TWA 800 and Calendar Connections with Terrorist Attacks

sitemap TWA 800 and Calendar Connections with Terrorist Attacks

"As Time Goes By"

"A calendar, a calendar! Look in the almanac....."

William Shakespeare

This article is extremely speculative and the reader should read it with this point of view. A lot of the linkages are just coincidental, but when doing research one first gathers every apparent linkage, irrespective of how improbable, and then by a process of elimination one attempts to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have not yet begun this process with the linkages in this article, but intelligent readers are quite capable of beginning this process for themselves. There is a lot of chaff here and maybe some wheat. There are interesting connections that can be seen using the Gregorian, Hijri and Jewish calendars in the events surrounding the TWA 800 downing. In the following items the Gregorian date will be given to the left of the page, the date in the Hijri calendar in the middle of the page, and the date in the Jewish calendar to the right of the page. For explanation of Hijri calendar see http://bert.cs.pitt.edu/~tawfig/convert/index.html and also http://wwwcgi.umr.edu/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/msaumr/hijri For the Jewish calendar see http://www1.jewishgen.org/jos/josdates.htm

Please note that in converting dates between the Hijri and the Gregorian calendars there can be a one day margin of error.

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Let us begin with the date July 17 in the Gregorian calendar, 1 Raby` al-awal in the Hijri calendar, and 1 Av in the Jewish calendar which is the date on which TWA 800 was brought down .....

July 17, 1996, 22:30 (EST) 1 Raby` al-awal 1417 A.H. 1 Av 5756
TWA 800 downing.

The Hijri date is the date on which the "Six Day War" ended with the occupation of arab lands ..

June 10, 1967 1 Raby` al-awal 1387 A.H.
On June 5, 1967 Israel launched a pre-emptive attack on Egypt. Israel issued an appeal to Jordan to stay out of the war. Jordan refused and opened a heavy artillery barrage on both west Jerusalem and the Tel-Aviv area which forced Israel to counterattack. By June 8th the Israel Defence Forces defeated the Jordanian forces and captured the whole of Judea and Samaria. On the morning of June 9th, Israel attacked the Syrians on the Golan Heights. The war ended on June 10, 1967. The war placed the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights under Israeli control.

The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the TWA 800 attack both in letters and in telephone calls .......

July 19, 1996 New York Times.
A specific warning about the flight had been sent by an extremist Saudi organization called the Movement of Islamic Change, the organization that claimed responsibility for blowing up US military personnel in Saudi Arabia last November. "Late this morning we got a copy of a letter in Arabic that we then had translated, and got it to the FBI" said a State Department spokesman ... "It's a ... statement that seems aimed at the Saudi regime or the American presence in Saudi Arabia"...... Officials said they were reviewing a telephone call placed to a Tampa, Florida television station yesterday morning from a man who identified himself as a member of a jihad and claimed responsibility for the crash.

It is now known that Islamic Jihad had part of its U.S. operations based in Florida ....

May 7, 1999 Company Press Release The Journal of Counterterrorism & Security International
NPR has not broadcast any in-depth story about the investigative findings and incriminating documents released by the FBI in its ongoing investigation into the secret headquarters of the Islamic Jihad that operated out of the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa between 1990 and 1995.

The operations had links to Islamic Jihad based in London ....

November 1, 1995 Electronic Telegraph World News
A British-educated economics lecturer, Ramadan Shallah, yesterday made his first appearance as the new leader of the militant Islamic Jihad movement, whose founder, Fathi Shiqaqi, was assassinated in Malta last week. Mr Shallah, 38, was at Damascus airport with other leaders of the rejectionist Palestinian world to receive Mr Shiqaqi's coffin.. (Shallah's) office in Damascus and the group's members in the Gaza Strip refuse to confirm basic details of his background.....From the differing accounts of his life, it seems that Mr Shallah was born in 1957 in Gaza City's Shajaiya neighbourhood. Believed to have headed Islamic Jihad's fund-raising operations in Britain He had been a student with Mr Shiqaqi at Zaqazik university in Egypt, where they joined Egyptian radicals in forming the Egyptian wing of Islamic Jihad, which assassinated President Sadat in 1980 after he made peace with Israel. .... The Palestinian wing of Islamic Jihad became known in the 1980s for its attacks on Israeli targets and was among the early proponents of suicide bombings .....He taught economics in Gaza and left in the mid-1980s, apparently taking up studies in Egypt and America. He went to Britain in 1986 and received his doctorate in economics at Durham University in 1991. He is believed to have headed Islamic Jihad's fund-raising operations in Britain. He is also thought to have been involved in militant Islamic activities in Florida.

And the Florida cell may be still be operational ....

August 1, 1999 Washington Post.com http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/terror/terrorism.htm
Deep inside the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan, a taxi driver from Florida named Ihab M. Ali sits in the same high-security cellblock as five men accused of plotting the twin truck bombings that shattered two U.S. embassies in East Africa last August. Ali hasn't been charged in the case, but prosecutors think he may know something about it. And they're squeezing him. Since they offered him immunity from prosecution and he still refused to testify to a grand jury, he is charged with contempt of court and held under unusually tight conditions, with just one hour a day outside his cell. Such is the hardball that authorities are playing as they build a massive federal indictment against Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden and 16 co-defendants for conspiring to bomb the embassies and "to murder U.S. nationals anywhere in the world." The indictment describes bin Laden as the leader, or "emir," of al Qaeda, a "global terrorist organization" with tentacles that allegedly reach from his hideout in the mountains of Afghanistan to followers in Texas, Florida and New York.

