All language subtitles for TWA.Flight.800.2013.1080p.WEBRip.x265-RARBG2_English

[ surf pounding,
gulls calling ]

Hank Hughes:
I have thought about
the TWA investigation

very often
over the years.

It's almost been
a nagging thought.

It's the one assignment
that I was given

in my entire career
of 42 years as an investigator

in one form or another
that I didn't finish.

And I like
to finish my work.

Woman on radio:
TWA 800, you're allowed to
climb and maintain 13,000.

Man on radio:
TWA 800, climb and maintain
13,000.

Man:
It was about 8:30.

I was standing on a bridge
looking south.

Woman:
I was at Davis Park
with my two young daughters.

[ airline radio chatter ]

Man #2:
So I'm actually heading east

and I just got done talking
to my coworker.

Woman #2:
It was a very warm night

and it was just-- it was kind of stifling almost.

Man #3:
We were taking a walk
that evening.

Man #4:
We were taking
a nice night flight.

Woman #3:
I was walking with
a friend of mine.

Man #5:
I was standing on the dock
and I was looking out

in a southeasterly
direction.

Woman #4:
I was on my boat.

Woman #5:
I was at Meschutt Beach.

Man #6:
We just happened
to look up at the sky.

And all of a sudden
I see something rise up from
behind these trees over here.

Reporter:
The US Coast Guard tonight
is reporting an explosion

about 10 miles south
of Long Island.

The 747 was on
its way to Paris

from JFK in New York.

Reporter #2:
We now have it
that TWA flight 800,

a commercial 747 aircraft

carrying 212 passengers,
a crew of 17,

has exploded in midair

about 10 miles out
into the Atlantic Ocean.

Reporter #3:
Bodies are being pulled out
of the water right now.

No survivors so far.

Reporter #4:
There's a lot of
search boats.

Reporter #5:
One witness described
a big fireball

with pieces coming off it.

Tom Kennedy:
I was pulling my boat back in.

I was tying it up
and the guy next to me

was tying his boat up.

And the guy said,
"Hey, look at the flare."

And I turned around
and I'm like, "Wow.

Somebody must have some
trouble in the bay."

No sooner I said that,
the thing just exploded.

Robert Young:
The beeper went off.

It was our flight
operations dispatch.

As the head of flight
operation safety

and the chief safety
investigator, I was hoping
it was a drill.

But it wasn't.

I was in Atlanta getting ready
to support the '96 Olympics.

My phone rang,
which was my unit chief

from the explosives unit
telling me to catch

the first plane out
to New York tomorrow morning.

I was at home
and my pager went off

and I was on the go team.

We gathered all the people
that we thought we would need

and we arrived about
4:00 in the morning at
JFK Airport in New York.

[ speaking French ]

Heckman: The command post
was at the East Moriches
Coast Guard station,

which was the closet Coast Guard
station to where the plane
actually went down.

Hughes:
We went to the Coast Guard
station

at Moriches immediately.

There were hundreds and hundreds
of police officers there.

James Speer:
My first impression

of the investigation was

martial law.

There were approximately
1,000 cops, it seemed, there

of which half of them
were FBI agents.

They had guards
on the hangar,

they had cops
at the Coast Guard station,

and it seemed very unusual
for an accident investigation.

Young:
Helicopters were landing
and taking off

like every three
or four minutes.

Wreckage was coming in
and bodies were coming in.

One of the people who went out
with me on the first morning

was a former Army
helicopter pilot

who had significant experience
with Black Hawk helicopters.

One of the helicopters
came in and he said,

"That's odd.
That's a Special Operations
helicopter."

And I said,
"Oh, that is odd.

I guess maybe they
just couldn't find one
and they borrowed it."

He said,
"Well, I don't know."

Reporter:
Just a little while ago,
a temporary morgue

was set up on the beach
in Long Island.

Robert Golden:
Right in here is the temporary
morgue facilities.

This is where
the boats would dock

and unload the victims.

Notice that hoses and various
bottles of chlorine

would be here
to hose down the boats
if there was any spillage

in the back of the boats
of biological fluids.

The bodies would
be photographed.

A tag would be placed
on the body.

And if there was
any jewelry present,

that also
would be photographed.

Speer:
The FBI supervised
the transport of the wreckage.

It was put on Army
National Guard trucks

and trucked to Calverton,
Long Island,

which is about
10 miles away.

I can still smell
the hangar.

It smelled of death.

And it just was not
a pleasant place to be.

It was very--

it took a toll
on all of us.

You walked in the hangar
through all the guards.

And it was not a pleasant
work environment.

Hughes:
We set up the staging area
at the hangar

and I noticed there was
a great deal of friction

between the FBI
and the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms.

The ATF agents,
most of whom have significant

more experience in
investigating explosions
than any FBI agent,

were relegated to sitting at
picnic benches and tables.

They weren't allowed
to do anything.

Speer:
On my first day there

when I had the tour
of the Calverton hangar,

there was a structural piece
of the aircraft

lying on the floor
that had three holes

blown through it like
a .22 through a tin can

with an obvious
entrance and exit side
of the penetration.

I was about to take
a picture of it

and somebody tapped me
on the shoulder

and said,
"Don't take that picture."

And I said,
"Who are you to tell me
not to take the picture?"

And he said, "FBI.
Don't take the picture."

The word was
in the press at that time

that eyewitnesses
had already begun to report

smoke trails corkscrewing
up toward the airplane.

Reporter:
The FBI today
raised new questions

that a missile or some kind
of streaking object

was seen in the sky
at the same time

TWA flight 800 exploded.

We do have some information
that there was something
in the sky.

A number of people
have seen it.

A number of people
have described it
very similarly.

Hughes:
The attitude of our
senior management was,

"Don't get too involved.
The FBI's gonna handle it.

It's a missile or a bomb
and we're not gonna get
involved in it."

Young:
Most all of us felt

that it was only a matter of
time before we found the piece

that would confirm
that it was a criminal event.

Explosive traces
of unknown origin

have been found relating
to TWA flight 800.

Heckman:
The FBI,

we had our own mini lab
set up on the site.

We got multiple
positive hits.

Anything we had
a positive hit off

had to be sent down
to the FBI laboratory

where they could actually
run a confirmatory test.

Three examples of that--

it was rather disconcerting
because the test at the lab

was confirmatory on those,

meaning that those were
actual explosive residues.

[ speaking French ]

Young:
It was very early on,

we didn't have many pieces
in the hangar.

And Jim said,
"Hey, I've got something here
you need to look at."

So I went over and looked at it and it was the leading edge

of the right wing,
as I recall.

Speer:
The part was really a very
sturdy piece of metal.

I was convinced that the part
had been damaged

by a high explosion
because of the entrance hole

and the exit hole
where you could obviously
see the entrance side

and obviously see
the exit side.

Young:
'Cause Jim wasn't allowed to
take a picture of that part,

he looked around the hangar
and found other parts

with similar holes.
And I'm looking at this

and I just don't know how these
could occur normally in a fire.

I decided to take it over
to the FBI field lab.

Young:
The FBI has a little room
that they controlled

and, of course,
we couldn't go in there.

Speer:
I knocked on the door
and said,

"I hear you have a couple
of machines that test
for nitrates in here."

And they said,
"Yes, we do."

And I said, "Can you show
me how it works?"

They said, "Sure.
We'll run a test sample
for you."

And I said,
"Well, how about you
running my test sample?

Swab this piece
and check that for me."

And so they did and sure
enough it tested positive,

which I was sure
it would do.

Positive for residue
of high explosives.

