Conspiracy theories remain

BY LAUREN TERRAZZANO | Newsday Staff Writer

For some, the missile theory will live forever. Others are convinced that TWA Flight 800 was shot down by friendly fire by the U.S. Navy, which was doing military exercises that night. And there are those who still believe the Boeing 747 was felled by a meteor, or a giant methane gas bubble in the sky.

Such theories endure a decade after the crash of Flight 800.

They persist despite the conclusions of federal crash investigators and two federal hearings that the crash was an accident caused when flammable vapors in the 25-year-old plane's fuel tank were ignited by an errant spark.

"It was definitely a missile," said Tom Stalcup, of Falmouth, Mass., who holds a doctorate in physics and heads the Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, a 30-member group worldwide largely connected by the Internet. Stalcup started investigating the crash in 1997 as a graduate student at Florida State University.

"The radar data shows a signature for a missile strike and wreckage came off the plane at supersonic speeds, which might not have happened from a center fuel tank explosion," he said.

In contrast, after the National Transportation Safety Board's four-year investigation into the crash, the then-head of its aviation safety division said the physical evidence recovered from the scene "indicated irrefutably that a missile did not strike the airplane."

Stalcup's group on Wednesday filed a federal lawsuit seeking the release of U.S. Navy logs of the recovery and analysis of the data.

They are also seeking the original so-called "Kabot photo" taken at a party in the Hamptons by Southampton town employee Linda Kabot, which shows in the background a cylindrical object with one end aglow heading toward the plane.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed more than 600 eyewitnesses to the disaster, all on Long Island, on land, water or flying that night. Many still believe that what they saw -- a smoky streak of light streaming toward the plane -- was a missile and not a cloud of smoke from descending fuel, as investigators later explained in computer simulations.

"I still think it was a device fired at the plane," said Jim Naples, 51, a general contractor in Center Moriches who has helped the TWA families build the memorial to the dead at Smith Point Park.

On the water that night with his wife and two daughters, Naples was fishing for fluke in Moriches Bay Inlet. A hot, muggy but clear night, the fishing wasn't that good so the family headed west toward home in their 21-foot boat just after 8 p.m. That's when they saw a reddish streak of light heading toward the sky to the west, followed by a thick smoke trail.

"I thought, I've never seen an emergency flare like that," he said, thinking it was a boat signaling for help. He was later interviewed by the FBI. "A second later, we saw a huge ball of fire. It's something I'll never forget." Then, miles from shore, the ocean was on fire.

Besides the Web sites that promote various theories, several books have been written on the subject. Controversial author James Sanders wrote that the crash was the result of a terrorist attack, covered up by the government. Author Nelson DeMille last year wrote a fictional account of the disaster, suggesting the plane was felled by a terrorist missile and part of a huge coverup.

Some families of the victims say they are tired of hearing the various theories. "My wife and I go frequently to Long Island to manage the memorial and ten years later, within three minutes, people are telling you their theories of what really happened," said John Seaman, of Clifton Park, N.Y., who lost his niece, 19-year-old Michele Becker in the crash. "There's a point where you want to say I'm not interested. The point is that 230 people left the Earth sooner than they were supposed to."