"On a Clear Day You Can See Forever"

Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the clouds a silence....

John Banister Tabb

In the winter of 1995/96 Hull observed a missile launch just off the I-95 highway in Connecticut.
After TWA FL800 was destroyed Hull contacted the FBI numerous times with this information but elicited no response.
A citizen researcher, Hull has continued to research the downing of TWA 800 with other interested private individuals.

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A Web version of TWA 800 Google Earth simulations has been created by Bob Donaldson (twa800.com) that will show you the view and perspective of each of the eyewitnesses.  The views show the altitude of Flight 800 from the perspective of each eyewitness.  Flight 800 is indicated by a red dot connected to the horizon by a white line.  The white line is simply used to show where Flight 800 is located above the horizon.  You must have Google Earth loaded on your computer to use this link.  http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html  Be aware that Google Earth does not work well on slow old computers.  To access the networked Google Earth link, do the following: 1. Open Google Earth. 2. At the top menu bar, click on the "Add" button, then click on "Network Link".  3. Enter TWA800 for the Link in the "Name" box and then paste the following link in the "Location" box: http://twa800.com/google-earth/flight-800.kmz   4. Click OK.  The link will now load the latest version of the file.  Click on the triangle next to the new link and it will expand all the links.  To zoom to a location, double click on that link. When you zoom to a witness location, an information balloon comes up.  Most balloons have a link to a jpg drawing of the missile trail the witness described. Several images prepared by Bob Donaldson are included in this article and are indicated as "Google Views".

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1) Eyewitness reports from the NTSB, the FBI, private citizens, and media interviews.
(Eyewitnesses' sketches may be view at http://flight800.org/sketch.htm.   Animated eyewitness sketches were provided by I. Goddard.  

Prior to the 911 attacks on the World Trade Center intelligence chatter had risen to a crescendo; the U.S. government anticipated an attack in the Middle East.  Five years earlier prior to the attack on TWA 800 intelligence chatter had risen to a crescendo; the U.S. government anticipated an attack in the Middle East.

July 18, 1996 18:19 GMT  Agence France Presse 
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said it was purely coincidental that the plane crash came just hours after Defense Secretary William Perry warned of a heightened threat of terrorist attacks, primarily in the Gulf.  At the Pentagon, Bacon said the increase in threats had come in localized areas such as Saudi Arabia, where 19 Americans were killed last month by a massive truck bomb at a US military housing complex in Dhahran.

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.

December 17, 1996   The Washington Times
An official with the Defense Intelligence Agency, spy arm of the Pentagon, has informed congressional staff members that, in his opinion, a shoulder-fired missile brought down TWA Flight 800. The same DIA official, described as an expert in missile technology, told the staff members that he personally was called in by the FBI in the days following the explosion of the TWA jet to assist with witness interviews. "In his opinion, the plane was brought down by at least one shoulder-fired missile," said the congressional source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "When he said that, we all took a deep breath," the source added.

These news items are supported by the eyewitness evidence which shows that: a) a missile exploded to the left of the aircraft in the region of the left wing. This missile shattered the upper surface of the left wing. Several eyewitnesses describe the aircraft as flying through this explosion.  b) a missile struck just forward of the wing area on the starboard side and transited the aircraft exiting on the port side, and c) a missile struck the nose of the plane in an upward direction blowing out the right hand side of the plane, fodding the right engine with debris and punching holes in the leading edge of the right wing.  See http://twa800.com/images/triangulation_update.pdf

The Village Voice February 24 - March 2, 1999
Noting that the "severe shattering of the left wing upper skin" had puzzled investigators, military expert Richard Bott speculated in the report, obtained by the Voice, that a missile striking the inboard left wing fuel tank would create "a significant hydrodynamic ram event" that would account for the wing's peculiar fragmentation. Some wing pieces were recovered near JFK, suggesting that they fell from the aircraft in the first moments after the plane exploded.

Jim Kallstrom commented in the same Village Voice article: "You know, there are some things you can't explain."

For further information on the damage to the left wing read Report to the Subcommittee on Aviation on the Crash of TWA Flight 800  

Let us begin with Major Fritz Meyer who with Captain Baur was piloting the first helicopter to arrive over the crash scene.

Interview Transcript with Meyer from NTSB dated January 11, 1997 - Docket No. SA-516 Appendix O
I saw in front of me and slightly to my left of dead front I saw a streak of light in the sky. I have (sic) no idea what it was.   And my reaction when I saw it was, what the hell is that? I observed it for somewhere in approximately three to five seconds moving in a gradually descending arc - sort of a gentle descending trajectory. Similar to that which you would observe that night if you observed a shooting star. The difference is that it was red-orange in color and it was broad daylight. I observed a streak of light for 3 to 5 seconds. And then I saw an explosion. And about one to two seconds after that I saw a second, and possibly a third, explosion. Now, these were hard explosions. This looked like flak. It's a hard explosion. It's like an HPX explosion, as opposed to a soft explosion like gasoline, or something. .... And then from that approximate position emanated this fireball, which was a soft explosion. And it was definitely petroleum. 

On arriving at the scene of the flaming wreckage ...

"Don't over fly." I said, "There's debris falling, you're going to run into it." Because what I was looking at was debris, like, fuselage, skin - aluminum skin, or stuff - tumbling in the air. Now, if you shred an aircraft and it tumbles in the air maybe it's falling at somewhere up to 40 mi. an hour; and it's falling in an erratic - you know, you watch things fall. They spin and they flop, and they - they do all kinds of things. Right in the middle of this field of falling debris - some of it burning - there are objects moving coming down at terminal velocity:160,180 knots. I'm presuming - that these seats - and there were people in them - were falling at 160 to180 knots. And I realized that this is logically inconsistent. Now, they couldn't have debris tumbling - light weight debris tumbling in the air, falling passed my field of vision in the same field with objects moving at terminal velocity if they had emanated from the same spot at the same time. I thought that was very significant. And I thought it was extremely significant, because the logical answer to me is that the head - the heavy stuff had to go somewhere else first, before it came down, or it wouldn't have come down and been passing - I would say 500 ft. to the surface - it wouldn't have been passing through my field of vision if - if it had all come down at once. It had to go somewhere else first because it was traveling, when it came down, at a much greater speed. That indicated to me that probably the seats had been blown vertically, with the people in them. But they had to be blown up to zero acceleration - to zero air speed and then turn around and begin an acceleration and come down. I thought that was very significant, and I reported it to the FBI agents.

(Meyer wrote to the author as follows: "How interesting to read the transcript of my testimony. The transcript misquotes me. For example; "I have no idea what it was " ---- instead of "I had no idea what it was". Read a detailed account of Meyer's observations given to the Granada Forum)

Meyer saw only one of the missiles in flight that were fired at TWA 800 but he witnessed all three of the "hard", "flak-like" explosions from the missiles.  As you read Goss's testimony later in this document you will realize that the missile that Goss describes was the missile that Meyer was watching in flight.  It eventually exploded near the left side of the aircraft and shattered the upper surface of the left wing.

Captain Baur saw the missile which approached the aircraft from the front and exploded in the vicinity of the nose wheel, forcing the aircraft nose upwards and separating it from the aircraft.

Google view of missile attack as seen by Baur and Meyer  

Here is how he described the incident in his testimony to the NTSB.

Interview Transcript with Baur from NTSB dated January 11, 1997 - Docket No. SA-516 Appendix N
The device that ... that I saw ... there was an object that came from the left. And it appeared to be like ... like, a white-hot. Like a pyrotechnic. And I guess at the time that's all in my mind I could liken it to. It came from the left and went to the right.  And it made the object on the right explode. Going back to the pyro. I mean, I know what pyrotechnics looks like. And I know ... or, in my mind what ... when two objects collide, i.e., a mid-air. So flying out there ... go back to your question ... I had thought that since in my mind's eye I saw two objects collide that there was a mid-air.

On arriving at the scene of the flaming wreckage ...

And then through the debris I saw what appeared to be ... like, I ... several bodies fall through it.  It kind of reminded me like a sack of potatoes. Most of the people that we saw.. or a fair amount of them seemed to be decapitated. Or amputated. There was double amputees; indicative of sudden stoppage.  In ... in going back to what I initially saw, it ... it was almost as if the plane dropped in its tracks. It didn't keep going.  ....   The things that stand out in my mind was this object that looked ...  that had a white phosphorous kind of flame ... or whatever you want to call it .. coming out of it striking another object that you couldn't clearly tell exactly what it was. The object came from the left and went to the right. It appeared to be ...to have a .. .like, a white-hot kind of lower flame.  Like white phosphorous or .. some type of, like, a rocket type motor. Those .. you know, from things I've seen in the military that they shoot at things.  But it .. it was like ... it was moving quick. And it had the light phosphorous glow coming out of the tailpipe. It may have also had something red and phosphorous on it, too. But I'm not certain.  And I just saw it in that flight.  And it was level in its attitude.  And it struck something.  And the thing that it struck sort of blew up in this big explosion. And the bodies that still fell were falling through this ... this stuff.  Between .. you know, in ..in that .. that ..that cone .. the smoke and the particulate you have this body or torso, or whatever, just come ... down through there.

And early on, like the next day, we were told not to discuss anything about missiles with ... you know, they encouraged us to talk to the media. But not to discuss that with them. So, the only person that I did discuss that with was the FBI.

Mr Wiemeyer asks:  You describe early on in the interview seeing some debris in the air that appeared to be like glitter?

It was red and glittery like that stuff that ... you know, like when a ... you shoot off fireworks and they explode, and then you get this ... after the explosion you get this kind of, like.... this stuff falls and ... I'm not an art major.  This stuff would fall and ... you have the explosion, and then the glitter or that ... whatever, that creates the explosion and I guess there's little pieces of metal, or something, that ... that give off these different colors.  And they fall to ... you know, back to earth. And they sort of burn out on their way down. This .. this red glittery stuff. And I couldn't tell if it was burning or not.  But it looked like ... like that stuff that's in fireworks after it explodes and  ... and that residue that falls back down out of the sky.  

Read Baur's complete testimony to the NTSB at http://twa800.com/witnesscd/AppendixN.pdf and then try to understand how a NTSB investigator could tell The Associated Press that he could explain the testimony as a "mechanical malfunction" and "a tongue of flame"...

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".

Baur and Meyer's observations of bodies falling through the "light" debris when they arrived on the scene is a crucial observation. It indicates that the Center Tank explosion occurred at a time much later than the missile explosions.  Meyer and Baur arrived at the scene when the main body of wreckage had already fallen into the ocean.  Heavy material falls rapidly, light material drifts down.  It was not surprising to find that the aircraft had impacted the ocean while lighter material was still drifting down.  What is surprising, and crucial in understanding when the Center Wing Tank exploded, is that Meyer and Baur observed several victims falling through their field of vision. Let us explore this in detail.

The first missile exploded off the port side of the aircraft between 8:31:05 and 8:31:12 when the flight data recorder stopped.

2030: 24 CAM- 1 TWA 800: Ollie.
2030: 24 CAM- 3 Huh.
2030: 25 CAM- 1: Climb thrust.
2030: 28 CAM- 1 : Climb to one five thousand.
2030: 35 CAM- 3 Power's set.
2030: 42 CAM (Sound similar to a mechanical movement in cockpit)  
2031: 03 CAM  Unintelligible word.  (This word was reported to be "Uh, oh!"  -  Did the pilot see the "Baur" missile approaching from the front?)
2031: 05 CAM  (Sounds similar to recording tape damage noise).  (missile explosion off  port side?)
2031: 12  End of recording. 

The aircraft then fell in flames from 13,100 to 7,500 feet. Note how the fuselage is blackened in this photograph behind the point where the nose broke off.  At approximately 7,500 feet the Center Wink Tank exploded in a "soft" explosion. The explosion of the center wing fuel tank blew some seats and their occupants upwards.  It was these victims who were observed falling into the ocean when Meyer and Baur arrived on the scene.  

Note this report from Eastwind Flight 507:

Eastwind Flight 507 8:31:50: We just saw an explosion out here.  

Capt McClaine, the pilot of Eastwind 507, told Richard Hirsch that he saw the large fuel/air explosion about 10 seconds before he made his radio report to Boston Center. He also made the same estimate to the NTSB in an interview on March 25, 1999. McClaine's testimony puts the time of the CWT explosion at approximately 8:31:40. What therefore occurred at 8:31:12 to cause the flight data recorder to go dead? Obviously, it was not the "soft" Center Wing Tank explosion and thus this explosion was not the initiating event in the aircraft's destruction.  

The initial missile explosions described by Meyer as "flak" or "hard" explosions were described by other witnesses as sounding like gunshots or M-80 fireworks while the "soft" fuel explosion he saw was described by witnesses as a "pop"  or a "boom" ....

Witness 484- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix F
Witness stated she saw a streak rising into the sky at an angle curving a little to the west. She saw it rise for about two seconds. It made a slight arc then she lost sight for about one second, then saw an explosion. The streak was the color of a match flame. Witness stated the explosion sounded like a loud firework, almost as loud as an M-80 going off. Witness heard one boom sound. The explosion was a huge ball which dropped down to the horizon.

Witness 630 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness heard two loud noises. He described the noises as something between fireworks and gunshots. About 15 seconds later, he heard a third sound which he described as a loud pop.

Note that between the "gunshot-like" explosions and the "pop" a period of "about 15 seconds" has elapsed in this witness's estimation.

Witness 750 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness stated that he heard what sounded to him as two M80 fireworks going off.

Following these sharp, gunshot-like explosions the damaged aircraft immediately began to fall.  Witness 63 is clear on this point - the airplane "dipped before stopping".   Recall that the CIA produced a movie in an attempt to explain away the "streaks" seen by hundreds of eyewitnesses.  In the CIA movie a headless aircraft in flames climbs several thousands of feet after 8:31:12 before crashing in the ocean.  The physically impossible CIA scenario was not observed by a single eyewitness!

Witness 63 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness advised that he was traveling west on the Sunrise Highway in the vicinity of Center Moriches when he observed an airplane off to his left flying in an eastbound direction. Witness glanced to his left a second time and, on this location, observed a bright flash of white light on the rear portion of the airplane. Witness described the white flash as small, similar to a firework, circular in shape and of a size which did not obstruct the view of the airplane. Witness indicated that the airplane appeared to be flying through the white flash. Immediately thereafter, the airplane dipped at a slight angle before stopping and bursting into orange flames.

Witness 364 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness was sitting on a bench at the Bellport dock. He was facing southeast towards Smith Point Bridge and saw a red streak rise (Google View) from the horizon. He though it was fireworks being fired from Smith Point Beach over the ocean. It ascended at a slight angle to the right, very high and then curved downward slightly and then leveled off and appeared to explode resulting in two similar objects falling down. He stated that it appeared to be two planes colliding.

Witness 364 - "FBI Flare sightings plotting report of selected witnesses"
"These locations have been used in providing possible locations of a MANPAD launch tube or "Stinger" eject motor for acoustic side-scan sonar and possible recovery." "These locations are within the preliminary envelope of foreign MANPADs obtained from the Defense Intelligence Agency which might have been used against TWA Flight 800. These locations are just outside of the preliminary envelope obtained from the U.S. Army for the U.S. "Stinger" missile system. The Army will provide a more accurate envelope after careful modeling."

Witness 280 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness saw a red dot traveling from west to east, parallel to the horizon. The red dot also seemed to be heading slightly south. Witness estimated that the distance of the red dot was about 20 mi.. He counted for about three or four seconds, and then the red ball turned into a bright orange explosion, as big as a house. It was like the red object pushed what ever it hit forward, causing it to explode and dive downward.

Approximately twenty to thirty seconds after the flight data recorder ceased operation at 8:31:12 the Center Wink Tank exploded  in the "soft" fuel explosion described by Meyer.

Eastwind pilot: "We just saw an explosion out here.".  

The CIA and the NTSB would have you believe that the aircraft's Center Wing Tank exploded at 13, 000 feet  at 8:31:12 and then the headless aircraft climbed several thousand feet before falling into the ocean.  All the while the aircraft was trailing flames which fooled the eyewitnesses into thinking they were seeing streaks, rockets, or missiles going upwards in the sky.

Well, as the elderly lady once asked in a TV commercial: "Where's the beef?",  you the reader might ask: "Where's the smoke?".

The black smoke from the CWT fuel explosion was not at 13,000 feet, where the NTSB and CIA say it should have been,  but was at 7,500 feet where the aircraft exploded after falling from 13,000 feet as a result of the missile explosions and loss of its nose. The smoke cloud was overflown by Witness 702 who estimated its height with his altimeter.

