Customer Reviews

First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America

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This book is a very well written introduction to James Sanders investigation into TWA Flight 800. I especially recommend this book to people who have not been following the various alternative investigations being conducted by independent researchers and the alternative press.

Unfortunately, however, this book is not a comprehensive summary of all of the evidence for/against various variations of the hypothesis that a missile brought down Flight 800, or a comprehensive summary of all of the evidence for/against the NTSB's center tank theory. Such a book, while much longer, more detailed and infinitely more difficult to write, is what someone who has followed the investigation is really looking for. Commander William Donaldson's preliminary report, available at www.twa800.com, is more like what we need at this point. An examination of that report, Sanders' earlier books, and "First Strike" reveal one of the problems researchers have created for themselves, undermining their ability to get Congress or other public officials to pay attention to them -- their hypothesis about what brought down Flight 800 keeps changing: Navy SAM, terrorist controlled ship-based SAM, terrorist controlled shoulder-fired SAM, etc.

In "First Strike," it is no a secret that Sanders and Cashill have concluded that both an accidental hit by a Navy missile and a high-explosive laden private jet brought down Flight 800. This is an entirely new hypothesis, and as other have pointed out, Sanders and Cashill have seriously weakened "First Strike" by presenting this hypothesis without spending the appropriate amount of time examining the evidence for/against it. The big objection is, of course, that no debris from a second plane was ever found. Now, maybe there is an explanation for that, but Sanders and Cashill don't present it. Similarly, they apparently haven't done any work to determine whether a small 6-seat jet plane went missing in July 1996. Or to determine the identity of the 6-seat plane spotted on radar prior to the crash. Maybe there is some aviator out there who can stand up and say, "Hey, that was me." Have they looked for him? It doesn't appear they have.

These sorts of questions seem basic to the hypothesis. Not having run them down seriously undermines the credibility of this work. This book may open some people's eyes (i.e., those who accepted the NTSB explanation but are willing to reconsider our government's response to terrorism in the 1990s in light of 9/11), but it's not going to change the minds of anyone in government who might actual do something about re-opening the investigation. And that's really too bad, because the country deserves an honest answer to the question of what happened to Flight 800.

The weight of evidence is overwhelming that the official version of what happened to TWA 800 is beyond belief. The authors make a compelling case that evidence supportive of a missile (physical, radar, satellite, voice recorder, data recorder, eye-witness) was routinely "lost", classified or destroyed. I find it a shame that these facts are not more widely reported. The national media have certainly not done a very good job of dispassionately analyzing the crash. By and large they have reported the official version which, as the book makes clear, is completely contrary to aerodynamics, the history of 747's and eyewitness accounts. I highly recommend this book because it is a well-researched, footnoted, convincing case that the accepted version of what happened on July 17, 1996 is bunk. I have some faith that the major media will one day tackle the issues raised in this book, but it seems most people (journalists and readers) have forgotten or no longer care about the suspicious nature of the crash. Buy this book, the more people are aware of the documented facts about TWA 800, the more likely that mainstream journalists will revisit what exactly happened back in 1996.

While hundreds of Long Island residents prepared for their evening cookout with friends, and some were enjoying those last few hours out on the water before dark, the passengers and crew of TWA Flight 800 were boarding for a routine flight to Paris. Little did the residents of Long Island or the passengers and crew of Flight 800 know that their lives would become inexorably entwined on the evening of July 17, 1996.

Their story and the case against the federal investigatory process are the subjects of a new book, First Strike.

For the record, First Strike is not a conspiracy book. It is, first and foremost, a book about people: What they saw, what they did and what they didn't do.

In a perfect world - where everyone does the right thing - this book would not have needed to be written. But, because of the people involved, it had to be written.

Authors Jack Cashill and James Sanders expertly fill in the blanks of the massive disaster that befell the passengers and crew of Flight 800. The evidence presented against the Clinton administration and the federal authorities- whose job it was to find and then tell the truth to the American people -is factually detailed in a dispassionate orderly fashion.

Important as well is the authors skill in placing the reader into the lives of the defenseless: the victims and their surviving families, the eye witnesses, and the technical experts that - still to this day - challenge the government's conclusions.

Without question, airplane disasters are not pretty. They are grisly, painstakingly detailed work that should have one goal in mind: to find out what happened.

