To fully grasp just how diabolical the coverup of the shooting down of TWA Flight 800 was, one needs to understand all of the things done to accomplish the coverup. Perhaps no better example of the this was what was done to discredit Witness #73.
Let’s be reminded that the shooting down of the plane by the US Navy was an accident. The coverup was not. There was an election campaign going on and this could very well have changed the outcome of that election.
Witness #73 was unknown to everyone who was researching the accident. Many independent researchers had tried to learn the identity of Witness #73 and all had failed until 2009. In 2009, physicist Tom Stalcup, someone who was proven much of the science about what really happened, tracked her down. After talking with Stalcup, she decided to call Jack Cashill, another dogged researcher into the TWA 800 disaster.
While Cashill did not know the identity of Witness #73 before this, Jack knew she was probably the single best witness to the destruction of TWA 800. Cashill notes:
On July 17, 1996, Sandy—not her real name—was visiting friends on Long Island. They were relatives of her fiancé who was working in New York City. That evening Sandy and her two friends drove to a beach near the Moriches Inlet on the South Shore of Long Island. Just a few minutes after sunset, the FBI would report, “She observed an aircraft climbing in the sky, traveling from her right to her left.” This would have been from the west, JFK airport in New York City, towards the east, eventually Paris, the original destination of the ill-fated 747 with 230 souls on board.
The sun was setting behind her. “While keeping her eyes on the aircraft,” the FBI report continued, “she observed a ‘red streak’ moving up from the ground toward the aircraft at an approximately 45 degree angle. The ‘red streak’ was leaving a light gray colored smoke trail. The ‘red streak’ went passed [sic] the right side and above the aircraft before arcing back toward the aircraft’s right wing.”
According to the FBI, Sandy described the arc’s shape “as resembling an upside down NIKE swoosh logo.” The smoke trail, light gray in color, widened as it approached the aircraft… “She never took her eyes off the aircraft during this time,” the 302 continued. “At the instant the smoke trail ended at the aircraft’s right wing, she heard a loud sharp noise which sounded like a firecracker had just exploded at her feet. She then observed a fire at the aircraft followed by one or two secondary explosions which had a deeper sound. She then observed the front of the aircraft separate from the back. She then observed burning pieces of debris falling from the aircraft.”
Weeks before the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were able to piece together the break-up sequence of the aircraft, Sandy had nailed it. She was the perfect eyewitness. She worked in the travel industry. She had a long-standing interest in aviation. She tracked the plane and the “flare” as separate objects. She read no more into the explosion than what she could observe.
While there were other eye witnesses who gave great accounts of what they saw, Sandy’s was spot on. Her friends may have been able to provide good accounts as well, but they did not want anything to do with the FBI. They were extremely upset that she provided their names to the FBI during her interview. Why this was the case is unknown. Perhaps they were too aware of just how corrupt the government was becoming and that nothing good could come from talking to the FBI.
Her fiancé who would later become her husband, did not want her to have anything to do with the case as well. However, in 2009, after talking with Stalcup and reading the reports written by the FBI, Sandy felt she had a story to tell.
Please note that there were two FBI reports on the two interviews that were done. The second interview was conducted on April 29, 1997. In this report, when asked about the object she saw approach the aircraft, Sandy replied that she believed she witnessed a missile, which had been fired from a boat which was located somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean.
Let’s understand that by this point in the life cycle of this event, the idea of a missile hitting TWA 800 had been trundled off into the world of conspiracy theorists. This was a common defense mechanism employed by the Clintons during their long political careers.
So, the missile detail in this report was there to push Sandy out into the fantasy world of conspiracy theorists. The report also included the “fact” that Sandy had consumed two Long Island Ice Tea cocktails earlier that evening. This would, of course, render her first interview unreliable.
There were two problems with this account. First, the woman did not drink at all and had no idea what a Long Island Ice Tea was. This item in the report was a total fabrication. But the second issue was even worse.
Sandy said to Jack Cashill, “There was no second interview. They made it all up.”
As it turns out and as Cashill noted in his book, they manufactured at least three other witness testimonies. All were designed to obfuscate credible reports about what had happened. Who is they? It is not clear but it seems that the CIA had a hand in a lot of the mischief that went on.
Some FBI personnel were resistant to the narrative that was spun by the CIA. One such resistor was an agent by the name of Steven Bongardt. As Cashill noted:
On the same day Bongardt was resisting the CIA in DC—April 29, 1997—the CIA rewarded his resistance by putting his name on the bogus second interview with Witness 73 at her home in North Carolina—on that very same April 29, 1997 day. They play dirty.
This was a criminal conspiracy by the FBI, CIA and the White House to cover up what really happened. In conjunction with the media (which was really the NYTimes), they managed to convince the American public that nearly 300 Americans who were initially painted as reliable witnesses, really did not know what they were seeing.
Perhaps civil suits by the family members of people who were killed could bring the light of day to this tragedy. It is long overdue.