it is an a exciting time to be in florida. and of course, to be on the ridiculist as well. that's it for us. thanks for watching. "witness: the crash of twa flight 800" starts right now. 18 years ago this week twa flight 800 exploded in the sky over the shores of long island bound for paris with 230 people on board, no one survived. the suspicion of terrorism was immediate. many described a streak of light heading towards the plane before it blew up. in the weeks, months and then years afterwards, the biggest and most intense investigation in aviation history at the time ensued. eventually, the u.s. government offered their best explanation for what happened. to this day, though, many still question if they got it right. this is a cnn special report, "witnessed, the crash of twa flight 800". >> it just blew up in the air and we saw two fire balls go to the water.

>> twa exploded right in front of me. i knew right away there were no survivors and it was kind of a sickening feeling. >> i saw a bright light and then white smoke plume behind it and an explosion. i do believe i saw a missile. >> there was obviously, some suspicion it might be a terrorist act. >> we do not know what caused this tragedy. i want to say that again, we do not know, as of this moment. >> the investigation was looking at almost every possibility, including state actors. we thought about gaddafi and libya. we were looking at iraq and saddam hussein. the president was prepared to take whatever action needed to be taken. >> a huge potential crime scene. >> this investigation could be the largest carried out by the fbi. >> i had 1,000 agents working on the case. >> my fiancee was on the plane. >> my sister paula with her son nine years old.

>> this is it. >> our biggest concern was a recovery of our loved one's bodies. there were a lot of times that i doubted the existence of god, and i said god, how and why could you let something like this happen? my name is joe lichner and i lost my wife pam who was 37 shannon who was ten and katy who was eight on flight twa 800. pam decided they would take a trip to europe and just supposed to be a very short trip, just over the weekend. i had to go on a business trip up to calgary. when i left, they jumped in my arms and wrapped their arms and legs around me, both of them did that twice before i left on my

trip because i wouldn't see them for over a week. shannon was ten years old when she passed, and i guess i would really describe her as a very kind-hearted little angel, and she even promised me that she would be the one who would take care of me in my old age. katy was different than shannon. she was a little spit fire. she knew what she want in life, and i'm sure that she would have gotten it. i talked to pam just 15 minutes before they boarded the flight. she called me and told me the flight was delayed and i could hear the kids playing in the background, and we were talking about what time they would expect to arrive now, and, you know, everything was going to be okay.

>> my name is donald. we lost our youngest daughter on flight 800. cheryl was 16 years old. she was part of the flex club, and they were planning on taking this trip. her older sister took the same trip four years before, so there is no way we could tell her she couldn't. i drove cheryl into the school where they met for the gray hound bus to go to jfk. she and the other kids were very excited. we had 16 students, plus five chaperons. when cheryl decided to take the trip, make this trip, i really didn't want her to go. i was concerned and i just had that feeling.

we really couldn't refuse her. i wish we had of. >> twa 800 was on the tarmac for a long time from early afternoon until the departure time that evening. my name is john gallier. at the time of the accident i was one of the five board members at the national transportation safety board. at the departure time from jfk it was a quite hot summer day and for the airplanes and equipment in and around the airplanes were most likely well over 100 degrees and that, we believe, played a role in this accident. the airplane left about 8:20 in the evening and 11 or 12 minutes later, the event occurred. >> i'm captain david mcclain. i was with east one airlines and the primary witness to the accident when twa blew up. at the time of the accident, we were overhead long island about

