Twenty-Five Years After the Crash of TWA 800
As to my own involvement with this story, until the evening of February 23, 2000, I was as naïve as a CNN anchor. Before that evening, I would have dismissed out of hand anyone who dared suggest that elements of the FBI and CIA would conspire with the White House and the New York Times to cover up the cause of so public a disaster.
February 23, 2000, was the night my education began.
Earlier that evening I had listened with some interest at a Kansas City country club as investigative reporter James Sanders spoke about his inquiry into the 747’s fate. At a dinner afterward, I found myself sitting next to James’s wife, Elizabeth. A sweet and soft-spoken woman of Philippine descent, she filled me in on the personal details. At the time of the disaster, she was a trainer for TWA. She had been a flight attendant for some years before that.
Of the 230 people killed on that ill-fated flight, 53 were TWA employees, many of them Elizabeth’s friends. At one of the numerous memorial services, Elizabeth introduced James to Terry Stacey, a 747 manager, and pilot who was working on the investigation.
and this,
“She never took her eyes off the aircraft during this time,” the 302 continued. “At the instant the smoke trail ended at the aircraft’s right wing, she heard a loud sharp noise which sounded like a firecracker had just exploded at her feet. She then observed a fire at the aircraft followed by one or two secondary explosions which had a deeper sound. She then observed the front of the aircraft separate from the back. She then observed burning pieces of debris falling from the aircraft.”
Weeks before the FBI and the NTSB were able to piece together the break-up sequence of the aircraft, Witness 73 had nailed it. According to a later FBI 302, however, when agents went back to Witness 73 for a second interview, she admitted she had been drinking “Long Island Iced Teas” before the crash and wasn’t quite sure what she had seen.
When I asked her about the drinks during our 2009 conversation, she told me, “I don’t even know what a ‘Long Island Ice Tea’ is.”
“Could it have been another drink?” I asked.
“No,” she told me. “I don’t drink, not at all. And there’s something else you don’t know, something stranger. There was no second interview. They made it all up.”