- As we have noted in previous articles, various agencies
of government including elements of the FBI, the Justice Department,
the CIA and the NTSB conspired, knowingly or otherwise, to suppress
conspicuous evidence of a missile strike on TWA Flight 800.
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- This included the distortion or denial of eyewitness
testimony, the falsification of witness statements, the apparent deletion
of the final four seconds from the flight data recorder (FDR), the withholding
of test results on the cockpit voice recorder, the suppression and possible
deletion of radar data, the obvious manipulation of missile residue tests,
and the removal or alteration of damaged parts (see collected columns listed
at the bottom).
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- With so much evidence removed from play, the evidence
that remained made little impact on an indifferent public. At the final
NTSB hearing in August of 2000, for instance, Dr. Bernard Loeb acknowledged
the explosive traces of PETN and RDX found inside the plane and out, but
dismissed them casually: "We don't know how they got there but we
do know it is not because of a bomb." Loeb's cagey avoidance of the
word "missile" notwithstanding, NTSB insiders must have felt
reasonably comfortable for some time in the knowledge that the physical
evidence of a missile strike had been safely eliminated from public view.
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- Still, these efforts at concealment were contrived only
to prove what did not happen to the plane. That was not enough. Those in
control of the investigation needed to prove what did happen. At the very
least, they needed to create the illusion of a science-based mechanical
explanation for the crash to feed the all too mild curiosity of a much-too-easily-satisfied
media.
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- From the beginning, the NTSB had been searching to find
even one scientist from a reputable lab or university anywhere in the world
who would confirm through testing that a specific mechanical event could
conceivably have brought TWA Flight 800 down. They were not having much
luck. No one within the scientific community seemed willing to squander
his or her reputation on so transparently false a hypothesis.
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- To be sure, with millions of future federal research
dollars at stake, scientists would reject the "mechanical" thesis
tactfully. But in the final analysis, they all said the same thing: No
level of scientific analysis, no series of tests, could confirm even the
remote possibility that a catastrophic mechanical failure destroyed the
ill fated plane in mid-air.
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- Early on, The NTSB tried to establish a very basic point
if a spark managed to enter the center wing tank (CWT) and ignite
the fumes, the resulting flames would spread from compartment to compartment
and create an "overpressure" capable of blowing the airplane
to bits. In its own words, The NTSB "needed to investigate the phenomena
associated with flame propagation in multicompartment, interconnected,
and vented tanks representative of the accident airplane's CWT."
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- After two-years of exhaustive testing, here is what the
investigating scientists concluded:
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- The ignition of Jet A fuel in one bay of the 14-scale
model resulted in transmission of the flame through the bay passageways
and vent stringers and ignition in neighboring bays, illustrating the behavior
of multicompartment flame propagation. Flamefront quenching was also observed
to be a characteristic of flame propagation.
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- "Flamefront quenching" means that this fuel
would actually extinguish the flames, almost like water. Jet A fuel does
not ignite readily like, say, gasoline. The tests told the NTSB that even
if a spark could be identified, it could not cause the violent explosion
that ripped apart the airplane.
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- The NTSB did not give up. It contracted with two more
research laboratories Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) and Christian
Michelson Research (CMR) "to develop computer code models of
the combustion process that occurs in a 747 CWT."
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- Although their words were again ever so polite, the known
phenomenon of flamefront quenching made it impossible for any honorable
scientist to develop a scenario supporting the NTSB's. Knowing who was
paying the bills, SNL and CMR went through the motions, but in the end
these scientists likewise failed to find any reasonable way to justify
an imaginary scenario. These experts concluded:
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- In all the computer solutions, conditions were calculated
that indicated that quenching could have occurred in some of the vents
and passageways of the full-scale CWT geometry. Incorporating the effects
of quenching in the calculations appeared to significantly affect the differential
pressure histories that developed across the internal CWT structural members.
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- The NTSB grudgingly admitted to losing this battle, but
given its easy access to the taxpayer's wallet, the agency was not about
to abandon the war. By this stage it couldn't afford to. The NTSB needed
some answer to steer the public away from the obvious missile theory. It
would have to win by attrition, to wear the public and the media down.
