Who's on First, What's on Second, I Don't Know is on Third.
The CIA, the FBI, and the NTSB
(The Naughty Nineties - Abbott and Costello)
"There's no use trying, " Alice said: "one
can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
"When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before
breakfast."
Lewis Carroll
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before the game began, the government's team knew it had a problem on its hands .....
July 23, 1993 Los Angeles Times
Intelligence Agency requests $55 million to buy back Stingers given to rebels
in the 1980s.
July 24, 1993 The New York Times
U.S. increases fund to outbid terrorists for Afghan missiles.
November 3, 1996 The Electronic Telegraph.
A race between terrorists and the Western powers for control of a huge cache
of missiles is underway in the arms bazaars of Afghanistan. The hunt, that
has pitched the resources of intelligence services against terrorist groups
and pariah states, is for an arsenal of shoulder-launched Stinger anti-aircraft
missiles. The weapons were sent into Afghanistan by the CIA during the Soviet
occupation and were a key factor in tipping the balance of firepower against
the Red Army. Now the West fears that, if they fall into the wrong hands,
the Stingers could turn the tables in future conflicts or prove devastating
if used by terror groups against civilian aviation. ..... The CIA has spent
more than £70 million in a belated and often bungled operation to buy
back the missiles. As a result, the weapons are fetching up to £200,000
each on the Afghan black market - 10 times their official "retail" price
- and have proved lucrative investments for their current owners, a mixture
of warlords, black marketeers and drug barons. ....
There is evidence that Afghan military commanders
have been only too eager to sell them to embassies in Kabul such as the North
Koreans' and the Iranians'. The two pariah states are believed
to have bought 40. .... "The Stinger is a status symbol weapon and would
be a significant weapon for any terrorist group," said Damon Bristow of the
Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies. "With little training
it can bring down any aircraft. The CIA has botched its shopping trip in
Afghanistan." When the CIA first sent covert shipments of missiles to Afghanistan
through Pakistan in June 1986, it kept a check of their serial numbers and
distribution. But at least 1,000 had been sent by April 1988 and the Americans
now admit to having no idea what became of most of them. ..... "The Stingers
do need to be maintained, and would need battery packs and trigger mechanisms
checked," said Tony Cullen, editor of Jane's Land Based Air Defence. "But
if they have been kept properly the weapons will still function. They were
designed to be portable and withstand rough treatment. Their other attraction
is that they are simple to use. You aim and fire. "
"The Israelis found Stingers held by Hizbollah,
American Special Forces found the wreckage of some in Iranian patrol boats
destroyed in helicopter attacks in the Gulf war and the Tamils
have used them in the Sri Lankan civil war." The FBI is still unsure whether
a heat-seeking missile might have brought down TWA flight 800, the civilian
airliner that crashed earlier this year in the sea near New York.
And when disaster stuck at the top of the first ......
July 17, 1996 TWA 800 downing.
Scott Holleran and his family who had missed the fatal TWA 800 flight arrived
later at the TWA gate for their flight back to the U.S..... The flight attendant
said: "Look, this is what we think happened. Everyone
at TWA thinks it was a missile."
The government team knew the opposing pitchers had some very fast, and hard balls......
July 19, 1996 ABC News Reports
Government sources were quoted as saying the explosion was a
"deliberate criminal act", possibly an
act of sabotage or the result of a hit by a "small
missile". Again, quoting unnamed government sources, it
was stated that infrared imagery from an orbiting
satellite may have detected a missile fired at the aircraft.
Newsday.com
http://www.newsday.com/jet/jet9main.htm
In the absence of explanations, theories abounded. One focused on a fax sent
Wednesday to an Arabic language newspaper in Beirut warning of an attack.
State Department and CIA officials confirmed they had received copies of
the fax Thursday. The message said "tomorrow morning
we will strike the Americans in a way they do not expect and it will be very
surprising to them," according to one official. A counterterrorism
source familiar with the fax said that it was sent at 11 a.m. New York time
Wednesday, more than nine hours before the
bombing. But a CIA source said that the agency
"does not attach too much significance"
to the fax.
At the end of the first innings a very unusual thing happened ... the crowd was asked to stand for a "moment of silence" in empathy for the top of the goverment's batting order whose teammates prevented them from taking the field with their bats .....
March 16, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition)
Issue 660
An internal memo from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), dated
November 15, complains that sensitive radar tapes were given to the White
House before they were provided to crash investigators. According to the
document, the radar data indicated that a missile
was converging on the Boeing 747 seconds before the aircraft broke
up off the coast of Long Island ......The document goes on to say
the NTSB was not allowed to take notes when it was
shown witness statements prepared by the FBI - which admits that 34 people
deemed “credible” said they saw a missile heading for the plane.
The FBI’s preferred theory in public is that vapours set off an
explosion in a central fuel tank.
December 15, 1997 Aviation Week and Space
Technology
NTSB efforts to elicit potentially vital information
from witnesses to the flight and crash of TWA Flight 800 were stymied for
months by FBI agents who blocked any attempts to interview the
witnesses, according to a copy of a safety board report obtained
by Aviation Week & Space Technology. The witnesses
included .... 96 ... witnesses who claimed to have seen a streak of light
rise from the surface prior to the 747-131's crash. ...... Two
days after the July 17, 1996, crash, as the witness group was preparing to
start interviewing witnesses, an FBI agent informed NTSB officials that the
bureau "was not prepared to share any information
outside the NTSB, so parties [to the safety board investigation] could not
be involved," the witness group report states. The NTSB had named
one of its investigators, Bruce Magladry, to head the witness group, .....
On July 21, 1996 .... Assistant U.S. Attorney Valerie Caproni informed
Magladry and Norm Wiemeyer, head of the Flight 800 probe's operations group,
"that no interviews were to be conducted by the
NTSB." Safety board investigators could review FBI-supplied documents
on the witnesses, "provided no notes were taken
and no copies were made." The next day, FBI and NTSB officials
reached an agreement that safety board officials could conduct interviews
"under the direction and in the company of the FBI,
and all information would be kept private
with no notes
taken." Concerned that this
interfered with the NTSB's mandate to make public the information gathered
in its investigations, Magladry withdrew from the
witness group two days later. The NTSB's efforts to glean information
from witnesses did not resume until mid-November 1996. ...