So they picked up the phone
and called somebody,

and in 90 seconds,
three FBI agents

ran in the room
in their coats and ties

and physically
pushed me aside

and wouldn't let me hear
the conversation.

Then they turned to me
and said the machine

has frequent
false positives.

There were a considerable
number of positives

because the EGIS machine

is susceptible
to false positives.

Interviewer:
He was told that the machine

frequently
yields false positives.

That's not true.

At the point of TWA 800,
the EGIS detector

was very specific

and very sensitive.

Tom Stalcup:
The FBI are saying there were

frequent false positives
with the EGIS.

Is that possible?

No, on the contrary.

The EGIS
is extremely sensitive.

It's sensitive down to about
50-100 picograms.

It's a very small
amount of material.

It's very rare,
if ever, to see

a false alarm
with the EGIS.

So they ran the test
four more times they said,

but they physically would not
let me watch them run the tests.

And they turned to me
then and said,

"The last four tests
are negative.

We're going to declare
the first test a false positive

and the overall
results negative."

The FBI then said,

"Oh, we've got to take
this down to our lab
in Washington..."

"And verify
that diagnosis."

I don't understand why
material would be taken

from that hangar
to the FBI laboratory.

It could be sampled
right at that hangar.

When you take it anywhere,
you're exposing it

to potential
contamination factors.

And the part disappeared
never to be returned.

It never returned.

[ laughing ]

Stalcup:
I talked to
Jim Kallstrom about this

and he laughed when I told him
things disappeared

from the hangar
never to return.

I laugh that he'd laughed.
He knows better than that.

What would happen
to the wreckage once
it got to Washington?

After it was reexamined
down in Washington,

whether it was--
if it was positive

where it was indicating
it could be an actual
piece of evidence,

then it wouldn't come back.

Charles Wetli:
Many of the bodies
had parts of metal

imbedded in the bodies.

Pieces of metal
we couldn't identify.

We initially separated out
these particles of metal

in plastic containers
categorized by a number
we gave them

and whether they came from
the surface of the body

or they came from the internal
tissues of the body.

And these were turned over
to the FBI.

Normally, I'd expect
to receive the parts

as he had discharged
them from his office.

But then at some point,
someone from the FBI

presented some plastic
containers

with metal parts
in them.

They weren't separated
as Dr. Wetli had described.

They were pretty much together.

We certainly lost
identification

as to who the parts
were associated with.

If you can
associate a wound

with a
certain particle,

it tells you something
about direction,

it tells you something
about velocity

of those parts.

But once they're combined,

there wasn't really much
analysis we could do.

Witness:
That early evening,
my wife and I

were walking up this road
right here at Smith Point
County Park

and I happened to notice
on my left-hand side

just over the dunes--

I seen a streak of light
going just about straight up.

It was, you know,
leaning a little to the right.

We started to get witnesses
calling in.

And then we sent agents out
to interview these witnesses.

And eventually,
we interviewed

several hundred witnesses

that actually
witnessed the event.

The initial witness
statements all indicated

that it might have been
a missile

because they were
all describing

seeing a streaking object

in the sky

and then a big fireball.

Sounded very much
like a missile.

Witness:
Half a second after that,

there was this bright
starburst, all white light.

And it just expanded

in a matter of a split second
and it was huge.

Vernon Grose:
What the FBI did,

which was
so onerous to me,

is that they did
all the interviewing
of eyewitnesses.

It was the FBI now
being sole interrogators.

They kept the NTSB out.

Hughes:
We've always conducted
our own interviews.

We're pretty good at it.

We've been doing it
for years.

The vast majority
of witnesses have never
been interviewed

by the National
Transportation Safety Board.

I find it unconscionable.

My name is
Vassilis Bakounis.

I'm from Greece.

I worked for 25 years
in Olympic Airways.

In the mid-'90s I went
to the United States

to get my commercial
pilot license.

On that day, as I was flying
at approximately 2,000 feet

over the shore
of Long Island,

I saw the light coming
out of the sea.

I followed that light

for many seconds

before it makes

a kind of radius
to the right.

And then I saw
the explosion.

And then it's aflame

and was falling down like

an umbrella of flames.

When I saw the light
starting climbing,

it was really, really low.
Very low.

And then it start climbing,
passing my altitude

and the explosion.

Kallstrom:
We will know what happened
on that airplane.

And I guarantee you that
the resources of the FBI

and the great law enforcement
team we have at every level

will be used on
that investigation.

Virtually nothing
that the FBI learned

about the investigation

was provided to us.

We didn't have much
cooperation from the FBI

on any part
of the investigation.

They had their
own explosive techs
in the hangar.

They had their own
metallurgists in the hangar.

Heckman:
We actually had FBI agents
on the Navy ships.

And as soon as the divers
would bring a piece of debris
to the surface,

our agents would take
possession of it.

They controlled the access
to the wreckage.

We were never
allowed to see it

until all the evidence techs
from the FBI had looked at it

and decided that
we could see it.

I mean, this was
unheard of.

They had video recordings

of the ROV searches
under the water.

Speer:
It became
almost adversarial.

One time, they asked us
to watch underground video

looking for engine parts.

There was a VCR tape
and they got the machine
set up and running.

It was a basic machine.

The FBI guy stayed there.

And I said, "You know,
you can go off and do
whatever you need to do.

We can run this machine."

"No."
"Okay."

Anyway, in looking
at the tape,

there'd be a little
time clock on the top

that had all the data
like the heading, the depth,
and time.

And after a while,
I began noticing

that on the same heading

there'd be interruptions
of the time clock.

And I turned to
the FBI guy and said,
"This tape has been edited."

And I said, "I want to see
the unedited version."

And he said, "No."

Man:
Death is nothing.

I have only passed
into the next room.

I am me, you are you.

We were for each other,
we are always.

Call me by the name
you have always used.

Speak to me
as you have always done.

Change not your tone,

but be solemn or sad
in manner.

Laugh at the things
we laughed at together.

Pray, smile,
think of me,

pray for me.

Speer:
They had barges that they
would load parts on.

And they were to keep
a log on all the parts
they recovered

so they knew where
all the parts came from

because they were
trying to assess

the breakup sequence
of the airplane.

Not all of the evidence
from one part of the airplane

is gonna fall in one spot.

So there's actually
three debris fields.

Rocky Miller:
We had tags and they
were color-coded

according to the area
that they were found in.

They also had latitude,
longitude on them,

the date
that they were recovered.

Hughes:
About a month
into the investigation,

I noticed that some
of the materials

in the hangar
had been disturbed at night.

Miller:
One of my investigators,
John Desmond,

came to me one day
and said, "Some of these tags
are being changed."

I said, "What do you mean
they're being changed?"

He said, "They're being
changed from yellow to white."

Somebody was changing
tags on us.

Now, there are only
two keys to that hangar.

I had one, the security chief
had the other.

Miller:
I went over to the FBI
and informed them

that we thought somebody
was in our hangar after
we'd locked down at night.

Hughes:
They set up video
surveillance in my hangar

and found that three FBI agents
from another office

had entered the hangar
for purposes unknown

in the wee hours
of the morning.

Miller:
We were told it was a couple
of new FBI agents.

Interviewer:
And did they ever tell you
who they were?

No.

Hughes: On one occasion
an agent from California
was brought in.

There was the famous incident
where little Ricky Hahn

was out with a piece
of fuselage

trying to bend it
in the middle of the night.

I found him
in the main hangar

with a hammer pounding
on some of the wreckage
trying to flatten it out.

The guy was hammering
on a piece of fuselage.

That defies
any common sense.

You don't alter
or destroy evidence.

You're altering
the shape of a material

which has acquired that shape
as a result of some forces.

