ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 19, 1996 TAG: 9609200001
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
WASHINGTON
WITH NO SOLID evidence pointing to a bomb, investigators are exploring the possibility of a mechanical failure.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, saying they are convinced that none of the physical evidence recovered from TWA Flight 800 proves that a bomb brought down the plane, plan tests intended to show that the explosion could have been caused by a mechanical failure alone.
The investigators acknowledge that they have no evidence pointing to a mechanical malfunction. Rather, they say, the failure to find proof of a bombing after more than two months lends indirect credence to another theory, that an explosion in the Boeing 747's center fuel tank might have been sufficient to destroy the plane.
``If you get a fuel-air explosion in that tank, how does it vent itself?'' said a senior investigator who insisted he not be named. ``How does the airplane open up? That's what we have to come to grips with.''
Boeing, on the basis of its own calculations, has contended that there would not be sufficient energy in such an explosion to bring the plane down.
But safety board officials say they are not persuaded. They plan computer simulations and lab tests, and they may even try putting fuel in the center tank of a scrapped 747 and blowing it up.
James Kallstrom, the deputy director in charge of the FBI's New York office, said Wednesday that the safety board tests of the center fuel tank do not reflect any new consensus among law enforcement investigators that a malfunction destroyed the plane.
``They should do all the tests in the world to try to ascertain what caused this,'' Kallstrom said. ``Just as we should do, from the standpoint of our bomb technicians and forensic people. Those procedures are complementary to each other, and they have been done simultaneously.''
All the investigators have their own ``private hunches'' about the most likely cause of the crash, he added. And Kallstrom acknowledged that NTSB investigators, unlike most federal law enforcement officials, place more credence in the malfunction theory.
Behind the different approaches is a growing sense of surprise and frustration that proof of the cause of the crash still has not been found, even though more than 100 divers have been in the water almost nonstop since the July 17 crash.
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