Are you serious? Why in the world would you believe this? Have you ever known any active service members?
I agree that there’s no way this could have been covered up even if the officers on the ship tried, and I seriously doubt that they would have. The US shot down an Iranian airliner by accident and fessed up.
There are many Navy and military members associated with ARAP that would disagree with that - including the now deceased Commander Donaldson. I believe there was one or two cases recorded of family members who were called by personnel who said something like “Dad we shot down an airliner” or such. I’ll have to dig for that one for verification. But you have to work from the other side-in on this one and understand the normal means of these things leaking has been tightly controlled. You have to think how exactly any conscientious sailor would go about this? The main media is shut down as a source, otherwise the many good cases of missile evidence already collected would be available. The internet is always available, but that has limited reach as far as official influence. Myself I suspect military personnel given an official no-talk order at threat of legal action might be intimidated enough to stay quiet. Yes, this sounds like classic conspiracy paranoia, until you look into it and find how much it conforms to things already happening within this case.
The first thing my relative said when I told him of this is exactly what you wrote above. You see, this is why Flight 800 is so important because it has changed the way you think of things in terms of normal expectations. What we have here is a new level of government ability to conduct investigations against the normal means of check and balance or even plain evidence. The "someone would have talked" expectation - which I agree is sound and reasonable - has to be weighed against what has already happened. With evidence pointing towards missiles being shown and available the media sources of CNN and Discovery Channel both decided to present programs in lengthy detail backing the official version and showing how a center fuel tank could blow-up from a spark. This is hardly the backdrop in which a conscientious sailor could come forth and tell what he knows. Call it the 'Gate-keeper' system. On top of that, government now has broad powers rendered under very broad definitions of national security if you look at some of the recent Homeland and Patriot acts. I doubt any whistle-blowing sailor would make it that far.
But (all this in my opinion of course) you have to ask why, with so much contradicting circumstantial, witness, and forensic evidence out there, did CNN and Discovery choose to investigate and try to prove the government version? Where is the CNN program bringing the witnesses together to tell what they saw and speak of what problems they have with the official version? Where is the Discovery Channel program investigating the technical aspects of missile evidence? Where is the NY Times week-long feature discussing the many cases of disproven evidence in the NTSB report like the alleged bomb sniffing dog test etc? Is this a scenario in which a sailor is going to come forth? Or could he even come forth if he tried?
A good example of what we are talking about is James Sanders. A detective/investigator, Sanders was approached by a hangar investigator who told him FBI wasn't sincerely looking into a reddish stain across several rows of seats. Sanders got some samples of this material from the investigator and had it tested. They came up positive for rocket propellant. The government's reaction to a private citizen doing the job the law required them to do for the public was to arrest Sanders and sieze his samples. They then had them tested and said the substance was glue used in the manufacture of the seats. This is where we get to the come forth part. After hearing his name associated with tests he never did the NASA scientist credited with finding the glue wrote a letter protesting that he never did any such tests. This letter has not made the media. I'll have to dig for that one if you need it. This is what happens to people who do come forth.
Another example is the St Louis Customs agent who allegedly did a bomb-sniffing dog test on the aircraft that accounted for the bomb residue found during the investigation. ARAP researchers discovered the agent recorded the time of the test and that the aircraft was scheduled to depart for Hawaii a half hour after the test was done. Since the agent testified that the plane was empty at the time, it makes it unlikely he tested the Flight 800 aircraft since 747's have pre-flight crews on them about an hour and a half before departure. Another TWA 747 scheduled for a London departure later that afternoon was sitting at the next gate. That was the plane the agent did the test on. The media reaction to this condemning circumstantial evidence of investigation falsehood was complete silence and shows trying to prove the government case. The NTSB reaction to having its evidence disproven was silence.
All I can say is good luck sailor.No, actually, it doesn’t. It still sounds like classic conspiracy paranoia.
As someone who is afraid of heights, that “zoom-climb” recreation that they show on the documentaries is enough to make me piss myself. Everytime I fly, my plane starts exhibiting the same “symptoms” that led up to the TWA 800 crash.
