dana perino and colson whitehead. for more information what book fairs we'll be covering, click the book fairs tab on our website, book tv.org. >> i'm going to take off my jack jacket. okay, we might have a few latecomers, they won't interrupt. they'll go around the back. first of all, welcome to the museum, it's our pride and joy, we hope you enjoy it and we also, if you want to tour the museum you'll have to go back out and around and we have a flight 800 room that might be interesting to you after you hear jack. it's my pleasure to welcome jack to the museum for the presentation. you're going to do questions and answers and he'll do q & a after his speech. welcome, jack. [applaus [applause]

>> thank you for having me and this is a great venue. i suspect the first time book tv has ever done one from an airplane hangar. this is my 10th book tv. it's one that is closest to my heart for a variety of reasons. let me start with background and many of you know, on july 17th, 1996, at 1819 p.m., twa flight 800 left jfk airport in new york bound for paris. 12 minutes later, 8:31 p.m. off the coast of long island, popular shore of long island, it was blown out of the sky. 230 people were killed, 53 of them were twa employees. many of you in this room knew at least some of those people. there is a memorial in their honor here at the twa museum and if i were coming here just

to spread some conspiracy theory, i would be dishonoring their memory and i would be insulting you. instead, i'm here to tell you what happened on the night of july 17th, 1996, in the nights and days and months and years thereafter. there are people in this room who know a whole lot more about aviation than i do and at the end of my conversation, i'm going to take questions and answers 'cause i know some of you have firsthand experience with this tragedy. >> here is what we know. in the last few years researchers have unearthed a motherload of new information, from of all places, the central intelligence agency, the cia, which raises the excellent questions with the cia is doing involving itself in a domestic airplane crash. we'll get to that in a minute. and we've also gotten some interesting videos and some--

a lot of whistle blowers from inside the investigation have come forward. so the state of our knowledge today is much better than it was 20 years ago. when i say we, i've got to give credit to the people doing a lot of research here, like my sometimes partner james sanders, business's tom stalkup. some of you know these people. and christina, a former cbs producer, ray lahr, a former pilot. investigator john clark. accuracy in media. and including roger, and hank hughes, as an investigator and others. so they deserve a lot of the credit for digging up the information i'm going to share. i wanted that to be known. as the book came out, i've heard from at least a hundred individuals from within the military or aviation interest supporting my thesis. many of them worked for and at the investigation itself. many of them are still angry

about what they experienced and what happened to them. here is what we know. now, according to an air traffic controller, in fact, this is who contacted me after the book came out and e-mailed me saying he loves the book and he thanked me for treating his story accurately because i wrote about him and i did not release his name. he worked for 38 years as an air traffic controller and he says, i have dependent children and you hear that from a lot of people, but what he told me that night, and this is a quote, he said a primary radar return indicated vertical movement intersecting twa 800. that's what they saw on their screens in wesbury and that's what precipitated the panic in washington d.c., it wasn't the eyewitnesses, it came out of the air traffic contollers in new york that something happened to this plane and the seconds before it intersected

that airplane, it disappeared. and the twa 800 notation disappeared from the screen. the supervisor comes over to my correspondent and he says, have you ever seen anything like this before? and he said, yeah, it was a missile test when i was in the navy, saw it all the time. so it wasn't something unknown to him. and the next day he comes back in and he wants to review the tape and he goes to the supervisor, can i take another look at that tape? the supervisor says, no, it's gone. it's been taken, this is a violation of all protocols, the tape was supposed to stay there for future adjudication. now, the only person who spoke about what happens next in washington is richard clark, the former anti-terror czar. he's both a liar and a bragger so it's hard to sort through his information and get to the truth. he spent time on this.

and everybody else who writes about that period of time in that administration is completely silent about the event. not a word. even though it was the number one news story in 1996. and it was richard clark titled the chapter "the almost war of 1996". clark and i think he's telling the truth her, convenes a meeting of the-- his anti-terror group in the situation room in the white house at 9:00. a half hour after the crash. i know from hillary clinton's logs and from my sources in the white house, that the clintons returned to the white house just about 8:30 after a-- some routine fundraiser nearby. they retreated to the family quarters and there they stayed for the rest of the night. they did not go in the situation room. my source who is a very good source, i asked him who was with them in the family quarters, he could only come up with one name, sandy berger. now, berger, the deputy

security advisor and tony-- and elsewhere, he knew when the conversation got political, he left the room. berger was the political guy, political decisions were about to be made. among them was the insertion of the fbi into the investigation. one of my most helpful people on this book and he's going to come into the story later on, i'll tell you about it. he was a former n.t.s.b. board member, there's only five members on the national transportation board and it's a pretty powerful institution. one of the leading experts on plane crashes, so knowledgeable cnn called him in that night to do on-air interpretation of events. on-air commentary and he spent the next six hours there. as he tells me, i wasn't there a couple of hours and already the fbi had taken over the investigation.

