I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair
"I cried all the way to the bank"
Liberace: An Autobiography (1973)
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"We do have information that there was something in the sky. A number of people have seen it. A number of people have described it similarly. It was ascending."
This statement by James Kallstrom regarding TWA Flight 800 was to become quite a common theme back in the good old days of the summer and autumn of 1996. A couple of months after the TWA downing there was a carbon copy attack which occurred on November 16, 1996 involving Pakistan International Airlines Flight 712 Leaving Kennedy at 9:25pm, 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. Shah was told by Boston controllers that there were no military exercises in the area. Boston apparently confirmed two 'unidentified blips' on radar. The object rose directly out of Long Island Sound and ascended almost vertically. The Pakistani crew just saw a flash, but apparently a TWA crew, which was behind the Pakistani aircraft saw the whole thing. The TWA crew was so alarmed by what they had just seen that they considered returning to JFK. Later, they requested clearance to skirt the area where the light had been seen. Radio 5 in the U.K. reported that the object which crossed the Pakistani aircraft had exploded. On a subsequent McNeill - Lehrer newshour there was a lot of discussion about "meteor showers" as there is today about an "ignition source" in TWA 800's center fuel tank but when asked about the direction that the object was travelling, Mr. Kallstrom replied, "ascending".
A truthful response from an honorable man. Yet, though we have all heard the expression "meteoric rise", they don't!
Mr. Kallstrom had his suspicions and he went looking ......
August 23, 1996 NY Times
Stinger missiles from Afghanistan might have made their way into the U.S.
was a long-standing assumption within law enforcement circles. The presence
on the crash scene of officials with the National Security Agency and the
Defense intelligence Agency reinforced in some minds that there might have
been some intercepted intelligence regarding a missile attack.... Mr. Kallstrom
ordered his agents to research the
Mistral, a French-made missile that could
be launched from a tripod and that would have had the range capability.
It wasn't really surprising that he would look for a Mistral since Mistral weapons seem to have been lying around in Maryland .....
October 11, 1994 Associated Press report datelined 09/28 23:55 EDT V0009
(1994)
A State bomb squad destroyed a French-made surface to air rocket launcher
armed with a live missile and explosives ....along a rural roadside in
Westminster, Maryland. (Note from author
- The object was actually an anti-tank weapon)
And Congress was concerned about Mistral missiles ......
July 10, 1997 The Subcommittee on Aviation Hearing "Status of the
Investigation of the Crash of TWA 800 and the Proposal Concerning the Death
on the High Seas Act"
Despite a massive and costly recovery and investigative effort by the National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the FBI, the cause of the crash has
not yet been pinpointed. .... Originally, the conventional wisdom was that
the crash was caused by a terrorist attack. This explanation was supported
by witnesses who said that they saw a streak of light in the sky, considered
to be a missile, heading towards the plane just before it exploded. .....So
far, no terrorist group or person has come forward with a credible claim
of responsibility. Some people argue that the absence of any claim does not
rule out terrorism as a possible cause. They say that terrorists today seem
more reluctant to identify themselves as the perpetrators of specific acts
because the impunity which they once enjoyed in many parts of the world has
disappeared. ...... Investigators have apparently concluded that the plane
crashed because its center fuel tank exploded. But they are still not sure
why. They have generally stated that there are three possible explanations
- a missile, a bomb, or mechanical failure..... The proponents of the missile
theory suggest that a missile fired either by the U.S. Navy or a terrorist
hit the plane. This theory remains under consideration because of the number
of eyewitness accounts from people who said they saw something in the sky.
For example, Capt. Chris Baur, a civilian pilot
for U.S. customs, repeatedly told investigators that he saw a missile strike
the plane. Because of his clear view from his helicopter and his military
training, Baur's account is one of the most credible. Proponents allege that
radar tapes show a projectile heading toward the TWA aircraft. Also, they
point to red residue on a section of seats which could be rocket fuel. Proponents
suggest that in the reconstruction of the aircraft, there is an opening on
the right side of the fuselage which was caused by a missile.
