Part 25 (1/2)
Heath, already upset by what he witnessed the day of the bombing, is now uncertain what will happen to him.[901]
Lea Moore, a woman who was badly injured in the blast, was contacted by a reporter from the L.A. Times. While he was enroute to interview her, she received a mysterious phone call telling her not to talk to him. Moore, a diminutive woman in her fifties, was frightened. When the reporter showed up at her door fifteen minutes later, Moore didn't answer.
Melba, the Albertson's worker who made sandwiches for McVeigh and John Doe 2, was hostile and frightened when questioned by this reporter - too scared to talk.
Connie Hood, who saw John Doe 2 at the Dreamland Motel shortly after midnight on April 16, then again the next morning, was interviewed numerous times by the FBI. They even went so far as to administer several polygraph tests. Hood told the agents exactly what she saw. On the last test, the FBI agent ”turned around and got in her face,” recalled her friend David Keen, ”and said, 'You've never seen John Doe! He never existed!'”
The experience of Hood and Keen is reminiscent of the interrogation of JFK witnesses in Dallas on November 22, when FBI agents pointedly told them they did not see any shooters on the Gra.s.sy Knoll.
”This big old dude (FBI agent) right out told me, 'You did not see that!'” recalled Hood. ”It got to the point where I was saying, 'Excuse me, excuse me, there was someone in that room next to us. I know for a fact there was someone in that room next to us. I did not imagine someone coming out of that fricking room!'”
Hood is sure of what she saw, and is furious about the games the FBI played with her. ”I'm angry,” said Hood. ”It made my blood boil.”[902]
TWA 800 Sidebar The experiences of these witnesses parallels those who saw a missile rise out of the water to shoot down TWA flight 800 on July 17, 1996, killing all 230 people on board. Over 154 witnesses on Long Island, who witnessed the attack, described what appeared to be a missile - a glowing object that impacted with the plane.
These accounts were backed up by FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) radar records, which showed an unidentified object (a ”blip” that was not ”squawking” a transponder code) move rapidly towards, then merge with, the large jumbo-jet.[903]
Yet like the seismic records, and the video surveillance footage which would have shown the Murrah Building being blown up, these radar tapes would be confiscated by the FBI.
Naturally, the government lied about the crash. The National Transportation Safety board (NTSB) claimed that the most probable cause was a ”spark” in the center fuel tank due to ”static electricity.” This is ridiculous even to the uninitiated. Said Michael Barr, director of aviation safety programs at USC, ”Airplanes don't blow up just like that. I've been following 747s since 1970 and I've never seen one blow up like that.”[904]
One witness, Lou Desyron, told ABC World News Sunday: ”We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color.... Once it went into flames, I knew that wasn't a flare.[905]
Another witness told the New York Daily News: ”It looked like a big skyrocket going up, and it kept going up and up, and the next thing I knew there was an orange ball of fire.”[906]
Long Island resident Linda Kabot inadvertently snapped a picture of the missile while photographing friends at a party. The photo appeared in the July issue of Paris Match.
Eyewitnesses on the ground weren't the only ones who saw a missile. Vasilis Bakoynis, a Greek commercial airline pilot flying behind flight 800, told the FBI that he saw what appeared to be a missile rise up from the water and strike the plane. ”Suddenly I saw in the fog to my left toward the ocean, a small flame rising quickly toward the sky. Before I realized it, I saw this flame become huge....”[907]
Private pilot Sven Faret reported a ”short pin-flash of light [which] appeared on the ground, perhaps water,” that rose up ”like a rocket launch at a fireworks display.”[908]
Major Fred Meyer, the pilot of an Air National Guard helicopter which was in the area, said he saw ”a streak of red orange” heading toward the plane. ”...it arrived at a point in s.p.a.ce where I saw a small explosion which grew to a small fireball, then a second explosion and a huge fireball,” the Boston Herald quoted Meyer as telling a press briefing on July 18th.
Meyer's co-pilot, Captain Chris Baur, told Aviation Week & s.p.a.ce Technology on March 10, ”Almost due south, there was a hard white light, like burning pyrotechnics, in level flight. I was trying to figure out what it was. It was the wrong color for flares. It struck an object coming from the right [TWA 800] and made it explode.”[909]
Ten days later, Meyer, a Vietnam veteran, told the Riverside Press-Enterprise: ”I know what I saw. I saw an ordinance explosion. And whatever I saw, the explosion of the fuel was not the initiator of the event. It was one of the results. Something happened before that which was the initiator of the disaster.”[910]
Meyer and Baur's account was backed up by Air National Guard C-130 pilot Cononel William Stratemeir, Jr., who told Aviation Week & s.p.a.ce Technology what ”appeared to be the trail of a shoulder-fired SAM ending in a flash on the 747.”[911]
Yet the government would seek to silence the hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw the missile. A team of approximately 50 FBI agents, many of the same agents who worked the Oklahoma City case, would visit these witnesses and ask, then demand, their silence.
