03x04 - Fire in the Sky: TWA Flight 800

[bunniefuu]

- A Boeing 747-100
en route to Paris from JFK

went down off the
southern shore of Long Island

about 50 miles east
of Manhattan.

- It was a horrific scene.

It touched the psyche
of the American public.

- 212 passengers and a crew
of 17 were reported on board.

It is believed
none have survived.

- This is the first time

that the FBI ever reconstructed
a huge plane like this.

- It was unprecedented.

Recovered over 96%
of this aircraft

over a series
of a year and a half.

- Unless it's criminal
in nature,

the FBI's
not gonna be brought in.

But we don't know
what happened, right?

- From 1982, there were
approximately 1,000 people

that were k*lled in airplane
incidents involving terrorism.

- We were feeling, "My God,"
you know,

"We have another t*rror1st act
here."

- In the FBI, we make
a lot of headlines.

Drug busts,

mob stings,

t*rror1st takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people
want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze!
- FBI.

- FBI!
- Action!

- But they don't know
the half of it.

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking
agent to agent.

This is "FBI True."

- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year
veteran of the FBI.

She worked on cases
that included

organized crime and terrorism

and took part in multinational
investigations

into drug trafficking
and money laundering.

Coppola finished her career
with the Los Angeles division

running two offices,
supervising investigations,

and providing undercover
security for special events.

- I know you guys worked the
TWA Flight 800 case together.

And when I first came into
the Bureau,

that had just
recently happened

about six or seven
months prior.

And there were, you know,

a lot of people
still working on that case.

- You have an airplane
that fell into the ocean

on a beautifully clear night.

The top story that night
on all the news channels.

- Witnesses say they heard
at least one expl*si*n,

maybe two,
and then some witnesses say

they saw in the sky something
that looked like a fireball.

The jet had come from Athens,
Greece to JFK.

It was on the ground
in New York

for about three hours
before heading to Paris.

20 minutes later,
it vanished from radar screens

and at this point,
there is no word

if the pilots
made a distress call.

- And having seen it
on television,

I called down to the office
to see, you know,

if they needed any help.

And the next day,

they asked me to come out
and give a hand

out in East Moriches
where we had set up

a forward command post
for the recovery effort.

- For over 20 years,
Kenneth Maxwell served

in a variety of positions
in the Bureau.

A member of the FBI's
Joint Terrorism Task Force,

he led investigations into

major international t*rror1st
attacks on U.S. citizens.

Maxwell managed
the FBI's immediate response

to the attack on the
World Trade Center on 9/11.

- We immediately responded,
as the Bureau always does,

in any type of major event,

especially one
of this magnitude.

- Rescue workers
worked through the night

recovering wreckage
and human remains.

Now, the investigation
this morning is being led

by a task force from the FBI
and New York City police.

- There were 229 people
on board the Paris-bound 747,

TWA Flight 800.

No survivors have been found.

- It was a horrific scene.

It touched the psyche
of the American public.

- Neil Herman spent 25 years

working domestic and
international terrorism cases

out of New York City.

He was a supervisor

on the FBI's
Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Herman is the recipient
of the prestigious

FBI Director's Award
for his counterterrorism work.

- Others might not know that
unless it's criminal in nature,

the FBI's not gonna be
brought in.

But we don't' know
what happened, right?

- The fact remained we
didn't know what caused this,

so we had to go into it
with an open mind

and we ran an investigation

coupled with the National
Transportation Safety Board.

- The National Transportation
Safety Board, or NTSB,

is a U.S. government agency
responsible for investigating

civil transportation
accidents.

As the NTSB investigate

whether a mechanical failure
was responsible,

the FBI explore a
more frightening possibility:

sabotage.

- A number of former
investigators have said

you have to put the
possibility of a b*mb

or sabotage at the very top of
the list of possible suspects

because as one said to me,
Russ, just a short time ago,

747s just don't blow up
in the sky without some help.

This is an airplane that has
a very good track record,

a very good safety record.

- You gotta remember that

everything that touched
that plane once it landed

from Europe
at JFK International

was in effect part
of that investigation.

We had massive investigations
into the airport,

we had agents shuttling in and
out over long periods of time.

- These things time,
but I'm very, very confident

that we will,
as I said last night,

get to the bottom of this.