Thank God for airport bars!
No, I’m not serious - it was supposed to be heavy-handed sarcasm. My point was of course there would be nothing in the world that could keep you quiet and participate in the cover-up of the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians.
But then there’s this…
From my point of view, there may be a few oddballs who could be intimidated, but conservatively, 90% of the sailors on that boat would be whistleblowers. But from JetBlast’s POV, every single one of the hundreds of sailors would just comply with orders to keep quiet about it.
How would a sailor report it? Easy, but it’s not through conspiracy sites on the Internet. Call up ABC, demonstrate that you were there and what you saw. Give them names of other sailors who could confirm your story. The lid is now blown.
All it would take is one sailor out of hundreds. Anyone who knows military people, knows that the vast majority would have done this. Any theory requiring every single one to remain silent has a huge burden of proof to surmount.
I do have to admire, in a way, folks who are convinced the government can’t do a single *other *thing right, but can run a perfect, airtight conspiracy.
Screw ABC. The National Enquirer pays better.
My apologies. It shocked me so much because it seemed so out of character. I’ll have to get my sarcasm meter recalibrated. We’re in complete agreement.
I’d be very interested to see if this is true as well. My limited understanding of radar leads me to believe that the tower’s radar is not equipped in any way to track (hundreds of) small pieces of debris moving at supersonic speeds. It is designed to track large objects moving slowly.
Which to me seems a convenient way of totally avoiding all the evidence. Is the "someone would have talked" hypothesis a gambit to head off avoiding discussion or even recognition of the numerous examples of circumstantial and scientific evidence?
What about Pierre Salinger, didn't he work FOR ABC? He couldn't get very far with them. The one thing I wish with Salinger, who was piled on and defamed shamelessly after he was dead and couldn't defend himself, was that he could have presented some of the radar and other evidence like the rocket propellant and St Louis bomb test while he had the cameras on him. But thinking ABC would actually put something like that on the air is probably unrealistic. Some people in here need to do some more reading on this and learn of Kristina Borjesson who worked for CBS and lost her job for trying to report on the TWA 800 cover-up. Perhaps the sailors could all go to CBS? I think it was CBS that handed the rocket propellant swatches over to FBI when they demanded them. So you are saying ABC and CBS would gladly come forth and recieve a whistle-blower sailor? But what about the other cases I've provided above? Wouldn't they be interested in those? Borjesson wrote a book about media duplicity, including her experience, titled 'Into The Buzzsaw'. Gate-keepers.
It seems some serious cases of circumstantial and scientific evidence is being avoided here in order to return us to the "someone would have talked" theory. Why is that? I would think it would be valid enough and significant enough to at least merit discussion? Hmm, I would almost think it was being deliberately avoided. Oh no, those folks surely wouldn't accept any admiration they didn't deserve knowing that official cause proponents have a much greater claim to airtight ignoring of numerous cases of obvious, widely available evidence.
Any chance on any discussion of the examples I gave? Like the St Louis bomb test? How did they manage to bomb test an empty plane a half hour before departure? 747's board at least an hour before departure. What about the NASA scientist who said he didn't do the tests they said he did? Isn't that a major scandal? - And how did seat glue manage to make a stain across several rows of seats? This stuff is all verifiable and documented. And the people who investigated it are serious sober-minded people with good credentials and credibility. I doubt anyone would get away with calling aviation PhD's "tin-hats" or MIT professors "conspiracy theorists". You're forgetting some of the people showing the evidence also have a military background. And how many NTSB investigations in US history had a group of witnesses take out a full page ad protesting the investigation?
Gee, am I overcritical or do I see these answers as somewhat lacking for the level of debate this room espouses? And let's extend that to this country and what it and its military espouses in terms of law and Constitution - let's say.Because all the evidence you’ve presented is clearly bunk, completely unsupported, or contradictory. You’re left falling back on the massive coverup theory and we’re pointing out that, it too, is a very unlikely scenario. Coverups don’t work, and the more people involved the quicker they unravel.
