haag, i have called and called and called and -- nothing. that is what i'm getting from the phone calls right now. flight twa had taken off when suddenly it had slammed into the ocean. that tragedy, and it is now in the news again. controversial documents disputing that the crash was an accident, and the film claims an outside force brought down the plane. tonight, theories and conspiracies and the results of our own investigation. cnn's david mattingly has the story. salvaging from the atlantic ocean, this was the starting point for seeking answers. after four years of investigation, an electrical short circuit inside the plane was declared the culprit.

but now, 17 years later, a new documentary claims to have proof to support a not so new conspiracy theory about twa flight 800. >> what we do show in documentary is solid proof that there was an external detonation, but we also have corroborating information from the radar data. >> primary conclusion was that the explosive forces came from outside of the airplane, not the center fuel tank. >> would that statement have been in your analysis? >> if i got the write one. >> according to its press release the film due to be released in july is quote a stunning expose detailing how the official investigation was derailed. >> and the agenda was that this

is an accident, make it so. >> all of this put forth by a small minority of members on the original investigation team. >> that is pretty high explosive. >> sometimes lawyers in the country don't get a fair shake. >> stalkup's documentary has caused a stir, but the men who lead the investigation stand by their conclusions that the explosion was caused from within and not something outside of the 747. >> i don't question the motive, but i wish if somebody felt that strongly about something, that they could have brought it to somebody's attention commensurate with the investigation and not wait 17 years until they get the pensions in their pockets and then come out with it. >> mr. stalkup is wrong, because there is no solid evidence that supports his theory. he has been chasing a variety of theorys for 15 years, and this is the latest. he is wrong.

>> so, who to believe? what to believe? on the 10th anniversary of the crash, cnn did its own investigation. >> a blowup in the air and then we saw two fireballs going down into the water. >> that is the voice of david mcclane piloting the 737 over long island and a bright light caught his eye. >> all of the sudden, boom. almost instantly a fraction of a second later, two streams of flames came out of the bottomf of it. >> another pilot, captain paul wheeler was in the cockpit of a virgin flight, and he wrote in the logbook, saw twa 800 crash. >> i would see the fuselage and the windows and bits falling off, fire everywhere, and it falling into the sea. >> twa flight 800, a 747 like

this was one of several hundred flights at jfk airport that day in new york. what made it special is what it meant to the people on board. missouri sisters couldn't wait to get started on their trip to france. >> you know, i could almost visualize them, you know, on the plane having a good time, and that there would not be any sleeping i don't think. >> older sister crisha was going to be married. >> i looked at it as a last chance to be sisters and do silly things together. >> in little montoursville, pennsylvania, students and chaperones were headed to france for the trip of a lifetime. these snapshots were taken minutes before they boarded a bus for jfk airport that day.

cheryl niverts' mother took the pictures. >> she was excited to see the eiffel tower and she had all of the pictures lined up. >> what did you mean? >> she was going the stand under the eiffel tower with a loaf of french bread. >> and then the flight attendant who was making her mom nervous. >> didn't want her to fly. >> how long with twa? >> five weeks. this was her first international flight. >> how did she end up on this flight with such little experience? >> that is the sad part. she ended up on the flight, because someone called in sick. she called me before leaving to the airport. i said, you are going to be tired. it is a hot day, and you are going to be exhausted. she said, no, mom, i'm psyched. >> the forecast for paris called for smooth sailing and for 12:00, it was. >> the story at this hour, a 747 that took off from kennedy

airport is missing -- >> the 747 aircraft has exploded -- >> an explosion that is over the atlantic ocean that is being reported. >> clyde willis, captain of a dredging company boat was first at the scene. >> the water was just burning. it kind of looked like it was burning maybe two foot off of the water. it was like a wall of fire. >> flames and wreckage for as far as the eye could see. >> wings, tail section, cushions, seats, anything that would float really. then we saw the first body. it appeared to be like a 12-year-old girl. >> had you ever seen anything like this before in your life? >> never. i hope i never see it again. >> soon, there were the frantic phone calls. at home in new jersey. carol learned of the crash from a relative. >> it was such a shock. i mean, it was like being punched in the stomach.

