TAS, July1997...

...The case is there if you're really willing to dig," he said about the potential for accidental explosions...

...But when the test debris was sent to the FBI crime lab in Washington, most of the Egis "hits" were not confirmed...

...He estimates that between 5 and 7 percent of the plane remains missing, which he calls "our greatest area of interest...

...Much as during a storm one sees lightning before hearing the thunder, so witnesses saw flame streaks from the exploding plane well before sound waves from the explosions reached them...

...Using an Egis explosives detection system, FBI and BATF technicians in Long Island tested the salvaged aircraft debris for the presence of the plastic explosives C-4, Semtex, and Detasheet...

...but, as Rob Morton, an oceanographer whose company manufactures the system, put it, the area's shifting sands were like an underwater version of the Sahara desert...

...There was one other inadvertent problem with the recovery operation...

...One PETN "hit" detected by Egis was on the right wing of the aircraft near the fuselage...

...If a glass container were used with a small-shaped charge in the TWA case, the blast signature would be difficult to recognize for the simple reason that the U.S...

...As the plane sat on the runway in the July heat, the fuel turned to combustible vapor, aided by heat from the passenger cabin air conditioning unit located beneath the center fuel tank...

...The results from the FAA trials showed an error rate of less than 1 percent, which makes the number of false "hits" in the TWA 800 probe difficult to explain...

...By takeoff time, the fuel vapor was as hot as 125 degrees Fahrenheit, the lower end of the explosive range for Jet A fuel...

...Her results showed that all traces of PETN and RDX, high-explosive residue from SEMTEX, would wash off...

...Following the mapping, the next level of priority was given to recovering victims' remains...

...He told the FBI he would review its sixteen-month long The American Spectator • February 1998 35 CI Ilstrom nevertheless made it clear that, as far as the FBI was concerned, the TWA Flight 800 case is not closed...

...Given what is known about the competing theories about the plane's destruction it's easy to understand why the FBI has not closed the case...

...In the FBI's ev.r, he'd p,-)bably be [nd where key wreckage remains unrecovered...

...But unlike the FBI, it appears the NTSB has paid less heed than it should to the circumstances of the crash and the limitations that were inherent in the salvage and recovery operations...

...The American Spectator February 19 9 8 n any event, a sound case for the accidental explosion of I the fuel tank is a long shot...

...Maybe two to five percent sounds like a fairly small percentage," an FBI source familiar with the probe says...

...As Baltimore approached, neither side had proved its case...

...When, before the Baltimore hearings, Kallstrom insisted on preserving the FBI's "chain of custody" on evidence that could indicate a small bomb, he was perhaps implying that the answer to the mystery lies somewhere in the eight tons of missing TWA 800 debris...

...in other words, events about as rare in the real world as accidental blowups of 747 airliners...

...The NTSB wanted tests on the charter plane to prove that hot summer conditions made center fuel tank vapors extremely volatile...

...The Boeing 747-100's center fuel tank is a box-like structure about 21 feet wide, 20 feet long, and between four and a half to six feet tall...

...Much factual information that is available was withheld because the FBI wants to maintain custody of the "chain of evidence" in the event that the real cause of TWA 800's explosion is discovered to be sabotage...

...But what they've said is, there's no evidence...

...The FBI had carried out tests of its own on a scuttled Air France 747...

...The man it hired to prove this theory is Joseph Shepherd, an aeronautics professor at the California Institute of Technology...

...Their recovery could answer a key mystery: how multiple systems designed to prevent any electrical discharge into the center fuel tank failed simultaneously...

...Hall wanted the witnesses he lined up to discredit all these alternative explanations...

...The NTSB dismissed this baffling paradox by attributing the residue to contamination from a dog-sniffing certification test possibly carried out on the airplane long before the crash...

...The area where the initial debris—including the center fuel tank—fell was designated the Red Zone...

...In addition to the missing seats above the center fuel tank, unrecovered parts include a center fuel tank scavenge pump and fuel-level probe gauges...

...Bringing up wreckage was the last priority...

...Relying on CIA-created computer animation, Kallstrom reconciled eyewitness sightings with the facts of the flight's final moments...

...But when an airplane weighs 170 tons, five percent would be eight tons—the size of a medium truck...

...Ofi 38 February 1998 • The American Spectator...

...Both showed fuel vapors well within the lower explosive limits for Jet Fuel A, the type of fuel TWA 800 had used...

...But the salvage operation was flawed by its very nature...

...Yet the FBI crime lab in Washington later confirmed one finding of RDX residue and another of PETN...

...The NTSB sought out Shepherd because he is an expert in the theory of long-shot explosions, theoretical events like nuclear power plant explosions and nuclear storage facilities...

...military missile destroyed TWA 800 and that the FBI was part of the cover-up...

...Johnson notes that in the Pan Am 103 case a microchip the size of a fingernail, combined with blast damage in a metal baggage container, allowed investigators to conclude that a bomb was used against the aircraft...

...The area where the main fuselage and most of the debris fell was designated the Green Zone...

...government has not done tests to see what kind of physical evidence would result...

...If that same standard had been applied to Pan Am 103, we would have declared it an accident one year into the investigation...