The report said there were 458 witness interviews
provided by the FBI. Of those, 183 reported seeing a streak of light and
102 provided information on the origin of the streak. The report stated that
six witnesses said the streak originated in the sky and
96 said it rose from the
surface. It is not clear whether the accounts of the 96 witnesses
were included in the 244 analyzed by the CIA for the FBI.
The analysts concluded that the witnesses did not
see a missile strike Flight 800.
And then they had their pleas of "foul play" rejected by an umpire.......
May 30, 1997 The Press-Enterprise
The Federal Aviation Administration has rejected a
plea by the National Transportation Safety Board to reverse its radar analysis
that a missile may have hit TWA Flight 800 and caused the July
17 crash that killed all 230 aboard. ..... The NTSB had asked the FAA to
renounce its early analysis, in part to contend with potential public or
media inquiries about the findings.
But back to the game .... "intelligent sources" were soon confiding their scouting reports that the opposing teams pitchers may have been using illegal Iranian balls ....
August 12, 1996 TIME Magazine
A well-placed U.S. intelligence source has told TIME that calls and transmissions
tracked by the CIA out of Tehran "have raised
suspicions" that there is an Iranian connection to the crash.
The CIA is also looking at intelligence on a meeting of terrorist leaders
in Iran the month before the crash to see if any green light was given for
the attack. "There is a hard look being taken at
the Iran possibility," says a senior U.S. intelligence official.
However, he adds. the intelligence gathered so far is
"vague, nothing solid." Even so, he says,
it is "tantalizing". the Iranian links
to terrorism were further highlighted last week when Defense Secretary William
Perry, in a National Public Radio interview, hinted that an ongoing Saudi
investigation of the June 25 bombing of a U.S. military complex in Dhahran
may "possibly" point to Iran's involvement. He suggested that the U.S. might
have to consider "strong action".
September 26, 1998 The New York Times
Federal authorities charged Friday that a person described as a senior deputy
to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi exile suspected in last month's bombings of
two U.S. embassies in Africa, made significant efforts on behalf of the bin
Laden group in 1993 to develop nuclear weapons. ..... The allegations, concerning
Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, also assert that
bin Laden had an official agreement with the Iranian
government and with Sudan's ruling party to oppose the United States, and
suggested that the United States had penetrated the bin Laden organization
and learned detailed information in 1996. ....
The government also asserted for the first time
in court papers that the Iranian government had entered into a formal three-way
"working agreement" with bin Laden and the National Islamic Front of the
Sudan to "work together against the United States, Israel and the West."
The front is the ruling party in Sudan. Members of bin Laden's organization,
al Qaeda, sent emissaries to Iran and some of its members received explosives
training in Lebanon from Hezbollah, the terrorist group backed by the Iranian
government, prosecutors said in court papers filed in U.S. District Court
in Manhattan. The government also said that during the time when the working
agreement was being negotiated, Salim met with an Iranian religious official
stationed in Khartoum and also traveled with al Qaeda members to Tehran to
arrange for training by Iran in the use of explosives. The allegations against
Iran come at a sensitive time, since Tehran is currently trying to improve
its relations with the West and is also at odds with the Taliban, the dominant
group in Afghanistan, which is protecting bin Laden. .... The
authorities also acknowledged for the first time .... that
the FBI had won the secret cooperation of an admitted
terrorist in al Qaeda as early as 1996, and obtained extensive
information about the group from the asset, who was not identified. ....
The document does say that the information from the source was provided to
the FBI in the late summer and fall of 1996, raising questions about how
much the government knew about the bin Laden group in the months leading
up to the bombings. ...
The coach considered protesting the game but then nodded off. Confirmation of the connection continued to come from the opposing pitchers who kept signalling the government batters that all of the fast balls were indeed coming from the mound ......
July 19, 1996 Reuters
Attorney General Jane Reno said she was unaware of any threats before the
crash but there were "some calls'' afterward
claiming responsibility. ABC News reported that an Arabic newspaper received
a warning of an attack on an American target Wednesday from the same group
that claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed five Americans
in Saudi Arabia in November. But the State Department said it had viewed
the warning letter as a political tract and not as a specific threat of an
extremist attack. "To us it seemed to be a general
political tract. We don't see it as a specific threat,'' State
Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said of the letter sent to Al Hayat,
an Arabic language newspaper published in London.
July 23, 1996 The London Times
The Tel Aviv paper Yediot Ahronot disclosed yesterday that Israel had been
asked by the CIA to check the Athens-New York passenger list of TWA Flight
800. The involvement of Mossad, Israel's secret service, emerged after it
was made known that the Israelis warned US Intelligence
before the disaster that an American aircraft would be the target of "sabotage
or hijacking" by Islamic extremists. "The American intelligence
agency gave Mossad the passenger list of the TWA plane from Athens to New
York and asked that it check the passengers' backgrounds to reveal if one
of them had connections to a terror group," reported the paper, which has
closelinks to the Israeli security services. .... Earlier this month, a Mossad
officer monitoring Middle East terrorist groups passed an unspecific warning
to his American counterpart in TelAviv. The officer said:
"The threat of sabotage or a hijacking against an
American plane was analysed and considered serious enough for us to pass
on to the Americans. It was then up to the Americans to assess the dangers
and decide whether to pass it on to their airlines."
July 19, 1996 New York Times.
A specific warning about the flight had been sent by an extremist
Saudi organization called the Movement of Islamic
Change, the organization that claimed responsibility for blowing
up US military personnel in Saudi Arabia last November.
"Late this morning we got a copy of a letter in
Arabic that we then had translated, and got it to the FBI" said
a State Department spokesman ... "It's a ... statement
that seems aimed at the Saudi regime or the American presence in Saudi
Arabia"......... Officials said they were reviewing a telephone
call placed to a Tampa, Florida television station yesterday morning from
a man who identified himself as a member of a jihad and claimed responsibility
for the crash.
Slim Doubleson, looking for a believable story for Time Line Live, insisted that the pitcher from Florida was a member of the Marlins! The spectators knew he was from the Middle East .....
July 21, 1996 New York Times.
