http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000321/ts/crash_twa_1.html

Tuesday March 21 5:37 PM ET

US Probers Say TWA 800 Witness Reports Little Use

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Air safety investigators have concluded that witness accounts of the 1996 explosion of a TWA jumbo jet off Long Island, New York, are of little use in their nearly completed probe of the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board Tuesday issued the report of its ``witness group'' that reviewed 755 records of interviews performed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation following the July 17, 1996, crash that killed all 230 people on board.

``The FBI witness documents reviewed by the witness group are poorly suited for purposes of an aircraft accident investigation,'' the investigators concluded.

The safety board is expected to hold a final hearing on the crash of TWA flight 800 later this year.

Investigators suspect an electrical fault ignited fuel vapors in the Boeing 747s nearly empty center fuel tank, breaking the plane apart and sending it into the sea.

Nevertheless, witness accounts of seeing a streak of light in the sky around the time of the crash have continued to aid conspiracy theories that a missile could have brought down the plane.

The safety board said that 670 witnesses reported seeing something judged to be related to the accident and of those 258 saw something that fit the definition of a streak of light.

Most of those streak of light accounts were consistent with the path of the accident plane, the witness review group said.

There were 38 accounts of a streak of light rising straight up, or nearly so, but these accounts seemed to be inconsistent with the calculated flight path of the plane.

The safety board said some FBI interviewers had framed their questions in a manner that emphasized aspects relevant to a missile investigation.

The FBI conducted the original interviews without safety board investigators being present because it initially believed it was dealing with a criminal probe.

NTSB's witness group said a at least a handful of witness accounts could be cited to support a variety of theories about the accident.

``No study of the eyewitness accounts alone can prove or refute the contention that the crash of TWA flight 800 was due to any particular cause,'' it said.

-- viewer (justp@ssing.by), March 21, 2000

Answers

The Conclusions we are about to receive, are what I expected."Investigators SUSPECT....." and sixhundredandseventy Witnesses(670)are ALL full of Shit.

-- Ollie N (not@buying.BS), March 22, 2000.