EmergencyNet NEWS Service
Thursday, July 18, 1996
Vol. 2 - 200

ENN 7/18/96 10:36CDT

JETLINER EXPLODES OVER NEW YORK'S LONG ISLAND ...
By Steve Macko, ENN Editor

NEW YORK CITY (ENN) - A TWA jumbo jet to exploded over the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff on Wednesday evening. All 229 people aboard were killed. On Thursday morning, recovery operations had pulled about 73 bodies out of the water. Many of the bodies were said to have been badly burned.

TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747, was bound for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. The plane, according to many eyewitnesses, exploded at about 2045 EDT and plunged into the ocean off Fire Island, which is a narrow strip of land 40 miles east of New York City that runs parallel to Long Island.

Wreckage and fuel on the water burned for several hours as U.S. Coast Guard helicopters and U.S. Navy planes hovered and flew over the crash site. Seven Coast Guard cutters and ten smaller vessels were rushed to the scene. They were joined by numerous other boats. Crews used night vision goggles to help spot bodies and debris.
A Suffolk County, New York, official said, "Some bodies appear to have been badly burned and charred."

Though there is no evidence as of yet, but speculation turned to the possibility of a terrorist incident. An FBI spokesman said, "It's too early to tell if it's a bomb." However, a high-ranking police source at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey told CBS News that officials suspected foul play.

All of the eyewitnesses told virtually the same story. One man who was fishing at the time of the crash said, "It started off like a little ball, like a flare. It came down for a few seconds and all of a sudden burst into flames, a big ball of flame." Another man said, "I saw a big fireball with pieces coming off of it. I heard two big explosions, like two big firecrackers going off." A colonel with the New York Air National Guard was flying in a cargo plane about ten miles away when he saw the explosion. He told, "I saw two large orange fireballs. They looked like comets, coming straight down into the water."

A woman described what she saw, by saying, "There was a loud explosion, which was followed by a fireball. The plane literally dropped out of the sky ... and it hit the ocean, sort of like the space shuttle did, and there were five more explosions."

According to a TWA vice president, there were 212 passengers and 17 crew members on the flight. The plane had arrived from Athens, Greece and had been on the ground at JFK Airport for about three hours before it was scheduled for a 2000 EDT takeoff for Paris. The vice president also said that the Federal Aviation Administration had been placed on an increased level of security because of the upcoming Olympic Games which are to begin on Friday in Atlanta. But, he said, there have been no specific threats made against TWA.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash along with the terrorism task force, which includes members of the FBI, the New York City Police Department and several other federal law enforcement agencies.

Buck Revell, a former FBI terrorism expert, said that such a jet had never been destroyed in the air by an explosion that was not sabotage. Vincent Cannistrano, a former CIA counterterrorism expert, said that if it was a bomb "this is another notch up the ladder of terrorism ... in the past year domestic aviation security has been tightened considerably." He said that terrorists have never blown up an airliner with a bomb planted in the U.S.

In Atlanta, a retired FAA spokesman Jack Barker said that it was quite likely a bomb had been placed aboard the aircraft. He said, "You don't want to speculate about what has happened until the NTSB and the FBI have made their investigation, but it certainly is reminiscent of the Lockerbie explosion and in the realm of speculation. The explosion in the air, the fire -- there had to be some kind of ignition in the air, and that could be caused by only a very few things. A bomb being on board could be one of them. The other has already been ruled out by the FAA -- a collision with another aircraft. Aside from those two things, for anything else to cause an explosion would be very, very rare."

Robert Kupperman, senior advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and well-known terrorism expert, said that he noted several pieces of evidence that make him believe that this was a likely terrorist bombing. He said the signs indicating a terrorist incident were: All of the eyewitnesses describing a fireball and subsequent explosion; It was a U.S. aircraft enroute to Europe; Terrorists in late June attacked a U.S. military facility in Saudi Arabia; And the Summer Olympic Games are starting this week in Atlanta.

Kupperman said, "The potential, especially with the interest in disruption of the peace process in the Mideast, plus normal stability problems, makes me quite suspicious. There's motivation, wherewithal and technical means to carry out an attack."

A counterterrorism task force from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York Police Department will lead an investigation into the air crash. But officials were not saying that this was an act of terrorism as of yet. In a statement, the FBI said, "While the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force is not prepared to declare the incident to be terrorist-related, the investigation will be conducted by the task force. Based upon the FBI's jurisdiction under federal law, the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force will assume leadership of the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the possible explosion which occurred on TWA Flight 800."

Other law enforcement agencies that are included in the task force are: the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Customs Service, the INS, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and other local agencies.

Internationally, the government of South Korea quickly tightened security checks for flights to and from the United States. A police official in Seoul said, "In view of the possiblity of a terrorist attack on the airliner, we have decided to strengthen security drills at the airport, particularly flights to and from the United States. Tighter security checks would continue until the end of the Olympics."

In Pakistan, security at the country's main Karachi international airport was tightened. An official said that all fights, particularly coming from and leaving for New York were being checked throughly.

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