The Flight 800 Investigation

Over the past several months Cmdr. Donaldson has uncovered significant new information that clearly shows that Flight 800 was shot down by one or more shoulder-fired missiles, that the FBI, the Justice Department and the Administration knew this from the beginning and spent the last 2 1/2 years trying to contain that fact. The highlights of this new information are contained in a letter to the CEOs of Boeing and TWA, dated April 5, 1999. The letter is in PDF format and will require Adobe Acrobat Reader. The letter is also available in text format.

Additional documents from the Navy's Supervisor of Salvage Report includes: 

Wreckage Distribution Diagram - pdf format or gif format. 
 
 
 
 

Trawling Map (pdf format) which shows "Per FBI: Possible Missile Launch Zone". This version of the Trawling map comes from the Supervisor of Salvage Report. The version provided to the Trawler captains has the "Possible Missile Launch Zone" (gif format) annotated. You can see from the annotated version of the trawling map that the trawling effort was specifically coordinated to cover what the FBI thought was the radius of the maximum range of the Stinger missile, 2.7 nautical miles. 

Search Area Diagram (pdf format) as shown in the Supervisor of Salvage report. 

When you overlay the FBI trawling area of 2.7 NM, (gif format), to recover parts of the aircraft and on the larger Search Area Diagram you can clearly see the purpose of the trawling effort was not bodies as claimed by the NTSB and FBI. It was focused only on the 2.7 NM radius of a possible MANPADS missile. Most of the search area was north and west of the flight path, areas where there was no expected debris from the crash.

The purpose of the Dredging Operation is even more evident when you overlay the dredged area with the Islip Radar contacts (gif format)  from the point of the last Secondary return (20:30 to 20:50). It clearly shows the 30 knot radar contact was within the radius of the short-range version of the Stinger when the aircraft exploded and fled the area at high speed over the next 20 minutes. It is clear that the dredging operation was for the purpose of recovering the missile evidence and the last scavenge pump. However, if they really wanted to find the last scavenge pump, they would have dredged the area where the majority of the wreckage was located. 

The FBI manned the trawlers hired to dredge up debris 24 hours a day. They were specifically looking for three items: a Stinger Missile Ejector-motor can, the Stinger Battery Cooling Unit, and the last Scavenge Pump which has not yet been found. Their intention was to conceal the discovery of these items from other Interested Parties, which includes TWA and Boeing. 

This is documented in the FBI Trawler Operations Manual, which the FBI left behind on one of the trawlers.  Other documents provided to the FBI missile-team clearly show that a shoulder-fired missile could have shot down Flight 800. 

The China Lake Naval Warfare Center report on the possibility of a MANPADS missile impact is inconclusive with respect to whether or not a shoulder-fired missile could have penetrated the wing tank adjacent to the CWT and exploded in the fuel. However, all of the damage to the left wing and left CWT side wall is consistent with this type of impact. They recommend several follow up tests to determine conclusively if a shoulder-fired missile was responsible, but neither the NTSB or the FBI requested that the tests be conducted. 

The FBI Agents, who have been ordered not to answer Cmdr. Donaldson's questions in the past, have now been ordered to avoid all contact. His calls to NTSB officials are now answered only by their attorneys. Because Cmdr. Donaldson was brought into the Sanders case as a defense consultant, he was first able to see detailed photographs, taken by Mr. Sanders of the Center Tank left side of body wall fracture pieces, in late March. These pictures were taken by Mr. Sanders at the request of Cmdr Donaldson during the discovery trial phase as allowed by a Federal judge. The pictures strongly suggest the left side of body wall of the center tank was blown into the tank at extremely high energy, not outward as the NTSB theory implies. When Cmdr. Donaldson called the NTSB and left voice-mail requesting to see the NTSB "Fracture Edge Analysis" of CWT left side of body wall parts, an NTSB attorney called back in minutes in a somewhat anxious state. The lawyer suggested such testing need not be done. Incredulous, Cmdr Donaldson informed him that any NTSB Final Report blaming a center wing tank failure without determining which way that wall exploded would be a farce.

A Thermal Imaging photograph provided by military experts shows that a MANPADS missile would guide on the three Air Packs located directly below the Center Fuel Tank.

The Stinger Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) is representative of many such systems available to terrorists groups.