July 20, 2001
 
 FEAR OF EYEWITNESSES

     Jack Cashill, the producer of a video that shows the
evidence that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by missiles, was invited to
appear on Greta Van Susteren's show on CNN on July 17, the fifth anniversary
of that tragic accident. This had been set up the day before, with Cashill
as the only guest. The next day the producer told him that James E. Hall,
the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board under President
Clinton, would also be on the show. 

     Only a few hours before the show, the producer told Cashill
that Hall would not do the show with him, and they had decided to have Hall
as the only guest. Cashill says, "Someone upstairs told her that responsible
journalism means I can't appear on the show without a counterbalance, but
it's okay for Jim Hall to appear by himself."  A lot of viewers who had
expected to see Cashill were angry when CNN put on only Jim Hall.  

     Hall had meekly  obeyed orders from the FBI not to allow any
eyewitnesses to testify at the NTSB public hearing on the evidence in the
case. Greta Van Susteren showed her hand by asking Hall if he was "100
percent certain that the conspiracists (sic) who say they saw a white light
traveling skyward, zigzagging, disappearing and then an orange ball of
fire...are wrong?" Hall said, "(W)ith 100 percent certainty...based on the
facts that we developed, they are wrong."

    The alleged "proof" is found in a transcript of a talk given
to the NTSB witness group by  a CIA analyst that is on the NTSB and other
TWA 800 Web sites. The analyst said they had been trying to figure out what
source there could be for the streak of light that 260 eyewitnesses said
they had seen. On Dec. 30, 1996, he got the idea "that you can explain what
the eyewitnesses are seeing with only the burning aircraft."  He claimed he
got this idea from  the FBI reports of their interviews of one man, who, he
said, "may be one eyewitness" who saw the whole thing.  That man is Michael
Wire, who six days after the crash  told the FBI in a phone call what he had
seen and then provided greater detail in an interview six days later. .

     The FBI reports say that standing on a drawbridge near
Westhampton, Long Island, Wire saw a zigzagging white light  going "skyward
from the ground" at about a 40-degree angle. He first saw it "just above the
roof top" of a house that blocked his view of the beach. It arched over and
headed out to sea on a southeasterly course. He lost sight of it just before
he saw an orange fireball falling into the ocean, trailing fire, that
disappeared behind a house  east of the one where he first saw the white
light. He then heard the first and loudest of four explosions. It shook the
70-ton bridge. 

     Wire's account of what he saw did not fit the CIA analyst's
theory that the white light Wire saw was TWA 800. Wire told the FBI he had
seen the white light come "off the beach" and "off the ground," first
appearing just above the roof top of a house. It was climbing at about a
40-degree angle and zigzagging. That could not have been TWA 800, which was
about ten miles away at an altitude of 13,800 feet and was not zigzagging
upward at a 40-degree angle.

     The CIA analyst's story was pure fabrication. He didn't
dream that his talk and Wire's FBI reports would ever be made public. He
told the witness group that there was a problem with Wire's first interview,
but that was cleared up when the CIA had the FBI  interview him again and
Wire said that he  first saw the light higher in the sky than the FBI report
indicated. The analyst didn't mention the problem of the
forty-degree-angle-zigzagging ascent. Wire was not re-interviewed by the
FBI; he has never changed his story, and he says that the CIA claim that all
that he saw was TWA 800 is  nonsense.

     The CIA produced a video based on this fabrication, showing the
crippled jet, minus its nose, climbing like a rocket. The FBI showed this
when they announced that they were ending  their investigation. Portions of
it were aired by the TV networks without exposing its absurdity.  Hall won't
debate anyone who knows this, because the Big Lie would be exposed. CNN's
substitution of Hall for Cashill in the name of "responsible journalism" is
a disgrace. Phillip Kent, the president of CNN News, promised me an
explanation within an hour. That was 30 hours ago.