16,000 feet headed out over the water. it was dusk around 8:30 in the evening. you could see a long ways, a good 50, 60, 70 miles or more. i saw this flight departing out of jfk with a bright light kind of, yellowish in colors and i mentioned to my first officer and we thought that possibly might have been a fire boot. wasn't no smoke or anything and it was probably the landing light. they were crossing our flight path, moving from the right to the left so we had a very good sight of them and were about 13 mile ace head of us and i flicked on the landing lights to let them know i saw them and at that exact instant he blew up. they exploded right in front of me. a big fire ball and almost immediately, you could see the two wings fall off and the fuel was obviously coming out of the

wings and then of course, it was all on fire so the long fiery streamers going about 3 to 4,000 feet from the wings down to the water. i reported almost immediately as in flight explosion. >> we just saw an explosion out here 507. >> i missed it. did you say something else? >> we saw an explosion, about 16,000 feet or something like that, they just went down to the water. >> twa 800. >> i think that was him. >> i think so. >> probably has more of an effect on me more than then. the lives gone and the next day they started mentioning people, who the survivors were and the

french club never got to france and it started to become more human then and that's when i started to feel it. i was sure it broke up immediately and i'm sure everybody was killed instantly, as far as i could see. they probably didn't know what hit them. i thought it was a bomb or some sort of sabotage, there was definitely no other cause than something was on board that caused the explosion. >> when a major airliner goes down suddenly, your first sense is that somebody was responsible for blowing it up. the fbi, they were working on the theory that this was a deliberate act of terrorism.

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who's ready for the garlic festival? this guy! bringing our competitors' rates to you -- now, that's progressive. i'd like to say a few words about the crash last night. first, on behalf of the american people, i want to say to the families of the passengers, we are well aware that only the passage of time, the love of your family and faith in god can ease your pain, but america stands with you. >> when twa 800 tragedy happened, i was chief of staff to president bill clinton. i immediately called the president, and said that i just been informed that a large airliner had gone down off of long island, and was not sure what was the cause of it, but

did say that there had been an explosion, and, you know, when the plane went down. so, you know, there was obviously, some suspicion that it might be a terrorist act. there was a pause. you can tell he was shocked by the news because he knew that an awful lot of lives had been lost. >> chief of staff leon panetta briefed us. >> there were some who thought there might have been some witnesses to the plane going down. there was even some talk about the possibility of seeing some kind of ark of light that might have gone towards the plane, which would have indicated some kind of missile. my first sense was that this was not just an accident, this was

something that had been caused deliberately. the fact was, nobody really knew. >> i want to caution the american people, we have no evidence, we have no evidence on this flight yet that would indicate the cause of the accident. so let's wait until we see the evidence. >> at about 8:30, my mother who had been dead for two years, she said in her southern ohio kentucky accent that i can never misplace. she says don, cheryl is okay, she's with me. she did not say heaven, but was implied. i turned around expecting to see my mother. i saw nothing. i received a telephone call from

the mother of one of cheryl's friends that was on the trip. she says don, there was a plane crash out of jfk at 8:30. and i turned the tv on, and i said they said it was like two miles high when it went down. my wife donna and i both realized that there shouldn't be anyone surviving from that crash. >> by 2:00 a.m. in the morning it became very apparent from the news reports that they were not finding any survivors. my biggest goal right after that was to get there as fast as i possibly could, and to be as close to where the event happened. i needed to be near my family. >> got a call from the coroner.

he wanted us to come to new york, bring dental records, other health records from cheryl so that he could examine them. later, we talked to the coast guard who recovered her. he was in tears when he saw us and we had cheryl's picture on it. he saw the picture and just started to cry, started crying. he says i recovered her. he says i thought, i thought i felt her heart beat and we worked on her trying to revive her but he says we couldn't. >> closure for me now is recovering their bodies. that's my number one priority.

i had three people on that plane, and i cannot leave one of them out there. >> that was really the only thing that mattered. while the fbi and the ntsb and everybody else was off running out trying to figure out exactly what happened in this crash. >> we have a massive investigation on going. >> i'm jim kallstrom and i was in charge of the twa investigation. when this tragedy happened, the country was at a very high state of alert. within a day and a half, i had 1,000 agents working on the case. i immediately thought this was more than likely terrorism. the fact that a 747 blew up in a fire ball, that's not a normal thing to happen. the fact that numerous shoulder fired missiles were lost over

the years from different thefts from armories around the world, within ten minutes of it happening, we had people calling our command center and telling us they saw things ascending into the sky. so we took that very seriously. >> my name is mike wire. i was a witness to flight 800. yes, i do believe i saw a missile. i was standing on the beach bridge taking a break and looking over the ocean and i saw what looked to be cheap fireworks from the roof line of a house, and it went out to sea and zigzagged and had a bright smoke plume behind it, and arked over and disappeared for a few seconds and then an explosion started getting bigger and bigger until it filled upmost of the sky and out of that ball of fire, a few slides, you can see it coming down burning.

