Did an unarmed Tomahawk missile stray off-course to destroy TWA Flight 800? FBI Seizes TWA 800 Radar Image Tape by Charles Overbeck Matrix Editor EASTERISLE@parascope.com The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the FBI had seized a copy of an FAA radar image tape purportedly showing a blip rapidly closing on TWA Flight 800 just seconds before it exploded. The tape was seized from retired United Air Lines pilot Richard Russell, who has been independently probing the July 17 disaster since last summer. Russell and other independent investigators and journalists have theorized that a Navy cruise missile, possibly an unarmed "dummy" missile, inadvertently brought the plane down. The Navy was conducting scheduled exercises in the area surrounding TWA 800's flight corridor and was first on the scene of the catastrophe which claimed 230 lives. A Navy P-3 Orion anti-submarine plane flying without its transponder activated passed 10,000 feet above TWA 800 just before the explosion, according to a recent article in the Press-Enterprise, a newspaper in Riverside, California. The Press-Enterprise also reported that a special exercise area reserved for the Navy went active at 8 p.m. on July 17, just as TWA 800 was leaving its terminal. According to the Press-Enterprise report, exercises routinely involve missiles and live fire. The tape seized by the FBI showed "three [radar] hits... one every four seconds," Russell told the Westchester County Weekly, a New York newspaper. "The last hit was three miles from TWA. Nineteen seconds later the plane dropped off." Russell said he obtained the tape from a confidential, high-level government source. He said that he had shown the tape to a professional radar controller, who concluded that the blip may be more than a mere anomaly. If the radar image on Russell's tape was, in fact, a missile which destroyed TWA 800, it would have been travelling at 568 miles per hour to cover three miles in nineteen seconds. The cruising speed of the Tomahawk missile is 550 miles per hour. Assuming a slight margin of error, the blip on the radar tape was travelling at approximately the same rate of speed as a Tomahawk cruise missile. The Tomahawk is a common munition on Navy warships, used against submarines and surface targets. An anonymous source told the Associated Press that a Brooklyn grand jury may examine the radar tape as early as tomorrow. In the mean time, Russell is not a happy camper. "I'm offended by it," Russell told the AP. "They took my property away, but that's the way they operate. I knew that they would be doing this. It's a cover-up." The FBI seized Russell's radar tape after the Press-Enterprise ran an article on the TWA 800 disaster, citing the tape as evidence. The FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board immediately issued an unsigned statement claiming, "The articles' resulting conclusions are not supported by the facts." FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom compared the Press-Enterprise article to former ABC correspondent Pierre Salinger's claims last November that the plane was brought down by friendly fire. But in fact, it was Russell's early reports on the downing of Flight 800 that led to Salinger's revelations. Last August, Russell emailed a group of friends claiming that TWA 800 was shot down by a Navy missile fired from military exercise area W-105. His message quickly made the rounds on the Internet conspiracy circuit. The FAA later confirmed that area W-105 was "hot" the night TWA 800 was destroyed. The mainstream media ignored Russell's theory until Salinger announced it to an audience of airline executives in Cannes, France, according to the Westchester County Weekly. The Associated Press also reported that the FBI has placed a ban on federal employees speaking about the investigation, preventing many witnesses from sharing their accounts with the public. Air National Guard pilot Captain Chris Baur is one of many witnesses who claim to have seen something in the sky just before TWA 800 went down. Baur, a trained military pilot who witnessed the explosion from the cockpit of his helicopter, believes he saw a missile strike the plane. He reportedly saw a track of light and a hard explosion, followed by another explosion. Although the FBI and the NTSB have repeatedly refuted "Internet conspiracy theories" on the downing of TWA 800, an official explanation of the disaster remains forthcoming after eight months. The government's $27 million investigation is reportedly winding down, but investigators claim they are still unable to determine whether the plane was destroyed by a bomb, mechanical failure, or a missile. Kallstrom has said that the friendly fire theory is a "very, very unlikely" explanation. As a related side note, Kallstrom spoke in favor of the notorious Clipper chip at a panel debate hosted by the Association of the Bar of the City of New York in January 1995. "The notion that technology is just some sort of snake that's slithering along, and it should go wherever it likes, wherever the brain trust is going to let that go, without a realization that there's public policy issues here -- public safety issues here -- is I think a very naive approach," Kallstrom said during the debate. "You know they're all these people that we are chartered to put out of business for the good of all of us," Kallstrom said. "For the good of society. One way we do this is with electronic surveillance." (c) Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc. TWA Flight 800: The Facts The TWA Flight 800 Mailing List What do you think? Tell us in the message boards!