ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 16, 1997 TAG: 9703170121
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: THE BOSTON GLOBE
Some who saw TWA 800 explode - and some who didn't - suspect that the government is covering up something.
Pierre Salinger is not alone in believing that a missile shot down TWA Flight 800 the night of July 17. It's also the prevailing view in the seaside villages of Long Island, where dozens of people looked up and saw the jetliner explode in the sky.
Several of them saw something else, too - a streak of light zipping up toward the plane before it ignited. These witnesses included lawyers, pilots, fishermen, respectable members of the community. So, many of their neighbors can't help but suspect that the government is covering up something.
Salinger has blamed a U.S. Navy missile.
Linda Kabot, assistant to the supervisor of Southampton Town Hall, said Friday: ``Many people are outraged that the investigators are still talking about things like a mechanical failure or a bomb at all. They don't believe in `friendly fire,' but they don't understand why officials aren't talking more about the theory that some kind of missile was involved. Why isn't the FBI saying, `This photo looks like a missile, but here's what it really is.' Instead, they just say, `We can't comment on that.'''
It's a banner time for conspiracy theorists. Movies and television dramas love them. The Internet spreads wild ideas with unprecedented speed and indiscriminate authority. Humorist Merrill Markoe calls it ``the X-Filing of America'' - the sense that nothing is as it seems, that dark undercurrents guide the course of human events, that government is omniscient and malevolent.
Eight months have passed since the crash, which killed all 230 people on board. Yet federal investigators say the ultimate cause of the explosion remains a mystery.
James Kallstrom, assistant director of the FBI's New York office, understands the obsession. ``There's a lot of witnesses, people who saw the same thing,'' he said. ``That compels us to take the thing seriously. But historically, eyewitnesses are bad. They saw things in the sky. There's all sorts of things in the sky.''
More compelling for Kallstrom is that, inside an aircraft hangar in Calverston, Long Island, engineers with the National Transportation Safety Board have pieced together 90 percent of the plane from fragments excavated from the ocean floor - and more still of the plane's center fuel tank, which, they are now convinced, is where the explosion took place. Yet they have not found a single clue that points to a bomb or a missile as the catalyst for the explosion.
What angers Kallstrom is the ballyhoo over Salinger, the former ABC reporter and press secretary to President John F. Kennedy, who says he has ``proved'' that the plane was downed by a Navy missile that veered off course during a secret test.
Salinger first made the charge in November, citing a document that he said came from an intelligence agent but which turned out to have been circulating for months on the Internet. Last week, Salinger published in Paris Match magazine a 55-page manuscript, restating the claim in greater detail.
``Pierre Salinger's paper is nonsense,'' Kallstrom scoffed. ``It's nothing but inaccuracies, distortions, inventions. The whole thing's a joke.''
Several independent military specialists agree. John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, said Friday: ``The Navy doesn't do these tests off Long Island. They have no range instrumentation there, so it would be a waste of money because they couldn't measure the results.''
LENGTH: Medium: 70 linesby CNB