- On a warm June evening in Kansas City, the historic home
of TWA and the current site of its huge overhaul base, a group of 75 or
so airline pilots watched the documentary "Silenced: Flight 800 and
the Subversion of Justice" in stunned horror.
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- Afterwards, not a one among them, either publicly or
privately, challenged the video's thesis that TWA Flight 800 had indeed
been shot down. Offered instead were corroborating details, particularly
from angry TWA pilots, about the money trail and the inexplicable Pentagon
visits of then TWA CEO Jeff Erickson. Said one TWA pilot. "90 percent
of us believe there was a government cover-up."
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- From the Boeing community in Seattle the response has
been much the same. Writes one Boeing engineer, a man who had spent countless
hours helping analyze TWA 800 on Boeing's Cray Supercomputers, "I
brought it ("Silenced") to work today and showed it during lunch
to eight of my fellow Boeing workers. The room was deathly quiet the entire
time. ... My impression then was a missile strike, and it is even more
so today."
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-
- Even more troubling is the response of Mike Wire, the
Philadelphia millwright on whose presumed testimony the CIA based its notorious
animation of TWA 800 rocketing upwards like a missile:
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- "The video 'Silenced' presents a factual reenactment
of what I saw that night. My part of the video also is what I told the
FBI a few days after the incident at an in-depth interview at my residence.
As you can see, what I saw originated from behind the houses on the beach
- that is why I at first thought it to be a firework. It most definitely
didn't start up in the sky like the FBI/CIA story says. I don't know how
they could (come) up with that scenario because it doesn't match what I
saw and told the FBI or what other witnesses I have talk to since May of
2000 had reported."
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- Writes Dwight Brumley, a 20-year Navy vet who watched
the tragedy unfold from above, after watching "Silenced":
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- "The CIA animation in no way represents what I saw
that night. Based on the time line, as I understand it, the "flare"
that I reported seeing off the right side of and below USAir 217 could
not, I repeat, could not have been TWA 800 in crippled flight just before
and after it exploded. There are two reasons why. First, TWA 800 would
have been moving in my field of view from left to right, not from right
to left as I clearly observed; and second, my understanding of the basic
laws of aerodynamics leads me to conclude there is no way that TWA 800,
with the nose section gone, could have possibly climbed 3,000-4,000 feet
as the CIA video portrays."
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- Not all responses to the project, however, have been
supportive. In the May issue of Kansas City business magazine, Ingram's,
and comparably in a five-part WorldNetDaily series, I wrote of Peter
Goelz, the then managing director of the National Transportation
Safety Board:
-
-
- "Instructive in Goelz's technique was his handling
of Kelly O'Meara, a reporter for The Washington Times Insight Magazine.
Some time after the crash, O'Meara interviewed Goelz about some radar data
newly released by the NTSB itself.
-
- "As soon as O'Meara left his office, Goelz called
Howard Kurtz of the rival Washington Post to plant a story. Kurtz would
quote Goelz as saying 'She really believes that the United States Navy
shot this thing down and there was a fleet of warships.' As O'Meara's audiotape
revealed, it was the mocking and evasive Goelz who raised the issue of
missiles, not O'Meara.
-
- "Wrote Insight editor Paul Rodriguez, 'In my experience
as a veteran newsman, journalists would never roll over and allow government
bureaucrats to use them to slime their colleagues. Yet that precisely is
what recently happened.'"
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- Peter Goelz was quick to respond. In a letter dated,
June 5, he wrote:
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- "Your story, like O'Meara's is a melange of half-truths,
outright falsehoods and sheer stupidity. The sad thing about your piece
and Ms. O'Meara's is the hurt that they can cause to the 100's of Navy
personnel who worked 24 hour shifts to recover all 230 victims and for
the family members of flight 800 who may read your groundless charges.
-
- "In the end there were no missiles, no bombs, no
mystery fleet, no fleeing ships, no terrorists, no U.S. Navy involvement.
It was just a tired old 747 with an empty, explosive center wing tank.
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- "For all those involved it was a tragedy of incalculable
pain. For 'pundits' like you, a topic for sport and financial gain. Shame
on you. Shame on Ingram's."
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- When Goelz saw the WorldNetDaily series he responded
once more, this time by e-mail under the subject heading, "GARBAGE."
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- "Just finished you [sic] five part WND series -
it's really garbage - and to think you're trying to make a buck off it
as well - I fear it's a new low. By the way, I just checked on Amazon.com
and [James] Sander's book [Altered Evidence] is currently rated as the
92,000th most purchased book. Don't start the new pool just yet."
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- For the record, under President Clinton, Peter Goelz
ascended from the ranks of the Missouri River gambling lobbyists to become
chief administrator of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
in just a brief few years. Ironically, he uses the same tactics against
me that he denies having used against Kelly O'Meara: ridicule, intimidation,
blind charges of profiteering, and the pious exploitation of the U.S. Navy
and victim families.
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- In truth, neither in the article nor in the video, "Silenced,"
do I even imply that the Navy shot down Flight 800. In fact, three of the
most compelling witnesses in the video are Navy people; a fourth is a family
member. For the record, Goelz's NTSB refused to let any of the 736 official
eyewitnesses - several of them experienced military observers - testify
at either hearing, and it disallowed all discussion of explosive residue
(found all over the plane) lest the FBI one day reopen the criminal case.
And yes, as he knows and the FBI acknowledges, there was a fleeing ship.
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- As to the plane, it was not particularly old and certainly
no more explosive than the average 747. If the NTSB had believed what Goelz
has said, they would have recalled those planes quicker than you could
say "Firestone." Ask the machinists union. Ask any TWA pilot.
Ask a Boeing engineer. After spending $40 million, the NTSB was unable
to identify a scenario that would allow the plane to blow up.
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- In the video, my partner James Sanders and I did something
the NTSB refused to do - talk to the eyewitnesses, position them on site,
review the drawings they made for the FBI, and much more.
-
- The fifth anniversary on July 17 presents the last great
opportunity to share this story with a mainstream media that definitely
does not want to hear it. If the overwhelming public response in the last
two weeks is any indication, this is one story that may well from the bottom
up. ___
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-
- Jack Cashill's stunning documentary video, "Silenced:
Flight 800 and the Subversion of Justice" is available only
through WorldNetDaily's online store. Be sure to get your copy today while
they are still available.
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- Related story - Haunting evidence of missile attack http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=23035
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- Jack Cashill is an Emmy-award winning independent
writer and producer with a Ph.D. in American Studies from Purdue.
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