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- So the NTSB contracted with Combustion Dynamics Ltd.
(CDL) "to evaluate the consistency between the computer calculations
of the full-scale CWT combustion model and other information and evidence
obtained during the investigation."
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- By this time the NTSB had descended to hoping "that
by conducting this evaluation ... it would be possible to narrow the number
of probable ignition location(s) within the CWT." This hope was in
vain. The NTSB had to concede defeat yet again:
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- Therefore, the rules-based analysis did not provide a
definitive determination regarding the probability that any given location
within the CWT was the ignition location.
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- But the scientists at CDL did discreetly extend the hope
that if the NTSB were to expend a few million additional taxpayer dollars,
the agency might walk away with at least some token of support from within
the scientific community:
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- However, the rules-based analysis did reveal that the
pressure differentials produced by an internal fuel/air explosion were
consistent with the overall level of damage observed in the CWT.
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- With hope still alive, the NTSB headed for Bruntingthorpe,
England, to blow up a 747 CWT and to pray that CDL's "rules-based
analysis" would prove to be something more than a polite gesture by
scientists dependent on future government contracts.
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- But by the time the dust had settled from the Bruntingthorpe
explosion, the NTSB was forced to abandon rules-based analysis:
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- The Board observed that the test parameters used resulted
in a significantly more dynamic and destructive explosion within the test
plane's CWT than was indicated by the accident airplane's wreckage. (The
catastrophic nature of the damage to the test plane indicated that if such
an event occurred in flight, it would likely result in the airplane instantaneously
separating into four major components: left wing, right wing, forward fuselage,
and aft fuselage.)
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- The "rules-based" analysis had literally been
blown away. With all of its investigative hypotheses reduced to rubble,
the NTSB chose to reconstruct the results in a way more to its liking:
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- Finally, analysis of the results of computer modeling
of combustion in a full-scale CWT under conditions simulating those of
TWA flight 800 indicated that a localized ignition of the flammable vapor
could have generated pressure levels that, based upon failure analysis,
would cause the damages observed in the wreckage of the accident airplane's
CWT.
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- No outside scientific agency or person had made such
a statement. In fact, all contracted testing and analysis ran counter to
what the NTSB was now saying. But it no longer mattered. By this point
the NTSB had shifted from scientific fact to sheer propaganda. Only its
own controlled personnel could be coerced into conclusions that defied
all scientific testing and analysis:
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- Accordingly, the Safety Board concludes that a fuel/air
explosion in the CWT of TWA flight 800 would have been capable of generating
sufficient internal pressure to break apart the tank.
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- This is fiction. Jet A's lack of flammability, according
to the exhaustive analysis conducted under contract for the NTSB, created
a high probability that the liquid would have extinguished any flames ignited
by any known internal ignition source. Nor could defendants find a hypothetical
spark of sufficient strength to ignite Jet A.
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- To be sure, if an explosion in the CWT had occurred,
it would have blown the CWT apart. In fact, an explosion had blown it apart.
This, no one denied. But no scientific foundation existed to hypothesize
how such an explosion could occur by purely mechanical means.
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- In its analysis, the International Association of Machinists
and Aerospace Workers flatly rejected the hypothesis that an explosion
occurred spontaneously. Said the IAMAW, "A high pressure event breached
the fuselage and the fuselage unzipped due to the event. The explosion
was a result of this event."
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- What the IAMAW is saying is that the initiating explosion
occurred outside the plane, penetrated the fuselage, and caused the CWT
to explode.
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- But the NTSB was no more interested in hearing the truth
from the IAMAW than it was from the scientific community. So it ignored
the IAMAW report and the scientific data and generally bypassed the inconvenient
step of first demonstrating that the explosion could occur from within.
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- In that scientific testing had eliminated all hypothetical
NTSB mechanical scenarios, the NTSB ceased scientific inquiry that would
only cause further embarrassment and marginalize the mechanical conclusion
it was charged with reaching.
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- From this point forward the board would descend from
modern science to old-fashioned alchemy and sum it all up in a fable worthy
of Harry Potter.
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