- WASHINGTON (AP) -- A retired Navy pilot who has been investigating the crash
of TWA Flight 800 said Monday that the plane was destroyed by two missiles
that exploded just off the left wing.
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- William Donaldson, joined at a news conference
by two former TWA pilots and three eyewitnesses to the July 1996 crash,
did not say who he believes fired such missiles. One, he said, was launched
from a boat just off the coast of Long Island, the other from a second
vessel farther south.
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- The plane exploded as it flew from New
York to Paris, killing all 230 aboard.
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- Donaldson said the FBI and the National
Transportation Safety Board, pressured by unidentified, high-ranking U.S.
officials, have steered the public toward a theory that the plane's center
fuel tank exploded.
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- "Politicians are interfering at
the top. People that should be bubbling the answers from the bottom are
silenced," Donaldson said at the conclusion of a nearly four-hour
briefing was arranged by Reed Irvine and his conservative group, Accuracy
in Media.
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- The NTSB has not determined the cause
of the crash, but it has ruled out a missile strike or a bomb on board.
Investigators believe an electrical spark may have ignited the fuel tank.
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- "Cmdr. Donaldson was wrong when
he postulated that Jet-A fuel could not explode. It did. He is wrong today,"
said Peter Goelz, the board's managing director.
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- FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette said:
"We remain unaware of any new evidence that would cause us to reopen
our criminal investigation."
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- Besides Donaldson, those speaking at
the news conference included retired TWA Capt. Howard Mann, a military
accident investigator, and retired TWA Capt. Albert Mundo, who served as
flight engineer on the next-to-last flight of the Boeing 747.
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