i still remember that feeling. i almost passed out. >> in pennsylvania that night -- >> it is after 2:00 a.m., and a vigil of sorts is taking place here at montours high school. >> students hug and cried, and so did parents. >> it is a lot of shock, and the families are struggling just to, just to even accept what has taken place. >> with only a glimmer of hope, the families called the airport and twa desperate for information. >> about every 15 second, i'd hit the button, and get a busy signal, and when i finally did get through a long time later, all they would do is to take your name and number. >> 230 men, women and children. in the first few hours alone the coast guard and others pulled 100 bodies from the water.

an alert went out to the fbi. jim kallstrom of the new york office believed that the news was about to get worse. >> i would have bet my rather meager pay check that it was an act of terrorism, and i believe that the conventional thought swept through the white house and everywhere else was that it was probably right. >> believing that the nation had just been at a tacked, an investigation is launched unprecedented in the history of u.s. air travel. coming up, it is a mystery and a million pieces. with clues scattered for miles at the bottom of the ocean. the white house demands answers and gets ready to retaliate. the plane was in over a

the plane was in over a million pieces. a million pieces. >> the fbi's jim kallstrom arrived before dawn at this coast guard station facing the toughest day of his career, convinced that the crash of twa 800 was an act of terrorism. >> if it was, the crime scene was all of long island and a good portion of the atlantic ocean. >> as the fog lifted from the sea that morning, this is what kallstrom saw. >> once you get to the site which i did early the next morning at first light and you see the debris floating and you debt down close in a coast guard boat and you see the bodies

recovered and the floating teddy bears and the backpacks and you see them laying in the morgue, and the grandfathers and the parents and the married couples, and the 2-year-olds, the baby, the teenagers, it is shocking. >> dozens of bodies were laid out on the floor of this coast guard boathouse. >> it is like really getting slapped with a brick along the head just to walk in there and see that. >> among the first to be recovered twa rookie flight attendant jill zimkowitz. >> if anybody could be saved it was jill, because she was strong and athletic and in good shape and a good swimmer, but there was no saving anyone. >> working in first class with jill was janet christopher, the senior flight attendant.

she was the wife of an fbi agent, close friends of jim kallstrom, the husband called. >> saying jim, help me out. she is on the plane. janet is on the plane. what is going on? of course, i didn't have a clue what was going on at this point. >> and the scope of the investigation was growing by the hour. the fbi would need to check the background of everyone on board, look at every worker who might have had access to the plane, and question hundreds of eyewitnesses from miles around. within days investigators made a startling discovery, this is the roof of the first class cabin, the huge 747 jet had split apart in midair. the cockpit and first class section plunging into the sea. radar readings showed that the rest of the plane went on flying for a half minute more. the final seconds must have been terrifying in the cockpit just like this one, the instruments went dead.

the pilots were helpless and unaware that the 747 had been beheaded. it was an all too eerie echo of the bombing of pan am flight 103 over lockerbie. another jet decapitated and an explosive hidden in a suitcase. leon panetta was president clinton's chief of staff. >> when a plane blows up like the one in scotland, your first assumption is that it is not an accident and deliberate act whether it is a bomb or missile or what took place, somebody was responsible for blowing up that airplane. >> had the pan am flight not been running late, it too, would have exploded over the ocean just as twa did, and just as the air india jet did in 1985, and another suitcase bomb, and that one also linked to terrorists. was twa 800 the third such

victim? >> my initial reaction was that the plane could have been shot down with a shoulder-fired type missile. we had talked about that in the profession for a long time. >> hundreds of eyewitnesses on long island saw the skylight up. >> there was a tremendous ball of fire that just burst in the sky. >> it looked like a mile in the sky of flame coming down, straight down. i thought it was coming from the ground-up, because the flame looked like it was shooting from the ground-up if you know what i mean. >> at the time, stinger missiles were missing from the u.s. military arsenals from america to afghanistan. >> so the notion that some terrorist could have a missile was not farfetched. >> the fbi would spend months and millions chasing that possibility.