Officials of Al Hayat, a prominent Arabic-language newspaper, said they had
received faxes in London and Washington early on Wednesday, warning of a
planned attack on an American target. The letter was signed by a group
identifying itself as the Movement of Islamic Change,
the Jihad wing.
Up in the broadcast booth Ran Blather, noticing all of the spectators peering to the East, declared that the United States was under attack from the West by El Nino! Nobody seemed to pay any attention since some thought was being given to doing something about Iran out there on first base, and US intelligence in the dugout had started supplying the supporting evidence .....
April 17, 1997 International News Electronic Telegraph
Issue 692
American intelligence officials tried to sabotage a Russian weapons deal
with Iran yesterday by leaking details of two meetings monitored in Moscow
in which arms shipments were agreed. These included the transfer to Teheran
of 500 advanced shoulder-launched "Igla" anti-aircraft
missiles. The US is indicating that the shipments are being organised
by Russian brokers acting separately from Rosvooruzheniye, the state arms
exporter, and offering discount prices. Other older surface-to-air systems
were also discussed, as well as the transfer of T-72 tanks and Mi-17 transport
helicopters. ... Washington fears that the missiles
are destined for use by Hizbollah, the Teheran-backed terrorist group. With
a range of 10,500 feet, they could be used in Lebanon against Israeli aircraft.
Any new arming of Hizbollah is alarming to Washington because
of the growing suspicion that it provided the logistics for last summer's
bombing in Dharhan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 US airmen and injuring 500.
A group opposed to the Iranian regime, the National Council of Resistance
of Iran, gave reporters in Washington what they called conclusive evidence
yesterday that the bombing was directed by Iranian intelligence. The attack,
it was claimed, was masterminded by Brig Gen Ahmad Sharifi, a commander of
the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The bombers were allegedly trained at the
Imam Sadeq base near the Iranian city of Qom, a Shi'ite religious centre
where Ayatollah Khomeini taught before his overthrow of the Shah.
August 5 1996 Electronic Telegraph Issue
442
The Clinton administration is drawing up detailed plans for military strikes
against Iran to punish the Islamic regime for backing terrorist attacks against
US targets. .... William Perry, US Secretary of Defence, has already
briefed the British and French governments "in general terms" about a plan
of attack - expected to be a missile and bombing strike on carefully selected
targets. But hawks in Washington, eager to seize the opportunity for a crippling
blow to Iran's growing military power, are pushing for a Pearl Harbour-style
attack to annihilate the entire Iranian navy and the nuclear weapons programme
of the outcast regime. Newt Gingrich, the House Speaker, called it "intolerable"
that America could only wait while up to 5,000 terrorists were being trained
for attacks on Americans. "We have every right as
a nation to defend ourselves by saying to the Iranian government either you
close those camps down or we will," Mr Gingrich said.
"We do know that international terrorism is almost
entirely subsidised by Iran, and that means that Iran is engaged surreptitiously
in acts of war against the United States." Mr Gingrich spoke as
if offering Mr Clinton the support of the opposition, but his comments could
also be read as a challenge. If evidence mounts
of Iran's sponsorship of international terrorism, and especially in regard
to the TWA Flight 800 crash, Mr Clinton could find himself forced to act
by the weight of public opinion. Mr Perry said that the detonator
and type of explosive used to bomb a US barracks in Saudi Arabia last month
were from military stocks, which suggested a foreign government's involvement.
It was well known that Iran was at the forefront of attacks on American
interests, he said, and promised "strong action" if Teheran is found to be
behind the bombing which killed 19 American servicemen. However, he played
down the likelihood of an imminent military US operation against Iran..The
severity of an attack on Iran could depend on the outcome of the investigation
into TWA Flight 800 .... FBI agents say they are
actively looking to see if there is a link between the Saudi bomb and the
mid-air destruction of the TWA aircraft. If sabotage is confirmed,
the crash would be the most deadly act of terrorism ever committed in the
US. Any shred of evidence that indicated an Iranian role in the disaster
would elicit a ferocious response from the American military machine. Mr
Perry has already announced that Iran is the "leading candidate" for the
recent wave of terrorist acts against US targets. He said he would elaborate
once he received the Saudi government's report - to be completed later this
week - outlining foreign sponsorship of the Iran-backed terrorist groups
operating in the kingdom. Iran's official news agency accused the US of trumping
up terrorism charges to justify an attack. Iran's permanent mission at the
United Nations accused Washington of trying "to make political gain" from
the fate of Flight 800. "Our power comes neither
from training terrorists nor supporting terrorism, but from our unshakeable
commitment to fight [US] domination," the statement said. There
are no doves in Washington when it comes to Iran.
Both Democrats and Republicans are agreed that
devastating action is needed.
April 20, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic
Edition) Issue 695
Hard-liners at the US Defense Department are pushing for a massive strike
against Iran to punish the mullahs for their alleged role in the bombing
of a US barracks in Saudi Arabia last year..... there is also strong pressure
within the Pentagon for a broader attack to cripple the growing military
power of the Islamic regime. Sources say that this would include a Pearl
Harbor-style strike to annihilate the Iranian navy before it can become a
threat to US naval operations in the Gulf, and heavy bombing raids to set
back Iran's nuclear weapons programme. The Clinton administration has been
weighing its options for several months, waiting to see whether there is
conclusive evidence of Iranian involvement in the Khobar Towers bombing.
But US intelligence has now linked a top official in Iran's Revolutionary
Guard, Brigadier Ahmad Sherifi, to a bombing suspect arrested in Canada last
month. "Iran was the organizing force behind the
attack," said a senior US official. ....Analysts argue that US
policy provoked fury in Teheran and prompted a strategic decision by the
Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani to launch a campaign of terrorism against
the Great Satan. Bill Clinton now has to decide how far to ratchet up the
cycle of escalation in the most dangerous and volatile region in the world.
......"The worst possible response would be a silly
missile attack in the middle of the night that stirs up a hornet's nest without
doing any real damage," says Ken Timmerman, editor of the Iran
Brief in Washington. "If you are going to hit them,
you've got to do it so hard they spend the next 10 years
recovering." This view is widely shared at the Pentagon, which
has watched with alarm as the Iranians acquired three Russian Kilo-class
submarines with quiet diesel engines that are hard to detect. Iran has also
been buying advanced C-802 cruise missiles from China which could pose a
serious danger to US warships in the Gulf. Hard-liners see retaliation for
the Khobar Towers bombing as an opportunity to deal with the Iranian military
before it has the means to choke the Straits of Hormuz, the source of 12
million barrels of oil a day, a third of the industrial world's oil supply.......
