Dear cj,
My intention was never to turn cj into a "Solve the TWA mystery"
project. As I introduced this series in cj#640:
> What is useful in this case, it seems to me, is to observe and take
>note of the process of cover-up and media control: How are these kinds of
>propaganda operations carried out?... What are the tricks of the trade?...
>How are media venues controlled?
Unless there's strong sentiment otherwise, we'll shift away from
TWA reports, except to refer back the case for whatever we've learned from
it.
Ideas for new topics would be considered of interest.
-rkm
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Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997
To: •••@••.••• (Richard K. Moore)
From: Elias Davidsson <•••@••.•••>
Subject: TWA cover up
I wish to comment on the following:
>Date: Sat, 8 Mar 1997
>Sender: •••@••.••• (Dave Erickson)
>Subject: Re: cj#642> TWA - Reader Comments
>
~--<snip>--~
>
> I would find the eyewitness story of someone who was on board the
> AWACS plane that tracked the missile to be a lot more believable than
> the sources that have been cited thus far.
I think that Dave has a point. If so many people are in the know, someone
might talk... BUT would they volunteer to ? Has the media asked THESE
people ? Would one get a permission to interview the military personnel
involved ? How to get their names and phone numbers ? Suppose someone of
these military personnel would wish to speak up. What would he do ? He
would try to reach a journalist. He would know that he takes lots of risks
, unless he personally knows and trusts the journalist not to divulge his
sources. The fact that even hundreds of people might know does not ensure
that the information gets publicly disseminated.
I would urge Dave, if he wishes to disprove the conspiracy theory, to
identify a number of these military personnel and interview them
personally. That is if he will be allowed to find them....Good luck. It's
surely worth the effort.
Elias Davidsson, ICELAND
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OOPS! FBI bans comments by Federal (including military) employees!
Besides - if the journalist doesn't divulge his sources, then we've
got just another "someone said", don't we?
rkm
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Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997
Sender: •••@••.••• (Joe Ferguson)
Subject: Re: TWA Flight 800
Hi Richard,
For the Network "News" as Theatrical Event thread:
--------------------------------------------------
I didn't have time to read cj#643 yesterday, but, being interested
in this subject, I intended to get to it today. After catching U.S.
mainstream news this morning, this became more relevant.
My wife likes to watch NBC's Today Show (I think it's called) despite
my criticism of it, so I often catch ten minutes of it with my coffee.
This morning they had Pierre Salinger on with his declaration that he
now has hard radar evidence that a missile downed flight 800.
You are probably acquainted with a more complete report of this by
now, but I wanted to relate how NBC handled this. After reading your
description of how you view U.S. "news" reports, I thought you'd
appreciate this.
They had a surprisingly coherent segment with Salinger explaining the
evidence he has and why it is reliable, and then for the "other side"
they presented, would you expect some kind of "expert" from the
government? Well, no, they presented the brother of one of the crash
victims! He stated simply that the friendly fire theory was "crazy"
and he wondered why the media gave Salinger any air time at all. This
segment was done as a three-way live link, so Salinger was still on.
Salinger managed to make relevant, rational responses to the purely
emotional statements of the brother, and then what's his name (Bryant
Gumball's replacement) asked: "Mr. Salinger, there are alot of people
in America who think you're a lunatic. How does this make you feel?"
I can't figure if NBC was disappointed that Pierre didn't just start
foaming at the mouth for them. But he didn't. He quite calmly stated
that he was hurt by all of the attacks and saddened by the official
response to the evidence.
After this segment they brought in some talking head official who said
"there were many lives lost ... friendly fire theory absurd ... blah
blah ..." I actually don't remember his exact wording because I was so
thrown by the previous segment: the ridiculously irrelevant pairing of
an investigative expert like Salinger with a crash-victim family member.
The only sense I can make of it is an attempt to portray anyone
relentlessly seeking the truth as the bad guy; unconcerned with the
suffering of the victims' families.
This was a really bizarre news presentation. It made me feel like
I was in a Hollywood movie or spy novel. It was totally surreal.
For the Intentional Friendly Fire Scenario thread:
----------------------------------------------------
>>From cj644:
> In our next issue, I'd like to flesh out the case for the "Intentional
> Friendly Fire" scenario. I rated that one at only 5% probability in the
> previous issue, but perhaps reconsideration is in order.
You read my mind. After reading cj#643 I was thinking "only 5% for
intentional friendly fire?"
It's not that I want to believe the government is THAT evil, but knowing
what I've heard about Ron Brown's fate, all I can say about this is, I
need to see a complete list of passengers. If it includes someone who
someone powerful really wanted eliminated, then I'm afraid 5% is too low.
To be honest, I have tried to not think about the Ron Brown story. I
want to believe it is untrue, because it's just way too unpleasant to
consider.
- Joe
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Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997
From: Charles <•••@••.•••>
To: "Richard K. Moore" <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: cj#644> TWA news update
Someone apparently raised a really wild question during PM's questions in
Parliament last week (just now broadcast on C-SPAN).
According to the questioner, an American by the name of Coleman
(affiliation unknown to me) has asserted U.S. involvement in the
** Lockerbie ** crash.
Have you heard anything about this?
- Charles -
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Dear Charles,
In mainstream media, directly after the crash, it was reported that a
notice had been put up in the local U.S. Embassy to avoid that flight, as
there had been a bomb threat. No such warning was given to the public or
those boarding the plane.