he goes, as a former board member of the n.t.s.b. i knew this was unprecedented and illegal. the n.t.s.b. was set up to be independent and at that point they sacrificed their independence and they yielded to the fbi. now, what vernon gross or no one know at that time some other insertion was on the very first day and this we know from the whole treasure trove of cia documents we've unearthed. here with is what we know. according to their documents, the di, that's the director of intelligence, became involved in the missile theory the day after the crash occurred. the cia has absolutely no business being involved in this kind of event, especially since the year before, in 1995, the department of justice sent out

a memo often known as the wall memo. and what the wall memo says is that there's a wall between the intelligence gatherers in the ceo and the criminal investigators in the fbi and never the twain shall meet. it cannot collaborate because it would violate people's rights, who knows. and george tenet in 2004 at that point was the director of central intelligence, the head of the cia, and he told the 9/11 commission that he was the person who introduced that notion to the public about the wall. and he wasn't the only one who talked about it, but he was the first one to do it, but as the cia documents proved, the cia and the fbi, for the next 16 months would collaborate on the twa investigation what they do not say outright is the

collaboration was designed to subvert the twa investigation. the cia had no other role, it becomes incredibly clear when you read their documents and to make all talk of missiles go away, because on the opening night, that's all people were talking about. when within the first few hours. we know there was at least one amateur video taken of the complete sequence of events. some of you may have seen it. it was aired on msnbc to the best of my knowledge, probably two or three times. i talked to one of the fellows who was the technical director at msnbc and he said, yeah, we showed it a few times and then three guys in suits game and took all copies and told us to keep our mouths shut or else. that was the end of that. and as a best elaboration of what was seeing, i got from a 747 pilot and he was willing to give me his name which allowed me to use his name, which is a

sign of some confidence. he was laid up in a hong kong hospital with back surgery and his wife came to visit him. and they had nothing to do, but watch tv for several weeks, during this whole sequence of events. he said we watched the video over and over again. he says here is what we see. he said there's a bunch of people milling around on the deck and someone says, look at the firework. and then they see-- and this is a lot of those people would say the same thing, they see this object come up off the horizon, it has a red burning tip and a gray smoky contrail on headed out to sea and arched over and then there's a bright white flash, another bright white flash and a fireball and a plane falls ouf out of the sky. and. there is is book written about

this, night wall. if you read it. and we get into the cia documents and they get interesting. on july 30th, 13 days after the crash. the cia analysts-- and i know the name of the head guy, i may or may not mention it later, and it's a two or three man missile team and he headlines the memo to his superior and the names are redacted, hold the presses. which is interesting. which is interesting. he tells his superor that he met with the missile team. the missile team has interviewed 144 excellent eyewitnesses to a missile attack on twa flight 800. he says the evidence for a missile attack for surface to air missile is overwhelming. their words. he said these people are mainly professionals and their

testimony is too consistent for it to be anything, but a missile attack. now, the cia analyst bragged to his superior how he discouraged the fbi from having forward with this report, which was just about ready to be published and he was successful because that report never came forward. between july 30th and august 17th, someone gets to the fbi. they came to the job intending to do it justice, someone gets to them before august 17th because on august 17th the fbi speaks for the first time to the new york times about eyewitnesses. now, the fbi would speak almost exclusively to the new york times. the new york times became very dependent on that relationship. in fact, at the heart of this story i'm telling is a media scandal. more than a government scandal,

more than anything else, it's a media scandal and at the heart of the media scandal is the new york times. they meet with the new york times and the story is reported on august 17th so they probably met on the 15th or 16th for about two weeks or so after the missile team met with the cia. and the new york times is told that there are fewer than a dozen credible eyewitnesses and the new york times is allowed to interview just one of those eyewitnesses. it's a good witness, named michael russell on a barge doing some surveying work and he's pretty knowledgeable and sees out of the corner of his eye a bright white flash and sees the plane fall immediately out of the sky. now there are two things that the n.t.s.b. would deny happening, at the time it served the purpose. the purpose then was to switch the scenario from missile to bomb.

for whatever reason the administration decided it could live with a bomb because it bomb it wasn't as scary as a missile and this crash took place started two days before the start of-- there was keeping people away from feeling scared about taking airplanes. >> in total, the new york times would interview-- before it was through the fbi would interview 258 eyewitnesses, who saw an object streaking up and hitting the airplane. 96 of them saw it coming from the horizon and tracked it up. of those 258, the new york times would interview before investigation was over zero.

i've talked to 20 or 30 of them. they're still there, they still want to tell their story. zero, they would speak to not a single one of those 258 official fbi witnesses. now, 750 people in all gave reports to the fbi, thousands more saw it because i know people who chose not to talk to the fbi and they had good reason as it turned out. between the 15th, the 17th and the 23rd. the new york times kept running more stories about bombs. rdx found on the play. pcn found on the plane. trac traces missile residue inside and outside the plan on 23rd of august, above the fold right, crime evidence found that the device exploded in cabin of twa 800. that's above the fold in the new york times, prime evidence

found and they're pointing towards a bomb, but they're not ruling out missile. it exploded in the cabin of twa 800. above the fold left, clinton signs welfare reform bill and democratic national convention. one of the headlines had to go and it was this one and then the bomb talk just started going away. the day before the 23rd, i'm sure the justice department was aware that the fbi had been talking too much. so the head of the fbi investigation is called to washington for his first meeting in washington. heading up this meeting, as best of the information suggests, is deputy attorney general jamie garelli. her name will come back to play in this so keep track of that. her boss is janet reno.

