Among our nation's most persistent and controversial mysteries is how and why TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747 bound for Rome with 230 souls aboard, fell from the sky in flaming pieces over New York's East Moriches Inlet on July 17, 1996, about 8:30 p.m. It had departed John F. Kennedy International Airport just 12 minutes earlier.
The government has stuck by its long-disputed version of the baffling cause. Yet plenty of skeptics believe the truth has yet to emerge from the fog of bureaucracy and interagency politics.
Despite an FBI investigation lasting 16 months and four years by the National Transportation Safety Board, the best assumption was that the airplane's internal fuel tank inexplicably ignited and exploded. The official version cited the most likely possible causes as a possible short circuit that set off a minute spark which ignited the fuel.
This catastrophe, perhaps more than any other airline disaster, has prompted numerous papers, televised programs and books. That's because in the ensuing 20 years, many have become doubters, including some who've served on the NTSB, and others with standing in the aeronautical community who've never bought the official version. The status quo inevitably marginalizes such doubters.
I recall reading in 1996 of witnesses who told authorities that in the darkness they watched what appeared to them to be the lighted streak of a missile soaring upward from the horizon toward the plane passing above them. Some experts later discredited what these witnesses agreed they saw as the plane's debris dropping from the sky.
I relive this incident today after noticing investigative reporter, author and conspiracy theorist Jack Cashill, 68, has a new book that touts fresh documentation, extensive and relevant interviews and a conclusion that believes a missile was fired into the plane.
Some on the official-version side will dismiss the book as a continuing conspiracy theory. In 1996 it might have been easily marginalized. But with the pervasive and proven lies Americans have been fed from on high, many who've lost trust as a result likely will pay attention to his book, TWA 800: The Crash, the Cover-up and the Conspiracy.
Now to what some might call the woo-woo part of today's column. At the time of TWA 800, my younger brother was living in Texas.
As a serious-minded physicist and employee of E-Systems defense contractors with a top security clearance, he understandably could never tell his older brother, the journalist, about his work. He prided himself on being a tight-lipped man of science.
Then came that day soon after TWA 800 when his voice on the phone seemed different than I'd ever heard it. He sounded almost shaken and more eager to talk than I'd seen him as an adult.
"Wow, I had some dream last night," I recall him saying. "This one wasn't like any dream I've ever had. It was so vivid and real, as if I was there and watching what happened. I've never had such an experience." Then he fell silent for a few seconds, as if still in disbelief.
He said he'd watched a few younger enlisted military people (males and at least one female) who'd been drinking carry a shoulder-fired missile launcher they'd taken from a storage facility to a spot near the water, "like on the end of a peninsula. It was dark, but I could see lights from a city not far away," he said.
The had removed the explosive warhead from the missile and for fun fired it upward as a plane was passing above, apparently not believing it could possibly hurt anything with the warhead removed. "They weren't purposely trying to hit the plane," he said.
Suddenly his dream switched. He found his consciousness inside the passengers' cabin of a large airplane on the left-side aisle. "I can still tell you the exact seat I was in. I was literally there in the seat with the passenger, seeing what he witnessed. A bright streak of fire suddenly tore from the bottom up completely through the cabin about 25 feet in front of me. It happened toward the center of the compartment.
"I can't begin to explain why I had it. But it's the most real and vivid dream I've ever had. It woke me instantly," he said. I found it interesting enough to head to the Internet again and study the clear damage shown on a photo of the partially restored plane.
Afterwards, my brother called to discuss the mystifying dream with his cousin, John Arthur Hammerschmidt, at that time a member of the NTSB. John Arthur told me last week he remembered that call and even took notes. He passed the information on within the agency but, of course, nothing came of it.
By then the various possible scenarios were formed and the wheels of interagency politics were grinding in that terrible tragedy. Brother's haunting and vivid dream (being unscientific and unproven) never went anywhere except to bed with him for weeks afterwards.
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Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 10/11/2016