Opponents of the missile theory, including NTSB officials, have provided
the following arguments against the missile theory:
•The radar tapes showing a projectile might not be authentic; •The dot on the authentic radar tapes thought to be a missile is in fact a Navy P-3 plane in the area at the time; •The red residue on the seats is glue; •The red residue is not rocket propellant because chemicals found in rocket propellant that would be there are missing; •What witnesses believed to be a missile was actually parts of the falling plane or a stream of flaming jet fuel from a ruptured fuel tank on the plane's right wing.
According to investigators, the initial explosion in the center fuel tank caused the fuselage of the plane to separate, but the rest of the plane continued to fly with all four engines running, spewing a trail of flaming jet fuel. Even if a missile did not strike the jet, it is still possible that a missile, exploding near the plane, could have ignited the center fuel tank. Tests have been conducted to study this possibility. Some proponents of the missile theory believe terrorists were responsible. These terrorists might have hit the aircraft with a missile launched from a vehicle or a boat. Intelligence and law enforcement officials have become concerned that terrorists could use hand-held anti-aircraft missiles to attack civilian airliners. While many experts believe Flight 800 was out of the range of the American-made Stinger missile, there are some foreign surface-to air missiles that reportedly have the capability of shooting a plane at 13,800 feet. One of these missiles that has been mentioned is the French-made Mistral. The Mistral has been sold to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, countries with growing Islamic fundamentalist movements. Also, there is a series of Soviet missiles that could have been used to hit the plane, including the SA14, SA16, and SA18.
Kallstrom knew the terrorist threat well and was not reluctant to discuss it .....
December 12, 1996 Associated Press
The new, more violent face of terrorism in the 1990s can be summed up in
a single word - 'revenge' - an FBI assistant
director (Kallstrom) said in a speech at a synagogue Tuesday.
But then as the evidence began to strengthen .....Kallstrom began to weaken ....
March 10, 1997 The Associated Press
Newly disclosed evidence "points to a
missile" .... the Press-Enterprise reported today. The evidence
includes reddish residue found on several seat backs that laboratory analysis
showed to be "consistent with solid missile
fuel" ingredients. .... James Kallstrom ...confirming that the
reddish residue was found on seats (denied) that it had anything to do with
missiles. "There's a logical explanation but I'm
not going to get into it," Kallstrom said.
Though the conversion was not yet complete ......
March 13, 1997 The Associated Press
The FBI agent in charge of the TWA Flight 800 investigation acknowledged
for the first time Thursday that the plane could have been brought down by
a shoulder-fired terrorist missile. But so far, there is no evidence to prove
that theory, James Kallstrom said. "This terrible,
terrible tragedy was not caused by our military" ...... Kallstrom
said that it is "technically possible'' a
terrorist using a shoulder-fired, Stinger-type missile could have caused
the tragedy, and he said investigators are examining that possibility ........
he noted that similar missiles have been used to down more than 25 commercial
planes over the past two decades in places such as Africa, the Middle East
and the former Soviet Union. ..... "There were too
many people who describe strange events like flares and streaks of light
in the sky'' to ignore the missile possibility", Kallstrom
said.
But waffling was not allowed; James had to come down on the correct side ....
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...... the FBI has only ruled out that a U.S. Navy
ship or other government "asset" destroyed the American civilian airliner.
If it was a missile, and if it was not fired by a U.S. ship, who did it?........
So Mr. Kallstrom began his retreat under cover of the C.I.A .....
September 18, 1997 The Associated Press
Investigators have detailed anew in letters to Congress that there is no
evidence that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a bomb or missile.
"The likelihood of finding such evidence in the
future is becoming more and more remote,'' Peter Golsch, spokesman
of the National Transportation Safety Board, said today. ..... The letters
from Kallstrom and the NTSB were sent to Rep. John J. Duncan Jr., R-Tenn.,
about two weeks ago in response to questions of members of Duncan's House
aviation subcommittee after a hearing in July. Asked whether the plane could
have been brought down by a missile exploding near it, Kallstrom said:
"A conventional or shoulder launched missile exploding
in close proximity to and penetrating the skin and various layers of structure
of the aircraft would leave distinctive markings as well as fragmentation
patterns on the skin of the aircraft. Examination of the recovered pieces
of the aircraft, particularly the skin, has not found the markings and
fragmentation patterns that would be characteristic of the warheads of large
conventional or shoulder launched missiles.'' Kallstrom added
that tests indicated that if a missile exploded near the plane, a fragment
penetrating as far as the center fuel tank would no longer
"have sufficient energy to create a spark to cause
an explosion.'' Also, a missile exploding nearby would have left
pieces big enough to have been found in the ocean with the plane's wreckage,
he said. The FBI, which is responsible for determining whether the disaster
was the result of a criminal act, and CIA are still doing
"a sophisticated and detailed'' analysis
of 200 witness accounts, Kallstrom said. He said this involves new interviews
with some of them and "correlation of the witness
locations and what they described seeing and hearing with known information,
such as the radar trackings the aircraft and the information from the cockpit
recorders.'' The analysis would take an additional 30 to 45 days,
he said. In Washington, Duncan said he had no quarrel with what the investigators
were doing, but added that he was "not entirely
satisfied at this point. There have been numerous people who have raised
concerns and questions about what happened to this plane and I think that
all of those concerns need to be examined before we say this is all there
is,'' Duncan said.