But in the case of Flight 800, the investigation (and the investigators) and the subsequent government conclusions were missing a key element - the truth. Moreover, they went out of their way to invent new ones to explain away what was obvious to most.

For example, a FAA radar tape is usually a useful tool in the investigatory process of airline crashes. Usually.

"When Ron Schleede of the NTSB first saw the data, he exclaimed, 'Holy Christ, this looks bad.' He added later, 'It showed this track that suggested something fast made the turn and took the airplane.'"

That was Schleede's reaction on the night of July 17, 1996. On July 18, the New York Times reported that an "unnamed government official revealed that air traffic controllers did pick up a mysterious blip that appeared to move rapidly toward the plane just before the explosion. The officials and the Times linked the radar to eye-witness sightings to a missile attack.

However, "By July 19, the government had gotten its story straight." In the end, what was obvious to everyone (radar experts, eye-witnesses and even the New York Times) was explained away.

Throughout the book the authors use of federal investigator's own words, official reports, and the curious behavior of administration operatives draws the reader into the political maze of the Clinton administration's refusal to publicly acknowledge what it knew about the demise of Flight 800.

Equally important, the book brings home the message that qualified experts (decorated war pilots, honest law enforcement personnel and experienced mariners) are not to be trusted where politics and approval ratings reign supreme.

In the end, the politics of the day dictated how an airplane disaster of this magnitude was to be investigated. The truth about Flight 800 was secondary to expediency, and the surviving families derived little comfort from the far-fetched explanations of the federal government. The authors come to the entirely damning conclusion that had Clinton told the truth on July 17, 1996, September 11, 2001 would have been just another day.

First Strike is the tale of the people who perished, of the people who watched them perish and of the people who refused to acknowledge the truth.

It was, after all, an election year.

One of my criteria for an important book is that it changes my mind about something that matters. By that standard, this is an important book.

I have always been a little uneasy about some aspects of the TWA 800 investigation. First, more than 200 witnesses reported seeing a missile, bright light or something that left a trail rising toward the airliner; second, the event was unique: aircraft accidents fall into certain categories, which become numbingly repetitious if you look into large numbers of them. Blowing up in midair is not one of those categories.

But my doubts were more or less put to rest, if not utterly eliminated, by the NTSB final report. The idea that what all those witnesses saw was not a missile rising toward the aircraft but burning fuel falling from it as the center and/or wing fuel tanks exploded -- well, it seemed a little odd that so many people couldn't tell the difference between up and down; but it's true that eyewitness testimony is notoriously inaccurate, as any police detective or judge will tell you. Physical evidence is generally more reliable.

But the main reason I more or less accepted the official probable cause was simply that I could not conceive that the NTSB, FBI, and CIA would or could collaborate on a deception in such a high-profile case.

Cashill and Sanders's book has convinced me that the most probable cause of the TWA 800 explosion was an external event, most likely a missile strike or nearby detonation. They have even convinced me it's probable that NTSB and FBI did reach a politically dictated, foregone conclusion that the airliner's destruction was caused by an explosion in the center fuel tank, set off by a hypothetical electrical spark whose source even the final NTSB investigative report acknowledges can only be guesswork.

I won't review the detailed arguments here; that's what the book is for. I will say that the book's tone is argumentative but factually based, that the controversial points (with one exception, which I'll get to) are reasonably documented and that much of the damning evidence comes from sources within the investigation or from qualified specialists.

In fairness, NTSB's accident-investigation methods are thorough, sound and painstaking. Under ordinary circumstances, I believe that there is no better agency in the world for determining probable causes of aircraft accidents. Doubtless many within the agency went about their work in the TWA 800 investigation honestly and expertly, and it's not their fault that their best judgment was overruled. But read Cashill and Sanders and tell me you don't believe the fix was in.

The last chapter contains a good summing up of why the official story doesn't hold together, but the authors should have left it there. Unfortunately, they proceed to dramatize a scenario involving a terrorist conducting a suicide mission involving a small commuter airplane loaded with high explosive. In a fiction-like device, we're treated to the terrorist pilot's history as well as his thoughts and speech as he heads his plane toward the B-747. "First strike" in the Islamic terrorism war, get it? (Actually, Islamic terrorism had already struck the World Trade Center in the attack of 1993 and Khobar Towers, shortly before TWA 800.)