Why is it you keep saying you don’t know enough about math, or aerodynamics, or explosions, or whatever, to be able to make a solid judgement of your own, yet you are so doubful of the conclusions of those who have such expertise?
I’m not a mathemetician or a pilot or an aerodynamacist either, but let’s look at the 3200’ climb. I’m going to assume 500mph airspeed (which is probably too slow if the the plane was already settled in at cruising altitude, but may be too fast if it was still climbing, OTOH if it was still climbing it was already pitched up). Anyway, that converts to 730 ft/sec. If it pitched up violently at a 45 degree angle, it could climb 3200’ in 10 seconds or so. If it pitched up less, it might take more time, but the airspeed would bleed off more slowly, and it would have a longer time before stalling. That doesn’t seem the least implausible to me.
But back to my original question – why have you decided the evidence is not good enough to justify the conclusions if you admit you do not know enough relevant information to make a judgement on the evidence?
Please.
Any chance of any discussion from you about the official, painstakingly-obtained conclusion, based on the actual “obvious, widely available” physical evidence provided by the airplane itself? Sure doesn’t look like it.
I’ve been on some that didn’t. And so what? Are the bomb testers and everyone who saw them part of this massive, yet airtight, conspiracy too?
There’s a lot more NASA scientists who said otherwise. Maybe they’re part of the conspiracy too.
There’s seat glue on *every *seat.
It happens. The human power to believe what we want to believe is not necessarily much affected by credentials.
As do a helluva lot more people who actually saw the wreckage up close.
What does that prove about what actually happened?
No, they reflect impatience with those of you who insist on filtering the evidence in order to reach a predetermined conclusion. That is more than merely “overcritical” of you.
What the hell does that mean?
Start with this. Explain for us how the aircraft, most of which was recovered and reassembled and used today to train crash investigators, shows a failure sequence consistent with anything but an explosion in the center fuel tank. Explain for us how it is different from the failure sequence evidence remaining after other fuel tank explosions in other aircraft.
Or just explain for us how your “missile” could get inside a fuel tank. Or, if your “alternative theory” is that it penetrated the fuselage and hit a particular row of seats first, why there isn’t any such “evidence” elsewhere in the cabin.
But this statement is just in outright contempt of the fact that the Hawaii flight that day had a scheduled flight attendant crew and galley service crew that boarded and prepared the flight that day and know when they got on to prep the flight. This would all be easily trace-able if we had an agency that was actually investigating facts instead of arranging a cover-up. You sound like you haven't even studied this. Did you know the Customs agent protested that FBI changed his words and took offense to them suggesting he was sloppy with his handling of the materials? I don't think those offhand remarks quite cover that. Hawaii is a good distance from St Louis, if you are suggesting they waited until a half-hour before departure to board I think you are damaging your own credibility. Hey, how did the bomb test residue get on the outside of the plane and wings by the way?
I don't think this quite covers the fact they lied about the NASA scientist they referenced as having done the test. Nor does it cover the fact that our media never bothered to look into a major scandal in the investigation. I've seen a chemical analysis of 3M Boeing seat glue and the samples. They are completely different in composition. I'm afraid your arguments are woefully lacking in comparison to the range of evidence involved here. Apparently there's one standard here for one type of "lies" and another for another type.
So you are contending FBI/NTSB can falsely cite tests and scientists without scrutiny? And that a major piece of missile evidence can go uninvestigated when the NTSB version is questioned by the very person NTSB cites as having done the test? Whose behavior regarding the residue swatches is more suspicious according to FBI's own profile standards? Why can't we re-test the swatches in an independent laboratory in order to show the veracity and reliability of the official investigators you cite with such confidence. Surely, it would be no great burden on them to simply re-test a sample. Oh, by the way, I wonder what Sanders and the testing lab would think of their basically being called liars and tamperers? Are you suggesting Sanders switched samples with PETN residue to frame NTSB? Or maybe the lab?