Prior to the TWA 800 downing, there was an unusual amount of activity along the coast suggesting that something suspicious was being monitored....

August 9, 1996 The Seattle Times.
According to a report in Newsday, the theory that a missile downed the jet .... remains alive because investigators have chronicled an "unusual" amount of radar use among slow-moving ships along the coast for several days before the crash, and have interviewed credible witnesses who say they saw a fiery streak head toward the aircraft before it plummeted in flames.

The date of the TWA downing in the Gregorian calendar was the anniversary of the start of the "Two Week War" in Lebanon .....

July 17, 1981
On July 17, 1981, Israel began to bomb the PLO strongholds in Lebanon in an attempt to drive out the PLO. The PLO headquarters in Beirut were also bombed.

And two years before the TWA 800 downing there had been a carbon copy in Argentina of the World Trade Center bombing ....

July 18, 1994 9 Safar 1415 A.H.
Emergency Response & Research Institute
The unthinkable has happened again in Argentina. For the second time in a little over two years, a skyscraper in Buenos Aires has been totally destroyed by a mysterious explosion. ..... Both Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Argentinean President Carlos Menem have issued statements that they believe that the attack was carried by "Islamic Extremists", but differing opinions have been offered about what specific group may have committed the atrocity. The demolished building .... housed the Mutual Israeli/Argentine Association (AMAI) and the DAIA (Delegation of Argentine/Israeli Associations. Both groups provide support and services to Jewish people living in Argentina. ......According to official Argentinean statements 26 people have been killed and as many as 150 people were injured by a monstrous blast that engulfed a seven-story building at 9:55 a.m. on Monday (07/18/94). Initial investigations suggest that the explosion was probably caused by a large car or truck bomb, similar to that used in the March 17, 1992 Israeli embassy bombing in Buenos Aires. The damage to surrounding buildings and vehicles would suggest that it was a tremendous detonation, with flames and flying debris causing damage for several blocks. Counter-terrorist experts say that pattern of the explosion is consistent with that used by the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad organizations in the past. While the analysts say that they must wait for further chemical tests and confirmation, a Chicago-based analyst says the bombing method would appear to be one that uses fuel-oil or gasoline, a nitrogen based fertilizer, and an oxidizer (Oxygen) or chemical accelerant (Hydrogen). The simplicity of these devices and easy availability of the chemicals makes them a favorite of terrorists and a constant threat for anti-terrorist forces. According to Argentine President Carlos Menem, four people have been detained as they attempted to exit Argentina, shortly after the explosion. One has been identified as Kabir Balkan, age 33, a Moroccan national who was said to have lived within a mile of the blast site. He had reportedly arrived in the country on July 11, 1994. An Iraqi man was also arrested at a Northern border checkpoint near Brazi; he has been identified as Adnan Mohammed Yousif, age 31. Yousif was traveling on an expired passport. Little else is known of Yousif, except that he is in custody. A man of "middle-eastern extraction", maybe Iranian, and a German woman were also believed to have been arrested as they attempted to leave the Ezeiza International Airport in suburban Buenos Aires; few details regarding their true nationalities or visa status are available. Although completely denied by Foreign Minister Mahmoud Mohammadi, of the Iranian government, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin placed the blame for the attack firmly on the pro-Iranian Hezbollah militant organization. According to a London-based report by the Al Hayat newspaper, Hezbollah had been given a "green light" to carry out "an unusual action" against the Israeli government in retaliation for a May 21, 1994 commando abduction of Mustafa Dirani, leader of the pro-Iranian Faithful Islamic Amal Movement in Lebanon. Additionally, on June 2, 1994, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an air-raid on a reported Hezbollah training camp near Baalbeck in Eastern Lebanon. American and Israeli counter-terrorist experts had expected a Hezbollah reply. Interestingly enough, intelligence sources had reportedly told Al Hayat, last week, that a Hezbollah attack could be expected "in an area other than Lebanon and Syria". Additionally, the perpetrators were to "take into consideration" recently more friendly ties between Iran and European countries like France and Germany. Obviously, that left South America as a viable target. According to the same sources at Al Hayat, Hezbollah has previously made claims that it has an "underground" organization in place, in six different countries, that could carry out terrorist acts "within a very short time". Experts say that the network must have included at least some contacts in Argentina.

We found out in August 1998, in a small report buried on page A5 of The New York Times, that the FBI knew who was involved ....

August 8, 1998 The New York Times
The F.B.I told Argentina today that it believed Iranian Embassy officials were involved in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center in which 86 people were killed. Officials gave Interior Minister Carlos Corach the findings of 40 agents who traveled to Argentina earlier this year to investigate the bombing, which blew apart the country's largest Jewish community center, in the heart of Buenos Aires. The attack followed the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, which killed 29 people. ... The only people charged are a gang of car thieves suspected of providing the vehicle used.

November 22, 1998 The New York Times
Four years after the car-bombing of a Jewish community center .... Argentine officials say they are hopeful that the detention of a potentially crucial witness in Brazil this week will finally lead to a breakthrough in the case. The investigations into the bombing of the Israeli Embassy here in 1992, which left 28 dead, and the bombing of the community center, the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association, two years later have sputtered for years despite many tantalizing leads. Two Argentine prosecutors flew to Brazil on Thursday to interview Wilson Dos Santos, a 40-year-old resident of Sao Paulo, who had walked into the Argentine, Israeli and Brazilian consulates in Milan, Italy, two weeks before the bombing to warn officials of an impending terrorist attack in Buenos Aires. Officials paid no attention to the warning at the time. Dos Santos added new details to his account in interviews with the Argentine federal police four months after the attack, only to recant everything before a federal judge the following week. Then he disappeared, until the police in Sao Paulo detained him for possible extradition to Argentina.