Hughes:
That was brought to
the investigator in charge's

attention, Mr. Dickinson.
Nothing happened.

Every time there was
a problem, it was ignored.

Man:
It was about 8:30.

The sun was still up.

Heckman:
We interviewed several
hundred witnesses

that actually witnessed
the event.

Man:
I was standing on the bridge
looking south.

Woman:
It was a very warm night.

Man #2:
We were taking a walk
that evening.

Man #3:
We were taking a nice
night flight.

Woman #2:
I was walking with
a friend of mine.

Man #4:
I was standing on the dock

and I was looking out in
a southeasterly direction.

I was at the--
I'm very upset,

even still
all these years later.

I was at Davis Park
with my two young daughters.

I had just put them to bed.

I was standing on the bridge
looking south.

All of a sudden, I decided
I had to go outside,

get the towels
off the front deck,
bring them in the house.

I go outside,
turn to the left...

Just happened to look
up at the sky.

...and I see something
that's going across

right in my line of sight.

I actually see something
behind a tree line,

much like my thumb,
go up in the air.

I saw what appeared to be
cheap fireworks.

I noticed a streak of light
heading up towards the sky.

I saw this white light
shoot up in the sky.

There's something going up
in the sky.

This rocket went up
in the air.

And I seen this white light.

And I said, "Someone shot
off a flare."

And it looked like a flare
going up.

And I'm trying to figure out
what it is

because it looked
completely out of place.

Larger than
a standard flare.

And it appeared behind
a house to my right.

And it went up
and out to sea.

I watched this object go
outbound towards the horizon.

It was moving
very rapidly.

- It was fast.
- Zoop! Just like that.

It was going very quickly.
It's very, very shiny.

Kind of like a little
smoke plume behind it.

Looked like a missile
vapor trail to me.

Then it turned to the left.

- Then it turned.
- And it arced over.

And it looked like it
curved to the right.

Then it momentarily
disappeared.

It disappeared
for a second or two.

Then it just sort of disappeared
from my vision.

Then I lost it
'cause there was clouds.

Then I saw it again.

It goes up.
And there was a plane
that was flying along.

And I saw a flash
of an aircraft light.

Blink, blink, blink.

It goes up right to
the side of the plane,

and I remember thinking
to myself--

I was very frightened
that it was gonna hit the plane.

And it was-- poof!
It didn't actually hit
the plane.

It exploded
right next to it.

Now,I know nothing
about military

or any of that,
so I don't know

if its exploding next to it
is still significant.

I also noticed on the horizon

a very bright mast light
of a ship.

From the mast light,
there was another flash

and I saw another object
rise out of the ocean.

The next thing,
something comes up from
underneath the plane.

I saw an explosion.

This big explosion.

And I'm looking at this
and I go--

I remember saying
out loud to myself,

"Gee, look at that.
A plane broken in the sky."

And then the very next day,
the FBI came to talk to me.

It was almost abusive
in a sense.

They took me into
the back room.

They said, "Well, we heard
that you saw something.

Tell us what you saw."
I told them what I saw

and they looked me straight
in the face and said,

"You did not see that.
You saw nothing."

Then they decided to jump
to a conclusion.

Once that happened,
objectivity

went out the window
as far as I'm concerned.

Young:
That's when the NTSB
put on their major push

for a mechanical failure.

Stalcup:
And were you in agreement
with that push?

We didn't find any part
of the airplane

that indicated
a mechanical failure.

Speer:
They said the airplane
exploded

from the center fuel tank.

Cause unknown.
Suspect a fuel explosion.

Merritt Birky:
Early in the investigation,

some of the first hardware
that was brought up

was from that
center wing tank.

Some of the parts
from that tank

showed evidence of burning,
melted aluminum.

So we knew we had a fire
in that center wing tank.

Hughes:
I think you can see
from the forensic evidence,

something did happen in
or around the center fuel tank.

The plane sat out
in the sun.

It was pretty hot
in July,

which increased
the temperature of the tank
in the aircraft

to vaporize the fuel,

so you'd have enough vapor
there to cause an explosion

if you ignite the fuel.

The question remaining is

what sparked the explosion?

Stalcup:
What ignited those vapors?

Well, that's-- that's--

that's never been
fully proven.

Hughes:
The theory was that wiring
had failed

and sparked the explosion.

We never found any of that.

We didn't find any evidence
in the wiring

on the aircraft that would have
indicated that a spark occurred

inside the center wing tank
to blow it up.

Interviewer: Did anybody
in the investigation
find this wiring?

Not to my knowledge, no.

Speer:
The only wiring
in the center fuel tank

is to the fuel
quantity gauge,

and that was the fine wire
meant for milliamps.

The main power on the airplane
is 115 volt AC,

and it would have
taken 1,200 volts

to arc the fuel
quantity probe,

and there's no 1,200 volt
electricity on the airplane

outside of
the engine igniters

and that's individual
to each engine.

So the cause of the ignition
of the center fuel tank

had to be something other
than airplane electronics.

James Traficant:
What I'm going to do
is to request

that Mr. Kallstrom

come up to the table
at this point.

Mr. James K. Kallstrom,
who is assistant director

in charge of
the New York office

of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.

Roy Blunt:
Mr. Kallstrom, would you just
give us some information

on how many witnesses
on the ground

or in other airplanes
at the time believe they
saw something

coming from the ground
headed toward that plane?

Well, I wouldn't want to say
that they all saw something
coming from the ground.

There are about 200 people

that saw events in the sky
that they described.

None of which described
a missile.

Blunt:
How many of them
would you say saw

approximately
the same thing?

A good bulk of the people
on the shore

report and we triangulate

that they're describing
roughly the same event.

So let's say 60-70.

We had witnesses that saw
things in the sky.

And we talked about
the possibility that a missile,

as horrid as that is,

could have taken down
this airplane.

And we thought
that needs to be addressed.

Could you play
the videotape, please?

Narrator:
The following program
was produced

by the Central
Intelligence Agency.

[ music playing ]

Stalcup:
It was November 18, 1997.

I was in the middle of
grad school studying physics.

I was sitting on my couch
flipping through the channels

with my girlfriend
and the FBI came on

and they said it was
about this plane crash,

which I had heard
things about in the past,
and I was interested.

Narrator:
Of particular concern
to FBI investigators

were reports from dozens
of eyewitnesses

who, on the evening
of July 17,

recall seeing an object,
usually described as a flare

or firework,
ascend and culminate
in an explosion.

Was it a missile?

Did foreign terrorists
destroy the aircraft?

At the request of the FBI,

CIA weapon analysts
look into this possibility.

The CIA's conclusion--

the eyewitnesses
did not see a missile.

Just after the aircraft
exploded,

it pitched up abruptly

and climbed several
thousand feet

from 13,800 feet
to about 17,000 feet.

Those who said they saw
something ascend

and culminate in the explosion
probably saw

the burning aircraft ascend
and erupt into a fireball,

not a missile.

To date,
there is no evidence

that anyone saw a missile
shoot down TWA flight 800.

Not a missile.

Never was,
never will be.

Stalcup:
I felt assaulted.

I felt as if I was
being lied to.

It looked more like a big
piece of propaganda

than the results

of an air crash
investigation.

And I just knew that there
was something wrong.

Throughout the animation,
they had the underlined words

"not a missile"
and the narrator would say,
"It was not a missile."

Narrator:
Not a missile.

It just seemed odd to me

that they would have to focus
so much on telling us

what it wasn't
rather than what it was.

[ modem hissing ]

That night, I went on
my dial-up connection

and that's when I found out
there was an eyewitness

in the air at the time,

an Air National
Guard captain who was in
a Black Hawk helicopter

who saw an object
strike another object

that was coming
from the right.

