The Nation's Pulse: TWA 800's Final Dissent
II, John B. Roberts
rllll i,-1 i::1 ~1 v,_~JJ- [1,] iIi " ~ - ] l'liLII]liqi. "] |: by John B. Roberts II TWA 800's Final Dissent The woman who called AI Gore and Jim Hall's bluff. A s the National Transportation...
...But Loeb was careful to qualify his remarks, limiting his statement about the lack of evidence to "recovered" wreckage...
...After gaveling the meeting to a close, Gore joined Clinton at a White House news conference at which he proudly hailed the report as "unanimous...
...There's no evidence of that, either...
...Loeb buttressed his dismissal of the plastic explosive residue with the observation that none of the metal wreckage showed characteristic highexplosive damage...
...Cummock, then president of the Families of Pan Am lo3, was well-known as an aviation securib...
...To accept the NTSB theory requires one to embrace a daisy-chain of antecedent theories, starting with theories to explain away the terrorist threats received by the NSG, then those that dismiss the explosive residue evidence, and finally those that revolve around a mysterious electric short that dozens of Boeing engineers and seventy-five full-time NTSB staffspent four years trying to pinpoint without success...
...Some commissioners accused Cnmmock of conflicts of interest, implying that she was arguing for stricter security because she had financial interests in companies that would benefit from tough standards...
...The American Spectator _9 0 c t o b e r 2 o o o 61 Johnson is not alone in sticking to his belief that a bomb most likely caused the plane's destruction...
...As Cummock discovered in the files she's been allowed to see, the Gore staff hid various political papers in the commission archives...
...It came back 'inconclusive,' which means it could be caused by a bomb...
...Its records were sent to the Transportation Department for archival storage...
...Or is the underlying thesis, the hypothesis of the explosion, wrong...
...Included in them are documents which show the commingling of politics and policy that from the start has clouded the TWA probe...
...If not a bomb or a missile, then what did it...
...Hall wanted a "probable cause" determination (NTSB lingo for pinpointing a specific failure that causes a crash) but the investigators had no evidence to justify a definitive conclusion...
...But the lack of evidence for the accidental explosion theory doesn't trouble those who've long considered TWA 8oo a closed case...
...Last summer Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) held hearings to discredit the FBI's handling of the TWA 800 investigation and lend credence to the NTSB theory...
...They're having difficulty writing the report," he told me, "because they can't figure out what happened...
...This 62 O c t o b e r 2 o o o The American Spectator...
...His nation is now engaged in another battle over how and where to commemorate the American role in a subsequent war, World War II...
...Kallstrom now says that the FBI was "perplexed" when it found PETN and RDX residue, which he says are "basically the ingredients of plastic explosive," but couldn't find collateral evidence...
...In mid-September 1996 , the commission issued a tough interim report calling for strict new sccuri~, standards...
...Hall opposed further efforts to recover the damaged parts of the aircraft, while Kallstrom wanted to extend dredging and recovery operations...
...It was natural for Clinton to ask for her help...
...A s the National Transportation Safety Board convened its final hearing into the TWA 8oo case on August 22, Miami-based aviation safety activist Victoria Cummock boarded a transcontinental flight to take her oldest son across the country to start college...
...At the commission's final meeting, Gore promised to publish Cummock's dissent in the official report...
...The only mystery was what caused the spark...
...Barring dMne intervention it will be at the far end of the reflecting pool that stretches beyond Lincoln toward the Washington Monutnent...
...In court documents fried six months ago by Perkins & Cole, the law firm representing Boeing in civil suits arising from TWA 800, the attorneys presented the bomb theory as a credible explanation for the plane's destruction...
...Documents she's finding in the commission archives bear that out...
...To buy into the NTSB theory first requires dispelling the sabotage theories...
...Battles between the two agencies had to be resolved by White House Chief of StaffLeon Panetta...
...Since the entry stairway must be situated on the east, Atlantic will be north and Pacific will be south, hardly noticeable given the current state of geographic instruction of those whom the memorial will inspire...
...In the weeks before the Flight 8o0 ex~plo - sion, Clinton's National Securib, Council had received credible terrorist threats against air travel...
...The unrecovered five percent of a Boeing 747 weighs about eight tons and is equivalent to a mid-sized cargo truck...
...Johnson, who is still active in terrorism contingency planning, notes that much of the missing debris comes from what he calls "the seat of the blast...
...The hardest evidence of sabotage to knock down is the high-explosive residue found on the aircraft...
...It's the theory you're most comfortable with," says Young...
...Its design would encompass a smaller pool called the "Rainbow Pool" that heads the reflecting pool...