May 6, 1999 Reuters
Argentina's Interior Minister ordered an investigation Wednesday into an audiotape that has raised suspicions that the local police were involved in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy that killed 29 people. The Interior Minister, Carlos Corach, said he had asked the police to establish the authenticity of the police radio recording, which, officials said, includes an exchange between police officers and men in a patrol car carrying out a routine inspection at the embassy minutes before the explosion. On the tape, the officials said, the officers order the patrol car to leave the area immediately. ....... "There might have been some sort of administrative negligence, but it is totally out of order to think that the police were involved in this attack," he said. .... Two years after the 1992 attack, a Jewish community center here was bombed, killing 86 people, and Israel believes that Middle Eastern groups like Islamic Holy War and Hezbollah were behind both bombings. The Israeli Ambassador, Yitzhak Aviran, said it was vital to track down Argentines who he is sure helped carry out the embassy attack. "For years I have emphasized the importance of tracking down the local connection, which is much more important than the international connection because they just came here and got blown up," Aviran said. "This has surprised me greatly, that the tape should turn up magically after seven years," he said. "That doesn't even happen in Hans Christian Andersen stories."

March 10, 2003 NY Times
An Argentine judge has ordered arrest warrants for four Iranian government officials who he says helped organize and carry out the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead. But the judge balked at a recommendation by prosecutors that more than a dozen more senior Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader, also be indicted. The 400-page ruling, by Judge Juan José Galeano, made public on Saturday, was the first time that Argentina has formally accused Iran of involvement in the July 18, 1994, blast the deadliest single anti-Semitic incident since World War II. The judge also cited evidence from the state intelligence agency that "armed units of the pro-Iranian armed group Hezbollah" were also involved, though no Hezbollah member was mentioned in the indictment.The highest-ranking Iranian official cited is Ali Fallahian, a former minister of security and intelligence. Mohsen Rabbani, formerly the cultural attaché in the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires during the mid-1990's, was named in the indictment as operational director of the attack. The other two officials indicted were Ali Balesh Abadi, a diplomatic courier; and Ali Akbar Parvaresh, a former education minister and a former deputy speaker of the Iranian Parliament who is currently the leader of an influential conservative religious group. To a large extent, the accusations echo those contained in secret testimony offered to Argentine judicial and intelligence officials by an Iranian defector named Abdolghassem Mesbahi. Once a high-ranking Iranian intelligence official, Mr. Mesbahi defected to Germany in 1996, reportedly because he was upset at the agency's involvement in the killing of dissidents in Iran and abroad. According to a transcript of the testimony he offered in 1998 and 2000, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times last year, Mr. Mesbahi said senior Iranian government officials, including Ayatollah Khamenei and then-president Hashemi Rafsanjani, personally ordered, organized and financed the attack on the Jewish center, the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association, known as A.M.I.A. He said they were also behind an earlier attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 in which 28 people died. "The decision for the 1994 attack was taken in Khamenei's office in 1992," Mr. Mesbahi said, according to the 100-page transcript, "at a meeting presided over by Rafsanjani" and attended by other senior officials. "The committee that took the decision for the bombing in 1992 was composed of the guide or leader, the president of the republic," a former minister of foreign affairs, the intelligence chief and leaders of Islamic religious groups and militias, his testimony said. Mr. Mesbahi also told Argentine investigators that payment for the attack in 1994 came from a $200 million bank account in Switzerland controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei and a son of the first leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Mr. Mesbahi also implicated Mr. Rabbani and Hadi Soleimanpour, then the Iranian ambassador to Argentina, in carrying out the bombing. In an interview on Friday in Buenos Aires, Eamon Mullen, the chief Argentine government prosecutor in the case, said the charges against the Iranian officials are based not only on Mr. Mesbahi's declarations but also "eight years of analysis" and a recent report filed to Judge Galeano by the Argentine state intelligence service, known as Side. Mr. Mullen declined to discuss the contents of the report, which he described as "secret and confidential." But Argentine officials have built up a substantial body of evidence, some of which they have made available to selected journalists. That material includes immigration records showing Iranian officials leaving and entering Argentina under false names around the time of the bombing as well as telephone records of calls between Iranian Embassy officials and suspected Hezbollah members living in the triple frontier area where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay converge. Argentina's interim president, Eduardo Duhalde, expressed concerns about the country's continued vulnerability to terrorist attacks and the dangers of standing up to terrorist states. Argentina was the only country in Latin America to take part in the American-led coalition that drove Iraq out of Kuwait during the Persian Gulf war, but Mr. Duhalde indicated that in the event of another war with Iraq, Argentina would sit on the sidelines. "We've been through some difficult moments, like the gulf war in 1991," he said in an interview with a radio station last month, on the same day the prosecutors made their recommendation. "I don't know if the consequences of that were the attack on the Israeli Embassy in 1992, the A.M.I.A. bombing in 1994 and an aborted attack in 1996."

One should not be surprised, therefore, when one finds that the March 17, 1992 event in Argentina ....

March 17, 1992
Israeli embassy bombed in Buenos Aires.

May have been in retaliation for an attack in Lebanon ....

March 16, 1978
An Israeli force of 30,000 men began an invasion of Lebanon backed by artillery and air power. President Carter threatened to cut off American aid and sponsor a UN resolution condemning Israel.

