July, 2001
 
P.O. Box 2831
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
4 August 2001

Philip Kent, President 
CNN News Group
One CNN Center
Atlanta, GA 30303 

AN OPEN LETTER TO CNN:

This is not meant to be a "nice letter". I do not send
sleazy news organizations who no longer do any real
investigative reporting "nice letters".

At one time, say ten years ago, you did an excellent
job of reporting the invasion of Bagdad, but it's been
down hill ever since, hasn't it?

You are afraid to stand up to the Federal government.
The District of Columbia now dictates what you say and
how you say it; sort of a form of "journalistic
slavery", isn't it?

Your airing of Jim Hall's continued lies about TWA
Flight 800 is an example of the lowness to which you
have travelled [the program: "The Point", July 17,
2001]. 

Of course Mr. Hall wants everyone to believe "it
wasn't a missile"! He, and a few other senior Federal
officials, will be doing some serious prison time when
the lid blows off of the TWA Flight 800 coverup, and
they know it. The charge: obstruction of justice and
possibly misprision of felony homicide. The lies will
unravel - they always do. And CNN won't be there to
"lead the charge". Unless, of course, you do the
unexpected and change your bedfellows now. 

Then, to save face, you reschedule Jack Cashill on
"The Point"; at the last minute you cancelled his
appearance again! What is your problem? The
"government's side" of this event has been heard over
and over, so that many of us are sick of it. We hardly
need to hear it again. Repeating a lie, regardless of
the number of repititions, does not turn it into the
truth.

Yes, let's not forget about those 230 people who were
blown out of the sky and the (at least) 183
eyewitnesses who saw a strange "streak" or "flare" in
the sky several seconds PRIOR to the "orange
fireball". Go to the Associated Retired Aviation
Professional's (ARAP) website [at
http://www.twa800.com] amd look at the vast amount of
evidence that contradicts the NTSB/FBI theory!

The unique sadness of this story is not those 230
souls. Nor is it the U.S. Governments' cover-up of the
truth. The real tragedy is the press, radio, and
television (the media) "rolling over" and refusing to
do their duty of impartial, honest reporting.

If CNN doesn't practice responsible journalism and
call the Feds on their ridiculous "game", who will?

A very concerned citizen,
 

________________________________
Michael A. Hamann, PharmD

Michael A. Hamann, PharmD.
P.O. Box 2831
Fort Bragg, CA 95437
27 July 2001
 

Congressman Dan Burton, 
Committee on Government Reform, 
2157 Rayburn Building, 
Washington, DC 20515. 
 

Congressman Burton,

This correspondence is being sent to you in the
sincere hopes that your committee will investigate the
federal government's role in obstructing the release
of, and alteration of the evidence involved in the
crash of TWA Flight 800. Shortly after taking off on
the evening of July 17, 1996, Flight 800 crashed off
of Long Island, New York, killing all 230 souls on
board. 

The "official" explanation of this tragedy was that
the Center Wing Tank spontaneously exploded; the first
time in aviation history that Jet A fuel (kerosene)
has demonstrated this property. JP-4 fuel (similar to
gasoline; very different!) has this volatile property,
and because of that, JP-4 has NOT been used in
commercial turbine powered aircraft for over 20 years!

There were also at least 102 eyewitnesses who saw what
could be best described as a typical surface-to-air
missile engagement of a commercial airliner. An ambush
with at least two (2) guided missiles involved. Those
passengers never had a chance!

On Dec. 12, 2000 - more than four years after the
tragic crash of TWA 800 - Jim Hall, chairman of the
NTSB, sat uncomfortably across from Don and Donna
Nibert. There was good reason for his discomfort. The
Niberts, from Montoursville, Pa., had lost their
16-year-old daughter in the crash and had journeyed to
Hall's D.C. office to find out why. Hall, arguably the
least qualified and most political chair in NTSB
history, surrounded himself with his director of
research and engineering, legal adviser and two flight
data recorder specialists. 

At the request of Don Nibert, Glen Schulze, a Flight
Data Recorder (FDR) expert, joined this group as well.
For the record, the FDR is a device that records
precisely what the plane is doing, microsecond by
microsecond. If a mechanical problem had begun to
unfold within the center wing tank, the Flight Data
Recorder would have picked up clues as the event
spread throughout the 747. The same holds true if the
plane had been blasted by a missile warhead explosion.
Clues would begin to appear on the Flight Data
Recorder. 

