And as Edward Condon once said, “where secrecy is known to exist, one can never be absolutely sure that he knows the complete truth”
If an event like the JFK assisination were to happen today anyone not thinking it was a conspiracy would be considered some kind of “nut”. We seem to assume today that any “event”, 911, Mumbai, being examples, are the work of the direct actors and other unknown conspirators and to think otherwise would be foolish.
There’s only one conspiracy theory (and I hate to even call it that) that I subscribe to, and have yet to see “debunked” - I don’t believe for one second that TWA 800 was brought down by a sparking wire in the plane’s center-fuel tank. Too many reliable witnesses, including military personnel familiar with ordnance and high-velocity explosions, saw something streak toward that 747.
When you think about it, you could understand the authorities not wanting the public to know there was some loon with a fucking rocket launcher hanging about near airports, and that they might do everything within their power not to let that information get out.
You’re arguing that the public didn’t have a right to know that terrorists were (possibly) targeting civilian airliners back in 1996? 
Not at all. I’m just saying it wouldn’t surprise me that the authorities might want to keep it quiet.
Why not? It’s the same thing that happens in your car engine thousands of time a minute: a mixture of fuel and air is ignited by a spark. The tank was nearly empty and contained an atmosphere of fuel vapor and air. The wiring was old and its insulation cracked.
The “loon with a rocket launcher” would need to have been out at sea, not near the airport, and the plane was too high and well outside the range of a handheld rocket launcher and there were no boats in the area large enough to carry a regular AIM. The so-called “missile track” the witnesses described was nothing like a real missile track and was probably the burning jet shooting up because it was suddenly lighter and tail heavy because the front end of the fuselage had been blown and torn off.
You two are smart cookies but you really should read something besides CT sites. There’s a world of information you don’t yet know or understand about physics, aeronautics, engineering, chemistry, military hardware, etc that would make you less susceptible to the BS CTers foist off on you.
Well, that actually is part of the conspiracy theory: the crash occurred just weeks before the DNC convention of that year, with incumbent Bill Clinton enjoying a comfortable lead over GOP challenger, Bob Dole. The idea that the US was actually under attack by radical Islamic terrorists would do nothing to help Clinton in the polls so, the theory goes, the real cause of the crash was covered up. Incidentally, on 9/11 George Stephanopoulos (who was in a position to know) referred to “the bombing of TWA 800” in an interview with Peter Jennings; also in 2001 John Kerry stated twice, on live TV, that TWA 800 was brought down by terrorists, once on “Larry King Live” on 9/11, and then again on “Hardball” on September 24.
Again, I’m not saying I actually subscribe to the “bombing” theory; but I certainly would like to see it properly debunked.
The usual missile story has it being launched accidentally from a US Navy vessel. Care to explain how the “radical Islamic terrorists” would have gotten hold of one?
Take a look at the wreckage photos sometime. You’ll see the walls of the center fuel tank bent *outward *in all directions. Reconcile that with an external explosion. Of course, the wreckage could have been doctored by the conspirators …
To the OP question, as long as there are people willing to ignore contravening factual evidence, they will consider their pet CT’s undebunked. Here’s an example.
I certainly don’t subscribe to the “loon with a rocket launcher” theory. But what about a shoe-bomb? Or friendly fire? Also, it seems to me that if, for the first time in aviation history a commercial airliner simply exploded, for no apparent reason, in mid-flight, the authorities would’ve ordered the immediate grounding of all flights so that all center-fuel tanks could be inspected. I don’t remember that happening. Of course, there would be no urgent need to inspect anything if officials knew that something else brought down the plane.
And it seems to me that there are enough credible witnesses who describe actually seeing a flare of some kind “intersect” with the plane itself. Granted, I’m no expert, but I find it a little difficult to simply dismiss over 200 eyewitness reports.