Military analysts are afraid that the Clinton policy of "dual containment"
of both Iran and Iraq is becoming a dangerous fiction. Herb Meyer, former
vice-chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council, warns that Iran
and Iraq may join forces to drive the US out of the Gulf and seize the Saudi
oil fields, with consequences that are almost unthinkable.
It is a nightmare waiting to happen
........
But no runs were scored and so the game went into the next innings with a Saudi dissident ready for ball one .....
March 29, 1997 The Telegraph
(U.K. Electronic Edition) Issue 673
A Saudi dissident with links to Iran took part in the Dhahran bombing that
killed 19 US airmen and injured 500 others last summer, according to Canadian
intelligence authorities. Hani al-Sayegh,
28, was arrested while working at a grocery in Ottawa. ...... They claim
he is a member of a terrorist organization called
Saudi Hizbollah and that he spoke about
the bombing in phone calls to Iran tapped by the intelligence services. The
details match the Saudi version of the blast. If proved conclusive, they
would force President Clinton to act against Teheran, either through a military
strike or sanctions.....Sayegh arrived in Canada last August, carrying an
international driving permit issued by Syria in 1994. On it, he gave his
permanent address as Damascus. The Canadians said
that Hizbollah was building a haven for its members in North
America.
June 19, 1997 New York Times
A Saudi dissident who says he will cooperate in the investigation of the
bombing that killed 19 Americans in Dhahran last year will plead guilty ...
in an earlier plot to kill Americans. The first plot was never carried out.
...This brought him one step closer to a deal under which he would provide
evidence about the June 1996 truck bombing in Dhahran in return for not being
extradited to Saudi Arabia. .... The federal grand jury indictment ... says
Sayegh was paid by an unnamed terrorist organization as part of a plot to
"kill nationals of the United States residing and working in the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia" in 1994 and 1995. ..... Sayegh, 28, says he is a member
of Saudi Hezbollah, the Party of God, a branch of
a terrorist organization based in Lebanon and backed by Iran.
He was deported on Tuesday from Canada, where he had arrived last August,
about six weeks after the Dhahran bombing.
June 18, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition)
Issue 754
A Saudi dissident was being deported to the United States by Canada last
night for FBI questioning about his role as a "look-out" in the bombing that
killed 19 Americans in Dhahran last year. CIA sources say that, two years
before the blast, Hani al-Sayegh, 28, secretly met Brig Ahmad Sherifi, the
top official in Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Sherifi's duties include organising
Hizbollah cells in Arab countries around the Gulf. If Sayegh provides conclusive
evidence of Iranian involvement in the attack, President Clinton will come
under heavy pressure to retaliate against Teheran with a military strike.
Canadian intelligence sources said he spoke about the bombing in tapped phone
calls to Teheran.
The CIA tried some curved balls ..... but the batter refused to swing ....
July 31, 1997 New York Times
In a setback to FBI efforts to solve a 1996 bombing that killed 19 American
servicemen in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi man pleaded not guilty here Wednesday
in a separate plot to scout out American targets in the kingdom for terrorist
attacks. The not guilty plea unhinged a deal in which the Saudi man, Hani
Abdel Rahim Hussein al-Sayegh, who was deported here in June from Canada.
Under the arrangement, law-enforcement officials say, he had agreed to provide
information about the deadly bombing at the Khobar Towers, a military housing
complex in Dhahran used by American Air Force personnel. ..... Law-enforcement
officials said Wednesday that while the not-guilty plea did not represent
a fatal blow to their efforts, it did provide yet another disappointment
in the Khobar Towers case, which has seen little progress. Sayegh was the
first witness whom federal agents considered able to shed light on one of
the core questions in the bombing -- whether Iran played a role in underwriting
the attack. Saudi intelligence officials have said that Sayegh met with Iranian
intelligence officials and later acted as a lookout in the attack, on June
25, 1996, in which a truck bomb ripped the face off an apartment building.
And so it was decided to give him a walk.....
September 9, 1997 New York
Times
The Justice Department said Monday that it would drop criminal charges against
a Saudi dissident who has been a central figure in the government's efforts
to investigate the truck bombing that killed 19 American airmen in Saudi
Arabia last year. The department, in effect, acknowledged the collapse of
its effort to obtain the cooperation of ... Hani Abdel Rahim al-Sayegh ....
Government officials said they might try to deport Sayegh, who remains in
custody. Officials said they would oppose any application for asylum. ....
when he was deported to the United States in June, officials expressed hope
that he could answer some of the most puzzling questions in the Khobar Towers
case, among them whether Iran had played a role in the attack. .... Saudi
intelligence officials had identified Sayegh as a driver of a scout car that
signaled the driver of an explosives-laden truck to the site of the blast.
But despite three trips to Saudi Arabia by the FBI director, Louis Freeh,
U.S. efforts have been stymied by Saudi resistance and refusal to allow access
to suspects in custody there.
Saudi resistance arose because the FBI got 'baseball' confused with 'bull fighting' .....
June 10, 1998 ABC Nightline
Khobar Towers was a turning point for the United States. Nineteen american
servicemen came home in coffins. Within the military there were two frightening
realizations - that it could have been much worse - and almost certainly
would happen again. In Saudi Arabia, once considered safe for Americans,
the landscape changed overnight .... A sometimes difficult relationship with
the Saudis becomes even tougher on certain types of intelligence - they have
yet to come clean with the U.S. on who they believe conducted the Khobar
Towers bombing and who trained them. It came as a bit of a shock to the Saudis
to find out how many Saudi young men had been trained overseas by the so-called
Afghani in extremist or potential terrorist roles.
