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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 26, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Editorial: The FBI
& TWA Flight 800

Over the objections of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board declared Dec. 13 that a mechanical malfunction is the most likely cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800.

This finding may surprise those who rely on the official corporate- controlled media. The New York Times, for example, more than once declared that the cause of the crash was definitely a "terrorist bomb."

On Aug. 24, the Times even carried a report suggesting that the U.S. military should bomb Iran in retaliation, since Iran was supposedly the most likely source for such a bomb. Senior New York Times columnist William Safire, who has close ties to the Pentagon, also suggested that the crash of Flight 800 could be blamed on Iran and that President Bill Clinton should order a military response.

Most of the big-business-controlled media in the United States have reported at some time that Flight 800 crashed because of a bomb.

The source of these reports was the FBI. The FBI is well known for its long years as a political police force that has used severe repression, including assassination, in its everyday operations.

The FBI is not a neutral source. Its reports in the media were used by the Clinton administration as well as key senators-particularly Ted Kennedy and Alfonse D'Amato-to push through Draconian police-state measures in the last session of Congress.

The laws were passed even though it is now clear that no bomb or terrorist had anything to do with the devastating crash. The measures include:

• a return to pre-Watergate rules on wiretaps and secret police break-ins;
• authority for the U.S. government to prosecute anyone posting material on the Internet that might be used for criminal purposes;
• authority for the FBI to begin computerized tracking of every U.S. citizen who flies.

In addition, the crash was used to justify harsh economic sanctions on Iran, Libya and Iraq.

Workers World reported immediately after the crash that the FBI's intervention into the investigation indicated that the crash was to be used to promote a political agenda.

"Of all the deceits in U.S. politics, one of the most common is to try to divorce right-wing politics from the degeneration of monopoly capitalism," Workers World reported in its Aug. 8 issue.

"The military-industrial complex-of which the aviation industry is a big part-is a major force behind political reaction. It has financed and encouraged the growth of right-wing politics in the United States. And it is ultimately in the interests of the military-industrial complex to blame 'terrorists' for the crash of TWA Flight 800.

"The militarists are already using it to increase repression and expand the police forces-no matter that the cause has yet to be found."

Of course, the NTSB is not neutral either. News accounts now say Safety Board experts believed almost from the beginning that a mechanical malfunction was the most likely cause-but that was never said publicly at a time when it would have mattered.

No attempt was made to speak out before the repressive laws were passed.

The danger of exploding vapors in empty fuel tanks-which the NTSB now says is the most likely source of the explosion-has been known for 30 years. In 1965, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a report on a 1963 fuel-tank explosion that killed 81 people on a Boeing 707.

That report said, "It is recommended that every effort be expended to arrive at a practical means by which flammable air/vapor mixtures are eliminated from fuel tanks."

Nothing was ever done. Safety was sacrificed for profit.

Many questions remain about the crash of TWA Flight 800. For example, there has been no independent investigation into journalist Pierre Salinger's assertion that a U.S. Navy missile shot down the plane.

No matter what is finally determined, a cover-up clearly took place in order to increase the government's repressive forces.

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Copyright © 1996 workers.org