...Although Loeb's best technical explanation for this one-in-a-million event is that it "somehow" happened, he still called it the NTSB's "most likely scenario...
...Under NTSB rules the wreckage was examined by' an independent lab in Chanfilly, Virginia...
...As Hall undermined Kallstrom, Curemock also came under attack...
...Independent tests show that both high explosive residue and its characteristic damage on aircraft aluminum disappear rapidly under the effects of saltwater corrosion...
...Aboard Air Force One, Clinton asked Cummock to serve on the JOHN B. ROBERTS II is a freelance writer and television producer...
...Behind the scenes, friction between the NTSB and the FBI intensified...
...inside the White House commission meetings, Cummock sensed a loss of momentum for new security measures...
...His Second Inaugural exegesis of the CM1 War that ends simply, "...and the war came...
...In the end, Hall had to settle for a theory...
...high containing more than 4oo stars, REID COLLINS/'S a former CBS and CNN each representing loo American casureporter alfies of the war...
...Soon the commission disbanded...
...activist...
...Many of the files were sealed...
...On the Lincoln or western front would be a wall nine feet...
...It's mind-boggling...
...Their contents would still be unknown if Gore had kept his word and published Victoria Cummock's dissent...
...Until you have that, you can't make a forensic conclusion," he says...
...Other political documents in the files include speech drafts and fundraising documents detailing meetings with airline industry executives who contributed heavily to the Democratic Party while the Gore commission was deliberating over security proposals that could have cost the industry millions of dollars...
...The ultimate irony is that despite the best efforts of Gore and his longtime political ally Jim Hall to stifle dissent over the destruction of TWA 800, it is Victoria Cummock who will have the last official word on airline security...
...advisory committee he created to review airport security in the wake of the crash...
...In Pan Am lo3, they could replicate it...
...But Kallstrom acknowledges that the FBI's work was hampered because there are no forensic databases for bomb-damaged aircraft submersed in saltwater or missile attacks on civil aircraft...
...W hen America thinks of a war memorial, what comes first to mind...
...The Justice Department has been dragging its feet in complying with court orders to turn over documents, and periodic status reports with the judge are necessary to resolve impasses...
...Last October, Boeing hired an independent explosives expert to review the TWA Boo wreckage...
...Are the scientists worse now...
...When the FBI suspended its criminal probe, a crucial five percent of the wreckage of TWA 8o0 remained unrecovered in the water offLong Island...
...He found three pieces worthy of reexamination, including one fragment from the fuselage underneath the center fuel tank bearing a suspicious hole...
...Instead, the Gore staff refused to include Cumlnock's 45-page dissent...
...The "Rainbow Pool" will be redug, some 15 percent smaller in size, and something will be placed in the center...
...He concentrated only on the three deposits confirmed by the now much-discredited FBI laboratory...
...This is equivalent to a short from your car's battery traveling into your gas tank's fuel sending unit and igniting the tank...
...The second is that the residue came from a bomb-sniffing dog test done about a month before the plane went down...
...Cummock was the sole commissioner to refuse to endorse the weakened reporL She insisted on writing a dissent...
...Loeb's third theory is that troops transported on the plane during the Persian Gulf war six years before the explosion left residue behind...
...KoIesnik's statement summarizes the self-contradictory position advanced by the NTSB and its bureaucratic allies...
...The Marine Memorial of course, across the Potomac from Lincoln, next to Arlington Cemetery...
...Loeb didn't bother to explain why high-tech explosives detection systems used on the wreckage as it came from the water actually identified a dozen pieces with explosive residue...
...N RIGID - - ":B'_,IIr i I I l l e t I I [ o l l I " ! all : l q l I f ' _ l i I t , l l : by Reid Collins And the War Memorial Came Is this the way to commemorate World War II ? O ne of the succincfly eloquent phrases of the English language is on the wail to the left of the seated Lincoln in his Memorial on the Washington Mall...
...Originally Hall wanted the final hearing held in November 1999...
...Cummock tried to get the Court of Appeals to order all the political documents released, but the Reno Justice Department opposed the motion...
...60 O c t o b e r 2 o o o _9 The American Spectator That's when she filed suit to have her dissent included in the official report and to gain access to the commission's files...
...Kittie Higgins, who was White House Cabinet Affairs secretary during the early months of the probe, confirms that James Kallstrom and FBI head Louis Freeh argued in meetings at the time that the amount of evidence that proved Pan Am lO 3 to be sabotage was extremely small...
...The unfounded accusations undercut her work on the commission...
...The first is that the wreckage may have been contaminated by military salvage teams as it was pulled from the water...
