03/18/98
The MSNBC cable channel is getting a lot of mileage out of President Clinton's latest sex scandal. Ratings are up so much that Chris Matthews political show, Hardball, has been expanded to an hour. But another more serious scandal—this one involving the deaths of 230 people—deserves at least some coverage. The Village Voice newspaper in New York has just published an interview with a credible witness who saw a vessel or ship in the area off Long Island about the time that TWA Flight 800 blew up. The sensational implication is that this ship might be connected to the eyewitness reports of a missile striking the aircraft.
The Village Voice is a newspaper with a left-wing bent, but this story goes beyond ideology. As you know, Accuracy in Media has consistently been questioning the government's suggestion that fuel vapors in the central fuel tank could have caused an explosion which brought the plane down. There is simply no evidence for this dubious theory. Based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and other experts, the evidence suggests that a missile or missiles brought the plane down. The real debate is whether the missiles came from a Navy ship, conducting exercises in the area, or from terrorists.
This issue is far more important than what Monica Lewinsky did with President Clinton. After all, nobody died in that scandal. In contrast, the TWA case raises the issue of a high-level cover-up over what caused the deaths of 230 people. Is the truth too embarrassing to disclose? Or is it being withheld for national security reasons because it betrays our vulnerability to terrorist attack?
In the wake of the Village Voice expose, the evidence of cover-up can no longer be ignored. The Village Voice adds new information to the story by quoting a former Navy pilot named Dean Seward as saying that he saw a warship about three miles offshore. Seward says he recognized the vessel as being one of the Aegis-class. These are highly computerized ships armed with surface-to-air missiles powerful enough to down a jumbo jet. Seward thought it was a U.S. Navy ship, but other information now indicates that it could have been a Canadian ship participating in a joint exercise.
We now know that there was a Navy exercise off the Long Island Coast that evening. The Voice notes that there is evidence that the FBI was actively investigating the possibility that remnants of a drone missile were recovered from the ocean floor.
The Navy, of course, has denied any role in the destruction of TWA Flight 800. The Navy claimed its only ship near the crash site was the USS Normandy, then 185 miles away. But the Navy has not been entirely candid in telling the public what transpired that night. It has had to admit that it had three submarines in the area, after having denied having any vessels there. In any case, the government's theory of what happened has been further discredited. It's time to get to the bottom of this cover-up.