”There was nothing I observed that gave me any indication that the streak of light I saw was caused by a missile,” Meyer would later quoted as saying. ”I don't know what I saw.”[912]
”We did not see smoke trails [from a missile], any ignition source from the tail of a rocket nor anything...” said Stratemeir four months later.[913]
Medical Examiner Dr. Charles V. Wetli originally told reporters that the pa.s.sengers in the forward compartment were hit hardest, indicating the major event was in the front of the plane, not the center as the government claimed. Dr. Wetli and others then backed off from their findings. An explosion had happened and killed people was as much as he could say, reported the New York Times. [914]
Was the government covering up evidence of a terrorist missile strike, or the negligence of the United States Navy? While the disintegration of flight 800's number three engine appears to indicate a shoulder-launched missile, the large gaping hole running from just underneath the center fuel tank through the top of the forward cabin suggests a strike by an unarmed missile ”drone.”
There is evidence for both theories. After denying the existence of any military operations in the area, the Pentagon eventually admitted that a C-130 military transport and two HH-60G Blackhawk helicopters of the New York Air National Guard's ANG's 106th Rescue Wing were operating in the area as part of a night-rescue exercise.
Such a ”rescue exercise” doesn't explain the presence of a P-3 Orion anti-submarine warfare plane, which, contrary to claims by Navy public affairs, is capable of carrying missiles. The U.S.S. Normandy, an Aegis cla.s.s guided missile cruiser (similar to the one that accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the straits of Hormuz, killing all 290 people), was also operating in the vicinity. The Normandy carries RIM-67 Standard SM-2ER semi-active radar homing air defense missiles, with a range of 93 miles and an alt.i.tude of 100,000 feet. Was the Normandy firing drones as part of a practice drill? Such maneuvers are routinely carried out off the coast of Long Island. Area W-105 was activated as a ”hot zone” at the time of the disaster.[915]
Naturally, the Navy claimed the Normandy was 180 miles from flight 800, which was in area W-106, 15 miles to the Northwest of W-105.[916]
FBI chief investigator James Kallstrom cited claims of military culpability as ”irresponsible... total unadulterated nonsense,” and, echoing the psychobabble employed by the government in the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, stated that such claims are hurtful to the victims. Jim Hall, head of the NTSB investigation, backed up Kallstrom, saying the allegations ”are causing incredible pain and confusion for those who lost loved ones.”
”I can tell you we left no stone unturned,” Kallstrom announced, as if playing a bad re-run of Janet Reno's press conference on Oklahoma City.[917]
Then in November, Pierre Salinger, a former ABC News correspondent and press secretary for President Kennedy, told reporters in Cannes, France, he had obtained a doc.u.ment from French intelligence (there were numerous French citizens...o...b..ard) detailing how the Navy was indeed test firing missiles and accidentally hit Flight 800 because the plane was flying lower than expected. Salinger said the doc.u.ment written by someone who ”was tied to the U.S. Secret Service and has important contacts in the U.S. Navy.”[918]
Backing up Salinger's report was Lt. Col. Bo Gritz, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran and Special Forces commander, who reported in June that the Army and Navy were conducting final acceptance tests of the AEGIS-CEC (Cooperative Engagement Capability) system, in the wake of the tragic shootdown of an Iranian airbus by the USS Vincennes.
The military chose Area W-105, claimed Gritz, in order to provide a realistic test using a densely populated area. ”W-105 had been especially selected (and activated for live fire) because of its similarity to the Persian Gulf.”
The Navy Orion P-3, a member of the CEC team, was loaded with up-graded gear, allowing integration of Army and Navy Anti-Aircraft Artillery acquisition radar. The equipment was supposed to ”discriminate between friend-neutral-foe electronic signatures, isolate the hostile threat and select the weapon best positioned for an a.s.sured kill to launch at the target.”
The simulated boogie was a Navy BQM-74E missile drone launched from s.h.i.+nnec.o.c.k Bay, east of Riverhead, Long Island by an Army unit shortly after the ”all clear” at 8:30 p.m....
Through the thickening fog of replicated hostile images, a shot solution was plotted and relayed to the missile unit best positioned for the kill. The software then automatically triggered the launch of a Navy Standard IV Anti-missile missile....