afterwards. from 20 seconds on, no interviews with eyewitnesses for several months, and those are for the wrong reasons. we know that on the 23rd, the faa started searching all over the world to see if they could stay in a place where twa flight 800 planes used for a training exercise. it took several weeks to find that and things began to happen. between the 23rd, 19 september, the new york times didn't know what direction to take because

the fbi didn't know. by september 19th, the story reached washington and the ntsb in that direction. what they say is perhaps it was a mechanical failure after all. mechanical failure alone might just explain what happened to twa 800. this is a problem still because all the resident traces of explosives found on the plane, headlines were found, how do we reconcile these things? the next day the fbi puts out a press release that twa 800 plane had been used for a training exercise in st. louis six weeks before this happened. on 21 december the new york

times runs an article saying the same thing and basically kills the investigation, the people, the investigators saying it is hard to make our case that the training exercise was sloppy, etc.. by the 21st neither the fbi nor the new york times talk to the cops were training. first person in the media to talk to the cop is me six years after the fact, no one talked to him in that time and what they decided was he did his exercises, and african-american guy, who was, excuse the language, pissed off about what they did to him. they ruined his reputation.

they concluded it was a sloppy exercise, still training age and what accounted for the explosive residue found on the plane, stuff found on the wing, not capable of getting out and doing that but that didn't matter. separating the back, the front, they ran with it. here is what they could have found out with an hours worth of investigation. the fbi, the cop put on his report the time of the exercise and wi-fi. he went to an exercise on a 747 in st. louis on a wi-fi and from 10:45 to 12:14 p.m.. here is what the fbi do. at 12:30, the twa 800 plane left the gate. what the fbi did not say is 400

people on board were bound for hawaii. you know you can't do that 15 minutes. the cop did the exercise in a sterile plane. there was no one on board his plane the whole time he did the exercise. they could improve that in an hour. it is not even disputed. 400 people ready to go to honolulu. they were supposed to believe in a 20 minute period, an hour and a half exercise. in no way they matched the composition of the residue found on the plane. nor does it matter where they placed it. the composition is wrong, there is no euphemism to disguise what they did.

they sacrificed this guy's career to get it done and he is still humiliated to this day. he gets letters from the fda condemning him and had to live with this. that was all the cover they needed. from that point on from september 21st on, the government moved into a fully different mode, the mechanical failure mode. some of you remember that. i talked to a lot of twa people who remember getting punched in the stomach when they heard that, the fuel tank people have to bear the brunt of that if there was something wrong with the fuel tank and it. up. i get emails from people reading the book, the fuel tank makes them angry. at that point too the ntsb has been totally shut out, supposed to do -- supposed to review the

statements. they were sent home. wouldn't even look at the interviews after the fbi had done them. instead the fbi headed interviews over to the cia. who else? to examine interviews and decide what it is, they have no experience with it, no legal justification for this. the fbi wasn't eager to do this. you can see that which they gave them, the cia, the witness statement in small doses and they only gave them one third of the total eyewitness base. they are only working -- on december 31, 1996, the cia analyst, give me a call

sometime. and explain what people saw contained in the plane itself come all they saw was flight 800. he decided the nose of the plane was blown off and the plane took 90 ° up, 70 or 80 , and aviators know what a crock this is. and in the course of that, deceived people into seeing a missile, i talked to many aviators. this can't happen. it went to 13,000, 17,000 plus feet. that is what confused them. we will get back to that in a second. they contracted with creating a

video to show that and that closed the case. that was december 31st. by february 1997, george tenet who has been promoted to the director of central intelligence, the number 2 guy when it started, and john deutsch signs off on it. the plane falls off, shoots up right, this is what it is. one heroic character from the fbi stands up, i identified this guy by name but not sure i should mention it. he is basically the head of it. there are two men on the fbi team, that tells you on april 29, 1997, he meets with the cia, and he says i don't buy this for a moment. we have at least 30 eyewitnesses

coming in the opposite direction, the triple slice they saw, we have eight eyewitnesses who saw the missile hit the airplane. all the radar data disagrees. he goes i insist you go back to the drawing board and start over because i won't by this. i don't buy this. the other member of the missile team putting the cia analyst, okay with the cia. and we don't know this until recently, on april 29th he was fighting with the cia. he was in north carolina, and on paper he does, interviewing one

of the witnesses in his book, the story of witness number 73. some of you saw this, i will play the story a little bit. in 2009 i got a call and she goes -- this is witness 73, you know who i am, yes i do. here is the story. the fbi writes 302, here is what the fbi witness summary from july 20, 1996, says about their interview with witness number 73. it is not a real name, they are talking to sandy who tells them she is on the beach and she is -- has an interest in aviation

and a travel professional, tracking flight 800 across the sky, out of jfk and she was right, and you see this object off of the horizon and a smoky contrail comes up out and over, closed outside the right wing, another explosion and the nose of the plane came off and stalls and falls out of the sky, breaks into flames in a fireball. three days after the crash sandy told the fbi, the breakup sequence of the aircraft with the nose coming off first before anyone knew it would take them weeks before they could validate but no one saw it more clearly than she did and she cooperated fully with the fbi three days later.