>> i think that everybody in the government justice and the fbi and everybody to my knowledge thought it was highly likely to be an act of terrorism, but again, they were asking me for the proof or evidence, and we didn't have any. >> and day after day, flying is the safest form of travel, and disasters are rare, and when they do occur, more often than not, they are the result of human error. a pilot's mistaken judgment, and this time it was not which is what made the crash of twa 800 so puzzling from the beginning and so astonishing at the end. within a week, the navy divers found the black boxes of the plane, and the flight data recorder on the bottom 130 feet down, but when the investigators opened up the boxes, they found no answers, only silence in the final seconds in the cockpit. >> the pilots didn't say, there is a guy on the plane with a gun to my head. the pilots didn't say anything, and the data didn't say

anything, and yet, we had a fireball seen from 40 miles away. that had never happened before. >> in the first few days, kallstrom met with the families at a airport hotel. >> it was just overwhelming. >> what did they want you to say to them? >> they wanted me to tell them what happened. and i didn't know. >> by the end of the week, 140 bodies had been recovered. one was brenna zievert, the younger of the two sisters who came home one time with a tattoo on her shoulder that her mother did not like. >> i said, you know, that may be something that you do not like, and it may never like, and when it happened the one thing that she was identified so quickly is because of the tattoo. that came back and i kind of

laughed and, yeah, brenna knew what she was doing, i guess. >> it was a mixed blessing for helen when the official notification came. >> he said, we found her. i can remember hanging up the phone, and running through the house so happy they found her. but in the same moment, i realized that she was gone. holy cow! >> get an ambulance. look at them kids. [ sigh ]

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>> get an ambulance. get an ambulance! >> scared to death. >> get them back. get them back. >> stretcher! >> by the summer of 1996, the word terrorism was entrenched in the american vocabulary. >> this was an environment charged with terrorism. >> it was absolutely charged with terrorism, and we were at a very high state of alert. >> three years earlier the first attack on the world trade center and the first islamic attack on american soil. in the summer of '96, its mastermind ramzi yousef was standing trial in new york for a separate plot, a plan to bomb american jetliners. in atlanta, the opening of the

olympics was only days away. security officials were on edge for good reason. this bombing in the park also was only days away. and in washington that spring, intelligent agents heard death threats out of iran or sudan against national security adviser anthony lake. >> i had to stay in a safe house and be driven around in an armored car here in washington. >> and then a military housing complex was bombed and 19 american servicemen died. u.s. intelligence believed that iran was behind that bombing, and immediately, iran became the leading suspect in the twa tragedy. >> i think that the first thought was that when we got this news that if it was terrorism, we wanted to have a special look at iranian connection.

>> clinton chief of staff leon panetta. >> i woke up the president to alert him of what had happen and the concern at this moment was that this might very well be a terrorist attack. >> on that first night at the white house there were discussions about bombing targets in iran and elsewhere. kallstrom was eager for answers. >> if this was terrorism, there would be consequences. >> we could go to war. >> if we knew who the perpetrators were. >> and iran? >> the usual suspects to quote casablanca. libya, private terrorist groups, et cetera, et cetera. >> and no reason for a missile or a bomb. >> wayne rogers lost a daughter

and two granddaughters on the twa flight 800. >> shannon was the oldest. a little doll. she was a lady. and katy was the tomboy. she was fiesty, and kind of like pam in a way. >> rogers flew to new york where the families were staying in an airport hotel, and he was thinking terrorism, and so were many others. >> what did they want to do? >> we wanted to attack whoever done these destruction to us, yes. if it was terrorists in the middle east, go over to bomb them and do whatever we have to do. they are wiping out our families, we will wipe out their families. >> but before long, the white house was starting to question the terrorism theory. >> we were not getting information to that effect, and nobody was taking credit for it. >> piece by piece, salvage ships were pulling the ruins of twa flight 800 from the waters off of long island and the edence that washington sought was not

