The idea is floated frequently that
the still nameless Russian collusion scandal is "worse than Watergate." It
may well be, but that comparison overlooks a more useful parallel.
The gold standard of government
conspiracy remains the investigation into the July 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800
off the south coast of Long Island. The ensuing cover-up involved
many of the same players as in the Russia conspiracy and for the same immediate
goal: to secure a presidential election for a Clinton.
As with the Russia scandal, not all
the collaborators in the TWA 800 case were equally motivated or equally
powerful. The White House drove the conspiracy through its Justice
Department. The CIA executed it without conscience. The
FBI grudgingly yielded to the CIA. And the New
York Times dutifully reported what the FBI whispered in its reporters'
ears.
As to the National Safety Board,
the only agency with statutory authority to investigate a domestic plane crash,
the DOJ shoved it aside on day one. The U.S. Navy brass, whose
"combatants" were responsible for the accidental shoot-down of the 747,
kept their heads down and their lips impressively sealed. They had
nothing to gain by rocking this boat.
In the TWA 800 case, as likely in
the Russian case, the collaborators never conspired as a group, and very few
among them knew the whole picture. The White House dealt with the
Navy, but the Navy had as little as possible to do with the FBI or the
CIA. The White House controlled the CIA, but the CIA did not deal
with the NTSB and only rarely with the FBI. The New York Times never
spoke to the CIA or the Navy.
The FBI talked almost exclusively
to the Times. Reporters treasure such close connections with a
source. The knowledge gleaned from these sources elevates the status
of their newspapers and, more to the point, burnishes the star of the reporter
within the newspaper.
If reporters have an inside source
that talks only to them, they will often shape the news to avoid alienating
that source. In fact, it is the rare reporter who can resist
manipulation by a key source, especially if the source is telling a story that
suits the politics of the newsroom.
This pattern of seduction and
manipulation seems to have shaped the reporting in the Russia investigation as
well. How else to explain a Times headline as implausible
and borderline comic as "F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties
to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims"?
In my own conversations with at
least two of the Times reporters involved in the TWA 800 case, one in
person, I was impressed by how little they knew about critical elements of the
case, including the CIA participation.
As revealed in a recently unearthed
cache of CIA documents, "[t]he DI [directorate of intelligence] became
involved in the 'missile theory' the day after the crash
occurred." According to the CIA, within two weeks of the
disaster, FBI agents had interviewed 144 "excellent" eyewitnesses to
a likely missile strike and found the evidence for such a strike
"overwhelming." The CIA analyst boasted of discouraging
the FBI from releasing its missile report. He seems to have
succeeded.
Two weeks later, the FBI permitted
the Times to interview one and only one eyewitness. That
witness saw the event out of the corner of his eye and thought it was a
bomb. He was the only eyewitness the Times would interview
from that day forward.
At the FBI's direction,
the Times ran an above-the-fold, front-page headline on August 23,
1996, "Prime Evidence Found That Device Exploded in Cabin of TWA
800." The conspirators had settled on a bomb as a sellable and
less scary explanation than a missile. For weeks, at the FBI's
direction, the Times ran stories about explosive residue found
throughout the plane.
On September 19, two months after
the disaster, the Times signaled the government's switch from a
"bomb" to a "mechanical failure alone." On
September 20, to explain away the explosive residue throughout the aircraft,
the FBI claimed that the TWA 800 aircraft had "previously been used in a
law enforcement training exercise for bomb-detection dogs."
As independent researchers easily
proved, the exercise in question did not take place on the TWA 800 plane, and
the training aids did not match in placement or in composition the explosive
residue found after the crash. The Times never questioned
the police officer who did the training, nor did its reporters ever question
the FBI about the inconsistencies – even though they were obvious at the time
to anyone paying attention.
Hovering above TWA 800 the moment
it exploded was a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion with its transponder off. The
P-3 plays a critical role in missile tests relaying information among the
various "combatants," in this instance a cruiser and three subs that
were in the "immediate vicinity" of the crash site.
Times readers never knew that
the P-3 was there. The Times never asked any Naval officer a
single question. Indeed, by November 1996, its editors and reporters
were openly mocking anyone who suggested Navy involvement.
The collaborators had one final
challenge before they could close the investigation: how to explain the
250-plus eyewitnesses – including military people, pilots, fishermen, and at
least one person with a video camera – who saw a missile or missiles
strike the 747. Someone near the top of this conspiracy took the
task away from an untrustworthy FBI and assigned it to the CIA, specifically
two CIA analysts who had no relevant expertise.
The FBI turned over the witness
statements grudgingly. By late 1996, after reviewing just a fraction
of those statements, the CIA analysts concluded that a spontaneous fuel tank
explosion blew off the cockpit of the 747. Then the flaming,
nose-less fuselage streaked straight up more than three thousand feet, leading
the eyewitnesses to think they had seen missiles – a preposterous scenario that
went unchallenged by the media.
In November 1997, in closing the
criminal case, the FBI showed an animation of this alleged zoom climb and
attributed it to the CIA. The Times asked no questions
about CIA involvement – ever – even after the world learned about the
"wall" that prevented these two agencies from cooperating in the
run-up to 9-11. Times readers still do not know that the author of
the "wall" memo, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, also oversaw
the cooperation between the FBI and the CIA on the TWA 800 investigation after she
wrote the memo.
As troubling as the TWA 800
investigation was, the Russia case appears to be more troubling
still. TWA 800 was a conspiracy of concealment. These are
commonplace in all governments everywhere.
The Russia case involves a
conspiracy of concealment, the Hillary investigation, and a
much less common conspiracy of execution, the Trump
investigation. Neither conspiracy could ever have succeeded without
the cooperation of the major media, the New York Times in particular.
There are, however, two major
differences between 1996 and 2016, and they will affect the outcome of the
Russia case. One is the internet. The other is Donald
Trump. Here is hoping the collapse of the latter conspiracy will
lead to the exposure of the former.
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/05/how_the_fbi_cia_and_nyt_collaborated_to_sway_the_1996_election.html#ixzz5GFwOEzzw
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