Right then and there
I said, "My goodness."

So I thought, "Well,
do I believe this article

that I'm reading
on the Internet?"

And I thought,
"Well, I'll just go right
to the source themselves."

There was a website
that listed eyewitnesses

that were listed by the media,
eyewitness names.

There was a Runyan,
there was an Angelides,

there was a Myron.

I think those were the first
three people I called.

And I said I'm this interested
citizen over here

and they told me what they saw
and it was in vivid terms.

And I said,
"Thank you very much."
And I called the next person.

They all had the same story.
And that's when I got hooked.

Because these people

saw something that night.

Stalcup:
So the CIA video,
what do you think of that?

It's a nice cartoon.

I think the zoom climb
is fraud, waste, and abuse.

I don't know how they got the CIA to get involved in this

absolutely ridiculous

animation.

I don't think that there's
any engineering justification

that says that
the airplane can do what
their video said it did.

Every pilot thought,
"Baloney. That could
never happen."

Trying to claim that
the airplane tipped up enough

after the nose came off
and climbed...

The nose weighs about
90,000 pounds.

If you disrupt the center
of gravity that much

and the airplane tips up,
it's gonna either stall

and fall
or break apart instantly.

Stalcup: Did you happen
to watch the CIA animation
about what happened?

- Yes, I did.
- And what did you think
about that animation?

That animation
didn't resemble

anything that I saw
in any way whatsoever.

I actually watched it
to the point

when they showed that
the plane split in two

and one half went up
and one half went down.

As soon as I seen that part
of their video,

I didn't watch any more
after that

because it's just
incredibly wrong

and that's not what I seen.

That is not what happened
that evening.

Did you ever see anything
rise up out of the fireball?

No, absolutely not.

That fireball
fell like a stone.

That streak you saw,

could that have been
an aircraft?

No, it was far too fast.

I've never seen a plane
go that fast up like that.

These people
on the shoreline

saw this bright streak
originating from near
the surface,

not a point two and a half
miles in the sky.

How they calculated
that zoom climb,

if I could get
that information,

I could prove that
they jimmied the data.

I filed a Freedom
of Information Act request

to the CIA and NTSB

for the data
and calculations that they
used for that zoom climb.

They refused to give me
the information.

Stalcup:
But Ray's efforts
weren't a total loss.

He actually got some internal
memos from the CIA.

And I filed a lawsuit
against the CIA separately

and got other documents
and, between the two of us,

we had a nice little history
of e-mails

from inside
that small group in the CIA

that did the animation.

One of the documents
specifically discussed

eyewitness Mike Wire.

He's standing on a bridge

and he sees this what he calls
a cheap firework

come by a house and kind of
arcs up and goes out.

What I saw looked like
cheap fireworks

coming out from behind
the roofline

of the double chimney house.

It went on a 45 to 50-degree
angle out to sea

and it wavered,
zigzagged up and down.

Stalcup:
The memo shows that the team
that created the animation

knew that the ascending light
that Mike Wire saw

couldn't have been
the aircraft.

But their animation that went
on national television

told a completely
different story.

Narrator:
A fourth eyewitness reported

that he watched a white light,
perhaps a firework,

traveling upward
at a steep angle.

Stalcup: The video shows
the light starting at a point
high up in the sky,

not behind the house the way Mike Wire described it.

The CIA animation shows it
approximately here in the sky.

And then it proceeds
from there

as a streak of light
up into the sky,

but that's not what I saw.

What I saw,

something left
behind the house

and went up to the plane,
the plane blew up.

Stalcup:
After watching the animation,

did that cause you
to do anything?

Well, that's when
I called the FBI,

you know, and I said,
"You seem to be a little off

on what you're
depicting here.

That's not the way
the events unfolded."

And what did they say?

They said,
"Do you want to change
your story?"

And I said, "No."

I said, "But you really need
to send somebody out here

that can understand
what I'm explaining."

Okay, and what happened?

Never heard from them.

Interviewer:
People who don't know
each other

all up and down the coast,

they saw the same thing

and you're saying there was
a mass misperception.

Well...
[ clears throat ]

not necessarily
a misperception.

This has been documented
over and over again

in traumatic events.

The human mind
tends to change things

or change the sequences
just because of the trauma

of what they saw.

They don't remember
things in the sequence.

Well, they're all
very consistent.

So, if you're saying
it's mass misperception,

which you are, really,
right?

I guess.

I find that very bizarre.

I can't explain it.

I'm not
a psychology expert.

But you did explain it.

Well, I explain it the way
it was explained to me.

Young:
If you don't mind me
being blunt,

if the airplane
didn't climb,

then the answer for what
the witnesses saw in the sky

might be
an unacceptable one.

All of a sudden,
this rocket went up
in the air.

And then there was
this big explosion.

Days later,
the FBI came to visit.

And they sat down
and they were talking to me

and they're asking me
questions and I told them
my story.

And he had his little pad.

And then when
the interview was over,

they looked at me and said,

"You have your papers in

to become an American
citizen, don't you?"

And I said, "Yes.
I'm waiting to be called."

They said, "Well, it would
be very wise of you

if you want to become
an American citizen

to keep very quiet about this
and not to talk about it."

Incredible.

And so I didn't because
I figured, you know,

I wanted to become
an American citizen.

Hughes:
David Mayer was a relatively
new NTSB employee

who had no training
or experience in any aspect

of transportation accident
investigation.

Almost a year after
the investigation began,

I noticed that he had
come to my hangar

and started to change
evidence tags.

Never bothered to ask me.

Just started changing them.

The things that he did,
technically, were illegal.

There are, I think,
10 or 12 pieces of evidence

where he altered the location
from which they were recovered.

Young:
In one case, we had a piece

that was originally recovered
in the yellow zone

and it was moved
to the red zone

because it made things
look nicer.

One piece, the aft keel beam
under the center tank,

came down
in the yellow zone.

Well, it would have
fit much better

with the exploding
center tank theory

if it had come down
in the red zone.

So it was moved
to the red zone.

Interviewer:
You're basically telling me

that this was an agenda-driven
investigation.

I think there's a strong
possibility of that.

And the agenda was,
"That this is an accident,

make it so."

It's about 22 minutes
after the hour and Jim Hall,

who is the chairman
of the National Transportation
Safety Board, is in Baltimore.

- Good morning, Mr. Hall.
- Morning, Brian.

Brian:
Tell us what's gonna
go on today.

Hall:
Well, Brian, we're gonna have
a public hearing

on the TWA 800 accident.

It's the 121st hearing

the Board has held
on a major aviation accident.

These hearings are an exercise
in public accountability.

Dan Rather:
The National Transportation
and Safety Board hearings

on the TWA flight 800 crash

focused today on the 747's
center fuel tank.

Grose:
After they've gotten
to a certain stage

of investigation, the NTSB
holds a public hearing.

Miller:
Prior to the public hearing
in Baltimore,

we had what you'd call
a prehearing conference.

At its conclusion,
I was asked to come to the IIC,

the investigator
in charge's office,
Al Dickinson.

And in his office
he sat me down and told me

that I was not allowed
to ask any questions

or speak at the public hearing.
And I asked him, I said,

"Al, I've been on
this investigation.
I don't understand this."

And he said,
"If you believe
in corporate memory,

you won't ask any questions
or speak at the public hearing."

Interviewer:
What could you possibly say

that would disrupt
the hearing?

Oh, I could
get up and say,

"Well, you know,
we have great concerns

about the accuracy
of your database

and we'd like to have
a thorough,

complete audit
of your database."

