Men’s News Daily exclusive

In the English language, there is an old joke that the human body is actually upside-down, because the nose runs and the feet smell.  The word “smell” can mean both to give off an odor, and to perceive an odor — and dogs are famous for doing both.  So, to distinguish the two meanings, the title of this story uses the word “stinks”, which has a more negative connotation.  In English, we also use “stinks” to describe a situation that is unfair, or one that does not stand up to logical scrutiny.  Both of those meanings apply to the “dog story” that was put forth by Federal authorities to explain the presence of the chemical residue from high explosives in the wreckage of TWA Flight 800, which was destroyed in flight eight years ago today

Crash investigators found traces of PETN — a chemical compound that is found in the residue from conventional high-explosives — in certain locations in the mid-section of the fuselage of the Boeing 747 airliner.  Hundreds of eyewitnesses in three states — New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut — saw Flight 800 explode as it climbed out over the Atlantic Ocean from Kennedy International Airport on the evening of 17 July 1996.  About 290 of those eyewitnesses also reported seeing a “flare-like object” rising from the surface of the ocean toward Flight 800, and converge with it, immediately prior to the explosion.  Some of those eyewitnesses reported seeing two such objects.  But, the FBI special agent in charge of the investigation later said, “There is no missile, there never was a missile, and there’s never going to be a missile.”

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators inside the official crash inquiry, and independent civilian researchers (primarily ARAP and FIRO) outside the official inquiry, both found it hard to explain away the presence of the PETN on metal surfaces in the immediate vicinity of a gaping hole in the airliner’s fuselage.  There are actually two holes in the fuselage.  Investigative reporter James Sanders — who went inside the Calverton hangar, where the wreckage was reconstructed — stated years ago that one hole shows metal blown outward, but the other hole shows metal blown inward.  (Sanders claims that he even took photographs of those holes, but that publication of those photographs was suppressed by a Federal court order.)  The location of the two holes lines up with a streak of “red residue” across the cabin interior.  That residue is consistent with the residue of burned solid rocket fuel.

I first spoke with Sanders on the phone shortly after his first book, The Downing of TWA Flight 800, was released in paperback.  (Some of the information in that book has been questioned, and Sanders has subsequently co-authored First Strike.)  The amount of evidence presented in the first book, and the amount of apparent stonewalling and back-pedaling by Federal officials, convinced me to join FIRO in 1997.  Sanders is not a member of FIRO, but members of both FIRO and ARAP have shared information with Sanders, and vice-versa.  And, members of FIRO (myself included) and ARAP also shared an emotional dinner with James and Elizabeth Sanders after their Federal sentencing hearing on Long Island.  (One of the attorneys prosecuting the Sanders couple told me, to my face, “There really is no statute,” to cover what they were “convicted” of doing to bring the truth to light.)

By my own admission, I’m one of the least-qualified members of FIRO.  This group of less than 50 people is made up of scientists, engineers, pilots (both current and retired), businessmen, and retired crash investigators.  On the low end of the spectrum, I was granted admission to the group because of my Air Force law enforcement and anti-terrorist experience.  Little did I know that my experience as a supervisor (and “catcher”) for canine (K-9) teams would actually come in handy among such high-voltage people.  My area of research focused on what became known as the “dog story”.  Years ago, I shared some of my findings with James Sanders, and they found their way into an article, along with his own findings.  But, at least one aspect of what you are about to read has never been published in eight years of controversial research.

The “dog story” did not come out until a few months after the crash .  It only came out after persistent questions to the FBI’s James Kallstrom about the presence of the PETN.  When the PETN could not be explained away, it had to be acknowledged — and then explained away.  The official explanation is that — during a training exercise at the St. Louis airport, four months prior to the crash — an airport police officer accidentally spilled traces of explosive material during a K-9 training exercise.  That residue somehow remained inside the airliner during four months of passenger movement, vacuum cleaning, and — ultimately — one high-speed impact with the ocean, followed by weeks underwater.

The moment that I heard the “dog story”, it struck me as preposterous.  Proving that opinion, however, took years of research by myself, Sanders, and others.  There are several “loose nuts” in the structure of the Federal story, and we shall examine them.

The airliner that became famous as Flight 800 is a Boeing 747-100 airliner with registration number 17119.  The registration number (or “tail number”, because it is painted prominently on the tail) of an airliner remains constant, but the flight number can change daily if necessary, depending on the route assigned.  Therefore, when official records are needed about a particular aircraft (versus a particular service route), the registration number is used to identify that aircraft.  This point, which seems like straightforward common-sense, is one of the loosest nuts in the story.