Witness 702 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness (Faret) was flying in a private plane cruising at 8,500 feet over Riverhead, Long Island, heading eastbound. Witness stated that the object definitely exploded below his plane because the smoke trail after the explosion was at 7,500 feet. He realized it was a plane that exploded when he flew over to the area. Witness emphatically stated the explosion took place at about 7,500 feet.

Witness 441- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix F
Witness was Captain of Piedmont Flight 3112 at 11,000 feet. Witness saw a bright orange flash of light forward and to the right of his plane. The flash appeared to be below his altitude. Witness described it as an intense bright flash which then separated into two bright lights. He turned the MD-80 left to avoid the fumes. At the time of his turning, the column of smoke rose to 11,000 feet. Witness approximated that it took three to four minutes to get to the area of the explosion. Witness described the explosion as a bright orange ball of light.

Witness 475- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix F
Witness was flying as first officer on Flight 3112. The bright flash occurred at a two o'clock position below his altitude. Witness estimated it as approximately 5,000 to 6,000 feet. The flash was a yellow ball moving outward.  This was occurring below him. It fell quickly into the water. Witness estimated it took ten to fifteen seconds from the first appearance (of the yellow flash) until it hit the water.

The New York Times reported that most of the investigators had arrived at this conclusion too ..

August 14, 1996  NY Times
Investigators examining the wreckage of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 have concluded that the center fuel tank caught fire as many as 24 seconds after the initial blast that split apart the plane. In recent days, investigators have concluded that the initial blast occurred elsewhere. They reached that conclusion after discovering that pieces of the fuel tank wreckage were ''virtually unscathed.'' This led investigators to conclude that the explosion did not rip through the center fuel tank, but rather occurred elsewhere. A senior investigator said the new evidence shows that the initial blast that severed the plane occurred slightly forward of the spot where the wings meet the fuselage, probably in the passenger cabin. In 10 field tests at Calverton, L.I., chemists have detected residue consistent with an explosive, though in each case, subsequent tests at the F.B.I. lab in Washington were not conclusive. The manufacturer of the machine used at Calverton said that false results occur in only a fraction of cases. During the last two days investigators discovered that some pieces of the fuel tank were charred or covered with soot from a fire, while other pieces showed little or no significant damage, suggesting that the tank did not explode. One official said recovered parts of the fuel tank are in ''pristine condition.'' ''It is clear that whatever set off the tank did not severely damage the tank,'' said one official, who insisted on anonymity. ''Something else, most likely later, blew up the tank.'' Besides the condition of the fuel tank's wreckage, investigators say that the pattern of the debris they have recovered off the ocean floor has also persuaded them that a mechanical malfunction is highly unlikely. The pieces of the plane that were blown off first have been recovered from the debris field closest to Kennedy International Airport. Investigators displayed a chart yesterday that showed another piece of evidence suggesting that the blast occurred where the front of the wings meet the fuselage. A narrow stripe of the fuselage ahead of the wings was displayed in red, meaning that those pieces have been recovered from the area closest to Kennedy Airport and were the first to be blown off the plane. The blast's force decapitated the plane, severing the cockpit and first-class cabin, which then fell into the Atlantic Ocean. The rest of the plane flew on, descending rapidly, and as it did thousands of gallons of jet fuel spilled out of the wings and the center fuel tank between them. At 8,000 feet, about 24 seconds after the initial blast, the fuel caught fire, engulfing the remainder of the jetliner into a giant fireball. While investigators, speaking not for attribution, said they have concluded that the center fuel tank did not explode, publicly they have refused to say that.

Ian Goddard pointed out (private email to website author) that the Pentagon was one of the first Government news sources on the aircraft explosion.  It is very interesting that the Pentagon knew within an hour of the crash that the plane’s center wing tank had exploded at approximately 8,000 feet and not at 13,000 feet as was later stated by the NTSB and the CIA.

 Minnesota Nine News; KMSP; Minneapolis/St. Paul  July 17, 1996 9:00pm
Plane explosion update The Pentagon reports a TWA plane exploded at 8,000 feet after taking off from Kennedy Airport on its way to Paris.

Fox 7 News 10:00; KTBC; Austin   July 17, 1996 10:00pm
Pentagon reports the plane exploded at 8000 feet.

The Site; MSNB; US    July 17, 1996 10:00pm
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, says the Pentagon spokesman says Coast Guard reports say the plane did explode in mid air at 8000 feet.

Most of the FBI eyewitnesses reported sighting the missile that they were closest to. But some of the witnesses saw all three missiles that were fired at TWA 800 and several others saw two of the three missiles that were fired. These observations of more than one missile fired at TWA 800 suggests a terrorist attack and not a friendly fire accident. The eyewitness testimony has been used to triangulate the launch points of the missiles and is consistent with the radar evidence.  Click here for a gif file and click here for a pdf file of the same diagram which is a slower download but the pdf file can be viewed at higher magnification using your pdf reader. The complete interviews may be viewed at http://www.twa800.com.

Witness 261 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was on a small beach in Southampton. Witness was with his wife standing at the shoreline looking out over the water. Witness saw an orange fire work, with a tail, in the air southwest of him. The firework traveled up, then arched down before Witness lost sight of it. Seconds later Witness saw a second and third firework in the sky simultaneously. Both were orange with tails and they traveled in the same arching pattern of the first firework. Approximately 30 seconds later witness heard a rumble and saw a blue vertical line of smoke stretch down to the horizon.

The CIA  scenario attempted to explain away one streak as being a climbing, noseless aircraft.  But Witness 261 did not just see a single streak, he saw one alone and then two others simultaneously supporting Major Meyer's testimony.  Recall again what Major Meyer said:

"I observed a streak of light for 3 to 5 seconds. And then I saw an explosion. And about one to two seconds after that I saw a second, and possibly a third, explosion."

Meyer saw one flak-like explosion and then seconds later two other flak-like explosions.

Here are some of the witnesses that saw two of the missiles ...

Witness 86 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B -
Witness observed two orange streaks ascending in a curved path. He stated that the streaks were bigger and brighter than ordinary boat flares and left long trails to the water.

Witness 158 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C -
Witness observed double orange flares streak upward and explode into a large orange fireball. She states the flares were slanted, arcing and trailed by gray smoke.

Rosa Gray Khalilch  Suffolk NY Police Reports Case # 96-435598
Gray Smith's Point Beach: Reports being on the beach Wed. July 17, 96 between 8:30 and 8:45 when the Grays saw .. double orange flares streak upward and explode into a large orange fireball. The flares were slanted arcing and trailed by a grey smoke. Gray also reports a strong odor of diesel fuel and the sighting was southeast of Smith's Point Beach.

Witness 218 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was at Mott Lane in Brookhaven. Mott Lane ends at the Great South bay. Witness observed what appeared to him as two objects flying up coming together and exploding. Witness stated that it looked as though two propane tanks had caught fire and were streaking up from the water or coast line in the south east sky over Shirley, New York. The objects had an orange and purple tail of flame. The objects took less than one and a half seconds to reach their highest point.

Barbara Pacholk interviewed by Tom Stalcup on 1/28/98.
She saw two objects rise from the water or land. One object exploded near the tail and the other near the nose. She also saw a black submarine and its periscope. According to Ms. Pacholk, the periscope was looking in the direction of the plane, rotated about a 3/4 turn, then left the area. She believes that it is possible that at least one missile came from this sub. She also noticed two large navy vessels in the ocean. One of which quickly left the area after the tragedy.

Witness 396  (Frank Lenahan) saw the two missiles that Witness 261 above said appeared "simultaneously".

Witnesses 396 and 397 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness and his wife were sitting on the outside deck. He was facing southwest which gives him a view over Tiana Bay to Dune Road and beyond. He saw two red streaks, very vivid in color, ascend from what appeared to be Dune Road and traveled away. He brought it to the attention of his wife, who turned and saw one streak go west to east straight across the horizon just above the dune line. The streaks he saw were side by side and very close.

Frank Lenahan & Mrs. Lenahan  Suffolk NY Police Reports Case # 96-435598
The Lenahans were sitting on their outside deck, second story and Frank Lenahan saw two red streaks, very vivid in color ascend from what appeared to be Dune Rd. about two miles away. He bought this to the attention of his wife who was turned, and she saw one streak go west to east, straight across the horizon just above the dune line. They didn't follow the streak(s) all the way up as they assumed it was fireworks. Mrs. Lenahan heard what she thought was thunder followed by a second (sound) which she described as a Concorde Jet, followed by a very large thump which they felt. She knew something wasn't right and she looked at her watch and it was 8:30.

Tom Dougherty was in the vicinity of Dune Road and has given numerous interviews on what he observed. The missile he describes is the one whose flight path was seen by Meyer as it was in the process of making a tight turn to the east before exploding on the port side.

Tom Dougherty:
"I looked up because it sounded like thunder. I kept looking trying to figure out what it was. And that's when I saw a flare come off the water." - "The flare, trailing orange flame, shot up roughly at a 45 degree angle, then rapidly increased it's angle of ascent.... Then it appeared to strike something."   He saw the missile during most of its flight from Dune Road on Fire Island. He was interviewed by the FBI and the FOX TV program Hard Copy. Tom said that he first heard two booms. Then he saw the missile shoot upwards, from the ocean, which was behind a sand dune in front of him. He saw it "shoot in another direction" briefly and then it corrected itself. He said that after the missile hit the plane, the plane glowed very bright as part of it fell and then, after becoming luminescent, it burst into flames. "This was the strangest thing I ever saw. Everyone calls it a 'missile theory,' but when you see something, you know what you see, and I didn't see a theory."

Tom Dougherty: Interview by Cdr. Donaldson presented at the AIM conference October 18, 1997.
I was in Docker's restaurant in Quogue ... I was leaving there and I was with two other people and as we were headed towards... south.. we were walking south towards the water. I heard what I thought to be thunder.. very loud thunder up in the sky and I looked up in the direction of where the thunder was coming from and I didn't see any clouds to indicate that there was any kind of thunder heads there. So I said you know that's strange to the friend of mine. So we continued a few more paces and I guess.. I don't know how many seconds later there was another thundering noise that I heard and I looked up again and I said that's very strange just to hear this when there was no thunder and no clouds of that type around. So I continued to look in that direction because of the noises that I heard and within a few more seconds I saw a red-orange flare go up which I thought was like a Guicci fireworks and I watched it go up away from me in a south-westerly direction towards West Hampton beach area and it .. what I was waiting for was the flare to reach its trajectory and to come down and explode like fireworks. And it didn't. What happened was it kept diminishing in size and then seemed to veer towards the east more and then it disappeared in the clouds or the fog area ... the haze .. and it was at that few .. a second later that I saw this 'glowing' in the sky and it looked like a UFO ... I was kidding around with my friends and I turned and I said look at that fireworks turned into a UFO. And then a few seconds later I saw something just... flop out of the sky with burning .. whatever it was.. and I watched and I said it's the strangest fireworks I've ever seen and a few moments later ....seconds later it was ..I can't keep track I heard another explosion and that's when I saw this big fire come out of the sky and it looked like the sun coming down actually. It was the size where I was standing maybe about the size of two half dollars together. So it was a good size .... sparks flying off it .. but I still didn't understand what kind of fireworks it was. (Click for Dougherty audio file)

To get the Real Audio Player go to  http://www.real.com/products/player/index.html  and click on Real Player G2 beta for the free one.  

Richard Goss also witnessed the Meyer and Dougherty missile as he was looking in the direction of Dune Road ...

Richard Goss: Interview by Cdr. Donaldson presented at the AIM conference October 18, 1997.
That evening I was just finishing up a sunfish race at West Hampton Yachts club .. it was a Wednesday night .. and that particular night every week we have an informal sunfish race and then it's followed by a 'bring your own' barbecue dinner on the back porch of the yacht club. That porch faces south and my position at the table that I was sitting at I was looking right out at Moriches Bay and you know just leaning back, resting, just enjoying the moment of that part of the evening. It was near dusk and it was then that I saw a flare-type object go up and feeling that oh someone along Dune Road has fireworks and other members of the club saw it also and said hey look at the firework. And everybody turned to look and we all watched it climb and I particularly watched it and it was bright, very bright, and you know that almost bright pink you know and orange glow around it and it travelled up and it looked to go straight up from the area that I was observing it and then it reached it's peak and it seemed to go away in the distance towards the south and that's when I saw it veer left which would bring it out east.

It was a sharp left and then it did not disappear. From my vantage point there was a direct explosion that followed and then after that there was a second explosion that was off to the east a little farther that was much larger .. it was like something broke off whatever that was and caught on fire. The smoke was black .. it was obviously some petroleum. I knew it was an airplane or aircraft of some sort and I didn't realize what size it was. And then it took some time to come down .. probably three or four seconds and there was just a stream of black and white smoke and then when it hit the horizon over the barrier beach .. Dune Road .. and when it hit the horizon there was a bright flash.  (Click for Goss audio file)

Richard Goss: Discussion on Art Bell show 11/24/97
"I saw a flare coming up...toward the barrier beach area...it was definitely going up, definitely going up! As it reached its peak, it took a sharp veer left...it moved horizontal at that point". Bell asks Gaus about the FBI's conclusion that he was actually seeing "fuel trailing from the explosion of flight 800 and it was not going up, but coming down, and it was an optical illusion."  Goss replies: "One hell of an optical illusion...I can't see that's possible at all."

Goss's reaction to the CIA video: Art Bell show 11/24/97
Goss: "Best described, I looked down at the ground and shook my head...it was a joke."
Bell: "That isn't what happened?"
Goss: "No."

Mrs Mahan of East Hampton said:
She heard a great roar over her car at the intersection of the exit 62 northbound ramp of Sunrise highway with CR 111 (Manorville Rd. ) and then saw middle eastern looking men scurry out of the woods and board a red pickup and a blue Jaguar. If she heard the missile that Goss say, it could have been launched from a point several miles north of the beach, near Sunrise Highway.

Consider some of the flights going out of JFK to Israel ....

Witnesses 472- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix F
Witness stated that Flight 800 use to be an "Israeli" flight. Witness is married to an Israeli doctor. Witness stated that she frequently flies to Israel.

Now here are a couple of strangely similar events involving another TWA flight to Israel. Three weeks to the day before TWA 800 was shot down, on June 27, 1996, at the same time in the evening, in approximately the same location as the TWA 800 downing, and within hours of the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the Coast Guard received a report of "three red flares" launched 25 miles south of Shinnicock Inlet.  An air and surface search was carried out which found nothing out of ordinary. There was no vessel in distress. TWA Flight 848 (New York to Rome) blocked out at exactly 10:00 pm on June 26, 1996 and assuming normal handling, Flight 848 would have passed about 11 NM South of Shinnecock Inlet at 10:29 p.m. EDT.  TWA Flight 884 (New York to Tel Aviv) was scheduled to depart before FL 848 but blocked out late at 10:19 p.m. EDT.  On June 25, 1996 nineteen Americans were killed by a truck bomb at the Khobar Towers in the Dhahran military base in Saudi Arabia.

This incident seems to have been repeated in England as reported in the September 2002 issue of Vanity Fair on page 236 where it was reported that on June 27, 2002, a calm, sunny day over the green patchwork of Gloucestershire, England, Captain Pete Bruder was in command of an American Airlines A300-600 on its way from London's heathrow airport to New York. At 22,000 feet, he says, "it just went, Bang!  It was like someone pushed the whole plane.  It went left, right, left, and back to where we started. We got slammed." In the main cabin, a flight attendant was thrown into a passenger's lap as the plane lurched from side to side. "Everyone in back was terrified," Bruder says. Unwilling to risk an Atlantic crossing, he returned to Heathrow.  The Air Accidents Investigation Branch, the British NTSB, held an investigation.  There was nothing on the flight-data recorder that indicated what might have happened, and no evidence of a fault. The weather was stable. Minutes ahead of the A300-600 had been a Boeing 777.  The investigators could not be certain, but reported that "it is most probable that the reason" for the Airbus's experience was the 777's wake vortex.  Bruder - who at the time had 10,500 hours' flight experience - is unimpressed. "When you hit wake vortex, the plane rolls: up one side, then down again when you get through it. This was different. Something made an input on the rudder on that plane, and you'll never convince me it didn't."

On November 16, 1996, subsequent to the TWA 800 downing, a missile was fired at two commercial aircraft in the vicinity of Long Island. Pakistan International Airlines Flight 712 left Kennedy at 9:25 pm, bound for Frankfurt. The pilot, W. Shah, said his co-pilot saw an orange light coming from the left hand side to the right hand side of the airplane. The object was 3 - 4 miles in front of the aircraft and above it. Boston apparently confirmed 'two unidentified blips' on radar. The tapes were turned over to the FBI and NTSB since the object(s) rose directly out of Long Island Sound and ascended almost vertically. Radio 5 in the U.K. reported that the object which crossed the Pakistani aircraft had exploded. On a McNeill - Lehrer newshour, when asked about the direction of the object, Mr. Kallstrom admitted that it was "ascending". TWA Flight 884 (New York to Tel Aviv) was following close behind the Pakistani flight.