- Jim Kallstrom, rest his soul,

took the bull by the horns
and he said,

"I'm in charge
of this investigation.

We have to have command
and control,"

and everybody said,
"You're right, Jim,"

and it went from there.

- Federal investigators say

at least 65 bodies
have now been recovered.

- We were pretty certain
early on

that it was
of a catastrophic nature,

the breakup of this aircraft

and the altitude
it came down from,

it was highly unlikely there
were gonna be any survivors.

But a human body still
can be powerful evidence

as far as blast damage,
as far as expl*sive residue.

All of that had to take place

in those immediate
first few days.

The dive teams, FBI dive team,

Suffolk County, NYPD,
Nassau PD,

whatever law enforcement
agency had divers.

- They were out there.
- They were out there.

Recovering victims
of this awful event.

- I remember you had people

still strapped into
their seats.

- It was amazing that

some of the victims' bodies
were fairly well intact

and very recognizable.

The divers recovered them
on the ocean floor.

And others, you know,
through time and sea life

and all the other
environmental factors,

the bodies
were no longer intact

and we were
recovering body parts.

Then add to that
when the weather got too bad

for all of our dive teams,

we leased three or four
scallop trawlers

with four agents
on each scallop trawler.

That was 24/7.

And the agents' job was

when those nets landed
on the deck of the trawler,

they would separate
airplane parts

and human remains
from sea life,

and the crew took care
of the sea life

and the agents maintaining
the chain of custody.

I remember Jim Kallstrom
relating to me

that Charlie Christopher,

who worked for him
in special operations,

his wife was one of
the flight attendants

who perished that night.

And Charlie calling Jim and
just saying, "Please, Jim,"

you know,
"Do whatever you have to do

to find out
what happened to my wife."

It was devastating
to all of the families,

but it took on that
personal touch, if you will,

that one of our own colleagues

lost his lovely wife
that evening.

- We do not yet know what
caused Flight 800 to crash,

whether it was
mechanical failure or sabotage.

But we will find out.

- You have to remember,
for 3 1/2 years

that led up this tragic event,

we had been working on the
World Trade Center bombing.

- The expl*si*n ripped through

the World Trade Center's
Twin Towers yesterday,

apparently from a car b*mb
in an underground garage.

Five people were k*lled,
more than a thousand injured.

- We had this
ongoing investigation involving

what was known as Manila Air,
or the Bojinka plot.

- Two bombs were supposed
to explode simultaneously

aboard two United Airlines
747s.

One would be arriving
from Los Angeles,

the other from Singapore.

- We were feeling, "My God,"
you know,

"We have another
t*rror1st act here."

Did someone on board
commit a suicide bombing?

OR was there a b*mb
like Pan Am 103

that was set into
the cargo bay?

- 52 minutes after departing
London's Heathrow Airport,

Pan Am Flight 103
crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland.

All aboard are dead.

- People from 21 countries
filled these coffins.

189 of them were American.

- From 1982 until the event
of TWA Flight 800,

there were approximately
1,000 people that were k*lled

in airplane incidents
involving terrorism.

The first weeks and months, we
were doing all that we could

to eliminate certain
potential criminal acts.

- Every single passenger
had to be vetted out,

because you're looking at

any variety of
different causes here.

The law is very strict
with an aircraft accident.

There's only two agencies
that are allowed access

to the manifest:
NTSB and the FBI.

The manifest is so important
in events like this

with aviation disasters.

There may be suspects
on there--look at 9/11.

- Sure, yeah.
- You know?

And the manifests were key

in very quickly
identifying the hijackers.

So there's a real solid basis
for getting that manifest

and vetting it out fully.

- You have agents and analysts
running their history,

their background,
where they coming from,

what were they doing,
you know, all that stuff.

- Right.

- Agents cross-reference
the names on the manifest

with police reports
from the surrounding areas

and review potentially
suspicious internet traffic,

telephone calls,
and letters from the days

leading up to the tragedy,

but they soon conclude that

none of the victims
played a role in the disaster.

- But then at the same token,
you're doing recovery,

you're doing
the evidence portion of it,

and from what I remember,
this is the first time

that the FBI ever reconstructed
a huge plane like this, right?

- You can't get a conviction,
necessarily,

in any criminal matter

just based upon
eyewitness testimony,

so you have to look
to the evidence.