As the WorldNetDaily article on the “dog story” has revealed, the paperwork for the purported K-9 training exercise identified only “a wide-body aircraft”, and not any particular tail number.  (In my own 1999 research, I obtained copies of the same reports.)  Airport police K-9 officers go through the Military Working Dog Training Center, located at Lackland AFB in San Antonio.  They receive the exact same training as all military K-9 handlers.  Thus, the procedures that I used to supervise a law enforcement shift in the Air Force are the same procedures that the airport police officer in St. Louis would have been expected to follow.  If my desk sergeant had noted on the Desk Blotter report that an explosive training exercise had been conducted on “one of the aircraft on our base”, I would’ve been the explosive force that he encountered that evening.  Thus, it should have been the airport police desk sergeant’s duty to ensure that the K-9 handling officer had properly recorded the correct tail number.  If the officer had failed to do this, it should’ve been the desk sergeant’s duty to send the officer back out to obtain the number.  Placing explosive material aboard a passenger aircraft is serious business, but it’s the only way to maintain the dog’s ability to detect such material.  Therefore, the records of such training are meticulous — except, of course, in this case.

According to the records obtained, though, there are other gaps in the story.  One of those gaps is that Officer Burnett claims to have planted a container of powdered explosive that had a leak.  No trained K-9 handler would do such a thing — especially aboard a transoceanic passenger airliner.  Lightning strikes do occur.  (In fact, years prior, 747 N-17119 survived a direct lightning strike while on final approach to Rome, and landed safely.)  What if a passenger lit a cigarette, and the embers came into contact with the powder?  (According to the report, the officer saw that the powder was leaking, but said it wasn’t much.  The report does not, however, describe any effort to vacuum up the powder after the purported exercise.)  The trace residue would not likely be enough to cause a damaging explosion, but it could start a quick and intense fire.  If Officer Burnett had actually done what his report claimed, then he should’ve been fired immediately for incompetence.  And, if he didn’t do it, then he should’ve been fired for falsifying official records — even if it was at the request of a senior FBI supervisor.

But, the level of incompetence shown by the reports goes much further.  According to the “block time” reports, which I obtained directly from TransWorld Airlines, the airliner left the terminal about fifteen minutes after termination of the exercise.  The problem is that explosive detection exercises are done in unoccupied areas, for a number of reasons.  So, if the aircraft was unoccupied at the time of the training exercise, then we are to believe that an entire 747 airliner was “turned around” — refueled, baggage loaded, cabin cleaned, lavatories serviced, pre-flight inspection completed, food and supplies loaded into the galleys, fresh drinking water pumped into the tanks, and hundreds of passengers boarded — all in less than fifteen minutes.  Or, we are to believe that, after the completion of all of the above, the captain of the airliner allowed explosives to be placed aboard his flight-ready aircraft.  Both are preposterous.

Reporters from the “mainstream” news media bought the FBI story without even half of the examination provided above.  (That’s because they went to journalism school; I graduated from the school of hard knocks.)  But, any real journalist knows that a story should be checked out by independent facts — those over which the subject of the story has absolutely no influence.  Based on my USAF investigative experience, I knew one source of fact-checking that no one has control over:  the weather.

This part of the story is my own exclusive research.  Jack Cashill and James Sanders have told me that they did not look into this aspect of the dog story, nor has any other known researcher.  Information obtained four years ago from US Government weather records shows that Lambert International Airport was under a strong thunderstorm system during the time preceding — and during — the purported K-9 explosive-detection exercise.  None of the K-9 handlers that I supervised would have placed explosives aboard an airliner during a thunderstorm — especially not if they discovered that one of the containers was leaking.  In addition to the possibility of detonation by lightning (the report noted that six different containers of explosives were placed on the airliner), there was also the possibility that the sample could’ve been ruined by rainwater getting into the container.  And, even if the K-9 officer had decided to do such a foolish thing, there should have been a desk sergeant and a shift supervisor to tell him “no”.  According to the story put forth by James Kallstrom, though, none of these safeguards occurred.  (As an experienced FBI investigator, I’m sure that Kallstrom should have seen all of the gaps in the story that have been pointed out here.  Apparently, he was betting that the “mainstream” news media would help him bamboozle the public.)

There is another factor that the “mainstream” media has overlooked.  That is the fact that the airport police do not own the airliner.  Therefore, if the TWA Duty Manager had seen that the police were thinking about doing something so foolish aboard one of the airliners under his control, it would’ve been his right and duty to prevent it.  The same is true of the aircraft captain.  Under both recognized tradition and Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs), the aircraft captain has final and ultimate authority in such a situation.  The pre-flight inspection checklist that pilots use is extensive (I have a copy), and it is highly unlikely that any pilot on any airline would have allowed an explosive (especially a leaking explosive) to be placed aboard an aircraft during the final hour before “block out” from the terminal.  Not only would it have been hazardous because of the storm, but the presence of the dog would have been detrimental (and scary) to the people cleaning the cabin.  Airlines pride themselves on customer service, and cleanliness is a big part of that.  I’m sure that the captain of the 747 would have said to the police officer, “This wet dog stinks.”

Unfortunately, eight years after the crash, the dog still stinks.