Which is exactly why they have no explanation for a streak of reddish/pink residue across a 3 seat wide section of 17 rows. What caused this oddity with the seat glue in this section only? Funny, it has the strange exact forensic appearance of missile exhaust transiting the cabin. (We'll forget that a laboratory tested the residue as positive for rocket propellant. Why bother with such detail when we can simply reference airtight conspiracies?) By the way, where were the outspoken Navy guys coming out to tell us what the color of missile propellant residue is?
I'll be glad to explain it. There's something called the Constitution that forbids government from practicing a different form of law than what the people are subject to, as well as being exempt from its own laws. It is a crime by the government's own definition to conduct a false investigation, or deliberately misrepresent facts or obstruct honest investigation, in an airline crash. Government decisions in recent times have been accompanied by information of questionable veracity. The whole idea of our Constitution was truthful check and balance of government. Any alteration of that by government can only be at the expense of the Constitution.
ARAP investigators have documented proof of FBI/NTSB altering or removing pieces of evidence from the hangar. Therefore, by the government's own definition, the investigation is disqualified as any valid reference. If you do an honest evaluation of past NTSB investigations they include eyewitness input and other circumstantial forensic proof. There was one crash back in the 40's or 50's that was solved mainly from the eyewitness statements. So it's not entirely fair or honest to demand others use the official evidence when there's proof the official evidence has been altered. And let's remind ourselves that this demand is coming from a side that gives itself the privilege of ignoring scientific evidence that they themselves haven't lived up to the demand of disproving themselves. I see a lot of suggestions of crank "conspiracy theorists" etc, but I don't see anyone touching Dr Thomas Stalcup's mach 4 evidence or referring directly to Dr Stalcup as a questionable source. Nor do I see any credible acknowledgement to the credentials and credibility of ARAP's prime investigators like Captain Lahr, or MIT professor Graeme Sephton and others.
No, I don't think the other side has lived-up its own demands in this debate. So far, I think I've provided more cases of forensic trace or evidence. The other side appears to be dependent on an end-around 'airtight conspiracy' gambit that is being effectively used to avoid discussion of yet-disproven circumstantial and forensic evidence. Surely restricting the discussion to the confines of the government version goes against all understood forms of discovery and information vetting. Especially when there is proof of government misconduct. Or are you even aware that FBI was witnessed by police as sneaking into the hangar and removing materials at night (which is something they arrested Sanders for)?
The failure you refer to is one that has had its failure sequence re-arranged in order to appear as the initiating cause. There's no doubt the tank exploded, and no doubt it left the forensic damage it did, however it wasn't the original cause of the plane's destruction. There's more than enough eyewitness and scientific evidence to show this and that's what we should be discussing. I feel there's an effort to avoid this in this debate.
I suggest we return to Blake's on-topic request and discuss the radar evidence. A request was made to explain the mach 4 ejecta caught on radar. So far, I don't think anyone has attempted to answer that.Yawn. As I’ve already pointed out, you already “know” there was a cover-up, and are cherry-picking (and, in this case, straw-grasping) for supporting “evidence”.
Even if relevant, it would still be trivial. I haven’t studied what happened to the Roswell aliens either, if that’s any comfort to you.
And what does that have to do with what happened to TW800?
[quoteHey, how did the bomb test residue get on the outside of the plane and wings by the way?[/quote]
The bomb test material, and the bomb tester, did get off the plane, didn’t they?
[quote[I don’t think this quite covers the fact they lied[/quote]
That’s an assumption, not a conclusion.
What makes you think what happened was “major” or a “scandal”? Besides the fact that you want it to be true, that is?
Another assumption, not a conclusion.
No theory, other than the fuel tank vapors one, was more investigated and more publicized than that one. It badly hampered the investigation, too. But, if you’re saying that the fact that the “answer” you want to be true was found to be otherwise means that it was “uninvestigated”, then there’s nothing much to discuss with you.
That’s a lot of indignation about accusations of lying from someone who has done so much of it, on a blanket basis at that, himself. :dubious:
Ever see a sloppy workman spill something out of the side of a paint bucket? Ever spill something yourself? Please.
And, oddly, no evidence on the actual aircraft structure that there was an explosion inside the cabin. How do you know what missile exhaust looks like, “exactly”, anyway?