Whether Congress is satisfied or not does not appear to be the point. Elected officials should stick to talking about who had coffee at the White House and calling one another scumbags. Why talk about who is shooting at American aircraft especially when the C.I.A is available to "cull" eyewitness accounts .....
September 22, 1997 Aviation Week & Space
Technology
CIA analysts assisting the FBI have spent more than seven month culling
eyewitness acounts ... of TWA 800, and outside consultants have scoured the
wreckage ...but those efforts have found no evidence that the 747 was downed
by a missile, a senior FBI official (Kallstrom) has told Congress.
"There is no evidence that a missile fragment could
have penetrated the layers of aircraft structure to the center fuel tank
and still have sufficient energy to create a spark to cause an explosion,"
he asserted. Missile debris from such a proximity hit
"would be a lot larger than if the missile had actually
impacted the aircraft and would, logically, equate to a greater possibility
of recovering a piece of missile debris greater than 1 -2 in. in diameter.
None of the pieces recovered and identified to date came from a missile,"
Kallstrom wrote. FBI agents in recent weeks have been working
with government and industry safety investigators and aerospace manufacturers
to identify a number of pieces of metal recovered from Flight 800's debris
fields on the floor of the Atlantic.
And then the final act before the final curtain .....
November 12, 1997 The Associated Press
The FBI has told families of victims of TWA Flight 800 that it
"has found absolutely no evidence'' of
a crime and is suspending its probe into the disaster, the father of one
victim told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Michel Breistroff of Paris,
whose 25-year-old son was one of the 230 people who died in the July 1996
crash, said he received the letter Wednesday from James Kallstrom, the FBI
assistant director who headed the criminal probe. Kallstrom told families,
"I must report to you ... that our investigation
has found absolutely no evidence to cause us to believe that the TWA Flight
800 tragedy was the result of a criminal act,'' according to
Breistroff, who read the letter to the AP during a phone interview .... The
FBI plans a news conference next week to issue a comprehensive report on
the criminal probe's findings, a law-enforcement source said. Federal, state
and local law enforcement agencies involved in the investigation are expected
to attend. .... Kallstrom's letter, according to Breistroff, said the FBI's
sole mission was to determine "with a high degree
of certainty'' if there was any evidence of a criminal act, and
if so, "to bring those responsible to justice.''
Breistroff, who lost his son Michel in the crash, said he and
other family members overseas now plan a campaign to have all 747s grounded.
"This plane is obviously a dangerous
plane,'' he said. "It took investigators
all these months and all these millions of dollars to tell us that. Therefore
the plane should be forbidden to fly.''
James ran out of things to do! But his swan song included a farewell video telling all who would believe that eyewitnesses are not witnesses and what the eyewitnesses saw couldn't possibly explain the 1,400 holes ......
November 19, 1997 New York Times
The FBI provided an unusual public explanation Tuesday of how it had become
convinced that the crash was not the result of sabotage. The centerpiece
of the presentation was a computer- generated videotaped reconstruction of
the crash, produced by the CIA, that sought to explain the reports of 244
witnesses who said they saw ascending lights before the plane plunged into
the Atlantic Ocean. ....... James K. Kallstrom, the head of the New York
office of the FBI, said the FBI's decision to suspend its investigation
"is based solely on the overwhelming absence of
evidence indicating a crime, and the lack of any leads that could bear on
the issue. In fact, we ran out of things to do.". .....