her two in-laws and did nothing to do with it. her husband wasn't with her, almost broke off their engagement because she talked to the fbi. the in-laws were upset she gave their names but they refused to talk, they saw what she did. maybe they had good reason. april 29, 1997, the same day steve baumgartner protesting to the cia in washington, within north carolina interviewing sandy, same day. the cia said they would take care of it. and when we talk in 2009, and she goes a second interview, she found out about it. several long island iced tea

cocktails and i don't even know what a long island iced tea is. and i don't drink at all and there is something you don't know. what is that? there was no second interview. and that same day to the gate the testament on the same day the fbi headed a missile team, gave them grief about what they were doing. there is something you don't know. they did that to several key eyewitnesses. create, manufacture out of whole cloth, with the statements that justify what they were trying to sell. and a later meeting, this was

made public in 1999 with the ntsb, cia analyst conceded only one witness had actually reported seeing the crippled plane with the nose come off climb. he was the man under greenwich. i got to know them very well. a great character, worked in philadelphia. when they closed the case with the fbi in november 1997 they showed for one time, many of you have seen this, the animation showing the plane flying along, the nose flies off spontaneously, fuel tank explosion, the plane shoots up 3000 or 4000 feet, the eyewitnesses, sounds like soviet propaganda if you ever saw the language, they tilt it all around and conceded the ntsb

some years later around the testimony of this young man on the bridge, it turns out they based it on a second interview, in the first interview, that is what sandy said. and i didn't see it come off of the beach, 20 ° off of the horizon when i saw it just made that up and put it into the record. there was no second interview with mike dwyer or sandy. a fellow flying above it, a navy guy with real missile experience, they made up a new interview for him, i saw a missile going right to left and a second 302, going left to

right, flight 800. these were the ones they were able to prove. finally, a year or so ago, we find out they say, this is a quote, the maximum altitude, was 14,500 feet. they knew that, not 17,000 plus sold to the american people, they showed the video once was when the fbi closed the case, no one in the media asked what is the cia doing here let alone this stuff is nuts, how can you try to sell this thing? james sanders worked with me on one previous book, the earliest explorer in this called me a year ago, won't believe it happened, they sent me the

video. jim had been sending freedom of information act requests to the fbi for some time. it is not the video from july 17th but almost as useful. a video we knew about on july 12, 1996. it was a video shot on the south coast of long island by an amateur. we knew it existed because the fbi and cia talked about it but it was a video of a missile test. the defense intelligence agency reviewed the video early on and said this is a surface-to-air missile we are looking at and talked about the smoke trail. when we saw the video we realized it was more than a smoke trail coming up. this was 5 days before twa flight 800 went down off of long island, an obvious missile test

taking place. that wouldn't matter a lot except when the fbi closed the case in november 1997 they said there was no missile test in the area for at least two years. they knew about this video, they did not enter the video. from the cia document we know that many eyewitnesses saw the missile test on july 7, 1996, so you have july 7th, july 12th, july 17th, you don't have to be a math major to see the sequence. every five days. after my book came out i heard from other people, on july 7th i was camping and i saw this, it does matter. that was what was going on. from november 1997 on it was closed, the ntsb held two hearings, no eyewitnesses were

allowed to testify, first time ever, totally unprecedented. they get away with it. the most successful cover of an american peacetime history, the great untold story of our times, 53 of your colleagues died without justice being brought to their families. i will jump ahead a little bit. had some other useful anecdotes. the deputy attorney general who oversaw the investigation, in may 1997 after this was in the bag gets a new job despite the fact she has no experience in mortgage or finance, named vice chancellor of fannie mae. and $25 million as vice-chairman

of fannie mae. and sat down and 5 democratic positions on the 9/11 commission. basically overseeing the events leading up to september 11th. in april 2004, attorney general john aircraft -- john ashcroft testified before the 9/11 commission and he said, quote, the single greatest structural cause for september 11th was the wall. the wall memo that prevented the cia and fbi from speaking to each other. i should note the head of the fbi missile team protested loudly about the wall in the run-up to september 11th and he went public with this protest. he said we can't look for him because we are investigators

with intelligence positions. two weeks after he said that, he said people are going to die. two week later this fellow, 18 of his buddies, they hijack the 4 planes and kill 3000 people because of the wall. full disclosure, he continues, compels me to inform you the memorandum, a member of this commission. the author of that memo is jamie borelli. as the nation learns in the aftermath of 9/11, the wall was breached all too easily to protect the secrets of twa 800 firmly when it came to protecting the security of the united states and that is where we are today. i am going to close with one last anecdote and we will take

