ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608050114
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SMITHTOWN, N.Y.
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
NOTE: Lede
Navy divers have recovered the body of one of TWA Flight 800's pilots. He was strapped in his seat amid the twisted wreckage of the cockpit, which was lifted from the ocean floor late Saturday.
The body of Ralph G. Kevorkian, 58, of Garden Grove, Calif., who had flown more than 30 years and logged 18,791 flight hours with TWA, was one of three brought ashore, bringing the total recovered to 194, authorities said Sunday.
The body of the flight engineer, Richard G. Campbell, 63, of Ridgefield, Conn., also was retrieved.
There were 230 people on board the routine flight to Paris July 17 when the Boeing 747 exploded shortly after takeoff from New York. All perished. Investigators still don't know what caused the explosion near the front of the plane, though suspicions point toward a bomb.
Investigators who had hoped the cockpit would provide some immediate help in solving the mystery seemed dismayed Sunday at the condition of the wreckage. The 6-by-10-foot section, weighing about a ton, had been turned into a tangle of wires, switches and other electronic gear by the impact of the crash. A beam from another part of the airplane was in the jumble.
``Untangling that cockpit mass of wire and everything else is going to take some time,'' said Robert Francis, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. ``We're not expecting dramatic results from today to tomorrow. We're going to take it apart properly so we can get the maximum amount of evidence available.''
While Navy divers continue to search for the 36 missing bodies, the two salvage ships operating 10 to 12 miles off the coast of Long Island have begun lifting a steady stream of wreckage from the ocean floor. Navy barges then bring it ashore and truck it to a former Grumman hangar in nearby Calverton, N.Y., where government investigators and Boeing officials are trying to reconfigure the aircraft.
Though the pace of wreckage retrieval has picked up in recent days, Francis said the percentage recovered was still minimal. When a bomb destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, nearly 90 percent of the plane was recovered eventually. Investigators hold out little hope of retrieving that much from the 120-foot-deep, murky waters off Long Island.
James Kallstrom, head of the FBI portion of the investigation, again refused Sunday to rule out either a missile attack or massive mechanical failure as a cause of the crash. However, he said the bureau has more than 1,000 people working on the case, and they are continuing to focus their efforts on potential bomb suspects.
Kallstrom confirmed the FBI is paying special attention to events at the Athens, Greece, airport, where the plane had stopped before arriving in New York.
Time magazine on Sunday, citing a well-placed U.S. intelligence source, reported that the CIA suspects Iran may be linked to the crash. Time quoted the source as saying calls and transmissions tracked by the CIA out of Tehran ``have raised suspicions'' there is an Iranian connection.
Also Sunday, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., put in a surprise visit to the crash site, and investigators ushered him on a four-hour tour of the investigation sites. One subject that came up was the mounting cost of the investigation, which could become the most expensive plane-crash probe in U.S. history.
Kallstrom would not discuss reports from some Long Island residents who claim to have seen military exercises in the area the night of the crash, nor would he address a second report that someone may have videotaped a missile-like flare in the sky the week before the explosion - a possible indication of some kind of practice run.
``We've looked into every possible thing that could have happened to the airplane,'' he said. ``Absolutely. But I'm not going to comment on what we think of them, or how we ... prioritize them.''
- The Los Angeles Times contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshots) Kevorkian, Campbell. color.by CNB