It's been seven years since TWA Flight 800 went down off Long Island, another investigation that, in my opinion (as well as in that of many others) didn't really resolve it. Scott Holleran wonders if it was (perhaps like Oklahoma City) another jihadist terrorist strike on US soil that the Clinton administration found politically inconvenient.

"...(perhaps like Oklahoma City) another terrorist strike on US soil that the Clinton administration found politically inconvenient."

!!!
In the various micro-histories of the nineties that one sees in TIME, etc., Oklahoma City is seen as Clinton's big "Look at me, I'm relevent!" moment after the Gringrich assault.
Very politically convenient, I would think...

You misunderstand.

OKC was politically convenient to Clinton as long as it could be painted as the result of militias and Evil Right-Wing Hate Radio (TM). If any of the middle east connections had come out, it would have become politically inconvenient because a) he wouldn't have been able to continue to blame Newt Gingrich and the evil "Taliban Republican" Congress that had just come into power for it and b) he would have actually had to do something about it--something more than sending a cruise missile into a tent and hitting a camel in the butt.

From everything I've read, the fuel tank explosion explanation seems the most reasonable one, especially since there were precedents for this in other jets. There's a certain minority which is positive the plane was shot down by a missile from a U.S. destroyer, but there's far too many "what-ifs" that had to have fallen into place to be convincing, in my opinion.

Islamic fundamentalists shooting a Stinger or other mobile SAM is one I hadn't considered before. Possible? I guess. But as we've seen in Kenya, Saudi Arabia, and now in Iraq, shooting down a plane with these things isn't as easy as it may seem - I wonder what the success/failure rate for shooting down Hind helicopters in Afghanistan was for the mujahedin using Stingers?

If an Islamic terror group was responsible, it would have been a major coup for a group like Islamic Jihad or al Qeita. I doubt they'd have passed up an opportunity like that to gain notoriety for themselves, rather than keeping mum. Also, one thing we've seen from what was confiscated in Afghanistan was that al Qeita were pretty through about keeping notes on operations. Something as big as this probably would have shown up in their archives which we recovered.

Anyway, I think there's enough evidence that the intelligence community under Clinton was asleep at the watch in many areas without needing more speculative charges.

FWIW, I understood that all of the engines of TWA 800 were intact. This should rule out heat seeking missiles. You still have SAMs which are radar controlled and much more likely to hit the aircraft in the center (kinda sorta like where the explosion originated). My suspicion is that a radar-controlled missile (ie, the radar would be loud) would probably have been detected by the US military in the region. Thoughts?

FWIW, I understood that all of the engines of TWA 800 were intact. This should rule out heat seeking missiles. You still have SAMs which are radar controlled and much more likely to hit the aircraft in the center (kinda sorta like where the explosion originated). My suspicion is that a radar-controlled missile (ie, the radar would be loud) would probably have been detected by the US military in the region. Thoughts?

Sorry about the double post, I thought I had reloaded this page and my first post wasn't there so I copied the text in and posted it again.

There's a great site about www.twa800.com, which was set up by the late Bill Donaldson, a retired naval aviator who didn't accept the official explanation. I think any fair minded person who reviews the physical evidence and eyewitness testimony will conclude that the missile shoot down hypothesis is the best explanation of what happened.

The allegations of FBI and DOJ improprieties are so in line with the other scandals that plagued Clinton (Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, IRS-gate) and the Clinton DOJ (Webb Hubbell, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Elian Gonzalez) that they are of a piece and mutually supporting. A number of DOJ officials in the TWA 800 investigation also appear in those other scandals.

All of the questions raised above about the physical evidence are addressed in Donaldson's investigation. For example, an all-angle heat seeking missile wouldn't necessarily hit the engines, especially if fired from the forward quarter. In addition, we don't know a lot about SAM hits on 747s because no one has done the research. That's one of Donaldson's complaints.