Again, I’m not saying I believe it was a bombing or friendly fire. (How could the latter be successfully covered up, considering the number of people who would have to be involved?) I’m just saying that there is enough conflicting evidence to lead me to think the issue has not yet been properly debunked.
They tested this theory and there are specific signatures of a small explosion like that. (Have you ever blown something up? Trust me, you can tell where the charge went off.) None of the recovered pieces of 800, and they found nearly all of it, exhibit the signature and none of the missing pieces close to the tank are large enough to contain the whole thing.
From what? No Navy ships carrying AIMs were anywhere close to Long Island.
Like you, the initial investigators assumed it was a terrorist attack. It was the lack of evidence of such, and the plethora of evidence pointing to a sad accident, that changed their minds. Once they realized what did happen, the NTSB made 15 recommendations to prevent it from happening again, including flooding nearly-empty fuel tanks with nitrogen so there is no oxygen to react with the fuel. And if I recall correctly, all 747s were to be inspected for cracked insulation on their old, often VERY old, wiring. It is not unknown for a plane to be taken down by exploding fuel. PanAm Flight 214 was brought down in 1960 by a lightning strike that ignited the fuel vapor in one of its tanks. The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) recommended flooding nearly-empty tanks with an inert gas, like nitrogen (yeah, it ain’t inert like argon, but it is as far as fuel vapors are concerned) decades before Flight 800, but it was never done. And, since CTers often LOVE the Bermuda Triangle, in the story of Navy Flight 19, the TBM Avengers that “disappeared” in it, is often embroidered by a claim that a PBM Mariner searching for them was also sucked into the vortex. No, the type was known for its leaky fuel tanks and apparently exploded in flight. Several people saw a fireball where it would’ve been at that time.
However, this should not be read as support for the missile claims. Yes, many witnesses to the end of Flight 800 saw something shoot up. It is unlikely ANYBODY was following 800’s flightpath before it exploded. Several of the (leading) questions on the list the FBI used specifically asked about a missile. Yeah, people turned to see what just lit up the sky, and if the FBI thinks it was a missile, it must’ve been one. People like to tell the authorities what the authorities want to hear.
So yeah, there was no coverup. Hell, EVERYBODY’s first assumption was that it was terrorists or friendly fire. People asked all of your questions, investigated them, and found them wanting compared to boring science. There was no conspiracy, just a sad, explainable accident.
Well considering MKUltra was established as a fact by Senate hearings, I guess the factual answer to your question is no.
The idea that conspiracy theories are automatically wrong is one of the stupidest fallacies of modern times.
Conspiracy is politics as usual.
Not true. While doing a little research, I found this site:
http://www.apfn.org/APFN/eyewitnesses.htm
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Witness 73: "On 7/17/96, at approximately 8:37 P.M., she was on the Mobay (phonetic) section of Long Island Beach, New York, when she** observed an aircraft climbing in the sky**, traveling from her right to her left. She advised that the sun was setting behind her.** While keeping her eyes on the aircraft, she observed a ‘red streak’ moving up from the ground **toward the aircraft at an approximately a 45 degree angle. The ‘red streak’ was leaving a light gray colored smoke trail.
Witness 166: “noticed a large commercial plane flying east.…[then] noticed something ascending 30-35 miles away, which looked like white, yellow fire, trailed by black smoke…It ascended in a straight line at an angle of seven to ten degrees away from a vertical ninety degree…[He] believed it was from the water…After hearing news of the crash, he concluded that he had seen a missile. He stated he was in the Polish army in 1974 and has experience with missiles…[He] opined that this was a medium size missile which would have required three experienced people to operate.”
Witness 145: "stated that she saw a plane and noticed an object spiraling towards the plane. The object which she saw for about one second, had a glow at the end of it and a gray/white smoke trail.
Witness 640: At Smith Point Park, “he leaned back to stretch [and] his eye caught a jet plane in the sky, off to his left, and moving eastward. At the same time, he saw, off to his right, a ‘green flash’ rising up, and going toward the plane. The “flash” was far out in the ocean, was rising from the west, was also traveling east, and was behind the plane.”