Four years after the Israeli embassy bombing the following incident was reported in a private communication by a passenger on US Air Flight 3684. Note the date of March 17, 1996

"Has anyone ever reported any information about USAir Flight 3684 from Baltimore to MacArthur (Islip, Long Island) Airport the evening of March 17, 1996 -- four months to the day before TWA Flight 800 went down? Just after dark, the plane was beginning its approach to MacArthur, when there was an explosion just forward of the tip of the right wing -- a ball of bright orange that appeared from inside the plane to be about 20 feet in diameter, followed by a concussion that shook the plane. Everyone looked at everyone else: "What the hell was that?" No announcement from the cockpit. As we got off the plane, we asked the flight attendant, who didn't have a clue. Next day and on several occasions afterwards, I sought information from the airline, the media, the FBI (Sorry, we can't comment on that, Ma'am). What happened? I could never find out. Does anyone know? If so, please refer me to sources".

The anniversary of the bombing was again remembered in the United States on March 17, 1997 and recorded by no less than four American aircraft ....

March 17, 1997
Northwest Airlines D93 Flight 775 Newark to Minneapolis and Flight 361 A320 Laguardia to Minneapolis report missile both departing at 6:55 PM about 15 Minutes into flight. Plus Delta and US Airways flights. (See The Tale of the Tapes).

April 9, 1997 Los Angeles - Drudge Report
The Saint Paul Pioneer Press is set to report on Thursday that Federal authorities are investigating claims from pilots of three commercial jetliners -- including one from a Northwest Airlines DC-9 bound for St Paul, Minnesota -- that they saw what appeared to be a missile or rocket over the New York area the evening of March 17. In the March 17 incident, the paper will report, the Northwest DC-9 took off around 7 p.m. from Newark International Airport in New Jersey. About 15 minutes into the flight, the captain of Flight 775 told the control tower of a possible missile sighting, according to the NTSB. Later, reports of similar sightings around the same time came in from the other two crews. In addition to the three separate crews, another pilot, operating an aircraft that had departed from La Guardia Airport in New York, reported seeing a similar sighting that night, a source tells the Press' Doug Iverson. He writes, "The possibility of a missile in commercial airspace is particularly significant in the aftermath of the crash of Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 moments after takeoff last July 17 from Kennedy Airport in New York. "If the object viewed in the New York sky March 17 was a missile, it raises a series of disturbing questions: How close was it, and who launched it?" Similarly, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune was preparing to report on Thursday that one of the Northwest cockpit crews gave a live, verbal report of the March 17 "missile" sighting by radio to the Federal Aviation Administration's air-traffic-control tower on Long Island. "We are reviewing voice tapes and radar," a NTSB spokesman tells the Star Tribune .....

April 10, 1997 Reuter
Northwest Airlines pilots reported that they saw what appeared to be a missile or a rocket over the New York area the evening of March 17, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press reported Thursday. In a copyrighted story, the Pioneer Press reported that investigators are piecing together tapes of air traffic control radar recorded the night of the sightings. Two other flight crews, from Delta Airlines and US Airways have filed similar reports, the newspaper said. The possibility that missiles are flying in commercial airspace is particularly significant in the aftermath of last summer's crash of TWA flight 800 minutes after takeoff from JFK International Airport in New York, the Pioneer Press said. The pilots of a Northwest Airlines DC-9 reported a possible missile sighting about 15 minutes into their flight from Newark International Airport in New Jersey in March, according to the Newspaper. A second Northwest flight crew, in an aircraft that left from La Guardia Airport in New York reported a similar sighting.

Now "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (click) but can anyone believe this?......

April 10, 1997 CNN
The Federal Aviation Administration now believes that a missile sighted by several commercial airline pilots flying over the northeastern United States on March 17 was actually part of a Navy test off the coast of Florida. The National Transportation Safety Board launched an investigation after four separate airline crews from three different airlines all reported seeing a rocket or missile that night.

And on March 17, 2001 the following incident occurred which was reported in the September 2002 issue of Vanity Fair on page 231. Was this a case of sabotage?

September 2002 Vanity Fair
On March 17, 2001, Northwest Airlines Flight 985 was taking off from Detroit. At a speed of 110 knots - much too slow for sustainable flight - the nose began to lift. The pilot tried to lower it, using the flaps, but, as the official report says, "the airplane was unresponsive. The airplane became airborne and climbed to an altitude of 20 to 30 feet above the runway.". The only way to avoid a crash was to cut the engine power. At last the plane "settled to the runway", its tail end striking the tarmac. It plowed off the end and continued for another 700 feet before coming to a stop in mud. The aircraft was badly damaged, but no one was seriously hurt.

Which causes one to wonder if Argentina, on Yom Kippur, suffered its own "TWA 800" to welcome President Clinton on his visit there which took place the following week ....

October 10, 1997 9 Tishri 5758 (Yom Kippur)
Reported by Associated Press October 11, 1997
Falling like a fireball from the sky, an Argentine airliner crashed and exploded in Uruguay, killing all 75 people aboard, ..... The pilot had been trying to dodge a turbulent storm. The Austral airlines DC-9 all but disintegrated when it slammed into farmland at 11 p.m. Friday near Nuevo Berlin, in eastern Uruguay. It was the deadliest crash ever involving an Argentine airliner. ..... ''The plane hit the ground with a heavy impact and is scattered over a very wide area.'' ..... Seventy passengers and five crew members were flying from the northern Argentine city of Posadas to Buenos Aires, said Santiago Garcia, commercial manager of Austral. Officials said most of the victims were Argentine but there were a few Uruguayans and one Swiss. Three infants were among the dead. .... Lt. Col. Walter Garcia, an Uruguayan civil aviation official, told The Associated Press that the storm ''explains only part'' of the accident, but did not elaborate. He said the flight data recorders must be found to help determine the exact cause. The crew had last made contact with the Buenos Aires airport about 40 minutes before the crash and reported changing course to avoid heavy rain and hail, air force spokesman Jorge Carnevalini said. ... Witnesses said the plane was already in flames when it hit the ground and exploded. Roberto Lemos, who was driving to the nearby town of Fray Bentos, said he saw what he thought was a flash of lightning. ''Afterward, I realized it had been a plane.'' Ingrid Bidegain de Bastos, who lives on a nearby farm, described seeing a ''red ball that fell and exploded on hitting the ground.''