What does the FBI do very well?

Collect evidence
and forensically analyze it.

- To reconstruct the aircraft,

the investigators
set themselves up

in a former
Grumman aircraft facility

in Calverton, New York.

Maxwell leads the FBI's daily
operations at the hangar.

- Now think about this
for a second.

What do we have here?

- Water.
- The ocean.

- Rescuers said their job was
made harder by three things--

the darkness--
there was no moon--

a five mile-long oil slick
left by the burning fuel

in the fully loaded aircraft,

and the water, 120 feet deep.

- It was unprecedented.

Recovered over 96%
of this aircraft

over a series
of a year and a half

and then taking
all of that debris,

millions of pieces of debris,

some as large as an almost
intact wing of a 747,

to small bits of metal and
fabric and personal effects

that all had to be collected
and analyzed forensically.

- So you guys are collecting
all this evidence...

- Yeah.

- Trying to
reconstruct the plane

and in your mind you're like,
"How are we gonna do this?"

- Yeah.

- How do you know
what piece goes where?

Does somebody say,
"Hey, we're gonna need help

from so-and-so,"
and you make a phone call?

What happens?

- The way the NTSB works,

when there's
an aircraft accident,

they bring in anyone
who has any type of role

in that aircraft.

That means the aircraft
manufacturer, Boeing,

that means the airline itself,
TWA,

that means people who knew
where things belong

in the aircraft.

Gridding it out
with the shape a 747, right?

Fuselage, the wings.
- Yeah, I remember.

- And then we have
separate rooms

for different parts of the
airplane that were coming in.

It was a Herculean effort.

And not only the fuselage
of the 92-foot section,

which was awesome
in and of itself

to be able to do that.

Thousands of man-hours
put into that.

We had another hangar

that was dedicated to the
reconstruction of the cabin.

You know, row-by-row
and galley by galley

and lavatory by lavatory.

We were fortunate
that because the seats,

the numbers and letters were
on the arm rests of the seats,

it really facilitated

the reconstruction
of the cabin area.

- Can you tell me
what it was like

when the families
were allowed to come out

to see the reconstruction?

- So the families arrived
to view this incredible effort

to put together the airplane

where their loved ones
were lost.

- Almost seven months
after the crash,

family members were taken
by investigators

to the hangar where the bits
and pieces of the plane

had been reassembled.

- It was exceedingly emotional
to witness this.

- We went in to see the seat
that Jamie was sitting in,

and looking at that,

I know it was
the last place that he had been

and we were given white roses

and each one of us
put a white rose in the seat.

- And we were very aware
of how hard this would be

not only
for the victims' families,

but the law enforcement
personnel.

- When you look
at the empty seats

that are charred
and busted up and mangled,

you immediately
run through your mind,

"These seats were full at one
time and they were full of life

"and full of people
and children

and husbands and wives,"
and it's just so upsetting

to see them sitting there
like that.

- As the FBI continues
its investigation,

the results
from forensic analysis

seemingly
confirm their worst fears.

- As a result of
scientific analysis

conducted by federal examiners,

microscopic expl*sive traces
of unknown origin

have been found
relating to TWA Flight 800.

- It was discovered
at Washington in our lab

that there were five separate--
five separate confirmations

of high expl*sive residue
found among that debris.

The attorney general
and the FBI,

they were gonna declare this
a criminal act

just based upon that.

And then at the 11th hour, it
came to the Bureau's attention

that the same aircraft
was out of St. Louis

a month prior in June

and St. Louis Airport police
b*mb dog and the handler

used that aircraft for...
both: Training.

- That's done often.

The b*mb dog handler actually

planted different kinds
of expl*sives

in the cabin area
and the galley

just to see
if the dog would find it.

When that news came in,
they said, "Time out."

You know?
"What do we got here?"

And so what we were
able to determine

from the thorough interview
of that police officer

was that
four of the five confirmations

could have come
from that training

because they were very similar
expl*sive chemicals

that he had secreted.

One, however, to this day,
remains unexplained.

- Investigators examining the
wreckage of TWA Flight 800

have found traces of a chemical
often used in expl*sives.

- RDX, which is a
high expl*sive chemical

usually found
in military ordinance,

was recovered
off the aft cargo bay curtain.

You couldn't say,
"Oh, those expl*sive residues

definitely came
from that dog training."

