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CBS/AP/ June 19, 2013, 8:56 AM
TWA Flight 800 gets another look 17 years later
Air safety officials stand in the hangar where the remains of TWA Flight 800 have been re-assembled at the National Transportation Safety Board(NTSB) training facility July 16, 2008, in Ashburn, Virginia. / GETTY IMAGES
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Updated 10:28 a.m. ET
NEW YORK Former investigators of the TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island are calling on the National Transportation Safety Board to re-examine the case.
The retired investigators claim that findings were "falsified." A documentary on the subject is coming out in July.
Play VIDEO
1996: TWA Flight 800 Crashed
The 1996 crash of the Paris-bound flight killed 230 people.
Initial speculation ranged from maintenance problems to a bomb and even a meteorite. Some critics theorized that a Navy missile accidentally brought down the jetliner.
The NTSB concluded that Flight 800 was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion, probably caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the wiring.
The agency said Wednesday its four-year probe remains one of its "most detailed investigations."
"The TWA Flight 800 investigation lasted four years...Investigators took great care reviewing, documenting and analyzing facts and data and held a five-day hearing to gather additional facts before determining the probable cause of the accident during a two-day Board meeting," the NTSB said in a statement.
The board said it would review any petition it receives from the documentary's producers, however they added in their statement that the petition for reevaluating the investigation "must be based on the discovery of NEW evidence or on a showing that the Board's findings are erroneous."
Mark Rosenker, a former NTSB chairman and current CBS News contributor, said he stood by the findings of the initial investigation, and that he saw nothing during his more than six years with the NTSB to indicate their findings were false.
An entire global team representing investigators from France, UK, and even observers from Russia joined in to find out what happened. US agencies included: FBI,CIA, FAA, ATF, NASA, Coast Guard, NYAir Guard, US Navy all helped in either the investigation or the challenging recovery. Even a British Defense agency assisted in examining and demonstrating that no missile brought this aircraft down," Rosenker said.
The crash happened when the Internet was still in its infancy, and it became one of the first stories fueled by online speculation and conspiracy theories. For some, the findings of the NTSB were never satisfactory.
CBS News correspondent Bob Orr, who covered the story closely during the four-year investigation, said in a 2006 conversation with a CNET reporter it became known as the "grassy knoll in the sky."
The problem was that certain rumors could not be shot down or proven one way or another easily - or quickly, said Orr, because investigators couldn't prove a negative. "It probably took close to a year before sources I trusted could say definitively, 'we know a navy missile didn't shoot it down.' But the best they could do for a long time was say, 'that doesn't fit with the evidence we have.'"
In the Flight 800 investigation, Orr said "we were always looking for that 'Eureka' piece of damage ... the one [piece of wreckage] that would reveal the cause of the blast. But, they never found that 'Eureka' piece, because there wasn't one."
TWA Flight 800 gets another look 17 years later
Air safety officials stand in the hangar where the remains of TWA Flight 800 have been re-assembled at the National Transportation Safety Board(NTSB) training facility July 16, 2008, in Ashburn, Virginia. / GETTY IMAGES
5 Comments
/31 Shares/28 Tweets/Stumble/EmailMore +
Updated 10:28 a.m. ET
NEW YORK Former investigators of the TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island are calling on the National Transportation Safety Board to re-examine the case.
The retired investigators claim that findings were "falsified." A documentary on the subject is coming out in July.
Play VIDEO
1996: TWA Flight 800 Crashed
The 1996 crash of the Paris-bound flight killed 230 people.
Initial speculation ranged from maintenance problems to a bomb and even a meteorite. Some critics theorized that a Navy missile accidentally brought down the jetliner.
The NTSB concluded that Flight 800 was destroyed by a center fuel tank explosion, probably caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the wiring.
The agency said Wednesday its four-year probe remains one of its "most detailed investigations."
"The TWA Flight 800 investigation lasted four years...Investigators took great care reviewing, documenting and analyzing facts and data and held a five-day hearing to gather additional facts before determining the probable cause of the accident during a two-day Board meeting," the NTSB said in a statement.
The board said it would review any petition it receives from the documentary's producers, however they added in their statement that the petition for reevaluating the investigation "must be based on the discovery of NEW evidence or on a showing that the Board's findings are erroneous."
Mark Rosenker, a former NTSB chairman and current CBS News contributor, said he stood by the findings of the initial investigation, and that he saw nothing during his more than six years with the NTSB to indicate their findings were false.
An entire global team representing investigators from France, UK, and even observers from Russia joined in to find out what happened. US agencies included: FBI,CIA, FAA, ATF, NASA, Coast Guard, NYAir Guard, US Navy all helped in either the investigation or the challenging recovery. Even a British Defense agency assisted in examining and demonstrating that no missile brought this aircraft down," Rosenker said.
The crash happened when the Internet was still in its infancy, and it became one of the first stories fueled by online speculation and conspiracy theories. For some, the findings of the NTSB were never satisfactory.
CBS News correspondent Bob Orr, who covered the story closely during the four-year investigation, said in a 2006 conversation with a CNET reporter it became known as the "grassy knoll in the sky."
The problem was that certain rumors could not be shot down or proven one way or another easily - or quickly, said Orr, because investigators couldn't prove a negative. "It probably took close to a year before sources I trusted could say definitively, 'we know a navy missile didn't shoot it down.' But the best they could do for a long time was say, 'that doesn't fit with the evidence we have.'"
In the Flight 800 investigation, Orr said "we were always looking for that 'Eureka' piece of damage ... the one [piece of wreckage] that would reveal the cause of the blast. But, they never found that 'Eureka' piece, because there wasn't one."
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