Further tensions were created by the way the FBI
handled itself in Saudi Arabia. In the
view of the Saudis the FBI tried to "muscle" them. The Saudis simply stopped
talking. The image of the FBI is "a forensic bull in an arab china shop -
and a bull that can't speak the language and doesn't understand the
culture"
Back in the broadcast booth Ran Blather, noticing all of the spectators still peering to the East, declared again that the United States was under attack from the West by El Nino!!! He suggested that the government should plan to do something about it!! Nobody seemed to pay any attention since in the next "at bat" the CIA caught a line drive from Pakistan. The batter was upset over his father's death and had earlier rushed the mound and killed two of the government's players.....
June 19, 1997 The Telegraph (U.K. Electronic Edition)
Issue 755
CIA agents have captured the Pathan tribesman that they have been hunting
for four years after he allegedly came to America from Pakistan to shoot
two of their leading intelligence operatives. The murders were thought to
be his revenge for the death of his father during the spy agency's 1980s
covert operation to undermine the Soviets in Afghanistan. Mir Aimal Kansi,
33, was tracked down after America put a $2 million (£1.2 million) reward
on his head. He was held by what officials described as "Afghan individuals".
A CIA team working out of Peshawar, Pakistan, received information from the
Afghans and the handover was supervised by .... an FBI official .... Kansi's
father, Abdullah, was a prominent leader in Quetta, Pakistan, which was used
by the CIA as a way-station for the shipment of arms to Afghan guerrillas.
The father died after working undercover for America and Pakistan. Kansi
.... fled to Pakistan. The FBI has wondered if he was connected to
Ramsi Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade
Centre bombing in New York, who escaped by the same route to Islamabad
before disappearing a month later.
November 11, 1997 The New York Times
A Pakistani immigrant was convicted of murder Monday night for killing two
CIA employees stuck in morning rush-hour traffic outside the intelligence
agency's Virginia headquarters nearly five years ago....
Mir Amal Kansi, 33, faces a possible
death sentence. .... Kansi was captured in June after a four-and-a-half-year
search that reached from Washington's suburbs to the mountains of Afghanistan
and to the deserts of Pakistan. He was the lone suspect in the killings from
the moment he fled the United States after the shootings, which injured three
other people on Jan. 25, 1993, outside the Central Intelligence Agency's
headquarters in Langley, Va. ... His motive, as
best it could be determined, was anger at American foreign policy in the
Middle East. He was especially furious over the Persian Gulf war and the
treatment of Palestinians by Israel, said Special Agent Bradley
Garrett of the FBI, who helped arrest Kansi at a cheap hotel in Pakistan
and testified against him last week. Kansi, whose surname is also spelled
Kasi, gave a detailed confession to the FBI team as they flew to the United
States from Pakistan, Garrett testified. Kansi said
he believed that the United States and the CIA had too much power over Islamic
nations like Pakistan. His hometown was a base for a $3-billion
CIA paramilitary operation that was designed to arm the Afghan guerrillas
who were fighting off Soviet occupiers during the 1980s. Garrett said Kansi
told him he chose the CIA headquarters as a target to
"convey a message to the United States."
..... He was tried under Virginia law, not federal terrorist statutes.
Legally speaking, because Kansi appeared to have acted alone, and not as
part of a terrorist group, it was a simple case of murder.
The "out" so angered some of the batter's supporters that they attacked and killed four spectators thought to be supporting the other team.
November 12, 1997 Associated Press
Four American businessmen and a Pakistani are dead today after gunmen ran
their car off a road in Karachi and riddled it with bullets. Police say they've
launched a manhunt for the attackers. The Americans were auditors for the
Houston-based oil company, Union Texas Petroleum. The company says it is
evacuating all of its 30 personnel in the country immediately. The shooting
comes two days after a Virginia jury convicted a Pakistani man of killing
two CIA employees. The State Department has warned Americans in Pakistan
and elsewhere to be wary of possible retaliatory attacks.
Which brought Ramsi Yousef to the plate where he too was struck out. After the game, in a conversation with one of the government's players, he blamed his poor performance on his distaste for another team in the government's division....
October 23, 1997 New York Times
As smoke billowed from the towers of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993,
after a huge blast had torn through the center's garage, a man watched intently
from the Jersey City waterfront. The man, Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef ..... said "it was
in retaliation for U.S. aid to Israel," Parr testified at one
point. "I asked, why not select Israeli targets?
He said Israeli targets were too difficult to attack. He said if you
cannot attack your enemy, you should attack the friend of your enemy." ...
"He related to us that during World war II the Americans had dropped the
atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 250,000 civilians,
and he said that the Americans would realize if they suffered those types
of casualties that they were at war,"
Yousef said he had received financing
for the bombing from family members and friends, though he would not
elaborate.
But he didn't have to ..... He lived in his teammate's, Osama bin Laden's, house and though bin Laden doesn't own a baseball team he has nearly enough money to do so.
Bin Laden did well at bat .....
July 17, 1997 New York Times
A Federal grand jury in Manhattan is investigating whether a renegade Saudi
millionaire .... has been funneling money to terrorist groups in the United
States.......Mr. bin Laden ... is believed to be living in Jalalabad,
Afghanistan. An official ... said that the money had been delivered to groups
in Detroit, Jersey City and Brooklyn ....He was ... linked to
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef ...in the three years
before the attack on the Trade Center, Mr. Yousef lived in Pakistan in a
house paid for by Mr. bin Laden, the State Department report said. .......Federal
investigators have information that shows Islamic fundamentalist groups,
consisting mostly of legal noncitizen immigrants from the Middle East, have
received money from Mr. bin Laden. "the level of
terrorist activity within the United States is really very low, ..... groups
typically do not want to trigger the type of response that an attack in America
would bring ..... Osama ... may not have the same constraint."
July 15, 1997 CNN Web posted at: 6:05 p.m. EDT (2205
GMT)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating connections between
a maverick Saudi Arabian multimillionaire and his followers in the United
States, who may be planning terrorist attacks on U.S. targets. Federal agents
have identified followers of Osama Bin Ladin in Brooklyn, New York; Jersey
City, New Jersey; and Detroit, Michigan, to determine whether they are preparing
to carry out attacks, CNN has learned. Bin Ladin ..... has been linked to
the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia ....Now living among followers
in Afghanistan, Bin Ladin ... has gone on record as being a bitter enemy
of the United States. In an interview with CNN last month for the TV newsmagazine
"Impact," Bin Ladin said, "We declared a Jihad --
a holy war -- against the United States government because it is unjust,
criminal and tyrannical."....Federal sources say a grand jury
is investigating Bin Ladin..... According to federal sources, agents
investigating Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman
and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York began looking
into the activities of Bin Ladin's followers in this country... ..In particular,
agents have been tracing money transfers from Afghanistan and Pakistan ....