one wing flew off and shock waves, i could feel it on my chest and it shook the bridge i was standing on and another two explosions and one more, four total. i have a problem. i need to speak with your fraud resolution department. ugh, we don't have that. what should i tell him? just make that super annoying modem noise... (shuuuuuuuh....zzzzzzzz...de ee...dong...shuuuhh...) hello? not all credit report sites are equal.

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the investigation start as week into it. we got the location of the debris. there was three major debris fields. this was a huge potential crime scene. the command center is set up at the coast guard station in long island and we start the process in congestion with ntsb while bringing the pieces of the plane and the bodies up from the ocean. >> we were really looking to see if any of those bodies had a sign of impact of terrorism and put where that body was on the airplane. it was very necessary for us to map that and map the damage and that's why we had to reconstruct the airplane to see that, to see if there is any holes penetrating the outside of the

airplane that lined up with some explosion that took place outside the airplane. >> when twa went down, there were a series of things that happened that raised concerns about growing terrorism. we saw the flight going down over scotland. we had a bombing that took place at the trade tower. the trial going on for the people involved in the bombing at the trade towers. don't forget within ten days of that incident, we had a terrorist act at the olympics. you're dealing with a situation in which the president of united states is increasingly concerned the united states is becoming more and more the target of terrorism.

>> we do not know why twa flight 800 crashed. if it proves to be a criminal act, other security steps may be required. whatever needs to be done, we will do it. i will use the full power of the presidency and we'll have full bipartisan support. >> at that point in time, the investigation was looking at almost every possibility including state actors. we definitely thought about gaddafi and libya since they were at that point suspected of having brought down the other airliner. we were looking at iraq and saddam hussein. we were looking at the possibility of even iran might have played a role in this, as well. clearly, if we had determined this was a foreign actor or a terrorist group similar to what

happened on 9/11, that president clinton would not have hesitated to take action. >> the investigation was huge from the standpoint of its involvement. we have to look at the people on the plane, who were they? was their background? were they mentally stable? who put anything on the plane? who took it off? who could have had access to the center of the airplane where the baggage is stored? what's their background? where do they come from? what's their criminal record? are they citizens? you start to see the size of the investigation. we're talking thousands of people. as to a missile theory, who was on long island that night? who was there in a car, on a porch, walking down the street, on a beach? who took out a boat. who rented a boat. did anybody steal a boat?

it had hundreds and hundreds of people say they saw things from their porches, from their boats, and that's why we put a lot of emphasis on the missile theory. >> my name is pat milton. i work for the associated press as a reporter and i was sent out to the crash site about an hour and a half after it occurred and i ended up covering the crash day by day for four years. hundreds of eyewitnesss along the coast of long island swore they saw something in the air that night some characterize it as fireworks and some said maybe it was a missing going towards the plane. one of the elements that did arise was it a friendly fire action? we learned the u.s. navy had a ship that was in the area, the uss normandy that did have surface to air missiles on it and had just been loaded on earlier that day.