The following is the text of the radio communications between the FAA, Pakistan Flight PIA 712, TWA 884 and 1504 FLL in the vicinity of Long Island, New York on November 16, 1996  (Click for RealAudio file PIA712 duration 2 minutes 30 seconds. Gaps between transmissions have been removed. Tape was provided by Tom Stalcup and obtained through the filing of a FOIA request to the FAA.)

PIA 712:  Boston  Pakistan 712
FAA: Pakistan 712 go ahead
PIA 712:  Do you have any fireworks going on in this area where we are? We just saw a kind of a large something just streak ahead and it went beyond our altitude.
FAA:  Ah ... no .. nothing reported other than that. You said it was some large streak?
PIA 712:  It came up diagonally from left to right and it crossed our altitude right in front of us.
FAA: OK  thanks.
1504 FLL:  Boston Center 1504
FAA: 1504 Go ahead
1504 FLL: Yea - where about is that aircraft that reported that streak?
FAA:  Ah .. He's about 20 miles south of Hampton
1504 FLL:  1504
TWA 884: Boston Center  TWA 884 heavy just out of four thousand for one one thousand
FAA: TWA Flight 884   Boston Center  Climb and maintain flight level 190
TWA 884:  Flight level 190  TWA 884 heavy
FAA: Pakistan 712 Boston
PIA 712:  Boston 712
FAA: Just to confirm .. you saw like something that was like a white streak coming from below and ending up on top of you - that went out in front of you? .. I'm not sure exactly what you saw. Could you classify maybe what you saw?
PIA 712:  It was a streak of light like some kind of a large firecracker rocket or something like that coming from below .... from the coast side - left to right ..... climbing beyond our altitude.  At that time we were about 16,000 feet.
FAA: OK.  Thanks very much.
FAA:  Kennedy Departure (unclear)
Kennedy Departure:   Kennedy
FAA: I'm going to put TWA on a 70 heading. Is that OK?  884
Kennedy Departure: Ya I'll shove over
FAA:  Thanks
FAA: TWA 884   Fly heading  070
TWA 884:  070  TWA 884 heavy
TWA 884:  Boston TWA 884. Where was that fireworks area?
FAA:  884 Actually, I'm kinda ... I'm  going to vector you around the area. It's about 20 miles .... actually, 30 miles south of Hampton.
TWA 884:  OK and I understand some type of rocket?
FAA: Yea ... we had a Pakistan just reported ... looked like a firecracker that was passing from left to right about 30 miles south of Hampton.
TWA 884:  884 heavy thank you.
TWA 884:   Firecrackers don't go past 16,000
FAA: I hear ya!

Kallstrom had the official explanation for this "rocket" observation. He told Lehrer on the PBS Newshour of November 17, 1996 that object observed was probably a meteorite though not explaining how this "meteorite" was "ascending" .....

Lehrer: Now, the latest new public report, was that of a Pakistan airlines pilot, who said he saw, quote: "something with lights in the sky" near where this TWA (800) plane went down that night.  Have you determined what that might have been?
Kallstrom: We think it was a meteorite shower, Jim, we're not absolutely sure. We've interviewed the pilot. He's a highly experienced pilot.  Appears to be very competent. Has a good memory of what he saw. We have no doubt that he saw what he described; an object he thought ascending from his left to his right. We're in the process of looking at radar tapes and other things to tell us if we can know for sure there was some other event. But there were reports that evening of meteorite showers. They were reported widely throughout Suffolk County.
Lehrer: And the National Weather Service confirmed it, did they not?
Kallstrom: More than likely, Jim, that's what it is, but we're still looking in to it.

Witness #8 of TWA 800's destruction saw a "flare" and he too called the Coast Guard.....

Witness 8 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
To the east of the boat witness saw a red object flying upward. Witness stated that he described the object as a flare when he called the incident into the Coast Guard but that it was actually much bigger than any flare he had ever seen. As the flare lifted into the sky he next saw a big explosion of a large red color. The red explosion hung stationery for a few seconds and then started to head back toward the water. Originally, when he called the incident into the Coast Guard he felt the flare had come up from the east possibly out of the back bay. Witness now figures that the flare must have come from the ocean.

Witness 260 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness and a friend were fishing in Moriches inlet, when he saw what appeared to be a flare rising into the sky a to the south, south east from witness's position. Witness said that he commented to his fishing partner of the inadvisability of firing flares for no good reason: however, inasmuch as the flare was not red, which would indicate a distress signal, but rather a whitish-yellowish in color, it seemed less serious at the time. Witness said that it appeared to him that the flare was launched from a position off-shore and not from any beach area. He watched the flare moved upward in the sky to a point where the flare seemed to lose energy and arc and began to descend. He observed a fireball somewhat above where he last saw the flare.

Witness after witness testified that the "streak", "flare", "rocket", or "object" went up, up, up!

Witness 9 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness was in a boat which was heading north. Witness was facing east when he saw a streak of red, orange light come up from the Bay or the ocean and head straight up or at a slight one o'clock angle.

Lou Desyron  ABC World News Sunday, 07/21/96
"We saw what appeared to be a flare going straight up. As a matter of fact, we thought it was from a boat. It was a bright reddish-orange color". Once it went into flames I knew that it wasn't a flare."

The Village Voice  July 17, 2001
Sitting toward the rear of the plane (US Air 217) 12-year-old Adam Coletti looked down and saw what looked like the wake of a boat. He saw the shape of a boat, he said. He turned to tell his mother across the aisle, he told the Voice; then when he looked back there was a redness where the boat had been. "It looked like it was red and kind of blinking, red, intense," the boy said. "I'm not sure if it exploded then, or if I turned again and looked back, but it was 10 to 15 seconds after I saw the red that I saw the explosion." The explosion, he said, had seemed to be stretching up from the boat. It "went up from the boat—just really quick," he said.

Witness 40 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness was in her apartment and approaching a window to open it when she observed a bright white object traveling very quickly across the sky east of her apartment building moving toward the East river. The object traveled horizontally and slightly upwards across the sky.

Margaret Greig   Suffolk NY Police Reports
Margaret Greig was sitting on the Smith Point Beach slightly to the west of the bath house facing southeast when she saw a “flare” shoot upwards from the ocean. The flare went “upwards in a concave arc.” The flare “had a pink flame at first which turned into an orange flame” about a quarter of the way up. A thin trail of black smoke followed behind flare. The flare shot upwards for about 5 seconds and then turned into a large ball of orange fire. The black-smoke trail lingered afterwards for about 6 minutes. She estimated that the flare was about one mile out to sea. The witness did not see anything fall into the ocean after the orange explosion.

Witness 72 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness recalled being alerted to an object in the sky and looking up to see what appeared to be a black or gray smudge which she thought was a flare. The object appeared to be South of her location and clearly beyond the dunes of Fire Island over the ocean. When she first observed the object, it appeared cylindrical in shape and was rising up in an arc-like direction. The smudge took approximately 6 to 8 seconds to reach its peak, at which time it evolved into yellow and orange pieces of fire.

Brandi Ellison and John Gang
These witnesses were in a boat along with 5 other persons, on the Peconic Bay at the end of the (?) Harbor Cove Inn. Facing westbound, witness #1 Ellison states she observed a flare shot upward, from the water, ascend with a bright orange-red glow skyward and at it's apex, burst into numerous red flames. Flare had a very large orange, red trail. Her boyfriend, witness #2 also watched the flare ascend and then descend into numerous red flames. Neither heard any noise. Witness #1 thought they were about 30 miles away. Witness #2 - 5 or 6 miles away.

Witness 249 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness and her son were on their way back from the Babylon library when Witness saw a definite white clear trail of smoke going straight from the ground to the sky. Witness stated that she saw an object at the top of the smoke trail that seemed to be leading the smoke trail upward. Witness did not see the plane or any other solid object. Witness stated that when the stop light change to green, Witness drove on and did not see anything else.

Witness 80 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness advised that on Wednesday evening he was fishing from the union dock, located on the southernmost part of Union Street, Moriches, New York. He saw what he described as an orange flare which appeared to be launched from the beach or beyond which went straight up then suddenly he saw a large red glow which he described as an explosion and thereafter saw the fireball split into two distinct parts and dropped from the sky.

Witness 84 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness advised that he was playing volleyball at Ponquogue Beach. While he was diving for a ball, he suddenly observed a flare heading up into the sky. He advised that this flare was orange and went up into the air at about the same speed as a firework. This flare was observed off to the southwest. It went from west to east in a flight further out toward the ocean. Witness stated the flare burst into a large fireball. This fireball broke up into three parts and fell somewhere into the ocean.

Witness 353 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness was on a boat one mile north of Mt. Sinai, when she saw what looked like a rocket rise from the sough east. Witness explained that it appeared to be like a rocket used in fireworks, with a red-orange ball and tail. Witness advised that the rocket followed an arched path and then she saw an explosion.

Witness 361 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness's boat was on the bay side of the barrier beach, docked at the facility on Moriches Bay. Witness recalled that he was looking south when he noticed a reddish - pink flare ascending upward into the sky. He stated that he thought the rising flare originated from the beach side of the barrier island.

Witness 385 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witnesses were aboard their personal watercraft travelling northwest approximately one-quarter mile west on the bay side of Moriches Inlet. A bright glow, which was described as orangey-red and perfectly round, appeared on the ocean side of the inlet just west of the west buoy and south of their boat. It seemed like it came off the horizon and rose slowly, weaving as it continued upward. At first they thought it might have been a flare, but realized that it was too huge. It traveled diagonally at an approximate 70-degree angle going in a westerly direction. The object rose in the sky for approximately 6 seconds, leaving a white smoke trail in its wake. It then disappeared from sight for approximately one half second. After that time a large oval ball of fire appeared just above the area where the object was last seen.

Witness 733 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness was driving westbound on Route 27 and was between Exit 60 and Exit 59 in Center Moriches. Directly to his left he saw a gray smoke trail ascend at a high rate of speed and where the trail terminated an explosion occurred. He described it as going straight up, not zig zag and the trail was visible for a period of time after the explosion. From the time he sighted the trail to the time of the explosion he guessed was three to four seconds.

Witness 73 saw a missile trail as it moved up from ground level and witnessed the strike in the vicinity of the aircraft's right wing...

Witness 73 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness was on the Mobay section of Long Island Beach, New York. She noticed an aircraft climbing in the sky traveling from her right to her left. Witness noticed that the aircraft appeared to level off. Witness thought that the aircraft was too low of an altitude to be leveling off at the time. While keeping her eyes on the aircraft, witness observed a red streak moving up from the ground toward the aircraft at an approximate 45 degree angle. The red streak was leaving a light gray colored smoke trail. The red streak went past the right side and above the aircraft before arcing back toward the aircraft's right wing. At the instant the smoke trail ended at the aircraft's right wing, witness heard a loud sharp noise which sounded like a firecracker had just exploded at her feet. Witness then observed a fire at the aircraft followed by one or two secondary explosions which had a deeper sound. Witness observed the front of the aircraft separate from the back. Witness then observed the burning pieces of debris falling from the aircraft.

Witness 73's testimony is very strong as proved by her acute observation about the aircraft flying level "at too low of an altitude".  TWA 800 had been told to hold at 13,000 feet by the air traffic controller....

2026: 24  CTR:  TWA eight hundred amend the altitude maintain ah one three thousand thirteen thousand only for now.
2026: 29 TWA 800 CAM- 1:  Thirteen thousand.
2026: 30.3 RDO- 2:  TWA's eight hundred heavy okay stop climb at one three thousand.
2026: 35  TWA 800 CAM- 1: Stop climb at one three thousand.

Physical evidence was found which also supported Witness 73's testimony.  PETN and RDX were found in the aircraft and explosive residues were found on the right wing. The right wing also had holes punched in it indicating travel of an object transiting the right wing.  The entrance point for this missile is directly below the fourth window to the right of the door and just in front of the right wing. The exit point is forward of the wing on the port side.

July 23, 1996   CNN
Earlier Tuesday, White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta told reporters that investigators believe they are "close to finding out what happened" in the crash of TWA Flight 800. He said some chemical residues had been found on some of the bodies and plane parts, but more testing will have to be done to determine what those residues are.

August 23, 1996   NY Times
Chemists at the FBI crime laboratory have found traces of PETN between rows 17 and 27 senior investigators said. Five days after the crash, a chemical test indicated a trace of PETN on the right wing where it met the fuselage. The right inboard engine was fodded with debris from the forward fuselage.

The Village Voice    February 24 - March 2, 1999
"You ever shot a .22 through a tin can? You know how the holes look where it punctures the metal and it rolls the metal back and tears it as it stretches?" the veteran pilot asked. "Well that's what these holes looked like, except they were oval-shaped." He was recalling three holes— each at least six inches long by around three inches high, he said— which had been punched through the thin aluminum paneling of a structural piece from inside the right wing of the 747. The holes were punched out "from the airplane toward the wing tip," he added. The piece, called a rib, came from within the wing's leading edge about five feet out from the fuselage, he said, where the landing lights would be. The pilot .... said, "Look, I think that these holes were caused by a high explosion."  There is an apparent exit (sic) hole in the aircraft fuselage just forward of the right wing and a red residue, consistent with missile fuel, was found on seats in the aircraft in this same location. Further, it has been admitted that Federal officials were baffled by impact damage on the doors that close over the front landing gear. The nose gear doors were blasted inward and whatever caused this damage happened before the plane's center fuel tank exploded since these nose gear doors were among the first things on the airplane to have come off in flight.

The government's explanation for the finding of explosive residues inside the aircraft were that they came from a "dog sniffing" exercise.  This explanation can not explain any explosive residues that may have been found on the bodies of passengers.  Further, the "dog sniffing" explanation raises a very simple question: Was the dog walking along the right wing?  

What were the "residues" found on the bodies of the TWA 800 passengers?  Was it the red residue that was found on several seats that is believed to be missile exhaust residue. The "official" explanation for this red residue is that it is "glue".   Again the "glue" explanation can not explain any red "chemical residues" found on the bodies.  

March 16, 1997   The Tribune Review
Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom has categorically denied the Press-Enterprise claims that a red residue found on the plane's seats came from rocket fuel. The FBI chief says the residue is equally consistent with the chemical composition of the glue that held the aircraft's seats together. The sequencing report noted that wreckage found from the front of the plane's fuselage - including dozens of bodies and passenger seats from rows 17 through 19 - were ejected from the plane first. The sequencing report demonstrated that more than 4,700 feet after this initial debris was found, the front section of the plane broke off and fell. At about that time, the center fuel tank erupted, causing the rest of the plane to spiral into the ocean. The trail of wreckage clearly shows that the initial event that caused the crash was not the explosion of the center fuel tank.

So the question remains:  What were the chemical residues found on the bodies?    Was it PETN/RDX?  Was it missile exhaust?  Was it glue?

Numerous eyewitnesses observed the missiles peak, arch or make a sharp turn.  For example ....

Witness 108 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness said that in the southwest he saw what appeared to be a flare rise up from below the tree line. The flare was orange-pink and was moving away from witness in the south-south easterly direction rising at about a 65 degree angle at a steady speed. Witness described the top of the flare as a little ball, orange-pink in color. The flare left behind a smoke trail which was bluish gray in color. The smoke trail behind the flare was like vapor or gas. The flare rose up word and then arced downward. The time it took to reach the top of the arc was approximately five seconds. The flare descended from the arc for approximately one second and exploded into an orange ball.

Witness 153 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness and his friends were playing in the water. Witness was standing in the water 68 ft. out from the shore facing east, when out of the corner of his eye to his right south and object in the sky caught his attention. Witness looked right and observed a light that he thought looked like a flare or firework at approximately 30 to 35 degrees up from the estimated horizon. The lighted object was round and colored a solid orange. Witness advised the object moved upward, away from him, and from his right to left and an incline of 45 degrees or less to the estimated horizon. He observed the lighted object move at constant speed in that direction for approximately one second. The object then reached its highest point in the sky and stopped for approximately half a second, and then moved in a sharp horseshoe turn downward.

Witness 178 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness stated that he was sitting on Smith Point Beach, facing south when, from the east, he saw what looked like a shooting star. He stated that the star seemed to come from Moriches Inlet. Witness described the star as a reddish-orange streak that was thicker in the front and thin in the tail. He stated that the star was rising going south to north and veering in an easterly direction. He observed the star for approximately five seconds. He stated that he lost sight of the star when he turned to point it out to his girlfriend. Witness advised that when he turned back, he observed a large orange-yellow ball west of where he had last seen the star.