We could have said that.

In fact,
our lawyer at TWA

complained to the NTSB
about the tag database
being inadequate

and too unreliable
for any analysis
or conclusions.

And that "far-from-settled
investigatory information

and analysis" would be
presented at the hearing.

Lahr:
In all of the accident
investigations

I have participated in,

eyewitness testimony
was an integral part of it.

Not this time.

Is it true you're not going
to have any of the witnesses,

the 200 and some witnesses
that just were eyewitnesses?

Well, Brian, that is part
of the FBI investigation,

which was a criminal
investigation.

The minute
the news came out

that the eyewitness portion
of that hearing was cancelled,

I started saying,
"Oh, my God, what's going on?

This is really big.
They don't want these
eyewitnesses to talk."

Is there any doubt
in your mind

as to whether or not
this was a missile?

I have no--

no reason in my mind

to think that this
was a bomb or a missile.

And I feel that we've done
everything we can

to look at that issue.

Mr. Hank Hughes joined
the NTSB in 1985.

He is a senior investigator
assigned to the office

of aviation safety.

Hughes:
My report, which was

496 pages in length
or thereabouts

with photographic
supplement

was cut and amended
without my knowledge.

When I did
find out about it,

I complained.
Nothing was done.

We were required to provide
a factual report,

but ordered not
to write an analysis.

Interviewer: What?
Could you say that again?

We were directed to write
a factual report,

but not an analysis.

All we issued
was factual reports.

Wetli:
I was basically requested
to supply autopsy reports

and photographs and so forth.
But there was no analysis.

In all of the other
investigations that I've done

and every other NTSB
investigator I've worked with,

the group chairman
writes a factual report...

and then based on
that factual report,

writes an analysis
of the significance

of the facts
and circumstances

of that aspect
of the accident.

Shanahan:
To determine really
what happened,

you've got to put everybody's
findings together

and analyze it,

which we've done that
in every investigation

I've been involved in
except this one.

Interviewer:
What would your analysis
have been?

That the primary--

the primary
conclusion was...

the explosive forces
came from outside the airplane,

not the center fuel tank.

Stalcup:
Would that statement
have been in your analysis?

If I got to write one.

Let me tell you, this is
an honest investigation

and it is being conducted
in an honest and open fashion.

Traficant:
I'd just like the panel

to answer my questions
yes or no.

If you can't, I want you
to say you can't answer it.

First question, Mr. Hall.

To this point,
is there any physical evidence,

conclusive forensic
physical evidence,

to prove that it was
a mechanical failure

that caused the explosion
of the center fuel tank?

Yes or no?

No, but-- no, but we're
looking at that.

I want a one
question answer.

- I know this is tough.
At this point--
- No.

Mr. Kallstrom,

were there in fact traces
of PETN and RDX

found in that
plane wreckage?

There were explosive
chemicals found.

Now, the FAA did
a historical record search

on the aircraft involved

and found out that actually
before the crash

it was at St. Louis Airport
overnight.

We were told
that in St. Louis

a bomb-sniffing canine
training session occurred

where they left
some residue

by mistake of the explosives
that the FBI had found.

You know for sure that
the dog was on that plane?

Kallstrom:
We know for sure.
Well, we have the report

that document the training.

Very specifically document
the training.

Both Congressman Traficant
and I

would like sent to our
offices immediately

the documentation that shows
the plane number.

Stalcup:
These are the documents
the FBI supplied to Congress.

The officer who
conducted the exercise

did not know
the plane number,

but testified he was on
an empty plane.

The plane that would later
become flight 800

left the gate fully boarded
with more than 400 passengers

at 12:35.

The officer finished
the exercise at 12:00 noon.

TWA regulations require
the cabin crew

to be on the plane an hour
before departure.

They would have
been on this plane

before the dog training
exercise even began.

So the exercise could not
have happened on the plane

that would become
flight 800.

Was it conclusive
that a dog

- was on this plane
that blew up?
- Kallstrom: Yes.

Stalcup:
Flight 800 is just...

a "fuck you" to the world.

I mean, it's just--
it's just amazing.

I think flight 800
is, you know,

it's a watershed moment
for this country.

It was, "Wow.

Look what we can really
get away with."

Even in the information age.

Narrator:
The CIA's conclusion--

the eyewitnesses
did not see a missile.

Interviewer:
How do you feel
about all this?

Oh, it's terrible.

First time I ever really
distrusted my government.

I...

World War II, I couldn't wait
to serve my country.

And I stayed in
the Navy Reserve.

I believe in this country.

And for that kind
of cover-up

to be tolerated,
it makes me fighting mad.

Wire:
I always believed
in the FBI,

that they do a good job.

Sometimes they have to
bend some corners,

but this is--

there's too much bending
going on with this.

I was very upset
for a long time about this.

Then I just kind of sat back
and resigned to the fact

that I could stand
on my soapbox all day--

nobody's gonna listen
to me, so...

If somebody's interested
in hearing what I have to say,
I'll tell 'em.

Hughes:
I've been an investigator
over 40 years

and it was a one-of-a-kind
experience

that I wouldn't recommend
anybody go through.

As an American,
I'm ashamed.

Stalcup:
The reason for me
standing here today

is to inform the news media
and the public

of an inexplicably flawed
official investigation

into our nation's worst
air disaster.

Stalcup:
After the Baltimore hearing,

I began researching the crash
deeper and deeper.

I called investigators
involved directly,

filed Freedom of Information
Act requests,

actually sued the CIA
and the NTSB,

I sued the FBI,
and I analyzed thousands
of pages of documents,

reports, witness statements,
radar data,

and other documents
pertaining to TWA 800.

Two weeks before
I graduated,

I took out
two student loans

to fund a vacation.

Interviewer:
Where'd you go?

Stalcup:
I went back to Cape Cod.

Interviewer:
That's a vacation?
That's home.

I did not want to go--

vacation meaning not going
directly to work anywhere.

I was getting
my doctorate in physics

while at the same time
being a citizen researcher.

I was so burned out.
I needed to just...

not do anything.

Interviewer:
And how long did you
not do anything?

Stalcup:
Well, not doing
anything means

I did flight 800
100% of the time.

Eventually I really got
frustrated by the media's
inaccurate reporting

and by reporters ignoring
the facts of the case.

I decided to get in touch
with Hank Hughes,

Bob Young, Jim Speer,

and other insiders
who had the courage

to come out
and speak publically
about their experience.

And to make
this documentary

to present our evidence
and to show how the government

handled the investigation.

Interviewer:
Why should the audience

believe you?

I mean, who are you
to be doing this?

Why should the audience
believe me?

Don't believe me.
I don't want the audience
to believe me.

I want them to look
at the evidence

and see what it says.

I think the most telling
piece of evidence

is the splatter that we found
on top of the center wing tank.

Stalcup:
There was a splatter pattern.

A pattern of material
that was deposited

in the top
of the center wing fuel tank.

When the center wing
fuel tank broke apart,

they pieced it back together
again when they brought it
back from the ocean.

They matched it up
just like a jigsaw puzzle

and found
this splatter pattern.

It was continuous across
the fracture line

of the center wing tank,

but it was not found
on the fracture's surface.

And this shows
that it was deposited

prior to the center
wing tank exploding.

Birky:
We really never
could identify

what that splatter
pattern was from.

Stalcup: Really?
It wasn't from anything that
melted on the aircraft?

Well, it could have been
something that was melted
on the aircraft

because it went through
a fiery-- a fireball.

Stalcup: But this material was deposited before the fireball.

Well...

there's some evidence
that that might be the case.