there. from the luggage under the bins where the planer to apart, the passenger seats, the landing gear, and anywhere investigators decided to find tiny imprints or tiny bits of bomb materiel imbedded in the plane, again, nothing. >> we had the overhead racks and the seats and the floor tiles and the fuel tank and all of the piece, and we saw no evidence of an explosion at all. >> promising clues turned into dead ends. bob francis ran the national transportation safety board investigation. >> traces of nitroglycerin were found in the cockpit at one point, but it turned out that somebody in first class had heart medication. >> and remember the two pilots, the eyewitnesses who saw twa 800

blow apart in front of them. both had flown in the military. both know what a missile looks like and neither saw a missile that night. >> i was aware from the height of the ground and the fact that there were no vapor trails in the sky that it was a missile that brought the aircraft down. >> i thought there was a bomb on board, because i did not see any missile at all. >> so was it a bomb? look at this, an electronic display of the actual sound of the explosion and barely more than 0.1 long, it is the last thing from the recording on board the plane. looking at a glimpse, the sound pattern looks like the bang that brought down pan am 103, but it is not. the twa blast is not as sudden. it does not peak as quickly.

>> you could pretty much tell that it was not a bomb right from the very beginning. >> instead, the sound seemed more like something else experts had heard before. an explosion in the philippines and almost forgotten accident six years earlier. eight people died when this boeing 737 burst into flames while it was still on the ground in manila, and the fumes in and other wise empty center fuel tang had ignited right below the passenger compartment, and now on long island, the ntsb investigators were finding telltale signs that the center tank blew up. >> we knew without argument that the center tank blew up. the question was and is what caused it to blow up? when we return, the final 12

minutes of twa flight 800. this was twa 800, the same

this was twa 800, the same 747 seen at jfk airport in new york two years before the tragedy. this is twa 800 now. most of the fuselage reassembled at an ntsb hangar outside of washington, d.c. without the wings, tail or cockpit. you can actually see where the plane came apart. you can see the dark smoke parts behind the rip in the plane's body, and ahead of it, the front part is clean, and that is where the first class section and cockpit fell off. the explosion was here. in the center fuel tank. i'm really struck by the size. you could really park a couple of cars in here. >> the fuel tanks are the size of about a two-car garage. >> is the center tank below the

passenger area is rarely used. >> how much fuel was in here at the time of the flight? >> the fuel tank was basically empty and 50 gallons is what they calculate to be the residual amount. >> only a thin layer of fuel on the bottom, but the fumes were more than enough to bring down the plane. >> that is the stuff to ignite and rapidly burn. >> ntsb investigator shows us what happened. >> this takes place in a matter of a second? >> very much less than a second. >> when the tank exploded brenna and crista were right up here near coach, right near here. >> where were they sitting? >> right over the center fuel tank. >> what do you think happened to them? >> i'd like to think, and i think that it happened instantly.

that there was no long delay of knowing what was happening. >> when the plane starts to come apart, this is where it happens. >> yes. this piece we are looking at here is the first piece of fracturing away and makes a big hole as it drops down. it is a pressurized cabin and the explosion weakens the pressure of the plane and the pressure inside of the plane starts to blow itself apart? >> yes, that is correct. >> and things are flying out, luggage and possibly passengers as well. the galley area is up here and goes out as well? >> any structure from inside of the airplane that is loose, those things are free to be pushed out of this hole. >> the first class section broke off and fell away and unmarked by smoke or fire. >> there was no soot damage or soot accumulation on these pieces or the nose pieces. >> almost impossible the believe that for about 30 seconds more, the coach section kept flying.

the plane is flying without the forward third of it still attached. how does that happen? >> the airplane has momentum and it does not stop in the air when it happens so it continues with the speed and the velocity. >> there was not just one explosion. but two that doomed the plane. you see the soot on the wreckage? that second blast half a minute later erupted when the left wing tore away leaking fuel from the much larger wing tank. what created that fireball that everybody saw? >> that's as the fuel is misting into the air, it finds the ignition source and flares up to create the fireball as the pieces are dropping to the water. >> cnn created this animation of what the ntsb describes as the last moments of twa 800. only 12:00 after takeoff, the

