Posted by Mike Hull _ Further Information on September 13, 19100 at 17:29:48:
In Reply to: Re: TWA 800 Disaster Witness posted by Michael Hull on September 13, 19100 at 17:21:57:
Also note Major Meyer's experience ....
Major Meyer and some comments he made to the Granada Forum on March 12, 1998 which sum the whole thing up .......
"Now I went out to give aid as I told you and found no survivors and went back to my unit and went home that night. The next day at 4:00 pm we gave a press conference and some reporters came to base and we sat in an auditorium on the base and I came down from my office to participate in this press conference in which the crew of the C130 and the rest or my crew and two para rescue men who had seen a light in the sky were all called in to tell what we saw to the news media. When I went into that press conference the public affairs officer from my unit gave me three criteria - he said "Do not speculate" - "Do not give your opinion" - and "Do not discuss the condition of the bodies. So those were the conditions under which we held that press conference. I described my streak of light and everything to the people there. I walked out of that room about an hour and fifteen minutes later and a fellow was watching a television in a room across the hall from the briefing room and he said: "Hey, I just saw you on television - Peter Jennings says you said it was a missile". Well all hell broke loose because I had apparently violated the parameters of the press conference. The AJ of the NY State Air Guard was on the phone with me and wanted to know why I did that. I told him: "General the entire press conference was videotaped - look at the videotape - I never said it was a missile". Well the media had picked it up as a missile and therefore I was given the task to then go back to the media and tell them "I didn't say it was a missile". So I went back - at that time the next day - two days later - the Friday after the accident - I went back to the coast guard station at East Moriches where I gave in excess of 40 interviews to news media crews in which I told them that I did not say it was a missile. They, of course, reported 'Pilot on the scene says it was not a missile' (Laughter). There came a period in here where we decided - and it was a mutual decision - it was not an order - that we were just going to stop talking to the media because no matter what we told them they screwed it up. We stopped talking to the media (applause). We also decided that we were witnesses to an accident - that there were pros in the NTSB who were going to come in and do a first rate job."
"And we waited for a year for those pros to do a first rate job and we don't believe they did ...."
: : What happened to the AF Major, a C-130 pilot, who was in the air near the scene of the TWA 800 explosion, and was interviewed on TV (I saw the interview) within a day or two after the accident claiming to have seen something streaking toward the 747? Anyone know his name and whether or not his statement is available for review. He certainly appeared to be a completely credible witness.
: Col. William Stratemeier - Pilot of the C-130
: People have claimed they saw an interview right after the crash of an Air National Guard pilot as he stood on a tarmac in front of an aircraft where the pilot said the jet was hit with a missile and that Navy-missile exercises were being conducted at the time. Consistent with such an interview, the Long Island paper Suffolk Life [SUFFOLK LIFE: "Flight 800: Accident Or Terrorist Attack? - Part 4 Was There A Cover-up?" By Joey Mac Lellan. December 17, 1998] reports:
: "Long Island's Channel 55 cameraman James Hughes, said during an interview that he and another camera crew from one of the networks were at the airport when the C130 landed. The crew, he said, stated they saw a missile heading toward FL800 just before they witnessed the explosion. The C130 crew members were pulled away from the two camera crews by what Hughes said appeared to be their superiors and came back claiming they had seen nothing." The C-130 was piloted by Col. William Stratemeier.
: The sudden change of the pilots story is consistent with a report from Aviation Week & Space Technology [AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY: Terrorist Fears Deepen With 747's Destruction. E.Phillips, P. Mann (7/22/96) p.20.] that the ANG C-130 pilot "said he had seen what appeared to be the trail of a shoulder-fired SAM ending in a flash on the 747," and then in the next issue, Aviation Week reports that the pilot had a sudden change of mind, now saying: "We did not see smoke trails [from a missile], any ignition source from the tail end of a rocket nor anything..." [AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY: ANG Eyewitnesses Reject Missile Theory. By David Fulghum, July 29, 1996, page 32.]
: Stratemeier said He had not seen anything before the fireball and so the above AWST item is strictly correct. He may have said that a missile brought down the aircraft without saying that it was he who saw the missile. The key to understanding the apparent conflict is the flight engineer, who was sitting between the pilots and one pace behind their seats.
: For further eyewitness details see "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" on my website.
: Regards
: Michael