But standing alone
wasn't enough

to declare that it was a crime
because the bottom line was

forensically,
you couldn't match the residue

with any type of
physical damage

to the metal structure
of the plane.

- When you're looking at
potential terrorism avenue,

it's ruled out, then.

You rule out that it--
- Right. It gets ruled out.

- But there were
certain questions

that couldn't be explained that
were left in the gray area.

For instance,
in the m*ssile theory...

- Another major theory
investigators are following

is that Flight 800 may have
been brought down by a m*ssile.

- There were very
compelling eyewitnesses

giving us detailed accounts
of seeing something

ascend into the sky

and then seeing an expl*si*n
after following this trail.

- And more than one witness.

- Hundreds of people.
- Right. Yeah.

People seeing the same thing.

- Right.
Hundreds of people.

So of course,
that was the starting point.

It was plausible that a
m*ssile could have risen

from the surface
and taken this plane out.

- We do have some information

that there was something
in the sky.

A number of people
have seen it.

A number of people have
described it very similarly.

- And we seen this white light,
looked almost like a flare

glowing in the sky.

- Scores of witnesses
tell the same story.

- It was going
on a downward trail,

but very, very, slow.

I mean, it was moving, like,
that slow.

And then it just,
boom, just exploded.

- What was it?

- That is one of
the principle anomalies

in this whole investigation.

What was it?

- There were some
eyewitness accounts

that make it sound as if

a m*ssile
could have been involved.

There is precious else
to support that at this stage.

Nothing in the radar
leads anybody to believe

that there was
a m*ssile involved.

- The CIA had a group
of their experts and analysts

look at all of our
eyewitness accounts

and apply science to it

in terms of where
was this person standing,

the distance from the horizon,
and they came to the conclusion

that what they really saw
at that distance

was the illusion
of something ascending.

They really saw debris
descending and falling.

- Falling, descending.

- So that theory
was put to bed.

- The investigation began
and lasted, in effect,

for almost a year and a half.

- And that's when
the FBI withdrew

from the investigation,
turned it over to the NTSB,

and let them
draw the final conclusion.

- Each Boeing 747 is equipped
with seven fuel tanks,

one in the belly
and three in each wing,

and connected to the tanks are
14 electrically powered pumps.

Some investigators suggest

an electrical spark
coupled with a fuel leak,

may have caused TWA 800
to explode.

- And they drew the conclusion

that the vapors in the center
wing tank had heated up

and made those vapors
more volatile

and that at a certain point,

a spark ignited
the center wing tank

and caused the catastrophic
breakup of the aircraft,

so the NTSB
came to the conclusion,

"Well, it must have
been some faulty wiring

that caused the ignition,"
because this was an aged 747,

one of the first ones
off the line.

Because of the age
of the aircraft,

there had to have been
some type of sparking event

that created the ignition
for the expl*si*n.

That's our probable cause.

Now again,
that standard is different

from what the FBI
would be required to do.

I'm not saying
that they were wrong,

and I hesitate on saying this
in a public venue

because there are still
families out there

suffering from this,
but from my perspective,

that's still
an unresolved question.

There was a certain amount
of anomalies

and strange phenomena
that occurred here

that created such a doubt
in my own mind

that I cannot,
as a professional,

accept that final cause
that's in the report.

And that's all I'm gonna say.

- Do you feel the same way,
Neil?

'Cause you did not
come to any resolution.

- It was very frustrating

because we went down
so many avenues

and were unable
to come to a conclusion

and in the end, there were
these unanswered questions

that sort of
left the doubt out there

as to what actually
really caused this.

- 16 buses
brought the families

from Kennedy Airport
to the edge of the Atlantic,

the ocean where they lost
their fathers and mothers,

their sons and daughters,

and then everyone walked down
to the water's edge.

Wreaths were rowed out
into the surf.

Some mourners waded in
on their own,

ankle-deep in the waters

where many of their relatives
are still missing.

They cast their sorrow
into the sea.

- I've always said
from the beginning

and I say it today
that we really don't know

what caused the demise
of these 230 lost souls

in a very definitive,
final way.

Having spent
a good deal of my life,

17 1/2 months
on this investigation,

it'll haunt me to my grave
not knowing in my own heart

what conclusively happened
to this plane.