Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, III - USN, Ret.

Aviation Mishap Analyst

P.O. Box 90, Clements, Maryland 20624

Web site: twa800.com

Press Release

Washington, DC - May 4, 1999

Cmdr. William S. Donaldson, USN, Ret. has been invited to testify at the above hearing and will call for the Congress to reorganize the NTSB and hold hearings into the handling of its investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800. Cmdr. Donaldson has been an outspoken critic of the NTSB's handling of this $40 million investigation which has yet to determine a cause for the crash.

Despite the fact that at least a hundred eyewitnesses saw a streak or flare rise from the surface and strike Flight 800 before it exploded, the NSTB has dismissed the possibility of missile involvement without interviewing the first witness. Nearly three years after the tragedy, the FBI still has not released its analysis of witness statements or identified a suspicious boat caught on radar speeding away at 30 knots from a spot below Flight 800 when it exploded.

Cmdr. Donaldson has identified 119 eyewitnesses on 18 boats, 4 aircraft and 31 locations ashore that surrounded the missile launch site. Their testimony alone would prove a missile engagement. However, these witnesses were not allowed to testify at Mr. Hall's hearing. Instead, the NTSB played a laughable video depiction of a noseless 747 climbing 1,700 feet implying that's what the witnesses saw streaking upward. The FBI pulled the CIA's similar video from national media when Boeing engineers wouldn't support it.

Cmdr. Donaldson will introduce physical evidence that the NTSB and FBI misled the American public about the nature of their investigation and the extensive dredging operation which they claimed was designed to recover every last piece of the aircraft and all human remains. In fact, the dredging operation was directed primarily at finding and hiding missile parts from a shoulder fired missile. The majority of area dredged was not in the area where aircraft debris was expected to be located and most of the actual debris field was not dredged.