>> the uss normandy had a crew of over 400 people and interviewed everybody and accounted for everybody. the missiles were out of range of twa flight 800 but we had to run these things to the ground. >> the two theories, there was a bomb on board or event like a missile from the outside. on the missiles from the outside, missiles when they take down airplanes will do it in two ways, one is they can come slamming into the airplane, which is very difficult to do, the other is they explode nearby the airplane. in either event, you have holes from outside going inside the airplane. i went over every inch of the airplane looking over the holes and didn't find holes. i looked for all i was worth. >> we had at least three radars that saw this event and some

initial reports that evening showed some anomalies on a radar that was mistaken by someone by the faa as a missile hitting the plane and later on, it was determined to be sop sort of electrical interference that happens all the time. but sure the radars were critically important. >> the fbi hung on to every bit of the radar data and they tried and tried and tried to connect those dots, if you will, and despite their best efforts, they were not able to prove that that was a missile that came up to hit the aircraft. >> as time went on and the pieces of this puzzle sort of came together, we have this string of connected dots that lead us to the center fuel tank. >> we know the center fuel tank exploded. that's a fact. the question was, what caused it to blow up? i grew up with three brothers, so i figured hey, i get it, kids get stains.

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the population is around 5,000. very small town. we lost 21 people, students and chaperons on flight 800. it seems like everybody knew at least one or a few of the people involved. it's very difficult, very hard

on the town. cheryl was about the third person recovered in her seat fully clothed and brought up by the coast guard. she had her ticket in her blue jeans and had her name on it. >> the ramada inn at jfk airport is where the family members congregated and each day we had a morning briefing and afternoon briefing. the daily briefings became really everything to us because they would tell you who was recovered. someone would come around and tap you on the shoulder. that tap on the shoulder, i know it sounds odd but that was a blessing because all we wanted at that point in time was to recover our loved one's bodies and take them home. you talk about blessings and

god's intervention in helping you through tragedies like this, a friend of mine who was a chaplain with new york city police, he gave me this little cross that i have and soon after that, pam was recovered, and then katy was recovered and shannon was recovered. i gave this cross to another person who had not recovered and then right after that his person was recovered. and they passed it down all the way down the line to the last person, jim herd, his son jamie had not been recovered and through her drudging operations out there, they ended up finding jamie. so in the end, everyone came out of the water. as far as the investigation was concerned, i was obviously very involved because i had a vested interest in finding out what happened and ensuring that justice was served for my family.

>> the fbi and other investigators were simultaneously investigating the missile and the bomb theory. the bottom line is, everything was centered around the center fuel tank because that's where they knew the catastrophic event took place. they just didn't know what set off the center fuel tank, a bomb, missile or mechanical failure. >> my name is jim wildly and in the investigation, i was the chairman of a group formed to determine how and why the airplane broke apart. >> it is unusual to reconstruct an airplane to this degree. this is the biggest jigsaw puzzle i've been involved with. we looked at differences of fire and soot patterns to determine which fractures came first and which damage to the areas came first and used that in little areas and backed up and started making a larger sequence until we were able to determine pretty much conclusively the whole breakup sequence of the airplane.

we have giant pile of evidence that leads directly to the initial event being this explosion within the fuel tank. >> the tank is big, 20 x 20 and four to six feet high. the bottom tank is supposed to be perfectly flat. the pieces we recovered on this airplane have a definite bow on it. they were pushed out. if you go above the tank in the same spot, you go above it, it's push upwards into the cabin. whatever happened, happened inside the tank. >> we know the center fuel tank exploded. that's a fact. the question was from the day that we together said the center fuel tank blew up, three or four months out, what caused it to blow up? so ntsb is looking at wiring, we're looking at all the pieces of the airplane for blasts. where did the bomb blow up? we found traces of high explosive in the airplane, about

six months out. it was down in the double sided tape that health the carpet and it made no sense that there was an explosion there because we had the flooring and we had the seats and we had the overhead put back together again where this was found. we didn't know why it was there but later on we found out that in st. louis, someone who works on bombs training a dog went on the plane and had some components of things that they make bombs of. it was leaking and that stuff stuck to the sticky part of the tape. >> the fbi has found new evidence that sabotage -- >> this surprised even, investigators and journalist and there was a lot of news coverage that pointed to the fact if ingredients like this was found, it had to be a bomb or maybe possibly the ingredients in a missile. this further contributed to the fact of eyewitnesss and many from the public who theorized that plane was brought down by