...The pieces that told us Pan Am lO 3 was destroyed by a bomb were small enough to fit on top of a table," says Larry Johnson, a former State Department counter-terrorism official involved in the Pan Am lo 3 case...
...Loeb posited that a short-circuit allowed high voltage to jump the wiring of the low-voltage fuel measuring system, thereby circumventing safety designs and traveling into the center fuel tank where it ignited the volatile vapors inside...
...She always had the sense tha~ a i~umber of the people involved in the con> mission and some of the commissioners themselves were out campaigning for Clinton and Gore in the flail of 1996," says an attorney at the McKenna & Cuneo law firm handling her case...
...Remarkably, one of them is a letter from Maria Hsia to Gore...
...Kallstxom won crucial rounds over dredging and reconstruction of the wreckage, but eventually Hall prevailed...
...The current design calls for two arches surmounting the rows of smaller monoliths, to represent the Atlantic and the Pacific theaters...
...Cummock's suit may be the reason Hall brought the TWA 800 inquiry to a premature close, even though the NTSB cannot yet explain how the Boeing 747 exploded...
...In short, crash investigators were operating blind, using databases and evidence derived from tests on dummy aircraft on the ground and a handful of real-life cases...
...In it Hsia reminds Gore she had met with him % few days ago" at the Buddhist Temple fimdraising event, and was following up on his suggestion that she could get government grants to administer tests under the Democrats' "Project Citizenship," a program designed to create new citizens and register voters in time to effect the 1996 elections...
...Four years ago, Victoria Cummock was invited by President Clinton to fly with him to New York to meet with grieving Flight 8oo families...
...In 1996, she served on the FANs Security Advisory Committee and held top-secret government clearances...
...The evidence Victoria Cummock has uncovered doesn't answer the technical riddle ofTWA 8oo's demise...
...But following the presidential election that November, the urgency of the commission's work began to fade...
...At present most of the files remain sealed...
...The result didn't rule out high explosive damage," says Boeing spokesman Russ Young...
...This is a crucial distinction...
...It would be an open theater dug out of the existing pool, surrounded by monoliths representing the states and territories, hung with wreaths...
...Cnmmock says the commission's top staffer, Elaine Kamarck, sent Hsia's letter to the INS with a handwritten endorsement saying "the Vice President wants this done...
...Bernard Loeb, the NTSB's chief investigator, outlined the agency's hypothesis...
...I don't think there's a mystery," Grassley aide Chris Kolesnik told me at the time...
...On the very day the aircraft was destroyed-July 17, 1996--NSC counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clark had convened an extraordinary interagency meeting to heighten security precautions against attacks on aircraft or airports...
...Because no outsider knew about the existence of these documents in the Transportation Department archives before Cummock's suit prevailed last year, they were not produced for congressional committees probing the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising...
...By the time the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security issued its final report in early 1997, none of the tough measures from September's interim report remained...
...When I asked an NTSB spokesman last April about the reasons for the delay, he said there was dissension within the investigating team about the final report...
...The real point is what they're not saying," says Johnson...
...You have not heard they've been able to replicate the explosion...
...Cummock is using the files to write a final dissent to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security report issued in the wake of the TWA explosion...
...But it does explain how political considerations drove the Clinton-Gore Administration to use the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security to siphon campaign contributions from the pockets of airline companies in exchange for downplaying evidence of sabotage and soft-pedaling counter-terrorism security measures...
...Loeb offered three theories to explain the residue's source...
...D espite a record $67 million and four years of effort, not one piece of evidence has been found to explain the source of energy that ignited the fuel vapors in the center tank...
...Still, Cummock's attorney says it's "a matter of months, not years" before she gets access to all the documents she needs to complete her final dissent...
...Thanks to a Court of Appeals decision supporting her lawsnit against Vice President Gore, Cummock has finally gained access to at least some security files withheld from her since 1996...
...She readily agreed after learning that Vice President Gore would chair the new White House commission, giving it muchneeded bureaucratic clout...
...After her husband died on Pan Ain lo 3, she worked tireless]y lobbying Congress and the Federal Aviation Administration to tighten aviation security...
...Also in November, NTSB Chairman Jim Hall began giving off-the-record press briefings criticizing the parallel probe run by FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom, and advancing the theory that an accidental malfunction instead of deliberate sabotage brought down TWA 800...
...NTSB Chairman Jim Hall may have hoped the two-day hearing in Washington would close the TWA case, but it is Victoria Curemock who will have the last official word on the events surrounding Flight 800...
...It's act on faith and avoid reason," Johnson says...
Vol. 33 • October 2000 • No. 8