Stalcup:
Who is responsible
for deciding

what potential evidence
would be examined?

I was.

Were you aware of something
called a splatter pattern

on top of
the center wing tank?

No.

This splatter crossed
the fracture boundaries.

Okay, but what is
a splatter pattern?

It's a melted material.

The NTSB didn't share
this with you?

I've never-- no.

I've never seen that.
Never heard of that.

One person that should have
known about this that didn't
was me.

If I had heard at the time,

I would try and get some
of the samples

of the residue
and have it analyzed.

Stalcup:
You sent a sample

from the top surface
of the tank of that
splatter pattern

down to NASA for testing.

Why would he send it
down to NASA?

There was an instrument
right there.

He already had the capability
on the scene.

There was no reason,
if you were looking for
military explosives,

to send it down to NASA.

Stalcup:
One of the persons
that did the analysis

of the residue was a guy
named Charlie Bassett
down at NASA.

And that was another
three- or four-hour,

maybe six-hour drive
from where I was at.

So I drove down there to talk
to him about that.

And he ended up saying,
"Did you hear about my
nitrates report?"

And I said, "What do you mean?
You found nitrates
in the wreckage?"

He said, "Sure, I did."

So he gave me a copy
of the report.

NASA sent back a report
giving them information

that there was nitrates
in that splatter.

That's very interesting.

- You didn't know that?
- No.

Stalcup:
And the report that came back
from Charlie Bassett--

in the splatter pattern,
he detected nitrates.

I can't remember that
at this point.

You don't remember
that nitrates were detected?

No, I don't remember that.

I'll have to go back
and look at the reports

if I have them anymore.
I don't know.

Stalcup:
Actually, I had
the report with me

and I gave it to Dr. Birky
to review.

So, these tests

did not identify uniquely

whether it was--
what the source was.

It only tells you
that there's nitrates there.

Stalcup:
They have this evidence
that something melted

on the center wing fuel tank
before it broke to pieces.

It basically by itself
proves that their theory
is wrong.

But they stopped requesting
further examination
of that piece.

Nitrates could come from
a number of different sources.

I mean, nitrates by themselves
don't mean anything.

You see,
I didn't consider

the nitrates
sufficient to identify

an explosive device.

You needed further
testing to do that?

- Pardon?
- It would have required
further testing?

It would have required
significant further testing.

That's correct.

And that testing
was never done?

Well, I don't--
no, it was never done.

A nitrate doesn't--
in my estimation,

my judgment, doesn't prove
an explosive device.

I mean, you can get nitrates
from many things.

But you just said you didn't
order the follow-up testing.

- No, I didn't.
- Why?

I don't have
a recollection of why

other than to say that...

we didn't do it.

People watching might think
that that's suspicious.

Well, I'm sure
they could say that.

They would have felt that.

My argument is

the follow-up testing
that needed to be done wasn't.

I can only answer by saying

that you're right,
it was not done.

Um...

should more analytical work
been done?

Well, that's--

that would be appropriate.

Hall:
We do everything we can.

It's our responsibility
to do this in a professional,

thorough,
and methodical way.

Stalcup:
In their own animation,

the NTSB amended
the CIA's version

by showing the plane
turning to the left

before the climb.

But the NTSB's theory
for what caused the crash

has no explanation
for that left turn.

Stalcup:
What about the left wing?

Do you remember any damage
to the left wing

that was interesting?

The left wing? No.
That was different
than the right wing?

Stalcup:
The upper surface
of the left wing

was shattered, but the right
wing's upper surface wasn't.

It looks like--
I mean, you've got

decimation of the upper
skin of the left wing,

but essentially nothing
on the right.

Stalcup:
The wings were carrying
all of the plane's fuel

for its trip to Paris.

The NTSB says that
when the left wing

impacted the ocean,
the fuel in side the wing

was pressurized,
causing it to burst.

Stalcup:
But in their own animations,

the government shows the left
wing breaking off on the air.

Narrator:
Its left wing separated
from the fuselage,

releasing unburned fuel.

Stalcup:
With the wing broken off
and no longer sealed,

with much
of the fuel gone

and no longer
evenly distributed
throughout the wing,

on impact with the ocean,
you're not gonna get

the hydraulic forces
you need

to shatter the wing
the way it did.

But at level flight
with the wings full of fuel,

if you introduced high energy
into that liquid,

you can get the hydraulic
forces you need

to shatter that wing.

There would be a reduction
of lift on that left wing.

The right wing, undamaged,
would have its full lift.

And that is what would
explain the left turn.

Witness:
It seemed like
the aircraft turned.

I could see the flash
of the wing

'cause the sun was behind me
setting out here.

Stalcup:
There were eyewitnesses
who saw the plane banking.

One eyewitness was in a boat
and they thought it was
gonna hit them.

Now, if the left wing
did shatter first,

you would expect to find
left wing debris

in the red zone,

the earliest debris field
closest to JFK Airport.

There was left wing debris

in the earliest debris field
closest to JFK Airport.

Parallel to the horizon

was a cigar-shaped cloud.
A long cigar-shaped cloud.

Stalcup:
If powerful energy were
introduced to the left wing

before it broke off,

fuel would spray out
and immediately vaporize,

creating a cloud of white vapor behind the plane.

Stalcup:
What color was
the cigar-shaped cloud?

- White.
- It was this white poof.

Like a crystally
white poof.

A huge white ball.

A white phosphorus
explosion.

Stalcup:
I wanted to see for myself

if high explosives
could have caused

that left wing
shatter pattern.

So I sealed
a piece of 747 wing

over a container
75% filled with liquid

just like the left wing was.

Then I put a quarter pound
of TNT into the container

and blew it up.

Misted liquid blew out
of the container

just like the misted fuel
blew out of the left wing.

Let's go look
for some pieces.

Man:
I know I saw two more
go over the trees.

- In there someplace.
- Really? That far?

- Yeah.
- It's right here.

Rivets sheared off.

Almost every rivet
on the upper surface

of the left wing
was sheared away.

We have the same fractures
that we have pictures of
from the wreckage.

This fracture right here
is just like

the fracture that we see
on the wreckage.

This fracture right here

is almost identical
to fractures

that are found on
the accident aircraft.

We have pictures of the wreckage
that look just like this.

Yeah, it appears
we replicated the damage
from the accident aircraft.

Stalcup:
And one more thing about
that left turn

caused by the shattered
left wing--

you can clearly
see it on radar.

Thanks to Captain Ray Lahr,
who sued the CIA,

we now have the NTSB's
own simulation software.

You see these blue triangles
and green squares?

That's where the plane
was according to two
separate radar sites.

And as you can see here,
the NTSB simulations

aren't going through
those triangles and squares.

So they're wrong.

If it doesn't fit
the radar data, it's not
what happened.

This is showing the climb.

And this is exactly when
they're not matching radar data.

So this climb is
itself invalid.

What really happened
to the aircraft is this.

When you fit it
to the radar data,

there is no climb.

[ radio chatter ]

Hughes:
Typically, you'll see
a damage pattern

which will correlate
with the injuries.

The center fuel tank
blowing up

or an explosive device
inside of the airplane

would have caused
a burn pattern

that would have emanated
from one area

and progressed in a direction
away from where

the explosion originated.

In the instance
of TWA flight 800,

there's no such correlation.

From front to back
and right to left,

the injury patterns were
completely atypical.

One person might have been
severely burned,

the person sitting next
to them didn't have a mark
on their body,

and the person sitting
next to them may have

been completely destroyed.

How do you account
for absolutely no patterns?

We saw nothing where,
for example,

those in the vicinity
of the center fuel tank

would have more damage
than those seated elsewhere
on the airplane.