friendly fire and that the government was covering it up. >> there was a tremendous effort many, many, many revisits by experts to take a look at the physical evidence of the airplane. we're talking about something of substance that could bring an airplane down. there was no evidence that that happened. the physical evidence on the airplane didn't support that. >> in october of 1997 and i said look, ladies and gentlemen, is there anything else that any of you think we can do that would add to this investigation or would add to the determination where we are now that an explosion or a terrorist did not bring down the plane? is there anything else we can do and the conclusion was no. >> there is a fair number of eyewitnesss who still insist that this plane was brought down by a bomb or missile and despite the fact that there is no evidence, they will not accept the government's point of view.

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the mission of the law enforcement team was to determine where a criminal act was the responsible for this disaster.

we must report in evidence has been found which would indicate that the criminal act was the cause of the tragedy of twa 800. >> when the fbi came out with the statement that it wasn't a criminal act, the fbi came out with a video that depicted the aircraft in flight and the nose blowing off of the aircraft. >> the fourth eyewitness report he saw a white light, perhaps a fire bird traveling upward. >> it showed the plane flying a good distance above the house. it clearly did not match anything eyewitnessed. i figured it was something that passfied the public. it did not fit what i saw. the center fuel tank went boom and cracked up a bunch of the airplane, very rapidly. now that cracking just led to

the whole airplane breaking apart. >> we believe the nose broke off forward to the wing. that came right down, straight down and the engine is still producing the same amount of power, so it's going to go up because it's lighter. the airplane rose and continued to climb for a few thousand feet more ending up in the 16,000 foot range and you have a lot of fuel being mixed with air and already a fire from the center fuel tank is now the fire gets to be quite large and noticeable. >> there were some witnesses that saw a rising streak of light. we believe this is from the nose section coming off, the residual fire burning and the airplane rising up and creating what appears to be a vertical streak of light. >> from the ntsb's point of view and fbi's point of view, the

evidence has to support what you see. no matter how much the fbi tried to tie those eyewitness statements into it being a missile, the physical evidence just didn't support that. >> i did not see anything come out of this airplane. i never have said it could not have been another missile or rocket that was fired at it and it could have came from the other side of the airplane, but from what i saw, no other cause than something was on board that caused the explosion. i guess i would have seen it, everything when i saw the explosion went down, not up and of course, like i said, the wings fell right off the airplane right away. how is it going to climb if you have no wings? >> the dark sky coming at them so he may have been able to see the wing tip lights. when this event occurred, this breaking up at the airplane and

the nose fell off, i'm sure he didn't see that because the airplane is now on lift and the nose is dark and surrounding water is dark so what he probably saw was the fire ball when it occurred. >> the fbi 16 months into the investigation determined there was no evidence of a bomb or missile and closed their active investigation. the ntsb then took over, four years later, the ntsb came out with a probable cause. >> good morning and welcome to this meeting of the national transportation safety board. this leads to the inescapable conclusion the cause of the in flight break up of twa flight 800 was a fuel flight explosion in the center tank. >> the accident occurred in a hot day in july and the airplane was sitting on the tarmac at the

gate with the air conditioners running and located right underneath the fuel tank. right in this location here. so they provide a large source of heat. we did some testing and found out that the temperatures were well over 100 degrees in most of the tank. >> the temperature rose quickly on the fuel and turning to vapor very, very rapidly and filling up the container with vapors, an explosive mixture of vapors. >> when you provide these conditions together and produce a spark from any source, the fuel air vapor will ignite and burn rapidly and it will explode. >> in some manner, there was a spark, an ignition source and the safe board looked at sources and we looked at bombs and missiles and determined neither was a scenario. the strong suspicion is some

wiring that led inside the tank got a short circuit that led into the tank. the safety board couldn't determine the cause of the park that got into the tank. >> because the ntsb was unable to pinpoint what set the center fuel tank off they only came up with a probable cause and not a definitive cause that has given rice to people feeling that this plane was brought down by a bomb or a missile. ♪ >> i was suspicious about >> i was suspicious about the investigation. there was at least two seconds purposely deleted from that flight data recorder. i trusted the government before we went through this. i do not trust them now. in the nation, it's not always pretty.