questions. when we take questions we will speak up because we are just picking up and the and noise. in early july of this year accuracy in media, excellent organization out of washington at the national press club, twa flight 800, made a speech, i talked to vernon gross, ntsb board member, the night before. i start coughing. ignore it. i didn't know he lived in washington. why not get some press coverage and check it out. invite them up to speak and he speaks for twee 10 minutes and he says to me by the way, tomorrow i am having lunch with the chairman of the national transportation safety board. you want to come? sure. so i go to lunch and meet the

new chairman of the national transportation safety board names christopher hart and looking for a point of connection with christopher hart and trying not to push, just laying back trying to convince him i am sane and this is a story worth looking at and i realize what it was. he mentioned he had been on the board between 1989, and 1992 when clinton replaced him. what was interesting about that if i had written about that in the book but didn't know anything about his background, had an arrow, physics degree from princeton and the washington post pointed the out at the time, replaced by jim hall, the best qualification. the washington post said that at the time and i said i wrote

about that in the book. i posted that in the wall. washington post, two things, a democrat. replace a democrat with a democrat, with extraordinary credentials with one with no credentials and an african-american. to replace the democrat, the foresight of the clinton administration to pack words with people who will come in handy. two more people before 1996, political operatives. by the time 1996 comes jim hall, a chairman, three of the five board members, to take over the investigation, it watched it

happen. it is clever in a sense. this was and was otherwise an awkward improvised cover-up that was done essentially just to kick the can down the road past november and hope for the best, dipping to 20 years. appreciate you coming today. [applause] >> speak up, might stand up. >> the reason for the cover-up, the military screwed up. >> a certain thing called confirmation bias, the you want them to confirm what you hope

will be the outcome. when i got into this in the year 2000 i hope the outcome, i would feel more comfortable, when dowager -- it is almost unpatriotic to say that fortunately the evidence, overwhelmingly, on july 17th. and allied shipping the maneuvers, don't know. i do not know literally who fired the missile. missiles were fired and i know that missiles took down flight 800. the smoking gun was there from the beginning. everyone acknowledged except the

new york times. and covering right above, and technical manuals easily available, went back and found them. and was called cooperative engagement capability where ships and submarines cooperate to shoot other missiles out of the sky it was sitting right there. we know there were other ships in the area, three submarines and one cruiser. so we know they were there, we know that. who fired what i do not know.

>> i've tried to contact those people, and guess what? they don't return my phone calls. [laughter] >> what a surprise. >> yeah. i wouldn't rule that out. that was not mentioned as being right. the fbi can see that there were three submarines, the ones you mentioned and the uss normandy in the immediate vicinity of the crash. we also know that from day one the navy was lying to the fbi. the navy never came forward. christina borgerson, who spock here, was witness to -- who spoke here, was witness to one incident. someone asked why is the navy involved in the investigation when the navy may be the

culprit? they picked up this guy and hustled him right out of the room. >> oh, yeah. >> yeah. there was at least two eyewitnesses to that. so that said, the navy would not have and could not have covered this up on its own. it had to come from above. >> yes, sir. >> do you have any motive? >> accident. a lot of people have asked me was there anyone on that plane who deserved his or her own missile, and the answer is no. the u.s. navy would not shoot down one of our own -- but we know in 1988 the u.s. navy did shoot down an iranian airbus. accidents can happen. >> [inaudible] >> well, i would say the reluctance to admit it had a lot to do with the election in 1996. [laughter] because the navy wasn't going to -- they couldn't have kept this under wraps. they might have fudged a little, but they weren't going to keep

it under wraps. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] i read that the doctor who performed the autopsies -- [inaudible] he found large amounts of shrapnel -- [inaudible] any thoughts on how that was covered up? because i've also heard that the up doctor has been silenced as well. >> well, you know, those of you who saw christina here in july, she wrote and directed a documentary called twa flight 800 which is excellent. it came out three years ago. and two of the people who -- they had at least half a dozen high-level whistleblowers participate. two of them were the pathologists. and when i was watching that, i thought you could have made a

separate documentary -- and it would be a gruesome one -- on what happened to the bodies. because in a fuel tank explosion, they're going to bush. it's going to be -- they're going to burn. in some cases the dna were fused from one body to another. there were pieces of bone flying around like arrowheads sticking into the fuselage. these guys gotta have pretty tough stomachs to do this. the injuries were not at all consistent with a fuel tank fire, at least those that were in the place where the explosive devices were most damaging. yeah, good question. yes, ma'am. >> [inaudible] what did they do with all the wreckage? did they destroy it? >> no. the wreckage was reassembled in long island where they did the investigation, and now it has since been shipped to the ntsb training facility in virginia. and it's used as sort of like a