From Argentina to the United States to the United Kingdom..... Remember that with the United Kingdom's help ......

April 14, 1986 4 SHa`baan 1406 A.H.
U.S. jets bombed Libya killing 37 people, including Gadhafi's adopted daughter.

but did the payback fail? ......

January 6, 1995 4 SHa`baan 1415 A.H.
Report on January 26th, 1995. 'The Sun' newspaper. Two pilots thought their last moment had come as their British Airways jet headed for mid-air collision - with a high speed UFO. Terrified fliers Roger Willis and Mark Stuart ducked down in the cockpit when the brightly lit mystery craft appeared only yards in front of them at 13,000ft over the Pennines. But as they waited for the deadly impact, they saw the triangular UFO flash down the right hand side of their Boeing 737 and disappear. Captain Willis and First Officer Stuart immediately checked with air traffic control. But they were told theirs was the only plane on the radar. Their flight from Milan, Italy to Manchester Ringway was 17 minutes from touchdown when the "alien" invader zoomed past. The Boeing landed safely, with the 60 passengers unaware of the drama. At first, the pilots didn't tell pals about the UFO, in case of ridicule. But BA bosses were informed and they sent a detailed log and sketches to the Joint Air Miss Working Group, which is part of the Civil Aviation Authority. An inquiry was launched into the January 6th incident. But a CAA spokesman said yeterday: "We have not been able to trace the aircraft involved." The pilots refused to comment. A colleague said: "They are high grade, sensible guys. Everyone's talking about what they saw." Theories that the UFO could have been a new military aircraft were discounted by experts. A spokesman for Jane's Defence Weekly said: "We know of nothing at all being developed that could account for this sighting."

A very strange fact is that the KAL 801 incident occurred in the Jewish calendar on 2 Av (compare TWA 800 on 1 Av) ......

August 5, 1997 Reuter 2 Av 5757
A South Korean jumbo jet with 254 people on board crashed and burst into flames .... on this Pacific island (Guam) Wednesday .... ..An FAA spokeswoman said the plane had just been cleared for landing at 2:35 a.m. local time Wednesday (12:35 p.m. EDT Tuesday) when radar contact was lost. Guam, largest of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, is an unincorporated territory of the United States with a population of about 144,000. A U.S. military base covers about one-third of the island, the westernmost U.S. territory, which is located 4,000 miles west of Hawaii and 2,200 miles south east of Seoul.

While this accident seems almost certainly to have been a 'fly into terrain' event, the amazing coincidence of the successive flight numbers and dates is made more curious by the fact that when TWA 800 went down two countries in particular took immediate precautions at their airports. One was South Korea ........

July 18, 1996 EmergencyNet NEWS Service Vol. 2 - 200 ENN 7/18/96 10:36CDT
Internationally, the government of South Korea quickly tightened security checks for flights to and from the United States. A police official in Seoul said, "In view of the possibility of a terrorist attack on the airliner, we have decided to strengthen security drills at the airport, particularly flights to and from the United States. Tighter security checks would continue until the end of the Olympics." In Pakistan, security at the country's main Karachi international airport was tightened. An official said that all fights, particularly coming from and leaving for New York were being checked thoroughly.

And the other was Pakistan!

This leads us to an incident involving Pakistani and TWA flights that occurred on November 16, 1996 and which was a carbon copy of the TWA 800 downing ..........

November 16, 1996 22:00 (EST) 4 Rajab 1417 A.H.
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 tapes have been turned over to the FBI and NTSB. The object rose directly out of Long Island Sound and ascended almost vertically. The TWA flight was changed to a different flight path 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 when asked about the direction of the object Mr. Kallstrom replied, "ascending")

November 17, 1996 WCBS-TV
WCBS-TV reports that last night Pakistani International Airlines flight 712 radioed Logan International (Boston) that a missile had just flown by their plane (the story implied 'just missing them') ...Boston confirmed 'two unidentified blips' on radar at the same time as the PIA report. (See The Tale of the Tapes).

November 17, 1996 Associated Press
FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette said Sunday, "At this point we don't know what, if anything, was seen." Shah (pilot of PIA 712) said they were told by Boston air traffic controllers that there were no military exercises in the area. He also said the pilots were interviewed by officials with the U.S. Embassy in Frankfurt... A TWA plane flying immediately behind the Pakistanis jet Saturday made a similar sighting and asked to turn around .... The TWA plane was rerouted and the air corridor used by the Pakistan Airlines flight was closed.

In the Hijri calendar 4 Rajab is the date on which the U.S. embassy in Lebanon was bombed with Islamic Jihad accepting responsibility.........

April 18, 1983 4 Rajab 1403 A.H. 5 Iyyar 5743
A car bomb exploded in front of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, killing sixty-three people, including seventeen Americans. More than one hundred others were wounded. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, calling the bombing "part of the Islamic revolution." Iran subsequently denied having any role in the attack.