The Islamic Change Movement did claim responsibility for the shoot down. Depending on who you talk to, the ICM was either a cover name for Al Qaeda, Saudi Hizb'Allah or Iraqi Mukhabarat. I prefer the latter theory, in part because July 17th is the Baathist national day, and the terror events of the 1990s (like WTC '93 or OKC '95) tended to occur on days of significance to the Iraqis, like the starting and stopping dates for Gulf War I. I think we should be looking for evidence in the Mukhabarat's files, and we have been told evidence of support for terror is a high priority for the intelligence people reviewing the Iraqi Mukhabarat files, right after WMDs.

Most people have abandoned the Navy shoot down theory. Bill Donaldson never accepted it - he thought is was Hizb'Allah acting at the direction of Iran.

The problem with the missle hypothesis is that you need a fairly large ship as a launch platform for any missle that can reach that altitude. If memory serves correctly, the "Stinger in a rowboat" only works if you are within a few miles of the airport, not in the middle of Long Island Sound.

So when you start talking about missles, you'd better tread carefully, because you've entered Black Helicopter Country. (Whatever happend to them anyhow? Last time I was in Yellowstone, I still didn't see any blue helmeted Pakistanis and Guineans running the place.) What I'd like to hear is why they didn't immediately celebrate their victory over the Great Satan, and why they haven't used the same spectaularly successful method a second time. That should be entertaining.

The real problem is that some people are unable to accept that not all events have easily and currently recognizable causes. These people crave an explantion NOW! A few centuries ago, tthey would have explained it as being caused by witchcraft, or demons, or capricious gods, or evil spirits. Now days, it 's hidden conspiracies or secret terrorists, and it's the same mindset.

SAMs do not 'hit' a target, they explode nearby, showering the target with fragments. Their warheads and guidance systems are specifically designed to operate in this way. A direct hit is far more difficult to achieve, so using an area-effect warhead vastly increases the probability of damage to the target.

There was no evidence whatsoever of multiple fragment damage to the 747, something that would have been unmistakeable had even a relatively small SAM (as all shoulder-fired SAMs are) warhead been used. While all-angle heat-seekers (Stingers, etc.) could have been used, these still home in on the thermal plume from the engines, and thus would certainly have showered them with fragments no matter what aspect they were fired from. As for radar-guided SAMs (the Navy Standard missile is the most immediate candidate), these are huge, expensive, very rare, and complex to operate. I find it inconceivable that an organization like Hamas (which is challenged by the task of operating unguided MRLs from land bases in territory it controls in the Middle East) could deploy sea-launched radar-guided SAMs in waters thousands of miles from its normal operating area.

Sorry guys, this is more tinfoil-hat speculation...

What are the purported middle-east links to OKC?

What never sat well with me was the explination I heared on the TV. To explain Eye witness reports of seeing a long missile trail: they said something on the order of "the internal explosion casaused the nose to fall off. Without pilots the plane began heading up at a shape angle for several minutes." I'm sorry, without a nose a 747 would disintegrate and I doubte it would ever head up at an angle like that. I trusted the man who was in the military and said he saw a missile.

Of note, several people helping to pull wreckage out of the water did report debris that had looked like it exploded.

Does all this mean coverup? I would hate to say yes - not believing something of that magnitude could be - but it sure seems to be one of the few explenations.

Middle East links to OKC.

"I wonder what the success/failure rate for shooting down Hind helicopters in Afghanistan was for the mujahedin using Stingers?"

Very low from what I've read from a CIA operatives reports. He said that often times the mujahedin would hear helicopters in the sky, not see them but just hear them, and just start firing stingers all over the place all willy nilly, not hitting a single thing. Of course they would still get all excited and fire there rifles in the air in celebration afterwards of their "victory".

From what I understand it was just at the very beginning of the stingers introduction in Afghanistan that the largest losses occurred to the Russian Air Force and Helicopters. Once the threat was understood though the Russians used Flare countermeasures with good success.