center fuel tank blast rips away the bottom of the plane. the cockpit and the nose section plunge into the sea. for another half minute or so, the decapitated plane flies on. then it loses momentum and begins the deadly drop toward the ocean below. the fireball as seen as far as 40 miles away in connecticut just under a minute after the center tank explosion, what is left of twa 800 crashes into the sea. all those people who thought they saw a flare or a rocket or a missile, not so says the ntsb. missiles leave pock marks on the metal. this part came from an unplanned aircraft shot down in an fbi test. >> that little pit that you are pointing to there, that is no bigger than the end of the pencil. >> right. these are small particles and going very fast and when they hit the surface, they create a pit or this microcrater. >> did you find anything like

this in this aircraft? >> we examined every piece of this airplane and not one piece had any of these characteristic signatures of an explosion of a bomb or missile. >> the final judgment of the ntsb, the tragedy of twa 800 was not an act of terrorism. instead, the huge plane blew up on its own an apparently the victim of a fundamental flaw in aircraft design and engineering. for many families, that conclusion was no less devastating. >> would it have been any easier to deal with if it had been terrorism? >> no, because the end is the same. i still lost my daughter, and that is what i felt from the beginning that nothing is going to change anything. coming up, a conspiracy theory that won't go away. >> i have reached a conclusion

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>> 16-year-old cheryl nivert boarded the flight to paris after making jokes to her friends in montoursville about the stains on her fingers. she had spent the summers picking raspberries on the family farm to help pay for the trip. the minute that the plane went down, this is where you were? >> yes, sir, right over here. >> donald nivert knows the exact spot he was when the plane went down. his daughter was seated several rows in front of the blast. >> i see this, and i say, i can't believe that i have let this deteriorate to the extent

that it has. >> why have you let it go? >> because of her and the memory that the daughter we lost was the last one to pick them. it was too difficult. >> instead of berries we find an overgrown field that is sown with doubt and few explanations of what caused his daughter's death. >> i have reached the conclusion

that a missile hit the airplane and probably friendly fire. >> where did it come from? >> it came from our navy. >> donald nivert was not alone in reaching that conclusion. less than 36 hours after the fireball flashed in the skies of long island, a trail of fire or red light going skyward hit the world wide web. that evening, her story of a possible missile was collected on web sites. >> i caught that red light and then the fiery stream coming down. >> and compiling all of the eyewitness accounts was one that took the missile theory and added layers of seemingly impossible intrigue. it was a theory of how a navy ship accidentally shot down flight 800 and how a cover-up reaching the highest levels of government was in play, and it

might have stayed simply an internet conspiracy theory had it not been for this man. >> it is a document that i got about five weeks ago from an intelligence agent from france who had been doing an inquiry, and had some contacts with people in the u.s. navy. >> it was pierre salinger, a former white house secretary, u.s. senator and network correspondent who went public. salinger who died in 2004 claimed to have official proof that a navy missile shot down twa 800 specifically naming this ship the "uss normandy" responsible, but for what salinger claimed exclusive was neither. >> i asked him to read me the document. >> former cnn producer is the one who told salinger that the unsubstantiated report was on the internet for hours.

>> i called him and it was an unguarded moment that what he thought for one moment that was an exclusive scoop was not. >> and in spite of evidence to the contrary collected by the fbi, salinger persisted. >> now that this thing is becoming more complicated, i can understand why i want to continue the investigation. >> nevermind that the "uss normandy" was too far away to shoot any of the missiles to the plane. the ship's missiles would have blown that plane to smithereens and there would have been plenty of evidence. >> they call his investigation a distraction. bob francis worried about what

confusion the report might have had on the grieving families. >> if you lost somebody and you knew that you lost somebody as a result of an intentional act that would be tough stuff to deal with. he didn't know what he was talking about and he was totally irresponsible and he was an idiot. >> and yet to this day, a conspiracy theory still manages to take root. and for a grieving parent like donald nivert his constant search for answers seems to yield even more mysteries. why didn't the ntsb find what you found? are they implying that they are involved in a cover-up? is that what you are implying? >> that is what i am implying. >> years after the crash, he acquired the copy of the electronic flight data recorder information.

he says when he found it analyzed he found four seconds of information were missing. >> when you say missing, do you mean erased? >> that or edited. >> coming up next, why won't questions of a cover-up go away? why did so many people like nanine lavine see what looked like a missile. >> i know what i saw that night, and i know it went up in the air, and arced a little bit to the right and then there was a big explosion.

that hot summer evening in july 1996, naneen lavine was visiting a beach house with her baby boy, and when the sun was about to set, she looked out toward the ocean when she saw the explosion. in 1996, she shared her story with cnn and the fbi interviewed her twice.

