by: F.R. Duplantier

"July 17, 1998 marked the second anniversary of the mysterious crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, killing 230 men, women, and children," recalls retired U.S. Navy Admiral Thomas H. Moorer. "This tragic accident," he observes, "has been the object of the longest and most costly investigation of a commercial aircraft crash in history. The FBI and National Transportation Safety Board say that they have spent over $43 million on this investigation. Despite that, they have failed to come up with an explanation that will square with the evidence that has been made public. They insist that neither a bomb nor a missile was involved. Their theory is that the crash was initiated by an explosion of fuel in the plane's center tank, but the evidence they cite to support this is so weak that many people have been unwilling to accept it."

A former Navy aviator and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Moorer professes to be "puzzled and disturbed by the inconclusive results of this investigation. Blaming the crash on an explosion in the fuel tank does not ring true for several reasons," he charges. "First of all, modern aviation fuel is designed for safety. It does not readily burn, much less explode. There is no precedent for a mid-air fuel tank explosion in a modern jet airliner using Jet A-1 fuel without the involvement of a high explosive device."

To buttress his claims, Admiral Moorer cites a 109-page report released on July 20^th of this year by retired Navy attack pilot Commander William Donaldson, who conducted a year-long investigation of his own with the support of watchdog group Accuracy in Media (the entire report is available online at http://www.aim.org). Donaldson is convinced that the plane was "destroyed by an air-bursting anti-aircraft missile. What is not yet fully known is who fired the missile or missiles which struck Flight 800. The preponderance of evidence," he asserts, "strongly points to a hostile attack by enemies of the United States."

Donaldson emphasizes that the crash occurred "two days before the start of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta" and that the U.S. was "warned by Israeli intelligence of a terrorist risk to TWA Flight 800 prior to the event." He speculates that White House officials sought to "hide the facts from the American electorate prior to the 1996 elections" by attributing the loss to "a nonexistent mechanical failure," rather than admitting their own incompetence.

"What Bill Donaldson has done, at a cost of less than $10,000," Moorer concludes, "is marshal an impressive array of evidence that proves what should have been obvious to the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board from the beginning. He has proven that over 100 eyewitnesses -- who have said they saw a missile shoot down TWA Flight 800 -- were right!"