As the meeting unfolded, Schulze made a lengthy,
highly technical presentation to the NTSB's top FDR
experts. He paused briefly after explaining the first
four of his five explanatory flip charts, looked the
NTSB experts in the eye and challenged them boldly: 
"Hard evidence extracted from the NTSB's own reports
is consistent with the FBI and NTSB withholding the
last 4 FL 800 FDR one second data blocks and over
3,000 data bits from the public." 

In a world with more honor, these would have been
fighting words. Schulze had presented factual
evidence, all of which originated within the NTSB
laboratories, that its final Flight 800 FDR report was
missing the last four seconds and 3,136 digital bits
of flight parameter information. He also charged that,
in response to at least three Freedom of Information
Act petitioners, the NTSB had provided highly edited
CD copies of the Flight 800 Cockpit Voice Recorder
tape that were also missing those four seconds. 

By the year 2000, however, at least at the top rungs
of the NTSB, "honor" was only a memory. If the science
here is complex and not easily transcribed, the
reaction of the accused needs no explanation. As
Schulze notes reveal, "No NTSB staff member commented
on or objected to the 4 missing seconds claim." 

Instead, incredibly, Jim Hall made a petty complaint
about the wording used by Schulze in a letter to the
Niberts. In the letter Schulze had asserted that the
characteristics and properties of the (NTSB) CD
waveforms were "consistent with this CD being a
crudely manufactured and bungled forgery of the actual
TWA FL 800 FDR tape." Hall had little stomach for
straight talk. 

Brushing Hall's complaint aside, Schulze presented
more hard evidence to back up his charge that the CDs
were crude forgeries. As he asserted, each CD released
under FOIA should provide one consistent set of FDR
information. This was not the case. Instead, each CD
presented highly inconsistent data at the precise
location on the tape 4 seconds of data appear to have
been removed. 

Schulze contended that the NTSB withheld from the
public the fact that the FDR has the precise time, to
the second, that the FDR ceased recording data. But
instead of sharing that data - "too accurate" in the
damning words of one NTSB expert - the NTSB used FAA
and Navy radar data to manipulate the numbers and
regain the four seconds missing from the FDR. 

In fact, the embedded code shows that the FDR stopped
recording at 00:31:08 Greenwich Mean Time [8:31:08
p.m. EDT], almost four seconds earlier than the
cockpit voice recorder and radar data indicate. The
implications of this discrepancy are huge. These four
missing seconds would provide evidence as to what did
happen to TWA 800 and may very well conflict with the
official government theory that Flight 800 exploded
due to mechanical failure. 

The NTSB experts presented no information to refute
Schulze's factual presentation. They lamely offered
the excuse that the "transient pulse" or spike marking
the end point of altered data on the FDR was "normal
and is the result of the erase head losing AC power."
The experts could not, however, explain why this spike
was removed from one of the three FDR versions the
NTSB has fobbed off on the public. 

The only means by which scientific testing and
analysis can confirm or deny NTSB/FBI tampering with
the FDR is to release the original FDR tape to an
independent laboratory. Don Nibert asked Jim Hall to
approve such an independent test. Hall asked for the
request to be put in writing. It was. 

More than six months have now passed since Jim Hall
and senior NTSB officials were presented with evidence
that data they were releasing had been altered. A week
after this meeting, with two years left on his tenure
as chairman, Hall abruptly quit the NTSB. 

The NTSB has been given ample opportunity to turn the
original FDR tape over to an independent testing
facility for analysis. This testing would either
disprove criminal conduct on the part of senior
government officials or provide the basis for felony
indictments on a conspiracy to obstruct justice. 

The NTSB has "completely ignored and failed to respond
to Mr. Nibert's perfectly legal and proper request as
a FL 800 Family Member," Schulze recently revealed. 

Based on the evidence, including the NTSB's refusal to
place its own critical evidence to the test, Schulze
unabashedly concludes, "It is my strong belief that
the NTSB cannot release the FDR accident tape from FL
800 for the purpose of independent read-out and
analysis without revealing their complicity in
tampering with this most important piece of TWA FL 800
accident investigation." 