Maybe it happened that way, but the evidence for that interpretation is sketchy. In what is otherwise a rational book, the authors plunge here into melodrama.

Aside from that lapse of judgment, though, the writers have made their case well. At the very least the book is worth your time, and if you come to accept its premises, I daresay you'll find the implications upsetting.

Sanders and Cashill have done a good job detailing the manifest and heavy handed coverup by the FBI, aided and abetted by people in the NTSB and FAA. The story is related in a highly readable, coherent, sometimes slow, but well documented fashion. The question has to be," How could something like this where dozens, perhaps hundreds of people had to know the official story was a lie, be perpetrated?" This question is never satisfactorily answered, but the documentation that it did occurr is persuasive. Unfortunately, the connection to government at the highest level is tenuous. The ease with which the government silenced critics is scary, but quite adequately documented. The unfortunate demise of Commander Wm. S. Donaldson probably lost the battle for truth and at this late date, any hope for truth to shine on this tragic event is probably gone. I hope this book makes it onto the best seller's list, as I think it very adequately tells the story of a perfidious government that set out to deceive the people and succeeded.

I don't know if their theory holds up, but one thing I can say - the abundance of fact and eyewitness testimony the authors cite do reveal a startling confluence of incompetence, political calculation trumping honesty, and seemingly purposeful mishandling or concealment of inconvenient data on the part of the Clinton administration ... the sum total of which might explain the former president's incessant, wrongminded bloviating during this time of war on terror: once more, seeking to lay the blame on someone else.

Also troubling is the failure of the major newspapers to ask hard questions, interview relevant witnesses and experts, and apply more skepticism to the proclamations issuing from the administration - a failure not likely to redeem their image as the bastions of leftism. Their sloppy journalism has allowed a selfish delusion to be perpetrated on the American public until now.

From the first interview until the last, many of knowledgeable witnesses with military experience, from the first surprising fact until the final revelations, you will be shocked at how much was kept hidden from public view in our present age of information. What you make of these facts is up to you.

This book is a must-read. You simply will not believe the amount of corruption and cover-up involving TWA 800 that existed in the Clinton-Gore White House, FBI, CIA, NTSB, and Justice Department. This cover-up makes Watergate look like child's play, and the fact that Bubba had a "D" after his name (for "Democrat") made his amen choir in the New York Times, et al, blindly complicit in the schemes. The current civil lawsuits against all the major corrupt players at the FBI, NTSB, and Justice Department will finally bring some justice in this sordid travesty.

Interesting, one of these players deeply involved in this criminal cover-up (and the book describes his misdeeds) ... He won't sue the authors for slander because the ultimate defense in a slander suit is TRUTH.

Read this excellent, well-written and documented book and be prepared for the shocking truth of what happended to TWA 800 & why 3,000 of our fellow citizens did not have to die on 9/11 if Bill Clinton had the guts to tell us what really happened in July 1996!

As a person that worked as a mechanic for TWA for almost 35 years, I can say that the US Government's explanation of the cause for TWA 800 to fall from the sky is highly suspect. I worked on the aircraft in question; 17119, 100's of times and many times on the systems that the government claims to have malfunctioned. It did not happen the way the government claims.

How it did happen is spread before you like a fictional mystery novel by the author in "First Strike". It is tragic that it is not fiction, because once again, our elected government has seen fit to lie to the electorate.

If the truth had been released about TWA 800, maybe 911 could have been averted. We will never know. I do know some things: More than a hundred people saw the missiles headed for TWA 800 and airplanes do not gain altitude after being blown up. The government's case relies on saying that all those people had simultaneous illusions of rising streaks of light and then asks you to suspend physics in order to make their case plausible.

The authors of "First Strike" tell you what really happened.

Impressive example of investigative journalism; it may well emerge as one of the most important and influential non-fiction works of recent years - a 'must read' for all who are thoughtfully concerned about the plight of our Nation. This well-written book presents solid evidence of official reports that were conveniently 'lost' and others quietly withheld; eyewitness testimonies that were distorted or ignored; consistent failures to honor legitimate FOIA requests for relevant information; and significant suppression of vital evidence - even its theft, destruction and 'rearrangement' to fit the account being fed to the public. All the while the major media looked the other way and busied itself silencing anything other than the fabrications being presented by complicit government investigators.