Bin Ladin's power base ..... through London to his followers in the
United States....Bin Ladin communicates with his adherents though audiotapes,
but he also spreads his fundamentalist beliefs through Web sites on the Internet.
The FBI wants to know if Bin-Ladin is financing any religious or political
activities in the United States. So far, sources say, Bin Ladin has not been
linked to any illegal activities in this country, but the investigation
continues.
He takes his baseball seriously! ...With Kansi, and Yousef back in the dugout was Osama bin Laden next on the strikeout list?....
June 25, 1997 MSANEWS Mohammad Jalal-Abadi - On behalf of Bangladeshi
Muslim Literary Circle in Great Britain, London.
The stage is now set for the Mossad and its lackeys in the CIA to use Pakistani
military intelligence and their "expertise" and the intermediaries to abduct
Sheikh Osama bin Laden whom the Zionist
entity and American State Department have declared
'world's number one terrorist'!
.....Pakistanis who are accusing Mr Sharif of compromising national sovereignty
and abandoning Islamic honour are not "Islamic terrorists" as claimed by
the Zionist terrorists and their puppets in the White House.
December 10, 1997 The New York Times
The Clinton Administration is putting pressure on Pakistan -
"very strongly" in the words of one American
diplomat - to use its influence on the Taliban .... to get them to moderate
their behavior ..... The United States' major concerns in Afghanistan are
human rights, drugs and terrorism .... Among the suspected terrorists living
in Kandahar, where the Taliban have their headquarters, is
Osama bin Ladin .... In a recent interview,
the Taliban Governor .... acknowledged that Mr. Ladin was there but answered
with a terse "No" when asked if he would
be handed over to the United States or any other government.
The government team tried hard and even had a little help from the in-field but bin Laden kept getting on base....
August 2, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 799
A leading associate of a sworn enemy of the West is now in custody in Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia, where he is providing information about his former boss's Islamic
fundamentalist activities. Details have been passed to MI6 and to the CIA
at Langley, Virginia. United States intelligence sources yesterday named
the informant as Abu Fadel, the terrorist alias for Sidi Tayyib. He handled
the distribution of Osama bin Laden's vast wealth as the
"godfather" of anti-American terror
groups. ... There is also a report that a second aide to bin Laden,
said to go by the name of Jallud, is helping the Saudis after being arrested.
Exiled from Saudi Arabia, bin Laden, 44, who has an inherited fortune estimated
at £154 million, is zealously committed to striking at American interests.
He is a towering figure in Islamic circles, where he gained heroic status
in the Eighties, fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan..... Cairo believes
that in association with the blind sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, he was behind
some of the murders of Western tourists in Egypt. America believes that bin
Laden was the patron of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the 28 year-old Pakistani on
trial in Manhattan for allegedly masterminding the 1993 World Trade Centre
bombing..... A State Department report labels him as
"one of the most significant financial sponsors
of Islamic extremist activities in the world today". It is thought
to be no coincidence that two alleged suicide bombers, Abu Mezer, 23, and
Lafi Khalil, 22, carrying Jordanian passports, were captured two days ago
making pipe bombs in a flat in Brooklyn, New York. They were apparently plotting
to blow up a subway train. American sources say the information being given
in Riyadh by Tayyib relates to the distribution of money to Arab communities
in Brooklyn, Jersey City in New Jersey, and Detroit. Tayyib has apparently
given details of bin Laden's bank accounts in Pakistan and Afghanistan from
which money has been sent to London and Detroit for passing on to individuals.
His information is thought to have been the reason a federal grand jury has
been secretly convened in New York to examine the financing of terrorism
in America. The CIA believes that bin Laden had advance knowledge of two
Saudi bombings that killed 24 US servicemen. He
is thought to have provided the money, with Iran supplying the muscle through
Hizbollah.
But later the same in-field, claiming that a fly ball from another big hitter had become lost in the lights, permitted what should have been an easy "out" to become a "double"....
October, 1997 Los Angeles Times
Saudi Arabia thwarted American efforts .... to seize a man authorities believe
is one of the world's most wanted terrorists, U.S. officials said.... The
man they had hoped to arrest had been hunted for a decade for his reputed
roles in the 1983 car-bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen in Lebanon
and for a 1985 Trans World Airlines
hijacking in which one American died. FBI officials were secretly
sent overseas to prepare to take custody of the suspect, a leader of the
militant Muslim group Hezbollah, on a stopover in Saudi Arabia during an
April 7 Middle East Airlines flight headed from Khartoum, Sudan, to Beirut.
But before they could carry out this operation, Saudi Arabia decided not
to cooperate and refused to allow the plane to land. The Clinton administration
...delivered a formal diplomatic protest to Saudi Arabia for its unwillingness
to help the FBI. The incident underscored the limits of cooperation between
the United States and Saudi Arabia, which admitted American troops onto its
soil in 1990 to help defend the kingdom following the Iraqi invasion of
neighboring Kuwait. The suspect sought by the FBI, who was secretly indicted
in the United States in 1985, is said to have been the Hezbollah security
chief in Lebanon who was in charge of American hostages taken in the hijacking
of TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome.
One American, Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem, was killed during that hijacking.
Although authorities refuse to give the suspect's name, he is believed to
be Imad Mughniyah, whom a top FBI official described several years ago as
"the single most dangerous terrorist at large
today." Mughniyah is said to have been one of the masterminds
not only of the TWA hijacking but also of the 1983 suicide bombing that killed
241 American military personnel in Beirut. And he was a leader in the abduction
of a series of American hostages in Lebanon in the early 1980s.
Meanwhile up in the broadcast booth Ran Blather, noticing that all of the spectators were continuing to peer to the East, declared again that the United States was under attack from the West by El Nino!!!! Still nobody seemed to pay any attention apparently preferring to watch Sheikh Rahman's visits to the plate which were accompanied with warnings to the government pitchers about what would happen if he were struck out ......