...The first area to be given priority for salvage operations was the Green Zone, where most of the fuselage and bodies lay...

...Instead of trying to resolve these unanswered questions, however, the NTSB has contracted for research to explain how the center fuel tank may have detonated accidentally with enough explosive force to blow apart the airplane...

...But it's possible, if a person knows what he's doing, to redirect it...

...The lab was later severely criticized in an inspector general's report, raising the possibility that crucial evidence was lost or mishandled...

...There's been a popular notion that the FBI and the NTSB have said that it wasn't a bomb or a missile," says Young...

...Despite the Evergreen 747 tests, the NTSB had no conclusive evidence of a mechanical cause of the explosion...

...In a recent interview Shepherd said that he is convinced that the aviation industry knows about the vulnerability of aircraft to fuel air vapor explosions...

...He believes that a bomb might have been fashioned from materials that are difficult to detect after an explosion...

...Slenski's studies were carried out on aircraft the same age or older than TWA Flight 800, and he was unable to create the conditions for an explosion even when electrical shorts in the fuel tanks existed...

...Jimmie C. Oxley, a chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island, conducted an experiment on her own initiative in the summer of 1996 to see how long explosive residue would remain on test strips of aluminum immersed in saltwater...

...The mystery does not end there...

...If her tests are correct, no residue should have been detected in TWA 800...

...In a letter dated December 3, 1997, Kallstrom sent Hall a sharply worded reminder...

...His law enforcement career includes six years of State Department work in counter-terrorism training...

...Although the center fuel tank is designed to withstand pressures between zo and 4o lbs...

...Slenski's findings, however, weren't central to the NTSB's focus...

...Hall and the NTSB now want the airlines to re-engineer civilian airliner fuel tanks along the lines of military combat aircraft, unlikely as these airliners ever are to find themselves in combat situations...

...Unlike Shepherd, Poe's experience with explosives comes from the field...

...Johnson isn't convinced that TWA 800 fell victim to terrorists, but he also isn't convinced that the plane exploded accidentally...

...Among the tons of missing debris from TWA 800 are passenger seats and cabin components from directly above the center fuel tank...

...McCord told the Baltimore panel that 98 percent of the aircraft was recovered...

...As a result, many aircraft parts remained submerged in saltwater far longer than required to wash away any explosive residue that would indicate a bomb...

...There are also reports from victims' family members that some aircraft debris was pressure-washed after recovery, potentially compromising key evidence...

...I can tell you for a fact," Johnson says, "that we had no studies for that kind of bomb device at the time of the TWA 800 explosion...

...Given the temperatures inside the tank, Shepherd believes the fuel air vapors could be ignited by a far lower amount of electrical energy than the tank's designers anticipated...

...NTSB investigators could not explain to Oxley why her tests showed no residue would be present, while minor contamination from the dog test would endure in the harsh underwater environment...

...But the debris from the initial blast fell in the Red Zone...

...At the time of the explosion, the 13,000 gallon-capacity tank held about 5o gallons of Jet A aviation fuel...

...In September of 1996, Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom also speculated about the possible use of a bomb on TWA 800...

...Unofficially, the FBI estimates the recovery at around 95 percent...

...Hall was also aware that bomb technicians familiar with the probe had begun to theorize that the plane could have been destroyed by an unconventional explosive —one that might leave few traces if it had used a glass or plastic container as the explosive and timing device...

...It would not necessarily be on the bodies," Kallstrom told the Washington Post...

...TWA 800 then broke apart...

...Dissen NTSB Chairman Jim Hall has buried his head in the sand to advance his theory that better off burying his head in the underwater sands where the plane went down—i the TWA t was early Saturday morning last Thanksgiving weekend...

...There will continue to be some minimal level of monitoring the investigation...

...George Slenski, an engineer at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, has studied fuel probes and wiring in aging aircraft—and his findings show that even when there is an electrical short, it does not provide enough energy to spark an ignition of fuel air vapors...

...A dramatic re-enactment of Flight 800, using an Evergreen 747 chartered by the NTSB, was shown on the nightly network news...

...per square inch without rupturing, the resulting explosion exceeded the tank's structural limits...

...Not only the tank but the fuselage ruptured, with the explosion spewing debris out the right side of the aircraft and causing the 735,00o lb...

...It could have been small and directed...

...Underwater submersible vehicles spent a total of no days on the ocean bottom, and more than 4,00o dives were made by recovery teams...

...Slenski was one of many aviation experts and engineers to appear at the NTSB's Baltimore hearings...

...The recovery priorities began with mapping of debris...

...Two traces of high explosive residue found in SEMTEX, a Czechoslovakian-made plastic explosive, were found on the aircraft debris...

...The FBI's concerns notwithstanding, Hall made an astonishing pronouncement at the end of the Baltimore hearings: "We have presented all of the factual information available at this time...

...36 February 1998 • The American Spectator Most of the fuselage and bodies lay in the Green Zone...

...You can't entirely eliminate a firing device," says explosives expert Billy Poe, explaining that a bomb will always leave some evidence behind...

...He just wishes the missing tonnage could have been recovered...

...What will tell you whether or not it's a bomb," says Larry Johnson, a former State Department official and counter-terrorism expert, "is material that you can spread out and examine on a kitchen table top...