The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

Note the word “missile”. No fewer than 38 witnesses had come forward to say they’d seen missile(s) streaking towards the plane just before it exploded. (Another 220 had seen a “streak of light”, variously characterized as a shooting star, a flare, or something similar near the TWA800.) The witnesses even formed themselves into an action group, running full-page ads in national US newspapers: “We the eyewitnesses know that missiles were involved… for some reason our government has lied and tried to discredit us.”

If it was a missile, who fired it and why? In The Downing of TWA Flight 800 (1997), journalist James Sanders proposed that the Boeing was shot down by a Stinger missile from a US Navy cruiser on a training exercise nearby; instead of locking on to a Navy drone, the missile mistakenly locked on to the Boeing. Sanders further claimed that the FBI suppressed Federal Aviation Administration radar records which showed “an unexplained blip” near TWA800. Sanders’s book has photographs of reddish residue, supposedly of missile fuel, on retrieved seats. When the NTSB began its public hearings into the TWA800 disaster, FBI deputy director James Kallstrom requested that the residue not be discussed.

Led by William Donaldson, a retired naval officer, a number of conspiracy theorists have proposed that TWA Flight 800 was downed by terrorist action. In the “Interim Report on the Crash of TWA Flight 800 and the Actions of the NTSB and the FBI” (1998) Donaldson stated that TWA800 was struck by two missiles, and subsequently the FBI, NTSB and Justice Department covered up the fact to save the Clinton administration embarrassment. Donaldson noted: “In the history of aviation, there has never been an in-flight explosion in any Boeing airliner of a Jet-A Kerosene fuel vapor/air mixture in any tank, caused by mechanical failure.” Another former US military man, Colonel Robert Patterson, speculated in Dereliction of Duty (2003) that TWA800 had been downed by a US Navy Stinger—but that the Stinger had been launched to intercept a terrorist (read Iraqi) missile heading towards the plane. In yet another variant of the terrorist-attack theory, Peter Lance concluded in Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror (2004), that TWA800 was blown up by a bomb with the intention of disrupting the trial of terrorist Ramzi Yousef for conspiring to blow up US airliners.

As of 2007, the NTSB, the Senate and the FAA all maintain that TWA Flight 800 crashed due to some form of mechanical or electrical failure. But can 38 independent witnesses all be wrong? Witnesses that even the FBI calls “credible”?

TWA Flight 800 crashed due to “friendly fire”: ALERT LEVEL 7

TWA Flight 800 crashed due to terrorist attack: ALERT LEVEL 5

Further Reading

Peter Lance, Cover Up, 2004

Robert Patterson, Dereliction of Duty, 2003

James Sanders, The Downing of Flight 800, 1997

Waco

If the results had not been so tragic, the story of the Siege of Waco could be rewritten as a routine for circus clowns.

On 28 February 1993 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided the ranch compound of the Branch Davidians at Mount Carmel, near Waco, Texas. Led by self-appointed Messiah David Koresh, the Branch Davidians were an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists and had been based at Mount Carmel since the 1950s. More recently, Texan newspapers had rumoured that Koresh was a polygamist and even a child-abuser; the BATF had become interested in him and his sect for firearms violations, including the converting of semi-automatics to full automatics and the manufacture of grenades. Since the Branch Davidians were legal dealers of weaponry (indeed, gun-dealing was one of the sect’s most significant money-making activities), the violations were relatively minor infractions.

Koresh could easily have been arrested on one of his weekly visits to Waco, but the BATF chose instead to launch a full-scale raid on the sect’s compound. On the morning of Sunday 28 February 1993, BATF agents moseyed up to the compound, hiding in cattle trailers. Unfortunately, the element of surprise was lost thanks to a large black BATF helicopter circling overhead, not to mention the accidental discharge of a gun by a BATF agent which killed a fellow BATF besieger. Believing themselves under fire, the Branch Davidians returned fire. In the ensuing gun battle, five Branch Davidians died, as did four BATF agents—all of the latter probably victims of “friendly fire”—before the government agency beat a hasty retreat. To the embarrassment of the BATF and the White House, the whole fiasco had been caught by news cameras.