In fact, Kallstrom said, most people who believed
they saw a missile were actually seeing different stages of the fiery breakup
of the aircraft. And after the plane first exploded, blowing off the cockpit
and front section of the fuselage, the flaming rear section zoomed upward
several thousand feet, giving some witnesses the impression that a missile
was rising in the sky, Kallstrom said. ...... Representatives
of TWA and the plane's manufacturer, Boeing Corp., said Tuesday there was
no indication of any flaws, either in Flight 800 or in 747s in general. James
Brown, a spokesman for TWA, added that investigators had found no sign of
a human error leading to the explosion and crash.
"At this point we're satisfied with all our procedures,"
he said. "The FBI even noted that our
security and baggage handling procedures on Flight 800 were flawless."
Despite Kallstrom's presentation, Pierre Salinger, the journalist
who last year publicly embraced the theory that a U.S. military missile had
struck the plane, said he would await the results of the safety board's
investigation. "I have talked to
Kallstrom," he said, "I said I wasn't
going to be talking about it any more. But I still believe what I said was
true." ..... Kallstrom said, for example, that forensic experts
had analyzed more than 1,400 holes in the many layers of metal in the recovered
pieces of the plane, determining their relationship with each other in hopes
finding a telltale path through which a missile or other object might have
moved.
A question arose about a red residue ....
Some were charged with possessing a piece of fabric from the wreckage that was sent for testing and which apparently contained residue from a missile ......
December 10, 1997 The New York Times
...James Sanders, published a book saying his investigation concluded that
the plane was brought down by a missile. Tuesday, he and his wife, Elizabeth
Sanders, a 51-year-old flight training supervisor for the airline, were in
Federal District Court here to answer charges of illegal possession of parts
of the wreckage ..... Sanders wrote that tests of the fabric helped confirm
that a missile had caused the jetliner to explode. .... Schlanger said,
"The action which the government has taken with
respect to the Sanderses, in choosing to invoke a relatively new statute
which was clearly intended to prevent looting of an aircraft and not situations
like those at hand, is unconstitutionally chilling to the concept of a free
press and certainly does nothing to alleviate the suspicions of many concerning
the possibility of a government cover-up."
While James was not charged with possessing a piece of fabric from the wreckage that was donated to family members and which apparently contained only the "sand of the sea" .....
August 12, 1996 People Magazine
http://www.pathfinder.com/people/960812/features/kallstrom.html
During a July 27 eulogy for Janet Christopher, Kallstrom presented her husband,
Charlie, and the couple's only son, Charles, 12, with
a small flag recovered from the submerged wreckage
of Flight 800. "It's dirty. It has the
sand of the sea on it," said Kallstrom.
Then the waffling began again - the red residue was declared to be "glue". But just in case it wasn't, nobody was permitted to discuss it, and the eyewitnesses were not to be permitted to talk lest they discredit themselves and any future investigation with their blatherings .....
December 5, 1997 Newsday.com
http://www.newsday.com/jet/year/cras1205.htm
Responding to pressure from the FBI on the eve of the first public forum
on the explosion of TWA Flight 800, the National Transportation Safety Board
has canceled the discussion of eyewitness accounts and explosive residue
at the five-day hearing into the cause of the crash. After an exchange of
letters Wednesday between Assistant FBI Director James Kallstrom and NTSB
Chairman Jim Hall, the safety board eliminated scheduled sessions on the
accounts and pulled a screening of the CIA video re-creation of the crash,
according to a copy of Hall's letter obtained yesterday. Reacting to Kallstrom's
concerns that the information would hinder any revived criminal probe,
the safety board also agreed to cut discussions
of explosive residue found on the plane's seats during the hearings,
which are set to begin Monday in Baltimore. In effect, the concessions redress
all the objections set forth in Kallstrom's four-page letter to Hall. And
it once again highlighted the discord between the two agencies. Despite the
fact that the FBI publicly concluded their criminal probe of the July 17,
1996, crash in which all 230 passengers died, Kallstrom warned Hall away
from "the use of any of the 244 eyewitness [accounts]
... or summaries prepared ... by the NTSB." And he said that experts
scheduled to analyze the eyewitness testimony "could
complicate our efforts if the criminal investigation were to be reactivated.