The date of this bombing has further significance in that it occurred on 5 Iyyar in the Jewish Calender which is the date on which the State of Israel was proclaimed. Further, the aircraft flying immediately behind the Pakistani jet was TWA 884 en route from JFK to Tel Aviv.

May 14, 1948 5 Iyyar 5708
State of Israel Proclaimed.

That a Pakistani and TWA aircraft were attacked on the anniversary of a bombing in Beirut of a U.S. facility is interesting on its own, but it then brings added significance to an observation in Connecticut on May 23, 1997 .........

May 23, 1997 (1:20am) 16 MuHarram 1418 A.H.
Witness states: We were driving south on Route 67 in Oxford.. heading home.. we saw a bright green light, just slightly paler than a traffic light, going at high speed, coming from a generally NNW direction heading generally ESE --..... it ... looked like a blowtorch, a bright point of green light with a paler triangular vaporous 'tail' behind it....

A description of a laser-guided missile which also took place on the anniversary of the bombing of another American facility in Beirut......

October 23, 1983 16 MuHarram 1404 A.H.
In Lebanon the Beirut American Marines Headquarters are bombed

And which residents of San Francisco were reminded of early one morning in 1997 ...

October 23, 1997 (Reported in New York Times on October 25, 1997)
A power failure that knocked out traffic lights, caused home computers to crash and disrupted the morning for much of San Francisco on Thursday (October 23, 1997) appears to have been an act of sabotage, the authorities said Friday. .... the power failure was described by utility officials as the worst act of sabotage of a power system in at least a decade. The blackout, starting around 6:15 a.m. and covering a large part of the business district and many residential neighborhoods, was traced to a single substation owned by Pacific Gas & Electric, San Francisco's main power provider. At the substation, officials found that 39 power-control switches had been manually turned in a way that halted the flow of electricity. Whoever caused the blackout would have needed a key to enter the substation and knowledge of how to shut down the system, the authorities said. ...... A counterterrorism task force was involved in the investigation, but officials played down suggestions that the blackout was an act of domestic terrorism. "We are exploring all possibilities," said Bob Griego, an FBI spokesman in the city. "But we have been told there was no mechanical failure, so at this point we're investigating it as an intentional act." .... "It's fair to say it required some expertise to accomplish what was done," said Leonard Anderson, a spokesman for the utility. "What happened was extremely unusual, a rare occurrence." .... The blackout has raised questions about the vulnerability of the 16 substations around San Francisco, all of which are locked but unguarded. ..... this was a very deliberate attempt to knock out power." The power failure came just as the city was stirring to life in the predawn darkness. Coffeepots went off. Electric garage doors remained shut. Lights went off. Power serving 126,000 customers was gone until about 9:45 a.m. in part of downtown and the neighborhoods of North Beach, the Marina, Pacific Heights, the Sunset District and the Richmond District. .... "Except for the earthquake of 1989, I can't recall an outage of similar magnitude," said Tony Novello, enforcement director at the Department of Parking and Traffic. Officials at the electric utility said they could not recall any time in recent memory when such an event left so many people without power. "Sabotage is rather unique," said Eugene Gorzelnik, a spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, a utility organization based in Princeton, N.J. "The few instances, you can probably count them on a couple of fingers."

Well, here are a couple more fingers to count .....

December 31, 1998 Associated Press
Federal authorities arrested a veteran utility worker Thursday after a bomb and hundreds of pounds of bomb-making materials were discovered at two Pacific Gas & Electric Co. warehouse. "Ready-to-go explosives'' and raw materials, including calcium nitrate and more than 250 pounds of ammonium nitrate, were found at the two downtown PG&E warehouses, and additional evidence was found at the home of Paul Madronich, 44, said Special Agent Tracy Hite of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Ammonium nitrate is the same chemical used in the deadly 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City. Madronich, of San Francisco, was accused of possessing a destructive device, possessing a destructive device in a public place and possessing of a destructive device as a public nuisance. He was being held on $55,000 bail and will be formally charged Jan. 5 in San Francisco Municipal Court ...... Hite declined to speculate on a motive and would not say whether Madronich had acted alone.

More fingers......

August 7, 1990 16 MuHarram 1411 A.H. 16 Av 5750
U.S. forces land in Saudia Arabia in preparation of repelling Iraq from Kuwait.

August 7, 1998 14 Raby` al-THaany 1419 A.H. The Associated Press
Terrorist bombs exploded minutes apart outside the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania today, turning buildings into mountains of shattered concrete and leaving burning hulks of buses and cars.

The NY Times appears to have noticed that terrorist events tend to occur on anniversary dates. In the September 6, 1998 issue we find: He (bin Laden) vowed to wage war against the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia and the Saudi leaders who had brought them into the country. American officials now say they believe that it was not a coincidence that the two embassy bombings in Africa occurred Aug. 7. Eight years earlier on that date, the first U.S. forces landed in Saudi Arabia as part of the effort to protect Saudi Arabia from Iraq, which had invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990.

And the bombing also occurred on the two year anniversary of this aircraft incident .........

August 29, 1996 14 Raby` al-THaany 1417 A.H.
The pilot of an American Airlines jet reported that he saw a missile off the wing of his 757 plane while he was traveling from San Juan to Boston. The plane was over Wallops Island, VA. The NTSB's report on the near-miss claimed that "the missile was a Black Brant V missile, with an inert payload and was launched ... in support of the Department of Defense."

Another bombing ....