Witness 179 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was driving west on the Sunrise Highway with a friend in the area of exit 62 to 64. She observed an object over a row of trees directly south of them which looked like a flare or a firework going up. She stated at first she thought it was a firework which was a dud because it arced and went down. Witness observed the object climb in an erratic fashion for about five seconds and then it arced and went down for about one-half to one second at which point she noticed an explosion. Witness stated the object, which climbed up and arced in an east to west direction, appeared to be a very bright orange color.

Witness 32 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness advised he was a passenger aboard a flight which originated in Charlotte, North Carolina and was destined for Providence, Rhode Island. He observed a light which appeared to be a flare and looked like the shooting of an unexploded fireball into the air. It was moving from right to left and it appeared to have peaked, then it was going downward. This event took no more than 10 seconds in time. Witness then observed an initial small explosion in the same area that he last observed the flare. Within a second later, the small explosion turned into a large explosion.

Dwight Brumley  August 27, 1999   Dan's Papers Long Island - Article by Jerry Cimisi
Navy Chief Petty Officer Dwight Brumley was on US Air Flight 217 from Charlotte, North Carolina to Providence, Rhode Island. Brumley, an electronic warfare technician was headed to the naval base at Newport. "I was seated on the right side of the plane," he said in a phone interview from Pensacola, Florida. "Then my attention was caught by a small plane that seemed close below us -- I could see the flashing lights; I guessed it was about 500 feet below. I thought it was a private plane and I thought it was pretty close." Radar data from the National Transportation's Safety Board's public exhibit on TWA Flight 800, shows that this "small plane" Brumley spotted was a Navy P-3, a turboprop aircraft used to hunt for submarines. U.S. Air Flight 217, on a course south to north by northeast would fly over the track of the P-3, which was coming from the northeast, going southwest. The P-3 was one of the military craft within 10 to 12 miles offshore that night, engaged in, the FBI later said, classified maneuvers. Brumley, who served in the Navy from 1972-1998, now a teacher in Pensacola, said his first assessment that the plane with the blinking lights was a private plane, made him judge its distance as closer than it must have been. He was looking at a larger plane at a greater distance; that perspective made the span of the plane, as marked by the lights at the edges of each wing, seem small. But it was what Brumley saw after noting the P-3 that was startling. "About 10 seconds later, off to my right, I saw what appeared to be a flare, rising, below us. That's what it looked like, a flare, an emergency flare." At this point the US Air flight was at approximately 21,700 feet and descending. The P-3 was at about 20,00 feet. And, coming from the southwest, headed east by northeast, was Flight 800, climbing at 13,750 feet. "It looked like it was arching upward," said Brumley of the "flare." Again, Brumley was seated on the right side of the plane. Flight 800, coming from the northwest, was not immediately in Brumley's field of vision. The streak moved from the right side (south) of Brumley's field of vision to his left (north) -- travelling faster than Flight 217, which was now descending, at about 420 knots per hour. "With what I know now, it seems it was not a flare," said Brumley. ....... "I guess I saw it a couple of seconds," said Brumley. "It arched upward, then it began to descend." As the streak of light moves across Brumley's field of vision, heading northward past him, again faster than his own plane, "it became a ball of fire," he said, and then "in a couple of seconds a larger ball of fire, that appeared to be heading downward." Brumley added that the spectacle was strictly visual. He heard nothing, nor could he feel any reverberation through the air. He turned to the passenger behind him, James Nugent, who was headed home to Providence, and asked, "Did you see that?" Nugent said he had indeed seen an explosion. It was definitely dark enough so you couldn't see the water," said Brumley.

Click for a diagram of Brumley's observations.  This is a very telling graphic which shows:

1. The main wreckage, fuselage, wings & engines landed directly on line with the last radar return on a course of 071 True. It didn't bank right or left.

2. The main wreckage is estimated to have landed 29 seconds after the last transponder return. The CIA video and NTSB video would have us believe that the aircraft was in the air for 42 seconds or more.

3. The free fall of an object from 13,750 assuming it reaches a terminal velocity of 500'/sec was calculated by Bob Donaldson. The time to impact from the last radar return at that rate of fall is 29 seconds. The aircraft dropped like a rock from the point of the initial missile explosions.  

4. Some of the wreckage, including parts of the CWT, that landed downrange further than the main wreckage appear to be downwind from the main wreckage, which could indicate that there was a final explosion before impact that ejected lighter material further downwind. This is the 'smoking gun' to put the CIA video to rest. The plane fell in a ballistic arc from the point of the last transponder return.

Witness 649 saw the same missile as Brumley.  

Witness 649- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix H
Witness described the projectile as red or pink with a trail of whitish smoke. The projectile was airborne for six to seven seconds and then met with a shiny object that produced white smoke.  The white smoke disappeared and then a red ball began to form.

Mike Wire - Witness 571
Wire was looking south-southwest toward the beach. At approximately 8:45 pm he saw a white light that was traveling skyward from the ground at approximately a 40 degree angle. He described the white light as a light that sparkled and thought it was some type of fireworks. Wire stated the white light "zig-zagged" as it traveled upward and at the apex of its travel, the white light "arched over" and disappeared from view. He estimated the white light was in view for approximately 15 seconds and its speed was consistent with the speed that normal fireworks might travel. He advised the white light first came into view just above the roof top of the fourth house west of the public parking area on Dune Road. He stated the white light traveled outward from the beach in a south-southeasterly direction. He stated two or three seconds after the white light disappeared, he saw an orange light that appeared to be a fireball in the sky approximately one-half mile away. Hew as unable to estimate the height or elevation of this fireball due to its distance from him. The fireball descended at approximately a 30 degree angle and left a fire trail burning behind it. According to Wire, the fireball disappeared behind the second house to the west of the public parking area located at Beach Lane and Dune Road.  Here is how the streak looked (Google View) from Wire's perspective.

Mike Wire gave an interview to Bob Donaldson in 2006 the outcome of which was that Wire went to the location where he stood observing the destruction of TWA 800. As you can read in the interview Wire took a digital photo, on which he then drew black lines indicating the route of the smoke trail he saw and the path of the burning debris falling to the ocean.  Bob Donaldson then edited the picture to show more of what Wire had described.  After several iterations, Wire and Donaldson developed an edited photo of the crash scenario from which, using Google Earth, Donaldson plotted Mike Wire's position on the bridge, the exact location of Flight 800 according to the Islip radar and  overlaid the drawing on the perspective in Google Earth.  The result was an extraordinary match up between Wire's recollection and where the events took place according to the Islip radar.  An article on this finding appeared in WorldNetDaily.

Witness 740 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness was in a small boat heading east in the canal that runs parallel to Dune road. He observed what looked like a red flare going up. The flare started out fairly straight, then gently curved along an arc from south to northeast. The flare was a reddish circle with a very small elongated red cone shaped area on it, which had a darker tint in front that back. In the back there was a red-white colored flame. The flare left a wispy white smoke trail. The smoke was thicker at its source, thinning out as it got farther from its source. . The wispy white smoke trail disappeared quickly.

Witness 649 made a drawing that shows a missile rising from the surface and impacting the plane.  Ian Goddard created this animation showing what witness 649 described. (http://users.erols.com/igoddard/TWA800/) This animation will take approximately one minute to download before it will run. Detailed analyses which can be read at:

 http://twa800.com/pages/wit649_debunks.htm

of this witness's testimony completely debunks the CIA explanation of what he saw.  Here is a view of the (Google View) streak from Witness 649's perspective.

Witness 200 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness stated that somebody on the dock said, "Look, a flare." Witness observed a small pale red-pink dot east, originating from the southeast direction, appearing from his vantage point to be the size of an eraser going up in the sky. The dock was followed by a thin, a very white trail of smoke, which was slightly wider than the dot. The dot traveled up a path shaped like a candy cane: straight up, then curving at the top from west to east, if one was facing south. As the dot started to come down, it exploded as a single burst of flames into a bright orange fireball.

All of this testimony about an object that approached TWA 800 making a tight turn was confirmed by none other than a Pentagon intelligence official ...

July 19, 1996    http://cnn.com/US/9607/19/twa.update/  
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. The reason: a Stinger missile is heat-seeking, and analysts concluded it would have had to make too sharp a turn to hit the TWA flight.  

Why was a top Pentagon intelligence official talking to CNN about "too sharp a turn"?  Some witnesses were using similar phrases in describing what they saw bring down the aircraft.  For example, Anthony Curreri was sitting on the beach at the Bellport Dock at the South end of Station Road. Facing southeast towards Smith Point bridge he saw “a red streak rise from the horizon.” He said the streak “ascended at a slight angle to the right, very high then curved downward slightly and then leveled off and appeared to explode resulting in two similar objects falling down.” Curved down and leveled off!  Tom Dougherty, interviewed by Cdr. Donaldson and presented by Donaldson at the AIM conference October 18, 1997 said: "I saw a red-orange flare go up which I thought was like a Guicci fireworks and I watched it go up away from me in a south-westerly direction towards West Hampton beach area and it .. what I was waiting for was the flare to reach its trajectory and to come down and explode like fireworks. And it didn't. What happened was it kept diminishing in size and then seemed to veer towards the east more." Veered towards the east!  Richard Goss on Art Bell show (11/24/97): "I saw a flare coming up....it was definitely going up, definitely going up! As it reached its peak, it took a sharp veer left  .... it moved horizontal at that point". Veered sharply left!  Moved horizontal!   Lisa Perry as reported in Dan's Papers, Long Island, May 15, 1998 said: "There was a plane in the sky ... out from the left, from the North, something was moving North to South over the dunes ... from the direction of the Great South Bay. The object came over the dunes of Fire Island. It was shiny, like a new dime; it looked like a plane without wings. It had no windows... It was as if there was a flame at the back of it, like a Bunsen burner .... It was like a silver bullet ... It was moving much faster than the plane.   The silver object took a left turn, and went up to the plane. The plane stopped for an instant, as something would when it had suffered an impact, not just an explosion. Then it began to fracture - as if you had slammed a frozen candy bar down onto a table".  Took a left turn!  Went up to the plane!

And the eyewitness testimony was further corroborated by the United States' own spy satellites ....

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.

July 23, 1996    The London Times
An American spy satellite positioned over the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island is said to have yielded important information about the crash. A law enforcement official told the New York Post that the satellite pictures show an object racing up to the TWA jet, passing it, then changing course and smashing into it.

March 16, 1997   International News 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.

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.

In March 1998 in Meyer's speech to the Granada Forum he described an interesting phone call he had received about further radar evidence of targets approaching TWA 800. Meyer stated ....

"After my picture appeared on television I received a phone call one night from an anonymous person - the person just got on the phone and said: 'You don't know who I am but I work for Sikorsky'. And he said I knew a friend of yours and he mentioned the name of a friend who had died in a crash up at Sikorsky in an H53. And then he mentioned a conversation that I had had with this deceased person where the two of us were standing at a small bar, called 'The Matchbox', having a beer after we had just finished a flight so I knew that this person did in fact know my friend. He said there is a tape -- and I don't think it is a tape -- I think it is a digital disk -- there is a tape of the Sikorsky radar which shows two targets approaching TWA Flight 800 before the impact -- one a high speed supersonic and one subsonic. The Sikorsky radar is not up in Bridgehampton - the Sikorsky radar is in Riverhead - it's actually just 5 miles north of the Suffolk County airport, which I was flying to. It is a remote site run by the U.S. Navy Virginia Capes authority and they lease the digital information to Sikorsky so that when helicopters are out there being tested, Sikorsky has the most sophisticated data radar that the Navy has watching their helicopters. When I went down to talk to my congressman in Washington, an assistant of his showed me a list of all the data that the FBI said they were holding -- all the documentation. I looked for this particular tape on it because the gentleman on the telephone had told me that the FBI had come in the next morning and confiscated it -- he used that word. The tape was not on that list and so in an interview in Washington I told Congressman Traficant that I didn't see this radar tape on the list that the FBI had given to Congressman Forbes. After my interview with him, Congressman Duncan sent a letter to the FBI specifically asking for this tape by name - just nailed it down and said: "Do you have this?" Even though it wasn't on the inventory that they presented to the Congress, they then admitted that they did have it in their possession -- said it didn't show anything unusual -- but refused to release it to anybody."

An airplane in "various stages of crippled flight",  according to the CIA explanation, can not be seen to collide with itself!

Witness 145 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was visiting a friend at Bayshore, New York. She was sitting in the house looking out towards the ocean just about dusk. Witness stated that she saw a plane and noticed an object spiraling towards the plane. The object, which she saw for about one second, had a glow at the end of it and a gray-white smoke trail. Witness stated she saw the object hit the plane and then the object headed down toward the ocean. She could not be sure where the object hit the plane, but said it could've been the side or near the back. She heard a loud noise and saw an explosion just as the object hit plane. The plane dropped towards the water and appeared to split in two pieces.

The CIA explanation that the streak observed by eyewitnesses was the aircraft in "various stages of crippled flight" is again shown to be false by the appearance of the undamaged aircraft subsequent to witnesses sighting of an object ascending into the sky.

Witness 221 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness advised that within seconds after the aircraft passed by him, he saw a streak of light travel up from the water into the sky. Witness described the streak of light as though it was a rocket or like a shooting star only going upwards.

Witness 233 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was talking to her boyfriend seated in the passenger side of the vehicle when she noticed a flare off in the distance, rising into the air. Witness originally observed the flare approximately halfway up in its flight. She described it as moving steadily straight up and described it is being reddish orange with a short reddish orange smoke trail. Witness advised that she initially thought that a boat in the Bay was in some sort of distress and shot the flare in the air for assistance. Witness then took her attention momentarily away from the flare and noticed the boats moored at the nearby dock located in the southeast direction from her vehicle. When she reacquired the flare it was still going and still steadily rising. She stated that from her initial sighting of the flare to the pause and "pulse" seemed like 10 to 15 seconds. Witness further described the flare as being a steady glow and rose at a steady, remarkable pace. Witness stated that within two seconds of the "pulse" she observed a large object seemingly stopping its forward momentum while igniting into a fireball, then breaking into two large pieces. These two large pieces then floated downward, then disappeared at the horizon.

Witness 243 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
A young boy, approximately 11 to 13 years at age notice something that appeared to be a flare flying up into the air. He called the group's attention to this object as it flew into the air. This flying object looked like it came up from land in the Moriches area. The flying object was relatively slow in flying up and took about four or five seconds before hitting the airplane. The smoke, which trail this object, was whitish in color and the band of smoke was narrow. It looked like a flare or Roman candle flying into the air. The object flew at an angle into the air and neither it, nor its impact with the plane, made any noise. There was one flame which came from the object, then a second once it struck the plane. The flying object was very bright, but not uncomfortable-blinding to look at. The object seem to take off from Dune Road or the left side of the Inlet.

Witness 286 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness said at the time of the crash he was standing on the dock located on Great Gun Beach on Fire Island. Witness was facing south when he noticed a flare ascending in the southeast direction. Witness said the flare was slightly east of him when he saw it. Witness described the object he saw as a skyrocket with a yellowish glow, possibly a flare that misfired. Witness said he followed the flare for 10 to 15 seconds and then saw an explosion. Witness then saw the plane explode but he did not see it crash in the water.

Witness 521
This witness saw an object which appeared to be a flare, round and orangy-red in color. It left a smoke trail of the same color, density and thickness in its wake that disappeared as the object continued to ascend. It rose from the southeast from their position and arched slightly at an approximate 70 degree angle while it made the ascent from east to west. The object traveled for approximately 3-5 seconds until it erupted into a ball of fire. It did not disappear before this eruption and made no sound that they could hear. It then broke into three separate balls of fire and descended to the ocean. It fell straight down until it disappeared from sight. The entire episode lasted approximately 10 seconds. The witness could not gauge as to how far in the distance this incident occurred but thought that the object may have traveled 1 to 2 miles vertically." This is a  view of the streak (Google View) from witness 521's location.

Witness 527
This witness was looking south when he saw a white line tracing up (Google View) into the sky. He does not remember seeing the line come all the way from the horizon. The line went straight vertical the entire time for a total of 2 seconds. He remembered thinking it was a flare as he had just purchased some flares sometime earlier. The highest point of the "flare" white line was about one foot above the horizon and the line was consistent. At the top of the white line appeared little red light or orangish-red circle which hovered or floated for a second, after which, a big dark red explosion appeared about an inch below the little red light. This bigger explosion was about a quarter inch in length. It hovered for a second, appeared to break apart from its round shape, and fell to the horizon in approximately two seconds. As the bigger explosion came down it became less red and more smoky - grayer about half of the way down. The big explosion came down along pretty much the same line as the white line had gone up. The entire incident from the time the white line first appeared until the explosion met the horizon took approximately 10 to 15 seconds.