There are number of medium-long range SAM's that are small enough to fit multiple missles together on the back of a single axle flat bed trucks. So it would be easy to put it on the back of a boat. The launch tube housing for the missle looks nothing more than long box in its undeployed position. Modern SAMS do have a number of cababilities built into their design. While a SAM missle may have the cabability of being programmed with a firing solution by a ground based radar operator prior to launch. Often times due to Anti-radiation strike craft being in the area, SAM batterys will resort to using a "Hot Shot" mode on the missle in which the missle is dumb launched with no link to ground based radar. Upon launch the missle uses its own internal radar to take a snap shot, its own internal computer processor analyzes and picks out the most probable target and then uses a forward looking IR imager to steer the missle onto the target. If it loses the IR image for any reason another radar snap shot is taken and a new target acquired. The warhead of the SAM missle itself can vary depending on the role that missle is designed to play out. For anti-aircraft it would be a high fragmentation warhead. For Anti-missle, using missles to shoot down the enemy's missles or even the enemy's incoming artillery shells, then a high concussion high explosive warhead would be used. Being that a missle or artillery shell is so slender it would most likely to pass through a fragmentation with little or no effect so instead its exacting aim is used to knock the missle off course or break it up with a direct high explosive hit.

I believe that a SAM missle fired at a large airliner would of course easily lock onto the heat dumped out by the huge 747 engines. Interestingly though some IR seekers have such a fine resolution that they can see the heat generated by the friction of air running over the leading edge of the wings. I believe its possible for the missle's computer to average all these signals together and it would attempt to strike at the very center which would put it right in the middle of the underside of the wing.

Or it could have been something as simple as a cargo door blowing open and causing a sudden decompression which started a catastrophic chain of events.

And rebuttal of the Middle Eastern links to Oklahoma hypothesis...

Duncan, there is nothing in that link that debunks the evidence that Jayna Davis gathered--it doesn't even mention it, so it's hardly the last word. It simply picks up a few selective points, and knocks them down, while ignoring much of the other data, and pretending to put it to rest.

Hefty, you believe a lot of things, but very few of them have any grounding in reality it seems. Lets start with the easy ones first:

1) There are no 'medium to long' range SAMs that fire from the back of single-axle trucks. There are a few short-range SAMs (really MANPADs) that can be configured in this way (the US has several Stinger configurations that can work this way, most notably from Hummers), but the bigger stuff requires far more support than that. MANPAD installations (again, like the Stinger) are possible to fit upon very light ships (they are popular on patrol boats over the world), but the bigger stuff (= radar-guided, which would almost certainly have to be the case for flight 800) isn't going to fit upon anything smaller than a small freighter, if that.

2) While SAMs can be fired in an unguided mode (this was done frequently in Vietnam, less so since, given the very poor results), the probability of doing any significant damage with anything less than a REALLY big missile is quite remote. We are talking about aircraft at high altitudes, flying very fast indeed, and even a very good preprogrammed launch isn't going to get the missile near enough to its target for the relatively small warheads on these missiles to do enough damage. More to the point, a missile big enough to be used in this way isn't going to be easily obtained, and leaves quite a bit of debris behind when it is used.

3) You suggest that the missile can use it's 'own radar' or an IR imager to acquire a target after it has been launched 'cold'. Where to begin... For a missile to acquire a target on its own requires it to have an independent active radar, not the semiactive system used by almost all radar-guided SAMs today. Yes, there are some active radar SAMs, but these require extensive ground-support installations, not simply a truck or two, and quite a bit of skilled manpower to operate. Short of a truly impressive piece of smuggling and construction (which has remained undetected to this day), a land-based system of that type isn't an option, and a sea-based system would require a reasonably large ship that would be child's play to spot. As for IR imaging, this has very limited range, and only works when you actually have the target already aquired. It is NOT useful to acquire the target in the first place. Your suggestion here seems to reek of too many Clancy novels.

