Posted by Listen To Um!! on September 25, 19100 at 15:47:09:
In Reply to: Missile Masters Marginalized. posted by N.Y.Observer on September 25, 19100 at 00:44:39:
:
: Phil Weiss On TWA 800
: From The New York Observer (excerpt) 9-25-00
: I turn to my favorite government story, the one that tells us about TWA 800.
: The fascinating thing about this case is the way that the skeptics have been
: isolated in this country, notwithstanding their considerable stature. Begin
: with a member of the official government investigation that has bravely
: challenged the findings: The International Association of Machinists and
: Aerospace Workers has virtually ridiculed the claim that old wiring initiated
: the blast, and pointed to holes in the fuselage that seem to suggest a
: high-energy explosion outside the plane. You will =never read about that in
: the mainstream press. The machinists join an impressive company of
: marginalized critics.
: On the center right, there is the Association of Retired Aviation
: Professionals (ARAP) and former staffers to Congressman Michael Forbes, whose
: district the plane went down in (notably his former administrative assistant
: Kelly O'Meara, now a reporter for Insight).
: There's former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer, there's
: Accuracy in Media. There's the Village Voice and the widow of a Lockerbie
: victim who was appointed to a select Presidential commission on airline
: safety and who has now sued the government, saying her dissent on TWA 800 was
: cast aside.
: On the lib-left, there are Dr. Tom Stalcup and Graeme Sephton, who have
: brilliantly analyzed the government's radar data for the Flight 800
: Independent Research Organization (or FIRO). There's former CBS producer
: Kristina Borjesson, who went out the door in part over this case. Not to
: mention all the eyewitnesses on Long Island, whose accounts are insulted in
: the latest National Transportation Safety Board report.
: Some of the questions these people raise are so compelling four seconds of
: crucial data from the flight data recorder seem to have been removed, says
: former TWA pilot Howard Mannthat any reasonable person who hears them has to
: at least question the official version.
: These questions have been taken up in countless places outside the
: mainstream. The French and Australian press have covered Stalcup and Sephton,
: for instance. Or, there's the respected travel writer Joe Brancatelli of
: biztravel.com, who has attacked the FBI for bullying the NTSB and corrupting
: the investigation. A poll by Aviation Week lately found that two-thirds of
: its respondents did not believe the government findings on TWA 800. But the
: Clinton court cannot abide the skepticism.
: The critics are routinely written off as conspiracy theorists, their points
: blacked out. The idea that our government might lie about, say a blown
: military exercise off Long Island is simply too preposterous, and damaging to
: world progress, to ever be discussed. It's Wen Ho Lee all over again. Ralph
: Nader has called this a "democracy gap." In which affluent corporations want
: you to spend your citizen-time this fall arguing whether the journey of an
: overstuffed daddy's boy from Tennessee is more compelling than the journey of
: a moronic mama's boy from Texas, much as you spent August arguing whether the
: corporatist Richard Hatch or the bleeding heart Kelly Wiglesworth should get
: the $1 million on Survivor.
: This column appears on page 19 in the 9-25-00 edition of The New York
: Observer.