Witness 496/534
She observed what she thought was a flare ascending (Google View) in the sky. When first observed the object it was already in the sky above the tree line. She advised that the object was orange, slightly more brilliant at its top. The object traveled from her left to her right in a straight line at a steep angle, which she described as more vertical than horizontal. The object did not leave a trail. She observed the object traveling for approximately 10-15 seconds when a large explosion occurred just above and to the right of the object. She does not remember if the object stopped or disappeared before the explosion but stated that the explosion was intense orange and red colors that expanded in a ball shaped mass. She stated that the "ball" of orange and red broke into two objects, and the two objects fell outward and down. She had the impression that one piece was larger than the other, which she estimated to be a 40% and 60% split of the original fire ball object.. She stated that it took less time for the object to fall that it took for the flare-like object to go up and reach its maximum altitude. Approximately 5 seconds after the objects disappeared from view behind the tree line, she heard a loud boom which she described as sounding similar to an intensely loud thunder rumble."

Witness 550- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix G
Witness saw a plane coming from the west to east and then what looked like a "smaller" plane coming from the northeast on a dead course toward the nose of the larger plane.

Witness 640- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix H
Witness walked out of the water and stood on the sand to stretch. As he leaned back to stretch, his eye caught a jet plane in the dky, off to his left, and moving eastward. At the same time, he saw, off to his right, a "green flash" rising up, and going, toward the plane.  The "flash" was far out in the ocean, was rising from the west, was also travelling east, and was behind the plane.

Witness 641/642
They observed what looked like a flame rising up (Google View) over the Atlantic Ocean, then arching in an easterly direction. They then reported seeing a flash of bright white light followed by a large red and orange fire type glow. Two items engulfed in the fiery glow were falling down, disappearing behind sand dunes in the horizon. ... They said what they saw appeared to be a flare being fired from a boat in the bay. They stated that the flare did not appear to be an ordinary flare, and it could have been something like fireworks, but the burst at the end of the flare seemed pretty unusual. It was not a normal boat flare that they are used to. They said the flare disappeared into black smoke behind a dune and it burst pretty low over the horizon. The boat that these individuals thought that the flare came from was a Pro-line center console occupied by two white males."

Witness 649- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix H
Witness observed an object (object #1) ascending from behind the trees. Object #1 appeared to be a bright white light with a reddish pink aura surrounding it. Witness said the object continued to maintain that appearance throughout his observation, except for the last second, when he believed the object impacted with another object. Initially, object #1 ascended almost vertically. Object #1 evolved into a "squiggly" pattern going up vertically and increasing in velocity and then arced off to the right in a south westerly direction. Witness stated that he observed a second stationary object (object #2) that appeared to glitter in the sky. Object #1 was heading towards object #2. However, object #1 appeared like it was initially going to slightly miss object #2 unless it made a dramatic correction at the last moment. In less than a second, witness believed object #1 impacted with object #2. Witness further described object #1 as an elongated object that had an oval "head" with an extremely bright white center that had a reddish pink "aura" about the object. The tail was the size of his pinkie nail which seemed to become smaller as it ascended in the air. The tail, grey in color, moved in a "squiggly" pattern which provided a sense of direction.  The projectile was airborne for six to seven seconds and then met with a shiny object that produced white smoke.  The white smoke disappeared and then a red ball began to form. The witness made a drawing which shows a missile rising from the surface and impacting the plane. Detailed analysis http://twa800.com/pages/wit649_debunks.htm of this witness's testimony completely debunks the CIA explanation of what he saw.

Witness 88 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness stated that they were fishing in Moriches inlet. Witness indicated they were approximately three-quarters of the way out of the Inlet. All the sudden witness heard an explosion. He glanced over to the south east and served what he thought was a firework ascending into the sky. He stated he originally felt this firework emanated from the shoreline on the other side of the jetty to the east. Witness stated that he continued to watch the firework ascend, expecting to view the explosion in the sky. He stated this object which was ascending left a wispy white smoke trail. About midway through its flight, the smoke trail stopped and the object turned a bright red in color. He felt that this bright red flame was at the top of the device. Witness stated that he now thought it was some type of boat distress flare . All of a sudden, it apparently reached the top of its flight. He stated that the red fireball then arched from the east to the west. At this point he observed an airplane come into the field of view.  He stated this airplane was very high up and many miles from his location. He stated that the bright red object ran into the airplane and upon doing so both the plane and the object turned a real bright red then exploded into a huge plume of flame. Witness noted that he felt that either the bright red object pushed the nose cone of the plane up or the plane was slightly angled upward when the strike occurred. He stated he felt the bright red object struck the plane towards the cockpit area. This plume separated into two sections which spiraled to the ground and left a white cloud of smoke in the sky. Witness stated that the flight of the bright red device took about 15 seconds.  

Witness #88 supports Baur's testimony that one of the missiles hit the nose of the plane.  Further supporting evidence comes from a conversation that Fritz Meyer had with Robert Francis (shown in this photo standing to the right of James Kallstrom) from the NTSB about damage to the front landing gear of the aircraft which Meyer described to the Granada Forum as follows:

Conversation with Robert Francis as reported by Fritz Meyer
Let me take you back to September of 1996 - the air guard unit became tasked to provide administrative support to the FBI people. That means we flew them all over the place - from the hangar at Calverton over to the coast guard station to the airport at East Hampton - we were just flying them here there and everywhere. During that time I had an opportunity to fly over with a friend of mine over to the hangar at Calverton where we landed in the grass. This friend of mine is an employee in the FAA and he is also a weekend warrior with the air guard unit. He took me into the hangar and he introduced me to Bob Francis who was the person in the NTSB in charge of the investigation for the NTSB. He had known Bob when Bob had worked in the FAA - so they are old buddies and he introduced me. "This is Fritz Meyer. He is the pilot who was flying the night the plane went down". So we started talking and we got separated from the people - Admiral Christiansen - that had flown over to the hangar and I was talking with just 4 people together. There was my friend, Bob Francis, a young lady from the NTSB - I can't remember her name - and myself. As we walked along Bob Francis turned and looked away from me and sort of .. collected himself... and he turned back to me and he said: "You know, we're getting away from that missile theory". I laughed in his face and he was crestfallen - he was distraught - and after that when I just laughed right at him we began to have a frank discussion. As we walked along we walked up to a nose wheel casting and it was all ripped and shredded - the tire was completely shredded  - and it was lying on a table or a frame of some kind in the hangar and we had had a more or less candid discussion about the crash and as we walked up he showed me this thing - and it had striations across it - great deep cuts through the alloy of the wheel casting. And he said: "You know my people tell me that this is sign of a high velocity explosion". Those were his words.   I made a mistake - I told this to a reporter about three months later and he picked up the phone and called Bob Francis and Bob Francis denied he had ever met me - had seen my face on television but he had never met me in person.

September 5, 1997 CNN
Federal officials investigating the crash of TWA Flight 800 are baffled by the discovery of impact damage on the doors that close over the front landing gear. National Transportation Safety Board investigators have been trying to figure out what could have caused the nose gear doors to blow inward. Examiners are said to be mystified about the significance of the damage on the doors, which are located below the flight deck and well forward of the plane's center fuel tank. The investigators are equally troubled by the fact that these nose gear doors were among the first things on the plane to have come off in flight. One crash investigator told CNN on Friday that the discovery keeps open the question of whether the fuel tank explosion was the primary or secondary event in the in-flight breakup of TWA flight 800.

The explosion of this missile underneath the front of the aircraft forced the nose upwards and broke it off the aircraft. The force of the blast also blew out part of the right hand side of the fuselage fodding a right wing engine.

Here is another witness describing a "small explosion" (at 13,000 feet?) which is followed "quite a few seconds" later by the fireball (at 7,500 feet?).

Witness 92 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness was camping at Smith Point Park, Mastic, New York. Witness observed what she described as a flare ascending into the sky from east to west and outward toward the ocean. Witness did not know whether it descended from land or from sea. Witness described the flare as a slow moving flare with a bright red trail followed by orange-yellow and a smoke trail. Witness claimed that the flare reached the point in the sky where it appeared to die out at this time witness heard a small explosion. Witness claimed that quite a few seconds went by, maybe even a minute, when she saw a huge fireball in the sky that was bright red.

Witness 359 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Just as witness reached the first red buoy marker, at about the center of Moneybogue Bay, while facing due south, he saw what appeared to be a boat flare shoot straight up into the sky from the horizon beyond Dune Road. Witness's initial though was that it was either a boat flare or fireworks. Because it arose from south of Dune Road, Witness knew it originated from the ocean. The flare was yellow-orange in color and shaped like a round ball. The flare ascended straight up into the sky. It did not arc or curve. The flare ascended for what witness estimated to be about 15 seconds. It then burst into a yellow flash, slightly larger than the flare itself. Witness thought that the yellow flash looked a little like "heat lightning". The yellow flash remained illuminated and descended. It then burst again into a huge fireball, yellow-orange in color. This second fireball was about 20 times the size of the yellow flash.

Recall again that the first missile struck the aircraft about 8:31:12 which is the time that the flight data recorder ceased operation.  The CWT exploded about 30 seconds later as the fuel spilled into the atmosphere and misted.  Note again this report from Eastwind Flight 507: Eastwind Flight 507 8:31:50: We just saw an explosion out here which also puts the CWT explosion at "quite a few seconds" after this missile strike. Capt McClaine told Richard Hirsch that he saw the large fuel/air explosion about 10 seconds before he made his radio report to Boston Center.  He also made the same estimate to the NTSB an the interview on March 25, 1999.  This puts the time of the CWT explosion at sometime about 8:31:40.

David McClaine: October 20, 1997  The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA.  
Eastwind Airlines pilot David McClaine's aerial view of the Flight 800 fireball made him the person to transmit the first known message of the tragedy to authorities. McClaine, piloting a Boeing 737 jetliner, had just leveled off at 17,000 feet on the plane's commuter run from Boston to Trenton, N.J. He had been watching a strange yellow light gradually ascend from the direction of Kennedy Airport. The light was different, he said, not the bright white light that jetliners' landing lights give off. McClaine said he had never seen a similar light in his 30 years as a military and commercial pilot. He thought it might be flames but heard no radio traffic, saw no smoke and decided it wasn't fire. The object moved up past 10,000 feet, where pilots normally turn off the lights they use as aerial warning beacons, but this one kept burning. He fixed his gaze on it for more than a minute, he said, and decided it was time to flick on his landing lights because his 737 would pass to the object's left. Before he could reach the switch, the yellowish light exploded into a ball of flames. "It blew up, just one big explosion," McClaine said. No more than a second later, two streamers came out of the bottom, flames trailing about 4,000 feet, he estimated. He did not actually see TWA 800's fuselage; smoke and flames trailing the plane blotted out the aircraft's debris as it fell 2 miles to the ocean. The yellowish light remains a puzzle. Federal Aviation Administration regulations require white landing lights and airliners have two main lights, not one. TWA's Boeing 747 landing lights are "a very bright, bright, white light," a company spokesman said. Beaver, Jane's missile expert, said a minute would be an exceptionally long burn for a surface-to-air missile but a drone's propulsion system lasts much longer. The BQM-34 "Firebee" drone, for instance, has a range of 700 miles and can stay aloft for about an hour at full speed. Others have longer ranges and flying times. McClaine immediately called Boston air traffic control with news of the in-flight explosion but got no response. He repeated the call twice more. A Boston controller told pilots to stand by for a roll call and orally ticked off the known aircraft. "They called TWA 800 twice," McClaine recalled. "I said,"Boston, I think that's them". And they said, "That's right." He said he thought at the moment that some "on-board incident," possibly a bomb, blew the plane apart, an opinion he still holds. He said he had not changed his original conclusion because he could not say the yellow light was a missile or drone. The incident held a special footnote for McClaine. As a youngster, he took the TWA flight often while traveling between the United States and Saudi Arabia where his dad worked for the Arab American Oil Co. FBI investigators talked to him a few days after the disaster but he hasn't been contacted since, he said earlier this month. He was initially asked if he saw anything like the trail of a missile headed toward the plane but said he didn't.

David McClaine: Eastwind 507 Pilot
8:37:11  Boston: Well, I want to confirm that you saw the splash in the water.
8:37:20  Eastwind 507: Yes, sir. It just blew up in the air, and then we saw two fireballs go down to the water. ... There seemed to be a light.... I thought it was a landing light, ... and it was coming right at us at .. about ... I don't know .. about 15,000 feet or something like that, and I pushed my landing lights, ah, you know, so I saw him, and then it blew.
8:37:40  Boston: Roger that, sir, that was a 747 out there you had a visual on that. Anything else in the area when it happened?
8:37:47  Eastwind 507: I didn't see anything. He seemed to be (alone?). I thought he had a landing light on ... maybe it was a fire ... I don't know.

Read McClaine's testimony to the NTSB at http://twa800.com/witnesscd/AppendixZ.pdf

Witness 96 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness was dining at the West Hampton Bay Yacht Squadron. Witness observed a flare appear in the Atlantic Ocean over the Barrier Island of West Hampton beach. From her vantage point she thought this flare originated from the surf near a strip of vacant land on the Barrier Island. Witness described the flare as having an orange tip with a white trail of smoke. The flare went straight up and did not arc. Witness estimated the time in which the flare was in the air at 5 seconds.

Witness 120 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was on motorcycle patrol. Witness was in the parking lot of Dockers restaurant, Dune Street, West Hampton Beach, New York when he saw a white streak traveling in an arch from west to east in the sky. The arch left a smoke trail and then exploded into an orange fireball. The fireball then fell down in two parts or columns.

Witness 129 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness related that he was fishing with his friend Witness 643 off the east jetty of Moriches Inlet. He noticed out of his peripheral vision what he thought was a flare to the south east. It first appeared to him at eye level and continued to rise upwards from that point, at a fast rate of speed. It rose to a certain point and appeared then to curve Southeast and slightly downward. He then saw a small flash or explosion and then a large explosion or fireball. The entire fireball then descended to the ocean surface in two pieces, which were close together.

This 747 pilot disputes the CIA's headless aircraft zoom theory. No climb of several thousands of feet here - the plane stopped in mid air and fell straight down ....

Witness 139 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was the pilot of Virgin Atlantic Flight 009. Witness believes that what he saw was not a plane malfunction because there was no horizontal component to the fire. He felt that it was a catastrophic occasion in the extreme to make a plane stop in mid air and fall straight down.

Witness 551- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix G
Witness was aboard USAir Flight 217. As he observed it the aircraft exploded and a large round orange fireball appeared which seemed to emanate from the front area of the plane. The plane seemed to stop in mid air "like a bus running into a stone wall - no forward motion".

And a passenger in the cockpit of the Virgin Atlantic flight saw an arcing missile too .....

Witness 140 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness 140 was a passenger on Virgin Atlantic Airways Flight 009 from London to the JFK. She is a private pilot. During the flight, she visited the flight deck and was invited back to observe the approach and landing. While sitting in the jump seat in anticipation for the approach, she saw what she described as an orange-white "flare" light which ascended slightly before it "bulged" and descended downward. She stipulated that the flare gave an indication that it appeared to be going slightly back, as if it was changing directions and going back on itself. She likened to the ascent to a "roller-coaster" with the ascent ending with what appeared to be a "big bang" followed by the descent.

Same thing from the ground looking up as from the air looking down ....

Vasilis Bakounis:
Private Pilot and Olympic Airlines engineer - "Suddenly, I saw in the fog to my left, toward the ocean, a small flame rising quickly towards the sky. Before I realized it, I saw this flame become huge. My first impression was that it was a flare shot off a boat."

Witness 241 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness observed a bright white light arching into the sky from west to east. It appeared to her to be emanating from Westhampton Beach, at an angle not exactly vertical, and travel over the ocean. At the time, she thought it was a firework. This light reached high into the sky, at an angle of greater than 45 degrees, and took approximately three seconds to reach its apex. At it's apex Witness observed that the light appeared to fizzle out, then moments later, a huge explosion occurred.

Witness 239 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was sitting with his back to the bay. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a flash of light, and when he turned, he saw a red-orange color flame going up in the sky in a southeast direction. He assumed it was a flare from a boat although he believed it look larger. He added that the projectile rose from the channel at a very high arch and at it's apex, separated into two reddish orange balls.

When should a "rocket" be called a "missile"?