>> the red dot came up like this and curved and it looked like fireworks would come down or fade and be a flare and then like big, big and these would be thick streams of fire. it was really vertical. >> a decade later, he sketch remains unchanged and so does her story. >> the red dot up quickly. deep down, i think it was a missile, but i know that it has been refuted, but i just know that it goes against what all of the witnesses who saw the red light go up saw. >> what do you believe they were seeing that night? >> i believe that the majority of the people that we can come to a pretty rational explanation they saw the plane coming apart in different stages of the tragedy. >> investigators believe that the red light seen by eyewitnesses could have been an intense fire immediately after the fuel tank erupted, and the next lights coming as the tank exploded as the flames seemed to

continue in the sky. there is an explanation for donald nivert's missing four seconds of the tape. they say it is a gap that happens when the new recording of a flight happens. what me sees as cover-up according to the ntsb is normal. >> the data recorder told us nothing. there was nothing abnormal on either box. >> richard russell is a former united airlines pilot who also used to investigate air crashes for the airline association, and it was his e-mail on the internet in 1996 that turned out to be pierre salinger's so-called proof of a friendly fire cover-up.

>> i have friends in high places, and they were in private industry, but they were in interface with the government agencies. >> these friends in high places also gave russell a tape of a new york area radar showing the last moments of twa 800. >> talk me through this. what are we looking at right here? >> well, this is twa 800, the time is 8:29:29. >> you can see the blip that is flight 800 stop in mid flight. >> and you can see it coast. >> what does that mean? >> that means that there is no more signal coming from twa 800. >> that is where it happened? >> that is where it happened. >> but the other tape shows more blips and one of them according to russell is the missile. >> if this is a missile, it is 30 seconds away from the target, and how does it take a missile 30 seconds to reach the aircraft when it is so close. >> i have no explanation for that. >> we don't see it cross the

path of flight 800. >> we don't. >> but russell is remained of a cover-up. >> it has been ten years and wouldn't someone have come forward and leaked information? >> someone perhaps hit the wrong button, and nobody wants to take credit for that. >> there is some percentage of people who think it is a conspiracy. >> like in this new to be released documentary that says that there is evidence of a cover-up and that twa was taken down by an outside force. >> i was convinced of the high explosion because of the entrance hole and the exit hole and sure enough tested positive, which i am sure it would. positive of the residue of the high explosions. three fbi agents ran into the room with their coats and ties an physically push me aside and would not let me hear the conversation and then turned to me, and said that the machine has frequent false positives. >> spears told him that the fbi needed the part to be taken to

washington for testing. and the part disappeared never to be returned. >> and he and others believe that the ntsb concealed evidence and never answered questions they raised. >> twa flight 800 is a watershed moment that look at what we can get away with even in the information age. >> the film's producers has asked them to reopen up the investigation. >> we took the missile theory and the possibility that the missile brought down the plane very, very seriously, and at that time in '96, we were in a high state of alert here in the united states, and 747s don't blow up in fireballs. that plane is rebuilt and sits in a hangar in virginia. if some brain child can look at that and come up with some other

idea of how that happened, you know, god bless them, but it has been 17 years and that has not happened. >> it was an unprecedented wave of terror that struck in and around our nation's capital. >> you had 9/11. this is one year later. >> over 23 days ten people are targeted for death. >> there was always just a single shot. >> the shot out of the back lot. he is bleeding real bad. >> the victims are diverse. >> men, young, old, black, white. >> the moerch sun known.