AF: Pilot was not impaired
     WASHINGTON ---- The pilot of an A-10 warplane that mysteriously
 veered 800 miles off course was not on drugs or impaired by alcohol
 when his jet crashed in the Rockies last April, military officials
 said Friday.
     "All the toxicology findings were negative - negative for drugs,
 negative for HIV, you name it," said Senior Master Sgt. Jim
 Katzaman, an Air Force spokesman.
     Air Force Capt. Craig Button was on a training mission when his
 attack jet veered off course April 2 and crashed near Vail, Colo.
     "They turned up absolutely nothing in the background investiga-
 tion to indicate why Capt. Button would have broke formation and
 flew off," Katzaman said.
     Button was stationed at Davis- Monthan Air Force Base near
 Tucson, Ariz.
 Knoxville News Sentinel 26 July 1997
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         Four theories remain about why TWA flight crashed
     (July 25, 1997 10:09 a.m. EDT) -- More than a year past the
 crash of TWA Flight 800, bizarre theories abound. Anybody with a
 computer hooked up to the Internet can troll through some of the
 zanier ones: a space ship shot, laser beams fired from Long
 Island, a giant bubble of natural gas popped from the ocean.
     Preposterous, and yet the chatter on the Internet and on radio
 talk shows shows a widespread belief that something beyond mechan-
 ical failure destroyed an airplane -- and the 230 people aboard --
 off Long Island on the evening of July 17, 1996.
     Here, in abbreviated form, are the four theories advanced most
 often, and the rebuttals to each.
                        The terrorist missile
 -- The scenario: Terrorists use a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft
 missile to blow up Flight 800.
 -- The rebuttal: Missiles of that type (the American Stinger, say,
 or the Russian Grail) lack the range to hit a plane flying at 13,700
 feet.
 -- Scenario II: The terrorists soup up the missile's range.
 -- Rebuttal II: Even if this is possible, a Stinger or a Grail homes
 in on an engine's heat -- and none of the 747's engines showed a
 scratch.
 The 747 explosion came from its big fuselage fuel tank, not from an
 engine.
     Anyway, a Stinger's warhead packs too little punch to cause such
 catastrophic damage.
 -- The Open Door: This refers to any doubts that still nag investi-
 gators -- to any feeling that somehow, under certain circumstances,
 the scenario just might have played out the way its backers say.
     In The Terrorist Missile scenario, there is no open door. By now,
 this theory has few subscribers.
                          The U.S. Navy missile
 -- The scenario: As part of a training drill, the cruiser Normandy
 fires a Standard anti-aircraft missile at a target missile. But the
 Standard runs terribly amok and hits Flight 800.
 -- The rebuttal: The Normandy was out of missile-firing range; at
 any rate, it fired no missiles that night.
 -- Scenario II: Of course, the Navy would say that. In bureaucratic
 self-defense, the Navy is covering the whole mess up.
     But radar tapes clearly show a track converging on Flight 800,
 and perhaps 100 witnesses saw a flare of light going upward.
 What's more, an Internet user who calls herself the wife of a TWA
 employee says Navy planes dropped flares in a hasty and unsuccessful
 effort to lure the misfired missile away from the jetliner.
 -- Rebuttal II: Nobody has found a hole in the plane's skin con-
 sistent with a missile's punching through.
    The radar track belongs to an unarmed Navy P-3 patrol plane flying
 above Flight 800.
    Several things can explain the flare of light: burning fuel ex-
 ploding upward ... the rear section of the airplane, pitching upward
 after losing its nose ... the notorious unreliability of witnesses
 to plane crashes ...
     Yes, planes dropped flares that night. But they were C-130s from
 the New York Air National Guard, dropping flares after the crash to
 help guide rescue boats.
    (Anyway, flares lure only heat-seeking missiles, not radar-guided
 missiles like the Standard. And the Navy would have had an impossibly
 short time in which to launch and maneuver planes to drop the
 flares.)
     As for the Navy's cover-up: In July 1988, the Navy did accident-
 ally shoot down a civilian plane, an Iranian airliner, killing 290
 people. But the Navy made no effort to cover up that mess, which
 happened half a world away. If the Navy came clean on that one, why
 would it cover up a shootdown in U.S. waters?
    Anyway, like most tight little societies, a warship's is gossipy,
 and hard on bumblers. Let an officer foul up in view of an enlisted
 sailor, and the whole ship will know about it by day's end.
    Among potential foul-ups, a misfired missile would rank as espec-
 ially noisy and visible.  Every one of the Normandy's 385 officers
 and sailors would know about it instantaneously. And expecting 385
 people to keep that dreadful secret for more than a year is loading
 human nature with more than it can bear.
 -- The Open Door: Investigators can't yet rule out a warhead with a
 proximity fuse -- one that exploded near, but not in, the aircraft.
                          The bomb on the plane
 -- The Scenario: A terrorist or criminal plants a bomb aboard, prob-
 ably in a piece of luggage. The suddenness of the blast gives the
 pilot no time to sense anything amiss; the cockpit voice tapes end
 without a phrase like, "Geez, what was that?"  For months, this
 scenario is the FBI's favorite.
 -- The Rebuttal: Although divers pulled 95 percent of the blown-up
 plane from the ocean, nobody has yet found any pieces with the tell-
 tale tracks of a bomb explosion -- pitting and cratering of metal,
 say, or microscopic streaks left by superhot gases.
 Also, the luggage bin -- the likeliest spot for a bomb -- showed no
 evidence of a blast. Investigators say they're dead-sure the ex-
 plosion began in that big fuel tank. What they can't pin down is
 the source of the spark that touched it off.
     Anyway, those muttering about a cover-up might look closely at
 the way the FBI and the National Safety Transportation Board worked
 together (or failed to work together) on the Flight 800 question.
     The FBI wanted the cause to be a bomb.  After all, part of the
 FBI's job is to catch airplane-bombers, and the FBI turned 700
 agents loose to catch this one.  Imagine the glory when the FBI
 paraded the suspect.
     But early on, the safety board leaned another way, toward
 mechanical failure. Only grudgingly, and only in May, did the FBI
 say it was leaning the same way. Imagine the bitter disappointment..
     The moral: The government consists of many parts, and as often
 as not, they are bureaucratic rivals.  To speak of a cover-up by
 "the government" is to assume a unity and discipline that are
 rarely there.
 -- The Open Door: Investigators say they can't yet rule out a very
 small bomb of the "shaped charge" sort near the big fuel tank.
                            The meteor strike
 -- The Scenario: A meteor (or a speeding chunk of space junk) hits
 the plane at Mach 4 speed.
 -- The Rebuttal: Satellites keep track of these things, and none of
 the satellites noted anything amiss. Besides, the mathematical odds
 of such a strike are incredibly tiny.
 -- Scenario II: Tiny, but long shots have come home before. As for
 the satellites, the government is keeping the tapes close to its
 vest -- so close as to suggest a cover-up.
 -- Rebuttal II: See above, on government's ability to cover things
 up.
 -- The Open Door: Investigators think a meteor is the least likely
 of the three scenarios with open doors. But so far, they can't rule
 it out -- can't prove a negative.
 Note: Of all the scenarios, a meteor would satisfy the most people.
 It would absolve from any fault TWA, Boeing, the Navy, the Federal
 Aviation Administration and the rest of government. A meteor strike
 is an Act of God -- and so far, no lawyer can sue him.
 By HARRY LEVINS, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
--- DB 1.39/004487
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