September 22, 1996 The New York Post
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' "

Witness 144 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness saw an object angle to the right with a bright orange glow with a white streak behind it. She described this streak as "taking off like a rocket".   She thought at first that she saw fireworks, but then changed her mind and said "No way, it was a missile!".

Paul Runyan  N.Y. Daily News, 11/09/96
"It looked like a big skyrocket going up". The flash looked "like a rocket launch at a fireworks display".

Witness 493- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix F
Witness said he was driving south on Rogers Road and saw a firework/rocket go up from his car. Witness said the rocket was orange in color and had fire coming from its tail.  He realized it was not a firework but a rocket.

Witness 550- NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix G
Witness was on his boat in Moriches Bay near the Moriches Inlet by a line of four buoys in the water. He was putting his anchor down when he heard a "whoosh" sound. He turned, looked up and saw a fireball high up in the sky. He said the sound was like the sound of a "Mortar round" or a "heat seeking missile."  He was asked how he knows what a heat seeking missile sounds like, and he said that he knows of the sound from television.

Witness 746 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness and his friend were standing on Plainfield Avenue, in front of the Elmont Rehabilitation Center. Witness observed, to his right, an object similar to a rocket, which appeared to have come from the ground, moving straight up in the air.

Zach Clanahan interviewed by Tom Stalcup 1/29/98.
Clanahan was fishing in a boat while heading towards shore. While watching the lines, his friend said "hey, look at that!" He then looked to notice a plume connecting the ocean to an immediate explosion. Another friend of his who also saw the incident was present during this interview. His name is Danny Curro, and was fishing on a different boat. He saw the fiery blaze coming down from the sky and hitting the water. It left black smoke. When the black smoke went away, he saw white smoke. He also heard three loud explosions after witnessing the event. The week before the accident while surfing, Clanahan noticed a lot of Navy exercises in the area. He and the others on the boat called the FBI hotline and told them that they had witnessed the event. No FBI official visited. Then, his friend's father (also on the boat) called the FBI back and said that he thought he saw a missile hit the plane. The FBI showed up right away.

One of the FBI-biased or media-biased eyewitnesses?

Witness 275 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was walking from the front of her home to her car when she observed an orange colored arc moving up word. The arc continued to travel upward and appeared to bend to the left a little at the end. Then the arc, which appeared to dissipate into a little round glow for two to three seconds, ended in a large explosion. At first, Witness thought that what she saw was fireworks. However when the arc ended in a large explosion, she no longer believed the arc to be fireworks. Witness was sure that what she saw was a missile, based on what she has seen on television and the movies.

Witness 166 had personal experience with missiles  .....

Witness 166 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness and his wife were at a park in Lindenhurst, New York, which he believes to be Green Park, which looks on to South Oyster Bay. He was facing the bay and noticed a large commercial plane flying east. Looking south east he noticed something ascending which looked like white yellow fire trailed by black smoke. It ascended in a straight line at an angle of 7 to 10 degrees away from a vertical 90 degree. It arched slightly at the top. He could not observe exactly were the object originated, but believed it was from the water. The ascension lasted 10 seconds. He then observed an explosion which appeared like a pulsing yellow and white light. He then saw this fall, which lasted approximately two minutes. He stated he thought he had observed faulty fireworks. After hearing the news of the crash, he concluded that he had seen a missile. He stated he was in the Polish army in 1974 and has experience with missiles. Additionally he opined that this was a medium-size missile which would have required three experienced people to operate.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck , it must be? ....  If it has a flame in the rear, leaves a smoke trail in the rear, it must be? .....

Witness 740 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness was in a small boat heading east in the canal that runs parallel to Dune road. He observed what looked like a red flare going up. The flare started out fairly straight, then gently curved along an arc from south to northeast. The flare was a reddish circle with a very small elongated red cone shaped area on it, which had a darker tint in front that back. In the back there was a red-white colored flame. The flare left a wispy white smoke trail. The smoke was thicker at its source, thinning out as it got farther from its source. . The wispy white smoke trail disappeared quickly.

Despite what the U.S. military experts told them, Federal investigators preferred to explain the eyewitness accounts as a problem of biasing by news media reports.

March 21, 2000  CNN.com
Federal Investigators' Comments:
The witnesses were on land, sea and air.
Some were surfers.
Many may have been influenced by news media reports about the explosion.

On the other hand he NTSB explains the eyewitness accounts as a problem of biasing by the FBI.

March 21, 2000  CNN.com
NTSB comment in its Witness Group Study report:
FBI witness interviewing was focused on the possibility that a missile had been used against the accident airplane.
This focus may have resulted in bias on the part of some of the interviewers.
The NTSB witness reports conclude that the cause of the explosion cannot be determined through eyewitness accounts alone.

In case the "FBI biased them" explanation might not be believed the NTSB considered floating an idea that the eyewitnesses were all suffering from "perceived memories". Elizabeth Loftus of the University of Washington, perhaps the world's greatest expert in manipulation of perceived memories, was scheduled by the NTSB to appear at the Baltimore hearings to help in the presentation of witness "perceptions" of the TWA Flight 800 disaster.  Her presentation was canceled by joint FBI/NTSB agreement. Tom Shoemaker asked Dr. Loftus:

"Can you please share with me what your presentation was going to include?"  

Dr. Loftus replied, "Basically, to address the question of why people thought they saw missiles when there weren't any."

Apparently the NTSB supplied Dr. Loftus with information proving to her that no missile(s) were seen by eyewitnesses, regardless of what they thought they saw on July 17, 1996.

Lisa Perry had a very good view of one of the missiles ....  

Witness 150 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was vacationing with her family at her father's Fire Island beach house, located at Davis Park, New York. As she was on the deck retrieving the towels, her attention was drawn to an unusual movement in the sky. She turned to her left looking straight east and noticed an unusual object traveling at high speed from north to south. Witness described the object as being cylindrical, tubular and bullet shaped. Having no apparent wings, except perhaps, a small vertical shape at the rear, it did not appear to be any kind of passenger airplane. It occurred to her that it had no projections on it, like wings, but why would there be such a huge bullet hurtling through the sky? She was trying to make sense of it. It looked like it was all steel and too fast for an airplane. It came from behind the beach and already had altitude when she saw it. She followed the object for approximately two or three seconds when she noticed a large commercial airliner which appeared to be travelling at the same altitude, "just stop" and begin to disintegrate. The object headed toward the side of the plane, directly south.

Lisa Perry - Dan's Papers, Long Island, May 15, 1998:  (See also Eyewitness Lisa Perry's Open Letter to NTSB )
I saw the missile. I was facing eastward, toward the Hamptons, the ocean on my right, the deck of the house on my left. The deck is about 22 feet about the beach. On a clear day, as you look straight down the beach along the line of the shore, you can see the parking lot at Smith's Point Beach, 12 miles away. There was a plane in the sky ... out from the left, from the North, something was moving North to South over the dunes ... from the direction of the Great South Bay. The object came over the dunes of Fire Island. It was shiny, like a new dime; it looked like a plane without wings. It had no windows... It was as if there was a flame at the back of it, like a Bunsen burner .... It was like a silver bullet ... It was moving much faster than the plane.   The silver object took a left turn, and went up to the plane. The plane stopped for an instant, as something would when it had suffered an impact, not just an explosion. Then it began to fracture - as if you had slammed a frozen candy bar down onto a table. You could see the spaces in between the parts of the plane.  Then a moment later there was another explosion and the plane broke jaggedly in the sky. It was sideways to the way it had been ... there is smoke, fire .. the plane starts to fall apart in the sky ... the nose is continuing to go forward: the left wing is gliding off in its own direction, drifting in an arc gracefully down; the right wing and passenger window are doing the same in their direction out to the right; and the tail with its fireball leaps up and then promptly into the water below.  The sounds were huge BOOM! - then another BOOM! There was a huge rumbling rolling in the sky... I told the FBI the nose of the plane had come off; and I told them this before the Navy pulled it out of the water. Mrs Perry was interviewed by the FBI - The two agents were very supportive; I was very comfortable with them .. I got the impression that they themselves thought a missile had hit the plane.  After the (NTSB) hearings I spoke with one of the agents, who told me the FBI had concluded I was too far from the accident to see what I had seen.  (Speaking of the CIA video) It wasn't like that at all.   They said most people turned to the sound and then saw something. I was already looking at the event, before any explosion. Having asked for a copy of her testimony to the FBI she was told to file a FOIA request.  I knew what I was seeing was a plane breaking apart with people in it. It still haunts me how it continued to be in the air not quite flying but not exploded apart. I'm heartbroken for the families of all those people who were on that plane.

Russ Stephen of Garfield, NJ wrote to the website author in September 2005 as follows below.  Note the similarities in the description of the plane's breakup to that described by Perry.

The night flight 800 crashed was a beautiful crystal clear night. I had taken my dog out for a walk.  I was living in Garfield N.J. and the dog and I were coming down the hill to my house.  I guess we were maybe 200 feet above sea level with nothing to impair my view.  The geography of that part of New Jersey is such that there is not very much between where I was walking and Long Island Sound.  I would guess that I was about 20 to 25 miles away.  I base that guess on the fact that I usually could see the lights of large planes coming into Kennedy or Newark about 10 to 12 minutes before they got to the airport. I noticed a strange light in the sky.  It took me about two seconds to realize that there was a missile in the air.  When you see flames coming out of something and the top of the flame is much wider than the bottom so that it looks like a point of light in the center of the flame, that's a missile.  They are very unique looking!  I used to live in the extreme south eastern part of Orlando, Florida and I have seen many missile tests.  There was no mistake, this was a missile!  I also want to point out that it was far too large to have been a shoulder fired missile. I grabbed a pair of 7X binoculars that I kept in the side pouch of my car and started following this missile.  All of a sudden the tail of the missile seemed to rear up like it had glanced off of something.  It sort of wobbled and nosed down a little bit, straightened up and continued on it's way.  About that time there was an orange glow that seemed to grow until I could see the silhouette of a 747.  This was not a case of being blown out of the sky.  There was no explosion, just a growing orange fireball. It was about 30 to 45 seconds before the front cabin heeled over to the left and fell trailing flames and debris. It was about 15 seconds later that the rest of the plane heeled over to the right and started raining flames and parts of the fuselage as it fell. It is my opinion that the missile struck a glancing blow to the underside of the fuselage in the proximity of the rear portion of the main wing.  

Lisa Perry wrote to the website author in September 2000

One missile didn't hit the plane. It exploded without hitting it, looking like a big bright white puff. Sort of like a light bulb glass shattering, bright white and brittle. I remember feeling relieved, that the plane would be alright cause it hadn't hit the plane, when I suddenly saw the other one coming up under the plane. I'm sure that one hit it, as I almost expected to see a hole popped in the plane from it.

Note the similarity in Penney and Perry's accounts that the plane appeared to lose forward momentum after this missile impact/explosion. 

Again the CIA explanation that the streak observed by eyewitnesses was the aircraft in "various stages of crippled flight" is shown to be false by this observation of the undamaged aircraft and the bullet-like object which was heading towards it. Also note the above witness's description of the object and compare it to the one observed by a Swissair pilot as reported in this article:

March 5, 1999    www.cbcnews.com    Ottawa (CP)
A Swissair pilot reported his 747 jet was nearly hit by an unidentified flying object, possibly a missile, near the area off New York where a TWA airplane crashed in 1996, The Canadian Press has learned. Swissair Flight 127 was cruising at 23,000 feet on Aug. 9, 1997, when the pilot interrupted an address to passengers to report the near miss by a round white object, says a report by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. "Sir, I don't know what it was, but it just flew like a couple of hundred feet above us," he radioed Boston air traffic control. "I don't know if it was a rocket or whatever, but incredibly fast, opposite direction." "In the opposite direction?" asked the controller. "Yes sir, and the time was 2107 (Greenwich mean time).  It was too fast to be an airplane."  The controller asked another aircraft if its crew saw anything like a missile in the area. The reply was negative. He then asked the Swissair pilot again how far above the plane it was. "It was right over us, right above, opposite direction, and, and I don't know, two, three, four hundred feet above. All that I can tell, 127, is that (we) saw a light object, it was white, and very fast." Investigators interviewed the captain and first officer on Aug. 10, 1997. The flight engineer hadn't seen the object and was not interviewed. The report, filed under NYC97SA193, said the flight was opposite John F. Kennedy Airport at 5:07 p.m. Eastern time - near the area where TWA Flight 800 went down July 17, 1996..... The transportation safety board report said the Swissair captain saw the cylindrical object for less than a second. He did not see any wings and was not sure it was an aircraft. "He had never been so close to other traffic before," said the report. "It passed over the cockpit, slightly right of centerline. If it had been any lower, it would have hit the aircraft.  

The observations of missiles fired at aircraft on dates prior to and following the attack on TWA 800 again suggests a terrorist attack and not a friendly fire accident. For further details on the Swissair, PIA, and other missile incidents in the New York metropolitan area see The Tale of The Tapes

Witness 151 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C  
Witness was fishing in the ocean off Shinnecock Inlet. He saw what he thought was a flare straight behind the boat. He described the flare as a white wispy trail that went straight up. He followed the flare for about five seconds, when the flare turned into an orange burst.

Edwin A. Evens:
Evens was on a boat off the Shinnecock Inlet with two other people. The boat was heading north toward the Inlet on a line from the one mile sea buoy. They were about 1/4/ to 1/2 mile past the buoy toward the Inlet when Evens saw what he thought was a flare straight behind or slightly to the right of the boat to the southeast. Evens said that the flare had a “white wispy trail that went straight up.” He called to the other in the boat to look at the flare. He watched it for about 5 seconds when it suddenly turned into an orange burst. He then saw black smoke yet saw nothing fall into the ocean.

Witness 151 was not the only one to see a "wispy" trail from one of the missiles. On the evening TWA Flight 800 went down, Heidi Krieger was taking pictures from a boat off the coast of Long Island. One of her photos appeared to show at least one missile contrail. The FBI confiscated Krieger's negative and stated that the photo did not show a missile contrail, just the effects of "debris on the negative." The photographs may be viewed in detail at http://www.flight800.org/krieger.html

Some witnesses just could not be moved ..  up is up, down is down, and down is not up!

Donald Eick: October 20, 1997  The Press-Enterprise, Riverside, CA.
Ian Goddard created this animation showing what witness Eick described. (http://users.erols.com/igoddard/TWA800/)
For Donald Eick and his family, the scene in the July 1996 summer sky is a permanent memory: a reddish flare-like object just off the water heading upward, zigzagging a little in an unmistakable vertical climb, a fireball erupting at the end of the ascent. The initial drama took no more than 12 to 15 seconds, Eick estimates. Then, the meteorologist, his wife and 12-year-old daughter saw three sections of aircraft "fluttering" toward the Atlantic Ocean. ...... Eick's description, previously given only to FBI investigators, is different than others because he says he and his family saw the plane separate: two parts in flame and one part seeming to arch upward before heading toward the Atlantic. All other published accounts, including reports from airline pilots in the air, tell only of seeing lights, explosions or fireballs, but not the fuselage. The Islip, N.Y., family was returning to Long Island's Great South Bay after a day of boating and swimming when Eick's daughter noticed the reddish light headed upward. Eick does his work as a meteorologist for TWA, but he says that his link with the airline has no bearing on what he saw. He also is a civilian pilot and has participated in accident investigations. "It was what we would best describe as a boat flare, a reddish object going up," Eick said. "It went up and a few seconds later we saw an explosion in the sky. I can't say if it came off shore or on shore. At first, we thought it was a boat flare. It zigzagged a little. We thought it strange. "Then, several seconds later, we saw an eruption of fire. We never heard anything. We saw a fireball, and at that point we identified what was an aircraft. We could see it fluttering down. We were the third boat on Long Island to report the incident to the Coast Guard." Eick said the family clearly could see three sections of wreckage, one of which lofted upward a bit before heading downward. That piece did not catch fire, he said. ... "When I was interviewed by the FBI the next day, they were interested in the wreckage I saw go upward," Eick said. "I think it probably was the nose." A classified NTSB report based on an examination of the wreckage said the nose separated almost simultaneously with some unknown event that produced excess pressure in the center fuel tank and began its collapse. The nose then plummeted, without catching on fire, to an Atlantic site separate from the main fuselage. The report said the main part of the fuselage began a steep dive after the nose separated and the wing tips ripped off because of the intense strain, followed by the left wing and, sometime later, the right wing. Eick said it was "completely erroneous" to believe that the red flare he and his family saw was fuel or other descending plane debris. "It was something going up to it beforehand," he said. "Yes, I saw flaming debris go down. Something attracted us to the area before it exploded. And even my wife and my oldest daughter, we all were witnesses to it. There definitely was something there first before the aircraft went down." The meteorologist estimated visibility at "about 20 miles and unrestricted." He said he and his family were about 10 miles from where TWA's wreckage rained into the ocean.

