ChiefsPlanet - Movies and TV TWA Flight 800 Investigators Claim the Official Crash Story Is a Lie

Lahr persuaded one key witness, James Holtsclaw, to go public for the first time. In 1996, Holtsclaw was serving as the Deputy Assistant for the Western Region of the Air Transport Association. On July 25, 1996, one week after the disaster, it was Holtsclaw who gave United Airlines pilot Dick Russell a copy of the radar tape recorded at New York Terminal Radar Approach Control. This is the same tape that got Pierre Salinger involved in the case and eventually ruined his career and reputation. Holtsclaw knows it to be “authentic” because he received it directly from an NTSB investigator frustrated by its suppression.

“The tape shows a primary target at 1,200 knots converging with TWA 800, during the climb out phase of TWA 800,” swears Holtsclaw on the affidavit. “Primary target” simply means an object without a transponder. Although Holtsclaw estimates the object’s speed, his estimate falls within the likely range of a missile.

Lahr also recruited retired Air Force Col. Lawrence Pence to his cause. “I find [the CIA scenario] highly unlikely, incredible. With the loss of a wing, with the loss of its pilots, cockpit and front end, I believe that [the aircraft] would have tumbled, tolled and basically dropped like a stone,” argues Pence, who spent most of his career in intelligence, dealing with missile and space issues. “And this is exactly what the radar data that has subsequently been looked at says happened.”

Physicist Thomas Stalcup, Ph.D., has reviewed most if not all of that radar data. “The radar data,” swears Stalcup in his affidavit, “indicate that Flight 800 began an immediate descent and northward turn immediately after losing electrical power.”

Several of the eyewitnesses Lahr has gathered have verified Pence’s stone-falling thesis. One is Maj. Fritz Meyer, a winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross. Meyer stared the explosion in his face from his Air National Guard helicopter about 10 miles away:

When that airplane blew up, it immediately began falling. It came right out of the sky. From the first moment it was going down. It never climbed. The thought that this aircraft could climb was laughable. … If you shot a duck with a full load of buck it came down like that. It came down like a stone.

Master Chief Petty Officer Dwight Brumley also volunteered his testimony to Lahr. A 25-year U.S. Navy vet with top security clearance and hands-on experience with missile exercises, Brumley was flying as a passenger on the right side of US AIR 217. The plane was flying north at 21,000 feet and was just moments from intersecting TWA 800′s flight path when Brumley observed a “flare” moving parallel to US AIR 217 … but faster:

During the approximately 7 to 10 seconds I observed the “flare,” it appeared to be climbing. It then pitched over and then just after the apex (one to two seconds at most) a small explosion appeared in the center of the “flare.” The body of the explosion was spherical in shape and then suddenly grew much bigger and then began to elongate as it appeared to be headed downward, growing larger as it descended.

Brumley’s “flare” was moving at nearly a right angle to TWA Flight 800. In addition to Brumley, Meyer and others, Lahr has entered the testimony of two critical witnesses whose testimony has been largely overlooked. On the subject of the CIA animation, however, no witnesses are more critical than the two pilots of an Eastwind Flight 507 from Boston to Trenton, First Officer Vincent Fuschetti and Capt. David McCLaine.

The Eastwind pilots were about to begin a slow descent to Trenton when they first spotted TWA Flight 800, then some 60 miles away on this “crystal clear” night. McClaine described the plane with its landing lights still on as “definitely the brightest light in the sky.” As Flight 800 approached them at a slightly lower altitude and began crossing its path from right to left, McClaine flicked on his own inboard landing light to signal to the pilots of TWA 800 that he and Fuschetti had the aircraft in sight.

Just as he flicked on his light, wrote McClaine in his report to Eastwind Airline immediately after the crash, “The other aircraft exploded into a very large ball of flames.” At this point, the two aircraft were less than 20 miles apart. “Almost immediately,” observed McClaine, “two flaming objects, with flames trailing about 4,000 feet behind them, fell out of the bottom of the ball of flame.” Within 10 seconds of witnessing the explosion, McClaine called in the explosion to Boston air-traffic control. He was the first one to do so. The FBI knew this by day two:

Eastwind: “We just saw an explosion out here, Stinger Bee 507 (Dave McClaine, Captain, Eastwind Airlines)”

Controller: “Stinger Bee 507, I’m sorry I missed it … did you say something else.”