dumb show for people when they walk them through and say, see? you know, no holes here, no missile struck here, you know? it's use is very questionable. mike? >> as you point out -- [inaudible] the first commercial airlines shot down by a navy destroyer. i thought it was '91, you said it was '88. [inaudible] the captain testified that the aircraft -- [inaudible] accelerated toward his ship, and he gave the command to fire. okay -- [inaudible] unfortunately, russia had a satellite parked above, and it recorded everything. they said, no, no, that airliner

was 22,000 feet -- [inaudible] well, the navy had to eat crow. i'm sure the cap town got a demotion -- captain got a demotion -- [inaudible] >> yeah. there was, there were allegedly three sat9 lites that had flight 800 in its view. one of the parents from pennsylvania whose daughter was killed on the crash, there was a group of french students, 15 of them, who were going to paris that night, he used his -- as a family member, he was allowed a certain leeway, and he got to talk to them. said there were three satellites that night, and they were all malfunctioning, that's what he was told. and that's literally what he was told. and so, no, there's never been anything seen from them. and yet when the cia created its animation of the zoom climb of the nose falling off and the

plane shooting up, they claim that infrared sensors on u.s. satellite blah, blah, blah, but they've never shown any images. they just are talking out of school. that didn't show anything like that. yes, terry? >> [inaudible] >> i know i've talked to a lot of angry people about this one, but let me talk about boeing first. boeing and twa took the fall, basically. why would they do that? well, in boeing's case, it was pretty obvious. they were in the middle of a merger talk which would have given them a lock on the american market. in the same week -- and this was at that time, exactly at that time -- in the same week that the department of justice approved that merger, they turned down a merger between office depot and staples which would have given them a 6% lock

on the crucial office supply market. so boeing, if they wanted to survive, really didn't have much choice. twa, i've heard a lot of stories about why twa went along, and, you know, probably not a goo place to go into -- a good place to go into it all right now, but afterwards we may want to talk. many people have their theories. a lot of people think it was the death knell of the airline, and four years later it would be out of business and merging with american airlines at least for some unhappy, short period and then moving on. yeah, it's unfortunate. yes, sir. >> i was going to say, i worked -- [inaudible]

many answer to your question, christina -- [inaudible] >> yeah. and then i think they took it down to virginia and reconstructed it -- [inaudible] recycling. >> yeah. >> [inaudible] >> right. well -- >> i worked a little on -- [inaudible] i remember immediately after -- [inaudible]

we knew they were lying. >> oh, yeah. and at the end of the day, after four years the spark be that sets off the fuel tank is of unknown origin, right? the overheated, then the overheating of the center fuel tanks sitting on the runway at jfk, it was 71 degrees. these planes sit on runways in cairo and phoenix, you know, all the time. >> well, i've been in fuel tanks -- [inaudible] >> yeah. right. >> my experience -- [inaudible] it wouldn't be any difference if there was two gallons or 20,000 gallons in there -- [inaudible] >> oh, it did explode. >> right. >> i mean, some seconds after the whole plane caught fire and what not. yeah. >> [inaudible]

[laughter] >> you got a lot done. >> really? what do you think about -- [inaudible] he said i'll tell you right now, i -- [inaudible] a missile did not take it down. is that what you believe or you were told to believe? yes. >> you know, i have heard that story. i've heard that story several times, and, in fact, nelson demille, has anyone read nightfall, his book? a little steamy, opening chapter. i just listened to it driving back cross country, and it's a lot of fun. it's about, it's based around the missing video, and he comes to the same conclusion that i did, basically. but he was deeply involved in

research in long island for some of his books, and he knew a lot of fbi agents s and every time he ran into one, he'd get that same stonewall, you know? the nypd or you have folk county police -- suffolk county police would be much more forthcoming, but the fbi, it was a fuel tank explosion. they've got their marching orders. the fellow in the missile team i referred to earlier, he did his 20 years and got out, and i think that's because for certain people, that culture is very difficult to buy when something's gone wrong. in the back, yes, sir. >> a few weeks ago -- [inaudible] lecture, and i happened to be in california. i have a friend who's -- [inaudible] douglas aircraft on long beach and retired as an engineer. i told him i was coming there -- [inaudible] and so tony said -- [inaudible] a few years back. and i said, you know, people at

the twa museum, they'll look you right in the eye, and they'll flat out tell you that plane was shot down, there's no doubt in their mind. he looks at me -- [inaudible] i can tell you just the talking among boeing people and the engineers, that plane was shot down. now, at the same time, he also sent me a video of george stephanopoulos -- >> [inaudible] >> when he talked about, and then he goes back and talks about how plane twa was shot down, oops, i mean -- >> yeah, right, right. >> and -- [inaudible] so this is my statement. here's my question. so the cover up that we're talking about here is so massive beyond almost anything you can believe. we're talking about the faa, the ntsb, the fbi, cia -- [inaudible] in other people's files. i mean, "the new york times" if