So, you see, Congressman, we have a problem! The
Department of Justice cannot be called upon to
investigate its own wrongdoing with any objectivity;
it's up to the aggressiveness of the Committee on
Government Reform to do the necessary work.

Thank you for reading my lengthy letter!
 

Sincerely,
 

____________________________
Michael A. Hamann, PharmD.

Congressman Dan Burton 
Committee on Government Reform 
2157 Rayburn Building 
Washington, DC 20515 

Congressman Burton,

I am sending you this series of letters to make you
aware of the disturbed feelings I have regarding the
NTSB/FBI cover-up of the true cause of the downing of
TWA Flight 800. Your Committee on Government Reform is
probably one of the few federal entities that can
maintain objectivity while investigating the
Department of Justice, FBI, and NTSB and their role of
deceit and obstruction.

The following paragraphs are reprints from an online
series of articles from WorldNetDaily (WND), written
by Jack Cashill, a documentary film producer. As far
as I can ascertain, the information contained in this
article is true; much of it is supported by the
government's own documents:

On the evening of July 17, 1996, when Mike Wire quit
the switch gear room on Beach Lane Bridge for a breath
of fresh air, he had no idea he would be strolling on
to the center stage of one of the most explosive
political cover-ups in American history. 

For the unassuming Wire (Mick to close friends) to
play this critical role took a combination of unlikely
and unrelated factors, among them the reckless cunning
of the CIA, an unthinking bit of bureaucracy by the
National Transportation Safety Board, a seemingly
trivial slip-up by the FBI, the keen-eyed detective
work of Accuracy In Media's Reed Irvine
<http://www.aim.org>, and above all, the stalwart
character of Mike Wire himself, a man whose courage
and resolve the CIA would fatally underestimate. 

Wire, a union millwright from suburban Philadelphia,
had been working all that day on this Westhampton
Bridge. At day's end, he leaned his burly
6-foot-6-inch frame against the rail on the southwest
end of the bridge and looked out toward the sea beyond
the house line. 
At that moment a white light caught his eye. Twelve
days later, during a 90-minute interview at his
Pennsylvania home, he told an FBI agent - "a real nice
guy" - exactly what he saw. Here is how the agent
recorded the conversation on his "302": 

"Wire saw a white light that was traveling skyward
from the ground at approximately a 40 degree angle.
Wire described the white light as a light that
sparkled and thought it was some type of fireworks.
Wire stated that the white light 'zig zagged' (sic) as
it traveled upwards, and at the apex of its travel the
white light 'arched over' and disappeared from Wire's
view. ... Wire stated the white light traveled
outwards from the beach in a south-southeasterly
direction." 

After the light disappeared, the 302 continues, Wire
"saw an orange light that appeared to be a fireball."
This description, by the way, matches the description
Wire gave the FBI a few days earlier by phone and
perfectly mirrors what the eyewitnesses observed in
the NTSB missile test: the white smoke trail, the
zig-zag, the arch, the disappearance. At the end of
the 302, the agent added the now ironic notation, Wire
"wishes to cooperate in any way he can and can be
re-contacted at any time." 

Wire was hardly alone in his sighting. Seven hundred
and thirty-five other citizens shared their
observations of the crash with the FBI. The patterns
in their testimony are undeniable, flare after flare,
streak after streak, zig-zag after zig-zag. 

At least 96 of these eyewitnesses saw the light rise
up off the horizon. Many saw the explosion from a
clearer angle than Wire. At least four of them, for
instance, saw the nose of the plane blow off; two of
these shared this information with the FBI even before
the authorities knew the nose had fallen off first.
Wire did not parrot these details. He had left Long
Island for home the next morning before any story
might have circulated. Had a co-worker not alerted the
FBI to what Wire had seen, Wire would have played no
role in the drama to follow. 

After his July 1996, interviews, Wire returned to his
uneventful, workaday life in Pennsylvania. Having
little interest in politics and less in the Internet,
he did not follow the controversy swelling around the
crash. Wire did, however, see the CIA recreation of
the flight presented by the FBI in November of 1997,
at least the abbreviated version shown on the news. He
presumed this to be some temporary scheme to pacify
the public and was fully unaware of his own role in
it. 