Until the NTSB has definitively determined an accidental cause for the crash,
I believe it is prudent to withhold from public disclosure or discussion
the identities of witnesses and the raw investigative details of the criminal
investigation," Kallstrom wrote in his letter. Since declaring
that investigators found no evidence of sabotage in the tragedy, Kallstrom
has consistently said the probe is not closed, opting to characterize it
as inactive. In his letter to Hall, he conceded that the possibility of
rekindling the criminal query is
"remote." In a two-page response to the
FBI objections, Hall told Kallstrom that he didn't "see any fundamental
disagreement between our agencies." And while he said he would comply with
the "general objections" he said he was "compelled to deny certain of your
specific objections." Those elements were not spelled out in the letter however,
and FBI officials could not be reached yesterday. Declining to comment further,
Hall issued a statement yesterday, saying that he would honor the FBI's positions
but that the NTSB would continue as planned to "discuss its work done outside
the criminal investigative process -- including that work which overlaps
in substance, such as wreckage documentation and the examination of any and
all potential ignition sources." The revision of the hearings, which are
meant to present the NTSB's findings on the crash off Long Island, cancels
testimony by two experts, including Elizabeth Loftus, a University of Washington
psychology professor whose studies call into question the accuracy of eyewitness
accounts, according to sources. Loftus could not be reached yesterday. But
the message on her answering machine said she that she would be in Baltimore
this weekend. In his letter, Kallstrom said that "I
believe that the presentation of expert testimony that could cast doubt on
the eyewitness' veracity does not further the accident investigation."
So he left the 'Federal Bureau of the Not-Obvious' renowned for his characterization of terrorists who bomb airliners as "cowardly scum".
December 10, 1997 The New York Times
James Kallstrom, the FBI official in New York who tracked down terrorists,
mobsters and swindlers but who will probably be best remembered for his criminal
inquiry into the explosion that blew apart TWA Flight 800, said Tuesday that
he would retire from the bureau to take a job in the private sector. The
54-year-old ex-marine said he would probably have retired earlier had it
not been for the lengthy investigation into the Flight 800 disaster, which
killed all 230 people on board. Strongly suspecting that the cause was a
bomb or missile, Kallstrom led an exhaustive investigation that lasted 16
months and involved more than 1,000 agents. Ultimately, he said, the
investigation disproved his initial hunches. ....
"Imagine the notion of us looking for the obvious
things in an investigation and not finding them and sort of vacating the
scene," Kallstrom said at the time.
"We're the Federal Bureau of Total Investigation,"
he added, "not the Federal Bureau of
the Obvious." .... Kallstrom said that he would become a senior
executive vice president of MBNA Corp. of Wilmington, Del., which is the
nation's second-largest credit card company after Citicorp, with 25 million
accounts and receivables of $46 billion. ... it was Kallstrom's blunt,
no-nonsense approach to investigations that inspired loyalty from agents
and the public. While sometimes criticized as being in the spotlight too
often, he felt comfortable with reporters, and could be relied upon for a
colorful quote at a news conference. When Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef and two others were convicted for plotting to blow up American
commercial airliners in the Philippines, Kallstrom described them as "cowardly
scum."
June 15, 1998 The Associated
Press
CBS News has hired the chief investigtor into the TWA Flight 800 explosion
to be a law enforcement consultant, the network said Monday. James
Kallstrom, the former FBI assistant director in charge of the New York City
office, retired from the FBI after 28 years last December. He headed the
probe into the Flight 800 disaster, which killed 230 people in July 1996.
"He will add significant insight to CBS News' coverage
of stories and issues involving law enforcement and will be a major asset
in our dedication to enterprise reporting in that area," said
Al Ortiz, CBS vice president and Washington bureau chief. Kallstrom is currently
senior executive vice president of MBNA America Bank.
And he left Mr Francis and his NTSB colleagues still looking for their command center....
July 14, 1997 Washington Post
The FBI already had a mobile command center on site and more agents working
the case than the entire NTSB had staff. Francis complained about the NTSB's
limitations. "We don't have a mobile command center
we can just order up," one official quoted the NTSB vice chairman
as saying. Kallstrom exploded: "You want
a command center? Is that what you need? Tommy
[speaking to Thomas J. Pickard, head
of national security investigations]
get him a command center."
So I'm gonna wash that man right outa my hair and send him on his way!