Witness 174 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Ian Goddard created this animation showing what witness 174 described. (http://users.erols.com/igoddard/TWA800/)
Witness 174 is a retired naval officer. He saw skyrocket type object streak up into the night sky. He recalled thinking that someone spent money on a dud, as it did not immediately explode. The skyrocket had an orange contrail which had a continuous brightness. A few seconds later, after the skyrocket contrail disappeared, witness saw a large orange fireball appear. He stated that the skyrocket went slightly from the left to the right as it was going up. He was questioned whether he may have actually seen something going down instead of up. He insisted that his skyrocket went up.

Witness 157 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness noticed a red flare or fire work trailing white smoke and ascending over the tree line on the south side of the waterhold. The flare was angling East-southeast. Approximately 7 to 10 seconds later witness observed a large fireball erupt.

Witness 175 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness reports that he had seen a flare going straight up, but he was unclear as to whether it had originated from land or water. As it was in the air, he observed the flare turn into a large red and orange flaming object or fireball.

Witness 184 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was walking on the beach at Smith's Point State Park. Witness was walking eastward on the beach when she saw a yellow-orange small firework go up in the air over the ocean. Witness then saw a big explosion in the sky followed by a large fireball.

Witness 186 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness stated she looked out her window in a southerly direction over the ocean when she observed an object, which she first thought was a flare, ascending upboard from the water into the sky. Witness stated that the object was approximately 12 miles offshore. Witness described the object that was ascending as pinkish-red in color (smoke) leaving a wide trail. Witness stated this object was traveling at a high rate of speed. From the time this object was first spotted to the time of the explosion was approximately five seconds. Witness further stated that the object that was ascending was doing so in a straight line and did not zigzag.

Witness 271 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was sitting on a deck approximately 4 ft. above the beach. Witness recalls seeing a flare-like light rush up into the sky. Witness thought that there was going to be a fireworks display. At the time witness believed it was a firework that failed to function.

Witness 276 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was facing a south easterly direction, when she noticed a flare like object traveling upward from north to south direction. She next saw a bright orange fireball in the sky.

Roland Penney:  Newsday, Sept. 1, 1996  
Roland Penney has told the story of the streak of light to four different pairs of FBI agents. "It was something going up that hit that plane," said Penney, who told his story to the agents four times in the first two days after TWA Flight 800 exploded into pieces over the Atlantic Ocean. "Whether it was a missile or what God only knows, but if it was a bomb or mechanical failure, I feel the plane would have still gone forward," he said. "With this, the plane went straight down and it didn't go forward an inch. This was, "Bam!' and it came down."

Roland Penney: Interview by Cdr. Donaldson presented at the AIM conference October 18, 1997.    
They said "Are you sure you didn't see something going down ...and not going up"? ...... I said  "No.... Gosh sakes I ain't that stupid ....I ought to be able to tell if something is going up in the air or going down in the air .... No and I said I'm not changing my mind about it ... I'll stick to that until I die. I said I saw something going up and I said there was no question in my mind. I said I'm telling you what I saw. I'm not telling you what I think I saw. I said I saw something and..... that's the way I am stating it. I'm not trying to make up a story just to be on the news or whatever... I said I have no desire to be on the news - I don't even want to get involved in this stuff anymore. But I said there was definitely something going up and then it went behind ... I said I'm assuming it's a cloud and then we saw this white light.
Donaldson: OK. And when we were off .. when the recording was off ... you mentioned that a neighbor ... we won't mention the name .. but had a similar experience apparently with an FBI interview that they were trying to get her to say that it was going the other way...
Penney: That's right  
Donaldson: And she talked to you on the phone and got a little bit ....
Penney: She was upset because she says I'm a grown woman - I don't drink and she says it wasn't because I had alcohol in me. She says I saw something definitely going up and there is no question in my mind about that and she says I'm not changing my mind either.

Here's a guy that is even prepared to do something to the President's desk if he doesn't believe that up is up ....

William Gallagher: 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 picked it up three seconds before it turned into a bright white ball, which split," Gallagher said. "I thought it was fireworks. And then I didn't know what to think because from the white ball, I saw two wide orange bands of light fall down, obviously the fuel igniting." It was TWA Flight 800. When he returned to port, he called the FBI. "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." Officials say more than 400 eyewitnesses were interviewed, many reporting a red flare-like or fireworks-like object ascending toward the plane. "I saw something hit the right side of the plane," said Gallagher. "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." Gallagher, of New Jersey, has worked the ocean waters near the crash for more than 15 years. "My honest opinion, my gut feeling, is that we have the most brilliant people in the world and the best technology," Gallagher said. "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?" FBI and NTSB officials bristle at such comments and say they are meticulously searching for clues among more than 300,000 pounds of debris, with another 15,000 to 25,000 pounds missing and deemed unrecoverable.

Gallagher saw something going through the airplane behind "first class" and investigators reconstructing the debris backed him up ...

September 23, 1996 Associated Press
Investigators reconstructing the debris say there is a hole going into the plane and a hole going out of the plane .... a source...said on condition of anonymity ..."There's metal bent in, metal bent out. Metal you can't tell. I see a hole going in and a hole going out....."

November 9, 1996 St. Louis Post Dispatch Post Dispatch and Pulitzer Technologies Inc.
The TWA veteran of almost 20 years said a source on the (crash investigation) committee had told him investigators had found a hole in the center of the aircraft they believed was caused by a missile.

More witnesses ...

Witness 187 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was on a cross country coming back from Block Island airport. Witness saw a light similar to a flare launched from a boat. He saw two explosions.

Witness 188 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness and his wife were at Smith Point County Park. He stated he was facing south, toward the ocean. Witness stated that he saw a white-colored flare rise up into the sky. This occurred to his south east. This flare suddenly exploded into a fireball which split into two pieces and fell into the ocean.

Witness 211 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness stated that she was standing in the Hampton Bays high school parking lot talking to a friend. Witness reports said as she was looking towards the south - Atlantic Ocean, she looked in the sky and observed what she describes as a firework/Roman candle which did not go off the right way. She thought it was a dud.

Witness 217 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness advised that she was sitting in front of the boardwalk at Smith Point with a friend who mentioned to her that a boat must be in distress because a flare had been shot up. She described the flare as a small reddish-orange ball with a whitish flash around it.

Fist-sized holes were found in the backs of several seats .....  

August 30, 1996 NY Times
An aviation expert and a law enforcement official who is an explosives specialist both said they saw several fist-size holes that had been punched through the backs of two seats on the far right side of row 23. The holes in the sheet metal on the seat back are pushed through from the rear and row 24, the seats just behind them is missing. Traces of PETN were also found in this general area.

September 4, 1996 CNN
The source said RDX was found on a curtain that would have been near row 40 in the passenger cabin, an area located behind the wings. The PETN found earlier was on a piece of the flooring in the mid-section of the plane, on the right side between rows 17 and 27 which begin just ahead of the front edge of the wings.

And the NTSB were astonished to find a beam, the walking beam, from the left wing of the plane embedded in the cockpit ...

Text supplied by Tom Shoemaker:
On August 8, 1996 , the "Austin American-Statesman" newspaper reprinted an article from "The New York Times" by reporter Don Van Natta, Jr. The article, titled "Large Metal Beam is Mysteriously Lodged in the Center of TWA Jet Wreckage, Officials Say", discusses official reactions to the then-recent recovery of major pieces of TWA Flight 800's cockpit wreckage. The following quotes are taken directly from that article: "Investigators on Sunday took their first look at the battered remains of the cockpit of TWA Flight 800 and said they were puzzled by how the plane's nerve center became gnarled into a one-ton ball of wires, metal, seats and switches. Senior law enforcement officials said no cockpit in previous accidents resembled the 6-foot-high, 10-foot-wide mass of debris. They said a large metal beam from the rear of the Boeing 747 is inexplicably lodged in the center of the cockpit wreckage, which one official likened to a metallic ball of twine that investigators would have to unravel."

Since the cockpit separated from the aircraft early in the sequence of events, one can only assume that some high kinetic force impacted the aircraft and ejected the beam forward into the cockpit before the cockpit separated from the aircraft.  Jim Cole of the Associated Press took a photograph which shows the TWA cockpit being lowered into a back lighted hangar with the beam, called the walking beam, sticking through the side of the cockpit into the flight engineers instrument panel.  The date of the picture was August 6th (or possibly the 5th or 7th) 1996.  Associated press has been contacted and will not make it available declining to explain why.  

The finding of the fist-sized holes, the explosives residue and the beam from the rear of the aircraft lodged in the cockpit can not be explained by a low velocity Center Wing Tank explosion occurring in the belly of the aircraft.  

Witness 63 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix B
Witness advised that he was traveling west on the Sunrise Highway in the vicinity of Center Moriches when he observed an airplane off to his left flying in an eastbound direction. Witness glanced to his left a second time and, on this location, observed a bright flash of white light on the rear portion of the airplane. Witness described the white flash as small, similar to a firework, circular in shape and of a size which did not obstruct the view of the airplane. Witness indicated that the airplane appeared to be flying through the white flash. Immediately thereafter, the airplane dipped at a slight angle before stopping and bursting into orange flames.

Witness 280 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness saw a red dot traveling from west to east, parallel to the horizon. The red dot also seemed to be heading slightly south. Witness estimated that the distance of the red dot was about 20 mi.. He counted for about three or four seconds, and then the red ball turned into a bright orange explosion, as big as a house. It was like the red object pushed what ever it hit forward, causing it to explode and dive downward.

Barbara Pacholk interviewed by Tom Stalcup on 1/28/98.
Witness saw two objects rise from the water or land. One object exploded near the tail and the other near the nose.

Barbara Pacholk: November 19, 1997    New York Post
"I know what I saw, I saw several fires go across the sky. One hit the plane at the tail and the second hit at the front, just before the wings. The fire came from both ends and met in the middle and exploded.

Witness 145 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix C
Witness was visiting a friend at Bayshore, New York. She was sitting in the house looking out towards the ocean just about dusk. Witness stated that she saw a plane and noticed an object spiraling towards the plane. The object, which she saw for about one second, had a glow at the end of it and a gray-white smoke trail. Witness stated she saw the object hit the plane and then the object headed down toward the ocean. She could not be sure where the object that the plane, but said it could've been the side or near the back. She heard a loud noise and saw an explosion just as the object hit plane. The plane dropped towards the water and appeared to split in two pieces.

Remember the light-falling stuff that Meyer and Baur flew through?  Lots of witnesses described it in detail ......

Witness 223 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness stated that what he observed was a column of rising orange and red flame that was quite big and lasted only a short time and then went away in what Witness described as faint sparkles similar to a Roman candle drifting down.

Witness 345 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness was proceeding East on Great South Bay, approximately one half to three quarters of a mile east of Captree Bridge, in his boat. He saw a reddish-orange light to the east, which he describes as ascending in a light northwest arc. He believed that the light was a flare, which he describes as staying on the same plane until it broke into a "waterfall" of fire.

Witness 371 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness stated that what he observed in the sky was a red arc which at that time he believed to be a red distress flare. Witness stated that he actually recalled saying "Look, it's a boat flare" and at that point another witness said "No, its fireworks out on Long Island. Witness stated that this was happening while watching this thing going up from Long Island, and when it reached a certain point in the sky there came an orange explosion and at that point Witness stated that he felt he was neither looking at a boat flare or fireworks. Witness stated that rather than the plume effect of fireworks pyrotechnics or the floating glow of a distress flare, what he did notice appeared to be a sheet of flame which he described as an upside down rectangle and the rectangle seemed to fall as a sheet and then as it fell seemed to dissipate. Witness stated that the sheet broke up as it fell and almost appeared to be "twinkling" away as it fell back towards earth. Witness stated that there were two colors emblazoned in his mind, the red arc going up from the earth to the sky and the yellowish orange color, almost like that of a fireplace fire, coming down from the sky towards earth.

Witness 375 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
Witness was on her boat near Great Gunn. She was looking southeast. She saw an orange glow. The orange glow appeared to be rising but did not move laterally. The glow then spread out and cascaded like a waterfall. This was followed by a second flash and additional orange flame like a cascade.

Witness 379 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix E
The witness stated that while looking southeast they saw an orange-reddish streak traveling upwards and arching off in the air. The witness stated that they saw an explosion which looked like a waterfall, similar to a fireworks explosion.

The object with the bright flame had a head according to Witness 226!   The CIA said it was a plane without its nose!

Witness 226 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness advised that he was riding his motorcycle westbound on Dune Road at approximately 35 to 40 mi. per hour from a club known as Dockers in Hampton Bays, Long Island. His attention was drawn towards the water as he noticed a red flame streak towards the sky. The flame then curved right and proceeded downward toward the water before finally splitting into two balls of fire. Witness stated that the bright flame was like a flare being launched. It had a head, followed by a small tail, and it's path was defined by a narrow trail of smoke.

Some of the eyewitnesses have apparently given up on both the CIA and the FBI ...

Jim Naples: November 24, 1997    The New York Observer Page 16
“We know what we saw. We weren’t drunk ..... “I looked up and my immediate response was, I never saw an alert flare like that. It was projecting upward with a stream of smoke behind ....I don’t think our accounts will be reflected in the final version .... I have a hard time believing that the F.B.I. believes its conclusions … I don’t believe that the truth is ever going to come out.”  

Barbara Pacholk: November 19, 1997    New York Post
"I know what I saw, I saw several fires go across the sky. One hit the plane at the tail and the second hit at the front, just before the wings. The fire came from both ends and met in the middle and exploded. Then the nose dropped, hung there for a minute. I understand that when a plane bursts into flames the flames fall, but this was a fire going up towards the plane,.....I wouldn't accuse anyone of wrongdoing, but I'm definitely still wondering what happened."  

On a ferry or getting out of a car it is the same story ....

Witness 231 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness was traveling on a ferry from Bridgeport, Conn., to Port Jefferson, New York, with his wife, when he saw what he initially thought to be a fireworks rocket ascending to his south over Long Island. At the point where the rocket was last seen, witness saw an orange fireball erupt and fall to the horizon. The rocket was in the air for approximately two to three seconds before the fireball erupted. It glowed red, but no smoke trail was visible.

Witness 287 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix D
Witness said that as he was getting out of his parents' car in the Moriches yacht Club he noticed a firework ascending into the air. Witness said the firework was ascending over the great gun beach on Fire Island, south east of the club. After watching the fire work for a few seconds he saw an explosion. He did not realize it at the time that the object that fell to the ground was a plane.

Here an airline pilot has a very close view of one of the missile explosions.  Note he does not report an "airplane" exploding. Clearly he was not witnessing a Center Wing Tank explosion.

Witness 701 - NTSB Docket No. SA-516 Appendix I
Witness was flying as First Officer on a flight that included a leg from Philadelphia to Boston. The aircraft, was a MD-82. Witness's attention was raised by a hot pink flash below his altitude. Witness first noticed this flash out of the corner of his eye and then looked directly to it. He saw the remnants of the dissipating flash, with four to six trails of what witness described as hot pink sparks descending from the flash. He did not see any falling debris, other than the spark trails, or anything to indicate that an aircraft was the source of the explosion. He initially though the explosion was due to fireworks. In fact, he described the explosion as resembling a fireworks explosion of the type in which the spark trails are completely vented downward instead of going out in all directions.

Paul Angelides saw what he described as a "red meteor with a smoke tail".   Mr Angelides who had one of the best views of a missile from launch to detonation gave a taped statement which was played at a press conference on July 20, 1998.  The following is Angelides account of incident given to Cmdr. Donaldson on July 12, 1998:

After work on July 17, 1996, I went to our ocean front summer rental house to have dinner with my wife and 1 year old son. After dinner my wife was bathing our son before putting him to bed so I decided to go to the ocean side deck to enjoy the view. As I walked through the sliding doors to the deck a red phosphorescent object in the sky caught my attention. The object was quite high in the sky (about 50-60 degrees) and was slightly to the west and off shore of my position. At first it appeared to be moving slowly, almost hanging and descending, and was leaving a white smoke trail. The smoke trail was short and the top of the smoke trail has a clockwise, parabolic shaped hook towards the shore. My first reaction was that I was looking at a marine distress flare which had been fired from a boat. I said to myself, someone must be in trouble.