This CIA video, however, proved to be the central,
most visible element of a disinformation campaign
designed to discredit the eyewitnesses. In an animated
sequence, The CIA argued that when the nose of the
plane broke off - due to a spontaneous explosion in
the center wing tank - the plane pitched up and
climbed like a rocket for more than 3,000 feet.
According to the CIA, this climb, not a missile, is
what the 736 official eyewitnesses saw. 
Forget for a moment the all-but-unanimous rejection of
this scenario by the aviation world. Forget, too, the
total absence of any eyewitness corroboration in the
FBI 302s or in the accompanying sketches. Focus
instead on the role Mike Wire played in the video's
creation. 

For reasons not fully explained, the CIA chose to
build its case squarely on Mike Wire's testimony. "FBI
investigators determined precisely where the
eyewitness was standing," says the CIA narrator of
Wire while the video shows the explosion from his
perspective on Beach Lane Bridge. "The white light the
eyewitness saw was very likely the aircraft very
briefly ascending and arching over after it exploded
rather than a missile attacking the aircraft." 

To be sure, this version of events does not at all
square with Wire's detailed 302 from July 1996,
recorded when his memory was at its freshest. The CIA
animation converts Wire's "40 degree" climb to one of
roughly 70 or 80 degrees. It reduces the movement of
an obvious smoke trail from three dimensions, south
and east "outward from the beach," to a small, two
dimensional blip far off shore. It places the
explosion noticeably to the west of where Wire clearly
remembers it. Most noticeably, it fully ignores Wire's
claim that the light ascended "skyward from the
ground" and places his first sighting 20 degrees above
the horizon, exactly where Flight 800 would have been.
 

Curiously, however, the CIA narrator repeats Wire's
claim that the object "zig-zagged," although neither
the CIA nor the NTSB animations show the crippled
plane in anything but a perfectly smooth, elliptical
ascent. 

The question begs to be asked: How could the CIA
recreate events at such obvious odds with the original
and detailed 302? Here is what the agency reported
orally to the NTSB and which the NTSB transcribed and
released with bureaucratic unconsciousness (NTSB
Witness document, Appendix FF, Docket No. SA-516,
April 30, 1999): 

CIA Analyst No. 1: "Let me say something else about
this eyewitness [Wire] because I think this is
interesting. He was an important eyewitness to us. And
we asked the FBI to talk to him again, and they did
[our emphasis]. In his original description, he
thought he had seen a firework and that perhaps that
firework had originated on the beach behind the house.
We went to that location and realized that, if he was
only seeing the airplane, that he would not see a
light appear from behind the rooftop of that house.
The light would actually appear in the sky. It's high
enough in the sky that that would have to happen. 

"When he was re-interviewed, he said that is indeed
what happened. The light did appear in the sky. Now,
when the FBI told us that, we got even more
comfortable with our theory. He also described, he was
asked to describe how high in the sky above the house
he thought that light appeared, and he said it was as
if -- if you imagine a flagpole on top of the house it
would be as if it were on the top or the tip of the
flagpole." 

If he could summon the political will, Attorney
General John Ashcroft could launch an investigation
into a criminal cover-up of the TWA 800 catastrophe
with nothing more than the CIA animated sequence and
the document above, as clear and compelling evidence
of a conspiracy to obstruct justice as a prosecutor
could hope for. 

Why? Here's why: The FBI never re-contacted Mike Wire
after July of 1996. Someone made up the interview out
of whole cloth - including the bizarre "flagpole"
detail. (Curiously, the NTSB's David Mayer fully
invents "two flagpoles" in discrediting critical
eyewitness 649). Some persons within either the CIA or
the FBI, or both, knowingly and flagrantly corrupted
the investigation into the tragic death of 230
innocent people. 

Joan Wire, Mike's equally courageous wife, did take
one call from an alleged FBI agent after July of 1996,
but when Mike Wire called the number back, he got a
New York publishing house, presumed the call a fraud
and refused to talk. 

If there were a follow-up interview by the FBI, there
should be a follow-up 302 complete with date, place,
and name of agent. The attorney general could begin
his investigation by asking the FBI to produce it. It
won't be able. 

Besides, even if the FBI had decided to call back,
Wire would not have changed his testimony. He has not
changed it to this day. When he and Joan came back to
Westhampton to help us create the video, "Silenced,"
he told and showed us exactly what he told the
original agent on his 302, though he had not seen that
document himself. For the record, Wire received no
compensation for this trip, even for his travel. 