Probably trying to stifle their annoyance at being distracted from investigating what really happened.
But accusations of lying are just fine. Right.
Good Lord. If you blanket-dismiss the usefulness of *the airplane wreckage itself *for helping determine why it crashed, on the basis that someone thought he saw someone else doing something with it, then what was all that rot earlier about considering all the evidence?
There is no more definitive way for you to demonstrate that you’re simply determined to support your pet theory of a government cover-up, NOT that you’re interested in finding out what actually happened. Tell you what, go get an engineering degree and some experience in the real world of aerospace engineering, and try this again.
I made a mistake here in engaging a conspiracy bug. My fault.
Good day. 
I was just pointing out that your answers seem to reflect a person unfamiliar with the subject. Which in turn doesn't give your offhand comebacks much credibility, at least not as much as you seem to be assuming.
I'm of the opinion that I'll allow anyone who desires to destroy their own credibility by ridiculing the MIT professors, Navy pilots, scientists, Aviation PhD's and their sound (yet so far undiscussed) evidence as Roswell kooks as much post space as they want. I think honest people will see the real material was flagrantly dodged here. The means of argument here is clearly ridicule and defamation and not discussion of facts. These are tactics commonly used by those not wanting to confront or admit the truth.
First, let's point out that you dodged the main point here. That point was that the test couldn't have been done on the TWA 800 aircraft because it would be impossible for the plane to be empty a half hour before departure. So, since you're electing to debate this with no knowledge of the issues, that means that the government's only excuse for the bomb residue hits found in many places on the wreckage is now disproven. By law that re-opens the case. I hope I don't have to explain why there being no official explanation for the bomb residue is important.
It's absurd to suggest that bomb chemicals from the test managed to get all over the outside of the plane. Anyone who consulted any Customs bomb tester would be told this was preposterous. Again, when interviewed, the agent himself protested that he had not spilled bomb chemicals as described and was not sloppy in his work. This is all on record. I'm sorry but I don't think your responses are adequate to the established and documented reality here.
What it has to do with TWA 800 is the NTSB now doesn't have any explanation for the bomb residue. (I see you are sticking with nobody being on board including galley crew, flight crew, flight attendants, and passengers a half hour before an 8 hour flight. And also the stumbling bomb tester spilling bomb dust all over the outside of the plane. But most credible people would see that as the absurdity it is -which is probably why nobody has challenged it.)
Ah ha. You expose your contempt of fact by denying that 747's preparing for an 8 hour flight wouldn't be completely empty a half hour before departure as the bomb sniffing agent recorded.
I'm trying to understand how exactly the scientist cited as disproving the missile residue protesting the government was lying about tests he had done *isn't* a major scandal in a major cover-up case like Flight 800?
Nobody has made any attempt to address Stalcup's mach 4 data. Why is that?
I'm not sure what missile exhaust looks like, but I do know what it is composed of, and the independent laboratory that Sanders took his seat fabric samples to tested it positive as PETN (rocket propellant). This became big news in the media. After FBI arrested Sanders and seized all samples they then allegedly made their own tests and found the residue to be seat glue. All media coverage died right away after this. But, as I told you, the NASA scientist credited with finding it was glue wrote a letter of protest saying he never did any such test. This DID NOT make the news. (So much for the 'come forth' theory)
First, so far, no one has ever attempted to explain how exactly seat glue managed to create a reddish residue streaked across a 3 seat-wide, 17 row-long section of seats? What caused the "glue" to do this? Next, we can't know what Navy missile propellant looks like when sprayed across airline seats when none of the Navy personnel we are being told would come forward actually have come forward to help with this. You would think this could be easily shown? I don't see any answer as to why we couldn't simply re-test one of the samples? (Unanswered)
A likely scenario has one explosion outside of the aircraft as an Al Qaeda suicide aircraft was struck by the US missile launched at it. 800's nose gear door was badly blasted inward and the nose gear tires had blast shredding damage with blast scarring far beyond any fuel tank explosion that would have blown the doors outward.