Shanahan:
Many of the passengers
were ejected from their seats

at some point
during the crash.

You could look at seats
that had fire damage

and see if the individuals
who were supposedly
sitting there

also had fire damage.

And in many cases
we found out that they did not.

That tells me
that the passenger

had left that seat
prior to the time that the fire

had spread into the cabin.

To give you an idea
of the crash, this is
sometime in mid-August.

I walked down to
the water and I see a piece
of the plane laying there

and I said, "What's going on?
Plane parts are supposed to go
to Calverton, not here."

And when you look a little
bit closer, you can see

a bone which has been shot
like an arrow right through
the fuselage of that plane.

This, I think, is something
that wasn't appreciated
by a lot of people,

the tremendous forces
involved here.

Hughes:
The damage to the seats

and the injuries to
the passengers was random,

which in my mind indicates

a high ordnance detonation,

not a low-speed explosion

like a center fuel tank
blowing up.

- A high-speed explosion.
- Stalcup: Where?

Well, given the fact
that we found no point

from which it emanated,
I think it was external
to the aircraft.

Young:
April of 2000,

the NTSB decided
that they would go down

to Eglin Air Force Base

and shoot Stingers,
flares, and fireworks.

And they would put
witnesses on the ground

in different locations

at various distances
from the launch point.

And basically,
the theory was

that when they do this,

the witnesses
would be so at odds

at what
the eyewitnesses claimed,

it would prove conclusively

that the eyewitnesses
didn't know what they
were talking about

and therefore it could
be brought up

to refute the eyewitnesses
at the final hearing.

Guess what?

They had a missile
visibility test

and it was on
the nightly news

and I happened to see it
that night.

The missile launch
was very similar

to what I saw out here.

It matched
pretty identical to it.

Stalcup:
Here's an example
of how the US media

covered the missile
visibility tests.

Government investigators
have confirmed tonight

that the Army
recently conducted

some dramatic tests

to disprove once and for all

whether or not a missile
attack was responsible

for the explosion
of TWA flight 800.

Stalcup:
Actually, according to
the official report,

the test was done
to determine how far away

a witness could be
and still see a missile.

Here's NBC's Robert Hager.

Stalcup:
The report starts off
with a visual cue

to remind viewers
to connect missiles
with conspiracy theories.

Hager:
Three times Army contractors
fire Stinger missiles

similar to this as NTSB
investigators watch below.

Investigators did not
stage the test

because they seriously believe
a missile caused the TWA crash.

In fact, they're certain
it was not a missile.

Stalcup:
Now pay close attention
to what he says next.

But they do feel it's
important for the record

to match what they were able
to see in the test

with what some eyewitnesses
believe they saw
off Long Island.

Stalcup: If they're
so certain that a missile
didn't cause the crash,

why would they have to match
what the flight 800 witnesses

believe they saw
with the missiles

the eyewitnesses actually saw
during the test in Florida?

Hager:
Eyewitnesses like
Vietnam vet Fred Meyer

who was in a helicopter
that night.

I followed
the streak of light

red/orange in color,

moving from my left center
to my further left.

Hager:
Meyer says then he saw
explosions similar to this.

Stalcup:
Actually, this, the plane
descending in a fireball,

is not what he saw next.
What he saw next was...

I saw an explosion.

And the explosion
was on the trajectory

of the streak of light
I had been following.

Stalcup:
The descending fireball

was the last thing
Major Meyer saw.

Hager:
Why are investigators
sure it wasn't a missile?

It's this reconstruction.

No residue of any
missile explosives. None.

Stalcup:
This is false.

Government investigators
did report

finding explosive residues
on the plane.

Hager:
Instead, a pattern
of twisted metal

that shows the explosion
that did bring the plane down

originated here
in the center fuel tank.

Stalcup:
And this is also false.

There is no evidence
confirming that the explosion

that brought down
the plane originated
in the center fuel tank.

Hager:
And no continuous holes
in a straight line

through the wreckage,
which would have had
to have been left

if a missile penetrated.

Stalcup:
Not if it were
a proximity fuse missile

that does not penetrate,
but explodes nearby.

This and many other
media reports

persistently focused
on missiles that could
penetrate the plane.

Hager:
So investigators believe
what eyewitnesses saw

was the trail of fire
left in the sky

by the falling
plane itself.

Stalcup:
Well before seeing this
descending fireball,

many witnesses reported
seeing an object rise up

off the surface.

Hager:
What investigators
really believe

is that the fuel tank
exploded

because of
an electrical short

or some other
mechanical problem.

Stalcup:
What investigators?

No ignition source
was ever confirmed.

And what other
mechanical problems?

The reporter provides
no details.

Hager:
And nothing they observed
in the new missile tests

has changed their minds.

Stalcup:
But he never reports
the results of the tests.

The results that showed
that all observers

easily saw the missile.

Hager:
Robert Hager, "NBC News,"
Washington.

Frank Hilldrup:
What about detonation
at some distance?

Perhaps a self-destruct
scenario?

It's possible that several
types of missiles

could have been in
the vicinity of TWA flight 800

at the time of the mishap.

But the possibility
that that occurred

is hard to imagine.

Stalcup:
Did you ever look
at my analysis

of the radar information

that actually showed
some evidence

of a high-energy explosion
on radar?

Yes.

Stalcup:
Since it happened
so close to shore

and miles off
of Long Island

in a very busy
air corridor,

there are several
FAA radar sites

that recorded
the crash.

Man:
The field to the left is
consistent with the explosion.

Stalcup:
At the Baltimore hearing,

they showed this
radar image which shows
20 minutes of debris

drifting with the wind
after the plane explodes.

But what they didn't talk
about in their presentation

is this--

the first few seconds
after the plane lost
electrical power.

The radar shows debris
flying away from the plane

at a speed of at least
Mach 4,

which is four times
the speed of sound.

No detonation velocity
lower than Mach 4 fit
the data very well.

So, yeah.

That explosion of
the center wing fuel tank

they determined
was a low-velocity explosion,

meaning that it went slower
than the speed of sound.

So any wreckage
that is shown going faster
than the speed of sound

could not have come
from that explosion.

And so any high-speed debris
that came out,

which we calculated
at Mach 4,

definitely was not from
the center wing tank explosion.

It couldn't have been.
And that's what disproves
this case.

I mean, that is
the smoking gun.

Missiles are rounded--
have rounded surfaces

and, like stealth fighters,

do not give
a very good signature.

However,
once a missile explodes,

it's a bright light.

You throw up confetti at night
and you shine a flashlight,
you're gonna see it.

And that's what this was,
a bunch of confetti moving
at Mach 4.

Shanahan: You're looking
at 3,000 miles an hour as
the initial velocity.

- Somewhere in that range?
- Probably greater than that.

- But, yeah.
At least, yeah.
- Okay.

Huh.

That's pretty high explosive.

It certainly smells
like a missile

when you look
at those findings.

When you see this kind
of information,

you have to say,
"It's a missile

and let's prove
that it wasn't."

And I don't see any evidence
that anybody attempted

to rule out that
this was a missile.

Not in any honest
scientific way at least.

[ radio chatter ]

Stalcup:
After climbing out
of JFK Airport,

flight 800 leveled off
at 13,000 feet.

Moments later,
a fast-moving object

was seen racing horizontally
out to sea

from Long Island's
south shore

heading east-southeast.

One of the dozens
of eyewitnesses

who saw object one
was Lisa Perry.

And I see something
that's going across the sky.

It's going very quickly.
It looked kind of like
that Superman bullet.

Stalcup:
A few miles offshore,
it turned upward

and began climbing
while heading south.