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You get the point. This is the type of testimony that has bothered from the beginning. Yes, I suppose it’s possible that all of these witnesses were mistaken, but I think enough of them saw what at least appeared to be a missile of some kind that their statements can’t be easily discounted.
And how 'bout this from the 8/23/96 New York Times: PRIME EVIDENCE FOUND THAT DEVICE EXPLODED IN CABIN OF FLIGHT 800 - The New York Times
After a prolonged, confounding search of the ocean floor,* investigators have finally found scientific evidence that an explosive device was detonated inside the passenger cabin of Trans World Airlines Flight 800**, senior Federal officials said yesterday.
For weeks, criminal investigators have said they would need positive findings of explosive residue at the Washington lab before they could conclude what most of them have believed all along – that a bomb, not an unusual mechanical malfunction – destroyed the jet shortly after it left Kennedy International Airport on the evening of July 17.
*
The new, confirmed test result comes from a piece of wreckage – part of a seat, one official said – that was in the precise area of the passenger cabin where investigators have said the epicenter of the blast was…
As you said, everyone basically assumed it was a missile/bomb from day one. And I know investigators later claimed that the “explosive residue” found was from an earlier test of bomb-sniffing dogs on the plane. I guess that’s possible.
But here’s what we have: for the first time in aviation history a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky for no apparent reason. * At the same time*, hundreds of reliable witnesses claim to see some kind of streak arc through the sky and “merge” with the plane. Actual missile residue is found by investigators at the exact spot where the plane broke in half.
I’m no conspiracy theorist. I know that Oswald acted alone, terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, we landed on the Moon, there is no Bermuda Triangle, the Holocaust actually occurred and the government is not covering up the existence of UFOs. But I also don’t think it’s terribly unreasonable to suspect there might be more to the official explanation of just what caused TWA 800 to crash. In fact, it seems to me more of a strain of credulity to dismiss the above evidence in order to believe in the sudden center-fuel-tank explosion scenario.
By the way, it appears there are actually far more eyewitnesses to the TWA 800 explosion then I’d remembered. It’s appears to be closer to 600!
“(T)he first time in aviation history a commercial airliner is blown out of the sky for no apparent reason?” You are twisting the “facts” to support your (baseless) claim. Okay, I’ve spent too much of my life around investigators of airline crashes, and you haven’t, so I will cut ypu some slack. EVERY crash is treated as if the cause were unknown. That’s EXTREMELY basic detective work–you don’t want preconceptions coloring the evidence–and that is where the FBI went wrong and handed you points of doubt. The cause of PanAm 214 was not immediately apparent, and it initially appeared to be a bomb. The full investigation pointed to a natural cause, and since then all airliners have been protected from lightning. The cause of Flight 800 was also assumed to be either terrorism or friendly fire, but the investigation showed otherwise. You seem to be taking the typical CTer stance, that NOTHING from the government can be trusted, and that means you must dismiss any evidence that supports the official view. This is an idiotic point of view because it requires you automatically dismiss ANYTHING the government says, no matter how sensible.
Well, actually, the eyewitness accounts above come from the FBI investigation. The evidence cited in the NYTimes story comes from federal investigators. I’m hardly “automatically dismissing” what the government is saying, wouldn’t you agree? I’m questioning the conclusions they arrived at, that’s all. And you call my claim “baseless.” Which claim, exactly? I have no idea what brought down TWA 800, as I’ve stated repeatedly. It just seems to me that, based on the available evidence, a random explosion in the plane’s center-fuel tank is much more far-fetched a theory than the idea that a missile or bomb caused the crash. I’ve also cited above the statements from George Stephanopoulos and John Kerry (aka "the government) in which they both referred to the “bombing” of TWA 800 five years after the event! And why do you simply dismiss what all those witnesses claimed to have seen? Again, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have some doubts about the official line in this case.