Eastwind: “We just saw an explosion up ahead of us here, somewhere about 16,000 feet or something like that. It just went down – in the water.”

The reader does well to recall the postulate on which, the infamous CIA video is based: No eyewitnesses saw the initial explosion. This was a lie – there is no nice way to describe it – and the CIA knew it. Fuschetti and McClaine both witnessed the initial explosion. The crew of two other airliners immediately confirmed their sightings. Brumley and Meyer saw the initial explosion as well. At a minimum, eight unimpeachable, experienced, airborne eyewitnesses saw the first blast and from a variety of different angles.

The CIA lied to protect its bizarre timeline. As the CIA told the story, the plane suffered an invisible center fuel tank explosion, lost its nose four seconds later, zoom-climbed an additional 3,200 feet and only then broke into two distinct fireballs, “more than 42 seconds” after the initial blast.

Compare the CIA story with Eastwind First Officer Fuschetti’s testimony. “At the onset of the explosion, the fireball spread horizontally then spilt into two columns of fire, which immediately began to fall slowly towards the water below.” Lest anyone misinterpret him, Fuschetti adds, “At no time did I see any vertical travel of the aircraft after the explosion occurred.”

The CIA’s fiery climb was necessary to explain away the hundreds of claims from eyewitnesses on the ground. It does not, however, account for what McClaine and Fuschetti saw. They saw the plane clearly at every stage.

Although McClaine and Fuschetti could not see a missile streak from their angle, they undoubtedly saw the first explosion and the immediate plunge of the plane into the sea. Indeed, McClaine was telling Boston air-traffic control that the plane “just went down – in the water” within 10 to 15 seconds of that first blast.

This may well explain why the NTSB never interviewed Fuschetti and did not interview McClaine until March 25, 1999, nearly a year and a half after the FBI closed the criminal case with a showing of the CIA video. “You are a very key person as far as we are concerned,” said Robert Young, TWA’s representative on the NTSB witness group, “because you were the only person that was looking at it at the time.”

Although McClaine was by no means the “only person,” Young’s acknowledgement boldly refutes the CIA claim that no one had seen the initial explosion. Young, at least, wanted this to be known. He asked McClaine whether there were any noticeable climbing angle changes before or after. Answered McClaine, “None at all.”

“I didn’t see it pitch up, no,” McClaine elaborated. “Everything ended right there at that explosion as far as I’m concerned.” When McClaine ironically ventured a far-fetched scenario that could have resulted in the CIA’s zoom-climb, Young responded in the same spirit, “We’d be cutting new trails in aviation if we could do that.” Young, however, was in no position to convert irony into action, and he knew it. The die had already been cast.

Still, Young did not give up. A few weeks after its interview with McClaine, the NTSB witness group managed to secure an interview with the two CIA analysts responsible for the video, now a full 18 months after the video’s sole showing. Young badgered the chief analyst, then unidentified, with McClaine’s testimony.

“If [the nose-less plane] had ascended,” Young asked the analyst rhetorically, “[McClaine] would have been concerned because it ascended right through his altitude.” When the analyst tried to deflect the question, Young continued, “I think he would have noticed it. Your analysis has it zooming to above his altitude.”

“It’s a very critical point that it’s not critical precisely how high that plane went,” the CIA analyst bluffed before pulling out his trump card. “Even if the plane went up several thousand feet on the ground there’s maybe one witness that saw that, this guy on the bridge.”

When pressed, the analyst could cite only one person who actually saw the zoom-climb, “the guy on the bridge.” Ray Lahr has marshaled his testimony as well. His name is Mike Wire, a millwright from Philadelphia and a U.S. Army vet. And how did the “guy on the bridge” feel about the CIA video?

“When I first saw the scenario, I thought they used it just as a story to pacify the general public,” attests Wire, “because it didn’t represent what I had testified to the agent I saw out there.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2003/12/22274/#lyIUVfhyY6RQHRBu.99