Wire has no reason to lie. In fact, he and Joan are
fully aware of the potential consequences of telling
the truth. Says Mike, "I understand the implications
of dealing with the big guys." But the reserved,
soft-spoken Wire, who served with the U.S. Army in
Korea during the Vietnam War, still believes deeply in
the concept of duty. "If we don't stand up for the
country," he asks rhetorically, "who will?" 

The question remains: Why, of all the eyewitness
accounts, did the CIA choose to alter Mike Wire's?
Many others, including key witnesses like Major Fritz
Meyer and Paul Angelides, never claimed to see the
streak of light come off the horizon. Their testimony
might have been easier to fudge. 

Best guess: the 302s contain fairly detailed
information about occupation and residence. There is
much the CIA can infer from them about income and
media access. Most of the eyewitnesses on this, the
affluent south shore of Long Island, viewed the events
from their boats, from their summer homes, from their
yacht clubs. One eyewitness, a humble mechanic from
Philadelphia, saw it on his work break before heading
home the next morning. Who would you choose? 

One must give credit here where it is due. The CIA
damn well almost got away with it. Wire spent the next
four years fully unaware of what had transpired. Had
it not been for an odd double screw-up by the FBI, he
might still be unaware. 

On his 302, the interviewing agent from July of 1996
neglected once to capitalize "Wire." The FBI employee
that redacted the 302s before their public release
failed to black out "wire" since it was a common noun,
not capitalized. The 302s also included Wire's
hometown. Reed Irvine of AIM, who has been diligently
pursuing this case for years, caught the discrepancy,
found Wire's name in the phonebook, and called. This
call did not take place until the spring of 2000. 

And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Thanks for the time you've taken out of your busy
schedule to read this document!

Sincerely,
 

_______________________________
Michael A. Hamann, PharmD.
 

President George W. Bush
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Bush,

I want to convey to you my concern regarding the lack
of integrity in our federal government. Your
predecessor caused some serious damage in this area
that you can help to reverse.

One area of my concern is the lack of openness and
honesty concerning the crash of TWA Flight 800 on July
17, 1996 near Long Island, New York. 

I believe your high profile "REVERSAL" of President
William J. Clinton's Executive Order 13039 will be a
good first step in allowing the U.S. Navy Special
Warfare personnel to "whistleblow" whatever covert
recovery efforts they were asked to participate in. I
suspect the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice
Recorder were recovered earlier than the NTSB
revealed, only to be reinserted at the crash scene
after alteration. The FDR and CVR show signs of
"tampering", according to reliable sources that I can
furnish upon request. 

I started out as a genuine skeptic, disbelieving the
"theories" that insinuated one or more guided-missiles
downed this aircraft. Yes, I believed the NTSB's
"official explanation" of a fuel tank explosion as
being the probable cause of the entire event. At first
I viewed those persons espousing that a missile (or
two) had brought down this aircraft as the same people
who not only would report seeing a UFO, but were "poor
reality-testers" who would claim to have flown to
Venus and back in an Alien spacecraft. That was April
2000.

Since then I have become very disturbed that the
NTSB/FBI scenario is far removed from the truth. Not
only is the NTSB/FBI official explanation wrong, it
obviously involves senior federal officials attempting
to "sell" this highly improbable explanation to the
public, and in so doing, altering whatever evidence
stands in the way of their "official explanation".
This improbable theory of the crash flies in the face
of at least 102 eyewitnesses who describe a typical
surface-to-air missile engagement. Many of these
eyewitnesses observed the entire event; missile launch
phase, climb-out, warhead explosion(s), Jet A fuel
ignition, and finally, the fall and breakup of the
aircraft. We are talking about prominent and respected
Long Island citizens, who have a lot to lose if we
mistakenly label them as "crazies"!! 

There is a well known principle of science and logic
known as "Occam's Razor" - the simplest explanation is
usually the best one. The "missile downing" of Flight
800, with its 736 total eyewitnesses, certainly
withstands the scrutiny of "Occam's Razor". However,
the spontaneous, never-before-heard-of explosion of
Jet A fuel in the Center Wing Tank fails all objective
scrutinies. Thus, the NTSB/FBI felt compelled to alter
the evidence to continue the lie, and protect those
who started the lie from justified prosecution.
 
Sincerely,
 

________________________
Michael A. Hamann, PharmD.