Whatever Happened to Flight 800?

I've cited author Jack Cashill a couple of times in the past. I enjoy a conspiracy theory story as much as the next person and one of Cashill's interests lies in the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island New York on July 17th, 1996 (wreckage pictured above). Cashill's article this week mentions that he and others are working on a documentary on the subject and he details what they now know about the incident, especially concernining the claimed existance of a video of the explosion showing a missle streaking toward the jetliner which was shown in several media markets around the world immediately after the crash but has since quietly disappeared....

"Reportedly, in the hours after the crash, there was a bidding war for the video in question. When the bid reached $50,000, Fox was eliminated from the process.

The high bidder seems to have been NBC and/or its new sister network, MSNBC. This makes market sense in that MSNBC had been launched just two days prior, and the publicity would have been well worth the cost.

Still, I say "seems" because my sources will not speak on record, nor will MSNBC follow up on queries. Here is exactly what I know, no more, no less.

In the summer of 2001, my partner James Sanders, and I were negotiating with Broadcast Network News (BNN) – then the world's largest independent news producer – to distribute our documentary on the subject of TWA Flight 800, "Silenced."

These were serious negotiations. The person with whom we were communicating was BNN's chief executive officer, Steve Rosenbaum.

One day that summer, Rosenbaum called me in a state of high excitement. "Jack," he said, "you will not believe the conversation I just had."

Although Rosenbaum thought our video had market potential, he was not at all convinced of our thesis, namely that missiles had been fired at TWA Flight 800. The conversation in question eliminated just about all doubt.

As Rosenbaum explained, he had been interviewing a candidate for a position as BNN's technical director at a rooftop cafe when an airplane passed overhead.

The conversation moved naturally to airplanes and then, with Rosenbaum taking the lead, to TWA Flight 800. "I've seen the video," said the candidate, who had until recently been working at MSNBC.

"You mean 'Silenced'?" said Rosenbaum, a little surprised.

"No," the candidate answered, "the video, the actual video of the plane being shot down."

As the candidate told Rosenbaum, late on the night of the crash, editors at MSNBC had the tape on their monitors when "three men in suits" came to their editing suites, removed the tape and threatened the editors with serious consequences if they ever revealed its contents."

The cited article contains some other interesting points as well. I doubt that we will ever know what happened on that night any more than we will finally untangle the Kennedy assasination, whatever became of Judge Crater, or whatever happened to Ron Brown. But it doesn't hurt to have a healthy dose of skepticism when examining the official sory of how something transpired. Especially if certain questions aren't answered properly as they tend not to go away so easily.