December 12, 1983 7 Raby` al-awal 1404 A.H. 6 Tevet 5744
Kuwait Bombing of Embassies. The U.S. and French embassies were bombed by Al-Dawa party members. Similar attacks occurred at a U.S. housing compound, a Kuwaiti oil facility, an airline terminal, and a Kuwaiti government office. Islamic Jihad claimed reponsibility for the bombings.

Two years later all died when .....

December 12, 1985 29 Raby` al-awal 1406 A.H. 29 Kislev 5746
A chartered Arrow Air DC-8 carrying 256 American troops back home from the Sinai desert crashed in Gander, Newfoundland.

And five months after the TWA 800 downing "objects" were still streaking over Long Island ....

December 12, 1996 1 SHa`baan 1417 A.H. 2 Tevet 5757
A Saudi Arabian Airlines crew reported sighting a bright greenish object streaking by their plane as it approached Kennedy Airport Thursday morning. It was approaching Kennedy airport, 15 miles south west of East Hampton, at about 12,000 feet when the object appeared on radar. At least one crew member saw the object from the cockpit window for about two seconds. (See The Tale of the Tapes).

A Swissair plane crashed on the tenth anniversary of the bombing of PA 103 in the Islamic Calendar and on the second anniversary of the opening of the "Second Temple" tunnel .....

September 2, 1998 11 Jumaada al-awal 1419 A.H.
Swissair jet from JFK crashes off Nova Scotia not far from the city of Halifax

December 21, 1988 11 Jumaada al-awal 1409 A.H.
Pan Am 103 bombed over Lockerbie.

September 24, 1996 11 Jumaada al-awal 1417 A.H. (http://www.birzeit.edu/palnews/war/index.html)
Israel opened an alleged "Second Temple" tunnel that connects to a cistern that runs under al-Haram al-Sharif (the whole area of the "Temple Mount"), the site of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, the world's third most holy site for Muslims. Palestinian President Yasser Arafat announced a national strike for the following day and the West Bank and Gaza Strip erupted with angry demonstrations. The clashes led to the deaths of over 80 Palestinians and 1200 injuries.

The Swissair plane had an intense fire somewhere in the cockpit area which was tentatively blamed on an entertainment system wiring problem. The fire was apparently so intense that aluminum was melted. Strangely on board the aircraft was a Saudi prince whose family Osama bin Laden is attempting to overthrow.

September 5, 1998 The Hindu Online
A Saudi Arabian prince was among those killed in the Swissair plane crash off Canada. The English-language Saudi Gazette quoted a Swissair source confirming that Prince Bandar Bin Saud Bin Saad Abdul Rahman al-Saud was among the 229 passengers and crew killed when the plane plunged into the Atlantic near Nova Scotia on Wednesday. Prince Bandar, 45, a former Saudi Air Force pilot, was on his way to visit his father who was receiving treatment in Switzerland.

Two months later Osama bin Laden was the victim of an assassination attempt by poisoning which he blamed on Saudi Prince Salman bin Abdul-Aziz. Bin Laden suffered acute kidney failure and for the next few monts hobbled around leaning on a stick. (The New Jackals by Simon Reeve)

There was another intense fire that melted aluminum underneath the cockpit of an aircraft that crashed in Florida. This time oxygen canisters were blamed but no one ever explained what ignited them.

May 11, 1996 23 Thw al-Hijjah 1416 A.H.
Valujet Flight 592 crashes in Everglades after fire breaks out in front cargo hold.

If these canisters are so dangerous why are fully loaded ones carried in all passenger aircraft?

The odd thing is that the Valujet crash occurred within hours of the anniversary of the signing of a significant peace treaty ...

January 18, 1974 24 Thw al-Hijjah 1393 A.H.
Egypt and Israel sign peace agreement.

The Swissair flight was attempting to get to Halifax which is an interesting city in itself with links to TWA 800 because of the items being smuggled through its port ....

August 25, 1996 Times of London
U.S. officials are investigating reports that Islamic terrorists have smuggled Stinger ground-to-air missiles into the United States from Pakistan. Senior Iranian sources close to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran claimed this weekend that TWA flight 800 was shot down last month by one of three shoulder-fired Stingers of the type used by Islamic guerrillas during the Afghanistan war. The sources said the missiles arrived in America seven months ago after being shipped from Karachi via Rotterdam and on to the Canadian port of Halifax. They claimed an Egyptian fundamentalist group backed by Iran was responsible for smuggling the weapons across the Canadian border into the United States. The group, the Gama'a al-Islamiya, comprises followers of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States over the 1993 New York World Trade Center bombing. A senior White House official responsible for counter-terrorism told The Sunday Times this weekend that he had seen a report that a Stinger missile had been smuggled into the United States from Pakistan. The official, who is involved in collating intelligence relating to the TWA inquiry for the White House, said investigators were aware of reports that Stingers may have been smuggled into the country.... If a Stinger was the cause of this, our first theory would be that it came from Afghanistan." The official was commenting on reports from Tehran that claimed several groups funded by the religious authorities in Iran are active in the United States. The reports claim one previously unknown underground group called Falakh may have as many as 50 highly trained terrorists in the country.

Swissair was also involved in another strange incident on August 9, 1997 over Deer Park, Long Island not far from where TWA 800 went down.

September 27, 1997 (Neue Zuricher Zeitung)
Swissair has revealed that an unidentified flying object almost collided with one of its planes over the United States last month. The captain and his co-pilot said an oblong and wingless object shot past at great speed - only fifty metres away from their Boeing Seven-Four-Seven. The American air traffic authorities said it was probably a weather balloon. (See The Tale of the Tapes).

