Why the 17-year wait to blow the whistle?
Whistleblowers in “TWA Flight 800” did not go public until now, after they retired, to avoid retaliation.
Did the whistleblowers inform their superiors of the problems?
Yes, repeatedly.
During the investigation, the whistleblowers repeatedly reported to their superiors the many abnormalities and occurrences of wrongdoing.
Former lead FBI investigator Mr. James Kallstrom, former NTSB managing director Peter Goelz, and former NTSB board member John Goglia have all erroneously suggested that the whistleblowers did not inform their superiors.
In “TWA Flight 800” whistleblower and senior aviation accident investigator at the time Hank Hughes talks about bringing serious problems with the investigation to the attention of then-Investigator in Charge, Mr. Al Dickinson of the NTSB, with no results. Finally, on May 10, 1999 Hank Hughes, under whistleblower protection, appeared before a senate judiciary committee to detail a long list of serious problems with the TWA Flight 800 investigation, including informing the committee that “chemical swabbing wasn’t done on an ongoing basis,…ERT [Evidence Recovery Team (FBI)] qualification in basic forensics [was] very limited.” Hughes also informed the Senate of an incident where he caught an FBI agent hammering on a piece of wreckage in an attempt to flatten it. Mr. Goelz should be aware of all of this because he too attended the Senate hearing.
Mr. James Speer, TWA flight 800 investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association says he was threatened with being kicked off the investigation more than once for complaining about irregularities.
Mr. Bob Young, through TWA’s legal team, sent letters to the NTSB leadership officially requesting that abnormalities be thoroughly addressed. They weren’t. Mr. Young is going public now in “TWA Flight 800” for two reasons: “Dr Stalcup had developed significant new information thru his FOIA efforts and we had a NTSB insider, Hank Hughes, and I believed that we had a real chance for a reconsideration by the NTSB. The compelling eyewitness testimony is in and of itself, new information that was never presented by the NTSB.”
“I think it is far more important to discuss the evidence presented in the film than attempt to discredit the whistleblowers,” says Dr. Stalcup. “This is all just a distraction from the bottom-line–the evidence. Mr. Kallstrom, Mr. Goelz, and Mr. Goglia would better serve the American public by talking about the evidence instead of spending so much time and energy personally attacking these courageous investigators.”
Do family members support the film and petition?
Yes.
Many family members in the United States and Europe participated in the film and have signed our petition to the NTSB.
Additional family members have contacted Dr. Stalcup directly since the petition was filed, wishing to sign it. Every response from family members received by Dr. Stalcup since the petition has been filed has been supportive.
Contact information for family members supporting the film and the petition are available upon request.
How could the government possibly cover this up? They would have had to keep hundreds of people quiet.
The documentary “TWA Flight 800” names the names and shows the faces of the individuals most responsible for misleading the public on the true cause of the crash. It also presents first-hand accounts of intimidation and threats on the part of the FBI and NTSB toward those with information that challenges the results of the official investigation.
Besides this documented intimidation campaign, there was a multi-pronged disinformation campaign, partly run out of CIA headquarters. A CIA team led by principal investigator Randy Tauss (who worked with the NTSB’s David Mayer) took care of misinforming the public about what the eyewitnesses saw by producing an animation that has since been discredited. FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom’s team steered the NTSB toward looking into only one type of missile: shoulder-fired. Which is the kind not likely to have been involved in the crash.
Kallstrom’s team met with military engineers at China Lake and obtained sample items with shoulder-fired missile damage. There is no record of these engineers providing the FBI with damage signatures created by proximity fused missiles exploding a significant distance from the aircraft.
Then, with sample pieces containing “pock marks” from shoulder-fired missiles in hand, NTSB investigators such as Metallurgy Group Chairman Jim Wildey began looking through the TWA 800 wreckage for similar damage.
Note: Early during the investigation, a CIA official [name redacted] from the Office of Weapons Technology admitted in an internal CIA email we obtained that a shoulder-launched missile was most likely not to blame.
When investigators found no evidence of telltale shoulder-launched missile “pock marks” left on the wreckage, they stopped pursuing this avenue of investigation, instead of looking for signatures of other types of missiles that create different damage patterns.
In fact, the evidence indicates that a proximity fused missile (which does not create pock marks) caused the crash. Proximity fused missiles leave inward penetrating holes in their targets as well as widespread explosive traces, both of which were found throughout the TWA Flight 800 aircraft.
The NTSB Final Report clearly states regarding their missile investigation that only a shoulder-fired missile was considered. So the NTSB did not consider the possibility that a proximity-fused missile caused the crash.
Unlike any other reporting on this crash, the film “TWA Flight 800” exposes how the cover-up was run and who was most to blame.
Was the TWA Flight 800 investigation thorough?
No.
The investigation cannot be considered thorough, since it neglected even considering proximity-fused missiles, which are a very common type of missile. And as the NTSB and FBI both admit, the missile theory was one of the three leading theories for the crash.
The NTSB spent most of their resources on a failed attempt to prove that a fuel-air explosion alone was responsible for the crash. While this aspect of the investigation was certainly time consuming and could itself be labeled as thorough, a more appropriate description would be a very large distraction away from what other evidence conclusively showed.
TWA Flight 800 