This answer is in contempt of police witnessing of evidence removal by FBI late at night at Calverton. All on record. (This is illegal by the way)
It also ignores claims by some of the hangar investigators themselves of witnessing wreckage being hammered and shaped to fit, which is a blatant violation of investigation procedures.
The suggestion that an engineering degree is required to debate basic verified facts about Flight 800 is absurd. But we do have engineers like Sephton and Stalcup whose input has strangely gone undiscussed. Forgive me if my citing your total evasion of these named engineers and their information offends what you consider to be your own attempt to 'find out what actually happened'.
In my opinion, the answers above look like a deliberate run-around designed to avoid addressing or recognizing the facts I've presented. I believe my presented facts have merit and I also believe your obvious efforts above to avoid them speaks the loudest.
To be honest with you I personally don't see anything you've entered into the discussion as giving you the right to call me a "conspiracy bug". I'd prefer to think the obvious level of deflection and avoidance you practice strengthens my case rather than weakens it. But I suspect the insult is being used provocatively in order to draw the debate into name-calling as an excuse to end it. But I can understand the need for official story-backers to avoid the debate, seeing how poor their offerings are. You can see the official story promoters get out quickly when a discussion of Stalculp's mach 4 data is called for.Because it’s clearly nonsensical. As RedSwinglineOne said, ATC radar is designed to NOT track little bits of shit (“clutter”) and, even if it did, aerodynamic drag would slow an object down LONG before its return could be differentiated from that of the airplane.
But that's absolutely meaningless and is clearly being used as a means to avoid discussion of scientifically provable evidence. I don't know who you are, or what your credentials are, or who "RedSwinglineOne" is, but I do know who Dr Stalcup PhD is and those responses are meaningless when compared to the material Stalcup discusses that is, so far, being strenuously avoided at the weakest excuse.
The argument "ATC radar is not designed to track little bits of clutter" is invalid because, no matter what the design, ATC radar was capable of recording the plume of ejecta originating from TWA 800's starboard side that evening. Even worse, your claim contradicts NTSB's own use of that same 'clutter' tracked by the same radar in their investigation.
Stalcup was clear in his arguments that scientific formulas were used to average the density of the clutter and its behavior vs aerodynamic drag. His scientific process is clearly spelled out as is his method. In order to disprove or discount what Stalcup alleges you have to discount his process directly - not by any overly-general pre-empting.
Your argument itself refutes what you are suggesting because if "little clutter", as you say, is stoppable by aerodynamic drag in short distance you have no explanation for the radar catching the plume reaching out to a half mile from TWA 800. So there are actually two forensic issues here. The first is the speed of the ejecta being caught by radar and the second is the distance and how that conforms to the ejecta potential of a fuel tank explosion? Can a center fuel tank explosion (confined by the wing airframe matrix) eject a large plume of materials outward to a distance of a half mile? The statement that debris would slow down long before they could be differentiated from an aircraft is incorrect and clearly ignores the fact that ATC radar caught debris that were both corroborated by witnesses, referred to by NTSB itself as debris caught by radar, and conformed to the debris field recorded by the wreckage recovery team. It is not credible to deny that the debris caught on radar is the same debris plotted and mapped in the debris chart established by NTSB itself (Except for the mach 4 ejection debris) (I wonder why they excluded that debris area without explanation?).
Furthermore, ATC radar more than adequately shows that both substantial ejecta plumes originating from TWA 800 just so happened to blow-out in the same direction that the shooting flare witnessed by hundreds was heading. Most witnesses described a shore to sea direction of the streaking object. The plume Stalcup analyzes happens in a shore to sea direction. Amazingly NTSB did no analysis of this plume and did no search in the downrange area where the debris landed. The statement "ATC radar was not designed to track clutter" is not valid in relation to this. Nor should it be used to prevent further discussion of the radar evidence. Nor has any credible information been shown to show why ATC radar isn't valid for tracking ejecta plumes.I’m not going wading though Stalcup’s analysis, but can you briefly describe how an ATC radar would measure the speed of the debris at Mach 4? I had the impression that ATC radar is not doppler.