The antimissile was programmed to climb rapidly until a ”mid-course” correction would be relayed to the missile's on-board computer directing the dive to impact. Final course adjustments would be made by the missile's ”semi-active” radar device after ”lock-on” was achieved....
Tragically, the last radar able to see the boogie through the heavy jamming and target replication suddenly and unexpectedly went blind.... Unable to receive guidance commands to keep it on an intercept course with the target drone, the Standard IV reverted to its own programming and began seeking a target. In a heartbeat, the internal radar acquired the TWA 747 well above and to the west of the intended target.[919]
Was the 747 destroyed by ”friendly fire?” Reports that rocket fuel residue was present on seat backs and bodies of the victims, and the large entry and exit holes, tend to support these allegations.[920]
During the 1982 Falklands War, an Argentine AM.39 Exocet anti-s.h.i.+p missile struck the British destroyer HMS Sheffield. Although it was a dud, ”the kinetic energy of the missile, flying at supersonic speed, was able to punch through the hull and slice into fuel lines, allowing the still-burning rocket motor to ignite a deadly and explosive fire. TWA 800 may have experienced an airborne version of this same fate.”[921]
Gritz' claim that the military chose the area off of Long Island for testing jives with the well-doc.u.mented fact of decades-long military testing on unsuspecting civilians in hundreds of cities across the nation - including everything from drugs and nuclear radiation, to chemical and biological weapons.[922]
Interestingly, on August 29, six weeks after the TWA 800 crash, an American Airlines pilot reported seeing a missile pa.s.s by his 757 while flying over Wallops Island, Virginia, the site of the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, which has a program for unmanned research rockets. Wallops Island is about 220 miles south of the TWA crash sight.[923]
Finally, as Ian G.o.ddard reported, on May 13, 1997, Long Island's Southampton Press reported that resident Dede Muma accidentally received a fax from Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical intended for the FBI's office in Calverton, Long Island (the two have similar phone numbers). The fax indicated that parts of a Navy missile target drone, a BQM-34 Firebee I manufactured by Teledyne, may have been found in the wreckage. The fax shows a diagram of what appears to be a missile, along with a breakdown of its tail section and a parts list...[924]
The near disintegration of the plane's number three engine, however, supports the theory of a heat-seeking SAM, suggesting that the plane was destroyed by terrorists.
Recall that two major terrorist conferences were held during which it was announced that there would be increased attacks against U.S. interests: one on June 20-23 in Teheran, and the other on July 10-15 in Pakistan. Intelligence officers and terrorist leaders from Hamas, HizbAllah, and the PFLP-GC's Ahmed Jibril, who carried out the Pan Am 103 bombing, were in attendance. This was followed on June 25 by the truck-bombing of the military housing compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.[925]
Also recall that immediately following the July 16th U.S. Senate resolution for sanctions against Libya and Iran, the al-Hayat newspaper received a warning from the Movement for Islamic Change: The world will be astonished and amazed at the time and place chosen by the Mujahadeen. The Mujahadeen will deliver the harshest reply to the threats of the foolish American president. Everyone will be surprised by the volume, choice of place and timing of the Mujahadeen's answer, and invaders must prepare to depart alive or dead for their time is morning and morning is near.
The New York Post also reported that the FBI was looking into an anonymous threat received after conviction of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the spiritual leader of the World Trade Center bombing cell, convicted of plotting to blow up major New York City landmarks. The threat warned that a New York area airport or jetliner would be attacked in retaliation for the prosecution of the sheik.[926]
A warning was also provided to the Israelis that Iran was likely to launch an attack against a U.S. aircraft. Thousands of Stinger missiles were given to the Mujahadeen by the CIA in the 1980s. According to former FAA investigator Rodney Stich, ”At least a dozen were thus obtained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards from Yunis Khalis, a radical Muslim Afghani resistance leader. One of them was fired by Iranians at an American helicopter on patrol in the Persian Gulf on October 8th, 1987.”
The U.S. produced nearly 64,500 of these missiles for the military and other countries since 1980, including Angola, Egypt, France, Germany, Iran, Israel, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The Soviets are known to have sold their SAM-7 to China, North Korea, India, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Laos, Libya, Sudan and Syria, among others.[927] Stingers provided to the Mujahadeen via the CIA in Peshawar, Pakistan, were often sold to terrorists and other groups.
”We have now spent more than a decade trying to retrieve those missiles,” said Natalie Goldring, a defense a.n.a.lyst with the British-American Security Information Council. ”Several hundred that were transferred during the Afghan war are nowhere to be found. They are very capable anti-aircraft missiles.”[928]