a dog gets hit in new york city, they've got 15 reporters -- [inaudible] >> right. >> so when you look at all of this and you think of all the time, all the effort -- [inaudible] and at the same time -- [inaudible] you know, the fbi and the cia and military people, not their favorite guy. >> no. >> he was a draft dodger, why would they protect him? so with all this all you have to do is look at the missiles, look at the -- [inaudible] but my question is with all of the massive work that it took to do this, as much as they disliked clinton in the military and the cia and the question's not only why would they protect him, but why wouldn't the government just say, you know what? we screwed up. we're going to write a check. we messed up. what would have been fall ott from that? -- fallout from that? here's so much per person, for the airplane, we had missile tests going on out there, and that would have been the end of it. my question is why. >> here's my best answer, is

that on the night of july 17th, 1996, they panicked, and then they decided to kick this can down the road. and is once you start kicking it, you can't kick it back. and then what you're doing is you're covering for yourself. and despite all the people who seemed to be involved, i don't think there's -- other than a couple people in the navy, i don't think there's 6-10 civilians who really know what happened that night. and here's, here's what they share with us. testify knop louse, you're right -- stephanopoulos, you're right, talks about it accidentally on 9/11. he writes a book about it, he doesn't even mention the incident. george tenet, you know, who oversaw the cover-up from the cia position writes a book, doesn't mention it. leon panetta's the one who alerts clinton, doesn't mention it. hillary clinton, 500-page book,

one-third of a sentence. louie freeh, head of the fbi at the time, two sentences. the senate select committee on intelligence which covers all of those matters, certainly everything that's involved with the cia from 1996-97, doesn't mention it. it's a conspiracy of silence. they've kicked it down a memory hole. my hope, and this is bizarre, i'm going to put out an appeal right now is i think one person of conscience who's suffered most from having to live with this was the head of the fbi investigation, jim call strom, who's now on fox as their terrorist go-to guy which means fox won't talk about this. but i know he's to tortured. i know family members who have come up to him in his face and said you're lying. and he's the public face of this investigation. and and if anyone, i think, has

an interest in coming forward and just clearing the air, i think it would be he. and what i would recommend -- because who a arrests who at this point? i would say what you need is like a south africa style truth in reconciliation commission where you just, okay, we're going to waive all punishment, and let's just sort out the facts and hope this doesn't happen again. yes, sir. >> interesting how this is working out. i've been in aviation maintenance since 1998 with twa -- [inaudible] here in the kansas city area. started out as an airplane electrician -- [inaudible] replacing wiring, supervision, management, you know, the whole line. i'm in safety now, that part of the house, but through all of this you talk about kicking the can along. we're still kicking the can. we have a terrible burden of grief for those who lost loved ones. we have a terrible financial burden with this now, and we're

still following this can down the road trying to keep fuel tanks from exploding that don't explode. right now here in kansas city we're installing inner gas systems that are hugely expensive on every single aircraft across the board, you know? and you just like to say this reconciliation, when is it going to stop? because we're just pouring money and resources down this hole. >> and, you know, what happened, as you know, is immediately after this crash had they really thought it was a fuel tank explosion, it would have grounded all the 747s, certainly air force one. but that didn't happen. yeah. >> i was managing -- [inaudible] 737s at the time. they grounded 737s and said you've got to look at everything in your tank, all your wiring. we pulled all the -- we said, you know what? we're just going to pull all the wiring, we grounded our whole fleet, pulled the wiring out -- [inaudible] all of that.

we found one wire, and these were old, 200 basics, old 737s. we found one wire on our fleet of i think we had 18 737s at the time. one wire that had one spot that was aged, and it was in a conduit on the outside of the front -- [inaudible] you would think that you would find some mechanical, some electrical problem. i have yet to see one in all of these years. >> and that's why at the end of the investigation for the ntsb, they simply concluded, you know, must have been of unknown origin, you know? they don't know where this spark came from. can then we found out, by the way, from the cia documents that their head of their witness team at the time, a guy named david mayer, was working with the cia. he'd worked with them for 16 months. the ntsb's working with the cia? i mean, they had -- there were

people in the ntsb who were problematic. 99% of the people involved in the investigation were doing the right thing or trying to. including most of the fbi. but there are a few people in key positions who weren't. and they just allowed things to happen. and when you meet, you know, my -- in fact, i was just talking to this air traffic control guy just e-mailed me today, and he said you're right, you know, you were right to mention pensions. because i said the word pension is like, you know, for us what the word omert is in sicily. it guarantees silence. he said i worked 38 years as an air traffic controller. they take that away from me, i'm finished, you know? and for the people who work in and around government as a great silencer, also what happens is so many of these people end up working for defense contractors. and then if they go public, they not only risk their pensions and freedom, but they risk their whole company's connection with the government. and so there's a lot of

low-level fear among people who know stuff. and like i say, there's only a handful of i'll say bad people involved, but a lot of people just afraid to speak out. yes, sir. >> [inaudible] >> the captain of the coast guard, i do not know about that. there is -- i will say that there is just one angle of the story we have not talked about is this, is that on the night of july 17th, 1996, the coast guard went out there, as did a lot of just commercial fishermen and private yachtsmen, and many of them heard the distinctive ping from the black boxes, the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder. they're actually origin boxes. so it was only 120 feet of water. other than the bodies, this is the first thing that gets picked up. it took them a week to retrieve them. during that week they were putting out various stories, oh, they must be damages, they must

