TWA 800 was destroyed twenty years ago this July off the coast of Long Island. Mike Wire was one of the 258 FBI witnesses who reported an apparent missile strike. The New York Times, which owned the story, interviewed not a single one of them. In the absence of real information, the CIA and FBI collaborated to discredit the eyewitnesses and advance an exploding fuel tank theory. Wire’s case is just one shocking example out of many. To learn more, see Jack Cashill’s introductory article in this series or his book, TWA 800: The Crash, The Cover-Up, The Conspiracy (Regnery: July 5).
Recently the CIA released documents pertaining to the tragic destruction of TWA 800. During review of those documents, I have learned that the CIA had designated me as Witness #1 to the heartbreaking events of that day. For the FBI, I was only Witness #571. How the CIA came to decide upon me is at the heart of this miscarriage of justice.
TWA 800: The Crash, th...
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On July 17, 1996, I was working to get the new Beach Lane Bridge in Westhampton ready to open. The bridge crosses the narrow inland waterway and connects the mainland with a small strip of beach beyond.
As a millwright tradesman, I had been working all day in the mechanical room of the bridge. A little before 8:30 p.m. that night, I surfaced to get some air. I was talking to one of the many men working with me when I saw what looked like a cheap firework rising from beyond the houses along the beach. This wasn’t out of the ordinary for a summer weekday so close to the 4th of July.
I watched as the sparkling white light zigzagged southeast away from shore at about a 40-degree angle. At its peak, it arched over and disappeared. Then I saw what appeared to be an explosion, it expanded into a large fireball, and then I watched the aircraft in flames descend from the fireball and fall to the sea, breaking up as it fell.
After a few seconds had passed, I heard the first of four explosions. The first was the loudest. I could feel a shock wave against my chest. It shook the bridge enough that the other workers came running up to see what was going on.
At first, I thought it was a mid-air collision. I called my wife Joan at home in Pennsylvania and asked her to watch the news to see if anything was reported. At that point, the other men and I observed a rescue helicopter fly overhead and listened to the aircraft chatter on the PA system from the State Highway communications truck on site. Still unsure of what was unfolding; I went back to work and stayed on the job until after midnight.
The next morning at breakfast I overhead a man, a lawyer as it turned out, telling friends what he saw the night before. It was almost exactly what I saw. The only difference was that I described what I saw as “fireworks.” He was more familiar with the sea and took to describing the light as a “flare.”
Later, when I was back home in Bucks County, my employer called to inform me that the FBI wanted to speak to me. The FBI took my observations seriously enough to send an agent to my house named Andrew Lash. He interviewed me with Joan present on July 29, twelve days after the disaster.
Lash was conscientious and wrote what I said on a yellow legal pad, allowing me to check what he’d written for accuracy. We spoke for about 90 minutes, and that was the last time I talked to the FBI.