- And it wavered
and zigzagged as it flew.
- Then it turned.

Stalcup:
At this time,
a second object

rose off the ocean miles away
and further to the east.

Both objects began converging
on flight 800.

Object two approached
the jetliner head on.

And then it started climbing,
passing my altitude.

Pilot Vassilis Bakounis,
flying at 2,000 feet,

saw the object rising
from below his altitude.

Meanwhile, object one
headed behind

and to the right
of flight 800.

It suddenly turned left
toward the jetliner

and exploded near
flight 800's left wing.

The detonation of object one
near the airplane

caused the upper surface
of the left wing to shatter.

As the plane
banked to the left,

misted fuel coming out of
the top of the left wing

made a thick white plume
of vapor behind the jetliner.

Then object two exploded

with two nearly
simultaneous explosions.

Two ordnance explosions.

The timing difference
between the two explosions

was a fraction
of seconds.

Stalcup:
A third object

came racing out of the ocean
and climbed sharply.

It appeared
to come from a ship.

Witness:
At night in the evening,
ships turn on their lights.

Sometimes they'll have
a bright mast light.

This particular vessel
had a very bright mast light.

From the mast light,

there was another flash

and I saw another object
rise out of the ocean.

Stalcup:
Object three exploded

underneath
the aircraft's nose

causing it to fall off.

As the aircraft fell
to the ocean,

its wings broke off,

creating two huge fireballs
in the sky.

[ gavel banging ]

Good morning
and welcome to this meeting

of the National Transportation
Safety Board.

The cause of
the in-flight breakup

of TWA flight 800

was a fuel/air explosion
in the center wing tank.

After four years
of working on this,

I assume that you would have
liked to have been able

to come here today in front
of the family members

and tell them what
the ignition source was.

Sir, I would just love
to be able to walk in here

with a molten piece
of wire and say here it is,

but, no, sir, I cannot walk up
and say this is the piece.

[ speaking French ]

Stalcup:
No eyewitnesses
testified at the hearing.

Instead, the NTSB's
Dr. David Mayer,

the same guy who changed evidence tags in Hank's hangar,

gave an hour-long
presentation

explaining why eyewitnesses
are unreliable.

Psychologist Ira Hyman
has written that people

combine knowledge
from various sources

with their own
personal experience
to create memories.

It's been well documented
that people's memories
change over time.

Even memories that we're sure
of can contain errors.

Witness accounts
can change over time.

Witnesses' memories
do change over time.

People's memories
change over time.

Hughes:
David Mayer is Mr. Fixit.

You know,
he fixed the tags.

He fixed
the witness statements.

A group put a four-page ad
in the "Washington Times,"

including
six witness accounts.

What do you think
about those accounts?

Well, I actually have
the ad with me.

The final witness
in the advertisement

is identified
as witness 649.

Stalcup:
Witness 649
is Joseph Delgado.

Witness 649 described events
that certainly do

sound like a missile
attacking the airplane.

Witness 649 said
that everything he saw

occurred between
two flagpoles.

The yellow line shows
his line of sight

between those two
flagpoles.

They said everything he saw

occurred between
these two flagpoles.

And it looks like
a single line.

It isn't a single line.
It's two lines,

but they're
two degrees apart.

It happened
somewhere in here.

So we're looking at
a 20, 30-degree angle
separation.

- Or better.
- He had a baseball field
in front of him.

He wasn't constricted
by his viewpoint.

- It wasn't just two degrees?
- No.

- It wasn't just
a very narrow angle?
- No way.

- No way?
- [ laughs ] No.

Mayer:
So it doesn't appears that
this witness was looking

in the right location to see
flight 800 at the spot

where it would have been struck by a hypothetical missile.

Stalcup:
Next, Dr. Mayer talks about
eyewitness Fred Meyer,

a war veteran who flew
rescue helicopters in Vietnam.

He observed a streak
in flight

for about one
or two seconds

and then he saw the enormous
fireball develop.

Mr. Mayer here did not
tell the whole truth.

He mentioned something
that occurred

at the very end
of my statement.

I saw a streak of light
crossing the sky

in a nearly horizontal
direction.

And then I saw an explosion

which was,
in my estimation,

a high-velocity explosion
of military ordnance.

Something I'd seen
many times before.

And then after having
made that statement,

I made statements
regarding watching

the fireball descend
into the ocean.

The witness observations
of a streak of light

were not related
to a missile.

The TWA flight 800
in-flight breakup

was initiated by
a fuel/air explosion

in the center wing tank.

The source of ignition energy
for the explosion

could not be determined
with certainty.

This then completes
the four-year investigation

into the tragedy
of TWA 800.

And I adjourn
this board meeting.

Stalcup:
I lived in Mashpee,

it's a little town
on Cape Cod.

We made our own ice cream,
made our own root beer.

We had four kids.
It was a wonderful childhood.

My father was
an oceanographer,

my mother was
a stay-at-home mom.

It was like a dream.

Life was a dream
and the birds were beautiful,

nature, go on
canoe trips, camping.

When I was seven years old,
my mother died.

When something like that
happens, it changes you.

You start to see
the value of life.

You know?

You, you know--
you have a--

you know...

You have a, you know,
beautiful mother
that loves you

and you're very young
and you're very dependent
on that woman.

And they're gone.

It's probably the most painful
thing you can ever go through.

And life goes on.

I was surprised that the cars
just didn't stop.

And you see the importance of life, really.

You know, you value life
a lot more

and you stand up
for what's right.

Mr. Chairman, members
of the committee,

my name is Joe Lychner
from Houston, Texas.

And one year ago today
on July 10,

I was the luckiest man
in the world.

I had a great home,
a loving family

including my beautiful wife
Pam who was 37,

my daughter Shannon
who was 10,

my daughter Katie
who was eight.

We had it all.

I had recently started
a new position with my company

and that's why I was
not with my family

when they boarded
TWA flight 800

for a short stay in Paris.

My name is Hank Hughes.

I'm a retired NTSB
investigator.

I was one of the principal
investigators of TWA
flight 800.

And, of course,
I worked with Bob Young,

who was the chief
investigator for TWA.

I am here because of some
concerns I've had

for well over 15 years.

The witnesses had
the courage to come forward
after this happened,

but they were ignored,
some of them were berated.

No witness was ever allowed
to testify.

Once it got to this point,
you can see these little
pieces right here,

well, this is
the wind direction.

Hughes:
The way to reopen
the investigation legally

is to file what they call
a petition for reconsideration.

This petition
goes to the NTSB.

We're gonna write our name
on the line.

If you would like
to participate,

we welcome you
to sign it, too.

Stalcup:
We're gonna read
our findings

and we're gonna all sign
them here in front of you.

Number one: The explosion
that caused the crash

was external
to the aircraft.

Number two: FAA radar sites
recorded fast-moving debris

that travelled perpendicular
to the flight path.

No mechanism or event
in the official theory

can account
for this radar evidence.

A significant number of credible eyewitness accounts

are consistent
with an external event.

The CIA produced
an inaccurate crash animation.

Both the CIA and NTSB
crash simulations
are inaccurate.

There remains
significant anomalies

in the way this investigation
was conducted.

There were numerous
violations of customary

and normal
investigative protocol.

The NTSB's probable cause
determination for this crash

of flight 800
is not supported

by the physical evidence,
the eyewitness statements,

and other facts.

An object travelled
a great distance

at great speed
and converged with it.

I mean, it's...

You know, you try to--

it's a very difficult thing.
You have to try to forget
and move on.

And I think that's important
for a lot of people,

but to not
have this explored

to the depth
that it should be

is wrong.