Understandably, government investigators who generated the fictional 'official' report or who were otherwise involved in the related cover-up of the facts documented in this book will not appreciate public disclosure of the evidence they worked so hard to conceal. Predictably, some may even attempt to "save face" by continuing their embarrassing cover-up; however, under the spotlight of the authors' overwhelming and irrefutable evidence, such attempts will emerge as sheer comedy, and a feeble, pathetic comedy at that.

Great book! Can't say that I "enjoyed" reading it, but that is only because the implications of its contents are so deeply disturbing. Too bad Amazon's rating system only reaches to "5"; this book definitely deserves a much higher rating.

The authors have done an excellent job in writing and stating their case in this non-fiction book! They tell you what is their speculation and document what they detail as fact. Since it is written in an investigative reporting journalistic style, it is not a book you can read in one night. But, it does periodically summarize what you have read so that you can put it down and pick it up days later and not lose the sequencing of facts.

I am wary of blindly accepting "conspiracy theories", especially about possible terrorist activities in the present climate of our nation. But this book made such a compelling argument that I filed my own "Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)" request to the FBI and the NTSB. So far only the FBI has allowed me to obtain some documents. The catch is that the ONLY "Documents available for release consist of 757 pages". Seeing as there was over a year of investigations by the FBI that included multiple interviews with over 700 eyewitnesses, research of police, Navy, and CIA involvement and participation in the investigation, etc., this is a conspicuously limited amount of documents. As I have had to pay to get a copy of them, I am still waiting for the documents to arrive. I am extremely interested in seeing what those documents contain (or lack).

I am aware of and have researched the conflicting articles (and books) that appeared in the media of the months and years following the crash. I am also aware that there was more than one government reason given for the crash. It changed every time the NTSB or witness reports made it into or were leaked to the media news (in error) and were later dispelled by the government. Since the Dan Rather Scandal in 2004, if you still believe in major media investigative reporting without bias, I might have some prime real estate development (swampland) to sell you.

The FBI was in charge of the crash investigation from day one (07/17/1996). From day one the NTSB was NOT in charge of the investigation. It was not even called in to work the crash until a day after the FBI and the Navy were. Technically, the FBI is only brought in when an accident is ruled out and a crash is considered to be a crime. Also, with the FBI in charge they can invoke the "National Security" clause to quash any news they do not want the public to know about or to limit information given out via the "Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)".

Over 100 eyewitnesses followed an object in the sky as it made a sharp turn and then saw an explosion, were not allowed to give testimony at the NTSB Congressional Investigation. I challenge you to do a web (www) search on "TWA Flight 800 Eyewitness" and see what information you find. Read the sites with an open mind and then draw your own conclusions.

While appearing on the Larry King Live show, Senator John Kerry suggested that the TWA Fight 800 was brought down by a terrorist act. At the time, I thought that maybe he had made a mistake. But on September 24, 2001, on Hardball with Chris Matthews, he casually recited a number of terrorist attacks against the U.S.A., including the mention of TWA "Flight 800" (again).

After TWA Flight 800 crashed in 1996, to which an increasing amount of people are now starting to believe that the crash might have actually been a terrorist strike, Al Gore was put in charge of the new airline and national security commission. The commission originally declared additional security measures would need to be implemented immediately in order for the airline industry to thwart the risk of terrorist activity, including the hijacking of planes. The airline industry immediately screamed bloody murder about the cost of implementing the added security measures. After a short amount of time, the major airline companies donated approximately $500,000 to the 1996 Clinton DNC Presidential Campaign. The commission backed off the "immediacy" of its requirements and changed them to be only recommendations. Without issuing the empowerment for the government agencies or commission to back these recommendations up, there was no reason for the Airline Industry to initiate them. Since 9/11, most, if not all, of those same recommendations have been put into place.

If the recommendations had been followed and the enforcement of them not possibly been bought off by special interests, it is my belief that the chance of a war in Iraq might have been greatly reduced. One can only speculate whether preventive action in the 1990's would have been sufficient to deter the September 11, 2001 tragedy, but this book gives you a lot of information to dwell on. Remember, in the first half of 1996, in a written proclamation, Usama Bin Laden formally declared war on the United States of America. Why did it take over 5 years for us to declare war on him?