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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 18, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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WW demands independent inquiry of TWA Flight 800

By Paddy Colligan
Baltimore

On Dec. 8 the National Transportation Safety Board opened hearings here on the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800. The trappings of diligent, meticulous and extensive research were on display in the volumes of data at hand behind NTSB Chairperson James E. Hall’s chair, and in diagrams of every detail posted around the stage in Baltimore’s cavernous convention center.

During the daily hearings, slides accompany presentations to help those present, TV viewers at home, and reporters assigned to cover the events follow the technical discussions.

A CIA-produced animation portraying the last moments of the tragedy was supposed to once and for all lay to rest the problem of suspicions that a U.S. Navy missile brought the plane down. Other materials were meant to prove that the airlines and aircraft corporations have done everything possible to ensure passenger safety.

However, in the few minutes before the hearings got under way, Hillel Cohen of Workers World interfered in the carefully organized proceedings long enough to raise questions that have nagged the multi-million-dollar investigation from the start:

How can those with the most to hide be the ones to do the investigating? How can the true story emerge when all along the investigation has been controlled by the corporations involved—Boeing and TWA—plus the Pentagon, the CIA and the FBI?

A news release circulated after Cohen’s disruption called for "an independent investigation conducted by representatives of the airline workers’ unions, relatives of the victims, and passengers’ associations. To prevent the Flight 800 tragedy from happening again, the truth must be known." The disruption was reported widely in the media.

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