be buried. and i've seen the video of the actual navy divers finding them x it's like finding a hassock in your living room. it's just sitting there on the floor, a big orange box. they just picked it up, wow, we found them. i'm -- and because then when they tested them, of course, they revealed nothing. and then one of the family members was able to bring in an audio expert, and he said, yeah, the final seconds have been edited out. and ntsb didn't even disagree with that. it's one of those things missing like the 116 pieces of the plane that were sent to the fbi lab and never seen again. so so many things were subtracted, deleted, removed, stolen, covered up, destroyed. but the one thing they could not silence were the eyewitnesses. and they are the most critical part of this testimony. and they are continuing to speak out to this day. why don't we take one more

question, and then i think we better wrap it up here before you guys melt. are you guys all right? [laughter] any other questions? yes, mike. >> [inaudible] the fbi -- [inaudible] >> yeah. >> 18 months -- [inaudible]

never be mentioned again and didn't want anybody to ever attempt -- [inaudible] this is just a shame -- [inaudible] >> as a matter of fact, that's what got me started. because four years after a the crash, i met james and elizabeth sanders who came to kansas city to speak to a large twa group, and you're right. sanders is an investigative reporter, terry stacy was the 747 manager and pilot working the investigation, and the first -- and what happened is and liz sanders was a twa trainer. and 53 twa employees were killed in that crash. she knew a lot of them, she trained a lot of them, and she was heartbroken. she was going from one memorial service to another. she runs into stacy, and stacy says, hey, is your husband still

an investigative reporter? she says, yeah. he goes, have him talk to me. so stacy and sanders get together, and the first thing stacy tells sanders is there's a cover-up going on. so they started collaborating to get information out of the investigation into the mainstream. and one thing that stacy told sanders was about this orange residue on these seatbacks in one certain section of the plane. sanders asks him to scrape off the residue. it doesn't scrape, so he takes a pip. of foam -- pip. of foam -- pinch of foam rubber. sanders has it tested, goes public with the results. as a result of that, stacy, sanders and elizabeth sanders are hounded, finally arrested. elizabeth and james are are tried and convicted in a federal court of conspiracy to steal airplane parts. [laughter] and not a single person in the media raises this as a first amendment issue.

and when i heard that story, that's when i said maybe i better get involved in this. so i want to thank you all for coming out. it's an excellent group. [applause] it won't shock you to know that i have some books over there for sale. [laughter] i appreciate it. and if you want to stick around later and ask questions, and i will say this, by the way, if you know anyone who has information, have them go to my web site, cashill.com, and talk to me. communicate through that, okay? appreciate it. [inaudible conversations] >> here's a look at some of the best selling nonfiction books according to "the new york times":

>> and that's the current nonfiction bestsellers list according to "the new york times." many of these authors have or will be appearing on booktv, and you can watch them on our web site at booktv.org. >> a opportunity of things

happening constantly that are affecting our politics. and, you know, the ways that things get changed in this country, i mean, there are many, many ways that things get changed, right? my favorite example is since we're in new york, everybody here is probably familiar with governor andrew cuomo and how hard andrew cuomo fought against raising the minimum wage right up this the moment that he wanted to take credit for it. >> it wasn't his idea? >> oh, no, it was not his idea. [laughter] so, yeah, you had a confluence of factors there. you had a movement that started in new york, that started the first fight for 15 protest that i went to was right down the street here on fulton mall. and you also had, you know, we should be real that he was under investigation and was looking for some friends, but these things work, and we now have an increase in the minimum wage that will eventually get to $15 an hour for new york city and most of down state. >> something that was unthinkable -- >> something that was unthinkable --

>> -- even two years ago. >> right. and, you know, i think when we look at, you know, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of occupy wall street, and everybody's like where did those people go, what are they doing? well, they're all over the place. i just saw four or five people at the standing rock pipeline blockade in north dakota where i was earlier this week. so u.n. you, we're seeing -- and that also managed to push the administration to at least ask for a temporary halt on construction, part of construction. they're still constructing other parts of it. and meanwhile, the protesters there are still going, they're still walking down to the equipment because the temporary hold is not, you know, it's not a win completely. >> you can watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. >> this is booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. here's our prime time lineup. tonight starting at 7 p.m. eastern, nicholas eberstadt reports on the decline in employment of men.

and at eight, danny orbach recalls the plots toss assassinate adolf hitler. at 9 p.m., national book award winning biographer deirdre baer on the life of organized crime boss al capone. and on booktv's "after words" program at 10 p.m. eastern, george boar house discussed the impact of immigration on the economy. and we wrap up our saturday prime time lineup at 11 with former banker bradley birken fed's book, "lucifer's banker." that all happens tonight on c-span2's booktv. >> the national book awards will be presented this wednesday. every year five nonfiction books are nominated and one is selected. four of those authors have appeared on booktv this year, and we're airing those authors beginning now on booktv on c-span2.