Pride dictated that the falling low of the US government be made good. The Waco operation was handed over to the FBI, who settled down to besiege the Branch Davidian compound with the methods of psych-warfare. Bradley fighting vehicles and helicopters endlessly encircled the compound, while taped loops—which included the sound of rabbits dying, Tibetan chants, bagpipes and Nancy Sinatra singing “These Boots are Made for Walking”—were broadcast at deafening volume. Noise torture had worked to flush out Panamanian leader General Noriega some years before, but the Koresh sect were made of tougher stuff. For 51 days the Branch Davidians withstood the governmental goliath, until Attorney General Janet Reno approved a final, all-out assault after being told of child abuse in the compound.

On the morning of Monday 19 April the Feds smashed into the compound with Bradley fighting vehicles and M-60 tanks. Still Koresh and his followers refused to surrender. Suddenly, at around noon, the compound erupted into flames. Nine occupants emerged alive. The body of David Koresh and 79 other Branch Davidians, including 23 children, were found in the smouldering ashes. Koresh and many of the others had been shot in the head.

Much of the subsequent controversy over Waco hinges on responsibility for the fatal fire at high noon. In October 1993 the Justice Department determined from its investigation that Koresh had ordered the fire in order to facilitate a mass suicide a la Jonestown; bugging devices planted by the FBI in the compound recorded cult members spreading fuel around. According to the Justice Department, Koresh was a brainwashing, sex-addicted guru who wanted martyrdom. The Wacko from Waco.

To this day, the FBI continues to blame Koresh for the conflagration. It’s not a claim that has stood the test of time unscathed. As the Academy Award-nominated Waco: The Rules of Engagement (1997) by maverick film-maker William Gazecki forced the FBI to admit, they fired and sprayed CS tear-gas into the compound for six hours. CS gas is highly flammable, frequently containing kerosene or methyl chloride. A bullet is sufficient to ignite dense CS vapour in a confined space, and the FBI’s own aerial infrared recordings seemingly confirm that the Bureau fired weapons into the compound after the CS barrage. The FBI also fired pyrotechnic grenades at Waco, though the Bureau adds that the grenades were launched “in a direction far away from the compound”—which has caused critics to wonder why they were fired at all. Some of the dead children at Waco were found in postures strongly suggestive of cyanide poisoning caused by ignited CS gas. Even if the Bureau did not deliberately set Waco alight, it may have caused the fire by accident; according to surviving Branch Davidians, the FBI’s tanks knocked over the kerosene lamps the sect was using for lighting after the G-men had cut off their electricity supply.

Then there is the mystery of why the Waco blaze, however it started, was not extinguished by the waiting firefighters. Initially, Branch Davidian snipers were blamed for keeping the fire department at bay; later the FBI agreed that it had ordered the fire department to hold back from the compound because of the danger of exploding ammunition. This claim does not square easily with the Bureau’s own order to bulldoze the Waco remains—while the debris was still flaming. As in the Oklahoma City Bombing, the FBI’s proclivity to order in the bulldozers destroyed potentially vital evidence.

For many right-wing conspiracy theorists, the siege of Waco was stage one in the plan for the New World Order, in the guise of the United Nations, to take over the US. Waco, according to this perspective, was provoked by the Feds in order to justify a clampdown on gun ownership, leaving Joe Public unable to bear arms when the guys in the blue hats came. One of those who blamed the FBI for the bloodshed at Waco was an ex-soldier called Timothy McVeigh who, on the second anniversary of Waco, expressed his rage by carrying out the Oklahoma City Bombing. McVeigh wasn’t the only one to blame the Feds: a poll taken in 1999 found that 66 per cent of Americans believed the Waco fire was deliberately caused by the FBI.