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she was very excited. she was very happy to go. >> what does that photograph mean to you now? >> we were in new york. i was suspicious about the investigation. >> what is the word? >> we would have updates at

least once a day from the ntsb. >> there is a lot of wreckage there. >> explained about what is going on, and these meetings. we would get different stories. okay, they would change what they were saying. >> here they are. >> and i says i would like to have a copy of the flight data recorder tape. >> the interior boxes were smashed a bit. >> i said i would like to have these analyzed independently. i says i want to believe what you're saying, but i'm having a great deal of difficulty doing that. >> tapes were in good condition on both recorders. >> after i received a copy of the flight data recorder, i sent that copy to my expert who analyzes this for a living. and he says there is at least two seconds purposely deleted from that tape. >> as far as the ntsb purposely

deleting anything, i don't believe we've ever done that. >> the one piece of damage on the flight data recorder -- >> when i looked at the data, i looked at that little blip in the flight data recorder. there is a space in the information. and we did look at it. we talked about there being an event or something that the data was missing. and it's unexplainable. it's just missing. >> i do not know what is on those two missing seconds. i think something that might indicate there may have been an outside explosion next to the airplane is what i feel. but there is no way that we'll ever know. my wife, she passed away september 8th, 2012. donna died with being suspicious that we had never been told the truth. i trusted the government before

we went through this. i do not trust them now. [ bagpipes playing ] >> i spent some time with a couple of the families who felt there was some sort of a cover-up. and i convinced them there wasn't. i think they believed what i said was true. to some, you'll never change their view. the mistake, everything the government does is a conspiracy. >> one of the congressional hearings, the fbi testified that there were no eyewitnesses to the crash that described seeing a missile. and this is a point that critics have pounced on in later years. >> would you give us some information on how many witnesses on the ground or in other airplanes at the time believe they saw something coming from the ground headed toward that plane? >> well, i wouldn't want to say they all is saw something coming from the ground. there are about 200 people that

saw events in the sky that they described, none of which described a missile. >> as i look back at the question, i could have probably been more articulate and said that a lot of the witnesses used the term missile. and they were good people, and they're not making up a story, but the reality is none of those people saw a missile. if i did not believe in the outcome of this crash, that would clearly be a problem for me.

when this first happened, there were some very dark and cold and lonely nights. there were a lot of times i doubted the existence of god, and i said god, how and why could you let something like this happen? and when i was at the end of my rope and i was about to give it up, he -- every single time he would send me somebody to carry me during those darkest days. then god gave me another family. i married brenda bragg and had rachel and colt. and in some regards, i mean, i'm the luckiest man in the world. i have a family waiting for me in heaven and a family here to take care of me while i'm here.

>> the case is never closed. probable cause is never cast in concrete. it can always be changed if we have no physical evidence that would change our thinking on what happened. >> at the end, i stood up and said i had 99.9% confidence there was not an act of terrorism. which means that if future investigative leads come in that result in us looking at this, we will certainly do that. and that's the .1% that i'm leaving there. >> without question, it was, you know, a theory, and it clearly could have been a possibility. but i think i was left with a feeling that, you know, in the end, we might never really know what happened.

this is "cnn tonight." i'm don lemon. the mother of a hot car toddler has a message for all of us. leave me alone. her attorney says she is being unjustly harassed. are she and her husband already being tried in the court of public opinion? my legal experts will weigh in on that. i'll also talk to a couple who have suffered the hell of losing their baby in a hot car. they want to make sure it never happens again. plus, is eric holder playing the race card just because he says some of the criticism of the president is, you guessed it, about race? is he right? and who decides what you can and cannot say about president obama? also, dick cheney tells jake tapper this --