4) SAM warheads are designed to disrupt the flight of the target, with destruction as a bonus, the sole exception being very large missiles. This is why fragmentation warheads are used, as they produce the highest damage probability per engagement. HE warheads have much smaller radii of effect, and (unless they actually impact the target) very low probability of seious damage. More to the point, HE warheads damage decreases as to the distance from the target, while blast-fragmentation warheads (which scatter hot debris for a considerable distance) maintains considerable damage potential even at significant distance from the blast itself. SAMs are not designed for use against artillery at this time, and only a very small number of systems (a few of the more late-model Russian SAMs, Patriot, and Standard SM-2, among others) are designed and equipped for use against incoming missiles. Hence the idea that most (or even many) SAMs come equipped with multiple warhead types as a matter of course is simply nonsense.

5) Ah, now the magic computer that can be programmed to fuse multiple sensor data and 'average' it to hit at the centroid of its sources. Once again, this ignores that missiles don't work this way tactically (if they did, it would be rather easy to fool them with rather elementary countermeasures) and that even if we choose for them to do so, that a missile with this capacity would have to carry a computer system capable of identifying and 'averaging' multiple targets, multiple target return sources, and multiple angles of incidence in realtime. Not a small device, and certainly not a terribly reliable one in combat (one need only look at the software problems experienced by the Patriot in the last war in Iraq to see how much more difficult this is in the real world than in a technothriller), and more to the point, not terribly useful in combat. All of these systems are designed for real combat, not for shooting down a putative jetliner in a scenario specifically created for this purpose. A missile which performs they way that you describe would be expensive, failure-prone, extremely large, and would require a significant ground element which simply could not be hidden or covered up.

Stick with the cargo door blowing open, it seems safer for you...

Scott, in response to #1, I offer the following link: HUMRAAM Considering that Raytheon has it on their website, I'm fairly confident it exists. HUMRAAM Google results The system involves a Humvee, which last I checked had a single axle, and modified AIM-120C's, which last I checked were Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles.

As far as 2-5, I don't have any knowledge to dispute your claims, or Hefty's claims. But, I believe you also underestimate the computing power available today, and how little space is required for a high-powered computer, especially one that doesn't have to run The Sims or Quake while it's doing it's thing.

As for HUMRAAM, this is not a deployed system, and even if it were, the Medium stands for Range, not Size. The warhead for an AIM-120C is quite modest in size, actually, and certainly not even close to large enough to bring down a 747 by itself. Either way though, it is still a blast-fragmentation warhead (and before you suggest it, swapping out the warhead requires a fairly significant software change for the guidance system, and the programming manuals for an AIM-120C aren't exactly public domain...), which still leaves us with the original issue of why no fragments in the wreckage... The original point from my missive was that medium sized to large sized missiles (which are what would have been required to take out a plane that size) simply don't deploy on vehicles that size, and still require targeting and acquisition radars which must are hardly trivial deployment problems. Remember, we are discussing the possibility of this being done by some crazed militia or Hamas-like organization. Even with virtually unlimited funds, this sort of hardware simply isn't that easy to find on the open market.

As for your comments on 2-5, it isn't a question of computing power, it is a question of what is built, tested, and deployed. The standards for reliability and maintainability for military systems are such that they tend to operate with much older computer hardware/software than is commercially available. Readers of this blog no doubt know how similar forces keep shuttles using computer technology several decades out of date, and while I don't suggest that the same forces are at work here, the effect is much the same.

More to the point, however, there is little reason to embed much of the technology that is discussed in the piece I responded to in the first place. Software is the biggest problem in deploying most systems these days (just look at the recent Gulf war to see numerous examples of that), and most of the recognition problems are almost exclusively software issues. The nonsense about 'averaging' the impact point from multiple sources reveals an incredible ignorance of how anti-aircraft systems (air to air or SAM) operate in the first place, but even if you don't know much about these systems...think like a hacker and consider how easy it would be to spoof such systems that have to perform such complex calculations and evaluations IN REALTIME.

I could go on, but I suspect you see my point.