There's an interesting book by Jonathan Vankin, an editor at San Jose
Mercury, called "Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes". On p 184 et seq, he
tells of a report commissioned by Pan Am on Lockerbie, and republished in
the Toronto Star and several London newspapers. Some highlights:
- several CIA agents were on the plane, returning from Lebanon
- they seem to have been working on a hostage deal
- they stumbled onto a CIA drug-running operation & were incensed
- the bomb was evidently planted to kill the first CIA agents
- West German police heard of the plot and actually videotaped
the bomb going on board
- When the CIA was notified, they said "Don't worry about it. Don't
stop it. Let it go."
Libyans were blamed for the blast, and the blast is still being used as
part of the anti-Libyan demonization campaign. It seems that when the CIA
carries out this kind of outrage, they aim to further several different
goals at once.
KAL 007 was an equally suspicious case. The Russian fighter pilot never
got closer than 20 miles to the ill-fated plane, and the Soviets had every
reason to believe the miles-off-course airliner was a spy plane which had
crossed paths with it earlier. The overflight territory was strictly off
limits and very sensitive tests were being conducted at the time. The
Soviets claimed that the shootdown was the result of "sophisticated
provocation" and this seems to be the most accurate characterization of the
event. The U.S. exploited the event extensively over the next several
months in gaining diplomatic advantages over the Soviets, and avoiding the
necessity of making advances in East-West relations. Shades of the Gary
Powers U2 spy-plane shootdown, also engineered by the CIA, which prevented
Eisenhower from attending an important summit meeting.
rkm
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Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997
From: Charles <•••@••.•••>
To: "Richard K. Moore" <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: cj#644> TWA news update
This has been in my box for several days but I just got around to reading
it. I pass it to you on the offchance that no one else has.
- Charles -
-------------------------
To: Matthew Gaylor <•••@••.•••>
From: Ian Goddard <•••@••.•••>
Subject: 60 Minutes of Lies
Hi Matt, please forward this widely:
•••@••.••• (Johnny Johnson) wrote:
> Those of you who are not logged on J Orlin Grabbe's Web site or
> sending e-mail in the name of Leslie Stall, probably didn't see 60
> minutes on CBS tonight.
>
> In a hachet job called "Rumor Mill", Leslie Stall tried to prove
> that the INTERNET is a place where anyone can publish rumors or
> worse, false and unsustatiated information.
IAN: 60 Minutes (•••@••.•••) featured my TWA 800 webpage at
http://www.erols.com/igoddard/twa-fact.htm and tried to trash it:
Their coverage was false and intensionally designed to
mislead. From the multiple friends who have given me detailed
accounts, I know that they held up my webpage, careful to
display my name, as an example of the unreliability of the
Internet and the inability to verify claims made on the
Internet. That is a defamation of me and my work.
But most egregious, it is misleading and false because in fact
my work and webpage stands as an example of the exact OPPOSITE
of the claim that "Internet claims cannot be verified," because
there is hardly any claim made on my page that is not referenced
to sources that 60 Minutes would consider to be reliable. That
right there, claiming that "X set of statements exceed verifiability"
when in fact they are clearly referenced and thus do not exceed
verifiability, stands as proof positive of intent to defame
based upon false claims -- where "false claims" are defined
as "claims made contrary to known facts."
There are skidillion conspiracy-oriented pages that do not
reference the claims they make which 60 Minutes could have
chosen to point as examples that it's difficult to verify the
veracity of claims made on the Internet. Instead of selecting
from this abundant crop of said pages, they choose my page, a
page which provides more references for verification than almost
any other claim making webpage that you will find anywhere on
any topic. Based upon the accounts provided to me from several
friends and family members, I can state with certainty that
their presentation of my page was grossly unjust, defamatory,
misleading, and false.
I'm told that as they showed my web page they said: "With no one
policing Internet information, how can we know this is true. Look
at this list of facts, it looks so official..." Gee, the facts I
cite give references so that you can confirm that they are from
"official sources." So, debunking their alleged concern of no
ability to "police information," in fact I gave them the very means
to self-police it, and they knew that I did, so that proves that
their program was intensional slanderous B.S.. They are terrified
of the Internet and its ability to police their pseudojournalism.
Anyone videotape this program?? If so, let me know.
Also if you could send me transcripts of the period
in which they comment on my web page.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
IAN GODDARD (•••@••.•••) Q U E S T I O N A U T H O R I T Y
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
VISIT Ian Goddard's Universe -----> http://www.erols.com/igoddard
_______________________________________________________________________
TWA 800: THE FACTS --> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/twa-fact.htm
WACO - WTC - OKC ---> http://www.erols.com/igoddard/facts.htm
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Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997
From: Charles <•••@••.•••>
To: "Richard K. Moore" <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Re: cj#646> TWA news & sources
A very minor quibble about Parveez Syed's article:
it says the FBI and NTSB repeatedly `refuted' the friendly-fire theory.
`Refute' doesn't mean `deny'. It means `disprove'.
I don't think they have `refuted' anything. Do you?
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Posted by Richard K. Moore - •••@••.••• - PO Box 26 - Wexford, Ireland
Cyberlib: ftp://ftp.iol.ie/users/rkmoore/cyberlib (USA Citizen)
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