September 22, 1996 The New York Post
More than 150 credible witnesses - including several scientists and business
executives - have told the FBI and military experts they saw a missile destroy
TWA 800. "Some of these people are extremely, extremely
credible," a top federal official said.
"When we asked what they saw and where they saw
it, the witnesses out east pointed to the west, and the people to the west
pointed to the east, " ...FBI technicians mapped the various paths
- points in the sky where the witnesses said they saw the rising "flare-like"
object - and determined that the triangulated convergence point was virtually
where the jumbo jet initially exploded. Struck by the number and confidence
of the witnesses, the FBI sat down many of the witnesses with U.S. military
experts, who debriefed them and independently confirmed for the FBI that
their descriptions matched surface-to-air missile attacks.
"The military experts told us that what the witnesses
were describing was consistent with a missile," a federal official
acknowledged. "They told us, 'You know what they
are describing is a missile' "...
Investigators are reviewing an anonymous threat
received after the October 1, 1995 conviction of radical sheik Omar Abdel
Rahman .... the threat was that a New York airport or jetliner would be attacked
in retaliation ........
Rahman had a plan ... swing hard and hope to hit the stuff that the CIA pitchers were sending his way back to the mound at great velocity ....
August 25, 1996 Times of London
U.S. officials are investigating reports that Islamic terrorists have smuggled
Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the United States from Pakistan. Senior
Iranian sources close to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran claimed this
weekend that TWA flight 800 was shot down last month by one of three
shoulder-fired Stingers of the type used by Islamic guerrillas during the
Afghanistan war. The sources said the missiles arrived in America seven months
ago after being shipped from Karachi via Rotterdam and on to the Canadian
port of Halifax. They claimed an Egyptian fundamentalist group backed by
Iran was responsible for smuggling the weapons across the Canadian border
into the United States. The group, the Gama'a al-Islamiya, comprises followers
of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian
cleric jailed in the United States over the 1993 New York World Trade Center
bombing. A senior White House official responsible for counter-terrorism
told The Sunday Times this weekend that he had seen a report that a Stinger
missile had been smuggled into the United States from Pakistan. The official,
who is involved in collating intelligence relating to the TWA inquiry for
the White House, said investigators were aware of reports that Stingers may
have been smuggled into the country.... "If a Stinger was the cause of this,
our first theory would be that it came from Afghanistan."
The official was commenting on reports from Tehran
that claimed several groups funded by the religious authorities in Iran are
active in the United States. The reports
claim one previously unknown underground group called Falakh may have as
many as 50 highly trained terrorists in the country.
Since the downing of an American civilian aircraft should more properly be dealt with as an "act of war" than as a "criminal act", the FBI handed the government's ball to the CIA bullpen and suggested it stop further home runs .....
September 18, 1997 The Associated Press
The FBI, which is responsible for determining whether the disaster was the
result of a criminal act, and the CIA are still doing
"a sophisticated and detailed'' analysis of 200
witness accounts, Kallstrom said. He said this involves new interviews
with some of them and "correlation of the witness
locations and what they described seeing and hearing with known information,
such as the radar trackings the aircraft and the information from the cockpit
recorders.'' The analysis would take an additional 30 to 45 days,
he said.
The CIA bull pen struggled with shrapnel-like hits all over the field trying to figure out something "intelligent" to explain the eyewitness accounts by the bottom of the ninth ...
September 22, 1997 Aviation Week & Space
Technology
CIA analysts assisting the FBI have spent more than seven months culling
eyewitness acounts ... of TWA 800.......
And they figured out a brilliant strategy to win the game ..... they would make an animated video of what should be seen on the field and play it on the ballpark screen!
September 25, 1997 The Press-Enterprise
Central Intelligence Agency analysts have concluded that a missile did not
trigger the mid-air explosion of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996, a CIA
representative said Wednesday. "There is no way
a missile brought down the plane,"
CIA spokeswoman Carolyn Osborn
said. She said CIA analysts had spent 14 months investigating
missile theories after being asked to do so by the FBI. Officials of that
agency were concerned early on that foreign terrorists might have caused
the crash of the Paris bound-jetliner. The CIA's involvement in the investigation
was disclosed during a congressional hearing Sept. 5 by the FBI's lead
investigator, assistant director James Kalstrom, who said the intelligence
agency's analysis should be completed by mid-October.
"Based on analysis using 244 eyewitness reports,
radar data, infrared data and cockpit recorder information, CIA analysts
have determined that the eyewitness sightings thought to be that of a missile
actually took place
after
the first of several explosions on the aircraft," Osborn said. "Our technical
analysis concludes that what these eyewitnesses saw was in fact the burning
(Boeing) 747 in various stages of crippled flight, not a missile."
The CIA's Osborn said the agency joined the investigation shortly after
the crash. "Missile analysts of the CIA have been working closely with the
FBI during or over the past 14 months to examine the possibility that a missile
was used to bring down TWA Flight 800," she said.
"The Central Intelligence Agency became involved
because of the possibility that it was an act of foreign terrorism. The
particular concern
to the FBI were reports from several eyewitnesses
who recalled seeing an object, usually described as being a flare, ascend
toward the plane and that these witnesses believe what they saw was a missile
destroy the aircraft." After reviewing
factors such as speed of sound and light, trajectory, and acoustical data
collected by the cockpit voice recorder, CIA analysts said they believed
witnesses saw
later,
not
earlier,
events in the plane's breakup.
"Earlier" became "later". An insightful observation from an organization possessing "nothing" and having no direction in which to go! Yet based on "nothing" .....
July 19, 1996 CNN Web posted at: 10:50 a.m. EDT
The CIA's Counter-terrorism Center also
has begun a worldwide search for any clues that terrorism may have been involved
in crash. But so far, a CIA official
said, "We have nothing that points us
in one direction or another." There was some speculation that
a surface-to-air missile, perhaps fired from a boat off the coast of Long
Island, could have brought the plane down. A top
Pentagon intelligence official told CNN such a possibility has been ruled
out.
.... a missile had been "ruled out" within thirty six hours of the downing.
After the game was over the spectators were completely at a loss as to who had won. The third innings had apparently taken place before the second innings or had it occurred after the seventh innings which came before the fourth innings? They had seen a lot of fast projectiles and good strikes. But the players 'without the bats' told the press that what the spectators thought they saw was wrong. They had a better animated video to prove this .....