September 27, 1997 Electronic Telegraph Issue 856
An unidentified object narrowly missed a Swissair jumbo jet with 64 passengers aboard at 23,000 feet near New York, a company spokesman said yesterday. The object was described by the 747 captain as "elongated, white and without wings" but the co-pilot recalled it as being "more spherical". American aviation authorities dismissed speculation that the object was a missile and said it was a weather balloon. Swiss Radio reported the captain as saying he did not find that explanation credible although neither he nor his co-pilot thought it was a missile. The near-miss occurred on August 9, 1997 close to the spot where a TWA airliner exploded in July last year with the loss of 230 lives. Swissair flight 127 was travelling from Philadelphia to Zurich via Boston.

There is probably nothing related between the following two events but let's note them anyway just for the record ....

December 21, 1988 13 Tevet 5749
Pan Am 103 bombed over Lockerbie.

The Lockerbie bombing (about which there had been some speculation that it was not a Libyan operation) is linked by an anniversary date to the assassination of a Hamas "bomb maker".....

January 5, 1996 13 Tevet 5756
"The Engineer" Yahya Ayyash allegedly led the military wing of Hamas and was well known for his proficiency as a "bomb maker". He was killed by an improvised explosive device contained within his cellular telephone. Israeli security officials have neither confirmed nor denied their involvement in Ayyash's death, but it is known that he was #1 on their most wanted list.

Was this an "act of revenge"?.......

December 12, 1996 Associated Press
The new, more violent face of terrorism in the 1990s can be summed up in a single work - 'revenge' - an FBI assistant director (Kallstrom) said in a speech at a synagogue Tuesday.

Because if it is maybe there are others that one can find .....

The United States tried to play "tit for tat" with Iraq ....

June 27, 1993 8 Tammuz 5753
The United States launched a multiple cruise missile strike on the site of the Iraqi intelligence service in Baghdad in retaliation for an Iraqi plot to assassinate former U.S. president George Bush during his visit to Kuwait in April 1993.

But did Iraq have the last word ....

June 25, 1996 9 Safar 1417 A.H. 8 Tammuz 5756
19 Americans killed by Dhahran base bomb.

Or was this bombing a repeat of the bombing of the skyscraper housing the Mutual Israeli/Argentine Association (AMAI) and the DAIA (Delegation of Argentine/Israeli Associations in Buenos Aires?

The "Game Is Up" - (click) - Revenge! Retaliation! - Tit for Tat! - and so it goes.

Strange as it may seem one of the most infamous terrorist acts in the United States did not occur on the anniversary of any particular event ....

February 26, 1993
World Trade Center bombed.

However, the explanation is quite simple - it was a question of the rent!

October 23, 1997 New York Times
As smoke billowed from the towers of the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, after a huge blast had torn through the center's garage, a man watched intently from the Jersey City waterfront. The man, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, may have had mixed feelings as he gazed across the Hudson River, a Secret Service agent suggested in testimony in U.S. District Court on Wednesday. ...Yousef had hoped it would topple one of the Trade Center towers and kill tens of thousands, the agent testified. ..... Secret Service agent, Brian G. Parr, described what he said were Yousef's admissions about his direct role in the bomb plot, his motives and goals, and where he had thought he had failed. "He said it was in retaliation for U.S. aid to Israel," Parr testified at one point. "I asked, why not select Israeli targets? He said Israeli targets were too difficult to attack. He said if you cannot attack your enemy, you should attack the friend of your enemy." ... "He related to us that during World war II the Americans had dropped the atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 250,000 civilians, and he said that the Americans would realize if they suffered those types of casualties that they were at war," Parr testified that Yousef agreed to talk to him and another agent, Charles Stern of the FBI, on the flight on the condition that they not take notes or record the conversation. During breaks in the interview, the two agents would go to another part of the plane and reconstruct the conversation, writing down their notes .... As for the timing of the attack, Parr testified, it was chosen for practical rather than political reasons. "They actually were out of money, and they didn't have enough to pay next month's rent. ... That's how they chose that date."

I wonder if things got very quiet after the FEDEX crash.....

July 31, 1997 Reuters 26 Raby` al-awal 1418 A.H.
FEDEX Crash
Five crewmembers . escaped ..when their Federal Express MD-11 cargo plane crash-landed,... at Newark .. overturned and burst into flames. CBS radio quoted a witness as saying he had seen flames from the plane before it crashed.

August 11, 1997 Aviation Week and Space Technology
Safety investigators are scrutinizing pilots' reactions and retrieving data from a Federal Express MD-11F to better understand why the aircraft crashed ..... Investigators have questioned the two pilots but have not released information on their interviews.

Because it occurred on the anniversary of an event that Hamas considers as "the ultimate submission to Zionism"........

September 13, 1993 26 Raby` al-awal 1414 A.H.
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES ON INTERIM SELF-GOVERNMENT ARRANGEMENTS - The Oslo Accords of 1993 heralded a new era of dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians through their representative - the PLO - after decades of war and conflict. Following the initial agreement, known today as "Oslo A", Israel withdrew its security forces from the city of Jericho and its environs and from most of the Gaza strip, thereby transferring civil administration and security responsibility to the newly established Palestinian Authority. "Oslo A" was denounced by some in Israel as the beginning of the end of the Jewish state; at the same time the Palestinian opposition to Arafat, and especially the terrorist organization Hamas, called it "the ultimate submission to Zionism".

Maybe not? But we need to keep an open mind. Coincidences do occur and certainly there are coincidences in some of these events. But are they all coincidental or do some of them fit a pattern? I'm just a little bit suspicious and becoming even more curious!