NEW EVIDENCE OF HAND HELD MISSILE IN TWA 800 CRASH AREA

JACK CASHILL, WORLDNET DAILY - More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him - likely by accident - one seriously smoking gun. The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney, John Clarke of Washington DC, details a communication that took place six days after the crash:

"On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis of both the videotape as well as a number of still photographs taken from various portions of the tape, the phenomenon captured by [name redacted] appeared to be consistent with the exhaust plume from a MANPAD [Man-portable air-defense] missile."

"The FBI guy who looked at this must not have read it, or not have realized what it would reveal," says Lahr. "Otherwise he would have redacted most of it as before.". . .

The earlier, unedited FBI document reports that a fellow and his friend on Long Island were attempting to videotape the sunrise when they saw and recorded "a grey trail of smoke ascending from the horizon at an angle of approximately 75 [degrees]." So compelling was the visual that the fellow made a comment to his friend, heard on the tape, "They must be testing a rocket." The fellow calculated that object was heading towards the Atlantic Ocean.

On the document Lahr first received, the story of the video ends right there. The next two paragraphs had been fully redacted.

This current unedited version shows that the FBI took the video seriously enough to bring in the DIA for further analysis. As mentioned above, the DIA found the video image to be "consistent with the exhaust plume from a MANPAD."

What is shocking is that the authorities not only removed all reference to this video from the official record, but they also removed just about all reference to the DIA. . .

An important component of the DIA is the Missile and Space Intelligence Center (MSIC), which is located in Huntsville, Alabama, and is charged with gathering intelligence on enemy surface-to-air missiles and short-range ballistic missiles.

During a Senate inquiry in May 1999, the FBI's number two man on the investigation, Lewis Schiliro, conceded that MSIC analysts had arrived on the scene in Long Island just two days after the July 17, 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 and interviewed eyewitnesses. "They reported to us," Schiliro told the senators of the MSIC analysts, "that many of the descriptions given by eyewitnesses were very consistent with the characteristics of the flight of [surface-to-air] missiles.". . .

When FBI officials shut down the criminal investigation in November 1997, they publicly discredited the eyewitnesses and fully ignored the work done by the MSIC analysts. At the final press conference, The FBI's James Kallstrom discussed only two images of a possible missile captured in flight. Both were photographic stills, and he cavalierly dismissed these as well.

There was no reference at all to the video analyzed by the DIA. In fact, there was no public mention of the DIA. The MSIC analysis was relegated to a footnote.

Nor, of course, was there any mention of the video shot on the night of July 17. From the beginning, there has been ample evidence that an amateur video had been taken of TWA Flight 800's destruction.