March 12, 1997 The Associated Press
An Air National Guardsman who witnessed the explosion of TWA Flight 800
repeatedly told authorities he thought a missile had struck the plane ....
After searching for survivors the night of the crash, Capt. Chris Baur, a
helicopter pilot, returned to his base and "told
officials immediately he thought he saw a missile"
... A NTSB investigator who interviewed Baur said
that what the pilot saw could be explained by mechanical malfunction that
might have created "a tongue of flame coming from the aircraft".
One confused and irate spectator was removed from the stadium for threatening scatological action against the President's desk ....
October 20, 1997 The Press-Enterprise, Riverside,
CA.
William Gallagher, a commercial fisherman,
had just finished trolling for squid when he saw a
reddish light in the sky.
"I'll lay my ass on the table and tell the president
or the FBI, and someone can hypnotize me: There was no way that
red light
was descending," Gallagher
said. "It was ascending. It made contact with what
turned out to be that airplane and made a white bright light and then split
in two." He thinks something is wrong with the investigation.
"If I were in a courtroom and the prosecutor says
I've got an eyewitness, then I become a trump card," he said.
"We're not just one witness but 135 or more strong.
I saw something hit the right side of the plane, my opinion was it blew the
wing off on impact. I assumed something went through the airplane, like behind
first class and into the wing. My honest opinion, my gut feeling, is that
we have the most brilliant people in the world and the best technology. If
they've been on scene for a year and they've not come up with something,
as a critical thinker I have to ask, could they be covering up
something?"
Most of the spectators were unable to understand that when a ball was curving up it was actually curving down .....
October 20, 1997 The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA,
A meteorologist. A commercial fisherman. A commuter
airline pilot. Three eyewitnesses to the fiery midair breakup
of TWA 800 share one clear recollection -- an ascending
object struck the jumbo jet. Yet when federal investigators
reinterviewed 244 of the more than 400 eyewitnesses to the crash, no agency
-- not the FBI or the CIA, not the Federal Aviation Administration or the
National Transportation Safety Board -- conducted a follow-up interview with
any of the three, whose accounts have not been widely published. Their initial
recollections, given within hours of the disaster July17, 1996, remain part
of the classified record of the second
most deadly aviation crash in U.S. history. "I find
it all very intriguing," said Paul Beaver, an editor and missile
specialist with Jane's, a British publishing and research group. Military
organizations worldwide use the prestigious 100-year-old company's information
for training and to keep track of each other. "From
Jane's perspective, we would like to say this leaves the whole question of
what happened to TWA 800 in the balance," Beaver said in an interview.
The accounts are "an indication that it may be something
more than a catastrophic (mechanical) event..... FBI and CIA officials
say they have reinterviewed and analyzed reports of 244 witnesses and determined
that what the people saw happened
after
the initiating event and was
"the burning (Boeing) 747 in various stages of crippled
flight, not a missile." Some investigation analysts say
witnesses mistook pressurized sprays of flaming
fuel going
downward
for something that looked like a missile or emergency flare headed
upward. All of the witnesses
interviewed by The Press-Enterprise said they
were never reinterviewed by the FBI or CIA and what they saw started before
the midair explosion, not after. Neither the FBI
nor the CIA would discuss their guidelines for deciding whom to reinterview
or how they categorized witnesses' reliability.
And so the bull pen refused to explain which way was "up" or which way was "down", or why "before" was "after" and "after" was "before". But when Slim rushed over they promised to discuss it on Time Line Live after he said that this winning strategy was very "intelligent".
Yet the crowd streamed out of the stadium knowing that the government had lost the game when...
March 7, 1994 Washington Post
CIA falters in program to buy back .... missiles
from Afghan rebels.
While up in the broadcast booth Ran Blather, noticing all of the spectators were leaving still peering to the East, repeated what he had heard on the news ..........
November 13, 1997 CBS Evening News
... "in the great turtle-spawning grounds of Nicaragua,
warmer than normal El Nino sea currents ... have cut into the birth rate
and survival rate of this year's new-born population of sea
turtles"
And CBS News hired a man who had no further interest in looking to the East ....
June 15, 1998 The Associated
Press
CBS News has hired the chief investigtor into the TWA Flight 800 explosion
to be a law enforcement consultant, the network said Monday. James
Kallstrom, the former FBI assistant director in charge of the New York City
office, retired from the FBI after 28 years last December. He headed the
probe into the Flight 800 disaster, which killed 230 people in July 1996.
"He will add significant insight to CBS News' coverage
of stories and issues involving law enforcement and will be a major asset
in our dedication to enterprise reporting in that area," said
Al Ortiz, CBS vice president and Washington bureau chief. Kallstrom is currently
senior executive vice president of MBNA America Bank.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Note to the reader: Extreme sensitivity by the major news media to any view providing evidence that a missile attack brought down TWA 800 continues to this day as evidenced by this lame excuse .....
November 7, 1998 The New York Times
Citing the potential for confusion among viewers between
"fact-based entertainment and hard news,"
executives of the ABC television network said Friday that the network
had dropped plans to broadcast a prime-time special, produced by the film
maker Oliver Stone, about the theory that long-range missiles caused the
crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 off Long Island.
The decision came after several ABC journalists had
expressed dismay to their superiors about the proposed program, called "Oliver
Stone's Declassified," fearing that viewers would perceive it as an ABC News
report, ABC News has reported that the missile theories are groundless.
"Clearly, Oliver Stone is a gifted writer-director
with a strong record of producing compelling dramatic movies," a statement
issued by ABC said. "On reflection, we believe this
genre may not be appropriate for a television network with a strong news
record and identity." .... Assorted theories about bombs and missiles
have been widely discredited since the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800, on July
17, 1996, in which 230 people died. Most aviation experts believe a spark
of unknown origin in the center fuel tank caused the plane to explode over
Long Island Sound. The National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency have all said
there is no evidence to support the theory that the crash was caused by a
missile or missiles. But several former military officers, citing witnesses'
accounts of streaks of light in the sky before the plane exploded, insist
that the missile hypothesis has never been adequately examined. Some people
have accused the F.B.I. of suppressing evidence.