- NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. investigators say movie director Oliver Stone is
producing more fiction than fact in an ABC special promoting the theory
that a missile shot down TWA Flight 800. James Kallstrom, who led the FBI
investigation into the July 17, 1996 disaster, said Thursday there is no
evidence of a missile attack. "The real facts are glossed over by
the likes of Mr. Stone and others who spend their life bottom-feeding in
those small, dark crevices of doubt and hypocrisy," he said.
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- ABC News said the program, which has
not yet been scheduled for broadcast, is an entertainment special and not
a traditional news story. "There will be no confusion with the audience
that this was in any way something ABC News was involved in," said
ABC News spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.
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- Despite an intensive two-year FBI investigation
into the crash, Stone said he questions the results. "You have to
pay attention to what eyewitnesses saw," he said. "The streaks
of light. There were a lot of witnesses, like the Kennedy assassination.
A lot of people said bullets were fired from the grassy knoll. How could
we ignore that? But we did." TWA Flight 800 exploded minutes after
takeoff from Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.
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- Investigators initially thought a bomb,
missile or mechanical malfunction could be responsible. The missile theory
was supported by more than 200 witnesses who told the FBI they saw streaks
of light in the sky about the time the plane exploded. After months of
analysis, however, investigators concluded the witnesses actually were
seeing the plane disintegrating. The investigators concluded that the centre
fuel tank exploded, but the National Transportation Safety Board has not
yet identified the cause of the explosion.
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- "The notion that thousands of professional
and courageous investigators . . . who worked day and night for what was
right are somehow part of a massive conspiracy is truly a story that could
only be created by the warped fairy tale world of Oliver Stone," Kallstrom
said. Stone is the director of JFK, a movie that advanced a complex conspiracy
theory for the assassination of president John F. Kennedy. Stone conceded
an accident could have caused the crash, but said a navy long-range missile
also could have brought down the plane.
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