I quickly realized that the object was too large and then began moving too fast to be a distress flare. I followed the object as it moved out over the ocean in the direction of the horizon. I lost sight of the object, as it was about 10 degrees above the horizon. In the same area of the sky out over the ocean, I then saw a series of flashes, one in the sky and another closer to the horizon. I remember straining to see what was happening as there seemed to be a lot of chaos out there. There was a dot on the horizon near the action, which I perceived as a boat. The flashes were then followed by a huge fireball, which dropped very quickly into the sea. I yelled to my wife. Come here quickly you've got to see this.

My first reaction was that I had seen a military exercise that went awry. Then the sounds started. There was a very loud and prolonged boom, which reminded me of thunder rolling above the house. The noise continued and concluded with a series of two distinctly louder bursts and a final extremely loud burst. The sounds shook the house. My wife who was on the bathroom floor drying our son from his bath felt the floor shaking as she heard the noise and I heard her cry out "what is going on?". After some silence there were two more extremely loud explosion like bursts of sound which also shook the house. I thought to myself that I had witnessed some big weapons being used.

I noticed several smoke patterns, which remained in the sky after the action took place. In the area where I lost sight of the object there was a long, wide, white cigar shaped cloud, which extended parallel to the horizon and eastward to the point where I had seen the huge fireball erupt. At the eastern end of the white cloud was a wide black smoke trail, which followed the same path as the fireball, which had dropped to the horizon. The path of the black smoke left a trail that was slightly to the east of a vertical drop. There was also a thin white, parabolic contrail, which extended upward and westward from the white cigar shaped cloud.

I called 911 and told the operator that I had just witnessed an explosion and crash, which had occurred off shore. The operator asked me for my location, which I provided to her. The operator said she would send someone right over. I told her that the explosion was off shore and not at my location.   I then called the Moriches Coast Guard Station. I stated that I had seen an explosion off shore. I was told, "oh, that's the Air National Guard they are firing flares tonight". I told the Coast Guard Operator that what I had seen was no flare and that I had witnessed a major explosion. I then returned to the beach to see if anything else was going on.

The dot on the horizon, which I thought was a ship, had disappeared. I could see flames beginning to appear above the horizon in the area where the fireball had dropped. I saw lights from aircraft and boats heading towards the scene. As I thought about what I had seen and what the Coast Guard had just told me, I felt that I had witnessed an aircraft explode during a military exercise. I began to feel morose, as the explosion was so violent certainly the Air National Guard crew could not have survived.

I began flipping TV news channels. At about 9:15 I got a CNN report that a Boeing 747 was missing…… I followed the event in the newspapers and on TV and radio news. I called the FBI hotline number and a few days later was interviewed by three FBI representatives at my home in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., which is about 50 miles from Westhampton. I told the FBI my observations. I gave the FBI a sketch with a sequence of the events, which I had recalled at the time. I told the FBI that I had drawn no conclusions from my observations and that I was confident that the investigators would find the cause of the disaster. I was asked, "what was your first impression?" and I replied "I thought it was a military exercise and someone shot themselves in the foot". I was asked if I had ever seen a missile before and I replied no. I was asked if I was ever in the military and replied no. During the FBI interview, I noticed they had a questionnaire with an item which read, "when did you first see the missile?". At the conclusion of the interview one of the FBI representatives told me not to talk to too many people about what I had seen since, "someone could say you said this and someone could say you said that".

I followed the news coverage of the event during the months that followed and I became increasingly concerned that the investigation was off the mark. In hindsight I realized that the delayed long rolling thunder sound which I heard probably corresponded to the object traversing the sky. The first two bursts corresponded to the two white flashes, the third loud burst corresponded with the fireball. After the silence, the last two sound bursts would likely correspond with the aircraft hitting the water. In early 1997 I called the FBI stating that I wanted to tell my observations again and that I felt what I had seen was very important to their investigation. I was disappointed by what seemed to be their lack of interest.   My friends and family have told me that I should not be persistent with the FBI since they are afraid that the Government would reprise against me.

Months later I saw the CIA video reenactment on various TV newscasts. It does not correlate in any way with my observations, especially with regard to the descending fireball of the aircraft, which is shown in the video from the perspective of an observer on shore. Nor is there any explanation of the characteristic location and movement of "the object" I saw traversing the sky. The FBI has explained eyewitness sighting of a "flare" as the body of the aircraft as it ascended, (prior to exploding) after the nose section fell off. I strongly disagree. My observations tell me that the aircraft was not just flying along and then suddenly blew up as the center fuel tank exploded. The large fireball, which would have occurred from a fuel explosion in the sky, was a later event in the sequence of my observations. The red, phosphorescent object which first attracted my attention traveled a great distance and at great speed to the area of flight 800's demise. The object originated in a vastly different sector of the sky than the Flight 800 path. The object traveled in a generally north-south direction whereas Flight 800 traveled west-east. The official explanations do not address the flashes of light I observed prior to the fireball and long rolling sonic boom, which ended with 2 small burst and one large burst, followed by silence and then two additional loud bursts. The video does not explain the long white cigar shaped cloud, which was left in the sky.

I have been disappointed with the results of the investigation so far. The official explanations of the disaster are vastly inconsistent with my observations. Considering the resources at the disposal of the investigators and the extent of the investigation, which has been performed over the past two years, I do not believe that the cause of the disaster remains unknown.   At the time of the incident I was 48 years old. I received a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1971, I received New York State licensure as a Professional Engineer in 1997. I am self employed full time as a Consulting Engineer and I have been qualified as an expert witness before courts in Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and Bronx counties. I am a small business owner / sole practitioner and the breadwinner for my family. I watched the negative official and press reaction to the reports by Mr. Salinger which more accurately describe my observations. I have reasoned that if Mr. Salinger, who is a former prestigious government official, could be treated so poorly, what is in store for me if I speak out. I am concerned for my security and fear Government reprisal against me for what I have seen.  

Paul J. Angelides  7/12/98.

Al Gipe:
A former Navy gunnery officer, was on his sail boat out at sea 25 nautical miles offshore. He saw what he thought was an emergency flare go up about 15 miles to the north. He said it looked like a 40 mm. tracer bullet, streaking upward, from south to north, until it exploded high in the sky a few seconds later. He noted down his position at the time, and not long after he learned the coordinates of the crash site from the radio. The estimated launch point was about three miles from the crash site.  Click for short three minute video  or  click for full ten minute video made from witnesses Angelides' and Gipe's observations.

The witnesses couldn't testify at the Baltimore hearings but some got to tell their story on the radio ...

Suzanne McConnell - Interviewed on the Art Bell show with Cmdr. Donaldson
Bell: Where are you, Suzanne
McConnell: I'm in East Moriches
Bell: You're right there then
McConnell: Yes, I am.
Bell: Commander, would you like to lead her through this?
Donaldson: Well sure. Suzanne and I just really got together for the first time a few days back. We have an 800 number now for eyewitnesses and anyone else who has a material contribution to the investigation and we just did make contact. Suzanne, why don't you tell everybody where you were, what you were doing and what you saw.
McConnell:Well I live right on East Moriches Bay and my family and I were sitting on the deck eating dinner and I just happened to be looking out directly at the spot where I saw the .. what I thought was a flare go up from about ground level
Bell: From ground level?
McConnell: And tracked it as it went up and all of a sudden there was just this orange fireball in the sky which then broke into about two or three pieces and then just kind of cascaded down to the bay.
Bell: So you saw this happen?
McConnell: Right.
Bell: And you saw something come without question from the ground up.
McConnell: Well it was... it had to have come at least from the ground because .. I'm not sure how far off ground level I saw it start but it definitely came from down below
Donaldson: And Suzanne the amount of time ....how fast did it take to go from ground level up to obviously where the aircraft was?
McConnell: Oh, it probably took about three or four seconds.
Donaldson: So it was really moving quickly then.
McConnell: Oh, it was going fast.
Donaldson: Is there any question that it was not going several times faster than the normal speed of an airplane that you see fly by?
McConnell: Oh, no. It was definitely moving faster than a plane.
Donaldson: OK and it was going near vertically. It wasn't going horizontally or something like that?
McConnell: Oh, no. It was going vertically.

Bill Lisle - Interviewed on the Art Bell show with Cmdr. Donaldson  
Bell: Bill where are you located?
Lisle: I'm located in Lindenhurst, Long Island  
Bell: Lindenhurst, Long Island. All right. You apparently were a mate on a commercial fishing boat of some kind?
Lisle: Yes, I was first mate on a charter boat fishing for blue fish about six miles off the beach.
Bell: On that night?
Lisle: Right.
Bell: So you had the advantage of  being off shore - let's see ..  six miles more or less west of the missile launch point and it says here you watched it go from the surface into the cloud and then observed two explosions? Is that correct?
Lisle: Well, everything is correct. What I saw was after it got up into the cloud cover I saw a large flash up in the clouds and then after that like another large flash and then you know I saw stuff coming down
Bell: Right, let's back up.  What were you able to see at ground level? What did you see from ground level, from the ocean where you were?
Lisle: Well we were heading west and I was standing right on the stern of the boat because we were trolling what they call .. blue fish (unclear) and I was watching the two lines running out the back of the boat. And all of a sudden I saw this large orange and red thing just take off from the surface of the ocean south east of me.
Bell: Could you.. is there any way .... I know it's difficult to estimate distance but how far would you say this launch was from your?
Lisle: It had to be maybe six miles
Bell: Six miles
Lisle: Maybe a little farther - it's kinda tough to estimate how far but I'd say something in that area.  
Bell: Was there any question in your mind what you saw?
Lisle: None, not at all.  From day one ... nobody will ever convince me any different about what I saw.
Bell: So you saw a missile leave the sea and streak up into the clouds. You saw one explosion, then you saw a secondary explosion
Lisle: Right, I saw like an explosion up in the cloud cover. I saw a flash - looked like sometimes you see lighting up in the clouds and then I saw another one and that was it.
Bell: You heard Suzanne before you and I'm going to have to ask you some of the same questions. Number 1 - did you talk to the FBI?
Lisle: Yes I did.  The second day after the accident they came down to the dock and interviewed me down at the dock
Bell: At the dock?
Lisle: Right. I was a mate on a charter boat out of (unclear) and when we were coming in from a trip they were on the dock and they wanted to talk to me then after we got tied up.
Bell: So you told them roughly what you just told me
Lisle: Yes
Bell: And their reaction?
Lisle:  Their reaction to me was:  "You actually want us to believe that you saw a missile go up there and shoot that plane down?"  And I said: "Yes"
Bell: That was their reaction?   My God!   So it's as though they were incredulous ...."You want us to believe that?"  That kind of reaction?
Lisle: That's the impression I got - yes.

Military people have to follow orders from their superiors.  The media apparently hasn't figured this out ....

Col. William Stratemeier - Pilot of the C-130 - Text and documentation supplied by Ian Williams Goddard
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.

Boeing and the NTSB looked for a way out.  Boeing Submission to the NTSB.  The exit strategy would be that the NTSB would find no definite cause for the CWT explosion if Boeing would not raise the missile defense in a multimillion dollar lawsuit. 

April 14, 2000   Newsday.com  
Lawyers for Boeing and TWA told a federal judge yesterday that they wanted to begin settlement talks to try to resolve more than 200 lawsuits filed by families of people killed in the crash of TWA Flight 800. "I think we ought to address settlement and address it seriously," said Seattle-based attorney Steven Bell, who represents Boeing. In a brief pre-trial conference in Manhattan, Bell said both sides had a "window of opportunity" to negotiate since the National Transportation Safety Board has postponed a final ruling on the cause of the crash. A board meeting to vote on a final report and cause was originally scheduled for June, but the NTSB said this week it is now scheduled for Aug. 22 and 23. Lawyers for the victims' families have asked to take depositions from NTSB investigators, but they won't do that until after the final board meeting. But the legal positions of Boeing and TWA were dealt a setback in the case last month when a federal appeals court upheld Judge Sweet's ruling that a 1920s law limiting monetary damages did not apply. A legal source said the higher court ruling may have been what motivated the defendants to talk about settling the cases.

Quoting Flora Headley, the mother of TWA 800 Capt. Ralph Kevorkian:  

"I guess I'm the only stupid one yelling about it". 

Yes, Mrs. Headley, something is indeed rotten in the State of Denmark.  But Major Meyer and the other eyewitnesses have known this for some time. So, let us end where we began with 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 ...."

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2) Statistical Calculations of Eyewitness Events given that in the eyewitness accounts above the evidence is clear that:  a) a missile struck the nose of the plane,  b) a missile struck just forward of the wing area on the port side and transited the aircraft, and c) a missile exploded at the rear of the aircraft.

In a December 15, 1996 article in the NY Times entitled "Many Answers in Crash Except the One That Counts" it is stated that: "safety board officials said their leading theory of the crash is that the fumes were ignited by a spark of static electricity created by fuel leaking into the tank. But they offered no evidence to support that theory and, in fact, they could not rule out a bomb or missile as the cause of the explosion -- two other possibilities for which there is no evidence."

Statistical calculations on the probabilities that what the TWA 800 eyewitnesses said they saw did in fact happen can be performed. In the article it is indicated that 40 of these witnesses are considered to be "reliable" and include a pilot and a military officer. What statistical reliability can we place on this evidence provided by eyewitnesses?

Of the 755 eyewitnesses interviewed by the NTSB/FBI let us assume that only 40 of them are "credible". Furthermore, let us assume that the observational capability of each of these TWA 800 eyewitnesses is so poor that he/she can report an observation correctly in only one out of five observations. There is then only a 20 percent probability that an event reported by such a witness would have actually taken place as described. With two of these witnesses independently describing the same event, the probability rises to 36 percent and with ten witnesses it rises to 89.26 percent. With forty such independent and similarly "unreliable" witnesses the probability rises to 99.99 percent that the event reported did in fact take place. This is as close to certainty as one can come mathematically. Further, even if one goes further and assumes that the reliability of these 40 eyewitnesses to TWA 800's destruction was so poor that each of them could report an observation correctly only one time out of ten, the probability that the event did indeed take place as described by the witnesses is still 98.52 percent.

The equation is as follows:

Probability of Event (P) = [1-(U^N) ] X 100
Percent Probability (P)  equals one minus the Unreliability (U) raised to the power of the Number of Participants (N) all multiplied by one hundred.

For example: If you give a coin to one person and ask them to flip it and you hope to see a "head" what is the probability that you will get it? Answer 50%. What if we give two people a coin each and ask both to flip their coins and we hope to have one "head" show up, the probability that we will get it is now 75%. With three people the chances that we can get at least one head is 87.5% and with four people it is 93.75%.

Another way to look at these probability outcomes is as follows:  

Assume that one has identical pieces of equipment which need to operate for a set period of time but each can do so with only 50% reliability.

How many pieces of equipment do we need to operate simultaneously to ensure with 99.9% probability that we will get the job done?     Answer 10.

Now if a witness is "right" in an observation only 10% of the time (or another way of putting this is that the witness is unreliable in 90% of his observations) then if one had 50 such witnesses what is the probability that what they said happened, actually happened? The solution is shown below:

Accuracy of Witness Groups at Ten Percent Reliability

No of Witnesses                          Probability that Event Happened

           1                                             10.00 % (N=1 and U=0.9)

           5                                             40.95 % (N=5 and U=0.9)

          15                                             79.41 % (N=15 and U=0.9)

          20                                              87.84 % (N=20 and U=0.9)

          35                                              97.50 % (N=35 and U=0.9)

          50                                              99.48 % (N=50 and U=0.9)

Another example:

Suppose an Eastbound red car collides with a Southbound blue car at an intersection controlled by green-yellow-red traffic signals on all 4 corners. There are 100 witnesses. Fifty of the witnesses contend that the signals controlling Eastbound traffic were green when the red car entered the intersection and the other 50 witnesses contend that the traffic signals for Southbound traffic were green when the blue car entered the intersection. Both drivers were alone and both were killed.  Which driver ran the red light?

100% of the witnesses contend that one of the cars entered the intersection when the traffic light controlling it's direction of travel was green.

Was it the red car?

Was it the blue car?

1) First we must assume that the 100 witnesses are all independent i.e. they did not discuss the crash among themselves.

2) They are each 10% reliable as the table above assumes i.e. there is only a 1 in 10 probability that any one of them saw the correct color of the lights.

Then you have a 99. 48 % probability that both sets of 50 eyewitnesses were in fact correct.

So how does one rationalize this?

What it means is that I can come to fully informed conclusion that there is a 99.48% probability that the traffic lights were indeed showing green in both directions at the same time.

We need no further analysis of the eyewitnesses by the police or their explanation of what they think happened. We need to go and check out the traffic lights.

With the TWA 800 eyewitnesses we need no further explanation from the FBI, the NTSB, or the CIA of what they think happened. We need to go and find the people who fired the missiles.

Simple. Isn't it?